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Home Page > News > Irish leader says Pope Benedict’s advice not helpful on abortion issue

Irish leader says Pope Benedict’s advice not helpful on abortion issue

Enda Kenny says ‘what we need is understanding respect and dignity’

ANTOINETTE KELLY,

IrishCentral Staff Writer

Published Wednesday, January 9, 2013, 7:20 AM

Updated Wednesday, January 9, 2013, 7:20 AM

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Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny & Pope Benedict

Photo by Google Images

The Irish Prime Minister has made clear that the recent intervention by Pope Benedict in the Irish abortion debate was not helpful.

Pope Benedict XVI stated at the weekend his "dismay" at proposals to bring in legal abortion in Ireland.

Enda Kenny, however, stated Ireland was not allowing abortion on demand.

"What we need is understanding, respect and dignity about the hearings that are now going to take place.

"What the Government is about here is setting in place a framework and a process so that legal certainty will apply to medical personnel who have to make decisions where the life of a mother is threatened, and also to introduce regulations that restrict a move towards abortion on demand, particularly in the case where suicide is involved," he said.

"We're not in a position to be able to tell medical personnel what it is that they should do but it is our duty to set in place a framework which gives legal certainty to situations that arise where they have to intervene to save the life of the mother," he added.

Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister has also said he disagrees with Pope Benedict’s stance on the Irish abortion issue.

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore has said women are entitled to "more than mercy and understanding" when it comes to medical abortions.

On Monday Pope Benedict expressed his dismay at the Irish Government’s plans to introduce new abortion legislation in Ireland.

Read More: Pope Benedict slams Ireland’s attempts to introduce abortion

Speaking about abortion, he said: “I must note with dismay that, in various countries, even those of Christian tradition, efforts are being made to introduce or expand legislation which decriminalizes abortion.

“Direct abortion, that is to say willed as an end or as a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law.

“In affirming this, the Catholic Church is not lacking in understanding and mercy, also towards the mother involved.”

Read More: Historic move as Irish government drafts abortion legislation for 2013 vote

Gilmore said the Pope was expressing the view of the Catholic Church and that he disagrees.

"I think what the Pope was expressing was the long established and well known view of his church. With respect, I disagree with it. I think that women in Ireland are entitled to more than understanding and mercy, as he put it. I think they are entitled to legal clarity about their situation where their life is at risk.

"And the Government has already made a decision to pursue the option, which was set out in the expert group report, which is to legislate and to introduce appropriate regulations to deal with that.

"That process has started. The process of preparing that legislation has started with the hearings, which are taking place in the Oireachtas this week and different points of view will obviously be heard and they will inform the preparation of the legislation."

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seanomelb | Jan 14, 2013, 12:30 AM EST

A story not often told cillowen well done

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cillowen | Jan 13, 2013, 11:18 PM EST

It is this moving story that compelled the current Minister of St. Kitts, G. A. Dwyer Astaphan, to meet with Tom Culhane of Union, New Jersey and discuss his proposal to erect a suitable monument on the island in memory of the Irish slaves. African Negroes had to be purchased, while the Irish were free for the catching, so to speak. It is not surprising that Ireland became the biggest source of livestock for the English slave trade. A leading academic recently revealed that Irish immigrants and African Americans married more than other ethnic groups in the U.S. in the 19th century.

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cillowen | Jan 13, 2013, 11:16 PM EST

who might thus be made English and of England type Christian, a great benefit to the West Indies sugar planters, who desired men and boys for their bondsmen, and the women and Irish girls to solace them''. Under James I, Cromwell burned the Irish forests to prevent people hiding from banishment as well as clearing the countryside, wood for ship building, and for pasture land to feed cattle for English beef. Emmet asserted, ``Over 100,000 young children who were orphans or had been taken from their Catholic parents, were sent abroad into slavery in the West Indies, Virginia, and New England, that they might lose their faith and all knowledge of their nationality, for in most instances even their names were changed.''

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cillowen | Jan 13, 2013, 11:14 PM EST

English shipping of Irish slaves to the New World earlier in the 1600s has been documented in many works. In 1612 Irish people were sent to the Amazon River settlements. An English Proclamation of the year 1625 urges banishment overseas of dangerous rogues (Irish political prisoners). Ireland was already a prime source of supply for servants and by 1637 on Montserrat the Irish heavily outnumbered the English colonists; 69% of all white people on the island were Irish.

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cillowen | Jan 13, 2013, 11:12 PM EST

LAST SHIPMENTS 1800S -- It is estimated that somewhere between 30,000 and 80,000 Irish were shipped from Ireland. One of the last shipments was made in 1841 from Limerick aboard the Robert Kerr. The Gleaner noted of these arrivals: "They landed in Kingston wearing their best clothes and temperance medals," meaning they did not drink alcohol (as quoted in Mullally, 2003, part 2, pg. 1). The Gleaner also noted of another set of arrivals in 1842: "The Irish are repeatedly intoxicated, drink excessively, are seen emerging from grog shops very dissolute and abandoned and are of very intemperate habits" (as quoted in Mullally,

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cillowen | Jan 13, 2013, 11:12 PM EST

St Kitts memorial in memory of Irish victims of the Irish Slave trade The reign of Elizabeth I, English privateers captured 300 African Negroes, sold them as slaves, and initiated the English slave trade. Few people know that the majority of Slaves in the Carribean, during the 17th Century, were actually Irish - Sir Alexander Bustamante, National Hero and first Prime Minister of Jamaica, used to boast that he was 50 per cent Irish, 50 per cent Jamaican and 10 per cent Arawak. Busta is not the only prominent Jamaican to claim Irish heritage. There's poet Claude McKay, Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records, one of Jamaica's foremost historians and former UWI Vice Chancellor, Sir Philip Sherlock, writer John Hearne, and successful horse trainer, Phillip Feanny, whose mother is from County Cork, Ireland. In addition, surnames such as Burke, Collins, Mackey, Murphy and Madden, to name just a few, are common enough. Irish influence is also found in the names of places. There's St. Andrew's Irish Town, St. Mary's Kildare and Clonmel and St. Thomas' Belfast and Middleton among others.

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cillowen | Jan 13, 2013, 11:09 PM EST

Cromwell drove Irish men and women, as threats to his new government, from their homes into the relatively barren and inhospitable province of Connaught. He created a system of arresting people for terribly minor infractions and forcing them onto ships headed to the Caribbean, providing the British planters there with "indentured laborers". Often times they actually just 'captured' the Irish for no reason at all. Did you know about Irish slavery? It seems that Irish slavery has escaped many texts, and therefore the entire education of many. Surprised to learn that there were Irish Slaves in the Caribbean?

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cillowen | Jan 13, 2013, 11:08 PM EST

ordering that the Irish were to be transported overseas, starting with 12,000 Irish prisoners sold to aforementioned Barbados. Mention of these white slaves are often left completely out of history books, or sometimes sugar-coated as "voluntary indentured servants", however thousands were kidnapped from the streets and from their beds. That is not voluntary. And the term indentured servants is meant to describe a temporary situation, which for most this was not. Paintings to suit, as natural in a UK/US Anglo Empire, and as an in harmony story of US founding.

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cillowen | Jan 13, 2013, 11:07 PM EST

the popes the popes figured too History prepping based on an ignorance of realities that the gathering folks need to be educated about. That truth will set you free, notion ...Oliver Cromwell Lord Protector of England from 1653 - 1658 Oliver Cromwell, in 1648, put down a rebellion in Ireland with such savagery and cruelty that is is nearly unimaginable. In his own words after the siege of Drogheda, "the officers were knocked on the head, every tenth man of the soldiers killed and the rest shipped to Barbados." On 14 August 1652, Cromwell began his Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland

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cillowen | Jan 13, 2013, 11:05 PM EST

the pope is

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seanomelb | Jan 12, 2013, 12:58 AM EST

What twisted logic falcon weaves

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eiriamach | Jan 11, 2013, 08:23 AM EST

Fflash, "Soldiers, cops," fire fighters, "and nurses" have taken oaths to serve others. Their avowed duty and obedience to their captains and supervisors guide their actions. By contrast, pregnant women have freely CHOSEN to bring new life into the world. They do not do so out of obedience or duty to others, and they do not do so as a sacrifice of their own lives. Ages past have known the tragedies of women dying in pregnancy and childbirth and of children growing up without mothers. Medical science can avert many such tragedies if we will use it. Of course women take risks in becoming pregnant. But it is up to us to see that they never die needlessly and do not sacrifice their lives for the delusion that a fetus in miscarriage has a "right" to extension of its life for a few days while the pregnant woman slips into a coma and dies. The comparison you've drawn is a false analogy. Take a poll: how many women would become pregnant if they knew that doing so condemns them to death and, most often, their fetuses along with them?

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falconflash | Jan 10, 2013, 09:10 PM EST

oh,eiriamach, this has been settle thousands of years ago... a mother will risk her life to give her unborn baby girl or boy it's life at the risk of dying herself...that is what Catholics (and all Christians) always have done... this includes soldiers, cops, firemen and nurses...As Jesus said: "Greater love has no one than this: that he lay down his life for his friends. Soldiers do it, pregnant women do it, the Irish do it, don't come in and change their culture with your athiestic attitude.

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howareya | Jan 10, 2013, 08:02 PM EST

Eschetic...my daughter was born at 1.6 oz. Don't tell me she wasn't a person...I know of people that have had late term abortions at that stage.

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howareya | Jan 10, 2013, 07:56 PM EST

alisaann...I guess you should be thankful your mother wasn't prochoice.

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