Living in the Age of Martyrs

Pray the Rosary: It Feeds the World

by Susan Fox 

"But do you hear the bombs?” the official said.

Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta: "Yes, I hear them.” 

"It is absolutely impossible to cross (east to west) at the moment; we must obtain a cease-fire!” he said. "Ah, but I asked Our Lady for a cease-fire for tomorrow eve of her Feast Day” (Feast of the Assumption, August 15), the tiny nun responded.  (Faded Transcript of a conversation in East Beirut, Lebanon, on Aug. 13, 1982 between Saint Teresa of Calcutta and an unidentified priest and officer.)

Fighting was fierce between the Israeli Army and the Palestine Liberation Organization in West Beirut that day. But responding to a desperate cry for help, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, India, had landed in Lebanon by the small port of Jounieh on Aug. 10, 1982. The appeal for support came from Amal Makarem, horrified to find a hundred spastic and mentally retarded Muslim children abandoned in a West Beirut orphanage without food, care or hygiene. Some were dying. She herself had tried to rescue the children, but had met with reams of bureaucratic red tape. 

The faded conversation reveals that the priest, too, was objecting to Mother’s heroic intervention: “You must understand the circumstances Mother . . . Two weeks ago, a priest was killed. It's chaos out there. The risk is too great. “

Her response: "But Father, it is not an idea. I believe it is our duty. We must go and take the children one by one. Risking our lives is in the order of things. All for Jesus.”

The next evening on Aug. 14, 1982, the Eve of the Feast of Our Lady’s Assumption into heaven, total silence enveloped the city. Mother Teresa went safely into the war zone and saved the lives of 36 surviving Muslim children. That’s all that were left. (Source: AsiaNews.it)

“She is the only one who came,” said Fr. Andre Y Sebastian Mahanna, Maronite Catholic priest and founder of the Apostolate of Our Lady of Hope/St. Rafka Mission of Hope & Mercy. It is an organisation dedicated to bringing hope and mercy to persecuted Christians and innocent victims of hate throughout the world. 

That forlorn statement, “She is the only one who came” is part of the reason he started and runs the worldwide  apostolate to Christian refugees, he told Christ’s Faithful Witness in an interview this summer in Denver. 

About the same time in the same tragic war, Fr. Andre was a child growing up. His family was among dozens of Maronite Catholic families who lived as refugees 20 miles north of  Beirut in a cave called Magharet El Saheb or Magharat Al Saheb, (Cave of the Friend) to escape the ravages of a war that began at his birth in 1972 and very quickly escalated into a major clash between nations, religions, and cultures. 

“That summer the Syrian Army, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and other illegally armed groups took away the food. We had no gas, no electricity, no oil. You name it. Everything was shut down, and the siege lasted for over two years but people here (in Denver) didn’t know about it. People like me we had to live in caves. I literally slept in a Phoenician tomb (Magharet El Saheb in the ancient seaport town of Byblos),” Fr. Andre told members of St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Centennial, Colorado, during Mass on Sunday July 29, 2018.

“When I saw the deacon read the gospel, one of candles was on and one was a little dim. It reminded me that one of our favourite games to play in the cave was to go deeper inside the cave and take that  candle with you until it dims. When it dims you stop because when the candlelight blows out that’s it, you are dead. There is no more oxygen to breathe. That’s the life I lived.”

But then it was decided among his Maronite Catholic community  to take the youth up to the mountains to improve their mood. “Our food was cheddar cheese and bread, except there was no bread,” he told us.

“Now how many of you pray the Rosary on a daily basis?” he asked. A show of hands went up. “Pray the Rosary the rest of you because it feeds the world!  I mean it. It feeds the world.”

“Our Lady comes to me and she says, ‘Go to Cezar, the chief of the camp, tell him to send with you the young adults of the camp.  Go up for about 3 hours to the road. You will see a white van and the white van will have bread in it. And you will bring it down to the camp.’”

Young Andre was very excited. “I went to the chief and I told Cezar you need to listen to this. Our Lady came and she said you need to give me young adults. We are going to walk for 3 hours, and there’ll be a white van. They will have bread and we’ll bring it back.” 

Cezar’s response was “Who is this ‘Our Lady?’” 

The young Andre answered: “I think (pause) the Virgin Mary.”

Cezar’s answer was disappointing, “ Okay, I think you are really hungry.” 

Andre didn’t give up. After eight in the evening, he told Cezar everyone needed to pray the Rosary all together. So they did.

Around midnight, Cezar, said, they wouldn’t lose anything by trying so he sent Andre with some guys to go up to the road. Sure enough when they reached the road, a white van comes and stops. The driver had 150 packs of bread to give them and he drove them back to the camp. 

The man explained why he stopped, “Something was telling me I’d see a fat boy with a Rosary and that I needed to stop immediately.” Living through a war since his birth, Fr. Andre had developed a fear of hunger and the habit of looking in school trash cans for food. He jokingly attributes his chubbiness to those habits. And that night, he held a Rosary. 

“Mary said, ‘If you are hungry I’m going to give you food.’ This is what her Son said. ‘If you are thirsty I am going to give you to drink.’ Knock at the door and the door shall be opened. I honest to God believed in it,”  Fr. Andre said. 

“Cherish your children. Tell them how blessed they are. When they tell you they don’t want to go to church,  (correct them) because  if they don’t go to church, Satan is going to

Fr. Andre Y Sebastian Mahanna: "Cherish your children."

swallow them. There’s no option today. Christianity is the largest persecuted religion in the world today. I witnessed myself between 2005 to 2015, 1 million Christians in the Middle East were killed. We have mass graves — 80 percent of those are Catholics.”

The Apostolate of Our Lady of Hope/St. Rafka Mission of Hope & Mercy prays and works through spiritual diplomacy as a team of  “first responders on the front lines of persecution accompanying people who are suffering migration — (with) no homes, no passports, unknown,  not helped,  rejected,  isolated, hopeless and no (medical) treatment for them.” 

Our Lady of Hope does home visits. They bring food, hygiene products, take people to the hospital and try to build their trust.

“The Church is too much oppressed. There is no sign of heaven (for the refugees). We need to regrow solidarity within the Church under oppression to show them Christ exists,” he told Christ’s Faithful Witness. 

The Apostolate undertakes the formation of volunteers worldwide. “Throughout the world there are 220 million people experiencing oppression, rape, sex slavery, genocide, human trafficking, organ trafficking, labor slavery, and homelessness,” Fr. Andre wrote. “Some are refugees, some are without food and some have no human rights, living in countries that have become clearly hostile to the faith in Christ and those who practice it.” 

Some of the apostolate’s volunteers are doctors, youth ambassadors, speakers. They have a team of about 37 people worldwide who are being formed to serve the suffering Christians in the world. But not only that, they also evangelise their persecutors. 

“We cross behind enemy lines. We talk to them. We preach to them the Gospel. We try to tell them to learn from the story of one of the 21 martyrs who were slain in Libya. Mark the Nigerian man came as an oppressor and when he saw the 20 Coptic men being killed for their faith, he knelt down with them, converted and accepted the Christ,” Fr. Andre said at Mass. “This is life,” Mark said, “Faith in Jesus Christ.”

Fr Andre puts his volunteers under the discipleship of Pope Saint John Paul II, Saint Teresa of Calcutta, St. Maximilian Kolbe  and St. Rafka (Rafqa Pietra Choboq Ar-Rayès, 1832 to 1914). Rafka was a Lebanese Maronite nun who longed to share the passion and suffering of Jesus Christ.

It would take at least a month to read all the names of the monks killed in the Christian Massacre in 1860 in Lebanon that are listed in the monastic necrology. In that year, St. Rafka was actually in the village closest to the Druze Muslims, who were killing the Christians. Most people would have run the other way, but she ran toward her persecutors, who were chasing a small child. She hid him under her robes. The Druze came and questioned her, but they mistook her for a Muslim woman. 

“How did she survive this?” Fr. Andre speculated she wanted to be martyred, but God had other plans. As the orphans were rescued by Mother Teresa in West Beirut, St. Rafka saved the life of the child hidden in her robe. St. Rafka told Jesus, “I want to carry your most hidden pain.” It was the weight of the cross. Her bones broke and her eye fell out. She bore the sixth wound of Christ, Fr. Andre concluded.

Left to Right: Fr Andre, holding the Rosary, St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. Rafka, St. Maximilian Kolbe. Below: Pope Saint John Paul II

St. Maximilian Kolbe was a Polish priest who was killed by deliberate starvation after volunteering to take the place of a Jewish father with several children in the starvation bunker of the Nazi Death Camp Auschwitz, Poland. Both he and Pope Saint John Paul II were deeply devoted to Our Lady. The pope's copy of True Devotion to Mary, which he kept by his bedside in the Vatican,  was stained with chemicals from his hands when he worked in a chemical factory as a young man. The Marian classic by St. Louis Marie de Montfort is said to be the foundation of the pope's priesthood and his papacy, out of which he urged countless number of Catholics to join the New Evangelisation.  Fr. Andre asks his volunteers to read the writings of these saints to prepare for the mission of helping persecuted Christians. 

“We try to respond to the crisis of faith hope and love in any given place where faith in Christ is under attack. We aim to spread the newness of evangelisation amongst oppressors,” Fr. Andre said. 

Fr. Andre never returned home after Our Lady’s miracle. Mary told Fr. Andre, “You need to give me your heart.”  He went and knocked on the door of the Monastery of St. Anthony the Great in Wata Houb, Tannourine, north Lebanon. There he became a monk, and was educated in France to become a priest. At the age of 23, he was assigned to shepherd the Lebanese Catholics in Los Angles, and became a naturalised American citizen.  Now he is pastor of Our Lady of Lebanon, St. Rafka Maronite Catholic Church in Lakewood, Colorado, U.S.A. 

But God is calling him to even greater efforts on behalf of the  Christians in the Middle East. He is not unknown to U.S. President Donald Trump, who at a rally in Greeley, Colorado,

Fr Andre meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump

in 2016, asked, "Does everyone here know Fr. Andre?" The whole crowd cheered. Fr. Andre -- for his part -- is hoping President Trump can be a voice for Christians in the Middle East, believing that assistance to them would be essential in reducing terror attacks in Europe and the U.S. (Source: National Catholic Register)

“We do not want to be accountable for doing nothing about the worst global persecution against the Church and Americans not knowing about it,” Father Mahanna told a gathering of Catholic Executives in Denver on Jan. 12, 2017, also reported by the NCR. “When God asks, ‘Where were you when my sons and daughters were being slaughtered?’ you don’t want to tell him, ‘I was doing business,’ or ‘I was eating,’ or ‘I was looking at iPhone messages.’ This destruction of the Christian Middle East is the gate to destroy the United States of America.”

“Christians are a treasure in the Middle East. They are capable of maintaining the peace with Muslims. They are capable of helping Muslims understand the religious value of Israel. They are capable of forgiving, pardoning and rebuilding their countries," Fr. Andre said, adding, "This (U.S.) administration should have an interest in asking Christians to assist them in how to better understand the modern Muslim world.”

In 2016, he was appointed by the Apostolic Union of Clergy in Rome to serve as a special envoy to clerics in the United States, with a specific mission of raising awareness on the status of the Christian Middle East. As founder of the Apostolate of Our Lady of Hope, “I am an ambassador of hope,” Fr. Andre concluded. 

“We are living in very special times. We must look for the age

of martyrs, of saints, of leaders, of fathers of the Church, and we must look for holy families,” he wrote in his weekly newsletter. 

“‘Do not let your hearts be troubled for I have conquered the world.’ I affirm to you again and again this splendid victorious and consoling answer of Christ, my and your Lord.”

"When Christianity is no more, the world goes into darkness." Learn more about Fr. Andre's Mission of Hope and Mercy. Sign up for his newsletter. Make a donation.  

A video of Fr. Andre's sermon can be found among the Homilies of St. Thomas More Catholic Church, Centennial, CO. Look for the one from Fr. Andre Y Sebastian Mahanna on July 29, 2018 

Prepare the World for Repentance

Sermon by Rev. John Paul Shea

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 15, 2018

Saint Charles Catholic Apache Mission Church, San Carlos, AZ

Today is another opportunity to praise God and ask for His mercy to help us live our New Life in Our Lord Jesus Christ.

In today’s Gospel (Mark 6:7-13), Jesus sends out His 12 disciples. He chose the number 12 because it signifies the 12 tribes of Israel, representing the whole people of God. Our Lord's coming fulfills God's promise to the Israelites that He would visit His people and bring true and lasting peace. 

The prophets of the Old Testament were called to guide the children of Israel toward conversion of heart so that God’s people would be prepared for the fullness of the Kingdom of God through Our Lord Jesus Christ. We hear of the Prophet Amos in today’s first reading (Amos 7:12-15). He is a shepherd called by God to speak to the children of Israel.

Now, as the 12 are sent out, Our Lord calls them to speak with urgency. They were to

take no extra provisions so that they would become reliant on the power of God and be His witness.

They were called to build the early Catholic Church so that it would faithfully announce the Kingdom of God until Jesus comes again.

Our Lord had said this world is ending and a new world is coming. Therefore, repentance and conversion are to be proclaimed everywhere so all may be saved from their sins and come to live in God’s eternal Kingdom.

In today’s second reading (Ephesians 1:3-14),  we learn blessings are in store for those who are saved through God’s mercy. Therefore, we Christian are to live in holiness in order

to prepare to live as we will in God’s Kingdom. 

Saint Paul says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.” He adds, “In love [God has] destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ, in accord with the favor of his will, for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted us in the beloved.”

In our Baptism, we receive new life where we are to live -- not according to the ways of this  world -- but as God calls us to live in accord to the favor of His will.

My brothers and sisters, God has called us to be His children by adoption through Our Lord Jesus Christ. God invites us to become part of His very self.  Let us remember what God has done for us through His Son. Jesus suffered in the flesh so that we can be reconciled to God.

We received new life in God through our Baptism, but each of us needs to persevere in the practice of our faith. God has given us the most perfect way to be forgiven through frequent confession of our sins. 

After He was raised from the dead, Our Lord breathed the Holy Spirit upon His apostles and gave them the authority to forgive sins. This authority has been passed down to every

age through the ordained priesthood. I understand we do not have regular confessions here at Saint Charles, but if you would like to have regular times for confessions maybe on a Saturday or a day that you feel would be good, I will be happy to take time each week to hear confessions. 

It is also good for us to recognize and acknowledge our own weaknesses. What sins do we struggle with? What areas of temptation lead us to hurt the Holy Spirit that we have been given in our Baptism? Maybe we struggle with anger. Maybe we struggle with drugs or addictions. Maybe we struggle with temptations of the flesh and are tempted with pornography. Whatever areas we may struggle, God wants to help us. He loves us and has chosen us. He does not want us to hurt ourselves or one another.

I have heard that the Apache people were considered warriors in their brave battles in the late 19th century. I encourage each of you and myself to be warriors today not for

The Apache Christ on the Mescalero Apache reservation.

fighting earthly wars but to be warriors for our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us fight the good fight against sin with the help of God’s grace so that we may attain the gift of eternal life that Our Lord Jesus Christ paid such a dear price with His Life. 

For as Saint Paul says, it is in Our Lord Jesus Christ that we, “who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of [our] salvation, and have believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which is the first installment of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s possession, to the praise of his glory.”

My brothers and sisters, as we come together

Fr. John Paul Shea

to celebrate the Holy Eucharist this morning, let us open our hearts to the gift of life that Our Lord Jesus has come to give all who call upon His Holy Name. For, Our Lord has not come to condemn the world because the world has already condemned itself. Our Lord has come to save us from the condemnation of this world through the message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

May God bless each one of us, and may our hearts be open to His Grace and His Love. For God has chosen us! Amen.

Pro-Life Irish Grieve for their Country as Abortion Sinks Its Teeth Into Ireland

This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers.(Deuteronomy 30:19-20)

By Susan Fox 

Unfortunately, those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. 

In 35 short years, the Irish people managed to forget the most important lessons of their history, which includes multiple famines, civil war, British occupation, earthquakes, religious persecution, the Easter Rising and their own missionary activities around the world on behalf of the Catholic Church. 

They forgot the value of their own lives.

This is a country blessed in Knock in 1879 with a personal and silent visitation from the Queen of Heaven, Her Son, the Lamb Slain on the Altar, St. Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church, and St. John the Evangelist, who wrote, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” John’s is the very heart of the gospel of light and life.

Could there be no greater scandal than what happened on May 25, 2018, when two-thirds of the Irish electorate with a historically high turnout voted to overturn the 8th Amendment, which guarantees the equal right to life of the unborn child and its mother: “The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.”

The pro-life amendment was passed 35 short years before in 1983 with a two-thirds majority when the Irish saw that U.S. citizens were stripped of their right to life by their own courts in the noxious Roe v Wade decision. With great foresight, the older Irish generation created the 8th Amendment because no court could overturn it. No elected legislature could change it. What happened to the U.S. population — dictatorship by the courts — could never occur in Ireland. 

Ironically, now the U.S. is poised to slip from the noose created by its judiciary in 1973 and back to its own pro-life roots with the appointment of Strict Constitutionalist Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court by U.S. President Donald Trump. Fully 51 percent of the U.S. population has remained pro-life through 45 years of legal abortion. And possibly 22 states are prepared to ban abortion once Kavanaugh is appointed to join the conservative majority on the Supreme Court. But the Irish now are are taking their first baby steps on the bloody road that plagued America for 45 years. 

Strangely enough the very children born and protected by the 8th Amendment refused the same rights to future generations of Irish. Bioethicists call this the loafer generation, willing to accept life from their own parents as their right but unwilling to extend that right to future generations. 

Irish exit polls suggest that there was an age divide. Voters over 55 voted overwhelmingly against abortion. Younger voters supported it. They ignorantly called  abortion a woman’s “choice” giving her control over her own body. Unfortunately, the victim of abortion is not part of the mother’s body, but has his own body. He exists for his own sake, not for the convenience of his mother. “Choice” turns human beings into cockroaches. They become pests who can be killed at will. 

“What about the wee future woman in the womb having control over her body? That is where the pro-choice, which is really pro-abort, argument falls flat every-time regarding abortion on demand,” tweeted Francis Doherty on June 20. 

I had three Irish babies. Two miscarried, one lives. Only six and eight weeks from conception, Raphael and Mary were tiny little human beings. One had my Irish husband’s face and long legs. I had my appendices out and they were delivered to my bedside. These appeared as stringy parts of my colon. I have personally witnessed that there is a vast difference between one’s own guts and one’s baby.

The pro-life minority in Ireland knew that. Many were shocked watching the coverage after the historic vote to see the young Irish voters cheering, and calling the outcome “compassionate.” But the “NO” vote quietly grieved and angrily tweeted. “We are winning the war against abortion all over the world. It’s just a backward sh_thole like Ireland that thinks it’s still 1967 (the year UK legalised and decided to pay for abortion),” tweeted pro-life Irish Patriot Donnchadh Mac an Ghoill.

“The media here in Ireland hacked the brains of 1.2 million fools into voting yes to abortion - imagine that - their brains were that soft that they let the media & @campaignforleo (Ireland’s Taoiseach— prime minister Leo Varadkar)  trick them into voting to kill innocent, frail, defenceless, happy babies,” wrote Amanda Gallagher.

My husband joked, "This is the Taoiseach"

A green spider landed on my wrist the other day. I screamed. My Irish husband joked that it was the the Taoiseach, who interfered in the Irish election to the extent that he was publicly advocating a “Yes” vote on the very day of the election.  

“The men and women of 1916 (the Easter Rising) would be hurt to the core of their beings by what has happened in Ireland (on May 25, 2018),” said Roger Buck, who has lived in Ireland for seven years.  The Easter Rising was an armed insurrection during Easter Week to end British rule in Ireland and establish an independent Irish republic. 

Maolsheachlann O’Ceallaigh of the Irish Conservative Forum, and author of "Inspiration from the Saints," added, “I’ve been gripped by grief for all the lives that will be lost. It’s like standing at the Viet Nam War Memorial

Maolsheachlann O’Ceallaigh

looking out at the rows and rows of names. You can’t take it in. This can’t just be another episode in the culture wars,” the Irishman said.

“A pro-choice speaker the day after the referendum said Ireland is still the same place it was the day before. Yes, but we didn’t realise how bad the situation was. It was beyond everyone’s worst fears.  Almost everything I loved about the Ireland of my youth is dead,” O’Ceallaigh said.

“There is a feeling that the real Ireland has been destroyed,” Buck said. “The real Ireland has been replaced by a fake Ireland. The overwhelming numbers in 1983 made the the pro-life choice to enshrine it in the constitution. That represents the real Ireland — an Ireland that has grown organically over centuries. It’s a natural Ireland that has always deeply valued Christianity. That has been replaced by a global Ireland, part of an alien ideology.” He blamed the modern media for the change in the electorate. 

Enshrine the 8th Amendment in your heart. I wanted it for my own country, the U.S.A.  Many young Irish were convinced by outside agitators like American billionaire George Soros, who funded the pro-death campaign through Amnesty Ireland,

that their law was wrong. The organisation lied to the Irish about abortion.

One young woman sincerely told me her pro-life law was wrong because a woman could die of miscarriage without a DNC and it would not be done because there was still a baby’s heartbeat. I responded, “My dear, if you have a heartbeat, you have a baby. There is no heartbeat in a miscarriage. I can personally attest to that.” In both of my miscarriages, I did not get a DNC by my own choice until the baby had been lost. But I was being cautious. I wrote a poem about the experience here:  No Death Rituals: Miscarriage Has No Funeral. 

I do not wish to belittle the experience of Savita Halappanavar who died in 2012 in an Irish hospital of sepsis related to a miscarriage. However, there is convincing evidence that it was medical malpractice that actually killed Savita. It’s pretty silly to cite the 8th Amendment when the woman’s water had already broken. That’s birth. She needed a DNC. Guidelines from the Irish Medical Council are perfectly clear that pregnant women must be given all necessary medical treatment to save their lives.

In the book of Deuteronomy, God gave the Israelites a choice: prosperity or destruction. Then He described the condition of the Israelites then and the Irish people now:  “Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving. Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.” (Isaiah 6:9-10)

And how long was this blindness to last?

God said, “Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until

the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged, until the Lord has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken. And though a tenth remains in the land, it will again be laid waste. But as the terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land.” (Isaiah 6:11-13)

In America after 1973, the schools and houses were left deserted. 60.5 million Americans lost their lives to abortion. The children that survive are subject to school shootings. Then the evil fog of ignorance took the elderly too. Whole neighbourhoods disappeared in Florida.

And indeed, as soon as the 8th Amendment was pushed aside, the ax fell. The Irish Taoiseach — Prime Minister of Ireland Leo Varadkar — said Catholic hospitals will be forced to  perform abortions contrary to their conscience.

“It will not, however, be possible for publicly funded hospitals, no matter who their patron or owner is, to opt out of providing these necessary services which will be legal in this state once this legislation is passed by the Dáil and Seanad,” the predatory green arachnid with eight legs brazenly stated. “I’m happy to give you that assurance.”

“If Catholic Hospitals are to be forced to deliberately kill the unborn, they should shut down. Not hand over, not sell, shut down & demolish rather than be turned into abortion facilities,” said Declan Ganley, Irish Entrepreneur, Chairman & CEO of Rivada Networks, a leading public safety communications business, tweeting from his personal account. “There should be no cooperation with the state.” 

The web gets even stickier because the government insists pro-life doctors refer their patients to another doctor if the woman wants an abortion. Such is tantamount to approving the murder of innocents.  

“Darth” Varadkar insists on it. "But what we can’t allow is this suggestion that a GP

who does not provide the service will then refuse to refer their patient on to somebody who would. Because essentially that is the equivalent of ‘you’re on your own, love’ and we are not going to have that,” the prime minister said.

Health Minister Simon Harris, who before the election sneered at pro-life Irish and called them “cold and neglectful,” also put his two cents in. “The idea of a woman in crisis sitting in front of her doctor and her doctor refusing to refer flies in face of care and compassion. Conscientious objection, yes. No referral or information, no.” However,

doctors with a good conscience cannot provide information to a woman, assisting her in the death of her child. The same conundrum exists in Canada, which wants its doctors to refer patients for euthanasia.

“Western governments are increasingly reaching into areas which in the interests of religious freedom and the rights of conscience were long thought no business of government,” tweeted Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge, adding “#Australia #Ireland #Canada #USA #UK."

Irish Health Minister Simon Harris made promises to
Irish medical students regarding conscientious objection
 that he is apparently not prepared to keep.

This edict from above has caused some medical students who voted for repeal of the 8th Amendment to rethink their decision. “Many students say that they voted Yes based on the promise he (Simon Harris) made that abortions will be illegal in the later stage of pregnancy," wrote Louis Courtney, Vice-President and Education Officer, NUI Galway Students' Union, in the Galway City Tribune. “Many students regret voting Yes and feel they were tricked into doing so by the promise made by the (Health) Minister (Simon Harris), which he doesn’t seem to be prepared to keep.” He said his fellow medical students are very concerned about whether they will be able to conscientiously object to carrying out an abortion and to object to referring a patient to another doctor who will carry out the abortion. 

The sticky web spread further when the Irish government  announced plans to introduce exclusion zones of 100 to 150 meters around its abortion clinics to prevent women in crisis pregnancies from learning of opportunities for health care, housing, jobs and clothes typically offered by committed pro-lifers.

Such a plan sparked a rebellion among Irish on Facebook. I asked my Irish friends, "Would you go to prison if the government tried to stop you from witnessing outside an abortion clinic?"

“I don’t mind going to prison,” responded Tom Moore of

Tom Moore

Tralee. “They won’t be killing no babies in Ireland,” adding that if there was evidence of vote tampering as some have claimed in the May 25 election, he wanted to know. “I would love to destroy the (current) government of Ireland.” 

The exclusion zones around abortion clinics are also present in the United Kingdom. Alina Dulgheriu, who chose to have her daughter after a pro-lifer met her on her way into an abortion clinic, is raising money to launch a legal challenge to the exclusion zone in Ealing District of West London, England.

Alina Dulgheriu & daughter, saved at the last minute
on the steps of the abortion clinic. 

“I cannot put into words the joy, the beauty and the love that my daughter has brought into my life. She simply would not be with us today if vigils had been criminalised, and I refuse to accept that other women should be denied the opportunity to receive help where they want to keep their child. I cannot imagine a society where a simple offer of help to a woman who might want to keep her child is seen as a criminal offence,” Ms Dulgheriu said. She is now part of the Be Here for Me movement, Mothers Against the Ban on Help Outside Abortion Centres.

When they can, they hold public rallies outside clinics that bring tears to my eyes. Watch this video: Pro-Choice Protestors attempt to shout down a Woman’s Heartbreaking Testimony Driving Her to Tears. With a happy young child bouncing next to her, a young African woman relates the story of how she was homeless, pregnant, and thought her only choice was abortion. “I had no hope for myself or my child.”

“I remember that day I found I was pregnant, I was telling God that all I need is a home. The answer for me (appeared)  I would be forced into killing the child.”

She met Lorraine, “a pro-life lady” at the Marie Stopes Abortion Clinic in Ealing, who told her Good Counsel Network could provide her with accommodation. “When I had that, I knew I would not abort. I thank God I did not need to do that (have an abortion).” 

“If Ealing Council bans pro-life vigils today …” At that point she dropped to the ground and began crying, “Then other women like me would be forced into that (abortion).”  

Around her, people held signs saying, “Say No to Coerced Abortion” and “Don’t Criminalise Help.” 64 percent of abortions are coerced, and the top reason for abortion is fear. 

Now it looks like  the same vicious web will be thrown around the abortion clinics 

in Ireland so that desperate mothers will not receive any help at the last minute. The current Irish government simply will not allow mothers any other choice but abortion.  And such is no choice at all.

"You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left but few in number, because you did not obey the Lord your God. Just as it pleased the Lord to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess." (Deuteronomy 28:62-63)

This link to a number of tweets from Dr. Collins outlines the corruption in the Irish leadership before the election. It demonstrates why the Irish are disappointed in their government. 

https://twitter.com/DrCollins10/status/997528579813625857