Abortion law is beginning of return to Penal Laws era
Shakespeare and the Resistance, a new book by Clare Asquith, explores the bard’s role in the political and religious opposition to Elizabeth I’s regime.
It also shows that England under the queen was “a highly successful police state” and “a country kept in check by terror”. How had it come to this?
The trouble began with Henry VIII, his takeover of the Church and his massive theft of Church land and goods, all done with the “silent submission” of the clergy in what was “the suicide of ecclesiastical authority”.
Radical reformer William Cobbett, in the mid-1820s, reviewed the longterm effects of the “rape” of the Church: not only Elizabethan terror but “pauperism, that disgraceful immorality, that fearful prevalence of crimes of all sorts.”
History shows that when the state turns on the Church, under Julian, the apostate Roman emperor, during the Protestant rebellion, the French and Russian revolutions, not only the Church but the people pay dearly.
Ireland is now heading in the same direction, and the recent abortion law, with its contempt for God and for reason, shows how far matters have already gone.
Catholic doctors and other pro-life people in health care recognise the terrible evil an abortion is. They may not involve themselves in the racket. Nor refer a pregnant mother to a killer doctor to have her child destroyed.
Evil law
Yet Irish politicians have passed a law that seeks to compel doctors to commit such an evil, contradicting their life-saving vocation and betraying both their patients.
Doctors and health care workers need to fiercely oppose this corruption of law. And they need the backing of the whole community in doing so.
But arguing for “freedom of conscience” only undermines their case, given the way “freedom” and “conscience” are understood today.
Freedom of conscience has become, in fact, the “right to choose” ideology in disguise. By founding an argument on it we accept and further entrench the ideology in society. Yet this is what needs to be rejected.
Better to argue that being involved in abortion is morally evil or against God’s law, and that being forced to do evil attacks human dignity and destroys society.
The recently passed abortion law shows democracy morphing into tyranny in our country.
One major effect of the law is that Catholics and other pro-life health care workers will face harassment and discrimination at work. They may even be forced out of their profession.
Nor will young pro-life people enter these professions, leading not only to a shortage of carers but also a radical corruption of the health service.
Candidates
Politics too will become exclusive. Already a Catholic can no longer be president of Ireland. The selection of pro-life candidates to contest elections will be ruled out by the parties, as is already happening with US Democrats.
Schools and teachers will be pressured to promote acceptance of abortion, same sex “marriage” and the whole “right to choose” ideology. And the corruption will continue to spread into other areas of life.
For more than a century the Penal Laws unjustly discriminated against Irish Catholics. The present abortion law is the beginning of a new Penal Law era. “No Catholics need apply.”
The longer this campaign of evil is allowed to go on, the more tyrannical the state will become. And the more difficult it will be to oppose an increasingly oppressive regime.
Meanwhile, Church leaders slumber on, apparently oblivious or indifferent to what is happening. Catholic hospitals killing unborn babies, for example, betray Christ and the whole community.
We are in the midst of an ideological war and we need to realise that. We must decide which side we are on. Are we for life, hope and God, or for despair?
Can we even recognise political attempts to promote evil for what they are?
Everyone is needed to take a stand for justice and goodness.
It also shows that England under the queen was “a highly successful police state” and “a country kept in check by terror”. How had it come to this?
The trouble began with Henry VIII, his takeover of the Church and his massive theft of Church land and goods, all done with the “silent submission” of the clergy in what was “the suicide of ecclesiastical authority”.
Radical reformer William Cobbett, in the mid-1820s, reviewed the longterm effects of the “rape” of the Church: not only Elizabethan terror but “pauperism, that disgraceful immorality, that fearful prevalence of crimes of all sorts.”
History shows that when the state turns on the Church, under Julian, the apostate Roman emperor, during the Protestant rebellion, the French and Russian revolutions, not only the Church but the people pay dearly.
Ireland is now heading in the same direction, and the recent abortion law, with its contempt for God and for reason, shows how far matters have already gone.
Catholic doctors and other pro-life people in health care recognise the terrible evil an abortion is. They may not involve themselves in the racket. Nor refer a pregnant mother to a killer doctor to have her child destroyed.
Evil law
Yet Irish politicians have passed a law that seeks to compel doctors to commit such an evil, contradicting their life-saving vocation and betraying both their patients.
Doctors and health care workers need to fiercely oppose this corruption of law. And they need the backing of the whole community in doing so.
But arguing for “freedom of conscience” only undermines their case, given the way “freedom” and “conscience” are understood today.
Freedom of conscience has become, in fact, the “right to choose” ideology in disguise. By founding an argument on it we accept and further entrench the ideology in society. Yet this is what needs to be rejected.
Better to argue that being involved in abortion is morally evil or against God’s law, and that being forced to do evil attacks human dignity and destroys society.
The recently passed abortion law shows democracy morphing into tyranny in our country.
One major effect of the law is that Catholics and other pro-life health care workers will face harassment and discrimination at work. They may even be forced out of their profession.
Nor will young pro-life people enter these professions, leading not only to a shortage of carers but also a radical corruption of the health service.
Candidates
Politics too will become exclusive. Already a Catholic can no longer be president of Ireland. The selection of pro-life candidates to contest elections will be ruled out by the parties, as is already happening with US Democrats.
Schools and teachers will be pressured to promote acceptance of abortion, same sex “marriage” and the whole “right to choose” ideology. And the corruption will continue to spread into other areas of life.
For more than a century the Penal Laws unjustly discriminated against Irish Catholics. The present abortion law is the beginning of a new Penal Law era. “No Catholics need apply.”
The longer this campaign of evil is allowed to go on, the more tyrannical the state will become. And the more difficult it will be to oppose an increasingly oppressive regime.
Meanwhile, Church leaders slumber on, apparently oblivious or indifferent to what is happening. Catholic hospitals killing unborn babies, for example, betray Christ and the whole community.
We are in the midst of an ideological war and we need to realise that. We must decide which side we are on. Are we for life, hope and God, or for despair?
Can we even recognise political attempts to promote evil for what they are?
Everyone is needed to take a stand for justice and goodness.