Portsmouth Roman Catholic

Sometimes I wish I had been a Catholic at some other time rather than today, a time when the Church was united in the teachings of Jesus Christ and we all were on fire to spread the truths of Jesus and change the world to the Kingdom of Christ.   I did have that zeal when I was young, I wanted people so much to receive the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ    I wanted to protect them from sin and hell.   I wanted them to love God with all their hearts and souls, and I wanted them to experience the love of Our Mother Mary. But where is that fire now.   Yes, I try to kindle it again but I find myself being seen as controversial if I try to do anything of that kind.   If I kneel for Communion I am judged.   If I receive on the tongue I am old fashioned.  If I confess my belief for all that the Church teaches I am stuck in the past while others have 'moved on'   I watched the exodus of so many children from the Church and I cried out but was silen...

"JERUSALEM, JERUSALEM, YOU THAT KILL THE PROPHETS AND STONE THOSE WHO ARE SENT TO YOU. HOW OFTEN HAVE I LONGED TO GATHER YOUR CHILDREN TOGETHER, AS A HEN GATHERS HER CHICKS UNDER HER WINGS AND YOU REFUSED.  LOOK1  YOUR HOUSE WILL BE DESERTED, FOR I PROMISE YOU SHALL NOT SEE ME ANY MORE UNTIL YOU SAY 'BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD" These words are spoken by Jesus as he looks down on the city of Jerusalem before he enters it to be mocked and crucified.   His lament spoke of the many times when the Jewish people were deciding that the laws of God and His righteousness were too difficult for the choices they had made in their lives.  When their evil spread God would send a prophet to try and lead them back to His laws and His  Commandments.    Yet they were, as Jesus said, killed and stoned for proclaiming His words.   Their leaders saw themselves as the wise ones and perhaps they ' did not want to turn the clock back' When Jesus...

I'll Sing a Hymn to Mary is a beautiful hymn which I sang in my young days when devotion to Mary was part of our Catholic Church as it had been for centuries.   She is still of course part of OurCatholic Church but when the 'educated classes' came into our Churches and Schools in the seventies and eighties they decided that devotion to Mary was a hindrance to Ecumenism.   In this they followed a Vatican II priest Karl Rahner who rejected a discussion document on Our Lady which he said "would put Ecumenism back ten years"   This presented a picture of hard line Protestants refusing to talk to Catholics while such devotion was part of the Catholic Faith.    If Devotion to Mary really did do this then what kind of ecumenism could this have been.   No Karl Rahner was using this as an excuse and a pretty poor one.   There was growing attack on Our Lady because her position was an inspiration to prayer and faithfulness to Jesus and that was the one thing tha...

I was just listening to a report on the media that there is a growing rate of sexual assaults on young girls by young boys.   I thought it was quite remarkable that they had even noticed given the wisdom the schools have used in protecting young girls from, pregnancy by giving them contraceptives. In many schools teenage boys look at teenage girls and want to be the first.   Then we have the hypocrisy of political entities in our secular society shouting out about poverty and blaming everyone but themselves.   They are the ones who destroyed the concept of faithfulness of one man to one woman in marriage and destroyed its stability.  They are the ones who shout about different forms of marriage other than heterosexual, they are the ones who created a climate of sexual freedom in which marriages broke down through unfaithfulness and lack of commitment and  when they shout about poverty they ignore what is obvious that poverty is greatest among single abandoned mo...

Does God have a human side?     The reason I ask is that when they pray to God most people see Him as someone who just sits on a throne enjoying songs of praise and granting requests as He sees fit.   We love Him, well that is what we are expected to do. and  look upon Him as the great benefactor in our lives. We then learn that God became Man in Jesus Christ.   Now that perhaps answers the question, for in Jesus the Divine became Human.   Now that helps us to understand something for as men we are loving, feeling, compassionate and moved to help others.   But did God not have these virtues until He became man?    And for that matter can God like man experience sorrow and hurt?   When we read the Old Testament we see a God of anger although we often read of the God of Love.   The God of Anger we try to explain away for we want a God who in a modern phrase 'accepts us as we are'. and does not care if we sin, after all we are in ano...

It is widely accepted that at the Presentation in the Temple the Prophet Simeon was inspired by the Holy Spirit to hear in the cry of a child the presence of the Messiah.     But there may well be a more down to earth explanation.    We know that Mary lived as a girl in the Temple for at least ten years and she and Simeon would probably have known one another. Simeon and Mary had something in common.  They both through their reading of scripture knew that the time for the birth of the Messiah had arrived.   Mary wanted to help the chosen Jewish girl in the birth and the raising of the Saviour and Simeon had just wanted  to see him before he died.     So when Mary left the Temple as all young girls did when they reached womanhood she would have said goodby to Simeon and discussed their hope in their wishes being fulfilled. Imagine the astonishment of Simeon then when he saw Mary in the Temple and she had related her story to him of the Ang...

One hundred years ago today there was the great miracle of the sun in Fatima.   Three children had been claiming they were seeing Our Lady and she had given them secrets and asking them to pray for the conversion of sinners and to make sacrifices and recite prayers given to them by an Angel and OurLady.     The secrets had not been revealed and the people knew very little about how the children had responded to Our Lady for this was revealed later by Lucia whom our Lady had told would not go to heaven at the time of deaths of Jacinta and Francisco but was required to live on so that she could tell the whole story of the Apparitions and reveal the secrets when the time was appropriate.   You can find the revelation of the secrets in the book 'Fatima in Lucy's Own Words' The main point though is the 70,000 crowd who witnessed the miracle did not know about the warning that sinners were going to Hell, and the vision of Hell given to the children.   They did not k...

In Luke we come across the story of how Mary and Joseph having went with Jesus to the Temple in Jerusalem for the Passover with friends and relations started the journey home and thought Jesus was with them.   After a day's journey they found he had been left behind and went back to Jerusalem to search for him and it took three days before they found him in the Temple sitting with the adults and discussing scripture and all were amazed at his knowledge for he was only 12 years old.    "Why did you do this to us"  Mary rebuked him "we have been searching for three days"   "Why did you search for me" he replied "Did you not know I would be in my Father's House" Something very special had happened.   Since she had given birth to Jesus, Mary was dealing with just another child like every other child.   He would play with them, laugh with them, help Joseph in the workshop, just another good little boy being loved and loving his parents.    A...

Meeting starts with Rosary and Devotions at 7pm including readings DV|D called Finding Fatima will be played at 7.45pm Any Questions on the DVD or Our Lady before leaving. St Joseph's Church, St Michael's Road, Basingstoke.

Since there are those who would deny others the story of Fatima because it mentions Hell which they no longer believe in, I will put forward the teaching of Jesus on the subject and then go to what was the first secret that the children were told not to reveal at that  time in Fatima. The story of Jesus tells us quite clearly that however discomforting it is, however we would 'rationally' challenge his words, Jesus told us in no uncertain terms that there was a Hell and that people would go there.    We have for example the story of the Last Judgement in Matthew 25.  "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the Devil and His Angels".   There is also the story of the rich young man who asked Jesus what to do to earn 'eternal life'.   Jesus told him to obey the Commandments.     But let us turn to Fatima. Having assured the children that they were all going to Heaven Our Lady gave them a vision of Hell. The vision...

Today is the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.    It had its origins in the Battle of Lepanto when a Moslem fleet sailed to conquer Europe in the 16th century.    The fleet was opposed by another fleet organised by the Holy League, a group of countries fighting against the Islamic attempt to conquer Europe.   The Pope organised a Rosary Crusade throughout the Church and as the Christian fleet sailed towards the enemy every sailor and soldier went down on their knees to pray.    The result was a great victory and the continent was yet again saved.    Great thanks and praise was given by the people to Our Lady of the Rosary.     In the 18th century the Islamists were at the gates of Vienna  and the city was about to fall.  Again their was the rosary and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.   The city was saved by the arrival of a Polish army who destroyed the enemy and freed Vienna. But where does Fatima come into thi...

"At the Cross her station keeping, stood the lonely mother weeping, close to Jesus to the last" In the Stations of the Cross we come upon Mary at the Fourth Station.   Jesus has been condemned to death, he receives his Cross, and weak from the pain and sufferings he has endured during the night, he falls to the ground under the weight put upon him.   Then he looks up and she is there, her eyes upon him, offering him her heart and giving him back the will to continue.   His mother knows what he must do, why he must continue, and she will be there with him every step of the way Perhaps like other mothers in this situation she should have hid herself somewhere so that she did not see the agony inflicted on her son.   But Mary and Jesus had been preparing fort this moment all their lives.   It was foretold in scripture, it was foretold to her by the Angel Gabriel, and the voice of Simeon in the temple had warned her of this hour.   She was ready, her s...

Devotion to Mary is not scriptural.   Mary is a creature just like you and I.   We have Jesus as our mediator with God, so Mary is not needed in any way whatsoever. This was very much the position of the Protestant Faith until the Reformers within the Catholic Church decided that in order to bring about an Ecumenical church certain Catholic beliefs had to go and among them was the position of Mary. The first thing to say is that Mary was never a creature just like you and I.   Yes, she was made like you and I, but the role she was to undertake as Mother of Jesus, the Son of God, meant that she had to be someone with the fullness of Grace and Holiness that was needed by someone who was to give birth to the Holiest of Holies.    Her sinless son would need a sinless mother whom he could love with all his heart and be united to her as a loving son.   So Mary, as the angel Gabriel said, was born "full of grace", indeed this grace filled her soul at the mo...