Portsmouth Roman Catholic

"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. ...

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...

In a wonderful pastoral letter our Bishop has set out a programme celebrating the 'Year of Mercy'.   He certainly had given the matter  great deal of thought and I do hope the Diocese will follow his lead. One thing he mentioned was parish retreats.  I remember my experience of them in the forties and fifties and what a wonderful thing they were and they brought many blessings. Here is how they worked.  Two priests, usually Passionists, would arrive in the parish to speak at all Masses on the Sunday and outline their programme.   People listened keenly for they were interested in one evening and a discussion would arise as to which of the priests would preach that night.   The subject was Hell.  I know that there are many today who believe that every night and every Sunday was about Hell, but this is far from the truth.   Hell night was when everyone felt obliged to attend, for despite the fact of the reality of Hell, nobody actually grew up f...

It was quite a change to find my last post was a video.  But I thought it good to hear the views of those outside the Church on the Synod.   They hit the nail on the head.   It was not disagreement with doctrine or scripture that inspired Kasper and friends, they just ignored both in order to be pastorally popular.

OK, let me now put aside the Synod and my disappointments, the Diocese and my disappointments, and the parishes and my disappointments.   The Year of Mercy is now almost upon us.  So we cannot behave like spoiled little children any more when we are asked to put the loving mercy of Christ first and think about just how far from that mercy we are.   And if we are far from his mercy how can we talk about bringing other people to Him. Do we understand Confession is a Sacrament and helps us to move towards holiness or are we content just to be good?  Is being good and being holy the same thing?   The Year of Mercy will help us reflect on this. If Christ asked his disciples to teach all nations to 'observe all he had commanded' are we at liberty to ignore this and cling to a lifestyle which in our experience does not harm anyone?   Are we certain of our self proclaimed Gospel?  Did Christ teach only rules we could never live up to? What about our chil...

Pelagianism, he explained, “leads us even to assuming a style of control, of hardness” stressing that “Christian doctrine is not a closed system.” He explained: “Before the problems of the Church it is not useful to search for solutions in conservatism or fundamentalism, in the restoration of obsolete conduct and forms that no longer have the capacity of being significant culturally.” The above is a quotation of what the Pope said in Florence recently.   My quarrel with the Pope is that he is a very poor communicator and does not speak in a way that is clarity or understandable.   Well we all know who he s talking about with his statement that Pelagiarism leads us to 'control' or do we.    Let us look at his explanation of Pelagianism.  Pelagianism he told us was a heresy that said we did not need the help of God to be saved.  So we can read into the part about power that those who do not follow the will of Christ and who do not see Christian Doctrine ...

I was at a diocesan meeting last night.  A speaker had been invited to give a talk on Trends for the Future in the Catholic Church.  I think perhaps it was the subject but I cannot say I came away hanging on to any threads or pearls of wisdom.    Deciding where the Church would be in 20 or 30 years time cannot be decided solely by human thought for we are a Divine Church not a Human One and the Holy Spirit has the power to change things overnight.    There was also a point made about a convergence of traditional and progressive ideas to make everyone interested but this was to admit that there were two different legitimate points of view - there are not.   You are either a Catholic faithful to the Church and its teachings or you are not.  If you are not, you are not committed to the Catholic Church. As we discussed what model the Church should be for future 'evangelisation' one lay person did give the foundations of that 'model'.   He did n...

A blogger called Torch of the Faith wrote an interesting article which brought me back to a sermon preached by a priest in the 1950's.  He was pointing out that there is a tendency for Christians  to be identified as good or practicing when they are employed in the parish doing this, that, or the other.   However a person may just go to Church on a Sunday and still live and spread the faith as devoutly as anyone else.   My priest in the fifties stated that he was worried about people with families who spent too much of their time leaving the family home to join a committee, a movement, or some other activity only performed in Church.    He believed that many people got so wrapped up in Church work that they forgot their duties to the family. Of course we need peopler to help the priest or the parish would collapse but there is a tendency to believe these days that you have to be 'doing' something in the Church in order to be a faithful Christians.   ...

I have just read  Cardinal Nichols telling us all about the Synod.   It is full of the usual phrases about 'listening' and other words suggesting compassion and mercy.  Yes we must support the divorced and remarried but how do we support the children?    Before the Synod, during the Synod, and after the Synod as now I have been asking this question so let me ask again - what about the children? What do I mean what about the children?  They grow up and get on with their lives like everybody else.  NO THEY DO NOT.  They grow up deprived of the full and loving relationship of a father or a mother.  They accept divorce as just another part of life and make bad relationships themselves.   Of course with their experience of marriage they make a decision it is better not to get caught in the trap and just start living with a partner.   IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE WHO IS GOING TO COMMENT AND CONTRADICT ME?   But of course the listening...

In the late 70's and 80's the voice of the 'mature' Catholic was heard in the Diocese.  The Pre-Vatican Church became the subject of derision - what with the priest turning his back on the people and mumbling in Latin, people at Mass doing their private devotions because they did not understand the Mass, good people being judged and condemned for their sins, and of course children being terrorised by teachers constantly telling them they were going to Hell.  Gee, we should be down on our knees thanking all those good people who got us out of that mess.   I suppose I do not remember that Church of my Youth because I have some mental condition that bars the memory.  And I also have this false idea of religious education where the teachers told us stories of the Saints, taught us the catechism and we learned this off by heart and I can tell you that in later life I am really thankful for that.   There were many times when the ability to quote that catechism was rea...

This morning Catholics who attended Mass were seen putting names into a basket. They were mostly relatives who had died. It is a traditional practice but is it just kept going to keep Catholics happy? The person has died so should that not be the end of it. I have never attended a funeral in the past 40 years where the families were reminded to pray for the should of their departed ones by any of the clergy. And when did you  last hear anyone speak of Purgatory. So is praying for the dead just a superstitious practice in the Catholic Church. Unfortunately there are those who will assure you it is. Scripture and Church teaching tell us different. "It is a Holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins" we are told in the book of Machabees. Jesus assured us that a sin against the Holy Spirit would not be forgiven in this world OR THE NEXT. This implies that yes, sins can be forgiven in the next world. Again scripture tells us that nothin...