The Sweetest Gift

Given all the recent planks in the eye of Mother Church concerning the welfare of children in Ireland, one might imagine that a period of reflective silence and penitence on the part of local divines would not go amiss. Such is not the view of the bishops, who have intervened to pluck the mote of women's rights to autonomy and health from the eye of a straying State. Irish Catholics are encouraged to oppose the repeal of the eighth amendment to the Irish constitution, which gives equal status to the rights of women and the rights of blastocysts and uterine worms; abortion is permitted only when the mother's life is at risk, and doubtless even this reeks of secular liberalism in more than a few Mariolatrous nostrils. Nevertheless, there are grounds for reassurance in the bishops' invocation of "equality, fairness and compassion for all" while promoting poverty and pain in the name of an all-male hierarchy ruled from Mussolini's pet theocratic city-state: whatever else she may be lacking, Mother Church still has her sense of humour.