"The Devil was always a liar" - We did take the Champs Elysees! But we did so peacefully!

On Sunday the 24 March 2013, what was possibly the largest demonstration in French history took over the centre of Paris to protest against gay "marriage" and adoption. The secularists responded by ordering a news blackout and sending their police to tear-gas women and children and the elderly. The German Nazi Party was also conceived in the bowels of militant sodomites, and famously used similar methods to deal with peaceful opposition. The pictures show your typical enemies of the state after having been tear-gassed  An English friend who lives in France, filed the following report:

Thanks for the regular news bulletins from the UK. I've not heard how it went in Trafalgar Square, but I can tell you the "disinformation machine" in France has been working overtime again.

As in January, there were well over 1 million people on the streets of Paris yesterday. If you know the place, imagine the stretch of wide avenue leading off from the Arc de Triomphe (avenue de la Grande Armée), reaching the very large Porte Maillot (location of the Palais des Congrès and the landmark hotel tower la Concorde), continuing over the Périphérique into Neuilly-sur-Seine all the way along to La Défense (the towering business quarter on the west of Paris). Protesters were also stretched along the "Esplanade de la Défense" towards the "Grande Arche de la Défense". So, look it up on a map, picture it if you've ever been there, and then look at the official figures given by the Interior Ministry of 300.000 people (less than the figure they gave in Jan of 340.000 !!!). You can laugh or cry.

Then, pause. Because that was not the full size of it. Because of the numbers, the protesters also filled the several "back-up" avenues including avenue Foch which leads on to the place de l'Etoile (arc de Triomphe). This avenue was also absolutely packed. People were arriving from all sides.

So, the space officially allocated was too small, tensions rising, and the determination to be heard, growing. Added to this, the disdain with which the government has treated this debate since the start had brought many many people to boiling point. Although the main cordon of the demonstration was relatively calm with frequent messages from organisers to remain calm and peaceful, people had had enough. And for all those outside of the official zone, there was much frustration.

The Prefet de Police had refused the organisers' request to occupy the Champs Elysées. Manuel Valls, Interior Minister, had only days before the demonstration also retracted permission to occupy half of the Place de l'Etoile (arc de Triomphe roundabout from which the Champs Elysées depart) with a sniding remark that the organisers "...just go and demonstrate from Corbeil to Evry, you're not having the Etoile. I decide !" (Corbeil and Evry are insignifcant minor towns in the "banlieus" of Paris).

In the weeks and days leading up to the demonstration, the media had applied a blanket blackout. NOT ONE WORD on the upcoming momentous rally. Fortunately we now have the Internet. Since January, protesters have been posting photographs of banners stretching across motorway bridges ALL OVER the country, every trip by President Hollande and his ministers has been interrupted by hecklers. At a recent Book Fair, 2 protesters presented the President (divorced from Ségolène Royal with whom he has 4 children, and currently "living" with a companion with whom he is neither married nor even civilly-contracted but who lives the merry life on tax-payers money) with 2 books : "Marriage for Dummies" and "Demonstrations for Dummies".

Back to the day. The pressure was mounting (space too small, so many people, frustrations). The police at the Etoile were heavily outnumbered. The huge swathe of people was pushing and pushing amidst shouts of "We want the Champs Elysées". The police started to panic. Tear gas was fired into the crowd and against the first rows to push them back. And here it is important to counter the downright lies of the Interior Ministry who dared to say that extremists had been involved. The primary victims of the gas were parents and children, and the elderly. It was a diabolical reaction by the police authorities.

As it turned out the gas attack was probably the trigger for the subsequent events. News of the police actions reached the main cortège of demonstrators very quickly via mobile phone. I was myself with my family on the avenue of the Grande Armée, some 200 yards from the podium. I received the news from a friend who had been separated from his wife who had herself been victim of the gas. That was our cue. We made our way through the crowds and in fact it was relatively easy to travel around the Etoile in a large enough circle avoiding all the police barricades. At this point, there had a begun a steady but constant and very calm flow of demonstrators from all the overflows towards the Champs Elysées.

Now, whether the incomptent authorities had really believed their own jibes prior to the event when they said they were expecting only 100.000 people, or whether they were actually encouraging scuffles to take place is unknown. The father of a 14-year old who had to have artificial respiration administered for 1/2 an hour following the tear gas, spoke with a frank police officer. Here's what he said:

"We're not used to this kind of demonstration. When you park too many people in an inadequately-sized space, it's obvious that there will be overspill and scuffles. They'll say there's 10.000 of you but in truth there's more than a million people here. We know it, they know it. It's a damn shambles throughout the gendarmerie and the police ; we're managed by amateurs".

As the main show continued on one side of the Arc de Triomphe, steadily a flow of demonstrators was making it's way around the Etoile through the smaller axes, and towards the Champs Elysées. The Champs had been blocked at the Etoile by a barrage of HUNDREDS of police with their vehicles but it was remarkably easy to simply walk around and reach the famous Parisian avenue. The crowds on the Champs Elysées grew. And with every new wave of arrivals cheered on by those flag-wavers already there, more and more people filled it. By 5pm, the Champs Elysées was FULL on 2/3 of it's length with THOUSANDS of demonstrators. The police were at that point completely submerged and protesters even began a sit-in on the tarmac preventing some CRS (anti-riot police) minivans from departing the scene.

The crowds were jubilant and perfectly well-behaved. The chants here, were however more determined and political : "Hollande, démission". The Marseillaise was sung many times.
As word spread more and more people spilled onto the "plus belle avenue du monde". The media speak of 10s of people. Don't believe them. There are some AFP photos which prove that the Champs Elysées was swamped with people, no traffic passing, all the way from the Etoile, right down to the Franklin Roosevelt roundabout which leads off to the Elysée Palace.
Eventually, having occupied the terrain for over 2 hours, people started to gather at the lower end of the avenue chanting "Apéro chez François" (apéritif at François')!

People generally dispersed around 6:30pm but a few hundred stayed on. Some even set up their tents here, trying to start up a "French Spring" movement but it didn't last long before the CRS finally moved everyone on at 8:30pm.

The official organisers have "condemned" any scuffles that may have happened and the overflow into the Champs Elysées (despite this being practically blacked-out by the media).  It's sad to say, but the only way to grab the attention of the media and the government is when it "gets out of hand".

This will not be the last of it... If you want REAL information, visit www.lesalonbeige.blogs.com It's full of photos, videos and the TRUE story on lots of news items.

Fr Shergold and “Babbling” [sic] the Rosary

In the course of an exchange in the Catholic Herald about the demise of the Sacrament of Confession in the post-Conciliar Church, one Fr Julian Shurgold wrote angrily deprecating the practice of going to Confession during Mass and concluded, “What ever next?  Will we see people babbling [SIC] the rosary … “   One must admire these poor Vat2 men; “surrender” is not in their vocabulary, and they must be expected to go down fighting.  As a one final act of defiance, they will probably be buried in the awful polyester “dentist” smocks, daubed with banal faux sixties Christian art, that pass for vestments in such circles.

Whenever I read this type of letter, I’m reminded of those hilarious scenes of rapidly dwindling numbers of elderly comrades parading round Red Square on May Day waving red flags, some in wheelchairs, others with Zimmer frames; elderly men stuck in a time warp, their faces etched in grief at the death of their revolution.  Whilst all around lesser men betray the revolution, they are resolved to die clutching its flag to their breast.

As a traditionalist, I’m reluctant to intrude upon the family grief and squabbles of my Novus Ordo brethren.  Further, given the fact that the church that has embraced the post-Conciliar regime of novelties is imploding in this country (notwithstanding the influx of tens of thousands of Catholics from Eastern Europe and the Philippines) at a whopping 100,000 souls every three years, one wonders whether the kindest thing might be to turn off the life-support machine and quietly tiptoe out the room.

For traditionalists, praying the Rosary is spending precious time with our Blessed Mother looking prayerfully through the family album – not, it would seem, an entirely inappropriate preparation for the Holy Sacrifice.  Therefore, as a bare minimum response to Father, I briefly toyed with the temptation to take issue with Fr Shurgold’s reference to “babbling” [sic] the Rosary, but decided not to - for I must reluctantly concede that he probably knows his congregation better than I do.

In addition, as traditionalists have an abundance of priests and penitents; it is difficult to feel deep empathy with the constant naval-gazing of the Novus Ordo establishment over its shortage of both.  Indeed, where I attend Mass there is frequently not one but two priests hearing confessions, and a long line of penitents.   As the Holy Sacrifice of the Cross was offered in redemption for my sins, it is not entirely clear to this old sinner why the Fr Shurgolds of this world should deem a layman humbly confessing his own sins to be an improper preparation for the re-presentation of that awesome Sacrifice.
                                                    
Fr Shurgold is of course absolutely right to suggest, as he does, that listening to [or reading] the Word of God is a fitting way to prepare for the Holy Sacrifice, and I would happily concede that even his bowdlerized version of the Scriptures (from which all hard-saying have been erased in order to better serve the feel-good Catholicism preferred by the Novus Ordo church) still retains much value.

But as one (of many) who manages to listen to the Word of God, confess my sins and recite the Rosary, in preparation for Holy Communion, it is unclear why Fr Shurgold should judge these pious activities to be mutually exclusive.  Perhaps false dichotomies are now so common place in modern argumentation (just listen to Obama or Cameron), people have ceased to notice when they are resorting to them.

Escaping the Liberal Mindset

I escaped from the liberal mindset, by the grace of God, at the age of about nineteen.  Since then, I have been verbally abused by liberals, with their faces contorted with unholy rage, on more occasions than I can count.  I have witnessed police having to hold back liberal mobs wanting to assault me or my colleagues on a dozen occasions.  I have had a bag of food thrown into my face on two occasions, and had my face spat in on one occasion.  I have been threatened with arrest for assault for merely lightly placing my hand on a near hysterical women’s forearm and gently assuring her that I was not her enemy - I merely disagreed with her.  I have had a bag of food thrown on the windscreen of my car.  I have had my bishop written to requesting that he forcefully silence me.  I receive more abusive emails than one can shake a stick at.  Mum and I have yet to complete an hour’s prayer vigil outside an abortuary without at least one complete stranger going out their way to abuse us.  Not once have I responded violently, not even verbally aggressively, to any of these outrages – indeed, I can honestly say that I have never experienced a temptation to do so.  Even when the middle aged liberal spat in my face, I merely smiled and responded, “That was a really first-rate argument sweetheart!” – I then said a Hail Mary privately for her sad liberal soul.

I’m afraid that I genuinely believe that the liberal mindset is a clear sign of mental, or perhaps more accurately spiritual, illness.  The liberal is a man who has enthroned his will where his intellect should be, consequently, when you challenge him you are not challenging his intellect but his will, and the will by definition is wilful.  Once you understand this, everything falls into place.  It explains why liberals as a class are so illiberal and so prone to anger and aggression.  It also explains their pathological hatred of science – unless of course they believe that it proves evolution to be true, and then they love it to bits, and will continue to do so even fifty years after it has been exposed as a scam.

A recent long email I received taking me to task for not supporting gay "marriage" is utterly typical of the genre.  A vast amount of wind and fury devoted to demonising the messenger, me, but no attempt to advance a single rational argument to explain the benefits to society that will accrue from institutionalising sodomy - an addiction to depravity that has unleashed the worst public health disaster since the Black Death, 30,000,000 dead so far and still counting.  Yet the same liberal mindset seeks to criminalise smokers at every opportunity on the premise that it is unhealthy!  Well, to be fair, no one, as far as I know, has every accused liberals of being consistent.

Very much a side issue, but interesting none the less: why, after a large “Right” wing demo in New York, can you eat your food of the pavement, while, after a similar size liberal demo, you need the 5th cavalry and an army of dumper trucks to clear up the mess?  I’m not sure what this tells us, but I’m certain it tells us something depressing about the liberal mindset.

The whole gay agenda is based on nothing more substantial than a nice story

The whole gay agenda is based on nothing more substantial than a nice story

The whole gay agenda is built on a nice story that goes something like this:  we are all born different, the majority, for example, are born right-handed, but a minority are born left-handed.  Similarly a majority are born heterosexual, but a minority are born homosexual; and just as we would not think of discriminating against someone born left-handed, so we should not think of discriminating against someone born homosexual.

It’s a lovely story.  It gets you right in the middle of your chest, it appeals to our sense of fair play. There is just one small snag: it is a load of cods-wallop that has been completely disproved by science.  I am aware that liberal hate science, but the rest of us are rather partial to having our theories supported by facts.

This anti-scientific story has been fabricated, promoted and maintained for one purpose, to justify a particular course of action.  As such it does not differ in principle to the lie that Jew are an inferior race, an unscientific lie similarly fabricated, promoted and maintained by the Nazis for one purpose, to justify a particular course of action.

The alternative story (the one supported by science)

All men are born heterosexual, just as are all insects, birds, fish and animals, and indeed most vegetation; a fact that can be easily confirmed by a cursory study of genitalia, which are clearly designed by nature to be complimentary.

It is a very imperfect world and sadly not everyone develops into maturity along healthy lines.  Further, it is of the nature of youth to experiment; this can be entirely proper but nevertheless carries with it very real dangers.

Some young people experiment with and abuse alcohol and a minority of these finish up alcoholics.  Some young people will experiment with and abuse substances; a minority will finish up drug addicts.  Some young people will experiment with sexual perversions such as same-sex anal-copulating (those who have experienced the adolescent neurosis of same-sex attraction are especially at risk here); a minority will become addicted to this depravity, and finish up describing themselves as gay or homosexual.

Most people who identify themselves as gay do not seek marriage (not even the pseudo-marriages of the church of secular liberalism).  Whereas approximate 40% of the UK population are married, yet only about one in fifty gays have entered into civil unions.  Most gays, it has been scientifically demonstrated, are astonishingly promiscuous, averaging in excess of 500 sexual partners in a lifetime.

  

Nevertheless, some gays do pair off, just as do some alcoholics and some drug abusers.  When they pair off, it should come as no surprise that they select partners who share their addiction to perversion.

I have a clear example of this pattern of behaviour within my own circle of acquaintances   Susan (not her real name) is an alcoholic.  Her relationship with Derek (not his real name) was dependant on his addiction to glue-sniffing.  Their mutual substance abuse condoned one another’s substance abuse.  Likewise, her current relationship with Martin (not his real name) is dependent on his drug abuse for similar reasons.  One cannot from this jump to the conclusion that the relationship is worthless or evil, but it is sensible nevertheless to face the reality of the situation.

This story has one massive advantage over the liberals' story: it is backed by science.  Academic researchers have found scores of cases of identical twins where one twin is straight and the other gay.  Identical twins have identical DNA, thus homosexuality cannot be hard-wired - period.  And as one researcher pointed out, they would have only needed to find one case to completely disprove the theory.

What is not hard-wired has to be learned.  The word “learned” here is used in a scientific sense and does not necessary imply culpability.  One’s mother tongue is learned but one would hardly accuse someone of being guilty of having learned their mother tongue.  Nevertheless, if conduct is not hard-wired, than it must be learnt, apart from divine infusion, there is no third way.

The second fact is that there are thousands of ex-gays in the world, just as there are thousands of ex-alcoholics and ex-drug addicts.  These ex-gays are hated by the militant sodomite collective and their liberal allies alike, and knowledge of their existence is suppressed by the media because it does not support their latest liberal dogma, and liberal dogma trumps science every time. 

The following web site should open your eyes to the underlying causes of this disorder: http://www.peoplecanchange.com/stories/index.php   Many of the stories leave one with a huge lump in one’s throat.  The site is especially valuable because everything is written by ex-gays.

Michael Portillo dabbled with homosexuality in his university days.  He has however been happily married for decades.  I have an acquaintance that was once gay who has been happily married for twenty years; he now has two teenage children.  He is also responsible for one of the best one-liners I've heard on the subject, “I just woke up one morning and realised it was possible to be good mates with a guy and keep my clothes on.”  Another of his memorable comments was, “The first time I felt attracted to a woman, I was walking on air – it was like, ‘welcome to the human race’”  I suppose if I was a liberal bigot, I should have responded, “Oh f**k off, and get back to buggery.  What’s wrong with buggery anyway?”

Militant gays and their allies make a big issue of the fact that some, possibly many, ex-gays relapse.  I personally would be very astonished if they didn't; so do many ex-alcoholics and ex-drug addicts.  There is a sense in which it is true that once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.  Yet no one seeks to argue from this that it is impossible to beat these destructive patterns of behaviour.  I imagine that the same is true for someone who has been deeply immersed in the sodomite life-style for a number of their most formative years.  All that this proves is that once you have succumbed to an addiction, there is always a real danger that you will relapse at a later date.  But that surely doesn't mean that we have to give up hope on ourselves and others merely to sustain some cruel liberal agenda.  On the contrary, we should take hope from those who have managed to break these destructive addictions, and if and when some do relapse, show them compassion and help them pick themselves up yet again.  Liberals, never ones for consistency, applaud therapy for paedophiles yet denigrate therapy for homosexuals.

Of course, if someone does not want to break out of these destructive patterns of behaviour, they cannot be helped; the desire for health must first come from within.  Someone who is committed to this addiction should be treated with kindness and respect, just as one would treat an alcoholic, but that is hardly a good reason to institutionalise their degeneracy!  I believe real love demands that I strive to raise my brother up, not confirm him in his depravity.

GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT

This article is shamelessly plagiarised from an article in the Remnant
 by one Father X.  I’ve abridged and adapted it for my blog readers.

“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” declared Obama, and thus placed himself squarely at the head of a liberal racist lynch mob.  I had always regarded this silver-tongued man from nowhere as unfit for high office, but I never expected to be proved right quite so spectacularly.

The Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland kept her subject busy painting all the white roses in her garden red because she had a pathological hatred of the colour white.  On the slightest or indeed no provocation, she would shout, “Off with his head!”  She believed in execution first - the trial could wait.  The Queen of Hearts would serve as a sort of poster girl for the masters of the universe who have run the secular asylum for the last two-hundred years.

Like the homicidal Freemasons and fellow travellers behind the destruction of Catholic order that was the French Revolution, whose cry too was, “Off with his head! - the trial can wait."  Jefferson, the arch-Mason, and one of the founding father of the USA, applauded this slaughter of the innocent because it was necessary to “water the tree of liberty.”  Nevertheless, like the rest of the leading Freemasons of his time, he never personally felt strongly enough about liberty to free his own slaves.  Today, the same masters of the universe are slaughtering unborn children on an industrial scale.  It appears that liberals abhor the holocaust because it was racist, i.e. discriminated against the Jews - the mass killing of the innocent part has never bothered them over much.

Trayvon Martin, the young black man to whom Obama was referring, was the juvenile tragically shot dead by George Zimmerman, a Hispanic neighbourhood watch volunteer.  Zimmerman’s area had recently suffered a wave of crime by hooded criminals, so Zimmerman was naturally concerned by the presence of the hooded Trayvon.  There appears to have been some sort of violent altercation between them and tragically Trayvon was shot and fatally wounded.  This is all we know; repeat: this is all we know.  Whether it was an act of justifiable self-defence, a cowardly unnecessary killing by a frightened little man, or deliberate cold-blooded homicide, we will not know until there has been a fair trial.

But the issue of guilt or innocence - or of trivia like a fair trial - do not concern left-wing racist lynch mobs.  So the media, including the Brussels Broadcasting Corporation, set about painting this as a white on black racially motivated hate crime, and once again laid bare the deep innate racism of the men who run the secular asylum.

One major network went so far as to edit the taped recording of the conversation between Zimmerman and the “999” operator, in order to beef up the evidence.  At one point the operator asked Zimmerman what colour the victim was.  Zimmerman replied, “Black.”  The network edited out the question so as to make it appear that Zimmerman volunteered this information unprompted, and thus strengthened their white-racist-killing-of-a-black-boy  slant on the story.  The same racist media has also again and again printed pictures of Trayvon at aged thirteen, rather than use more recent photos of him as a stocky seventeen-year old.

The third lie was to portray George Zimmerman as a white man.  In fact he looks Hispanic but is in reality mixed race.  So, desperate not to spoil their white-racist-kills-little-black-boy story, the media invented a new racial group; white-Hispanic.  When was the last time you heard the secular Left refer to Obama as a white-Black?

This racist lynch mob was led by all the usual suspects in the media in general and, in the UK, the BBC in particular.  Al Sharpton, a man who has made a comfortable living out of playing the race card, led the pack.  Jesse Jackson the self-appointed spokesman for the whole of Black America was hot on his heels.  They spearheaded a liberal lynch mob that is always ready to play the race card when the victim is black, but equally desperate not to play it when the victim is white.

Of special note was film director Spike Lee, a man who supposedly abhors violence, who irresponsibly - and hypocritically - tweeted Zimmerman’s address and thereby put Zimmerman’s life in danger.  Except he didn’t, because he got the address wrong and in so doing put an entirely innocent family in danger!   The Black Panthers put out a million dollar bounty, dead or alive, on George Zimmerman head.  This in any genuinely civilised country would have brought the full force of the law down on their heads, but in the liberals’ racist asylum it didn’t even raise audible criticism from the law enforcement agencies.

Contrast the frenzy of the left-wing racist lynch mob over the Trayvon killing with the virtual media blackout aground another young black man of about the same age, one Tyrone.  Tyrone is accused of breaking into the home of an elderly white couple, married sixty-five years.  The wife was eighty-five and nearly blind.  She was raped and then beaten to death by the burglar.  Her husband, a ninety-two year old World War II veteran, was shot in the face, then beaten and left for dead.

Presumably, this unspeakable crime doesn’t really qualify as a crime as far as the masters of the secular asylum are concerned because the victims were white and therefore of no service to their race-baiting agenda.  Racial unrest rooted in white against black crimes - real or fabricated - is what excites liberals.  It does not matter that black on black and black on white crimes exceed the number of white on black crimes many times over.  There is a parallel here with the Left’s homophile agenda.  A few years ago Mr Gay UK killed, dismembered and cooked a homosexual “friend” on his cooker.  Unless you were in the habit of regularly reading page 28 of the Bradford Gazette from top to bottom you could be excused for having missed that story completely.

If Zimmerman after a fair trail is found guilty of a cold-blooded racist killing, and Tyrone is also found guilty, I’d be happy to pay my own fair back from China to throw the switch on the electric chair for both of them.  But until proven guilty by a fair trail I'll suspend judgement.  But for the secular liberal race mob, it doesn’t matter a fig what actually happened between Zimmerman and Martin; guilt has been decided, the trial can wait - off with his head!

Oh, and by the way Mr Obama, that elderly white couple raped, beaten, shot and left for dead, would look just like my old mum and dad.

PÈLERINAGE DE PENTECÔTE - de Notre Dame de Paris à Notre Dame de Chartres

By Graham Moorhouse

“AIMER, C’EST TOUT DONNER” – St Therese

Not everyone is aware that there are not one but two traditional pilgrimages taking place at Pentecost in France, the other one organised by the SSPX.  This year the SSPX pilgrimage followed the footsteps of St. Joan of Arc from Chartres to Orleans, with Bishop Bernard Fellay leading the way.  Between the two over 20,000 traditionalists march.  Few traditionalists have any stomach for the legalistic nitpicking of neo-Catholics vis-à-vis the SSPX, and each year the lay leaders of the two pilgrimages - brothers in the old Faith - meet at the halfway point and raise a glass to the Catholic cause they both serve.  This year, an even stronger awareness that Tradition is rising and Traditionalists are uniting permeated our weekend.  We must all renew our prayer that next year we shall march as one: one massive column of 20,000 or 25,000 Catholics marching shoulder-to-shoulder for Tradition, the Mass and the Family.

The restoration of tradition scored another first this year: the celebration of the Traditional Mass in Notre-Dame de Paris in the very heart of France’s capital.  The Cardinal-Archbishop of Paris not only granted permission for the celebration of the ancient Roman Rite at Notre-Dame but also sent his auxiliary, Bishop Jean-Yves André Michel Nahmias, to preside, preach and offer the papal blessing to the pilgrims.  Another first, as far as I’m aware, was a chapter from Iraq.

One short phrase has always summed up the spirit of Chartres for me:  “Aimer, c’est tout donner” (To love is to give all).  In that one short sentence of St Teresa one finds the God who chose to endure unimaginable suffering for his creatures, St Thomas Moor cheerfully mounting the scaffold to die for truth, the Carmelites going to the guillotine to end the Terror, St Kolbe volunteering to be starved to death by Nazi New Age Pagans for love of a family he had never even met, the young priest embracing celibacy for love of God and souls, the Catholic mother exhausted in the care of a large family and the Crusader laying down his life for the faith, his homeland and his comrades in arms.  What separates the gold standard of genuine Catholic love from the world’s love is one word, “sacrifice”; and not just any sacrifice, total sacrifice.

The world, and that sadly these days includes worldly clerics, neither understands that sort of love, nor desires it.  Pop singers may warble on endlessly about love, condom manufacturers abuse the word and worldlings prostitute it for their own self-serving ends, but what they mean is a sentiment, a feeling, even mere lust.  The world always wants to see the price tag and does not want any commitment which does not come with a get-out-of-jail-free card … preferably several.  That is why the world wants divorce, contraception, abortion, government approved sodomy, pre-nuptial contracts, living wills and euthanasia.  Even its children are no longer entitled to unconditional love, for unless they pass some pre-birth fitness test, they will be killed by abortion rather than offered unconditionally love.

The Catholic gold standard is not a feeling but a conscious, courageous, even audacious, act of a generous will that accepts no going back and no limits on the sacrifice necessary.  For such a love death is sweeter, far sweeter, than betrayal.

It is the young people at Chartres who time and again leave the deepest and most lasting impression upon one.  Eighty percent of the pilgrims are between the ages of fifteen and twenty five and one will seldom witnessed such manifest faith and devotion.  These young traditionalists fill one with hope and joy for the Church of tomorrow.  On the Sunday night, after benediction, thousands of them take part in an all night vigil before the Blessed Sacrament.  These youngsters had walked twenty six miles that day and have a further fourteen miles to complete the following day before reaching Chartres.  Pure grace alone can explain the existence of these young people, for certainly nothing in contemporary culture nor the emasculated post-Conciliar Church can explain their existence.

The memories of Mass in a forest - the cathedral of the trees as the late, great Michael Davies described it - always stay with me, and stretching away as far as one could see young people kneeling on the hard ground silently waiting for a priest to bring Our Lord to them - and with what manifest and profound reverence was the Lord of Time received … and not one “special Eucharistic minister” in sight.!

The two youngest British pilgrims, Cameron Clegg, my grandson, and Dominic Di Falco walked practically the whole seventy miles! - an amazing achievement for a nine and ten year old; clearly tomorrow’s solders of Christ in the making.  Even when I wanted, and planned, to drop out, I couldn’t because Cameron insisted on keeping going!  Cameron never fails to entertain me: a priest had just given a pep-talk on the value of confession.  Cameron dropped back and enquired, “Do you thing I should go to confession Grandad?  I only went a couple of days ago.”  “Well, have you committed any sins?” I enquired.  “Well,” he ventured, “I did tell someone what merde meant.”

The next time a bishop or priest tells you that we have a vocation crisis, just smile benignly and pass on.  We marched with hundreds of young priests, seminarians, tonsured monks, young nuns and brothers, clearly all deliriously happy and head over heels in love with the Church.  As old orders lose their way and implode, new vibrant orders are springing up to accommodate vocations.  To be surrounded for three days by Catholics who genuinely and joyously embraced the old faith is pure joy.  Given such ardent love of Our Lord in the Eucharist, such filial and tender devotion to the Mother of God, such real loyalty to the Holy Father and fidelity to the Mass of our forefathers, saints and martyrs, God is raising up sons of Abraham from the very stones!

The seemingly worldwide rising of young Catholics in support of the pro-life movement and the right to life has caught the pro-choice (so-called) movement off balance. Having been force-fed Plan Parenthood's abortion propaganda all their lives, teenagers are the last people they expected to be leading the prolife crusade against the culture of death and its lethal termination of pregnancy programs.

And Catholics in England now-a-bed 

 Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not there, 

 And hold their valour cheap whiles any speaks 

 That knelt with us in London’s Bedford Square. 

With apologies to the Bard.  

Young Catholics, and some not so young, praying the rosary outside a London abortuary

If I took my grandchildren to see Cinderella and found that the producer had written the ugly sisters out of the pantomime, I would be saddened, and, feeling cheated, would probably ask for my money back. The grotesque outfits, veniality and banal banter of the ugly sisters are the indispensable foil to the beauty, fortitude and kindness portrayed by the character of Cinderella. 

Similarly, when I take part in a pro-life prayer vigil, I would feel cheated if the pro-aborts failed to show up. One needs their ugliness, utter absurdities and in your face aggression to fully appreciate the dignity, integrity and gentle charity of a crowd of traditional Catholics on their knees quietly praying. 

 At the pro-life prayer vigil outside the abortuary in Bedford Square on Friday night (30th March) the pro-aborts did not disappoint; a friend remarked that just watching their antics was worth the entrance fee. The presence of Bishop Alan Hopes leading four or five hundred Catholics in prayer gave the occasion enormous added import and contributed to what was a deeply moving occasion. Bishop Hope is one of two genuinely Catholic bishops we have in England, the other being Mark Davis. They are currently forced to swim in a toxic episcopal sea of post-Conciliar Modernists, which can hardly be pleasant - they both need our support and most certainly deserve our prayers. 

 Four to five hundred mostly young Catholics endured the taunting and rage of two hundred pro-aborts. It was highly significant that traditional young Catholics who probably represent less than one percent of the population, with a little social networking, were able to put four to five hundred pairs of knees on the pavement outside the abortuary. Yet the Guardian, with the remaining ninety-nine percent of the population to draw upon, and with the backing of the Brussel’s Broadcasting Corporation, could only manage a couple of hundred, tops. 

 Having been involved in the pro-Life movement for forty-five years, twenty-five of those as chairman of the North-West Kent Life group, I was struck by just how little the pro-aborts have changed over the period. Indeed, it looked as if they had rummaged in the cupboard under the stairs and found some placards that their grannies had made and dusted them off. These placards made absolutely no sense forty years ago, and made no more sense today. 

A pro-abort delivering one of
their finely crafted arguments

The only change I did notice was that forty years ago when I was organising public meetings, most of the pro-aborts had a young man in tow. These were a recognisable sub-species: they invariably appeared anorexic, pasty, utterly humourless, chain-smoked home-made cigarettes and suffered from rather serious acne. One of the young ladies who regularly shared the platform with me in those days would unkindly whisper, “I think the opposition have turned up Graham. I can see a lot of pineapple faces at the back.” That particular male genre seems to have completely disappeared from pro-abort ranks; a great pity - their presence would have evoked a very pleasant stroll down memory lane. 

 Pro-abort posters fall into three broad categories: the doggerel, the incomprehensible and those that even the pro-aborts wouldn’t want you to take too seriously. If you can think of a word that is quintessentially Catholic that rhymes (sort-off) with something connected with female genitalia, this is considered a killer argument among pro-aborts: consequently, signs such as “KEEP YOUR ROSARIES OFF MY OVARIES,” and “KEEP YOUR EUCHARIST OUT OFF MY UTERUS,” abounded. One of my grandchildren brought home a similar slightly irreverent rhyme that he had learned in the playground, and chanting it ad-nausea for about a fortnight - however, he did have the excuse of being eight at the time. There’s probably a cottage industry waiting for some Catholic designing such posters for pro-aborts: the best I could come up with is, “Keep your holy water off my daughter,” but that is clearly not sufficiently indelicate for pro-abort taste, so, it’s back to the drawing board I’m afraid. One of the incidental high-lights of the demo was watching a smart middle-aged gentleman dutifully chanting “Keep your rosaries off my ovaries,” - the mind boggles... 

After the doggerel come what one can only call the “search me” placards. These are the ones that when a colleague says to you, “What on earth’s that all about?” you reply, “Search me.” One placard definitely in this category read, “IF YOU ARE SO PRO-LIFE, WHY DON’T YOU PUT GUARDS ON CEMETERIES?” The last man to post a guard on a cemetery as far as I recall was Pontius Pilate at the behest of the Jewish leadership; Pilate was hardly pro-life and what it has to do with the current price of fish, I have no idea. Another poster in this genre read, “STOP THE CUTS”! Whether the man holding it aloft was from rent-a-mob and had joined the wrong demo or merely picked up the wrong placard we sadly may never know. 

Among the placards that “even the pro-aborts wouldn’t want you to take too seriously” was, “IF YOU CAN’T TRUST ME WITH A CHOICE, WHY DO YOU TRUST ME WITH A CHILD?” Imagine turning up at the nursery to collect your toddler and the nursery manager nonchalantly telling you that she had killed little Johnnie. Then, in response to your explosion of outrage and grief, coolly responding, “If you can’t trust me with a choice, why did you trust me with your child.” The same “argument” would clearly legitimise the killing of five-year old, and indeed seventeen-year olds for that matter. Although, seventeen-year olds may fight back, and I suspect that abortionists prefer their victims not to do that - leastways not successfully. 

The other sign falling into this category is the old chestnut from the sixties, “EVERY CHILD A WANTED CHILD”. The corrupt police and private security forces in Brazil who have been cleaning up the streets of Rio de Janeiro by killing street children (in 1994, 1221 street children were shot dead - 344 under the age of 11) ought to wear that slogan on their cap badges. All these slogans of course basically say the same thing, “DON’T MESS WITH MY RIGHT TO HAVE SEX WITH MEN I DISLIKE SO MUCH THAT THERE IS NO WAY I’D WANT TO BEAR THEIR CHILDREN.” 

What passes for a killer argument
in the secular asylum

At one point several young ladies with big drums turned up and tried to drown out our prayers. There was also a particularly interesting character: an elderly woman dressed in the severe drab manner of those who have self-certified themselves intellectuals, a poor man’s Beatrice Webb with “Guardian Reader” stamped through her like a stick of Brighten rock. She came complete with the statutory bike, no doubt her single-handed contribution to stopping global warming dead in its tracks. She obviously considered herself an elite member of the SAS of the pro-abort forces, for she studiously eschewed standing with her co-religionists, choosing instead to work alone behind enemy lines. To this end she had wired up a couple a claxons on her handlebars and, positioning herself close to our left flank, sounded them incessantly. 

While one can obviously pray quietly, and indeed silently, pro-abort protests rely heavily on making noise, and lots of it, these ploys therefore appeared to be a classic case of shooting yourself in the foot: it couldn’t stop us praying, but it very effectively rendered their own chanting inaudible.

One of the slogans they shouted incessantly, rather like a Buddhist trying to work himself into a coma, was, “Stop harassing women.” Evidently, several score pro-aborts, their faces contorted with rage, repeatedly screaming this slogan into the face of a kneeling teenage girl quietly praying her Rosary doesn’t constitute harassment; obviously being a fully-paid-up card-carrying member of the secular asylum results in a certain blindness - leastways, as far as being able to spot irony is concerned. 

One highlight of the evening occurred when a Guardian-type reporter put her mike in the face of a young Catholic and said something to the effect, “Do you not believe that woman have a right to choose?” He responded along the lines, “Choosing to kill someone is a pretty radical choice.” “We don’t believe that it is a human being,” responded the reporter. “What species do you believe it to be then?” politely enquired the young man. At which point the reporter remembered she had another urgent commitment and vanished in the proverbial puff of blue smoke. 

Pro-aborts coalesce round their narrow concept of “freedom”, but evidently lack the mental subtlety to understand that “freedom” is a multi-faceted word. As Fr Frank Pavone has pointed out, the “freedom” to own a Porsche is a different sort of freedom to the freedom of an animal caught in a trap to escape by gnawing its leg off. The freedom of a young woman to kill her own child because she feels trapped by an unwanted pregnancy is obviously closer to the latter sort of freedom than the former. The pro-abort mind is so darkened by their hellish creed that they are genuinely unable to understand that offering to remove the “trap from her leg”, enhances her freedom, not diminish it. 

Whereas the pro-aborts have fossilised somewhere in the sixties, the pro-life movement has changed radically. In the early days we studiously avoided such issues as artificial contraception, chastity and religion. Our logic was that we wanted to create a broad front. People of all faiths and none could unite behind the moral principle that no one had the right to deliberately take the life of an innocent human being. We concentrated on nailing pro-abort propaganda lies, especially those intended to dehumanise the unborn child. In this we were broadly successful; referring to the unborn child as “foetal jelly” or the “products of conception”, once the norm in pro-abort propaganda, are now rarely heard. These lies have been effectively buried by ultrasound scanning, a medical breakthrough pioneered by the late Dr Ian Donaldson, himself a staunch pro-lifer. Films like the Silent Scream, shot by an ex-abortionist, that showed an unborn child desperately trying to avoid the abortionist’s probe, put the final nail into the coffin of these lies. 

In the last decade the pro-life movement has been taken over by a new generation of radical traditional young Catholics; when one of your supporters turns up on skateboards, rather than with the aid of a walking stick, you know that something of a tectonic shift has taken place. Where these militant young Catholics are coming from is a complete mystery, for nothing in contemporary culture, or in the emasculated post-Conciliar Church, or the current corrupt Catholic school system can explain their sudden explosion upon the scene. However, many, maybe even the majority, appear to have been tempered in the crucible of the Old Mass, the rite of our forefathers, saints and martyrs, recently released from forty years of illegal incarceration on the orders of the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, now gloriously reigning. 

What these young people have instinctively realised with the simple, even simplistic, vision of youth, is that the modern slaughter of the innocent on an industrial scale is quite literally Satanic, and therefore what we are facing is a profoundly spiritual evil. They further realised that the only way to fight a spiritual evil was with spiritual weapons. Unilaterally, and seemingly overnight, they decided to go nuclear, and left the old guard running to keep up with them. The close links between artificial contraception and abortion was no longer swept under the carpet, chastity was now openly promoted and henceforth their religion would be in the open, in your face even, and prayer and the rosary were to be their heavy artillery. Very soon they were on their knees outside abortion clinics all over the world; and not just for an hour or two, they kept up their prayer vigils for forty days non-stop! 

One is reminded of the Spanish Conquistadors who, on discovering that the Aztecs were slaughtering babies on an industrial scale, threatened all out war, a war that was only averted by the appearance of Our Blessed Lady at Guadalupe. That the diagnosis of the evil of these traditional young Catholics, and their chosen remedy, were absolutely spot-on is underscored by the fury of hell that it has unleashed. The effect on the pro-aborts was like throwing holy water over a man possessed, a veritable explosion of demonic and irrational rage erupted, all underscored of course by fear - and my goodness, how the godless fear the power of prayer, especially the Rosary! 

The success of these militant young Catholics has been nothing short of phenomenal. The lives of thousands of babies world wide have been saved, thousands of woman have been rescued from grave sin and a life of regret, even some of the staff of the abortuaries have repented their role in the barbarism and courageously crossed the road to join the young people on their knees, and a significant number of abortuaries have closed their doors permanently. 

The most moving moment of the evening for me came after the official prayer vigil was over, the young people, seemingly spontaneously, as if the Spirit had breathed upon them, started to sing the Áve María, grátia pléna … They sung it sweetly, gentle and in perfect harmony. The pro-aborts responded with a hellish fury; a cacophony of yelling, drum banging, whistles and clarion soundings filled the air. Several pro-aborts had to be forcefully restrained by the police from crossing the barriers separating them from the young people. The young Catholics appeared not even to notice the existence of the pro-aborts, they continued to sing sweetly, gently and in perfect harmony - it was as if they had moved onto some higher plain of being. I have the distinct impression that these young Catholics are just getting started; and I confidently predict, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”