On the cusp of persecution, it is good to remember the history of dear Ireland.

Persecution is in the air. The so-called equality act will result in targeting every religious group in the country except those that now worship the world instead of God. We've already seen the persecution resulting from draconian regulations over the China virus. It's just the beginning if the godless elitists in Washington have their way. 

Don't Despair Over Bad Bishops -- The Suffering They Inflict on Faithful Priests will Bring Graces Flowing on Our Poor Church

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin

Irish Priest Punished after Pro-life Homily

After reading this article, I left the following comment:

One more example of bad bishops undermining the faith. Priests can attend pride marches and shill for same-sex marriage like Fr. Martin and be lauded and given Vatican posts. Faithful priests get the cross and the nine inch nails. That's why I don't despair. The blood of the martyrs (even white martyrs) is the seedbed of the faith. This persecution is the Good Friday that will bring the Resurrection! I'm praying for Fr. Larkin and exposing this rot on my blog with an address for the bishop. May he hear from people all over the world about this injustice!

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin removed Fr. Larkin from his pastoral assignment forbidding him to say any public Masses or have any contact with former parishioners.

Why?

The Death of the Catholic

The third man lived and died here

Continued from yesterday's post: God and the Deaths of Three Men - One Protestant, One Atheist, One Catholic

THE CATHOLIC

The third man to die was the Catholic who led a Catholic life, but not without pain and suffering. 

He was born in Dublin, Ireland to a middle class Irish couple, the first of three sons whose father always made certain the family went to Mass every Sunday. All three sons grew up to be handsome men with turquoise blue Irish eyes, each one possessing a pleasing temperament and a graciousness not seen today in many people. Even their mother would marvel at the beauty of her sons. 

As a child, the oldest brother contracted polio and as a result one leg never grew as long as the other and he limped all his life. His mother, once, in sincere anguish literally clutching her chest, told me that it “tore her heart” when she would see him as a child and then teenager limping down the street. She would stand at the door and could see her three sons walking home from school, one of them limping along.

Sunday Meditation: The Bell Tolls for Ireland and for Western Civilization

In 1624 John Donne wrote a short book of meditations titled Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions. At the time he was dean of St. Paul's, a prestigious position in the Church of England. The meditations were inspired by a long period of illness with spotted fever when he lay in his sickbed and listened to the funeral bells ringing at a nearby church. He made this observation in Meditation XVII:

The Church is Catholike, universall, so are all her Actions; All that she does, belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns mee, for that child is thereby connected to that Head which is my Head too, and engraffed into that body, whereof I am a member … All mankinde is of one Author, and is one volume; when one Man dies, one Chapter is not torne out of the booke, but translated into a better language. [Unusual spellings are from the original.]

From there follows a poem that contains two very famous lines: "No man is an island." and "For whom the bell tolls."

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

Study Shows 81% Increase in "Moderate to Highly Increased Risk" of Mental Health Problems for Post Aborted Women

The "sample comprised 22 studies, 36 measures of effect and 877 181 participants (163 831 
experienced an abortion)." The abstract of the study reports:

 Women who had undergone an abortion experienced an 81% increased risk of mental health problems, and nearly 10% of the incidence of mental health problems was shown to be attributable to abortion. The strongest subgroup estimates of increased risk occurred when abortion was compared with term pregnancy and when the outcomes pertained to substance use and suicidal behaviour. 

Pray for Ireland! Pray the Rosary and Make Holy Hours to Defeat the Move to Gut the 8th Amendment!

Darling Brendan, please pray for the babies of Ireland! Please offer all your sufferings joined with the sufferings of Christ to defeat the Culture of Death in Ireland. Read more here...

A Virtual Trip to Ireland

One of my readers sent links to two blogs she's working on in Ireland. It took me back a decade to a trip I made with my mom (RIP) and a good friend. We rented a car and drove all over the place for two weeks leading. At one of the B & B's we stayed in the owner laughed and said, "You Americans, you go everywhere and see nothing!" Ah, but we visited Jesus at every church we passed and talked to dozens of the local folks: a bride and groom waiting for the same car ferry we were, two school girls eating their lunch on a park bench, a mom with two little boys who couldn't wait for divorce to be legalized (sad), a distinguished white-haired gentleman painting his rowboat. How I would love to return! Unfortunately, I'd have to get on an airplane and whenever I think about that I think of a sardine can. But I can take a virtual tour and I invite you to do the same.

Blessed Thaddeus McCarthy's Catholic Heritage Association

St. Conleth's Catholic Heritage Association

North Cathedral, Cork City

Franciscan Church Merchants Quay, Dublin

Ireland is Catholic...but for How Long?

Worrying trends in Ireland paint a picture of a country whose strong Catholic tradition is eroding. I'm not surprised. I visited Ireland for two weeks in 1991 with my mother and a friend. Everywhere we went we saw signs that Ireland was in trouble. American television saturated the tube. Conversing with locals, we found many expressing the desire for liberalizing divorce. Homosexuality was being promoted in the press. Moral relativism was clearly on the rise.

After my mom left to return home, my friend and I continued on to Medjugorje with an Irish pilgrimage group. When we expressed our concerns about what we saw in Ireland ("You're about 15 years behind us," we said, so you better start fighting now!"), they pooh-poohed us. But within a year or so of returning to the states, an Irish court allowed a teenager to seek an abortion in England. At the time leaving the country to secure abortion was against Irish law. Today, about 7000 women a year seek abortions outside the country where it is still illegal except to save the life of the mother. But the pressure on Ireland continues and the sex abuse crisis didn't help things any. Sin has consequences and when the shepherds are vicious they damage the faith of the weak. The Church needs reform from the top down and the bottom up -- not just in Ireland, but everywhere.

One of the things that impressed my friend and me most about Ireland was the number of children. Everywhere we went we saw bright-faced kids. I photographed many and particularly remember seeing two teenagers on a lunch break in their school uniforms of white blouses and navy blue skirts. One was red-haired and freckled; the other looked like Snow White with black hair and a pale complexion. I asked permission to snap their picture and it remains one of my favorite photos from the trip. But, like every other country in the west, Ireland's children are an endangered species. The birthrate plummeted during the 90s and continues to be below replacement level. (See report on Ireland's children here.) Those teens we saw are close to 40 now and their own families probably look a lot different than the ones they grew up in.

Pray for the family. When I was in elementary school, our social studies books showed the family as the basic building block of the community. The neighborhood, town, state, and nation are only as strong as their families and the family is under assault everywhere. Please join me in praying for Ireland, the land where my grandfather was born. Any decline in the faith there feels like a personal loss to me and to the Church in the U.S. where so many Irish missionaries have served. St. Patrick, pray for Ireland and for us.

Did You Catch a Leprechaun Today?

Every year at least one of our grandkids constructs a leprechaun trap (with the help of engineer dad). This year was the most complicated of all.  See the trap demonstrated here. I wonder how much our first grader actually did. But he's smart as a whip so he was probably a consultant who suggested the laser beams. Oh, by the way, the leprechaun is prevented from jumping out by a plexiglass cover which was left off for the demonstration because of the glare.

Frankly, I suspect that the trap will fail because leprechaun's move at lightening speed and have acute hearing so the minute the magnet begins to operate, he'll here it and dash out under the door. (Did the door catch a bit of green cloth from his coat?) Hey, if Indiana Jones can do it, it's a piece of cake (or Irish soda bread) for a leprechaun! Proof for my theory? I'll bet the door was closed and there was no leprechaun in the trap!

Anyway, Happy St. Paddy's Day and I hope you catch a leprechaun, eat some corned beef and cabbage, and wish the top o' the morning to everyone you meet. We are all Irish on St. Patrick's Day, even St. Patrick who was really a Brit.

Ireland Sells Out to EU: Passes Lisbon Treaty which means death for the babies

Last week Ireland voted to ratify the constitution of the European Union also known as the Lisbon Treaty. It was defeated first go-around partly because of its support for abortion. The second vote was secured by misleading the people that Ireland could opt out of certain aspects of the treaty. But pro-life groups in Ireland and legal advisers say it ain't so. Ultimately, Ireland will be bound by the laws of the European Union which permits abortion.

Weep for Ireland and for her children. Passing the EU Lisbon Treaty is a disaster and its bloody consequences will be seen as Planned Parenthood and the abortion clique make further inroads into the Emerald Isle undermining her protections for the unborn. By ratifying the Lisbon Treat, Ireland trades the emerald color of hope for the bloody red of dead babies murdered by abortion.

Lisbon Treaty Supranationalizes the Criminal Law.

"The effect of the Lisbon Treaty will be to change the status of criminal laws giving more centralised powers and adopting a situation entirely new over criminal matters. Legal analysts agree it is an unknown quantity and it is not yet clear what the effects will be. There is, among other changes, a plan to introduce a European Prosecutor."

Lisbon Will Force Abortion into Ireland through EU Charter of Human Rights: Irish Pro-Life Lobby

"Green wrote Tuesday in the Irish Times that despite promises from the government that Ireland has 'iron-clad' opt-outs from certain sections of the Treaty, these 'Irish guarantees' do nothing to change the text of the Treaty itself and a Yes vote on Lisbon in October would lead to the overturning of Ireland's abortion law.

"The Lisbon Treaty, he said, 'will remain unchanged by any assurances obtained by the Government on any issue. Not a word or a comma will be altered. It is exactly the same treaty rejected last June by the Irish people.'

"Under the Treaty the national laws of each member state will be interpreted not through the state's courts, he said, but by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) that is under no legal obligation to consider any other law besides EU law. This means, Greene wrote, that the government's much-touted guarantees 'are not part of any EU treaty (including the Lisbon Treaty), so cannot be considered EU law.'"