Portsmouth Roman Catholic

When I read Amoris Laetitia I had no trouble with it.  As far as I was concerned I understood what accompanying people who were divorced and remarried really meant.   I had a case in my family where my son was living with an already married woman and they had two children together.   Could they go to Church?  Yes.   Should the priest encourage them?  Yes.  Why?  For the sake of the children and as the relationship changed with time they too would find it possible to live as sister and brother.  Perhaps I was reading the document with the Church as indeed when young I was encouraged to read the Gospel with the mind of the Church.   Unfortunately there are bishops in the Church who wanted Communion for the Divorced and Remarried.  From a human point of view of course it can be seen as caring and compassionate, but we are not part of a human organisation we are following the teachings of Jesus Christ which if implemented could change...

Hebrews 7:15-17 And what we have said is even more clear if another priest like Melchizedek appears, one who has become a priest not on the basis of a regulation as to his ancestry but on the basis of the power of an indestructible life. For it is declared: "You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek."  ( NIV ) Jesus was never ordained a priest of the Jewish Faith.   He did not belong to the tribe of Aaron so his blood line did not allow him to become a Jewish priest.    The quote from St Paul then is to justify the title they were giving to Jesus as a priest who had offered himself and was calling others to do likewise who were not of that blood line.   But who is this Melchizedek? We have to go back to Genesis to find him.   A great battle had been fought, four kings against 5 in the land where Abram, later Abraham, In the land occupied by Abram's son Lot.   Although Abram was not involved his son Lot, his goods, and his women and ser...

When the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate were appointed by our Bishop to Gosport they were an order under attacks which reached the level of the Satanic.  The media in Italy through every calumny against them which included misusing funds and property, cruelty in their order, rape, and even attempted murder.  A judge has recently put their case to the archives saying that  there is no evidence whatsoever against them and they have no case to answer   Our bishop is to be congratulated for bringing this wonderful order into our Diocese.  And now for the good news.            Radio Immaculata – “Bringing forth Christ through Mary” launches on 8th December, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception - an important day for both the Friars and the Diocese. The Marian Franciscans in Gosport are preparing to launch an all New Internet Radio Station, Radio Immaculata offering a mixture of live broadcasting and aud io on-demand. With al...

In the early 1980's when my sons were young and attending a Catholic Primary School I attended a meeting of parents.  It was to discuss a new program 'Here I Am' on the Catholic Faith which was anything but.  One of the main concerns I and many faithful Catholic had with the programme is that the most important teaching on the Blessed Sacrament was missing in fact all teaching on the Blessed Sacrament had been omitted.    I expressed my concern that this would greatly destroy the Faith of the children.  Of course my words went unheard among the reformers and academics.   The Real Presence, the reverence and the Adoration that was part of my Catholic upbringing was removed from Catholic schools, to remove adoration the Tabernacle was moved in many parishes into a corner, and the inevitable happened -  and children lost their Faith.    Since it was not part of their teachings in school young people viewed as old fashioned the idea of the substa...

. The “Dubia” 1.    It is asked whether, following the affirmations of "Amoris Laetitia" (nn. 300-305), it has now become possible to grant absolution in the Sacrament of Penance and thus to admit to Holy Communion a person who, while bound by a valid marital bond, lives together with a different person "more uxorio" (in a marital way) without fulfilling the conditions provided for by "Familiaris Consortio" n. 84 and subsequently reaffirmed by "Reconciliatio et Paenitentia" n. 34 and "Sacramentum Caritatis" n. 29. Can the expression “in certain cases” found in note 351 (n. 305) of the exhortation "Amoris Laetitia" be applied to divorced persons who are in a new union and who continue to live "more uxorio"? 2.    After the publication of the Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation "Amoris Laetitia" (cf. n. 304), does one still need to regard as valid the teaching of St. John Paul II’s Encyclical "Veritatis S...

The Heartbreaking Rise of Suicide Among Young People Blessed are the children for whom the unconditional love of parents – and of God – reign supreme. Marcia Segelstein The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released statistics revealing that children ages 10 to 14 are now more likely to die from suicide than from traffic accidents.  The New York Times  called it an “unprecedented rise in suicide among children at such young ages.” In 2014, the CDC reports that 425 children in that age group committed suicide. And while more boys took their own lives than girls, the rate of increase for girls was sharply higher, tripling since its last report. Just a couple of weeks ago Kathy Schiffer  detailed  the tragic suicide of 11-year-old Bethany Thompson in Ohio, who was bullied by classmates over her “crooked smile.” While the reasons for suicide are complex, stories like Bethany’s and others often include reports of taunting and mocking by peers, e...

It was perhaps the most vile election in modern times.  Both candidates were hell bent on destroying the character of the other that real discussion on policies never surfaced.   False accusations of what the other person stood for were common place.   What divided them for me was my Roman Catholic Faith.  On the one hand there was Hilary Clinton who seemed to think she had the infallibility of the Pope in the world arena when she said "Babies in the womb have no human rights".   She was a backer of free abortion in the Obamacare package but went much further.   She wanted to use her Clinton Foundation to spread free abortion throughout the world.   She was a great supporter of Planned Parenthood and had nothing but praise for the selling of the body parts of the babies, for after all the babies had no human rights.   Her e-mails were not criminal but in the last week the stories that emerged from the ones she claimed did not exist but were found,...

Because of some strange headlines I tuned in recently to a speaker for the Seventh Day Adventists and he was complaining about Ecumenism bringing about a  Christian Church that would then be under the Pope.    "That is why he was in Sweden celebrating the Reformation for that is what many Protestants want" I doubt if this is what many Protestants want but it sure is what the Freemasons want and in the Vatican they are pushing the buttons of Pope Francis.  I remember being at a meeting in a Church some time ago where local well paid bureaucrats of a former bishop were putting forward that the Pope's Supremacy was in love and not authority.   I had no idea what supremacy in authority meant but it seemed to mean nothing and anyway the audience did not question this - they no doubt understood because they were 'mature',   So there us a pattern here which started shortly after Vatican II.   Get rid of devotions, get rid of a Mass that Protestants do not...

When the Reformers took over in the seventies in England there was a great deal of talk about the radical teachings of Jesus as regard to improving the equality of wealth.   Devotions and the Catechism and indeed the spiritual life itself was abandoned in order that the Church could play its part in relieving world poverty as the radical Jesus had apparently taught.   Of course appealing to our common humanity has its merits but soon this approach was not proving as popular among young people as they Reformers had hoped.  Not that they noticed mind you, even although young people were leaving in droves.  What they failed to notice is that the very things Jesus did champion was chastity and the indissolubility of marriage.   Sin was unimportant now since we could all buy our way into heaven by giving to the poor.   Unfortunately it was the children in the parishes they were making poor as marriage collapsed and they did nothing, as chastity destroyed our you...

The BBC showed an interview this evening where Cardinal Nichols was discussing with an interviewer his thoughts on refugees.   He seems to have been asleep for a long time.  There has been substantial thinking about refugees among many people and distinctions made between refugees, economic migrants, and Islamic extremists.   He seems unaware that the figures given by the EU themselves show that 70% of the migrants are  young men, many having left their families behind and it is among these that the revolutionary Moslems are hiding.   He seems unaware of the criminal behaviour of these young men in Germany and Sweden and other countries   He also seems unaware that bombs are going off in France and Belgium which is causing fear among many who would otherwise be ready to invite them into their country.   He blames a climate of fear that has been created.   The climate of fear was not created by any group in this country it was caused by the terro...

A great deal of responsibility is always placed on older brothers and sisters when looking after younger siblings.  They are older, stronger, and wiser and many girls will model themselves on their older sisters and boys likewise.   Although Jesus did not have brothers or sisters when he grew up he would have spent time with children of his own age and played their sports and laughed with them.   We have no record of Jesus as a child but when he visited his own town during his ministry they remembered him as the little boy growing up there who did not seem to be different from anyone else and no doubt thought that the was full of nonsense and this idea that Jesus was the Messiah, the boy who ran messages for his parents, and worked in the Carpentry business was just too much for them.   They only saw the very ordinary Jesus they had always known.    So Jesus our brother was just like everyone else as a boy and in his early manhood, so what happened.   ...

I wonder how many remember the seventies like I do.   There I was a Catholic trying to practice my faith and suddenly my parish was almost invaded by revolutionaries.   The Church had changed we were told, all those devotions and stuff are no longer necessary, and forget all that about the One True Church we do not have a monopoly of truth any more.   And by the way Mary is just a woman, a human like us.   Then Feminists from places of learning came long to talk about married priests and women priests and how celibacy was not really necessary.   Then all this Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament - it is only bread so why worship bread   Now they were charitable at times and realised as they said that some people did not take change easily.   My problem was that I did not take lies easily either.   But it was all very exiting - just like the French Revolution and although those of us as they described us 'were stuck' at least we were not taken to th...