21st Century Ireland is desperately grasping for an identity.
It sometimes defines itself against British identity, yet it has found itself increasingly becoming a subculture of Britain both financially and culturally.
Some often cast it as being distinct from American culture, yet many Irish children are now growing up with American accents after having Youtube (pronounced Youtoob) being assigned as their co-parent. Religion is even starting to become more Americanised, with the rise of ‘megachurches’ involving Irish ‘pastors’ with exaggerated American accents and portable headsets. In politics too, the country rarely discusses its many many problems of its own but instead focuses upon American politics, including a minute’s silence for George Floyd in the Dail and political rallies where people wearing ‘Make America Great Again’ hats are bombarded with ‘No Trump No KKK No Fascist USA’ chants from counter demonstrators.
Modern Irish define themselves against the ‘cruelty’ of ‘Old Catholic Ireland’ in the past, put have more problems with homelessness than ever before, they are the worst country in Western Europe for human trafficking and child abuse is now at record levels, thanks in part to family disintegration and drug usage.
In 2018, this struggle for new identity reached its nadir with the Repeal the 8th effort to remove the right to life of unborn children. Killing a baby is a pretty bad thing to hitch your wagon to, yet some could not help but ascertain that this legalisation would herald a beautiful new Ireland. Nonetheless, it was really just a referendum that was more about spiting the church than making anyone’s life better.
What emerged was a tactic of trying to undermine Catholicism by provoking it with the Satanic or with the neo pagan (such efforts funded by the government of course). One such event was the ‘Renunciation’, a pseudo Satanic ritual in Ireland’s man bus station wherein the ‘Annunciation’ of Our Lady was mocked by telling the story of a baby being murdered by abortion instead of delivered.
Some quite disgustingly dressed their children up in pro abortion gear on the day of their First Holy Communion. Politicians like Catherine Noone, since roundly rejected by voters, entered Knock Basilica (late) and then reported that the government were not happy with the sermon that had criticised abortion.
It was all part of a movement for a toleration of Catholicism that could be subsumed into the new Woke Ireland, that pretends that it hasn’t far worse and far less excusable social problems than previous generations, a hangover from the Celtic Tiger generation that fell in love with avarice.
One of the curious responses has been the effort to designate St. Brigid as a pagan ‘triple goddess’.
An organisation known as ‘Herstory’ have been trying to campaign for St. Brigid’s Day on the 1st of February to be declared a National Holiday. But there’s a catch. It is to be called ‘Brigid’s Day’ and it is to celebrate ‘Brigid’ the ‘abortionist’ and ‘lesbian’ who was a ‘triple goddess’. The ‘abortionist’ comment coming from a laughable reading of an account of her life.
One of this group’s funders is the taxpayer assisted National Women’s Council of Ireland, the website of whom states:
By ‘woman’ we refer to any person who identifies as a woman.
It is very problematic for feminists to know that the real St. Brigid was an Abbess in Kildare and that she had far more authority and fulfillment (in an Abbey that had both men and women) than has the average wage slave today. To paraphrase GK Chesterton, feminism has this muddled idea that a woman is free when she serves her employer but a slave when she serves God.
Likewise, these feminists who eschew Gaelic tradition magically decide once or twice a year that they will celebrate pagan festivals like Imbolc as a means of irritating the church. They who assert that female identity belongs to ‘any person who identifies’ as a woman, also publish on their Brigids Day post that:
As women, we know her because we are her
The contradictions don’t end there, they claim that Brigid ruled over an ‘egalitarian’ society where ‘men and women’ lived together equally. It wasn’t egalitarianism, it was Early Medieval Catholicism, of the sort so regularly mocked and maligned in modern society.
The last few lines are something special:
Brigid may be an anomaly for Catholicism but one thing is for sure, she represents true Christianity. In the 21st century, she reemerged as a fitting heroine of the Marriage Equality and Repeal the 8th referendums - both extraordinary victories of compassion.
Making Brigid’s Day a national holiday would be a reflection of the progressive, modern Ireland we live in today.
Brigid was not an anomaly for Catholicism, her title ‘Mary of the Gael’ is recognition that women have always played a central role in Catholicism. Her life and her faith, converting the pagans and consecrating herself to Our Lord, were true Christianity. She would not have supported something as absurd as killing babies, which we know now in Ireland is certainly not ‘compassion’ as ‘doctors’ are leaving babies to die on operating tables.
We do agree on the last point though.
A neo pagan Brigid’s Day would be a good reflection of the human trafficking riddled, drug addicted nihilistic wasteland that is modern Ireland.
St. Brigid made her Cross from a straw to explain to a Pagan King about Our Lord. Her story is one of reaching out to the damned to save them, but keeping their Irish identity intact. The church in Ireland needs to start reclaiming her saints, if we don’t someone else will do it for us instead, in increasingly preposterous ways.