Renewed Calls To Ban Nun Habits In Public Places

IRISH politicians will today discuss the outright ban on nun habits in public places in a bid to clamp down on Catholic fundamentalists.

The proposed law, which will ban the wearing of a nun’s habit in certain designated areas, is enormously popular with the Irish public, but unfortunately, as with France’s banning of the burqa, has received quite the backlash from human rights complainers across the world.

“It is a human beings fundamental right to wear what he or she likes in public,” said Sister Mary Theresa Ward, a 67-year-old nun who regularly wears the habit. “This proposal makes no sense to me. What exactly will it achieve?”

Speaking from the Dáil today, Taoiseach Enda Kenny defended the Government’s decision to seek a ban on the garment, which he says “can be used to disguise terrorists”.

“Who knows what kind of human being lies beneath the shroud of Rome,” he said poetically, giving a quick glance for appreciation of the great work his script writer did for him. “Are we to live in fear of the unknown? Or shall we remove the masks of deception? That is the question we now face going forward in this ever evolving civilization of ours”.

The Concealment Act, which will also prohibit old woman headscarves, baseball hats, socks with sandals and people wearing monk robes, will go before a Dáil vote next Monday, and if passed, will be rolled out in 2015. 

Meanwhile, tens of nuns wearing full habits took to Leinster house in protest of the move by praying profusely outside government buildings. Gardaí quickly deployed their rapid response team, arresting three of the nuns and hospitalising four.

“The protesters were given several warnings to get up off their knees and stop praying. They persisted on reciting decades of the rosary so we had no other option but to tear gas the women,” said unit commander Garda Gerry Walsh. “Some of the nuns used their habits like gas masks – proving our point exactly.”

Early Waterford Whispers poll figures suggest a landslide victory for the outright ban on the habit.