Sodom & Gomorrah - Lest We Forget

An interesting article for all Catholics and all 'men of good will.'

The media like to paint "sexual morality" as personal, but it clearly has ramifications for wider society, as the collapse of marriage has shown via easy divorce, co-habitation, abortion - and now "gay marriage."

I'm sure the inhabitants of Sodom thought they were easy-going, advanced, liberal, free-thinking, popular, wealthy & above the laws of God... and perhaps even mocked Him. 

Lessons for us all. 

http://www.arkdiscovery.com/sodom_&_gomorrah.htm

Below: sulphur & brimstone found at the site of the "five cities of the plain."

Liberals: Jesus Didn't Condemn Homosexuality

Just read a liberal flow chart which tried to justify "same sex marriage" and homosexuality per se because Jesus never condemned it. 

Quite literally: OMG. 

So here's a meme just for them. 

British & Irish Lions & the Psalms

Apologies to all Australian Catholics, but it looks like a Welsh - sorry, British & Irish Lions - victory has been foretold:

"The young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing." -- Psalm 34:10

And you can't argue with that. So lets have a cheer every time Halfpenny slots one over. 'Tis for the greater glory of God...

Why Do So Many Think They Know Better Than God Himself?

I should start this blog entry with an apology to any theologians or priests looking in, for I am neither, just a bog standard Welsh Catholic with a Comprehensive education, so if I mix my metaphors or fumble the ball a little, please do bear with me.

I love Advent. I love this time, with the approaching of Christmas, the preparation, the hymns, carols, the excitement - almost as much (sometimes more than) the great Feast itself!

The thought of the Nativity story, the Incarnation of the Word, God made man, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ... it can make one dizzy in anticipation.

When one analyses this simple fact of the Incarnation of God one realises that far from being the simple matter of a baby in a crib, we are dealing with a fathomless mystery and equally amazing example of the fathomless nature of God's Grace.

As we Catholics say the Hail Mary we repeat those wondrous words pronounced to the Mother of God:

Hail Mary the Lord is with Thee,
Blessed art Thou amongst women and Blessed is the fruit of Thy womb.

After Her total submission to the Will of God, something each of us strives towards in our lives (often failing dismally), she was made the Ark of the Covenant. The Incarnation of God was made possible by the total submission of Our Lady to the Will of God. The Handmaiden of the Lord became our Co-Redemptrix, surely one of the reasons for Satan's prideful rebellion, that a mortal woman by raised higher in Heaven than the Hosts of Angels, as their (and our) Queen.

And this brings me to an issue that came up in conversation with our local priest on the issue of the Church, Confession etc. "Why do we need the church?" so many ask in the modern age. They could ask why do we need coffee, why do we need pavements, why do we need collars on shirts - for none of these has done even a tiny fraction towards advancing civilisation as Mother Church has -- yet we get this modernist, 60s, socialist, materialist (label it as you will) mantra repeated all the time in all forms of media but especially in modern fiction:

Why do we need the Church.


The modernists who would rewrite history and paint the Church as the greatest evil known to man (forgetting all the evils it replaced and all the evils it negated and strove to 'fix' - I am reminded of GK Chesterton's quote on Christianity as not found wanting, but found, and untried), forget that Our Lord Jesus Christ left us His Church.

If we did not need a Church, if we did not need the Sacraments of the Church, then Our Lord would not have created it, with St Peter as the first Pope, with the Apostles and others as the first Bishops, with the Mass and -- "This is My Body" -- the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity left in the Eucharist to strengthen the Christians. Our Lord also explicitly gave the priests the power for the forgiveness of sins, to enable us as e struggle on in our daily lives.

The modernist rebellion against the need for the Church (which reached its ideological zenith circa the French Revolution - but has reached its technological zenith today via the reach of Hollywood and the media) is flying in the face of the wishes and precise instructions left by Jesus Christ whose birthday most people in Europe are about to celebrate.

As for those Protestants of 1001 varieties of the modernist 'catholics' who say they do not need the Catholic Church, i.e. that any church will do... well they are as bad as those charlatans who say "I can confess my sins to God at home" -- because we all know that they seldom do, nor (without they guidance of Holy Church) would they know what constitutes sins in many respects.

Jesus Christ did not start the Protestant churches - men did. The Son of God did not start all the other religions men did (yes - even modern Judaism was started by the Pharisees). Are we really so proud, so insincere, so devious as men to think that we know better than Jesus Christ - the Son of God, God made man, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Word Incarnate?

He left us the Church with the Pope at its head; he left us the Sacrifice of the Mass, he left us Confession to help us overcome our sins... and yet we, modern men, think that we do not need all this! We can do without His Church, we can do without His Sacrifice of the Mass, we can do without His Confessional!

How proud and sinful is modern man, that so many of us think we can pay lip service to the Son of God, yet ignore the very things He left us, in order that we may be worthy of Heaven, the gates of which He opened for us.

We are all of us sinners, we are all of us weak, we are all of us human. We All fall, many times, on our own Via Dolorosa. That is why we need the institutions left to us by Jesus Christ - especially His Sacraments.

If we think we can do without them we are sorely mistaken! We should submit ourselves to the Will of God, and that begins by availing ourselves of His Sacraments through the auspices of His Church.

To do otherwise is to join the Devil in his terrible revolt against God Himself.

Be on the side of the Angels! Go to Mass, get to Confession, partake of Communion. The Sanctifying nature of the Eucharist will give you many Graces, and in this modern(ist) world we, each and every one of us no matter our status, need all the Graces we can get!

G.K. Chesterton on Sola Scriptura

He could be a little more 'rotund' and the sound is a bit computerised.... but this is glorious nonetheless.

Enjoy!

GKC Warns on Treating Trade as an Absolute

As usual, across the decades, GKC speaks to us with so much Catholic good sense.

Even after the collapse, the bail-out and the billions poured in to a black whole of debt, the leaders of nations are still treating banks and "the markets" as something sacrosanct.

Money, a means to facilitate trade and commerce has become an end in and of itself, and we all know what the love of money results in, as our Faith warns us:

For the desire of money is the root of all evils; which some coveting have erred from the faith, and have entangled themselves in many sorrows.

1 Timothy 6:10

The Bible's Buried Secrets: Old Heresies Dressed Up As New

Francesca Stavrakopoulou, the smiling face of anti-Christ atheism

I caught two things today by unhappy chance. The first was one of the happy clappy crowd, that sing-song tribe that infest the airwaves at certain times of the morning intent on putting you off your corn flakes, and via their syrupy forced happiness seem to induce a depression over the fact that religion can descend into a Kum-ba-ya meets Eastenders mentality/theology-lite.

This one was akin to the Sisters of Perpetual M&S, the cardigan-clad nuns, only worse: a CofE priestess. She was busy telling the millions listening (to Radio 2) how great a BBC2 TV series about the Bible is and how great it is that the presenter is an atheist.

How typical. How could anyone, claiming to be a Christian, find solace that a soul is (temporarily, I hope) lost to God, let alone someone with access to a prime time TV show which, no doubt, would be busy trying to "prove" the Bible was so much hogwash,so many fairy tales that no-one in the 'modern world' could take seriously?

No doubt so many vicars, vicaresses, priests and priestesses will celebrate, for they too are atheists, they too do not believe in the Bible. They too do not accept the Passion and Resurrection of Our Lord, they too do not accept the Virgin Mary, the Immaculate Conception, the Incarnation of God-made-man, and so much more. They certainly do not believe in Transubstantiation and the Real Presence of Our Lord.

Welcome to the world of the social-worker-priest(ess). Oh yes, you see, Jesus was a great man. He loved the poor, he preached a brand of socialism, and he loved his neighbour. I use a small "h" because he, the cuddly Jesus, is not God to these people, he is the good guy. This is the cult of "Jesus hearts U" so beloved of yuchy modern tapestries, in yuchy modern roller-disco churches: all Godless, all soulless, all empty.

Then this evening I just about remembered this programme was on, and so I switched on the TV to catch the last 5 minutes of "the Bible's Buried Secrets." What I heard was nothing new (is anything new under Heaven?) but a miasma of old lies and old anti-Christian propaganda as insideous as the whisperings of the serpent in Paradise (which, next week, we'll be told didn't exist).

Some years ago I read Hilaire Belloc's superb book The Great Heresies. Get yourself a copy or read it online (see below). This wonderful defender of all things Catholic makes it clear that there is indeed nothing new under Heaven, that all heresies are just repeats of old lies, woven anew, presented in new form, designed to attack the Faith from left, then from right, on a new front here, then from a different angle there. So it was with this BBC2 series tonight.

Oh the Jews weren't monotheists but invented this later, the angels were pagan deities reinvented, other pagan gods became demons (I always thought they were demons), and the oldest lie of all (repeated by Jews, gnostics, pagans, protestants, atheists and all the enemies of Christ for almost 2000 years), that the Virgin Mary was a reinvention of a pagan fertility goddess (take your pick of which one) and so Christians venerate a pagan deity.

You see the presenter of the BBC programme, Hebrew scholar Francesca Stavrakopoulou, is giving us nothing new. This is classic Sanhedrin propaganda, reinvented by the mass murderer and Church desecrator Cromwell, spread anew by Communist commissars by the point of the gun, and now promoted by the BBC in the age of multi-format media.

The sad thing, in the post-Dan Brown Da Vinci Code era, these old lies of the enemies of the Church have become the stock-in-trade of the media luvees. Those too busy in their drug-addled media world, enveloped in a world full of sin and debauchery, have picked up the oldest of lies, dressed them up in 21st Century garb, and spoon fed them to people who think they are individualists by following this "new" religion.

That a CofE priestess rejoices in this TV series and its atheist presenter with an anti-Bible and anti-Christ agenda is, in and of itself shocking. Yet I am not surprised in the least. Ever since St Cuthbert's heretical "descendant," the layman Jenkins, dressed in Bishop's garb in Durham presented the world with his Resurrection-doubting beliefs in the 1980s (the same man went onto bless one of the first to "bless" a civil partnership in 2005), the empty vessel that is the post-Reformation State religion has been all too obvious.

Belloc was right. The Church has always been, and will always be under attack. His good friend GK Chesterton once described the Church's history as an adventure, as exciting because it swerves one way to avoid one heresy (that the Church is too worldly), then swerves the other way to avoid another heresy (that the Church is too spiritual) and so the history of the Church is not one long boring 'plod' but rather a breath-taking escapade to avoid the errors of the world.

That Radio 2's trendy CofE priestess could find any comfort in yet another assault on the Church, on Christ, on the angels and saints, and on the Holy Mother of God speaks volumes about the CofE. Any pretence that it is in any way Apostolic is out the window. This "church" of priestesses, of homosexuals, of Bible burning is a whited sepulchre, seemingly  'Christian' on the outside, yet internally is little more than an empty vessel making a lot of noise. It has become so "inclusive" that whilst it is busy, at its front door, hugging a world that is debauched, atheist and anti-Christ, it cannot see that at the side door its faithful, with any remnant of that Apostolic tradition, are leaving in droves to join the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

That the BBC is putting out this gnostic-pagan nonsense, dressed up in modern media clothes, and then promoting it on another outlet tells us all we need to know about the BBC, that is if we had any doubts about its agenda to begin with. Its idea of religious output is Songs of Praise. Puuurrrlease!

Let us hope and pray that the modernist heretics inside the Catholic Church do not put-off the Anglicans finding their home-in-Rome. The last thing these many thousands of souls need is to escape one nest of vipers dressing up atheism, gnosticism, goddess-worship feminism, social-worker vicars and priestesses, and kum-ba-ya meats Eastenders theology as Christianity, only to find the small but vocal heretics in the Catholic Church that the holy pope St Pius X warned us about in his Syllabus of Errors.

Let us hope and pray, for our hope is in God, and the Saints that will guide the Church and keep her loyal to the Magisterium and to her Traditions, so that we can (in the imagery of GKC) swerve to avoid the heresies of this age and thus embark on another adventure with our beloved Church.

Link:
The Great Heresies by Hilaire Belloc

Churches Built on Sand: Without the Real Presence of Christ

I was thinking over the readings from last Sunday's Mass, especially the Bible passage about the fool who builds his house on sand.

Now I will be the first to acknowledge that whilst I find theology fascinating, I am no theologian. My Latin is dire, and my knowledge of Greek, Hebrew etc. non-existent.

I am one of those Catholics that does enjoy reading decent Catholic books when time permits, but has to rely on the certitude of the guidance put forth (over many centuries) by Holy Mother Church.

I can only read material, understand it, meditate on it, through the prism of Orthodox Catholicism. As I'm not a theologian, it's the only way I can be sure of being on absolutely solid ground.

That's one of the reasons I get so flummoxed and bamboozled when I read of "experts" or "Catholics" who deny transubstantiation, or who try and make out the Latin Mass is "divisive." After all, the Church has always been crystal clear for centuries that the Real Presence of Our Lord (Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity) is an absolute cornerstone of our Faith.

Likewise, the Popes said that the Tridentine Mass was eternally valid, and many Saints went to their deaths after celebrating it, attending it or defending it. How could such a treasure trove of graces, the very Church-decreed vehicle for Catholics to witness the Last Supper and the Passion of the Cross, and to bring about the Sacred Mystery of Transubstantiation itself ever be termed "divisive?"

I know sometimes it seems like hard-headedness and even a form of false piety, but in finding solace in the simple (!) facts of Catholicism can be like finding a port in the storm, the storm being this mad world (and anyone who raises a family, runs a business and lives a life trying to make ends meet to pay the bills knows that the world can be beautiful one moment and mad the next).

Thus it is that no matter what the world throws at us, as Catholics, we always have the certitude of Our Lord, in the Blessed Sacrament.

As well as being a hopeless Theologian I am also dire when it comes to quoting from the Bible. Our Lord said He would be with us until the end of the world (yes, I'm paraphrasing) and I take solace in that. I also think that when He said that, He had a special meaning: the Blessed Sacrament.

He was leaving this world as God-made-man, but He would be staying, in a quite literal sense, in the Blessed Sacrament, that we might all visit Him, adore Him, and place our worries before Him.

Now to return to last Sunday's readings and the house on sand and the house on rock.

I couldn't help but thinking that Our Lord again had a special meaning in this parable.

Aren't the false religions of this world like the houses built on sand? Think of the Protestant churches. Within mere years of the Reformation, Luther, Calvin and Zwingli were arguing and at each others' throats. Did the Disciples of Christ behave like this? The Protestants have the word of a man (they can chose which of the three here named) to be the founder of their church, to dictate their theology, their Sunday service.

We have the word of Jesus Christ, who made St Peter the very first Pope, who founded the Catholic Church, who instituted the Sacrifice of the Mass. This has not changed in 2000 years.

I do not think it was an accident that Our Lord referred to a house built on rock, for most of us know that when Christ made St Peter the first Pope and head of His Catholic Church, he said (I shall paraphrase again) 'You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church.' As Catholics should know this history, we should also know that Peter means Rock.

Thus when Our Lord says build your house on rock, I believe He was reminding us that our homes, our families and our souls belong in the security, the sanctity and the surety that is His Holy Catholic Church.

Only there will we get the strength we need, in the Sacraments but most especially through the Real Presence and Holy Communion with Our Lord, to find security in this world. For as many wise men, living and dead, have said, the strength we need is not our own, but the strength of Our Lord Jesus Christ and where else can we hope to be near to Him, Body Blood Soul and Divinity but at the Altar of God?

Crime Does Pay: The Pontarddulais Example

From the Walls of Jericho to Pontarddulais

I remember reading an article several years ago written from a Protestant point of view, which stated that the Bible dealt with many societal issues, not least governance.

Included in the latter category was crime and punishment.

The author concluded (if I remember right) that circa 25-30% of the Bible was dealing with personal issues, but 70-75% of it dealt with society, government etc.

Naturally as a Catholic I found this very interesting, not least because Catholics (should!) believe in the Kingship of Christ, viz that societies should be officially Catholic, their laws be Catholic etc.

I found the article very interesting, but wondered in later years (without the original piece to reference) if he had included Old Testament laws ( I am 99% sure he did) and if so, would these kind of societal laws be made null and void by the Birth of Our Lord.

But didn't Christ Himself say:

Do not think that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. 

Does this mean the Old Testament (OT) laws still stand? I know Catholics still use the OT, for example, to oppose the Sodomite agenda. But on the other hand don't we chastise the Pharisees and their descendants for their rigid adherence to OT laws, even to the extent they sought the death of Christ. or was this because they had twisted the OT laws?

Anyway, forgive me for digressing. That's just me thinking aloud.

Where am I headed with this (I hear you plead).

On the local news last night there was the story of Pontarddulais Brass Band who had their instruments stolen and sold for scrap. The story was that the "head thief" went to jail.

Here's how the BBC reported it online:

Four men have been sentenced for stealing £15,000 of instruments from Pontardulais Town Band, which were sold to a scrap dealer.
Andrew Beer, 39, was jailed for 24 weeks at Swansea Crown Court. Christopher Davies, 23 and Jason Power, 36, were given suspended sentences.
Dealer Marcus Egan, 34, was given a suspended sentence for handling stolen goods.
The instruments, sold on for £61, were crushed at Egan's business.

One of the band members on the BBC last night decried how the total fines levied were £500, yet their insurance head risen to £700 p.a. because of the theft.

So let's study this:

1. Thieves steal and scrap instruments worth £15K.
2. As a result the band's insurance rises to £700 p.a.
3. The main thief gets 3 months (he'll serve circa 1 and a half months).
4. For stealing £15K's worth they are fined £500.

Doesn't something seem wrong there? The thieves (assuming they are on benefits) will pay a pittance, unnoticed for months to come, and the ringleader will get B&B for 6 weeks ate tax-payers' expense.

The only ones seriously out of pocket will be the honest brass band members who will have to pay extra insurance for years to come, leaving them hundreds (if not thousands) of pounds out of pocket, not to mention some of their original instruments may have held sentimental value and so be irreplaceable to all intents and purposes.

Now, again from memory, the article I read which dealt with The Bible and society said that:

• If items are stolen and returned the thieves must pay the victim the value of the item(s).
• If the items are stolen and not returned (eg destroyed/damaged) then the thieves must pay the victim twice* the value of the item(s).
• if the thief did not have the money, then he would be forced to work until he had earned the money to repay the victim.**

Now in a land when a thief steals a car (eg worth £3K) smashes it up, gets a smack on the wrist (often to re-offend ad infinitum), leaving the victim to claim the loss on his insurance, rarely getting the value of his car, and facing increased insurance bills for years to come, wouldn't it be a great idea to implement something like the above (Biblical or not)?

It seems to me as a Catholic, that the current state of affairs not only flies in the face of Christian values and common sense, but also natural law.

I am not (Deo Gratias!) a lawyer, and I am no expert in the laws of the land, I can only speak out on what I see, and when I see injustice am I not (are we not!) honour bound to speak out? Especially when the weak, vulnerable, and victims in society are being unjustly targeted by the justice system that should not only be protecting them in the first place, but giving them succour and (obtaining for them) remuneration after any crime.

It's easy to be populist when dealing with crime (why do bank robbers get 15 years for taking bits of paper and paedophiles get 5 years for ruining the lives of dozens), but regardless of cheap point scoring (rightful or otherwise) we must surely seek the implementation of a justice system that is intrinsically fair and just, with victims and criminals.

I have long thought that at the moment we have a system that uses a sledgehammer to crack a nut (intrusive laws, Orwellian tactics etc. against the innocent majority) yet when criminals are eventually caught, as in the Pontarddulais Brass Band case discussed herein, they are not given sufficient reprimand to make them reassess their lives and realise the harm they have done.

We owe it to the victims of crime to make the criminal justice system fair, correct and just; inasmuch as we it to the criminals to make the criminal justice system fair, correct and just.

I believe the only way to make it so for the victims to make sure the thieves et al recompense the victims; just as to make it so for the perpetrators is to make the jails places where they can get an education and become rehabilitated.

At the moment the criminal justice system fails on both counts, leaving victims worse off and leaving criminals in a cycle of crime.

I would be interested in knowing what other Catholics think, as well as examples of Biblical laws or the teaching of the Magisterium of the Church on victims and criminals.

I apologise for the rambling nature of this piece, but I am thinking aloud on this matter and searching for answers...


* This may have been 1.5 times the value of the item(s)
** I think it may have mentioned selling his property to pay, but that may be wishful thinking on my part.

Link:
Scrap Dealer Crushes Brass Band's Instruments

Scott Hahn: Signs of Life interview

I love this interview because it conveys how Catholic traditions, such as the Sacraments, Sacramentals, prayers for the dead and so on are rooted in the Bible, New and Old Testaments.

Scott Hahn is a convert from Protestantism and is an expert Bible scholar. The facts in this great EWTN TV show should be known by all Catholics, especially as the aggressive atheists attack our Faith as groundless, man-made and mumbo jumbo.

Scott Hahn proves that Catholic traditions have deep roots, and we all know how they are badly needed by all of us, and wider society as we struggle to live good lives.

Please do watch this video and tell friends! We must defend and spread our Catholic traditions.