The long awaited Leveson Report has been released and those newspapers orientated towards the Left (The Guardian, The Independent, along with a host of celebrities) are scandalised by the outcome that, thus far, the Prime Minister hasn't endorsed official regulation of the newspaper industry by statute.
The newspapers traditionally orientated towards the right of British politics, (The Telegraph, The Times, The Daily Mail) have meanwhile praised David Cameron for resisting pressure and not endorsing a statutory body for press regulation.
My first reaction is thus: David Cameron, as we have seen, seems to move along the left to right spectrum like a table football figure depending on how politically expedient it is to do so. So...what has the British Press got on David Cameron?
However, while the British mainstream media chew over the results of the Leveson Report, a totally unexpected tangent has suddenly been taken, one supported, most probably by MPs and newspaper proprietors alike. Yes, from out of the blue, MPs have suggested that whatever happens with the mainstream Press in terms of regulation, the notorious group of scoundrels known for phone-tapping, police bribery and underhand journalistic mendacity - bloggers - have been omitted from the Leveson Report altogether.
Why? Well, the answer is because bloggers have not done anything other than express opinion on politics and the state of current affairs. The truth is that the relationship between the State and newspapers has always been a 'complex' affair and that the Press has the power to make or break politicians, their reputations and careers. They can, as we know, build you up or knock you down. Ordinary British people, however, have a less complex relationship with Government in as much as British people are there to be largely shafted by their Government, to vote out the criminals only to elect a new bunch of criminals in their place in order to largely represent the interests of an elite. Unlike the British newspaper barons, we don't really have a wining and dining relationship with our elected politicians and Prime Ministers.
We do, however, have dangerous opinions. Recall, for instance, that it was bloggers who broke the Climategate scandal and it was bloggers who sent that scandal viral. The sad truth is that there is, as Belloc said, an "Official Press" and there is, now, an unofficial, alternative source of news, opinion and commentary gaining in profile and readership. Don't believe me? Well, just ask The Tablet. In the wake of the Leveson Report, we're seeing that while those in Government fear the power of the Press, they fear the power of the people far more. Of course our politicians fear Rupert Murdoch...but they fear youmore and there is no reason to believe that the establishment Press fear you any less than they do.
I challenge readers to watch this for longer than five minutes without reaching for a sick bag or smashing up their computer monitor. This is the guy who wept when Benedict XVI was made Successor of St Peter. Presumably, that's because despite his hatred of the 'institutional Church', he sees the Papacy as the Office which could turn the Catholic Church into a loyal sister of the Anglican Communion.
The Vatican is imploding, right? Funny that because I was under the impression that Tablet sales are down year upon year and that it is The Tablet which is heading into oblivion. Incredibly, this man is so blinded by the half century of fifth columnist liberals who have laid waste to parishes and dioceses around the World, in all sectors of the Church's mission, that he has the audacity to point to the Successor of St Peter and the Vatican in terms of blame, because, obviously, the Church isn't liberal enough to maintain its 'relevancy' to the people.
I expect that publications like The Tablet have played no small part in the process of creating an astonishingly uncatechised laity over the past half century and that Mickens can claim at least some credit for the apostasy we have witnessed. It is to liberals and the indifferentism preached by liberals that we can attribute the decline in numbers coming forward for the Priesthood. He talks of the Church and the Vatican 'imploding' as if he isn't a figure on the 'inside' working towards this end! Bobby. Put the sledgehammer down and if you don't like the fact that 'your Church' isn't heading in the direction you want, there is an exit door in every parish. Nobody is forcing you at gun point back to the porch, but then, I suppose that your ample wages come from being a 'Catholic' so you wouldn't consider it!
Don't you just love the way that, like a bible-bashing Protestant, Mickens goes to Scripture to discredit the hierarchical structure of the Church! Show me the bit, Bobby, where Our Lord says, 'Thou art Bobby, and upon this columnist I shall build my Church!'
"Speakest thou not to me? Knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and I have power to release thee?"
What power today is in the hands of those who like Pontius Pilate either ask, 'What is truth?' or who have no interest in asking the question! What power indeed and how unwisely is it used and with what dreadful consequences!
The unborn who were and are told, 'I have power to crucify thee, and I have power to release thee' by doctors and nurses, by politicians and the supporters of the destruction of innocent life! Then after they have dismembered the unborn body, wash their hands as if they are innocent of their blood!
To the elderly who are told by doctors and nurses, by politicians, 'I have power to crucify thee, and I have power to release thee'! Such people know the power that they have and like Pilate use it with devastating effect upon human lives and families, starving the defenceless to death!
To mothers and families under the constant reproach and condemnation of social services and of politicians, 'I have power to crucify thee, and I have power to release thee'! Knowing the power they have and of the consequences for human relationships and bonds, they have no hesitation in ripping new born children from their mothers' arms and sending the children away to new prospective parents deemed more worthy of parenting than their natural parents! To the women of China and other nations who have broken the unjust laws on family planning, too, they are told the same thing, only to be sterilized or to undergo forced abortion!
Yet on the Last Day we shall awake to the dreadful day of judgment when on mercy and love we shall be judged, when the true King shall return to make an everlasting judgment that is just. The rulers of this age and those who follow the spirit of the age, in showing no mercy to the defenceless and weak then shall see that on each occasion they spared not the lives and hearts of the poor, vulnerable and weak of this World, that they crucified Christ again and their might stands as naught against the Just Judgment of the King of the Universe!
The defenceless stand in the palm of the rulers of this age and the rulers of this age choose death and destruction, not appreciating that if they do not repent they seal their own eternal death!
May the Lord spare us and have mercy on us. May we too have pity on and show mercy to all our brothers and sisters from conception to natural death.
I went to a pub in a nearby town and saw a man reading a newspaper article about 'same-sex marriage'.
So, having never met the guy before and not living in the area I just decided to ask him what he thought of 'gay marriage'.
He replied that he had nothing in particular against civil partnerships and all that. He said, "It's just the word...marriage! Why can't they call it something else? Anything else but marriage!"
Christopher Brooker is one of the few people in the public forum who stands up for the rights of families against what is becoming an ever greater threat to human dignity and the right to a family life. The awful reality is that social services, backed up by family courts across the United Kingdom have, for years, even decades, been removing children unjustly from families to be put up for what has been described as 'forced adoption. The policy has been explicitly eugenic and is directed at poor families who are left powerless and with no voice to speak out.
A minority of extreme cases of child abuse and terrible neglect of children in the media have been used as an excuse for this trend in social engineering in a racket that spans decades. Victims, as well as mothers and fathers and grandparents, in this racket, include children who are severed from their roots and placed often into a care system that dehumanizes them and in cases abuses them.
The Conservative/Liberal Coalition Government has made no commitment to reverse this criminal infringement of the right to family life, but instead are planning to expand the role of the State in family life and the role of social workers in society, which result in more family break-up and destruction of mostly poor families.
The recent case of a family in Rotherham who had fostered children only to have them removed by Rotherham City Council for the brazen crime of voting UKIP not only gives us ample reason to vote UKIP, but also sheds light on the insidious and often brutal incursion into family life that runs through the heart of social services' and its 'child protection' agenda. The interests of children are served first in their family and parents are the primary educators of their children.
The interests of children, unless a child's life or health is in grave danger, are not served by the State's invasion of the family home, far less by a child being treated then as a commodity or his or her placement into a care system that dehumanizes and institutionalizes them regularly. The immediate bonds of father, son, mother, daughter should not be broken lightly because the State is no fit parent for any child.
If children must be adopted or fostered out to other parents, the real motive for any adoption and foster agency should be seeking the best foster or adoptive parents, preferably a foster father and a mother who are able to provide a child with love, shelter, understanding and care. Voting patterns, surely, should play no role in deciding who can or who cannot foster or adopt children.
If the established Church is a spent force in British society then why does the Government want to control it?
Don't get me wrong, I don't believe the Anglican Church has much relevance in British society since its orders are surely 'null and void'. The refashioning of the hierarchy according to equalities discourse does it no favours, wins it no more converts and serves not to make it more relevant, but more irrelevant to the modern age.
The kowtowing to modern trends in sociological theory and the 'equal' workplace dogma only serves to make it appear less and less like a Church and more and more like any other institution. Though this Church was founded not on Christ and St Peter, but an earthly king with some earthly motives who sought power over the true Church, even perhaps liberal Anglicans would have to admit, if questioned, that the Church was not established to be 'just like any other British institution'. To say that would be to suggest that Our Lord was 'just like any other man' when in fact, He makes it plain that His Kingdom 'is not of this World'. If you're expecting Heaven to be a democracy then you may get a shock when you meet St Peter at the pearly gates.
As Fr Alexander Lucie Smith eloquently says in his article for The Catholic Herald, there is another country in which the Church is an extension of the State, subject to its guidelines, beliefs and doctrines and that country is China. As Catholics we should keep an eye on what the Government wishes to impose upon the Church of England, because we'd be naive to think that once the Established Church has been fully taken over by the diktats of the State, the State wouldn't make moves upon the Bride of Christ Herself. All this and some pretty stringent press regulation no doubt in the offing as well...oh, and those plans for secret courts and an extension of the role of social services. Pray for freedom and pray also for Her Majesty the Queen who must be looking upon recent events and government minister's statements with a concerned eye.
The State and the Church always live in a certain tension, perhaps because those in power in the State view the Church with a certain envy over the power of belief and the ability of the Church to inform opinion and influence belief. What the Church does, or is meant to do, by virtue of Her mission, the State tries to ape by propaganda and the power of the mass media. While it might be true that neither the CoE or the Catholic Church has been particularly effective in evangelizing the United Kingdom over the last 40 years, the fact remains that in an era in which religion is deemed to be something that takes place in the private sphere only, the State is bound to seize the opportunity to take advantage of perceived weakness in the Church.
If disestablishment were to be the end game or end result of these kind of government shenanigans then that is an issue in itself with profound constitutional ramifications. Something tells me, however, that the real target is the only spiritual power capable of taking on the rise of an arrogant and power-thirsty State seeking to impose a new religion of secularism like a blanket of permafrost over the United Kingdom. That power, is, of course, the Catholic Church.
As we move into a more secularised society in which the Church's message is less welcome it is worth reflecting on what the Church is saying to people who have sexual identity issues. Besides the obvious compassion the Church has on those who struggle with homosexuality (and sexuality in general), the Church presents to every age the same vision of redemption, of man placed into a wondrous relationship with God by virtue of his Baptism and the other Sacraments.
The message is not heard as loud or as often as it should be, perhaps, but the message for nearly 2,000 years remains the same. Our happiness is linked intrinsically to our relationship with God and our neighbour. The happiness we seek is blessedness - not mere contentment and security, nor the pursuit of pleasure. The Beatitudes laid out by Christ in His proclamation of the Kingdom of God upon the Mount are those teachings that will make us truly happy. They just so happen to overturn what the World says of how we can achieve happiness.
Happiness, or rather Blessedness, is Cruciform. It does not appear to us to be particularly appealing, yet it is, ultimately and in this life too what will make us truly happy. We try with God's grace to attain to this pattern of life. We fail, but we seek this happiness, the happiness of true lovers who, in forgetting our own needs and desires, forgetting self, find life in all its fullness in Christ.
As in every age, it doesn't appear to be a recipe for happiness - so much so that the World rejects it, but it is a positive, expansive, infinite vision of man, rather than a restrictive vision of man defined by his sexuality and orientation and his desires. Neither is this vision of holiness restricted by gender or class, ethnicity or disability. It is about man moving beyond his limited capabilities and personal desires and wants into the vast, unlimited ocean of God's love.
We see this Blessedness in the lives of the Saints, in Our Lady most especially who, as the Immaculate, was totally given over to God's will in her earthly life from the moment of the conception of her being and now reigns in Heaven with her Divine Son in the flesh. Consistently, down the ages the Church presents to Her members Her poor and tells us that if we desire happiness, if we desire Christ and Heaven, to lay down our lives, our desires, our worldly pursuits, things we find that don't make us happy but leave us unsatisfied, and to serve the poor in whom Christ Himself is served.
The Lord says much about His Cross. He tells us that it is this means of torture He will 'draw all men' to Himself. It is by means of the Cross that man will see the love his Creator has for him. It is by means of the Cross that man will see the true depth and meaning of love. It is by means of the Cross that man will lay down his life as his Brother and Saviour, Jesus, has laid down His Life for him. In every age, the Church calls us, as Her members, to lay our own needs and wants aside and to serve the poor with generous hearts. We are moving, in a more secular age, into an age in which human beings are disposable and discarded, unwanted and made scapegoats for society's and our pride, lust, vanity and greed. This age tells us to love self above all things and to always put ourselves first. This is not, as philosophers down the ages have told us, what will make us happy. Happiness is to be emptied of ourselves only to be filled with the love of Christ for men.
In every age Christ and His Church tell us that if we want to be happy and blessed, then we would do well to put aside our own desires, needs and wants and serve our neighbour's needs - especially the poor. Every age has shown us men and women, Saints, who have shown us the way in following Jesus faithfully. It may be that we do not follow the Lord as generously as His Blessed Saint Francis or Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, nor that we are showered with as much grace, but we would be foolish to fail to heed their pattern of life and see in it something of our truly desired happiness, our desired blessedness, that form of happiness that we truly desire, in this age and in all the ages, for evermore.
Finally, let us not be naive. Despite our own neuroses with our own sexuality, it must be said that the Government, the State and commercial interests, too, are far more interested in our sexual orientation and preferences even than we are. So much so, in fact, that the Government is offering same-sex marriage to a small community of people who so far show little interest in marriage as an institution.
We are being divided into neat sub-sections of society and are told regularly to form allegiances, political and social, along these lines. Catholic identity and, in particular, the Catholic truth that man finds happiness and satisfaction in God alone - the Catholic truth that only a relationship with Jesus Christ can grant us the happiness that we truly seek - this is certainly a threat to the Establishment and the established political, social, moral, cultural order of our day. Don't let any Government tell you what you are, for the State has no right to define you. You are made, crafted wonderfully by and for God. In God's eyes, you're not gay, straight, bi, trans or anything else. He has called you by your name. You are a child of God, not a child of the State, nor of the left or the right, nor of any socio-cultural category, for if Christ, the Son of the Eternal Father, is for us, who can be against us and who could possibly prevail?
St Catherine of Siena told us that, "If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world on fire!" If we are what we are meant to be then we will set the World on fire with the love of God. Every government - every Government in history, without exception - fears that above all other things, for the making of Martyrs is always a work showing forth the power of God.
Any day now, the Bishops will rise up and in concert proclaim the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ fearlessly and when they do, the very walls of Parliament will shake. I guess the Te Deum is unsuitable for the month of November, but I thought it got across the message of the Church's true vision of man rather well.
Like the traditional vestments, boys. What a game of chess you could have on that floor!
Meanwhile, look at this disgusting example of patriarchy in action. Go on, sister, smash the patriarchy! How typical of a man in authority to think he has the duty, as a man, to comfort a downtrodden sister...
I was recently contacted by the BBC in Brighton who are looking to make a documentary on the homeless and the cuts. So, I accompanied a reporter from the BBC to the St Mary Magdalen Soup Run.
The BBC are looking for a particular strand of homeless person who has been affected directly by the Government's cuts.
In other words, the BBC are looking for 'deserving poor', rather than 'undeserving' poor. The deserving poor are those who have been hit by the cuts. The undeserving are those who are homeless because of some other event or feature in their lives. Interestingly, nobody from the Soup Run really came forward to be interviewed. One who did think about coming forward was reticent about being interviewed because he has family in another part of the country and he doesn't want them to see him in his situation as it is now.
I don't know why the BBC man, who is very affable and likeable, requires someone from the Church to put him in touch with homeless men and women. After all, at about 8.30/9pm, they're everywhere in Brighton, in shop doorways and the doorways of disused, empty office blocks.
A car park in Brighton now using electronic access
All you have to do is walk around and approach them and ask them how they ended up homeless and whether they would like to talk. Anyway, I did manage to find one man on Western Road after the Soup Run who wanted to talk. He was made homeless when the hostel he was staying at in Rochdale was closed due to funding cuts.
From there he made his way down to Brighton. Another man not too far away from the Church did not qualify for the higher rate of housing benefit in another town up North and was made homeless when he couldn't pay his landlord rent. He had a job at Marks and Spencer in his hometown but had to quit since he was without a house and smelt too much. From there, he drifted down to Brighton where the streets are paved with gold.
However, being used as an voluntary BBC researcher did give me a chance to talk to homeless men and women in Brighton. The issue that kept coming up was the local connection policy - something that comes from central Government but which central Government allows local authorities to apply completely at their own discretion - so basically, if the Council like you, they'll let the local connection policy slide. If they don't like you, they won't. It is totally at their discretion.
Another car park with electronic access
A rather disturbing trend I was told by a young homeless man near Brighton Station is that of car parks in the central Brighton area being gated up with electronic passes so that only people who have cars parked there can access the car park. This seems sensible enough, but the fact of the matter is that hitherto these car parks have been used by the homeless as a place to sleep because in the basement floors the temperature is just that one or two degrees higher than on ground floor. You wouldn't think that car parks save lives, but I guess they do, especially in winter. So, knowing there is an issue with homeless people sleeping in car parks, the owners of the car parks have done the noble thing and gated these car parks up in such a way that only car drivers with electronic passes can access the car parks. In the true spirit of Dickensian Britain, the homeless are thus forced upstairs on ground level where its nice and cold. The man who told me this told me he'd lost some friends to overdoses and others to hypothermia. This he told me shivering under a duvet huddled outside a pub near the station.
St Patrick's
Of course, the car parks issue would be mitigated slightly were there a nightshelter in Brighton, but the St Patrick's Nightshelter was closed, leaving St Patrick's only with the hostel section, now run by a housing association, and Brighton's homeless with nowhere to keep warm. I suppose the UN would call this social cleansing by the back door. There is a Church based scheme over winter to house a small portion of Brighton's homeless but these have been handpicked and, I think, basically referred by the Council working with a group called Antifreeze.
Having done some volunteering with that scheme last year, the fact is that only 10 or 12 people make it onto that scheme and the Salvation Army takes up the majority of the homeless. Still, it is also true to say that the homeless population in Brighton is growing - a trend likely to continue under Government cuts in housing benefit and with the forthcoming Universal Credit benefit reform in April.
The fact is that landlords up and down the country are charging exhorbitant rates of rent in the midst of a housing shortage. The housing benefit cap means that those who are under the tenancy regime of landlords charging local authorities high rents will likely be made homeless and those who don't set the rates of rent - the poor - will just be thrown out onto the street in order to find that the local hostels have been closed due to the cuts.
Is this an issue that keeps David Cameron and George Osborne up at night? No, patently it is not, but I dare say it isn't an issue that keeps David Miliband or Nick Clegg or Caroline Lucas up at night either. Obviously, when I meet a homeless person I reassure them that everything will be better once the country has 'gay marriage'. For some reason, they don't appear to be convinced that this is a policy that will benefit them in any way. Are they bigots or something? When rights to housing, shelter, heat and water are removed, I suppose the right to marry another person of the same-sex is perhaps a bit of an elitist right after all. You could be forgiven for thinking that the Government doesn't really have much time for human rights, or human beings for that matter.
In spite of the narrow remit for the BBC's documentary on homelessness and the cuts, I think we could make an argument that all of Brighton's homeless are economically homeless, since none of them can afford to get out of the hostels merry-go round trap, or lift themselves out of poverty and the street and put down a deposit on a flat and not be homeless and utterly dependent on the mercy of a State that couldn't give a flying one what happens to them.
Keep the poor and homeless of your town, locality or city in your prayers, because come 2013, it is expected that the edifice of the 'safety net' of the welfare state will develop significantly bigger holes. Documentaries raising awareness of the fact are good - it is important to educate people about it and God bless the BBC for thinking of doing so. Quite how it helps those at the mercy of the State is another matter.
I did tell the BBC man about Baron Homes and their exploitation of the poor in order to increase their property portfolio in Brighton and beyond, but I doubt the BBC will be interested. I can't help thinking they are only interested in scoring political points.
Perhaps David Cameron, George Osborne and Ian-Duncan Smith want the Church to take in the homeless and are relying on a huge growth in the monastic vocation in taking in the destitute. That'll be the Church that will most likely lose its charitable status when it refuses to 'marry' persons of the same sex and refuses to ordain women to be priests and Bishops under 'equality law'. It can't be easy for a Government that has inherited a crippled economy and empty coffers in the Treasury, so perhaps it will just be cheaper for them to let the poor and homeless freeze in winter and, hey presto, you've reduced the benefit payments and reduced your population in one fell swoop.
MPs are set to vote on 'gay marriage', within weeks.This is, by all accounts, a monumental shift in UK Government policy. What's the rush? Are the lions in Britain's zoos hungry due to the rising price of meat or something?
It's a big decision, Dave. You're rushing into this and its a decision you may live to regret. Take some time out to think about it. You know, it could upset a lot of people - voters even. People could lose their jobs not too long after you've 'taken the plunge'.
I don't know. Maybe Dave's just a misunderstood biblical Christian who has seen the words of Scripture, 'What thou doest, do quickly,' and has decided to take Our Lord literally.
Meanwhile, the Chancellor, George Osborne (of Bilderberg participation fame) has also publicly committed himself to the drive for same-sex marriage. Quite what the issue has to do with the Treasury or the City of London is a mystery, but there we go. On the face of it, I suppose the policy has as much to do with the Chancellor as the CoE's Synod vote on women Bishops has with Frank Field. Perhaps Britain risks losing 'foreign investment' if we don't go ahead and legislate for 'same-sex marriage'. I suppose it is not beyond the realm of possibility. Obviously, were that the case, it would be economic and social suicide not to go ahead with SSM...
Still, despite what people say - that the nature of the same-sex marriage legislation to come is inherently totalitarian - it is good to know that there are other members of Dave's cabinet of an even more liberal persuasion (and of Bilderberg participation fame) who are campaigning for other liberal measures like secret courts to try those who protest against same sex mar-...sorry, I mean those who are a threat to 'national security'.
Praise the Lords, of course, but for how long will they hold out? It's no wonder they want Lords reform. Britain would be a happier and more democratic place with a bunch of bankers and estate agents in the second chamber as well as the first, wouldn't it? As a nation, we've fallen into something of a spiritual abyss. Perhaps, therefore, it's really not surprising if our elected leaders behave as if they are members of a satanic international network building the kingdom of darkness on Earth. But hey, Dave, what's the rush? Rome wasn't built in a day, so I don't know why you think Babel can be built in a few weeks. Or is that Babylon? I'm not so hot on the Old Testament.
On Tuesday, The Independent reported that City banks and investment institutions told George Osborne to step up the Government's commitment to low carbon energy in order to avoid a future marked by climate change related disasters.
On Wednesday, George Osborne stressed how vital big banking institutions are to our society and told the United Kingdom:
"I want Britain to be the home of big successful banks. I think it would be a real shame if we were saying to the likes of HSBC that they can't locate themselves in the UK. I think that would be a mistake for us as a country."
It looks rather to me like we're being governed by banks. For some reason the entire banking sector of the United Kingdom has jumped on board the carbon bandwagon. Stepping into a local branch of HSBC recently, I saw two promotional posters. One had a picture of a bee or wasp with cameras for eyes with a caption that said something like, 'In the future, nature and technology will work in harmony' or something equally Orwellian.
The second poster was highlighting how HSBC was the first carbon neutral bank - as if anyone cares! Bizarre. And remember...usury is good for you, folks! It's never let you down before and it won't let you down again. In the meantime, perhaps someone can tell me what this has to do with mortgages and overdrafts?
Beneath the caption HSBC inform us that 'there's a new world emerging'. Sure, there is, and a brave one at that. It's a new world in which banks run Governments and people are just numbers.
CNA reports on the Holy Father's recent lessons on Faith, at Paul VI Hall.
'The practical atheism of those who say they are Christian but live as if God does not exist is a greater threat than actual atheism, Pope Benedict XVI said as he presented three ways for people to more fully discover God.
While actual atheists often think deeply about God before rejecting belief, practical atheism “is even more destructive … because it leads to indifference towards faith and the question of God,” the Pope stated.
His fourth installment in a series of lessons on faith was delivered Nov. 14 to an overflow crowd of nearly 7,000 in the Pope Paul VI Hall, near St. Peter’s Square.
Benedict XVI focused his address on the challenge of witnessing to Christ in today’s world.
Christian witness is always hard, he said, because people are prone to “being dazzled by the glitter of worldliness,” but in the Western world sharing the faith is even harder today.
As he described it, the Christian faith was the everyday reality for most people in what used to be called Christendom. The burden was on non-believers to justify their disbelief.
But today the tables have turned following a long slide into atheism, skepticism and a secular worldview that was ushered in by the Enlightenment.
This, in turn, has paved the way for moral and spiritual disaster in the Western world. People have become confused about ethics once commonly held, making room for relativism and fostering “an ambiguous conception of freedom, which instead of being liberating ends up binding man to idols,” the Pope said.
In response to the ensuing moral and spiritual chaos, Pope Benedict called on all people to discover God by following three paths.
The first path involves contemplating creation. “The world is not a shapeless magma, but the more we know, the more we discover the amazing mechanisms, the more we see a pattern, we see that there is a creative intelligence,” the pontiff remarked.
The second way of finding God is through inner contemplation. The Holy Father quoted St. Augustine’s famous saying, “Do not go outside yourself, come back into yourself: truth dwells in the heart of man.” He also observed that the modern world is full of distractions that make it hard “to stop and take a deep look within ourselves and read that thirst for the infinite that we carry within, pushing us to go further and towards that Someone who can satisfy it.”
The third path, faith, is a dimly lit path for many people who view it as a limited aspect of life, if not a form of “illusion, escapism…or sentimentality.”
But in reality, the Pope stated, faith concerns the truth about mankind and our eternal destinies.
“Faith … is an encounter with God who speaks and acts in history and which converts our daily life, transforming our mentality, system of values, choices and actions,” he said. Faith is “not illusion, escapism, a comfortable shelter, sentimentality, but involvement in every aspect of life and proclamation of the Gospel, the Good News which can liberate all of man.”
Yet, many people consider Christianity as a mere system of beliefs and morals instead of God’s self-revelation in history so that he could have a loving relationship with his creatures.
“Christianity, before being a moral or ethical value, is the experience of love, of welcoming the person of Jesus,” Pope Benedict stated, calling on all Christians to learn better the faith they profess and purify their lives in conformity with Christ...
'Environmental scientist James Lovelock, renowned for his terrifying predictions of climate change's deadly impact on the planet, has gone back on his previous claims, admitting they were 'alarmist'.
The 92-year-old Briton, who also developed the Gaia theory of the Earth as a single organism, has said climate change is still happening - just not as quickly as he once warned.
He added that other environmental commentators, such as former vice president Al Gore, are also guilty of exaggerating their arguments.
The admission comes as a devastating blow to proponents of climate change who regard Lovelock as a powerful figurehead.
Five years ago, he had claimed: 'Before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.'
But in an interview with msnbc.com, he admitted: 'I made a mistake.'
He said: 'The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing,' he told 'We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear cut, but it hasn’t happened.
'The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world.
'[The temperature] has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising - carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that.'
After two books - Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back and How We Can Still Save Humanity, and The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning: Enjoy It While You Can - he is writing a third.'
I take no pleasure in confirming that Sir James Lovelock is another Royal Society Fellow. I don't know what the data trends are for climate, but I can see a trend emerging with the Royal Society and crackpot Malthusian propagandists.
A reader has alerted me to a BBC documentary tonight called 'Four Born Every Second' on population and poverty at 10.35pm on BBC One. The Open University have teamed up with the Non-profit organisation Steps International has created the 'Why Poverty?' initiative as a groundbreaking cross-media project to help audiences across the world understand what they can do about poverty.
The project creates an international partnership with broadcasters such as the BBC, NGOs, institutions such as The Open University and concerned citizens around the world. Helpfully, the nations of the World are being helped by the extrapolation of statistics which are measured to help institutions to form a Human Development Index based on gender equality, empowerment and access to reproductive health.
At last, a BBC documentary with no obvious left-wing eugenic agenda waiting in the wings. Oh, no wait...
Perhaps the only personality disorder for the Western world will be those disorders that suggest the patient has some kind of traditional morality and refuses to accept new and certified norms of human behaviour and convention. Despotic, genocidal leaders will be happy about the development in psychological theory and practice.
'The former chief executive of the UK’s Family Planning Association, the UK branch of Planned Parenthood, has been appointed as the new head of the country’s Girl Guide organization.
Julia Bentley said that she was delighted by her appointment to what she called “the ultimate feminist organization,” and indicated that under her leadership, Guiding will “offer girls what they really need.”
Meanwhile, here in the United Kingdom, The Telegraph today reports that, 'Liz Truss, an education minister, refused to rule out the possibility that teachers, even in faith schools, could face disciplinary action for objecting on grounds of conscience.' At the time of counting, The Telegraph article has attracted 3085 comments and counting. Readers are not amused.
And who can blame them. The redefinition of marriage will turn mothers and fathers into progenitors A and B. 'Husbands' and 'wives' will become merely 'parties to a marriage'. The entire landscape of the post same-sex marriage is totalitarian in its application to society. It has already been proved so by the experience of Canada and those states in the US where it has been brought in, like Massachusets. Parents will be unable to pull their children from lessons on homosexuality and marriage as the State takes away from parents the right to be primary moral educators of their children. It will eventually see Priests being punished under the law in the ECHR for not ministering to gay couples the 'rights' to marriage that have been won under marriage equality legislation.
Perhaps now is the time for us to follow the lead of the Church's eldest daughter and take to the streets, but the French are just so much better at that kind of thing, aren't they!?
'...urge action not only on reducing consumption, but also on slowing population growth, with a particular focus on educating women and girls in developing countries.
“For too long the dual issues of population and consumption have been left off the table due to political and ethical sensitivities,” said Professor Charles Godfrey, Fellow of the Royal Society and Working Group Chair of the IAP, the global network of science academies. “These are issues that affect us all, developed and developing nations alike, and we must take responsibility for them together.”
The good news was that at the time, the Vatican threatened 'to block moves for free access to reproductive health services because of concerns about contraception and abortion.'
It strikes me that the success of the global environmental movement (and the the Royal Society) in achieving their population and eugenic agendas relies on convincing the nations of the climate change threat. It is a ruse. and a diabolical one at that.
As much as the Catholic Church is motivated by the defense of the dignity of the human person and by the love of Christ, is the Royal Society, the UN and those who are spreading the climate-population propaganda, motivated by their own religion, steeped in Darwinism.
Thanks to a commenter, Physiocrat, for drawing my attention to the foundational link between the Society and the Lodge.
The Royal Society's HQ at 6-9 Carlton House Terrace
Well, thankfully, despite raising the tension over the over 300 year old Royal Society and suggesting that the institution has been at the forefront of the social re-engineering of the United Kingdom towards a eugenic dystopia in which all but a select class will be rendered highly limited in their reproduction, don't worry, because its really not a conspiracy at all.
No. They're quite open about it really.
You can read the blogs posted by The Royal Society. They really do hammer home the point that this Society, dominated throughout history by eugenics advocates of one kind or another, still to this very day is interested in the same Malthusian prophecies that concerned Fellows from before Darwin and beyond.
For evidence of this, try reading The Royal Society's blogs. Latest blog posts include such riveting reads as:
The Wellcome Trust Lecture Hall at The Royal Society
Earlier this month, the Wellcome Trust and Medical Research Council (MRC) announced a £12.75 million initiative to create a catalogue of high-quality iPSCs. iPSCs have regenerated hope in the field, especially for their potential uses in disease modelling, drug discovery and toxicity tests. Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly clear that iPSCs incur more aberrations in differentiation than hESCs. There may therefore be a case for continuing research efforts into all types of stem cells, as it remains to be seen which route will ultimately be the most effective for clinical use. The debate surrounding the morality of embryonic stem cell research is likely to continue, though perhaps it may be influenced by techniques that do not require the destruction of an embryo, such as the creation of embryonic stem cell lines from discarded IVF blastocysts that would otherwise be discarded as waste.'
So, that's population hysteria and Brave New World institutional reproductive and pharmaceutical megalomania covered. Next: Apocalypic climate change concerned population tyranny. Check! It seems to be another obsession on the Society blogs, especially in the wake of the climate change focused 'People and the Planet'report .
Or for more hysteria over climate change, why not read:
Can human beings be 'enhanced' to create a more productive workforce? Sounds a bit creepy, but let's talk about it anyway, why not? After all, 'pre-conceived philosophies' and 'orthodoxies' are so boring...
A bit outlandish? Well, you're just being dogmatic.
As we know, these are fraught times in which populations wonder just what Mother Earth is going to do next in vengeance at us for our over-consumption. Could we combat global warming or cooling by a process of 'geoengineering'? Don't know, sounds a bit freaky and a bit above man's station, but, hey, we are 'obedient to no master's words' so let's try and change public opinion on the matter and do it anyway!
Keeping up with the Society's tradition of talking to oppressive regimes who murder their own people and deprive them of their own freedom and sharing scientific ideas with them, as they did with the Soviet Union, how about...
Worried this Society is a little too close to Government? Don't be. For a week every year they are actually in Government as part of a kind of foreign exchange initiative in which Royal Society Fellows do MPs jobs for a week and MPs, presumably, spend the day in the lab, knock off early and go straight to their second homes for a nice gin and game of Scrabble with their advisors. As of 2010, to date more than 200 MP-scientists pairs have taken part.
Have you wondered whether these same scientists could come up with methods in order to, through chemical and 'sensory' means in 'military applications', destroy the morale of the enemy. Well, you'll be glad to hear that the guys at the Society are psychopaths as well.
Let's hope this isn't being considered for 'domestic purposes':
Like I said, there's no conspiracy here, because as you can see, these guys are pretty honest about the whole project(s). Thank God this Society has nothing to do with the BBC. Oh wait! The BBC nature documentaries are presented by 'human population + climate = doom' fear-mongerer and super-charged birth control advocate, David Attenbrough, honorary Fellow of the Society.
CERN, Geneva: Inaugurated in 1960 and linked to The Royal Society
Funnily enough, I read an interview with Attenbrough in a BBC magazine while I was waiting at the dentist recently to have a tooth extracted.
He was asked something like whether he thought birth control should be 'compulsory' to 'save the planet'. His reply was a little creepy. He responded by saying, "It would be better if people could be persuaded to use it" or words to that effect, when a simple, "No" would surely have sufficed.
In general, I have some concerns about The Royal Society, as you can probably tell, because they seem to indulge a scientific agenda without recourse to anything we had hitherto understood as objective morality. In fact, they appear to positively excel in this painfully amoral scientific pursuit.
It also seems that The Royal Society and The Wellcome Trust are joined at the hip. It's worrying, therefore, that a Society whose illustrious history is dominated by advocates of eugenics, then and now, is so linked with The Wellcome Trust's massive Human Genome Project for the United Kingdom.
Let's hope this Royal Society don't have too many links with IBM.
'One of the great London rumours is that somewhere inside the Royal Society’s building on Carlton House Terrace sits a giant swastika. This is not because these esteemed scientists and thinkers are secretly Hitler-worshipping fascists, but because their home at Nos 6-9 was the location of the German Embassy (at Nos 8-9) during the pre-war Nazi era.
Carlton House Terrace was designed by John Nash between 1827-1832 to occupy a site previously taken by Carlton House. No 9 almost immediately became the seat of the Prussian Legation, which slowly evolved into the German Embassy. In the spirit of the time, it soon expanded to occupy the house next door at No 8.
In 1936, Joachim von Ribbentrop moved in, replacing the late Ambassador Leopold von Hoesch (whose dog’s gravestone can be seen under a tree near the Duke of York steps). Von Ribbentrop demanded a complete renovation of the property, and the Nazi’s top architect, Albert Speer, was called in to do the job.'
A bittersweet irony. The Royal Society moved into 6-9 Carlton House Terrace in 1967. One fellow moves out and a new bunch of Fellows move in to ensure his legacy endures. Say a prayer. These guys do not, if the roll call of its Fellows is anything to go by, give a flying one about the welfare of the human race. Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.
'Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places. Therefore take unto you the armour of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and to stand in all things perfect. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of justice, And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.' ~ St Paul to the Ephesians
What links Thomas Malthus, Charles Darwin, J.Robert Oppenheimer, Lord Rothschild, Clement Attlee, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Richard Dawkins, Isaac Newton, Charles Galton Darwin, Julian Huxley, brother of Aldous, who wrote Brave New World, David Attenbrough, Henry Wellcome, John D Rockefeller, Tim Bernard Lee, Bertrand Russell and many, many other 'luminaries'?
Answer: The Royal Society, but also, most of them either did or do now support eugenics in some form or other. The Royal Society have, if we are honest, been at the forefront of the building of the promotion of the application of science, medicine and technology without recourse to what we would call conscience for what is now centuries. I obtained a book recently that made me question the role of this Society in the forming of the culture of death that we now inhabit. For me it is the names on the roll call that get me wondering about their role and several passages in the book, The Royal Society Tercentenery, published by The Times, in 1960, made me wonder how powerful has this institution been? The Society has been at the forefront of, I think we can assume, every revolution in British culture and society since the 1600s. Just listen to this for creepiness value and see how it contrasts with what the Catholic Church has always understood as the moral foundations for the application of new discoveries in natural science:
'There can be no official view in science. The Society, according to its motto, is bound to no masters words and neither are its Fellows. This independence, which 300 years ago marked a breaking free from Aristotle and the masters of antiquity, can be taken today to mean independence from set orthodoxies, preconceived philosophies and prejudice deriving from day to day policy.'
'The society has beeninternationalist in its interests from the beginning and has so been recognised. It has survived in form the American War of Independence, the Napoleonic Wars, two World Wars anda period of tensions with Russia without damage to its relations with overseas scientists'.
International cooperation in research leans more heavily on organization than ever before. Whether the subject is space, oceanography, or questions of units and symbols, there is an advantage and influence in promoting agreement from the existence of a national body of scientists whose tradition is to consider issues on their merits. Without claiming more for the Society than its due, this has been the reputation won by its representatives on international bodies - regardless of the issue discussed.
Participation by both the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh in the celebrations is from one point of view, a matter domestic to the Society. The one is Patron, the other a Fellow; and the Society is royal by Charter. But there is another, more constitutional way of looking at the matter. Whereas various other countries have national academies in the sense that the state is responsible for them, the Royal Society has been an independent organization from the beginning. It is in touch with government departments, both in its own right and through various of its Fellows. But it is not of them - and in fact there lies much of the strength of the Society. It is a means by which opinion can be brought to bear, and it acts also as a non-official purveyor of research and grants. In conditions in which the greater part of the funds needed for research come directly or indirectly from the Treasury, this is an already useful safeguard - and it is likely to grow in importance. In this sense it may be said that the Society is necessary to the state, but it is not responsible to it; and in the peculiar British way of doing things the cloak of royalty is then appropriate.'
The book goes on to cite as achievements of Fellows of the Society a range of scientific achievements. These include developments in medicine, radio astronomy, genetic research, nuclear research, the development of computer technology, geophysics, electrical engineering, space exploration, developments in supersonic flight and agriculture.
Too many people in the world...especially poor types!
One thing I did not know before I read this book is that two luminaries who have made a dramatic impact upon the world as we know it today published their works as Fellows of the same Society. These two individuals were Thomas Malthus and Charles Darwin.
In fact, it turns out that in the long years of the incubation of Darwin's theory of evolution, 'at Downe House in Kent he was much influenced by Sir Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker, but the flash of inspiration had come from his chance reading of the Essays on Populationby Malthus in 1838.'
'Darwin postponed publication until all his evidenced was marshalled, but in 1858 (Alfred Wallace Russell) Wallace sent him the draft of a paper with an identical point of view. He also had been inspired by the recollection of the Malthus essay when lying stricken by a fever in Singapore. The happy sequel to this remarkable coincidence was the publication of their two essays on the theory of natural selection, followed by The Origin of Species a year later.'
How interesting it is that the 'flash of inspiration' (would that be 'natural selection' and the 'survival of the fittest'?) for Darwin's Origin of Species was a book by an over-population propagandist whose predictions concerning food resources and populace's consumption were dismally, hopelessly wrong. Not that this fact stops those in power and influence using his theories to update his pretty appalling views to the 21st century in their attempts to spread abortion, artificial contraception and sterilisation around the globe with a dash of environmentalism put into the mix in order to create panic over the issue of population.
Thanks for that one John Robert Oppenheimer. Thanks Royal Society! Amazing what you can create when you dispose of any previous 'orthodoxies' or 'pre-conceived philosophies' and answer to, basically, er, nobody!
Charles Galton Darwin went on to apply to human beings what his grandfather discovered and, inspired by the same Malthusian fallacies that prompted his grandfather's scientific breakthroughs, wrote works such as The Next Million Years, which argued the case for social coercion by the state or other institutions in encouraging the population of the the lower classes to limit breeding.
Charles Darwin's cousin, Sir Francis Galton, established the British Eugenics Society that would become in later years The Galton Institute, which would have as its own luminaries such figures as Marie Stopes, Margaret Sanger, Arthur Balfour of the Declaration that would create the State of Israel (also in The Royal Society), William Beveridge (founder of the NHS that now kills the elderly), Margaret Pyke, Professor Steve Jones (also of the Society who promotes human embryology), John Arthur Keynes (of Keynesian economics) and Neville Chamberlain, despite the fact that, in the wake of Hitler, eugenics had been dealt a rather nasty blow. Obviously not, in the minds of those who built post-war Britain, a fatal blow.
The two wars had, of course, reduced human population upon the planet somewhat dramatically and laid the foundations for the two revolutions that would hit Britain and the Western world, the sexual revolution and technological revolutions that bring us to where we are today - the internet and communication revolutions brought to us in no small part by the founder of the world wide web, a notable Fellow of the Royal Society himself.
Julian Huxley with C.P Blacker discussing world population trends...
A key figure in the Royal Society with a particular interest in eugenics includes Julian Huxley, who was also, conveniently, the first Director-General of UNESCO - an international body within the United Nations with a particular interest in population control and population issues.
That will, of course, be the same UN institution which this week have said, explicitly, that religious objections have no rights in spreading abortion, artificial contraception and sterilization into those nations which have not yet accepted it as it extends the same 'rights' to those nations which have. So watch out Poland and, obviously, watch out Ireland because if I were a conspiracy theorist, I would wonder whether the goal of the secularization of the West and the destruction of Christianity might not have, as its end game, a huge desire by the rich and powerful to impede the breeding of the poor and powerless. It is worth noting too that Huxley was a key figure in the Abortion Law Reform Association (ALRA) formed by eugenicists that was to become Abortion Rights, the group that scream at people who pray the Rosary outside BPAS and Marie Stopes. Current notable Professors who are Fellows of the Royal Society who are, I would suspect, playing their part in the field of human embryology and fertilization, as well as IVF.
From the architects of the Industrial Revolution to the architects of the sexual revolution, the broadcasting and communication revolution and the technological revolution in which we are presently situated, the Royal Society has been at the forefront of change, at a national and supranational level, its Fellows working within government, institutions forming an international network of illuminated experts. If you want to understand the dramatic role that this Society has had in changing Britain, for better in ways, but in many ways terribly worse, then, if you've got an hour or two, watch the Olympics Opening Ceremony - a real explanation of the powerful role this Society has played, in our society. Sadly, many, if not all of the Fellows, are notorious eugenicists. Here, once again, is one of the Fellows, discussing the issue of infanticide with a man, Peter Singer who has been invited by Fordham University to talk to Catholicswhile advocating infanticide.
Fellows of this illustrious society brought you the atom bomb, the pill, abortion, abortifacients, the deathly NHS, the welfare state and a host of social evils into which the British population, as well as other populations have been enticed. The Society is comprised by those who have been on the left and right of British politics. As far as I can see, the one thing that binds a sizable number of these Fellows together, is, saddeningly for us and the whole World, the evil of eugenics. The dystopia that has been under construction and is still under construction has been built and is being built by them. As they boast in their book, 'the Society is necessary to the state, but not responsible to it.' Is there any other independent organization in Britain that can claim that it is 'necessary to the state, but not responsible to it'?
A friend has introduced me to a band called The Electric Prunes, who produced this album entitled Mass in F Minor. As the Vatican II documents called for, Latin has been retained. My friend believes that this was a group of very devout Catholics who took a lot of acid in 1968. I believe this could be called Chant psychedelia...Very prayerful...if you're on acid.
Poor Ireland. I have read, so far, just a few good articles on Savita and the case for abortion, so before you read anything else on this tragedy, including this blogpost, read Life Site News.
First and foremost, may she, they, rest in peace, Savita and her unborn child, may the Angels and Saints lead them into Paradise.
But else what can we say? This could be the case that breaks Ireland's resistance to abortion. Most likely, it will be. If you read media reports, Ireland is now in self-flagellation mode over Savita's tragic death. It should not be. Let us state it clearly - Ireland should not be hanging its head in shame.
I've read several pieces, including William Oddie's piece for The Catholic Herald in which he argues that doctors could or should have induced labour despite the fact that doctors would know that an unborn child of 19 weeks would certainly die outside the womb. As far as I know, the principle of double effect works for ectopic pregnancy where an infected tube is removed in which the embryo has developed and will stay. What is removed is the tube. It is known the unborn child will die but this is a secondary effect of the removal of the diseased part of the organ. In this case it is the organ being removed, the fallopian tube, not a direct attack on the unborn child. It is not the intention to target the unborn child in this procedure. The principle of double effect works only in accordance with 'therapeutic means' which do not directly attack the unborn child, surely.
In this case, either by direct abortion or by induced labour, doctors would be deliberately killing the unborn child. By direct abortion, this would be the case. By induced labour, doctors would have knowledge that a baby of 19 weeks would not survive outside of the womb. By performing either action, the doctors would have become deliberate killers, knowing the outcome. Doctors would have been playing God with who should live (the mother) and who should die (the child). Secondarily, I'm yet to hear of why it is that pro-abortion advocates insist that abortion would have necessarily have saved this poor woman's life.
What can we say? Ireland, stand firm. Despite what even Catholic commentators are saying, if this case happened as the media present it, these doctors did not deliberately intend to kill anyone. Insodoing, they have at least acknowledged that despite all medical and technological advancements, they are not gods who in holding life and death and their hands, choose that one life is worth more than another. Doctors are not gods who save lives. If doctors are able to, then they save lives as is their duty, but the principle from which doctors have traditionally worked is that they are employed to defend and uphold life, to preserve it when it can be and to cherish life - not to deliberately take it. It surely does not take a doctor long to realise that his life-saving powers are limited.
Ireland. Before you go down the road that we have taken here in the UK, ask yourself whether you want your doctors to become the kind of ruthless men and women that we have here. Ask yourself whether, as a nation, you wish to have 200,000 abortions a year. Ask yourself whether, as a nation, the fine maternity standards you now have, you wish to be obliterated by a culture in hospitals and clinics whereby in one ward a woman is giving birth and in another clinic or ward an unborn child is being killed. Ask yourself whether you want the Downs Syndrome children that are protected under Irish law to be killed by the Irish State? Ask yourself whether Savita's death is the catalyst for change in Irish law to accept the preservation of women's health or the excuse for the depopulation of your country too.
Ask yourself, Ireland, whether the media around the World make this much noise when a woman dies during or after an abortion and why if they do not then why not?
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