Liam Neeson Criticized for Making Blatantly Anti-Catholic Commercial Promoting Abortion

Opinion   |   Dave Andrusko   |   Oct 20, 2015   |   5:18PM   |   Dublin, Ireland

I try always to be very careful about labeling something “anti-“this or “anti-“that. I don’t want to confuse a vigorous presentation, as unfair as it may be, with a blatant appeal to ugly prejudices.

But….

Sometimes the appeal to baser instincts is not only impossible to miss but clearly something that is consciously intended. Which brings us to an absolutely astonishing ad produced by Amnesty International as part of its full-bore campaign to legalize abortion in Ireland.

Matthew Archbold of the National Catholic Register calls “Chains,” the 1 minute, 36 second long ad, “blatantly anti-Catholic.”

That is putting it mildly.

The narrator is actor Liam Neeson, the voice of Aslan in the film version of “The Chronicles of Narnia.” (Aslan is generally understood to be a Christ-like figure, which makes the use of Neeson even more tasteless.) The ad began airing yesterday.

The objective is to “Repeal the Eighth,” a reference to the Eighth Amendment to the Irish Constitution which abortion proponents are keen on obliterating. Passed in 1983, the amendment says, “The State acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.”

Archbold explains to his audience that if they might think he was being overly sensitive, click on the link to a proponent of “Repeal the Eighth.” It mentions the setting: “Over a montage of a moss strewn, abandoned church…”

The whole point of the ad is that the Church–the Catholic Church–is outdated and abandoned by the people and therefore its evil, outdated influence on the Constitution must be removed.

CLICK LIKE IF YOU’RE PRO-LIFE!

 

Here’s the dialogue which obviously is more powerful when spoken, even by someone as wooden an actor as Neeson:

“A ghost haunts Ireland [that would be the Catholic Church]. A cruel ghost of the last century still bound to the land. It blindly brings suffering, even death, to the women whose lives it touches. Feared by politicians, this is a ghost of paper and ink. A spirit that lives in a constitution written for a different time. It is the shadow of the country we’d hoped we’d left behind. Ireland doesn’t have to be chained to its past. It’s time to lay this ghost to rest. …Repeal the Eighth.

On the off-off chance someone could possibly miss the message, 20 seconds in you see a cross. At that instant Neeson says, “It blindly brings suffering, even death, to the women whose lives it touches.”

There is an immediate jump cut to a relic of a church and Neeson says, “Feared by politicians, this is a ghost of paper and ink.”

I could not possibly offer a better concluding thought than Archbold’s:

Make no mistake, the forces of secularization and abortion know who their enemy is, it is the one institution that stands for a radical commitment to love and the sacredness of human life. … It is a sad culture that attempts to demonize an institution that preaches love at every turn and begs people to treat others as they would wish to be treated. I understand they want to turn their backs on the Church and march away. But the real question is, what are they marching towards?

LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.

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