Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of

unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

In his book, how the Irish Save Civilization author Thomas Keel described the outsized role

that the small island played in preserving literacy and learning between the

fall of Rome and the emergence of the medieval period. Perhaps if a book on Ireland is written 1500 years from today, that title might be how the Irish

lost the civilization it saved.

You see on March 8th International Women's Day, a referendum will be held on the island on weather

to erase the word mother from the Irish Constitution.

As it was originally written, the Irish Constitution included provisions to protect traditional roles for women, in particular their

role as wives and mothers in the home.

Now some think it would be better in order to better reflect current sensibilities if the

Constitution read quote the provision of care by

members of a family to one another by reason of the bonds that exist among them in other

words no reference to mothers or to women it might seem like a small change,

but it would put Ireland in a position of attempting to be the First Nation in history

to eliminate from its governing language the words that describe

the objective realities about people.

After all, people are in reality really boys or girls.

Men or women.

They might be a husband or a wife or a mother or a father.

So to redefine or eliminate this linguistic precision really makes no sense,

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