Abortion in Ireland and the Number of the Beast

I know, it's just coincidence.  Of course our silly superstitious forebears would have thought it was significant that the number of abortions in Ireland the first year after abortion was legalized was 6,666.  Us fancy and sophisticated science era types know it's just a cosmic coincidence.  We live in a material universe that obeys the laws of nature, and generally those strange things that old timers would have applied religious significance to we know, for a fact, are just coincidence. 

Of course the real story is that Ireland is seeing what almost always happens.  Legalize abortion, and you get waves of abortions.  True, in America, abortion was already picking up steam by the time of Roe v. Wade.  Despite only a handful of states having legal abortion, the rates were increasing at an alarming rate beginning in the 1950s.  By the end of the 1960s we were approaching the close to one million human lives aborted every year that has marked the body count ever since Roe. 

For reasons I don't know, the Church has now chosen to insist this is all due to socioeconomic problems and injustices, perhaps a dose of sexism and, when needed, a pinch of racism and good od-fashioned misogyny.  But the fact remains, we see happen in Ireland what always happens, and that is the link between the collapse of a Christian culture with its Christian virtues regarding human life and sexuality, and the skyrocketing rate of abortions and the logical consequences thereof. 

I realize this is touchy ground, and the Church as a whole (not just Pope Francis) prefers to focus on the 'sin' when it comes to things like abortion, rather than the sinner.  The latter it leaves for things like racism, antisemitism, corporate greed, arms manufacturers, and others who oppose things like open immigration or government run healthcare systems.

Nonetheless, since there is nothing in Catholic theology that suggests when we sin certain sins, we can enter the confessional with variations on 'bless me Father, for those reprehensible reprobates made me sin', perhaps it's time to be a little more consistent in how we address the issue of sin, and the awful nature of the culture of unimaginable death and killing for the sake of our libidos (since, in the end, that's what this is about) we have constructed.  Just saying.