Portsmouth Roman Catholic

 Did yo know that the parishioners at the Cathedral are not turned away from Mass on Sunday?   When they turn up at the door, they are not asked their telephone number,  test and trace is not longer used anywhere in this country, because the Vaccine has made it unnecessary, ad 80% of the country have been vaccinated and need not isolate.   But that does not mean that you can just walk into the Cathedral.  You are asked to give proof that you are vaccinated.    Vaccinations have also meant that the distancing rule has been abolished and people can now come within a comfortable distance of one another.   But if anyone at the Cathedral is uncomfortable at people being too close, they can put a card down on the seat beside them as if it was a place reserved for others.    Handwashing is of course carried out before and after Mass.   It seems to me a very good system meeting the advice of the Government and Health exp...

The decision given against young Heidi Crowther, a person with Downs Syndrome, in the High Court was a strange one.    The judges, no doubt afraid of a backlash against them, claimed they could only act in accordance with the law, and yet were ready to give opinions which were outside the law.    In my reading of the case on a BBC website there was a paragraph which said 'The Government maintained there was no evidence the law discriminated against Downs'.   Just read that again 'There is no evidence the law discriminates against Downs'.   Well we must admit the obvious, the law does not discriminate against Downs, it also aborts babies with other conditions.   You must excuse me using the word baby instead of foetus for I have seen too many scans on pregnant women which show me there is little difference between a baby in the womb and a baby in a pram.   I am not into mental gymnastics.    But maybe I am being harsh ...

 It was good to hear on TV that the problems of young people in schools is at last being recognised.  Young girls from the age of  13 are having explicit e-mails sent to them by boys, and parents are furious that the schools are doing nothing to protect their children.  There have been cases of sex abuse and even rape.   Now the exposition of such things happening and the finding of parents that schoolteachers do not take them seriously, indeed one parent resorted to law, is all fine and good, but there was an obvious question that was not being asked.    How many girls do not complain because having just entered into puberty they are flattered by the attention they get, especially when they come from unhappy homes.   I have been blogging on this subject for about 30 years on my blog, and I am certainly not the toast of many Catholic school teachers or priests, when I pointed out that their refusal to give sound moral teachings, in accor...

 I have recently discovered why we are not following the bishop.   Apparently when he issued his guidelines, and he was following the guidelines of the Bishop's Conference, 'that local conditions must be taken account of when putting into practice safety measures against Covid', the Bishop welcomed everyone back to Mass, for conditions in the diocese were favourable and people were returning to normal activities in society.   They were returning to pubs, clubs, restaurants, Churches in normal numbers, large numbers were attending festivals and music events, and there were large crowds attending football matches.   Social Distancing was abandoned in every day life, and because of the success of the Vaccine, we were as we should have, getting back to as normal life as possible. It seems however that certain priests in the diocese were unhappy with the Bishop following the rest of society.   They decided on a plan of 'virtue signalling'.  ...

  CATHEDRAL OPENING TIMES Monday to Friday the Cathedral will be open 10am – 4pm Saturday & Sunday 10am – 7pm Confessions times have resumed - Saturdays from 11:00 -12:00 and 17:00-17:45 in St John’s Chapel. Now why have I advertised the  opening times of our Cathedral in Portsmouth.     As you can see the Church is open daily, there are confessions and there is no mention of a limit on the numbers of people who can attend.    Portsmouth Cathedral is following the guidelines laid down by the Conference of Bishops, there is no major outbreak of Covid in the area, and the Government guidelines that we must learn to live with the virus provided we are aware that the outbreak is low in your area, and if that changes we change,   What does live with the virus mean?   It means we carry out our normal everyday lives though having regard to the safety of others by wearing masks in certain situations.    I watched las...

 I was so pleased with this young girl Emma Raducannu.    She was a young girl who worked very hard at her tennis and because she had put so much into it she won the American Open.      Now there are thousands of young people who have been inspired by her example and wish to to do just what she did.    She is a figure of the success they want, and they have vowed to follow her example.    She is venerated by them.   They hold her in high esteem, and that is what the word venerate means. Now that is how our young should be looking at the saints of the Church.   Like Emma they are just human beings and will always be human beings, but they shaped their lives to be close to God, and found themselves in love, the love they had for Jesus, and the love Jesus had for them.   "There is a greater joy in Heaven over one sinner who does penance, than over ninety nine just people who need not penance"   What t...

In the beginning God made them male and female.     Every animal and every human being.    I am saying God because I am not a  Christian, I am a Catholic and I identify with the Church that goes back to the teachings of the Apostles, and has passed down those teachings for 2,000 years. Now when I turn to the  Early Church, I find the writings of the Early Fathers who all speak of the beauty in the teachings of Christ.   And must I speak again of the beautiful letter of Justin, who told the pagans just how the early Christians were faithful in receiving the Flesh of Jesus, followed the commandments of Jesus in living chaste lives, and in being faithful to their marriage vows as Christ had taught.   This was the Church that Christ had built for all time, and in which he promised he would live for all time. Just think of how attractive that Church must have been.  People completely devoted to Jesus, and living lives to be envied, ...

 In the Early Church there was a heresy called Arianism.    Far from being a heresy confined to a location as most heresies were, this heresy spread throughout the church.   Indeed many bishops succumbed to it, but the Pope in Rome opposed it with all his might, along with many bishops including St Augustine.     One of the things that destroyed this heresy was the faithfulness of the people to the Pope and bishops like Augustine, they were not themselves theologians, but somehow they knew who was in the right.    This is known as the 'sensus fidelium'.   An inner sense of the people as to what is right and wrong.   If someone is in disagreement with the Church, and putting forward  reasons, this is not the 'sensus fidelium', no the sensus fidelium is not a rational thing, it is a sense inside guided by the Holy Spirit granted to faithful Catholics, fidelium means the faithful, that the Church cannot err in what ...

 Far from holding incestuous orgies, Justin goes on to say, Christians rejected all sexual relations except in the context of a marriage ordered towards the begetting of children.    These marriages are exclusive and unto death.   Justin is here witnessing to the early Church prohibition on divorce and remarriage and he also boasts that lifelong chastity was highly prized in the Christian community.   Many people in their sixties and seventies who have been disciples of Christ from childhood retain their purity; and I am proud that I could point to such people in every nation". Justin is really trying to impress the Pagans with the fact they are following Christ and are faithful to Christ  and his teachings.   Christianity is not an ideology but a way of life.   "I am the way, the truth and the life" said Jesus.   There are those in the Church who say the Church must update itself to the standards of the modern world....

  Earlier this week Dr Joseph Shaw, chairman of the Latin Mass Society, said that he doubted bishops would take the unusual step of ruling on this issue for their diocese. Were they to do so, he said, they must be mindful of the rights of priests and faithful. “The faithful may not be refused Holy Communion just because they wish to receive on the tongue,” he said. “Priests may decline to distribute in the hand if there is risk of profanation. Priests may decline to offer any of the Sacraments when it is inopportune to offer them. These rights are granted by the universal law of the Church and cannot be taken away by bishops.” The above is a quote from Dr Shaw of the Latin Mass Society.   I am quoting him for he was responding to a decision by the Bishops of England and Wales that each bishop can make his own decision as to whether during this Covid crisis the faithful are to be allowed communion on the tongue    The Tablet, the periodical in which I found this ...

My son broke his ankle recently and was admitted to hospital.   He does not live in Basingstoke, so we had to visit his local hospital.    Three of us travelled by car and arrived at the hospital where he was being treated.     The three of us walked through the entrance wearing our masks, and were greeted by staff offering us a sanitiser for our hands.    We then went to his ward and my son asked us to fetch a wheelchair he could sit on and take him outside.  We did so and he was allowed to leave the ward and sit with us outside.  It was a wonderful experience, Unfortunately this was not the experience a friend of mine had when she visited her grandmother in the local hospital.    There were only two of them, my friend and her mother, both wearing masks, but only one of them was admitted.   My friend pleaded she would sit in a waiting room, but she was turned away and told to wait outside. Now the action of the ...