Stat Veritas

Archbishop Lefebvre -v- the papacy, St Pius X -v- Benedict XVI - Vat 2 has splintered the Catholic Church into factions; and, as in any conflict, truth is the first casualty. On cue, the history of the Artians and St Athanasius is currently being urgently re-written by neo-Catholics to fit their regime of novelties

2012-02-01T04:28:00.000-08:00

Neo-Catholics are often obsessed with the SSPX (If you need a definition of “neo-Catholic” you can do no better than follow this LINK). A certain Mr Robert William’s personal obsession with the SSPX has assumed the nature of the sort of vendetta against them that was condemned so forcefully by Benedict XVI in his letter of the 7 July 2007 (which accompanied his Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum), but nevertheless the Catholic Herald regularly publish his letters on the subject.

Mr Williams never misses an opportunity to work the word “excommunicated” into any sentence containing Archbishop Lefebvre’s name. However, when Benedict XVI lifted the censure of the four SSPX bishops on 21st Jan. 2009, his document giving it juridical force, finished by pronouncing the censure of excommunication promulgated on 1st July, 1988 to be “void of juridical effects …” Perhaps one of our many amateur canon lawyers can explain how one can be excommunicated by a decree that has been declared “void of juridical effects” by the highest authority in the Church?

Neo-Catholics naturally object to the similarity between Archbishop Lefebvre and St Athanasius being pointed out. To counter this rather obvious comparison, Mr Williams asserts that the Church and the papacy “remained resolute” throughout the Arian crisis. He further claims that this novel view is proved by some unnamed “19th century disputants.”

St Jerome writing at the time of the Arian crisis (admittedly without the benefit of unnamed "19th century disputants" to draw upon) famously lamented, "The whole world groaned and marvelled to find itself Arian". One of the popes at the time, Liberius, whose instincts were undoubtedly orthodox, was plucky at first, but torn from his see and banished to Thrace, signed a Semi-Arian creed and, under pressure from the Arians, renounced the champion of the orthodox party, St Athanasius. If that is an example of “remaining resolute”, it is somewhat difficult to imagine what Mr Williams would regard as “irresolute.”

Can anyone explain why St Paul is a saint when, in his own words, “… when Cephas [i.e. the Pope] was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed,” (Galatians 2:11), whilst Archbishop Lefebvre is a villain for doing the same (and with much greater cause) vis-à-vis Cephas’s successor? I have no doubt that Robert William with his forte for legalistic hair-splitting will be able to explain away these episcopal double standards - leastways to his own satisfaction and that of his fellow neo-Catholics.

FROM THE CATHOLIC BISHOPS CONFERENCE, FEMINISM AND THE CATHOLIC PRESS - LIBERA NOS, DÓMINE

2012-01-27T09:21:00.000-08:00

Someone by the name of Anita de Lacey wrote to the Catholic Herald last November bewailing the fact that the Nicene Creed states “For us men”, as it appeared to her, or so she avers, that women have been excluded!

Man-eating (sorry -
person-eating) shark

Someone once wrote that the oddest thing about Hitler was not that he was mad, yet millions followed him, but that he was obviously mad and yet still millions followed him. Similarly, what strikes me about such letters, is not that they are crackpot (in a world of seven billion, we must expect that a few will write daft letters) but that they are so obviously crackpot, and yet the Catholic Press still publishes them!

Given the obvious cerebrally challenged status of most of our post-Conciliar English bishops, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that some of them have flirted with this nonsense. Notably, David Konstant held up the publication of the Catechisms of the Catholic Church while he attempted to rewrite it in Fem-speak. He would have had Our Lord saying “People do not live by bread alone,” - presumably because he believed that women reading “Man does not live by bread alone,” might labour under the delusion that women could - which suggest that the bishop didn’t have much respect for the intelligence of most women (to learn more, follow this link: HERE). Unusually, on this occasion, mercifully Rome came to the rescue of England’s long suffering Catholic remnant.

I suggest that the day when Ms de Lacey is torn to shreds after she leaps into shark infested water because she didn’t realise that women were on the menu of man-eating sharks, will be soon enough to start worrying about this sort of patent drivel.

Contrary to what our political masters would have us believe, the current recession, kick started in the US, has nothing to do with capitalism or the free market, and everything to do with governments and government behemoth like Fannie May.

2012-01-25T07:41:00.000-08:00

During a family get-together over Christmas, the conversation among the men inevitably got round to the current economic meltdown. Sooner or later, and sadly just as inevitably, someone trotted out the cliché, "laissez-faire capitalism doesn't work".

My old heart sinks when ever I hear my own flesh and blood mindlessly trotting out these old chestnuts as if they were revealed dogma. There is admittedly a superficial truth in this slogan; but it’d rather like announcing that marriage doesn't work and then pointing to Fred West's basement as proof of your contention - all that is being demonstrated is that in a fallen world, nothing is perfect.

In the culture of the North Atlantic alliance most have had their compasses confiscated and thus are like walking iPods, and the educational, political and media élite can write on them any tune they want. Thus they engineer consent to their chosen ideologies and outlaw ideas that they do not currently favour. They persuade millions that their masters’ ideas and beliefs are their own. It is depressing to realise that your offspring, whom you carefully raised to be independent thinkers, have morphed into walking compendiums of received opinion. The problem with “received opinion” - like its smug cousin “conventional wisdom” - is that it's not really opinion at all, but merely the safe adoption or whatever is fashionable and trendy. There was more independent thought in Spain at the height of the Spanish Inquisition than there is today in Britain under the jackboots of our secular left thought police.

“Conventional wisdom” and “received opinion” would have us believe that the current economic meltdown had something to do with the failure of free markets and capitalism, or a lack of adequate regulation, bankers’ greed, etc. Whilst the greed of bankers may be repugnant, it is as relevant to the current economic meltdown as my gate post is to the price of fish.

The simple truth is that our current mess has absolutely nothing to do with the market, and everything to do with political meddling in the market driven by left-wing interventionist ideologues. It is important to note that this secular left mindset is now shared even by those who present themselves as conservatives: George Bush and David Cameron being obvious examples.

There are in fact five culprits who should be in the dock for the current economic mess: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which at one point were underwriting no less than seventy-five per cent of all US mortgages!), the Community Reinvestment Act and affirmative action in lending, the US government's artificial stimulus to speculation, the "pro-ownership" tax code and the Federal Reserve and its artificially cheap credit. Not one of these guilty parties has the slightest thing to do with the free market: they all arise from government policies driven by the left’s interventionist creed, i.e. the belief that laissez-faire capitalism doesn't work.

Let's take a closer look at the first defendants; Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, neither of which were constructions of the free market. They are both government leviathan, capitalised and financed by eye watering sums of taxpayers’ money and that phony cash that the Fed routinely magics out of thin air.

They spent their ill-gotten gains buying up mortgages from banks and financial institutions. This had a number of entirely predictable results: 1) banks now had virtually unlimited sums to invest in the housing market, sum that go vastly beyond what a free market would devote to that area of the economy; 2) banks are artificially shielded from the normal risk of a free market and thus take risk that they would not have done in a free market; 3) because so much money is slopping about in the housing market, house prices are artificially inflated and eventually shoot through the roof.

As a result of secular left government policies, we now have vast sums of money being loaned to the sort of people the sane would be reluctant to loan a fiver to, in order to encourage them to buy vastly overpriced real estate! But Fannie and Freddie had not finished: they were then trying to cover their butts by parcelling up the doggy mortgages they had both created and purchased with taxpayers’ money and sold them on as equally doggy investments. And when the bobble finally burst, as anyone who was not a complete economic dunce would have foreseen, the politicians whose meddling in the free market caused the mess in the first place are now running around telling us that the free market doesn’t work, and needs yet more regulation!

Only around five US senators had enough economic savoir-faire to foresee that this meddling would end in tears. Of particular note is Senator Ron Paul (one of the front runners for the Republican nomination); five years before the bubble burst, Senator Ron Paul had denounced the whole scheme as nothing more than a giant taxpayer funded Ponzi scam.

Once the bubble burst, banks and financial institutions of course rapidly returned to a more prudent and cautious loan policy, a policy that had served the market well for decades, if not centuries. What do our politicians do? Call for the banks to return to the sort of reckless lending that had got us in the mess in the first place! So the current crisis, having been caused by excessive and imprudent lending, is now going to be solved by still more politically driven and artificially stimulated imprudent lending - yea, and I’m writing this blog riding a camel.

Poulson, the onetime US Treasury Secretary, even bemoaned the fact that “millions of Americans” were facing rising credit rates and reduced access to credit, and thus, “making it more expensive for families to finance everyday purchases.” What planet are these guys on? What sort of healthy economy wants people to buy their weekly groceries on credit?

It’s as if a gang of political thugs employ two heavies, Freddie Max and Fannie May, to beat up granny Freda Marwick for money that they allege she owed them. And when poor Freda dies at the hand of these two heavies, the gang of thugs, when put in the dock, claim that they never had any dealing with Freddie Max and Fannie May (“never heard of em guv”) and it’s all Freda Marwick’s fault for dying in the first place - “You should have all known you couldn’t leave old Freda Marwick to look after herself,” they proclaim. And in the secular asylum that we are all currently forced to live, the jury actually buys the crap and acquits the bloody lot!

CATECHISING CHRIST’S LITTLE ONES

2011-07-31T13:49:00.000-07:00

“This prostitution of Catholic education by our bishops to serve their private Modernist agendas and the awful scandal of clerical sexual abuse of minors are flip sides of the same coin, for both are rooted in the willingness to abuse clerical and episcopal power for one’s personal ends.”

By: Don McGovern

It is absolutely critical that the Catholic remnant in this country assumes a pro-active responsibility for catechising their children and there grandchildren if the faith is to survive. If you are not prepared to equip yourself for this sacred task, then you can kiss goodbye to any chance of them growing up Catholic and a meaningful Catholic presence on British soil.

One of the fundamental errors that most Catholics make is to equate Modernism with liberal Catholicism. This is an error equivalent to calling a Communist a liberal Conservative. A Modernist is not a liberal Catholic, he is simply not a Catholic; he is in fact an anti-Catholic! How else can we accurately describe someone who dissents from much, if not almost all, that constitutes one a Catholic?

A Modernist has much in common with the sixteenth century reformers, but where he differs markedly is in his methodology. Whereas Luther nailed his dissent to the church door at Wittenberg and shouted his foul mouthed defiance from the rooftop; the Modernists prefers to conceal his dissent and work away to destroy the Church termite-like from within. There will be no loud, coarse mouthed defiance from him; the last thing he wishes to do is draw attention to himself. Like the wolf in the story of Little Red Riding Hood, all is disarming smiles, effusive politeness and inflated bonhomie; his handshake is always warm, if a little unpleasantly limp and moist.

When it suits his purpose he will claim that he is recovering some long lost tradition from the early Church, when he wishes to kill-off some tradition retained from the early Church he will tell us that it is necessary to change for pastoral reasons to better address the needs of modern man. Thus, he puts himself in a heads I win, tails you loose situation, all the while smiling you to death.

Just one example, Modernists are uncomfortable with the doctrine of transubstantiation. His attack is multi-faceted: he will encourage us to stand and receive communion in the hand; he will find pseudo-reasons for encouraging every Tom, Dick and Harriett to distribute Holy Communion and invade the sanctuary, and the Tabernacle will be removed from its place of prominence on the high altar. Most cunning of all, he invents numerous new “Real Presences”, on the premise that we will finish up with so many “Real Presences” that the real Real Presence won’t seem so special anymore. Thus we have the “Real Presence” in the scripture readings, the “Real Presence” in the priest (particularly mendacious that one, because he doesn’t actually believe in priests), the “Real Presence” in the assembled people, etc.

The scriptures record that even when Christ was on earth, many disciples deserted Jesus because they rejected the doctrine of the Real Presence (John 6, 60-72). But whereas the Bible records that these disciples walked sadly away from Jesus, the Modernist prefer to stay and work to undermine the doctrine itself from within the Church.

Another example: the Church solemnly teaches that she does not have the power to ordain women. The Modernist believes she does. More accurately, he doesn’t believe that priest have sacerdotal powers (that smacks to much of magic to him - like Christ’s miracles, that are similarly rejected), he believe that anyone, including women, can be appointed by the community to preside. So you find modernist like Bishop Malcolm Mahon taking two Anglican priestesses with him on his diocesan pilgrimage to Lourdes and encouraging the faithful to attend their invalid (and hence blasphemous) masses. Thus he replaces our Catholic religion with his Modernist religion without uttering a single self-incriminating syllable.

The Modernist is always keen on ecumenism, but only if it involves mixed bathing with other Modernists. Thus he will queue up to wine and dine the “Archbishop” of Canterbury, and not tire of publicly slapping himself on the back for being the fine, liberal, progressive fellow he perceives himself to be for having done so. However, he will rent his garments at the mere suggestion that it might be nice to invite an SSPX priest round for coffee - he’d much prefer to sup with the local mullah or a liberal rabbi to that. Even brother bishops who evidence signs of genuine Catholicism are rapidly bundled off to outer darkness: witness Bishop O'Donoghue, who discovered his Catholic backbone shortly before retiring and became an instant leper, never again to be spoken off in polite conversation.

Because Modernists are anti-Catholics, nowhere has there termite like destruction been more ghastly and evil than in our schools. They have introduced religious text books that deliberately set out to destroy our glorious faith and enforce their agenda with a degree of ruthlessness that makes the German Nazis look positively incompetent. These text books make no mention that the children have a soul to save, no mention of the foundational doctrine of Original Sin, or a host of other Catholic doctrines that are de fide. A teacher can have his or her career ruined by merely seeking to teach one doctrine of the Catholic faith - and many have. The story of the persecution of good Catholic teachers by the bishops’ Modernism enforcement tsars would fill many volumes.

This prostitution of Catholic education by our bishops to serve their private Modernist agendas and the awful scandal of clerical sexual abuse of minors are flip sides of the same coin, for both are rooted in the willingness to abuse clerical and episcopal power for one’s personal ends.

So what is a genuine Catholic to do in the presence situation? First up, whatever you do, with a few glorious exceptions, do not entrust the faith of your child to a Catholic school. Having been force fed Modernists garbage for ten years or more, well over ninety per cent of children who attend our schools lapse, and rightly so. Indeed, that is not the end of this miserable storey, most of them do not merely lapse, they become actively hostile to the faith! And don’t expect any empathy from your Modernist bishop; as far as he is concerned this is a success story, for there is nothing he wants more than that our children should share his own hostility to the faith of our forefathers.

Have you not noticed dear betrayed parents that none of our good young priests has ever been near a Catholic school, had he done so, both his faith and his vocation would have been destroyed long before he was anywhere near a seminary. Bishop Morris, the outspoken Modernist who has recently been sacked by the Pope from an Australian see had not had a single vocation in his diocese for ten years, but that’s real success from the Modernist point of view. They do not believe in a sacerdotal priesthood, so why on earth would anyone imagine that a dearth of vocations would worry them?

Having removed your child or grandchild from the present corrupt Catholic school system, you need to send him to a good state school and catechise him yourself, or better still home-school him, but we have to be realistic and accept that not all have the time, circumstances or the ability to homeschool well.

Two of our bishops have recently broken ranks and very publicly announced that they are going to phrase out the toxic Modernist programs of their brother bishops from their schools and use text books that are a little more Catholic. One or two others have also done so, but with less fanfare. These bishops will need the prayers and militant support of all genuine Catholics if they are to succeed, for they will face absolutely massive opposition, not just from other bishops but also from within their own education bureaucracies.

Regrettably, while they plan to replace the Modernist’s poison with something a little recognisably more Catholic, what they are planning to use is far from perfect. It is undoubtedly better than Here I Am and Icons, but that is saying little; it would be near impossible to be worse.

This could be the last chance Catholics will have for a generation to have their children and grandchildren taught the faith properly. It is absolutely critical that we pray, fast and become militantly active in securing this by insisting on genuinely good Catholic syllabuses.

The best of those that Pro Ecclesia has evaluated is the American Faith and Life Series available from Ignatius Press. One of the problems in teaching the faith these days is that we have two generations of teaches who are as clueless as their pupils, having themselves been through Catholic schools and been brainwashed by the Modernists. Faith and Life could almost be described as an idiot’s guide to teaching the faith: it is so excellently and comprehensively structured that one could place it in the hands of an atheist or Muslin, and armed with it they would be able to teach the Catholic faith, and teach it very well indeed.

And Catholic parent or grandparent reading this who wants to catechise there children or grandchildren could not do better than purchase this series. Ignatius Press can be found at: http://www.ignatius.com

Child Abuse and the Catholic Church

2010-12-09T12:30:00.000-08:00

(With acknowledgement to Peter Hitchins and Gerald Warner)

“One should never waste a good crisis”

One should never waste a good crisis; the child abuse scandal is the perfect opportunity to clean out the stables. Benedict XVI should take advantage of the wave of revulsion against our awful post-Conciliar episcopacy and fire the clowns who, while spewing out an endless torrent of modernist’s banalities and ecumaniacal episcobabble, have sat on their purple clad arses for the last forty years whilst Christ body haemorrhaged away. These are the same men who having wickedly denied any meaningful catechesis to the young and in consequence (having produced a generation wholly ignorant of the faith) have all but extinguished the Catholic faith from Europe.

The sex-abuse crisis is a God given opportunity to start to roll back the devastation of the last forty years, to cull the hirelings, stop the apologies, reinstate apologetics and begin replanting the vineyard. It is time for Catholics to roll up their sleeves, to square up to liberals and secularists, and to root out the traitors within our own ranks, and to proclaim again from the rooftops the timeless truths of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.

Child Abuse and the Catholic Church

All decent people are horrified by the abuse of children, especially sexual abuse, and will instinctively feel deep compassion for the victims and their families. Further, to learn that a Catholic priest, who is supposed to model himself on Christ, has committed such a terrible crime is just too horrible for words.

It is nonetheless essential to put the issue into
perspective

In the USA an appalling 17 out of every 1000 Catholic priests have been found guilty of sexual abuse, which is a shocking 1 in 59. In the UK the figures are much lower: 4 in every 1000 priest have been accused (fewer still have been convicted) - that is one in 250 accused.

Appalling as these figure are, you are, statistically speaking, still safer leaving a child in the care of a Catholic priest than you are leaving a child in the care of a teacher, a youth leader, a doctor, a lawyer, a farmer or indeed a family member, for all these groups offend more frequently than do Catholic priests. Catholic priests are actually at the bottom of the ladder.

So why the media blitz on the Church? Simple: the current hounding of the Church by the secular media has absolutely nothing to do with concern for children and everything to do with a deep latent hatred of the Catholic Church. This totally bias propaganda is comparable to the sort of evil cant that Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, used to spew out against the Jews and their rabbis. Anti-Catholicism, unlike anti-Semitism, is a respectable (indeed, mandatory) prejudice among the secular left.

The second thing one needs to do is accurately identify and name the problem.

All the independent studies that have been carried out have demonstrated that over eight out of ten of the victims (in some independent studies it has been as high as nine out of ten) were not children strictly speaking, but adolescent males (i.e. teenage boys). That should tell anyone without a liberal bias to defend that the problem is not paedophilia but homosexuality.

Rome is not blameless, for one of the root causes of the problem is the plethora of effete liberal bishops she has foisted on the Church in the aftermath of Vatican II. These men, desperate to embrace the secular liberal agenda, opened their seminaries to homosexuals, and boy they flooded in! Entirely predictably, a significant number of these men have proven to be predatory sodomites. These problems were further exacerbated by the fact that a significant number of the bishops were themselves homosexuals and were thus willing and anxious to cover up the sins of their clergy. Had post-Conciliar bishops not started willfully ordaining homosexuals there never would have been a significant “child abuse scandal”, so-called, in the first place.

So why is this truth, which is no more than the bleeding obvious, never addressed by the media or the Church? Again the answer is simple: both the media and large sections of the western Church are currently in hock to the militant homosexual collective - sometimes unkindly referred to as the Lavender Mafia. One has only to listen to Archbishop Vincent Nicholls defending his bizarre decision to sanction regular Masses for militant homosexuals who flaunt, celebrate and seek to promote their disordered inclinations and impure and unnatural life styles, to realise the truth of that last sentence. How many Catholics forty years ago would have foreseen that one day they would listen to a successor of St Augustine pimping for perverts? Why are there no similar Masses for shop lifters, drug peddlers, pedophiles or sadomasochists, one may legitimately ask? I‘m sure they, and indeed many others who have the misfortune to suffer from disordered inclinations, would appreciate a Mass where they are “accepted” and encouraged to promote their favourite moral disorders.

Recently, Cardinal Bertone, one of the Pope’s right hand men, was courageous enough to point out that most independent experts agreed that the problem is homosexuality – his statement put one in immediate danger of being trampled underfoot by the frenzied stampede of English bishops frantic to distance themselves from his statement. Yet further evidence, if needed, that large sections of the western church are deeply compromised by their now routine obsequious stance before the militant homosexual collective.

Liberal fatwas and the bigotry of militant atheists

The secular mindset is characterised by irrationality, dysfunction and overinflated egos. It is a mindset further characterised by little humour and even less joy. The secularist have only one real enemy, the Catholic Church: that is why just before the Pope’s arrival a number of secular Ayatollahs wrote to the Guardian protesting the visit of Benedict XVI. On their “charge sheet” of course was the issue of child abuse. Among the list of the usual suspects was the Teflon-coated Peter Tatchell, a man who has built a career out of campaigning for legalised paedophilia since the 1990s!

As Michal Matt has pointed out, what we have here is a campaign by militant homosexuals to brand the Pope as homophobic for failing to deal sufficiently rigorously with the crimes of homosexual priests! As they say, if you can make sense of that humbug, “You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!”

On June 26^th 1997 the Guardian published an article by Mr Tatchell, defending a book called “Boy-Love”. This book Tatchell argued was not shocking but “courageous”. The book he applauded documented “societies where consenting inter-generational sex is considered normal”. He gave an example of a New Guinea tribe where “all young boys have sex with older warriors as part of their initiation into manhood” [One might be excused for wondering if they “all” do it, just how consensual it is] and allegedly grow up to be “happy, well-adjusted husbands and fathers”. Mr Tatchell further wrote: “Several of my friends – gay and straight, male and female – had sex with adults from the ages of nine to 13. None feel they were abused. All say it was their conscious choice and gave them great joy … it is time society acknowledged the truth that not all sex involving children is unwanted, abusive and harmful.” Further, in 2008 Mr Tatchell had an article published in an Irish paper in which he argued that the law should allow adults to have sexual access to fourteen year olds.

So there you have it, buggering little boys is fine provided it is done by some depraved tribe or one of Mr Tatchell’s friends but not by a Catholic priest! There can be no more stomach churning humbug than the wheeling out by the media of men of the likes of Peter Tatchell to attack the Pope for the Church’s failures to adequately address the issue of abusive clergy. Mr Tatchell’s way to protect children from abuse is by redefining it so that abusive priests who succeed in persuading children that they want sex aren't criminal but legal lovers!

The opposition to the papal visit came from an unholy rat pack of condom waver, abortion peddlers, anal-copulating pimps, feminism fanatics and value-free sex-ed ideologues (and they tell us Catholics are obsessed with sex!). This sordid collective of those whose centre of gravity appears to be permanently fixed six inches below their belt buckles have already advanced into our primary schools and ensure that pornography seeps like sewage from million of teenagers’ bedroom computers. They will clearly not be content until they rule the world and have dismantled every last moral barrier.

And therein lays the rub. The only institution big and powerful enough to stand in their way is the Catholic Church. The Church may be undermined by the sex abuse scandals and compromised by the weak leadership of men of the ilk of Archbishop Vincent Nicholls, men who prefer to genuflect before the Zeitgeist than before Catholic truth and peddle diversity and equality like a card-carrying Marxists, but the Church has a history of rising from the ashes and there will always be a large remnant of genuine Catholic who, bloodied but unyielding, will not back down in this culture war … and we may take heart from the fact that we will not stand alone, there will always be others willing to stand alongside us.

If the campaign against the papal visit was really about protecting children, the signatories would have ensured that the egregious Mr Tatchell wasn't allowed within a mile of it - they didn't, because it isn't. Nevertheless, we should be grateful to Mr Tatchell for, unlike most of his ilk, he is honest enough to point out where the sexual revolution is headed.

Has the Church done enough?

Of course not! Whilst I have not the slightest doubt of the sincerity of Benedict XVI’s horror at what he calls these “unspeakable crimes”, the fact is that it is action that Catholics seek, not words. It is a depressing fact that nowhere in the entire world has a single bishop been disciplined for covering up child abuse and protecting the criminals - not one! On the contrary, Cardinal Law, one of the most prolific protectors of clerical child abusers in history, was called to Rome by JPII and given a plumb job!

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, who moved around child sexual predators (Father Michael Hill among several others) during his time as bishop of Arundel and Brighton, kept popping up during the recent papal visit. Furthermore, he has also been given the job of helping sort out the Irish Churches sexual predator problem - one honestly couldn’t make that one up. Can one imagine anyone in the secular world retaining such a position of responsibility with such an awful track record?

To understand the uncertain leadership and mixed messages Rome continues to put out: one needs merely to again recall that something in the order of ninety per cent of the perpetrators of clerical sexual abuse are homosexuals and then reflect that one of the supporting cast in the papal visit, the current Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, encourages, justifies and promotes homosexuality via his Warwick Street Masses and cannot even bring himself to state that the Church will never bless the unions of sodomites!

Hypocrisy

Before Vatican ll Catholics were taught that the four marks of the Church were that she is one, holy, catholic and apostolic. The post-Conciliar Church can surely add a fifth mark: hypocrisy - and the predatory sodomites in the ministry and their episcopal patrons are not the only charlatans. The sex abuse scandal has given the post-Conciliar Roman Protestants who fill our pews - the fruits of forty years of the Novus Ordo - the perfect excuse for apostasy. Tens of thousands who had never been abused, or even stood close to someone who had been, have found the perfect excuse to lie in bed Sunday morning. One can only assume that, according to what passes for logic among this generation of frauds, the fact that some sexual degenerate, who should never have been allowed within a million light years of the priesthood, violated young people, proves that the Son of God did not become man, redeem us on Calvary and found the Catholic Church?

WELCOMING ANGLICAN CONVERTS

2009-12-10T13:27:00.000-08:00

One of the most surprising and welcome recent items of news is Pope Benedict’s generous provision for Anglican converts seeking to escape the Noddy-land of Anglicanism. This will mean that groups of ex-Anglicans will be able to worship together free from bullying by local bishops who dislike the newcomers' conservatism, and who prefer the un-biblical "dialoguing" with heretics than saving their souls by welcoming them home into the one true Church.

The Pope appears to have done this without consulting either the Anglican or Europe’s modernist establishments. That alone is a reason for cheering: at last a post-Conciliar pope who acts as if he actually believes he has the Power of the Keys, rather than like the rather timid chairman of a board of governors. It must be good because Hans Küng doesn’t like it, and the Tablet is wailing loudly that the Pope should have consulted. There is a complete lack of integrity here of course, the only reason they want him to consult is because (had he restricted his consultation to Tablet readers) they believe he would have come to a different decision. The real reason that they are now consuming record quantities of Prozac is that they are deeply depressed at the prospect of a large influx of orthodox convert clergy.

Nevertheless, understandable traditionalist elation apart, there are good reasons for some caution. The document has not yet been published but one would be very concerned if it weakened the Church's commitment to clerical celibacy beyond the prudent limited concessions already made to earlier convert Anglican clergy. A more serious concern: given the English Church’s manifest complete lack of integrity in the reception of individual "converts" since the Council (the reception of Tony Blair, a man whose convictions are manifestly about as Catholic as my gatepost’s, illustrates my point) what honesty can we expect when receiving large numbers on mass?

There is only one reason to become a Catholic: the conviction that the Catholic Church is the one true Church founded by Christ, outside of which there is no salvation. It is not even sufficient to merely agree with the Church, one must submit one's intellect to her reality, rather in the manner that one submits without quibble to the proposition that 2+2 equals four. However, I fear that many of these Anglicans will be coming into the Church with the mindset of a man who has decided to switch to shopping at Sainsbury's rather than Morrison’s because he prefers the fish counter

THE KENNEDY FUNERAL SCANDAL

2009-09-30T13:30:00.000-07:00

With acknowledgement to Frs Brian Harrison, O.S. and Thomas Euteneuer, President of Human Life International.

It is no secret that there have always been priests, bishops and even popes, anxious to serve Caesar rather than God. Pope Stephen VI dug up the corpse of his predecessor and put it on trial in order to earn the favour of the Emperor; Blessed Fr Noel Pinot was sent to the guillotine by an apostate priest, and numerous priests sided with the murderous communists who sparked the Spanish civil war for some worldly benefit, such as the advancement of the Basque nationalist cause.

However, since the Council, many clerics have fallen head over heels in love with the world (which is just a more venerable word for the secular asylum). Nowhere was this more tragically illustrated than in the recent pantomime funeral for the late Senator Kennedy. The televised funeral Mass, celebrated in Boston's Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, was a scandal comparable to that given several months ago when America’s most prestigious “Catholic” university bestowed an honorary doctorate upon Barack Obama, the most pro-abortion and 'pro-gay' president in U.S. history. The message it sent out was, the Church is not serious about the defence of innocent human life or the sanctity of marriage; it’s more a disciplinary matter, like that old fish on Friday fixation.

The funeral had the usual farcical and embarrassing Novus Ordo canonisation: with Fr Mark Hession eulogising about what a wonderful Catholic Christian Ted was, assuring us that we could be "confident" that he is already with Jesus in glory! Well, I have news for Fr Hession, many are equally confident that Hell is full of what the world regards as “jolly good chaps”.

Senator Edward Kennedy, the secular, brash and privileged "Lion of the Senate" had everything that the world had to offer, including comprehensive political protection from his criminally buffoonish and cowardly causing of Mary Jo Kopechne's death. However, it and its subsequent cover-up were perhaps the least among the many sins he will have to account for before the Throne of Grace. Ted Kennedy went on to continue his murderous rampage throughout his political career with his constant advocacy of the legalized murder of abortion, and his defence of Roe-v-Wade by vetoing potential Supreme Court judges who might have rectified that terrible injustice. Ted Kennedy is a man with oceans of innocent blood on his hands.

Hitler is held in universal opprobrium for supporting policies that led to the death of millions of innocent human beings. Kennedy was held in universal approbation (by the left) for supporting policies that led to the death of millions of innocent human beings. How to explain? Well, I suspect the clue lies in that sacred cow of the left, “discrimination”. You see Hitler discriminated by concentrating the killing on one racial group, whereas Kennedy did not discriminate: his victims could be Jew or gentile, black or white, rich or poor, male or female. So this in the twisted logic of the secular asylum makes the killing okay, even praiseworthy, and earned for Kennedy the highest accolades of such organisations as Planned Parenthood and NARAL. In truth, he did of course discriminate: he picked his victims exclusively from the small, voiceless, unseen, and powerless; those who can neither fight back nor file a legal suite.

Boston Cardinal Séan O’Malley, stung by the worldwide outrage over this scandal, responded with the usual left wing blather about the senator’s work for the poor and not being judgemental. All humbug of course, because had Ted Kennedy espoused some cause anathema to the secular left, like holocaust denial, there is no way these worldly clerics would have staged this travesty of a Catholic funeral. No one of course may dare judge the state of the senator’s soul, that can and must be left to God, but his actions we most certainly can and should judge. Ted Kennedy and the clerics who staged this public scandal will not of course be the first to attempt to hide their betrayal of Christ behind a smokescreen of concern for the poor.

We must, as a matter of Catholic duty, earnestly pray for the salvation of heretical Catholics like Senator Edward Kennedy, but we do not have to praise him, let alone exalt him with the full honours of a public Catholic funeral. There was very little about Ted Kennedy's life that deserves admiration from a spiritual or moral point of view. Indeed, he was probably the worst example of a Catholic statesman that one could think of.

LIFE IN THE SECULAR ASSYLUM

2009-09-30T13:08:00.000-07:00

With acknowledgement to Oliver Sykes, a Remnant guest columnist.

When the Duke University-lacrosse-rape story broke in the spring of 2006, it sparked media feeding frenzy nationwide for more than two years and endless liberal posturing about white privilege versus a disadvantaged black woman.. In the few weeks following the woman’s Mar. 14 2006, claim that she had been raped, there were 1,367 stories, including extensive coverage on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, National Public Radio, NewsHour and all the major newspapers and magazines. The coverage was wall-to-wall. In the fifteen days following the arrest of the suspects in the Duke lacrosse story, on April 18 2006, there were an additional 1,056 news stories. But it all turned out to be a lie and the politically correct house of cards collapsed. The liberal media quickly moved on with no regrets about a rush to judgment

Now there is another Duke University-rape story, but this time, the liberal media is keeping tight-lipped. That is because this case involves a homosexual administrator who does AIDS research and who lives with his partner in a sexually liberated and eco-friendly housing community. He adopted two black boys; then drugged and sodomized one of the boys and broadcast the sodomy online, and offered the 5-year-old boy up via the Internet for other gays to abuse. This time there were nineteen news stories and most of these were cursory and in small, local newspapers!

Work that one out: a prominent gay Duke University official is nabbed in an FBI child-sex sting and there are 19 news stories, yet when two Duke Lacrosse players were wrongly arrested for supposedly raping a stripper there were more than 2,400 stories. Thus, the media serves the agenda of the godless - Joseph Goebbels could hardly do better.

The story has a happy conclusion - or as happy as possible in the circumstances. The two children are now in statutory care and we must hope and pray that they may finally find a home with a real mum and dad - and not again end up, serving the cruel agendas of secular liberals, with another brace of sodomites united in a sham marriage by nothing more holy then a mutual commitment to depravity.

A JEW CHAMPIONS CHRISTIANS’ RIGHTS

2009-05-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

Somewhere at the back of my mind I seem to remember that the Jews have an avenue in Jerusalem, or maybe Tel Aviv, in which the trees have been planted to commemorating the lives of “Righteous Gentile.” Each tree has a plaque bearing the heading “Righteous among the nations,” with a synopsis of the life of the individual celebrated. Aside, I also believe that one tree, shortly after WWII, was planted to commemorate the life of Pope Pius XII, in recognition of the 860,000 Jews he saved from Hitler’s gas chambers - more incidentally than all the governments of the world, and charities and noble individuals, such as Schindler (just over a 1000) added together! Well if Vatican City one day has a similar avenue celebrating the lives of non-Catholics who have made outstanding contributions to the Church, I should like to pay for a tree and a plaque for one Ezra Levant. Who is Ezra Levant many readers may well ask?

Ezra Levant is a Canadian Jew who, unlike our post-Conciliar bishops who tiptoe about in these situations like timid school girls, has taken on the Canadian government’s “Human Rights” Commission head on. Levant, in spite of being a Jew, had realized, what should be self-evident to any Catholic, that the bludgeoning international “Human Rights” industry, backed as it is by militant secularists, radical feminists, Muslim activists and the homosexual collective, is little more than a front for anti-Christian bigots in general and anti-Catholic bigots in particular. This is why the ADL, another “Human Rights” scam can turn up in busloads to express their outrage when some callow spotty teenage thug daubs a swastika on a synagogue, yet are nowhere to be seen when rent-a-mob from the homosexual collective trashes a church.

Ezra, clearly no mincing shrinking violet, set out deliberately, not to politely dialogue with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, à la post-Conciliar Church, but by a mixture of wits, courage and Jewish chutzpah, to blow a bloody great hole below their water line. And in this he has succeeded spectacularly! First he published on November 20, 2008 on his blog, ezralevant.com, the following:

“Come on people, wake up! It's time to stand together and take whatever steps are necessary to reverse the wickedness that our lethargy has authorized to spawn. Where homosexuality flourishes, all manner of wickedness abounds.

Don't allow yourself to be deceived any longer. These activists are not morally upright citizens, concerned about the best interests of our society. They are perverse, self-centered and morally depraved individuals who are spreading their psychological disease into every area of our lives. Homosexual rights activists and those that defend them, are just as immoral as the pedophiles, drug dealers and pimps that plague our communities.”

This resulted predictable in a gay activist, probable a cat’s-paw from the homosexual collective, lodging a complaint with the Canadian “Human Rights” Commission. However, on November 17, 2008, Mr Levant received a letter from Lucie Viellette, Secretary to the Commission, stating that the complaint filed against him had been dismissed on the grounds that he had published the article in question “with the goal of furthering a public debate on freedom of expression.”

You may well ask what is so significant about all this. Well, here comes the punch line: this was a perfect scientific experiment: you see, Mr Levant had republished, word for word, the very same "hate speech" that a Protestant Minister, one Stephen Boissoin, had published six years earlier. However, the Rev. Boissoin was found by both the Alberta Human Rights Commission and the Canadian Human Rights Commission to be guilty of hate speech. He was found guilty of violating Section 13 of the Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act. He received from the Alberta Human Rights Commission a hefty fine and a lifetime ban on preaching sermons that criticize homosexuality and a lifetime ban on private communications which are critical of homosexuality.

Mr Levant had merely re-published Boissoin’s words, attributing them to himself and then sat back and waited for the inevitable “human rights violation” complaint to be lodged against him. It was - but, unlike Rev. Biossoin, he was acquitted. Mr. Levant response: “I published the exact same words Rev. Boissoin used. I published the words in the exact same jurisdiction that Rev. Boissoin did – in Alberta. I published them in contravention of the exact same laws that Rev. Boissoin did – the Stalinist human rights acts. And a complaint was brought against me, just as it was against Rev. Boissoin. Only one thing was different. Rev. Boissoin is Christian. I'm Jewish.”

Not content to leave it there Ezra Levant re-published the infamous cartoons of Mohammed - provoking a predictable complaint from two Islamic fundamentalist. This time, the Commission, having been caught with their trousers down once, felt obliged to call Mr Levant to account. Click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzVJTHIvqw8; you will enjoy an object lesson on how to deal with secular bullies. One almost feels sorry for the “human rights” lawyer as she visible wilts before Mr Levant’s verbal onslaught - almost, but not quite.

"FIRE IN THE DARKNESS THAT COVERS MODERN EUROPE”

2009-03-13T12:47:00.000-07:00

PÈLERINAGE DE PENTECÔTE
(29-30^th May to 1-2^nd June 2009)
“The Pentecost pilgrimages are the most important annual events happening anywhere in the world today.”

With acknowledgement to the Remnant

It begins on the day before Pentecost when thousands of traditional Catholics from every corner of the world join their French brothers and sisters at dawn beneath the spires of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Three days later it ends in the city of Chartres, as some fifteen thousand dust-covered traditionalists complete the challenging march and kiss the stones of the ancient Cathedral of Notre Dame de Chartres. Much of what happens in between defies description.

Yes, Europe is in the process of banishing the old Faith from her shores! She’s busy legalizing every conceivable human depravity, butchering her babies, euthanizing her elderly, destroying the Christian family and the sacrament of matrimony. And, yet, in the midst of all this putrefaction, over the hill comes a jubilant band of thousands upon thousands of Catholic pilgrims from every corner of the globe, marching six abreast, in a column that takes an hour and a half to pass any given point, announcing to the whole world that the old Faith is still alive and in rude and hearty good health.

For three days, even secular France cannot ignore this strange and wonderful pilgrim parade, flanked by countless priests in muddied cassocks and purple stoles, the all but forgotten keepers of Europe’s altars. Throngs of scouts lovingly carry statues of Our Lady on their shoulders; banners of the saints are raised high for all to see; pilgrims sing forgotten hymns, renew broken vows, and celebrate Mass in the Rite of their forefathers, saints and martyrs. The Pilgrimage to Chartres is fire in the darkness that covers modern Europe.

The total cost is £250 (£125 for children under 12). This includes Coach travel to France, two night's hotel (B&B) accommodation (one in Paris and one in Chartres), 2-nights tented accommodation, Pilgrimage Registration, pilgrimage booklet, 3-course meal with a quarter bottle of wine on Monday evening, a quartet of charming, erudite guides who will take you places you never knew you wanted to go and return by Coach Tuesday. It is the bargain of the millennium!

Plus, at no additional cost, spiritual direction and confessions on the hoof, as many rosaries as you can manage, every hymn you ever thought of singing, three magnificent traditional High Masses in breathtaking settings (the memories of which you will take to the grave), All-night Exposition, hearty French breakfast every morning, medical facilities, wake-up calls, plenty of bread and water rations, hearty evening soup, as much wine as you can carry (if you're quick), blisters, chilblains, shin splints, bruises, aching muscles, in short, an unrivalled opportunity for penance! - everything, in fact, for the right-thinking Catholic to achieve salvation. What more could one possibly ask?

Seventy miles may seem daunting, but that said, a nine year old boy and a priest in his eighties completed the march with the British contingent one year. And free transport is provided by gloating Frenchmen for Brits who fall by the way side.

For free information pack, contact: CHARTRES 2008
27 First Avenue, AMERSHAM, HP7 9BL
Tel: 01494-729-223 or Email: Chartres@duc-in-altum.co.uk

The Tablet

2009-02-18T04:59:00.000-08:00

The Tablet, the favourite read of that malign spirit that describe itselves without any consciouse irony as "liberal" - this august publication used to be known affectionately by Catholics as "The Pill"; today, few can be bothered even to insult it. At the moment they are churning out hysterical articles suggesting that Rome is in meltdown owing to the overdue lifting of the contested excommunications on the SSPX.

If a former Muslim held the Koran in contempt and believed Mohammad was a false prophet, he would cease, if he had a scrap of personal integrity, to claim to be a Muslim. Yet former Catholics, who have long abandoned the faith of the Church in favour of the godless secular creed of the present-day North Atlantic civilisations, insist on continuing to describe themselves as Catholics, or more specifically, liberal Catholics.

It is difficult to understand the raison d’être of this seemingly bizarre humbug. Nevertheless, “Liberal Catholic” remains the label of choice of those who, too drunk on their own ignorance and pride to notice that they staggered into the wrong church, insist on continuing to live parasitic like on the Body of Christ. The Tablet serves this constituency - it should come as no surprise therefore to any informed Catholic that it is the favourite read of many of the hirelings who currently occupy English sees.

In so far as a lapsed Catholic who becomes a liberal Catholic can be said to have returned to the faith (which is self-evidently problematic), the Tablet’s current editor returned to the Catholic faith, having been through the Landings program at Ealing Abbey. Landings is a twelve step program designed in the United States for sensitive, middle-class lapsed Catholics of the sort to be found in the Ealing Abbey parish. As a "program", it's a vague and somewhat belated recognition that all is not well with the Catholic Church. Within seven years of her return, Catherine Pepinster was the Tablet's editor.

What separates Catholicism from all other “isms” is that the Church was founded by God in person when He walked the earth for the explicit purpose of carrying on His mission of sanctifying, ruling and teaching until the end of time. In order to be able to fulfil this assignment the Church has been given the charism of infallibility. Where it otherwise there could be no moral obligation to either embrace Catholicism or remain a Catholic, for the Church would have no more inherent right to claim our allegiance to her teachings than a drunk slumped on a bar stool putting the world to rights. Because the Church has been divinely commissioned, disagreeing with what she clearly and firmly teaches is not an option; indeed, it is not even an option merely to agree with what she teaches, one must simply and without reservations assent to it. J.R.R Tolkien summed it up when he wrote, "Catholicism is not a set of opinions to which one subscribes, but a reality to which one submits."

Strangely, Liberals “Catholics” never dispute such doctrines as the Trinity or the Incarnation. This is decidedly odd, for if the Church is not infallible, she is just as capable, and indeed if anything more likely, to be wrong about the Trinity and the Incarnation as she is about contraception. This oddity is explained by the fact that all liberal heresies have their epicentre about 6” below the belt buckle. This is not as bizarre as it would at first seem, because what they have done is simply swap the doctrines of the Faith for the various articles of blind faith of the present godless secular culture, a culture self-evidently preoccupied with sex.

Liberal “Catholics” appear to be aware in some obscure way of the irrationality in their creed and are consequently forced to resort to all sorts of painful mental gymnastics and self-deception to paper over the cracks. They are prone, for example, to clichés such as “moving with the times”. Quite why a Church that is the guardian of sacred truths revealed by God would want to dump those truths for the latest fashions of the godless is never of course explained. Indeed, if all Catholics have to do is embrace the latest moral fads of modern secularists, why on earth do we need a Church in the first place - especially one that judged by the liberal yardstick is promoting multiply grave errors?

Another obviously transparent trick is to pretend to perceive some sort of dichotomy between love and truth. One can only assume that when Christ said, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” He was being unloving! To tell a sodomite the truth that indulging in buggery is a short one-way ticket to hell is a loving thing to do. To leave him in ignorance to perish in his depravity is neither loving nor just; on the contrary, it is cruelly irresponsible.

“Christ was not a rigid rule follower” is yet another red herring liberal “Catholics” routinely trot out. But this is not exactly true, Christ was scrupulous in keeping the commandments and the just demands of the Jewish religious establishment, and encouraged others to be equally observant. What he objected to was the burden of the minutia of man-made rules and endless embellishments that had been laid over these just obligations by the Pharisees and others.

Yet another liberal decoy is to try and pass off their dissent from the clear and settled teachings of the Church as mere “squabbles among Catholics”. No well instructed Catholic could possibly be taken in by such patently deceitful gobbledygook, and it is doubtful to be honest that many liberals are so cerebrally challenged that they actually fully succeed in conning themselves with this line.

When public speaking at Catholic gatherings, the body language of liberal “Catholics” is very illuminating. They often appear uncomfortable with their own answers, and will give this away by involuntarily dropping their voices. They are also inclined to waffle and to lack clarity in responding to questions. This is not dishonesty; it arises from the genuine confusion and dialectic contradictions at the heart of their creed, rather than from any conscious intent to be evasive.

Catherine Pepinster has a MA in philosophy and religion from Heythrop College, London University. Nevertheless, she is clearly a lady who has only the vaguest grasp of Catholic doctrine (if she has any at all) and who holds heretical opinions on many serious issues of faith. She is a personable woman and honest according to her own confused lights and is young enough to learn, but it is not obvious where the motivation to do so will come from.

We have received legal threats and posturing from Catherine Pepinster’s solicitors concerning an earlier and shorter version of the above essay. Yet more evidence of the thin skins and illiberality of so called liberals, or perhaps one more spin-off from the insecurity inherent in embracing an irrational creed. To read the solicitor’s letter click here.

Answers on a postcard please.

2009-02-17T09:40:00.000-08:00

Following the overdue lifting of the contested excommunications of the SSPX bishops, there is now much blather in neo-Catholic land to the effect that the SSPX bishops will have to formally accept Vatican II before they can be fully reinserted into mainstream Catholicism.

Can someone tell me what specific article of faith is rejected by the SSPX that was unambiguous defined and formally imposed on the faithful by Vatican II, that was not part of the Catholic faith prior to Vatican II?

Answers on a postcard please.

GOD BLESS OUR POPE: The contested excommunications are finally lifted

2009-02-06T13:10:00.000-08:00

with acknowledgment to Gerald Warner

Benedict XVI grows in stature by the minute. To the achievement of the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, he has now added the sensible and overdue lifting of the always contested excommunications imposed on the four bishops of the SSPX. Although there was always widespread skepticism about the validity of those censures, their lifting removes a major roadblock to the restoration of the Church.

In the children’s animated cartoon, the Ice Age, a wooly mammoth, one of the principle characters, believes that he is the last of his species. However, half way through the story he is dlighted to find a female wooly mammoth to which he immediately takes a shine. Unfortunately, the female wooly mammoth his suffering from the delusion that she is a sloth and spends her time hanging upside down from trees, with disastrous consequences! Happily, with the aid of friends, she is persuaded over time that she is a mammoth. The final eureka moment comes when she realizes that her shadow is similar to that of the male wooly mammoth and they both live happy ever after.

What I found fascinating was watching the reaction of my grandchildren. They were fidgeting with frustration with this animal’s delusion. When the mist cleared and she accepted her “God given” nature, the collective relief was palpable.

The Church is the Ark of Salvation, the Body of Christ, the one true faith, the one true Church, founded by the God who threw the stars into their orbits and knit you and me together in our mother’s wombs; indeed, she is the very reason for the existence of the universe.

Yet for the past forty years, the Bride of Christ has been behaving as if there was no such thing as truth and error, right and falsehood, she was merely another religious tradition or one church among many. This widespread delusion and apparent insanity of our mother caused many orthodox Catholics to squirm with frustration. The lifting of the excommunications suggest that our mother is recovering from these delusions and her eureka moment may not now be far away. Then we shall all be able to breathe an enormous sigh of collective relief.

Not everyone will be dancing in the street of course: the Staff of the Tablet will probably need counseling - poor dears. Anything that moves the malign spirit of those who, without any conscious irony denominate themselves "liberals" to misery has to be great news.

Recently, a handful of Catholics, more noted for their mad optimism than solid faith, have been striving to persuade us to throw a party to "celebrate" the 50th anniversary of the calling of the Second Vatican Council. What sort of Catholic, one wonders, wants to celebrate the fact that in England and Wales in 1964, at the end of the Council, there were 137,673 Catholic baptisms; in 2003 the figure was 56,180. In 1964 there were 45,592 Catholic marriages, in 2003 there were 11,013. Mass attendance has fallen by 40 per cent. In "Holy" Ireland, only 48 per cent of so-called Catholics go to Mass. In France, there were 35,000 priests in 1980; today there are fewer than 19,000.

In the United States, in 1965, there were 1,575 priestly ordinations; in 2002 there were 450 - a 350 per cent decline. In 1965 there were 49,000 seminarians, in 2002 just 4,700. Today 15 per cent of US parishes are without priests. Only 25 per cent of America's nominal Catholics attend Mass. Worse still is the erosion of faith among those who ludicrously describe themselves as Catholics. Among US Catholics aged 18-44 (the children of Vatican II) as many as 70 per cent say they believe the Eucharist is merely a "symbolic reminder" of Christ.

To call this unparalleled implosion of the Church a "renewal" is a sign that one is as close to being a raving lunatic as one can get short of eating one’s own shirt - and to attribute it to the Holy Ghost is blasphemous.

The Catholic Church is in the same position as an alcoholic: until she admits that she has a problem, no cure is possible. The lifting of the contested excommunications is a sign that the Church is returning to mental health. Hopefully once the SSPX is back fully in the fold, they will be able to help prod our mother towards that final eureka moment when she once again fully and openly acknowledges and confesses her own God given nature.

Further down the road, another exciting prospect is that, once the final agreement is worked out, it opens the door to the canonization of Archbishop Lefebvre; that sadly I will not live to see.

In the meantime we can all look forward to sitting back and enjoying some innocent fun reading all the revisionist history being written by those who have been calumniating the SSPX for 20 years. Funniest of all will be the mental gymnastics of the post-Conciliar popeologist. These are the folk who if the Pope was to declare the sky green, would be peddling round excitedly telling everyone what a delightful shade of green the sky actually is.

Bishop Williamson's Outburst

2009-02-02T07:45:00.000-08:00

I was seven years old when WWII ended and the images that emerged from Nazi Germany shortly after the war of the Concentration Camps and their victims have seared themselves on my memory. Anyone who seek to minimise or make light of the suffering of The Jewish people, and indeed many others, at the hand of the Nazis (pagans and self-proclaimed heirs of the Enlightenment) during this dark period in the history of modernity, displays prima facie signs of criminal insanity.

That said, I do not support the sort of holocaust denial legislation in place in Germany. The problem is that what is being criminalized is precariously close to a thought crime. Once we hand these sorts of sanctions to liberal governments, it is only a matter of time before they are using them to persecute those who expose truths they find uncomfortable. One can find oneself in trouble in Turkey for example for drawing attention to Turkey’s role in the massacre of millions of Catholic Armenians. In Canada, a Christian minister can find himself in serious trouble for merely pointing out that sodomy is one of the sins crying to Heaven for vengeance.

Neither does it follow that I cannot acknowledge that the godless secular left’s preoccupation with the Holocaust is for the most part mendacious. It is driven by their desire to divert our attention away from the fact that their hands are dripping with innocent blood: the millions who died in the cruel purges of Stalin (a man idolized in his time by the British left) and his henchmen (all militant atheists) are but one of numerous examples.

The willingness of the secular left to sanction massacres, on a scale unknown before the age of Enlightenment, to advance their agenda is also born testament to by the current abortion holocaust. Indeed, if you want to drive a secular liberal apoplectic with rage, point out to him the similarities between the Nazi’s attitude to the Jews and the pro-aborts’ attitude to the unborn. Both have arbitrarily decided to define a sub-set of humanity as sub-human. Both have then equally arbitrarily decided that they may murder this sub-set if it serves their “laudable” purposes.

Neither should we ever forget that one of the first acts of the Christophobic Masons behind the French Revolution, the midwives in at the birth of modernity, was to organize a genocidal massacre of all Catholics in north west France. By the time this came to an end some 300,000 Catholics had been butchered by musket, rapier or drowning. So meticulous did the Infernal Columns carry out their “duties” that not even our pets and livestock were spared: whole villages were left full of our corpses: men, women, children and beast lay rotting side by side. The secular left, true to its mendacious form, has managed to entirely expunge that inconvenient little truth from the history books and the collective memory.

The recent decision of Edinburgh Social Services to remove two children from the care of their grandparent and place them with a brace of sodomites united in a sham marriage by nothing more holy than a mutual commitment to a disordered sexuality is merely one more illustration of the continual willingness of secular left ideologues to sacrifice the innocent on the altars of their distorted agendas.

No Catholic should ever watch television with his brains in his lap like a secularist. The mainstream media is controlled by the Christophobic left and even when they tell the truth they are lying. Just consider the recent saturation coverage of the murder of some two-hundred innocent Indians by Islamists in Mumbai. What was wrong with that you may ask? Nothing, except that an even larger number of Christians have suffered a similar fate at the hands of Hindu-fascists in the same country and of that the main stream media has reported absolutely nothing! To report such matters for the godless secularists who massage our news would clearly be the equivalent of reporting that so many flies had been swatted.

Nevertheless, the evidence for the cruel fate of the Jews under the Nazis, like the evidence for the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Our Blessed Lord, rest on the solid testimony of contemporary witnesses who were close to and even personally involved in these events. Further, just as the Apostles and others maintained their testimony in the face of persecution and cruel death, so some of the leading Nazis maintained their testimony while facing the hangman’s noose. Consequently, any traditionalist who seeks to seriously question the Holocaust, either with regard to the number of its victims or its methodology, is in danger of sawing off one of the main branch on which his own faith rests.

Against this background, when I read Bishop Williamson’s outburst on Swedish television, my jaw dropped. The Bishop confirmed his earlier infamous remark in Canada that “there was not one Jew killed by the gas chambers; it was all lies, lies, lies.” The Bishop further declares on camera that “I believe there were no gas chambers” and that “the historical evidence… is hugely against six million Jews having been gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler… I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews died in Nazi concentration camps, but none of them in gas chambers.”

“Jaw dropping” aside, I was not entirely surprised for I had a year or two earlier out of curiosity attended one of the Bishop’s lectures. My gut reaction, which has more often than not served me well, was that he was a vain man who clearly revelled in the notoriety (and the following) that his crackpot opinions gained for him. He had clearly never met a conspiracy theory that he didn’t absolutely adore. Further, this array of way-out opinions were seemingly held with the sort of moral certainty that Catholics normally reserves for dogmas of the faith - yet the evidence marshaled to support them seldom rose above knowing winks, nods and nose tapping in the general direction of some sort of Gnostic knowledge of his inner circle.

I recently wrote that the next decade or two is shaping up from the Devil’s perspective to be one of the most decisive battles of history. It is a matter of enormous regret that the Devil has been handed an easy victory on a plate, in one of the first skirmishes in this gathering cosmic war, by a level of stupidity seldom found in nature in one of our own “generals”. Indeed, were Bishop Williamson a military man, he would now be facing a court marshal for negligently aiding the enemy.

Hopefully, once the SSPX position is regularized, entirely admirable men like Bishop Fellay who has already moved swiftly to distance the Society from Williamson, will be in a position to deal with such matters both effectively and decisively. In the meantime, if Bishop Williamson had the love for the Church and tradition that he claims, he would fall on his sword - and today rather than tomorrow.

Probably the funniest poster I've ever seen

2009-01-29T18:00:00.000-08:00

On the Lighter Side

2009-01-23T08:51:00.000-08:00

A Protestant minister was baptising people in a river. A drunk staggers upon the scene and enquires, “What are you doing?” “I’m helping people find Jesus,” replied the minister. “I want to find Jesus.” declares the drunk. The minister takes him kindly by the arm and leads him out until he is up to his waist and then dunks him under the water. Lifting him out, the minister enquires, “Have you found Jesus?” “No” says the drunk. The minister dunks him even deeper and holds him under for a few seconds. Lifting him out he again enquires have you found Jesus. “No” splutters the drunk. The minister again dunks him under even deeper and he holds him under for some thirty seconds. He then lifts him out and repeats “Have you found Jesus brother?” The drunk gasping for breath, stutters, “No … are you certain he fell in here?”

Hail to the “Messiah”!

2009-01-23T02:45:00.000-08:00

The ecstasy and salivating adulation of the deeply anti-Catholic secular left (plus a handful of post-Conciliar modernist prelates) at the election of Barack Obama should compel all Catholics to pause for reflection.

A white man who voted for McCain for no better reason than that he was white would be denounced (and quite rightly so) as a racist bigot. Why then is a black man who voted for Obama, as ninety-nine percent of African Americans appear to have done, for no better reason seemingly than that he is black (or perceive to be so) doing something noble? The liberal proclivity for placing their emotions where their intellect should be frequently results in double standards that are nothing if not absorbing. Deciphering such conundrums is all part of the fun of life in the secular asylum.

Barrack Obama is fanatically committed to abortionism and the culture of death and he is therefore by definition deeply anti-Catholic. Even if he makes good on his promise to bring home American troops, the number of Americans, and others, unjustly killed on his watch is set to multiply many times over.

I recently wrote that we are in a spiritual battle and the next decade or so is shaping up to be from the Devil’s prospective one of the most decisive battles of history. As mere mortals our noses are far too close to the canvas to see or understand the cosmic picture. Nevertheless, I have a distinct feeling that another piece of the jigsaw has just clicked into place.

Not so long ago a child survived abortion in the State of Illinois. The surgeon placed the child in a bucket and left it in the closet to die. A nurse, who became aware of what had happened, recovered the child, wrapped him in a towel and nursed him on her lap until he died. The press carried the story and this resulted in the Illinois Senate passing a Bill to ban the killing of a child born alive as the result of a failed abortion attempt.

Obama was the only Senators to vote against this bill … on several occasions. The following are some of the reasons Obama gave for his opposition: “a ban to stop aborted babies from being shelved to die would be burdensome to mothers”; “aborting babies alive and letting them die is a doctor's prerogative”; “aborting babies alive and letting them die is a religious issue”; “aborting babies alive and letting them die violates no universal principle”; “introducing legislation to stop live aborted babies from being shelved to die was a political maneuver.”

Obama is a man who is so keen on abortionism that he will support infanticide to protect it! The free world is now led by a man whose moral compass appears to be about as well developed as some of the leaders of the Third Reich, whose regime’s rise to power was also incidentally via the ballot box. Tremble dear readers and pray without ceasing.

A friend once amusingly remarked that the reason that Catholics are blamed for all the horrors of history is that we are the only one’s still around to take the blame. There is more truth in this witty aside than one may first envisage. The reason that the world hates us with such a white hot intensity is that deep in their subconscious they know that when their tacky Godless civilization has passed into the dustbin of history, as all other civilizations have before them, we shall still be here. The worldlings know it and the fury drives them insane. Catholics to vanquish have merely to survive, and all we have to do to survive is do what our forefathers have always done: keep the Faith.

In the meantime, President Elect Obama will do well to remember, that the beast that hailed the Messiah on Palm Sunday was the same mindless beast screaming “crucify him” on Good Friday.

Dialogued is Dead RIP

2009-01-22T12:14:00.000-08:00

Abridged and adapted from an article in the Remnant

A positive consequence of the ruckus over the Good Friday prayer is that “inter-faith dialogue” was exposed for the nonsense it always was. The instant Peter brought Christ the Saviour of all men back to the table, his “dialogue partners” began picking up their toys and didn’t want to play anymore.

For forty years they’ve been jabbering about this ill-defined "dialogue" and yet things have only gone from bad to worse. After all, fundamental religious differences aren't exactly rocket science: he says Christ was merely a rabbi; she says Christ was only a prophet; they say He is whatever they want Him to be; and we say He is the Son of God. How is a lot of inter-faith blathering going to cause any of these contradictory beliefs to suddenly gel - unless, of course, “divisive” dogma is knocked for six? And once that happens, how is a “better understanding” of anything ever going to be achieved? But such blatantly obvious contradictions don’t register with the enlightened dialoguers. They remind one of those lunatic sex “educators” in public schools calling for still more sex education after veritable epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases began spreading among their robustly sex-educated teenagers. “If it doesn’t work, don’t fix it!” seems to be their motto. It would appear that ecumeniacs and sex “educators” have much in common. Bottom line: Inter-faith dialogue hasn’t worked. Tensions between the religions are getting worse every day. Why? Because inter-faith dialogue doesn’t serve truth - it buries it!

Dialogue is premised on a certain unspoken willingness on the part of the Catholic Church to downplay her own doctrine, if not actually renege on her claim to be the one true Church. If there was ever any doubt of this before, there isn’t now. The Pope revised one prayer to be said once per annum by a minority of Catholics and what did his “dialogue partners” do? As the Bible puts it, they rent their garments. Why? - because the fundamental rule of dialogue was violated by nine words written by the pope: “acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Saviour of all mankind.” Anathema! He has blasphemed! Dialogue be damned!

Clearly, this sort of dialogue isn’t really about achieving a "better understanding” of anything; our “dialogue partners” understand perfectly well the theological differences. What they evidently want is for the Church to modify her teachings to say that Christ is Saviour but only for Catholics and those who believe in Him - not for all men! Evidently, this has been the ultimate goal of inter-faith dialogue from the start.

Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told Reuters Television she couldn’t imagine that this “German pope could impose such phrases upon his church.” Impose what phrases? That Christ is the Saviour of all men? Yes, who does he think he is - the POPE? No wonder Alan Brill of Seton Hall concluded that the Pope’s prayer marks “the end of the era of John Paul II, the era of reconciliation.”

The “party pooper” here is Christ, of course. If Benedict were to hold up Mickey Mouse as the Saviour of all men, the dialoguers would no doubt hail his intellectual courage and continue doing whatever it is that dialoguers do. Which raises an interesting question: What exactly do dialoguers do? What is their point and purpose? How often do they dialogue? Can one watch them dialogue on YouTube? What was going on behind dialogue doors all these years to leave poor Mrs. Knobloch convinced that Popes are no longer permitted to pray that all men might acknowledge Christ as saviour? Obviously, they weren’t talking about Him in there. One word about the Saviour and the dialoguers stormed off in a huff. “The inter-religious dialogue has suffered an enormous setback,” Mrs. Knobloch sobbed to Reuters, “because of this version [of the prayer] and I assume that one will find a way very soon to continue the dialogue, but at the moment I don’t see it happening.”

Does Mrs. Knobloch actually imagine anyone in the real world gives two hoots about dialogue. What has inter-faith dialogue done for you lately? As the world plunges into universal warfare (without precedent in human history!), terrorism and economic collapse, is there a single shred of evidence that inter-faith dialogue has been anything other than part of the problem? Cardinal Kasper has devoted his life to it, Mrs. Knobloch thinks it's a bomb, but what does it mean for folks with real jobs, mortgages and mouths to feed? I can’t imagine!

Has there ever been a clearer indication of the sheer pointlessness of “dialogue” than that the Catholic Church is now expected to set aside her foundational teachings on salvation even in her own prayers and in her own backyard, in order to sit across the table from Mrs. Knobloch and talk about — WHAT? What in thunder does this woman want to talk about?

“As long as the Catholic Church, that is to say Pope Benedict, does not return to the previous wording, I assume that there will not be any further dialogue in the form that we were able to have in the past.”

Yes, and what a shame, have a nice day!

In the meantime, the Muslim convert to the Catholic Faith who was baptized by Pope Benedict on Holy Saturday, made a comment that could formulate the caption beneath this whole tragic picture. Shortly after Magdi Allam, 55, had been baptized into Christianity – taking the name “Christian” as his baptismal name – he asserted that the “Catholic Church has been too prudent about conversions of Muslims, abstaining from proselytizing in majority Muslim countries and keeping quiet about the reality of converts in Christian countries”.

Welcome to the Titanic, Magdi! The Catholic Church since Vatican II has been “too prudent” about most things, especially teaching her own doctrines to her own children. Want proof? Ask a Catholic sixth grader what the hypostatic union is, or the beatific vision, or even the Fourth Glorious Mystery. Better yet, ask him to give you the Ten Commandments. If you’re lucky, he may hand you a DVD of a Charlton Heston film.

Our best bet is that the sheer folly of inter-faith dialogue will be fully recognized by the hierarchy before any more of the Catholic Church is swallowed up whole by the new order of the age. Pope Benedict speaks often and eloquently about reclaiming Catholic identity - what better way to do just that than to suspend this exercise in futility and get back to the business of preaching the Catholic Faith, whole and entire, to all the nations of the world.

We would, therefore, like to make common cause with our Jewish brothers who in recent weeks have suspended dialogue with the Catholic Church over the revised Good Friday prayer. This, it seems to us, is wise beyond words and we urge our Catholic leaders to support this Jewish initiative without further delay.