Bishops's Letter, Minister's Diktat, And A Twiddling Taoiseach

Enda and his mobile phone

What a week!  It seems that time is flying and more and more things are popping out of the woodwork to be dealt with.  Hence the spaces between posts - not that I have nothing to say - you should all know me by now, I tend to have too much to say at times.  I grab a few moments.....

Since my last post a few things of note have happened.  First of all the Bishops have released their statement for the Day for Life in Ireland which falls this year on the 7th October, feast of Our Lady of the Rosary (or as a friend pointed out this morning - the anniversary of Lepanto).   I have tried to find the statement online, but I do not think it is up yet - I trawled through the Bishop's Conference website and found nothing - it's not a great website and it can be difficult to find things on it, so maybe I missed it.

Anyway, the statement is good: it is clear and states quite catagorically that abortion is wrong, never necessary to save the life of a woman and that the child conceived is a human being worthy of the right to life.  There is a wonderful sentence in it worth noting: "From that moment [fertilisation], each of us did not grow and develop into a human being, but grew and developed as a human being" (emphasis in the text).  That is a marvellous way of stating the facts and undermine the argument proposed by those who promote and defend abortion that the "embryo" or "foetus" is not a human being. 

I am always amazed that in this era when science and medicine are so advanced, there are people out there who claim the embryo is not human, but becomes human (it seems) when the woman assents to the pregnancy.  Talk about hocus pocus and medieval ideas! The pro-abortion lobby are positively backward when it comes to scientific facts and then they have the gall to accuse those who respect human life as being stuck in the past and not as progressive as them.  Poor deluded creatures, their blindness has made fools of them all. 

The Bishops also point out that the government does not have to legislate for abortion to comply with the ruling of the European Court - someone should tell the bright sparks in the government because all we hear out of them is that we may have no choice.  Personally I believe they know, but well, politicians tend be selective when it comes to truth, and on this issue, even though it will cost innocent human lives, they'll fiddle the same old tune. 

Abortion, the bishops point out, is not a solution to a difficult problem, but the  delberate taking of human life and it can never be a genuinely humane or compassionate solution.  It is an evil that brings more evil, destroying not just the life of the baby who is killed, but the woman who has the abortion and society in general which becomes less humane and compassionate as it gets used to the killing of the innocent.  As the bishops correctly point out, as we listen to all the hard cases, it has proved by international experience that once abortion has been legalised, even if only for very restricted cases, it quickly becomes more widespread than was first intended (although to be honest, many of those arguing for abortion intend to have abortion on demand - their talk of restrictions is nothing more than a Trojan horse - as experience teaches us).

Meanwhile the Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, is berating RTE for its unbiased coverage of the Children's Rights Referendum.  Now to be honest I never thought RTE could ever be accused of unbaised reporting, but if they are finally getting their act together, they should be supported. The issue is, once again, the McKenna judgement whereby both sides in a referendum campaign must be given equal time to explain their position: the government doesn't like this.

Meanwhile (you'll love this), after another minister in the same government told the Catholic Church to keep its nose out of the forthcoming abortion debate, Minister Noonan has told the Churches that he expects them to issue statements very soon supporting the government position on the Children's Rights Referendum.  This is an interesting development - a government minister telling the Christian Churches what positions they should take on certain issues: is this a diktat?  What about separation of Church and state?  This crowd just get worse. 

And meanwhile, our Prime Minister, Enda Kenny, on a visit to the Pope with other representatives of the European Political Group of which his party is a member, was twiddling away on his mobile phone during the Pope's speech.  Lord knows what people think about Ireland when they see our political representatives behave in such a childish way.  But really, is this the best we Irish can get to run our country?  Thanks their actions against the Pope and the Vatican, this government has already brought much criticism of Ireland from foreign diplomats and governments - when will they stop showing us up in public with their adolescent rebellion against Catholicism?

Not sure if you saw this, if not, please read it - John Water's excellent article on the Children's Rights Referendum.  As always, Waters sheds light on issues usually ignored in Irish Society today. That man deserves a knighthood!  We must drop a few hints with the bishops to put in a word with the Holy Father.