Ireland has banned public Mass for longer than any other country in the world in the past year, aside from the blanket bans in countries such as China. 40 weeks of public Mass being banned in the South, while it is freely available in the North. Ireland has the most irrational and aggressive anti Catholic lockdown ‘laws’ in Europe, as outline here by Angelo Bottone.
A number of international media outlets have expressed astonishment at the farcical nature of the never ending lockdown by Ireland’s incompetent government.
In an article in the National Review, Irish American Catholic Michael Brendan Dougherty.
He writes:
European nations such as France and Poland are going back into lockdowns now. Ireland never left. From mid October to Easter Sunday, with nothing but a five-day respite at Christmas, the government of Ireland has had people in what they call a “level-five lockdown.” The details of this arrangement are rather shocking. No visitors to any households. You can meet with members of one other household in an outdoor setting, so long as it is not a home or garden. Only 25 people may attend funerals or weddings. Anything aside from stingily defined domestic travel and even exercise beyond five kilometers is prohibited, and enforcement was dramatically stepped up in January. That is, even a 3.11-mile run is illegal. After some hemming and hawing, the government also admitted that saying Mass publicly is an offense.
He continues with an explanation of why the Irish have accepted the world’s cruellest and least effective lockdown:
Why is it like this? Isn’t Ireland a land of rebellion? Beyond voices like Gary Dempsey, not really. Social critic Conor Fitzgerald has diagnosed Ireland’s political culture as suffering from an acute case of “goodboyism,” which he defines as “the tendency in the Irish establishment to ostentatiously direct themselves towards external sources of cultural authority over and before the Irish populace.” Resistance to lockdown is associated with Donald Trump, or troglodyte Tory backbenchers. Ireland self-image is more enlightened and progressive than that. The Royal Irish College of Physicians made Dr. Anthony Fauci an honorary fellow this March. He proceeded to warn them against getting too frisky too soon. Pat on the head received: Good boy!
Ireland of course, has never been a land of rebellion. Rebels have only ever been sporadic and small in number. As is the case now, the majority of people, our bishops included, fear being ostracised more than they want to do what they feel is right.
In Catholic newspaper, The Remnant they had an article entitled ‘Back to the Mass Rocks: Ireland’s Heartbreaking Apostasy’. It mentioned some of the harsh lockdown measures before commenting:
In recent years, by popular referendum, the people of Ireland removed from their Constitution the prohibition of divorce and abortion and legalized same-sex "marriage." They also elected an open homosexual as Prime Minister who has made Mass illegal under the guise of covid. It has become a "mission territory." I guess some Catholics are going across the border to Northern Ireland, a part of the UK, to Mass. If you read this article, notice that the local police are cooperating with injustice just as they are throughout the U.S. The police enforce laws for the state, not for you. Maybe someday people will have a more forgiving attitude toward the Germans who did evil acts under orders from the Nazi State.
This is the simplistic view of Ireland which prevails abroad. Firstly, Ireland never elected Leo Varadkar as Taoiseach, his party elected him by default when Enda Kenny resigned. His election had less to do with his homosexuality and more to do with his privileged background, educated at Ireland’s most prestigious Protestant boarding school. There has also been his cavorting with the anti Catholic Orange Order. Varadkar was barely reelected last January and may not even run again next time for fear of being voted out. Secondly, the Referendums in both cases were the results of heavy pressures from the United States and from the United Kingdom. Many of those who voted to remove the Right to Life in 2018, if you asked them what they were voted for will tell you it was about women in emergency situations, in short they didn’t understand what was on the ballot, thanks in part to the efforts of the ‘Irish’ media, which is largely British and American owned.
Regardless, The Remnant are correct, Irish people are now having to travel to North for Mass because it has been made illegal in the South out of spite, since not a single case has been linked to Mass here.
On that note, Breitbart have pointed out that only 1 in 1,000 cases have been linked in Ireland to outdoor transmissions.
“Our conclusion is that in many sectors, and for many sizes and formats, it should be possible to put appropriate evidence-based mitigations in place to deliver outdoor events and activities in a way that does not escalate the risk from sporadic transmission to cluster outbreak,” Professor Weed stated, according to The Irish Times.
The figures come after Dr Matteo Bassetti, a top epidemiologist in Italy, criticised his government’s move to require the wearing of masks in outdoor environments.
He said in October 2020: “The epidemiological trend offers no scientific basis for these measures.”
Adding: “In my opinion, prohibitions don’t do much; we need to focus on the involvement of the people, on correct information.”
Italy is not the only country to require the wearing of masks outdoors. Before the Easter holidays, the government of Vienna announced that high-traffic areas in the centre of the Austrian capital, such as the Stephanplatz square, would require the wearing of masks.
The bishops seem to have accepted that they have less standing and purpose in Irish society than a supervisor in Krispy Kreme or Gus the leather expert from the local sex shop, who are both operating as normal. Ordinary Irish Catholics have been left powerless and voiceless, with most resistance efforts completely pointless if bishops are going to go so far as to threaten priests who give Communion to people. Clearly, the Eucharist is now below a Flat White as a necessity in the view of the bishops if they willingly ban the former while the latter is sold each day by the million. If they think otherwise, their actions do not match up, which as we know, is not what being a Christian is about. We have been relatively supportive of the bishops, it has not been an easy situation, but now that bishops are discussing closing down churches as a result of all of this, the decision is quite easy, open the churches or accept becoming another Anglican Church style woke irrelevance. It’s absurd to complain and then ask the laity to help, then do nothing with the efforts that he laity carry out upon their request.
The weather is now good enough for outdoor Masses, virtually no cases are linked to outdoors (none were linked to indoor Masses either). The prudent thing to do, with the church facing closures, is to open up.
We must emphasise also, that this is an Irish problem rather than just an Irish Catholic problem. Many business owners have stayed silent because of the financial assistance that they have received from the government, even though in the long run it is unlikely that they will survive the coming recession. Likewise, many young people are happy to be receiving unemployment payments and so are supporting policies that will surely mean mass emigration for them in the coming years. You could continue with the reasons, but overall the 26 counties have overwhelmingly failed to hold their political, policing and medical leaders to account in what has been a chaotic, rudderless and bleak year. Through their examples, many priests have connected with ordinary people by being compassionate regarding funerals and weddings, while secular Irish were reporting single digits of extra mourners presenting at funeral Masses to Gardai. The bishops will come out of this damaged in the eyes of the faithful and the wider public, as will other authority figures, but many ordinary priests have done their best within the context of their vow of obedience and one can only hope that those efforts plant some hope for the future of the Irish church.
