De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

  From the earliest days of Christianity teaching was unmistakably clear. We have the Fifth Commandment and later the most primitive Christian teaching, The Didache states: “You shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born.” This is not a later doctrinal development but part of the Church’s foundational moral witness. Which makes our present moment all the more revealing: we now have leaders of Christian Churches who do not oppose abortion in principle, but merely argue that certain forms of it “go too far.” That may pretend to be nuance but it is not. It is clearly a huge rupture. You cannot claim the moral authority of the Church while abandoning the principles that gave that authority meaning. And this failure is not abstract. Law teaches. When legislation expands abortion, it teaches that some lives are negotiable; when Church leaders fail to oppose it clearly, they reinforce that lesson. What we are witnessing is the pedagogy of the law in action, a feedbac...

Katherine and I travelled to Brixton to join the 40 days for Life Vigil. We spoke to some of those taking part about why it is an important witness. Please do like and share!

On Saturday, Katherine and I attended the March4Life in London along with thousands of others. This is her brilliant write up of the event: On Saturday I failed to hide my extreme, fringe, bigoted and dangerous view that *trigger warning* killing humans is wrong. I joined a group of other like-minded extremists who believe things like drinking water is vital, feet are for walking on, men can’t give birth and you don’t need a PhD to work this stuff out. Together we Marched for Life in London , a diverse crowd, unified by their recognition of, and commitment to, reality – including the reality that the birth canal isn’t a magical tunnel that turns a bunch of cells into a human being. What wasn’t clear was what unified the un-boundaried fantasy of the opposing voices. At one point a voice rose up from the throng of ghouls shouting “Whadda we want?” and was met with a chilly silence, before someone mumbled something about the Tories. After a dressing room huddle in which a Tim Burton ...

In her latest article in the Catholic Herald , Katherine Bennett pertinently shines a light on the hypocrisy of a culture that rages about the murders of Lucy Letby, a nurse on a children's ward in Chester who attacked at least thirteen infants in her care between June 2015 and June 2016, killing seven of them, while celebrating the murder of unborn children in the same hospital. It is an excellent piece: How did a nurse commit such unthinkable murders? Are they really so unthinkable in a world that considers the killing of a baby with Down’s syndrome a “right”, that calls for abortion on demand up to birth? Are we so blind that we cannot see the lies, the ugliness and the evil that lurks beneath what bubbles up to the surface? How deeply corrupted is a conscience that celebrates both the abolition of the death penalty and the introduction of euthanasia for prisoners, the emancipation of women and the right to self ID, the safeguarding of children and grooming in schools? We are c...

I have blogged before about the CBEW "lead bishop for life" John Sherrington and his feeble approach to life issues, constantly he seems to say as little as possible and usually late. First of all, ALL our bishops should be bishops for life, why do we just have one who speaks on life issues? Does this mean that the rest can simply delegate their responsibilities to Sherrington? (Because that certainly seems to be, broadly, the case).  We are facing an growing epidemic of child murder. Between January and June 2022, there were 123,219 abortions performed on residents of England and Wales. This compares with 105,488 over the same period in 2021 according to the latest government statistics . The Catholic Church's stance on abortion is a deeply held and consistent teaching, guided by its understanding of human dignity and the principles of natural law. The basic key aspects are: Sanctity of Human Life: The Catholic Church believes that human life is sacred and begins at co...

We all know the Papal Plane Game by now. It always seems to create a scandal but Francis doesn't care, or slow down. Sure, nothing he says is Magisterial, but we all know that irrespective of the finer points of canon law or moral theology (or ecclesiology or theology for that matter) Francis still seems to speak without care, and those who desire to break down the teaching of Christ and the Apostles into something they find more palatable for the modern era, or more comfortable given their personal peccadilloes, jump on his every word to justify whatever blasphemy they seek to endorse.  A perfect demonstration of this is, on the way back from Bahrain, Pope Francis offered a justification for adding pro-abortionists as members of the Pontifical Academy for Life . As the National Catholic Register reports : "While speaking about the gifts of women during an in-flight press conference on Sunday, Pope Francis mentioned the recent appointment of a pro-abortion economist to th...

When Gavin, Katherine & I were discussing what we should bring to you on Catholic Unscripted this week, I felt there was more than a little push back to the idea of discussing the pope's latest appointment to the Pontifical Academy for Life. No one even knows about the Academy, I was told, and no one cares much about it. But I don't think the importance of this moment can easily be overlooked: Of all the scandals of this pontificate, the naming of the pro-abortion atheist to the Pontifical Academy for Life has caused more more scandalized comments than anything we’ve witnessed so far. Even non-Catholics have reached out to us in horror. It’s really unmasked Francis. — Rorate Caeli (@RorateCaeli) October 21, 2022 Indeed, this appointment has caused bishops to publicly raise eyebrows: Appointment of pro-abortion economist to Pontifical Academy for Life??? https://t.co/7I9OVIkSTh — Bishop Down Umber (@BishopUmbers) October 19, 2022  And clergy are speaking out: In an atte...

  In this episode of Catholic Unscripted, we were contacted by a viewer to discuss the promotion of abortion on the Graham Norton chat show on BBC 1. We talk about the way abortion has become mainstream in the UK and ask why it's not more of a priority for our bishops (rather than climate change!). We also discuss Pope Francis' attempt to frame tradition as infidelity which I wrote about here .

 Breaking news Having undertaken mammoth efforts to correct the speaker of the house, her bishop has finally decided he has no option but to publicly exclude her from receiving Holy Communion: After numerous attempts to speak with Speaker Pelosi to help her understand the grave evil she is perpetrating, the scandal she is causing, an the danger to her own soul she is risking, I have determined that she is not to be admitted to Holy Communion. https://t.co/l7M85CyG86 — Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone (@ArchCordileone) May 20, 2022 He was immediately supported by bishop Conley of Lincoln, Nebraska: I support Archbishop Cordileone in his courageous pastoral outreach to a member of his flock. His actions are made as a shepherd with the heart of Christ. https://t.co/mRGCtE2ZN3 — James D Conley (@bishop_conley) May 20, 2022 This is, of course, the fulfilment of canon law: This is what had to happen. Writing to his priests today, Archbishop Cordileone lays out the timeline and says h...

  I watched this cringe-filled interview of Archbishop Cordileone by EWTN's Raymond Arroyo over the weekend. Raymond does really well in asking the hard questions of Archbishop Cordileone, but I felt desperately sorry for the Archbishop. What a position to be put in! He does his absolute best to rely on the Pope's strong condemnation of abortion, but, notwithstanding those words, this act, devoid as it was of any condemnation of Pelosi's anti-Catholic actions and given the present circumstances, where the Archbishop is involved in a very public debate with Pelosi and Pelosi has advanced abortion on demand in a radical and aggressive way, can only be seen as an attempt to criticise the USCCB strategy on Eucharistic coherence. Raymond: "you're on the wrong side of the Church Archbishop" - how can we infer anything else from this meeting? Archbishop Cordileone: "The Pope has to use his own discretion" - ++Cordileone has clearly been left high and dry by...

The Pope continues to act in increasingly problematic and distressing ways.  This weekend he met Nancy Pelosi at the Vatican. Pelosi, for my non-American readers, is the 81 year old Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, a role she has held since 2019. The speaker is the political and parliamentary leader of the House of Representatives and is simultaneously the House's presiding officer, de facto leader of the body's majority party, and the institution's administrative head. Speakers also perform various other administrative and procedural functions. Pelosi, like President Joe Biden, makes much of her "devout" Catholic faith. It's a useful way to curry favour with like-minded voters. Pelosi is an ardent promoter of the LGBT ideology, she supports contraception and, most vocally, promotes abortion claiming it is completely consistent with her claims to be a devout Catholic. Pelosi voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 and ...

Pope Francis has decried abortion and euthanasia, saying that today’s “throwaway culture” leads to the killing of children and discarding of the elderly. Which is awesome.  Giving a speech on Monday in which he said that today’s “throwaway culture” leads to the killing of children and discarding of the elderly, the Pope strongly defended Catholic teaching on the fundamental and essential dignity of every human person from conception to natural death: “There is the discarding of children that we do not want to welcome with the law of abortion that sends them to the dispatcher and kills them directly. And today this has become a ‘normal’ method, a practice that is very ugly. It is really murder,” The speech marked the second time this month that Pope Francis has spoken out strongly about abortion. During a press conference on his return flight from Slovakia on Sept. 15, the pope repeatedly said that “abortion is murder” and compared the acceptance of abortion to “accepting daily m...

In the Holy Smoke podcast last week, seasoned UK journalist Damian Thompson analysed the Vatican's attempt to silence the USCCB criticism of newly elected President Joe Biden, which I first wrote about here . This is well worth a listen: I think the first thing to say is that it is obvious that this situation has only arisen because the USCCB did not point out these problems with Biden prior to the election. To me this lack of action sums up the lack of potency in the Church at the moment which means we are paying lip service only to the Gospel: it says to Catholics all over the world that doctrine doesn't matter - that you don't need to follow Catholic teaching - that no rules apply - that the Church could be "wrong" on these fundamental issues of life - that secular society has a point about killing unborn children being a good thing. This is antithetical to Catholic teaching, and, because it is so obviously antithetical, it requires regular, firm & loud ...

Jason and Crystalina Evert, picture: Facebook Ireland, my ancestral homeland, has turned away from the light over the last decade or so and there's virtually no one to stand against the flow of darkness. As I have opined over a number of years now , the faith of the once proud land of saints and scholars, the tiny island that evangelised half the world, has been eroded until it is little more than superstition. This epidemic of agnosticism and apathy has been brought about by a lack of teaching, episcopal hypocrisy and an appalling record of abuse. The bishops in Ireland continue to be utterly useless, lording it up in massive domiciles surrounded by luxury and privilege while doing absolutely nothing to combat the tide of secularism drowning the country. For example the bishop who argued that St John Henry Newman wouldn't have converted if he lived today , or the bishop who's Facebook page trots out karmic Disney memes in place of anything even vaguely Cathol...