Friday, December 15, 2017

Pro-Life Mass: Feast of the Holy Innocents

Pro-Life Mass
Feast of the Holy Innocents December 28th 

In view of the constant and unrelenting attack on the lives of unborn babies in Ireland and in response to the one sided proceedings of both the Citizens' Assembly and the recent vote of the Oireachtas Committee we are convinced that this is  primarily a spiritual battle and accordingly have arranged for the celebration of Holy Mass on the Feast of the Holy Innocents December 28th at 11.30am in St Kevin’s Church, Harrington Street, Dublin 8.

Mass will be  in Latin and will be offered for the defence of 8th Amendment and the protection of unborn life.
We believe that it would be hard to find a more appropriate day to offer our prayers and Holy Mass, for the protection of unborn life, than the Feast of the Holy Innocents   

This invitation is open to everyone who wishes to attend.
Tea, coffee and  seasonal refreshments will be available following the celebration of Mass.


 Tel. 087 2578250: e-mail:patrickgbuckley44@gmail.com

Friday, November 10, 2017

Spiritual Crusade to defend the 8th Amendment


Our 54 day crusade of prayer and fasting  for the defence of the 8th Amendment, which protects the lives unborn babies in Ireland, commenced on November 1st. and extends to Christmas Eve.
   
The public response to this initiative was beyond all expectation and has resulted in hundreds of people of all ages and from all parts of Ireland taking part together with eight nominated individuals who have agreed fast, on a water only fast for six periods of 9 days each.

There is a clear understanding that the current war on the unborn is primarily a spiritual battle and that in addition to the excellent work of all the pro-life organisations a spiritual battle consisting of prayer and fasting  is also an essential element. 

There are currently eight people committed to a fasting rota for the 54 days and as we write this column on November 10th we have reached the end of the first,  very successful, 9 day fast. The second 9 day fast which is being carried out by two young men begins today.

Prior to the commencement of this initiative Patrick Buckley spoke at meetings in Malahide, Navan and Mullingar stressing the importance of a spiritual approach to defending  unborn life in Ireland by the defence of 8th Amendment and he gave details of the Spiritual Crusade.

The spiritual crusade is a joint initiative of European life Network (ELN) Human Life Ireland  (HLI )and the Catholic Voice Newspaper .

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

The right to life is non negotiable

Fundamental human rights such as the right-to-life are non-negotiable. The right to life can never be subject to a vote.  The very idea of casting votes on who should be allowed to live and who should die is anathema.

Based on sound science, human embryos, from the moment of fertilisation, are new living human beings.  To use the words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 we are all members of the “human family”.
From the moment of fertilisation we all share a common humanity and human embryos are equal members of the species homo sapiens and each stage of development is equal in value to every other stage.

There is a connection between the self-interest of certain communities and the line to be drawn between recognition of persons and non-persons.  That self-interest may be driven by eugenic, economic, social or political factors such that those a society wishes to exclude are deemed to be non-persons.  History is replete with examples of this phenomenon.

However cleverly the arguments are presented the taking of a human life the killing of a human being is a heinous crime it is called murder. The killing of the most vulnerable human beings, unborn babies is the most heinous of crimes and and we call on all elected members of the Oireachtas to outrightly reject all demands for the holding of a referendum on the right to life of unborn babies

Holding such a referendum would open the way for the elimination of the legal protection of the right-to-life and, consequently, to the killing of many of Ireland’s unborn children by abortion.

Accordingly a petition is being circulated to the general public for signature and will ultimately be sent to all members of the Oireachtas appealing to them on behalf of the people of Ireland to reject all calls to hold a referendum on the repeal, or alteration, of the pro-life Eighth Amendment.

To access the appeal click on the following link

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Victory at UN Commission on Population and Development

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The first week in April was not a good week for UNFPA, the UN Population Fund which was first given the news at the outset of its conference, the Commission on Population and Development, that the Trump Administration had decided to withdraw funding of  around $75 million on the basis that UNFPA’s activities in China are complicit with that nation’s coercive population control program, the implementation of which includes forced abortion and involuntary sterilization.



The UNFPA problems continued later that week with a firm rejection of the anti life and family policies they and other UN organs are attempting to impose globally.  The outcome of the Commission on Population and Development (CPD) was in fact a significant victory by pro-life and family forces and was the second time in three years that the Commission failed to produce an outcome document.



The 50th session of the Commission held at UN headquarters in New York, was themed, ‘Changing population age structures and sustainable development’. This was the first CPD since the Trump Administration took office in the US and was viewed by UNFPA and their anti-life allies, such as International Planned Parenthood (IPPF), as a testing ground to establish the direction the administration would take when faced with demands for the acceptance of controversial language on sexual and reproductive rights and comprehensive sexuality education for children.



In recent years the negotiating strategy adopted by Western governments has been to insert many references to controversial issues in documents during the negotiating period and rely on the chair to issue a compromise text which inevitably retains some of those issues.
In this case the outcome document was similarly loaded up with controversial language and when the chair’s text was circulated early on Friday morning it was completely unacceptable. Negotiations continued all day Friday and a so called compromise text was produced by the Qatar Chair, Ambassador Alya Ahmed Al Thani, which in the end failed to satisfy either side leaving her with no option for her but to withdraw the text.



The decision by the chair to withdraw the document was enthusiastically welcomed by pro-life and pro-family NGO’s but was greeted with a shocked silence and anger by the anti-life and family brigade when the realisation sunk in that there would not be an outcome document and that their plans for sexualising children had been stopped.



One of the most poignant interventions was made by the Russian Federation’s delegate who told the meeting that pushing sexual and reproductive health rights as indivisible from human rights was nothing but an attempt to undermine international agreements on human rights.  Such formulations, he said, diluted basic human rights, which only discredited the Commission’s work.

 He also expressed opposition to use of the Commission as a “back door” through which to force various human rights concepts that did not meet the broader consensus.



Babatunde Osotimehin, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), expressed regret that the Commission had been unable to reach consensus on its outcome document for the second time adding that it was clearly a challenging time for the Commission. As population age structures changed, commitment to improving the lives of women and girls was becoming increasingly important, he said, and he urged all Member States to continue their funding of UNFPA so as to restore its core budget.

Thursday, March 23, 2017

So much for free speech #FreeSpeechBus tour


CitizenGo, the International Organisation for the Family and the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) joined together to co-sponsor a major event in the United States in the promotion of a #FreeSpeechBus tour.

The #FreeSpeechBus tour was designed to spark a national conversation about the truth of gender and to call for the right of all Americans to debate the issues surrounding gender without fear of harassment or retaliation. 
The tour which celebrates the complementarity but also the differences between male and female commenced in Manhattan today with a press conference and visits to the United Nations and Trump Tower.

BUS VANDALISED

Sadly after only a few hours the free speech bus has been attacked and vandalised in the streets of Manhattan. 
Windows  were smashed and the sides of the bus were covered in graffiti.

Thursday, February 9, 2017

The Citizens' Assembly: Shut it down now


It is with sadness that I watch the ongoing farce known as the Citizens' Assembly and I have to ask myself how is it that the killing of babies can even be contemplated let alone presented as an acceptable option by some members of our society? 

Everyone knows that certain members of the Irish Government are committed to changing the law but they are also keenly aware that a direct decision to do so would have a disastrous effect on their chances of re-election, hence the creation of the talking shop known as the Citizens Assembly to ‘investigate’ the issues.  The obvious purpose of this is to create the pretence that they are acting on the advice of the Assembly and are at arms length from the issue allowing them to  claim that a new referendum is the will of the people. 
It stands to reason that the Irish Government would not have appointed such a body if they really believed that the killing of babies is unacceptable and were intent on upholding the 8th Amendment.
To date the strategic direction of the Citizens’ Assembly appears to the onlooker as being substantially pro-abortion with an occasional nod towards the pro-life view.
The Assembly secretariat appear to have completely ignored the fact that the current law upholds the right to life of the unborn which has resulted in the development of a caring, 2 patient model for pregnancy and childbirth. It also ignores the achievements of the 8th amendment which include at least 100,000 additional citizens.

We have to ask how is it considered acceptable to introduce people who make their living from the killing of babies to take part of our national debate?
Patricia Lohr of BPAS for example, who infamously told a London audience last September that killing children by abortion is “extremely gratifying”, gave an address to the Assembly during its 3rd session.   
This lady also published a paper on Feticide[1] in which she chillingly tells us:
From a medical perspective, this term refers to modalities to induce fetal demise (1). Feticide is most commonly used for selective termination of higher order gestations to twins or singletons. It is also used by some providers before medical and surgical abortion in the second and third trimesters to avoid signs of life at induction or in the belief that it makes the procedure easier and safer. Several methods have been described including intra-cardiac injection of potassium chloride, intra-amniotic injection of digoxin, and transection of the umbilical cord (2). Older methods of medical abortion employed instillation of hyperosmolar solutions such as urea, which also variably induced fetal demise.  

The Assembly was also addressed by a representative of the Guttmacher Institute – the research wing of Planned Parenthood which is the largest abortion provider in the United States and throughout the world.

In recent decades we have witnessed a drift away from the understanding of natural law which includes the prohibition on killing as set out in the 5th Commandment to positive law which seeks to identify and implement all sorts of trumped up individual rights, in the name of liberty, regardless of the consequences of this approach. The twisted thinking of the liberal left which denies the humanity of unborn babies is rooted in Marxist ideology.

Shut down this unsatisfactory Assembly now.


[1] http://www.reproductivereview.org/index.php/site/article/1093/