Ireland says aye!

J

Josiah

Senior Member
Location
50 miles east of Cincinnati, OH
Votes Overwhelmingly For Gay Marriage...
First Country To Legalize Via Referendum.
This is GREAT.
To have come so far so fast is just amazing.

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Been keeping an eye on that all day and enjoying their celebrations. Well done, Ireland!! I agree, Holly, they should legalise abortion instead of them having to come over to the UK.
 

It's surprising really, that Eire has said YES. I think they wanted to be thought of as a progressive country,the polls predicted a yes, but we all know about polls!
 
Celebrated over here too

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We could have legalised marriage over here because it is a federal law that prevents it. All that would be required would be a conscience vote in parliament but the government refuses to allow its members to vote for change. The Opposition has allowed it in the past, even though their party policy if for gender equality in marriage. However, it can't be too long before it will become legal everywhere in Australia. The majority of the people are for quality.
 
A statement by the Catholic church expresses concern they are losing obedience in it's members. They state they are losing members and may need a "new message".
 
The catholic church has lost its moral authority because of the revelations of widespread paedophilia and the way it was covered up. Ireland was once described as a "priest ridden country" but the grip of the church hierarchy is much weakened.

We are in the middle of a royal commission taking evidence about child sexual abuse in institutions of all kinds and it is currently sitting is a regional Victorian city of Ballarat where the evidence against priests and brothers is very damning, as is the way offenders were moved around but never dealt with.

Australians are becoming much more vocal in demanding legalised same sex marriage and those opposed are in the minority. Conservative church views are being ignored by the people in the pews but the politicians are still very nervous.
 
Shalimar said:
Yes for gay marriage in Eire, now work toward legalizing abortion.
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Legalising abortion is not the be all and end all. It was legalised here a few years back, this is the result. It is not the panacea many believed.
Feminists believed above all in the right of women to determine their own fate, and control their own bodies. They also believed that abortion would be only a last resort. Women, they fervently believed, would be responsible.
Nobody anticipated a steady rise in abortion figures, or that abortion would become a backstop contraceptive measure for some women.
We thought the procedure would be too unpleasant to bear repeating, but we were wrong about that, too, and we would have ridiculed anyone who predicted our current abortion statistics.
Our abortion rate now exceeds Germany, the Netherlands and Finland. Only the United States and Australia carry out more.
We've done our best, surely, through education to minimise the number of abortions. It's a brutal solution, after all, physically and emotionally hard on women, even if you sidestep the ethical problems it raises.
Contraception is now freely available to even underage children, and sex education starts at primary school. But the number of 11 to 14-year-old girls having abortions has increased 144% in the past 15 years, and among 15 to 19-year-olds by 74%. Teenage pregnancies make up nearly 25% of all abortions. We don't seem to know enough about why. In the past 30 years, the number of abortions performed annually has soared from 4682 in 1976 to 17,934 last year. Taking ever greater ease of access to contraception into account, it's a baffling result.
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Sad figure, Fern.

My daughter, who is now 52, was a little upset to learn of her first pregnancy because as newly weds, they weren't in a good place financially. Immediately the doctor offered to arrange a termination. Then she was even more shocked because she certainly didn't want that as a way out of a financial problem.

She had our first grandchild, went on to have three more, had to be very careful with money until they all grew up and has never regretted having them.

I find it astounding that a doctor would offer a healthy young woman an abortion without carefully looking into her circumstances. Different issue if she comes seeking a termination but still, she may prefer to be offered a way to have and keep her baby.

I would like to see the number of terminations to be much lower than it is but we have to be careful about the statistics. I understand that in Australia there is no distinction between terminations and D & C procedures. I had one of these for medical reasons. So did my mother post menopause. Nothing to do with terminations.
 
I can't quote him but on same sex marriage I would imagine that he would state that marriage is a sacrament (Catholics have 7 sacraments, Protestants only recognise 2 - baptism and the Eucharist) and it is not for the church to play around with the sacraments.

On abortion I would expect him to take the position that all life is sacred and that life begins at conception, ergo abortion is the taking of a human life.

People who are waiting for any pope to say anything different will be waiting a long time IMO.

Change in these areas must come through legislation. It is up to the politicians to change the laws.
 
If someone thinks the question is insincere or that an honest answer won't be respected, then it isn't a case of not wanting to think about the answer.

Yes, so what is the point of being a Catholic?
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This is a personal question for which there would be many different answers, depending on who you asked. But it really can only be answered by a Catholic. I am not the one who can answer your question. Try elsewhere.
 
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