Why would the Irish government want to throw the country back to the dark ages?
You ask the wrong question. Ireland is a democracy. The question should be: Why do the Irish people (not the government and not the Church) want to make blasphemy illegal? Many countries are enacting hate crime legislation and this just sounds like another hate crime law. Ireland’s new law states that a person publishes or utters blasphemous matter if: + He or she publishes or utters matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion + He or she intends, by the publication or utterance of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage According to the U.S., a hate crime is a criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin.
yea lets bring back that good ol protestant government These infamous laws were imposed by England (a protestant nation) upon a nation that was, at the time, 97% Catholic. To quote a protestant historian on the conditions in Ireland after the laws were imposed: “They ( i.e. Catholics ) are not only excluded from all offices in church and state, but are interdicted from the army and the law, in all its branches. . . . Every barrister, clerk, attorney, or solicitor is obliged to take a solemn oath not to employ persons of that persuasion; no not as hackney clerks, at the miserable salary of seven shillings a week. No tradesman of that persuasion is capable of exercising his trade freely in any town corporate: so that they trade and work in their own trade native towns as aliens, paying, as such, quarter age, and other charges and impositions. . . .” Allow me to take a few moments and point out precisely what the Irish Persecution Laws entailed. The Irish Catholic was forbidden the exerci
I’m half Irish on my mother’s side and whilst born and raised in England I deeply resented the Irish influence on my schooling and Catholic education. The unwavering ‘devotion’ and appearance of piety was riddled with hypocrisy and it didn’t take me long to realise the Catholic Church relied heavily on guilt and fear. ‘Love’ was constantly referred to but rarely practised. I maintain my mother’s whole life (all 93 years) was twisted and full of bitterness due to Catholicism – her inability to reconcile the mass of contradictions. She was reasonably intelligent and died a believer ‘of sorts’ – in my view, fearful, muddled and deeply disappointed with life. I never experienced molestation (within the church) but endured 5 years at a Jesuit College back in the 1950s – where bent and twisted priests seemed to enjoy thrashing young boys. I rejected the Church and all it’s works about the age of 27 and after many years of uncerainty am now an atheist – with distinctly anti-Catholic views. Th
