Scenes from Saturday’s removal for Albert Reynolds at Sacred Heart Church, Donnybrook including: John Bruton and Brian Cowen (pic 2), Bertie Ahern (pic 3) and Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Kathleen Reynolds..
The funeral is currently taking place at the Sacred Heart Church in Donnybrook, Dublin 4. It is being celebrated by Fr Brian D’Arcy.
Watch it live on RTÉ here.
Previously: The Passing Of a Taoiseach
(Photocall irelandf/GIS)
James Whelan writes:
Here’s Dungarvan yesterday morning, getting ready for the Sean Kelly Tour of Waterford. Sure where would you get it!
David Power writes:
Yesterday morning’s sunrise in Tramore, Co. Waterford at 6.20am. Hard to believe that was the best part of the day. Although cycling around the Comeraghs in the rain still ain’t a bad thing. Thanks Sean Kelly Tour, super event!
Bernie Smith of Pro-Life group, Precious Life is interviewed in today’s Belfast Telegraph.
Q. Do you not think you are adding to a vulnerable woman’s distress by trying to make her feel guilty about her choice?
A. Let’s turn this around and look at child abuse. If there was a child abuser in a community is that not the responsibility of people in society to highlight how horrible child abuse is. Abortion is the ultimate child abuse and for a woman in that situation it couldn’t be made worse because there is nothing worse for a woman than to have an abortion. I have sat with women who were suicidal because they had an abortion because there was nobody to say to them beforehand there was another way.
Q. What about the young girl or woman who is suicidal because she doesn’t want to go through with the pregnancy?
A. Well what do we do when people are suicidal? Take a woman who has just given birth and she has postnatal depression. I suffered from severe postnatal depression and like many women I needed someone to help me through that difficult stage. Would eliminating that baby, killing that baby have prevented me from being suicidal? I needed medical intervention. In some cases women who are suicidal during pregnancy may even need to be institutionalised in some cases.
Q. Are you saying a woman who is feeling suicidal about their pregnancy and doesn’t want to continue with the pregnancy should be institutionalised?
A. Well if her life is at risk.
Q. So you would do this against her will?
A. Not against her will, but if someone’s life is in danger we immediately have to offer medical intervention. Abortion does not eliminate suicidal thoughts. Abortion causes suicidal thoughts. I don’t believe aborting a child for any reason is in anyway beneficial to that child.
Q. What about the young girl in the republic, raped and suicidal. Was it not cruel to force her to continue with her pregnancy?
A. Well how much more cruel would it have been to rip that child from her womb. A loving society offers support and help to women. If she was suicidal she should have received immediate psychiatric care and sometimes that involves medical intervention that would include hospitalisation and the proper medication. The right decision was made in this case not to abort the baby. She’ll never regret giving birth to her baby but she would have regretted an abortion.
Previously: Come Dine With Me (Pro-Life Edition)
The Language Of Compassion And Care
Meanwhile, On Great Victoria Street, Belfast
Meanwhile, In Belfast
Oh..
PaddyIrishMan writes:
“No Irish (or women) need apply. Asian food shop on Great Strand street [Dublin]…”
화이팅!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmdoNe_gHek&feature=youtu.be
Joseph Conroy writes:
“Pro Choice March on Saturday from the Spire on O’Connell Street to Leinster House. Featuring excerpts from speeches by (in order) Sinead Redmond of AIMS, Ross Kelly from Doctors For Choice Ireland, Ruth Coppinger TD and Monika Janas from ROSA.”
Cartagena, Colombia yesterday.
Mmf.
Thanks Eimear Hayes
Meanwhile…
David Arch writes:
“After stirring my hot chocolate last night….”
The Broadsheet Book of Unspecified Things That Look Like Ireland (NewIsland)
Jozef Wesolowski
You may recall an interview Pope Francis gave last month in which he pledged that bishops who covered up the abuse of minors would be held accountable.
It has now emerged that the former Papal Nuncio to the Dominican Republic, Jozef Wesolowski has been defrocked after being accused of sexually abusing boys.
But far from settling the matter, the Vatican has stirred an outcry because it helped Mr. Wesolowski avoid criminal prosecution and a possible jail sentence in the Dominican Republic. Acting against its own guidelines for handling abuse cases, the church failed to inform the local authorities of the evidence against him, secretly recalled him to Rome last year before he could be investigated, and then invoked diplomatic immunity for Mr. Wesolowski so that he could not face trial in the Dominican Republic.
The Vatican’s handling of the case shows both the changes the church has made in dealing with sexual abuse, and what many critics call its failures. When it comes to removing pedophiles from the priesthood, the Vatican is moving more assertively and swiftly than before. But as Mr. Wesolowski’s case suggests, the church continues to be reluctant to report people suspected of abuse to the local authorities and allow them to face justice in secular courts.
The Vatican says that because Mr. Wesolowski was a member of its diplomatic corps and a citizen of the Holy See, the case would be handled in Rome.
Huh?
Tom writes:
“I thought your readers might be interested in this. While flicking through the pages of one of Bhutan’s daily newspapers. Bit random.”
Writing in yesterday’s Sunday Business Post, Dr Peter Boylan (consultant obstetrician and former Master of the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street) has called for cross-party support to either repeal or retain the Eighth Amendment:
The vast majority of Irish women who seek abortions do so in the UK. This avenue should not be presumed to be available forever. Growing public awareness in Britain of the extent to which we are exporting our problem, as well as on-going financial constraints in the NHS, make it likely that British hospitals will increasingly restrict access to women from Ireland for termination.
Our current law is governed by the 1983 Eighth Amendment, which provides for the equal right to life of the mother and the unborn. As we saw with the case of Savita, this has resulted in abortion being lawful only where there is a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother.
Obstetricians find this difficult to interpret. Put simply, obstetricians have to decide how close to death a woman has to be before they can intervene and the woman herself has no say in the matter.
Psychiatrists have to assess the risk of suicide. In practice this really only applies to those who are not able to travel, the majority of whom are in the care of the state.
…I suggest that our politicians reach cross-party agreement, as soon as possible, that a referendum – whose sole issue should be the removal or retention of the Eighth Amendment – will be held at a specified date early in the term of the next government. Such political consensus would not bind parties to a particular stance on the referendum to follow, but would take much of the toxicity out of the issue of a referendum itself from the politics of the next general election campaign and lessen the kind of aggressive lobbying to which TDs have been subject in the past.
We can only hope thereafter for a mature, factual, and compassionate debate on this most difficult of subjects. In the meantime, bad law makes hard cases.
No country for vulnerable women (Dr Peter Boylan, Sunday Business Post) [behind paywall]
Previously: Dr Peter Boylan on Broadsheet
Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland
