Portsmouth Roman Catholic

One of the things I learned from correspondence with a gay counselor was that there was a minority of gays who were upset at the promiscuous lives of the majority of gays leading to HIV/AIDS and STD`s being endemic in the Homosexual community.  This is why even as late as last year  n American and British Health Services still forbade Blood Donors from the gay community.   Certainly this minority will take advantage of joining in Marriage and in the words of Pope Francis "Who am I to judge you, nevertheless the Church has a right to its teachings".   So there will be an initial uptake of Gay Marriages from such people but perhaps also joined from others who will take it up as a political weapon to attack the Catholic Church.   If the Church holds its nerve and continues to believe that the wisdom of Jesus is greater than ours, we will see this through.   Marriage for gays will gradually fall in number since it is against the promiscuous nature of that ...

We had a wonderful Mass this morning on the great feast of the Annunciation.   There were children from the secondary school present and for the first time in 50 years I heard a priest in my parish asking the children to speak to Mary.  It was yet another pointer to the great recovery the Church is making since the Spirit of Vatican II.    The blot was the mistranslation of the Gospel, brought in by the modernists who controlled the new reading for Mass and who seemed to have had an aversion for words like `soul` and `grace`.   So, we had "Hail, highly favoured...." instead of "Hail, full of Grace...... "  The understanding of Grace in the context does not lend the word in any way to be translated  as favoured.   I once had correspondence with a young Protestant girl on our Lady and she was adamant that we worshipped her.   Thank God her Protestant bible had not been tampered with and I was able to take her to Luke and the Annunciation a...

Bishop Egan spoke out on the teachings of Christ and his Church on the question of Marriage, Abortion, and receiving Holy Communion.   He believes those at odds with the Church on these questions should not receive Holy Communion which is a gift rather than a right.   Again those who love Jesus and can bend their knee before his presence in the Sacred Species will have no difficulty.  Those who `follow their conscience`, "Nobody is going to tell me" and those who are too educated to listen to immature people will continue to ignore him, ensure the people know as little as possible about what he said and ensure that in the RCIA they control in the parishes nothing Catholic is even hinted at.    But they were never interested enough in the young people to observe what is happening and that their days of bullying are coming to an end.  

The Pastoral Letter for Lent from Bishop Egan was a wonderful example of how a shepherd should lead his sheep.  It contained all the teachings of Christ and His Church and yet again brought to our attention the Catechism.  He mentions mortal sin and venial sin and how the former could lead us to hell.  For those who read the Bible seriously this is just the straight forward teachings of Jesus, for others though it represents a `turning back the clock`, and unfortunately they still run many of the parishes having been given power to dictate by former bureaucrats and members of the clergy.  But am I in conflict with Bishop Egan here when he reminds us also that the social media including bloggers can be guilty of destroying the reputation of their neighbours?   It is sad that the media world has picked up on the blogger point made by our bishop since at the moment a Deacon called Nick Donnelly who ran a blog   `Protect the  Pope` has been asked by his bi...

.....does the Tablet try to report and respect the truth or does it just massage facts to support its own agenda?"  I commented on a recent post about an English Bishop who was questioning the Church on sexuality.   There were actually two bishops reported to be questioning the Church.  Turns out that my source was The Tablet and the words quoted first in this post was the angry bishops response.   The Tablet is read in many catholic parishes by those who want the Church to move forward so that they can believe what they like and do what they like.   Those who read it do so because they believe they are `mature`.  They see nothing divine in the Catholic Church but only an institution that they can change according to their tastes and by creating elitism in parishes of those who `have moved forward` they control what they call the traditions and practices of that parish.   Elite groups meet to discuss `the way forward` and ordinary Cathol...

According to one compassionate Bishop the trouble with Jesus was that He had not Anthropological nor Psychologica insights.  So with this great difficulty he preached a lot of nonsense.   But single mothers, abortions, divorce and re-marriage, young people setting up home together outside marriage are all part of our `living experience` and justifies a new morality which the people demand.  Single mothers enjoy their state in life, divorced mothers are over the moon as they look forward to their next encounter, and although four out of five co-habitations end in bitterness it was a wonderful living experience.  And let us not rule out what a benefit abortion has become for so many young Catholics.  But there I go again totally lacking in the compassion of the new Xtians.   "But", the bishop cries "we need to give them pastoral care".  There is hardly a family that has not been affected by the true `life experience` of their divorced siblings, and ...

Fr James Daley was the first priest to return to Basingstoke since the Reformation.  He bought 4  Burgess Road and the plot of land the Holy Ghost now occupies.   It it told how when he was turning the first sod with his parishioners for the first Catholic Church about 120 men from the town came to stop them.    Fr Daley took off his jacket and confronted them.  "If you want to stop this you will have to deal with me first" he shouted.   He was a well built man over six feet tall  There began a dialogue and eventually the crowd was so won over that when many left to walk back down Chappel HIll others stopped to help with the digging.  A truly ecumencal occasion.

Protect the Pope is a blog run by Deacon Nick Donnelly of the diocese of Lancaster.   His bishop has asked him to pause for a period of prayer and reflection and this has caused a fury among many faithful Catholics and their grounds is that nobody has asked the members of A Call for Action, a left over group from `The Spirit of Vatican II` who still think they can bully and sneer in order to bring their changes into the Church, to stop for a period of prayer and reflection.   There is no doubt that his exposure of the activities of these people was not welcomed by them and since they still have the support of the majority of the bishops who grew up believing they would soon have a independent English Church, it is not surprising that a conspiracy theory has evolved.   But I think Bishop Campbell of Lancaster is doing the right thing.  I have been sounding off for years against the Spirit of Vatican II and how it destroyed the young people of the Portsm...

In his book `The Making of Basingstoke `Eric Stokes writes "Henry VIII`s break with RomBut e appears to have had little impact on the religious life of the people of Basingstoke.  In August 1938, Thomas Cromwell, Lord Privy Seal, ordered Lord Sandys to have an `idolatrous` image removed from St Michael`s AlChurch.   It was to be transported to London pending its destruction.  Although the offending figure was one that appeared to have been greatly venerated by the people there is no record of anything untoward having happened to disturb the life of the ordinary citizen".   Well that is perfectly straight forward isn`t it?  Well there was the hanging, drawing and quartering of Blessed Hugh Farringdon and his monks in Reading.  You bet that when the Catholic priest was reoed the poor people were helpless to do or say anything.  But let us stop fighting the Reformation again.  Basingstoke is now in the same position   as Walsingham was when a b...

When Cardinal Heenan returned from Vatican II, he gave a talk to his diocesan priests on how devotion to Mary had been attacked by certain Bishops, especially the German bishops who had gone into ecumenism shortly after the war since they had a new relationship with Protestants after the persecution by Hitler. Th. ere had been a schema on Mary prepared or discussion but it was thrown out since the shouts arose "This will put the Ecumenical Movement back ten years".  The Bishops of the rest of the world knew little about ecumenism in this form and were not prepared for such an onslaught on Catholic truth  The Germans won the day.   Bishop Heenan then went on to ask  his priests not to lose devotion to Mary since this devotion truly leads to a love of Jesus especially in the Blessed Sacrament.   Already however the knives were poised behind his back and when Corpus Christi College opened it became a place of revolution and not just revolution but scandal as nuns a...

.In America they are selling the words of Pope Francis on T-shirts.  .Who Am I To Judge.  These are the words that endeared him to the world.  Hans Kung, the National Catholic Reporter, and every Liberal in their dying agonies cried out "O yes,  he is one of us".  The Spirit of Vatican II was alive and well again as the Reformers danced around proclaiming the Pope instead of shouting "We do not need him"  But as all things with the Spirit of Vatican II there seems to be some `misunderstanding`.  What the Pope actually said was "Who am I to  judge YOU, but the Church has a right to its teachings"  In fact the Pope was stating what is a crucial point of Catholic teaching that although someone is doing wrong we have no right to judge them, only God knows their heart.  The atheist hge was talking to admitted his replies were sometimes not quite what the Pope said and so I a positive that no Pope would say the Church has a right to its `opini...

Jesus never promised happiness.  He told his followers to take up their cross and follow Him.   One of the Crosses he gave us to carry was to live the life he wanted us to live in a society which opposed us living it.  Marriage is one very good example.  I watched a video recently on Humanae Vitae and the audience was talking about the right of married couples and the difficulty of living `the Rhythm Method`.  The first objection I had was that Humanae Vitae warned of the dangers of a contraceptive mentality among all catholics INCLUDING YOUNG PEOPLE  and Natural Family Planning moved on a long time ago from the imperfect Rhythm Method.   In Humanae Vitae catholics were warned  that marriages would increasingly fail.   There are now many parishes which can go through a whoe year with no couples wanting marriage.   Young people just live together.   The enemies within, priests and bishops, used this to start ...