Portsmouth Roman Catholic

As we continue with the catechism answer "God made me to know Him, to Love Him and to Serve Him in this world....."  We now explore 'To Love Him'. This is a difficult one.    Despite our best efforts to arouse love for Him we are often left having to keep up appearances with others by saying the right things.   "Yes, we do love God" we say for no other reason that that is the answer expected of us.    But we feel nothing in our hearts and yet God demands us in the First Commandment  "Thou shalt love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul with all your mind and strength"       How can we do it?    In the Old Testament they would bring animals to be slaughtered or purchase animals to be slaughtered in order to show their love and commitment to their God, they would keep the Ten Commandments and Jewish practices to a severe level in order to persuade God of their love.     They would of course give thanks to H...

I was perhaps 6 years old when I learned to recite from my Penny Catechism the answer to the question "Why did God make you?"  The answer which I have in my lifetime gone back to many times was "God made me to know Him, love Him and serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next"   The Catechism represented the official teaching of the Church as taught by the Council of Trent and is full of the wisdom and teachings of the Catholic Church. So let us make a start and think about the first part which is knowing God.   I know a great many people but the ones I get to know at a personal level are those I talk to, share stories with, and when I am in trouble they are the ones who are on my side and give me help and encouragement.  Some I have a really close relationship with so that in my everyday life they are constantly in my thoughts.  But it is in my family unit I get the most love and support.  My wife, my sons, my daughter- in- laws,...

This is a baby in the womb.   If it is in Ireland then it is less safe today than it was yesterday..    But an abortionist will say "Nonsense, we are only killing babies up to 12 weeks gestation and that baby is over that"    It sounds reasonable and all  the horror stories of babies being born gasping for breath and left to die can be ignored.  Can't they"    O poor foolish Ireland! I was listening this morning to the victory speeches of the pro-abortionists  How wonderful that they seemed to recognise that assurances would be give n to those who lost.   Yes, it was fought in a good spirit, etc, etc,     What poppycock.   After the 1967 Abortion Act in Britain we had the same nonsense.   David Steele assured us that there would not be Abortion on Demand, we had a strict law, yes, and on paper it looked like a strict law, however there was one clause in it which the feminists soon tore to shreds and that w...

My challenge to anyone who dismisses this lady is this - Show me your Fruit.

I found the sessions with Sherry Weddell last weekend very challenging.   Sherry had three things to say which were very important to would be disciples, and the first thing was that we must have a Personal Relationship with God.    Now this is a question she has asked many Catholic leaders with some surprising responses, yet she maintained that without such a relationship the vast majority of Catholics will never advance beyond what she called a seeker, moving to trusting and then openness to that stage when we become a disciple.  The vast majority of us are just infant Catholics.    This can be quite a shock to many who have laboured in the Catholic Church for many years.  Yes, we can have a parish where we have all the societies and charities and everyone can have a choice as to where their talents lie, whether it be prayer or catechesis, the St Vincent de Paul Society or Cafod, but if these labours are bearing no fruit, if it just becomes an enclos...

St Augustiner was a young man who followed the pagan ways of Rome.   He enjoyed sex outside of marriage and even fathered a child.  But he did have a devout Christian mother who constantly prayed for him.   One day Augustine took a look around him and found that the Christian young people were not behaving as he and his friends were behaving.  They valued chastity and marriage.   They believed in the teachings of Jesus and followed him and his teachings.   He saw immediately that there was something really beautiful here and he decided to investigate and as a result changed  his life.   He too found what these Christians had found - a personal relationship with Jesus. Today as he looks down from Heaven does Augustine still see that same commitment in the Church?  Does he see people striving to love Jesus by following his commandments.   Why not?   Perhaps it is because in the Church today we have somehow separated our live...

As you will see from the stained glass window the name given to the image is Virgo Immaculata.   Mary was the virgin who remained sinless and spotless.  Yes she would have been tempted by Satan, but as the image shows she kept close to God in prayer and all the wiles of Satan, the forbidden fruit he offered, depictdd by the apple, ended up stuck in his throat while the right foot of Mary crushed his head. "I will put enmity between Thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed", God tole the serpent in Genesis   Satan was no match for Jesus who was God made Man but he had overcome a mere mortal before in Eve, What a triumph it would have been to destroy she whom Jesus loved above al others - his mother.   But Mary kept close to Jesus and to God, the new Eve, and mother of the new children that the death of Jesus brought into being.    And as Revelations 12 tells us having failed to destroy the birth of Jesus Satan  went after her other chi...

In February 2016, we welcomed back one of our most beautiful attractions following months of ground-breaking conservation work. You can enjoy the exquisite Tudor stained glass once again.         Our chapel’s stained glass is the finest in the National Trust’s care and considered to be among the most beautiful 16th-century glass in Europe. It features King Henry VIII, who visited The Vyne several times, as well as his sister Margaret and first wife Catherine of Aragon, together with their patron saints. When condensation gradually began to eat away at the windows, causing pitting and corrosion, the glass was removed for conservation and re-fitted with state-of-the-art protective glazing by specialists Holy Well Glass. The rare panes of glass, known as ‘lights’, have returned to The Vyne once more. The last light featuring Henry VIII was reinstalled on Tuesday 9 February 2016.   The story behind the glass   The stained glass windows ...

At the Vyne Estate just outside Basingstoke among many others you can see these two stained glass windows.   One is of a young King Henry VIII kneeling in prayer.  Henry often visited the Vyne which was the estate of Lord Sandys.  He would visit with Catherine of Aragon regularly since he valued very much the opinions of this Lord.   While in Basingstoke since in his youth he was very devout and had a great love for Our Lady he would have visited the Shrine to Our Lady in Basingstoke which was destroyed at the Reformation.   Nevertheless despite carefully keeping on the Kings side during the Reforms it seems that Sandys retained much of his Catholicity and rather than smashing the windows he removed then carefully and kept them somewhere at the Vyne.    This was wise because Henry also visited him with his new wife Anne Boleyn.   But what can the Stained Glass Window of Our Lady tell us?   There are many similarities between this imag...

A coach carrying 39 people from Basingstoke arrived at Hotwalls Beach just shortly after 2.30pm on the 29th April.   Since no one else was there we began the3 service on our own though the numbers rise as people from the Cathedral and other parishes in Portsmouth arrived   We certainly had over 70 when the Rosary began at 3pm.    I apologise to anyone who thought we had hi-jacked the service it was just that we did to know if anyone was cooing. Although there was a chill in the air and it was cloudy there was no wind and no wind  rain despite the clouds.    Despite the priests no leading the service the stand ins did very well and everyone thought it was a very spiritual experience.   Mary was certainly there praying with us and smoothing out the challenges we faced in sorting out the service. I hope the people of Portsmouth enjoyed the service as much as the people of Basingstoke and we did not upset any of their plans for the day.  ...

My previous post where the video was censored spoke about two jounalists who went into a hate rant against the Catholic Church.   Unfortunately if they had actually bothered to research what was actually going on instead of making themselves look stupid they would have found that the Catholic Church had no objection whatsoever to turning of a respiratory system which was artificially keeping someone alive.    The case was that the parents wanted to move their son to another hospital which had promised to try another way of keeping Alfie alive.    The  hospital refused this and the rights of the parents were dismissed.    As it turned out the hospital had also made a wrong diagnosis for Alfie did to just live for a few minutes when the breathing apparatus was removed as the Hospital had said, he actually lived for five days and during that time he co old have been removed to another hospital.