Yes, the SSPX contingent that made up much of YD's traditional support has finally lost patience with the direction that the latter has been taking in recent years, upped sticks and founded their own group. In this post, I will look at what we can expect from the Irish Life League and look at just how much potential damage will be done to the pro-life movement as a result.

The ILL is apparently modelled on the UK Life League, led by Jim Dowson, which has gained notoriety for their reckless use of graphic images, in the misguided belief that this will end people's support for abortion. Um, no it won't. To end abortion, what we need to do is to intellectually smash pro-choice fallacies to pieces, and this will not be done by alienating people. The UKLL is largely marooned from the rest of the British pro-life movement, and we can expect the same from their Irish namesakes.

However, ideologically, the ILL are far more dangerous than their British counterparts. This is because their apparent leader, known only as "John Grace", will be known to regular readers of this blog as the author of the Third Positionist "Thought and Action" blog, a site notorious for its fascist and anti-Semitic content. Now admittedly, the blog alone is negligible, and it is a wonder that the pro-choice side are unusually hesitant to use it to paint all pro-lifers as fascists. What is most worrying though, is that there was a tiny group of Williamsonite SSPX adherents which wanted to bring YD back to where it was before Barrett's fascist sympathies were exposed. No, that is an understatment. Barrett, to his credit, never denied the h0Ɩ0cαųst, a viewpoint that John Grace repeatedly chides the YD leadership from adapting.

We know that there has been bad blood between the leadership and the Williamsonite tendency as far back as 2006, but probably stretches back even earlier. Eoghan De Faoite, according to Grace, was involved in an argument in a SSPX meeting over YD's tactics. And no, it wasn't because they thought that they were too extreme, that's for sure. YD "have gone politically correct/multi-culti", they say. They don't alienate non-Catholics who may very well mean the difference between our current pro-life laws and abortion on demand.  They rely on the Youth 2000 (who I will discuss in more detail in the next few days) gene pool for volunteers, which apparently are "anti-Tradition" (it could legitimately be argued that Y2K are over-reliant on  charismatic styles of worship, but that in itself is not enough to accuse them of being heterodox.). According to the "SSPX Resistance" as they like to style themselves, such scandalous activites warrant ostracism from "Traditional" Catholics (read Catholics who refuse to submit to the Roman Pontiff, on whom the very Church is built).

Lastly, it is of great credit to the YD leadership that SSPX-SO members now feel the need to leave. It is certainly a far cry from Justin Barrett attending NDP rallies or picketing politician's houses. Furthermore, the allegations that Eoghan De Faoite and Una Ui Scolai are pro-contraception are not only bordering on slander, but laughable (trads supporting birth control indeed). Certainly YD still have issues to iron out (the republican tendencies being a prime example of this), however it much much better to have a pro-life group led by a republican as opposed to a fascist.

Furthermore, the allegations that Eoghan De Faoite and Una Ui Scolai are pro-contraception are not only bordering on slander, but laughable (trads supporting birth control indeed)