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.

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 e…

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

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.

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,…

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.

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…