Portsmouth Roman Catholic

I enjoyed reading the latest Pastoral Letter from Bishop Philip.   What impresses people when they heard Jesus speak was that 'he spoke with authority and not like their elders'.   He had a clear message to give which he then entrusted to his apostles and disciples.    If today we ask ourselves does the Church speak with the same authority and with the same clarity as he and his followers did in those early days?   We have certainly gone through bad times in the last forty years and perhaps that is why our yang people in Catholic schools show little interest.   Where they should find certainty they find doubt.   Where they should find unwavering trust in God they find confusing.   Like the story of the Tower of Babel, there is confusion in what is said and the Catholic Church is not united but split into groups, one group almost at times despising the others.     The pretended unity is a sham.   Instead of preaching the Gospel with ...

It shogun be brought to your attention that Jesus proclaimed Himself a King before Pilate.   In Jewish history the Queen who sat at the right hand of the King was his mother.    Thus Bathsheba sat beside Solomon.    The Queen was the one who was sought out for petitions of justice and mercy.   Thus if Jesus is King it follows that Mary is the Queen of the Heavenly kingdom.     "Woman behold your son, son behold your mother" as said by Jesus on the Cross brings us to the heart of the matter.   For the Early Church saw Mary as the new Eve who gave birth to the new Adam.  She is the new Eve and our Queen.

If indeed I am, by receiving Holy Communion, receiving the Divinity of Jesus, the second Adam, and that second Adam is God-Made-Man, why have I been forbidden to kneel and adore him at the altar rail?   One of the most astonishing modernist teaching is that somehow I am worthy of this honour, despite the words of the priest "Lord I am not worthy to enter under your roof...."   A creature has no equality whatsoever with his Creator and it is only the love of the Creator that keeps him in existence.     But perhaps the worst of this claim is that at the same time modernists are discouraging Confession and making little of sin as they promote adultery among our young people in our schools by insisting that we can ignore the teaching of Christ in such matters because he only wants us to look after the poor.   Yes, he wants us to look after the poor but he also told the apostles to 'teach all I have commanded you' Matthew 28.    We have a country now that i...

Wheb I wrote my last post on the early Church it was the result of my reading the text.  Much later I began to reflect on what I had written.   Yes, Mary was the new Eve, but she was the virgin who had kept faithful to  God and her offspring would not be contaminated in its humanity with the weakness brought about by original sin.  Certainly Jesus was her Son and she had given him his unblemished hunaanity.   Jesus was fresh of her flesh   In Revelations 12 we read of that great sign of a woman clothed with the sun and a crown on her head.   We read on that the serpent was ready to devour her son to whom she was giving birth but he failed and so he went after her other children.   Who were her other children?   We are.   But how can we become children of Mary?   The answer is by receiving Jesus in Hoy Communion.  For those glorious moments our flesh becomes his flesh and we become His Brother and His mother is our mother. ...

In th first formative years of the church Mary was very much alive.   We read of her being with the Apostles in the Upper Room, working out what Jesus really wanted them to teach and preach in His Church.   She then apparently accompanied St John to Ephesus where she lived and was from there assumed into Heaven.    The Church then faced up to the question of Mary and what role she played in our salvation.  The theme they caught onto quickly was that since Jesus was the new Adam bringing about a new Christian humanity then Mary who gave birth to him was the new Eve and the mother of that new humanity.   Christians were people who now cast off the slavery of sin and lived in the grace of Jesus Christ.      Christians were called to redeem the rest of mankind from that slaery and redeem them in the grace of Baptism.    There was much speculation about the virginity of Mary in comparison to the virginity of Eve, for Eve was the virgin w...

If you ask why young people are not attending Mass anymore you can get many answers.   There are those who 'apparently do their best, it is just a different age'      There are those who put it down to a lack of teaching in schools and families on the essentials of the Faith.   Just teach chastity and morals and all will be well.   Just tell them about Jesus and speak about Jesus and become popular and you will be doing the job right.    There is a certain truth in all of these, though there is one thing we must never do it seems, and that is blame ourselves. But the answer lies in understanding that young people today are more idealistic about their society than ever before.   Many are committed to justice for all, but are turning more to those who have little understanding of human nature and how many things they believe are good in society are actually destructive.   But what they have is a 'big picture' which is an illusion and sec...

My interest in Mary Stuart began in my twenties when I read a book by a Church of England woman Agnes Strickland.    She was a 19th Century Historian and wrote very much in favour of Mary which was quite out of step with her time.   Mary was still the villainess who murdered Darnley, pursued her lust for Bothwell, and plotted to overthrow Elizabeth.  Many of these charges still stand of course but perhaps there is a little more sympathy ands understanding of her position, surrounded by five illegitimate sons of of her father James V, and resented for being a woman and a Catholic.    The latest contribution was from a Dr John Guy with his book My Heart is My Own where he boasted that he had written a book which had debunked many of the myths about Mary and his history was the Truth.    However when it came to the murder of Darnley he concluded that although there was no evidence that she was implicated 'she must have been', the most historic '...

This young lady is bipolar but she has a tremendous faith and studies very hard.   This is on the role of Mary, which again with no supporting evidence from the Pope, the Catechism, nor Vatican II, was vilified by many of the modern Bishops in the Church, and sadly in England they were very strong.   In case anyone is interested in the truth if you consult the Vatican II document The 'Constitution on the Church' you will find that devotion to Mary was actually encouraged and we were told to continue such practices.  But that is truth, and as Pilate asked "What is Truth"    I suppose he meant whatever makes you feel comfortable and is useful in getting on with people.