Unlike in previous referendums, anti Catholicism was a little more toned down than usual in the humiliating defeat suffered by the Irish establishment in last week’s anti mother and anti family referendums.
No one draped an altar in referendum paraphernalia, nobody attacked statues and nobody hailed it as a complete rejection of the Catholic faith.
Actually, one politician did not get the memo about the last part.
The Green Party’s Pippa Hackett launched an anti Catholic tirade in the hope of bagging some much needed votes on the eve of the referendum.
Unfortunately, it failed to garner the million or so necessary votes to turn the tide in the establishment’s favour.
Hackett, a Protestant, wrote on X:
21st Century Ireland is a universe away from the world of 1937… when Eamon De Valera and John Charles McQuaid authored the Irish Constitution - with the Code of Canon Law in one hand and a catechism in the other
Eamon DeValera fought in the Easter Rising and is the most significant political figure in the history of the state. John Charles McQuaid was Archbishop of Dublin and his letters reveal a deeply compassionate man who cared for the poor and needy of Dublin, something which has rarely if ever been said of any elected member of the Green Party.
With all due respect to Pippa Hackett, perhaps she should spend less time imagining that Catholics oppressed this land and more time coming to terms with her faith enforcing the Penal Laws for centuries, hanging priests and having our archbishops hanged drawn and quartered, selling our people into slavery before committing the genocide of the 1840s.
