Portsmouth Roman Catholic

On the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes there will be Rosary and Benediction at the Holy Ghost Church in Basingstoke at 3pm. It was at the Grotto in Lourdes that Mary the Mother of Jesus with the permission of God the Father appeared to a 14 year old Girl called Bernadette Soubirous.  Why did the Father give her permission? Surely it must have been something very important.  Mary is someone very special to God the Father and God the Son for she was the bridge between the Father and the Son and without her co-operation and sacrifices the Salvation of mankind could never have happened. There were two things very important in the message of Lourdes.    The first  was that Mary was conceived without sin.  She was the Immaculate Conception.   In other words we are born with a weakness in our soul which attracts us to sin.   As St Paul reminded us the things we would do we often do not do and the things we should not do we do.   We humans are i...

Having already posted my 'surprise' at one so called Catholic University holding a course on Islamic studies I picked up this news item.................................................................................................................. January 16, 2018 ( LifeSiteNews ) – Muslims who have converted to Catholicism have penned an open letter to Pope Francis challenging him on his attitude towards and preaching on Islam.  “If Islam is a good religion in itself, as you seem to teach, why did we become Catholic?” the converts ask Francis in  the letter . “Do not your words question the soundness of the choice we made at the risk of our lives?”  The  letter  continued to gain signatures over the weekend, approaching 3,700 by Monday afternoon.  The letter asks the Pope frank questions on the hot-button issues of Islam and immigration, questions that posed at great risk to those doing the asking. Sharia law forbids conversion by Muslims to other ...

Father Ostdiek cites §49 of the  Caeremoniale  to support his view; but he neglects to mention that the document specifically concerns  cathedrals,  not ordinary churches. Even within cathedrals, the quoted paragraph "recommends" but does not mandate this placement of the reserved Sacrament. The footnote to this paragraph from CE (n. 49) refers to the 1967 Instruction of Pope Paul VI,  De Sacra Communione...  (Holy Communion and Worship outside of Mass) n. 9. The relevant sentence is, This [personal worship] will be achieved more easily if the chapel is separate from the body of the church, especially in churches where marriages and funerals are celebrated frequently and in churches where there are many visitors because of pilgrimages or the artistic and historical treasures. This passage makes it clear that a separate chapel is recommended especially for large, busy churches, such as cathedrals and those which may be tourist attractions. (St. Peters in...

In a blog I posted "Am I the only one going to Heaven" I spoke about the nun who claimed that all Churches shared the Truth and none had a monopoly.  And that of course was Vatican II.   Now this boils down to something very simple - was that true or was it not true  if  you are not interested in what is true and not true and just want to suit yourself then you are advised to read no further, for you are not of God.   So what did the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church say............................................................................................................................................................. 18. For the nurturing and constant growth of the People of God, Christ the Lord instituted in His Church a variety of ministries, which work for the good of the whole body. For those ministers, who are endowed with sacred power, serve their brethren, so that all who are of the People of God, and therefore enjoy a true Christian dignity, wo...

Do you remember when in almost every Catholic Church in England and Wales the altar rails were knocked down and people were forced to stand for Holy Communion?   Do you remember when the Tabernacles were removed from the Sanctuaries and put in a side Altar or even a side room out of the way?   Do you remember when a book written by a priest was approved in which he said that the Presence of Jesus in the host was neither physical nor symbolic but something in between ?   Do you remember the great discovery that the priest  did not change the the Bread and Wine into the Body and Blood of Christ but it was the Holy Spirit and we ignorant Catholics did not know this?   I remember all of these because I questioned every one of them. Of course Vatican II had sanctioned these changes we were told.  So I looked through Vatican II and I found nothing so I asked for the evidence.     Now since I had been a Pre-Vatican Catholic who had apparently sat duri...

I read this once on a Facebook page.   Two cousins in their early teens were discussing the existence of God.   One was very scientific and explained that she could not imagine any other reasons for the existence of anything, the world, the flowers, the trees, etc.    The other one listened and then replied  "If there was a God, them my family would not be in such a mess"    The girl had no father, nobody who came home to a little princess and cuddled her and made her feel the luckiest girl in the world.   Her mother was a single Mum who had also been abandoned by her father and did her best in the circumstances but they were a poor family.   And yet her family is no exception and the girl is no exception. I wonder where leftwing politicians would be without them.    You have heard the howls from them about all those thousands of children living in Britain in a state of poverty.    And yes, they have their support in the...

The video on You Tube is 'President Trump Addresses the 2018  March for Life.

We believe that the Mass, celebrated by the priest representing the person of Christ by virtue of the power received through the Sacrament of Orders, and offered by him in the name of Christ and the members of His Mystical Body, is the sacrifice of Calvary rendered sacramentally present on our altars. We believe that as the bread and wine consecrated by the Lord at the Last Supper were changed into His body and His blood which were to be offered for us on the cross, likewise the bread and wine consecrated by the priest are changed into the body and blood of Christ enthroned gloriously in heaven, and we believe that the mysterious presence of the Lord, under what continues to appear to our senses as before, is a true, real and substantial presence. 35 Christ cannot be thus present in this sacrament except by the change into His body of the reality itself of the bread and the change into His blood of the reality itself of the wine, leaving unchanged only the properties of the bread and ...

I grew up with Protestants.   I used to have close friends in the Protestant Church, a  friend David and two girls Nan and Hetty.  The girls sang in the choir and i once dared to go and listen to them, in their Church.   Amazingly I was not consumed in fire and brimstone.  But then I never thought I would.    I did not believe they were bound for Hell for not being Catholic because I was told repeatedly in my school about the Baptism of Desire.    If course we did disagree about religious things.   Especially the claim that the Catholic Church was the One True Church but we did not find any bitterness because we recognised that we had different belief systems.    Let us say that we were a true Ecumenical Gang.that made no demands that either of us should change our beliefs. I was therefore completely confused when after Vatican II,which I read, that in some way this Council had ruled that we were all part of the One Church. ...

What is today's Gospel connection with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.    Yes, Catholics do not go to Church just to praise God or receive Holy Communion because the words of a priest can command the Holy Spirit to change bread into the Body of Christ.   It is the Lamb of God that we receive.   What is the connection between the words of John the Baptist when he called Jesus the Lamb and identified that lamb as being the one that would take away the sins of the world? Lambs and other animals were offered in Sacrifice in the Jewish Faith as reparation to God for the sins of the those who offered the Sacrifice.   Sacrifice and atonement for sins was part of the Jewish Faith.     So Jesus was sacrificed as a Lamb but not just for sinful Jews but for us and everyone in the world.     But the lamb sacrificed was eaten afterwards in the Jewish Rite by those who had sacrificed the animal.   This made the sacrifice a very personal thing,...

What a wonderful picture and a wonderful story of how St Mary's College , a Roman Catholic College in Twickenham is embarking on an inter-faith programme with Imams and the Moslem Faith.      I could certainly say that the vast majority of Catholic parents have benefited enormously from the expert teaching at St Mary's but I would be lying. Here we have another pretence, another hoax, another lie  from the world of Catholic Academics.   The expert teachers they have produced for our Catholic schools have seen in 50 years attendance of  pupils after schooling in our Catholic parishes drop from 80% to 3%.   Quite an achievement.    And of course their brilliant catechesis has seen young Catholics indulge in sex and drugs in the same proportion as the rest of the secular society.   It has seen young Catholic schoolgirls moving on to be single mothers or visiting abortion clinics in the same proportion as those the secular society. ...

The Church would be better off if the Pope spoke about religious matters and did not enter politics.  There is a world of difference between a migrant and a refugee. A migrant comes for financial gain but a refugee comes because he has no alternative. In the real world, Holy Father, mass migration is controlled because the host country cannot guarantee jobs, housing, and financial support. Far from gaining financially the host country will watch all of its citizens b ecome poorer. Yes, we can bang the drum and shout we need doctors and nurses and take them from third world countries but for example in India there is just one doctor for every ten thousand people.     Do you see the stumbling block, Pope Francis.      On refugees, yes you are on more solid ground but why are you ignoring the plight of Christians and Catholics, the very people you should be protecting. In Syria for example Christians cannot settle in a large town like Mosu...