Modernity is the progeny of Freemasonry: the zeitgeist, with its false notions of liberty, was conceived in Masonic lodges and is doomed to create yet another secular asylum.

One of my family has sadly fallen head over heals in love with the zeitgeist, so much so that he will now own any opinion that does not come with a BBC imprimatur - nor reject any that does.  He recently showed his frustration with my repeated references to the “secular asylum” by sarcastically remarking, “I almost wonder whether your word processor has an app to throw it randomly, at least once a paragraph?”  I thought that was rather a splendid idea, and wondered if anyone knew where I could find such a thing.

In the late sixties, the seventies and eighties I was pro-actively involved in the pro-life movement; I built the largest local pro-life group in the UK and chaired it for twenty-five years.  In the course of that work, I regularly organised, and chaired, public meetings.  It was my practice when doing so to send invites to the local pro-abort organisations, who would obligingly turn up and heckle from the back of the hall.  I would respond by addressing their leaders directly from the platform and inviting them to join me on the platform and use the microphone to make their case.  Rather than lose face, they would usually take up the offer.  When they had finished, I would ask the audience to put questions to them.  Five minutes or so later, I, taking pity on their obvious discomfort, would reclaim the microphone.  Then, as they descended from the platform, I would invite the audience to give them a round of applause for their courage.

Fast forward and compare that civilised and courteous exchange with today: just watch your average Question Time to understand what I mean.  For example, could one imagine in one’s wildest dreams, Shami Chakrabarti, the current director of Liberty, a hard-Left pressure group that hides behind the façade of human rights (and hopes that we have forgotten that it once campaigned for legalised incest), treating her opponents with the sort of liberality I have just described?   I have no particular axe to grind with Ms Chakrabarti, I’m sure this young lady, who unfortunately suffers from the disability of invariable looking as if she has cod-liver oil swilling round her back teeth, is a pleasant enough soul; I merely cite her as a sort of poster girl for the phenomena that I am describing.  Just watch her leading a snarling pack of secular liberals that is set upon anyone who dares to question their latest dogma.  Anyone brave enough to query, in the mildest possible terms, secular myths like global warming, or question, again in the mildest possible terms, whether two men addicted to using one another’s bottoms as masturbatory aids can in reality claim to be married, will be lucky to escape alive.  There will be no attempt on the part of the secularists to argue their case rationally; the person daring to question their latest dogmas will simply be subjected to mob intimidation, and soon after will disappear from public view with a liberal fatwa on their heads.  So the question is: why is the secular liberal seemingly compelled to be so manifestly illiberal.  The answer is, somewhat like an onion, multi-layered.

A good priest explain it thus: a Catholic ought in theory to be intolerant because he is the custodian of revealed truth and consequently error is, or should be, deeply repugnant to him.  He is tolerant in practice because he loves.  The secularist should be tolerant in theory because he denies the possibility of absolute truth.  He is intolerant in practice because he does not love.

This insight, whilst true, only takes us so far.  Modern political life was conceived in the wombs of Masonic lodges and brought to birth in the French and American revolutions.  The dogma at the core of that political reality is that Christ has no place in the public forum.  But if Christ has no place in the public forum, Christ be not God.  But Christ is God.  Therefore the whole edifice that we call modernity is built upon a colossal lie.  And a place where people live by colossal lies is by definition an asylum - and this particular asylum is quintessentially secular.  Hence my repeated references to life in the secular asylum are dead accurate.

And the inmates of an asylum are inherently intolerant.  In an asylum, if a man comes up to you and asserts that he is a horse or Napoleon Bonaparte or that he as just returned from Mars, the last thing you do is respond, “Oh no you’re not.”   The reason you do not reply by asserting the truth is because doing so may very well spark a violent reaction.  Scruples dictate that you should not confirm the delusion, so you move into small talk; the weather is usually a safe option.

Similarly, in today’s secular asylum, a man can invite me to meet his wife and then wheel out some hairy fellow.  Again, I cannot say, “No that’s not your wife, that’s very obviously a bloke.”  The reason is the same as in the asylum: I fear the violence that the truth may provoke.  Yet again some fellow can have himself castrated and pumped full of artificial hormones to make his breast grow and insist that we call him Susan.  Once more, one dare not point out, what is no more than the bleeding obvious, that he is actually a block who has been surgically and chemically mutilated, and that he is no more a woman than he is a horse, because to do so may provoke violence - so we discuss the weather.

There is yet another issue at work, to recognise a lie, you must first believe in truth.  But there’s the rub, for those in charge of the secular asylum no longer believe that there is such a thing as objective truth - except paradoxically they do believe that “there is no such thing as an objective truth” is an objective truth!  Yet, if there is no such thing as objective truth, then the belief “that there is no such thing as an objective truth” is merely a dogma of their new secular religion, an article accepted on blind faith; and, like all dogmas, because it cannot be dispassionately argued, it must be imposed by intimidation and force.

If you are among the few who have managed to remain sane in the secular asylum, you see examples daily of this relativizing of truth all around you, indeed, there are so many that it is difficult to know where to start.  The advance of an irrational intolerance in the secular asylum is now such that we have reached a tipping point from which it is difficult to see us turning back.  I’ll give just a handful of up to date examples.

Example 1: recently the actress, Cynthia Nixon, was quoted as saying that for her being gay was a conscious choice.  Nixon is “engaged” to a woman with whom she has been in a relationship for eight years.  This remark, which she stood by when challenged, brought the gay rights movement and the secular liberal establishment down on her head like a ton of bricks.  Why?  Because it is not politically expedient for the secular liberal agenda for it to be “a choice”; note, whether it is true or not is no longer deemed relevant, truth is no longer even an issue.  It is whether it serves the agenda - or not - of those who run the secular asylum that is now the only issue.  Not one of the scores of talking heads who attacked Ms Nixon challenged the truth of her statement; they merely condemned her for letting the side down by telling the truth.  “It wasn’t helpful,” would sum up most of the comments.  Only in an asylum could truth be describes as “not helpful.”

Example 2: recently, somewhere in the north of England, three Moslem men were convicted of a hate crime and are currently looking at a prison sentence.  Their crime was to distribute leaflets that argued that sodomy should be a crime and the penalty for it should be death.  Now let me state up front that this is a view that I regard as quite definitely crackpot, but my sympathies are not the issue here.  What is an issue is that the entire case against these men was built on lies, and, for the few sane men left in the secular asylum, obvious lies.

First we were solemnly informed that the gay community felt intimidated by these leaflets.  No they didn’t!  There was not a single gay man in the UK who took them even a teensy-weensy bit seriously.  The only way one could be intimidated by them was if one believed that there was a possibility of the men persuading parliament to implement such a law, and no sane man believed that.

The second lie was told by the judge when he informed the accused that the law does not allow us to discriminate on ground of “sexual orientation”.  Again not true, the law does nothing to prevent us discriminating against paedophiles for example, which is obviously just as much a “sexual orientation” as is homosexuality.  Had these three men suggested that the penalty for convicted paedophiles should be a good flogging, their views, rightly I believe, would have been dismissed as idiotic, but there would have been no policeman fingering their collars.

Example 3: Pat Buchannan after ten years has been silenced as a political analyst at MSNBC because of a clamour from the left that to permit him continued access to the microphones would be dangerous and an outrage against public decency.  What this actually meant is that he wasn’t routinely parroting the dogmas of their new secular religion, so he had been condemned by the Sanhedrin for blasphemy.  The leaders of an organization that had self-certified itself as America’s leading voice for lesbians, bisexuals, gays and transgendered people rent their garments and squealed that Buchanan’s “extremist ideas are incredibly harmful to millions of LBGT people around the world.”  His extremist ideas? - he believed, along with the vast majority of the human race, that anal copulating was “unnatural and immoral.” 

On cue, Abe Foxman, the leader of the Anti-Defamation League, a publicly funded hard-Left gang of Jewish bully boys, who has sought to have Pat censored for twenty-two years, piled in.  Pat crime here was to have written that “America’s shrinking Jewish population is due to the collective decision of Jews themselves.”  What else explains the projected decline by 50 percent by 2050 of the Jewish population of America, if not the “collective decision of Jews themselves”?   But, I forgot, truth in the secular asylum is not the issue.  Silly me, I keep forgetting.

Example 4: A recent article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, argues that newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life”. The academics also argue that parents should be able to have their baby killed when it is born.  The journal’s editor, Prof Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, said those who made abusive and threatening posts about the study were “fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society”.  Note: the values of a liberal society are presumed to include openness to publicly promoting murder, but we may not publicly suggest that anal copulating may be immoral - and my family member believes that we are not living in a secular asylum!

I am very reluctant to use the word “fascist” because it is one of those words so overused by the Left that it has been rendered meaningless, but I fail to see the big difference between the ideological Nazis who forces Jews to wear large yellow stars on their breast in public and the ideological secularists who closes down Catholic adoption agencies because we were not prepared to place vulnerable children with braces of sodomites.   Indeed, on further reflection, faced with an option between walking around with a large yellow star pinned on my breast and placing a vulnerable child for whom I was responsible with a brace of sodomites, I’ll take the star any day.

In Britain today a good married couple can be turned down for adoption because the man confessed to enjoying an annual cigar on his birthday, while the same man, had he confessed to regularly using his best mates bottom as a masturbation aid, would have had a statutory right to adopt!  Similarly, the same lunatics will deny a black child a home with a white couple on the grounds that the child may not cope well with this obvious incongruity in his life, yet will give the same child a hairy bloke for a “mum”, while assuring us that the child won’t notice the obvious incongruity.

The downsides of the belief that there is no such thing as objective truth, is all beliefs become mere dogmas.  And what cannot be supported by reason or evidence, by its very nature, must be imposed by force.  This is why both Communists and the Nazis were doomed inexorably to create Hells on earth; and our current secular masters of the universe are moving, indeed, are compelled to move, inexorably in the same direction.  The closing down of Catholic adoption agencies will prove but the first of many draconian measures yet to come.  Obama latest sally against Catholic institutions is but another stepping stone on the road to yet one more secular hell in a long line of secular hells.  The direction in which we are moving is now obvious, only the speed of travel remains in contention.

Is there then no hope?  Well, from the Catholic perspective there must always be hope.  Has not the Church watched a thousand such asylums come and go; and outlived every one of them?  The secularists are aware of this and that is why they fear and loath the Church.  The Freemasons and homicidal lunatics behind the French Revolution were buried by Napoleon within fifteen years; the Communists, who believed that they were the future of the world, are now merely a project for “O” levels students; in Spain 75 years ago an unholy alliance of liberals, socialist, communists and anarchists murdered in cold blood some 15,000 innocent Catholics, yet before the decade was out, the perpetrators of this gruesome slaughter were facing the firing squads of the triumphant Nationalist army; the German Nazis, who boasted that their empire would last a thousand years, managed to barely clock up ten; so why should we assume that our latest condom waiving, depravity pimping, global warming myth peddling, Christophobic masters of the universe are going to fare much better than the last lot - or the lot before them?  

It is obviously true that the emasculated post-Conciliar Church has been unable to put up the resistance that our forefathers in faith would have done, but even here things are stirring.  Recently, several thousand young traditional French Catholics brought a blasphemous play to a halt in Paris.  Where did these young people come from?  - nothing in contemporary culture or the enfeebled post-Conciliar Church can even begin to explain their existence.  In England, where Catholics have endured a forty year nightmare of dreary bog-standard post-Conciliar Modernists syndicating English sees, we now, against all the odds, have a genuine Catholic man on the see of Shrewsbury - and this just when many of us had given up hope of seeing such a marvel in our lifetime.  Bishop Mark Davis’s appointment could well mark the beginning of the end for the effete, stomach turning, bromidic Warlock x Hume bloodline - we can but pray and fast.  Whilst there no hard evidence that any of our English bishops are Masons, if something walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, one can hardly be faulted for wondering …

Ultimately, our hope is not of this world: Our Blessed Lady, when she appeared at Fatima, warned us of the coming triumph of what we may now call the dictatorship of relativism - but she also promised us that her Immaculate Heart would ultimately triumph.  One would need to be a very foolish man indeed to distrust the word of the Queen of Heaven, for, although she is undoubtedly gentle and meek, she is also known to have some awesomely powerful friends.

With Joe Stanley and a bloke in a wig and floral frock reading the bidding prayers at Vincent Nichols’ scheduled Masses for militant gays at Warwick Street, most Catholics can but weep for the once great English province of the Roman Catholic Church.

If a hairy bloke in a wig and floral frock reading the bidding prayers at Mass, cheered on by a dissident cleric, strikes you as a fantasy from Hell, then you probably haven’t viewed the new video on YouTube of the special Masses at Warwick Street for militant homosexuals and a supporting cast of dissident clerics organised by Archbishop Vincent Never-Answer-a Straight-Question Nichols.  Click here to view video now. 

Any genuine Catholics would of course be sick to the stomach to see such sacrilege regularly taking place with the blessing of the English episcopacy.  Nevertheless, were it not for the sacrilege, it would be hilariously funny.  Indeed, Monty Python would be hard pressed to come up with anything quite so surreal - our Archbishop has clearly missed his vocation.

How’s this for surreal: we have a bidding prayer praising God for 97-varieties of wall-to-wall “life giving” sex, which is then followed by a bidding prayers for all their friends who have been killed by that same “life giving” sex.  One honestly couldn’t make it up.

Then there is Joe Stanley’s comical flogging-to-death of the word “integrity”.  However, their litany of “joyful and life giving” sexual disorders (“orientations” they would no doubt prefer to call them) which they claim “embraces the fullness of human diversity and excludes no one,” in reality excludes a whole raft of sexual “orientation” - sadomasochism and paedophilia, to name but two of scores? 

The latter omission is especially odd given that the poster boy of the gay rights movement, the Teflon-coated Peter Tatchell, has assured us that, “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 …”  

So why such an exclusive litany that clearly doesn’t even begin to “embrace the fullness of human diversity and exclude no one”? - what’s happened to all that “integrity” you keep banging on about Joe? 

CATECHISING CHRIST’S LITTLE ONES

“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

WELCOMING ANGLICAN CONVERTS

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

A JEW CHAMPIONS CHRISTIANS’ RIGHTS

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”

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

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.

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

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.

Dialogued is Dead RIP

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.