Portsmouth Roman Catholic

The biblical readings which we just heard presented us with the image of two families  on pilgrimage to the house of God . Elkanah and Hannah bring their son Samuel to the Temple of Shiloh and consecrate him to the Lord (cf.  1 Sam  1:20-22, 24-28). In the same way, Joseph and Mary, in the company of Jesus, go as pilgrims to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover (cf.  Lk  2:41-52). We often see pilgrims journeying to shrines and places dear to popular piety.  These days, many of them are making their way to the Holy Door opened in all the cathedrals of the world and in many shrines. But the most beautiful thing which emerges from the word of God today is that  the whole family goes on pilgrimage . Fathers, mothers and children together go to the house of the Lord, in order to sanctify the holy day with prayer. It is an important teaching, which is meant for our own families as well. Indeed, we could say that family life is a series of pilgrimages, both small and big. For example, ho

Bishop Egan is to be congratulated on his recent pastoral letter.   He points out the need to find ways to make marriages work.    Yes, I too was disappointed and said so in my post that the Synod failed to address the issue of family failure and give helpful advice.   The trouble is that our society is anti-marriage and to live as Christ wanted us to live in this Domestic Church has become very difficult.   Yet the family is where the children learn about love by being loved and if the family is dysfunctional and that love is missing it takes a great deal of grace for a child to love him or her self.    Many parents in care never even have the love of one person for very long as staff move on ion their careers and they grow up as the most helpless of beings.   I was delighted that after the letter was read there were real prayers offered for the protection of the family rather than the glib idea that good marriages are an ideal.  Christ did not preach that marriage was an ideal. Y

May I wish a happy Christmas to the Archbishop of Canterbury for supporting the sentiments in my blog.  I have heard nothing from my immediate Catholic circles not even something I have been campaigning for - prayers for the Christians in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.   But despite this I will wish them all a HAPPY  CHRISTMAS.

They are sure that Islam is a Religion of Peace, and woe to you if you don’t fall in line behind them.  They don’t want to hear about Islamic supremacism or about Muslim  persecution  of Christians.  Instead, they bow and scrape before imams and Muslim leader s who have never lifted a finger to stop Muslim persecution of Christians. They actively work to silence and marginalize those who speak out about this persecution.  They consign today’s new martyrs to their fate, sacrificing them on the altar of their fruitless, delusional and self-defeating quest for “dialogue” with Muslims.  How many Christians has that “dialogue” prevented from being persecuted or martyred?  Why, absolutely none, of course.  But the comfortable suburban Church continues on its comfortable suburban way, secure in its illusions and delusions. One day, however, the truth it has so assiduously endeavored to ignore, deny and suppress will dawn upon it with undeniable and terrifying reality, and maybe

This is the First Commandment.  "You will have no other Gods before me"   When reading the Old Testament we can see God as very hard and intolerant.   He revealed Himself to a tribe which became knows as the Chosen People.   To this people he revealed the truth that God had made mankind in his own image and likeness and if man had fallen then it was by his own will.   But He promised that He would one day through a Messiah bring mankind back to that first union he had with them when he made them with all the perfection he could as a Creator and with all the graces that made them special friends.   But this relationship was in the future and meanwhile try though they may the Israelites often ignored his mercy and were as brutal in war and ambition as any other desert tribe.   this was fallen man and without knowing the love of God they could not change.   The Old Testament is therefore the history of man without grace and the New Testament the history of Mankind living as St P

Why are we unable to interest so many young people in Marriage and instead excuse cohabitation as something that is part of the living experience so we cannot do anything. The answer is not easy so perhaps that is the reason we stop searching.   The answer is uncomfortable so that is why we avoid it.  And what is the answer?  It is for bishops and priests to get out of their comfort zones and start teaching what Christ taught.   Does anyone doubt that Christ did not approve of Divorce and Remarried.  Some will say He is full of Mercy and Understanding and He would not really condemn us, despite what He says in Luke 10.  And anyway he was not serious in most things he said about sin, hell, and punishment, he really just taught ideals.    I think not.   Jesus was building a Kingdom here on earth that was totally just and totally loving.   He established a Church to carry out His wishes and that Church until now has failed miserably.  What individuals who excuse their actions on conscie

A Church employee was on the road to Jericho when he found a young boy lying at the side of the road.   He stopped to speak to the boy.  "I have left home" the boy said.  "Why?" the official asked him.     "My mother and father were divorced, probably because of me, and she brought in another man I was to call uncle, he did not like me and I did not like him,  he abused me so I have run away". "Dear, dear" said the Church employee "what a terrible world we live in, but perhaps it is better to live at home than die in the streets,  go home and I will pray for you"   Then a priest came along and saw him.  He also approached the boy and heard the same story.  "I am so sorry that this has happened to you but then your parents are just humans and we only have an ideal world to live in where nothing is perfect.  But remember Jesus loved you, he died on the Cross for you and so take comfort in that.   He went  on his way feeling he had gi

ll my many years as a Catholic I have never heard this phrase in the Petrine Text explained.   I am going back to the Pre-Vatican II Church in saying this since today it is almost impossible to hear the full Petrine text explained except in some mumblings about the Faith of Peter which largely ignore his place as head of the Church.   I suppose it has something to do with ecumenism where we are more interested in pleasing Protestants than teaching Catholics.   So let me take a stab as a layman to explain scripture since nobody else in interested in doing so.  The Gates of Hell protect the Kingdom of Evil in this world.  It holds sway over so many and do you remember when Jesus in the desert was tempted by the Devil the Lord was offered all of these Kingdoms by Satan.    When Jesus founded his Church it was His army in His Kingdom who would fight against the world and conquer it, making it truly the Kingdom of Heaven.   It would batter down the gates of that evil Kingdom.   Of cours

In Matthew 28 we read of Jesus sending his disciples to evangelise the world.   "All Authority (that word again) is given to me, go therefore to all nations baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching to to OBSERVE (does he really mean indoctrinate) all I have commanded you, and behold I am with you all days, even to the end of the world"  He may well have secretly thought that Observe would not be appropriate in the 20th century where people would be so educated that they could think for themselves, but let us concentrate on Baptism. Baptism has to do with Original Sin.  So what is Original Sin? At the time of Moses someone in Israel looked around him.  He saw how men were evil and committed so many offences against one another.   Surely a God who was perfect could not create such imperfect men, he asked himself.   Then he remembered the legends of his tribe that once men were perfect and close to God but somehow they by t

Why am I a Catholic?   Why do I not just 'move on' and join the thousands who form communities of love and forget all this Popery and Truth and Morality?     Why am I so 'Negative?  Why do I enjoy being unpopular? In one way it is because having seriously studied the Catholic Faith I am convinced that Christ established a Church that would guard and defend all that he had taught and was indeed the Way, the Truth, and the Light for the salvation of all the world.  The teachings of the Church still teach what Christ taught on morality and does not excuse the sin of adultery just because everyone is doing it, not does she accept divorce as part of the human experience for there is nothing that Jesus despised more than Divorce  Matthew 10.  I remember asking a couple who were entering the Church why they were doing so.   They responded that they wanted to know the Truth.  The RCIA will knock that out of you was my thought.  What would I have taught that was different?   I w

Mankind is capable of so much good.  As children of God they have been created in his image and likeness to build the Kingdom of God on earth.  Yet it is not happening.   There is instead a weakness in his nature that attracts him to evil things, to selfish things, and to dismiss the God within them.   Yet we know from scripture that we were created good and were totally pleasing to God who in an analogy 'walked with us in a Garden'.   Yet as scripture relates somehow we rebelled against that God who loved us so much and our perfect nature was weakened and became capable of evil.  Yet God promised us medicine in the coming of a Messiah who would be able to make us perfect again if we so wished it.  He could change history and remove the weakness but he could give us the medicine - the grace to be perfect again. Into this mess of a world came Mary.   She was to be the Mother of God, but as greater scholars than myself have noted she with that weakness, that almost imperfect ge

The title is a saying I used to know.   I think it was from the Greeks.  If so, the Greek Gods are about to destroy us all for never in the history of the world has there been an age with so much madness as this one. Nobody seems to use reason any more and having overthrown morality conscience is boosted by professing that you love the poor and disadvantaged so anything else you do must be justified or of little consequence.   In other words serving the poor has become something for the self-image rather than a precept of the teachings of Jesus Christ, or perhaps even an excuse for not living the Faith We have this from many in our approach to Syria where the refugees whom we see are the focus of our attention and little regard is payed to the Muslims and Christians who are being put to death in Mosul in Iraq and in Syria itself by Daesh with a barbarity which the world has not experienced  for many centuries - crucifying, beheading, and stoning to death.   While Christians and yes

Catholics experienced it all over Europe.  Suddenly after Vatican II the false Spirit took over and the demonising of the Pre-Vatican Church began.   It was the Ecumenical age and Church leaders felt obliged to apologise for the nasty Roman Church who believed that they had the Authority to teach what Christ had commanded them, since Christ was the Absolute Truth.  Matthew 28.  So the truth was rejected and in its place people followed their conscience and became good neighbours to one another and did not care much for anything Jesus taught, except love, of course.   That this abandonment of truth had led us to a pagan society for out young people to enjoy was not of any concern.   Of course the Church lost thousands of Catholics but apparently this was all in the plan of the Holy Spirit. Pope Francis who apparently had entered a Mosque and prayed facing Mecca, then allowed an Imam to ride with him on his Popemobile on his visit to the Central Arab Republic was full of this new ecume

"This will put the Ecumenical Movement back ten years".   These were the words of a German bishop Karl Rainer at the opening session of the Second Vatican Council.   There was to be a discussion with a concluding document on the place of Mary in the Catholic Church but the majority of Bishops did not know they were facing something new in the Church - manipulation, as we have seen recently at the Synod on the Family, and open dishonesty.   They were no match for the cunning and power of these so called 'progressives'    At least at the Synod of the Family many had come prepared and were ready with their opposition, but at the Vatican Council this was not the case. I heard at that time a tape of a talk given by Cardinal Heenan to the priests of the Westminster Diocese where he spoke about this opposition.  He told them that a lessening of devotion to Mary would lead to a lessening of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and we should not go down that road.    But the Ca

There are those who put me down as an idealist.   Yes, many of the things I say or propose are just beyond human accomplishment so we must live in the 'real world'.   It was like the night I told an audience that I looked back to the early Church as the model for today, pointing out that young people were chaste and marriages lasted, in contradiction to the pagan culture around them.  "Surely he does not think we could get anywhere near that sort of Church today" was the question in many of those listening.   'He is not living in the 'real world'. Now that is the problem, many priests and laity want a Church that is firmly anchored in 'life experience' or the 'real world'.   But this world is no different from the paganism of Rome which the early Christians had to live in.    The world today caters for sexual orgies, sexual exploitation, sodomy, and rather than put unwanted babies out to die we slaughter them in the womb.   We have a paga

Pope Francis' address today to German bishops on their ad limina visit was not the only message for the country's episcopate. It seems his morning homily was, too.   In his address at the end of the German bishops' ad limina this week, the Holy Father said “one can truly speak of an erosion of the Catholic faith in Germany”. “Whereas in the 1960’s the faithful almost everywhere attended Mass every Sunday," he noted, "today it is often less than 10 percent." He called on the bishops to use the upcoming Holy Year of Mercy to revive the Church through rediscovering “the Sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist” in the face of a collapse in sacramental participation in the country. But in his morning homily, too, the Pope appeared to speak to the German hierarchy, warning against the temptation to ecclesiastical “worldliness”, and urging those present not to become "dominated by money and power." This is an underlying problem frequently