I posted a similar Irish-vote essay as the one I’m sharing
with you below a while ago and I’ve gone through it again for posting here. It
will be in a couple of sections. Commentator LB236 wrote in a Comment below
that, “I am no expert in Ireland or its history—what little I know comes from
anecdotes mentioned in other books on Catholicism I have read—but I refuse to
believe a nation that kept the Faith in the midst of persecution for so long
would have as a nation apostasized were it not for the destruction of the Mass
that nourished the faithful for so long.”
That is, to some extent, true, and it is true for not just
Ireland, but the Church Universal. <b>However:</b> the "nation
that kept the Faith in the midst of persecution fro so long" is not the
English-speaking, post-Famine Ireland. The Penal Laws were over by the time of
the Great Famine. It was an Irish-speaking Éire that kept the Faith under
centuries of English Protestant persecution -- and even before England became
Protestant, they kept two distinct Churches in Ireland, one for the Irish and
one for the English colonists.
Yes, everyone is wringing their hands over Ireland, but it
is SO important, for everyone, to know Irish history, that
<i>nightmare,</i> as James Joyce put it, <i>from which he was
trying to awake.</i> Two major, powerful, screamingly important things
need to be understood: First, until about 180 years ago, or four Biblical
generations now (three score & ten plus some overlap): is that Ireland was
one kind of nation since Patrick came in the 400s all the way to 1846, and
another nation entirely from the post-Famine period down to the “Celtic Tiger”.
Before the Famine, Ireland was mostly Irish-speaking. Celtic realm, founded in
an ancient Faith imparted over a thousand and a half years before; after the
Famine, very few would admit to even knowing the language. (My great-aunts were
Irish-speakers but wouldn’t teach it to my mother, for example. “We’re
lace-curtain Irish,” they actually told her – but their parents spoke no
English when they immigrated into the U.S. And my great-aunts were desperate to
hide that fact.)
Regarding Ireland’s language shift, there’s been a complete
changeover in a way unique in European history. In other words, the country
you-all think of as “Ireland” is a new construct, rootless, languageless, and
in a powerful way, spiritless. By that I mean the Irish Church from the early
1800s to today is <i>NOT</i> the Irish Church of any time before
1800. It was a half-Jansenist Church, promoting English and trying to eradicate
anything unique Irish or Celtic about it. (There were exceptions: see
Archbishop John MacHale, 1791 to 1881.) The religion my grandmother and mother
had was devoid of any Irish (as in long-established Celtic) roots. It only took
over Ireland in the post-Famine era, and was “a mile wide and an inch deep” for
that Biblical generation who lived from the creation of the Irish Free State to
today.
Second point: this Abort vote was rigged. I’m not saying it
was rigged for the aborts to win but rigged to win big. Win by a ridiculous
margin. And this was done precisely to stymie debate. Yes, yes, sure, Ireland
of today wasn’t what it was even as late as the 1980s, but these vote totals
were to do as JGP Connolly, the author of the main article here, writes, “The
margin of victory for abortion was too huge for there to be any doubt.”
Exactly. Precisely. That’s the point. And I know enough
Irish history, modern and otherwise, plus a tremendous amount of American
history and “machine politics” to know the Irish <i>never</i> have
had a proper election. Why should they? They’re clannish, as clannish as
Appalachians (I’m one of those too), and they’ve never accepted the standard
Western Civ meme of the importance of the individual. That’s first of all;
second of all, they had the English (God help us!) as teachers and exemplars in
the art of democracy (insane laughter, chocking, some minutes of restoring
calm). Every time in history, from the Middle Ages on, whenever English-planted
parliaments slowly evolved into true democratic institutions in Ireland, the English
squashed ‘em. It happened as late at the last all-island vote ever held in the
country, in December 1918, it happened in the later 1800s with Parnell and a
half generation before Parnell, with O'Connell, in the 1700s when the Brits
squashed the Irish parliament; it just has happened over and over and over
again. So why would the Irish have any “democratic” genes?
Part 1
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