Buoyed by recent support from Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald and Fine Gael politician Neale Richmond, anti Catholic group the Orange Order have reopened a ‘dormant’ branch in the historic symbol of Anglo Protestant power in Dublin, Trinity College.
The group, who have complained about being compared to the Ku Klux Klan and other arch Protestant groups, have become more openly visible in the South of Ireland over the past number of years. Then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who was educated in a Protestant school and who celebrated abortion in a former seat of Protestant power at Dublin Castle in 2018, visited an Orange Lodge in an official capacity last year and was gifted with a glass obelisk as a thank you. Varadkar, who was Tanaiste when the Irish government surrounded Fr. PJ Hughes and his church earlier this year because he was saying Mass, has also said that he would love to an Orange Order march through Dublin.
His party compatriot Neale Richmond also refused to apologise after being photographed near a banner honouring Oliver Cromwell, who raped, murdered and enslaved tens of thousands of Irish Catholics as part of his ethnic cleansing campaign during the anti Catholic and anti Gaelic genocide of 1649.
Richmond’s refusal to apologise was trumped by ‘Republican’ Mary Lou McDonald, who has gone on record as stating that she wants to force the entire island of Ireland to celebrate the Orange Order’s hatred for Catholicism every 12th of July.
Now, as part of the their increasing arrogance, the Order have openly expressed their reopening of their lodge at Trinity College, which had not been used publicly since 1966. After holding a formal ceremony this past week, they stated that they hope for more lodges to be established around the country.
It is not hard to imagine that they will have a lot of interest, particularly from members of Fine Gael and Sinn Fein, who have showed immense interest in the legacy of the Orange Order recently. In the past decade, this has included shutting the Vatican Embassy as Fine Gael did or picketing Catholic churches as Sinn Fein have done.
In a 2000 article for The Guardian, Henry McDonald summed up the hatred that envelopes the dark heart of the Orange Order:
None the less, anti-Catholicism lies at the root of Orange thought and not unionism; it remains a potent force. Worst of all, its final logical terminus is eliminationist, just as anti-Semitism was in Germany.
After all, if you believe that Catholic men, women and children will burn in the fires of Hell if they do not convert to the true faith, what's wrong with petrol-bombing their homes and burning them out of your streets?
