Is This the Death of the Catholic Church in Ireland?

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This is so depressing. How can they know what abortion is and yet repeal the eighth amendment. They were a beacon of pro-life conviction in the world and they have now thrown away the lives of thousands of children to look hip and progressive.
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I don’t think they did it to look “hip and progressive.” A massive amount of women were leaving Ireland to receive abortions regularly - supposedly nine were coming to the UK everyday, on average. It’s a real issue with real effect over people’s lives, and I don’t think all of those women would vote against restrictions on abortion merely to look “hip and progressive.”

I’m glad that Ireland has voted to repeal the eighth amendment and hopefully it will lead to greater access to birth control within Ireland.
 
I agree, all I’ve seen on social media is comments like “Ireland needs to come out of the dark ages” “needs to progress” etc when will this rubbish end? So naive and easily lead it’s beyond belief.
 
You hit the nail on the head. And judging by things I’ve heard many are in favour of euthanasia too. Such a great country Ireland is turning into 😔:confused:
 
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Vouthon said:
Unfortunately, when the public mandate is so incontrovertible that just isn’t going to happen. Elected lawmakers represent their constituents.

This isn’t like Brexit where you had a perishingly slim margin of victory by one side over the other. Ireland isn’t split on this issue, it is (by the looks of things) pro-choice.
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Elected officials are not obligated to vote based on how their consituents vote or feel on every single issue. They also have to follow their own conscience. I think elected officials should stand up for what is right and moral. If the majority of an elected official’s constituents voted tomorrow to kill all Jews, immigrants, or Catholics etc., the elected official is not obligated to go with the wants of the majority of their constituents because the overwhelming majority voted that way…, not when going with the constituents would result in such terrible carnage. Surely you would agree.

If repeal of the 8th happened it would likely result in many more deaths of unborn children and no elected official is surely obligated to allow that to happen just because the majority of constituents voted for repeal. Therefore, those that are elected should stand their ground and not give in to this majority vote because it would have such disastrous life ending consequences.
 
Exactly, the political reality of the situation has to be appreciated, as bitter a pill to swallow though it may be.

A clear majority of both the people and their lawmakers support repeal.
 
We, as Pro-lifers, have spent countless hours praying for abortion to end; we’ve donated countless hours protesting against abortion and countless hours volunteering in aiding single mothers with newborns; and finally, we’ve donated millions if not billions of dollars to fight legally against the culture of death. All this, over the last 40 some years, has gotten Pro-lifers hardly anywhere it seems. Yes, we win a court case here and pass a law there but most people still support a woman’s (supposable) right to choose what see wants with the child inside her body. And until we Pro-lifers can show beyond a shadow of a doubt that the child inside the mother’s womb really deserves his/her right to life and practically all people of the world agree with this, we will never overcome the woman’s so called right to choose. We need to come at this disaster from a better and new angle because what we are doing is not working to help people see the child’s point of view. Unfortunately, I got nothing to offer. I constantly dwell on this subject, praying to God for some form of enlightenment - enlightenment in anybody to just get this argument between Pro-lifers and the culture of death to go in a more dramatically positive direction for the unborn child. I will continue to support the Pro-life movement all the way but we really need to start a bigger and brighter fire.
 
This is the extent of the decline in Ireland:
A survey in 2013 indicated that weekly Mass attendance in Ireland stood at 34 per cent, which may seem a relatively healthy figure for Western Europe, but is in stark contrast to the figures of over 90 per cent in the 1970s. Attendance currently stands at around 18 per cent in the huge Dublin archdiocese, and in the capital’s sprawling peripheral estates it is much lower still.
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http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/issues/may-8th-2015/post-crash-ireland-desperately-needs-the-faith/

The scandals of course had an effect, a very significant one. But we also know throughout the West, there were many apathetic people in the pews who are now disaffiliating completely.
 
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And to think that divorce was legalized in 1995 in Ireland by a 1% margin.

Generational differences are huge.
 
It’s not over until it is over and that is not yet. But the same-sex marriage vote provided clear evidence that Ireland is no longer a country dependent on Catholic morality and this vote regarding abortion just provided further evidence. Ireland will chart on its own course on these issues… but I think the loss of life that Ireland will have in the coming future if the elected officials don’t take a stand for life will have tragic consequences that Ireland will bear.
 
I think what happened to Savita Halappanavar shocked a lot of people and whether we like it or not the Catholic church did a lot of harm in Ireland. It’s definitely a time for humble pie.
 
I think its safe to say Ireland no longer recognises itself as being Catholic. We have now officially lost out identity and sadly we are undoing everything St Patrick done. Saying YES to the demands of the EU through this government has been the final nail in the coffin. What have we done!!
 
Indeed, as someone with strongly pro-EU views, I’d better not chip in on this or else I might sidetrack the thread from this very sad and serious development. But I nevertheless concur with you.
 
ConfusedLucy, the 8th amendment did not kill Savita. Three separate inquiries into her death found that she died of sepsis – an infection of the blood caused by an extremely virulent bacteria, Ecoli ESBL, rarely seen in Irish maternal health services. The HSE inquiry also found that the bacteria was also the most likely cause of Savita’s miscarriage.

The inquiries found that Savita’s case had been medically mismanaged in the hospital, with the HIQA inquiry pointing to 13 missed opportunities to save her life. The 8th amendment has been blamed for the cause by pro abortion supporters, media and government minister’s because it has been part of their plan to turn people’s opinion and views which has clearly worked
 
The question I ask is did we do enough to stop it? Was there ever a clearlevel planning field? So much money being pumped into Ireland from George Soros for the YES campaign, media, celebrities all supporting abortion with the younger generation being very easy to sway especially with the way celebrities can influence opinion now a days (especially the younger generation). The sad thing about this is so many young people didn’t fully understand what voting YES entailed but because it was the popular vote they thought it was “The right vote” because if the naivity of many we will have to pay the price for generations to come.
 
You think? EU has been the death of Ireland in my opinion. We have lost our identidy, culture etc because of the EU worsed mistake we ever made and now we are in debt to them so basically they own us.
 
RTE News literally describing how they intend to inject baby hearts with poison. And that this is to be celebrated. I feel like I’m living in a horror movie and can’t wake up.
 
TheLittleLady said:
Silly question. 1973 was not the “Death of the Catholic Church in the US”.
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Not only was is not the death of the church in the U.S., but frankly the Church began, in my view, a slow revival about that time. I’ll probably post this down in this chain elsewhere but I’m old enough to remember 1973, even though I was a kid, and the following on decade or so. Frankly a lot of fairly devout Catholics really weren’t that worried about the onset of abortion and even fit the mindset that I’m seeing reported in Ireland, "this isn’t really about abortion. . . it’s about (fill in weak argument here). It took at least a decade before people started to realize “oh, this really was about killing”.

My point is that this isn’t a wholesale rejection of the Church, it’s an example of what happens when people start focusing on the material world quite a bit and then get comfortable with moral laziness and nothing much is done to arrest it. Things are likely to change, but it won’t be soon and it’ll be uncomfortable. Part of that will be the mess that this will bring about as Ireland becomes Quebec, followed by the realization that Ireland isn’t really that special anymore. Then things will start to turn.
 
Fr Dwight Longnecker - ‘IRELAND AND THE END OF CULTURAL CATHOLICISM’

dwightlongenecker.com

Ireland and the End of Cultural Catholicism | Fr. Dwight Longenecker

The vote to allow abortion in Ireland has revealed what we already knew--that Ireland's Catholic faith has eroded, and the once great and powerful Irish church has become a husk of what it once was. I am no expert on Ireland, Irish history or the Irish church, but I expect the malaise has the...
dwightlongenecker.com dwightlongenecker.com
 
There’s a lot to unpack here and none of us really understand what we’re seeing. I suspect that this is one of those stories that a person will have to look back at nearly a century later to understand. I also suspect that what we’re seeing in regards to Ireland now fits into the overall situation that applies to post World War Two Europe. But in saying that, I don’t think that this story in the end plays out the way people right now likely think it will.

After WWII something changed in Europe, really starting in the 1950s, as the economy of the entire region changed and improved. It wasn’t like it revived to some pre war state, it actually dramatically improved and the standards of living with it all over Europe. Ireland really lagged behind. In most of Europe as this occurred all the churches weakened, with the Protestant churches basically collapsing (we may lament the state of the Catholic Church, but the Reformation is coming to a final end in Europe and the end is in site for all of the Reformation era Protestant churches).

When people are flush, religion seems like an annoyance to many and the change came pretty quickly to European economies. The revolutions of 1968, the Pill, etc., all came at the same time. And our Church also held Vatican II in the same era which lead to a lot of confusion (I’m not condemning Vatican II, but the "Spirit of Vatican II confusion). The church in some areas, such as Germany, spent a lot of time making itself pretty meaningless, something it hasn’t gotten over and which the older leaders in some areas are still doing.

(Part I) to be continued just below.
 
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