Portsmouth Roman Catholic

Thre have been many years of struggle in the Church as she tried to conform the world to the teachings of Christ, for only in a world which conforms to the teachings of Christ can the Kingdom we ask for in the Our Father come to be.    In the early years the Church was very successful in its message, yes it taught love, but that love was based on following His way, and his way started with the love of a man and a woman, the begetting of children into that loving relationship, and the children growing secure and safe, knowing love, and how to give love.   Jesus was opposed to anything that broke down this basic family unit and his condemnation of divorce and adultery were part of His Way, the way forward for mankind.    Two parents bonded to their children and allowing the children to experience their love and learn to love one another was the very foundation of His Way.    So summing up Divorce is something that should be alien to Christians.   As the Church has always taught when marc

MAY I JUST METION THAT I FIRST CAME ACROSS THE ABOVE IMAGE WHEN I WAS LOOKING AT A STOCK OF PICTURES THAT CAME UP WHEN I LOOKED FOR THE STAIN GLASS WINDOWS FROM THE VYNE BASINGSTOKE.     I THEN PUT MY THOUGHTS ON THE MATTER ONTO THIS BLOG AND BEGAN TO SEARCH FOR FURTHER IMAGES OF THIS IN OTHER CHURCHES AND PLACES OF WORSHIP.   WHAT HAPPENED THEN IS THAT THE IMAGE IN OTHER STOCKS APPEARED ONLY BECAUSE I WAS SEARCHING.    THEY CAME UNDER THE TITLE 'PORTSOUTH ROMAN CATHOLIC' AS THOUGH I WAS THE ONE WHO CONJURED THE IMAGE UP AND ANYTHING I WROTE WAS DONE SO WITH SOME KIND OF AUTHORITY ON THE SUBJECT WHICH I DO NOT HAVE.   THIS KIND OF STALKING I FIND TO BE A NUISANCE AND GOOGLE SHOULD MIND ITS OWN BUSINESS.

I am moving on in years and perhaps I will die soon and for that I will be grateful.   I have lived through the years when secularism took over our country.  I have seen pornography grow as an industry to destroy Christian morality.  I remember a lady called Mary Whitehouse calling for the media to be responsible when nudes in the press and bed scenes in film and tv left nothing for the imagination.  At length we did start classifying these as Adult programmes but by then sex was a recreational pursuit.    In schools there was a call for more and more contraceptives as young people responded to the new 'freedoms' the secular state had introduced.    The in Britain in the sixties and MP David Steele introduced an Abortion Bill    We were assured that it was ridiculous to say that this would lead to Abortion on Demand, but it did not take very long for any attempt to control abortion to be sunk without trace.   We moved from bring allows to destroy a 'baby' in the womb to

The panels of painted glass in the north window of the chancel and the south window of the nave date from 1524 and were originally in the Holy Ghost chapel Basingstoke. Lord Sandys, Henry VIII’s Lord Chamberlain had developed the chapel as a burial place for the Sandys family. He employed the most important Flemish glaziers and artists of the day to create a large range of stained glass windows. During the Civil War lead from the glass was being used by Parliamentary troops to make bullets. The glass panes were removed for safe keeping and were stored in the loft of Mottisfont Priory, one of the Sandys estates. After the Civil War some of the panes were used in the chapel of The Vyne, another Sandys family home. In 1684 the Sandys estates were inherited by Sir John Mill of Woolbeding House. His grandson, the Rev. Sir Henry Mill, rector of Woolbeding, aware of the 16th century glass in storage at Mottisfont, used some of the panels to create a beautiful east window in the chancel

Charles Eamer Kempe was probably the greatest Victorian Stain Glass designer  in Victoria history.   He dedicated his work to redesigning Churches and especially restoring the art of Stain Glass Windows depicting Jesus, Mary and the Saints and depicting many biblical scenes to bring Churches closer to God.   There is hardly a part of the country where you are not far from his work be it Yorkshire, Stirling,  Newcastle, Wakefield, Oxford University, Sussex, Brighton.    So, so many places.   Now you may well be asking what this has to do with my hunt for Virgo Immaculata?   My answer is that he restored medieval stained glass window production and copied the old and fading  to replace the original.    Now if it were a painting you would have probably had a signature of some kind but with stained Glass Windows you made up something individual on the window which those who looked at it would see and know who the designer was.    Kempe used several methods.  He like Pelicans and wheats

I often marvel at just how blind the Secular Society is?   Knife crimes on the rise, poverty blamed on the Government rather than the breakdown in family life that it is responsible for.    Children growing up in broken homes without a father and being assured that there is nothing wrong with this.  Yet still the problems grow.   Not having had the experience of a loving father and mother, both dedicated to each other and focussed on them, these children grow up  felling cheated and deprived, and unable to make relationships that are lasting.    Then we have the call for more mental health provision for the growing number of children growing up lost and confused.   Again the answer is always 'spend more money' The most abused word in the English language is the word 'love'.   Jesus once said "You have heard it said "Tou shall not commit adultery.  But I say that any man who looks at a woman and lusts after her has already committed adultery with her in his h

A Great City is Brought Low by Pride It’s going to be like this for some years into the future. Christians must be prayerful and courageous. Joanna Bogle Pride is one of the seven deadly sins, and some say the deadliest. It is deeply horrible that this summer great crowds gathered in London and other cities to celebrate it. Specifically, the big the publicly-funded events and associated posters, music, celebrity backing and so on, are to celebrate Gay Pride – pride in affirming lesbianism and homosexual activity. Things culminate in a great day of Pride and a march through London – helped large sums of public money, and support from the armed forces, and the government, plus local authorities and all sorts of commercial companies. The big posters bearing official announcements are an annual part of London life now: The Royal Navy officially promotes the Pride March, the police support it, the mayor of London supports it. Announcements supporting the “Pride” line on lesbia

The answer to the question whether an abortion is a human right depends not just on the humanity of the mother but the question of whether the baby is also human.   Many mothers now have scans at three months and when they examine these scans thy see a baby.   Of course if you are struggling to come to terms with being pregnant you will not want this scan or any evidence that what you are carrying is a baby.   And indeed the hardened abortionist women will want you to keep away from any images that contradict their message    Yet at the same time they profess that abortion is a 'difficult decision'.   I remember one of them being asked whether it was easier after the second, third, or fourth abortion.   Now I am taking here about the hardened abortionists who keep the killing clinics open and walk the streets talking about the hardship of women who have been raped as though that was the main reason for abortion, or the mother carrying a disabled child, or the life of the mother

When I visited the Vyne in Basingstoke for the first time last year I saw the above image of HENRY VIII as a young man kneeling in prayer.  It was said he was praying to his favourite saint but this did not ring true, for the young Henry of History who was completely devoted to Our Lady.   I have no doubt then that a stained glass window of Mary would have been there when he visited with his first wife Catherine of Aragon and was still happily settled in the Catholic Church   Knowing his devotion to Mary it is inconceivable that at that time there would not have been a window to Mary.   However after the Reformation when his love for Mary had turned into hatred against her, it was understandable that Lord Sandys who lived in the Vyne would have removed  the window promptly since Henry continued his visits with Anne Boleyn.   But what happened to that window? Henry, to be fair to him, did not start an iconoclastic search and smash of every window of Mary in every Church in Engl