What can we learn from Ireland's massive vote for abortion?

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NoelFitz said:
What can be done? Do we write off Irish Catholicism.
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Write off Irish Catholicism? I take it you’re an Irish citizen, so perhaps that’s what the question feels like for you. For me, the Irish case is about much more than Ireland; it’s about Catholicism everywhere.

Me, I think I’m writing off Catholicism as a whole – not as a theology, certainly not; but as a community. We shouldn’t pretend that the Ireland referendum was a disaster that couldn’t have happened elsewhere. As I posted in another thread, Ireland was one of the last countries in Europe to legalize abortion, not one of the first. Sure, other countries did not have referendums on this, but many of them are Catholic-majority democracies, and nevertheless abortion was legalized in those countries some way or another. So Ireland isn’t an exception. The reality of the situation is just more obvious in Ireland because the issue was turned into a referendum.

And that reality is this: among the RCC’s members, there are many who support abortion, regardless of the fact that it goes grossly against the RCC’s moral teachings. (Another user recently posted a thread here with statistics confirming that in several countries there is a majority in favor of legalized abortions even among church-going Christians.)

The debacle shows us what the RCC has come to: it is a “community” of “believers” who refuse to vote in accordance with the moral teachings of their own Church. But that’s not a community at all, and that’s not belief. And do I want to sit in the pews knowing that the man next to me may be “alright with abortion”? No, I don’t – I’m sorry, but I don’t want that anymore. There are many things we can disagree on, even vehemently, but this – no, not this.
NoelFitz said:
Is abortion the litmus test of Catholicism,
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I’m afraid that for me it was. I didn’t see it coming, but now that the Ireland debacle is a fact, yes, I feel that for me it was a litmus test.
NoelFitz said:
Do we have other values? Should we focus on social justice?
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Yes, we have other values, but you can’t “compensate” a gross problem away. Ethics isn’t an accounting exercise. I can’t look at my pro-abortion fellow church-goer and say “Oh well he’s all for legally killing unborn babies, but hey, his views on ‘social justice’ are alright.” Nor would I be able to look at myself like that. Anyone who goes down the path of overlooking gross ethical errors because they are “compensated for”, will end up destroying his own faith, the community, and the church.
NoelFitz said:
Should we boldly fight the enemy knowing everyone is wrong except us?
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We should if we could, but how? The enemy is among us. As I said, there’s a good chance he’s sitting next to you in the pews, and in spite of his support for abortion he’s going to stone-facedly walk up to the priest, receive the Body of Christ, and say “Amen.” And he won’t lose a minute of sleep over it either. Supporting abortions, receiving the Body of Christ – it’s all in a day’s work for the modern “catholic”.
 
I believe that the Irish law is now such that a child can be aborted up to 12 weeks on request with no restrictions, but after that it is only legal if their is a risk to the mother’s physical or mental health. Some parties wanted to make it available from “as early as possible to as late as needed” which I’d take to be from the instant of conception to the moment of birth.
 
This was a huge reason for the Irish vote:


She was 17 weeks pregnant, and was in a crisis in her pregnancy.She was in the hospital and she begged for an abortion to save her own life, but was denied because of the 8th amendment which was in place. She died. This has caused a huge uproar…even though it has never been proven that the abortion would have saved her life. It was a failure of the hospital to diagnose her condition and give her the proper treatment. But the landslide started and could not be stopped.

IMHO: This was the straw that broke the camel’s back…that and all the child abuse allegations/actualities in the church.

Abortion has been passed, but under what circumstances? …that is being discussed in the Legislature as we speak. (even though the 8th amendment did allow for abortion in some circumstances)

So please keep praying for Ireland.
 
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I don’t know about you but I’m not contributing to “pontifical universities” when I give to the Church.
I’m giving my money to the priest in my particular parish so he can keep the lights on for Mass and repair the buildings.
I threw some money in the collection at the last TLM I attended because the money goes to pay for the expenses of continuing to have TLMs in the area.
I give directly to charities or to Missio and feel confident that money is going to help the poor person in Africa put in the water system or whatever.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
I’m giving my money to the priest in my particular parish
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After the hefty “stone walling” I described I only give contributions to assorted parishes where I find the priests charitable enough - and I do give liberally to convents of contemplative religious. It’s hard enough having to face certain priests in mass and being reminded of their hypocrisy. I’ll let their drinking buddies do the contributions -they all seem to be doing really fine and I can’t recall any of them being catholic to the least- because I can’t and I don’t want to even think about them anymore.
 
What is very fascinating to me?

The history of Irish education system for nearly 100 years.

90%?

No wonder they had no unique identity

It’s just a name label now

Patrick, What did you learn from their school?

Catholic… Catholic… Catholic

Ok Patrick, Why did you vote Yes?

I thought Yes won’t win but it’s cool to be different

Wait a minute… you thought Yes won’t win?

Yeah but I guess it’s a bad luck to assume anything

Who taught you about Democracy & voting?

Catholic school

Ok Patrick… you must go to the confession ASAP

Why? I’m done with Catholic school

Oh… you didn’t stay in the Church?

No I went there only for the education then I left

Patrick is one of many
 
Very amusing to read all the different opinions on this. Especially the negative ones.

I’m assuming none of you knocked on doors to convince people of the need to vote no?

Well I did and in my opinion there were four reasons that this passed.

1 - People voted yes for the “hard cases” rape/incest/foetal abnormality etc.
2 - People in ireland are not Catholic anymore
3 - People have come to see the right to choice of the mother as more important than the baby’s life
4 - Years of the media lying about abortion being essential for women’s health.

While I am disappointed that my fellow citizens voted for this, I actually think more than ever that this is an exciting time to be an Irish Catholic. There is much work to be done in the years ahead to turn this around. To be honest, I think that while we need a strong pro-life movement, we need to evangelise and win back the culture even more. What has happened in Ireland is what happens when people throw out Christianity. Their moral compass is broken.
 
Greenfields said:
Do we give up on family if they were to have an abortion? I doubt it Steve-b. God bless.
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No one said “give up on Ireland.”

What they were referring to was to give up the romantic-sized idea of Ireland being a truly Catholic nation.

It isn’t, and hasn’t been for a while. The 66% vote was the proof that the people who were still romantically idolizing Ireland needed to realize that Ireland (as a nation) is secular, not Catholic.
 
Exciting time, perhaps…

But it should not be fun, because the context is tragic. Deaths of unborn are deaths.

And we will never regain all that was lost, in the best case, a very very tiny portion.
In almost all contries where this dechristianization happen, the situation goes far more worst with time.
 
NoelFitz said:
Is abortion the litmus test of Catholicism, Do we have other values? Should we focus on social justice?
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I have read one iota of this long thread, so forgive me if this has been addressed.

Abortion is a social justice issue. I don’t understand that tendency in our Church to separate abortion out from poverty, human trafficking, health care, immigration, etc. All of them, including abortion, entail concern for basic human rights.

In fact, I don’t fully understand why parish pro-life groups are separate from parish social justice groups.

There may be an inherent liberal-vs-conservative thinking behind doing so. Right Wing pundits coined and stigmatized the whole “Social Justice Warrior” concept. Meanwhile, too many people on the Left equate the pro-life movement with everything the Right represents. As Catholics, we need to break through this dichotomy because we’re really not a Left-vs.-Right Church.

As to what to do about Ireland, I’d continue to work on changing the culture. But that process is long and arduous and won’t address the urgency of women seeking abortion in the short-term. Irish pro-lifers would do best to work at chipping away at the demand for abortion rather than the supply.
 
blackforest said:
Irish pro-lifers would do best to work at chipping away at the demand for abortion rather than the supply.
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In Ireland people consider that lowering the demand for abortion means more contraception.

I am a bit disappointed with the replies, as not all are constructive. The problem in Ireland is more than abortion. It is a complete rejection of Catholicism.

There is a need for the Church to win back the people. This can be done perhaps by a positive joyful approach based on a loving, forgiving God.
 
NoelFitz said:
The Irish voters by a large two thirds majority voted for abortion in a recent referendum.

How did this happen? …
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Proponents argued that women needed the right to choose how to deal with crisis pregnancies.
 
Over half of all abortions, at least in the U.S., are performed on women who were using contraception at the time of conception. I find that the contraception-to-stop-abortion approach leads to a dead end.

I’m sorry that you’re disappointed in my suggestion about a demand-over-supply approach. It’s picked up a lot of steam in the U.S., and I’m thrilled to support it.

I agree it would be great to see the Church win hearts and minds. But that process can be gradual and incremental, and we also need to address the urgency, the here-and-now of women facing crisis pregnancies.
 
joseie said:
Why concerned about abortion only?.What about many countries which legalized SS marriage and even more countries brothels and prostitution? Are they not equally or more mortal?
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Agree that the other problems you mention are very serious as well. Still, for me abortion is kind of the ultimate offense against nature, and therefore against God. This is first because of the defenselessness of the unborn, and second because of the the irreversible nature of the act. Prostitution or SS marriage, to take the examples you give, are “lifestyles” (for lack of a better word), that one can turn away from and then recover from (not easy, but doable if one turns to God). Abortion is irreversible. You can’t bring that unborn baby back.
 
We can learn that the soft and nice Catholicism of the last half century is as useful as a soup sandwich.
 
I totally agree this was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and voters were stirred up with ‘compassion’, ‘choice’, anti-Catholic restrictive practices, ect.

However Savita died from a virulent, bacterial infection that is very rare in the West. There are around 5-6 similar deaths, each year, in the UK, however abortion will not stop the sepsis - and abortion is freely available for use in the UK. But of course the media jumped on the story and ensured it suited their purposes. As noted, below, an Irish woman, bled to death in a taxi, after obtaining an abortion in the UK , shortly afterwards - practically NO media coverage.


The official report of the Coroner’s Inquest into the tragic death of Savita Halappanavar established that the actual cause of her death was a sepsis infection with a virulent anti-biotic resistant strain of E Coli, compounded by a series of systems failures that delayed the realisation by her medical team of the gravity of the risk to her life, and the timely implementation of the appropriate responses to it.

To their credit the doctors treating Savita didn’t blame Ireland’s laws for her death. They could have easily done so to deflect attention away from their mistakes but they didn’t. It was opportunistic abortion campaigners and journalists who dishonestly used this tragedy to push for abortion.

Shortly after the Savita Case broke in the media, news emerged that a woman from Ireland bled to death in the back of a London taxi immediately after an abortion at a Marie Stopes clinic in Ealing, London. Apart from a few minor media reports, the story was buried without a trace.
 
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People in Ireland did not vote for abortion. They voted to change the constitution to allow parliament to legislate on the level of restrictions to be placed on abortion. The immoderate and emotional language used by the pro-life side of the debate is one reason for the loss of this vote. Another is the ‘no abortions at all’ proposition which people can only accept if the accept 1) All unborn humans from the point of conception have the same rights as born humans and 2) the end does not justify the means, ever.

The first is not immediately apparent to people (we celebrate birthdays, not conception days) and the second leads to impossible to accept positions. An example: the Church allows ectopic pregnancies to be aborted but only by the removal of the fallopian tube containing the foetus, but not the foetus alone, as to do so would ‘directly’ kill the foetus, whereas indirect killing plus sterilisation of the tube is considered morally ok.

The weaknesses in logic and incompatibility with common sense have harmed the pro-life cause. Rational discussion about reducing abortion rates would be more productive.
 
FiveLinden said:
Rational discussion about reducing abortion rates would be more productive.
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What are you suggesting, big taxes and aggressive regulations on the practice? Keep it legal, just make sure that it is a very expensive hassle?
 
Augustinian said:
What are you suggesting, big taxes and aggressive regulations on the practice? Keep it legal, just make sure that it is a very expensive hassle?
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No. I think unwanted pregnancies should be avoided in whatever way is considered moral by those making the decision and that people should have enough information, education and access to allow success.
 
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