Alan: Although Ireland remains an overwhelmingly Catholic country I believe the priest-pederasty scandal (along with other psycho-social abuses by Catholic clergy) transformed the nation's consciousness.
Never again would The Official Story be accepted - solely - on grounds of authoritarian assertion.
Never again would The Official Story be accepted - solely - on grounds of authoritarian assertion.
Over time, Irish Catholics -- a passionately communitarian people -- realized that the spectrum of statistically-normal human behavior -- behavior within The Natural Order albeit statistically less frequent -- is a much wider spectrum than Christian authorities had taught.
In this domain of "Natural History" they were as wrong as they were concerning heliocentrism.
In this domain of "Natural History" they were as wrong as they were concerning heliocentrism.
In the end people decided to follow their newly-informed conscience -- part of humankind's developing conscience -- and decided that gays and lesbians are, by nature, disposed to love members of their own sex with singular passion and that it is more damaging to force people to remain in legal and psychological "closets" where sexual/relational activity must be furtive and therefore tainted by "mainstream" bigotry and tawdry opprobrium.
"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice. The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization. We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal. Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good. The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”
"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice. The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization. We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal. Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good. The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”
"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton
Margaret Mead dispels the bafflegab:
It is "poetically just" that the Irish Catholic Church was "hoist on its own petard" and that Irish Catholics now lead the world in this epochal fight for human rights.
Homosexuality And "The Natural Order"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/03/homosexuality-and-natural-order.html
The Phenotypic Expression Of Religion Matters More Than Its Dogmatic Genotype
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/02/the-phenotypic-expression-of-religion.html
"Pope Francis Links"
Pope Francis: One Of The Most Powerful Critiques Of Capitalism You Will Ever Read
Pope Francis: "This Economy Kills"
Pope Francis: Quotations On Finance, Economics, Capitalism And Inequality
Referendum 2015 Live: It's a resounding Yes for same-sex marriage in Ireland
The Irish Times
For more Irish "User Views": http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/referendum/referendum-2015-live-its-a-resounding-yes-for-samesex-marriage-in-ireland-31238126.html
For more Irish "User Views": http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/referendum/referendum-2015-live-its-a-resounding-yes-for-samesex-marriage-in-ireland-31238126.html
23/05/2015
With 39 constituencies having now declared, the Yes vote is 62.3% and No 37.7%. The number of Yes votes is 1,128,209, with 682,932 votes for No.
The three constituencies still to declare are Cork North West, Cork South West and Cork East.
With 34 constituencies now declared, the Yes vote is 61.7% and No at 38.3%. The number of Yes votes is 964,616, with 599,505 for No.
As the cliche goes, success has many fathers and in the context of the Yes victory in the Irish gay marriage vote there will be many politicians who will want to claim the credit. It is a fact that this referendum was the brainchild of Eamon Gilmore, leader of the Irish Labour Party back in 2011.
He insisted to his Fine Gael colleagues that a vote be held on same sex marriage in the lifetime of the new government. Gilmore described the proposed referendum as the “civil rights issue of this generation”. Since entering coalition with Fine Gael, Gilmore has been ditched as party leader as Labour took a hammering in the opinion polls. Voters turned on Labour over austerity cuts and water charges with the same venom as the British electorate rejected the Liberal Democrats.
Irish Labour strategists will be hoping this referendum victory will give them some kind of recovery bounce ahead of next year’s general election. But whether Labour gains from today’s stunning pro-gay marriage victory especially in greater Dublin is open to question.
The archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, has described the almost certain Yes final result as a wake-up call for the Catholic church. “This is a social revolution,” he told RTE Television. “The church has a huge task in front of it get its message across to young people ... The church needs to do a reality check.”
Asked if the church was ill-equipped to deal with these issues, he said: “We tend to think of black and white but most of us live our lives in grey.” The church needed to use the result to harness the energy that has been unleashed in favour of equality for all, the archbishop added.
28 of 43 constituencies vote Yes
With 29 of 43 constituencies declared, the Yes vote is running at 62.2% and the No at 37.8%. Only one had a majority of No votes. For more detail check RTE’s handy results page.
Party time
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