The Remnant

The Remnant from Laurence England on Vimeo.

This was fun to make but its low on humorous content. 

For four minutes and and thirty four seconds I got to pretend to be Bruce Springsteen.

I don't think he's practising the Catholic Faith anymore, is he?

A bit

My Favourite Sins

Pray for Ireland, a land where faithful Catholics now form a minority in a pagan nation, a situation which is analogous to the experience of faithful Catholics in the Church. May God convert their nation and our nation of the United Kingdom to defend human life from conception to natural death.

One Baby Boy, So Many Victims...

As the battle over the life and death of Alfie Evans intensified in the full glare of the onlooking world, I was among those who could not comprehend the unswerving logic of an entire machinery, governmental and ecclesiastical, locked on course for the snuffing out of a precious human life, that of little Alfie, who from his hospital bed lay blissfully unaware of the extraordinary tumult surrounding him, a tumult inside and outside the hospital, in the courts, in the media, around the whole world.

I cannot help but feel that in ages past, Alfie Evans might have lit the blue touchpaper of civil unrest, mass demonstrations, even calls for revolution in a country like the United Kingdom. The sheer powerlessness felt by those following the case of Alfie and his parents, those close to him and those far away, apart from a committed and passionate team surrounding the family, an intense gathering of supporters outside the hospital, manifested itself in cries from the heart on social media, blogs, Facebook and other vents for public anger and frustration. Perhaps because of the rise of social media, things have changed, perhaps not for the better. Perhaps when the release valves of public anger made known through hashtags fail to save the cause of a baby boy, it is time for a rethink.

Clearly, Alfie was a victim of a foul ideology that now dominates public life in Great Britain, a hideous, unreasoning line of repressive eugenic thought reminiscent of 1930s and 40s Germany, one that was already politely embedded in the British Establishment thanks to the rise of social darwinism, one that was never even nearly defeated during the Second World War, an ideology that does not even limit itself to the upper echelons in the British Establishment but finds a welcome in the hearts of British men and women working in myriad fields across the social spectrum in these Isles. It isn't really new. It never really was. For centuries, millennia, human societies have justified the killing of innocents because some human life is deemed 'unworthy' of being called human life. For centuries, we have employed utilitarian justifications for murder. For centuries, we have deemed some lives more or less worthy and that social 'inferiors' possess less inherent worth. What marks causes like that of Alfie Evans out, however, along with the crimes of Nazi Germany, is the tying of this myopic, if common, human error - one to which we are all essentially prone - to the over-wielding, face-crushing apparatus of the modern State.

And what a State it is and what a tyrannical monster it can become when a society becomes detatched from Christ. For differing reasons, we Catholics, we British Catholics, should have seen the killing of Alfie Evans coming, because as other commentators have stated, the State-based assassination of Alfie, a British citizen whose right to life is, unlike the unborn, legally recognised, was entirely legal and 'above board'. While completely contrary to what we know as the natural law, that knowable in the hearts of mankind to be right, just, noble or virtuous, compassionate or kind, Alfie's life could be 'ended' and all 'by the book'. It could even be 'ended' by the withdrawal of basic sustenance and / or by the injection of toxins designed to sedate the patient into silence until even his breathing falls utterly silent. It could be ended because laws have been implanted into the British legal system that recognise, inherently, that in some, most, if not all cases, the life of citizen to State is one of 'owned' to 'owner', if not necessarily 'slave' to 'master'.

With language dressed in solemn medical virtue and medical care, the United Kingdom has reached the tipping point at which all but those without even a rudimentary vision of the limits on State power, could cry, "Murder!", as a judge told a court, a hospital, parents, a nation, yes, the whole world and its Creator, that an NHS patient could essentially be put to death in 'the best interests of the child'. There are, as has been documented, real reasons why the State and those who act in the name of Her Majesty's Government deem the State the possessor of persons, their lives and their deaths, beyond all reasonable limits.

Actual laws, such as the Children's Act of 1989, the Mental Capacity Act of 2005 and those laws which gave rise to the Court of Protection, a kind of super-secretive court that has those kind of powers at which should astonish and horrify British citizens, forsee just these kinds of situations and accord to the State just those kinds of justifications as were used in what Alfie's army could call the killing of Alfie Evans. What was and remains astonishing is that all of these conditions were met in one little boy and the entire weight of the British legal system fell like a tonne of bricks on one little boy and his brave, besieged and embattled parents.

It serves us nothing to say that Alfie Evans is a warning to the British people, since the warnings are long behind us, long before Alfie was born. If Alfie were a warning, he may still be alive in a hospital in Rome receiving treatment, still being caressed by his loving parents, still charming the world with his beautiful face, with his loving vulnerability, with his touching and mysterious interaction with those who loved him, with those who saw in his innocent eyes a glimpse, as so often we do, of something of the mystery of God. No, Alfie was not a warning. A warning is a threat. Evil men carried out an evil plan and succeeded in their evil plan and left a signature of evil across the face of the United Kingdom, confirming that this nation is now under the influence of horrifying evil that will not yield even in the face of the vehement reproach of just men and women around the whole world.

No, the warnings have been many and have gone unheeded. The warnings were the low-income family living on a housing estate deemed by the encroaching State apparatus of social services to be neglecting their child because they couldn't afford or for some reason failed to provide the correct environment for their child, note, to the standards to which social services holds them. Many children, of course not all, are forcibly removed, through the family courts, from those who have been deemed 'unworthy' of parentage. These children are then 'processed' into a care system in which they experience no or little love whatsoever, their links with parents and natural bonds severed.

The warnings were the man or woman with schizophrenia, be it mild or not so mild, who, having been sectioned, and placed under an authority's 'care', is diagnosed and placed on a mental health wing periodically, but is generally left to live an isolated and marginalised life, only to be placed on medication that renders him or her impotent, sterile or both, or unable to function as he or she could without them.

The warnings were the Christian family who, having discovered that their school was providing their child with completely unsuitable material for 'sex education' are informed that they are unable to pull their child from a toxic and highly sexualised learning environment, because wishing to preserve a child's innocence, or wanting to provide more suitable information themselves, is not 'in the child's best interest'. The warnings were the children removed from couples deemed unable to provide enough for their child, only for their children to be handed over by an adoption agency, with all the power of the State behind them, to sexually active 'gay parents' who can never provide children with the moral environment for their growth to maturity, nor the masculine love of a father, combined with the feminine love of a mother.

The warnings were the homeless man who, deemed unsightly to beg around our cities, or even to busk, is given the kind of stringent legal order that inhibits his movement or freedom and means that he cannot beg or even busk in a certain locale without a possible prison sentence being the result of his disobedience. The warnings are there, have been there, wherever an unjust State manned by unjust personnel, rob human beings of their natural and inalienable rights.

But most stridently of all, the warnings were there, already in place, for years, perhaps decades in Great Britain's National Health Service and within care homes, which can stealthily, at a time of their own choosing, place patients on the kind of 'end of life' plan that could render families and loved ones impotent in the face of the State's own medical system, as British citizens with firmly established legal rights, are placed on a well-documented death pathway that necessarily enables doctors and nurses to administer to patients deep sedation-causing drugs, in increasing dosage, while removing the most basic necessities of food and water from these patients, who, unable to speak out for themselves, are rendered entirely helpless as they grow nearer and nearer to death, whose bodily organs slowly succumb to the most agonising end, while families, some aware, some unaware, look on helplessly, because 'experts' have told them that this, the most barbaric, the most inhumane path, is the only path upon which patients can be placed at this stage in their treatment.

In the final analysis, we see in Alfie Evans a whole world, a world that is, a cruel and unjust world, a cold and heartless world, a world in which evil appears to us triumphant, a world which parodies 'care' and 'treatment' in its eugenic analysis that ends that 'life unworthy of being called life'. Those with a Christian vision of human life, however, see something else. We see a little boy, unknowing of all that was surrounding him, a warrior who did not, could not acknowledge the battle in which he was staged, through whom Almighty God has already worked wonders. Through a single baby, God has paraded the wicked for all mankind to see, whose pride and vanity will be recorded one day as legendary.

Little Alfie has paraded the unjust, the wicked and pathetic bishops of England and Wales, unmasked evil present in our own Bishops' Conference, hurled down the reputations of those who, fearing the consequences of conflict with the British Establishment and the British State, sided with Alfie's persecutors and those of his parents, adopting precisely the same sinister and deceitful language as those who felt a baby boy was better off dead. He has revealed the broad, cunning and evil face of the eugenic mindset against which Catholics must once more rise to slay, if necessary with our own blood. He has revealed the true state of our country.

He has also paraded those who fight for true justice, who fight for God's law, who fight against the culture of death, who wish for no earthly reward for their efforts, who pulled resources together to move heaven and earth for this young couple and their child, those who recognise that the State's power, though a necessary presence in the lives of the modern nation, has limits it cannot exceed without crushing human dignity. He has revealed the openness of whole nations to true compassion and true justice, those countries who offered to treat Alfie, who saw a fight for a human life as a fight worth fighting and an expense worth paying.

It is doubtful that Alfie's death will bring about a 'sea-change' in the attitude of the legal and medical establishment that denied Alfie and his parents treatment elsewhere, lest the cherished NHS be seen to be ineffective. No, it was vital that the NHS was seen to be effective, if not in caring and treating the most vulnerable, then in policing and administering death to its its patient. The truth is that what is most feared among the powerful in this country is the 'sea-change' that is yet to take place but that all Catholics who value and cherish human life pray will take place, the 'sea-change' from a country that justifies the taking of innocent human life on entirely subjective grounds, that justifies judicial and medical tyranny in the name of a thinly-veiled form of social darwinism rampant throughout British institutions, into a country that honours Almighty God, that honours the rights of parents, that honours the lives of its citizens from conception to natural death, that honours all that is good, all that is honourable, all that is worthy praise.

Perhaps one day that day will come, perhaps one day Britons will rise from their slumber and demand the respect for human life that they themselves have discovered is sacred and holy. Perhaps that day is coming, but if it does, it won't have come without God's help and the wonders He has already done, through little Alfie Evans, the little warrior prince of Liverpool who, history may yet record, even put the silence of the Royal Family themselves to shame.

Pray for Alfie's parents, pray for our nation, pray for our bishops, pray for the clergy, but Alfie, Alfie must now be safe with God, for all along, his cause, in baptised innocence, was with God. Many people failed Alfie, while many valiantly fought on his side, but our holy Faith tells us God did not fail him. He is faithful. Alfie has been delivered from the pains of death and his enemies who surrounded him, from the fury of his foes, of both men and demons. May God do the same for us, for those who govern us and for our country as well.

The Francis Song

A reader asked me for my response to 'Gaudate et Insultate', I've read some excellent analyses of the document and I don't think I can add much to it, so I thought I might as well sing what we can see is going on, what others have noted, based on The Dentist Song, from the hit musical Little Shop of Horrors. That song's about a brutal, sadistic dentist. Not like our Pope, obviously. He isn't a dentist.

What Qualities Does the Next Pope Need?

The Franciscan pontificate is unpredictable and volatile, as well as risible. From day to day it scandalises and shocks the Church.

The next Pope will have to learn from the many serious mistakes made during this pontificate and should already, while a Cardinal, be examining where Francis has gone wrong, as well as the partial success (if you can call it that) of his extraordinary public relations efforts, efforts which have now led to the most amazing apology in all of human history, the kind of stupendous apology that marks a Pope who called abuse victims liars and slanderers out as a living Saint. Really, he should be canonised now. But, here's what I'll be looking for from the next Pope, should God in His mercy give one to the Church.

1. I hope that the next Pope believes in the Catholic Faith. It's a big one this and I think that the Catholic Church in the next pontificate requires someone who believes the religion into which they were baptised. It really helps people to believe the Catholic Faith if the Pope believes it too.

2. I hope that the next Pope is honest. Again, everybody has their weaknesses, but for the next Pope, an appreciation, at least, for truth, would be a real bonus and such a quality might restore some confidence in the papacy.

3. I hope that if the next Pope is going to insult anyone, or craft insulting expressions directed at certain members of the Church, he aims his barbed arrows at those who show ill-will or malice towards the Church's perennial doctrines and towards the enemies of Christ within the Church. But this isn't essential. He could forego insulting anyone. That might actually be an idea. Let the truth stand on its own merits. If God grants it to us, and let us not presume, we'll need some calm after the hurricane that is Francis.

You may have your own suggestions that you'd like to share of qualities you are looking for in the next Pope. Perhaps you'd like him to love God and the Church, or have a punctilious concern for souls, doctrine, liturgy and worship, but I just thought we'd start off with the basics first.

As I say, feel free to add your own...

Happy Easter, Pope Francis...

Next questions for Scalfari to ask the Pope could be 'Did Jesus exist? Did he rise again?'

A link was shared recently to Haaretz documenting the anti-semitic remarks of Cardinal Maradiaga concerning the 'Jewish media' and the 'whipping up' of the abuse crisis in the Church from early 2013. A little while before ++ Maradiaga's 'it was the Jews' diversion, I recall Cardinal Sodano suggesting, publicly, to Pope Benedict XVI that the abuse crisis was a kind of manufactured phenomenom attended by the 'feigned' outrage of media. I think he had intended these words to be a form of consolation to the then Pope (after all we know what a loyal a creature ++ Sodano is) but one could tell from Benedict XVI's face what he thought of ++Sodano's words: 'You're not helping.' Such were the kind of men hovering around Benedict XVI. I think Cardinal Bertone (what is he up to nowadays?) called the Vatican a nest of 'crows and vipers', or something such like.

 
Many of us, at that time, had no idea what kind of persons were such individuals as ++ Maradiaga. We have a little more insight into, at least, ++Maradiaga's mad-cap world now. What an obsure figure he was before Francis! But then we have more insight into the worlds of many Cardinals now and, of course, that's all thanks to the light-bearer-in-chief, Pope Francis as well, for it is he who has thrust such men as ++Maradiaga into the spotlight, but not only ++Maradiaga. Thanks to Pope Francis, we now know the identities of all the villains and 'wolves' who had little/no interior faith but pretended to do so every now and then so as not to give the game away while the Pope was Catholic and the CDF was a thing. Useful to know should God give us another conclave.

Just think of the figures that Catholics following events now know a great deal more about, those Cardinals and Bishops who are active in supporting the demolition job now under way as well as those who have fallen utterly silent. For this reason, looking at that report from 2013 from Haaretz, the photo-collection of potential 'frontrunners' and candidates for the 2013 conclave is fascinating to view in hindsight - after five years of devastation - and in a way it is consoling to view, because almost all of the men that the website put forth as potential Popes at that time have fully revealed their fidelity, or rather their infidelity or their indifference to, or even hatred for, the divine Faith during the reign of this Pope. Had it not been Pope Francis who had won the conclave, it could well have been one of them and how would that have gone? Better, perhaps, but perhaps not much!

This man helped to draft the Catechism and now rejects it.

Cardinal Maradiaga was listed by Haaretz as a candidate for the 2013 conclave along with ++Schonborn, ++Tagle, and a host of other acolytes for Amoris Laetitia. We didn't know it at the time, but as it turned out ++Maradiaga may have had enough cash in 2013 to buy the papacy for himself or his friend or himself and his friends, just like Cardinals did in the good ol' days!

Perhaps ++Scola would have been a 'safe pair of hands', but really, who knows? Many Cardinals have gone awfully quiet during the time of the devastator. Now that the devastator has, with all his pomp, vanity and empty show turned up to the fanfare of the world, those who still ask for 'clarity' will be waiting for a long time, while those who have eyes to see and ears to hear have all the clarity they could possibly require from Pope Francis. That's as true for Austen Ivereigh as it is for Ann Barnhardt. What is that clarity? It is this: decide now who you shall follow, Jesus Christ or His adversary working stealthily through His unbelieving, dupicitous Vicar on Earth. Choose now who you shall believe, Jesus Christ and His Gospel or Pope Francis and his contradictory secular mush. There. Now that is clarity. It may be apocalyptic clarity, but its still clarity.

Let's not pretend that you and I know more than his long-time friend, Eugenio Scalfari, about Pope Francis's 'real' beliefs, or that Pope Francis has telephoned you or I rather than a strange nun who claims he told her artificial contraception is okay in 'these' circumstances. If the Pope cared for souls he would correct these people himself and if these persons thought the Pope cared for souls, they would not dream of crediting to him words which were not his. They are entitled to their good names. They are only the messengers of the Pope. If they were liars, or if their messages were contrary to the will of the Pope, I think the Pope would call them out on that himself, just like he did (not) Msgr Vigano.

As if to underscore this point, Sandro Magister is now reporting that its likely Pope Francis intimated more to Scalfari on our two possible eternal destinies, including a remark that Purgatory and Heaven 'aren't real either'. As readers are possibly aware, after five years, I'm past reacting indignantly to the Pope's words as if one ought to be "shocked" by Francis's inane / insane ramblings. I've come around to the idea that in a psychological war, it is best to laugh at those bishops, including Francis, who desperately want to enjoy public credibility and be taken terribly seriously while leading their flock into a nonsensical 'new paradigm' in which the only thing that 'disappears' into a vortex is Catholic teaching. If you are still shocked by Pope Francis...

IT IS TIME TO STOP BEING SHOCKED.

For what purpose does our shock and incredulity serve but to give to the innovators the satisfaction of seeing us throwing our arms up in the air helplessly? We have had five years of this insanity. Under Francis, scandal, apostasy, doubt, infidelity, sacrilege, insult, dissembling, ambiguity, confusion, dishonesty, sexual immorality in the Vatican, betrayal, abuse cover-up, corruption, deception, financial scandal, blasphemy and insanity constitute the new normal. These things are now normal. Indeed, these things are the lifeblood of his pontificate, since you cannot achieve Francis's goals while presenting yourself as a WonderPope who is destroying everything (but nothing is really changing, honest!), without many of these things, especially if your pontificate requires evil people to carry out an evil plan, because only evil people carry out evil plans. Those who refuse to co-operate with evil are, in this pontificate, swiftly shown the door or are publicly derided by some minion or other.

Don't shoot the messenger. Eugenio Scalfari.

It is important that we stop being 'shocked' for the sake of our own psychological and spiritual health but that we keep praying for the cleansing and spiritual renewal of the Church, in whatever manner God chooses to do this. Quite frankly, I think that men with such atheist leanings as Pope Francis and Eugenio Scalfari (birds of a feather), friends and collaborators that they clearly are, get off on undermining the Faith of the Catholic Church, the faith of Her members, on Good Friday, at the most sacred time of the year. Can we not just assume, after five years, that if Francis wanted to teach the faith and save souls he would do so and that if he teaches things contrary to the Faith by whatever means he chooses to do so, then that is precisely what he wants to do?

That is not to say that the whole pontificate is not a living nightmare, but if there is one thing more painful than a devastator Pope and that is to endure the utter silence from almost the entire college of Cardinals in the wake of the destruction that the devastator Pope is launching on the Church. Yet, even this is in a sense helpful, because we now know the reality of the situation of the Catholic Church in the 21st century. By now we know who is for Christ and who is against Him. God knows the hearts of those who are silent, but their silence speaks volumes.

The devastator has already revealed the true thoughts of many bad and heretical Cardinals and Bishops and brought them out into the open to be paraded like a float of flamboyant characters at a gay pride parade before the whole Church. We hardly knew anything about these figures until Francis came along and tore off their masks. And yes, many of these characters are, similarly, utterly shameless, even when they are paraded naked. He has also brought out in stark relief the faith and integrity of good Cardinals and Bishops who are loyal to Jesus Christ and to His Gospel. His is a double-edged sword, indeed!

As today's report from Germany tells us, and as the latest Cardinal Burke interview tells us, some prelates will defend the Faith of the Church even when the devastator does his worst. Others will follow the devastator to ruin. All of this is prophecised. Some will be honoured and given eternal glory. Others will enjoy everlasting shame and contempt. Francis is not the Last Judgement, no, but it looks rather like he's going to be a helpful prelude to the real thing when it comes, helping people to decide henceforth whom they shall serve and for whom they will teach, speak and lead others to worship: Christ or Antichrist.

That's the clarity that Francis has brought.



Where Christ and His Gospel will lead us.

Or



Where Pope Francis and his anti-Gospel will lead us.

Of course, we never thought that could happen...

Happy Easter to all readers.

A Blessed Easter to You All