Portsmouth Roman Catholic

 Irenaeus goes on to attack the Gnostic teaching on the corruptible body.     "For as the bread which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God is no longer common bread but the Eucharist consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly, so also our bodies when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible having the hope of the resurrection to eternity"    Remember Irenaeus is speaking in the 2nd century, 100 plus, and he is telling us of the consecration of the bread into the Body of Christ by someone using the words of God, that is of Christ.    How dare anyone in the Church deny the existence of the Mass in the Early Church!       But Irenaeus goes further to talk about the teaching of St Paul on Re-capitulation or a re-heading up  of the human race - Christ was the New Adam restoring a new humanity to the human race which could free itself from sin.    He tells us Jesus had an accomplice in his rebellion.   In his renewal and recapitulat

 Today is the feast of St Irenaeus.     Irenaeus was a remarkable saint since almost single handed he took on the Gnostic heresy, which at a time when faith in Roman Gods was waning was welcomed with some excitement.    Even Christians became Gnostics and began to argue from the many wrings in the early Church that the saviour only came to rescue the few enlightened people who had a spiritual presence in them and not everyone.   It borrowed from Greek philosophy and Persian writings.    It claimed that the Gods were not interested in creating anything of matter but a lesser God called the Demiurge had created the world.  This had been a great mistake for the world was corrupt.    A few people though carried spirits in them, fallen angels imprisoned in flesh, which they had to free, and that was the work of the Saviour.    But only a few people knew this secret, an elite,  and they passed it on to others who were worthy.   As the author of the book I read remarked  "It sounds just

 Polycarp was the bishop of Smyrna which Ignatiius of Antioch had passed through on his journey to martyrdom in Rome.  Ignatius was very impressed by Polycarp and one of the seven letters he wrote on his journey was to Polycarp to encourage him as a bishop.    Unfortunately a persecution of the Christians there broke out and Polycarp was arrested.     He was asked to call Caesar Lord and offer incense to him and deny Christ.      Polycarp refused and since there was a crowd in the arena but the lions had been settled down for the night it was decided to burn him.    He was tied to a stake but before they set the wood alight he offered a prayer.    ".........  I bless Thee because thou has deemed me worthy of this day and hour, to take my part in the number of the martyrs, in the cup of Christ..........may I be received  in thy presence as a rich and acceptable sacrifice just as thou has revealed and prepared beforehand ......for this and for everything I praise Thee, I bless Thee,

 This is a post I find difficult.   Should I blast in with condemnation and judgmentalism, and call the people who passed this legislation in the European Parliament Nazis, Murderers, Scum, and all the harsh words I can think of to put them down.   There was a time I would have, but looking back on my early days when abortion was being passed in the UK Parliament and feeling anger, why in the Catholic Church was there so little response from the clergy.   Then when the assurance that there would be no abortion on demand, was made a mockery of by doctors seeking to earn a fortune, and women who for their own reasons, and I will not judge, brought into being just that 'abortion on demand', I set myself up in SPUC and spoke from the pulpit on the subject to raise funds, I did receive about £400 from each Church I spoke in, so the ordinary Catholic recognised the horror, though there was an occasion when one of the 'angry minority' spoke up in objection.  What happened in t

 Ignatius of Antioch lived at the time of the Apostles.   He was a follower of Christ and when St Peter left Antioch he appointed Ignatius as his successor.   In the early church many persecutions happened at a local level and one such broke out in Antioch.   Ignatius was arrested and condemned to fight the lions in the arena at Rome, so under the guard of a few soldiers he began his journey to that city.   The remarkable thing about Ignatius was the joy he felt at becoming a martyr or witness to Jesus Christ.    He wrote seven letters on the way when they stopped at towns or cities to the local Christian communities, which were not under persecution and would come to speak and encourage him.   These letters gave an insight into the doctrines and governance of the Early Church and are almost compulsive reading for anyone who wishes to know of such things.   His last letter of course was to the Romans.   "I am voluntary dying for God, that is if you do not interfere, I plead with y

 Clement was the Third Pope after Peter.    We know of him because he sent a letter to the Church in Corinth which had been established by Paul.   The Corinthians had decided that they would decide for themselves who their bishop and elders should be with no regard to Rome whatsoever. But let me quote Marcellino D'Ambrosio on a very important matter.   "Interesting though, this letter was lost to Western Christians until the year 1621 when the Patriarch of Constantinople  gave the King of England a precious gift.   It was a copy of the 5th century bound  volume of the Bible called the Codex Alexandrinus, that contained along with the Gospels and Epistles, the Letter of Clement.    That meant unfortunately Clement's letter was not available during the prior century when great arguments arose that shattered unity in the Christian West" I think D'Ambrosio is being kind here.   For the presence of this letter would not have changed matters much, since from the very be

 A film was released in 2020 called Fatima.   It was a new version of the story of three children to whom the Mother of God appeared in 1917 asking that the world turn back to God and say the Rosary every day, so that peace can return to the world.  In 1917 the First World War was being fought and thousands of young men were dying.   Portugal also had a new Government replacing the Monarchy, and this government was determined to revolutionise Portugal by ridding it of the superstition of religion and the Catholic Church.   Then a girl of ten, another of eight, and a boy of seven started seeing visions and to prove their visions were real announcing that on the 13th October there would be a miracle at Fatima.   These children were of course mocked but many officials and newspaper reporters came to scoff at their delusions, since in a scientific age there could be no miracles.    There were 70,000 sightseers on the field at Fatima who saw the sun dance in the sky and suddenly fall to ear

 Usually when I go on to my blog I find all my entries, the recent writing the top one under posts.    Unfortunately there are very clever people in this world who interfere and take charge of my blog.   I had once an article on Cafod I had written years before appearing at the top of my readers blogspot.com.     Someone was trying to show how biased I was.   I took up the challenge and wrote an apology to the people in Cafod of today, who were quite different from those I dealt with many years ago.    Times change. Yesterday I was interfered with yet again by something I had seen and shocked me many yeas ago, and had caused me to write a short piece in anger.   I do not know why it was reposted but I can say quite plainly that I offer no apologies whatsoever.    Perhaps they were upset by the prophecy that when this Church is restored then Scotland will regain the Faith.   Let me assure the readers that I was not claiming inspiration from the Holy Spirit, I was claiming inspiration fr

 Sometimes when I switch on my blog and look at the blogs I have written there appears at the top posts from the past.   One post recently was a post about a former Seminary in Scotland, or rather the ruins of a beautiful chapel that was built there in the 1960's.    In the early 60's the seminary had about 40 young men training as priests.   Then came the evils attributed to Vatican II, we were introduced to a new Church, a Church of mature people who could think for themselves, who were given management of the Church, and in no time at all, there were no more vocations, there were no more teenagers attending Church for the schools had introduced a 'mature' programme which alienated them, and of course a 'new morality' for what mature person could possibly put up with the idea that they committed sin.    So it was very much thumbs down to Jesus and thumbs up to a church for the 20th century, where a Jesus was invented who did not talk about hell, sin, divorce,

 This is the Year of the Eucharist.    Now there are plenty of events and meetings planned throughout the next few months.   People will attend and everyone will settle down to a positive programme of uplifting talks and going home feeling good inside.   This is how these meetings have been for over fifty years.   What was actually happening was that we have all been lulled into a sleep, we all pretend everything is well, and all we have to do is wait for God to fix any problems.  So to a background of Catholic Schools succeeding in alienating over 90 per cent of schoolchildren from the Church, and by their early teens, we keep our voices quiet.   We do not want to be 'divisive'.     Then there are the sex programmes, where the 'old fashioned' teachings of Christ are ignored because we live in a more educated society.   Young people in Catholic Schools learn about contraception and are as keen as pupils in State Schools to indulge in this 'responsible sex', lead

 What kind of a Mass do you prefer?   Do you prefer the Latin Mass or the Vernacular Mass?   Ever since the Mass was changed into English in the 1970's the debate has carried on.    There is little point today in going over the historical arguments of whether the Latin Mass should or should not have survived, today many enjoy the Mass they have in their own language and nothing will change that fact.    Yet hostility to either the English Mass or the Latin Mass survive.     As for myself I have never thought of language as important for in the early days in Rome most Masses were said in Greek until about 180AD when Latin became prominent.    Indeed throughout the East the Masses are still said in Greek, and should I say Jesus said the first Mass in Aramaic.      However I have a great problem with those who want to ban the Latin Mass.   While living in England I have no difficulty with the English Mass but when I go to France, since I do not speak French, I am completely lost, and

 Today we celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.    Again we focus on human love, just as on the Feast of the Sacred Heart.   Catholics often say that Christ gave Mary to us from the Cross, "Woman behold your Son, Son behold your Mother", but in the Divine plan it was much more than just a symbolic gesture.   The Fathers of the Church did not see her as just a woman chosen by God to be the Mother of Jesus, perhaps she would do,  or perhaps someone else.   The Angel Gabriel greeted her "Hail, full of Grace....."  What he was saying was that she already had all the gifts that God deemed necessary for one who was to be the Mother of the Saviour he would send.    It is quite astonishing to me that there are those who believe any woman would do, as though it was just an ordinary task bringing up the Son of God!   But certainly the Early Church, and Mary was part of the Early Church, knew better.  The Son of God could not inherit a human nature that was pron

 I find it hard to continue writing about the Blessed Sacrament and sharing a vision of the love of Jesus in this Sacrament on this special Day, the Feast of the Sacred Heart.   On this day we celebrate the man Jesus, and how much he loves us through the symbol of his heart, which is where we accredit our feelings and emotions as human beings.  We love with our hearts, and Jesus loves us with his heart. And yet this day brings sorrow not just for my awareness of how little I love, but for one of the worst blasphemies committed against His Sacred Heart.   It was in the late seventies when I visited a Church in a neighbouring town, that I saw for the first time this plot against Jesus.    There was no Tabernacle on the altar which made me wonder, but my attention was drawn to a priest who went to a neighbouring wall with some hosts  in his hands.   He opened a safe and put the sacred species inside.   Now I had never read anything about such changes and I was puzzled.   But more and more

 Have you ever argued texts of the bible with a Protestant or a slip away Catholic?    It can be fun, but it is also fruitless, for neither you nor they will change positions.    The difficulty is you are both making scripture 'sola scriptura', the only basis on which to reach a conclusion, for the Bible is regarded as the only authority.   But this is a false assumption, for there is a whole history of the Christian people from the time of Christ and what they believed, and much of it has been written down for posterity in the writings of the Fathers of the Church, and although their works were not chosen by the Church as the Word of God to be used in our liturgies, they are a guide we can use in disputes as to what is true and what is false.    In the Catholic Church we do not believe just in the Bible but we believe in such writings or 'traditions'  of the Fathers. So in this Year of the Eucharist when we look at scripture and then tradition, or the thoughts of the E

Before writing this I have prayed to Jesus and Mary and St Raphael the Angel of Communication.   Some will say that I am mad, but then others know I am.   But all I can do is tell my story. I was very enthusiastic about  Bishop Philip and his encouraging words as he introduced the Year of the Eucharist, so enthusiastic that on Monday I decided to send him my thanks by e-mail and offer him my thoughts on the matter.    So I sat down at my PC and went into my email page.    What opened up was not my usual email page, I found it difficult to find where I was supposed to write.   It was full of instructions on this, that and the other.    I did eventually find where to write but it was on a one line track and what I wrote before disappeared.    I eventually pressed 'send' and the last bit of my script disappeared.   But where did it go?   I pressed the side bit 'sent' items but it was not there.   It had vanished into thin air.   Did it go or did it not?    I then worried a

 At Lourdes Bernadette on several occasions asked her 'beautiful lady' her name, but the lady did not reply.   On the last Thursday, however, when Bernadette asked again the lady lifted her arms and her eyes to heaven and replied "I am the Immaculate Conception"   Now only four years before the Pope at the time having consulted all the bishops of the world declared that the doctrine that Mary was conceived free of the original sin committed by Adam and Eve because as Gabriel had said "Hail, Full of Grace......." to Mary, these words had demonstrated that as the Mother of the Saviour there was to be no fault in her nature she could pass on to Jesus.   She was immaculate and free from the stain and weakness to sin that all humanity had inherited from Eve from the moment of her immaculate conception.  But as Eve who was born immaculate had fallen into sin when tempted by the serpent, Mary the new Eve triumphed over temptation, and do not believe for one second

 I have been reading the book The Song of Bernadette by Franz Werfel.    Franz was a playwright and novelist born at in Austria of Bohemian heritage.   He was a Jew but was raised by a Catholic Governess who used to take him to Mass with her, so Franz, though a Jew, had a great respect for the Catholic Church.   Franz fought as a soldier against Germany in the First World War, and afterwards wrote a book revealing the terrible genocide incident in 1915 committed against the Armenian people.  His writing took off between the wars and he became a person of fame.   At the outbreak of the Second World War he was in Germany and he was reported as dead by the American authorities.    But Franz and his wife were in the South of France trying to escape over the border to Spain and fortunately for the Catholic Church he was told they would find safety in Lourdes.   They went there and Franz learned the beautiful story of the shrine and was captured especially by the story of  Bernadette Soubiro