Map showing hundreds of locations in Ireland where the Rosary was prayed on Sunday

In what is being hailed as one of the largest prayer initiatives in Ireland in 40 years, tens of thousands of Catholics flocked to over 270 locations along the coast of Ireland on Sunday to pray the Rosary in order to prevent the legalization of abortion and to restore the faith to what was once the most Catholic nation on earth.

According to George J. Galloway, writing for Catholic World Report, the Feast of Christ the King was the day chosen to pray for the preservation of the faith and for the defense of life against a planned 2018 referendum which will decide if the country’s Eighth Amendment, which gives an unborn child a right to life equal to that of its mother and thus outlaws abortion, should be repealed.

Organizers originally hoped to establish 53 locations of prayer around the coast but quickly amassed an army of prayer warriors in more than 270 cities, towns and villages.

“And so they came,” Galloway writes. “Despite the cold and damp and drops of patchy drizzle, the faithful came out to the coasts of the Irish Island. I mean all of it. They braved the stinging winds off the North Atlantic Ocean in tiny villages like Clonbara, Falcarragh, in Donegal. Standing or kneeling on beaches and strands they stubbornly faced Dingle Bay, the Celtic Sea, St. George’s Channel, the North Channel, and the Irish Sea. Determined faces all with one purpose. To stem the tide of abortion in what used to be the most Catholic country in the world.”

According to the organizers, they came “asking God for the miracle of the protection of Life and the preservation of Faith” on a day that was very deliberately chosen.

“Ireland was the first country in the world to be consecrated to Christ the King,” the organizers explain. “This solemn consecration was declared in the 1940’s. The feast is extremely important. Acknowledging Christ as King has relevance for the spiritual, social, cultural, legal and political life of Ireland.”

Many believe prayer is the only way to save the country from the encroachment of the godless secularism being pushed upon the populace by the media.

The result has left the faith plummeting to new lows. This has caused a new hunger among the population similar to that of the Great Hunger caused by the potato famine of 1945-49, only this time it’s spiritual.

“Yes, there is another kind of famine plaguing Ireland today. It is one wrought by the sins of man and not the soil. Like almost all western countries, Ireland has bought into a materialistic, self-absorbed, hedonistic form of secularism. Where the highest good in human existence is characterized and fantasized by a corrupted form of self-realization. Instead of exporting or giving and sanctifying and sacrificing to the world her innate spirituality, Ireland is now importing the modern creed of ‘what’s in it for me?’” Galloway writes.

But the faithful are not about to lose heart and are more than ready to pick up their “weapons” and fight back.

“We don’t have the media, but … We have guardian angels. We have Our Lady. We have our prayers,” said Kathy Sinnott, one of the organizers of the Rosary on the Coast who is also EWTN’s Celtic Connections radio show host.

“Long before the media was invented, when you wanted something, you prayed. We’re going over [the media’s] heads. We’re going with our mother, our Queen, the Immaculate Heart of Mary and she’s taking us to Jesus Christ the King. And we’re going to ask for those miracles and we’re going to trust that we’re being heard.”

As a woman named Normal Cahill Morrison commented on the campaign’s Facebook page, “this is the sword given to us … we must use it!”

In their book, The Rosary: Your Weapon for Spiritual Warfare, Johnnette Benkovic and Thomas K. Sullivan remind us of a little-known passage from the works of Father Emil Neubert, a leading Mariologist of the twentieth century in which he tells us how to understand Christ’s admonition that “without me you can do nothing”.

“To the feeling of your powerlessness without Christ you must join the conviction of your omnipotence with Christ.”

In other words, when we are feeling overwhelmed by the strength and cunning of our enemy, we must remind ourselves of the far greater power that is within us.

“The faithful of Poland recognize this,” Galloway writes. “Is this Ireland’s last chance at redemption? Is it ours in America?”

He adds: “Perhaps it’s time to think about our own rosary on the coasts of America. Only, instead of facing the sea we should turn around and look inward at ourselves and our families and our homes. Let’s replicate what the Poles and the Irish have done. Let’s bend a knee to Christ the King.”

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