Sinn Fein leader heaps praise on republican multiple murderer – sparking condemnation
Under this headline comes a report that: ‘Mary Lou McDonald has praised an IRA killer for his dedication to “peace”, sparking condemnation. . . . Writing on X (Twitter), the Sinn Fein president had said on Saturday: “One year ago, we lost our comrade, Bik McFarlane.’
I have to confess that I am weary and heartily sickened of the oft-repeated and tritely inane condemnation that such sentiments engender from the Unionist camp!
Condemnations there must be but not just those that might catch an editor’s eye and end up in a ‘headline’!
Rather, I long for the day when a Unionist leader uses such a comment as that by the murder-glorifying Sinn Fein leader, Mary Lou McDonald, as a basis for the setting forth of the true and historic mindset of Irish Republicanism as represented by IRA/Sinn Fein.
Not all support the IRA
I know from personal experience that NOT all Roman Catholics are Sinn Fein or IRA supporters. Many of them suffered under IRA terrorism. We here in Northern Ireland know all about the grief and suffering of families who have had members taken away by the IRA, murdered and buried in a secret grave and then all pleas for information as to where their loved one lies, have been cruelly ignored!
If the IRA can do that to members of its own religious community, just what will it not do to members of that community, the religion of which they hate — PROTESTANTS?
Despite the possibility that I may, and doubtless will, offend some Roman Catholics for, in their eyes, classing all Roman Catholics as supporters and sympathisers with the IRA, I must state the truth of events in Ireland.
Let me state clearly that should a Roman Catholic voice honest criticism of those so-called Loyalist groups, which are involved with terrorism and racketeering, and which sadly, thus shame the name of Protestant, I would shout a loud ‘AMEN’!
I would take no offence for such honest criticism is warranted.
Criminal
The one lamented by O’Neill, her comrade ‘Bik McFarlane’ was a murderous IRA criminal. He served as an altar boy in the Ardoyne area of Belfast and then went to train as a Roman Catholic priest in 1967 and two years later he joined the Provisional IRA!
Given the long list of associations between the Roman Catholic priesthood and the activities of the IRA, that was hardly a surprising move!
During his IRA ‘career’ it was alleged that he was linked to many murders. The first such attack, in which 5 were murdered and 50 injured, was referred to in the House of Commons by the then SDLP MP for West Belfast, Gerry Fitt. He said that at the time of attack, McFarlane had machine-gunned three pedestrians who were passing the Bayardo Bar on the Shankill Road in Belfast as it was blown up. The Shankill Road is a strongly Protestant area in West Belfast.
McFarlane attempted to escape from the Maze Prison dressed as a priest in 1978. I’m sure he looked the part!
Dead
He escaped to the Irish Republic and there continued his terrorist activities. He died on 21 February 2025 in Belfast.
Over the last 12 months he has been learning of the utter sinfulness of his life and activities and it is a lesson he will continue to endure eternally with wailing and gnashing of teeth in a furnace of fire (Matthew 13:42). This was not what the Roman Catholic Church would have promised him.
McFarlane’s ‘peace’!
Bik McFarlane has been termed as one dedicated to peace by Mary Lou McDonald. The peace that McFarlane was ‘dedicated’ to was that peace the Irish rebels pursued in 1641, when thousands of Protestants were slaughtered.
The ‘peace’ sought in the 1798 rebellion, when thousands of Protestants were massacred during Roman Catholic terrorist activities, often led by Roman Catholic priests, was the ‘peace’ of McFarlane.
In the south of Ireland in 1798, the cruelty of the Roman Catholic rebels was very evident. ‘Father’ Murphy of Boolavogue of Wexford, was a notorious butcher of Protestants.
On a Sabbath morning, a Protestant minister named Burows, was brutally murdered, his son mortally wounded and seven of his parishioners also done to death. Poor Mrs Burrows was left on the lawn of her home amongst the butchered bodies, trying to aid and comfort her dying son!
Worse!
But the murderous ‘Father’ Murphy led an even greater atrocity. The country around was scoured and all the Protestants that could be found were herded to Vinegar Hill in Wexford, and there ‘piked’.
This slaughter continued for a number of days. Some twenty priests celebrated the Mass periodically, doubtless to sanctify the extermination of the Protestants.
In Scullabogue, also in Wexford, on 5th June 1798, a party of Irish rebels massacred up to 200 noncombatant men, women and children, most of whom were Protestant, though there were also about 20 Roman Catholics, possibly non-supporters of the rebellion.
They were held prisoner in a barn. An order for the massacre was signed by a priest which began with a piking and a shooting of the victims. But this was deemed too slow, so the barn doors were nailed up and the thatch of the roof set alight. It is recalled that one little child tried to crawl out beneath the barn door but one of the rebels stuck his pike in the child and pitched it back into the flames as if it was a mere sheaf of corn!
Greater details of the evils wrought in 1641 and again in 1798 may be read of in the excellent little book, ‘History of the Irish Presbyterian Church’, written by Rev Thomas Hamilton and published in 1887.
IRA murderer, McFarlane’s ‘peace’ was the peace promised by the Irish Republican ‘Home Rulers’ in the 1920s, when after the twenty six southern counties obtained a measure of independence from the United Kingdom and set up a parliament in Dublin, hundreds of Protestant families had to flee to Northern Ireland because of persecution by their Roman Catholic neighbours. Often times those families left with virtually just the clothes on their back for they were unable to sell their property because no one came forward to buy it. The thus abandoned properties were then simply taken over and distributed amongst the neighbours!
1969
During the ‘troubles’ which began in 1969, the likes of Bik McFarlane sought ‘peace’ by using the gun and the bomb, ambushing and murdering those who had never raised a hand or carried out an evil deed against their Roman Catholic neighbours!
Unionist politicians are the chief of fools if they believe that peaceful coexistence is possible with such as Bik McFarlane. There was a letter recently in the ‘Belfast Newsletter’ with the title, ‘A unionist pact is a good idea if you believe in the Union and want to enjoy the benefits it brings’.
How much more true is the view it is not a good idea to expect harmony if there is a teaming up of those who are for the maintaining of the Union with Great Britain with those who are prepared to destroy Northern Ireland by the bomb and the bullet, by murder and terror?
Stormont folly
That is what Stormont in its folly claims to be seeking at present. The benefits of such a charade is a daily marching of Northern Ireland toward a ‘United Ireland’ under the very ones who nurtured and nourished the provisional IRA and its terrorist campaign.
Unionists should withdraw from Stormont and form a MILITANT OPPOSITION TO ALL THAT IS POLITICALLY DECEITFUL AND HYPOCRITICAL.
Yoking up with Sinn Fein/IRA cannot succeed for it is contrary to the will of God. Yoking with the ungodly is something that just cannot work as it is contrary to the mind of God. The Lord is the ultimate power in this universe and nothing exists but by His permission and that includes political deals and schemes!
“And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever,”Daniel 2:44.
Ecumenical traitors
Of course, any opposition to the spirit of compromise presently at work within Unionist circles would require an attack upon those who have rendered Unionism ’toothless’ — the Ecumenical leaders who for some 100 years have been misleading and misguiding the three so-called Protestant denominations here in Ulster!
The dominant spirit within these denominations has been that of the ‘liberal’ and the ‘modernist’ theologian. Casting away the Bible they have replaced its truth with their perverted notions. Their inventions are of course the activity of the devil. These evil and blinded men have been the mere couriers of the devil’s lies.
Paul mentioned them by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.
“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.
If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine, whereunto thou hast attained,” 1 Timothy 4:1-6.
“Good ministers of Jesus Christ”, as here defined by Paul, are considered fools and rabble-rousers by those who are guilty of departing from the TRUTH!
Northern Ireland’s departure from the truth — its embracing of abortion, sodomy, transgenderism and the perverted folly of those who huddle together under the umbrella of ‘LGBTQ+ — can all be traced back to these pulpits and their proclaiming of the devil’s lies.
I honestly cannot foresee a day when any Unionist will advocate God’s response to the religious and political corruptions of today. It is seen as unworkable as Moses proposing to walk through the Red Sea, of Daniel refusing of Nebuchadnezzar’s menu, of the three Hebrews rejecting the call to bow down before the golden idol and of Peter trying to walk on water!
It requires faith in God for such to work. I believe that there was an abandoning of such faith back in 2007 when a coalition was formed with Sinn Fein/IRA and sanctioned by many Free Presbyterians.
Error recognised NOW!
Many of those who did act foolishly back then may well have altered their views, forced to do so by that which has been the outcome of the exceedingly flawed political plan.
But it is too late! “Water spilt on the ground . . . cannot be gathered up,” 2 Samuel 14:14. There are wrong-doings which cannot be remedied!
“Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled; lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears,” Hebrews 12:15-17.
I believe that many in Ulster will yet be brought to tears over the direction that they were persuaded by ‘false prophets’ to embark on. As the wise man says: “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death,” Proverbs 16:25.
Sin has always exacted a high price from those who defy the warnings of God. That is what Ulster has done for many decades. The betrayal of the Gospel has been highlighted and the rejecting of the Word of God has been repeatedly documented and the warnings issued but sadly few have listened.
Infiltrators!
Indeed, even more tragic and devastating is the sad and undeniable fact that there are those who have infiltrated the ranks of the Free Presbyterian Church and are undermining its faithful witness and the betrayal of the Gospel by the ecumenical denominations and seeking to have the voice of protest toned down, indeed utterly silenced!
Mingling with Ecumenists is no longer seen as wrong and contrary to 2 Corinthians 6:14-18. Such a doctrine as set out by Paul is denied, opposed and considered just out of date by some who swore at their ordination to faithfully oppose that which these verses condemn.
Yes, there is coming a sad harvest, one of the same character as the harvest mentioned by the Lord in Judges 6.
“And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD: and the LORD delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years. And the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel: and because of the Midianites the children of Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains, and caves, and strong holds. And so it was, when Israel had sown, that the Midianites came up, and the Amalekites, and the children of the east, even they came up against them; and they encamped against them, and destroyed the increase of the earth, till thou come unto Gaza, and left no sustenance for Israel, neither sheep, nor ox, nor ass. For they came up with their cattle and their tents, and they came as grasshoppers for multitude; for both they and their camels were without number: and they entered into the land to destroy it. And Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites; and the children of Israel cried unto the LORD. And it came to pass, when the children of Israel cried unto the LORD because of the Midianites, that the LORD sent a prophet unto the children of Israel, which said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you forth out of the house of bondage; and I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of all that oppressed you, and drave them out from before you, and gave you their land; and I said unto you, I am the LORD your God; fear not the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but ye have not obeyed my voice,” Judges 6:1-10.
Like Israel back then, Ulster has been told but have not obeyed the voice of God.
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
Monday 23rd February 2026