Christianity

Stalinism, religion, and the workers' fight

The sight of these two reactionary forces huddled in a tete-a-tete - officially called the Dialogue between Marxism (!) and Christianity - is startling enough to provoke thought.

The Catholic leftist who fired anti-abortion protest

Above: John Cavanaugh-O'Keefe One aspect of the American anti-abortion movement that is seldom remarked upon is how its initial leaders came not from the evangelical right, but rather from the Catholic left. This is not to say that Catholic leftists pioneered American anti-abortionist politics in general. Rather, left-wing Catholic radicals in the 1970s spearheaded anti-abortionism as a modern, confrontational, street-level protest movement characterised by direct action. The key figure here is John O’Keefe. Born in 1950 to an Irish-American family who lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland, O’Keefe’s...

Structural problems and child abuse

Matthew Thompson writes ( Solidarity 611 ) that my article criticises the “report into clerical abuse in France” on the grounds that it doesn’t call for the “far-reaching reforms demanded by some campaigners such as the ordination of women as priests or the abolition of clerical celibacy” That was not necessarily the intention of what was quite a flat and neutral factual account. It merely noted that “some campaigners” had demanded measures such as “the ordination of women as priests or the abolition of clerical celibacy” and that these recommendations were not included in the final report. It...

What to do on clerical abuse

I was a bit surprised to see Micheál MacEoin (“New evidence on Catholic Church and child abuse”, Solidarity 610 ) criticise the report into clerical abuse in France on the grounds that it doesn’t call for the “far-reaching reforms demanded by some campaigners such as the ordination of women as priests or the abolition of clerical celibacy”. How would that stop paedophiles being ordained as priests and gaining access to children, any more than it has in religious groups which have done those things, like the Church of England, or in other areas where widespread abuse has taken place over...

New evidence on Catholic Church and child abuse

A new report has exposed the scale of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in France. Written by an independent commission led by a former judge, the report estimated that at least 3,000 priests (around 3% of the country’s total) had abused minors, with around 216,000 children thought to have been victimised. France itself has been reckoning with the issue of abuse in the Catholic Church for over twenty years, since Bishop Pierre Pican of Bayeux was convicted in a civil court of covering up for an abusive. Since then there has been a slow build-up of pressure as new cases came to light, abuse...

Catholicism and women's rights

During the current Labour leadership election, Rebecca Long-Bailey (RLB) admitted to holding religious objections to abortion rights based on her Catholicism. Whilst this has not seemed to affect her voting record on this issue, it is concerning that many on the left were so quick to jump to the defence of RLB and Catholicism in general, with some even painting those that voiced concern about the influence of Catholic belief in politics as anti-Irish. Anti-Catholic sentiment in the UK remains a live issue in the North of Ireland as well as in parts of Scotland, and this is certainly rooted, in...

As early as possible, as late as necessary

Our reproductive rights include the right to dignity, information, and bodily autonomy and integrity. In a world where so much of the framework of sexism has been control of women’s sexuality, body, and reproduction, our right to make autonomous decisions about our own body and reproduction is central to our right to physical and psychological integrity. We know that under capitalism there is a limit to the choice and control we have over reproduction, but we push for the greatest possible bodily autonomy. In some places we have seen steps forward in reproductive freedom, most recently the...

The Third Irish Revolution?

Have you heard the ultimate “Irish” joke? In a referendum on a united Ireland the Protestant Unionists of north-east Ulster campaign for “no” on the grounds that the South is too liberal. The people no longer fear God, maybe scarcely believe in God, and refuse to listen to their spiritual advisers. The two-to-one vote on 25 May to rip up the 8th amendment to the Irish constitution — entrenched there by a referendum in 1983 — was a great empowering and liberating event for the women of Ireland, Mná na hÉireann. Legislation to allow abortion will soon follow. The yes vote in the referendum on...

TV fictions and AWL reality

An open letter to Ashok Kumar It’s been said before, and it will bear saying again. If everything published by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty in the last five decades were to disappear, and if future historians of socialism had to rely on what our political opponents said about us, then the historians would find it impossible to make political sense of the story. On the one hand we are people who do, and have always done, everything we can to help workers in their struggle against employers and governments. We throw everything we have into that. We preach working-class revolutionary...

Notes on early Irish history

Ireland has a singular history. Unlike England, it was never part of the Roman Empire. There was trade with the Roman Empire most importantly with Roman England, and Ireland was culturally influenced by the Roman Empire. For instance, a Roman script replaced the primitive and clumsy Ogham script. In the period of the final decline of Rome, the Irish joined the other barbarians in raiding Roman and immediately post-Roman England for loot, including slaves. Among those slaves was, famously, the future Saint Patrick. Legend has it that Irish raiders penetrated east as far as what is now...

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