'Like a Bridge... '(with Fr James Martin S.J and friends)

Like a Bridge... from Laurence England on Vimeo.

From his latest tweet, I hear Fr James Martin S.J is on a week's holiday. I wonder which Pride Festival he is attending on his break.

Is Pope Francis the Last Hope for Life and Family in Argentina?

A source in Argentina has provided me with some perceptive observations on the recent intervention from Pope Francis timed - to many commentator's bewilderment - after the recent vote in Ireland and the more recent parliamentary vote in Argentina on liberalising abortion laws in these respective countries.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, 'our man in Argentina' places the sudden papal defence of the unborn  in the light of politics surrounding the bill approved at the Deputies House and is about to be voted in the Argentinian Senate.

A Little History of Argentinian Politics

Firstly, a brief introduction to the pitfalls of Argentine politics are called for. Argentinian politics are very complicated and while even today's political wranglings must be seen in as expressions of an ebbing and flowing Peronist-Antiperonist dialectic.

"Peronism", he says, "can be anything, can be right and even far right or can be left to even a Marxist level. No matter what political expression it takes, Peronism is essentially a power-building machine. A maurrasian politic d´abord, but sick. The only Peronist principle - a principle observable in this pontificate - is loyalty, in the Mafia sense of the word."

"Sometimes Peronism can achieve the good, like when in 1974 the ideology led the defense against the Malthusian offensive in the UN Bucharest Population Conference. Similarly, it can turn against family and life when it is convenient."

Argentina has been ruled for 12 years (2003-2015) by a Leftist Peronist administration by the late Nestor Kirchner, succeeded by his wife Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. The character of that government was almost Marxist, Chavezist-leaning and tyrannical. Back in those days, Jorge Bergoglio was the Archbishop of Buenos Aires and Primate Cardinal. Even though he is a Peronist his relationship with the Kirchners was bad, but for entirely unknown reasons.

The Kirchners tended to see him as the main opposition leader. Note, Pope Francis isn't late to Argentinian politics. Even as an Archbishop, he enjoyed the political clout that being a Catholic Cardinal in a Catholic country afforded him. While he has remained a political creature after his ascendency to the Throne of Peter, his publicly poor relationship with the Kirchners dramatically changed, for entirely unknown reasons, when he was elected Pope.

A coalition was built against Kirchnerism, and this coalition finally won the election in 2015. This political alliance (Cambiemos – Let´s Change) was built by all the anti-Peronist forces: liberals, conservatives, socialists and others forming an unlikely mix. Mauricio Macri was the leader of this coalition, now he is the President.

Mauricio Macri was seen by most of the people as quite a conservative culturally and somewhat a free market supporter. But the most important thing for everyone at that time was to drive the Kirchners out. Peronism was divided during the election and many Peronists voted Cambiemos. Catholics were divided too, their vote split between Kirchnerismo (and here we see some Bergoglian influence) and Cambiemos.

Mauricio Macri was quite LGBT agenda leaning (and so are the Kirchnerism) but he said during the campaign that abortion law would not be touched in his government and that he was a strong life supporter. It is important to note here that Cristina Kirchner strongly opposed abortion during her government and that she even thwarted abortionist initiatives presented by her own party in Parliament.

The Reality of the Political Situation in Argentina

Actually, Macri is a postmodern political persona, a product of political-sociological marketing, perhaps taking someone like Tony Blair as his model. He seems as he want to be a Latin American Macron or Justin Trudeau. In short, however, political struggle in Argentina is the struggle between the paleozoic bolivarian Latin American left of the Kirchnerism and the modern global Obamaist leaning left of Cambiemos. Bergoglio represents the first, and Macri the latter. They really detest each other, in fact.

Macri has a touch of the global elite's annointed one in Latin America about him. He has been chosen to host the G20 meeting, he was a special guest of Justin Trudeau at the G7 meeting ten days ago and he has a good relation with him.

Argentina, meanwhile, is facing heavy economic headwinds and called in the IMF for aid one month ago. The deficit is rampant, inflation is about 35% and the country is heavily indebted in dollars in the context of rising international rates.

As readers might know, at the G7 meeting was too Christine Lagarde, president of the IMF. The radical feminist agenda was publicly established there, and it is very unlikely that Macri was not put under a lot of pressure by Trudeau and Lagarde and others. Trump disrupted the meeting and then left without signing the declaration.

Before the G7 meeting, he had put the abortion law in discussion contrary to what he had said in his election campaign. In addition to this, he clarified that he would not veto it in the case of it coming out as approved. That was a slap on the face to the majority of his voters. Despite the Latin American Catholic collapse in faith, people in Argentina are in the majority against abortion. People were not happy and marches against the law were massive. Many (if not most) of the marchers were Cambiemos voters and the abortionists are mostly very young females, extreme left leaning, femen-type activists who would never give their vote to Cambiemos. That can be taken as a sign that he needs the law and he is under pressure for it from some people, somewhere, but not the Argentinian people themselves.

Last Wednesday, then, was the day when the deputies voted. At the beginning of the night, the life campaign was winning by seven votes, according to polls and projections. The Government put a lot of pressure on the deputies, even trading money for the provinces in exchange for votes. That went out in the very morning after and it was a shocking scandal.

People in Argentina are extremely angry about the way this vote has gone. The thing is that many people fear that going against the government would be to favour the Kirchners. And if the Government does not get the votes for the approval, the IMF will not send the money. That would lead the country into further and deeper economic chaos. Of course, those who campaigned against the bill consider this factor to be insignificant compared to the value of the sanctity of life at stake in the bill and would prefer to face anything except the killing of the unborn. They marched last Wednesday and are struggling hard against the law, no matter what consequences come their way.

Despite the horrific setback for life, some positive trends are emerging as a result of the deputies decision. For instance, now that International Planned Parenthood is a household name for everyone in Argentina, many people are talking about the millions they are sending to build up the pro-abortion lobby. Similiarly, people are openly discussing the UN's positions on abortion and its influence over sovereign governments such as that of Argentina. Things that everyone considered conspiracy theories a month ago are becoming a common knowledge and talking points now.

What is Pope Francis playing at?

The morning after the vote, when campaigners were exhausted after the vigil, the night spent in front of the Congress, Pope Francis sent a tweet congratulating the people watching the World Cup. That raised in Argentina a tsunami of fury against him. People felt betrayed by everyone: the political system, the party they had voted, the silent Bishops, and now even the Pope (though Catholics in Argentina had never expected much from him), this was seen as beyond the pale.

Maybe he realized his mistake, maybe he did not, but the remarkable thing now is that he sent a very powerful message against abortion and in support of families. Less widely known is the report that he asked for the list of the abortionist voters in Parliament.

This action could have two meanings:

a) Just another remark and senseless Bergoglian rant to save his own behind in front of the shame of abortion approved in his own country, 

or 

b) He is about to go full swing against Macri and is using this issue as leverage against him. If he does that, he might even topple the Government mounting the Peronist deputies and the people against them. 

Unfortunately, because Jorge Mario Bergoglio has always been a shrewd and obscure political operator, we don´t know for sure the reason he has done it.

In the first case, is very likely that abortion will pass even when the Senate is more conservative than the Deputies Chamber, because if the clergy does not care much, no one will.

In the second case, it would be a case of the Church struggling against the global elites and what is increasingly termed 'the New World Order', and coming out victorious. Argentina may then pay the price in a deeper economic crisis if the IMF and World Bank retire themselves from the table because the political establishment did not play ball.

"That would", in the words of my Argentinian source, "be really painful, but it is better to offer our pain than the innocent blood for money."

With Cardinal Parolin having been to the Bilderberg Meeting recently, it seems an unlikely scenario that we see now Pope Francis vs. the IMF, or Pope Francis vs George Soros or even Pope Francis vs Planned Parenthood, but the idea of Pope Francis saving lives - for frankly any reason - or doing battle against the spirit of the World is and will remain for Catholics appealing. Where he does God's will, he is surely to be commended on that. Hopefully, his salvo in defence of the unborn is sincere If Francis is angling at defeating the abortion bill in Argentina, because of his temperament, then he will need to win. He is, after all, a political animal.

"He is a Jesuit," says our man in Argentina, "so it is impossible to know for sure. The plain truth of the matter is that we need the Church to face the Prince of the World, even with Francis at the helm."

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...