Daft 'elites' are blind to harm they cause
The TV licence fee should be scrapped. The government has no right to take our money to give it to RTE. People should not have to pay for entertainment they do not choose.
Building regulations must go. Builders should be free to decide the kind of houses they will build, depending on market demand.
The party whip should be abolished. Let politicians freely choose how they will vote on any and every issue.
Taxes need to be cut to a quarter of what they now are. Workers have a right to choose how they will spend their hard-earned wages. If they don't want to spend it on welfare, education or services, that is their choice.
People who want sex without strings or babies also have a right to choose a contraceptive poison or sterilisation.
Men should be free to divorce their wives with a text. They should also be free to choose not to support their children.
If a man chooses to be a woman, we must all accept this, calling him her, and he must be allowed to compete in women's sport if he wishes.
Drugs like cocaine and heroin should be openly on sale for those who want to use them. The State should not interfere with people's choice to drug themselves.
Many Catholics no longer take part in Sunday Mass nor hand on the faith to their children. That's their choice, and who are we to judge?
The "right to life" of those closest to us, a senile father, an unborn daughter, cannot be allowed to hinder our choices.
These few applications of the right-to-choose principle, all with their supporters, indicate just how much this slogan dominates life today.
Used most blatantly in the demand for abortion, it applies far more widely. It is now secularist society's basic moral principle.
Often choice is promoted as "self-determination" or "personal autonomy". Which simply mean, "I demand a right to do whatever I please."
This radical individualism has no in-built limits. It allows nothing, even the right to life of the weakest, to stand in the way of its voracious, ruthless appetite.
There were always people who lived by this principle. But how did it come to dominate society in recent decades? That is due in large part to the colossal failure of European philosophers over the past 400 years.
No society can exist without morality, the ability to distinguish good from evil. But morality, the philosophers believed, should be based on reason alone. Yet all their attempts to provide a convincing rational morality failed.
That failure went deep. Having excluded God and our duty to worship him from public life, objective or given morality became a big problem.
The result was a rapid descent into today's ruthless "choice" ideology, abetted by our politicians, media, college lecturers, etc.
Meanwhile, instead of defending and enriching a true morality based on reason, Catholic bishops, priests and scholars have, in general, kept a cowardly silence over the past 60 years or so.
They neglected to proclaim the Ten Commandments. Even the sacrificial death of Christ, the need for salvation and the hope of heaven were all pushed into the background.
The focus moved instead to justice and peace, drug violence, immigrants, jobs and welfare - all necessary but safe topics.
This policy helped the Church to "adapt to the present age", but rendered it deeply irrelevant, as a growing body of Catholics realised, and left.
Secularist society, however, lacks the philosophical and religious resources it needs to escape from the social and moral quagmire it has created.
Only the Church has those resources. But has it the courage and zeal to use them for the salvation of souls and the good of society?
Building regulations must go. Builders should be free to decide the kind of houses they will build, depending on market demand.
The party whip should be abolished. Let politicians freely choose how they will vote on any and every issue.
Taxes need to be cut to a quarter of what they now are. Workers have a right to choose how they will spend their hard-earned wages. If they don't want to spend it on welfare, education or services, that is their choice.
People who want sex without strings or babies also have a right to choose a contraceptive poison or sterilisation.
Men should be free to divorce their wives with a text. They should also be free to choose not to support their children.
If a man chooses to be a woman, we must all accept this, calling him her, and he must be allowed to compete in women's sport if he wishes.
Drugs like cocaine and heroin should be openly on sale for those who want to use them. The State should not interfere with people's choice to drug themselves.
Many Catholics no longer take part in Sunday Mass nor hand on the faith to their children. That's their choice, and who are we to judge?
The "right to life" of those closest to us, a senile father, an unborn daughter, cannot be allowed to hinder our choices.
These few applications of the right-to-choose principle, all with their supporters, indicate just how much this slogan dominates life today.
Used most blatantly in the demand for abortion, it applies far more widely. It is now secularist society's basic moral principle.
Often choice is promoted as "self-determination" or "personal autonomy". Which simply mean, "I demand a right to do whatever I please."
This radical individualism has no in-built limits. It allows nothing, even the right to life of the weakest, to stand in the way of its voracious, ruthless appetite.
There were always people who lived by this principle. But how did it come to dominate society in recent decades? That is due in large part to the colossal failure of European philosophers over the past 400 years.
No society can exist without morality, the ability to distinguish good from evil. But morality, the philosophers believed, should be based on reason alone. Yet all their attempts to provide a convincing rational morality failed.
That failure went deep. Having excluded God and our duty to worship him from public life, objective or given morality became a big problem.
The result was a rapid descent into today's ruthless "choice" ideology, abetted by our politicians, media, college lecturers, etc.
Meanwhile, instead of defending and enriching a true morality based on reason, Catholic bishops, priests and scholars have, in general, kept a cowardly silence over the past 60 years or so.
They neglected to proclaim the Ten Commandments. Even the sacrificial death of Christ, the need for salvation and the hope of heaven were all pushed into the background.
The focus moved instead to justice and peace, drug violence, immigrants, jobs and welfare - all necessary but safe topics.
This policy helped the Church to "adapt to the present age", but rendered it deeply irrelevant, as a growing body of Catholics realised, and left.
Secularist society, however, lacks the philosophical and religious resources it needs to escape from the social and moral quagmire it has created.
Only the Church has those resources. But has it the courage and zeal to use them for the salvation of souls and the good of society?
