As the country of Ireland prepares for next year’s abortion referendum, the faithful are planning to follow Poland’s lead by staging a massive Rosary rally around the country which will take place this year on November 26.
The Catholic Herald is reporting on the initiative, called “Rosary on the Coast for Life and Faith” which will take place on Sunday, November 26, the feast of Christ the King, at 2:30 p.m. The aim is to encircle Ireland with a human Rosary and have enough rallies to represent the Hail Mary’s in a Rosary located around the coast.
“If we have more, that’s even better,” the organizers say on their Facebook page.
This event is aimed at a referendum scheduled to be held next year to determine whether or not to repeal the Eighth Amendment to the nation’s constitution which guarantees the rights of the unborn child. This makes abortion illegal in the country unless there is a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother.
Last month, the country’s prime minister, Leo Varadkar, who claims to be personally opposed to abortion on demand, announced that a referendum would be held to determine whether or not to repeal the amendment which many people believe is “too restrictive.”
The vote would be held in May or June of 2018, which would be only weeks before Pope Francis plans to visit Dublin in August to attend the World Meeting of Families.
Recent polls show a majority of the people in this largely Catholic nation to be in favor of repeal.
“Our island is in the midst of a catastrophic loss of Catholic faith especially among the young,” the campaign organizers say. “Ireland, North and South, is facing an immediate threat to the protection of our unborn babies.”
Taking their inspiration from the recent “Rosary at the Boarders” campaign in Poland and a similar event in Italy, the aim of the campaign is for the preservation of the faith and the protection of human life in Ireland.
They chose to hold the event on the feast of Christ the King because Ireland was the first country to be consecrated to Christ the King.
“This solemn consecration was declared in the 1930s and to date only three countries share this great blessing,” the organizers report. “The feast is extremely important. Acknowledging Christ as King has relevance for the spiritual, social, cultural, legal and political life of Ireland.”
When it comes to winning the culture war, there’s nothing more powerful we can do than join together in the prayer of the Rosary.
“The great challenges confronting the world at the start of this new Millennium lead us to think that only an intervention from on high, capable of guiding the hearts of those living in situations of conflict and those governing the destinies of nations, can give reason to hope for a brighter future,” St. John Paul II wrote in his apostolic letter on the Rosary.
Commenting on this passage, Johnnette Benkovic and Thomas K. Sullivan write in their book, The Rosary: Your Weapon for Spiritual Warfare, “ . . . [T]he Rosary continues to be a source of spiritual power for us today, just as it was in centuries past.”
For this reason, let us mark our calendars and plan to join our Irish brothers and sisters in praying a Rosary on the great feast of Christ the King for the protection of life and faith in Ireland.
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