Nobody Expects the Irish Inquisition

Ireland passes draconian new restrictions on speech, enshrining the cult of LGBTQ+ as the new Established Church.

“Also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel.” (Judges 2:10)

Few nations in the history of the world have witnessed the kind of spiritual collapse recently seen in once-Catholic Ireland. The land has simultaneously observed a true religious awakening, albeit of a paganism that is both new and dark. And the latter religion now seeks to devour the former, using the power of the State. Irish believers face new, draconian laws that suppress freedoms of religion and speech — threatening jail time for those who assert traditional Christian beliefs and dissent from what we can only now call the cult of LGBTQ+.

When I was growing up in Northern Ireland in the 1990s, the Republic in the south was still near the peak of its Catholic devotion. Through an incredible movement of social reform, Irish Catholicism had grown from a relatively nominal faith in the early 1800s to the dominant cultural force of Ireland a century later, with more than 90% regular Mass attendance being the norm. In Ireland’s 1937 Constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann, Article 40.6.1. declared, “The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offense which shall be punishable in accordance with law.” The Bunreacht did not define what constituted blasphemy, and there were very few prosecutions for it, the last of which was in 1855.

In 1979, when Pope John Paul II visited Ireland for the first time, 1.2 million people — more than a third of the Republic’s entire population at the time — came to attend Mass in Dublin’s Phoenix Park. To realize the gargantuan force this religion represented, American readers should try to imagine over 100 million people turning up for an event. Even in 1990, by which time church attendance was in serious decline across most of the Western world, 81% of Irish Catholics attended Mass at least weekly.

Scandals the Irish Stumbled on

But, as church historian Crawford Gribben puts it, the moral authority of the church was “shattered by a devastating sequence of scandals,” primarily regarding widespread clergy abuse, with reports of “systemic exploitation, trafficking, malnutrition, sexual abuse, and death,” and skeletons of babies killed by malnutrition found on the site of an institution from which 1,000 other children were illegally trafficked to America, without their mothers’ consent or knowledge, in a kids-for-cash adoption scheme. The devastating effect of this on the Irish psyche cannot be overestimated; it reinvented the entire nation’s self-perception in just a few short years.

Of course the Irish Catholic church collapsed. Mass attendance is now down to around 25% and still plummeting toward a yet unknown bottom. Homosexuality was decriminalized and then turned into “marriage.” Abortion is now legal, as is divorce. And those blasphemy laws were abolished outright in 2018.

Or, rather than “abolished,” it would be better to say “swiftly replaced with a different version.”

A New, Fierce Religion

When Ireland cast off its Catholic vestments, it did not at that point become religiously neutral — the main reason being that religious neutrality is a silly myth promoted only by those who want to forcibly convert you to their religion while pretending they’re doing nothing of the sort. Neither did it become what I would like it to be, namely staunchly Protestant, like its Northern Irish counterparts. (Not that that was ever particularly likely.)

Instead it embraced, with truly remarkable speed, the religion of LGBTQ+. And as it is historically a place of near-matchless religious devotion, it has worshiped that demon god with a fervor that the prophets of Baal, screeching and cutting themselves atop Mount Carmel, would admire. Those who have landed at Dublin Airport will have witnessed this, as they were greeted by likely the largest flag they have ever seen. Not the flag of Ireland, nor a Celtic cross, nor a Shamrock, nor a Trinity knot, but the vile monstrosity that is the Trans Pride flag. It is emblazoned across the entire side of the airport’s main terminal as a mark of fidelity to the nation’s new master.

The Irish Inquisition

Unlike the vague, hard-to-prosecute blasphemy laws against the Triune God and His people, the new blasphemy laws that serve this god are much, much more detailed, are designed to be enforced, and carry serious penalties. No more soft moral guidance here to keep things on track; break these and you’ll be punished.

Ireland’s originally proposed “Hate Speech” bill expanded the regulation of hate crimes nationwide to protect devotees of the Cult of Wokeness. In addition to the already questionable current laws, “incitement to violence or hatred on account of certain defined protected characteristics” would have been introduced as an offense, as well as the stunningly Orwellian “preparing or possessing material likely to incite violence or hatred on account of protected characteristics.” The latter of those means not only that broadcasting something that could be considered “homophobic” would be illegal, and even saying something of that ilk in conversation. But possessing it is now illegal too.

Got an edgy meme on your phone? Jail. Wrote something verboten down somewhere? Jail. What about that Bible you have, is Romans 1 in there? Hmmm.

Give Us Your PIN Code or Go to Jail for a Year

And jail is not some exaggeration for dramatic effect. You could get two years just for possessing such materials. Even longer for broadcasting them. And failing to give the police your password when asked so they can search your devices for your blasphemy will land you twelve months in prison. (Briton Tommy Robinson is currently serving time for this last “crime.”)

The “protected characteristics” listed in the bill of course include sexual orientation, as well as race, color, gender, descent, etc. — basically, anybody on the “oppressed” side of the intersectionality spider diagram. Hurty words against them may not be spoken. (Call the parish priest whatever you like, though.)

Thankfully, the original bill had to be amended before it passed, meaning some of the most egregious elements were removed. It’s still the goal, obviously; this was just a minor hiccup. Justice Minister Helen McEntee has openly stated as much, and has significant backing to try to pass it again soon. But the final bill that passed, the Criminal Justice (Hate Offenses) Act 2024, still punishes vast swathes of speech and enforces a rigid orthodoxy.

The New, Dark Catechism of Sodom

For starters, the law functionally recognizes infinite “genders,” defining the word as “the gender which a person expresses as the person’s preferred gender or with which the person identifies, and includes transgender and a gender other than those of male and female.” So … whatever you feel like on the day. One Irish senator, Sharon Keogan, spent almost 25 minutes reading out the full list of potential genders the bill covers in the Irish parliament. But the bill passed, and women — the kind with wombs — are no longer a distinct legal category from men, and separate spaces for them such as changing rooms and bathrooms are under threat.

There’s much more to add. Irish citizens, who have not voted for the mass immigration that has flooded their nation with the world’s criminal gangs, are now less worthy in the eyes of the law than someone from elsewhere. How? Because the bill considers “hatred”— something never defined, by the way — towards a protected person to be an aggravating factor in sentencing. This means that all crimes committed against foreigners (not to mention any bloke who thinks he’s an elegant Dutch woman that day) perceived to involve “hate” will get more punishment than crimes committed against the native population. And thus the Irish government turned its own people into second-class citizens.

Ireland is no less religious than it was during the Pope’s visit in 1979. The government is arguably even more religious than it was back then. It has merely swapped out the God of Heaven for a demon of hell, and the great tyrant of “Tolerance” does not like to be questioned. Do so, and face his wrath.

As a Northern Irishman, Jamie Bambrick has been in pastoral ministry for over a decade and currently serves as an associate pastor in Hope Church Craigavon. He is also a video creator, having amassed over a million views on YouTube and four million on X in less than 18 months. His niche interests include Irish church history and most any sport.