Hate Speech Laws Coming for Irish Church

Faced with out of control crime levels and depleted Garda recruitment (only 95 recruits in the past year) Minister for Justice Helen McEntee needed a cheap victory to try to reclaim some credibility.

She decided on some ludicrous avenues.

One, she extended nightclub opening hours so that young people can forget that her government is actively trying to stop them from affording a home.

Secondly, she sought to impose anti prayer zones against prolifers, undermining Garda Commissioner Drew Harris, who spoke against them.

Thirdly, she proposed new anti free speech laws which can be used to stifle descent against the incompetent government.

These laws, make no mistake, will be used to target Catholics.

This is the same government and media that partied its way through lockdown while sending Gardai to the doors of priests who had allowed one or two (yes, one or two) extra people to attend funerals during lockdown. Or who visited dying people at their homes with Communion during lockdown.

Do you really believe that they have changed their minds on the church?

The new so-called hate speech laws will be used to crackdown on Catholics and Catholics only. While the head of Clonskeagh Mosque has already said much of what Father Sheehy said in Listowel, he will never be the object of anti free speech repression. While Catholic schools are more likely to implement the government's rainbow flag raising and RSE programmes, they will be punished for the slightest hint of Catholicity, as they were in the wake of the murder of Aisling Murphy, for which a Slovakian migrant currently standing trial. Similarly, the church's ‘homophobia’ was blamed when two gay men were mutilated in Sligo earlier this year, for which a Muslim migrant has been arrested.

This is the same state lest we forget that referred to God as a ‘rapist’ on their broadcast station.

Bishop Raymond Browne has made a colossal mistake by allowing the country's many British owned news outlets to dictate what can and can’t be said in his church.

Our advice to the priests of Ireland, turn off your webcam and make the state fork out to send spies there in person if they wish to have you prosecuted.

Pope Benedict XVI on All Souls

During these days we go to the cemetery to pray for the loved ones who have left us, as it were paying a visit to show them, once more, our love, to feel them still close, remembering also, an article of the Creed: in the communion of saints there is a close bond between us who are still walking here upon the earth and those many brothers and sisters who have already entered eternity.

Human beings have always cared for their dead and sought to give them a sort of second life through attention, care and affection. In a way, we want to preserve their experience of life; and, paradoxically, by looking at their graves, before which countless memories return, we discover how they lived, what they loved, what they feared, what they hoped for and what they hated. They are almost a mirror of their world.

Why is this so? Because, despite the fact that death is an almost forbidden subject in our society and that there is a continuous attempt to banish the thought of it from our minds, death touches each of us, it touches mankind of every age and every place. And before this mystery we all, even unconsciously, search for something to give us hope, a sign that might bring us consolation, open up some horizon, offer us a future once more. The road to death, in reality, is a way of hope and it passes through our cemeteries, just as can be read on the tombstones and fulfills a journey marked by the hope of eternity.

Yet, we wonder, why do we feel fear before death? Why has humanity, for the most part, never resigned itself to the belief that beyond life there is simply nothing? I would say that there are multiple answers: we are afraid of death because we are afraid of that nothingness, of leaving this world for something we don’t know, something unknown to us. And, then, there is a sense of rejection in us because we cannot accept that all that is beautiful and great, realized during a lifetime, should be suddenly erased, should fall into the abyss of nothingness. Above all, we feel that love calls and asks for eternity and it is impossible to accept that it is destroyed by death in an instant.

Furthermore, we fear in the face of death because, when we find ourselves approaching the end of our lives, there is a perception that our actions will be judged, the way in which we have lived our lives, above all, those moments of darkness which we often skillfully remove or try to remove from our conscience. I would say that precisely the question of judgment often underlies man of all time’s concern for the dead, the attention paid to the people who were important to him and are no longer with him on the journey through earthly life. In a certain sense the gestures of affection and love which surround the deceased are a way to protect him in the conviction that they will have an effect on the judgment. This we can gather from the majority of cultures that characterize the history of man.

Today the world has become, at least in appearance, much more rational, or rather, there is a more widespread tendency to think that every reality ought to be tackled with the criteria of experimental science, and that the great questions about death ought to be answered not so much with faith as with empirical, provable knowledge. It is not sufficiently taken into account, however, that precisely in this way one is doomed to fall into forms of spiritism, in an attempt to have some kind of contact with the world beyond, almost imagining it to be a reality that, ultimately, is a copy of the present one.

Dear friends, the Solemnity of All Saints and the Commemoration of all the faithful departed tells us that only those who can recognize a great hope in death, can live a life based on hope. If we reduce man exclusively to his horizontal dimension, to that which can be perceived empirically, life itself loses its profound meaning. Man needs eternity for every other hope is too brief, too limited for him. Man can be explained only if there is a Love which overcomes every isolation, even that of death, in a totality which also transcends time and space. Man can be explained, he finds his deepest meaning, only if there is God. And we know that God left his distance for us and made himself close. He entered into our life and tells us: “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die” (Jn 11:25-26).

Let us think for a moment of the scene on Calvary and listen again to Jesus’ words from the height of the Cross, addressed to the criminal crucified on his right: “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise” (Lk 23:43). We think of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, when, after traveling a stretch of the way with the Risen Jesus, they recognize him and set out immediately for Jerusalem to proclaim the Resurrection of the Lord (cf. Lk 24:13-35). The Master’s words come back to our minds with renewed clarity: “Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” (Jn 14:1-2). God is truly demonstrated, he became accessible, for he so loved the world “that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16), and in the supreme act of love on the Cross, immersing himself in the abyss of death, he conquered it, and rose and opened the doors of eternity for us too. Christ sustains us through the night of death which he himself overcame; he is the Good Shepherd, on whose guidance one can rely without any fear, for he knows the way well, even through darkness.

Every Sunday in reciting the Creed, we reaffirm this truth. And in going to cemeteries to pray with affection and love for our departed, we are invited, once more, to renew with courage and with strength our faith in eternal life, indeed to live with this great hope and to bear witness to it in the world: behind the present there is not nothing. And faith in eternal life gives to Christians the courage to love our earth ever more intensely and to work in order to build a future for it, to give it a true and sure hope.

Does Listowel Priest's Sermon Echo Pope Francis?

While some may disagree with the style and timing of Father Sheehy's controversial homily on sin, Bishop Raymond Browne's claim that ‘the views expressed do not represent the Christian position’ should raise eyebrows.

On the issue of gender theory and Transgenderism, Pope Francis has been unequivocal, comparing it to nuclear weapons.

"Let's think of the nuclear arms, of the possibility to annihilate in a few instants a very high number of human beings. Let's think also of genetic manipulation, of the manipulation of life, or of the gender theory, that does not recognize the order of creation”.

In 2016, Pope Francis criticised Gender Dysphoria as ‘ideological colonisation’ and called it a sin against the Creator God.

“In Europe, in America, in Latin America, in Africa, in certain Asian countries, there are true ideological colonizations. And one of them – I say it clearly with ''surname and first name'' – is gender! Today, at school, children – children – are taught this: that everyone can choose their sex. And why do we teach this? Because the books are those of the people and institutions that give you the money. These are ideological colonizations, also supported by very influential countries. And that is terrible! Speaking with Pope Benedict - who is well and has a clear mind - he said to me: “Holiness, it is the time of sin against God the Creator!”. Clever! God created man and woman; God created the world this way, this way, this way…, and we are doing the opposite. God gave us an “uncultivated” state, so that we could make it culture; but then, through this cultivation, we do things that bring us back to the “uneducated” state! What Pope Benedict said, we must think about: “It is the time of sin against Creator God!” And that will help us.”

In 2018, on the flight from Dublin to Rome, Pope Francis suggested psychiatric help for homosexual young people and referred to it as ‘an error of fatherhood and motherhood’ to ignore these tendencies.

"I would say first of all pray, not to condemn, to dialogue, to understand, to give space to the son or the daughter.

When it shows itself from childhood, there is a lot that can be done through psychiatry, to see how things are. It is something else if it shows itself after 20 years. Ignoring a son or daughter who has homosexual tendencies is an error of fatherhood or motherhood”.

In 2010, as a vote on same sex marriage approached in Argentina, he wrote:

“In the coming weeks, the Argentine people will face a situation whose outcome can seriously harm the family ... At stake is the identity and survival of the family: father, mother and children. At stake are the lives of many children who will be discriminated against in advance, and deprived of their human development given by a father and a mother and willed by God.

At stake is the total rejection of God's law engraved in our hearts. Let us not be naive: this is not simply a political struggle, but it is an attempt to destroy God's plan. It is not just a bill but a "move" of the father of lies who seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God”.

He has also criticised the contraceptive mentality which Father Sheehy mentioned:

"The family is threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life."

In March 2021, he said that ‘God cannot bless sin’ as he ruled out blessings for same sex couples.

While Bishop Browne may well have been within his rights to object to the tone or timing of the homily, it seems odd for him to disown words that echo both the pope and the Cathechism.

Likewise, after the attack on young priests by the Synod Steering Committee in recent months, it seems remarkable that as with the Synod on a whole, those who walk out or never attend in the first place get to dictate the decisions of the bishop.

Perhaps in Ireland’s restructuring of its dioceses over the coming years they should cut out the middle man and just appoint one at each of RTE, Newstalk and the Irish Times, because they seem to be the ones really in charge of the church.