De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

I think this story speaks to some really important dynamics which are currently very much at the fore in society. To sum it up I would say it goes something like this: Religion is stupid and makes you hate people. Gay is good. Catholic leaders - who are mostly gay themselves, yet are supposed to teach the opposite (ie sex is only for the creation of life) - find themselves in a difficult position where they want to be pro-gay but not too pro-gay. No matter how pro gay Christians are, it will never be pro gay enough for gays. The “unmitigated tragedy” of a mass shooting at a Colorado Springs gay nightclub prompted “irresponsible” press coverage that wrongly scapegoated religious communities for their stands on sexual morality and identity, Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila of Denver has said . Given the fact that the Church as a body appears to be doing its level best to give very mixed messages about sexual morality and identity at the moment, I find it frustrating to hear a bishop, one of t...

Thank goodness someone else has noticed the dishonesty & hypocrisy in the comments of Atheists like Sandi Toksvig – who believes neither in God nor in sin ( see here ) - and yet has the audacity to complain that a recent meeting of Anglican “bishops” has (yet again) fudged the issue of the sinfulness of homosexual genital acts. She also claims that because she has received hate mail from some lunatics that this is all Welby’s fault. So she will never go into a church again. (Not that she did before.)  ,,, And she will scream & scream until she is sick! Gareth Roberts in The Spectator writes : Has Justin Welby met his match in Sandi Toksvig? The entertainer has sent an open letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, complaining about his attempts to compromise with African bishops and avoid a showdown at the Lambeth Conference on the issue of same-sex marriage. The gist of it is: ‘Even though I don’t believe in God, I’m rarely going to attend my local church again’. This...

Fr Mark Goring speaks to Alexander Tschugguel ( who pitched Pachamamma into the Tiber ) about what's going on in Germany & Austria right now. Alexander provides some valuable insight into the comments of Cardinal Schönborn, which have encouraged those seeking to resist the teaching of the Church - quite extraordinary when you think about it! It does demonstrate how we've got to this place. These subversive strains of the Church have been facilitated and allowed to proliferate by men like Schönborn who clearly compromised in this area, despite being credited with the authorship of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Indeed, his involvement with that volume shows how well these men hide in high office and are quite prepared to say things completely at odds with the agenda they seek to promote, depending on who is in charge. The very same game has long been played by our own Cardinal, Vincent Nichols .

Yesterday was the annual Pride march in London. It's becoming increasingly clear that more and more people are waking up to see what Pride actually is. I have a problem with this - at London Pride. What would a young girl see here? And what do I see? Many people I suppose would way it's all fine. I really don't think it is. pic.twitter.com/4rkMl7tF8k — MGadd (@Sparrlyten) July 6, 2019 You shall know them by their fruits. pic.twitter.com/C2YFLzEyoV — Caroline Farrow (@CF_Farrow) July 6, 2019 In First Things , Ed Condon makes some good points. He begins by explaining the root of the problem; a subjectivism which reduces moral acts to individual freedom and choice: Unmoored from concepts like Natural Law—which provided a common societal bedrock in previous centuries—the true, the good, and the right are now adrift, blown by the ever-stronger winds of legal positivism into whatever harbor awaits them. For a growing number of people, the Supreme Court’s decisio...

Priests who promote homosexuality in direct contradiction to Church teaching justify their new approach by saying that they are "accompanying" same-sex attracted people to faith. In fact, if one delves even a little below the superficiality of this duplicitous pretence one can see how this nonsense can never work and the reality is that are in fact achieving the opposite. History demonstrates that SSA people will either work to change Church teaching, as the Westminster LGBT+ group who recently spent time with Pope Francis do , or, if they are honest, they will recognise they only really have two options: conform their lives to Christ or leave. For a parent, priests who do this are their worst nightmare, particularly in a secular culture that constantly positively promotes such lifestyles. Faced with this parental challenge, where does one go to for help? If you are a Catholic, you go to the Church and her tradition to find a way to guide your child through this chall...

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed! ~ Galatians 1:6 f At the outset of this Papacy many Catholics, including myself, held the Archbishop of Malta, Charles Scicluna in great esteem. When he was appointed I wrote this glowing appraisal , and again a few days later when Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith of the Catholic Herald said that Malta now has a world class bishop to lead it . And so it seemed. Scicluna had the pedigree too. In 1991 he obtained a doctorate in canon law at the Pontifical Gregorian Unive...

Screenshot of the picture used to advertise Brentwood's  Caritas  website, which emphasises LGBT ideology & a strong link with children. (I have obscured the faces of the children for obvious reasons). It seems almost divine providence that, further to my last post , Cardinal Müller (former prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ) has given an interview  on the abuse crisis and its link to homosexuality in priesthood. In this interview he states: The LGBT ideology is based upon a false anthropology which denies God as the Creator. Since it is in principle atheistic or perhaps has only to do with a Christian concept of God at the margins, it has no place in Church documents. This is an example of the creeping influence of atheism in the Church, which has been responsible for the crisis of the Church for half a century. Unfortunately, it does not stop working in the minds of some shepherds who, in their naive belief of being modern, do no...

This weekend in my own diocese of Brentwood we saw the launch of a new initiative: Caritas Brentwood launches! Have a look at https://t.co/H6sgRsmiJN to discover amazing people doing stunning work throughout @BrentwoodRC . Catholic Social Teaching in action. Lives transformed. — Fr Dominic Howarth (@Father_Dominic) November 17, 2018 I actually read the bidding prayers at Mass which prayed for the success of this initiative and when I got home, I thought I would have a look. I was flabbergasted (frankly) to find this page promoting the organisation Quest which Cardinal Hume banned from the Catholic Directory of the Church in England and Wales because he concluded it was not a Catholic organisation as it stated that its objectives were to change Church teaching. Quest  have a long history of lobbying and dissent which you can get a sense for at Protect the Pope . Quest openly and publicly support same-sex marriage in direct contradiction to Church teaching. Despite ...

On Wednesday Damon Linker in The Week proposed that Pope Francis is "effectively promulgating two truths". He rightly asserts that Pope Francis is implicitly affirming the official doctrine while subtly undermining it with a less stringent pastoral teaching. Instead of seeking to change the underlying rules, which would risk divisiveness and even schism, he shows that it's perfectly alright for a priest or layperson to diverge from or ignore the rule in the name of welcoming as many people as possible to Christ's church. Linker reckons that Pope Francis is playing a very craft long game to change doctrine: But I think the pope's strategy for a longer game displays greater psychological acuity — and Machiavellian cunning. Francis may be betting that once the church stops preaching those doctrines that conflict most severely with modern moral norms, the number of people who uphold and revere them will decline rapidly (within a generation or two). Once that h...

Bishop John Keenan, Bishop of Paisley in Scotland is really stepping up to the mark lately thank God. Today I saw that he had published a letter sent to the Director of BBC Scotland, Donalda MacKinnon, outlining his concerns of the corporation’s treatment of Catholics in a recent short film titled ‘ Homophobia in 2018, Time for Love ’ which was posted all over social media. I even saw one of my old Confirmandi share it! The film, broadcast on the corporation’s digital platform, ‘ The Social ’, focuses on a gay person's perceived hatred--mostly people looking at him when he is kissing his boyfriend in a public place--and suggests Catholics are the root of the problem. The film contains detailed references to the teachings and liturgy of the Church with several deeply insulting and offensive representations, the video includes a clip in which the Sacrament of Holy Communion is described as something which ‘tastes like cardboard and smells like hate’. In his letter, dated 23 Apr...

Former Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron MP who quit as Liberal Democrat leader in July  after journalists attacked him for being Christian and questioned him about his opinions regarding homosexual acts, has admitted that he should have stood by his principles and that he lied when he said gay sex isn't a sin. I was really pleased when Tim was appointed leader. I feel we desperately need more Christian voices to engage the culture. I was then hugely disappointed that he decided to betray his Christian beliefs on any number of issues in the course of his pursuit of acceptance and power. I think Peter D. Williams of Right to Life   said it perfectly on social media yesterday: Since resigning as party leader, Tim has started doing what he should have done in the first place, providing an intelligent, articulate apologia for the hope that he bears (1 Peter 3:15). As I reported in November , he gave the Theos annual lecture for 2017  which was roundly welcome...

I could post EVERY DAY about Fr James Martin, because EVERY DAY he publicly states error about the faith, every day he pushes his agenda, EVERY DAY he endangers souls. This is today's error: Gospel: Today we see Jesus' human and divine natures: he learns from the woman that his ministry extends to all, and he heals her daughter. pic.twitter.com/Hb6l5SJKWw — James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) August 20, 2017 Standard Antiochene trolling from Fr Martin, who consistently attempts to assert Jesus was less than divine. He is immediately pulled up on it: Interesting — isolated proof texts from Scripture quoted out of context as against the unbroken tradition. Standard Protestantism I guess. — Adrian Vermeule (@avermeule) August 20, 2017 As the Jesuits were founded to combat the Protestant heresy, this is particularly pertinent, but Fr Martin is unabashed: Interesting--ignoring what the Gospels reveal about Jesus's two natures, fully human and fully divine. Standar...