Irish priest issues message to Catholics in Ireland

"I am convinced that the senator will have the courage to say it. No offense. OK, no offense. I’m sure it will be full of lovely people. Lovely people.

Lovely little Catholics. Little and good Catholics. But I’m just going to say that my ancestors preferred to die of hunger rather than change their faith. That’s the blood I come from.

I don’t know where you come from. OK, maybe from the same place, maybe from something better, but I don’t know. I know where I come from.

And I’m sorry to talk to you like this, especially being a priest, but I don’t know how much more I’m going to tolerate your garbage.

I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re a lovely person, but you don’t seem capable of getting your life in order. And I wasn’t given those excuses in my life. I had to clean up my own mess. I left the seminary because I wasn’t sure of my vocation. I came back, even though I was already settling into a perfectly fulfilling job, because the vocation kept pursuing me.

I’ve been a priest through the worst times of the Church for quite some time, really bad times, and I’m not in the mood for your endless cowardice in facing life’s decisions.

So I’m telling you now: I don’t care if you were raised Catholic. I don’t care if your grandmother prayed the rosary. Listen to me. I care what you think. I care what you believe.

And if you don’t believe in God and His Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Catholic Church, which is the body of our Lord Jesus Christ on earth, the whole assembly of believers and its authority to teach, if you don’t believe in that, God bless you, God keep you.

The door is there. It leads to the street and you can go with my blessing. Not a curse. And my prayers and my respect. Think about that last one. Did you hear the last one? My respect.

Because you’re not getting it where you are now, sitting in a pew of the Catholic Church, attending a ceremony you don’t understand, without even showing the basic education of respect that would be expected of a civilized atheist, not even knowing what you’re doing here."