What was Irelands lowest moment?

FTA69 wrote: »

This notion that the church only came to prominence in the 1920s is flawed to be honest. The Catholic Church has had a massive influence in Irish society for centuries. "Official" type Catholicism developed in the 1800s with Paul Cullen who transformed the Irish church into a disciplined and over-arching body that was also extremely politically active. The Catholic Church controlled Irish national schools a good 40 years before independence. The Brits realised that alienating the vast majority of the Irish people and allying solely with a small Protestant ascendancy was untenable, as such they sought to ally with the Catholic middle-class, key amongst which was the church who consistantly opposed all revolutionary movements that emerged. It was an official British act which bestowed the education system to the Church.

Ireland wasn't some sort of secular state pre-1922.

Indeed well said and I won't disagree with any of the above but the point I was trying to make was that the nation was to quick to let the catholic church retain their powers for so long.

When people went from embracing Thatcherism (which was bad enough) to the all out insanity of calling for sterilisation on AH.

I don't recognise Ireland anymore


Oh and the uberpats who take any criticism of the aul' sod as a personal insult

Kirby92 wrote: »

One I feel strongly about that hasn't been mentioned....

Staying neutral in WW2.

DeValera offering condolences to the Nazi Germany Ambassador in Dublin after Hitler killed himself.

The way Irish soldiers who joined the British forces were treated after returning from WW2. The Starvation Order meant they were barred from state jobs, refused military pensions and faced with widespread discrimination by the general public.

Ireland was neutral in name only as the nation favoured the allies by sending any pilots who were shot down to the boarder where it was made easy for them to get back into the fight. Any Axis pilots or U- Boat crews who ended up here sat the rest of the war out. As for DeValera he was a small minded man who was never up to the task of leading a nation and it is really only now that people are starting to see that fact.

Now as you are on about the Irish soldiers who fought in WWII you have to remember any Irishman who left the Irish army was technically a deserter no matter how noble the cause was the truth of it is that they did leave Ireland in the emergency and had no right to expect anything when they returned home.

Irishmen who were not serving in the Irish armed forces and went to fight the Nazi's should be praised and it was of course wrong how they were treated when they returned.

Kirby92 wrote: »

Staying neutral in WW2.

Staying neutral in WWII was probably one of the few things Dev got right. Had we decided to join in between 1939 to 1940 we would certainly have been invaded. We would have suffered massive damage like the UK did and been unable to deal with it.

I'm no fan of Dev at all, but I think staying neutral was the right thing. At the time, very few knew of the concentration camps. It wasn't our making and wasn't our conflict and we would have been trounced to bits by Germany....and had Germany invaded us first, the UK would have invaded from the north, so that would have been us proper ****ed.