From the country where colleens have to fight to escape the misogynistic blarney of Catholic Church patriarchs, a blog pontificates on the true™ meaning of the Mes Aïeux song ‘Dégénération’.

The song was immensly popular in Canada, no doubt due to the heartfelt emotions … But now the group are attacking Lifesite for an article it printed wherein it commented on the lyrics and saw them in a pro life manner. …The group say that Lifesite “hijacked” their song to use for the pro life cause, more true is the fact that this group, who have made it clear now that they are in fact pro abortion, hijacked the pro life and Catholic culture to sell their records.

To the pious jackass who wrote that, as well as other rabid ruminations in the ‘Hidden Ireland’ blog: Mes Aïeux is not a rock band. But if you’d like to use rock lyrics for your battle call to enforce compulsory pregnancy, why not these words:

Under my thumb /The squirmin’ dog who’s just had her day /Under my thumb /A girl who has just changed her ways /It’s down to me, yes it is /The way she does just what she’s told /Down to me, the change has come /She’s under my thumb /Ah, ah, say it’s alright /Under my thumb …

The bloke who wrote those words has an estate somewhere in Ireland, we’re told.

Mes Aïeux correctly responded to the mis-use of their song by sending the website a letter from their lawyer. That is called setting the record straight. Birth Pangs contacted Mes Aïeux at the email address given in the Lifesite news item. A member of the band replied that they had received dozens of demented and hateful messages from readers of Lifesite, which he dismissed as the expression of religious fanatics.

We might be tempted to dismiss the bigoted and lunatic ravings of the ‘Hidden Ireland’ blog as such, except that the views expressed therein are not unique to this particular abortion-criminalizing religious zealot. Irish Family Planning has a daunting work-load, since resources available to women who do not wish to produce a babe year after year after year in accordance with the dictates of the parish priests and the exhortations of the bishops, are few and far between.

The historical and political record stands in grim reminder of the ever-dominant and patriarchal Catholic Church. Choices for women are severely restricted, and strictly enforced, as this previous Birth Pangs blog entry reported.

Why these harsh restrictions on women’s choices, including the limited availability of birth control? Why the Irish Catholic religious imagery, replete with female symbols of submission, obedience and sanctity? But since we’re on the topic of appropriation for the purpose of creating a successful marketing strategy, it’s important to note that St Brigid has a backstory.

… a number of Saints, who many scholars see as nothing more than Christianizations of mythical figures. Among those thought to derive from pre-Christian figures outside the mediterranean sphere are Saint Brigid, whose crosses are said to protect a house from fire, is thought to derive from Brigid, the celtic goddess of fire … whose main festival was Imbolc, which happened on the same date as the feast day of Saint Brigid, and whose main sanctuary was Kildare where the Saint supposedly founded a monastery…

So, the Catholic Church took a pagan goddess, cleaned her story up to suit their purpose and canonized her! Say … isn’t that called propaganda?

At Birth Pangs, we like to encourage a culture of irreverent and irreligious buffoonery, with a sharp satirical, social and political perspective. It’s only proper that we conclude with an acknowledgement of Sheela na Gig. This mysterious female deity was present in hundreds of icons all over Ireland and some of the isles, before Christian clerics lay their grubby hands on her, ordering their evangelized followers to chisel the likeness of Sheela na Gig off the public buildings where she hovered, a reminder of women’s power over life and death. Some stone carvings survived this desecration and they continued to be a scourge to Church patriarchs. The vandalization and theft of a treasured and archeologically significant Sheela na Gig might have been carried out by the brethren of the ‘Hidden Ireland’ author. Who knows?

More information about the blessings and the sacredness of Sheela na Gig can be found here.