Opinion
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IRELAND, February 28, 2018 (Lumen Fidei) – Although most people are unaware of it, the week that end Friday, January 19, 2018, was one of the darkest and most evil weeks in the history of the Irish nation. 

Grown men and women, many of them parents of children, all of them elected representatives, stood up in the Irish parliament chamber one after the other, to outline the conditions under which they believed that certain human beings, members of our nation, should be allowed to be put to death. 

If a child’s mother was raped, it should be legal to kill that child. If the child has a terminal illness and will not live for long, it should be legal to kill that child too. A child whose mother is suicidal can also be killed or where the mother’s life is in danger, you can kill that child as well. Children under twelve weeks old have no rights whatsoever and can be killed for no reason at all, other than that someone wants to kill them. 

Of course, this wasn’t the language that these men and women used.

Those who promote evil rarely speak plainly, rarely speak the truth, and rarely present the facts. Instead they rely on rhetorical, flowery and emotive language and a false compassion, pretending that they really care for women whilst they portray our ancestors, the Catholic Church, those who framed the eighth amendment to our constitution, and those who want it retained, as having little or no regard for women and for the rights of women. They tell us that it is a complex, divisive and complicated issue. 

God the Father managed to deal with this issue in just four simple words, “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” 

It only becomes complicated and complex when you seek to act contrary to God’s laws and when you seek to pretend that you are acting in a caring manner. 

Stripped of the flowery language and rhetoric what these people are really saying is that it's good to allow women to kill their children in certain circumstances. 

A few courageous voices 

Thank God there were a few courageous voices who spoke up to defend the most defenceless members of our nation, but the vast majority favour the killing. 

The main-stream media are also complicit in promoting the killing. For example, the Irish Times headlined the story of Mícheál Martin, the leader of the Fianna Fáil party, coming out in favour of the killing. Mícheál, is the leader of a small and insignificant political party in terms of the wider world. Donald Trump, on the other hand, the President of arguably the most powerful nation on this earth, was ignored because he called for an end to the killing of unborn children. The Irish Times is so biased that they are no longer aware of their bias, so sure are they of obtaining their objective of turning Ireland into an abortion regime. 

In Ireland, we are now living in a totalitarian society, where those who oppose killing babies, who oppose same-sex marriage, and who oppose other government initiatives, are to be silenced, ignored, and eventually they will drum up legislation through which we may be put in jail. It is no coincidence that they have chosen to re-open the ‘Kerry babies’ case in the run-up to their precious referendum, by which they hope to get the baby killing legislation passed. This will be used as their stick to beat down the Catholic Church and all belonging to it, hoping that we will take responsibility for these babies, murdered in Kerry many years ago, and hang our heads in shame. The blame game is as old as Adam and Eve. Lies and deceit are as old as ‘old nick’ himself. 

A sickly sub-pagan Ireland 

In the promotional material for the book 'Out of the Ashes – rebuilding American Culture' by Anthony Esolen, an American Catholic and professor of English, we read the following. 

“Our sickly, sub-pagan state resembles a bombed-out city. We have to assess the damage, but merely lamenting it does no good. There is work to be done. The first step is the restoration of truth. America’s most powerful institutions—including the government—are mass producers of deceit. We have to recognize the lies and clear our minds of cant.” 

The same is true of Ireland. Ireland's most powerful institutions – including our government – are mass producers of deceit and we need to recognise this and to help others to recognise this. 

Now let us be very clear about the deception that is going on with the so-called 'Citizen’s Assembly.' This was never a citizen’s assembly, it was a government initiative designed to bring about a particular result, which our government is too cowardly to tell us straight to our faces. In other words, the government wants to legalise the killing of certain innocent children. Those who serve the Lord have a duty to stop this.

The government called for the ‘citizens assembly’, not the citizens. The government appointed the head of this assembly, not the citizens. The government chose the means by which the so-called citizens' representatives would be chosen, not the citizens. The citizens of this country had no real say as to how this assembly would operate or as to who would be invited to address the assembly. The citizens' representatives were merely pawns in a government chess game by which our government seeks to appease their European and UN masters. 

This is because our government had a particular reason for creating this fiasco. They are coming under tremendous pressure on the world stage, to bring our legislation into line with other jurisdictions who legally permit the killing of innocent children in certain circumstances. We are an embarrassment to those, child killing nations, therefore we must change, and we too must sign up to the child killing. 

The most recent case of this happened on June 13th, last year, when a United Nations “human rights committee” announced that Ireland had violated the rights of a woman who travelled to England to have her sick, unborn child, put to death. The Irish Republic has been ordered to pay compensation to the mother, and to provide psychological treatment for her, because our constitution prevented Irish medical personnel from assisting her in the killing of her innocent and sickly, unborn child. This UN committee, even though it has no legal jurisdiction over us, ordered Ireland, a once sovereign nation, to change its laws so that women can kill their sick unborn children here at home, and they gave Ireland six months to provide information on how we will comply with these UN demands to have innocent Irish unborn children put to death in Irish hospitals and on Irish soil. 

This is an example of deceit. Imagine calling for legislation to kill sick and other innocent children, in the name of a human rights committee? 

Now our government knows that they would lose a straight referendum which permitted the killing of Irish children, so they created the citizens assembly ploy, to make it look as if the citizens of Ireland are calling for the legislation which will permit the killing of a certain class of Irish person. Now that the assembly has called for unrestricted access to the killing of unborn children, the government can pretend to be 'Oh so gracious' by suggesting that they will put limits on those whom they will permit to be killed. 

Only certain children may be killed 

Our minister for health Simon Harris, recently said that he abhors the idea that unborn children could be killed because of a disability, but he is OK with the idea that you can kill the same child, if that child has a fatal illness or if the child is under 12 weeks old. Lies and deceit. 

Our government, and most of our Irish politicians, also want to make sure that the blood of these innocent children is on as many hands as possible, so they have proposed a referendum, which will be accompanied by a dishonest marketing campaign, in order to remove the protection currently enjoyed by the unborn children of this once Catholic nation. 

I was greatly saddened by the contribution of Lisa Chambers in the recent debate on abortion in our parliament on Thursday 18th January. Lisa, an elected member of the Irish parliament, is a thirty-one-year-old woman from County Mayo, where I have lived for the last thirteen years. Her contribution was typical of those who argue in favour of killing certain children and was disappointing for many reasons, the main one being that, whilst she spoke of the importance of facts, she ignores the fact that abortion kills a living and innocent human child. 

She argued passionately against rape, but she has no problem with killing the children of rape. She does not argue for the death penalty for the rapist, but she argues for the death penalty for his child. Of course, she does not put it that way, for to do so would expose the illogicality of her arguments, and so she dresses it all up in emotional language and accuses men like myself of trying to force women to have babies. This is a lie, plain and simple. 

In the dreadful case of a woman who becomes pregnant because of rape, the only one who has used force is the rapist. However, you cannot remove that child from the mother's body without using force. Therefore, Lisa Chambers is advocating the use of force to kill an innocent child. It is she who is advocating force to kill another human being, because that human being’s very existence is, understandably, a cause of upset. Yet, a child that was alive will be killed if Lisa has her way. 

For my part, I will do all in my power to help a raped mother. I and my family, (I have eight children) would gladly take her into our home to look after her and to care for her if that were the only way to save the child.

However, I will have no part in bringing about the death of her innocent child. I will never condone the use of force to take the life of an innocent child, even though that force is used in a clinically clean hospital or medical facility. That Lisa does not appear to have a problem with using force to kill an innocent child conceived because of rape, astounds me. What causes a young woman, to become so hard-hearted as to deny the humanity of an unborn child? 

The politics of disability 

As noted above, Lisa, Simon Harris, and others, also say that they do not favour the killing of unborn children on account of a disability, yet at the same time they are quite happy to kill the same child if she develops what they call a 'fatal foetal abnormality,' or if the same child is under twelve weeks old. Or rather, should I say, that they favour someone else carrying out the killing for them, they will merely cooperate by drafting the legislation that prevents both themselves and the murderer of the child, from being brought to justice. 

They argue that we should legislate to kill terminally ill children or children under twelve weeks old, but let’s keep alive the disabled ones. What is so special about a disabled unborn child that they do not want them to be killed, whereas they have no problem with killing the others? Can they answer this question?

My guess is that they don't want to upset the, already born, disabled children and their parents. In other words, it is for base political reasons alone, that they do not want to legalise the killing of the disabled, but mark my words, if these people get their way, it will not be long before the legislation is revised to allow for the killing of disabled children as well. 

When women travel to England for an abortion, they go abroad with a living child and that child is put to death whilst they are in England. These are facts. Uncomfortable facts, yet facts nonetheless. One can call it 'abortion' or 'termination', but the fact is that a human being who was living, is now dead and did not die as a result of natural causes but was forcibly put to death. 

We all lament the dark happenings of Ireland's past, yet these people are arguing in favour of permitting the passage of a far greater darkness; legislation which will make it legal to abuse innocent children by putting them to death. 

This is not pro-woman, this is not pro-life, this is simply evil dressed up as a good, and future generations will wonder at how anyone could possibly have argued in favour of this grave evil. Despite the odds against us, we must do all in our power to prevent this becoming a reality in Ireland. 

We must defend the innocent 

We must battle against the immediate threat that is posed by the referendum and we must also battle against the forces that seek to undermine and destroy the Catholic family and the Catholic way of living.

This latter campaign, to destroy the Catholic family, is, I believe, the root cause of abortion in our western society.

We are engaged in what is primarily a spiritual war, a battle of powers and principalities, the battle between God and Satan. We must make sure that we have on the armour of our Catholic faith, and we must make sure that prayer and intercession to Our Blessed Mother Mary, is the foundation of all our actions in this battle. We know that God cannot lose this war, but the battle for souls continues and many are being lost and dragged down into darkness. We must battle and pray for their souls as well. 

We should never underestimate the importance of the practising Catholic Family, rooted as it is in prayer, supplication, adoration and the desire to do God’s Holy Will. 

The practising Catholic family is the greatest pro-life place on this earth! The practising Catholic family is the safest place for children to grow up. The practising Catholic family is the only foundation and the rock upon which a just society can be built.

You cannot build a just society on any other foundation than that of the Catholic family based on the marriage of one man and one woman, their biological children, and on the teachings of the Catholic Church. This is because the Catholic Church was founded by Christ for this very purpose as a means of leading souls to Heaven. 

Editor's note: John Lacken lives in Ireland. He is married to Naomi and they have eight children. John is the Secretary of the recently formed ‘Lumen Fidei Institute’ www.lumenfidei.ie which seeks to promote, to defend, to teach, and to help Catholics to live out their great calling as Children of God.