What if they Elected an Irish Pope?

[OnDoutside]

[Irish_Dem]

1. Funny!

But seems unlikely there will ever be an Irish pope.
The Catholic Church has lost Ireland due to all the sex abuse scandals
and women dying from septic pregnancies.

[OnDoutside]

5. Yes, Mass attendance is down to 28% from 90% 40 years ago. People have made their decision, though I wish

politicians would catch up and be braver in weakening the power of the Catholic Church in Irish Education. Religious education badly needs to be withdrawn from Primary Schools.

[Irish_Dem]

6. But Ireland is doing much better than the US.

Ireland has made abortion legal up to 12 weeks and also permitted to save a mother's life.

In some US states abortion is legal, and talking about jailing women for murder.
And making it illegal to cross state lines for an abortion. Even talk about
the gov't tracking a woman's menstrual cycles and pregnancies.

Dying pregnant women in the US are left to die horrendous deaths, it is illegal to save
their lives in some states.

And now the GOP wants to defund public education with no religion,
and spend money only on religious schools.

It is interesting that here in the US, Irish Catholics are seen as more cultural Catholics.
They follow the rules and rituals and self identify as Catholic. But other than that
they do not carry on about God or religion like American protestants and more latin
Catholics. I have cousins in Ireland who are like American Irish Catholics.

[OnDoutside]

7. We are but we must always be vigilant. Most of what's left in the Church leadership are extremists and they're

getting a lot of their funding from America, which is used for "think tanks" etc to try and influence media channels.

We had to bring in a new law to try and stop the harassment of hospitals where abortions are performed

https://www.pila.ie/resources/bulletin/2024/07/10/new-irish-legislation-will-prevent-antiabortion-protests-outside-health-facilities#:~:text=Within%20those%20100%20metres%20it,likely%20to%20influence%20the%20decision

The Catholic Church also still have a vice like grip on our education system and it's a constant battle to remove religious education from our schools (without success so far), they're one big property company.

[Irish_Dem]

8. Yours is a very timely warning for the US.

Christian zealots are in the process of taking over US public schools.
And from what you are saying, once entrenched, they are impossible to get rid of.

And interestingly American funding goes back to Russia, Putin has been busy installing
his religious, gun, anti woman/POC/LGBT agenda in the US.

Thanks for the information OD, I had been hearing that Ireland had kicked the Catholic Church
out of Ireland, but that is not quite the case, yet.

[OnDoutside]

9. That's exactly where we are, they have a number of

lay spokespeople but very much on the hard-line end of the spectrum of anti abortion, evils of divorce breaking down the family, anti gay marriage etc.

One of the main front speakers is a guy called David Quinn who seems to get himself invited onto shows as the representative of the other side. He was editor of the Irish Catholic newspaper in the 1990s and then founded the shadowy Iona Institute where only he knows where the funding is coming from.

This is the Iona Institute about page

https://ionainstitute.ie/about-the-iona-institute/

That will give you a flavour of what they're doing.

We have come a long way but rest assured they haven't gone away and I'm sure they're only waiting for a chance. Interestingly they're fairly anti immigrant as well.

[Irish_Dem]

11. Same agenda, same propaganda, same made up issues.

Has Putin's fingerprints all over it.

The west is becoming more like Russia every day.

[OnDoutside]

12. I just don't understand why western intelligence services

haven't been screwing with Russia/China/Iran as much as they've been doing to us.

[Irish_Dem]

13. It is certain Putin has infiltrated/damaged the US intelligence services.

Trump started giving Putin classified documents early in his first term.
American agents and assets were killed or disappeared.

I don't know why the European intel agencies have not tried harder to damage Russia.
Perhaps Putin has an ironclad hold on his govt and people.

[SocialDemocrat61]

2. Jameson instead of wine!

Works for me.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Cheese and Onion! They'd be flocking to the churches.

Sell it as a gluten-free offering.

[Norbert]

4. St Patrick's Day will be an even bigger holiday.

Green beer all the way.

[peggysue2]

10. Too funny!

Made me laugh. Always a good thing!