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

Portillo, Elizabeth I, Scottish Independence & Catholicism

Come on laddie: paint your face!!!

I have never really liked Michael Portillo. Not because his father was a supporter of the anti-Catholic forces in Spain. Nor because he is a homosexual. Nor even because he flipped from being a "right-winger" to being a liberal (around the time he was forced out of the closet).

I believe he is the breed of politician who is always the "system's man." Not strictly a careerist, though he clearly wanted to be the Tory leader before being 'outed,' moreover he is well-connected amidst the politicos, bankers and media-luvvies.

It is that breed of people who will never rock the boat, will always come out on the side of the ruling class, whilst pushing from the inside for the very worst kind of laws viz morality, public decency, the family and so on.

They will never be openly hostile to the Catholic Church, but they will always say that Catholics should keep their opinions inside the Church. Like Alistair Campbell, the one-time (some might say all-time) porno-fiction writer, this breed of politico "don't do God."

The very idea of God is anathema to this breed. To them, religion should not encroach on politics (whilst their politics forever encroaches on our religion). They, like Nietzsche before them, believe that "God is dead" or at least is in His retirement home (reserved for visiting hours on Sundays) with the other 'deities of your choice' so we are free to pick n choose from Buddhism to witchcraft, Baptist to Islam.

The Catholic Faith is an anachronism to these breed, one of many beliefs to pick n choose as long as you keep it to yourself. They are free to ram their constructs and beliefs down our throats via the school system, the mass media and the political system, so that we believe in "Liberté, égalité, fraternité." 


Over the years, they have used this Masonic hydra to make the majority believe that contraception was acceptable, then that abortion on demand was acceptable, then that homosexuality was acceptable. Now they are all pushing for the acceptance of euthanasia.

Of course we will be told this will be "for love." Or "to stop suffering." The modern god "choice" won't be far behind. And so eventually, through BBC docudramas, through Eastenders plot-lines and via the Chinese water torture of political and media pressure, the majority will go with the flow. Oh they will lie, tweak, fabricate and concoct "surveys" and even use very sad individual examples (in that Roe Vs Wade style). But the end result will be euthanasia on demand. Mass murder.

They'll get us coming and going! Both ends of the hospital will be death mills; with one end seeing sad women pressurised into killing babies by uncaring boyfriends, husbands, married lovers etc., whilst the other end sees sad old people who think they are a "burden" signing their lives away whilst relatives rub their hands with glee and flick through holiday brochures and paperwork from car showrooms.

The only people with "yooman rights" will be hardened criminals. The rapists, paedophiles  -- all will have their rights enshrined; whilst the innocent unborn and the pressurised elderly will be killed by the thousands.

We can see it happening a mile off. Abortion was meant to be for a small number of women. Their lives would be in danger. Two doctors would have to sign off the "procedure." All manner of checks and balances would be in place.

Now we have abortion on demand with abortion profiteers (sorry, 'providers') advertising their referral or confidential helpline services as if they do not have a vested interest (or profit motive) in promoting abortion as the pain-free option with no physical, mental or moral ramifications.


Do the people now pushing euthanasia not realise that the same thing will happen again? The Death Clinics will advertise "helplines" and suchlike, where they will present suicide as a "valid lifestyle choice" and those who bother to protest outside the clinics will see doddery old men and ladies taken in by relatives with pound-signs in their eyes.

So why pick on Michael Portillo?

Well he thinks that none of this is "extreme." He thinks we live in a wonderful land where everything that is liberal and free is accepted by the majority. I have no doubt his own twisted proclivities colour his judgement, as is the case with so many people embroiled in the political sphere.

The other evening he was involved in a discussion on the BBC's Newsnight about "Britishness" and "Englishness," which were being discussed in the shadow of the SNP's victory in Holyrood and the prospect of Scotland going independent.

Mr. Portillo painted a bizarre picture of English/British history, wherein Britishness was essentially an all-embracing liberalness that avoids extremes. This was, for him, rooted in Elizabeth I's stance against Catholics and Protestants, choosing instead the "centre ground."

Excuse me? Methinks Mr. Portillo needs a history lesson. Bloody Bess was a tyrant. She murdered many  Catholics in the most gruesome manner. This is an ample example of the re-writing of history in which Mary I is painted as "Bloody Mary" for killing circa 500 Protestants in the legal manner of the day, whereas the Protestants: Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Elizabeth I killed many, many times more - in the multiple of thousands. Men, women and children often killed in reprisal attacks for mass movements in defence of Catholicism such as the Pilgtrimage of Grace and the Northern Rising.

You see what Portillo and his ilk do not tell you is that England was a thoroughly Catholic country. The Protestants were small in number, but agitated to control the State. And so Elizabeth, who swore an Oath to be a Catholic queen, turned against her people. She put a rift between England and Europe for centuries. She put the country at risk from Spanish/Imperial armies. And she ruined the beliefs of the whole country, forcing people to go underground to celebrate Mass as their parents and grandparents had done, openly.

Splitting the country between the "pro-Catholic" and "pro-Protestant" factions in turn led to the disastrous Civil War, with the forces of Cromwell all but raping Ireland. Cromwell the mad Protestant who banned Christmas is, of course, a darling of the politicos because he was an extreme anti-Catholic nutter. Despite banning parliament and replacing a King with himself as Lord Protector, he remains the darling of "democrats."

It had (and has!) nothing to do with democracy. If a popular vote was taken the population of England would have remained Catholic through all the turmoil. The people loved their Church, and their devotions.

What Portillo and his ilk believe Britishness to be (and here I concur) is a worship of the State and the State's religion (Anglican hotch-potch at first, and now "tolerance" of goodness knows what).

The SNP spokesman on the programme did interject in Portillo's ramblings of Britain being against "Catholic extremism" at one stage by stating that the British Union was a construct to keep the State Protestant and for the benefit of the Hanoverians.

Of course to Portillo regicide and overthrowing the lawful King to replace him with a Dutch or German puppet is a great example of Britishness and not "extreme" in any way! Just as it is not extreme to have an Anglican Queen sign off laws that go against her Oath of Office to uphold the law of the land and the Bible, in particular laws which legalised homosexuality, abortion and which will legalise euthanasia.

Britishness and Anglicanism are State worship. That is why the head of the Anglican church is the queen (also head of the Protestant, Presbytarian Church of Scotland), and so Britishness has always been about being anti-Papist; as such one could argue that Britain was the first Masonic State (whose regicide led the way for the French revolutionaries).

Certainly John Dee, the man who is said to be the founding  father of the British Empire and Elizabeth I's right-hand man was a known occultist. Then we have Cromwell the murderer who was the nuttiest Brit to rule the country. Then there is William of Orange (the "King Billy" so beloved of Protestants), a usurper who sold England to unending debt by establishing the Bank of England.

Portillo thinks all of this and more proves that Britain is all about tolerance and fairness. Tell that to the Irish circa 1845. Tell that to the Scottish circa 1746. Tell that to the Welsh children banned from speaking their mother-tongue. Tell that to the Boers who were put in the first ever concentration camps. Tell that to the English forced from the land and into slums.

Britain is a construct designed to promote worship of the state and money (coming together in the Empire), which is why the City of London has been the centre of finance for many centuries. Anglicanism is state worship with a healthy dose of anti-Catholicism at its head. They have bent over backwards (Houses of Orange, Hanover and Saxe-Coburg/Gotha - aka Windsor) to stop Catholic rule, hence we still have anti-Catholic legislation on the statute books.

I know it's hard - and many Catholics have fought and died under the Union Jack, not least in my own family - but I believe Scottish independence will be a good thing, because it will make us all re-evaluate patriotism, who rules us, and the means of ruling us.

There is no hard and fast rule for Catholics, but when the law was recently changed to give the Welsh Assembly more law-making powers, the Catholic Bishops put out a statement broadly welcoming it, as the nearer to people power is held, the more accountable it is (very Chetsertonian of them).

I do not think "splitting up" (as the likes of Portillo so manically portray it) the UK will end the hegemony of Mammon, Freemasonry and other anti-Catholic forces, any more than it will change the day-to-day lives of all of us, whether we are Welsh, English, Scottish or Irish. There will be no barbed-wire borders. I do not even think the moral-framework of the laws (let along the Social Reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ) will come into force.

But might the Scottish, Welsh and English nations look to their Catholic roots as well as their futures in all this political change?

I doubt it somehow, but the end of the British Union may yet give Catholics hope for the future and be part of God's plan. With the Euro stumbling and even America unable to "pay its bills" the era of small nations may take us back to a more Catholic way of doing things...

Celtic Tiger Leaves a Large Volume of Guano

Celtic Tiger or Golden Calf?

Circa 5 years ago all the talk of Ireland was of the "Celtic Tiger" -- the rapacious economy, growing faster than ever, new technologies, booming property prices etc. It seemed the good times would never end. The Irish were looking out on new horizons, and the view was spectacular.

The "experts" were busy telling us how Ireland was now a Capitalist power-house. The (for want of a better word let's, in Chestertonian mode, call them) modernists in the media, those people who love 'progress' as long as it fits their agenda, were busy telling us that -- each like a latter day little Nietzsche -- Catholicism was all but dead, a medieval anarchronism that the Irish people no longer wanted or needed.

The message, rarely said openly, but implied continuously was that money was now god, it was the new force in Ireland. Mammon had quite clearly replaced God, if these pundits were to be believed.

The sad thing is that so many hundreds of thousands of people have had to suffer to prove the experts, pundits and talking heads wrong, otherwise it would be tempting to revel in their downfall and exposure as little more than modern-day Wizards of Oz.

Their great Golden Calf, before which they prostrated themselves, has toppled all so quickly and the prophets of Mammon have been left with egg on their face.

I have friends in Ireland trapped in negative equity and who have lost their jobs, through no fault of their own. Married couples had to buy a home, and now whole families are struggling just to make ends meet and pay the bills. That is the reality.

The Celtic Tiger, far from delivering the Irish people 'freedom' (and we should reflect on what Pope Benedict said whilst in the UK, viz money does not bring happiness) has brought them a ton of woe and many years of debt, taxation, unemployment and penury.

Yesterday on the radio an Irishwoman talked of the suffering in Ireland, with some people even taking their own lives over the amount of debt, lost homes etc. etc.

The modernists have slunk away, their voices have fallen silent, the Irish people have been left to shoulder the burden of the ineptitude of the banks and government who let this huge bubble grow with their eyes fixed on the huge profits promised, like cartoon characters with their pupils replaced by Euro signs.

Thankfully the Catholic Church is still there, to pick up the pieces for those who will turn to it; to provide support and succour in times of need.

How sad it is that so much loss and suffering has had to occurr to open peoples' eyes to the fleeting and temporal nature of the Celtic Tiger.

I just hope others will learn the Irish lesson, but perhaps that is simply wishful thinking on my part.

If only our public servants would learn to put the Common Good before the lust for profits and power. I cannot see that day arriving any time soon as long as power is created by writing in banking ledgers.

Leo XIII addressed social issues in 1891.

Times have changed since that wonderful and saintly Pope, Leo XIII, wrote Rerum Novarum on the conditions of the working classes, with many of the slums cleared (in the West!) but in the relations between capital and labour we have to ask if things have changed beyond tweaks and reforms here and there.

Certainly the example of the Celtic Tiger dictates that Catholics should be looking at a society that puts money in its rightful place - as a servant to be used to alleviate poverty and help society; not as a fickle god to be worshipped at the cost of all else.

If we don't, as a society, change our ways then we are destined to repeat the many mistakes of the past time and time again.

The modernists, media experts etc. like to say that Catholicism has nothing to say to the modern world (or worse still, that she should genuflect to it). Recent events have proved that the modern world needs Catholicism like never before.

Link:
Rerum Novarum

This wonderful encyclical still speaks to us nearly 120 years later, and contains so much of great worth it is well worth a read. Here are just two examples of many (excuse American spellings):

35. We have said that the State must not absorb the individual or the family; both should be allowed free and untrammelled action so far as is consistent with the common good and the interest of others. Rulers should, nevertheless, anxiously safeguard the community and all its members; the community, because the conservation thereof is so emphatically the business of the supreme power, that the safety of the commonwealth is not only the first law, but it is a government's whole reason of existence; and the members, because both philosophy and the Gospel concur in laying down that the object of the government of the State should be, not the advantage of the ruler, but the benefit of those over whom he is placed. As the power to rule comes from God, and is, as it were, a participation in His, the highest of all sovereignties, it should be exercised as the power of God is exercised - with a fatherly solicitude which not only guides the whole, but reaches also individuals. 

46. If a workman's wages be sufficient to enable him comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children, he will find it easy, if he be a sensible man, to practice thrift, and he will not fail, by cutting down expenses, to put by some little savings and thus secure a modest source of income. Nature itself would urge him to this. We have seen that this great labor question cannot be solved save by assuming as a principle that private ownership must be held sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners.