Senator Rónán Mullen
It’s a big year, electorally speaking. We’ve already had two referendums that proved revealing. We’ll have the local and European elections on June 7. And Taoiseach Simon Harris may yet go to the country this October – if this Government’s last budget is, as expected, of the giveaway variety, then Harris and Micheal Martin may see a post-budget election as the best chance of a rather stale act avoiding a drubbing and maybe even getting back into power.
One way or another, now is the time for you, the voter, to prepare your shopping list for the people who want to become your Councillor, MEP or TD.
Banish all negative thinking that suggests it doesn’t matter what you say to politicians on the doorstep, that they’ll just tell you what you want to hear and forget about it once they’ve got your vote.
Promises
Yes, some politicians make promises they never mean to keep. But the politician on your doorstep is your chance to let the world know what you are thinking. And not just that. The conversations you have with people you know will, in turn, influence what they say to the canvassers who come calling.
The future belongs to those who don’t succumb to disappointment or frustration, who never give up, who keep themselves abreast of all possibilities, and who waste no opportunity to influence the culture around them.
As Christians, we are called to work for God’s kingdom in this world and the next. “Thy will be done.” This does not mean that we work for a theocracy, where our religious leaders govern society, or for an integralist situation where we try to enforce every aspect of the Church’s social teaching through law, heedless of the views of any minority.
I haven’t witnessed anyone pushing that theocratic agenda in my lifetime. But I see the opposite: Christians who succumb to a kind of fatalism that thinks the devil has all the best tunes here below, and so we should batten down the hatches and leave it to God to sort everything out in the end.
It may be the Devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody”
We’ve been helped into this thinking by those on the hard left and ultra-libertarian right who fight like tigers for their agenda. Maybe it’s because they think this world is all there is. (Though some, I only say some, may be powered from below also.)
Should any of these activists accuse you of trying to ‘impose your religion’, you might ask, “Whose religion are you trying to impose?” Because as Bob Dylan tells us, “it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody”.
Truthfully
Serving the Lord in politics, whether as a voter or as a politician is not about enforcing your will and desires on all comers. It’s about truthfully working for the common good. Since every human being has infinite dignity as a child of God, our task is to build a civilisation of love, a culture of life where we each will the good of the other.
There isn’t room to write the manifesto here, but, for now, here are three things we should be saying to our politicians in the coming weeks:
Abortion: It has to be always top of our list, no matter how much RTE, the Government or the world tries to normalise it, 10,000 vulnerable innocent human beings are being deliberately killed in our country each year.
Precautionary pain relief for late-term abortions is the least we should expect in a country that pretends to be civilised, not savage”
We’ve had nothing like this since the Famine. If people matter the way politicians always say they matter, then this can only be described as a holocaust. In the short term, there is no chance of repealing our abortion law.
But at a minimum every canvasser should be asked whether they would support a State policy of reducing the number of abortions, offering ultrasound in all cases where abortion is requested and practically support and encourage every woman to keep her baby.
Also, precautionary pain relief for late-term abortions is the least we should expect in a country that pretends to be civilised, not savage.
Education
Education: The reason why secularists want the Church to have no involvement in our education system is obvious. Education influences how people think. Secular activists believe that education should be in the hands of the State because, through NGOs and State appointments, they can access the curriculum and mould the next generation according to their values.
Transgender ideology is an obvious example. The Cass Report in Britain has now highlighted what many doctors and other experts have been warning about all along: the danger of pushing puberty blockers at gender-confused children.
Who is going to hold our Government to account over this?”
But our Department of Education has been enabling organisations like TENI (Transgender Equality Network of Ireland) and BelongTo to push social transitioning in schools. Who is going to hold our Government to account over this? This election gives parents a chance to do just that and push back against excessive State control of our Education system.
Asylum and migration policy: People are angry and scared about what the Government is doing. They worry that it is making commitments that the social fabric and economy cannot sustain. Hostility to asylum seekers or economic/poverty migrants is always wrong.
But it is also wrong to allow entry without documentation, to accept within the asylum process those who are not genuine refugees, to allow the exploitation of our system by criminal traffickers, and to create social ghettos around the country that undermine the local economy.
If some people with relatively more resources can reach our shores while people more deserving of protection languish abroad, that is injustice. Christians should insist on a sustainable and humane migration policy, showing firm resistance to unworkable or dishonest solutions.
The EU Migration Pact requires a national conversation before any further sovereignty is signed away. On this last point, if you are concerned about the EU Pact, now is the time to lobby your politicians because the Government wants to get this through, with minimum debate it seems, before the June elections.
What to say when the visitors come knocking
Senator Rónán Mullen
It’s a big year, electorally speaking. We’ve already had two referendums that proved revealing. We’ll have the local and European elections on June 7. And Taoiseach Simon Harris may yet go to the country this October – if this Government’s last budget is, as expected, of the giveaway variety, then Harris and Micheal Martin may see a post-budget election as the best chance of a rather stale act avoiding a drubbing and maybe even getting back into power.
One way or another, now is the time for you, the voter, to prepare your shopping list for the people who want to become your Councillor, MEP or TD.
Banish all negative thinking that suggests it doesn’t matter what you say to politicians on the doorstep, that they’ll just tell you what you want to hear and forget about it once they’ve got your vote.
Promises
Yes, some politicians make promises they never mean to keep. But the politician on your doorstep is your chance to let the world know what you are thinking. And not just that. The conversations you have with people you know will, in turn, influence what they say to the canvassers who come calling.
The future belongs to those who don’t succumb to disappointment or frustration, who never give up, who keep themselves abreast of all possibilities, and who waste no opportunity to influence the culture around them.
As Christians, we are called to work for God’s kingdom in this world and the next. “Thy will be done.” This does not mean that we work for a theocracy, where our religious leaders govern society, or for an integralist situation where we try to enforce every aspect of the Church’s social teaching through law, heedless of the views of any minority.
I haven’t witnessed anyone pushing that theocratic agenda in my lifetime. But I see the opposite: Christians who succumb to a kind of fatalism that thinks the devil has all the best tunes here below, and so we should batten down the hatches and leave it to God to sort everything out in the end.
We’ve been helped into this thinking by those on the hard left and ultra-libertarian right who fight like tigers for their agenda. Maybe it’s because they think this world is all there is. (Though some, I only say some, may be powered from below also.)
Should any of these activists accuse you of trying to ‘impose your religion’, you might ask, “Whose religion are you trying to impose?” Because as Bob Dylan tells us, “it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody”.
Truthfully
Serving the Lord in politics, whether as a voter or as a politician is not about enforcing your will and desires on all comers. It’s about truthfully working for the common good. Since every human being has infinite dignity as a child of God, our task is to build a civilisation of love, a culture of life where we each will the good of the other.
There isn’t room to write the manifesto here, but, for now, here are three things we should be saying to our politicians in the coming weeks:
Abortion: It has to be always top of our list, no matter how much RTE, the Government or the world tries to normalise it, 10,000 vulnerable innocent human beings are being deliberately killed in our country each year.
We’ve had nothing like this since the Famine. If people matter the way politicians always say they matter, then this can only be described as a holocaust. In the short term, there is no chance of repealing our abortion law.
But at a minimum every canvasser should be asked whether they would support a State policy of reducing the number of abortions, offering ultrasound in all cases where abortion is requested and practically support and encourage every woman to keep her baby.
Also, precautionary pain relief for late-term abortions is the least we should expect in a country that pretends to be civilised, not savage.
Education
Education: The reason why secularists want the Church to have no involvement in our education system is obvious. Education influences how people think. Secular activists believe that education should be in the hands of the State because, through NGOs and State appointments, they can access the curriculum and mould the next generation according to their values.
Transgender ideology is an obvious example. The Cass Report in Britain has now highlighted what many doctors and other experts have been warning about all along: the danger of pushing puberty blockers at gender-confused children.
But our Department of Education has been enabling organisations like TENI (Transgender Equality Network of Ireland) and BelongTo to push social transitioning in schools. Who is going to hold our Government to account over this? This election gives parents a chance to do just that and push back against excessive State control of our Education system.
Asylum and migration policy: People are angry and scared about what the Government is doing. They worry that it is making commitments that the social fabric and economy cannot sustain. Hostility to asylum seekers or economic/poverty migrants is always wrong.
But it is also wrong to allow entry without documentation, to accept within the asylum process those who are not genuine refugees, to allow the exploitation of our system by criminal traffickers, and to create social ghettos around the country that undermine the local economy.
If some people with relatively more resources can reach our shores while people more deserving of protection languish abroad, that is injustice. Christians should insist on a sustainable and humane migration policy, showing firm resistance to unworkable or dishonest solutions.
The EU Migration Pact requires a national conversation before any further sovereignty is signed away. On this last point, if you are concerned about the EU Pact, now is the time to lobby your politicians because the Government wants to get this through, with minimum debate it seems, before the June elections.
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