A Way With Words

You'd think that a man who made a living by giving sermons on a weekly basis would have a way with words.

Cardinal Sean Brady does have a certain gift, but it's not the sort of thing that would help fill the pews in the largely empty churches of Ireland.

The government is scheduled to finally tackle the abortion issue, a topic that has been forced on those who were long able to ignore it. When the whole world is looking at you after a woman dies due to complications of a miscarriage, a death that could easily have been avoided with an abortion, you tend to take some action and get out from under the heavy scrutiny.

The matter is one of abortion to save the mother's life. Doctors shouldn't have to wonder if they'll be arrested for performing the medical procedure when it's their opinion that it's necessary.

Yet there is the Cardinal in the pulpit, urging Irish Catholics to march against abortion.

A woman just died when an abortion would have saved her life, yet the prelate is concerned that elected representatives might not craft laws that would provide "...the best possible care and protection to a woman struggling to cope with an unwanted pregnancy or by the deliberate destruction of another human life."

You're thinking that not providing the abortion was a deliberate destruction of Savita Halappaavar's life, but the Church hierarchy doesn't seem to consider a woman's life as having all that much importance in the greater scheme of things.

Better to let a hundred women die than to risk a non-therapeutic abortion taking place on Irish soil. After all, it's only the doctor's word that the woman needed one. What if he's skirting the law, making a claim that isn't true? 

A woman just died for no other reason than the lack of concern for the pregnant woman. Not much of a surprise, if you look back a few years to the horrors of the Magdalene laundries.

Old attitudes and misogynistic practices are not easily erased by those who would fight to keep them firmly in place.

Maybe it's not a way with words, but a dismal lack of musical talent. The Cardinal is sadly tone deaf.