Portsmouth Roman Catholic

When I was growing up in the forties and fifties my life had an anchor.  In my family there was love, in my church there was certainty, and in most politicians there was a desire to serve the people.   The nation had values which kept it civilised and there was a broad agreement as to what was right and wrong.  It was such values based on Judaeo Christian teaching that built loving families, and loving families were the cells of our civilisation where young people having been loved were able to bring that love into their own family lives when they married.    Although sexual exploitation happened between men and women for always we are weak and vulnerable to sin, it was not something to boast about in public.   No, it was wrong and we knew it was wrong but if there was sincerity in the relationship then nobody cared. But change came s with more materialism entering our lives.  One of the great changes was the Pill and contraceptives.     A ...

We are at that time of the year when we remember the Passion, death, and Resurrection of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.   When there were two million Catholics going to Church in the sixties there was no noticeable increase in attendance but now thanks to the Spirit of Vatican II we have less than 800,000 who go regularly, and dropping, but at Christmas and Easter those who are nominally Catholic join us for the services. So what is the problem that keeps many baptised from Church?   The problem is that although they have been taught an intellectual knowledge of Christianity they do not see how Christianity affects their everyday lives.   To say today that people who go to Church are no better than people who do not go to Church would be widely accepted even by many within the Church.  So why go to Church at all?   I believe those who do not go to Church have a feeling that somewhere along the way they are missing out on something.  So they go to Chur...

March 16, 2016 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- On March 16, speaking publicly on a rare occasion, Pope Benedict XVI gave an  interview  ( English translation ) to Avvenire, the daily newspaper of the Italian Bishops' Conference, in which he spoke of a “two-sided deep crisis” the Church is facing in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. The report has already hit Germany courtesy of Vaticanist Guiseppe Nardi, of the German Catholic news website Katholisches.info. Pope Benedict reminds us of the formerly indispensable Catholic conviction of the possibility of the loss of eternal salvation, or that people go to hell: The missionaries of the 16th century were convinced that the unbaptized person is lost forever. After the [Second Vatican] Council, this conviction was definitely abandoned. The result was a two-sided, deep crisis. Without this attentiveness to the salvation, the Faith loses its foundation. He also speaks of a “profound evolution of Dogma” with respect to the Dogma ...

"We have done everything to bring young people to Church"   This is a sad comment from many priests as young people take their first Communion and are never seen again, or reluctant young people turn up to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation.   Indeed were there no Catholic Schools the majority of the boys and girls would not be there at all.   But they still cling to the myth that they come back when the evidence is that they do not.  There were two million people going to Mass in the 1960's and the last count I read was about 5 years ago when thee were less than 800,000 and this figure contains the bonus the Church received from 2 million Catholics emigrating from Europe "OK, OK there I go again.  Talk, talk, talk.  What solution do you have?" The solution is there before our very eyes in the First and Greatest Commandment.  "Thou shall love the Lord Your God with all your heart and all your soul, with all your mind and all your strength" ...