That The Bones You Have Crushed May Thrill

Anything Bush could do, Obama can do with greater impunity. When Bush and Blair launched wars they were evil unjust wars, but when Obama launches wars, its the spreading of peace around the globe. They're peace-seeking missiles he uses on Pakistan. Very sophisticated. Well, it is when the liberal media believe that Obama should always be naked from the waist down, lest the Earth be cast into perpetual darkness. War is peace now.

It's easy.

Just criticise gay marriage or President Obama.

Preferably both.

That should secure it.

Google owns YouTube and runs Blogger.

Just thought I'd warn you in case you were unaware.

Fr Aidan Nichols is coming to Brighton to speak at St Mary Magdalen Church as part of the series of lectures hosted by St Mary Magdalen Church, Brighton, in the year of 150th Anniversary of its opening.

Fr Nichols has a brilliant mind, is a profoundly gifted theologian and will be speaking on the future of the Church in England on Thursday evening at 7.30pm.

An interesting video this, one that I have been alerted to by a reader. It covers the story of same-sex marriage in the US, covering such issues as the education of children on homosexuality (regardless of what parents would wish their children to know) and the silencing and imprisonment of one Massachussets man for questioning the status quo. It has interviews with men and women who have led the gay lifestyle only to reject it and find love with someone of the opposite sex and it highlights the grave threat to religious liberty which is already apparent in the US in those states which have accepted same-sex marriage. Confirmation, that as the Bee Gees sang, for the US, 'the lights all went down in Massachussets...'


RIP Robin Gibb. RIP religious freedom and the parental moral education of their biological children.

Not the words of our Prime Minister, of course, but those of the Prime Minister of Turkey.

Finally, a politician who tells the truth.

From The Eye of a Needle

I've been sent this quite astonishing video by a reader which is worthy of attention and dissemination. You could be forgiven for thinking that maybe this council accommodation could do with some work. Maybe a spot of restoration and the removal of black mold that caused the children living in this accommodation to develop respiratory problems? Well, you'd be right, but the really astonishing thing about this video is not just the appalling conditions of the accommodation but that it was taken by the mother of a woman with 4 children after Mears Group plc had completed their 'work' on the council property.

The family, a mother with her four children in this two bedroom accommodation were moved out of the Hangleton property after repeated complaints by the family and extended family were made to the Council. To its great credit, The Argus newspaper also covered the story of the squalour of the property and their coverage of the shoc…

Hard as it may be to believe, I do tire of writing about 'gay marriage' and if you think I'm obsessed with it, then at least be assured that I'm not half as obsessed with it as are our beloved elected politicians who seem to discuss it tirelessly.

Today, Ed Balls has come out in favour of it and into the bargain outed his anonymous gay uncle. Yet, you don't have to be an intellectual rigorist to spot some pretty glaring inconsistencies in Ed's reasoning.

Ed maintains that he 'believes' that his uncle, who never got the chance to have a Civil Partnership with his gay lover, because he died, would have wanted to be married to the chap with whom he shared his life. How well did Ed know this uncle? We're not sure, but the fact that Ed says he 'believes' he would have wanted this, even though he clearly doesn't know for sure, means we'll never know whether the gay uncle would have wanted a gay marriage or, indeed, not.

Then, to make his…

I've been in contact with a media company who invited me to talk about paganism and whether it should be taught in schools in RE.

Obviously, the main thrust of what I said was that it should not, since if it is to be taught the pagan-lite elements such as belief in the power of crystals and horoscopes, lessons would at some point have to dabble in the world of the occult and the 'spirit world'. Or, at least, it would be hard to teach what some pagans might believe about stuff like horoscopes if you didn't also include the stuff the some pagans might believe about trying to contacting the dead.

If paganism were a religion to be taught alongside Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism and other significant religions, then exactly what would be taught?  The problem of course is that paganism would mean something different depending on which pagan you happened to be talking to. For one it would mean visiting Stonehenge at the summer solstice, for another it might just be s…

There is much talk of today's politicians being 'out of touch' with your average Brit.

It seems to have been said of every government that I can recall, however, and the gulf between 'the people' and 'the people in charge' seems to widen as time goes on. It seems to be a general trend across Europe, too.

There is a palpable sense in which the issues that concern the Prime Minister and his deputy arrive somewhere near the bottom of the 'to do' list scribbled at the back of the minds of most in the UK. Some decisions of course, are on the 'not to do' list for a sizeable proportion of UK citizens. The 'us and them' feeling that we have about our politicians won't have been helped by the publication of the Cabinet's incomes which comes to a grand total of about £70 million a year. For instance, as the cuts deepen and the State abandons the poor, disabled and sick and throw them back to the Church that always loved them - at a ti…

I was, sadly, unable to see or hear Cardinal Raymond Burke in the flesh today, but I am heartened to hear that this wonderful Cardinal has a new book out called Divine Love Made Flesh.

Read more at Life Site News about his new publication.

And fight the New World Order! Wear a Crucifix everywhere you go!

Like some readers I find Alex Jones a bit much. I mean can you imagine going for a pint with him. Hectic or what!

"You know what, Larry, make mine a Kronenburg but I don't trust beer either. I'll bet those globalists have put some chemical in it that'll make me either sterile or take five years off my life!"
That said, I found this clip of Jones recently talking with Lord Christopher Monckton, who claims that David Cameron's Government has applied to the EU explicitly to ban the wearing of crucifixes. He also has some interesting things to say about the Bishops of England and Wales.

The truth of the issue is that the Government has applied to stop people from wearing Crucifixes in the workplace only. But, then, I guess that you can start from the office and work your way out onto the pavement and then in people's homes and Churches and stuff. If you want more cheery news from Lord Monck…

A part of the reason - among the many other facets of the State'sincremental take-over of British society - that I believe we're headed for a dystopic situation in this country is the way in which central and local Government groom our children and feel it perfectly natural that the State should be the prime moral educators and indeed general educators of children.

The phrase 'to groom' is particularly apt for this blog post as well, because on my way home today from a local park, I saw a Brighton and Hove City Council 'Youth Information Bus'.

Standing a little further away from the vehicle than the little nipper pictured above, you could be forgiven for thinking Preston Park had an ice cream van. It's a sweltering day and I may have even considered a 99 with a flake myself, but on arrival at the scene, I realised the only things of different flavours available at this little van would be condoms.

So, what is a van manned by two Council workers with leafle…

Dystopia

Develop a pill that can prevent fertilisation
And another that can seek out and destroy
The embryo
Drop them like a megaton A-bomb
All across the sheer face of the Western world

Stand back and watch like J. Robert Oppenheimer
Declare "I am become Death, the destroyer of Worlds"
Make it easy, make it free to all nations
Do it all in the name of women's liberation

Sit back and laugh as the birth rate suddenly plummets
Pour your cash into Planned Parenthood and into Marie Stopes
Watch the hounds tearing children to pieces
Call it "safe, legal, rare reproductive health"

Spread at home and abroad State sex education
Get them starting nice and early
Then watch their inhibitions go!
Divorce marriage from all previous notions
That held families together
Generations ago

It's a dysto-oh-oh-oh pia!
Dystopia
Oh-oh-oh-oh pia
It's a dysto-oh-oh-oh pia!
Dystopia
Oh-oh-oh-oh pia

Raise the standard and the cost of everyday living
Make it harder to have children than it was all those yea…

'Mercy and truth have met each other: justice and peace have kissed.' 

Of course, The Tablet and the bureaucratic monolith that is the Diocesan justice and peace machine don't like what Bishop Mark Davies has done.


As James Preece asks, why don't you hear The Tablet whinging when Churches close?


Say a prayer for those who have been made redundant in the Diocese of Shrewsbury that they find proper jobs soon.

Andrew Sullivan is a writer for Newsweek. He also claims to be a Christian. May I suggest that Mr Sullivan believes in the man with the halo, but not in the Man with the Crown of Thorns. It's interesting to note to whom he attributes divinity.

Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith has posted at the Catholic Herald on the dangers with moving such great Feasts of the Church such as Ascension Day to Sundays.

Because of attending a Church which embraces both the ancient rite and the Novus Ordo as two forms of the one rite, I was pondering whether Catholics in Brighton could be forgiven for thinking the Lord ascended twice.

'So, the Lord Ascended Thursday, came back down from Heaven to say some choice words to some of His Bishops, then went back up again on Sunday?'

If you were a child who attended some parish Masses across the United Kingdom on both Ascension Days, that's the message you might walk away with.

Mgr Keith Newton of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham is talking at St Mary Magdalen Church this Thursday on Ecumenism. Not to be missed!

The Catholic Herald this week carried a story that the Bishop of Arundel and Brighton has criticised the use of the Hail Mary in the Mass, I believe because it is a national custom not mentioned in the rubrics of the Universal Church.

English Catholics are, however, fond of the Marian prayer at the end of the bidding prayers in the Mass and many would be sad to see it disappear.

Is His Lordship perhaps hinting that it would be prudent to overcome such innovations and abuses by introducing the Faithful in England and Wales to Mass in the language of the Universal Church, perhaps in the ancient rite? After all, this would bring an end to national customs, the aforementioned and other liturgical abuses such as the use of pottery chalices.  This, I believe, would be a sensitive and pastoral way in which to bring to the Mass in your average parish both a universality in keeping with our communion with our brothers and sisters abroad as well as with those who have gone before us. Problem so…

Just a quick post to let readers know that the Government's computer system, which crashed the last time it opened itself up for responses to the Government's consultation over 'equal civil marriage', otherwise known as 'gay marriage' or 'the destruction of the institution of marriage'...is now working.

Click here to have your say on the Government's consultation, which Lynne Featherstone has assured us is a cosmetic exercise in democracy because HM Government are going to do it anyway. The C4M site has rather helpfully given a list of decent responses to the Government plan, so you don't have to reel out all the arguments yet again.

Happy Feast of the Ascension.

Dystopia
Develop a pill that can prevent fertilisation And another that can seek out and destroy The embryo Drop them like a megaton A-bomb All across the sheer face of the Western world
Stand back and watch like J. Robert Oppenheimer            Declare “I am become Death, the destroyer of Worlds” Make it easy, make it free to all nations Do it all in the name of women’s liberation
Sit back and laugh as the birth rate suddenly plummets Pour your cash into Planned Parenthood and into Marie Stopes Watch the hounds tearing children to pieces Call it “safe, legal, rare reproductive health”
Spread at home and abroad State sex education Get them starting nice and early Then watch their inhibitions go! Divorce marriage from all previous notions That held families together Generations ago
It’s a dysto-oh-oh-oh pia! Dystopia Oh-oh-oh-oh pia It’s a dysto-oh-oh-oh pia! Dystopia Oh-oh-oh-oh pia
Raise the standard and the cost of everyday living Make it harder to have children than it was all th…

I've just heard from Mr Evans that New Steine Mews refused Jason his clothes from his room two days ago because of what I wrote on my blog.

I believe Jason because Jason didn't know I'd written anything on my blog therefore I don't require the 'other side to the story'.

New Steine Mews, however, did know because I sent them links to both of my blogs.

So, they make a man homeless, evict him with none of his possessions. Then, after he's been out in the rain for a few days and he needs his clothes, he goes back to see them to get them and he's told that he cannot have them because someone has written something unpleasant about the near total lack of compassion or empathy the staff there have with the homeless.

If you would like to make known your views on this, feel free to contact the staff at New Steine Mews at:

hostel@nsmhostel.org.uk
...and let your views be known.

Look, I know that Jason can be 'hard work' but talk about kicking a man when he…

Book online here.

Last week the Holy Father canonised St Hilderberg of Bingen. In fact, it is being reported that Pope Benedict XVI officially recognised what the Church had already considered of the 12th century mystic and that the Church had now "inscribed her in the catalogue of Saints".

It is worth noting His Holiness's words on this Saint, as reported by The Catholic Herald...


"In St Hildegard’s time, there were calls for radical reform of the Church to fight the problem of abuses made by the clergy, the Pope had said. But she “reproached demands to subvert the very nature of the Church” and reminded people that “a true renewal of the ecclesial community is not achieved so much with a change in the structures as much as with a sincere spirit of penitence”.
12th century, 21st century. You wouldn't have thought they would be similar and yet a desire for 'renewal' is expressed in the Church by many - including the Holy Father himself, among supporters which number Bish…

At last week's Catechism discussion group at St Mary Magdalen's Church we discussed the consecrated life in the Church.

In particular, we were discussing the three vows of religious life - poverty, chastity and obedience. It was a very thought provoking discussion.

Strangely, though, it got me thinking about non-Catholics that I know living in hostels around Brighton.  One friend lives at St Patrick's hostel in Hove. Aside from the fact that many of those living in the hostels of Brighton have 'issues' like we all have 'issues' - ranging from mental health to alcohol and drug abuse - the life of a hostel dweller is quite monastic in its basic format.

First, you really only get into these hostels if you are on benefits - so you live on a minimum allocated amount each week with which to buy your food, top up your rent, buy your necessaries. Of course, if you find it hard to budget, or have a particular addiction or habit that causes you to lose a great deal …

I found the following comment on The Eye of a Needle blog. I don't get many comments on that blog so its an interesting 'lead'.

'Teresa has left a new comment on your post "Brighton and Hove City Council and Mears Group: A ...":
what a disgusting waste of taxpayers money, want to see some more of mears work come to Burwash Road Hove BN3 8GP and view a flat that has 2 bedrooms and a bathroom with black mold on the ceilings and walls its an eye opener to see this be outside Burwash pharmacy at 12noon on monday 12th may 2012 at 12noon and you can see it for yourself and Brighton Council expect a family with 4 children to move into this health hazard.'
Interesting, eh?  I can't make that appointment as it happens, but it sounds like someone else in Brighton wants the truth about the Mears Group and their care of Brighton's social housing to be exposed.

Do read Dr Joseph Shaw's latest post and the Cranmer promotion of the Coalition for Marriage advert that elicited mouth-foaming from the Advertising Standards Authority decrying its 'offensive and homophobic' content.

Anyone would have thought the gay marriage law was already in operation and the thought police had been given the go-ahead for the round up already. It looks a little big for my sidebar, but it's a neat little ad. If this is the most offensive advertisement out there in the big bad media, then I'll eat Cardinal Arinze's turkey.

From The Eye of a Needle

Just recently I have been struck by the indifference and hypocrisy of some of the hostel workers in Brighton. In particular, New Steine Mews appears to be quite a case in point.

Jason Evans, now homeless once more in Brighton has some pretty stinging words to say about his experiences resulting in his eviction from New Steine Mews, the 'Place of Change' in Brighton.

According to Jason, the reason for his eviction is as follows:

Jason was in the reception talking with one of the staff members of the hostel. For some reason or another, the particular staff member is alleged to have called Jason an 'Arabic bastard'. Not being one to always turn the cheek, Jason, in response, called the staff member a 'Spanish bastard' in return. Jason maintains that later in the evening the two men shook hands and were able to overcome whatever mild altercation they had had earlier.

'Big deal', you might be thinking and I'd agree with you. Bu…

I apologise if I have scandalised any readers by forgetting to bow my head at every mention of the name of our Blessed Saviour.

'Moving Beyond Jesus' 
Take an association of nuns
Tell them habits inhibit woman
‘Lose the wimples girls
Show a little more leg’
Introduce them to feminism

Make them think the Holy Church has moved on
From all that stuff about Salvation
'Lose the Rosaries girls'
Replace them with Myers Briggs
Get them teaching yoga lessons

Now you’ve got them teaching all the children in the schools everything but the Catechism
And of vice and virtue the children hear nothing
For the nuns have found a new vocation
Teaching children the Mass is just a friendly meal with Jesus
Just bread and wine
Symbolism
There’s no need to kneel
So just do what you feel in the Church and in the bedroom

‘We are moving beyond Jesus’
‘We are moving beyond Jesus’
‘We are moving beyond Jesus’
Into the darkness, far from the Light

Now you’ve destroyed their spiritual life
Appeal t…

Good article from the Washington Times on the new Obama election slogan, "Forward" and the 'rich association' the phrase has, in political language, with European Marxism.

Oh, and I picked the story up on Prison Planet, by the way.

If Belloc were alive today, I'm sure he'd skim over Prison Planet every now and then just to get a different take on things. He was open-minded like that.

Vote on gay marriage poll here.

I know it sounds odd, but vote 'Yes'.

Well, as usual, to round up the week, I took a look at The Tablet's website to see what's abounding at the magazine trapped in the 70s and with a readership of a similar age and, to my amusement, I saw this article concerning one Hans Kung...

'Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, has blamed Professor Hans Küng for creating anti-Roman sentiments among German-speaking Catholics and for a widespread misinterpretation of the Second Vatican Council.

"In the German-speaking world there has been, above all, the diffusion of Küng's idea that the Council constituted a rupture with the tradition of the Church and not an evolution of it," the Swiss cardinal said in an interview in the Italian magazine I Tempi. "In my opinion, this interpretation has caused the current disquiet [in the Church]," he said.

The 84-year-old theologian rejected the hypothesis. "I have never affirmed that Vatican II was an act o…

The news concerning the Irish Church continues to be depressing. However, the fall out of the abuse scandal in Ireland - a scandal that seems to have been covered up by State and Church alike - has other repercussions for Ireland other than the collapse of Faith.

Ireland is one of the few States that has given into the clamour to make  abortion widely available.  It remains highly restricted. While the United Kingdom recognised the 'woman's right to choose' in 1967, Ireland has done considerably well to hold the fort against those forces inside and outside the country that believe that abortion is the answer to the 'problem' of pregnancy.  Indeed, as Lifesitenews confirms, Ireland - one of the very few states in Europe not to have made freely available  - remains a world leader in maternal health.

Facts like this, however, do not stop the enemies of the unborn child, the family and the Church smelling blood when the Church appears to look like a carcass.  Given the…

The Obama Administration plans 're-education camps' in the US.

Pray for Chen Guangchen, pray for China.

But don't forget to pray also for the the 'land of the free'.