In the modern world, abortion has become something of a secular sacrament, down to which all politicians must make obeisance. If they do not, then they are clearly haters of women and an obvious supporter of the evil, reich-wing Donald Trump. The Roman Catholic Church is one of the few bulwarks against pre-natal infanticide in the West, though the Church’s actual action against it seems sparse.

Irish politician refused communion over abortion vote

BBC | Monday, July 15, 2024

The refusal of the Eucharist to a public representative in the Republic of Ireland has been “unambiguously condemned” by the Association of Catholic Priests.

It follows reports that Fine Gael TD and Minister of State Colm Burke was refused Holy Communion at a funeral Mass on Friday.

That politicians would have condemned the priest’s actions is unsurprising; that the Association of Catholic Priests would do so ought to be shocking.

He was told this was because he had been “excommunicated” over his “support for abortion”, according to Irish broadcaster RTÉ.

Mr Burke had voted in favour of repealing the Eighth Amendment, a process which led to legal abortions in the Republic of Ireland.

In 2018, the country voted overwhelmingly to overturn the abortion ban by 66.4% to 33.6% – a landslide win for the repeal side.

The Eighth Amendment had granted an equal right to life to the mother and the unborn child.

The Association stated:

Procurement of an abortion is complex, morally and medically. Legislators have to balance two sets of rights, the right of the unborn child to life and the free decision-making right of the mother. Public representatives are tasked with finding a balance between both.

This is complete bovine feces. While it could be argued that the “procurement” of an abortion could be “complex” administratively, morally it is not: unless the life of the mother is seriously threatened by continuation of the pregnancy, a very small number of cases, it is always morally wrong: it is the putting to death of one human being, one who cannot speak or cry or defend himself, for the convenience of another. The Church’s position on this is clear and unambiguous, but the Association of Catholic Priests in Ireland can’t seem to understand that . . . or just plain disagrees.

There is, however, some hope on the horizon. After a few decades of political and religious liberalism among the Catholic priesthood, The New York Times reported on America’s New Catholic Priests: Young, Confident and Conservative. At least in the United States, perhaps aided by more liberal couples choosing not to have children at all, while conservatives don’t normally go that route, and Vatican initiatives to keep homosexual males out of the seminaries, a new generation of young priests and seminarians has begun to crop up, primarily during this century, who describe themselves as more conservative both theologically and politically.

Priests ordained since 2010 “are clearly the most conservative cohort of priests we’ve seen in a long time,” said Brad Vermurlen, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, who has studied the rightward shift of the American priesthood. Surveys tracking the opinions of priests have found that, starting in the 1980s, each new wave of priests in the United States is noticeably more conservative than the one before it, Dr. Vermurlen said.

His and his colleagues’ analysis found newer priests were significantly more conservative than their elders on questions including whether homosexual behavior is always a sin, and whether women should be able to serve as deacons and priests, for example.

More than 80 percent of priests ordained since 2020 describe themselves as theologically “conservative/orthodox” or “very conservative/orthodox,” according to a nationally representative survey of 3,500 priests published by the Catholic Project at the Catholic University of America. Foreign-born priests in the United States, a significant presence as ordination rates remain below replacement levels, are less conservative theologically than their American-born peers. But still, not a single surveyed priest who was ordained after 2020 described himself as “very progressive.”

Politically, the trend is similar, with almost all priests ordained in 2020 or later describing themselves as moderate or conservative.

Religion is, at bottom, a conservative concept; it is the admission by the individual that there is something greater than oneself, and the voluntary concession of — if not always submission to in practice — a higher authority. Political liberalism today might as well be distilled down to the 1960s phrase, “If it feels good, do it,” in which morality is seen as secondary to pleasure, and, once secondary, becomes unimportant.

There’s more work to be done, and, as is usually the case, my focus on religion is on the Catholic Church. But the many Protestant denominations in the United States are seeing something similar, as the Episcopal and Methodist churches are seeing internal schism over the liberal acceptance of homosexuality; as the left had previously surged in those denominations, congregants and congregations in some places have resisted and rebelled, and begun to split off. The American left have embraced notions which are, in the end, policies toward their self-suicide. Noone on earth is immortal, and as they self-limit marriage and reproduction to ever-later ages, as they embrace young lifestyles of promiscuity, they create the conditions in which eventual marriage becomes harder and harder, and for a significant number of them, unobtainable.

Do you think that my admittedly guarded optimism is misplaced? We already know that black women have abortions at nearly five times the rate of white women, and, a back-of-the-envelope calculation I did a few years ago, one which did require some reasonable assumptions, concluded that if black woman had abortions at only the same rate as white women since abortion was legalized, the percentage of the non-Hispanic black population in the United States, 12.1% in the 2020 census, would be somewhere in the vicinity of 17%. Considering that black Americans give roughly 90% of their votes to Democrats, this has been a significant factor in reducing the impact of votes for liberals. The trends of population growth in the United States have been seen more heavily in the more conservative states.

Conservatives cannot stop fighting for what is right, yet slowly but surely, we are on the winning track.