Approaching the 1916 Centenary Celebrations

Today marks the beginning of the final year in the run up to the centenary of the Easter Rising, and is a good occasion to reflect on all that has passed since 1916; on the opportunities that our independence provided for us; and on whether or not we have used those opportunities to their best advantage.

We can ponder on the satisfaction or otherwise, of those who gave their lives for the freedom of future generations, regarding the fruits of their sacrifice. Would they even recognise the country that Ireland has become?

Let us try to put ourselves in the shoes of one of those heroes who sacrificed all, and who now finds himself back in the Ireland of 2015.

How would he feel about the state of the country, the culture, the economy, the government and the people?

Wouldn't he be a bit taken aback at the profound changes in the culture and way of life? Walking around the streets of Dublin he would wonder how anyone could live with the constant noise, the hustle and bustle – certainly a lot worse than in his day.

And everyone walking around staring at the strange device in their hands, thumbs working furiously, and white cables coming out of their ears.

Maybe he would see some of the irritating sights and sounds as the inevitable price of progress, although it is to be suspected that he would prefer the calmer ambience of the streets in his own day, more conducive to reflection.

The fashions, too, might shock him. And he couldn’t avoid noticing the parallels between those fashions and some of the behaviour he might witness, especially at night. “Definitely a moral and cultural decline since my day,” he might think.

Thinking, then, about how all these changes came about, he might have a look at what influences have been exerted over Ireland in the past century. He would want to look at government, at the media, and at what ties we have to other countries.

He would probably want to read some history books and newspapers – or maybe he has been keeping an eye on all that from Heaven anyway.

Many aspects of what he would see would make him question whether we fully appreciated the sacrifice he had made on our behalf.

“I could have lived another half century,” he might think, “and perhaps had some influence on the direction of the country. But then again, fifty years would not have been enough. It was in the past fifty years that the most profound transformation of the country took place,” he would add.

He would be greatly perplexed at the way we drifted into the European Union in its present form. Perhaps he would find our entry into the EEC acceptable. Perhaps!

But the incremental loss of sovereignty since then… the sovereignty for which he and his associates had sacrificed their lives… that’s another matter.

What would leave him most perturbed, though, would be the realisation of how far we have drifted from the purity of the ideals that they had held so dear, especially in moral and social questions.

The accelerated rate of change in these fields would upset him. Some of the legislation would horrify him.

Neither he, nor any of his fellow martyrs for Ireland, would ever have been unmoved by the trauma of a woman in a crisis pregnancy and in danger of death. Yet, would they have dared to legislate for the death of the unborn infant as a solution for this situation?

Not only would they not have contemplated such a final solution, but their mothers, sisters, wives and daughters, as well as every other lady they knew, would have staunchly rejected the killing of the child, even if it could have saved their own lives.

But they were of a generation that knew the value of sacrifice. And they were also sufficiently grounded in reality to realise that killing the baby couldn't guarantee the life of the mother.

They would have left no stone unturned to find solutions, but life affirming solutions. That is how medical science has improved.

Living in a more reflective era they might have pondered the issue more carefully, with more gravity, than our leaders of today, enervated as they are with the speed of life, with so many demands on their time and attention, with so many stimuli from their iPhones.

“I pity them,” our hero might think. “But still, they are an arrogant bunch. They preen around and argue over which of them is the true heir of 1916, which of them should rule the proceedings for the centenary celebrations. They have all abandoned the path that we laid down for them.”

He might also be a bit confused at seeing a whole culture dedicated to self-gratification to such an extent that even the government is so preoccupied with sexual rights issues that it can’t focus on the real issues of the day or the real dangers for the future.

His perturbation at the state of Ireland, his confusion, his acute pain at the abandonment he would feel, was most callously condensed into a single statement by An Taoiseach who, in referring to the referendum on the redefinition of marriage, said:

“As we approach the centenary of the Rising, a Yes vote would, I believe, send out a powerful signal internationally that Ireland has evolved into a fair, compassionate and tolerant nation.”

The insinuation was clear: the leaders of ’16 were unfair, merciless and intolerant. And even worse, no party in the Oireachtas, none of those who so proudly proclaim their political lineage to the Rising, raised a voice to contradict such a contemptuous statement.

The heroes of Easter 1916 must have turned in their graves.

A Farewell to Innocence

The Children and Family Relationships Bill, currently before the Oireachtas, is probably the most heinous bill ever presented for the consideration of our legislators in that it proposes measures that will undermine the innocence of the most vulnerable of children.

Although some of those who oppose it accept that it may have some beneficial provisions, the bill proposes to deliberately deprive children of either a mother or a father. That is so iniquitous that, regardless of any good the bill might contain, it is still an abomination.

The deprivation of either a mother or a father will become the norm when Adoption Authority employees, and those of accredited agencies, who can’t in conscience provide the kind of “service” that is required by the new law eventually get squeezed out of their posts. Thus decisions on adoptions will be left to the type of creep that doesn’t see anything wrong with, and proactively promotes, intentionally denying to a child either a mother or a father.

And where are those who sanctimoniously claimed to care for children when such statements gave them an excuse to attack the Catholic Church? Enda Kenny and Alan Shatter, for example, are supporting and pushing this bill. It was Shatter who introduced its first draft.

Do they no longer care for the most vulnerable of children, those who for whatever reason have lost their natural parents, and are now in need of adoption? These same children may soon be deliberately deprived of either a mother or a father, thus perpetuating their vulnerability throughout their childhood, and affecting their whole lives.

And if the bill itself is destructive, that is greatly accentuated by its context.

To begin with, on several occasions since the end of 2013, prominent members of the government have stated that legislation permitting adoption by homosexual pairs would be enacted before the referendum on the redefinition of marriage – explicitly in order to prevent adoption of children from being an issue in the referendum.

So the government is rushing a bill through the Oireachtas to influence the outcome of a referendum. Whether or not it is legal to do so, to enact legislation for the purpose of prejudicing referendum results certainly undermines democracy, and is a mark of the utter disdain with which this government treats the population.

Furthermore, now that the child abuse scandals in the Catholic Church have played themselves out and run their course, the paedophile lobby – in abeyance for several decades – is being resurrected. Yes, soon paedophobes will be as unacceptable in fashionable intellectual circles as homophobes and islamophobes are today.

It might be too much to expect of the geniuses in government and the media to foresee that the convergence of these facts – this bill and the revival of the paedophile lobby – could have consequences before which even the worst of our legislators might recoil.

Last May the Ombudsman for Children provided advice on the Children and Family Relationships bill in a revealing document, favouring every element of the bill (perhaps it would be naive to expect otherwise, as the office is an arm of, and dependent on, the State).

The section on adoption begins with the perfunctory claim that it is all about the rights of children. But this is as deceitful as when the same claim comes out of the mouth of a politician who supports the “rights” of people, based on their sexual orientation or marital status, to adopt children.

It becomes clear further on in the same document that it is about the rights of adults, not children. Quoting a House of Lords (UK) judgement on the issue, it claimed that to prevent unmarried couples from adopting would be in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights. The judgement in turn relies on the very tenuous basis that being unmarried is a status, and you can’t discriminate against anyone based on their “status”.

Really? Well everyone has either the status of being married or the status of being unmarried. Does that mean that everybody has the “right” to adopt children?

Legislation such as this will have a profound effect on the social, cultural and moral life of Irish society long into the future. But, as usual we can expect it to go through the Oireachtas without any public debate, and even without the public being properly informed about it.

The few noble exceptions in the Oireachtas who oppose the bill will be treated with scorn by their colleagues and all but silenced by the media.

Government parties, opposition parties, the civil servants involved, the Ombudsman for Children along with other quangos, NGOs and lobby groups, and almost the entire media close ranks on the issue and shut down any possibility of real debate.

This will have more dire consequences for the future of Ireland than even the worst of economic policies, although the latter will be discussed endlessly in the public forum.

Those who promote this abomination, those who vote for it – that is the deliberate and systematic denial to future generations of vulnerable children of either a mother or a father – are inviting the wrath of God on themselves and on the whole country.

But the punishment is unlikely to be swift. The Dáil probably won’t be swallowed up by the earth on the day the bill is enacted. Nor is a tsunami likely. The more usual, more probable and more severe punishment will be that we suffer the consequences of the legislation itself. And that could take some time to happen.

It is a pity that those in government don’t undertake to accept moral and legal responsibility for the consequences of the laws they enact. But then, those who vote for evil laws are unlikely to give much heed to the concept of moral responsibility, and they can expect to be safely dead from old age by the time the legal consequences are fully manifest.

At the very least those who vote for the Children and Family Relationships bill will have earned for themselves the undying contempt of posterity, and especially of those whose innocence will have been shattered by their malevolent actions.

Future generations will have to live with the fruit of what is being planted by our present government. We can’t foresee or calculate all of the consequences, but for certain society will have to endure the vengeance of those whom it abandoned as children to the selfish whims of adults.

When it comes to elections and referenda, we should always keep in mind that the moral law is superior to, and has far more serious repercussions than, any worldly considerations about the economy, political correctness or – the big preoccupation of our current leaders – what people on foreign shores will think of us.