Pray for Ireland as they vote on abortion Friday.

Image result for immaculate conception shrine in dc ireland

(Mary, Queen of Ireland at the National Shrine of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. I remember the peace I would feel as I would sit in here and pray, with little baby Clare growing in my womb, while I was a doctoral student at CUA.)

I have a lot of items to share with you this month, and a big prayer request for Ireland.

May is the Month of Mary, so: Marian consecration! This is a fantastic way to live out your baptismal promises in the hands of Our Lady. This May 13th was my 24th anniversary of my own consecration. May is also a great time to build a practice of praying the family Rosary!
Pentecost and the Domestic Church! My radio co-host, Megan, and I had the opportunity to interview Kendra Tierney of CatholicAllYear.com. She shared great domestic church ideas around family prayer, celebrating baptism anniversaries, and loving your kids, and I can’t wait for that show to air this fall. I checked her blog this morning, and her husband is fighting cancer. Prayers for them!
Fr. Wagner’s beautiful funeral. Sniff! Listen to the heartachingly beautiful Polish hymn on this video.) (My uncle, Fr. Hans Olson, is in the line of priests at :07 gesticulating with his hands and joshing around Fr. Chris Hoiland. Typical! Even at a funeral! But isn’t it stirring how all the priests, bishops, and faithful honor this holy man?)
Also: Mother’s Day! A royal wedding on my 18th wedding anniversary! A brand new feast day of Mary, Mother of the Church! May is an awesome month full of great opportunities to reflect on marriage, build the domestic church, appreciate moms and women, and (here in the PNW) finally enjoy some glorious weather, praise God.

I’ve been hustling to finish the index and proofreading of A Catechism of Family Life, meet column deadlines, and finish correcting the papers for my deacon aspirant students from my Intro to Morality class (what an inspiring group of men and their wives, wow). I may have also spent a little time online looking at royal wedding fashions. (I’m only human!)

But this is the issue tugging at my heart right now that motivated me to write to you today:

IRELAND.

Ireland votes tomorrow, Friday, May 25th, on whether to repeal their 8th Amendment, which guarantees the right to life and dignity of all unborn Irish by protecting them from abortion. Please, please, please join me in praying that, against all odds and polls, Ireland will Vote No and keep their legal protection for the unborn in place.

Last week, my six-year-old, Beata, had her school’s spring concert. The songs were based on the “Frog and Toad” books, and it was just precious. Beata was so proud and excited for the big day. Her gifted and joyful music teacher handled the two hundred first- and second-graders on the stage with skill and contagious enthusiasm. My mom came down from Seattle to join us for the concert, and for ice cream at Main Street’s Dairy Freeze afterwards. We gave Beata a rose when she finished. She was just beaming.
It was a sweet and happy evening. However, I was also sad and haunted, though I didn’t say anything at the time. The thought that struck me that evening was, “There should have been three hundred children on that stage.” One third of Beata’s classmates are missing, killed in the womb through abortion.

Ireland has been targeted in a years-long strategic plan by international social-engineering groups to turn around its abortion laws because of its symbolic value as a Catholic country. I hope and pray that the women and men of Ireland stand strong for life on Friday, that they may not lose one third of their children, as we have.

Join me in praying a rosary, an Our Father, a Hail Mary, or the Breastplate of St. Patrick for Ireland today. Consider making a sacrifice–giving up a treat or an indulgence to give them the spiritual strength they need. Pray that the prolife voters will turn out in droves to the polls. Pray that the country can remain an example of an industrialized, Western nation that can effectively protect women and children from legalized violence in the womb.

I submitted a Letter to the Editor of the Irish Times to refute a religion editor’s erroneous representation of the history of Catholic moral theology on this issue–it didn’t get published, but you can see it on my website.

You can get prolife updates from Students for Life of America, a group I follow and support financially. I like to support them because, when I started the prolife student group at Gonzaga in 1995, I remember the battles we faced. Prolife students on today’s campuses face many more challenges that we did back then. Students for Life is on the ground in Ireland right now helping with this historic moment.

Thank you so much for any little–or big!–prayer you can add to the cause today and tomorrow. Pray that, even if Ireland votes Yes, the damage will be mitigated.

St. Patrick, pray for us!
St. John Paul II, pray for us!
All you holy Irish men and women saints, pray for us!

Mary, Queen of Ireland, pray for us!