“Ní múchfar an tine seo, a lasadh ar an cnoc seo, go brách….”
The Catholic Church in Ireland may be bruised, but it is not broken. Despite scandal, secularisation, and dwindling vocations, it often remains a vital force in Irish civic life, especially in the hearts of older generations and the lifeblood of parish communities nationwide.
Progressive strategists understand this. That’s why open-border advocates increasingly cloak their agenda in the language of Catholic compassion. FF and FG also draw heavily on parish structures and social Catholic goodwill to underwrite policies that, in reality, run counter to the long-term good of the Irish nation.
Still reeling from internal rot – including the quiet legacy of a “gay mafia” within the Church – Catholic institutions today often operate like hostages, afraid to speak plainly. The result is a faith gently hijacked, steered toward liberal goals under a pious disguise.
One striking example came late last year, when the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference released a pastoral letter titled “One Hundred Thousand Welcomes.” Ostensibly a response to rising concern about migration, the letter leaned heavily into secular talking points: Ireland’s emigrant past, the need for integration, and the moral imperative to welcome all newcomers.
(The past few weeks will have seen many sermons delivered in parishes throughout the country making similar arguments based on the example of the Good Samaritan.)
While well-meaning, the document lacked spiritual depth and theological clarity. It combined Gospel universalism with liberal cosmopolitanism in a way that blurred rather than enlightened.
The core message was summed up in the following line:
“Regardless of what the loud voices in protest or on social media might pronounce, we recognise the Image of God in every migrant. Even if a crowd is shouting racist chants, we stand for the truth that God’s love is not restricted to the holders of any particular passports—we are all equal in his eyes.”
No Catholic should disagree with the sacred worth of every human being. But Catholics are not obliged to support policies that overwhelm communities, bypass democratic consent, or destabilise the national home.
Indeed, social Catholics – especially those over 50 who practise the faith beyond a census tick-box – hold the balance of power in this debate. These are people who can be reached with the right arguments, made in the right spirit. And it is precisely to them that the bishops’ letter appears designed to forestall.
Here, then, is why Irish Catholics can, and must, oppose the current regime of mass migration, in fidelity to both faith and reason.
Universality Is Not Globalism
Catholicism affirms the unity of mankind through our shared creation and redemption. But it does not require erasing national identity or sovereignty. From the beginning, the Church has worked through nations and cultures, not against them. St Patrick at Tara baptised a people, not a borderless mass.
The liberal globalist view – where borders are seen as bigotry and migration as destiny – is not Catholic. It reduces the human person to an economic unit, severed from land, history, and community.
To be Catholic is to be relational – to God, to family, and to one’s place. Love of neighbour begins with those nearest to you. To be an Irish Catholic is to take that love even further, to a living, breathing homeland alive with a positive fusion of Gaelic ancestry and Catholic truth.
All of this includes your parish, your town, and your country. Catholic tradition has always recognised this natural order of obligations.
Even tribal nationalism, where it does not abandon Christian charity or human dignity, can be defended under Catholic moral teaching. It is not un-Christian to love one’s people. To deny this is to exile generations of Irish saints and patriots from the moral order.
Subsidiarity Over Supranationalism
Catholic social teaching is clear: problems should be addressed at the lowest appropriate level. That means families before states, parishes before national bureaucracies. But Ireland’s migration system today is driven by market forces, asylum fraud, and EU technocracy, with little or no say from the Irish people.
The communities of East Wall, Newtownmountkennedy, and others are right to protest. Their moral instincts are sound. No bishop, priest, or politician should ask them to remain silent while their local areas are transformed without consent.
Outsourcing charity to NGOs or state systems is not Christian solidarity. It feeds a secular order that displaces faith, family, and cohesion. The IPAS system creates social dislocation, not renewal.
Real solidarity arises from shared experience, common values, and trust. None of these can be mass-produced by demographic change or top-down policies.
“They’re Filling the Churches” Isn’t the Whole Story
Yes, migrants often bring a lively faith. Yes, some parishes have been sustained by Nigerian or Filipino priests. But this is a short-term plan, not a long-term solution.
Second-generation migrants are already drifting into secularism like their Irish peers. And there is a deeper cost: alienation of native Catholics who feel that the Church is no longer theirs – that it serves the state’s diversity agenda, not the people of God.
Instrumentalising migration to prop up the Church is both theologically dangerous and socially irresponsible. It treats people not as ends in themselves, but as tools to mask a deeper decline.
What’s needed is not imported piety, but revived Irish faith, rooted in families, culture, and tradition. This has always been how Catholicism renews itself, not by viewing man as a replaceable and fungible unit on the export/import market.
Fides, Patria, Libertas
Ireland is not a post-national playground. It is a real place, with a memory, a soul, and a divine calling. When the Church lost her voice, the state lost its spine.
The experiment in mass migration has failed wherever it has been tried. It fragments societies, erodes trust, and alienates citizens. And in Ireland, it has not led to any confessional revival worth speaking of. The common good is not a global abstraction, but a concrete harmony
The Catholic Church has a duty not to flatter secular ideologies, but to speak truth in season and out of season. That includes the truth that nations have the right, and sometimes the obligation, to enforce their borders, deport where necessary, and defend the common good.
From Tara to Clonmacnoise, from the Penal Laws to the Proclamation, Irish nationhood and Catholic identity have walked side by side. The decay of one often signals the decay of the other.
To recover either, we must start telling the truth. That mass migration is not a moral mandate. That demographic upheaval is not Gospel charity. And that sometimes, love means saying: this is our home and it must remain so.