Ladies and gentlemen,
It looks as if the Republic of Ireland has – very decisively – decided to vote down the 8th Amendment and so withdrawn protection from the most vulnerable of all Irish citizens – the unborn.
Ireland has, after holding out for many years, finally decided to join the mainland European rush to self-immolation.
What is worse is that, in most countries, abortion was imposed by the judicial and/or legislative elite whereas Ireland’s own people have chosen this route, themselves, by referendum.
It is tempting to say “I told you so – this is the end result of their infernal rebellion, murderous civil war and fatuous rewarding of rebels and murderers with government office” but that is only part of the story and is too simplistic. I am no fan of the way the rebels sapped the spirit of the Irish people but the abortion calamity cannot be blamed solely upon that.
The greater culprit, alas, is the post-Vatican II dispensation which has so sapped the vitals of the Catholic Church. Having sown the wind, we are now reaping the whirlwind.
Everywhere, we are seeing a devastated vineyard, as the late Professor Dietrich von Hildebrand so aptly put it.
For those who have been sitting on the fence for the last 50 years, now is the time to come off the fence and admit that the much-trumpeted “renewal” promised by the champions of the New Church has been a disastrous failure.
The Church will not be renewed until it heeds the words of St Pius X in his encyclical, Notre Charge Apostolique – “Our Apostolic Mandate” - of 1910 to the French Bishops, in which the saintly Pontiff said this:
“…all that is needed is to take up again, with the help of the true workers for a social restoration, the organisms which the [French] Revolution shattered, and to adapt them, in the same Christian spirit that inspired them, to the new environment arising from the material development of today’s society. Indeed, the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they are traditionalists.” [emphasis added]
Instead, Church and Society are heading rapidly in the opposite direction.
Now is the time for all good Catholics to admit that the experiment is over. It was a total failure. We must now set about restoring the broken edifice of Christianity. And, I suggest, the place to start is with the liturgy – the official prayer of the Church, originating in the Jewish Temple worship, Christianised by Christ Himself at the Last Supper, and fashioned by the Holy Spirit diachronically over the centuries, which should unite all Catholics, whether of the Roman or another rite, together. Without a widespread return to the ancient liturgy of the Roman rite, it is clearer than ever that the Church in the West will not recover its strength.
And let us pray for Ireland and its people.
Oremus pro invicem,
James Bogle, President FIUV 2013-2015
