A light has at last shone in the darkness

What happened last Friday was of course more than the rights of people to decide who they want to marry, and be able to live within the protection of the constitution rather than live in the shadow of it because of that choice. It was about religious freedom from a Catholic dogma that included all others as well; it was about support against prejudice and where consent between adults in how they choose to live, to love, was really all that mattered in the end; it was about the ever changing evolution of how we used to be taught against what we learned ourselves. The old road had finally ran out.

                                   A face that tells a thousand words but never speaks the truth

Depending on one’s vintage, it was a crime to be gay in Ireland in 1993, and that was a full 26 years after England decriminalised that particular definition of love. This is, give or take, about the usual time frame for Ireland to play catch up, except this time around, regarding the right to marry, they were way out front. What has hindered this country from taking the lead in many other state of affairs was, and I dare say still is, the Catholic Church. This is about to change for good. To parlay and tweak the words a little of dear old Winston Churchill: “This is the not beginning of the end of the Catholic Church in Ireland today but it is the end of the beginning…..”

That can only continue when you dismantle the machine that is greased by the oil of money and greed, which is the reality of what this Church was and ever will be about. They own and operate over 3200  schools across the land, which is over 92% of the entire education system of 'no other choice', that includes most universities and hospitals. Most dodgy charities are run by them too or where they lend their support. 

Their policies still today in all of these places of medicine, science and education, are discriminatory against gays, single mothers and children themselves, should the latter choose to be anything else but Catholic.

The Catholic church can close down this country in the morning and the Government has always known this. It is also why justice has been denied and still delayed for the victims of this most corrupt institution. Previous and historical governments created this monster and it will take a very courageous one to dismantle it and take back the properties and monies bequeathed to them in trust and blind faith.  But with the will of the people firmly behind them now, a light has at last shone in the darkness.  

In the matters of social or religious change it was not that this church was created by God or Jesus, but more it was they who created both in their own image and likeness in order that they could rule with more than a certain impunity. The purple robes and blood red hats would ensure a trail of tears in their wake until the people finally woke and stood up from bended knee and said no more. That happened too last weekend. This church never set out to reform itself in any way and it was always the people that it claimed to serve that forced change by exposing it, resulting in eventual regulation and law. It needs a lot more to reclaim the centre ground for our institutions of education and medicine. They belong to the people and must be given back or taken back. It must not be allowed to be a choice or it will remain the same and prove to be no choice at all.  

Those victims that came before last weekend were the ones that were reviled by their own families for being single mothers. Then suffered the created stigma of having their children labelled  'illegitimate babies.' Then there were the  infants that were sold on by the church for profit followed by the Industrial schools  and the Magdalene laundries that stemmed from those left behind; then came the cover-ups, the missing files, the convenient fires, and on and on it went..... We must not forget the babies in their thousands buried in unmarked graves all across this green land and those that were used as guinea pigs for drug trials before their little broken hearts gave out at last. No more should have been cried a long time ago.

Like all things that belongs to the root and branch of evil, this Irish version of the Catholic church is consuming itself. Ireland has at last turned a corner that not only includes the young voters, but by those whose families were impacted directly and indirectly by the Catholic church as victims. The social revolution has at last begun in earnest where we have to teach again moral values to those that had long since claimed to be the guardians of morality.
And when  we have duly them taught these things, like us, they must then be taught to think for themselves.

Barry Clifford