Catholic and Protestant pastors are still reacting with horror to Ireland's recent vote in favor of same sex marriage.
Fr. George W. Rutler of the Church of Saint Michael on West 34 Street in Manhattan released a strongly worded letter at the weekend claiming that Irish voters have effectively defied their patron St. Patrick and welcomed druidism back to Ireland.
“The landslide vote in Eire for legalizing the fictitious form of marriage between persons of the same sex, in contradiction of all laws natural and divine, unearths the pulsating Druidism that Saint Patrick and his fellow saints defied,” Rutler wrote in exasperation.
The fault for the landslide Yes vote in favor of same sex marriage in Ireland belongs to the young and left wingers Rutler says: “While most of Europe suffers from the deadly sin of indifference, or sloth, Ireland is in adolescent rebellion, virulent and irrational. This was exploited by political interests hostile to Christian civilization, and their propaganda combined legitimate accusations against ecclesial failings with a left-wing, secularist agenda.”
The two and a half decade long campaign in favor of LGBT inclusion in New York's St. Patrick's Day parade is another example of what can happen when tolerance and equality becomes the goal, he warns: “Look at the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade in New York City to see what happens when the honor of a saint is dishonored, and when ambassadors for Christ become nothing more than goodwill ambassadors. ”
Like conservative firebrand Cardinal Raymond Burke earlier this week, Rutler believes the Irish have defied God. “The Irish vote is worse than perverse: it is blasphemous,” he writes. “All the great saints of once-verdant Ireland would have used stronger language.”
Meanwhile Free Presbyterian Northern Irish pastor Reverend Ian Brown has claimed that god is using the terror group ISIS and gay rights campaigners to punish Europe.
A cabal of baleful forces including liberals, gays and even President Barack Obama are responsible for the growing sense of crisis that many conservative Christians are experiencing after the Yes vote in the Republic, Brown said.
“That’s why the dark specter of ISIS is closing in on us today from the east and homosexuality closing in from the west, including ourselves as part of the west,” he told his congregation.
“In the west, do you know what army is on the march? It’s the sodomites. I’m not saying that they all view themselves as blitzkrieg foot soldiers but I’ll tell you what, the liberal elite are only too happy to use them, fund their causes, push their rights, promote their aims and today in our Western world they are sweeping through the states of America compelling the states to capitulate and legislate in favor of same-sex marriage.
“And one state is falling like the next like a row of dominoes going down and they’re being supported right up to the highest powers by Barack Obama; he’s complicit, like many others are in all of this.”
Independent Methodist Minister, Rev Jonathan Campbell echoed Brown's displeasure, saying that he expects a campaign for same-sex marriage will be launched in Northern Ireland in the wake of the landslide referendum result in the Republic, adding that he believed a “sinister agenda is at work.”
“And the darkness is everywhere,” the Newbuildings pastor told his congregation. “It just seems that the enemy has come in like a flood as the prophet Isaiah spoke about – ‘the enemy has come in like a flood’ – but thank God the spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him.”
Loyalist activist Jamie Bryson added his own political voice to the chorus of religious disapproval, suggesting that the goal of LGBT equality is communism.
“Equality is a left wing phenomenon,” Bryson wrote. “It is a rampaging lion with no principles at its core because by its very nature it is the doctrine of eroding principles and morals, of breaking down society’s moral fibre. It has no base point from which to work – essentially it is a doctrine built on rapidly shifting moral sand. It is Godless communism by the back door.”
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