First Question: The Journeying Companions

 So where do we start?    Well it is difficult for many but my experiences over 50 years where I found myself in places I should not have been and listening to catechists being instructed in the Faith, gives me an advantage.

But first let me go to a Teachers Training College which used to be in this Diocese.   There I listened to a talk which was then delivered by a Lesbian who was telling the upcoming teachers that the Church had it wrong on sex.    They also had sessions I attended where old women in 'bunned' grey hair would bewail their fate that they could not be a priest.   I met another few later in the local school who were attending a lecture by someone who had written a book, book writing was all the rage at the time, but he had discovered that priests do not actually change the bread and the wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus.  He became a travelling celebrity.   "Gosh, I knew that when I was about 7" I thought to myself, but then this came under the category of teaching ignorant catholics.    I left early.

The chosen catechists for our children were certainly not my 'journeying companions'.   I was not chosen as a catechist but somehow I always managed to be there.   In one session I got too cheeky and exposed my ignorance      The 'expert' began by telling us that Vatican II had said that no Christian Church had the whole truth but we all shared it.   So I said "Vatican II said no such thing"     This rather threw her for she believed she was teaching chosen modernists.   Her reply was "So you think you are the only person going to heaven"    I just smiled.   By the way my teachers were under the influence of the Catechism of St Pius X who had definitely said that people of good will and sought love and justice, could enter heave through the Baptism of Desire.   Then there was the final session when one catechist triumphantly said "The Church will have to change its teaching on Contraception, Divorce, and Abortion"    To the pleasure of the Catechist another agreed "John" she sad "it is the work of the Holy Spirit", then off they went to teach the Catholic children.   So I have now shown the people who are not my journeying companions for they cannot lead me to Jesus, but only destroy my faith in beauty and the miraculous.   In the changing of the Bread and Wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus.    This was not some teaching developed by the Church, but as a Protestant Historian HND Henderson said "We must grasp that from the very beginning the belief was realist in the Church.   They believed the bread was the flesh of Jesus, and the wine was his Blood.    The flesh of Jesus was worked out from John 6, the Last Supper, and the crucifixion "This is my Body which will be given up for you"    "This is the Chalice of my Blood which will be shed for you"    A Sacrificial Offering.   and as Henderson said they were influenced by Malachi 1.10.     Those who would kneel if they could are my Journeying Companions and nobody else.    And this Synod will not change the truth that lies in the heart of people.   "He who is not for me is against me".


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