43 Comments

• joycean | Dec 05, 2011, 02:09 PM EST

  Jacersagain, so the Irish plagarized our Constitution; then when they had time wrote their own. The US Constitution works for us. This is a federal system; there are many functions left to the states on the assumption that different states will see things differently. in 1787, our Constitution was not written with the assumption it would (or should) work elsewhere.

• eiriamach | Dec 05, 2011, 01:06 PM EST

  Jacers, in reply to your criticism: I've given BishopSean the standard American answer to his question, and I've shown that Vatican II offered the same answer. The path of democracy may be slow and fraught with obstacles, but people on that path are patient and vigilant, and they keep their lamps trimmed. When we ask why RCC loses 3 Catholics for every one (usually immigrant) Catholic it gains in the USA, the answer lies not alone in its mishandling of sexual abuse cases, but also in the failure of the hopes of Vatican II- generation Catholics for moral progress, with the Church helping to clear the road of KKK and other institutionalized forms of bigotry. Advent is about "making straight the path," so it's a good time to reflect on the multiple roadblocks placed by the USCCB in the path of moral progress. The USCCB's current lobbying against women's health care (contraceptives), against marriage equality, against stem cell research and AIDS treatments, against justice for victims of child abuse, and more, blocks the road to progress by citizens who follow Vatican II in seeking to use secular government to achieve goals that Christians, in their "freedom of the children of God," ought to embrace wholeheartedly. That's it-- I'm done here (had enough of GD). Others can read the exchange below and decide for themselves whether they prefer your 'theocracy of the 10 Commandments' to my constitutionally- protected liberties.

• eiriamach | Dec 05, 2011, 12:31 PM EST

  Your opinion is duly noted, GD. Expect that someone will remind you of your predilection for brevity in comments the next time you go one and on about what you consider the curse of foreigners in Ireland and the USA.

• eiriamach | Dec 05, 2011, 12:26 PM EST

  In defense of the American approach~~ 1) Catholics ought to value Constitutionally protected freedom of conscience and resist imposition of any set of religious principles, as John F. Kennedy did, because freedom holds out the best hope of Christian unity in this nation. (Yes, I realize that words like "ecumenism," along with "liberation theology," "gay agenda," and "feminism" have become instruments of demonization by USCCB during past decades. But take a good look at those words and ask whether Christ would have any problem with any of them.) When the moral principles held by Catholics, Jews, Protestants, Muslims, etc. are debated in the political forum, we can recognize the values we hold in common, our "common ground," and build consensus around them. But when sectarian interests such as "Right to Life" enter that forum with explicitly religious self-interests to subordinate the freedom of conscience of one part of the population to another's theology, we have serious division-- and that's the situation we now have. From the RCC Catechism: "'That they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be one in us, ... so that the world may know that you have sent me.' 278 The desire to recover the unity of all Christians is a gift of Christ and a call of the Holy Spirit. 279."

• eiriamach | Dec 05, 2011, 12:22 PM EST

  In defense of the American approach~~ 2) It is counter-productive to replace individual freedom of conscience with a theological system of virtue. In its better moments, RCC has understood this point. Paul VI's "Declaration on Religious Freedom" (1965) argues that freedom of conscience is a civil right: "The truth cannot impose itself except by virtue of its own truth, as it makes its entrance into the mind at once quietly and with power. Religious freedom, in turn, which men demand as necessary to fulfill their duty to worship God, has to do with immunity from coercion in civil society. Therefore it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ.... This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits. The right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very *dignity of the human person* as this dignity is known through the revealed word of God and by reason itself. This right of the human person to religious freedom is to be recognized in the constitutional law whereby society is governed and thus it is to become a civil right."

• jacersagain | Dec 04, 2011, 09:38 PM EST

  (..more) So, alright, Tom Deignan may be one of the bad journalists we have to put up with in our world but at least he’s not as bad as KKK’s “rantic” anti-God, anti-Catholic driven commanders and followers. Those who seek power use fear to intimidate and always lose out in the end (Saladin, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Putin, Berlusconi, Musharaff and soon-to-be-added names Assad, Merkel and Sarkozy). Those who seek and come to know truth never have any fear, especially of un-codified, unwritten constitutions. Instead, they should look to the “written-in-stone-by-the-power-of-God” guide to a happy life, for all of us humans together. It’s dead easy to follow, no need for me to tell you, just go and do it. The proposed EU written Constitution should perhaps look to the mistakes of the American Constitution as us Irish have and listen to its peoples’ cries for justice and equality and not the determinations of a small bunch of people locked in the five world-controlling “families” including the British Royal family or Goldman Sachs clans and their adherents, or the anti-Catholic, un-Christian Ku Klux Klan dying breeds. Someday, eiriamach and her inviolable computer will be ... well, you know the rest. She like me will be another forgettable statistic of the computer world’s entities. I hope not for hernat least; she’s too good and should be listened to in certain of her points but, like her computer, like me, she will be past her sell-by date, unlike the Catholic Church which she, the KKK and other anti-Vatican, anti-Apostle Peter people inveterately and futilely challenge. Bishop Sean was correct to challenge eiriamach... “are the secularists those who insist on Separating Church and State, or those who insist on Separating State and God?” he asks. No one, esp eiriamach, has yet given a satisfactory answer.

• jacersagain | Dec 04, 2011, 09:25 PM EST

  (...more) Does it not strike anyone that most of the referenda that Irish people passed were corrections to those parts of the Irish Constitution that were based on America’s written Constitution influence? I think American citizens need to wake up and look at their own very antiquated, controlling and (by these days standards) very un-liberating Constitutional laws. The premise on which the American founding fathers wrote their constitution for their country of their day is so far removed from the reality of today that I think it needs to be looked at again, to look at the God-given Christian model (for example, those God-given Ten Commandments, or His Son’s two compacted Commandments: a standard, a flag if you like, to look up to with a fiercely dedicated clenched fisted-hand on heart - to Love God, to Love your Neighbour) of behaviour for a good family, a good society, a good country and a good world, not a Mammon-driven, war mongering American capitalist company model that is destroying human values, never mind Irish values, American values and those of other countries in Europe and elsewhere on our globe. The dream of one American citizen, Martin Luther King, had nothing to do with the dream of America as seen today. (...more)

• jacersagain | Dec 04, 2011, 09:22 PM EST

  (...more) Since reaching voting age, I voted in most referenda to change our Constitution (not in all of them; I was out of Ireland at the times I missed; my right to vote is one of the most precious rights I have and I always make it my own and my children’s business to cast our votes) and am glad to see my vote (or would-have vote) was equally approved (mark that) by my fellow Irish citizens on all but second-chance EU referenda that I voted on or missed voting. By making comparisons of these Irish and American constitutional change referenda figures, one could suppose that the writers of the Irish Constitution got it wrong the first time and it has needed so many referenda over 70 yrs to change it while Americans only needed 25-odd changes in 300yrs. But hang on a minute... (...more)

• jacersagain | Dec 04, 2011, 09:18 PM EST

  you know, it may seem out of context for me to post the following under Tom’s article above...but... you know, I hope it’s seen relevant to this discussion. According to the red pen markings-up I’ve made in the tattering copy of the Irish Republic’s Constitution that I have from my school days, in its short (70 yrs) history, the Republic of Ireland’s Constitution has had about 30 amendments proposed. The people of Ireland rejected about 9 or 10 of them and passed the rest (some EU stuff at a second, arm-twisting persuasion, let’s not us Irish forget). By contrast, the American Constitution (which I don’t have a copy of) has been amended some 25 times or so in its 300 yrs of history. Not many may know this - but the Irish Constitution, adopted by plebiscite (i.e. passed as acceptable by the Irish people in 1937), was originally based on the written USA Constitution and the unwritten, un-codified British Constitution - a mix of both.( More... ah, sorry but yes I’m on a roll of verbiage)

• eiriamach | Dec 04, 2011, 01:33 PM EST

  Jacers writes of "the Church’s teachings on sexuality, family and end of life." Yes, there are very, very, very many of these. But what about Christ's teachings, in his own words, about "sexuality, family, and the end of life"? Not so many words from him! About social gender roles? Apparently, he disdained them and praised the brazen women who interacted with him rather than minding the kitchen when he was visiting, women, in other words, who used their freedom to think for themselves. Yet Vatican males issue reams of paper and hypertext about "the Church’s teachings on sexuality, family and end of life" and what they as males think natural law dictates about women's roles. Human beings pretending to 'know better than God' are more likely to be found in their offices than at my computer any hour of the day. I do have one disadvantage vis a vis those men-- unlike them, I make mistakes. But then, I also have one advantage-- I've not forever bound by a doctrine of infallibility or Magisterial continuity to my mistakes; I can learn from them and do better next time. (I think that learning process is part of God's Plan for humanity.)

• eiriamach | Dec 04, 2011, 01:04 PM EST

  Jacers, what you call "dangerous, disturbing reasoning concerning the moral law" just IS the political thinking embodied in the founding documents of the USA. Thomas Jefferson suggested that we are "created equal" and "endowed by the Creator" with "unalienable" (meaning it's always wrong to deprive us of them) rights to "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness." To become fully human is to exercise these rights well and not to interfere with others' doing so; to be deprived of them is oppression, wretchedness, and cause for revolution against a tyrannical gov't, or for changing any laws that fail to protect rights and liberties (as Civil Rights, Women's, and gay rights, etc. movements did here). You may think such a view bold or even arrogant, but it derives from our heritage of natural law. The 10 commandments are a fine set of constitutional principles for living a free and virtuous life, but without some thinking about what they mean, one can go far astray in limiting freedom unjustly with them. "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Why not divorce? Because children need a stable environment in which to flourish and because disloyalty in intimate relationships causes suffering and encourages selfishness rather than love and responsibility. If my view smacks of ‘I (or we) know better than God,’" yours smacks of puppet people with God (or the Catholic Church) as the Great puppeteer that cares nothing about the human personality or character but only about obedience for the sake of obedience. That's what Americans call a tyrant.

• jacersagain | Dec 04, 2011, 11:05 AM EST

  My last post crossed eiriamach’s latest one. I think eiriamach has been up too early with the birds in the USA this morning. Her latest seems to me to run around in circles vis-a-vis her earlier ones. Let me try to put it simply... Since God is absolute, the Supreme Being, He is neither secular nor religiously sectarian. His Commandments therefore are non-religious and effectively are a statement of the moral law for all mankind. The Jews from the time of Moses made a religion praisig God and of being custodians of the Ten Commandments. From the time of Christ, the Messiah of the Jews and us Gentiles, the Christian Church has become the custodian of Christ’s Commandments which fully encompass the Ten Commandments. Thus the Holy Roman Catholic Church (as the only church directly descended from the one person to whom Christ entrusted its guardianship) is the custodian of the Moral Law and it does its human best to elucidate it. Yes, I know many of its members - ordained and lay people, including myself - have consistently broken the Commandments (and thereby, the Moral Law) and many have abused its role as custodians. But that does not mean the Catholic Church itself is intrinsically wrong in what it preaches on these Commandments later compacted by Christ. If one looks deeply enough at the Church’s teachings on sexuality, family and end of life, one sees total undeniable truth in them, much as they may intrude on our own modern-day consumerist-driven selfish values. (btw - Lest anyone, especially eiriamach, thinks I’m being sexist in my use of ‘He’ in describing God in the male gender... that is only because Christ referred to God as His Father in Heaven). Only then do we see how galling are our modern values in propounding abortion, euthanasia, let-live sexual mores and even divorce.

• jacersagain | Dec 04, 2011, 09:22 AM EST

  Jeeze eiriamach, that last post positively smacks of ‘I (or we) know better than God’. It contains very dangerous, disturbing reasoning concerning the moral law and Commandments of God, particularly your use of X in examples to support your case. Since God is absolute and He has given laws through Moses, that’s all we need to keep for maintaining moral order. One could argue that there was a moral law before God wrote the Commandments in stone (no less) for Moses to teach all humankind. Christ’s Commandments are but the Ten Commandments embodied in two simple ones. I’d suggest any moral law before Moses was instinctive, such as preservation of human life and all that goes with that. To restore proper moral order and law, one needs to read every single one of the Ten Commandments on their own and ask oneself “Well, am I or am I not doing that?” Any breach of any one commandment leads to moral breakdown – of one's self, in families, society at large and in the business world.

• eiriamach | Dec 04, 2011, 08:36 AM EST

  Why does the idea of "secular" politics trouble anyone? To quote Franzoni, "The concept of secularism is completely alien to the hierarchy, or rather, it invokes it, specifying ... that secularism should be 'healthy' ... should accept the Vatican’s theses." RCC "is convinced that only the Catholic Magisterium can speak words of truth about 'natural law' and 'sensitive issues' and therefore it tasks Catholics with making civil laws stress the perspective of official Catholic doctrine on every issue." ("Vatican II Lost & Betrayed," ACPI Sept.) The opposite of "secular" government is "sectarian": Church-controlled. A glance at Irish history ought to warn us away from that. Secular law is compatible with believing in God. Even the current pope, getting it half right as usual, began his Bundestag speech by quoting St. Paul (Romans 2:14ff): "When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires ... they show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness.” It's time to send the USCCB back to "think again" about what Franzioni calls "sensitive issues" of "sexuality, the family, the end of life." When a church dictates such laws, it makes infants of the laity and usurps rights that even the Vatican's own Second Council reserved to the people: "all the faithful, whether clerics or laity, possess a lawful freedom of inquiry, freedom of thought and freedom of expressing their mind with humility and fortitude” ("Church in the Modern World," 52).

• eiriamach | Dec 04, 2011, 06:21 AM EST

  Bishop Sean asks, "are the secularists those who insist on Separating Church and State, or those who insist on Separating State and God?" "One nation under God" we call ourselves in the USA, and I have no objection to that description. I point out to atheists and agnostics who object to it that "under God" is a universally understood way of saying that our laws follow objective moral values and sound principles of ethics rather than appeals to religious authority or "relativism" or mere political expediency. Religious doctrines and dogmas AS SUCH do not belong in the political forum. IF a particular religion's moral doctrine can defend itself as any ethical precept should be able to do, it may well prevail, but if its advocates cannot provide any better reasons than "God commands it," then it fails in competition with other moral precepts whose advocates can give MORAL reasons in support of them. Question: is it right to do X because God commands it, or does God command it BECAUSE X IS RIGHT? And if God commands us to do X because X is right and good, then we as rational, thinking human beings should be able to say what is right and good about doing X. The moral law-- that system of unwritten principles developed over the ages and in many different cultures and called in Western civilization Natural Law-- is a good objective guide for legislators trying to enact civil laws. My reading of the Natural Law tends to agree others', such as the Rev. Martin Luther King's, rather than the USCCB's! That's a problem: some religious advocates misread and reason poorly, and lately, the USCCB has been making some obvious mistakes but still claims the authority to impose their narrow readings on those of us who prefer to think our way through a moral problem.

• seanomelbourne | Dec 03, 2011, 05:57 PM EST

  George semms to be against everybody, I dont know how he can stand himself.

• GeorgeDillon | Dec 03, 2011, 12:28 PM EST

  eiriamach: "The Klan's hatred of Catholics had roots in centuries-old Anglo-Protestant racism". So is that where your hatred comes from ? Shame on you, you bigot.

• BishopSean | Dec 03, 2011, 12:00 PM EST

  When Robert E. Lee surrendered to Gen. Grant, he reportedly told Grant the reason the North won the Civil War was because Grant.... "had more Irish soldiers than the South did." Question to @eiriamach; are the secularists those who insist on Separating Church and State, or those who insist on Separating State and God? Regards.

• eiriamach | Dec 03, 2011, 10:08 AM EST

  1) Why did the KKK target Catholics like the Irish? The Klan's hatred of Catholics had roots in centuries-old Anglo-Protestant racism. The British considered the Irish too "barbaric" to be Christians. They rationalized subjugating the Irish as inferior by nature. Edmund Burke described the British Parliament's habit of regarding the Irish "as enemies to God and Man, and indeed, as a race of savages who were a disgrace to human nature" (qtd. in Theodore W. Allen, "The Invention of the White Race," 1994. 31). Here in the US, with huge numbers of immigrants by mid- 19th century, Catholicism became a powerful combination of culture, religion and political ambition that openly designated its "enemies." And predictably, its enemies were Anglo Protestants and those it now labels "secularists," who insist on separating church and state. But for the Irish in 19th-century USA, Catholicism was a source of consolation and meaning in suffering; it shaped every part of their lives. In many cases, anti-Irish-Catholic bigotry strengthened Irish loyalty to a religion that helped transform them, as T.W. Allen shows, "from Irish haters of racial oppression into white-supremacists in America" (23).

• eiriamach | Dec 03, 2011, 10:07 AM EST

  2) There's no explaining Irish-born Archbishop John Hughes' support for slave owners (1860s) or Fr. Coughlin's rabid anti-Semitism (1930s) without noting the immigrants' experience with the anti-Irish, anti- Catholic bigotry that awaited them in America. As Terry Eagleton wrote, "religion is as powerless as culture to emancipate the dispossessed. For the most part, it has not the slightest interest in doing so" (excerpted from "Reason, Faith, and Revolution," in 'Commonweal'). So in that 19th century climate of poverty and oppression, US bishops manipulated the suffering of the immigrants into a mentality that demonizes religious and political differences, a demonization that the Irish had already experienced under British rule as racism. Today, as the USCCB carries out Rome's political agenda at a yearly cost of $27,000,000 , they reclaim that 19th century 'racial' hatred and direct it against feminists, gays, progressives, and secularists. They abandon the hope of Christian fellowship with mainstream Protestants, who, by mid- 20th century, finally learned to embrace racial and gender equality and justice. As in NI, those who will not evolve with progress are condemned to replay history's nightmares.

• eiriamach | Dec 03, 2011, 03:52 AM EST

  As the Hebraic proverb cited in Matthew 12:37 says, "By your [own] words you will be declared innocent, or by your words you will be declared guilty." How could I ever try to "silence" you, GeorgeD? As I've stated before, you'll never meet up with a fiercer opponent of censorship than me. The more words you use, the less anyone else needs to point out the un-Christian character revealed in your comments. (Re-check your history books: Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center is universally credited with bankrupting and breaking up or getting "rid of" the KKK. Is Dees Irish? Does it matter?)

• seanomelbourne | Dec 02, 2011, 06:15 PM EST

  Interesting post eiriamach you have georgy boy betwix and between he obviously has lost all rationality

• GeorgeDillon | Dec 02, 2011, 05:02 PM EST

  eiriamach--You're a Know Nothing. Spray your invective in other directions--leave me alone. I feel sullied when a crazy religious bigot like you even mentions my name. But if you think you'll silence me--think again. The Irish outlasted the Know Nothings, and they got rid of your buddies in the Klan.

• eiriamach | Dec 02, 2011, 03:03 PM EST

  Ooops! I did not see Jacersagain's comment before I clicked "Comment." Jacers will not appreciate my last one, I'm sure. Well, ya can't please all the people even any of the time.

• eiriamach | Dec 02, 2011, 03:00 PM EST

  Prefer whatever, GeorgeD. But with the USCCB spending $27 Million in 2009 (according to current Pew research) on lobbying and politics, you may as well get used to Americans opposing the bishops' political agenda. If you consider that opposition to be anti-Catholicism rather than politics, so be it, but you'll notice that unlike the USCCB's homophobia and misogyny, it's rational, rooted in moral principles, and informed about relevant facts. And it won't go away until Catholic Church money is no longer financing opposition to women's health care, AIDS prevention and treatment, protection for children from abuse, gay rights, medical research, anti-discrimination legislation, etc. Tom Deignan writes about "how much better off we are today." How are we better off? Because bishops are more subtle than Klansmen and prefer bribing lawmakers to lynching "undesirables" and upstarts? We're dealing with more than "vestiges" of KKK "paranoid impulses" in the USCCB. "Vestiges"? That's what your name-calling is, George. I cannot imagine why you think it has any effect on me or anyone else. If you cannot reply to the argument, you attack the person who made it.... again ... ho hum....

• jacersagain | Dec 02, 2011, 02:20 PM EST

  Well said eiriamach.

• GeorgeDillon | Dec 02, 2011, 09:50 AM EST

  eiriamach: I'd prefer if anti-Catholic bigots like didn't refer to me. Leave me out of your racist rants, you fool. Go back to your Krap Klavern, you Kreep.

• eiriamach | Dec 02, 2011, 08:08 AM EST

  "Good old days"? I can tell you from much experience that plenty of Irish "good old boys" are still around. Deignan mistakenly thinks the KKK mentality does little harm today. The lesson we need to learn from having been powerless targets of KKK hatred was not to inflict the same suffering on others-- or on each other! Yet "good old Irish boys" like GeorgeDillon-- Tea Partiers, radical-right GOP, American Irish-language activists, AOH & trad RCs, and even some US Irish scholarly organizations-- have learned only to identify the "good old boys" by ethnicity, culture, religion, or politics. They insist, like George below, that differences in these areas should still make a huge difference. In a multi-cultural environment (today, that's nearly every economically developed nation), each culture changes the others, if only because we adapt to each other's presence. That's a given and it can bring needed progress. But fear of difference--xenophobia like Dillon's-- is an un-Irish reaction to multi-culturalism. Today's know-nothings don't burn crosses on lawns. Instead, they wage threatening email-harassment campaigns; they try to stir up fear of immigrants on IC blogs; they use social-media website tools to block and censor feminists, progressives, RC reformers, anyone who thinks we Irish are not already so perfect that we have nothing new to learn and no reason ever to talk with others who are different from us.

• GeorgeDillon | Dec 02, 2011, 07:32 AM EST

  kilsally: Thank you for the reasonable note, something of a rarity on this site. I think you are exaggerating, but there may be a kernel of truth to what you say. I myself have seen Irish guys begging outside stores where inside there are Polish sales assistants working hard. This is definitely a public policy issue, yet another symptom of bad governance in Ireland. But as I have said elsewhere here, Mass Immigration is not an economic question. Chinese are hard-working, and there are piles of them. Why not import 10 million Chinese into Ireland, if hard work is your only criterion? Or how about 2 million Poles--you claim they all work hard, so that seems to be sufficient for you? In fact, I'd be sure that Chinese are harder working than Americans--why not import 10 million Chinese into Wyoming or Montana? Or how about 10 million into Israel, after all, in your view Mass Immigration is not about culture, it's just about hard work. The other point you omit in your note is that Ireland actually permitted the invasion of Eastern Europeans years before it had to. That's why it was swamped by Poles Latvians etc., when other countries such as Germany exercised a deferral of Mass Immigration from those countries. The overriding fact remains behind all of this. The Irish people never acquiesced to opening up their country to mass settlement by foreigners. In fact I was in Ireland at the time of the plebiscite, and I remember that all the corrupt Irish political class assured people that voting Yes would NOT lead to an influx of Eastern Europeans. I knew they were lying, but the Big Lie worked.

• McNamara31 | Dec 01, 2011, 08:57 PM EST

  Sadly some of these "types" are still alive and well, and tuning into Hannity each night.

• PhoenixZouave | Dec 01, 2011, 07:00 PM EST

  Remember in the 1920's KKK aims changed to an anti-catholic agenda. Indiana had the largest membership of the KKK in the US of A.

• JimmyJK | Dec 01, 2011, 05:53 PM EST

  according Rheta Akamatsu in her book the Irish Slaves: from 1651 to 1660 there were more Irish slaves in the colonies than the entire non slave population. another great book is Notre Dame V. Klan from the 1920's.... amazing story. fight for the rights of the good human, we were once on the very bottom

• Kilsally | Dec 01, 2011, 05:49 PM EST

  George - Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK have seen a similar influx of Eastern Europeans since they were admitted to the EU where there is freedom of movement between States - you can`t blame them for coming as the wages are better and to be quite honest most of them work very hard, all the hours they can get usually in menial factory jobs that the locals don`t want and the dole spongers certainly dont want.

• OldMariner | Dec 01, 2011, 04:43 PM EST

  Colkelley - Abe Lincoln "rabidly hated" Catholics? Where can I find citation for this? It was the poor and the un(der)-represented who were the main Civil War combatants on both sides. Many of the better off males bought their way out of the draft. Both sides continuously needed cannon fodder and who else better suited than the newly arrived Irish and other groups.

• seanomelbourne | Dec 01, 2011, 04:25 PM EST

  George is blinded by hate and ignorance of the social history of the U.S.A. Maybe he should read about the Irish and American trade unionism and the murder of Irish workers by industrialist in the USA. The Irish were treated as inhumanely as blacks. The freemasons lodge financially supported candidates who ran against Catholics. They offered their support to Roosevelt when he ran against a catholic opponent,Roosevelt graciously declined the offer.George is way off the mark with his comments on Ireland.He's never been to Ireland yet he portrays himself as some sort of expert on Irish affairs.

• GeorgeDillon | Dec 01, 2011, 02:35 PM EST

  joycean: What happened in the US a century and a half ago has no relevance to Irish immigration policy. What a crazy logical leap for you to suggest that they have something to do with each other. Actually modern research shows that much of the No Irish Need Apply stuff is pure myth. But it is relevant to Ireland, now that I think of it, because in lots of fields of work in Ireland there is today a policy of "No Irish Need Apply". Security guards, for example, you'll almost never see an Irish one any more. Nurses, almost no Irish except older wonen. Long distance bus drivers--all Eastern European or Africans. Indeed the most important point of relevance of what happened here a century and a half ago is what befell the Native Americans who were unable to resist Mass Immigration. They were rounded up, exiled from their lands, dispossessed and murdered. That's ethnic cleansing writ large, but thnic cleansing is now happening in large areas of Dublin. Without the violence. For Now.

• Aughavey | Dec 01, 2011, 02:05 PM EST

  Not quite sure what your point is? The bigotry was wrong but there were historical reasons for many of the prejudices particularly the religious ones. Indeed the US Constitution talks of no foreign powers and such like presumably having the Vatican in mind much like some of the British / English laws enacted after the Protestant reformation which talked about foreign princes and powers etc.

• KSERRAHN | Dec 01, 2011, 01:53 PM EST

  All that you said in the article is true just ask my Scots/Irish relatives in The mountains of North Carolina. And they are very proud of it , me not so much. Fact is I won't have much to do with them any more.

• joycean | Dec 01, 2011, 01:12 PM EST

  This is an important chapter in American history which has been glossed over recently. I was particularly surprised that a number of people I spoke to in Ireland had no idea that Irish immigrants to this country in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries faced discrimination. It is ironic that it is now the native Irish in Ireland who have issues with immigrants.

• donal1951 | Dec 01, 2011, 11:06 AM EST

  My wife tells a story of the French-Canadians, Irish and Jews invading a KKK meeting in her home town and beating the tar out of the Kluxers. Some very prominent businessmen showed up for work with black eyes.

• jamieLM | Dec 01, 2011, 10:37 AM EST

  I'm not trying to minimize anything, but Catholics and the Irish aren't the only groups in America to have felt bigotry and prejudice - past and present. Do you think if there were no Catholics and Irish in America, everyone here would've been living in love, peace, and tolerance for the last 200 plus yrs.? We live in the age of political correctness and have laws against discrimination which prevent most people from openly expressing their prejudices and acting upon them. We're also a product of our times. What was once acceptable behavior, is not acceptable anymore. Thank goodness for that. Unfortunately, the truth is we all, in EVERY country, harbor prejudices to varying degrees. Most of us work to overcome them and refuse to let them dictate how we treat others.

• colkelley | Dec 01, 2011, 10:05 AM EST

  Interesting facts - the KKK is currently headquartered in Gary, Indiana, and the Grand Dragon is a native of (and raised in) Ohio. There are more KKK members in York County, Pennsylvania, than in the entire state of Georgia. Studies have established that 85% of the KKK is OUTSIDE of the Old South. Having faced down the Klan myself back in 2002 I just don't find them all that scary. Thanks...you Yankees can have them. Oh, and don't forget that in the Civil War the only reason the Union Army created the strictly-segregated United States Colored Troops was because they had run out of Irish to use as cannon-fodder - yes, the Yankees and Old Abe rid themselves of a significant percentage of the Irish Catholics they so rabidly hated.

• Murph46 | Dec 01, 2011, 10:01 AM EST

  Jobs available-Irish need not apply! Need I say more?