https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/elegy-for-catholic-ireland/ Elegy For Catholic Ireland n First Things, John Duggan writes a heavy, sad, but insightful review of a new book about the collapse of Catholicism in Ireland. Here’s how it begins: Ireland nowadays seems filled with people who are content to ignore, forget, or step around what’s left of Catholicism, including the actual church buildings themselves. Don’t be fooled by the shaky residual attachment to things like First Holy Communion. As I write, almost uniquely in Europe under COVID, Ireland has made offering or attending Mass a criminal offense. Even outdoor confession is illegal. This is the true measure of how things stand. Good God. In the video from which I took the screenshot above, the narrator says that the sex shop is open on Easter, but churches are closed. “This is the degenerate country we live in now,” she adds. More: Scally goes on to burrow into some of the most notorious scandals, abuses, and cover-ups that triggered the implosion. He shows how victims, before they were abandoned to their anguish, were first rendered helpless and voiceless as the power of the few coalesced with the docility of the many. And he widens the lens away from just victims, perpetrators, and complicit superiors to those one might call the bystanders—everybody else, more or less. Scally’s reflections on the shifting burdens of shame and guilt are subtle and persistent. He speculates on whether habits of deferring to authority, or looking the other way, or avoiding too much fuss, are still at large in post-Catholic Ireland, in how the legacy of old scandals and the eruption of new ones are handled. I know little to nothing about the sex abuse scandal in Ireland, but I do appreciate very much that Scally indicts the bystanders. This is one of the more appalling, but underreported, aspects of the abuse scandal in the US Catholic Church (and not just among Catholics, I hasten to say): how ordinary pewsitters far too often turned a blind eye to what they had reason to know was going on, because facing the truth would be too painful for them. I think of the broken older man I used to know in New York, in recovery from a life of alcoholism and debauchery, who was (he claimed) anally raped by the monsignor who was the principal of his Catholic school in Queens. When he told his working-class Irish Catholic mother about it, she slapped him and told him never to speak ill of a priest. He was twelve years old, and became the monsignor’s whore. This is very good: Casting a cold eye over the deeper past, Scally provides an excellent analysis of the ways in which Ireland’s calamitous nineteenth century provided the impetus for Church and people to embrace a form of moral perfectionism: it seemed the country’s best stay against returning to the abyss. A new Catholic Ireland, emancipated but highly disciplined, in possession of both the land and a watertight moral code, would never again succumb to squalor. I finished this chapter confirmed in things I have long believed. The Irish Church provided a precious gateway to the transcendent. However, it often enforced a severe price of entry in terms of behavior and compliance—a price that many could not or would not pay, and that others only pretended to (itself a recipe for all kinds of nasty pathologies). Irish Catholicism was unable to find its way to being both orthodox and humane, both popular and intellectual; to both engaging and withstanding modernity. This is the challenge for communities formed to live out some form of the Benedict Option, of course: to find their way to being both orthodox and humane. Read it all. I cannot imagine wanting to return to a world in which moral certainty and the emotional and psychological comforts of religion were bought with the lives of sex abuse victims and silence enforced by communal agreement. Those days are gone, and I’m glad of it. However, look around you. Seriously, look around you at this degenerate society we have become. It seems that we have not gotten better, we have only, at best, rearranged the evil … and have jettisoned the one thing (religion) that could have helped us find our way back to sanity. about the author Rod Dreher is a senior editor at The American Conservative. A veteran of three decades of magazine and newspaper journalism, he has also written three New York Times bestsellers—Live Not By Lies, The Benedict Option, and The Little Way of Ruthie Leming—as well as Crunchy Cons and How Dante Can Save Your Life. Dreher lives in Baton Rouge, La.
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/05/what-happened-to-catholic-ireland https://agreatread.co.uk/the-best-c...0u5NO5taqmyDN9VzL2A2C-HcD76qJFNYaAobHEALw_wcB The Best Catholics in the World: The Irish Church and the End of a Special Relationship [9781844885268] by Derek Scally (No reviews yet) Write a Review When Dubliner Derek Scally goes to Christmas Eve Mass on a visit home from Berlin, he finds more memories than congregants in the church where he was once an altar boy. Not for the first time, the collapse of the Catholic Church in Ireland brings to mind the fall of another powerful ideology - East German communism. While Germans are engaging earnestly with their past, Scally sees nothing comparable going on in his native land. So he embarks on a quest to unravel the tight hold the Church had on the Irish. He travels the length and breadth of Ireland and across Europe, going to Masses, novenas, shrines and seminaries, talking to those who have abandoned the Church and those who have held on, to survivors and campaigners, to writers, historians, psychologists and many more. And he has probing and revealing encounters with Vatican officials, priests and religious along the way. The Best Catholics in the World is the remarkable result of his three-year journey. With wit, wisdom and compassion Scally gives voice and definition to the murky and difficult questions that face a society coming to terms with its troubling past. It is both a lively personal odyssey and a resonant and gripping work of reporting that is a major contribution to the story of Ireland. 'At once intimate and epic, this is a landmark book' Fintan O'Toole
In the 1990 World Cup, the Republic of Ireland football/soccer team got in to see the Pope, I saw a short video of highlight but this one has some of it too, see 16 minutes in: It was a very good team. ... or squad might be how it is said by many.
I don't know the whole story, but this is disturbing. Pretty cowardly to surround this young woman, and tackle her to the ground. It looked like some of the men watching wanted to intervene, but I suppose they would have been arrested too. I was half hoping she would clobber them with her handbag.
The problem with a situation like police arresting some one for whatever reason is, if the victim lashes out she could be arrested for attacking the police, in addition to whatever trumped up charge is in force; if she screams as can be heard on the video they can interpret that as disturbing the peace. I notice in videos when the police or Garda or whoever is arresting someone, the victim usually aquiesces, because at that point they have completed their protest and the arrest is their equivalent of the white martyrdom. I noticed a lot of people milling around on the video, so unless this woman was doing something unlawful, it is strange why she should be arrested.
Terrible situation. Yes, I do wonder what led up to that moment to warrant an arrest. I was bothered by it because it seemed to be an extreme overreaction. Just so sad that it has come to this.
I kind of want to keep this under-the-table but I just found out, our Pastor at our Church is going to be at a Trappist Abbey or Monastery in Republic of Ireland for a few months starting in about 10 days or so. List of Cistercian abbeys in Ireland - Wikipedia Holy Cross Abbey, Tipperary, Ireland (restored) Mount Melleray Abbey, Co. Waterford, Ireland (Trappist) Mount St. Joseph Abbey, Roscrea, Ireland (Trappist) Portglenone Abbey Church, County Antrim, Northern Ireland (Trappist) Mellifont Abbey, Collon, Co. Louth, Ireland (Trappist) Bolton Abbey, Moone, Co. Kildare, Ireland (Trappist) St. Mary's Abbey, Glencairn, Co. Waterford, Ireland (Trappist); the only Cistercian Abbey for women in Ireland It looks like there are actually a number over there. Picturesque in some cases.
Our Lady appeared at a Grotto there that one of the monks built. One of the recent monks was a saint with special mystical powers. A bit like Padre Pio. https://www.melleray.com/apparitions/
I see there has been rioting in Dublin the last couple of nights against the lock down. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57368847
Our Lady requested the song "Peace Is Flowing Like a River" according to that apparitions site, Apparitions | Mount Melleray Grotto, August 21, 1985
Our Lady keeps asking for prayers for Peace on many, many occasions. At Medugorje, as Queen or Peace she said that, 'You have forgotten that with prayer and Fasting you can stop wars...'
She also mentioned that one of the Chastisements cannot be stopped now even with prayer. I have always suspected that this to mean a huge war.
I see young people in other parts of the world are sick to death of the perpetual lock downs too, as they are in Ireland. I don't blame them for this. Freedom is a plant that has to be watered with our own blood from time to time. If I was younger I would be out fighting for Freedoms too. Bless them. Freedom is a very, very basic need; as basic as the air we breath. We die without it.
With all that is going on at the moment, here is the latest message from you know who, and it does sound like the next step to expect even in Ireland. For discernment, allegedly from Jesus: May 2021 "I speak to you, My people of the world, through My little one. See how she has upheld the messages I give to her to warn you of what is to befall you. I wanted you to turn away from sin and the thirst of your flesh: it craves fulfilment of all that is evil and not of Me. I am Life and I have come to call you back to Life and fill you with grace and mercy but you have abandoned Me and permitted yourselves to be seduced through the desires of your flesh to be led into the pit of death. You see all that is evil around you but, My people, I still love you and My desire for you is to open your hearts to your Lord God, receive from Me Truth and see with your eyes - you are on the way to hell and you fail to see or believe. My people, I will always call you even though you have strayed far from Me. I continue to plead before each heart to open to Me, let Me in, I can rekindle Life and grace in you. As for the world around you- can you not recognise its poisons and the army of hell seducing you on every side, leading you on the way that leads only to hell? I desire with the love that flows from My Sacred Heart, that you turn away from the beast that seduces you in heart, flesh and life. Partake of all that I offer you with the love of My Sacred Heart. Your world is filled with the demons from hell multiplying temptation and the many evil deeds that continue to draw you on the road to perdition. My priest sons, how so many of you have abandoned the flock -as you have abandoned Me, your God. You once upheld with joy and respect our union in My Priesthood but you have long since abandoned Me and the flock. The world's deprivation is increasing: soon you will be left with nothing. There will be disease of multiple kinds to ravage the flesh and bring death to much of the world's inhabitants. The sea will cover many parts of the earth and the corpses of many will rot on the ground as their stench is carried for miles around. I make this plea with you people who have received Life in Me. Arm yourselves with My Life. I offer Myself to you - My Mercy, My Grace, My Life. Save yourselves because you have little time left. The world as you know it will be unrecognisable soon. It will be changed forever. The calamities will increase as will the earth's darkness from the demons of hell. They can be heard in Heaven as they rejoice at their victory. My sacraments were withdrawn from you without reason. Very soon they will no longer be available to you but only an alternative which will not be of Me. You will partake of poison. Yes, you will feed on the poisons already prepared for you. My people, those of you who have open hearts , hear Me. Arm yourselves with the prayer of the Rosary and pray it many times from your heart. Pray before My Mother's picture which is surrounded by roses. Keep the Petal close to your heart: that will be your armour when My sacraments are withdrawn from you. Pray for My priests who have deserted Me. I will grant many graces before the darkest days draw close to you. There will be darkness as day turns to night. The mountains will fall on you. I bless you, My little one, in the Name of the Father, in Me His Son and the Holy Spirit."
