Occasional dispatches from the front line of spiritual battle. A Catholic blog. Postings often conceived in the garden, at the playground or at the kitchen sink and hastily typed out far too late at night after putting the children to bed.
Blog started on the Feast of The Divine Mercy 2011, the day of the Beatification of Pope John Paul II. Blessed Pope John Paul II - Ora Pro Nobis!
Home educators in France are waking up to the reality that their educational choice is about to be legislated out of existence by the French Senate. This is the latest in a raft of anti-family measures by the Hollande government, which has also added traditionalist pro-family group Civitas to groups to be monitored for “religious pathology” by the newly minted “National Observatory of Secularism” created by Interior Minister Manuel Vallsto promote France’s secularist policy and what it deems to be 'public morality' in schools.
It shouldn't be surprising that home education is under threat in France. Vincent Peillon, current National Minister of Education is on YouTube saying that democracy is not possible where the Catholic Church is present and that the Church must be destroyed as part of an ongoing “revolution”. Pro-family groups in France are finding the legislative ground shifting, but have become well organised: the wonderful pro-(natural)-family “Manif Pour Tous” movement has spread beyond France to Spain, Italy and Ireland. We need it in Britain as well.
British home educators watch France with increasing unease. We have a few things in our favour – for the moment at least. The first is that home educating in the UK is not a predominantly religious phenomenon. The vast majority do so for loosely philosophical reasons: most are found somewhere on the hippie-ish spectrum – from yurt dwelling alternative lifestylers to slightly mad Oxbridge academic families, they are all people who have thought outside the box and often place great value on family and children. For Catholic home educators this is positive: religion can't be pinpointed so easily as a reason to crack down on home ed. Britain also has a legacy of civil liberties, from which stems a residual tolerance of home education compared to other European countries. The strong home education communitiessthat have resulted mean home educated children have access to wide and varied social networks. This is significant as the French legislation specifically mentions "voluntary de-socialization, destined to submit the child, who is particularly vulnerable, to a psychic, ideological or religious conditioning" as the reason for banning out-of-school learning.
In Britain the current government is taking a laissez-faire attitude towards home education. If it's working – and the research shows that it is – why change it? However only a few years ago, in his role as Secretary of State for Children Schools and Families, Ed Balls did his best to crush home education, commissioning a report on electively home educated children. When the initial report recommended no changes to the existing situation Balls commissioned a second report followed by a select committee. Backbencher Barry Sheerman, (who as Chairman of the parliamentary cross-party committee on children, schools and families under the last government asserted that “faith education works all right as long as people are not that serious about their faith. But ...it does become worrying when you get … more fundamentalist bishops”) has been asking leading questions about Home Education and making cryptic comments on Twitter. The message is clear: home education is in our sights and we won't be happy until it's gone.
Should this matter to the majority of parents who do not home educate? ABSOLUTELY. Why? Because Home Education as a litmus test of the relationship between the family and the state. Where the state accepts home education the state is accepting the family as the natural and safe environment for a child to learn. By contrast, state prohibition of home education is symptom of a state’s broader ideological position: suspicious of the family, wary of religious or ideological “indoctrination” , and insisting that professionals are better equipped than parents to guide children's academic and moral growth.
A government that does not respect the right of a family to determine their children's educational path will never respect the rights of the parent to be the primary influence on their child. When the next round of state-led threats to home education kicks-off, pay attention: it’s not just about home education.
A version of this article appeared in Catholic Family Round-up in April 2014
Friendly atheists just dying to support their Christian friends in crisis...
It's happened too many times to be a coincidence. Someone in my circle of friends is having a difficult time - death, divorce, illness - and I lend a sympathetic ear. Obviously I'm not the only one doing this, but sometimes I find that if the person has had some involvement with the (Catholic) Church, past or present, this will come up in our conversations: largely because they will ask me "is it true that the church says X or Y?" or because they'll make a statement along the lines of "well my problem would be even worse if I was still practising the faith because of X or Y or Z" where X and Y and Z are fallacies usually picked up from the culture at large. I'm happy to correct misconceptions or point to resources that might be helpful, but that's the end of it. None of the people I'm thinking of could be described as religious but clearly they have some issues to do with religion that I'm happy to help with if it's within my ken.
Well. We can't be having that now, can we? Today I was told on no uncertain terms that "mutual friend A" who is in the middle of a nasty marital separation "has made it clear that she does NOT want to be dragged back into Church". I contacted "friend A" -- who had contacted me with questions about the Church and marriage dissolution and / or divorce -- who confirmed that she had not said anything of the sort to anybody. I pointed out -- as if I needed to -- that I had no plans to drag her or anybody else for that matter "back into Church" but that I would be at the end of the phone line / email should she need me.
This isn't the first time that I've been rather bossily told -- and not always by the same person -- that I must not not try to "convert" lapsed Catholic friends when they're in the middle of the crisis. The tacit assumption is that they're screwed up enough thanks to that church of yours, thank you very much, so just back off. The irony is that whilst I've prayed privately for these friends, I've never told them, nor have I in any way tried to coerce them "back to church" -- whatever that means.
...BUT ... and it's a big BUT... every time a lukewarm or lapsing Catholic friend has had a crisis, the proselytising atheists have appeared, like sharks circling their prey with smug toothy grins. "Oh how awful that you feel guilty because of that stupid faith that was rammed down your throat as a child..." they crow "yes of course you're better off without it -- the last thing that you need right now is to worry about being judged by some church people" and so forth. The benign atheists are there with their smiles and their sympathy and their tea with a missionary zeal that would put Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses to shame.
Please join me in asking St Rita, the patron saint of women with difficult husbands, to pray for my friend who is going through a huge trauma -- not helped by the "help" of friends who see this as an opportunity to undermine her fragile faith.
Mr Justice Langstaff ruled on the case of Celestina Mba, a Christian care-worker, who was forced to leave her job after being repeatedly scheduled for work on Sundays despite having her employers having been told before they hired her that, as a Christian, she would not work on Sundays. Despite the evidence that other workers were able and happy to cover Sundays, and therefore no business case could be made for compelling Ms Mba to work on Sunday, The High Court judge said "Christians have no right to decline working on Sunday as it is not a “core component” of their beliefs" Presumably he's never heard of the Ten Commandments.
The Telegraph's report says
Mr Justice Langstaff, who as president of the Employment Appeal Tribunal is the most senior judge in England and Wales in this type of case, upheld the lower tribunal’s ruling which said it was relevant that other Christians did not ask for Sundays off.
The fact that some Christians were prepared to work on Sundays meant it was not protected, the court said.
So if we can discard the Ten Commandments as being a core part of Christianity, what else wouldn''t count as a "core componant" of Catholic belief in a court simply because lots of people who call themselves "Catholic" do or do not do them?... The mind boggles. None of this is particularly surprising - if anything I'm amazed that it took so long. I was saying that exactly this would happen only a few months ago to Mr Annie-Elizabeth, and he thought I was sounding paranoid. Ha! I very rarely wish I was wrong (like most wives, I'm rarely wrong - I think almost always being right is a special dispensation of grace that comes to wives with the sacrament of marriage) - but in this case I sincerely wish I was wrong. Want to get really paranoid? Look at prime office space in Central London, lying empty for two days out of seven: it's astounding that there isn't more call for a 7 day business week. The argument would be made, initially, as it was with Sunday opening (but quickly recinded), that nobody would be forced to work on a Sunday.The NHS is toying with the idea of implementing a 7 day working week, Sunday shopping is the norm, and Sunday is no longer special (or even relevant according to the High Court) then what barrier is there to all businesses slowly adopting an "efficient" 7 day model. Of course people would be given two days off together: they just wouldn't be the weekend as we know it. Childcare? Come on, there's nothing the government would love more than getting their ideological paws on the nation's children for even more hours a week. Think of the opportunities! A seven day working week would allow full-time mothers - those scourges on the nation's economy - to work on the days when their husbands were at home. In time they could be persuaded to synchronise work patterns and give up any loony ideas of influencing their offspring. Hell, the state schools will do a much better job. And yes, I did mean, Hell. Well, with this pretty picture of dystopia-not-quite-yet here I'm off to dig a catacomb, and it may not simply be a metaphorical one. Isn't it about time you considered doing the same?
Hot on the heel of ludicrous liberal media protests about the "severity" of the Pussy Riot verdict (look at the Guardian report - it doesn't even bother to mention that it's the most sacred of all Moscow churches, nor that a vile desecration took place - simply that there was "a protest" in "a cathedral", and even the usually sensible Spectator has been taken over by )... comes the very sad news that in Ukraine a group of self-proclaimed "militant feminists" FEMED have publically profaned a crucifix in the Kiev suburb of Majdanyj Nezalezhnost.
Equally stomach churning is the news that the OSCE (Organisation for Cooperation and Security in Europe) have criticized the verdict as representing a dangerous tendency towards curbing freedom of expression:
Charges of hooliganism and religious hatred should not be used to curb
freedom of expression. Speech no matter how provocative, satirical or
sensitive should not be restricted or suppressed and under no
circumstances should it lead to imprisonment
So in other words, you can go into a church and say or do anything you like, as long as you claim that you're exercising your freedom of expression.
Does the OSCE actually believe that "under no circumstances" freedom of expression should be curbed? Holocaust deniers? Individuals inciting violence against groups of people or against the state itself? Mad mullahs exhorting loners to blow themselves up? Under no circumstances? Or does that just apply to people dissing Christianity? Would this extend to calmly and respectfully explaining the biblical position on homosexuality and marriage in a gay nightclub?
...or would that constitute a hate crime?
This is also the week that the UN Human Rights Council declared that
many "traditional values are in conflict with human rights" and that
"traditional and cultural values in Western countries propagate harmful
practices, such as domestic violence".
Pray that our children will survive spiritually intact in this Brave New World.
The excellent Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute has started a campaign to raise awareness of a "Family planning summit" to be hosted by Melinda Gates in London in a few weeks time. The summit is co-sponsored by International Planned Parenthood Federation (the world's largest abortion provider) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) (slogan - apparently intended without irony: "Population matters"). Pro-lifers have applied to register at the summit in order to provide a counter-voice to the dominant pro-abortion, pro-population control, pro-contraception agenda, but have been refused entry. As a result, C-Fam have started a petition attached to an "Open letter to Melinda Gates" on http://2-melinda-gates.org/which I have signed and would encourage readers to consider doing the same.
The letter raises many pertinent issues, including asking whether the summit will consider support for healthy childbirth programs. For me this is crucial - so much money and effort is spent on contraception and abortion services under the umbrella "women's health" when the Cinderella services - midwifery, neonatology, ante- post- and peri-natal care are barely given any consideration. When pregnancy and childbirth are dangerous simply for want of cheap sterilisation equipment or vitamins or simple equipment like pinards / fetoscopes or simply more trained birth attendants, women may be far more easily seduced into believing that abortion is their "only" option.
A pinard is cheap and as effective as ultrasound for ante- and peri-natal foetal monitoring Photo credit: "Midwifery Elective Adventure"
I visited the Bill and Melinda Gates' foundation website and read Melinda Gates' address to TED xChange 2012: The Big Picture which is described on its website as "a platform for sharing game-changing ideas [for] solving the world’s biggest problems? Climate change, global poverty, the AIDS/HIV crisis — solving these problems will demand big thinking and unprecedented international cooperation. ... and the world is invited to join the conversation." Presumably this invitation isn't extended to pro-lifers.
Now when third world women talk about wanting opportunities, I don't think that they're thinking about the "opportunity to learn about contraceptives". But Gates' talk is subtle, if illogical - she gives examples of "happy endings" stories of poor women who started up businesses, or managed to educate their children privately, because (she suggests) they restricted their family size. I wonder whether she talked to elderly people in countries with low birthrates - China, Italy - about the impact on their lives of having only had one child. I wonder also about the changes to human relationships in a society where the majority of people are the willful first-borns. Historically most political and military leaders have been first-born or only children. Parents with larger families will understand why almost immediately. Second, and particularly subsequent siblings have a different perspective on life; are more likely to be team players. A healthy society needs foot-soldiers and farmers as well as generals.
Here's the telling bit: Melinda Gates' had a Catholic Education. Or should I say a "Catholic" education. Referring to the religious sisters who educated her, she says: "you know, the nuns who taught me were incredibly progressive. And I hope that they’ll be very proud of me for living out what they taught us about social justice" [emphasis mine].
So can we blame this whole sorry debacle on liberal nuns?
Are confused leftist nuns to blame?
Most depressing of all was the slogan on the Bill and Melinda Gates' Foundation website: "ALL LIVES HAVE EQUAL VALUE". Yeah right - tell that to the millions of babies who'll never be born thanks to the Foundation's "philanthropy". For an organisation deeply involved in contraception and abortion behind the "womens' health" smokescreen, that really is a slogan FAIL.
Following on from the Coalition for Marriage petition (which at last count had 535731 signatures), the Muslim Council of Britain has launched a campaign to support natural marriage, which has been endorsed by SPUC. The petition launched by "Muslims Defending Marriage" states:
I disagree with the government’s proposed re-defining of marriage. I fully support the long-standing legal definition of marriage as the voluntary union of a man and awoman to the exclusion of all others.
This is good news as it makes the point - which should be obvious but clearly isn't - that it isn't just Christians who oppose proposals to redefine natural marriage. I hope this new effort gains many signatures. Please point any Muslim friends in the direction of the website and petition.
This raises another interesting question: the Coalition for Marriage petition has well over half a million signatures, and yet has largely been ignored by the government and mainstream media. I wonder just how many signatures it will take before this latest petition makes the government sit up and pay attention. Just sayin'.
Superb letter in today's Irish Times (12/10/11) by somebody called Maolsheachlann O Ceallaigh who appears at one point to have published a blog called "The Irish Chestertonian". An exerpt from today's letter below:
"The doyen of modern atheism, Richard Dawkins, has written that “the universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
I suggest that such a response can only come from someone spectacularly tone-deaf to the music of existence. Mankind’s craving for ultimate truth goes deeper than can be satisfied by any scientific explanation of empirical facts (which simply pushes the explanation back one more stage to some mysterious “laws of nature”); as St Augustine wrote, “our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee.”
The rest of the letter's worth a read too. Unfortunately the way the Irish Times webpage is set up means that it is not possible to link to an individual letter, so by tomorrow the link will be out of date.
Two news stories about murder caught my eye this week, both in western Canada. One was, thankfully, a non-murder -- the abduction of a young child from his home in the middle of the night -- everyone feared the worst, but he was returned unharmed to the family home. The other case was that of a newborn, strangled after birth by his mother, and his body dumped over a neighbour's fence. This, as reported by Lifesite News, was also a non-murder, at least according to the judge who downgraded the mother's sentence from Infanticide (4 years) to a suspended sentence last Friday in the Alberta Court of Appeal. The sentence had already been downgraded from murder (with a maximum life sentence) to Infanticide (with a maximum of five years in jail) last May. The most recent downgrading of the sentence means that the mother will serve a maximum of sixteen days in jail for the crime of disposing of her baby's body by dumping it over a fence, but no punishment at all for the murder itself.
The judge, Justice Joanne Veit of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench, explained that the logic behind this relates to Canada's lack of abortion laws which, she said, reflects that "while many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support," and went on to say that "Naturally, Canadians are grieved by an infant's death, especially at the hands of the infant's mother, but Canadians also grieve for the mother."
Ahhhh. So this is basically just a late term abortion then? And that makes it OK. And abortion is a "less than ideal solution"? A solution for whom? And "less than ideal" for whom?
You'd imagine that this shocking case would be all over the Canadian media, and that there might even be a debate about whether or not abortion and infanticide are legally equivalent, and perhaps whether or not it might just be a good idea to consider implementing some abortion laws just in case somebody decides to, say, "abort" their pesky teenager when they get fed up with them. But no. I've just done a cursory search of several national and regional Canadian papers, and unless you actually search for this case by name, nothing appears. What there *is* a lot of is "what if" and "wouldn't it have been awful if..." articles about the abducted child.
I'm not trying to minimise the awfulness of having a child abducted, nor the horror of what might have happened. But I'm rather shocked that there isn't at least as much furore about what just happened in a courtroom where the murder of a born child was swept under the carpet because, hey, people don't mind killing the unborn here in Canada so we need to be a little more understanding of those mothers who can't cope with their born children. Presumably if the abducted toddler's mother had simply decided to strangle him and dump his body in a neighbour's garden, then it wouldn't be a news story at all.
And before I'm accused of having no compassion for the mother who killed her child, I can assure you that I do, and that I have prayed and will pray again for both her and her child. However this does not change the fact that she murdered her child and that a judge, echoing the views of Princeton Bioethicist Peter Singer ('Simply killing an infant is never equivalent to killing a person.'') decided that murder of a newborn simply isn't murder.
Post-partum depression, this decision would seem to indicate, serves as an excuse to strangling your newborn. If you can prove you were depressed, killing your child is something that is understandable and if you listen to this judge, acceptable. If abortion advocates actually believe that women are so fragile after childbirth that strangling their child is understandable, I wonder what they would say if the same judge proposed that new mothers have to prove their sanity before taking custody of their newborn children? It is absurd to simultaneously claim that women are strong enough to do anything they choose in the world, but that childbirth, something they are biologically designed to do, will result in a spasm of murder. The only natural instinct abortion advocates believe women lack is the maternal instinct.
None of this should be surprising: if you allow abortion without restriction, the next logical step is to legalise infanticide. I mean, you could argue, theoretically, that any baby could possibly have been born a few days later, which would mean that they could, theoretically, have still been in utero when they were killed, so it's not infanticide, right? Wrong. Just plain wrong.
...And if you're wondering why there's a photo of a seal hunt at the top of this post, it's because if you google "Canada's shame" you get loads of stories about why it's wrong to kill baby seals. But not one about why it's wrong to kill baby humans.
I'm really glad that I went to the Michael Voris talk last night: it exceeded expectations. Beforehand, as we waited, one of our group joked that he might run onto the stage to some rousing music; I suggested the "Rocky" theme. We all snickered. I felt somewhat ashamed when he did come on and had a real spirit of humility about him: sure he's a practised orator, albeit in a very casual style. So much for the better -- it's hard to hold an audience in thrall for an hour unless you're a skilled speaker -- but he came across as sincere, authentic and profoundly Catholic. You got the sense that you were listening to a man with an genuine love for Christ, who is profoundly grateful for his re-conversion and the shot at eternity it gives him. A man who has discovered the pearl of great price, and wants to share it with as many people as possible.
He started and ended with prayer, and constantly redirected our focus to the Holy Trinity. This was not the "Michael Voris" show, he was the medium not the message. Some highlights included Voris's memory of Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen's response to a hippy who wanted him to read a book combining Catholicism and Eastern mysticism: "Get out! Get out! The Catholic Faith is a gift from Almightly God and I won't have you polluting it!" (a Vortex with the same incident is linked to below) and his question to the audience: how will you measure up in heaven against the martyrs of the early centuries of the Church?
That last question underlined much of the talk: it is not enough, argued Voris to be "a Catholic", to fully embrace the Faith one needs to be "Catholic", no indefinite article, no qualification, no secondary identity. To be Catholic is to embrace Our Lord fully and to be prepared to accept His cross. You might be made fun of, you might lose a few friends or compromise your career, but, argued Voris, none of these measure up to the sacrifices made by early Christians so that we could have the Faith handed down to us.
Voris pointed out that God's word through the Catholic Church is Truth: when faced with Truth you can either reject it or embrace it. Embracing Truth means changing your life. Taking up your cross to follow Christ. Keeping one eye on eternity while trying to live the Truth here on earth. God didn't intend us to pick and choose the bits we like, to water down Truths to suit fashion and cultural climate, or to accommodate those who oppose the Truth. This is where Michael Voris comes most into conflict with those who disagree with him: those who feel that he promotes a Catholicism that is too rigid, too unyielding, not gentle or accommodating or palatable enough for those who disagree with parts of the Magesterium or who believe that all religions are essentially aiming for the same place. Voris would argue that these people misunderstand the meaning of the word charity -> caritas -> love. He argued, persuasively, that to elide the Truth in order to prevent hurt feelings or offended sensibilities is the direct opposite of charity. Charity - love for the other - involves biting the bullet and telling the Truth in those matters that affect the salvation of souls. Hurt feelings are nothing compared to an eternity in Hell. Having been given a wake-up call by his dying mother, Voris is profoundly grateful for her lack of tact in addressing his dissolute lifestyle and the slippery slope to Hell it was leading him down. He she been tactful, he'd probably not be standing in front a a full house at the Regent Hall in London, exhorting his listeners to save souls, embrace the Faith and live radically.
Based on last night's talk, I'd say that none of the criticisms I've heard leveled at Michael Voris would stick. He was humble, charitable, amusing, self-effacing, meticulously faithful to the Magesterium, Catholic down to his very essence. Oh, and to knock another myth on the head: his hair was clearly all his own.
Among the people I went with there was (at least) one skeptic who, by the end of the talk was utterly convinced of Voris's sincerity and orthodoxy. The general consensus was "What's not to like"? followed by "Why are our shepherds not speaking as clearly and plainly as Michael Voris?"
Another reason that last night was good fun was because it was a sort of accidental blognic -- and I got to go to the pub(!) which is a rare occurrence. It was great to meet fellow Guild of Blessed Titus Brandsma bloggers Lawrence "Bones" England (even if he didn't have a clue who I was! See if I scribble in your combox again! :-P), Paul "OTSOTA" Priest, and Dylan "Reluctant Sinner" Perry, as well as seeing pals Mac "Mulier Fortis" McLernon and Bara Brith. There were lots of familiar faces in the audience (which was packed to capacity on the ground floor) including some new friends from the recent NACF pilgrimage to Walsingham. I also discovered that a fellow parishioner is, like me, a former rat fancier: now there's an essay topic - "Connections between Extraordinary Form Mass-goers and small livestock fancying". The mind boggles. It was good to see such a strong turnout from faithful Catholics, many of whom had traveled a considerable distance to get to the talk. Having an opportunity to socialise afterwards was a bonus, and made me wonder whether or not some "Juventutem" style evenings could be arranged for oldies like "Mr.Annie Elizabeth" & me who are well beyond Juventutem age but who enjoy good conversation and socialising with faithful Catholics?
As a last aside, I'll leave you with a rare sighting of the Lesser Spotted Mulier Fortis left (literally) holding the baby!
A post about Distinctive Catholic Markers on Father Ray Blake's blog got me thinking, not only about those visible things that set us aside as Catholics, but also those small matters of attitude that are so different from mainstream thought as to be truly counter cultural. One that I've mused on a lot in recent months is the idea of vocation as opposed to "career" for our children.
When I was growing up there was a lot of talk about exams and achievements that were expected, and later on stuff about careers but nothing at all about vocation. No sense that I needed God in order to make sense of what I should be doing with my life. It's probably not surprising that I made a bit of a hash of things: Oh I got the academic laurels and had the glittering career all right, but I squandered more than a decade of my life living a life that was fairly spiritually empty, never sure what I should be doing, constantly trying to fill a God shaped hole, and looking in all the wrong places. I can only say that it's thanks to the workings of the Holy Spirit that I didn't continue barreling down the wrong path.
Clearly the Holy Spirit works in ways that we can not even begin to understand. A very holy priest friend of ours came from an unlikely background: one parent a lapsed Catholic, the other an atheist. The children brought up without even a cursory reference to God. Siblings all went into the hard sciences and are not believers, but the eldest became a priest. How? Briefly - a blinding flash of a conversion in his late teens, followed by a baptism and the sacraments. The atheist father said he'd accept his son becoming a Catholic "as long as you don't become a priest". Not many years later, the son entered the seminary and the rest is, as they say, history.
But this is really the exception to the rule. It's difficult to underestimate the importance of Catholic families who encourage their children to think about their vocation from an early age, so that those children can take on board the idea that God has a plan for each of us, and that our role in life is to try to discern what He wants us to do, and how He wants us to use the talents that we have been given. This applies to the married vocation as much as religious vocations. Thinking about the idea of "vocation" at all is, I think, a very Catholic thing; the idea that we need to discern what God wants us to do with our lives.
One common problem is that many people in their late teens and early twenties tend to take themselves very seriously (it goes with the territory, it's a phase), and if they haven't had a serious spiritual grounding, been given a good sense of perspective, can lose their way very easily in the mire of post-adolescent egotism and cargo-cult spirituality. If, on the other hand, we've understood from a young age that we have a role in God's plan, that we have God-given gifts, talents and skill that we need to use to their best potential in order to fulfill God's work, then we are handed a lifeline during the post-adolescent years.
So the family is crucial is vital in providing a perspective that counters that of Society, but the message needs to be imbibed at the breast so to speak, not introduced in adolescence. A child who knows from the time he can lisp his first prayers that God made him to know him, love him and serve him in this life and to be happy with him forever in the next will not find it incongruous at the age of seven or eight to start considering what God's plan for him might be. This groundwork means that the "conversation" is already open by the time that adolescence beckons.
Don't ask me how we do it -- those lucky enough to have been brought up in faith filled families have a template to use; the rest of us simply do our best and muddle through with the information, advice and help we have. And we pray. A lot. Ideally as a family. And we pester people too: so please don't be offended if you're a never-lapsed cradle Catholic and a nosy woman starts asking you about what you think your parents did right. I'm not just being nosy, I'm just trying to add to the sum of my knowledge in order to give my children the best shot at keeping it Catholic as they get older. I don't think that it's rocket science - the things that seem to make the most difference are (in no order): having a father as well as a mother who is a practising Catholic, seeing your father pray, praying as a family, having Catholic friends, having Catholic family friends, having a good understanding of the Faith... Please add to my list in the combox if you can.
I'm continually struck by how angry, unhappy and, frankly, messed-up anti-Catholic protesters always seem to be. Looking at the photos of "protesters" verbally attacking young pilgrims at WYD in Madrid made me feel physically sick: it was as though the "protesters" were trying to destroy the peace and happiness they saw manifested before them. As though they, having rejected the pearl of great price, wanted to snatch it from the hands of the pilgrims and trample it underfoot.
Compare the posture of the pilgrims with that of the person confronting them. Contrast the scabs on the central girl pilgrim's knees with the bitter accusatory look on the figure to the right. There are more photos that tell the same story on the Reuters website.
She saw the the anti-Pope snarling mob led by Dawkins and Tatchel, with their plastic devil horns and inflated condoms, sex "toys" and angry faces and she saw the sheer joy of those cheering the Pope and the banners carried by the enthusiastic youth. She said it wasn't about arguments, it was about faces. Dawkins & co. glaring and hopeless, those who were there cheering the Pope full of hope and smiling - anger and joy, hate and love
Hopefully in Madrid comparing and contrasting the the pilgrims and protesters will bring about similar conversions of heart.
All this week whenever I've seen photos like the one above, lines from Matthew 18 have kept coming to mind:
[6] But he that shall scandalise one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea. [7] Woe to the world because of scandals. For it must needs be that scandals come: but nevertheless woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh.
I find it hard to pray for people like the so-called protesters, but I suppose they are the ones in most need of our prayer. It is hard to muster charity for those so intent on destroying the faith and happiness of others.
Twitch of the mantilla to John Smeaton for pointing out the hypocrisy of the "family planning" movement which bases its arguments around the rhetoric of "choice". Statements from Simon Ross of Population Matters (formerly the Optimum Population Trust) in last Sunday's Observer suggest that "choice" is only acceptable if you choose what the population-limiters find acceptable. To paraphrase Henry Ford, you can choose to have any size family you like, as long as it's below population replacement levels. David Beckham and Boris Johnson are singled out as "very bad role models with their large families". Ross goes on to suggest that society needs to "change the incentives to make the environmental case that one or two children are fine but three or four are just being selfish"
The irony of this is presumably lost on Ross and it would be funny if we didn't know that this sort of population control already happens in China (paid for, dear reader, with taxes that your government and mine gives to the United Nations Population Fund - the UK also funds the UNPFA -- see top of p14 on the Multilateral Aid Review, published March 2011 ) and that "incentives to make the ... case that one or two children are fine" are a slippery slope towards the government deciding how many children a family is allowed to have. It starts with tax incentives, it ends in coerced abortion.
Public attitudes to family size are changing too. People feel that they have the right to pass judgement. Here's a real life example: several years ago, I was shouted at by a well-dressed, well-spoken woman in her 50s in an upmarket optician's shop in central London. After my eye appointment, I had taken my children into the loo and each little one had needed a turn and then the baby's nappy had needed changing. When we came out this woman complained that we'd taken too long. I apologised and explained that several of us had been using the loo and that I had also had to change the baby's nappy. "I heard them playing in there" she retorted "it's not a playroom!". "They're only children" I said as patiently as I could, between gritted teeth, "there's no harm in them being happy and chattering while I change the baby's nappy". This really got her goat -- "THE SELFISH GENE!!" she shrieked "you all get it as soon as you have a baby! You think you can just do as you like! How selfish having so many children! Don't you care about the planet?" (As absurd as this sounds, I swear that I'm not making it up -- this is a verbatim account). I was completely floored by this twist in the conversation, and said quietly "my children will be the doctors and nurses giving you medicines and wiping your bottom when you're old and helpless. They are a gift. God bless you." She flounced into the lavatory and slammed the door, and I ushered the children out. The younger ones were oblivious to what had happened, but the eldest asked "Mummy what was wrong with that lady - why was she shouting at us?" I told his that I thought she was probably ill, and that's why she had behaved the way she had.
The sad thing is that her attitude is all too common, and to a large extent condoned by the mainstream media which in turn is informed by Population Matters and other population-control cronies like the Green Party, various "family planning" organisations that treat pregnancy as a disease, and so forth.
I'm really tired of this anti-child, anti-life, anti-family and, crucially, anti-woman rhetoric. Children matter, families matter, and -- if you look at the science -- the declining birth rate and resultant population implosion is going to have a devastating impact economically and socially unless we find a way of redressing the balance. I think we need to be pro-active in fighting these attitudes -- for the sake of our own children and their children.
Fortunately I meet more people who are positive about children and families than people like the woman described above, but then again I steer clear of posh optician's shops and order my contact lenses online these days...
Mundabor flags up an urgently serious matter within the Church in Austria: 313 priests and deacons have signed up to a "call to disobedience" citing "the Roman refusal of a long-overdue Church reform and the inaction of bishops" and declaring that they will:
- pray for Church reform at every liturgy, since “in the presence of God there is freedom of speech”
- not to deny the Holy Eucharist to “believers of good will,” including non-Catholic Christians and those who have remarried outside the Church
- avoid offering Mass more than once on Sundays and holy days and to avoid making use of visiting priests--instead holding a “self-designed” Liturgy of the Word
- to describe such a Liturgy of the Word with the distribution of Holy Communion as a “priestless Eucharistic celebration”; “thus we fulfil the Sunday obligation in a time of priest shortage”
- to “ignore” canonical norms that restrict the preaching of the homily to clergy
- to oppose parish mergers, insisting instead that each parish have its own individual leader, “whether man or woman”
- to “use every opportunity to speak out openly in favour of the admission of the married and of women to the priesthood” (Reported by CatholicCulture.org)
So essentially what these 313 clergy are saying is that they are not Catholic. End of story. No ifs, ands or buts. They disagree with Church teaching, they dissent from the Truths of the Faith, they refuse to be obedient to the Magesterium of the Church; so rather than a "statement of disobedience" surely this is a statement declaring themselves no longer Catholic. One would assume that Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna would take swift action to nip this outrageous dissent in the bud, particularly as it is being done in a high-profile and flamboyantly public way, deliberately causing scandal.
Sadly not - whilst Cardinal Schönborn professes to be "shocked", rather than immediately putting anyone signing up to this initiative on probation (and, frankly, surely he's able to sack them on the spot for a stunt like this) he is going to "meet with the initiative’s leaders and point out its 'inconsistencies', such as 'priestless Eucharist'" . Good grief -- point out its inconsistencies? I would have thought that signing up to this sort of thing would get a seminarian dismissed from his studies, never mind priests and deacons who continue to be allowed to lead souls into perdition by preaching this heresy.
Mundabor, Fr Z and EF Pastor Emeritus have wise words on the subject of the "call to disobedience" and what ought to be done as soon as possible.
But first, please, please PLEASE send an email protesting the fact that these priests and deacons are allowed to continue their ministry, openly preaching heresy, promoting disrespect for and encouraging disobedience to the Church, and leading souls astray. That this situation is allowed to continue is a major scandal. The 2011 Vienna Western Mass was stopped by a petition and public outrage, please God that this scandal may be ended as soon as possible as well.
Please email: Congregation for the Clergy: clero@cclergy.va Papal Nuncio in Austria: nuntius@nuntiatur.at Holy Father: benedictxvi@vatican.va
Charles François de Saint Simon Sandricourt,the last Bishop of Agde, was guillotined in Paris on July 26, 1794, one of the last victims of The Terror. Known as a devout, kindly and learned man, he gave away much of his inherited wealth to the poor.
There are very few monuments to mark the murder of the Catholic hierarchy during The Terror. Bishop Saint-Simon is remembered in the name of a narrow street a few steps away from the Cathedral in Agde, and by a small plaque in an innocuous place beneath the former Bishop's palace by the waterfront (now a parking lot next to the Herault).
France is a highly secularised country, where the main discussion of religion involves the banning of burkas and programmes about the Inquisition on the liberal ARTE channel which underline the "obvious evil" of religion. Amidst this whitewash, people forget their actual history - the revolution and the hatred that fueled it, the reforms and forced vows, the denunciations, the stripping of the churches -- at their peril. Charles François de Saint Simon Sandricourt pray for your people, pray for us!
