---The Good---
Sunday the 14th September was to prove a funny old day.
The highlight of the day was the celebration marking Daphne
McLeod's forty year fight for the right of children to be taught their faith properly. The special Mass and reception
afterwards was a truly lovely and memorable occasion. The best part for me came when Daphne entered
the club room beside the Church, and everyone broke out into spontaneous
prolonged applause.
Father spoke warmly and movingly about her work and Daphne
was then presented with a rose (the name of the rose appropriately: Absolutely Fabulous)
as a remembrance of the occasion. She
was also presented with a spiritual bouquet which she obviously appreciated
enormously.
This was rounded off by a splendid feast provided by the
parishioners.
Daphne spent her time happily chatting with well wishers
including two Irish Flock readers who had flown in from Dublin especially for this occasion - may
both these lovely ladies be blessed for their kindness and devotion.
---The Bad---
A shadow had been cast over the day earlier by the news that
Mrs Palmira Silva, the sweet 82 year old lady, mother and grandmother, who had
been beheaded in her north London
garden by a mentally deranged convert to Islam, was the cousin of members of
our congregation.
Politicians prate on endlessly about Islam being a religion
of peace. We should challenge them by
asking them to name a single country on the planet that has embraced Islam
other than at the point of a sword held to the throat of unarmed men, women and children. One
could also ask these politician to explain why, if Islam is a religion of
peace, the Middle East is the least peaceful place on the face of the Planet,
and has been so for as long as any can remember.
The barbarism of this deranged young man had me reflecting
on what we mean by the word "barbarian". It sums up those who gratuitously destroys
what is beautiful, holy, living, growing, thriving and healthy, those who
wantonly tear down in seconds what others have painstakingly built over decades.
---The Utterly Bizarre---
Which brings me neatly to the "bizarre",
the tragedy unfolding at the nearby parish of Blackfen, which up until a week ago
had been home to a beautiful, thriving, traditionalist community, full of young
married couples with lots of children and young people. It had also provided a warm welcome to home-schoolers, with over a hundred homeschooled children and their parents
regularly meeting in the parish. Half a
dozen good and clearly hurting folk were "crying on my shoulder" this
Sunday over the mindless destruction of this (their) spiritual home.
A new priest, one Fr Steven Fisher, took
over a week ago and was clearly hell
bent on the senseless demolition of what his predecessor had built. Indeed, he gratuitously upset so many trads
in the course of the first hour, it made the proverbial bull in a china shop
look like Margot Fonteyn. Space forbids
me relating a string of grievances, sufficient to say that he kicked off by
announcing at his first traditional Mass that Holy Communion could be receive
in the hand! A bizarre announcement even
from the angle of man-management and simple human prudence. All it could achieve would be to delight half
a dozen contracepting elderly post-Conciliar Modernists (who would sooner be
found dead than at a traditional Mass in any case) while needlessly upsetting a
hundred or more trads. Within days, the Modernist rag, the Pill (aka the tablet) was on sale at the back of the church - no surprise there then.
The mendacious excuse for this immature and loutish behaviour
is "unity." Oh what crimes O
Lord are committed in the name of the sham unity of the post-Conciliar
Church! If there was any tension in the
parish it certainly would not have come from the trad side. Trads are the most generous when it comes to
contributing to the parish coffers, invariably play an active part in all
parish activities and have no interest whatsoever in interfering in the worship
of their Novus Ordo brothers and sisters.
If there was ill-will, it was being stirred up by a handful of elderly
contracepting post-Conciliar Modernists.
A priest's role in such circumstances is clearly to be a mediator, a
bridge builder, not to use it as an excuse to indulge in an orgy of wanton destruction.
Two devout homeschooling mothers were informed that they should have their children in Catholic schools. This humbug from a man who had personally told me a decade ago that the only reason that he was a priest was that his mother had had the wisdom not to send him to a Catholic school! The tragedy is that the man carrying out this wilful
vandalism was, I can personally vouch, once a good priest. One can only weep and wonder when and why he
decided to sell his soul to the Revolution and become part of the problem rather than part of the
solution - was his conversion motivated by ideology or careerism, or was the original persona merely a sham? - only he can tell us.
At this hour of decisive
battle for the soul of the Church, we must of course expect the Devil to go
after good priests, so we must redouble our prayer for our many good priests
(and not forgetting a handful of good bishops). The faithful remnant must also pray for themselves and one another, lest we too through pride fall into the same abyss.
It is difficult to understand what the powers-that-be hope
to achieve by the sort of boorish carry on at Blackfen.
No trad that I know is going to quietly melt back into the
post-Conciliar Modernist wallpaper merely because one priest is putting a
special effort into being unkind and tactless towards him; most would rather
seek out the SSPX than go down that particular cul-de-sac.
It is crucially important not to allow these setbacks to
discourage us. In any war there are
bound to be setbacks and reversals. Our
post-Conciliar Modernists are currently running around trying to put out the
little forest fires of tradition breaking out all over the Church. They no sooner damp down one in front of them
and two spring up behind them. Pretty
soon some of these fires will join up and become bigger fires, and then these
bigger fires will join up and become infernos.
Our Lady has promised that ultimately her Immaculate Heart will triumph,
so the question is not "if" but "when". In the meantime, we must expect our
post-Conciliar Modernists, as they become increasingly desperate, to become
even more intolerant, insensitive and cruel than they already are - for such
has proved the final days of all revolutions.
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