Friday 8 December 2017

Happy Feast!



Party and enjoy this great Feast of she whose Immaculate Heart will triumph!


15 comments:

Mary Kay said...

Hilarious! I loved the bits with the laughter following. You have cheered me up immensely on this Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Even though he seems to try, our pope cannot detract from her glory as the great Mother of God. Thanks for your musical interludes. They are good for the soul!

John Haggerty said...

Late on Monday night just as you are settling into 'The Wisdom of Father Brown' with your cup of cocoa, there will be a knock on the door.
Men in black, calling on behalf of the Curia, will ask you to come away with them, no questions asked.
Make sure your passport is handy, Bones.
You may be gone for quite some time.
If you are not the author of 'The Dictator Pope' then you are certainly its chief publicist.
That is enough to have you detained without trial for the remainder of this papacy.
Still, look on the bright side.
The food in Rome is always a pleasure, and then there's the wine.
Always remember that there's an old neo-Calvinist here in Glasgow (yours truly) who is praying for you.
You will be praying for Francis, I hope.
Direct those prayers to Saint Jude.
The saint of hopeless causes.

The Bones said...

Not the author, but the book deserves MUCHO publicity!

susan said...

utterly UTTERLY brilliant! Probably your best yet.

I'll need to watch it 10 more times before I see everything in it....much to chew on.
Thanks for the laugh...especially when the urge to cry is so overwhelming.

A blessed and fruitful Advent season to you, good warrior for Christ.

Long-Skirts said...

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant! But it is all so hard to take.

CatholicNI said...

My first grandchild was "baptised" on the Feast of The Immaculate Conception 2017. It goes without saying that I will have "do it myself" in Red Hen fashion. Our Lady's Errors of Russia the Red Huns (Red Humanist United Nationists) are everywhere and their abominations of desolation are all we have left in formerly Catholic buildings worldwide.
Which priesthood will you be defending before Almighty God and the holy Apostles Peter and Paul?

Anonymous said...

Hilarious, but sadly true, that's the man sitting in Rome, peronpampero peron, and maybe it's the one we deserve. God bless you Mr. Bones, thanks for all.

john haggerty said...

'Push back against the age as hard as it pushes against you. What people don't realize is how much faith costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the Cross.' - Flannery O'Connor

The guiding mind behind Theosophy was Madame Blavatsky.
She unveiled her plans for a one-world religion; a process that would take place over the next hundred years, she said.
Blavatsky viewed Christianity as THE major challenge to her agenda.
Both the Church of Rome and Bible-centred Protestantism were in her way.
Christianity would have to be destroyed before the stage could be set for her new church, she firmly believed.
The one-world religionists will talk a lot about their love of creation.
They maintain (quite wrongly) that all religions are saying the same thing.
But their faith is man-centred at its heart.
According to Blavatsky, men and women are not 'dead in trespasses and sins' as the Gospel teaches us.
If the United Nations is not collaborating with Madame Blavatsky's agenda, what mask is it wearing?
Young people have no Christian role models either in the music and film industries, theatre and the other arts.
Pope Francis is in a unique position to stand up as defender of the despised Gospel.
Instead he wants to be everybody's friend, though not the friend of those who question his heretical ideas.
Does he not know that 'friendship with the world is enmity with God'?

See 'Another Gospel' by Arthur W Pink, Grace Online Library.

john haggerty said...

In my above comment I mentioned Madame Blavatsky and her 'secret doctrine'.
One of the most powerful opponents of Christianity today is an American clinical psychologist, Valerie Taricot.
Ms Taricot's intelligence, gentleness, empathy and moral understanding make her a far more formidable figure than Madame Blavatsky.
See YouTube: Valerie Taricot recovering from religion.
See her recent blog, 'Does Christianity make an idol out of the brain?'
A compelling public speaker, she belongs to a growing number of Americans who think of themselves as 'recovering Christians'.
A former Evangelical, she deals honestly with the acute loneliness of those who lose their faith.
'Christians can basically go anywhere in the world and find a ready made community simply by walking through the door of a church. A former believer can find themselves deeply alone, even at the dinner table,' she says.
Ms Taricot's experience is a very American one - as Henry James said, 'it is a peculiar fate to be an American'.
I wish I could send her a copy of 'The Captive Mind' (1954) by Czeslaw Milosz, the great Catholic poet, which I am reading for the third or fourth time.
Christians should reflect on, and pray about, the loneliness and bitterness of those ex-Catholics and former Protestants who have lost their faith.
Abuses happen in all walks of life including church life.
But they are most damaging in church and family life.
Valerie's own experience of Fundamentalism has led her to think of Christianity as 'self worship' when in truth it is quite the opposite.
Czeslaw Milosz (born in 1911 to Polish and Lithuanian parents) saw what men who despised Christianity were capable of doing to others.
By one of those ironies of fate he emigrated to the United States.
A new biography of Milosz is just out.

john haggerty said...

Erratum. I wrote Valerie Taricot when I should have written Tarico.

Valerie's YouTube talk, Christian Belief Through the Lens of Neuro-Science is worth watching if only because the 'scientific' and humanist attack on faith is likely to increase in the years that lie ahead.
A new persecution may well be in the air.
A British professor of neuro-science expressed his doubt about his own subject being used in this way to attack religious belief.
He said there was a real danger of over simplification; basically there was much about the brain that we still did not know.
Restraint is not a virtue of the New Atheists however.

As I have said before, we need defenders of the faith as good as Newman, Manning, Chesterton, Belloc, Simone Weil, Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward, Meriol Trevor, Jean Danielou, Michel Quoist, Rosemary Haughton etc.

And we need holy churches where the faithful are praying and making devotions for this divided and suffering world.

john haggerty said...

I have just read a damning report online:
The Secularization of the Church of Scotland - A report on the 2017 decision to permit same sex marriage.
It's from the blog of David Roberston.
One comment, below the blog, quotes a warning from Pope Pius X on anti-Christian forces which are attempting to promote a gnostic one-world church.
Another comment suggests that the Church of Scotland has now become a kind of service organisation for government.
Jonathan De Groot, who had been minister of my local Church of Scotland parish (Sandyford Henderson Church) left last year and is now the minister of a Free Church of Scotland parish in Edinburgh.
He left Sandyford in great sadness. He and his wife were much loved. In his years there young people (many of them students) found a real spiritual home.
I will miss his preaching.

john haggerty said...

In the comment above I refer to forces that want to create a gnostic, one-world church; and Pope Pius X's condemnation of such forces.

New Age ideas are already at work WITHIN the Catholic Church -

The growing closeness between Sister Joan Chittister (who chaired the Conference of Women Religious, sponsored by the United Nations) and the occult broadcaster Oprah Winfrey.

The Charismatic movement with its incoherent speaking in tongues; the promotion of pagan pseudo-Christian practices such as dream interpretations as part of prayer life; the so-called 'slaying in the Spirit' which attends the Pentecostal churches.

The Sri Chinmoy Choir, a mind-control anti-Christian cult, which last year toured Catholic churches and Cathedrals in Ireland.

The huge growth of occult Freemasonry particularly in Italy; and the lifting of the Catholic ban on Freemasonry which every pope condemned.

Pope Francis touring the globe and telling the world that we are all children of God when the Bible makes it clear that without Jesus Christ we are 'children of wrath'.

Now watch these very disturbing films on YouTube:

The House of Christ Lucifer.
Sophia (Lucifer) the True Holy Spirit - Lucifer's Sanctuary.
The Sophia of Jesus Christ.
Gnosis, Sophia and Occult Secret Societies.
The Holy Spirit - the Sophia of the Church.
The Return of Sophia.
The Serpent, Sophia and Gnosis.
The First Repentance of Sophia.

Gnosticism was once just a fad in southern California; now it is in schools, colleges, churches, prayer manuals, social clubs, television shows, advertising and music videos.

I fear that many liberal Protestant churches will morph into Sophia-Gnostic congregations; we will see homosexual and transgender priests worshipping the wisdom deity Sophia and the goddess.

Biblical churches will be denounced as 'fundamentalist' (the new F word) and 'homophobic' by the media, the entertainments industry and the intellectuals who shape public opinion.

As for the Catholic Church, it will become the 'windswept house' as Malachi Martin predicted.





John Haggerty said...

'The House of Christ Lucifer' (YouTube) is uploaded by Hawwah Lucifera Morningstar.

I have seen pseudo-Christian services with a similar Luciferian programme.
They often combine Wicca and Mother Earth worship with Jesus prayers though the Gospel of Thomas is a favoured text rather than the canonical works of Holy Scripture.

The Catholic Church's most powerful radio-telescope in Italy is named Lucifer.

Pan-sexuality is a feature of these New Age faux-Christian services.
Richard Holloway, formerly Episcopal archbishop in Scotland, promotes pan-sexuality in his YouTube talks.

According to Wikipedia the Anglican church has at least one transgender priest but more will surely follow.

On YouTube see 'The Transgender: Normalizing Mental Illness'.

From a pro-transgender viewpoint see the YouTube podcasts of a charming young woman who has stopped being male through hormone treatment and surgery:
'Discovering Your Female Voice - How I Found Mine' and other podcasts by A Woman for All Seasons.

A 'genderfluid' approach to sexuality is now commonplace in liberal churches.

The Scottish Parliament has made it easier for persons as young as 16 to go ahead with gender reassignment.

See 'The Endgame: Why the West is Lost' (YouTube) a pessimistic look at the death of the Christian world-view.

john haggerty said...

Correction: the pro-transgender podcasts are signed 'A Girl For All Seasons'.
The journey of Charlie from male to female is handled thoughtfully and sensitively.
The beautiful young woman who signs herself 'A Girl All Seasons' is aware of society's reservations. One of her podcasts is titled 'When to tell someone you're transgender'.
She talks about a man who was attracted to her and then rejected her after she told him she had 'transitioned'.
A recent podcast 'What am I meant to be doing now?' admits to feelings of loneliness and uncertainty about the future.
She needs the Gospel as do all troubled people.
The LGBT movement presents no problem for liberal churches. The well-known preacher Steve Chalke created much shock in the Evangelical world when he said he would marry same-sex couples.
I believe he is 100 per cent wrong, and his decision has only made the issue clearer for those of us who remain faithful to the Bible rather than to cultural fashion.
It is good to have a counter-cultural movement; the Church of Rome represents a useful counter current. (I very much doubt if anyone pays attention to the views of the conservative Reformed churches in which I worship.)
However we must not allow the liberals to behave as if they are the only ones who have all the understanding and empathy.
Jesus Christ came as a servant and sided with the outcasts and the marginal people.
But he also said 'Take up your cross and follow me.'
I do not hear the liberals preaching the cross or the way of self-denial.
I am reading a classic book by the Scottish 18th Century minister Thomas Boston, 'The Crook in the Lot (Banner of Truth).
'There are many now in heaven,' writes this Puritan, 'who are blessing God for the crook they had in their lot here.'
The crook is our cross; it is only natural that we wish to have it removed, says Boston.
'The greatest of men, such as Samson and John the Baptist, have been born of women naturally barren; so do the greatest crooks issue in the richest mercies to them that are exercised thereby.'



john haggerty said...

Another correction:
The large Lucifer infrared telescope is located in Arizona USA and is not to be confused with the the Vatican Observatory at Castel Gandolfo.

See the following articles on the Internet:
Relax - the Vatican didn't name a telescope Lucifer.
NASA and the Vatican's infrared telescope called L.U.C.I.F.E.R..
Wikipedia, Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope.
Why did the Vatican name its new addition to its Arizona telescope Lucifer?

The late Malachi Martin, ever speculative, is interviewed (YouTube) regarding the Vatican's interest in outer space and the possibility of intelligent life on other planets.

For a Biblical understanding of the word Lucifer see two Internet articles:

Is Lucifer the Devil in Isaiah 14:12? The KJV arguments against modern translations. By Dr. Daniel B Wallace, a scholar of New Testament Greek.

Is Lucifer Satan? Does the fall of Lucifer describe Satan? (gotquestions.org.)

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