“The supreme adventure is being born. There we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap... When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale.”
The last weekend in June has become one of the most important dates in the calendars of bank managers, multinational CEOs and under pressure Fine Gael Ministers. Each person currently occupying those roles has learned to stave off criticism for the coming 12 months by adorning their logos and symbols in rainbows so as to make a barter with the masses. The terms of the barter read, no criticism of their toxic financial burdens so long as they show deference towards the united colours of nihilism.
The bankers can evict people, the multinationals can avoid paying tax and the Fine Gaelers can avoid hearing any genuine criticism while the citizens get to pretend that their country is a more hospitable place than it was decades ago, and that promiscuity is the reason for making it so. You can’t buy a house or raise a family, but you can buy alcohol to drink on the street and pretend you are in a Spice Girls video so why not celebrate.
Pride weekend is a tiresome celebration not so much of homosexuality anymore, but rather of Ireland’s descent into affirmative staged happiness. The levels of self harm, violence and drug use in the country say one thing about the self loathing of the current generation, their acceptance of people who clearly despise them as their leaders says another. The former are expressions of desperation, the latter of resignation.
The beginning of hope for Ireland getting out of this quagmire is in seeing a future for itself. One full of life, family and faith.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said that
Our world is beginning to divide very rapidly into two classes of people: the biophiles and the necrophiles. The biophilic people are those who love life. The other class of people are the necrophiles, the lovers of death.
This weekend, on the 6th of July, the Rally for Life will see tens of thousands of these biophiles, these lovers of life, take to the streets of Dublin. Loving life is not about hoping for political victory or seeking delight in prosperity and success, to love life, it needs to be loved as anything is, for what it is and for what it can be, and with a willingness to fight for it.
The annual march has an added poignancy this year, in being the first in Dublin since the removal of the right to life and the introduction of extreme anti abortion laws since. The gloating by liberals, delighted with the extremity and malice contained in the abortion laws, has been displayed in such a fashion as to deflate and demoralise prolifers. In many respects, it could be said that the shock has been difficult for many to recover from. Particularly in relation to some of the grisly details that have emerged since, abortion rates skyrocketing, doctors hankering for the cash on offer if they provide a successful abortion and the story of a healthy baby aborted when misdiagnosed with illness they never had. To be deflated in the face of those things might seem reasonable, but it is not logical nor realistic. Although abortion has become embedded into every Western society where it has been legalised and government funded, in the United States we are already seeing the tides of injustice turning around. Several states have brought in humane laws banning abortion when the heartbeat is detected and President Trump is the most supportive President that the prolife movement have seen there. Their prolife movement started very modestly in 1974, with 10,000 people attending the first March for Life after the passing of Roe vs Wade, the law which would eventually enable over 50,000,000 abortions, including the work of serial killer Kermit Gosnell. The March for Life now attracts well over half a million people each year, but the real crown jewel lies in what happens in between each march.
The most significant factor has been the role of the Catholic Church in opposing abortion across the United States. The efforts of the clergy and laity have been a credit to those who have waded through scandal after scandal in order to keep paradoxically be a beacon of hope for children, born and unborn, even as the hierarchy have had to grapple with the damage done by many of their colleagues to those very groups through sexual abuse. The presence of priests saying Mass outside clinics has been an important witness but so too has the witness of those who have been arrested, for things as innocuous as praying the Rosary. These have been the efforts that have provided the spiritual and temporal graces needed to keep the fight against abortion going, in a way that transcends the arguments of those who reduce the issue to merely one of secular ‘human rights’. These have been the daily struggles which have attracted people to the Catholic faith and to the fight against abortion. Since last year’s referendum, we are seeing some of the same efforts. Every Saturday evening there is a public vigil outside Holles Street, there have been vigils outside closed GP offices by Catholics and there has even been an exorcism carried out by an American priest on an abortion facility.
As Catholics, being prolife means being anti abortion and yet also a whole lot more. It means that the so called culture of death, the caliphate of cheap pleasure that our country has become, must be opposed in every way. Not in a petty manner, not with tit for tat complaints. But with imagination, with conviction, with faith. Chesterton said that being born was the supreme adventure, those of us who love life need to remember those other words of Chesterton, that dead things only go with the stream while living things were the only ones who could go against it. There will be no banks at the Rally for Life, there will be no members of Fine Gael and there will be no multinational corporations. Those are people who have no investment in passing anything on to the next generation nor of even ensuring that there is a next generation. They live for themselves only. It has been said that marches against abortion are the only ones on a large scale where the people marching do so not for themselves, but for someone else.
On July 6th, let this be the first Rally for Life where we march for the 1,000 babies being aborted each month. And let it be one where we march not just in opposition to the most vile creature in all of society, the abortion ‘doctor’, but also his enablers in business and government. Not to mention his minions in the media who twist his dirty deed until it appears as innocuous as a tooth extraction. With God on our side, it will not take us 40 years to reverse this damage, as it has for those in the States. Unlike the Roe vs Wade law, nobody in Ireland has a constitutional right to an abortion and any sitting government can remove it at any time. Let us pray for that intention.
But don’t forget, the hard work happens regularly. Groups like Gianna Care who help mothers in need. And vigils like those at Holles Street and the Peaceful 7. Don’t let the one annual event distract us from that. Whatever your time constraints are, we all at least have hands and lips to pray with and to ask God for his help. With us all working and praying together, the annual Rally can be a morale boost and a reflection of our year long work. In time, as in the United States, the young people being left behind and short changed by the united colours of nihilism will see who is actually on their side and which side they would prefer to be on.