Part Three: It was the best of times, it was the....

Word Picture:

The old structure within a diocese almost invariably ensured that the cream floated to the top.
The cleverest, wisest, most charismatic or empathic, the most talented, the best preachers or pastors or spiritual directors/confessors - even on the rare occasion the holiest of priests would manage to reach the top jobs/positions within a diocese - most of us have been graced with encountering the type of priest I'm referring to.
Now even if some of them weren't the best among pastoral priests ; they were assuredly the most capable or effective administrators, good chairmen or team leaders - and rarely were there any who had not experienced and obtained a deep level of understanding regarding the human condition and the spiritual necessities for societies and the individual.
because the priests were highly active and very much about the Lord's business it was more often than not quite easy to determine a cleric's capabilities and talents.
the Holy Spirit made the job of a Bishop a great deal easier by pushing the more capable and responsible priests to the fore.
Frequently a bishop would be fully aware that he could both rely on his clergy and could be assured that anyone he placed in a diocesan position of responsibility/authority was already tried and tested by time and had proved their worth on many occasions beforehand . It was more than likely that a person he had 'chosen' for a position would become his or another bishop's successor; and he could be proud of both his choice and have few qualms about the future in that cleric's hands.

Then came Vatican II.

Now there were already significant embryonic factors within the clerical and episcopal make-up:

a] The efficacy of priestly formation was being compromised by increasingly poor,irrelevant or out-of-date/overly zeitgeist training in seminaries; and the limiting of the considerations of the duties and responsibilities of Holy Orders - usually the source of this was the poor example of priests and the overlying ethos of the seminaries regarding priesthood [too many educators in pastoral ministry had little experience of being pastoral ministers!]

b] The increasing duties, responsibilities and demands upon the priest within the parish led to six significant consequences/types of clergy:

i] the Hero - the priest who seized the helm of responsibility in the storm to prevent all around them sinking - assuming an authority and duty merely by being the right person at the right time who saw the problem and acted upon it.
ii] the Envious - those antagonistic to the hero-type - there may be a vast array of reasons/causes/motivations behind their positions ; but nevertheless the predominant result is their begrudging the hero's position - how they act on that envy also manifests itself in varied forms - hostility, indifference, diammetrically opposing positions regarding doctrine or praxis, procedural antipathy, reticence to assist or even direct action against the 'hero'.
iii] the Tin Pot Dictator - the Master of his own Domain - not much more needs to be said as we have all encountered and experience such a type - it may be a virtuous and benign dictatorship or one that has compromised its authenticity and supped with the Prince of this World; but nevertheless they are still dictatorships and the priest has jeopardised spiritual authority by confusing it with the secular and temporal.
iv] the Reactionary - what are they opposing ? good grief ! it could be anything - the Pope, the bishop, certain clergy, Church teaching on sexuality or contraception or divorce or celibacy, liturgical practice, aspects of church dogma, it could be politically motivated or over-encultured with the spirit of the age [we've all suffered the hippy priests, the corporate downsizing thatcherite priests, the blairite spin/procedural committee priests...all too sad!]
v] the Counter-Revolutionary Uber-Traditionalist - could be some belligerent irish canon unwilling to change anything and stopping time somewhere mid 1928, ditto an almost anglo-catholic brideshead-type who revels in the bells, smells, frippery ; or the youngster outraged at the pragmatism/situationist ethics/abject relativism/sacrilegious liturgies/banale indolences of the reactionary clerics; and counteract with an overpietistic or overlegalistic pseudo-conservatism verging on sedevacantism. [yes this is surprisingly not a new phenomena or a product of the outrages in the late sixties and seventies- the tridentinista were already gathering forces in the forties/fifties being fully aware that there was going to be trouble ahead]
vi] the Recluse - the priest who ran away and hid from any controversy, who either swayed in the wind and agreed with everyone, or dissociated himself from the prevailing situation and got on with his own job in his own quiet way.

c] Systemic Ignorance of Fundamental Theology among the Clergy - this is the deficit of the teaching of the underlying 'why' that I referred to in the previous posting ; and led to the massive ruptures regarding doctrine/morality/liturgy/clerical praxis/ecclesiology among the clergy - let's be truthful - what we had was a schism - the only problem was that both left and right, liberal and traditionalist, were so inadequately trained and educated in all the subjects they purported to be experts on, that their ignorance prevailed, incompetence ensued; and many millions of catholics were deeply hurt in the process.

d] The Crisis in Faith - it was on its way - academia and intellectual realms and alleged 'colleges of excellence' were adopting every new fad or ideology or innovative philosophical/political/socio-cultural/anthropological process - chaos reigned.
pragmatism, relativism, demeaning post-hegelian political ideologies, behaviourism, nihilism , linguistic and logical positivism and many more ideologies all had pervasive contaminating influences ; and the ignorant ill-educated clerics and theologians became corrupted by these prevailing forces...
The results ? Well please refer to my first posting regarding anxiety and despondency.

e] The Crisis in identity [more later, but basically I'm referring to the loss of an authentic notion of a Unique Real Ordained Priesthood in contrast to 'vocational pastoral ministries']

f] The Crisis regarding the Love of God and consequently the reality of both Love and God. [ref. first posting]

g] Existential Angst and the authenticity of anything the cleric professes/represents/adheres to ; in the light of d,e & f.


Now One person in 1958 was more aware of the clerical situation than any other - Cardinal Ottaviani [indeed every member of the Vatican General Council] was inundated with reports/assessments/new writings on the impending crises regarding doctrine, morality, the liturgy and most especially the clergy:
So much so that when John XXIII announced the actuation of a Second Vatican Council one voice was heard echoing through St Peter's:
'E Pazz!!' [He's mad!!!]
to the cardinal it was like detecting a gas leak and lighting a match to see where it was coming from....

We must concede that many necessary reforms and considerations simply had to be addressed or redressed - but what happened at Vatican II and the reprehensible post-conciliar committees was a systemic fiasco of the first order....

One of its benefits was that indeed, all the sins/poisons that had previously only lurked in the mud - now hatched out !!!
The result was the disenfranchisement of tens of millions of catholics - they were left abandoned to the wolves...Holy Mother Church ruptured and millions of victims were left in its wake...

a price worth paying ?
I'm sorry, but I believe the price was too high; but I trust in God and his Divine Providence - I am certain that God did not leave us orphans ; that ultimately there MUST be a reason as to why this happened and why God allowed it to happen....
could it possibly be that had we remained the way we were we may have altered into some monolithic autarchy ? or could the world have finally confronted us head on and destroyed us all in its wake ?
I don't know , all I am sure of is that it was God's will ; and it is now a wake up call to action for every devout and orthodox sinful catholic...

maybe this was a baptism of fire in preparation for the terrible adversities ahead ?
I do not know - but I do know the affect it has had on the church at a Diocesan level - and in the choice of clerics - which is what I'll address in my next posting.

[to be continued]

Part Two : The Enemy Within.

Nietzsche had a mandatory criterion for the possibility of God, meaning to Life etc ; and that was Love being eternal....

He could not believe it ; and I truly believe that the major source of the crisis in the Church is the simple fact that despite wanting to believe it, and all the verbiage and innovative ritual attempting to compensate or paper over the hints of disbelief, this lack of belief is prevalent.

But the unbelief isn't the disease, it's merely a symptom of something a lot more subtle.

The cause ? We need to go back a century and beyond...to the age of presumption and arrogance. Italy , France and Germany were beginning to settle down after generations of crisis; Britain and Ireland were beginning to reap the benefits of the decades-long struggle to re-integrate catholicism, The US was gaining the security in the power of money and distance from warring europe - and catholicism leapt on the bandwagon grasping the opportunity to thrive espcialy among the millions of immigrants, the British Empire was stealing a quarter of the world from its rightful owners and instigating 'peace' down the barrel of a gun and utilising every available natural resource - and we resided in the shadow of that effect ; The Church was gaining ground, there were no significant adversaries and theological/scriptural/moral/canonical and clerical spheres were beginning to become effective and powerful influences within societies; the social teaching of Leo XIII made this even more of a concrete visible active prevailing force - we built churches, hospitals, schools, junior and senior seminaries bulging at the seams - and it's here we begin to see the first signs of complacency...

I'm not going to go through a history lesson - it's all readily available to anyone interested - but the first major test to the Church in the new century was modernism. Now Pius X was truly a saint and he sought to remedy a crisis in a specific way - suppression of the questionable ; and the re-emphasising and reformed expression of age old dogmas and their doctrinal implementation and consequences - almost every available resource was oriented towards what the church teaches and how it is to be taught....

You see the problem ? It's very subtle , but here's the root of what followed - we were complacent in that we presumed that society and the individual were not going to significantly change in their outlooks and lifestyles...

Inadvertently we'd become contaminated with Hegelianism - we'd catholicized his notion of the Geist - the development and progression of society and the Church along a certain path - all that was required was a reiteration of 'the what and the how' of Church teaching ; the 'why?' we believe or act wasn't exactly ignored, but it was never deemed an absolute intrinsic necessity towards understanding and living the catholic faith - and anyway, catholic society possessed the capabilities to deduce the 'why' from the hearts and minds of those who thrived in the overwhelming thrall of the Church. Because we had a surplus of understanding 'the why' among the average cleric or devout parishioner, we merely assumed that feeding the faithful [and the trainee clergy] with 'the what and the how' was more than amply enough for doctrine and praxis to be sustained. We presumed that the monolith of the teaching authority of the church would suffice. We were negligent because we failed to notice the idol of 'Church authority' had feet of clay.

Thus the message of the 'why we believe and live that belief' was neglected and compromised; and in a way it became distorted and obfuscated into being perceived as not primarily a spiritual authority ; but more a regimented temporal [albeit religious] one...it was seen as 'surplus to requirement' to do anything other than 'state the faith', not continually prove it...it was seen as an unnecessary exigency to do anything other than 'show love of neighbour' through teaching, healing, feeding, housing, consoling and caring - very little effort was made to emphasise the 'why we love' or to validate or prove or remind the faithful 'what business we are about and why'

This negligence only took three generations to wreak havoc -war irreparably altered society and the clergy were already being contaminated by this black hole in their catechesis and training; the ignorance manifested itself in two ways:

a] questioning every aspect of the Church and the faith it professed and the morality it demanded; failing to realise that one was not personally equipped or experienced or educated enough to assess or discern the core motives and reasonings of the fundamental teachings, these people decided that they could work out their own , personalised theology, morality and ecclesiology - or sought answers from sources external to the church [regularly of the protestant ilk like Bultmann, Barth or Tillich]

b] defiantly refusing to contemplate the possibilities of the motives or reasonings behind the church teachings [possibly out of fear or a sense of possibly losing the newly acquired temporal power within a parish/diocese] and rather than attempt to understand the why ; instead blindly following what the church says to the letter [and possibly adding a more rigorist or pietistic flavour to it in the process] - 'Just do what you're told and stop asking questions!!!'

It was a lack of education, a dearth of understanding , and a childish arrogance [something only truly present among the ignorant] that led to the initial divergence of what we perceive now as progressive/liberal/neo marxist and the Ultra-traditionalist 'fascist'.

rather than being a Faith ; this ignorance allowed ideology to pervade and contaminate the ranks of the clergy.

But what about the parishes and dioceses ?

Well charitable activity, intense social interaction, continuous prayer and devotion and the machinations of the Holy Spirit through these corporal and spiritual works of mercy delayed or even halted the progression of the 'intellectual' malaise...but even within this there were detectable flaws, especially amongst the attitudes of certain clergy - whereas previously they had taken up the mantle of responsibility for their flock, burdened themselves, sacrificed and lived their love for the parish - with subsequent generations this responsibility and earned position of spiritual authority became distorted into the presumption of the younger priests [or the older priests who had been 'tainted by habit to forget the origins of things' ] that this clerical position was one of temporal , civic, social authority. The ostensible 'shepherd' slowly metamorphosed into a normatively benign well-meaning dictator !!! But this was by no means a universal occurrence - the high amount of clergy and their busy lives interacting with the communities allowed human living and loving to deflate a lot of clerical egos and autocratic ambitions....the only places it was truly likely to happen was where socio-cultural influences thrust the cleric into more than just a priest but a civic representative of authority - this usually occurred in either the rural backwaters [e.g. in ireland where the priest was practically a minor deity - we can still se it today in certain regions of the developing world or in the US among the ultra-conservative protestant bible belt pastors] or amongst the isolated or disenfranchised immigrant communities - Italians, Irish, Poles etc....

This clerical ambiguity of their role as a priest ,

and the ecclesiastical consequences of poorly trained catechetical intellectual ignorance ,

with the splitting of the church along the lines of ignorant loyalty [right-wing] and ignorant defiance [left-wing];

together with the rise in political ideologies of all flavours and their mixing with the realms of philosophy and social sciences and even transgressing into theology ;

all wrapped up in the social upheaval after the second world war - inevitably led towards Vatican II

....and we all know the consequences of that. [To be continued]

Ok here goes...and please bear with me , it's going to be pretty long...

Anyone who has known me for any length of time will tell you that one of my many annoying habits is repeating a single sentence which I've practically adopted as a motto for how to live my life - It was written by St Francis de Sales, exemplified through the praxis and pedagogy of St John Bosco, indeed it's been intrinsic to the life of every saint ;and it encapsulates Catholic Theology, Spirituality and Morality. It's quite a simple phrase really, one that's prone to being misunderstood and quoted as if it's merely something found on the back of a cornflake packet or in a fortune cookie ; but as Dostoyevsky told us , there is nothing under heaven that cannot be twisted, distorted or debased by men of ill will . It goes like this :

"It is never enough to love someone ; that someone has to know they are loved."

Now Mother Theresa was always a controversial figure , and no end of abuse was hurled at her when , in this world of wars, terrorism, sexual profligacy, abortion, poverty and disease rife in the developing world she stated :

"Wherever I go in the whole world, the thing that makes me the saddest is watching people receive Communion in the hand."

Communion in the hand ? Is she crazy ? Well let me put it to you that the blessed Theresa was anything but...because if you look into what she's saying a little closer you'll arrive at some startling revelations about what is truly in crisis within the church. I'll return to this later.

I once gave a sermon during my time as a Pastoral Minister in the US - it centred around a question:

"For a catholic, what is the greatest 'object' in the world ?"

After qualifying the statement that the Blessed Sacrament was not truly solely of this world, and a catholic had already received the waters of baptism ...and after a few possibilities proposed to me by the congregation which I rejected; I pointed to the little box room in the corner of the church and said :

"There - that's the greatest object in the world !" and proceeded to explain why the confessional is so intrinsically important beyond our wildest imaginings....let me move on...

Now I'm sorry to be seemingly chaotic , but I do have a reason for beginning something , then leaving it hanging and proceeding to something apparently unrelated; but you must be asking by now what the heck has this to do with the clerical crisis ? Well please bear with me for a moment - I'm getting there.

Chesterton was one of the most significant adversaries of the sin of Pride - read any one of his apologetic essays and you will invariably find it having the overriding virtue of Humility as its fundamental tenet - but he goes beyond this to a great psychological insight - that Pride , and all its manifestations in arrogance, presumption or despair are grounded in two things : Ignorance and Anxiety - In order to be humble [ and thus be virtuous in any way ] you have to possess a freedom of spirit and an openness to understanding - a willingness to confront the unknown and face your fear.

Now the majority of people think it was FDR who said 'we have nothing to fear but fear itself';

actually the president plagiarised it from my old hero St F-d-S... and if you haven't read it before , I urge you with the deepest sincerity to read St Francis de Sales' chapter on Anxiety from his 'Introduction to The Devout Life' - it's one of the greatest pieces of psycho-analysis ever written. I've posted it already on this blog : here's the link

http://onthesideoftheangels.blogspot.com/2007/08/anxiety-psychological-genius-of-st.html

Our Lord and Saviour spent his entire life telling us to 'Be Not Afraid' ; and we poor, weak-willed sinners do everything and anything but listen to those words....

Aside from objective sin, Anxiety is the most dangerous phenomena as it compromises and jeopardises our freedom to accept God's overflowing graces or to act upon them. Not only do we run away from God , from the world and our neighbour, we run away and hide from ourselves.

The only way for this anxiety to be overcome is through the iron will of patience and unconquerable strength of gentleness ; in other words the only way is through Love.

Now we're nearly there: only a few more steps....

Now despite all its terrors and consequences , its hiding in the shadows, anxiety still resides in the shadow of Truth - even when it has lost everything else and dwells in confusion and delusion ; it still confronts and admits the validity and worth of Truth.

One can sink to an even deeper level...to one of despondency where Truth or untruth is not even considered; one is so scared of addressing the possibility of anything's truth or falsity, of its reality or its being merely an illusion, that one both denies or dismisses the necessity of confronting anything remotely hinting at those concepts, and when confronted with these phenomena one runs away from them. In other words not only are you lying to yourself and fully aware of the nature of the lie ; you also become a fully-fledged coward.

Cowardice ? can it really be that simple or obvious ? That we're so scared of being scared , so scared of being wrong, so scared of it all being a delusion, or a lie, or a nihilistic nightmare, that we simply refuse to acknowledge anything ; and would rather run away and hide in the faux-security of self-delusion . That we're so scared that our belief in God might neither be validated by God's reality, nor corroborated by our Human will that it is a truly some , if only weak, form of faith - we'd rather dismiss the concept of believing out of fear that we might be unable to believe...never risk loving or hoping out of sheer cowardice that we'd be unable to love or hope or have what we love or hope for confirmed by actually being made manifest?

No, it isn't that simple..how could it be ?

because it's actually more simple than that...

I asked my elder son a few years what being a catholic was all about...

His answer ?

"God loves you !"...[he kind of spoilt the moment by adding..."get used to it !" straight afterwards with a cheeky grin ; but the more I reflect on his words, the more I feel that this is the message for the world of today... if there is one thing the world and all its members needs to know - it's that God loves them....]

But what of Universal Divine Revelation ? Natural Theology ? The Incarnation, teachings, actions, passion, Death and Resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ...

Surely after all this we should be able to find the reflections of God through His Creation and the Truth in the Person of Christ in all our endeavours and interactions , surely we must see the working of the Holy Spirit in whom we Live , Move and have our Being in all we encounter and survey ?

No, because I truly believe for some of us the abyss has opened into an even deeper chasm where not only does the person not know they are loved, or believe they are loved, or even believe that they are in any respect lovable; No, they have sunk to the level where the concept of love as possessing any reality beyond genetic programming ,hormonal urges or evolutionary survival technique is beyond them.....

They don't believe in love...and truth be told, they don't believe in God.

So to return to the beginning... what can we say ? what can we do ?

Ensure that our neighbour knows they are loved - it's simple enough - but being simple it's also the most arduous, sacrificial , devastating , heart-breaking but ultimately rewarding thing we can ever do...

But What has this to do with the Crisis in the church and the clergy and the episcopacy ? and where does Mother Theresa's quote fit into this schema ? and what concrete implementations or policies can be actuated to remedy the situation...?

Well ? I'm coming to that...[to be continued]

#10 Sorry I got a bit angry in this one...

Vincent's reply :

So your conclusion, OTSOTA, is that it does not matter if many priests and bishops are living a downright lie, if not actually indulging in a sinful lifestyle?And next week you will be advising us how to pin a jelly to the ceiling.

I was somewhat peeved...


Now how did you induce that from what I said ?

Incidentally you can pin a jelly to a ceiling with enough pins of good quality - the same way you can have an efficacious Church about the Lord's business with enough Prayer, Faith, Hope and Love.
We've just had a pretty poor crop in this recent off-season...

You equivocate living a lie with either 'dipping one's wick' or prefering 'parisiennes to parisiettes'...

Please wake up and realise that the crisis is infinitely worse than that - clerical celibacy , I concur, is an imperative ; but if you think this is the core crux of the clerical malaise you are very,very mistaken...most of our celibates are also the ones 'living a lie' ; pretending to be 'working' priests.

I am categorically NOT implying that the clergy should be allowed to be sexually profligate ; I'm not suggesting the time is right for married clergy - the priests have enough problems caring for their parish, let alone being responsible or mentally competent enough to cope with that plus a wife and family ;

and I am most definitely not excusing sexually active homosexual priests who think 'having it away' with other priests or having a bit of fun at some discreet distant locale with anonymous individuals is not detrimental to their Ministry.

I'm saying that among the majority of priests [who've never kissed a girl, boy or goat] their priesthood is deeply compromised by their simple lack of being efficacious, Holy, effective, responsible, believing, pastoral, praying priests !

This has led to a severe crisis where their abandonment of responsibility has led their flock to abandon them and the Church.

Some of the most capable, intelligent, loving priests out there do NOTHING!

...and why ? because they've been allowed to act in such a way; they've never had the example of how a parish should be run, they've had minimal pastoral training, virtually no authentic liturgical training, practically no training in how to preach, and when it comes to spiritual direction and how to lead a life of prayer and meditation ???

please don't make me laugh - most divine offices are only opened at a deanery meeting - there is a complete abandonment of responsibility, because surrounding them - birds,bees and educated fleas among the clergy DO NOTHING!

The majority of them 'work' from late saturday afternoon to midday sunday - say eight hours a week if we're charitable ? let's throw in a handful of 20 minute weekday masses, a few more administrative appointments,maybe a couple of social functions ?
a handful of visits to elderly or sick parishioners, maybe they are on the hospital rota for that week and perhaps have to administer a couple of sacraments of the sick ?
maybe a school mass if it's term time ?

Let me tell you this example is a damned sight busier week than most of our clerics would perform in a month !
Some of our beloved clergy out there have never missed an episode of neighbours, countdown or 'deal or no deal' in their lives !!
Some are of the mental disposition that rather than saying the divine office ; they have the daily ritual of sitting down to 'the weakest link' with coffee and a chocolate hobnob.

Do you think all this free time does them any good ? that they are more relaxed and capable and psychologically/spiritually composed to run their parish during times of pastoral crisis ?

think again...

Abject boredom, self-indulgent narcissism and overly selfish reflection results...

Rather than inspiring them to do more to fill these vast holes in their schedules they ultimately end up doing less...

I've stayed/lived in six presbyteries - and I've seen the results first hand, I've visited many more where the loneliness , despondency and inability of the priest to 'know what they are about' screams from the walls.

Some priests are in virtual solitary confinement for five out of the seven days a week ; yearning for the telephone to ring, their heart leaping when the letterbox rattles with post or the doorbell rings...

I'm sorry but this isolation and loneliness breeds emotional imbalance; more often than not occasioned with changes in behavioural patterns....the 'eccentricities and quirks' which are indicative of deep problems !

Sure we have dozens of priests who are nothing like that, nor ever could be subsumed into that mindframe, they are people who cope, irrespective of any dearth of pastoral or psychological training, they're survivors...

...but a lot of priests aren't.For the majority of them there are two options :

a] Put up with it and hope/pray it gets better; or grimly cling to the hope that you'll eventually be able to cope with this intense loneliness in a better way.
b] Change things - occupy myself - seek any solace anywhere I can.

The first type ultimately sink ; the second type may begin all idealistic and aspirational ; get up early, say the office, write a book on sprituality or NFP or the life of St Unknown of the remote...go jogging or swimming, learn to play bridge or swahili or car maintenance, start reading all those karl rahner's stacked up in the garage...buy a goldfish!

Some are lucky and it helps , some are even luckier and they do achieve a long-term hobby which assists them to come out of their shell and start performing their ministry in a better way

...for others ? well their lack of success or achievement in their ridiculous over-estimating of their capabilities; merely confirms to them their inadequacy and worthlessness in every aspect of their lives

...How many times do you think I've seen this ?

Then there's the priest who becomes utterly engrossed to the point of obsession with one aspect of their lives - it may be the diocesan liturgy or educational policy or a building project or being a prison/hospital chaplain - every other aspect of their faith [and their reason!] go out of the window with this new 'fad'
- for some it will last all their lives and give them some reason to go on ; for others more recklessly 'will-o-the-wisp' - like, they'll jump from one fad to another [and on occasions waste ridiculous amounts of diocesan/other people's time, money, energy and resources...]

When the priest feels useless or inadequate , or that anything/everything he is doing is utterly futile - that's when he reaches for the bottle, that's when he starts responding to the flirtations from female [and yes on occasion male] parishioners, that's when he starts vanishing from the presbytery for days on end

...thus begins the descent into his personal hell

....Priests are in trouble, and our dearly beloved bishops are doing 'bugger all' about it because their predecessors gave just as bad example as the priests did - abandoning the priests, being negligent to the point of grave matter...

you know I read the 21st chapter of John and it brings me to tears - because our contemporary apostles are not feeding Our lord's lambs , caring for His sheep.

I repeat, the only way anything can be done about it is a massive overhaul in the priestly training process - maybe even a secular version of the old intensively trained religious orders ? - the dominicans, jesuits or redemptorists [but the majority of these once glorious beacons of light for the faith have gone to pot in heterodoxy and acedia and their own selfish anti-catholic agendas].

You've seen the karate kid/rocky/nikita/[whatever inspirational film] montages where the individual is trained, and trained hard to be that which they aspire to be ?That's what seminaries should be like - not boarding schools with a bit of extra prayer and the odd group discussion...

Train priests !

And as for the priests we already have ?

The bishops should get down on their knees in penance and apology for the way they have abandoned them - then grab the priest by the scruff of the neck, chuck a bucket of ice water all over them, and throw them back into training to give the coping mechanisms and spiritual psychological pastoral training to go out there and perform the Lord's wonders in His name.

How many bishops can turn to their priests,
How many priests can turn to their parishioners
How many seminary rectors can turn to their students and authentically declare :

'I did not/do not leave you orphans, there are no strangers here' ?

You know I'm forever complaining about the dumbing down of catechesis - my kids only ever seemed to do the same four parables at school year in, year out...

But in our abject arrogance and lack of basic decency, let alone love, we've forgotten the message of even those parables...

Lord, who is my neighbour ?

#9 The response was 'purge the morally schizophrenic homosexuals' - I replied...

You talk about moral schizophrenia

- this is a Church post-vatican II dude, what do you think we're living in ?

Are you aware of the flagrant heresies and apostasies, sacrileges and heinous moral compromises being taught in our seminaries, being preached from our pulpits, being pronounced or approved by conferences of bishops ?

For crying out loud wake up !

Look at our children being doctrinally abused in the classroom with mendacities alleging to be catechesis ['catholic christianity' being the most blatant one]

Our parishes are emptying en masse because of the systemic plague of despondency our priests are contaminated with

...even the Polish immigrants are spending the little money and resources they have on building their own churches here because they are horrified at the abject dearth of spirituality in our Parishes...

And if you think it's bad here you should see the US where every priest can do as he bloody well pleases and not only get away with it, but get paid for it too !

Millions of "dispossessed , aside thrust, chucked down by the sheer might of despots' wills" to paraphrase the blessed cardinal...

But what about homosexuality in the seminaries ? Vincent, I have to tell you it was a major problem twenty years ago; but really now you have very little to worry about because there are hardly any seminarians left !

...and those who are there are not inveigling themselves into 'dens of iniquity' to get their wicked ends away - those days have gone !

The Seminaries of the western world are empty , defunct, surplus to requirement...

Young men aren't becoming seminarians because young men aren't practising catholics any more - the catholic education system and the clergy and the diocese have abandoned them !

Trust me, the majority of seminarians in this country now are there because they had to fight to get in and fight to stay there.
They are the ones who are orthodox , devout and loyal to Holy Mother Church, it's their teachers, rectors, spiritual directors and parish priests back home who are the ones who have compromised their priesthood and their faith to the point of dissolution...

The seminary gay subculture is vanishing - the seminary culture is vanishing; because the church is vanishing before our very eyes...

Young priests are some of the only hope catholicism has in this country - the eastern europeans bring most of the rest ; because we, as a catholic people, have abandoned our church and allowed reprehensible travesties to occur within it for forty years now - and did we fight , did we ever make a stand ?

NO ! we grumbled, moaned, whinged, complained, but we still rolled over passively and submitted to everything, until it got to the stage where we gave up caring about anything and walked away.

There's a catholic school a stone's throw away from my house, couple of hundred kids attend it - you can count on two hands how many attend Sunday mass...

I come from a highly devout huge scottish catholic family, my grandfather's family helped build the shrine to Our Lady at Carfin, my grandmother took three cleaning jobs on and one of her wages went solely to help build the catholic school - but how many of her dozens of grandchildren attend mass ? you can count on one hand !

A third of our town's population of 60,000 are catholic - if 1% attend mass it's been a good Sunday...

We're screwed ! Big time ! Sure it's not got that bad in the south of England or Scotland yet, where catholic communities are more ritualised - The majority of our diocesan priests are in charge of two or more parishes - and because of the seminary mentalities and horrendous example these priests were given when they were young by uncaring , negligent post vatican II priests , these priests really think they are doing their job by merely providing a single sunday service and odd wedding and funeral.

They are bored out of their skulls !
Lonely, isolated, distant from their ageing parishioners and other clerics - they really don't see much point to it all now; their parishes are dying ; they feel that their own souls are dying ; this isn't a crisis of faith, this is a crisis of existence !

The media are against us - the secular morality of the tabloids and Trisha/Jeremy Kyle are most definitely against us...The uneducated big brother watching masses of ignorant feral youths are must assuredly against us...

Academia [even the ostensibly catholic halls of education] ridicule orthodox devout catholic sentiments as anachronistic, misogynist and sexually repressive redolences of a crumbling Patriarchy....

There is a new catholicism-ism - one that is oblivious to any sexual or life 'sins' - one that denies the authenticity of the Incarnation, resurrection , real presence, efficacy of the sacraments or Our lady's virginity - mention the assumption and they'd laugh in your face, mention the potential sinfulness of the condom or pill and they'd think you as viciously cruel - gone are the days of cafeteria catholicism - this is picnic christianity with a tiny hint of catholic ritual.

Hundreds of thousands of catholics in this country went through devastating times in the eighties and nineties - unemployment, family and marital breakdowns, bereavements, illnesses, depressions, divorces, problems with kids involved in crime and alcohol and drugs...major crises

and where were their fellow catholics ?

where were their fellow parishioners?

where were their priests ?

A friend of mine went to confession about twenty years ago - there she confessed how she was a nun who was duped into running off with a spanish man who swore he loved her but proceeded to philander, beat her up, steal everything she owned, sexually molest their two children and rape her if she tried to prevent his assault on the two children... she risked her life to escape to england penniless, mentally and physically wrecked but slowly, steadily trying to get her, and her children's, life back on an even keel - but her hatred for her ex-husband was eating her away....this was the first time she had built up the courage to tell any human being what she had gone through...this confession was a critical moment in her life....

The priest sat there sighing, picking his nose, looking at it and eating it, then sighed a big long sigh and told the poor woman to cheer up - the weather has got a bit better and we've got some nice sun now...Now for your penance...

Not a word of sympathy, consolation , empathy nor any offer of assistance or aid....this seems to exemplify the contemporary church and the condition of the clergy,
For all I know this priest may have been desperate to reach out and help but he had never experienced any training, teaching or good example to emulate ?
[I'm sorry that's a lie, this priest wouldn't ]; but that's not the point ;
our priests are just slightly informed well-meaning pagans who are pastorally inept beyond credulity...

No Training.
Reprehensibly poor education.
No example from other clerics.
No shepherding from their Bishop.
We have to do something - and while you're worried about whether your new curate is worried about his bum looking big in his chasuble ; catholicism is collapsing around you!

Bishops are still writing ad clerums about praying for young men to come forward in our time of vocations-crisis...

They really shouldn't worry, come the next few generations, unless something drastic is done NOW, there won't be a lack of priests, because there won't be any catholics !

#8 A response to a really nice orthodox catholic who suggested we purge all homosexuals from seminaries [and that we had available means to do it]

[I sincerely apologise for this crude posting, but we were in a rather heated discussion]
[Please ignore this - it's not exactly conducive to what this blog is about]

Vincent, what exactly do you think should be done ?
wire all prospective seminarians up to a heart monitor and see if it beats faster when they watch 'naughty knickers and the lash of lust' or while they flick through a dieux du stade calendar ?

sexuality doesn't work like that,
sexual attraction is a complex thing that requires channeling in order to become an efficacious part of the celibate life,
it doesn't need to be suppressed, seen as something sordid or lascivious, but something that needs psychologically liberated from physical desire and endocrinal urges......

the straightest father of twenty would look twice if a young David Beckham walked past...a gay friend of mine said jokingly that he felt guilty watching Diana Rigg in the Avengers because it was compromising his homosexuality!

To be frank and somewhat crude, we don't want clerics sticking their dinkles where the sun don't shine - whether they are gay,straight, bi or have fetishes for garden furniture...

The only way to ensure this happens is by yes, weeding out those who will never be able to resist diving into sexual activity, but also by ensuring that those who have a willingness for celibacy have the support and pastoral assistance and training to help it come to fruition - clinical psychological counselling and spiritual direction and practical applications in the outside world will assist this....

Go on an all-out 'queer-hunt' and you'll soon discover that so many seminarians [and staff] are so sexually ambiguous that after you've finished the only person left on the seminary site is an elderly cleaner and the cat [and even he'd been speyed!]

It's a sad state of affairs but we have to be honest here; we are always going to have homosexual as well as straight clergy; but the only decent ones who manage in their parishes to be effective,dignified, orthodox pastors are the ones who have channelled that sexuality into their daily lives - not frightened of their own shadow, flinching from any intimacy, there are few things more sad than seeing a young priest who can't hug...

The priests who are living their celibacy are the ones we should exemplify, not the others,
it's the priests who have run away and hid in their presbyteries, locking themselves away every weekday and only appearing for a few select performances at the weekends; too frightened to visit female parishioners while their husbands are at work lest tongues wag...

never mentioning anything to do with sexuality, in fact being highly prudish about sexual educational material in the classroom
but still he'll have his mucky books under the mattress, watching the free ten minutes of the adult channel...and heaven knows what's on his internet search history ;
but even so he's terrified to talk to a young female member of the parish and so terrified of being thought a pervert that he makes all the altar servers girls and has nothing to do with their training....

priests are called to live their celibacy, not stifle and kill and suppress their sexuality - it's ridiculous to presume it's possible - lacordaire said a priest needs a heart of bronze for chastity - chastity and celibacy are only possible when that sexual dynamism is transcended through acts of charity and devotion towards others - and for that a priest needs a decent life of prayer and meditation, and also the ability to get off their backsides and start shepherding their flock and being involved in their lives!!!

One old cleric once jokingly said to me [quite coarsely] if you want to be a fisher of men you have to get your hand off your rod and start casting out your nets !crude, but very apposite.

#7 in response to a question regarding testing a vocation

You asked a direct question and I was rude enough to ramble on self-indulgently and vicariously; failing to respond.

The answer is very simple: the poor example of priests.

Ask anyone you know and they will give dozens of examples of hair-pulling exasperation at the attitudes, opinions,demeanours and actions of our beloved clergy.

But this leads to further necessary elucidation - and it's one fundamentally based upon the abandonment and abject neglect of our priests - the loneliness, despondency, the apparent futility of it all, the lack of support, their impotency and feelings of being virtually castrated or cuckolded in the modern world.

Their isolation from parishioners and a secular lifestyle - the reprehensible behaviour of associates who escape with a slapped hand or even promotion from the authorities.
The feelings of no sense of worth , the middle-age crises which seem to have no end , the disillusionment with their faith...

Everywhere one looks this is being demonstrably relayed from the pulpit - you don't know if you want to hug the priest or throw a bucket of ice-water over them.

All too often they appear to believe that they have no position of validity or worth - this is expressed through two ways - becoming dictatorial and tyrannical over minor procedural exigences, or just giving everything up into the hands of the laity...

Some barely survive through a 'happy medium' of these two expressions - others are jt disconsolate and seek succour elsewhere...Drink, food, isolation, tv, travel,unhealthily consorting too much with like-minded others, wasting money on inane aspirational projects, shopping, the internet, pornograpy or sexual liaisons where available, gambling...the list is endless.

But young men SEE these things ; parishioners witness all this and are highly antagonistic towards this outlook of the clergy and the contemporary church which is basically a milieu of neglect and abandonment

...and then there are the priests who ARE involved - the inner ring of reprobates who gave up thinking of God and the Church decades ago; caring more for liturgies and administration and educational/RCIA policies and all the committees,conferences and meetings involved.

...the young catholic man would rather choke on his own vomit than become one of these terrible speech makers or paper shufflers

...but what if he's lucky enough to encounter a good orthodox highly-motivated priest ? one who cares for and visits his parishioners, one who actually teaches and reveals his love of God and neighbour from the pulpit ?

All too often this accentuates the faults and failings of the majority of clerics around him - experiencing a good priest can concentrate all the crises in the church and make the young man more frustrated ; especially when he sees tht the priest is like an oasis, a voice crying in the wilderness; ridiculed and dismissed by associate priests, patronised by the authorities who are antagonistic to his anachronistic running of a parish; occasionally remonstrating with the priest for his failure to promote lay ministries and participation... the liberalising modernists have many ways of criticising/destroying anyone who is more capable or more loved than they are.

The young man confronts great risks and deeply questions his abilities - could he really endure a life like this ; with neither support nor comfort in any way - and what's more , all the things he truly believes a priest should be doing in the world seem to be thwarted or prevented even amongst the best of priests by the powers from above...young men are out there who are willing to become priests [irrespective of wanting to become them] but their wisdom perceives that they would hardly be given any opportunity to be the priest they truly thought they should be - idealistic, aspirational and devoted to God and the church - they see on the ground that everything that a priest should be is being proverbially urinated on, by the bishops, the laity and even the priests themselves...

#6 The Nightmare vocations weekend - a fantasy of grotesques - please ignore- this is for research purposes only.

[please understand that this is not autobiographical - merely a normative compilation of about a dozen associates who have gone through a very similar 'generic' process before entering seminary. Understand too that these depictions of seminarians are 'bogies' 'grotesques' at a masquerade - nobody is truly like these people]

vocations weeks/weekends are a nightmare scenario for any young man wishing to assess a possible vocation...

A few things immediately leap out;one is that the more senior members of the gathering are not priests; but maybe an ex-monk, or an ex-anglican cleric , or a civil servant/steel worker whose elderly parent they've spent the past twenty years caring for and has just died...or an ex-seminarian trying for the second or third time to return to seminary.

Invariably they look quite nervous and 'out of sorts' they may smile distantly or gaze mid-air or seem too deeply in their own thoughts, any response to a question will be glibly short or overly personally descriptive and too detailed.
They appear in either a state of deep discomfort being surrounded by so many youngsters, or quite passive and peeved that they have to 'go through the motions' before getting on with the work to do in a church.

Then the ones who are too young: fourteen or fifteen years old ; it's quite unsettling , but some old parish priest has thought to send one or two altar boys in the expectation that in four or five years they may test their vocation; and it's better for them to start integrating with the seminarians now - not a very good idea...one of the kids may be a completely disinterested goth or emo wearing a blatantly blasphemous t-shirt, another kid may be dressed like he's an open university lecturer in his early sixties - their clothes revealing a great deal about them and their backgrounds...but not the way you'd expect. The 'punk' is normally the one who will end up one of the best priests in the diocese.

There may be a few other potential seminarians and they are generally of a specific type ; young, intellectual-looking, either not very healthy looking or overtly sporty and team-captain-like, the majority wear glasses [don't ask me why, they just do] and they seem thoroughly unsettled and frightened of their own shadows...one significant point of observation is the haircut which usually falls into two categories - overly short/assaulted by hedgetrimmers or clinically parted Roger Moore/Thunderbirds -like. Their dress sense is overly reserved - sometimes they may resort to wearing Jesus-sandals in warm weather; but it just looks gauche.


Then comes the vocations director - now twenty years ago the v.d. would have been a middle-aged experienced parish priest, dean or vicar of clergy - but for some reason today episcopal policy has decreed that vocations directors have to be young - as the young priest will 'inspire and empathise' with the young seminarian - more often than not this can actually have the diammetrically opposite effect...

Not even the young vocations director is arrogant or presumptuous enough to believe he has any answers or enough experience to truly support a prospective candidate for the diocese......

then come the seminarians.

Now you are probably filled with prejudicial/assumptive stereotypes regarding the seminarians and their personalities and characteristics ; based upon your own experiences with young priests ; let me tell you that you are both surprisingly very wrong, and sadly very, very right....


Let's start with the biggest, and the most brainless, group - what I'd refer to as the 'monty python mob' - why ? because they are the type of people who spend a lot of time speaking in the code of the 'inner ring' a lot of this used to be quoting from monty python; although it could just as easily today be lines from little britain or ugly betty - but these people are some of the most isolationist you will ever encounter...

Ever been to a rugby/cricket club and there's a rowdy bunch hanging round the bar being overly loud, having a penchant for 'mickey-taking' and ridicule, and constantly referring to events/antics/gaffes involving people who aren't there and their run-ins with officials and how it was all a good laugh, but you wouldn't understand because 'you'd have to be there' ? That's the type !- There's also a disturbing over-reference to women as if they're some alien species and 'only good for one damned thing'; as if they're all the most experienced philanderers on the planet ; it's only after listening for a while that you realise that most of them have never even kissed a girl, nor would ever really wish to...You know the type ?

Well seminarians of this ilk come in two distinct flavours - as if they belong to two opposing teams - imagine arsenal and chelsea, or city and united, you have the vocally secular 'I'm not really clerical. I'm just one of the lads' versus the 'I'm not a human being any more, I'm part of that inner sanctum of the potential presbyterate' Of course I'm alluding to what the python mob would refer to as : "we're the Romans!!!"

The Venerabile Collegio Inglese and the Beda breed ecclesiastical gossips, attention seekers and young men attempting desperately to be gnostically 'in the know' about points of doctrine and canon law or clerical shenanigans.... any opportunity to mention the name of a cleric whom at least one member of the group of avid listeners is ignorant of - is a tactical victory for the romanita....

The 'Lads' vs 'Romans' - the mutual contempt is almost tangible - but ostensibly there will be smiles and subtle truces ; among the ranks there may be a few 'treacheries' of people becoming friendly with 'the enemy' - they may even be 'pulled up for consorting with that bunch of modernists/tridentinists/louts/nancy boys/delete as applicable

'Hostility reigns between these two groups; but there are many varieties of seminarian that fall somewhere between them...quick desciptions:

a] The 'in-your-face' grinning/overly serious interrogator - a seminarian that falls into two sub classes - but they do the same thing - ask overtly personal questions to the point of being downright rude - the difference is subtle but significant - one type seems to be mentally making a note of absolutely everything for future reference; the other doesn't really seem to care about the answers to the questions at all ! what seems more important is that he has asked the questions...[don't ask me why this happens - I'm just reporting what I and others have encountered - the motive of this type of individual is beyond me - why ask questions if you don't care about the answers ? unless you're asking an ulterior totally different question you can't use words for ? possibly ?]

b] the awkward,lovable but not exactly likable, 'lunk' - not very intellectual in seminarian-type interests, not a deep conversationalist about seminarian-type things, doesn't exactly fit into any of the niches that seminaries have classified for seminarians - The patron saint of parish priests, St John Vianney, would have fallen into this isolated, sadly patronised about and dismissed category, 'put up with out of charity', but never invited to private gatherings...What's amazing is that these 'misfits' usually have some extraordinary talent - either creative or musical or being a great listener/counsellor - but only those who go out of their way to seek the hidden depths of this person may discover it....

c] The autocrat: bit self-explanatory really, clinical, snobbish, prone to being hostile and holding anything not 'conducive', or anyone who is not 'one of us' in utter contempt. A doctrinal draconian, a clerical pro-eugenicist; antipathetic to any dead-wood. You may think that the majority of these people are overly pious right-wing traditionalists ; please don't be misled - there are just as many liberal modernists and 'reformers' who have adopted the stance of 'ideological restructuring' within the church; acting as if they were participating in a corporate take-over...they always have a close associate nearby , and have a predilection towards forming select groups which either support the establishment or seek to destroy every aspect of it.

d] the Louche - seems to exude charisma and decadence - part angel/part demon, Brideshead or Bauhaus, Junkie Jim Morrisson or refined Rupert Everett - they seem to induce adulation or abject anathematisation from those around them. Inveterately they're either a 'go with the flow' passively nonchalant care-free individual, or staunchly right/left wing with a very categorical agenda; yet they 'play the game' with an amazing dexterity and efficacy. They make very good, albeit dangerous, friends.

e] the sporty/excitable type - activities and participation-obsessed, in order to be a 'human being' in their eyes you have to be a 'human doing' - invariably among seminarians this leads to a 'human going'.

f] The 'expert'; the ones 'knowledgeable about everything' - least said the better....

g] the idealistic innocent youngster - sometimes they really are just that; on more than the odd occasion they are playing a very subtle game a la 'I Claudius' - playing the naiive fool - sometimes as a defence mechanism; on other occasions to manipulate and gather worthwhile information...sadly these people are not very trustworthy, their ostensible guilelessness for some reason leads to the stirring up of trouble.

h] the 'uninvolved' - they were called this because they were the exact opposite - behind the scenes they were deeply into administration, organisation, planning etc, but would never look you in the eye or participate in any human interaction or social event - scurrying everywhere, busy about their business - typing up a new rota being infinitely more important than wasting a few seconds on polite pleasantries with another human being.

i] the weasel/Iago - sadly there are a few around; quickly you learn to tell them absolutely nothing of any import regarding yourself or anyone else ; unless you wish to manipulate circumstances - they can be a useful tool but one always feels like you need to attend confession or take a long shower after encountering them.

j] the equivocator/placator - the pragmatist who agrees with everyone about everything when they are in their presence - never really having an agenda of their own except wanting to be liked

k] the predator - yes they exist - hacking away at one's psyche to break down the walls - some wish to invade that space; others don't really care as the fun was the destruction-part; some a homosexuals seeking out any potential weakness or sexual insecurity in the young man for a chance of some sordid fun ; others are just nasty pieces of work who live to one principle : 'it is not enough to succeed - others must fail!'


l] the follower - ingratiating to the point of excruciation - the one desperately seeking to be the object of their affection's 'executive officer','right hand man' or the 'beloved unto the lord' - they can get pretty nasty if their position is ever compromised or perceived as in jeopardy.

Of course the young and enthusiastic vocations director is oblivious to most of this... they have a tendency to jump to conclusions - categorise someone according to a single action they have witnessed and thought unusual or 'character-confirming'.

Like a lot of naiive individuals, they really do believe thay know more than they truly do about the people around them; and are very quick to reach judgements. The young feel they have to know everything and have their voice heard otherwise they wane from existence.
For a young vocations director it can lead to two outcomes - getting overly involved or being reticent to ever get involved - having big brother watching you leads to people becoming insecure and overly secretive;on the other hand giving an individual enough rope to hang themselves without any overt concern for their well-being leads to anxiety and loneliness, together with the potential to just grab the rope and throw themselves off the roof [why delay the inevitable? it's obvious the diocese doesn't want me, why don't they just get it over and done with?]

Anyway, this proverbial young man has so far only encountered seminarians at a vocations week...seminaries are very different places...

#5 The young man in the parish...

after a struggle at school; confronting all the secular morality bombarded upon him from every corner and being accused of all manner of things - being a homophobic misogynist and an enemy of women by opposing abortion, and a conspirator in the genocide of AIDS in africa just for being a catholic [some of these denunciations coming from teachers!]

- amidst all this the young man might decide that he really does believe in catholicism....his only way to survive is to be with like-minded people before he goes crazy

....so he tries to get involved in the parish, like a fool he goes to the priest,

now invariably priests react in one of two ways - over-sincerely or with a wary hostility - luckily this time the lad got the curate, had he encountered the parish priest and expressed his overt religious fervour he might have been 'politely' sent away with a flea in his ear and told to grow up and get a girlfriend and come back in five years when he'd 'grown a set'

...nevertheless the curate is finding ways for the young man to get involved - so much so that by the end of it the lad discovers he has virtually volunteered for everything...

the next few months are tough

...there are run-ins with the professional laity at every corner who inform him that whatever he does - be it reading at mass, or holding a chalice, or expressing an opinion of the real bodily resurrection or singing the Inwood gloria - he's doing it wrongly !!

he's asked would he really mind if their daughter jocasta who's just back from drama school did it for the next few times just to show him how to do it properly ?

the young man finds more companionship amongst the elderly and more neglected members of these groups - more often than not he finds himself sitting next to someone who likes to talk about 'the old ways in the days of the old monsignor/canon' "the canon would never have let them put flowers there!" "the canon always knelt on both knees when he opened the tabernacle" "the canon always had first fridays, and made sure there was a candlemas procession" "the canon would never allow that..." and so the list would go on - an elderly devout woman might slip him a 'chaplet of divine mercy' leaflet, or a brown scapular... or tell him how to get a plenary indulgence for something.... the leader of the meditation group overhears and ridicules those 'quaint old ways' and then proceeds to give a lecture on carlo carretto and john cassian in the desert....and how her sister spoke in tongues at the latest renewal conference...

the curate is quite nice really; he has his guitar but he sings and plays well, and he really loves God, but he has weird quirky things - he says things like Moses wasn't exactly a real person but it didn't matter for people of faith, he has a 'day off' every week and even if he stays in the presbytery he won't answer the phone or help anyone who comes to the rectory - it's his day off; he does seem a bit overfriendly with a couple of his priest friends - one is a bit slimey and holds the young man's hand for a bit too long when they meet, and the curate does go out to the pub every saturday without a collar wearing a salmon pink jumper and spends a lot of time having 'meals' with people;

the priest's sermons are usually funny or sad stories ; but he doesn't really talk about Jesus or God very much and when someone mentions the pope or bishop he does smile patronisingly and say "God bless him"

- a lot of the parishioners think he's dreamy or lovely, some others think he's a drippy stick of wet celery who should spend a few months down a coalmine to give him a dose of reality and a spine.
They prefer the grumpy parish priest ; the young man doesn't - the young man doesn't understand anything about the parish priest at all - he just seems so miserable and lonely and non-involved - even during mass his sermons are all about how we shouldn't feel guilty for our failings - never anything else !
the young man begins to suspect the parish priest is broken in some way - and nothing will ever get through to him....

so the years progress and the young man really feels that despite belonging to a bunch of less than perfect individuals in a parish, the time is right for him to test his vocation ;

his family are none too pleased - the priesthood seems a wasted life , especially with all the potential academic qualifications the young man has... the only people who seem enthusiastic are the people the young man doesn't exactly want to be enthusiastic...

even though the curate is ecstatic, the parish priest is grumpily hostile, but it's the parish priest's approval the young man wants...

the professional laity are already composing songs for the young mans ordination mass and making preparations for six years hence, but the elderly people he thought he was close too seem sad and look at him funnily as if the young man does't understand what he's got himself into - one even mentions solemnly in almost whispers about struggles, loneliness and sacrifice... and the young man doesn't really understand -

one of the matronly trendy catechists announces how one of those under her wing is going to try out for the presbyteral ministry , test his vocation as they had all tested their ministerial vocations before God chose them to be a part of her catechetical group - and who knows when we get a new pope she might be joining him in seminary ???So the young man heads off to the first diocesan vocations weekend....

#4 [continued] a fantasy word-picture for a prospective seminarian

The young man looks back on his religious education from school - more often than not he won't be at a catholic senior school; as the bishops have sold the majority of them off en-masse; the days when catholic schools were the envy of surrounding educational establishments have long gone ; ever since the headmasters were granted more autonomy and more members of the professional laity got onto the boards of school governors , the quality of chosen candidates for teachers has not been the wisest, academic capability or catholicity gave way to those individuals who were 'conducive to the vision of the spirit and mission statement ' affable, inoffensive, liberalising 'educationalists' with little pedagogic experience , but belonging to a lot of educational committees or pressure groups...
thus the school grades plummetted,
elderly teaching staff became disillusioned and resigned many years before they had planned to, so in order to save money the school employs inexperienced young or trainee teachers [who , by some strange coincidence happen to be the children of the professional laity saving up money for their 'gap year' or impending marriage ] - discipline and grades plummet further ; the government notices the grades and implements special measures and ultimately the bishop grasps the opportunity for some ready money and bails the whole team out by closing the drain on fiscal resources...

no the young man must attempt to rely upon the religious education he received at primary school...

and then he gets a shock

he remembers a few songs about Paul in a basket and eagles , he remembers painting zacchaeus up the tree every year, and acting out the good samaritan and the prodigal son for assembly [miss said he made a good third pig] the rest is a blur...

he remembers sitting down at a table having a seder meal, visiting a sikh temple and rubbing yoghurt on a flag pole, he remembers getting told off for playing frisbee with the paper skullcaps miss handed out when they visited the synagogue; and he remembers the coach trip to the mosque that smelled funny and all the girls had to go out the back while all the men shouted and stuck their bums in the air...

he seems remember the bishop coming to the school once and someone gave him flowers while he told them they were the hope for the future in the spirit and hadn't they painted pretty pictures of him ?

He remembers being told about the mass but it's all about sitting round a table and sharing bread and wine - it seems to have nothing to do with a church altar or the crucifix or the tabernacle... there seems to be no notion of sacrifice at all...


he still went to church with his mum and gran, but felt a bit embarassed because he was the youngest one there apart from the schoolteacher's two young daughters who were altar servers; none of his schoolfriends went to mass, in fact none of his catholic neighbours seemed to go any more either....but when it comes to his catholicism , what he believes ?

that's come from his parents, well more specifically one set of grandparents who are impolite enough to think religion is a topic of conversation and does affect one's daily life.everything else has come from books - in fact most of the things he knows about the church comes from reading a non-catholic ;

CS Lewis books seem to be the only really accessible religious books around or available - and even then he had to buy them from a non-catholic 'christian book store'

the internet has been a great help, but all too often there are american sites which purport to be catholic and then suddenly they tell him he must support george bush and capitalism and the NRA and the war against terror and Iraq and must despise free education and universal health care as satanic , they have weird prayers to our lady and fantastic tales of her visitations to american mystics who tell the world that there's going to be great wars and earthquakes and purges of humanity - and then they say the Pope isn't really the pope as he's a heretic !

So he leaves those sites and tries to access the british catholic sites - they seem to teach nothing about catholicism at all - it's just meetings and conferences and group sharings and spirtual renewal retreats - lots of pictures of kids making banners and priests sitting in bathtubs of beans and elderly [drunk looking?] women holding up stylised picures of doves made from macaroni , or being applauded from a wooden pulpit by fellow women who all look like they've popped out of 1970's ambridge - and why are they all joining hands during the our father ?

the young man may seek solace from the youth group ? or the diocesan youth ministry ? he rings round and discovers there's a meeting in a nearby town so he gets on the bus - they say a little prayer, discuss what's happening in their school [somewhere he doesn't attend], what plans they have for the upcoming event or trip to a conference up north, and apart from a lot of in-talking and laughing about individuals he doesn't know, that's basically it ! The older members go down the pub and mockingly abandon him because he refuses to pretend he's 18 - he rings his dad to come and pick him up and decides not to go again...

after a few months he is informed there's a youth mass coming up at the cathedral, would he like to go ? more of the same thing happens but he does manage to meet a few others just aslost and alone as he is and they end up talking about a few things...

they have a weird mass in a field where the priest wears a multicoloured nylon tablecloth with grains of wheat all over it - the altar is an upturned orange box but there is a candle, he dishes out a huge loaf for everyone to tear a piece off - the boy supposes the rain will wash away all the dropped crumbs of host on the grass - they sing a few songs that could be hymns as they talk about spirit all the time and everyone seems really huggy, the priest is really trying to be hip and groovy and the bossy nun is wearing trousers - but soon it's all over and everyone seems to be hugging each other goodbye and talking about what they'll do at the next meeting somewhere the young man has never heard of...yet again the young man takes the journey home again on his own, but he is lucky enough to get one of the people he met's address...but the youth doesn't write back...


he's told there might be another youth event on the other side of the diocese - some over-enthusiastic woman who was dressed twenty years too young for her age gave a talk about it at mass one sunday - telling the elderly parishioners that children are our future in the spirit - he does sign the list for it at the back of the church, but crosses it out when he discovers he's the only one after the sign's been up for three weeks...

#3 Another word picture in response

Well !

Let me state an aside first before it disappears; a considerable amount of priests are disgruntled at the way anglicans - married anglicans or blatantly camp ones - were accepted with open arms into the clergy while remaining ostensibly CofE; merely with the bugbear of disapproving of women priests.

The debacle of the permanent diaconate whereby indolent-enough priests could dump their clerical exigences on some over-enthusiastic member of the professional laity who had enough basic theology and morality to confidently over-emphasise doctrine and praxis erroneously with a patronising smile has got many of the clergy and the laity's 'backs-up'!!

All too often in parishes across the country does sunday mass look something more akin to the adventures of the brady bunch - deacon dad's on the sanctuary in his posh white frock looking austere before he preaches; mum's dishing out communion, the eldest son or daughter is doing the readings and the rest of the kids are altar serving... not exactly conducive to inspiring anything but hostility from the sadly, but unexpectedly ,envious members of the congregation...

The priest seems , more often than not, surplus to requirement and a bit of 'spare one'.
This isn't only within the remit of mere deacons - oh no ! throughout the country there are vast swathes of 'professional laity families' who are involved in everything !!
invariably they are teachers or avid middle class 'professionals' and this does "rub the parishioners' noses in it" - ostensibly these people mean well, but all too readily does it turn into a conflict of wills; and the creation of an 'inner ring' from which the average parishioner feels ostracized.
These professional laity do feel that because of their time and effort they should be afforded some validity and position within the church mechanism - and they are all too ready to fill in any 'gaps in ministry/catechesis' with like-minded friends and associates.
They are on the visible administrative committees anmd parish councils etc; while the 'lower class' individuals of the parish have to make do with the legion of mary, the st vincent de paul society, the union of catholic mothers or the martha group of church cleaners.

You don't think young men don't see this going on around them ? a parish run in a way that it isn't really a parish at all - it's more like a baptist chapter.

They see that "children's liturgies" are merely excuses to get the kids out of the way so their professional laity parents can sing 'colours of day' and bang a tambourine in the band, or prance around the sanctuary as some new 'minister of something'.

They may attend RCIA and be both enraged and astounded at the heterodoxy being promulgated as church doctrine by the 'catechist' laity who have never studied a day's theology in their lives - and I don't just mean the ordinary stuff that the cafeteria catholics pick and choose - contraception, homosexuality, divorce etc - I'm talking about things like whether Jesus was married to Mary magdalene or had a gay affair with St John, that most of the Bible is fairy stories, most of church teachings are capitalist, heterosexist, racist, misogynistic anachronisms , the pope and the bishops are just out of touch and need to catch up with reality ,and come vatican 4 we'll have a lesbian pope who's had three abortions and four divorces; and the only ex cathedra condemnations will be about racism, eating meat and not being carbon neutral.A young man with a modicum of orthodoxy is bound to be a little disillusioned.

# 2 a response to a question regarding the preponderance of homosexual seminarians and priests.

Well ?
One of my heroes is Bishop d'Arcy of Fort Wayne/South Bend Indiana [next cardinal please your Holiness??] - a man with long experience of priestly formation - he's of the opinion, with the vatican, that homosexuality is too much of a burden and struggle within the obvious potential opportunities for sexual intimacy within a seminary - and he would normatively be against promoting celibate gay candidates for the priesthood.

But that is not exactly the point that we are discussing here - What we are talking about is not sexual orientation - it's a lack of definitive sexual orientation - and clinical psychologists back this up.
Over a sixth of adolescent males go through a period of exclusive homosexual attraction/activity for around three years of their sexual development - two thirds of these revert to exclusive heterosexuality after this period providing psychological sexual maturation is allowed to occur - in other words the vast majority of teenage gays are not actually gay at all; but are indeed 'going through a narcissistic self-pleasure seeking phase projected onto other same sex individuals - sexually gratifying the 'mirror image of the self' -
this can hardly be denoted as sexually oriented at all -
for some males this 'period' never leaves them and even through a basically heterosexual life they still have latent homosexual predilections - we all have adult friends who are a bit...um...well ? overfriendly ? it's one of the consequences of confused or thwarted sexual maturation...

But for the majority the sexual maturation process ultimately clarifies their orientation - regrettably socio-cultural and nurturing influences hone in on this period and especially in western cultures there are men who should be psychologically heterosexual but are subsumed into the culture and lifestyle at a vulnerable age and adapt to it [western cultures have 2 to 3 times the amount of homosexual male population they technically should according to anthropological/sociological studies of all cultures]

But let's consider the post-pubescent males entering seminary - some, especially the more 'religious' and 'pastorally active' may have significant delays on their sexual maturation in comparison to their more 'secular' contemporaries - some may have their first sexual encounter with a fellow seminarian or female student many years after the average teenager plays 'doctors and nurses' or encounters heavy petting.
A considerable amount of time should be spent with the seminarian in their training and development both psychosexually and emotionally in this process for them to actually determine who they are and how they are going to channel that sexual authenticity through their priestly ministry.

If this doesn't happen there will be consequences - some seminarians go on a sexual free-for-all once they've tasted the forbidden fruit - going out to clubs and sleeping with anything that moves ; some even going through a process in [mainly U.S.]seminary called 'bed-notching' whereby they have competitions to see how many first year seminarians they can have a sexual liaison with 'notching their bed post'!!!

Some may suppress it, and that has consequences.
Psychologically it will not go away ; for some it can lead to an eating away of the self and a personal emotional breakdown ; for others of ulterior disposition and ill-intent it will express itself through other means - invariably through spite and malice and abuses of power which may ultimately lead to abuse in all its varied forms - but it usually starts with psychological abuse before it gets sexual.

But what of the others who don't go on to be abusers , but are still deeply sexually immature ?
Well some are at even greater risks.

Some may develop an intimate friendship with another and be sneaking into each others beds in the small hours; or sneaking out over the seminary wall to a local girlfriend's - this psychologically demeans sexual activity - rather than seeing lovemaking as a beautiful sacrament between a loving married couple whereby they are most Godlike - it becomes a debased deathly-silent , terrifyingly guilt-ridden conspiratorial mutual masturbatory fumbling in the shadows...an image that remains with them for a long period of time...- one they may later on seek to conquer or redress - but how ?

Assuredly some will attempt prayer and loving understanding of the marital relationships and the good example round them of family life .

But others ?
They'll try and get rid of those sexual 'bogeymen' and guilt trips by trying to sexually liberate themselves with someone who ostensibly cares about them....But there are others too who having only experienced orgasmic intimacy and excitement via the dark,unsubtle,raw,unemotional,clinically almost violent and dangerous, sexual liaisons that they can only continue to achieve arousal or gratification through that means - why do some married men/clergy get their kicks out of cottaging/dogging/prostitution when technically the opportunity for them to get it elsewhere is readily available ?
It's the sexual thrill and risk of it all - a very dangerous psychological disposition - and a sign of deep sexual insecurity and immaturity.

Another insurmountable barrier for some is the factor of modern woman !
The post feminist teenage girl who is frankly , generally speaking, a monster !!! insensitive, selfish, foul-mouthed, incapable of any considerations apart from her own gratification - Go into any school in the country today and you will discover that three-quarters of all the problems will have teenage girls at their source.
The Jeremy Kyle/Trisha/Take a break magazine generation of 'young ladies' are neither adorable or romantically inspiring ; whereas the 'new-man',the responsible caring males, metrosexually dressed, sharing in all the fellow males' interests and pursuits is exceedingly more enticing and rewarding.
Our parenting and media are producing an era when young men are turning gay out of choice and frankly for some who could blame them when faced with the alternative ???
Sometimes the Daniel is prettier, more caring and loving and more of a capable companion than the Danielle; and that's a direct product of society !!!
Feminists seem to be oblivious to the notion that their feminisms are wreaking a new form of misogyny which isn't at a level of thinking men are superior to women; it's being thrust into young men's faces that a lot of women are not the people you'd really want to spend time with.

I've probably outraged a lot of feminists with that comment , and they'll make the same age-old reaction that catholic attitudes towards women are anachronistically defunct - we like to see every women as pure and virginal and motherly as Our Lady - and we are all sexually fixated on that purity and oedipal urges - it's baloney - men do not like horrible women, full stop - and society is wreaking havoc among the mentalities of our female youth - all products of the liberation of women [i.e. they've dumped their husbands for a younger useless model and have to spend all the hours God sends socialising to keep him and her mates 'happy' and working all the rest of the time to pay for it; while she bleeds her lonely abandoned ex-husband dry and the kids are left neglected to go to pot!!!] .

[I'm sounding so Anne Atkins it's scaring me]

My main point is that seminaries are not going to get anywhere when they are filled with students, and run by people, who are allowed to remain in situations of arrested sexual maturation and left in a psychological limbo rather than confronting their sexual orientation and their preparation for celibacy head-on.

I don't think the problem is a directly homosexual one at all ; it's a problem which is now on the wane, but was highly prevalent especially in the US in the 80's - it's having infantile predatory homosexuals being allowed to hold their sway and blackmail/tyrannise/psychologically abuse fellow seminarians within seminaries; while seminary officials turn a blind eye - or even participated in any available 'fun'!

But meanwhile there are many young sexually insecure, immature and vulnerable seminarians who are frightened of their own shadow... receiving little if no support from anyone apart from fellow seminarians just as scared as they are - and psychological intimacy can lead to physically intimate outreachings/misunderstandings and lead to physical mistakes that corrupt and ruin the originally innocent relationship...I honestly ask you - would you want your son placed in an institution where the few predatory 'deviants' [and I do call them deviants - they aren't homosexual any more than we are - they are predatory sexual abusers with not an ounce of love or respect in their souls] can be permitted to hold their sway ?

thought not!!

Would you want your son placed in an institution that didn't give two hoots what happened to the people in their responsibility providing the bills were paid and the exams passed and the liturgies sung and the sports cups won ?

thought not, neither would I !!

A major problem is age - I wouldn't allow ordination till at least 28 - but then again I'd have priestly training being a significantly longer more involved process.
I'd have integrated intense clinical psychological assessments, psychosexual counsellings and therapies given by trained catholic spiritual directors.

Together with that I'd actually force seminary staff to run their seminaries - trust me they aint like Hogwarts - some are like colditz but with a 1970's hippy minimalist vatican-II-ista mentality - some are like repressed holiday camps where anyone can do what they like providing nobody knows....No, seminaries need to be run...not even that well, just well enough to ensure that the poor seminarian isn't either left abandoned or given enough rope to hang themselves, or left vulnerable to the malevolent machinations of people of ill-will and eight hands.

If that really happened - it wouldn't matter if the seminarian went in there either sexually ambiguous,gay,straight,bisexual, or into goats or items of agricultural machinery - they would have a decent opportunity for sexual maturation and an option to address the challenges and sacrifices and understand the graces and benefits of a celibate life.

I don't see celibate homosexuality as being a preclusion from vocations.; but it does have significant difficulties which must be assessed and determined before any decisions regarding ordination occur - being in extraordinary circumstances - a celibate homosexual candidate would be expected to act extraordinarily and prove their loyalty to chastity and celibacy to an extraordinary standard.
Some of the best , most holy catholics I know are celibate chaste homosexuals [and, significantly, they are some of the most sexually and psychologically mature people I know ][some are even priests].

But for the sexually immature to be ordained is reprehensibly irresponsible;and the training staff in the seminary; and the bishop and vocations director responsible for the candidate - should be dragged over the coals for it !!!

Not one of these priest-abusers should have been able to get through the process towards ordination ; human error should statistically dictate that a few would fly in under the radar and be missed - but for dozens upon dozens to systemically continue to abuse hundreds for decades ?

That's a clerical crime crying out to Heaven for justice.and the blame lies at the doors of our seminaries and bishop's palaces.

#1 - To All...any help will be gratefully appreciated.

I've been asked by someone to write my personal views regarding the crisis amongst the clergy and especially the role of the episcopacy in this regard.
This is going to take me many hours to compose and I would sincerely ask you all to contribute anything you consider relevant to the issue....

In the meantime I'm going to copy and paste a few of my postings regarding the sexual abuse/homosexual priest/clerical crisis issue merely to clarify a few points in my own mind : Please understand these were reactive statements and not merely 'off-the-cuff' remarks in a 'cultured, rational, amicable' discussion. In places I'm a bit crude so I apologise beforehand and ask anyone of a sensitive disposition to please ignore the next few postings. Thankyou.

There are three main factors in this issue:
a] Reprehensibly poor training of Priests in theologically and morally suspect seminaries where little pastoral care or concern is given towards the trainee; where a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy prevents a responsible confronting of sexual maturation and the necessary preparation for celibacy. A prevalent milieu of 'condoning' sexual profligacy, mutual masturbation, intimate liaisons etc as a 'necessary phase in preparation for priesthood' is an argot which should be quashed.
b] Subsequent Indolence verging towards Acedia regarding the pastoral care/responsibility/leadership/duties for priests within their dioceses from the Bishop, Deans and diocesan administration ; where systemic compromises of clerical celibacy [girlfriends , boyfriends, adulteries and inter-clerical sexual liaisons] are either ignored, covered up or 'moved on' to pastures new awaiting any new opportunity to 'carry on regardless' - and when it comes to blatant social or psychological difficulties or aberrant behaviour patterns ; these are dismissed as personal eccentricities and allowed to continue. Priests throughout the western world are being 'left to their own devices'; devoid of any shepherding from the cathedra.
c] Our reticence at addressing the issues of Catholic homosexuality and equivocating the homosexual with the unacceptability of homosexual sexual acts and thus, among many catholics both phenomena are deserving of condemnation [thus abandoning the homosexual and depriving them of pastoral concern and familial love] - and the consequences it has for those young men and women seeking to hide their sexual orientation from their families and friends by running and hiding in the religious life and Holy Orders. Admittedly there is no causal link between psychologically sexually mature homosexuals and sexual abuse; but sexual abuse lies in repression and the prevention of mature sexual development - it is where this is suppressed and arrested that psycho-sexual disorders arise; especially among deviant autocrats who seek to abuse all forms of power; especially that of sexual dominance and tyranny - the clergy is a magnet to this personality.Assuredly we are lucky in this country to have significantly less difficulties with clerical sexual abuse - but the disease still has a potential breeding ground and recurrence is possible unless we radically alter policies and our bishops get off their backsides and start caring for their priests. Many of the instances in the US and Ireland could have been prevented had intervention occurred at the first indications of trouble [on more than a few occasions even before ordination] - But rather a conspiracy of silence ensued - and I hate to say it ; a lot of the silence was due to inter-clerical blackmail i.e. "If they find out what I'm up to, everyone will know what you're up to !"

His Grace does us proud !!!

*

What was the Archbishop of Birmingham , Vincent Nichols,
going to say in his address to students at a training day for the 1962 Missal
in light of the Motu Proprio ?
was he going to be antagonistic like Archbishop Conti of Glasgow ?
dismiss it as anachronistic and unnecessary like our beloved Cardinal ?


Well ? Read on with Joy !


"So the first invitation of the Holy Father is for us to avoid speaking or writing or thinking in terms of two rites: the ‘Tridentine Rite’ and the ‘modern’ or ‘post Vatican II Rite’. We should respond attentively and consistently to this invitation.
Why does the Pope insist that there is one rite of the Mass? Because, whichever form is being used, the same mystery is being celebrated, the same rite is followed. There is one mystery and there is one movement, or structure, through which that mystery is enacted …
I hope that your study of the Missal of Pope John XXIII will help you to appreciate the history and richness of that form of the Mass. And I trust that you will bring all that you learn to every celebration of the Mass you lead in the future.
I have no doubt that each of us must strive for improvements in the way the ordinary form of the Mass is celebrated so that its inner mystery and spiritual movement is more clearly set forth. As Pope Benedict says, we must do all we can to bring out the spiritual richness and theological depth of the Missal of Paul VI, ‘for that will guarantee that the Missal of Paul VI will unite parish communities and be loved by them’.
Please remember that what you study here is not a relic, not a reverting to the past, but part of the living tradition of the Church. It is, therefore, to be understood and entered into in the light of that living tradition today.
The Missal of Pope John XXIII will remain the extraordinary form of the celebration of the Mass, for, as Pope Benedict says, its use ‘presupposes a certain degree of liturgical formation and some knowledge of the Latin language; neither of these is found very often’. And the decision of the Church was that, for general use, it needed to be revised. But there are truths of which it can still remind us and it has treasures and consolation to offer.
May the Lord bless your efforts in these next few days and draw you closer to the heart of the one saving mystery, that mystery which we now celebrate together."



Thank God !

[extracts courtesy of Damian Thompson's Holy Smoke Telegraph blog ]

Please Ladies, let your voice be heard....

...although in these days of political correctness; the feminista will probably distort any statistics contrary to their agenda ; but please fill in this questionnaire regarding the priorities for the ministers of women :

http://www.thewnc.org.uk/

thanks to http://catholicactionuk.blogspot.com/www.fulltimemothers.org

In All Charity...get thee to a confessional father !

I am as mad as hell !!

Fr Jim Tucker - devout, normally highly orthodox priest from Virginia; usually a voice of reason amongst all the insanity that exudes from his region ; His blog 'Dappled Things' is normatively a clever, coherent and sincere discourse on the difficulties in contemporary society and The Church ; only on a rare occasion have I had to question his [what I consider inappropriate for a cleric] over-politicising ; but this time he has gone too far !

Britain's Gun Ban -- An interesting look at why gun bans are so foolish. Outlaw possession of weapons, and then the majority of people with weapons will be the criminals who don't care about your gun ban anyway.

In Britain's case:
It's a law so severe that the Britain's Olympic shooting team is forced to train abroad, lest one of its members try to shoot up a grammar school. So how effective has the law been? A doubling in gun-related crimes since the ban, naturally.

Fr Jim's reasoning sounds so sensible doesn't it ? Well it might if you're ignorant !

Well let's have a look at the real truth...from Virginia state records...remember their population is only 7.7 million compared to the UK's 60.6 million.

Many childhood unintentional shooting deaths occur in or around the home of a friend or relative. While Virginians have the right to own guns, they have the responsibility to store those guns safely and out of children's reach. According to the 2002 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey, approximately 38 percent of Virginians keep firearms in or around their homes; and 1 in 6 are unlocked and loaded.

An even larger number of children are hurt by nonfatal gun related injuries. Although gun related injuries peak in adolescence, they can affect infants and younger children too. Younger children are most likely to be injured, either shooting themselves or a playmate, after playing with a gun that they have found in the home, not realizing that the gun is real or that it is loaded.

Virginia Firearm Statistics 2003 [taken from Virginia Department of Health]

There were 798 firearm deaths in Virginia in 2003 making it the second leading cause of injury death.

The firearm death rate was 10.8 per 100,000.
The age-adjusted death rate was 10.66 per 100,000.
Males were almost 6 times more likely to suffer a firearm related death than were females.
Blacks were 2 times more likely to suffer a firearm related death than were whites.
There were 446 firearm related suicides, 330 firearm related homicides and 11 accidental firearm deaths.
Firearms were the leading cause of injury for suicide deaths, responsible for over half (56%) of these deaths.
Handguns were used in 34% of suicides, and shotguns were used in 17%.
Firearms were the leading cause of homicide deaths, responsible for almost three-fourths (73%) of these deaths.
There were 596 firearm related injury hospitalizations in 2003 for a rate of 8 per 100,000.
Forty-eight were self-inflicted, and 339 were assault-related.

Twenty-eight were shotgun related and 163 were handgun related.
The median charge per episode of care was $19,462 and the average length of stay was 6.5 days. Over 22 million dollars were billed for firearm related hospitalizations.
Thirty-five percent of discharges had self as the expected source of payment, and 36% had a private payer.
Men were at 12 times the risk of a hospitalization due to a firearm injury than were females.
Blacks were at almost 9 times the risk as whites for hospitalizations from a firearm injury.
The most common injury types were fractures (31%), internal organs (32%), and open wounds (31%).
There were 8 hospitalizations from BB/pellet guns for unintentional injury, 1 for suicide and 1 for assault.

.....and now let's look at the UK statistics :

According to provisional Home Office figures, there were 58 firearms-related homicides in 2006-07 compared with 49 in the previous year. That is an increase of 18% in just one year. If we include airguns, the number of homicides in 2006-07 rises to 61. There were 413 firearms incidents that resulted in serious injury - more than one a day.

But at the same time, the trend in gun crime overall has been going down.

Overall firearms offences fell 13% in 2006-07 to 9,608 incidents - the lowest number in seven years. Firearms robberies, handgun offences and serious injuries from firearms are also down.

YOUTH SHOOTINGS IN 2007
London: Six deaths
James Andre Smarrt-Ford, 16
Michael Dosunmu, 15
Billy Cox, 15,
Annaka Keniesha Pinto, 17
Abukar Mahamed, 16
Nathan Foster, 18
Manchester: One death
Kamilah Peniston, 12
Liverpool: One death
Rhys Jones, 11

Just over half of all firearms offences occurred in just three major forces - the Metropolitan Police in London, Greater Manchester and West Midlands.
Drilling down into the national figures up to the end of April 2006 shows that West Midlands, Merseyside and Greater Manchester Police have all experienced drops in firearms offences whereas London has seen an increase.
The Metropolitan Police says that in the 12 months to July 2007 it saw a 3.5% rise in firearms offences - up from 3,485 to 3,607 incidents.
Nottingham is another city that has struggled with a guns label after a number of killings in 2004, including schoolgirl Danielle Beccan - but its police chiefs say public perception is at odds with reality because the city witnesses far fewer incidents per resident than other so-called gun hotspots. Figures show Nottinghamshire Police recorded one firearms-related death in 2006 and none as of August 2007.

While there has been substantial concern in recent years over the use of imitation weapons in gang incidents - not least because some can be converted into real guns - the figures show there has also been a decrease here.

Further detailed research on firearms crimes on a regional basis will be published in 2008.
What all of this means is that we cannot draw any simple nationwide conclusions about gun crime. What we can say with certainty is that gun crime is a problem that remains closely focused in some cities that have witnessed some terrible deaths.

The figures do not show that gun crime is prolific or widespread in England and Wales.

Now for those who can't be bothered to read the statistics - UK Gun Deaths : 58 [a shockingly high figure !] but as we are only a fifth of the population of the US we should expect the figure to be significantly higher - by a factor of 5 ? No. 10 ? Guess again. 50 ? closer but no coconut...

ok 100 times the amount of gun deaths ? No sorry wrong again : take a look

In 2004 (the most recent year for which data is available), there were 29,569 gun deaths in the U.S:
16,750 suicides (56% of all U.S gun deaths),
11,624 homicides (40% of all U.S gun deaths),
649 unintentional shootings, 311 from legal intervention and 235 from undetermined intent (4% of all U.S gun deaths combined).

In other words there are , wait for it 50,981.034 % more gun deaths compared to the UK !!!!

Now if you want to be more fair , and you don't mind nearly 17000 people blowing their brains out when other attempts at suicide might have been less effective and they had more chance of getting help before they killed themselves - let's remove those figures.

You are still Two Hundred and Eleven Times more likely to die at the end of a gun in the US than in the UK !!!! Whereas we have had only a few hundred deaths in the past decade since the handgun ban of 1997; the US has lost a quarter of a million people due to guns ! That's about the population of the city of Trenton , New Jersey.

Now God Bless Father Jim, but when it comes to inaccurate , inane , and blatantly ,[ to resort to the vernacular], DUMBASS statements - he takes today's biscuit !

Oh Good Grief...

Emulating the sacrificial victim ? shepherding 'In Persona Christi' ?
Or getting ready for the local 'Mammas and the Papas' Fan Club meeting ?
These poor deluded women have absolutely no notion of priesthood whatsoever;
failing in the most singular abject realization that no man WANTS to be a priest;
they are merely willing to accept the call....

Still, nice to see them smiling , but as my Kids' Hero 'Vince Noir' [from 'The Mighty Boosh' played brilliantly by Noel Fielding] says :
"It's impossible to be unhappy in a poncho !"




Thanks to Fr Erik

Feminism's silence on the genocide of women....

[Photo taken of Campigners outside the chinese embassy in London a couple of weeks ago]

The rights of woman seem to be on the tongue of every politician; but how little is being made of murder of millions of them ; merely because they are yet to be born....

Holy Mary, Mother of God, Pray for us.

From LifeSite
In January Chinese media reports said that by 2020, 30 million Chinese men would be unable to find wives

(See http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/jan/07011510.html).

Since then, however, recent reports indicate that the numbers have dramatically risen. According to these findings, the imbalance will increase to 37 million more marriageable Chinese men than marriageable women by 2020, the Guardian Unlimited reports.

Nationwide there are 119 Chinese males for every 100 females rather than the average 105 males for every 100 females in the Western developed nations, ABC News reports. In some regions, however, there is an even greater divide with 130 males to 100 females.

The city of Lianyungang in Jiangsu province has the most marked difference of 163.5 boys to 100 girls among children aged one to four.

According to a recent report by the China Family Planning Association (CFPA), 99 cities in China have sex ratios above 125 boys per 100 girls.

Although there are two Chinese laws preventing sex-based abortion, this is ignored in many places throughout China.

In some cases, the doctor gives a thumbs up to the parents if their unborn child is a boy and a thumbs down if it is a girl.

People often abort their baby girls, especially in rural areas, because they want a son to support themselves and the grandparents in their old age.

Within the past few years, the Chinese government has offered various attempts to remedy the skewed male to female ratio.

In 2003 a "Care for Girls" policy was introduced which gave financial benefits to parents with female children as well as a pro-female child slogan campaign.

Such efforts have not affected the situation, however, which is a direct result of the government's one-child policy and its forced methods of population control.

[Next time you hear a politician or environmentalist call for population control - remember what this really is !]

With deep sadness...one of the best has gone on to his Heavenly rest...

Canadian Cardinal Gagnon dead at 89

Montreal, Aug. 27, 2007 (CWNews.com) - Cardinal Edouard Gagnon, the former president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, died inMontreal on August 25 at the age of 89.

The Canadian prelate, who was ordained as a Sulpician priest in 1940,became Bishop of St. Paul, Alberta, in 1969. In 1973, he was named byPope Paul VI to be vice-president of the newly created Committee for the Family.

He became president of that body the following year, andin 1981, when Pope John Paul II (bio - news) elevated the committee to the status of a Pontifical Council, he remained head of the office--now with the title of Archbishop.

He was raised to the College of Cardinals by Pope John Paul in 1985.

Cardinal Gagnon resigned his Vatican assignment in 1990, to be replaced by Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo.

Upon hearing of the Canadian cardinal's death, Pope Benedict XVI (bio- news) wrote separate messages of condolence to Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte of Montreal and Father P. Lawrence Terrien, the superior general of the Suplician order.

The Holy Father praised Cardinal Gagnon as a "faithful pastor who, with an evangelical spirit,consecrated his life in service to Christ and his Church.

"With the death of Cardinal Gagnon there are now 181 living members ofthe College of Cardinals, of whom 105 are below the age of 80 and thus eligible to participate in a papal conclave.

While the Liberals and Progressives look as miserable as sin...

This Pope truly Loves God and his neighbour...even his enemies!

This single photo reveals everything we stand for...there is more evangelization in that simple smile than anything words could say.

this is why we're going to win !!!

It brings tears of Joy to my eyes.

It's soooooooooo good !!!

I know a lot of people do not like reading from a monitor screen,

but I took my old copy of Balzac's 'Lost Illusions' with me to read

while waiting for my family's order at the Chinese take-Away

and have spent the past eighteen hours engrossed in it - not

even sleeping more than a couple of hours.

Sure I'm a sucker for stories like these, but please, try it out !

It's free on project gutenberg.

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/13159

Saint of The Day

St. Monica
Widow; born of Christian parents at Tagaste, North Africa, in 333; died at Ostia, near Rome, in 387.

We are told but little of her childhood. She was married early in life to Patritius who held an official position in Tagaste. He was a pagan, though like so many at that period, his religion was no more than a name; his temper was violent and he appears to have been of dissolute habits. Consequently Monica's married life was far from being a happy one, more especially as Patritius's mother seems to have been of a like disposition with himself.

There was of course a gulf between husband and wife; her almsdeeds and her habits of prayer annoyed him, but it is said that he always held her in a sort of reverence. Monica was not the only matron of Tagaste whose married life was unhappy, but, by her sweetness and patience, she was able to exercise a veritable apostolate amongst the wives and mothers of her native town; they knew that she suffered as they did, and her words and example had a proportionate effect.
Three children were born of this marriage, Augustine the eldest, Navigius the second, and a daughter, Perpetua. Monica had been unable to secure baptism for her children, and her grief was great when Augustine fell ill; in her distress she besought Patritius to allow him to be baptized; he agreed, but on the boy's recovery withdrew his consent.

All Monica's anxiety now centred in Augustine; he was wayward and, as he himself tells us, lazy. He was sent to Madaura to school and Monica seems to have literally wrestled with God for the soul of her son. A great consolation was vouchsafed her — in compensation perhaps for all that she was to experience through Augustine — Patritius became a Christian. Meanwhile, Augustine had been sent to Carthage, to prosecute his studies, and here he fell into grievous sin.

Patritius died very shortly after his reception into the Church and Monica resolved not to marry again. At Carthage Augustine had become a Manichean and when on his return home he ventilated certain heretical propositions she drove him away from her table, but a strange vision which she had urged her to recall him.

It was at this time that she went to see a certain holy bishop, whose name is not given, but who consoled her with the now famous words, "the child of those tears shall never perish." There is no more pathetic story in the annals of the Saints than that of Monica pursuing her wayward son to Rome, wither he had gone by stealth; when she arrived he had already gone to Milan, but she followed him. Here she found St. Ambrose and through him she ultimately had the joy of seeing Augustine yield, after seventeen years of resistance. Mother and son spent six months of true peace at Cassiacum, after which time Augustine was baptized in the church of St. John the Baptist at Milan.

Africa claimed them however, and they set out on their journey, stopping at Cività Vecchia and at Ostia. Here death overtook Monica and the finest pages of his "Confessions" were penned as the result of the emotion Augustine then experienced.

St. Monica was buried at Ostia, and at first seems to have been almost forgotten, though her body was removed during the sixth century to a hidden crypt in the church of St. Aureus. About the thirteenth century, however, the cult of St. Monica began to spread and a feast in her honour was kept on 4 May. In 1430 Martin V ordered the relics to be brought to Rome. Many miracles occurred on the way, and the cultus of St. Monica was definitely established. Later the Archbishop of Rouen, Cardinal d'Estouteville, built a church at Rome in honour of St. Augustine and deposited the relics of St. Monica in a chapel to the left of the high altar.

Female Liturgists throughout the ages #1 Livia

Note to Our 'liberal' Clergy ; How to beat them does not mean joining them..

In preparation for the Motu Proprio's Implementation - The Litany of the Holy Cross

Litany in Honor of the Holy Cross;

[drawn from the Imitation of Christ by Thomas A Kempis, 1380-1471.]

The word of the Cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Cor. 1:18)

Antiphon: God forbid that I should glory in anything save the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. (Gal.6:14)

Jesus has many who love His Kingdom in heaven, but few who bear His Cross. He has many who desire comfort, but few who desire suffering. He finds many to share His feast, but few His fasting. All desire to rejoice with Him, but few are willing to suffer for His sake.

Ant.

Why do you fear to take up the Cross, which is the road to the Kingdom?

In the Cross is salvation and life, protection against our enemies,

infusion of heavenly sweetness; in the Cross is strength of mind, joy of spirit, excellence of virtue, perfection of holiness.

There is no salvation of soul, nor hope of eternal life, save in the Cross.

Ant.

Take up the Cross, therefore, and follow Jesus, and go forward into eternal life.

Christ has gone before you, bearing His Cross; He died for you on the Cross, that you also may bear your cross, and desire to die on the Cross with Him.

For if you die with Him, you will also live with Him.

And if you share his sufferings, you will also share His glory.

Ant.

See how in the Cross all things consist, and in dying on it all things depend.

There is no other way to life and to true inner peace, than the way of the Cross.

Go where you will, seek what you will; you will find no higher way above nor safer way below than the road of the Holy Cross.

Ant.

The Cross always stands ready, and everywhere awaits you. You cannot escape it,wherever you flee; for wherever you go, you bear yourself, and always find yourself.

Look up or down, without you or within, and everywhere you will find the Cross.

And everywhere you must have patience, if you wish to attain inner peace, and win an eternal crown.

Ant.

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen us to follow You not only to the Breaking of Your Body, but also to the drinking of the Blood of Your Passion.

Help us to love You, for Your own sake, and not for the sake of comfort for ourselves.

Make us worthy to suffer for Your name, Jesus, our Crucified and risen Lord and Saviour, now and forever.

Amen.

How I can tell it's about to rain....

To say I loathe violence would be an understatement....

Asimov said something like it's the last resort of the ignorant who have run out of anything to say.

I'm not sure I agree. I think for some people it has become the first and only 'psychologically gratifying' resort.

My grandfather, so I'm told, as he was long dead before I was born, was one of the gentlest, most softly spoken people you could ever meet; yet he had no qualms in training others how to knock seven bells out of each other in the boxing ring....

My Great-grandfather was supposedly a demure, nonchalant, passive individual ; but he was a DCM, twice nominated for the VC and became a White Russian Knight of the order of St George.

Violence was an intrinsic part of their way-of-life; yet in another way it seemed utterly disparate from their lives.

I've been smacked, I've smacked my kids : But the violence involved [no matter how brief [and more painful to me]] never seemed to become a part of my psyche - anyone who knows me will tell you I'm a 'big jessie' - the only sports I have ever excelled in have involved sprinting at great speed away from people. I have been physically violent on rare occasions ;but never been overpowered with a psychological violence to 'complement' it. It seems today that more and more people have no such limitations, reservations or moral compunction.

I don't understand violence - don't get me wrong, some of my favourite films include the Chinese/Japanese medieval warrior or Hong Kong gangster genres where brutality and comic book violence hold their sway ; and I adore to spend an afternoon slaying goblins, dragons and demons with my children on the ps2 or xbox360; a couple of garden canes and we can spend all afternoon playing zorro or star wars in the back garden....

No, what I simply cannot understand is people beating each other up.

An act of violence nearly killed me about twenty years ago - the details and circumstances aren't important ; but I don't think I ever truly recovered ; the reason might surprise you almost as much as it did me - because for a few brief seconds during which I knew that if I didn't act I would be dead ; I coldly clinically and quite rationally knew that I was capable of killing my assailant - God graced me [and my ostensibly innocuous but insensed attacker] miraculously with a rescuer in the nick of time. But psychologically the damage had been done - I knew now that I could kill ; and have never been able to look at myself in the same way again. Yet even with that profound self-knowledge; I still don't understand violence.

A few years ago I encountered a gang of youths kicking another man to a pulp - recklessly I took a running jump into them all and the man managed to get to his feet and escape while I made as much noise as possible - trying to reason with them about police and security cameras and witnesses [about a dozen nightworkers in the local store were looking on at the assault through a plate glass window [no-one had rung the police -not even the security guard]] but amidst all the shouting and threats one [before they all ran off] in a rage punched me full-on in the jaw. My ears rang for days and it took two years for a dentist to discover that my tooth and jaw were fractured, had subsequently gone rotten; and a large triangle of my jawbone had to be removed.

With the deepest of cosmic ironies, a few years later I was walking through the woods after having dropped my kids off at the swimming pool ; and I passed five drunken junkies with their girlfriends ; and because one of them didn't like my demeanour or the way I was dressed they spat all over my back; I continued to walk on and they presumed I was 'disrespecting' them so they proceeded to punch and kick me and ultimately [the most painful part] throw me headfirst into a tree... As I was stumblingly trying to pick myself up I faced the laughing girlfriends and said 'do you really think this is soooo cool ?' they merely glowered at me in contempt - so I turned and limped off like Quasimodo , oblivious to their barrage of homophobic screams and insults. The dentist had to perform mirror like surgery to my tooth and jaw on the other side of my face - so at least I'm symmetrical now !

But even amongst the callous, vituperative insanity of it all ; even with the first hand and bruise laden experience ; I still don't understand how people can do that to other human beings...

A young girl in this town tried to stop a fight a few years ago at a fair, one of the girls had no qualms stabbing her to death. A girl I worked with for a few weeks murdered her mother and boyfriend in cold blood and carried on with life as if nothing in the world was different. One of the nicest, friendliest kids in our school grew up and beat a man's body to a puree with an iron pub chair. My friend was a pub landlady - one quiet lunchtime in the bar there were a few heated words amongst some teenagers and within seconds a knife had been pulled and one lay dead. I don't understand. I just don't think I can understand !

Do you remember the advert from a few years ago where celebrities clicked their fingers to represent a child dying in the third world ?

they would have had to click their fingers every 2/3 of a second to represent those aborted !

46 million a year!!! Its barbarous insanity and evil is way beyond my comprehension.

In holland the sick and elderly are attempting to escape from the clutches of their children by registering in hospitals and old folks homes outside dutch borders or legislation - because every year 800,000 elderly and sick meet their deaths before God or nature intended , in the name of mercy killing. I don't understand this.???

The scores of millions killed in wars and genocides over the past century - I don't get it !??

The billions who die prematurely through disease and starvation and deprivation - I don't comprehend....

I see young innocent kids playing together on the school playground - I see them again only a few years later and they have turned into selfish, aggressive, abusive, violent, foul-mouthed feral monsters ; hunting in packs to demean, denigrate and humiliate not only each other but any innocent passer-by ; given the right opportunity or circumstance they would have little reticence in physically or psychologically assaulting another human being and revelling in it almost self-righteously. I don't understand; but what leaves me incredulous is how many of these 'aberrations of humanity' are teenage girls...what are our schools, media and society doing to them ? I simply don't understand at all ? As someone who's had rocks, bottles and torrents of abuse thrown at him for merely passing by these kids....it's just beyond all rational comprehension....

And so we look to the news...and what do we hear practically every day now ? Stabbings, shootings, indiscriminate assaults and murders for the most inane and irrational of reasons...

My wife [a criminology expert] is forever attempting to reassure me that child violence isn't really statistically any different than from the gangs of teen victorian thieves and garotters - but I'm finding it increasingly difficult to believe her - never before has a whole society seemed to be in such chaos - walk past any nightclub at the weekend and invariably there's some violent assault and an ambulance's flashing light - hang around and you'll witness women of any age trying to rip each others skin off or men trying to beat each other to a pulp while the bouncers 'stay out of it' - the insanity just seems to be snowballing....

What's happened ?

My kids in their gruesome way, love to hear stories about my scars ; the majority are work-related [a huge freezer door impaled my hand with two punctures which uncannily look like vampire bite scars - you can put your finger through a hole in my shinbone where a bolt went through it] but my most prevalent scar is one that rings my leg at the knee where most of my lower leg had to be sewn back on again.

The cause ?

When I was twelve a schoolfriend in a fit of pique over an accusation of cheating decided to pick up an ornamental plate and hit me with it - even though I've relived the incident a thousand times over the years I still don't have the remotest inkling as to why he would have done such a thing - to automatically resort to such indiscriminate violence when usually he was the most passive, cowardly person ? What is in us that makes us so suddenly 'lose it' ?

Nevertheless the wound didn't heal properly and rotted my knee joint so I have a minor [almost undetectable] limp - and I rarely notice it except for those few seconds before it begins to rain and then, almost like some electronic detector, it twinges. [My kids think it's cool and magical!]

The only things that really scare me are things unknown, things I'm not able to rationalise or empathise with....

....this pervading culture of violence [especially amongst the young] has now completely traversed to limits way beyond my understanding - and it terrifies me !

I apologise for being so gloomy and doom-laden - but somebody please tell me : what's going on ?

My Favourite Film...

Three Asian Films [you've probably never heard of] that I'd recommend

Fallen Angels [1995] Wong Kar Wai


Happy Times [Hotel] [2000] Zhang Zhimou [probably the greatest asian tearjerker ever made]


Welcome to Dongmakgol [2002] Kwang-Hyun Park


Watch 'Welcome to Dongmakgol' in full [19 parts] on Youtube starting with this link :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyPCMajTnJQ

WARNING : Narcissism Alert ! Ignore if you're not interested in the Blogger !!! The Myers-Briggs and other oddities...

[had a couple of e-mails from people saying I haven't really described myself on here]

I'm highly suspicious of categorising individual characters into specific 'compartments' ; the enneagram seems just crazy and indecisive ; and more dependant upon the individual psychometrist than any definite system ; but having gone through many Myers-Briggs 'personality' tests over the years and they invariably come up with the same result I feel consigned [condemned?] to the possibility that it might have some significant validity [well for me anyway !] I can't really go into any deep personal details on here as the sin of detraction might arise and any revelations could result in potential harm to innocents; but I can say I am very , very close to the stereotypical INFJ. [Please only read the following if you're trying to understand a little more about why I am the way I am - otherwise ignore with a bargepole]

The Protector

As an INFJ, your primary mode of living is focused internally, where you take things in primarily via intuition. Your secondary mode is external, where you deal with things according to how you feel about them, or how they fit with your personal value system. [Don't tell the boss ! I loathe...sorry, love those pork chops and legs of lamb like they're family members - seriously !]
INFJs are gentle, caring, complex and highly intuitive individuals. Artistic and creative, they live in a world of hidden meanings and possibilities. [Liking this so far...[wink!]]
Only one percent of the population has an INFJ Personality Type, making it the most rare of all the types.
INFJs place great importance on havings things orderly and systematic in their outer world.
[hmmmm!!! I have a tendency towards extremes - regimentally tidy or beyond redemption chaotic. P.]They put a lot of energy into identifying the best system for getting things done, and constantly define and re-define the priorities in their lives.
On the other hand, INFJs operate within themselves on an intuitive basis which is entirely spontaneous. [Yes, but it always feels perfectly natural ; not as if you are being recklessly thoughtless or negligent of considering the situation deeply]
They know things intuitively, without being able to pinpoint why, and without detailed knowledge of the subject at hand. [Scary - you try explaining to a partner how you know someone is having an affair or being beaten up by their husband or has stolen the petty cash money at work ; when you don't even know how you know yourself ! And it isn't suspicion, it's simply knowing !]
They are usually right, and they usually know it.
Consequently, INFJs put a tremendous amount of faith into their instincts and intuitions.
This is something of a conflict between the inner and outer worlds, and may result in the INFJ not being as organized as other Judging types tend to be.
Or we may see some signs of disarray in an otherwise orderly tendency, such as a consistently messy desk. [It's me !!!!]
INFJs have uncanny insight into people and situations. They get "feelings" about things and intuitively understand them. As an extreme example, some INFJs report experiences of a psychic nature, such as getting strong feelings about there being a problem with a loved one, and discovering later that they were in a car accident. [Won't step into this one - those who'd believe me wouldn't need the encouragement, those who wouldn't would think I was lying about it all; beter to stay silent]
This is the sort of thing that other types may scorn and scoff at, and the INFJ themself does not really understand their intuition at a level which can be verbalized.
Consequently, most INFJs are protective of their inner selves, sharing only what they choose to share when they choose to share it. They are deep, complex individuals, who are quite private and typically difficult to understand.
INFJs hold back part of themselves, and can be secretive. [In a quite clever way; having no qualms about discussing intimate aspects of their lives or events other people might be reticent to reveal; but the inner self remains securely locked away]
But the INFJ is as genuinely warm as they are complex. INFJs hold a special place in the heart of people who they are close to, who are able to see their special gifts and depth of caring. INFJs are concerned for people's feelings, and try to be gentle to avoid hurting anyone. [well I'm an argumentative git !! I can be idolised and loathed to the extreme just by being me; but I would hate to hurt anyone's feelings - even if we were vitriolic, vituperative intellectual enemies !]
They are very sensitive to conflict, and cannot tolerate it very well. [but invariably get into it !]
Situations which are charged with conflict may drive the normally peaceful INFJ into a state of agitation or charged anger.
They may tend to internalize conflict into their bodies, and experience health problems when under a lot of stress. [guilty as charged]
Because the INFJ has such strong intuitive capabilities, they trust their own instincts above all else.
This may result in an INFJ stubborness and tendency to ignore other people's opinions. They believe that they're right. [Not for me, it results in me spending a lot of time and energy trying to work out why they are wrong - just knowing they are wrong internally is no justification]
On the other hand, INFJ is a perfectionist who doubts that they are living up to their full potential. [Doubt it ? Or have it thrust in one's face every day ?]
INFJs are rarely at complete peace with themselves - there's always something else they should be doing to improve themselves and the world around them.
They believe in constant growth, and don't often take time to revel in their accomplishments. They have strong value systems, and need to live their lives in accordance with what they feel is right. [especially when everyone else around you is saying the opposite]
In deference to the Feeling aspect of their personalities, INFJs are in some ways gentle and easy going. Conversely, they have very high expectations of themselves, and frequently of their families.
They don't believe in compromising their ideals.
INFJ is a natural nurturer; patient, devoted and protective. They make loving parents and usually have strong bonds with their offspring. They have high expectations of their children, and push them to be the best that they can be. [Loving , but useless regarding practicalities]
This can sometimes manifest itself in the INFJ being hard-nosed and stubborn. But generally, children of an INFJ get devoted and sincere parental guidance, combined with deep caring.
{Well I'm more likely to burn dinner while telling the kids about the origins of the Trojan war or the structure of benzene or why low taxation is wrong}
In the workplace, the INFJ usually shows up in areas where they can be creative and somewhat independent. They have a natural affinity for art, and many excel in the sciences, where they make use of their intuition.
INFJs can also be found in service-oriented professions. They are not good at dealing with minutia or very detailed tasks. [weird as I was a quality controller who didn't miss much - but did have to spend a long time making every mistake possible and training myself through them]
The INFJ will either avoid such things, or else go to the other extreme and become enveloped in the details to the extent that they can no longer see the big picture. An INFJ who has gone the route of becoming meticulous about details may be highly critical of other individuals who are not. [Not guilty - but was highly scrupulous when I did canon law]
The INFJ individual is gifted in ways that other types are not. Life is not necessarily easy for the INFJ, but they are capable of great depth of feeling and personal achievement. [Thanks for rubbing it in !!]

The Vietnamese show the way...

La Vang, over 150 thousand faithful for the feast of the Assumption

by JB. Vu

Priests and faithful from all over the country gathered at the Marian sanctuary to celebrate the Blessed Virgin, who "protects the country from the threats of materialism and consumerism".

Over 150 thousand people, among Catholics and Buddhists, gathered at the national shrine of Our Lady of La Vang, in the central province of Quang Tri, to celebrate the feast of the Assumption.

The place where the Virgin appeared in 1798 has been affected by years of conflict as well as typhoons.

Gun battles raged around thesanctuary grounds at the height of the war in the `70's, but the shrine is still standing, protecting the people of the Church and Vietnam.

On the feast day of August 15th, Archbishop Hue presided over a solemn mass at the sanctuary together with 126 priests from across Vietnam as well as abroad.

One of them Fr. Le Si Hien, told Asia News: "TheVietnamese Bishops council officially asked the government for permission to run the grounds on which the shrine stands.

We would like it to become one of the biggest pilgrimage sites in the entire world".One young Catholic who followed all of the festivity' celebrations says: "Our country is under the threat of materialism and consumerism.The sanctuary of Our Lady of La Vang helps us to fight this threat,which creates social injustice."

An associate who lived in Vietnam was astounded at the way religion was an intrinsic part of vietnamese life - a shrine in every buddhist home, an oratory in the majority of catholic houses where prayers and family rosaries are recited throughout the day - their devotion puts us all to shame.

There's a difference between being a 'Fool for Christ' and being downright ignorantly cretinous!!

I have a real problem with professionals : 'professional' laity, 'professional' clerics; but most especially 'professional' Bishops.
Ever since they stopped being truly pastoral and visiting /interacting with ordinary members of their flock ; the only people they encounter are academics/representatives of specific causes or socio-cultural 'positions' ; and therefore their perceptions of reality are distorted into believing that society is a series of social ailments which need to be countered 'head-on'.
Invariably what these 'pressure groups' determine as the great overriding social malaises are the ones closest to their sentiments - racism, homophobia, homelessness, wife-battering, environmental issues etc...and the major imperative issues that are pervading and destroying vast swathes of society are neglected, dismissed and ignored as lacking 'relevance' - Some of these issues are not conducive to 'political correctness' ; they may not be 'right on' ; they may require intervention with a specifically catholic pastoral morality which would be antagonistic to all the secular 'plans for action' which the activist has become engrossed in/contaminated with. Therefore those involved become corrupted with the 'spirit of the age' and the demeaning marxist 'perceptions of reality'.
Yet these people are the ones 'close to the Bishop' or 'holding the Bishop's ear' ; and the Bishop's understanding of society becomes warped according to the agenda of these 'well-meaning' deluded gullible individuals who aspire to be 'relevant'.
Look at this latest ranting from an Australian Bishop : It's not indicative of how socially aware or concerned he is ; it reveals how little he truly knows about both the human condition and the abject neglect of those for whom he was ordained, consecrated and installed to care for; while he listened more to the 'professional laity ' and activists around him...

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson says the Catholic Church needs to reverse 2000 years of teaching on sex and power as part of radical reforms from the Pope down.

While it refuses to look at some fundamental teachings — including sex outside marriage, women priests, homosexuality and papal power — the culture that produced and protected abusers will continue, he says.

These explosive claims — unprecedented for a bishop — are in a book to be launched tomorrow: Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church.

Bishop Robinson, 70, who was abused as a child, headed the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference professional standards committee for a decade until he retired because he was so disillusioned in 2004.

Calling for the most radical changes since Martin Luther started the 16th century Protestant Reformation, Bishop Robinson says the Pope has failed the church, and the church has failed its members.

"I'm aware of how radical the call I'm making is. I'm looking for a very different church," he told The Age.

He said the response of the church, especially the Vatican, to the sexual abuse crisis did not go deep enough. "The most profound factor about sex is that the church has had a morality for 2000 years based on offences against God and I find that quite inadequate. I ask if we should move to a morality based on relationships, on good and harm to people."

Bishop Robinson said the Catholic Church centralised too much power in the hands of the Pope. "The entire responsibility of the church throughout the world to something as big as sexual abuse depended too much on the response of one person."
...

Bishop Robinson proposes stripping considerable power and authority from the Pope, who would speak formally on behalf of the church only after consulting it. The Pope would function more like a prime minister than a monarch.

He was an auxiliary bishop of Sydney until he retired in 2004. He's still listed on the archdiocese's page. With Cardinal Pell being the archbishop I'd think he'll be persona non grata shortly.

In Defence of the Right to Dream....

A lot has been said over recent years regarding the menacing threat of Video Games.
I concur wholeheartedly that some are little but reprehensibly disgusting, debased, obscenity. Some are terrifying and are definitely older teen/adult games which instill nightmare !!
But please do not tar everything with the same brush : please do not solely allow your children to only play desensitised saccharin , mind-numbing repetitive childish games which suck the life fom them....
Give them the chance to dream - for their imaginations to soar into the wonder that's out there in the field of gaming - you need only look - tell them they can stand on tiptoe and they'll reach Heaven. You don't believe it can inspire ?
Just look at this and see if you don't have a tear in your eye by the end ?

A Gotta See - My kids still haven't stopped laughing...

Anxiety - The psychological genius of St Francis de Sales

ANXIETY of mind is not so much an abstract temptation, as the source whence various temptations arise.

Sadness, when defined, is the mental grief we feel because of our involuntary ailments;—whether the evil be exterior, such as poverty, sickness or contempt; or interior, such as ignorance, dryness, depression or temptation.

Directly that the soul is conscious of some such trouble, it is downcast, and so trouble sets in.

Then we at once begin to try to get rid of it, and find means to shake it off; and so far rightly enough, for it is natural to us all to desire good, and shun that which we hold to be evil.

If any one strives to be delivered from his troubles out of love of God, he will strive patiently, gently, humbly and calmly, looking for deliverance rather to God’s Goodness and Providence than to his own industry or efforts; but if self-love is the prevailing object he will grow hot and eager in seeking relief, as though all depended more upon himself than upon God.

I do not say that the person thinks so, but he acts eagerly as though he did think it. Then if he does not find what he wants at once, he becomes exceedingly impatient and troubled, which does not mend matters, but on the contrary makes them worse, and so he gets into an unreasonable state of anxiety and distress, till he begins to fancy that there is no cure for his trouble.

Thus you see how a disturbance, which was right at the outset, begets anxiety, and anxiety goes on into an excessive distress, which is exceedingly dangerous.

This unresting anxiety is the greatest evil which can happen to the soul, sin only excepted. Just as internal commotions and seditions ruin a commonwealth, and make it incapable of resisting its foreign enemies, so if our heart be disturbed and anxious, it loses power to retain such graces as it has, as well as strength to resist the temptations of the Evil One, who is all the more ready to fish (according to an old proverb) in troubled waters.

Anxiety arises from an unregulated desire to be delivered from any pressing evil, or to obtain some hoped-for good.

Nevertheless nothing tends so greatly to enchance the one or retard the other as over-eagerness and anxiety.

Birds that are captured in nets and snares become inextricably entangled therein, because they flutter and struggle so much.

Therefore, whensoever you urgently desire to be delivered from any evil, or to attain some good thing, strive above all else to keep a calm, restful spirit,—steady your judgment and will, and then go quietly and easily after your object, taking all fitting means to attain thereto.

By easily I do not mean carelessly, but without eagerness, disquietude or anxiety; otherwise, so far from bringing about what you wish, you will hinder it, and add more and more to your perplexities.

“My soul is alway in my hand, yet do I not forget Thy Law,” Ps. cxix. 109. David says.

Examine yourself often, at least night and morning, as to whether your soul is “in your hand;” or whether it has been wrested thence by any passionate or anxious emotion.

See whether your soul is fully under control, or whether it has not in anywise escaped from beneath your hand, to plunge into some unruly love, hate, envy, lust, fear, vexation or joy. And if it has so strayed, before all else seek it out, and quietly bring it back to the Presence of God, once more placing all your hopes and affections under the direction of His Holy Will.

Just as one who fears to lose some precious possession holds it tight in his hand, so, like King David, we ought to be able to say,

“My soul is alway in my hand, and therefore I have not forgotten Thy Law.”

Do not allow any wishes to disturb your mind under the pretext of their being trifling and unimportant; for if they gain the day, greater and weightier matters will find your heart more accessible to disturbance.

When you are conscious that you are growing anxious, commend yourself to God, and resolve stedfastly not to take any steps whatever to obtain the result you desire, until your disturbed state of mind is altogether quieted;—unless indeed it should be necessary to do something without delay, in which case you must restrain the rush of inclination, moderating it, as far as possible, so as to act rather from reason than impulse.

If you can lay your anxiety before your spiritual guide, or at least before some trusty and devout friend, you may be sure that you will find great solace.

The heart finds relief in telling its troubles to another, just as the body when suffering from persistent fever finds relief from bleeding.

It is the best of remedies, and therefore it was that S. Louis counselled his son, “If thou hast any uneasiness lying heavy on thy heart, tell it forthwith to thy confessor, or to some other pious person, and the comfort he will give will enable thee to bear it easily.”

Oh good grief ! What Next !???

From 'In the Light of the Law' blog.

"The practice of spouses jointly celebrating the sacrament of confession recently garnered support from Catholic News Service veteran columnist Fr. John Deitzen. Provided that couples "approve and consider it helpful for their marriage", Deitzen holds that spouses may confess their sins in each other's presence and receive absolution. He notes only that each spouse would be bound by the seal of confession in regard to what he or she learned about the other. "

Now there are intrinsic canonical problems with this and Edward N. Peters JD. JCD. goes into them in detail on his blog:

http://www.canonlaw.info/blog.html

But Seriously ???

What planet are these priests on ? You'd think with all their decades of alleged 'experience' in dealing with marital relations they would realise that this has to be one of the stupidest ideas ever !!!

Blame Damian Thompson for this....

The catholic herald's editor-in-chief
has launched an attack on 'aromatherapy degrees' [I kid you not]
Thinking about New Age stuff and recapturing the alpha male groups...reminds me of this cartoon - If you don't laugh you're not as childish as I am...

#1
#2
#3

The Nightmare's on it's way...

Take up your cross now!
Sure this is only the methodists in this picture.
But the way things are going ?
Take your stance for orthodoxy now;
fight the tiny things NOW
and the big things will be easy to conquer.

Why do I take these tests?

You Are 92% Gentleman

No doubt about it, you are a total gentleman. You please the pickiest ladies, and you make everyone in a room feel comfortable.

Are You A Gentleman?

The Monk & The Fish - beautifully symbolic french animation - a MUST SEE!!!

Alan Shore takes on the US Administration [Boston Legal]

Living in a Manse made little difference for Gordon's conscience in his support for the culture of death...

The ignorance , The abject indifference, the misguided malevolent cruelty, the conspiracy in pure evil....

The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has appointed several pro-abortion ministers to life-related portfolios in his new UK government, a move which means any reform of the abortion law is likely to lead to more abortions.

Ms Dawn Primarolo MP, appointed a minister of state for health, has voted for abortion on demand to be extended to Northern Ireland.

Mr Ben Bradshaw MP, also appointed a minister of state for health, supports the Abortion Act 1967.

Mrs Ann Keen MP, appointed a parliamentary under-secretary of state for health, believes in a woman's right to choose abortion.

Mr Jim Knight MP, appointed a minister of state for children, families and schools, signed a parliamentary motion in 2002 calling for "universal access to comprehensive reproductive health services", a phrase normally understood to include abortion on demand.

Beverley Hughes, also appointed a minister of state for children, families and schools, signed parliamentary motions in 1997 calling for abortion on demand and for the Abortion Act 1967 to be extended to Northern Ireland.

Gareth Thomas, appointed a parliamentary under-secretary of state for international development, is one of parliament's leading promoters of abortion on demand and population control.

von Balthasar: On The Crucifixion [pt 2]

As soon as the formula "for the many", "for you", "for us", is found, it resounds through all the writings of the New Testament; it is even present before anything is written down (cf. i Cor 15:3).

Paul, Peter, John: everywhere the same light comes from the two little words.What has happened? Light has for the first time penetrated into the closed dungeons of human and cosmic suffering and dying. Pain and death receive meaning.

Not only that, they can receive more meaning and bear more fruit than the greatest and most successful activity, a meaning not only for the one who suffers but precisely also for others, for the world as a whole.

No religion had even approached this thought.

The great religions had mostly been ingenious methods of escaping suffering or of making it ineffective. The highest that was reached was voluntary death for the sake of justice: Socrates and his spiritualized heroism.

The detached farewell discourses of the wise man in prison could be compared from afar to the wondrous farewell discourses of Christ. But Socrates dies noble and transfigured; Christ must go out into the hellish darkness of godforsakenness, where he calls for the lost Father "with prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears" (Heb 5:7).

Why are such stories handed down? Why has the image of the hero, the martyr, thus been destroyed? It was "for us", "in our place".

One can ask endlessly how it is possible to take someone's place in this way. The only thing that helps us who are perplexed is the certainty of the original Church that this man belongs to God, that "he truly was God's Son", as the centurion acknowledges under the Cross, so that finally one has to render him homage in adoration as "my Lord and my God" Jn 20:28).

Every theology that begins to blink and stutter at this point and does not want to come out with the words of the Apostle Thomas or tinkers with them will not hold to the "for us".

There is no intermediary between a man who is God and an ordinary mortal, and nobody will seriously hold the opinion that a man like us, be he ever so courageous and generous in giving himself, would be able to take upon himself the sin of another, let alone the sin of all.

He can suffer death in the place of someone who is condemned to death.

This would be generous, and it would spare the other person death at least for a time.

But what Christ did on the Cross was in no way intended to spare us death but rather to revalue death completely. In place of the "going down into the pit" of the Old Testament, it became "being in paradise tomorrow".

Instead of fearing death as the final evil and begging God for a few more years of life, as the weeping king Hezekiah does, Paul would like most of all to die immediately in order "to be with the Lord" (Phil 1:23).

Together with death, life is also revalued: "If we live, we live to the Lord; if we die, we die to the Lord" (Rom 14:8).But the issue is not only life and death but our existence before God and our being judged by him.

All of us were sinners before him and worthy of condemnation. But God "made the One who knew no sin to be sin, so that we might be justified through him in God's eyes" (2 Cor 5:21). Only God in his absolute freedom can take hold of our finite freedom from within in such a way as to give it a direction toward him, an exit to him, when it was closed in on itself. This happened in virtue of the "wonderful exchange" between Christ and us: he experiences instead of us what distance from God is, so that we may become beloved and loving children of God instead of being his "enemies" (Rom 5:10).

Certainly God has the initiative in this reconciliation: he is the one who reconciles the world to himself in Christ.

But one must not play this down (as famous theologians do) by saying that God is always the reconciled God anyway and merely manifests this state in a final way through the death of Christ.

It is not clear how this could be the fitting and humanly intelligible form of such a manifestation. No, the "wonderful exchange" on the Cross is the way by which God brings about reconciliation. It can only be a mutual reconciliation because God has long since been in a covenant with us. The mere forgiveness of God would not affect us in our alienation from God.

Man must be represented in the making of the new treaty of peace, the "new and eternal covenant". He is represented because we have been taken over by the man Jesus Christ.

When he "signs" this treaty in advance in the name of all of us, it suffices if we add our name under his now or, at the latest, when we die.Of course, it would be meaningless to speak of the Cross without considering the other side, the Resurrection of the Crucified. "If Christ has not risen, then our preaching is nothing and also your faith is nothing; you are still in your sins and also those who have fallen asleep . . . are lost.

If we are merely people who have put their whole hope in Christ in this life, then we are the most pitiful of all men" (I Cor 15:14, 17-19).

If one does away with the fact of the Resurrection, one also does away with the Cross, for both stand and fall together, and one would then have to find a new center for the whole message of the gospel. What would come to occupy this center is at best a mild father-god who is not affected by the terrible injustice in the world, or man in his morality and hope who must take care of his own redemption: "atheism in Christianity".

Saint of the Day

St Bartholomew is regarded as the most honest of the apostles:

'Nazareth ? Can anything good come from there?'

St Philip reassures him gently:

"Come and See !"

Our Lord saw in Nathanael a man free of the tortuous complications that so often affect pious people. Nathanael had the prized virtue of simplicity; Jesus called him “a true Israelite in whom there is no guile” (Jn 1:47). Nathanael had no hidden agenda. What came out of his mouth was what he held in his heart.

When second century popes sent missionaries to India they found pockets of thriving Christian communities and discovered a hebrew copy of matthew's gospel. The apocryphal Acts of Abdias refer to a man who lived his life where his preaching, good works and agonising death were one intense prayer.

With Our obsessions regarding liturgy or legislation or faux-simplicity....

We need to look to the truly simple man who went about his Master's business in a distant land; and died horrifically for his love and faith.

Please pray for our Bishops truly bearing witness to Christ

Bishop Jia Zhiguo 賈冶國,

the underground Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Zheng Ding 正定 in Hebei Province 河北, was arrested again by the Public Security and Religious Bureau at approximately 9:00 in the morning of August 23, 2007 (Beijing time). We do not know the reason of the bishop's arrest, nor do we know his current location.

In the last 5 days, there was a marked increase in the number of security police for putting Bishop Jia under strict surveillance 24 hours a day and there were police vehicles parking outside of the bishop's residence. Anyone coming to visit the bishop was summarily arrested.

A priest and a layperson were arrested and interrogated for 8 hours before they were released.
Since the release of the China letter by His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, Bishop Jia was told several times by the religious bureau that he was not allowed to publicly support and promulgate the Pope's China letter.

We do not know for sure whether this order has anything to do with the bishop's arrest this time.
A few days ago, the Religious Bureau forcibly put a sign “The Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association” vertically at the side of the gate of bishop Jia’s church! The sign could possibly still be there.
Bishop Jia is 73 years old and was ordained a bishop in 1980.

He was previously jailed for approximately 20 years and has been under strict surveillance for many years by the Chinese authorities. He takes care of approximately 100 handicapped orphans in his house. As far as we know, he has been arrested eleven times since January 2004.
In addition, another priest, Father Wen Daoxiu 溫道修, of Beiwangli Village 北王力村, Qingyuan County 清苑縣,, Hebei, was also arrested on August 15, 2007 by the Public Security Bureau after the priest had just finished offering a Holy Mass. We do not know his whereabouts and the reason of his arrest. Father Wen is in very poor health with three partially blocked blood vessels to his heart. He is in his mid-fifties.
Joseph Kung, the President of the Cardinal Kung Foundation, said:

"It is apparent that the aforementioned actions by the Chinese government is not only contrary to the spirit of the China letter issued by the Pope almost two months ago, but also contrary to the generally accepted principles of human rights and to the spirits of the Olympic games. The freedom-loving and powerful countries of the world should take into greater consideration - consistently, and persistently, and not haphazardly - all human rights violations in China when forming and implementing their political and commercial decisions in relation to China. Does a country consistently violate the most basic human rights deserve to be the host of 2008 Olympic Games?"

From Austria...

Did the Priest finally have enough of the liturgist,

'lector', musical director and extraordinary minister ?

hardly....

Just more liturgical inanity...

why don't we just throw out the altar and replace it with a sandpit for our 'Yoof' ?

Or a big bag of lego bricks for the liturgist to build their own tiny little world that doesn't interfere with anyone else's ?

Second Meditation of 'St Francis de Sales'

Of the End for which we were Created.

Preparation.

1. PLACE yourself before God.

2. Ask Him to inspire your heart.

Considerations.

1. God did not bring you into the world because He had any need of you, useless as you are; but solely that He might show forth His Goodness in you, giving you His Grace and Glory.

And to this end He gave you understanding that you might know Him, memory that you might think of Him, a will that you might love Him, imagination that you might realise His mercies, sight that you might behold the marvels of His works, speech that you might praise Him, and so on with all your other faculties.

2. Being created and placed in the world for this intent, all contrary actions should be shunned and rejected, as also you should avoid as idle and superfluous whatever does not promote it.

3. Consider how unhappy they are who do not think of all this,—who live as though they were created only to build and plant, to heap up riches and amuse themselves with trifles.

Affections and Resolutions.

1. Humble yourself in that hitherto you have so little thought upon all this. Alas, my God, of what was I thinking when I did not think of Thee? what did I remember when I forgot Thee? what did I love when I loved Thee not? Alas, when I ought to have been feeding on the truth, I was but filling myself with vanity, and serving the world, which was made to serve me.

2. Abhor your past life. I renounce ye, O vain thoughts and useless cogitations, frivolous and hateful memories: I renounce all worthless friendships, all unprofitable efforts, and miserably ungrateful self-indulgence, all pitiful compliances.

3. Turn to God. Thou, my God and Saviour shalt henceforth be the sole object of my thoughts; no more will I give my mind to ideas which are displeasing to Thee.

All the days of my life I will dwell upon the greatness of Thy Goodness, so lovingly poured out upon me.

Thou shalt be henceforth the delight of my heart, the resting-place of all my affections.

From this time forth I will forsake and abhor the vain pleasures and amusements, the empty pursuits which have absorbed my time;—the unprofitable ties which have bound my heart I will loosen henceforth, and to that end I will use such and such remedies.

Conclusion.

1. Thank God, Who has made you for so gracious an end. Thou hast made me, O Lord, for Thyself, that I may eternally enjoy the immensity of Thy Glory; when shall I be worthy thereof, when shall I know how to bless Thee as I ought?

2. Offer. O Dearest Lord, I offer Thee all my affections and resolutions, with my whole heart and soul.

3. Pray. I entreat Thee, O God, that Thou wouldest accept my desires and longings, and give Thy Blessing to my soul, to enable me to fulfil them, through the Merits of Thy Dear Son’s Precious Blood shed upon the Cross for me

Pater , Ave, Gloria.

Gather your little spiritual bouquet.

Litany of the Most Precious Blood...

V/ Lord, have mercy.

R/ Lord, have mercy.

V/ Christ, have mercy.

R/ Christ, have mercy.

V/ Lord, have mercy.

R/ Lord, have mercy.

V/ Jesus, hear us.

R/ Jesus, graciously hear us.

V/ God, the Father of Heaven,

R/ have mercy on us.
V/ God, the Son, Redeemer of the world,

R/ have mercy on us.
V/ God, the Holy Spirit,

R/ have mercy on us.
V/ Holy Trinity, One God,

R/ have mercy on us.

Blood of Christ, only-begotten Son of the Eternal Father,

Blood of Christ, Incarnate Word of God,

Blood of Christ, of the New and Eternal Testament,

Blood of Christ, falling upon the earth in the Agony,

Blood of Christ, shed profusely in the Scourging,

Blood of Christ, flowing forth in the Crowning with Thorns,

Blood of Christ, poured out on the Cross,

Blood of Christ, price of our salvation,

Blood of Christ, without which there is no forgiveness.

Blood of Christ, Eucharistic drink and refreshment of souls,

Blood of Christ, stream of mercy,

Blood of Christ, victor over demons,

Blood of Christ, courage of Martyrs,

Blood of Christ, strength of Confessors,

Blood of Christ, bringing forth Virgins,

Blood of Christ, help of those in peril,

Blood of Christ, relief of the burdened,

Blood of Christ, solace in sorrow,

Blood of Christ, hope of the penitent,

Blood of Christ, consolation of the dying,

Blood of Christ, peace and tenderness of hearts,

Blood of Christ, pledge of eternal life,

Blood of Christ, freeing souls from purgatory,

Blood of Christ, most worthy of all glory and honor,

Lamb of God, who take away the sins of the world.

R/ spare us, O Lord
Lamb of God, who take away the sins of the world,

R/ graciously hear us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, who take away the sins of the world,

R/ have mercy on us.

You have redeemed us, O Lord, in your Blood.

R/ And made us, for our God, a kingdom.

Let us pray.

Almighty and eternal God, you have appointed your only-begotten Son the Redeemer of the world, and willed to be appeased by his Blood. Grant we beg of you, that we may worthily adore this price of our salvation, and through its power be safeguarded from the evils of the present life, so that we may rejoice in its fruits forever in heaven. Through the same Christ our Lord.

R/ Amen.

Some More Purgatory Puzzles.

Remember Angels always tell the Truth

Demons always lie

Humans can either lie or tell the truth on whim.

5th Stairway

A: I am an Angel

B: I am a Demon

C: B is a Demon

6th Stairway

A: I am an Angel

B: I am a Demon

C: B is not an Angel

7th Stairway

A:I am an Angel

B:I am a Demon

C: A is Human

8th Stairway

A: I am an Angel

B: I am a Demon

C: B is Human

Tougher Purgatory Puzzle :

After climbing the 8th stairway you proceed along a long corridor until you eventually reach a crossroads where there are three entities... after shaking hands with each of them they allow you to pass but as you continue you hear one of them giggling....

Nevertheless you proceed...but the farther you travel the darker it seems to get; eventually you reach into your backpack for your torch [that's flashlight to our american cousins] - but discover it's missing !!! one of the three entities has stolen it!

You begin to run back towards the crossorads but a few seconds before you reach it a huge iron portcullis falls from the ceiling and bars your way....

You shout to the three at the crossroads:

"Give me back my torch!!!"

An angelic voice from above booms loudly:

"These three are deaf mutes and cannot hear you : Only I may guide one to approach you ! You must decide whom to choose and they will return anything to you that they have taken"

You shout upwards

"This isn't fair - how do I know ?"

" Fear Not ! Each will compose a written testimony for you...."

You leap back as three paper-wrapped rocks are launched through the portcullis at you ; and land at your feet....

As promised there are three notes...

But it is so dark you can't read them properly !!!

A: B [or is it C ? I can't tell!!] is innocent . He is also an Angel.

B: A is ....[what ? does that read guilty or innocent ?] . He is also a Demon.

C: A & B are both [??? Does that say Angels or Demons ???]

"This isn't Fair !!! I can't read the notes properly !"

The voice replies "You will know enough if I tell you there are no Humans amongst the three."

Whom do you call over to get the torch ?

A Peaceful Faith ? Only if the peace is silence or death....

Ok , I know a few Muslims ; and some are devout and very 'peaceful' externally [but God knows what's going on internally ?]; others are not so devout to their religion , but more devoted to their God and neighbour ; and to be honest , are much the better for it...The picture is of the Pope's effigy being burned - where ? Downtown Tehran or Dubai or Basra ? No, London !!

Try out Damian Thompson's blog for more details of the problems with Islam

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/ukcorrespondents/holysmoke/

but in the meantime read this about what happened to a christian convert in Iran.

Man in Iran Lashed for Being Christian

Tehran, Aug 15, 2007 / 10:14 am (CNA).- Iranian authorities lashed a man 34 times after a copy of the Gospels was found in his car, according to an AKI report, filed Aug. 14.

The man, identified as “A. Sh.” on an Iranian website representing Christian converts, was found to be a Muslim convert to Christianity. He was arrested after police searched his car, which had been involved in an accident, and found the book printed in Farsi.

He was detained at police station Number 102 in Tehran for two days where he was lashed and suffered "other humiliations", the site said.

Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism are the only religions allowed in Iran. However, converting from Islam to any of them is prohibited

How to start a discussion....

[just click the picture to enlarge it ]
Ok. Here's the puzzle - Yes most of you probably know the answer but even after all these decades there are still millions who don't - If you're ever 'trapped' in a room filled with people and a deathly silence pervades the air - ask this puzzle; I guarantee people will start to talk - if not argue heatedly :

Three Men order a shared room in a Hotel [each paying £10] for a total of £30
One of the men tries the Shower and discovers it's broken.
He rings down to reception and the manager apologises and says they'll have to use the shower at the end of the corridor; but he'll send up a minor refund for the invonvenience.
The manager slips a fiver to the bellboy and tells him to share it among the disgruntled customers.
The bellboy [being human] can neither work out how much five pounds divided by three is; let alone being able to find enough change to provide three equal shares...
So instead the bellboy pockets two pounds for himself , and gives each of the three irate customers a pound refund.

Now this means that instead of paying £10 each for the room, the men have paid £9 each
Now 3 x £9 = £27
and the bellboy kept £2 for himself ....
but that only makes £29 !!! and Not £30
Where's the missing pound ?

Thoughts from von Balthasar : On The Cross #1

Without a doubt, at the center of the New Testament there stands the Cross, which receives its interpretation from the Resurrection.

The Passion narratives are the first pieces of the Gospels that were composed as a unity. In his preaching at Corinth, Paul initially wants to know nothing but the Cross, which "destroys the wisdom of the wise and wrecks the understanding of those who understand", which "is a scandal to the Jews and foolishness to the gentiles".

But "the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men" (I Cor 1:19, 23, 25).

Whoever removes the Cross and its interpretation by the New Testament from the center, in order to replace it, for example, with the social commitment of Jesus to the oppressed as a new center, no longer stands in continuity with the apostolic faith.

He does not see that God's commitment to the world is most absolute precisely at this point across a chasm.

It is certainly not surprising that the disciples were able to understand the meaning of the Cross only slowly, even after the Resurrection.

The Lord himself gives a first catechetical instruction to the disciples at Emmaus by showing that this incomprehensible event is the fulfillment of what had been foretold and that the open question marks of the Old Testament find their solution only here (Lk 24:27).

Which riddles?

Those of the Covenant between God and men in which the latter must necessarily fail again and again: who can be a match for God as a partner?

Those of the many cultic sacrifices that in the end are still external to man while he himself cannot offer himself as a sacrifice.

Those of the inscrutable meaning of suffering which can fall even, and especially, on the innocent, so that every proof that God rewards the good becomes void.

Only at the outer periphery, as something that so far is completely sealed, appear the outlines of a figure in which the riddles might be solved.

This figure would be at once the completely kept and fulfilled Covenant, even far beyond Israel (Is 49:5-6), and the personified sacrifice in which at the same time the riddle of suffering, of being despised and rejected, becomes a light; for it happens as the vicarious suffering of the just for "the many" (Is 52:13-53:12).

Nobody had understood the prophecy then, but in the light of the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus it became the most important key to the meaning of the apparently meaningless.

Did not Jesus himself use this key at the Last Supper in anticipation? "For you", "for the many", his Body is given up and his Blood is poured out.

He himself, without a doubt, foreknew that his will to help these" people toward God who are so distant from God would at some point be taken terribly seriously, that he would suffer in their place through this distance from God, indeed this utmost darkness of God, in order to take it from them and to give them an inner share in his closeness to God.

"I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!" (Lk 12:50).

It stands as a dark cloud at the horizon of his active life; everything he does then-healing the sick, proclaiming the kingdom of God, driving out evil spirits by his good Spirit, forgiving sins-all of these partial engagements happen in the approach toward the one unconditional engagement.

You won't get the answer until you realise how easy it is...

Sir, I bear a rhyme excelling,
In mystic force and magic spelling.
Celestial sprites elucidate,
All my own striving can't relate.
What Am I ?

Riddle...What am I ?

Moonlight in the gloomy night of life.

I can soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.

Life would be an error without me.

And I separate the generations.

I express the inexpressible.

The art most nigh to tears and memory.

On which silence is impossible.

I am the shorthand of emotion.

I should strike fire from the heart of man and a woman I should bring to tears.

Only I can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.

The speech of angels.

[answers to this and the riddles above at the foot of the page]

St Joseph's Church , Bunhill, London - A Violation

Before and After Photos.












Need anything be really said ?
We've all encountered it...
House of God,
Gate of Heaven ....
How do these 'reformists' sleep at night?

Put Not Your Trust in Shakespeare...

Yesterday was the 522nd Anniversary of the battle of Bosworth; only a few miles from here; it always fills me with deep sadness....

If you haven't read Josephine Tey's 'The Daughter of Time' - I heartily recommend you do; but keep a hanky close by.

Here's Chesterton on Our Last Truly English Catholic King:

If we desire at all to catch the strange colours of the sunsetof the Middle Ages, to see what had changed yet not wholly killed chivalry there is no better study than the riddle of Richard III.

Of course, scarcely a line of him was like the caricature with whichhis much meaner successor placarded the world when he was dead.

He was not even a hunchback; he had one shoulder slightly higher than the other, probably the effect of his furious swordsmanship on a naturally slender and sensitive frame.

Yet his soul, if not his body, haunts us somehow as the crooked shadow of a straight knight of better days.

He was not an ogre shedding rivers of blood; some of the men he executed deserved it as much as any men of that wicked time;and even the tale of his murdered nephews is not certain,as it is told by those who also tell us he was born with tusks and was originally covered with hair.

Yet a crimson cloud cannot be dispelled from his memory, and, so tainted is the very air of that time with carnage, that we cannot say he was incapable even of the things of which he may have been innocent.

Whether or no he was a good man, he was apparently a good king and even a popular one; yet we think of him vaguely,and not, I fancy, untruly, as on sufferance.

He anticipated the Renascence in an abnormal enthusiasm for art and music,and he seems to have held to the old path of religion and charity.

He did not pluck perpetually at his sword and dagger because his only pleasure was in cutting throats; he probably did it because he was nervous.

It was the age of our first portrait-painting,and a fine contemporary portrait of him throws a more plausible light on this particular detail.

For it shows him touching,and probably twisting, a ring on his finger, the very act of a high-strung personality who would also fidget with a dagger.

And in his face, as there painted, we can study all that has made it worth while to pause so long upon his name;an atmosphere very different from everything before and after.

The face was a remarkable intellectual beauty; but there is something else on the face that is hardly in itself either good or evil, and that thing is death; the death of an epoch,the death of a great civilization, the death of something which once sang to the sun in the canticle of St. Francis and sailed to the ends of the earth in the ships of the First Crusade,but which in peace wearied and turned its weapons inwards,wounded its own brethren, broke its own loyalties, gambled for the crown, and grew feverish even about the creed,and has this one grace among its dying virtues, that its valour is the last to die.

But whatever else may have been bad or good about Richard of Gloucester, there was a touch about him which makes him truly the last of the mediaeval kings.

It is expressed in the one word which he cried aloud as he struck down foe after foe in the last charge at Bosworth--treason. For him, as for the first Norman kings, treason was the same as treachery;and in this case at least it was the same as treachery.

When his nobles deserted him before the battle, he did not regard it as a new political combination, but as the sin of false friends and faithless servants.

Using his own voice like the trumpet of a herald, he challenged his rival to a fight as personal as that of two paladins of Charlemagne.

His rival did not reply, and was not likely to reply.

The modern world had begun.

The call echoed unanswered down the ages;for since that day no English king has fought after that fashion.

Having slain many, he was himself slain and his diminished force destroyed.

So ended the war of the usurpers;and the last and most doubtful of all the usurpers,a wanderer from the Welsh marches, a knight from nowhere,found the crown of England under a bush of thorn.

Pardon My language - but the LYING BASTARDS!!!

The Automated response by Her Majesty's Government regarding the petition to revoke the Abortion Act:

Abortion is a subject on which many people hold very strong and widely differing views. It is accepted Parliamentary practice that proposals for changes in the law on abortion have come from backbench members and that decisions are made on the basis of free votes. The Government has no plans to change the law on abortion.
As Parliament has decided that abortions may lawfully be carried out in the circumstances specified in the Abortion Act 1967 (as amended by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990), we believe that facilities for abortion treatment should be available. We also have a responsibility to monitor the provisions of the Act as they are, unless Parliament chooses to amend the law further.
Women seeking a termination for whatever reason must have grounds under the Abortion Act. A pregnancy may be terminated only if two registered medical practitioners are of the opinion that an abortion is justified within the terms of the Act, in the light of their clinical judgement of all the particular circumstances of the individual case.

How many of these millions of abortions were illegal according to the letter of the law ?

Monitoring the provisions of the act ? If it were not so heinously reprehesible it would be laughable that they could think anyone believes this - we are all fully aware that abortion on demand is available to anyone .

Lies...More Lies...and still the silent genocide continues unabated....

Getting Ready for Christmas...already!!

As I'm rapidly careering towards forty I get the funniest feeling I'm trying to recapture my youth [I was too busy doing 'Churchy' things for it to be mis-spent].

One of my few pastimes was boardgames - Talisman being my favourite.

But my beloved ex-landlord absconded with most of my belongings in '95 and the massive fantasy game with its four separate boards, dozens of metal figures etc probably ended up in a skip or a charity shop - to replace it all would cost hundreds...

But miracles do happen ! A new edition of the game is being released in October

and The kids and I are going to be very happy bunnies come Christmas morning.

seriously I could not recommend it more , so if you're stuck for something to get for kids with a reasonable attention span - Buy this !

#100th Post - The Curt Jester opines...

Just had to plagiarise this....

Top 5

Here are the top five surprising results to Summorum Pontificum:

a] Progressive liturgists and others are now finally concerned that priests properly know and use the rubrics. At least for the extraordinary form of Mass in the Latin Rite.

b] A new concern for the number of people attending Mass. Declining numbers at experimental liturgy did not invoke a similar concern.

c] That priests more than adequately know Latin. At least if they want to be allowed to celebrate the 1962 missal.

d] The word "extraordinary" is finally coming to a proper understanding of what it means. Now if only they can learn to take the same view towards Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion.

e] Some bishops are now much more concerned about how liturgy is celebrated in their diocese and even want to test their priests capability in this regard. Maybe even one day the same concern will be applied to the ordinary form of the Mass.

[Hope in God, be strong and take heart, hope in the Lord]

Stuck in the Purgatory Toilet...

After climbing all those stairs you feel a call of nature and run off to use the facilities....

You flush, wash your hands and then pull the door to the toilet exit - it's locked !

You turn round.

Five other entities are grinning at you - you've been locked in and one [or more] of them has the key.

They will only hand the key over if you identify each one of their natures and ask the person or persons who stole the key for it.

ask the wrong person[s] and you'll be stuck in there forever...

Now you think this should be easy enough - Angel , demon, human etc.....

But these Humans are different : They are all university academics so will lie/tell the truth in special ways

At least One is a Philosopher ; a Philosopher will alternate between making a true statement and a false statement then back to a true statement, false statement...and so on...[n.b. you don't know whether the first statement will be true or false]

At least One is an Agnostic ; an Agnostic likes to fit in ; so will copy the previous speaker; if they lie he will lie too, if they tell the truth he will tell the truth too...and so on.

At least One is an Atheist; The Atheist will always do the opposite to the previous speaker ; if they lie he will tell the truth, if they tell the truth, he will lie !

An Angel will always tell the truth, A Demon will do nothing but lie.

But then something occurs to you !!! Do angels or demons need to use a toilet ?

maybe there are more than one of certain types? maybe there are demons or angels here but one can't be sure ??

You are only allowed to ask all five of them, as a group , five questions.

You realise that the easiest way to work this out is to find a pattern - the agnostic copies which means you'll find two truths or two lies together: So you ask the five of them :

"#1 Who is an Agnostic ?"

A: "B isn't an agnostic"

B: "C isn't an agnostic"

C: "E isn't an agnostic"

D: "A isn't an agnostic"

E: "D isn't an agnostic"

Ooooops...now the question has been asked the people start walking around...quickly you ask

"#2 Who is an Angel ?"

B: " I am ! "

E: " I am ! "

C: " I am ! "

A: " I am ! "

D: " I am ! "

They start walking around again; in sheer desperation you ask "#3 Ok , who stole the key ?"

C: " I didn't !"

B: " I didn't !"

D: " I didn't !"

A: " I didn't !"

E: " I didn't !"

Again they change places: You start pulling your hair: You ask "#4 Ok how many of you stole the key ? "

D: "Well only one of us..."

A: "Actually there were two of us.."

C: "Um, there were three of us who did it..."

E: "There were four of us who took the key"

B: "Ok we all did it ! "

They swap places again ! There is a tiny glimmer of hope but maybe you don't know it yet - you

ask your final question : "# 5 Who did it ?"

E: "B did it !"

B: "D did it !"

D: "A did it !"

C: "E did it !"

A: "C did it !"

Now maybe you don't know it yet; but you can work out who stole the key, and the identity of each person...

So ask the person [or persons] for the key and unlock the door.

[There's a Starting hint at the bottom of the page if you get stuck]

Saint of The Day

Prayer to Pope St Pius X

Glorious Pope of the Eucharist, Saint Pius X, you sought "to restore all things in Christ."

Obtain for me a true love of Jesus so that I may live only for Him.

Help me to acquire a lively fervor and a sincere will to strive for sanctity of life, and that I may avail myself of the riches of the Holy Eucharist in sacrifice and sacrament.

By your love for Mary, mother and queen of all, inflame my heart with tender devotion to her.

Blessed model of the priesthood, obtain for us holy, dedicated priests, and increase vocations to the religious life.

Dispel confusion and hatred and anxiety, and incline our hearts to peace and concord. so that all nations will place themselves under the sweet reign of Christ.

Amen.

Saint Pius X, pray for me

The Next Three Purgatory Puzzles.

Remember, an Angel must tell the truth, A Demon must lie, Only a human can do either, and there is only one of each type on each staircase.

Second Staircase

Person A: I am an Angel

Person B: I am not Human

Person C: Person A is not a demon.

Third Staircase

Person A: I am an Angel

Person B: I am a Human

Person C: I am a Demon

Fourth Staircase

Person A: I am an Angel

Person B: I am a Human

Person C: Person A really is an Angel.

A Bit of Fun...

My postings have been a bit depressing recently so I thought a little Smullyanesque/Newheiseran Logic puzzles might relieve the tension.

You've died and are strolling through purgatory on your way to Heaven.

Now in order to get to heaven you must climb many hundreds of flights of stone stairs,

But in front of each staircase stand three individuals who will not let you pass them by;

unless you identify their true nature :

Each time all three look human , But One is an Angel who always tells the truth, One a Demon who always lies, and the last one is Human who can lie or be honest accoding to their whim.

The first staircase.

Person A: "I am an angel"

Person B: " I am not human"

Person C: " I am a demon"

Can you deduce who is whom ? whom is who ?

[Getting the 'Gist' of it ? they're quite simple when you think about them; but how often in a day do we really think ? These really help me wear my brain out before bedtime and the subsequent sleep is great - better than anything medication can provide]

[Thanks to the genius of Mark Newheiser]

Authentic Love

...the peace which [Jesus Christ] came to bring is not synonymous with the absence of conflicts. On the contrary, the peace of Jesus is the fruit of a constant struggle against evil.

The fight which Jesus decided to wage is not against men or human powers, but against the enemy of God and man, Satan.

Whoever wishes to resist this enemy by remaining faithful to God and goodness must necessarily face incomprehensions, and, at times, true and actual persecutions.

Therefore, those who intend to follow Jesus and devote themselves to truth without compromises must know that they will face oppositions and shall become, despite of themselves, a sign of division among others, even within their own families.

Love for parents is in fact a holy commandment, but, for it to be lived in an authentic way, it may never be placed before the love of God and of Christ.

In such a way, on the steps of the Lord Jesus, Christians become "instruments of his peace", according to the famous expression of Saint Francis of Assisi.

Not of an inconsistent and superficial peace, but of a real [peace], sought with courage and tenacity in the daily struggle to overcome evil by good [cf. Romans xii, 21] and paying in the flesh the price which this entails.

Benedict XVI

Angelus

August 19, 2007

Satanic Insanity

The Ancient poets declared that the rain hides God.

I've already spoken of my deep sadness and anger at the diabolically evil systemic genocide in this country of the Unborn; especially those of potential mental /physical disability ; whom even alleged 'Christians' from other faiths dismiss as "...should be put out of their 'misery' ".

Catholic Action UK has informed us of the latest news from the SPUC regarding the amniocentesis test; murdering many more than the potentially disabled foetuses it purports to test for - What if the Parents knew of this beforehand ? Would they go through with the test ? Perhaps these days it would be too Idealistic to presume they would not go through with it :

From SPUC: Prenatal tests for Down's syndrome could cause women to miscarry their healthy babies, according to a British doctor. Dr Hylton Meire, formerly of King's College Hospital, London, warned that the amniocentesis test can be needlessly invasive and can lead to miscarriages of unborn children. Writing in Ultrasound, he calculated that there are 160 healthy babies lost for every 50 cases of Down's or Edwards' syndrome detected

I despair of this secular mentality that can permit all this and yet still purport to be humane ; time to reassert the principle laid down in the United Nations 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child that the child "needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth."

A state of Civil war in Europe ?

[with thanks to Catholic Action UK and CF News]

The Vatican is worried its opposition to abortion, embryonic stem cell research and homosexual marriage could one day land it before an international court of justice, a senior Vatican official said in an interview published yesterday. Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, who heads the Pontifical Council for the Family, reiterated traditional Roman Catholic Church positions and criticized some European countries, including Belgium, the Netherlands and France, for giving legal recognition to civil unions. 'We worry especially that, with current laws, speaking in defence of life and the rights of families is becoming in some societies sort of a crime against the state,' Lopez Trujillo told the Catholic news magazine Famiglia Cristiana for its issue scheduled to hit the stands today, Thursday.

Think the cardinal is being paranoid ? well look at what happened to a Lutheran pastor in June:

Without legalized abortion the number of German children would increase annually by at least 150,000 -- which is the number of legal abortions in birth dearth Germany. Pastor Johannes Lerle compared the killing of the unborn to the killing of the Jews in Auschwitz during the Second World War. On 14 June, a court in Erlangen ruled that, in doing so, the pastor had 'incited the people' because his statement was a denial of the holocaust of the Jews in Nazi-Germany. Hence, Herr Lerle was sentenced to one year in jail. Earlier, he had already spent eight months in jail for calling abortionists 'professional killers' -- an allegation which the court ruled to be slanderous because, according to the court, the unborn are not humans.Other German courts convicted pro-lifers for saying that 'in abortion clinics, life unworthy of living is being killed,' because this terminology evoked Hitler's euthanasia program, which used the same language. In 2005, a German pro-lifer, Gunter Annen, was sentenced to 50 days in jail for saying 'Stop unjust [rechtswidrige] abortions in [medical] practice,' because, according to the court, the expression 'unjust' is understood by laymen as meaning illegal, which abortions are not.Volksverhetzung is a crime which the Nazis often invoked against their enemies .

How soon till this kind of prosecution reaches our shores?

And again, merely as a vade mecum..

One of my heated responses during a 'Caritas' and that 'bloody' book discussion - included a photo of cardinal Kung as I felt it appropriate to remember such a man in these times.

I concur wholeheartedly Damian, that the conference of Bishops is a reprehensible travesty [the permission given for the use of 'catholic christianity' in our schoolrooms is scandalous!] - I had a 'polite' barney over a dining table with his Eminence while I was a lowly seminarian and he was bishop of Arundel and Brighton regarding his oecumenical activities [shared tabernacles etc] so am fully aware of what we face .

But my old deceased Bishop Francis Thomas stood up against Peter Stanford with no support from anyone [it ultimately ended up with the futile measure of his cancelling his subscription to the CH- but that was due to fellow episcopal acedia]

I remember the highly orthodox old bishop Gray of Shrewsbury, ignored and ridiculed by fellow bishops and the clerics in his diocese [nicknamed Charlie Laughton or Boss Hogg] and now Northampton has Peter Doyle as Bishop and he's a devout, orthodox "good 'un" in a sea of reprobates....

But how is a bishop supposed to act when clerics and professional laity are hostile , antagonistic and work to their own agenda with the ostensible full support of the conference?

Can a bishop remove heterodox catechetical material from the classroom ?

Cancel anti-catholic RCIA programmes ?

Censure religious retreat centres which are half Buddhist/half Timothy Leary ?

My children have had no catholic instruction since the age of 11 yet vatican two commands every child to be instructed till 16 - and the instruction they did get was celebrating seder meals and Diwali and doing paintings of the Islamic Qa'aba!!! Interspersed with neo-protestant dumbing down of the gospels [every year they painted Zacchaeus up that bloody tree!] - Yet we are purported to have a fully active [and expensive] youth ministry in our diocese - my kids have never seen them !

Bishops are being systematically 'cuckolded' in their dioceses by 'professional' clerics who belong to the infernal 'Inner ring' in this country - the old-boy/girl network which is highly anti-clerical and anti-catholic.I remember being dumbstruck when Pat Jones announced to us that it would be wrong for us to mention the Holy Spirit in confirmation-preparation classes; when 'liturgy expert' mgr 'KM' banned the singing of any communion hymn that referred to the real presence - all had to be meaningless gathering songs.

When a seminary rector turned to a bishop and an american monsignor and declared 'we don't do latin !'

Systematic Theology lecturers who declare there was no bodily resurrection; Moral theology lecturers saying abortion was the responsible good if a mother already had a young child to care for, and that dropping bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a 'good in itself'!! - and the Bishops are impotent to prevent this.

Admittedly we have a 'bad lot' who conspire in this heinous misrepresentation of our faith; but we have a 'few good men' abandoned in their episcopacy, receiving naught but antipathy from the conference of bishops; but the same must be said for our priests ! Just look at our collarless inept bunch running the conference of priests - cumulative IQ of rubber plants who couldn't run a bath; let alone a support/pedagogical training system for our clergy.Some of our bishops we have to fight for, not fight against.

Merely for posterity...

Anyone remember Peter da Rosa ? ; Neil Boyd of 'Bless me Father' fame ?

Well he wrote disparagingly of the resurgence of the Motu Proprio so here was my response:

You know dude, I remember being in hysterics at the 'bless me father' books as a child, the storm at the summer fete, the burying of the hoover with the alleged host crumbs etc;

but your comments over the past twenty years have made me laugh out loud even more - because bless your ex-clerical blacker than black fuligen socks ; virtually everything you comment on as being wrong with the church reassures me more adamantly how right that ecclesial policy or point of doctrine is !

Certainly I concur wholeheartedly with your vociferous denunciation of clerical abuse cover-ups and the inefficacy of our episcopacy; but your alleged medicinal procurements to alleviate the situation are either abortifacient to any embryonic hope for orthodoxy, or fatal to the ailing health of that aspect of Holy Mother Church and its authentic teaching.

You are fully aware of the constitution on the sacred liturgy 36#1 that commanded [impero] the retention of latin as the Lingua Prima; and that it was Bugnini et al of blessed memory with a hotch-potch assortment of renegades and neo-protestantising reprobates who enforced its virtual abolition outside the canonical books and papal documents - Ottaviani risked his position and virtually his life to ensure the consecration remained valid within the Novus Ordo; yet the bishops who had been so resolute in Rome ; returned home and for the price of a conciliar tin-pot dictatorship within each diocese and province; they rolled over and played dead from the neck-up, eagerly accepting each new innovation, pragmatism or situationist policy that spouted out of Rome [including a few nice new regional liturgical inventions and 'challenging, innovative' doctrinal and moral positions they could publish and increase their nicely flourishing bank balances]

Why do you think the young priests are so in favour of the return of the Extraordinary rite? because they are a bunch of arrogant right-wing closeted camp pseudo-anglo catholics wanting to attire themselves in fancy dress and archaic regalia and lord it over the laity who've 'overstepped their mark and need put back in their place' ?

Among a few lonely confused dissidents maybe - but the vast majority of them are sick of the sacrilege and outright heterodoxy of the past forty years - sick of the chipped ceramics and eagles' wings - sick of the priest being so terrified that a sermon may compromise the parish fund that they haven't said anything controversially radically orthodox and confrontational according to the Gospel since Harold MacMillan was PM.

The majority of the laity are not the 'professional laity' of the chattering classes you consort with; the majority of the young priests coming forward for ordination are no longer willing to be duped into believing that 'all religions are of the same worth and catholicism needs to mould itself into the homogenous mess called oecumenism' ; nor are they ready to accept the theologically inept and doctrinally erroneous diatribes of the sixties and seventies that denied the Incarnation, the resurrection, the ontological difference in holy orders, the real presence or the efficacy of the sacraments.

No longer can some revisionist scripture scholar come along and rewrite the new testament according to his whim and the flavour of the month and have a whole legion of clerics bowing down in acceptance and adulation before him and his challenging 'wisdom' -

NO! Those days are gone.

The hippy guitar-wielding, tambourine shaking,nylon rag wearing clergy abandoned the laity; and the consequences are that the new authentically orthodox laity will not listen to them - they'd rather listen to the authentic message of Christ and the Church via the Gospels and the teaching of that age-old adversary of the Liberals - His Holiness!What a coup eh ?

We radically orthodox traditionalists win on all sides; and why ?

Because the liberal modernising pragmatist situationists spent all their time talking about peace and love and shiny happy group hugs and excusing away all sin while the abandoned laity had to grow up with very little assistance from any of them, no teaching or guidance from the pulpit or the confessional, no shoulder to cry on in the presbytery because the priests were never there, no priest ever visited so they became alienated from the community, isolated, ignorant and uncommunicative - so the catholics had to keep their own personal spiritual houses in order - while tens of thousands of regular catholics around them sunk into despair or were left to the wolves with no pastoral assistance from the church...

Shame on us for allowing it to happen, but more shame on you for supporting it.

Yet now there is a new era on the horizon, what did JPII say ? My Czekamy - we wait ?

Well while the liberal clergy and laity dashed all our hopes to the ground and liturgically danced around them the seeds of opposition were growing - and the eager response of the young to the Motu Proprio is only the beginning [sure most of them have no idea what latin is or how to conjugate the simplest verb - but they can empathise with what screams of the divine and spiritual; and they strive to reclaim what was lost and abandoned - it may seem an era to us who lived through this diabolical travesty ; but forty years is a brief flicker in the history of Holy Mother church - and the young will not be corrupted by our foolish indolent, uncaring ways....

I think this is what we could call 'match point' to His Holiness..

This isn't going to make me many new friends....

I've just been to 'The Cafeteria is Closed' website and been somewhat unsettled with US catholic attitudes towards the forthcoming presidential elections. I felt compelled to put in my farthing's worth.....

Primarily I have the deepest concerns with US catholic attitudes to delegating their democratic executive power in their vote during presidential elections; and fear that through ignorance and poor doctrinal catechesis they are being led astray and technically excommunicating themselves.

Canon law is very specific : Irrespective of the pronouncements from the US conference of Bishops and the meek equivocations leaking out from the Vatican.

Canon 1329§2 In the case of a latae sententiae penalty attached to an offence, accomplices, even though not mentioned in the law or precept, incur the same penalty if, without their assistance, the crime would not have been committed, and if the penalty is of such a nature as to be able to affect them; otherwise, they can be punished with ferendae sententiae penalties.

Judicial murder is a latae sententiae excommunicable act - this includes

a] illegal, unjust war

b] abortion and euthanasia

c] the actuation of capital punishment upon the incarcerated ; this is not congruent with a 'last recourse double-effect' death penalty which prevents immediate direct aggression in order to preserve threatened life [ref. CCC & Evangelium Vitae]

Any catholic who conspires in these actions through their executive democratic vote [i.e. a presidential election differs from all other types of election in that the person, not the party is being given direct power by a voter] is guilty of conspiring in latae sententiae excommunicable acts and may have automatically excommunicated themselves.

I do not understand why the US bishops and cardinals are being so lenient against catholic politicians who have excommunicated themselves [ pro-choice politicians are no longer in communion with the church - merely denying them access to the Blessed Sacrament is tantamount to a leniency which conspires in the act.]

In the last election it was technically canonically impossible for a catholic to vote for either Bush or Kerry. Both have records of conspiring in judicial murder via war, life issues and execution.

What of the next election ?A catholic must not, indeed cannot vote for candidates who conspire in the culture of death.

Secondly I feel I have to refer to both the Gospels and Catholic Social teaching esp. since Rerum Novarum: A catholic is obliged to promote the Corporal and Spiritual works of mercy - and this MUST be a consideration in regards to a social and welfare policy. To those right-wing catholics who wish for small government, low taxation, minimal welfare benefits and oppose universal healthcare and free education; my I remind them that they are in direct contravention of the teaching of Christ in Matthew 25!

Thirdly there are exigencies which must be given due consideration ; the principles of the NRA, pro-nuclear weapons and aggressive foreign policy organizationns, prejudicial groups, or anti-immigration groups, or xenophobic insular societies which promote the lowering of the budget, if not removal of food,aid,medical supplies to our overseas neighbours in the developing world; are NOT conducive to catholic teaching.

We are commanded by Christ to Love our Neighbour and never to demean ourselves by treating any other as a lesser individual, or to promote the wasting of money and resources and manpower on endeavours which are antagonistic and contrary to this.

To clarify, may I remind those who support the NRA or nuclear weapons or a high defence expenditure or an aggressive hawk overseas policy - guns and WMD are designed solely for one purpose - and it is not the promotion of life - a gun is designed to kill via penetration and hydrostatic shock- there is nothing defensive about it - I should think we are aware of the effects of nuclear weapons.

I am deeply saddened that too many US catholic citizens compromise, indeed jeopardise, their faith during these periods leading up to elections; a catholic simply cannot promote or ostensibly vindicate anything which is contrary to their Faith - and this is not because they are in a quandary induced by moral dillemma where the choice is either an intrinsically moral disordered position over a position of pure evil [e.g. I have to vote for the anti-catholic morals republican because the democrat is pro-choice] this is fallacious thinking - A catholic is only morally obliged to vote in an executive election where they can do so without compromising their executive democratic delegative power - to conspire in that which is contrary is not permissible; even though it is during normal non-executive elections [i.e. where you can vote for the 'least worst'].

That opportunity is NOT available to a catholic in an executive election; for they technically conspire in all the policies that are actuated by said president.

This may seem harsh and irrational and unrealistic ; but there are times when it is neither feasible nor tenable to vote for any candidate as to do so would jeapordise one's faith.

I say to US catholics that they need authentic, sincere, devout, orthodox catholics to come forth and participate in these presidential elections in order for them to be both represented and ABLE to vote.

Otherwise they may compromise their very position within the One,Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

The Assumption

The ark which God has sanctified,

Which He has filled with grace,

Within the temple of the Lord

Has found a resting-place.

More glorious than the seraphim,

This ark of love divine,

Corruption could not blemish her

Whom death could not confine.

God-bearing Mother, Virgin chaste,

Who shines in heaven's sight;

She wears a royal crown of stars

Who is the door of Light.

To Father, Son and Spirit blest

may we give endless praise

With Mary, who is Queen of heaven,

Through everlasting days.

Litany of Penance by Cardinal Newman

LITANY OF PENANCE

LORD have mercy.

Lord, have mercy.

Christ, have mercy.

Christ, have mercy.

Lord, have mercy.

Lord, have mercy.

Christ, hear us.

Christ, graciously hear us.

God the Father of Heaven, Have mercy on us.

God the Son, Redeemer of the world, Have mercy on us.

God the Holy Ghost, Have mercy on us.

Holy Trinity, one God, Have mercy on us.

Incarnate Lord, Have mercy on us.

Lover of souls, Have mercy on us.

Saviour of sinners, Have mercy on us.

Who didst come to seek those that were lost, Have mercy on us.

Who didst fast for them forty days and nights, Have mercy on us.

By Thy tenderness towards Adam when he fell, Have mercy on us.

By Thy faithfulness to Noe in the ark, Have mercy on us.

By Thy remembrance of Lot in the midst of sinners, Have mercy on us.

By Thy mercy on the Israelites in the desert, Have mercy on us.

By Thy forgiveness of David after his confession, Have mercy on us.

By Thy patience with wicked Achab on his humiliation, Have mercy on us.

By Thy restoration of the penitent Manasses, Have mercy on us.

By Thy long suffering towards the Ninevites, when they went in sackcloth and ashes. Have mercy on us.

By Thy blessing on the Maccabees, who fasted before the battle, Have mercy on us.

By Thy choice of John to go before Thee as the preacher of penance, Have mercy on us.

By Thy testimony to the Publican, who hung his head and smote his breast,Have mercy on us.

By Thy welcome given to the returning Prodigal, Have mercy on us.

By Thy gentleness with the woman of Samaria, Have mercy on us.

By Thy condescension towards Zacchaeus, persuading him to restitution, Have mercy on us.

By Thy pity upon the woman taken in adultery, Have mercy on us.

By Thy love of Magdalen, who loved much, Have mercy on us.

By Thy converting look, at which Peter wept, Have mercy on us.

By Thy gracious words to the thief upon the cross, Have mercy on us.

We sinners, beseech Thee, hear us.

That we may judge ourselves, and so escape Thy judgment, We beseech Thee,hear us.

That we may bring forth worthy fruits of penance, We beseech Thee, hear us.

That sin may not reign in our mortal bodies, We beseech Thee, hear us.

That we may work out our salvation with fear and trembling, We beseech Thee,hear us.

Son of God, We beseech Thee, hear us.

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world,Spare us, O Lord.

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world,Graciously hear us, O Lord.

Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world,Have mercy on us.

Christ, hear us.

Christ, graciously hear us.

O Lord, hear our prayer.

And let our cry come unto Thee.

Let us pray.

Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord, to Thy faithful, pardon and peace, that they may be cleansed from all their offences, and also serve Thee with a quietmind, through Christ our Lord. --Amen

Chesterton XV - 'Heretics' chapter 11

XI. Science and the Savages

A permanent disadvantage of the study of folk-lore and kindred subjects is that the man of science can hardly be in the nature of things very frequently a man of the world.

He is a studentof nature; he is scarcely ever a student of human nature.

And even where this difficulty is overcome, and he is in some sense a student of human nature, this is only a very faint beginning of the painful progress towards being human.

For the studyof primitive race and religion stands apart in one important respect from all, or nearly all, the ordinary scientific studies.

A man can understand astronomy only by being an astronomer; he can understand entomology only by being an entomologist(or, perhaps, an insect); but he can understand a great deal of anthropology merely by being a man.

He is himself the animal which he studies.

Hence arises the fact which strikes the eye everywhere in the records of ethnology and folk-lore--the fact that the same frigid and detached spirit which leads to success in the study of astronomy or botany leads to disaster in the study of mythology or human origins.

It is necessaryto cease to be a man in order to do justice to a microbe; it is not necessary to cease to be a man in order to do justice to men.

That same suppression of sympathies, that same waving away of intuitions or guess-work which make a man preternaturally clever in dealing with the stomach of a spider, will make him preternaturally stupid in dealing with the heart of man.

He is making himself inhuman in order to understand humanity.

An ignorance of the other world is boasted by many men of science;but in this matter their defect arises, not from ignorance of the other world, but from ignorance of this world.

For the secrets about which anthropologists concern themselves can be best learnt, not from books or voyages, but from the ordinary commerce of man with man.

The secret of why some savage tribe worships monkeys or the moon is not to be found even by travelling among those savages and taking down their answers in a note-book, although the cleverest man may pursue this course.

The answer to the riddle is in England; it is in London; nay, it is in his own heart.

When a man has discovered why men in Bond Street wear black hats he will at the same moment have discovered why men in Timbuctoo wear red feathers.

The mystery in the heart of some savage war-dance should not be studied in books of scientific travel; it should be studied at a subscription ball.

If a man desires to find out the origins of religions, let him not go to the Sandwich Islands; let him go to church.

If a man wishes to know the origin of human society, to knowwhat society, philosophically speaking, really is, let him not go into the British Museum; let him go into society.

This total misunderstanding of the real nature of ceremonial gives rise to the most awkward and dehumanized versions of the conduct of men in rude lands or ages.

The man of science, not realizing that ceremonial is essentially a thing which is done without a reason, has to find a reason for every sort of ceremonial, and, as might be supposed, the reason is generally a very absurd one--absurd because it originates not in the simple mind of the barbarian, but in the sophisticated mind of the professor.

The teamed man will say, for instance, "The natives of Mumbo jumbo Land believe that the dead man can eat and will require food upon his journey to the other world.

This is attested by the fact that they place food in the grave, and that any family not complying with this rite is the object of the anger of the priests and the tribe."

To any one acquainted with humanity this way of talking is topsy-turvy.

It is like saying,"The English in the twentieth century believed that a dead man could smell.This is attested by the fact that they always covered his grave with lilies,violets, or other flowers. Some priestly and tribal terrors were evidently attached to the neglect of this action, as we have records of several old ladies who were very much disturbed in mind because their wreaths had not arrived in time for the funeral."

It may be of course that savages put food with a dead man because they think that a dead man can eat,or weapons with a dead man because they think that a dead man can fight.But personally I do not believe that they think anything of the kind.

I believe they put food or weapons on the dead for the same reason that we put flowers, because it is an exceedingly natural and obvious thing to do.

We do not understand, it is true, the emotion which makes us think it obvious and natural; but that is because, like all the important emotions of human existence, it is essentially irrational. We do not understand the savage for the same reason that the savage does not understand himself.

And the savage does not understand himself for the same reason that we do not understand ourselves either.

The obvious truth is that the moment any matter has passed through the human mind it is finally and for ever spoilt for all purposes of science.

It has become a thing incurably mysterious and infinite; this mortal has put on immortality. Even what we call our material desires are spiritual, because they are human.

Science can analyse a pork-chop, and say how much of it is phosphorus and how much is protein; but science cannot analyse any man's wish for a pork-chop, and say how much of it is hunger, how much custom, how much nervous fancy, how much a haunting love of the beautiful.

The man's desire for the pork-chop remains literally as mystical and ethereal as his desire for heaven.

All attempts, therefore, at a science of any human things, at a science of history, a science of folk-lore, a scienceof sociology, are by their nature not merely hopeless, but crazy.

You can no more be certain in economic history that a man's desire for money was merely a desire for money than you can be certain in hagiology that a saint's desire for God was merely a desire for God.

And this kind of vagueness in the primary phenomena of the study is an absolutely final blow to anything in the nature of a science.

Men can construct a science with very few instruments, or with very plain instruments; but no one on earth could construct a science with unreliable instruments.

A man might work out the whole of mathematics with a handful of pebbles,but not with a handful of clay which was always falling apart into new fragments, and falling together into new combinations.

A man might measure heaven and earth with a reed, but not with a growing reed.

As one of the enormous follies of folk-lore, let us take the case of the transmigration of stories, and the alleged unity of their source.

Story after story the scientific mythologists have cut out of its place in history, and pinned side by side with similar stories in their museum of fables.

The process is industrious, it is fascinating, and the whole of it rests on one of the plainest fallacies in the world.

That a story has been told all over the place at some time or other, not only does not prove that it never really happened; it does not even faintly indicate or make slightly more probable that it never happened.

That a large number of fishermen have falsely asserted that they have caught a pike two feet long, does not in the least affect the question of whether any one ever really did so.

That numberless journalists announce a Franco-German war merely for money is no evidence one way or the other upon the dark question of whether such a war ever occurred.

Doubtless in a few hundred years the innumerable Franco-German wars that did not happen will have cleared the scientific mind of any belief in the legendary war of '70 which did.

But that will be because if folk-lore students remain at all,their nature win be unchanged; and their services to folk-lore will be still as they are at present, greater than they know.

For in truth these men do something far more godlike than studying legends; they create them. There are two kinds of stories which the scientists say cannot be true,because everybody tells them.

The first class consists of the stories which are told everywhere, because they are somewhat odd or clever; there is nothing in the world to prevent their having happened to somebody as an adventure any more than there is anything to prevent their having occurred, as they certainly did occur, to somebody as an idea.

But they are not likely to have happened to many people.

The second class of their "myths" consist of the stories that are told everywhere for the simple reason that they happen everywhere.

Of the first class, for instance, we might take such an example as the story of William Tell, now generally ranked among legends upon the sole ground that it is found in the tales of other peoples.

Now, it is obvious that this was told everywhere because whether true or fictitious it is what is called "a good story;" it is odd, exciting, and it has a climax.

But to suggest that some such eccentric incident can never have happened in the whole history of archery, or that it did not happen to any particular person of whom it is told, is stark impudence.

The idea of shooting at a mark attached to some valuable or beloved person is an idea doubtless that might easily have occurred to any inventive poet.

But it is also an idea that might easily occur to any boastful archer.

It might be one of the fantastic caprices of some story-teller.

It might equally well be one of the fantastic caprices of some tyrant.

It might occur first in real life and afterwards occur in legends.

Or it might just as well occur first in legends and afterwards occur in real life.

If no apple has ever been shot off a boy's head from the beginning of the world, it may be done tomorrow morning, and by somebody who has never heard of William Tell.

This type of tale, indeed, may be pretty fairly paralleled with the ordinary anecdote terminating in a repartee or an Irish bull. Such a retort as the famous "Je ne vois pas la necessite" we have all seen attributed to Talleyrand, to Voltaire, to Henri Quatre, to an anonymous judge, and so on.

But this variety does not in anyway make it more likely that the thing was never said at all.

It is highly likely that it was really said by somebody unknown.

It is highly likely that it was really said by Talleyrand.

In any case, it is not any more difficult to believe that the mot might have occurred to a man in conversation than to a man writing memoirs.

It might have occurred to any of the men I have mentioned.

But there is this point of distinction about it, that it is not likely to have occurred to all of them. And this iswhere the first class of so-called myth differs from the secondto which I have previously referred.

For there is a second class of incident found to be common to the stories of five or six heroes, say to Sigurd, to Hercules, to Rustem, to the Cid, and so on.

And the peculiarity of this myth is that not only is it highly reasonable to imagine that it really happened to one hero, but it is highly reasonable to imagine that it really happened to all of them.

Such a story, for instance, is that of a great man having his strength swayed or thwarted by the mysterious weakness of a woman.

The anecdotal story, the story of William Tell, is as I have said, popular, because it is peculiar.

But this kind of story, the story of Samson and Delilah, of Arthur and Guinevere, is obviously popular because it is not peculiar. It is popular as good, quiet fiction is popular, because it tells the truth about people.

If the ruin of Samson by a woman,and the ruin of Hercules by a woman, have a common legendary origin, it is gratifying to know that we can also explain, as a fable,the ruin of Nelson by a woman and the ruin of Parnell by a woman.

And, indeed, I have no doubt whatever that, some centuries hence,the students of folk-lore will refuse altogether to believe that Elizabeth Barrett eloped with Robert Browning, and will prove their point up to the hilt by the unquestionable fact that the whole fiction of the period was full of such elopements from end to end.

Possibly the most pathetic of all the delusions of the modern students of primitive belief is the notion they have about the thing they call anthropomorphism.

They believe that primitive men attributed phenomena to a god in human form in orderto explain them, because his mind in its sullen limitation could not reach any further than his own clownish existence.

The thunder was called the voice of a man, the lightning the eyes of a man, because by this explanation they were made more reasonable and comfortable.

The final cure for all this kind of philosophy is to walk down a lane at night.

Any one who does so will discover very quickly that men pictured something semi-human at the back of all things, not because such a thought was natural, but because it was supernatural;

not because it made things more comprehensible, but because it made them a hundred times more incomprehensible and mysterious.

For a man walking down a lane at night can see the conspicuous fact that as long as nature keeps to her own course, she has no power with us at all.

As long as a tree is a tree, it is a top-heavy monster with a hundred arms, a thousand tongues, and only one leg.

But so long as a tree is a tree, it doesnot frighten us at all.

It begins to be something alien,to be something strange, only when it looks like ourselves.

When a tree really looks like a man our knees knock under us.And when the whole universe looks like a man we fall on our faces.

From 'Introduction to The Devout Life' by St Francis de Sales

CHAPTER IX.

FIRST MEDITATION. Of Creation.


Preparation.

1. PLACE yourself in the Presence of God.

2. Ask Him to inspire your heart.



Considerations.
1. Consider that but a few years since you were not born into the world, and your soul was as yet non-existent. Where wert thou then, O my soul? the world was already old, and yet of thee there was no sign.
2. God brought you out of this nothingness, in order to make you what you are, not because He had any need of you, but solely out of His Goodness.
3. Consider the being which God has given you; for it is the foremost being of this visible world, adapted to live eternally, and to be perfectly united to God’s Divine Majesty.

Affections and Resolutions.
1. Humble yourself utterly before God, saying with the Psalmist, O Lord, I am nothing in respect of Thee—what am I, that Thou shouldst remember me? O my soul, thou wert yet lost in that abyss of nothingness, if God had not called thee forth, and what of thee in such a case?
2. Give God thanks. O Great and Good Creator, what do I not owe Thee, Who didst take me from out that nothingness, by Thy Mercy to make me what I am? How can I ever do enough worthily to praise Thy Holy Name, and render due thanks to Thy Goodness?
3. Confess your own shame. But alas, O my Creator, so far from uniting myself to Thee by a loving service, I have rebelled against Thee through my unruly affections, departing from Thee, and giving myself up to sin, and ignoring Thy Goodness, as though Thou hadst not created me.
4. Prostrate thyself before God. O my soul, know that the Lord He is thy God, it is He that hath made thee, and not thou thyself. O God, I am the work of Thy Hands; henceforth I will not seek to rest in myself, who am nought. Wherein hast thou to glory, who art but dust and ashes? how canst thou, a very nothing, exalt thyself? In order to my own humiliation, I will do such and such a thing,—I will endure such contempt:—I will alter my ways and henceforth follow my Creator, and realise that I am honoured by His calling me to the being He has given; I will employ it solely to obey His Will, by means of the teaching He has given me, of which I will inquire more through my spiritual Father.

Conclusion.
1. Thank God. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and praise His Holy Name with all thy being, because His Goodness called me forth from nothingness, and His Mercy created me.
2. Offer. O my God, I offer Thee with all my heart the being Thou hast given me, I dedicate and consecrate it to Thee.
3. Pray. O God, strengthen me in these affections and resolutions. Dear Lord, I commend me, and all those I love, to Thy neverfailing Mercy. Pater.Ave.Gloria.

At the end of your meditation linger a while, and gather, so to say, a little spiritual bouquet from the thoughts you have dwelt upon, the sweet perfume whereof may refresh you through the day.

AAaaaghhh The U.S wouldn't know what political radicalism was if it bit them on the bum!!!

You Are 24% Politically Radical

You've got a few unusual political ideas, but overall you're a pretty mainstream person. Chances are that you're turned off by both the radical right and looney left.

Are You a Political Radical?

Have the bishops forgotten this ?

I'd like to know why we are running away from the law ; and penalties are not being exacted ? here's a link to a princeton professor and his attitude towards anti-life 'catholics'
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=815

Now what does canon law say about it all ?

Can. 1329


§1 Where a number of persons conspire together to commit an offence, and accomplices are not expressly mentioned in the law or precept, if ferendae sententiae penalties were constituted for the principal offender, then the others are subject to the same penalties or to other penalties of the same or a lesser gravity.

§2 In the case of a latae sententiae penalty attached to an offence, accomplices, even though not mentioned in the law or precept, incur the same penalty if, without their assistance, the crime would not have been committed, and if the penalty is of such a nature as to be able to affect them; otherwise, they can be punished with ferendae sententiae penalties.

Now stop me if I'm wrong on this, but doesn't this mean that any politician who conspires in the culture of death , exacting their executive legislative delegative powers towards the promotion or actuation of illegal war, abortion, euthanasia, embryonic experimentation, or social policies which indirectly cause death in the third world by depriving them of food,clean water and medicines - are not merely to be deprived of access to the Blessed Sacrament ; they are Latae Sententiae excommunicated !!!!

Now the other week in Hednesford, Staffordshire, a pharmacist on moral grounds refused to dispense the morning-after pill to a customer; Mrs Sarah Luke . Lloyds pharmacy has declared that their ethical policy demands that the pharmacist who conscientiously objects MUST refer the customer to another pharmacist - something which a Catholic , in the remit of Canon 1329#2 ; CANNOT do !!!

So please tell me, what can a Catholic pharmacist do ? and where are the Conference of Bishops or Caritas or Our Catholic MPs ? Is anything being done to validly protect the religious freedom of catholics in their struggle against the culture of death ?

Well Catholic Action UK is yet again making a stand that the catholic authorities feel incapable of doing. Thank God for them.

Come on - I challenge you...

Who do you think these three are ? Surely there must be some indication in the photo ? Um... Er....well looking at the hands it's obvious they've never seen any manual labour - so they are obviously not carpenters, um faces aren't weatherworn so they can't be fishermen, and they haven't exactly got that serene contented look of people who spend either a lot of time on their own or long periods in serious contemplation - so they obviously aren't shepherds....

Ooh look ! the one on the left has a big expensive ring on his right hand - is it Elton John ? No, never in a checked shirt like that...the one on the right is overexerting himself in the laughter so maybe the one in the middle is his boss ? and he has to laugh at his jokes ? the one on the right is also wearing a microphone and has a terrible haircut - that's it !! he's a liberal democrat mp - could he be the one having it away with the cheeky girl ? So that means these men must have some kind of professional job that deals with money, shuffling people around and very little else - bank managers ? chartered accountants ? Bishops of Plymouth, Portsmouth and Clifton ?

No, sorry, give up..someone's going to have to tell me...

Saint of the Day - St Maximilian Kolbe

Second of three sons born to a poor but pious Catholic family in Russian occupied Poland. His parents, both Franciscan lay tertiaries, worked at home as weavers.

His father, Julius, later ran a religious book store, then enlisted in Pilsudski's army, fought for Polish independence from Russia, and was hanged by the Russians as a traitor in 1914.

His mother, Marianne Dabrowska, later became a Benedictine nun.

His brother Alphonse became a priest.

Raymond was known as a mischievous child, sometimes considered wild, and a trial to his parents. However, in 1906 at Pabianice, at age twelve and around the time of his first Communion, he received a vision of the Virgin Mary that changed his life.

"I asked the Mother of God what was to become of me.

Then she came to me holding two crowns, one white, the other red. She asked if I was willing to accept either of these crowns. The white one meant that I should persevere in purity, and the red that I should become a martyr.

I said that I would accept them both. "

He entered the Franciscan junior seminary in Lwow, Poland in 1907 where he excelled in mathematics and physics.

For a while he wanted to abandon the priesthood for the military, but eventually relented to the call to religious life, and on 4 September 1910 he became a novice in the Conventual Franciscan Order at age 16.

He took the name Maximilian, made his first vows on 5 September 1911, his final vows on 1 November 1914.

Studied philosophy at the Jesuit Gregorian College in Rome from 1912 to 1915, and theology at the Franciscan Collegio Serafico in Rome from 1915 to 1919.

On 16 October 1917, while still in seminary, he and six friends founded the Immaculata Movement (Militia Immaculatae, Crusade of Mary Immaculate) devoted to the conversion of sinners, opposition to freemasonry (which was extremely anti-Catholic at the time), spread of the Miraculous Medal (which they wore as their habit), and devotion to Our Lady and the path to Christ.

Stricken with tuberculosis which nearly killed him, and left him in frail in health the rest of his life.

Ordained on 28 April 1918 in Rome at age 24.

Received his Doctor of Theology on 22 July 1922; his insights into Marian theology echo today through their influence on Vatican II.

Maximilian returned to Poland on 29 July 1919 to teach history in the Crakow seminary.

He had to take a medical leave from 10 August 1920 to 28 April 1921 to be treated for tuberculosis at the hospital at Zakpane in the Tatra Mountains.

In January 1922 he began publication of the magazine Knight of the Immaculate to fight religious apathy; by 1927 the magazine had a press run of 70,000 issues.

He was forced to take another medical leave from 18 September 1926 to 13 April 1927, but the work continued.

The friaries from which he had worked were not large enough for his work, and in 1927 Polish Prince Jan Drucko-Lubecki gave him land at Teresin near Warsaw.

There he founded a new monastery of Niepokalanow, the City of the Immaculate which was consecrated on 8 December 1927.

At its peak the Knight of the Immaculate had a press run of 750,000 copies a month. A junior seminary was started on the grounds in 1929.

In 1935 the house began printing a daily Catholic newspaper, The Little Daily with a press run of 137,000 on work days, 225,000 on Sundays and holy days.

Not content with his work in Poland, Maximilian and four brothers left for Japan in 1930.

Within a month of their arrival, penniless and knowing no Japanese, Maximilian was printing a Japanese version of the Knight; the magazine, Seibo no Kishi grew to a circulation of 65,000 by 1936.

In 1931 he founded a monastery in Nagasaki, Japan comparable to Niepokalanow.

It survived the war, including the nuclear bombing, and serves today as a center of Franciscan work in Japan.

In mid-1932 he left Japan for Malabar, India where he founded a third Niepokalanow house. However, due to a lack of manpower, it did not survive.

Poor health forced him to curtail his missionary work and return to Poland in 1936.

On 8 December 1938 the monastery started its own radio station.

By 1939 the monastery housed a religious community of nearly 800 men, the largest in the world in its day, and was completely self-sufficient including medical facilities and a fire brigade staffed by the religious brothers.

Arrested with several of his brothers on 19 September 1939 following the Nazi invasion of Poland.

Others at the monastery were briefly exiled, but the prisoners were released on 8 December 1939, and the men returned to their work.

Back at Niepokalanow he continued his priestly ministry, The brothers housed 3,000 Polish refugees, two-thirds of whom were Jewish, and continued their publication work, including materials considered anti-Nazi.

For this work the presses were shut down, the congregation suppressed, the brothers dispersed, and Maximilian was imprisoned in Pawiak prison, Warsaw, Poland on 17 February 1941.

On 28 May 1941 he was transferred to Auschwitz and branded as prisoner 16670. He was assigned to a special work group staffed by priests and supervised by especially vicious and abusive guards.

His calm dedication to the faith brought him the worst jobs available, and more beatings than anyone else. At one point he was beaten, lashed, and left for dead.

The prisoners managed to smuggle him into the camp hospital where he spent his recovery time hearing confessions. When he returned to the camp, Maximilian ministered to other prisoners, including conducting Mass and delivering communion using smuggled bread and wine.

In July 1941 there was an escape from the camp. Camp protocol, designed to make the prisoners guard each other, required that ten men be slaughtered in retribution for each escaped prisoner.

Francis Gajowniczek, a married man with young children was chosen to die for the escape. Maximilian volunteered to take his place, and died as he had always wished - in service.

Should you ever become disillusioned...

There are times when we become complacent and feel that we are but small links in a chain, small cogs in a vast machine; and that we can simply do nothing to alter the Universe, nor, more significantly, the state of the Church....

Primarily we must remember that the Church precedes Creation; NOT the other way round....
Secondly we have the powerful resource available to any - prayer.
Thirdly, the price is too high NOT to act....

My partner and three children are away on holiday till the weekend, so life has been pretty lonely - a lot of time has been spent reading other catholic blogs and I came across a name from the past - Richard McBrien [for two seconds I did get confused with the rocky-horror bald man who ran around the crystal maze] - regrettably this is a 'theologian and commentator' - I remember upon entering seminary having to write an essay on confession and so strolled around the library looking for resources.
McBrien's 'Catholicism' came in two large volumes : thinking size mattered I hauled them back to my bedroom and began to read - the moment 'Fr' McBrien started to inform me that 'The sacrament of Reconciliation didn't REALLY absolve one from one's sins' I uttered a loud defamatory curse word and launched both volumes out the open window (almost caving in Fr Anthony Kay [Salford's beautifully-souled vocations director] 's head in the process!)
I never thought that the 'McBrien influence' was of any import - I thought he'd dissipated into obscurity - BOY was I wrong !!!
If you ever need reassurance as to why we are fighting for the heart and Soul of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, please, please, please go to this link and read this poor man's reprehensibly ill-informed heterodox diatribes and realise that the struggle goes on....

http://www.richardmcbrien.com/

Reminder of Why this site is Dedicated to the Sacred Heart

"We descend from the first to the last, that is, from the fruit, which is glory, to the root of this fair tree, which is the redemption wrought by our Saviour. God's bounty gives glory in succession to merit, merit in succession to charity, charity in succession to penitence, penitence in succession to obedience, obedience in succession to vocation, vocation in succession to our Saviour's redemption. On this last is based that whole mystical ladder…, both at its end in heaven, since it rests upon the loving bosom of the eternal Father…, and at its end on earth, since it is planted in the bosom and the pierced side of our Saviour, who for this cause died upon Mount Calvary."

[St Francis De Sales {Treatise on the Love of God #3} ]

Universal prayer of Pope Clement XI

Lord, I believe in you: increase my faith.

I trust in you: strengthen my trust.

I love you: let me love you more and more.

I am sorry for my sins: deepen my sorrow.

I worship you as my first beginning,

I long for you as my last end,

I praise you as my constant helper,

And call on you as my loving protector.

Guide me by your wisdom,

Correct me with your justice,

Comfort me with your mercy,

Protect me with your power.

I offer you, Lord, my thoughts: to be fixed on you;

My words: to have you for their theme;

My actions: to reflect my love for you;

My sufferings: to be endured for your greater glory.

I want to do what you ask of me:

In the way you ask,

For as long as you ask,

Because you ask it.

Lord, enlighten my understanding,

Strengthen my will,

Purify my heart,

and make me holy.

Help me to repent of my past sins

And to resist temptation in the future.

Help me to rise above my human weaknesses

And to grow stronger as a Christian.

Let me love you, my Lord and my God,

And see myself as I really am:

A pilgrim in this world,

A Christian called to respect and love

All whose lives I touch,

Those under my authority,

My friends and my enemies.

Help me to conquer anger with gentleness,

Greed by generosity,

Apathy by fervor.

Help me to forget myself

And reach out toward others.

Make me prudent in planning,

Courageous in taking risks.

Make me patient in suffering,

unassuming in prosperity.

Keep me, Lord, attentive at prayer,

Temperate in food and drink,

Diligent in my work,

Firm in my good intentions.

Let my conscience be clear,

My conduct without fault,

My speech blameless,

My life well-ordered.

Put me on guard against my human weaknesses.

Let me cherish your love for me,

Keep your law,

And come at last to your salvation.

Teach me to realize that this world is passing,

That my true future is the happiness of heaven,

That life on earth is short,

And the life to come eternal.

Help me to prepare for death

With a proper fear of judgment,

But a greater trust in your goodness.

Lead me safely through death

To the endless joy of heaven.

Grant this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

More Chesterton XIV - just for the sheer heck of it...

The Last Hero

by G.K. Chesterton

The wind blew out from Bergen from the dawning to the day,
There was a wreck of trees and fall of towers a score of miles away,
And drifted like a livid leaf I go before its tide,
Spewed out of house and stable, beggared of flag and bride.
The heavens are bowed about my head, shouting like seraph wars,
With rains that might put out the sun and cleanse the sky of stars,
Rains like the fall of ruined seas from secret worlds above,
The roaring of the rains of God none but the lonely love.
Feast in my hall, O foeman, and eat and drink and drain,
You never loved the sun in heaven as I have loved the rain.

The chance of battle changes - so may all battle be;
I stole my lady bride from them, they stole her back from me.
I rent her from her red-roofed hall, I rode and saw arise
More lovely than the living flowers the hatred in her eyes.
She never loved me, never bent, never was less divine;
The sunset never loved me, the wind was never mine.
Was it all nothing that she stood imperial in duresse?
Silence itself made softer with the sweeping of her dress.
Oh you who drain the cup of life, oh you who wear the crown,
You never loved a woman's smile as I have loved her frown.

The wind blew out from Bergen from the dawning to the day,
They ride and run with fifty spears to break and bar my way,
I shall not die alone, alone, but kin to all the powers,
As merry as the ancient sun and fighting like the flowers.
How white their steel, how bright their eyes! I love each laughing knave,
Cry high and bid them welcome to the banquet of the brave.
Yea, I will bless them as they bend and love them where they lie,
When on their skulls the sword I swing falls shattering from the sky.
The hour when death is like a light and blood is like a rose, -
You never loved your friends, my friends, as I shall love my foes.

Know you what earth shall lose tonight, what rich uncounted loans,
What heavy gold of tales untold you bury with my bones?
My loves in deep dim meadows, my ships that rode at ease,
Ruffling the purple plumage of strange and secret seas.
To see this fair earth as it is to me alone was given,
The blow that breaks my brow tonight shall break the dome of heaven.
The skies I saw, the trees I saw after no eyes shall see.
Tonight I die the death of God: the stars shall die with me:
One sound shall sunder all the spears and break the trumpets breath:
You never laughed in all your life as I shall laugh in death.

Chesterton XIII - 'Heretics' Chapter 10

X. On Sandals and Simplicity

The great misfortune of the modern English is not at all that they are more boastful than other people (they are not); it is that they are boastful about those particular things which nobody can boast of without losing them.

A Frenchman can be proud of being bold and logical, and still remain bold and logical.

A German can be proud of being reflective and orderly,and still remain reflective and orderly. But an Englishman cannot be proud of being simple and direct, and still remain simple and direct.

In the matter of these strange virtues, to know them is to kill them.

A man may be conscious of being heroic or conscious of being divine,but he cannot (in spite of all the Anglo-Saxon poets) be conscious of being unconscious.

Now, I do not think that it can be honestly denied that some portion of this impossibility attaches to a class very different in their own opinion, at least, to the school of Anglo-Saxonism. I mean that school of the simple life,commonly associated with Tolstoy. If a perpetual talk about one's own robustness leads to being less robust, it is even more true that a perpetual talking about one's own simplicity leads to being less simple.

One great complaint, I think,must stand against the modern upholders of the simple life--the simple life in all its varied forms, from vegetarianism to the honourable consistency of the Doukhobors.

This complaint against them stands, that they would make us simple in the unimportant things, but complex in the important things.

They would make us simple in the things that do not matter--that is, in diet, in costume, in etiquette, in economic system.But they would make us complex in the things that do matter--in philosophy, in loyalty, in spiritual acceptance,and spiritual rejection.

It does not so very much matter whether a man eats a grilled tomato or a plain tomato; it does very much matter whether he eats a plain tomato with a grilled mind.

The only kind of simplicity worth preserving is the simplicityof the heart, the simplicity which accepts and enjoys.There may be a reasonable doubt as to what system preserves this; there can surely be no doubt that a system of simplicity destroys it.

There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats grape-nuts on principle.

The chief error of these people is to be found in the very phrase to which they are most attached--

"plain living and high thinking."

These people do not stand in need of, will not be improved by,plain living and high thinking. They stand in need of the contrary.

They would be improved by high living and plain thinking.

A little high living (I say, having a full sense of responsibility,a little high living) would teach them the force and meaning of the human festivities, of the banquet that has gone on from the beginning of the world.

It would teach them the historic fact that the artificial is, if anything, older than the natural.

It would teach them that the loving-cup is as old as any hunger.

It would teach them that ritualism is older than any religion.

And a little plain thinking would teach them how harsh and fanciful are the mass of their own ethics, how very civilized and very complicated must be the brain of the Tolstoyan who really believes it to be evil to love one's country and wicked to strike a blow.

A man approaches, wearing sandals and simple raiment, a raw tomato held firmly in his right hand, and says,

"The affections of family and country alike are hindrances to the fuller development of human love;"

but the plain thinker will only answer him, with a wonder not untinged with admiration,

"What a great deal of trouble you must have taken in order to feel like that."

High living will reject the tomato.

Plain thinking will equally decisively reject the idea of the invariable sinfulness of war.

High living will convince us that nothing is more materialistic than to despise a pleasure as purely material

.And plain thinking will convince us that nothing is more materialistic than to reserve our horror chiefly for material wounds.

The only simplicity that matters is the simplicity of the heart.

If that be gone, it can be brought back by no turnips or cellular clothing; but only by tears and terror and the fires that are not quenched.

If that remain, it matters very little if a few Early Victorian armchairs remain along with it.

Let us put a complex entree into a simple old gentleman; let us not put a simple entree into a complex old gentleman.

So long as human society will leave my spiritual inside alone,I will allow it, with a comparative submission, to work its wild will with my physical interior.

I will submit to cigars.

I will meekly embrace a bottle of Burgundy.

I will humble myself to a hansom cab.

If only by this means I may preserve to myself the virginity of the spirit, which enjoys with astonishment and fear.

I do not say that these are the only methods of preserving it.

I incline to the belief that there are others.

But I will have nothing to do with simplicity which lacks the fear, the astonishment,and the joy alike.

I will have nothing to do with the devilish vision of a child who is too simple to like toys.

The child is, indeed, in these, and many other matters, the best guide.

And in nothing is the child so righteously childlike, in nothing does he exhibit more accurately the sounder order of simplicity, than in the fact that he sees everything with a simple pleasure,even the complex things.

The false type of naturalness harps always on the distinction between the natural and the artificial.

The higher kind of naturalness ignores that distinction.

To the child the tree and the lamp-post are as natural and as artificial as each other; or rather, neither of them are natural but both supernatural.

For both are splendid and unexplained.

The flower with which God crowns the one, and the flame with which Sam the lamplighter crowns the other, are equally of the gold of fairy-tales.

In the middle of the wildest fields the most rustic child is, ten to one, playing at steam-engines. And the only spiritual or philosophical objection to steam-engines is not that men pay for them or work at them, or make them very ugly, or even that men are killed by them; but merely that men do not play at them.

The evil is that the childish poetry of clockwork does not remain.

The wrong is not that engines are too much admired, but that they are not admired enough. The sin is not that engines are mechanical,but that men are mechanical.

In this matter, then, as in all the other matters treated in this book, our main conclusion is that it is a fundamental point of view, a philosophy or religion which is needed,and not any change in habit or social routine.

The things we need most for immediate practical purposes are all abstractions.

We need a right view of the human lot, a right view of the human society; and if we were living eagerly and angrily in the enthusiasm of those things, we should, ipso facto,be living simply in the genuine and spiritual sense.

Desire and danger make every one simple.

And to those who talk to us with interfering eloquence about Jaeger and the pores of the skin,and about Plasmon and the coats of the stomach, at them shall only be hurled the words that are hurled at fops and gluttons,

"Take no thought what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink,or wherewithal ye shall be clothed. For after all these things do the Gentiles seek. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."

Those amazing words are not only extraordinarily good, practical politics; they are also superlatively good hygiene.

The one supreme way of making all those processes go right, the processes of health, and strength, and grace, and beauty, the one and only way of making certain of their accuracy, is to think about something else.

If a man is bent on climbing into the seventh heaven, he may be quite easy about the pores of his skin.

If he harnesses his waggon to a star, the process will have a most satisfactory effect upon the coats of his stomach.

For the thing called "taking thought," the thing for which the best modern word is "rationalizing," is in its nature, inapplicable to all plain and urgent things.

Men take thought and ponder rationalistically, touching remote things--things that only theoretically matter, such as the transit of Venus. But only at their peril can men rationalize about so practical a matter as health.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen

[with thanks to catholic Mom of 10 for reminding me]

When I lived in the US Friday nights used to be enlivened by the fantastic TV show from the 1950's hosted by one of the greatest evangelists of the 20th century. [9p.m. ET on EWTN for those with satellite tv]

Anyone who has problems understanding Neo-Thomistic thought vs modern interpretations of God I cannot more highly recommend a book more than " God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy" [1925] [FS's doctoral thesis, foreword by GKC!]

before I slip off to sleep I frequently listen to one of the radio programmes from times past - sure he shouts a bit, but they are wonderful and somewhat better than anything I hear from the pulpit from our curate [bless him!]

http://www.americancatholictruthsociety.com/articles/sheen.htm

Come off it guys please ???

Archdiocese of Liverpool:

St Cecilia's Catholic Primary School;

Headmaster - Mr Charles Coyne

Single ?

Well...um

Not exactly ; he's just registered a civil partnership with

Mr Richard Jones....

Is he resigning ?

Well, apparently he doesn't feel he has to ; possibly because he is following catholic teaching and leading a chaste , celibate life and his and Mr Jones' relationship is one grounded upon an intimacy which doesn't include any well, um, how would my kids decribe it ? Snoo-snoo ??

But 'gay marriage' is symbolic of something utterly contrary to the unitive and procreative aspects of human lovemaking which are an intrinsic part of the sacrament of Matrimony ; irrespective of any potential 'undivided' love these two have for each other; they are conspiring in a secular activity which demeans and humiliates the life-sharing graces and fully unifying love implicit in marriage - and ostensibly seeks to normalise homosexual sexual acts; which are intrinsically morally disordered.

Now on-the-ground catholicism has real problems with homosexuality : Too many equivocate the condition with the actual homosexual acts and either condemn both through revulsion, or condone both out of misguided sympathy - I have spent many years fighting for chaste, celibate homosexuals to be treated with dignity and love within the church - have spent a lot of time arguing tooth and nail with steadfast right-wingers denouncing every homosexual as a sick perverted deviant destined for hell ; and liberals who think gay sex is an equivalent expression of unifying love as God-graced human lovemaking in marriage and denounce me as homophobic for stating otherwise. I have had many gay friends I adored as brothers, some are clerics , some in high positions of responsibility and authority and their lives aren't easy [I especially ask your prayers for a fellow ex-seminarian who is now h.i.v. + and having a rough time reconciling his faith] and they do require extraordinary pastoral care from the Church , but regrettably some of the only sources of assistance are from renegade anti-Vatican pressure groups that say there's nothing wrong with expressing their sexuality physically with whomsoever they please; we need to do more....

but Mr Coyne has spat in the face of the Church and papal advice ; we can be highly accommodating towards homosexuals within the church and church-related administrations, but to deliberately wilfully defy Church recommendations is to the detriment of every fellow catholic homosexual aspiring to live a life in Christ - he has not been courageous; merely childish; and now Archbishop Kelly has been informed by legal professionals that the church can do absolutely nothing about the situation - he cannot be dismissed. How are the children and local sympathetic/antipathetic catholics going to be informed regarding the definitive pastoral teaching regarding homosexuals when they have this symbolic behemoth thrust upon them ?

Mr Coyne, you've helped nobody....

Why we fight...

HTE Bill briefing

The Human Tissue and Embryos Bill is due to be introduced into Parliament in November.

The Bill is a matter of serious concern for all who promote the sanctity of human life.

It would provide greater scope for embryos to be produced for research, allow more embryos to be destroyed in the process of IVF, and legalise the creation of cybrids, hybrids and chimeras. The Bill will even allow sperm or eggs to be extracted from children or the unconscious in some circumstances without their consent.

The progress of the Bill will also provide an opportunity for amendments to be tabled to change the existing law on abortion.

Although the current availability of abortion is very bad, changes could be made to the law which would make things much worse.

The current overwhelming pro-abortion majority in Parliament means that amendments would be brought in to increase the overall availability of abortion.SPUC has started a campaign focussing on this bill.

They also have a very useful briefing paper (pdf - 238Kb). This gives a helpful summary of the what the Bill would introduce and why we should be concerned about it.

The Briefing also gives straightforward and helpful answers some commonly asked questions about the possible reform of the law regarding abortion and explains why attempts to lower the “time limit” for abortion can backfire.

[with thanks to the Hermeneutic of Continuity]

What is she playing at???!!!

See the pretty young thing on the right ?
looks like she couldn't hurt a fly ?
Masters in Theology and Philosophy from Oxford
Another Masters from Durham, Qualified Social Worker and Catholic Activist;
Perfect Angel don't you think ?
I can personally testify that said young lady , while still at school,
a full foot shorter than anyone else, was a dedicated, devout catholic, who participated in/helped run practically every
school or youth group religious event. Coming from a large Irish catholic family she was a devoted sister and daughter. Mature, highly intelligent , responsible, well ahead of her years.
I haven't seen or heard of her for years ; the last time only shortly after the tragic death of her sister [ my friend and classmate] .

Until today.... and I am gobsmacked !

Bishops of England and Wales Support Book Attacking the Pope [edited from other blogs]

Heads ought to roll for this!
Bishops support book attacking the Pope [Daily Telegraph]

The Catholic Church in England and Wales has helped commission a withering attack on Pope Benedict XVI that also refers to the atrocities of 9/11 as “the ‘terrorist’ attacks” in inverted commas.The Pope, who "cannot understand the developing world"
Catholic Social Justice, a volume of essays put together by an agency of the Bishops’ Conference, systematically rubbishes Benedict’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (God is Love).
The book has been given a glowing foreword by the Bishop of Plymouth, Christopher Budd.

Benedict is accused of taking an ideological position in favour of “the capitalist system and colonialism”.
We are told that the Pope’s views on social justice are “hardly credible” in view of the Church’s historic record of violence, torture and theft.
We learn that the Catholic clergy teach that “men are superior to women” because they are more in the image of Christ.

Pope John Paul II is also criticised.
According to Fr Tissa Balasuriya, the author of the relevant essay, both John Paul and Benedict lived their lives “in a world dominated by white racism” and therefore could not understand the developing world.

This judgment has been produced under the aegis of Caritas-social action, an agency of the Bishops’ Conference.
In other words, Catholics in the pew have helped pay for an attack on the Pope.
But worst of all, in my opinion, is this passage in Balasuriya’s essay:

“The 21st century was born in violence, with the ‘terrorist’ air attack on New York on 11 September 2001 and the invasion of Iraq by the USA, the UK and Australia on 18 March 2003.”
Those inverted commas are despicable.
Did the Bishop of Plymouth notice them before he recommended the book in his foreword?

Philomena Cullen, one of the editors, attacks “the ideology of the nuclear family” and endorses “the open family ideology rooted in a feminist perspective”.
Cullen – social policy coordinator of the Bishops’ Conference agency – notes that all dominant ideologies entail the misuse of power, “whether manifested as sexism, racism, disabilism, ageism, hetereosexism”.
How much evidence do Catholics need that the Bishops' Conference has been hijacked by pragmatic, situationist, heterodox activists working under the patronage of bishops who are in many cases doctrinaire liberals so ill-informed and of ulterior motive as to be heretical ?

Pope Benedict is incredibly badly served by the majority of his English bishops, at least one of whom – Budd – is undermining the Pope by putting his name to this book.

[Not exactly my opinions on the issue, but they do state what the publication sadly declares - oh and get this - guess who's one of the contributors to this travesty ? - None but our old friend - the guy we love to hate , always there to make us laugh , HANS KUNG!!!]


You know the saddest irony to all this is that a fellow student from the catholic school both Phil and I attended ultimately became a victim of the 7/7 bus bombing ; I'm personally outraged because a cousin of mine died in 9/11; but how could she be so callous or negligent as to allow a book with her name on the front to have a contribution that placed terrorist in quotation marks...? I'm embarassed for her; and informed her of this earlier this afternoon.

Ok you geniuses out there.....explain this !

For My Mum

It would be embarassing for all concerned to go into too much detail [she'd make my life Hell if I did] but I've been a pretty poor son - an unmitigated failure really ; sure the only thing I've ever done right is my three wonderful kids [and even then I went the completely wrong way about it!] Anyway , she deserves a posting dedicated to her and to all mothers out there ; especially for the memory of my Mate Briany's Mum, a mother of fifteen ; now sadly deceased....

When God Created Mothers
by Erma Bombeck

When the good Lord was creating mothers, he was into his sixth day of overtime, when an angel appeared and said, "You're doing a lot of fiddling around on this one."
And the Lord said, "Have you read the spec on this one? She has to be completely washable, but not plastic; have 180 moveable parts, all replaceable; run on black coffee and leftovers; have a lap that disappears when she stands up, a kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair, and six pair of hands.
"The angel shook her head slowly and said,"Six pairs of hands...no way."
"It's not the hands that are causing me problems," said the Lord."It's the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have."
"That's on the standard model?" asked the angel.
The Lord nodded. "One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks, "What are you kids doing in there?" when she already knows. Another here, in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn't, but what she has to know, and of course the ones here in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and say, "I understand and I love you," without so much as uttering a word."
"Lord,"said the angel, touching his sleeve gently, "Rest for now. Tomorrow..."
"I can't," said the Lord. "I'm so close to creating something close to myself. Already I have one who heals herself when she is sick, can feed a family of six on one pound of hamburger and can get a nine year old to stand under a shower.
"The angel circled the model of the mother very slowly. "She's too soft," she sighed.
"But tough!" said the Lord excitedly. "You cannot imagine what the mother can do or endure."
"Can she think?"
"Not only think, but she can reason and compromise," said the Creator. Finally the angel bent over and ran her finger across the cheek.
"There's a leak," she pronounced. "I told you, you were trying to put too much into this model."
"It's not a leak," said the Lord. "It's a tear."
"What's it for?"
"It's for joy, sadness, disappointment, pain, loneliness and pride."
"You're a genius," said the angel. The Lord looked sombre, "I didn't put it there."

Just love it...

GLORIA IN PROFUNDIS
G.K. Chesterton

There has fallen on earth for a token

A god too great for the sky.

He has burst out of all things and broken

The bounds of eternity:

Into time and the terminal land

He has strayed like a thief or a lover,

For the wine of the world brims over,

Its splendour is split on the sand.

Who is proud when the heavens are humble,

Who mounts if the mountains fall,

If the fixed stars topple and tumble

And a deluge of love drowns all-

Who rears up his head for a crown,

Who holds up his will for a warrant,

Who strives with the starry torrent,

When all that is good goes down?

For in dread of such falling and failing

The fallen angels fell

Inverted in insolence, scaling

The hanging mountain of hell:

But unmeasured of plummet and rod

Too deep for their sight to scan,

Outrushing the fall of man

Is the height of the fall of God.

Glory to God in the Lowest

The spout of the stars in spate-

Where thunderbolt thinks to be slowest

And the lightning fears to be late:

As men dive for sunken gem

Pursuing, we hunt and hound it,

The fallen star has found it

In the cavern of Bethlehem.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Chesterton #11 'Heretics' Chapter 9

IX. The Moods of Mr. George Moore

Mr. George Moore began his literary career by writing his personal confessions; nor is there any harm in this if he had not continued them for the remainder of his life.
He is a man of genuinely forcible mind and of great command over a kind of rhetorical and fugitive conviction which excites and pleases.

He is in a perpetual state of temporary honesty.
He has admired all the most admirable modern eccentrics until they could stand it no longer. Everything he writes, it is to be fully admitted, has a genuine mental power.
His account of his reason for leaving the Roman Catholic Church is possibly the most admirable tribute to that communion which has been written of late years.

For the fact of the matter is, that the weakness which has rendered barren the many brilliancies of Mr. Moore is actually that weakness which the Roman Catholic Church is at its best in combating.
Mr. Moore hates Catholicism because it breaks up the house of looking-glasses in which he lives.
Mr. Moore does not dislike so much being asked to believe in the spiritual existence of miracles or sacraments, but he does fundamentally dislike being asked to believe in the actual existence of other people.

Like his master Pater and all the aesthetes, his real quarrel with life is that it is not a dream that can be moulded by the dreamer.
It is not the dogma of the reality of the other world that troubles him, but the dogma of the reality of this world.
The truth is that the tradition of Christianity(which is still the only coherent ethic of Europe)rests on two or three paradoxes or mysteries which can easily be impugned in argument and as easily justified in life.
One of them, for instance, is the paradox of hope or faith--that the more hopeless is the situation the more hopeful must be the man.
Stevenson understood this, and consequentlyMr. Moore cannot understand Stevenson.

Another is the paradox of charity or chivalry that the weaker a thing is the more it should be respected, that the more indefensible a thing is the more it should appeal to us for a certain kind of defence.
Thackeray understood this, and therefore Mr. Moore does not understand Thackeray.

Now, one of these very practical and working mysteries in the Christian tradition, and one which the Roman Catholic Church, as I say, has done her best work in singling out, is the conception of the sinfulness of pride.
Pride is a weakness in the character; it dries up laughter, it dries up wonder, it dries up chivalry and energy.
The Christian tradition understands this; therefore Mr. Moore does not understand the Christian tradition.

For the truth is much stranger even than it appears in the formal doctrine of the sin of pride.
It is not only true that humility is a much wiser and more vigorous thing than pride.
It is also true that vanity is a much wiser and more vigorous thing than pride.
Vanity is social--it is almost a kind of comradeship; pride is solitary and uncivilized.
Vanity is active; it desires the applause of infinite multitudes; pride is passive, desiring only the applause of one person,which it already has. Vanity is humorous, and can enjoythe joke even of itself; pride is dull, and cannot even smile.
And the whole of this difference is the difference between Stevenson and Mr. George Moore, who, as he informs us, has "brushed Stevenson aside."
I do not know where he has been brushed to, but wherever it is I fancy he is having a good time,because he had the wisdom to be vain, and not proud.

Stevenson had a windy vanity; Mr. Moore has a dusty egoism.
Hence Stevenson could amuse himself as well as us with his vanity; while the richest effects of Mr. Moore's absurdity are hidden from his eyes.
If we compare this solemn folly with the happy folly with which Stevenson belauds his own books and berates his own critics, we shall not find it difficult to guess why it is that Stevenson at least found a final philosophy of some sort to live by,while Mr. Moore is always walking the world looking for a new one.

Stevenson had found that the secret of life lies in laughter and humility.
Self is the gorgon.
Vanity sees it in the mirror of other men and lives.
Pride studies it for itself and is turned to stone.
It is necessary to dwell on this defect in Mr. Moore, because it is really the weakness of work which is not without its strength.
Mr. Moore's egoism is not merely a moral weakness, it is a very constant and influential aesthetic weakness as well.
We should really be much more interested in Mr. Moore if he were not quite so interested in himself.
We feel as if we were being shown through a gallery of really fine pictures,into each of which, by some useless and discordant convention, the artist had represented the same figure in the same attitude.
"The Grand Canal with a distant view of Mr. Moore,"
"Effect of Mr. Moorethrough a Scotch Mist,"
"Mr. Moore by Firelight,"
"Ruins of Mr. Mooreby Moonlight," and so on, seems to be the endless series.
He would no doubt reply that in such a book as this he intended to reveal himself.
But the answer is that in such a book as this he does not succeed.
One of the thousand objections to the sin of pride lies precisely in this, that self-consciousness of necessity destroys self-revelation.
A man who thinks a great deal about himself will try to be many-sided, attempt a theatrical excellence at all points, will try to be an encyclopaedia of culture, and his own real personality will be lost in that false universalism.
Thinking about himself will lead to trying to be the universe; trying to be the universe will lead to ceasing to be anything. If, on the other hand, a man is sensible enough to think only about the universe; he will think about itin his own individual way. He will keep virgin the secret of God;he will see the grass as no other man can see it, and look at a sun that no man has ever known.

This fact is very practically brought out in Mr. Moore's "Confessions."
In reading them we do not feel the presence of a clean-cut personality like that of Thackeray and Matthew Arnold. We only read a number of quite clever and largely conflicting opinions which might be uttered by any clever person, but which we are called upon to admire specifically, because they are uttered by Mr. Moore.
He is the only thread that connects Catholicism and Protestantism, realism and mysticism--he or rather his name.
He is profoundly absorbed even in views he no longer holds,and he expects us to be.
And he intrudes the capital "I" even where it need not be intruded--even where it weakens the force of a plain statement.
Where another man would say, "It is a fine day,"
Mr. Moore says, "Seen through my temperament, the day appeared fine."
Where another man would say "Milton has obviously a fine style,"
Mr. Moore would say, "As a stylist Milton had always impressed me."
The Nemesis of this self-centred spirit is that of being totally ineffectual.
Mr. Moore has started many interesting crusades, but he has abandoned them before his disciples could begin.
Even when he is on the side of the truth he is as fickle as the children of falsehood.
Even when he has found reality he cannot find rest.
One Irish quality he has which no Irishman was ever without--pugnacity; and that is certainly a great virtue, especially in the present age.
But he has not the tenacity of conviction which goes with the fighting spirit in a man like Bernard Shaw.
His weakness of introspection and selfishness in all their glory cannot prevent him fighting;but they will always prevent him winning.