Ireland and the terrible truth about wokeness

Hands down my favourite part of the referendum revolt in Ireland last week was the discovery of ‘miraculous medals’ among the ballot papers.

A miraculous medal is a small pendant that features the Blessed Virgin. Normally, she’s shown crushing a serpent beneath her feet. They’re devotional medallions. They come in silver or gold. And to some Catholics, they’re a means of asking the Virgin Mother for an intercession, for her holy assistance in the healing of a sick person or the enactment of some other kind of miracle. And would you believe it – electoral officials found some stuffed among the ballots, no doubt by voters hoping Jesus’s mum might miraculously make the dual referendums go their way.

In the end, they didn’t need the Mother of God. The mere mortals who make up Ireland’s electorate were enough to see off the government proposals put forward in the referendums – first, to update the meaning of the word ‘family’ in the Irish Constitution, and second to alter the constitution’s ‘sexist’ reference to a woman’s ‘duties’ in the home. Huge majorities said ‘No’ to both of these suggested amendments.

And yet the presence of the medals was touching nonetheless. They found some in Letterkenny in Donegal. In fact, reports the Donegal Daily, ‘several of the miraculous medals turned up at various ballot boxes across the county’. Others were discovered in Limerick. At one polling station, no fewer than 11 medals were found. ‘“Yes” campaigners didn’t have a prayer’, quipped Donegal’s paper.

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