The Irish saved Catholicism from the chaos of the collapse of Roman civilization brought on by the invasion of Europe by barbarian hordes, Father Seán Connolly argued Thursday in the Catholic World Report.
President Joe Biden, who often touts both his Irish heritage and his Catholicism, seems to be spurring another collapse of Western civilization with his outright anti-Catholic views on issues such as abortion and gender ideology.
One Irish writer is fed up with his antics.
“President Joe Biden’s self-delusion seems to be boundless,” journalist and fiction writer Ruth Dudley Edwards, born in Dublin, proclaimed Tuesday in a commentary piece for the U.K.’s Telegraph.
Though the article — headlined “Joe Biden must be the world’s worst Catholic” — was published a few days before St. Patrick’s Day, Edwards clearly had the Irish holiday in mind.
When Biden “looks in the mirror,” she wrote, “he apparently sees an upright Irish Catholic true to the historic values of his deeply rooted religious identity.”
Edwards wasn’t finished — not anywhere near it.
“He is, in fact, an appalling Catholic who publicly flouts the church’s most cherished teachings and is about as authentically Irish as a leprechaun hat in a St Patrick’s Day parade,” she continued.
No one knows what Biden sees in the mirror when he looks at himself, but it almost certainly isn’t reality. Self-reflection isn’t one of his strong suits, judging from his proclivity to spin yarns about his past.
Remember his tale of being in the top half of his law school? In reality, Biden lied about his academic record. He later had to admit that he graduated 76th in a class of 85, as reported by Fox News.
And then there’s the story about Biden being an over-the-road trucker. False.
And then there’s — never mind. If you get started down the road of tracking down Biden’s lies, you’ll find yourself accompanying him on the road to perdition.
Edwards conceded that the U.S. president is “perfectly entitled to believe whatever he wants” — even if he is delusional. She also conceded that many Americans agree with Biden’s views — what this says about their sanity is another topic — and many of those will also claim to be Catholic.
But that’s not what irks her.
“What sticks in the craw,” Edwards wrote, “is his willingness to use his Irish Catholic identity to burnish his image while seemingly knowing nothing about either.”
For example, she pointed out that Biden “is a warrior for the rights of parents to approve ‘gender-affirming transitional medical care’ for their children,” even though even Pope Francis — who is far too liberal for conservative and traditional Catholics — “rejected the idea of teaching children that ‘everyone can choose their own sex.’”
Edwards wrote that Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Illinois “has reminded his flock that the church ‘teaches that the removal or destruction of healthy sexual and reproductive organs is a type of mutilation and intrinsically evil.’”
“Yet Biden has shown no interest in addressing Catholic teaching,” she said. “He’s focused on placating Democratic progressives by confronting Republican politicians like Texas governor Greg Abbott, whose administration says medical treatment aimed at transitioning children can be a form of child abuse.”
Edwards noted the president also denounced another GOP governor, Florida’s Ron DeSantis, for banning “lessons on gender identity in kindergarten to howls of outrage from progressives, and since then has acted to restrict puberty blockers, hormones and surgical interventions for minors.”
Biden suggests it’s “sinful” and “cruel” to ban puberty blockers and sex change surgeries for kids. pic.twitter.com/y3OOFdle06
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 13, 2023
Who is Joe Biden? It’s hard to say. He epitomizes a politician who goes any way the wind blows. His is a walking, talking caricature.
Should the Catholic Church punish Joe Biden?
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It’s safe to say that Biden will tack from the left to the center — at least in his words — as the 2024 presidential election draws near. There are too many voters who bristle against allowing late-term abortions and cutting up kids who have been confused about their gender. But, as the saying goes, “Sayin’ ain’t doin’.”
That’s why DeSantis and Abbott are popular governors. They choose to live in reality rather than a progressive fantasy turned nightmare. They are doing their best to thwart the progressive attempt to undermine the Western way of life.
“Rome fell because of inner weakness, either social or spiritual; or Rome fell because of outer pressure—the barbarian hordes,” Connolly argued. “What we can say with confidence is that Rome fell gradually and that Romans for many decades scarcely noticed what was happening.”
Sound familiar? It should. It seems that too many Americans are stumbling along with Joe Biden. They refuse to reflect on what’s happening around them. They dread self-reflection. When they look in the mirror, they see what they want to see, not what is really there.
St. Patrick, who is being celebrated Friday, played a key role in tending to the light in a time of darkness.
“When Patrick was laying the foundations of the Irish Church,” Connolly wrote, “no one could have foreseen the vital role it would play shortly after his death in preserving the light of faith and learning in the midst of Europe’s dark age.”
St. Patrick was a former Celtic slave brought to Ireland from Roman-era Britain. The church founded by Patrick in Ireland, according to Connolly, “had three distinct characteristics: it was Celtic, monastic, and missionary.”
Connolly drew his evidence primarily from Thomas Cahill’s “How the Irish Saved Western Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe.” In the 1995 book, the late historian wrote that Ireland “is unique in religious history for being the only land into which Christianity was introduced without bloodshed.”
“In contrast to the conventional ‘Red Martyrdom’ by blood of many saints, the Irish developed a spirituality of the ‘Green Martyrdom’ of asceticism,” Connolly wrote Thursday. “The Irish Church soon produced an unprecedented number of monks and missionaries.”
Another way of looking at it is that Catholicism blended almost seamlessly with Celtic spirituality. At one time Ireland was naturally devout.
I highly doubt Biden knows anything about Ireland’s role in preserving the light of faith. He doesn’t know much about Catholic teachings, so why would he?
Edwards pointed out one thing about Biden’s commonality with modern-day Ireland. “At least on this topic,” she wrote, “Biden is in touch with his distant Irish roots. In 2015, Ireland passed a Gender Recognition Act almost as extreme as the one that just brought down Nicola Sturgeon.”
The fact that Ireland isn’t at all what it used to be might be a sign that the West is on the verge of collapse. It’s no longer devout. Because of this, it is going against its own nature. As goes Ireland, so goes the West? Let’s hope not.
Biden is playing his part in the decline. As a modern-day Nero, rather than fiddling as Rome burns, the president looks at himself in the mirror and dreams about when he was a truck driver or at the top of his class. The only class that he might be at the top of is deception.
Edwards seems to think so. At the conclusion of her commentary, she wrote, “It’s part of a pattern: he is all talk, and no walk.”
Ain’t that the truth.
