Danish Scientist's 'Explosive' Research

Niels Harrit and eight other scientists found nano-thermite in the dust from the World Trade Center. This is a must see for 9/11 'truthers' and those who think that 'truthers' suspicions are not grounded in science.

During this astonishing interview the news presenter asks the Danish scientist, "If you are moving 10 to 100 tonnes of nano-thermite around and placing it on all the floors, I am just surprised no-one noticed." The scientist responds, quite brilliantly, "As a journalist you should address that question to the company responsible for security at the WTC."

A principal of the company Securacom, who provided security for the WTC at the time, along with United Airlines (Owners of Flight 77, Flight 175 and Flight 93), and Dulles International Airport (Departure of Flight 77), was one Marvin P. Bush, younger brother of one former President George W. Bush, who, according to The Telegraph, '...told Mr Blair that there could be a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaida in a telephone conversation on September, 14 2001.' So we now know that just days after the 'terrorist attack' on 9/11, Bush did not beat around the perennial garden feature after which he is named before getting old 'Tone 'on board' to begin preparations to launch an invasion of the non-existent 'WMDs 'r' Us' warehouse that was Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

According to Securacom's present CEO, Barry McDaniel, the company had an ongoing contract to handle security at the World Trade Center "up to the day the buildings fell down," ongoing, one assumes, until the contract expired once the said buildings were blown to dust by nano-thermite and the WTC remains had been removed by Controlled Demotions Inc who boast of their 'services to Government in sensitive projects, domestically and internationally', to be taken away, melted, destroyed, shipped off and never to be seen or heard of again. Never heard of again, that is, until a respected Danish scientist pops up 8 years later and says he has examined some of the dust from the area, containing highly advanced explosives, only to be ignored by the World's mainstream media aside from a news station in his home country.

The most famous contract Controlled Demolitions Inc. had previously won with the Government was this one, as quoted from their website:

'At 7:00 am on Wednesday, May 24, 1995, the remains of the building that was the target of America's deadliest domestic terrorist attack crumbled neatly in 7 seconds. The results of the implosion surpassed expectations. The Murrah Building fell as planned, leaving the adjacent parking structure intact.'

That's right! The Oklahoma bombing! The twin towers, on the other hand, came down in about 8 and 10 seconds respectively. Wow! Those CDI guys are pros, aren't they?! "Wooo! Alright! High fives all round guys!" Still, I hope you spared a thought for the innocents trapped inside the burning building!

It just so happens that among the financial industry and insurance industry tenants of the WTC 7 building, which also fell down into its own footprint despite not being hit by a plane, were offices of the United States Secret Service, the Department of Defense (DOD) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the destruction of all, one can safely assume, assured the elimination of any incriminating evidence therein.

Add to this 'explosive cocktail' the fact that just weeks prior to the attack in July 2001, property billionaire Larry Silverstein took out an insurance policy on the hitherto solely Port Authority-owned complex, including a sublimely prophetic clause covering risk of terrorist attack(s) (Remember, there were two planes so he got double payout!), in the event of which he could collect the insured value of the property while being released from his obligations under the 99-year lease, and you have on your hands the new contender for, 'the most diabolical, wicked and nefarious deception since a serpent told a lady that if she ate an apple from a tree in the garden, it would all be "just fine"' award, followed closely by Climategate...If a Jack Russell heard about these revelations, this is how he would react...

Climategate Protestors Ejected from Al Gore Book Signing in Chicago

Fan: "Hi Al, I'm one of your biggest fans!"

Gore: "Well, I hope you turn yourself off at night to save energy. Anyway, thanks for buying my book, because its thanks to people like you that I am totally and utterly minted."

Prison Planet has reported that 'Climategate' protestors confronted Al Gore at a book signing and that they were unsurprisingly invited to leave by his security men.

Meanwhile, The Times has reported that the University of East Anglia have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It is alleged that the amount of carbon burned in the process of destroying the evidence last night has added another two degrees to the warming of the planet.

And sensationally, according to Canada Free Press, the email leaks reveal that current US Obama administration 'Science Czar' John Holdron is directly implicated in the scandal.

Wiston Clinic, Pregnancy and Abortion

Are you considering an abortion at Wistons Clinic, Brighton?

Due to the fact that my blog post appears quite high on the Google-search...

If you are considering an abortion at Wistons Clinic, please be reassured that there are alternatives to abortion. Studies have shown that the psychological, physical and spiritual effects of abortion can be highly damaging and traumatic, in terms of feelings of loss, pain, regret, guilt and despair.

Life UK provide assistance in terms of housing and care to mothers who are struggling to cope with the prospect of motherhood. The charity also offer a free helpline to those in need of non-judgmental counselling and advice for those who feel torn because of an unwanted pregnancy or are considering abortion or who have procured one and need post-abortion counselling.

If you feel you fit into either of these categories then click the link here to access the Life website. Their hotline is 0800 915 4600 or you can 'text to talk' at 07786 200330.

There is a Light that is Going Out?

Morrissey Sides Recklessly with the Culture of Death

Yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent. Advent for every Catholic is the beginning of a spiritual journey towards true joy, as we recall the great Mystery of the Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a spiritual time in which we prepare to celebrate the day when God entered into the World to share in the poverty, misery and suffering of the human experience to redeem our fallen human nature and unite us to Himself. It is the moment at which God, by His unfathomable generosity and love for us, steps into Time and begins what would become the Mystery of our redemption.

Like us in all ways but sin, the Child born in a manger, in the poverty of the stable would enter into our human experience concretely, cosmically and totally, uniting Himself with the human experience of life, suffering, rejection, betrayal, sadness and joy. It is a season of the Church at which we awe and a moment in which we recognise that, indeed, God wished to reveal Himself to be Love Itself and that we are called into a relationship with Him.

Of course, none of us are immune from the effects of Original Sin in terms of sadness, mental distress, misery, sinfulness or even the depths of despair. Yet, what we recognise in the Incarnation is that God has united Himself to us totally. It is in this great act of self-giving, this act of self-emptying which the Son would carry forth in His Ministry even unto His cruel Death upon the Cross that we, who live in this vale of tears find Hope, the kind of Hope of which neither Obama or any other human being can offer. Which is why one of my favourite singers, Morrissey has made me more than a little concerned.

The Telegraph reports that during the 'Desert Island Discs' interview the...

'...former frontman of 'The Smiths', famous for his melancholy lyrics, said that suicide was "an act of great self-control".

During the programme, which is broadcast on Sunday, Morrissey was asked by the presenter Kirsty Young: "Have you thought about being in control of your death? Have you thought about shuffling off this mortal coil at a time of your own choosing?"

He replied: "Yes, I have. I think self-destruction is honourable. I always thought it was. It's an act of great control and I understand people who do it." When asked what luxury he would take to his desert island, Morrissey deliberated taking sleeping pills. "I would either take a bed, because I like to go to bed, or I would take a bag of sleeping pills because I might want to make a quick exit," he said.'

Oh, dear. Cue requests from Philip Nitzchke to sign up Morrissey for his next trip to the UK to sell suicide kits. Let us take, not Morrissey as our model, but his patron, St Stephen, who died in defense of Holy Mother Church, for Morrissey's real name is Stephen Patrick Morrissey...'Lord forgive him, for he knows not what he says.'

God has united Himself with us in the Incarnation. Our Lord has, by His Birth, Life, Passion, Suffering and Death and Resurrection united Himself with us in fact so much, that in the face of such a sacred, burning, unquenchable love, no Catholic man can justify the act of self-destruction, for in so doing, he murders not only his own body but his own soul.

For God has loved him unto death, unconditionally and taken upon Himself all of his misery, heartache, trials and sins. God's love for us, as revealed by the Incarnation and the Cross is incomprehensible and infinite and yet, because we have free will we can reject Love. Ultimately, the tragedy of suicide is the tragedy of the rejection of Love. It can never be desribed as a 'great' or 'honourable' act because it is the rejection not only of self, but the God who 'loved him unto death'. No suffering is so great that it compares with the sufferings of Christ in His Passion, nor even perhaps the suffering His Heart undergoes when a soul condemns itself to eternal damnation. For even in the depths of despair and sorrow, to coin Morrissey, "there is a 'light' that never goes out." That Light is Christ.

Now, it is all very well for Morrissey to say under pressure from a BBC who appear to be a voice for the pro-assisted suicide lobby, 'I understand people who do it,' or 'Heck, well, you've listened to my music, you know I've been there!' A great many of us can say, 'I have felt suicidal.' Some can even say, 'I attempted suicide' and so we can 'understand' a great deal of what constitutes for the myriad feelings tending towards self-'termination'.

However, it is an incredibly reckless thing to say is that suicide constitutes 'an act of great self-control' for surely all suicide attempts are made at moments when people feel at their most out of control, or that self-destruction is 'honourable'. Morrissey has fans of course, many of whom are depressive misfits, which makes his comments even more scandalous. Suicide should in no way be esteemed, glamorised, recommended or promoted and, though I assume that the man who made these statements is lapsed, because they are so anti-Life and anti-Christian, he is a Catholic, which makes it even worse.

A part of Morrissey's attraction is the sense that he has been through the mill and he is still hanging in there. Morrissey's fans identify with his feelings of isolation, grief, feelings of being an outsider or an outcast, sexuality struggles, feelings of rejection, not fitting in, and bewilderment at the vulgarity of the modern World and for these reasons is revered by many as a great poet, singer and entertainer. Artists who suffer have a duty to inspire some kind of hope through their art and if they cannot inspire hope when giving interviews and end up endorsing suicide then they should keep their traps shut and let the music do the talking, because even if that can be depressing, at least his fans think, 'It's nice to know someone else knows how I feel.'

Still, if we really want to do that, perhaps we should stick to promoting the Gospel instead and telling people that if we were ever marooned on a desert island, we'd leave our Morrissey albums to the watery wreackage and just be glad we'd kept our Rosaries in our pockets.

Holy C**p...There is Nothing Amusing about Climategate

At a speech in St Paul's, Minnesota, Lord Christopher Monckton, a prominent and public Roman Catholic, has warned the World that the Copenhagen Summit will see a treaty ratified with implications far more wide-reaching than merely co-operation on climate change.

"At the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed. Your president will sign it. Most of the third world countries will sign it, because they think they’re going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regime from the European Union will rubber stamp it. Virtually nobody won’t sign it.

I read that treaty. And what it says is this; that a world government is going to be created. The word “government” actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world countries, in satisfication of what is called, coyly, “climate debt” — because we’ve been burning CO2 and they haven’t. We’ve been screwing up the climate and they haven’t. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement.

How many of you think that the word “election” or “democracy” or “vote” or “ballot” occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn’t appear once. So, at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement, who took over Greenpeace so that my friends who funded it left within a year, because [the communists] captured it — now the apotheosis as at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He’s going to sign it. He’ll sign anything. He’s a Nobel Peace Prize winner; of course he’ll sign it."

And the trouble is this; if that treaty is signed, your Constitution says that it takes precedence over your Constitution, and you can’t resign from that treaty unless you get agreement from all the other state parties – And because you’ll be the biggest paying country, they’re not going to let you out of it."

Click here for his full lecture on the myth of man-made global warming. The planet may or may not be warming, but I am warming to this guy. He even called Our Blessed Lord, "Our Blessed Lord", that more or less means he is a real Catholic. Let's be serious for a moment here, the Catholic, respected and highly esteemed Lord Christopher Monckton is warning the World that the Copenhagen Treaty will lead to a World Government, over which every nation state's sovereignty will be destroyed, including, wait for it, that of the United States of America...and no, the BBC have not picked up on the story.

Climategate Gets More Amusing Everyday...

The Telegraph has an article on the nuclear fallout from the Climategate scandal, in which data was alleged, though it appears now beyond doubt, to be deliberately manipulated by scientists at the University of East Anglia. The BBC are steering well clear of this fiasco because Copenhagen is coming up and the less people know about this, the better it is for the Summit to pass resolutions on how to milk money out of people who 'emit' carbon through taxation. Obviously, the professors involved are rather embarassed by the leak, but one who miraculously still has his job, Professor Jones, appears to be defiant.

Prof Jones, who has refused to quit despite calls even from within the green movement, said last week in a statement issued through University of East Anglia, "My colleagues and I accept that some of the published emails do not read well. I regret any upset or confusion caused as a result. Some were clearly written in the heat of the moment, others use colloquialisms frequently used between close colleagues."

He suggested the theft of emails and publication first on a Russian server was "a concerted attempt to put a question mark over the science of climate change in the run-up to the Copenhagen talks".

He added: "Our global temperature series tallies with those of other, completely independent, groups of scientists working for NASA and the National Climate Data Centre in the United States, among others. Even if you were to ignore our findings, theirs show the same results. The facts speak for themselves; there is no need for anyone to manipulate them."

So, let's get this straight. The data which appears to have been manipulated tallies with other 'completely independent' groups of scientists working for err...NASA. Would we ever in our wildest dreams have expected the University of East Anglia to be anything other than independent? No! We just assumed you were, because you work for a rather obscure University!

If you, who work for an obscure University in little old England, were among colleagues who altered the data given to entire national Governments to fit the propaganda, then I don't think so called independents who work for NASA will have had a problem doing the same. The suspicion has to be that if little old UAE were fiddling the figures, that all the Government-sponsored acadamics working for gigantic NASA were probably doing the same! Good grief! How stupid does this guy think we are?

As one commentor on Damian Thompson's blog has hilariously suggested, right now, the most popular activity in all the climate institutes is illustrated below.

Delete files Y/N ? Yes

Telegraph Editor Rehabilitates Oily Toe Rag...

...and receives a barrage of angry comments from the readers of his newspaper.

Sir Charles Moore has defended Peter Mandelson who he claims has been hanging around with the Rothschilds and Colonel Gadaffi's son at the Rothschild mansion in Waddesdon. There we have it. Peter Mandelson: The low-life who just can't get enough of the high life. But such social events are above board, of course, because the Rothschilds have no history of influencing Governments, social or economic policies so there's no conflict of interest there.

Oh, what's this? From the Financial Times in June 2009.

'Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the banking family's 19th-century patriarch, and James William Freshfield, founder of Freshfields, the top City law firm, benefited financially from slavery, records from the National Archives show, even though both have often been portrayed as opponents of slavery.'

But that was then and this is now and these vested financial and political interests died long ago, thank God! Oh, what's this? From March 2009, courtesy of PR Newswire?

'Rothschild Australia and E3 International are set to become key players in the international carbon credit trading market, an emerging commodity market that analysts estimate could be worth up to US$150 billion by 2012.'

Hmmm. Yes, I suppose that in the light of the Climategate scandal, Mandelson and the trillionaire might have had some things to talk over. So called 'conspiracy theorists' are often castigated for asserting that our politicians do not act on our behalf, but on behalf of a very powerful group of dynasties interested in furthering only their agenda, wealth and power at the expense of everybody else's freedom and quality of life. So it is that when chaps like me read this in The Times, alarm bells ring.

In August 2009 The Times reported...

'A radical plan to raise £100 billion by privatising the motorway network has been presented to the three main political parties by NM Rothschild, the influential investment bank. Rothschild, an architect of several privatisations, made its pitch in the weeks running up to the summer recess on July 21, Whitehall sources said. Bankers told leading politicians that the sale of the roads overseen by the Highways Agency — all motorways and most big trunk roads — could help revive battered public finances.'

Mandelson, the man who would be king, the pretender to the throne and architect of New Labour is consorting with a member of one of these powerful dynasties - the Rothschilds and in a bizarre footnote, the son of the Libyan dictator who embarassed the Government only this year with the return of the Lockerbie bomber! Such things are bound to make those who trust the Government as far as they can throw them more than a little concerned, because, frankly, I very much doubt that pertinent political, social and economic issues of the day were overlooked during the 'social engagement' and furthermore, dear Catholic editor of The Telegraph, this is why men like Peter Mandelson infuriate us - He does not speak or act as a parliamentarian on our behalf at all!

Wave Goodbye to Climate Change and Embrace the Gospel

Fr Phillip Neri Powell, has mused on his blog, that 'one element of the Globo-Warmist fraud that hasn't been covered is the impact these revelations will have on certain eco-dogmas that have seeped into the Church. Many religious orders have wholeheartedly embraced "Saving Earth" as the 21st-century equivalent to "Saving Pagan Babies."'

The Diocese of Arundel and Brighton is consistently bombarding parishes with campaigns like the one above, in which it is clear that the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ has been subsumed into a secular obsession so that it no longer reads as Save the Planets Souls campaign and into a Save the Planet campaign which, if nothing else, does absolutely nothing concrete for the poor, the imprisoned, the hungry, the thirsty the rejected and outcast of society on whom Our Lord told us to base our works of mercy. By our love, He said, men would know that we are His disciples.

Furthermore, while the Vatican has acted to make itself more 'green', the Holy Father has concentrated his statements on human ecology, the culture of life, the destructive effects of human self-interest, greed, lust and sin and the need to stand firmly against the culture of death. This is the Gospel. What the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton sends to parish churches is quite simply, not!

The 'Strict Irish Catholic Upbringing'

Pete Doherty, whose father is of Irish descent, apparently had a 'strict Catholic upbringing'. The troubled singer who has more Rosary beads than a pilgrim shop in Lourdes continues to battle against his addiction to heroin. He strikes me as being one who is always exorcising his ghosts from his past. The love that Our Lord and Our Blessed Lady have for God's children was impressed so much upon him during his 'strict Catholic upbringing' that more recently he's been getting into Scientology. The singer Morrissey, also of Irish Catholic descent clearly had such a gentle introduction to the Irish Catholic's 'How to Love God' course during his upbringing that he recently penned a piece entitled, 'I Have Forgiven Jesus', the end verse of which goes...

'Jesus - Do you hate me?/Why did you stick me in/Self-deprecating bones and skin/Do you hate me?/Do you hate me?/Do you hate me?/Do you hate me?/Do you hate me?'

Of course, Our Lord doesn't hate him, but hey, that's how it feels to be an Irish Catholic.

I remember from a trip to Dublin, going to the Dublin Writers Museum and reading the biographies of the famous Irish writers like Shaw, Yeats and Pearse and learning of how there was a giant streak of suspicion of the Church and anti-Catholicism running through their lives and their works. I don't think that it is wrong to say that more modern accounts of Irish life like 'Angela's Ashes' by Frank McCourt showed a rather grim portrait of Irish Catholicism, not because he was author was anti-Catholic, but because he was depicting it as it was.

Joyce's 'Dubliners' etched out that coldness of Irish religion also, as well as the political undercurrent of anti-colonial hatred. There seems to be a brutalism, a dehumanising force, a depiction of God so paralysing, running through Irish Catholicism's blood, that it leaves the children of the Church not so much with vestiges of 'Catholic guilt', as Catholic fear, terror and panic attacks which eventually put them off God for life.

Conspiracy Theories Are Catholic

After the Latin Mass tonight I was challenged by other parishioners on conspiracy theories after I said, "Nobody has done more harm to the 9/11 truth movement than Bishop Richard Williamson." This is, of course, because he is a rabid Holocaust revisionist, with as much credibility as his Holocaust-denying friend David Irving and all you have to do to admit that the Holocaust happened and it was evil on an industrial scale is to go to Google and type the word, 'Holocaust'.

Personally, I don't belong to any of the new 9/11, climate change or 7/7 'truth movements'. There is only one 'Truth movement' and that is the Catholic Church. Yet, it is hard not to sympathise with such secular 'truth movements'. As human beings we have a yearning for truth and a yearning for the Truth, the Truth that is Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Church, for Christ and His Church can never be separated. People of faith and none have a natural repugnance for lies, even if we ourselves have been guilty of indulging in a few in our time.

We are told by Our Lord in the Gospel that the Devil is the 'father of lies' and Our Lord wills that we should hate lies, spin, cover-ups and deceit, for where there are lies, there is the enemy of truth, the Devil and out of love for God we should will that he be cast down into Hell so that he may not secure the ruin of a single soul.

Truth, therefore, and the exposure of lies for what they are, is, or at least should be, a burning passion of the Catholic. Charity may cover a multitude of sins, but Charity does not cover a multitude of lies. Therefore, we should condemn the actions of the Church and State in Ireland for the cover up of abuse and scandalising of the Faithful and pray for the healing of all those concerned.

Furthermore, while keeping a healthy optimism in the innate goodness of human nature, we should not be so naive as to think that people in power and authority do not tell massive porkers because it is convenient to an agenda. Those with authority in the Church in Ireland who covered up the scandal did so because they didn't want individuals to be found out or the reputation of the Church to suffer and now here we are in 2009 with Her reputation in Ireland destroyed and the Church suffering. It was a conspiracy. A web of lies and deceit.

Now, if those charged by Christ to govern and minister to the Church are capable of such, I ask you, how much more corrupt are those worldly institutions who have no recourse to the laws of God at all. Charlie Sheen was ridiculed by many in the press for asking Obama to launch a fresh investigation into 9/11, despite the fact that he must be the only Hollywood actor who isn't a Scientologist. The actor, whose father, Martin, ironically took his stage name from Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, is within his rights to ask questions like, "Hang on. How did Mohammed Atta's passport survive the inferno in mint condition, but the black boxes didn't?"

All those Americans (and the bereaved families) are doing is asking the Government for an independent public inquiry on what really happened on the day of September 11 2001. They are asking for the truth and guess what, they got the 9/11 Commission, which failed to address the fact that in what the government describes as a "bizarre coincidence", one U.S. intelligence agency was planning an exercise on that day in which an errant aircraft would crash into one of its buildings!

All those British people (and the bereaved families) are doing is asking the Government for an independent public enquiry into what really happened on 7th July 2005. They are asking for the truth and guess what? The Government will not grant them an inquiry. Tony Blair, a man we no longer associate with sincerity or integrity, described the calls for an inquiry as a 'ludicrous diversion' despite the fact that events of that day do not add up and in what the government probably describe as a "bizarre coincidence", a 'private company' was running a training exercise in which the same tube stations which they would be 'defending', were actually bombed!

You see, in order for truth to out, you need to take not so much a 'ludicrous diversion' as an inconvenient and uncomfortable one. All in all, it's a bit like Confession, where we put our hands up and say, "Yep, You got me, Lord have mercy!". We are Catholics. We are people of the Truth and we should be people who demand the truth from our elected representatives, even if they have already legislated, rather conveniently in 2005, in the Inquries Act (2005) that government ministers have the power to suppress embarrassing information, in legislation which at the time prompted one US Republican Representative, Chris Smith, to exclaim, "The bill pending before the British Parliament should be named the 'Public Inquiries Cover-up Bill.'"

The proof of the pudding as to which 'smoking guns' really exist will be in who gets arrested and placed in 'prolongued detention' over the coming months and years. The rhetoric coming from the Obama administration is that people who ask too many questions on healthcare, governmental versions of events and the erosion and removal of civil liberties is that they are 'conservative terrorists'. The Catholic Church, which should be a thorn in the side of corrupt and wicked governments could very well come under that description in the future. We should, therefore, sympathise with anyone who is persecuted in their pursuit of justice and truth, because, in all truth, we know how it feels to be labelled a 'nutjob' just because we believe in Christ, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life!

Anglicans Turn on Anglicans who like Anglicanorum Coetibus

Courtesy of Damian Thompson

I think the vandals were trying to say that the Church of England doesn't have a Pope, but the Anglicans at St Saviours knew that already, telling reporters, "Why are they so angry? We know that the Archbishop of Canterbury is not so much a Pope as a kind of liberal, philosopher-wizard figure."

Manhattan Declaration Taking Internet by Storm

The Manhattan Declaration, not to be confused with the Manhattan Cocktail, now has 150,000 signatories. If you haven't done so already, click here to get them up to a million.

Government Kidnaps UK's Children

You know those children of yours. You thought they were your children. Well, not anymore!

The UK Government has just ran off with them in a car, tempting them with hard-boiled sweets and mumbling something about puppies, only to get them home, tie them to a chair, shower them with condoms and tell them about masturbation, oral sex and sodomy. You think the Irish Church is bad...Well, get a load of our Government!

According to Life Site News, you are no longer allowed to give your child homeschooling and in a nutshell, you can't legally stop your child from having sex education at 5 years of age.

Misanthrope Calls for Culling of People

"Look. Wouldn't this picture look better if half of these people were eliminated and the surviving people would then more space? Plus, there'd be less emissions! If we then take this to the scale of a whole country, we can see that this model would have the same results on a countrywide basis. Then, let's look at the model when you look at it globally. If we reduce the number of people globally then..."

Johnathon Porrit, patron of the absurdly named Optimum Population Trust, who has such a high regard for people that he spends his life telling the World we need to eliminate more of them, has called for the UK population to fall to 30m so we can save the planet. It's amazing what diabolical ideologies a man can come up with this global warming/climate change stuff. Porrit, who clearly has gone slightly mad, is a Government adviser, by the way.

Porrit: "The planet's heating up, if we don't act soon, people will die."

Brown: "Oh my God! That's awful! What should we do?"

Porrit: "There's only one answer. Get rid of more people."

Brown: "Say, what?"

Is it me or are so called 'green' people just Nazis who like the countryside?

I know this sounds horrid and uncharitable, but if I ever saw him in a pub, I don't think I'd be able to overcome the temptation to walk up to him and kick him in the bollocks while making some reference to my hope that there was going to be one or possibly two less eugenicists in the World as a result. I dunno. Maybe he can't get it up or something and he's just taking his frustration out on everyone else...

See how easy it is for religious people to turn nasty?

The Church in Ireland

The Catholic Church in Ireland has been crucified from within. The seeds of destruction were planted by those who in ordained authority who gave free reign to their perversions and temptations, their heresy and their cold brutality, reducing the Church to One from whom men turn away their faces in shame.

Like Christ, She is scourged by the sins of men, and her crown is a Crown of Thorns, a crown not of glory and honour, but of contempt and scorn. Exposed, naked, She now bears the sins of many within and without. Reduced to poverty and derided by men, She becomes an outcast, sorrowful and afflicted and ascends with the heavy burden of sin to Golgotha, where her enemies rejoice at Her failure and Her crucifixion at the hands of men.

What was done in secret, what remained hidden is now shouted from the rooftops. Yet, it is only within the Light of Christ that good can come from this evil. The Blood which poured from from the Heart of Jesus was poured out for those who abused their power also and injured the innocent. Only in that same Heart can the victims find their true recompense, healing and the strength to forgive their abusers, for no amount of money can make satisfaction for innocence lost.

May the Crucified Christ, ravaged, bloodied and torn, Whose Body was broken on the Cross on account of our sins, help the Irish Church, broken and crucified by poor sinners. May the same Light that now reveals a catalogue of sins, cleanse the Church. May the Resurrection renew the hearts and souls of the all the Faithful into the Image of the tender and loving Redeemer.



Pray for the Church in Ireland. For the Church in Ireland incorporates the victims, the abusers, those who covered it up and important to remember, the blameless also.

The 'Manhattan Declaration' Causes a Stir

Fr Ray Blake's post on the Manhattan Declaration, not to be confused with the Manhattan Project, the results of which are pictured above has already received criticism from one commentator. The commentator's criticisms of the Church, or those who speak in Her name, primarily, Her Pope, Bishops and Clergy, and secondarily, mad blogging Laity is as follows...

Why do Christians, especially traditionalist Catholics, always sound so pompous when they get onto their moral high horse?

Sorry, I was just getting my foot caught in the stirrups. If there's a moral high horse to be mounted, we're there, bro! We strive to speak the Truth, to proclaim the Truth and to speak it with Charity, even if, as frail and sinful creatures we fail daily to live up to it. Hence we fall off the horse, go to Confession, get back on and start striving to witness to the Gospel again.

The one they claim to follow allowed himself to be intimated into silence and to have his conscience violated by earthly powers regardless of the consequences to himself. Can his followers expect anything better?

The One we follow, or strive to follow, even if our efforts are often so feeble, allowed Himself to be handed over to the wicked to be crucified and to die in atonement for the sins of the whole World. At no point was He 'intimidated into silence' but He allowed, by His free choice, the power of evil, during His Passion, to snuff out the Light of the World - Himself. Death, however, had no power over Him and the Heavenly Father raised Him from the dead to reign as Eternal King, Judge and Saviour of mankind. Can we expect anything better? Well, what with this country being Our Lady's Dowry, converted by St Augustine of Canterbury and his monks, at the behest of Pope St Gregory the Great, one would have thought so, but then, this is a different age and the Church is now and will be in grave danger. Still, if the worst comes to the worst, Our Lord warned His followers, "If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you" and if ever the Church in the UK faces the kind of 'silencing' that involves pillows over mouths then those who die will receive the crown of Martyrdom.

Why should they think they can stand on their rights?

Rights? From whence do they come if they have come not from God? Like the right of the unborn to live, for example.

And rather than setting up oppositions between their supposed moral superiority and contemporary society why do they not seek out and co-operate with the real goodness that is found in the world at large? Christians have no monopoly on truth or goodness. They will not be listened to until they imitate their founder in his humble lack of self-righteousness.'

Catholics are all for co-operation. Unfortunately, however, the 'discussion' is a one way street and the Church is ignored. For evidence see the Abortion Act (1967) and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (2008). It doesn't matter what the Church says, the Government does it anyway and that tends to go for the US, the UK and the EU. You berate the Church and Christians for displaying a lack of humility. Yet, where is the humility of those in public office who lay siege to the laws of God?

Catholics must surely know by now how heartily detested the Church is these days.

Yep. We're picking up a general 'vibe'.

The more we stand on our rights and issue pompous statements of what we will and will not tolerate, the more people will come back at us and say, 'Don't you dare to lecture us when you are riddled with paedophiliac abuse and other scandals.' If we want a right to be heard we have to earn it, and the only way we can do so is by imitating Our Lord's example of humble unselfrighteous service.

Unfortunately, we cannot, dear brother, wait until we are Saints in order to proclaim the Gospel. Our time is short and as for the World? Well, we never know when Our Lord will return to judge us on our words, deeds, actions and omissions, nor do we know the hour of our own death. Time is short. Let us serve the Lord in sincerity, truth and love! As for those who abused children in their care, entrust them to God's mercy because from what Our Lord said of those who scandalise the child, they're going to need it, but then, who am I to judge their fate, when my own sins are so grave and I have nothing to defend my soul, save God's mercy?

Yes, so I read the Passion story. Our Lord allowed himself to be reduced to impotence and silence and clearly did not consider whether his conscience would permit acquiescing in the terribly unjust treatment meted out to him. He rejected the option of having his disciples fight in his "just" cause - and of course in doing so shows his true authority. Would that his followers imitated his model of humility.

While Our Lord was quick to tell St. Peter to put away his sword, I don't think the Lord was too happy when St. Peter denied him thrice. Still, we all know the rest of the story and it is still true that if Holy Mother Church denied Him today, the Lord would be just as upset. For if the Truth were not preached, how would men know they needed to go to Confession to receive God's mercy and make a firm purpose of amendment?

Sadly, Fr. Blake, if we do not always live the truth we proclaim people will not listen to our proclamation. Being and saying must go together. This is really my point, that proclamations costing nothing to make will not impress when people see the Church as authoritarian, judgmental and condemnatory - in short very unChristlike.

Yes, its important that we love as Christ called us to love. It is important we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, shelter the homeless, bury the dead and pray for the living and the dead. That does not mean we remain silent while injustice prevails.

People love and admire Christ and will listen to him...but see the Church and its leaders as being exactly like the Pharisees Christ condemns who do not practise what they preach. This is why they will not be guided by them and why the Church does have to earn a right to speak for Christ.

Some people love and admire Christ, others love and worship Him as their Redeemer and Best Friend. For He is the kind of Friend who doesn't kick you when you're down. The kind of Friend who picks you up when you fall. The kind of Friend who listens to your Confession of sin and your misery and crowns you with His merciful love and then gives you His very Body, Blood, Soul, Humanity and Divinity afterwards, sealing you with His tender mercy and His Salvation. All this He does through His Priests, His Bishops and yes, His Pope too, whether they be great sinners or whether they be great Saints. The Church does not have to earn a right to speak for Christ, for He has commanded the Church to speak in His Name and I must say, Pope Benedict XVI and Fr Ray Blake, for that matter, are doing it rather well. Many have caused great scandal in their ministry and done harm to many individuals in the abuse scandal, but that, I have to say, is an entirely different matter.

Polish Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady Mother of the Church

That said, with regard to modern Churches and architecture, I rather like this. It is simple but very reverent. The Blessed Sacrament is housed firmly in the centre, where He should be, with a beautiful relief of Angels adoring the King of Kings in the Tabernacle.

The Church is a Polish Catholic Church ran by the Marian Fathers in Ealing, London. I attended the Polish Mass there on Sunday evening and obviously, while I don't know Polish, the Mass was very reverently said and the liturgy good.

While there, however, I couldn't help thinking, "Another reason for the Latin Mass..."

The Church, as the Universal Church, used latin in the liturgy for so long and as many readers who view this blog will appreciate, that meant that you could go to any Church in any country or any city and you would be hearing the same liturgy in every one. Therefore, once people of all tongues had the hang of the Latin Mass, it was uniform, standard and everyone could understand it.

I'm no expert at latin, far from it, but the Latin Mass Society produce Mass books with english translations on every page for the layman and I'm sure they could, or someone else does, a Polish translation of the Latin Mass. Just a thought. More of the Latin Mass and you would also have more harmony and integration between British and Polish worshippers...Just a thought.

Anyway, whoever came up with this, well done and it just goes to show that not all modern artists/architects behave like crackheads when they're asked to design a church interior.

Time for the Blairs to go into hiding before they get one?

"Holiday, darling?"

I was wondering why he and Cherie had bought all those houses! Looks like he's going to need a safe haven! Former British Ambassador to the US, Sir Christopher Meyer drops Tony Blair right in it and from a great height too.

Courtesy of The Times

Blair 'signed in blood' support for Iraq war at Bush's Texas ranch, ex-envoy says

Tony Blair's meeting with President Bush at his Texas ranch in 2002 was probably the turning point when the Prime Minister 'signed in blood' Britain's support for the Iraq war, it was claimed today. Sir Christopher Meyer, then British Ambassador to the US, told the Iraq Inquiry that Mr Blair would have been more influential if he had attached pre-conditions to British support at the Crawford ranch meeting - which was six months before Hans Blix began looking for weapons in Iraq.

“I think that would have changed the nature of American planning,” he said. “By the time you get to the end of the year it’s too late. . . I did say to London that we’re being taken for granted. To this day I am not entirely clear what degree of convergence was, if you like, signed in blood at the Crawford ranch,” Sir Christopher said. “[But] they weren’t there to talk about containment or strengthening sanctions."

The high point of Britain’s influence on Washington amounted to “bugger all” and a stronger Prime Minister like Margaret Thatcher could have done more, he told the inquiry. Sir Christopher, who was the ambassador in Washington between 1997 and 2003, said he often thinks: "What would Margaret Thatcher have done? I think she would have insisted on a coherent diplomatic and political strategy."

He denied, though that Britain’s foreign policy was dictated by Washington. “I wouldn’t say that it was as extreme poodle-ish as that,” he said. “I don’t think that is a fair comment.” Sir Christopher told Sir John Chilcot and his five fellow panellists that the high point of Britain’s influence on the Bush Administration was encouraging President Bush to publish a road map on the Middle East but that “led to bugger all, let’s be frank”.

He said that after the September 11 attacks, the atmosphere changed in Washington. Condoleezza Rice, President Bush’s national security adviser at the time, was the first person he heard mention Iraq on September 11. He said that “by the following weekend that turned into a major debate at Camp David” – it developed into a bit of a “ding-dong”.

Over the next two months, Sir Christopher said the Bush Administration had decided on a new course over Iraq. “What was inevitable, [after 9/11] I think, was that the Americans were going to bust a gut on the mandate of regime change.” He said that up until that moment there was a lack of real impetus over Iraq, which he said was more of “a grumbling appendix”.

The only pressing concern for the US was what would happen if an American plane was shot down policing the “no-fly zones” over Iraq. He summarised their view as: “If they shot down one of our planes, we’ll kick the s**t out of them for doing it.” After September 11, Mr Bush became convinced that more direct action was required. “In his heart he just wanted to get over there and kick Saddam out.”

Sir Christopher said he had informed London in the subsequent months that the Bush Administration was heading for enforced regime change. “We were watching this stuff like hawks,” he said. “The Foreign Office, I don’t think they can claim they were ignorant of the way things were going.” He said the only discussion now was on defining the route to war, with Britain pushing for a multilateral – UN led approach. “You didn’t have to argue that with the State Department but you sure as hell had to argue it with Cheney and Rumsfeld and to a lesser extent Condoleezza Rice.”

Once the US had agreed to wait for the UN to pass resolution 1441 on weapons in Iraq and sent Mr Blix over to inspect, there was no time to come up with the evidence required before the scheduled start of the invasion. “The real problem, which I did draw several times to the attention of London, was that the contingency military timetable had been decided before the UN inspectors went in under Hans Blix. So you found yourself in a situation in the autumn of 2002 where you could not synchronise the military timetable with the inspection timetable. We found ourselves scrabbling around for the smoking gun,” he said. “And we - the Americans, the British - have never really recovered from that because of course there was no smoking gun.”

What with the Iraq enquiry, the MPs expenses scandal and now the climate-gate fiasco bringing some much needed truth to the political arena, one begins to wonder whether there is a general politicial cleansing movement gathering speed...

World Service Covers Papal Meeting with Contemporary Artists

They don't make them like they used to...

BBC World Service covered Pope Benedict XVI's meeting with contemporary artists last night and you can listen to it here. The Holy Father told the collection of largely hopeless nihilists, wasters and blaggers that account for 'modern artists'...

'You are the custodians of beauty: thanks to your talent, you have the opportunity to speak to the heart of humanity, to touch individual and collective sensibilities, to call forth dreams and hopes, to broaden the horizons of knowledge and of human engagement. Be grateful, then, for the gifts you have received and be fully conscious of your great responsibility to communicate beauty, to communicate in and through beauty!

Through your art, you yourselves are to be heralds and witnesses of hope for humanity! And do not be afraid to approach the first and last source of beauty, to enter into dialogue with believers, with those who, like yourselves, consider that they are pilgrims in this world and in history towards infinite Beauty! Faith takes nothing away from your genius or your art: on the contrary, it exalts them and nourishes them, it encourages them to cross the threshold and to contemplate with fascination and emotion the ultimate and definitive goal, the sun that does not set, the sun that illumines this present moment and makes it beautiful.'

Which is great. Hopefully they've got the message and we'll see an end to crucified frogs, revolting churches and Paul Inwood's near monopoly on church music. I like the bit in the World Service report where the narrator says, "The Pope made a very long speech," and then doesn''t air the Holy Father actually speaking!

For once, I fear, the Holy Father is wasting his time. The age of the holy, God-graced genius is over. The vast chasm of theological understanding, sheer raw talent, passion for the Sacred and yearning to express the Divine through art exhibited in Bernini, Zurburan and Palestrina in previous centuries and what artists produce now could not be wider. Or, I don't know, maybe it's like the gap between the rich and the poor...as time goes by, it just gets bigger. Good on the Holy Father for trying though. It's like Caritas in Veritate and Deus Caritas Est where Pope Benedict XVI says something eminently profound and sensible, but the World? The World won't listen.

Anyway, as long as Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse got to the airport in time for their flight to Rome, that's the main thing...

The Manhattan Declaration

The political touch paper, the Manhatten Declaration, not to be confused with Woody Allen's charming neuro-flick has been lit and gone viral, so I may as well add to the encouraging virus. It's a good idea, a bold statement and it reads like a, 'Come on then, if you think you're hard enough!' to the Obama administration.

A Call of Christian Conscience

Christians, when they have lived up to the highest ideals of their faith, have defended the weak and vulnerable and worked tirelessly to protect and strengthen vital institutions of civil society, beginning with the family.

We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:

1. the sanctity of human life
2. the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
3. the rights of conscience and religious liberty.


Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them. We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Click here to sign it.

Telegraph Columnist Gives it to Supreme Court with Interest!

I wanted to post on this and still may do, but Gerald Warner has beat me to it and he has a much larger readership! I for one, had a 'vested interest' in this ruling as I get charged £60 a month for my overdraft and I get £60 a week. I heard on the radio yesterday that the Bank of England secretly gave RBS and Lloyds another massive bailout this year and didn't tell anyone...The banks get 'financial help' and we get shafted by the banks. Crackin'!

Courtesy of The Telegraph

Thank you, Supreme Court: now our votes are on offer to the party that will crucify the banks.

'So, now we know. The highest court in the land thinks it is perfectly equitable and moral for banks routinely to charge customers £35 for a transaction that costs them £2.50. It believes an automatic charge of £12 for inadvertently going 10p over the agreed overdraft limit – followed by daily penal charges – is how British institutions should do business.

It has benevolently nodded through every exaction, penalty and shameless scam that the fertile minds of the barrow boys in pinstriped threads can devise. I don’t know about you, but I preferred them in the days when they wore tricorne hats with masks that made them look panda-eyed and shouted “Stand and deliver!”

This is the landmark ruling of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom at the climax of its long 56-day history as the ultimate arbiter of justice in Britain. It is true that its ruling contradicted the views of the High Court, the Appeal Court and every seven-year-old who could recite the Ten Commandments, but never forget it was a technical ruling. So let’s hear no unsporting and uninformed complaints from ignorant laymen, just because they have been robbed of a few thousand pounds. Once again, the sophisticated interpretation has triumphed.

And the sophisticates are out in force to applaud this triumph of sophisticated technicality over outdated financial morality. Never forget, they tell us, that there are eight times as many bank customers who have never gone into the red as there are of those feckless borrowers. You know the kind of undisciplined prodigals I mean: small businessmen trying to keep afloat in a sea of government red tape, buffeted by a recession, burning midnight oil, acquiring ulcers while their wives succumb to heart conditions; family men trying to keep the show on the road – that type of distasteful shyster whose conduct is so keenly reprehended by sober-suited bank managers...'

[For full article click here]

The Church of God

In the Archbishop's address at a Willebrands Symposium in Rome, Archbishop Rowan Williams said:

"Since the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, the Roman Catholic Church has been involved in a number of dialogues with other churches – including with the Anglican Communion – which have produced a very considerable number of agreed statements. This legacy has been brought together in a recent publication by the Vatican department to promote Christian Unity, whose first President during and after Vatican II, Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, is justly and happily celebrated in today's centenary conference. Let me give an outline of what I want to say in the half an hour or so available. The strong convergence in these agreements about what the Church of God really is, is very striking.”

The Archbishop then went on to list, at length these theological points at which the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church give each other a little nod in agreement in another one of his excruciatingly tiresome sermons.

In a more broad perspective, however, can it really be argued that ‘the strong convergence in these agreements about what the Church of God really is, is very striking’, in the light of the modern Anglican Communion.

The Catholic answer should, unfortunately, be a resounding, ‘No!’
Why?

The answer should be a resounding ‘No!’, because it has become more and more apparent to all believers and to those who do not believe, that the Anglican vision of God appears to be very different to the Catholic vision of God.

It is the story of bad parenting and good parenting and as we know, God should be the best and ultimate Father, which, as Catholics, we know that He is.

The ‘Anglican God’, the ‘Father’ is a rather woolly figure who dotes on His children and spoils them without giving them any boundaries, while at the same time, appearing to be rather ambivalent and indifferent to His children’s behaviour. He’s kind of like an absent Dad, whose gone down the pub and left the kids at home alone to get along and do what kids do. So, the kids are messing around and the Anglican God gets home, isn’t really too bothered that they’re up to no good, turns a blind eye and says, ‘Well, they’re having fun, let them do what they want.’ This is reflected in the modern Anglican Church’s inability to stand up and, in full agreement, state categorically that sex outside of marriage, adultery, divorce and remarriage, homosexual acts, masturbation, artificial contraception and abortion are grave and serious offences, that is, mortal sins, to Almighty God.

The ‘Catholic God’, the ‘Eternal Father’, on the other hand appears to be rather severe and strict in His view of what constitutes acceptable behaviour and what does not. So, it is that the Catholic Church teaches sex outside of marriage, divorce and remarriage, homosexual acts, artificial contraception, adultery, masturbation and abortion to be sinful, grave offences to Almighty God. Yet, at the same time, the Catholic God, the Eternal Father, is a Good Parent because when one of His children commits any number or one of these offences, the same God, through the Priest absolves the child of his offence and forgives him because of the Eternal Offering of His Beloved Son on Calvary. That, in a nutshell, is Christianity – or at least, that, in a nutshell, is True Christianity.

Now, it may be that some of the Bishops of England and Wales are a little slack in preaching this Eternal Truth and have to have Rome call them every now to ask them to apologise to the Faithful for not preaching this Eternal Truth with clarity, but at least the Catholic Church has a Magisterium which states, quite categorically, the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ and sets out a Standard of human behaviour which, though we may fall short of it, is to be strived for with the Grace of God and with the help of His Sacraments, of Baptism, Confession and the Holy Eucharist to name just three of the seven Sacraments which the founder of the Anglican Church once defended aided by the friend and confidant he had murdered, St Thomas More.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter that the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church can agree on some finer points of theology, or agree even on the Person of Our Lord Jesus Christ, His Humanity and His Divinity.

• Only one of these Churches reiterates and represents the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
• Only one of these Churches proclaims God’s Justice and God’s Mercy in one and the same breath.
• Only one of these Churches proclaims Salvation to the World and preaches the forgiveness of sins.
• Only one of these Churches was established by Our Lord Jesus Christ, sent, as He was, by the Almighty and Eternal Father to redeem the World, not to condemn it, but to save it!

This Church is the Catholic Church.

The God of the Anglican Church doesn’t care.

The God of the Anglican Church does not even care about the Salvation of His children.

The God of the Anglican Church is playing bridge down the pub with His mates while His children become embroiled in sin and then when He gets home he goes to bed and forgets all about them.

The God of the Catholic Church stays up waiting for them to come and apologise so that He can forgive them, heal them and let them find refuge in Him so that they can sleep peacefully.

If you were a non-believer and I don’t rule out that you have stumbled on this blog from somewhere, then I ask you, if you were on your death-bed and you wanted a Priest to hear your Confession, who would you ask to be fetched, a Catholic Priest or an Anglican vicar?

Within the answer to that question you have the answer to the question: ‘Which Church does the secular British public take seriously and which church do they not take seriously at all?’

Pray for the New European President...

...for he is not what he appears. There was, in the kitchen after the Traditional Latin Mass last Friday, some excitement over what appeared to be the appointment of a sound and orthodox Catholic to the position of EU President, a Mr Herman Van Rompuy. Everybody cheered when he got in primarily because he wasn't Tony Blair...or so we thought.

Some lamented over the fact that the President's role will be titular and therefore a loyal son fo the Church would find it impossible to block the next wave of anti-Life, anti-Christian legislation which will surely emanate from the heart of Brussels, while others suggested that the new head of Europe could be effective in 'fighting the good fight' in Europe and be 'the Pope's man', i.e someone who was for example, pro-Life and pro-religious freedom and liberty.

Unfortunately, it appears that Herman Van Rompuy is not all that he seems. Who, one would rightly ask, in politics, especially at the highest level of politics, could be? For only the worldly wise and those willing to sell the Faith down the Loire could possibly rise to the top?

Well, the stridently Protestant blogger, Cranmer, who is included in my blog list for the sole fact that he does write some interesting articles even though he's a Protestant, alerted his readers to the new President's Bilderberg connections.

On the 22nd November The Telegraph reported the following:

Mr Van Rompuy, 62, who was appointed to the newly-created £320,000-a-year post at last week's special EU summit, set out his stall on direct Euro-taxes during a private speech at a recent meeting of the Bilderberg group of top politicians, bankers and businessmen. The group officially meets in secret, but when selected details of his remarks leaked out, his office was forced to issue a public statement on his behalf.

"The financing of the welfare state, irrespective of the social reform we implement, will require new resources," he said. "The possibility of financial levies at European level needs to be seriously reviewed."

To anyone who has not heard of Bilderberg, the loose association of the very powerful, Bilderberg is a collection of highly influential, hugely wealthy men and women who meet, secretly, every year to discuss how to make the World work in the way in which they deem fit. Cue conspiracy theories concerning using global warming, flu and terror to subject the populations of the World to a New World Order, global currency and global government which has fundamentalist Christians and even sensible Catholics scrambling for the Revelations of St John the Divine. They comprise of men and women from finance, politics, the media, technology, science and the rest. The very idea that the new President should emerge from a Bilderberg meeting stating his case for Europe as President and that this information should have slipped into the public domain should set alarm bells ringing for those with concerns about the democratic deficit/chasm which exists in Europe. There is nothing democratic about Bilderberg - nothing of the shadowy meetings is officially published. There is nothing democratic about the position of EU President either, since his office is unelected. He is, if you like, Europe's 'chosen one', except no European citizen chose him and it is clear, having emerged from a Bilderberg meeting that he belongs not to the Church but to a cabal of very wealthy and frankly rather insidious people and it is this group who are 'pulling the strings'.

The same men and women who are associated with the shadowy organisation are associated with eugenics, abortion, population-control, the 'gay' political movement and all those things of which Holy Mother Church says, "Down with this sort of thing!" Therefore, the loyal Catholic's hope that Van Rompuy will be 'the Church's man' in Brussels should be tempered by the news that he's a man of very divided loyalties.

Paul Belien of The Brussels Journal: The Voice of Conservatism in Europe penned a recent post claiming that he knows the 'man of the moment' well from his time as a political journalist who wrote for the Belgian press and wrote freelance for The Wall Street Journal. Apparently, and you know I hate to gossip, but Paul Belien writes...

'Our paths crossed at intervals until 1990, when the Belgian Parliament voted a very liberal abortion bill. The Belgian King Baudouin (1930-1993), a devout Catholic who suffered from the fact that he and his wife could not have any children, had told friends that he would “rather abdicate than sign the bill.” The Belgian politicians, convinced that the King was bluffing, did not want the Belgian people to know about the King’s objections to the bill. I wrote about this on the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal and was subsequently reprimanded by the Belgian newspaper I worked for, following an angry telephone call from the then Belgian Prime Minister, a Christian-Democrat, to my editor, who was this Prime Minister’s former spokesman. I was no longer allowed to write about Belgian affairs for foreign newspapers.

In April 1990, the King did in fact abdicate over the abortion issue, and the Christian-Democrat Party, led by Herman Van Rompuy, who had always prided himself on being a good Catholic, had one of Europe’s most liberal abortion bills signed by the college of ministers, a procedure provided by the Belgian Constitution for situations when there is no King. Then they had the King voted back on the throne the following day. I wrote about the whole affair in a critical follow-up article [Read it! It is fascinating if rather shocking and saddening!] for The Wall Street Journal and was subsequently fired by my newspaper “for grievous misconduct”. A few weeks later, I met Herman at the wedding of a mutual friend. I approached him for a chat. I could see he felt very uncomfortable. He avoided eye contact and broke off the conversation as soon as he could. We have not spoken since.

The same writer, who doesn't appear to have a personal agenda, says of Mr Van Rompuy:

"Herman is like Saruman, the wise wizard in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, who went over to the other side. He used to care about the things we cared about. But no longer. He has built himself a high tower from where he rules over all of us."

So, in conclusion, while it is too early to call on whether the new head of the European-Dream-Cum-Horrendous Secular Nightmare will defend human life and take a stand for all the values the Church holds dear, such as the protection of religious, national and cultural identity, the defense of the unborn and their inviolable right to Life and the defense of the institutions of Marriage and the Family, early investigation of the monastery-hopping, 'I'm so Catholic, me!' Van Rompoy does not appear to look good, with even a tiny bit of preliminary 'googling'. Pray for him because having read just one or two articles on his rise to presidential power it looks very much like after all the fuss...Tony Blair got the job after all!

Times Columnist: People with Learning Disabilities Shouldn't Marry and Have Children

Minette Marrin of The Times has penned a piece which, dressed in honeyed words, reveals her to be a Nazi old piece of work...

'When my little sister was a child in the 1960s, we never said to her that she was mentally handicapped; no one in our family would ever have considered doing so. One day, though, when she was about 10, she received a visit from a social worker, as she did occasionally, perhaps because my mother was receiving money from the council, and this person left my sister in tears.

"She says I’m mentally handicapped,” said my sister, sobbing.

“What does that mean?” I asked, hoping the social worker had not said anything even more upsetting. “She says it means I can never get married and have children...”'

Read here for Marrin's compassionate feelings on the subject...I'll leave comments to commenters. Personally, I'm appalled. Her line of reasoning runs thusly...The State has less money because its a recession and there are bound to be cuts, so stop supporting people with learning disabilities who try to have a family because its expensive. The inference made, though not explicit is that people with learning disabilities should be sterilised or should they fall pregnant their babies should be aborted. This coming from someone whose sister has a learning disability. Well done, Minette...Marie Stopes would be proud of you, girl!

Oops!

"What was the First Commandment again?" I'm joking, of course. I understand the spiritual leader of Catholics in England and Wales was not actually worshipping a strange god. However, I prefer the Benedictine method of inter-faith dialogue..."Hey, pagans! Come to Papa!"

That said, I'm not sure Rome is going to like this. Let's write and tell them about it before the Ad Limina Apostolorum in January. Here's Archbishop Vincent Nichols's speech. As one commentator on Damian Thompson's blog mentioned, Our Blessed Lord is conveniently omitted from the ecumenical hand of friendship engagement.

Archbishop Vincent Nichols – visit to the Hindu Mandir Neasden
21 November 2009

Dear brothers and sisters,

Let me thank you first of all for the generous invitation and warm welcome that I have received in your unique and beautiful Mandir. I thank your spiritual leader, Sadhu Yogvivek Swami and the trustees of the Mandir for their invitation, especially as it falls on the celebration of the birthday of your worldwide spiritual leader, His Holiness Pramukswamiji Maharaj.

The story of the building of this Mandir is well known. Indeed, I was glad to visit it not long after its opening in 1995. It is moving to see that even the architecture of this special place symbolises co-operation and peace between the cultures. The structure of the haveli, built from Burmese teak and English oak, is a poignant sign of how cultures and religions can join together to build something beautiful and enduring.

It is always good to come together like this, to strengthen each other, to learn of each other’s faith and to rejoice in a spirit of dialogue and love. Indeed, for a long time now, the Catholic Church has made dialogue with other faiths a priority in her actions, for the Church urges us to appreciate that the entire human race shares a common origin and a common destiny. This human and spiritual unity in our origins and our destiny impels us to seek common elements in our path through life as we play our part in the quest for fundamental values so crucial in our time.

This is, in part, why the Catholic Church, and many others, is insistent that every human person has a right to religious freedom. Such freedom means that all should have immunity from coercion, that no-one should be forced to act against his conscience in religious matters, nor prevented from acting according to his conscience, whether in private or in public, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits. There are some today who seek to set aside the right to act on the basis of religious faith in a reasonable manner in the public forum. Yet we know that religious faith cannot be left alone at home and still retain its integrity. It requires public expression in word an deed. This is an essential part of the right to religious freedom. This is something to which we must all be alert today.

We as a Church feel very strongly that religious sentiment and beliefs of the majority of the citizens of this countryr are important factors which can contribute significantly to the building up of a true culture of peace and harmony. They are not a matter of private conviction to be excluded from the public forum, but crucial elements of a true and generous citizenship in this land.

We are, for example, all convinced of the unique value of prayer in the search for peace. In fact it is impossible to have peace without prayer, the prayer of all, each one in his own identity and in search of the truth. The experience of prayer is a manifestation of the unity which binds us together, beyond our differences and distinctiveness. Every authentic prayer, we believe, is under the influence of the Spirit “who intercedes insistently for us…because we do not know how to pray as we ought.” Yet every person, all of us present here, is capable of prayer, that is of submitting ourselves totally to God and of recognising ourselves to be poor in front of God. Prayer is one of the means to realise the plan of God among us. It shows us that the world cannot give peace, but that peace is a gift of God and that it is necessary to entreat it as a gift by means of the prayers of all.

Both of our religions teach us that we fall short of the fullness of being to which we are called. We share the sense that we are to consistently seek to be more authentic, more generous especially in helping those in need. Indeed the search for peace in prayer goes hand in hand with the strong responsibility for helping those who are at the margins of society, and are in dire need of care and support. We are aware that many people live in fear and insecurity, and we consider it our duty and our privilege to extend a helping hand where we can.

Particularly in a time of economic hardship, this helping hand becomes important and valuable. It is thus with great pleasure that I see the continued efforts around this Mandir to serve the community in its many worthwhile projects, providing support to an admirably wide range of people, and offering diverse services that reflects the needs of the whole community –be it education for children, opportunities for young people or support for parent in raising children.
The needs of elderly people are especially close to my heart. We know the plight of the elderly in our society. We face the real danger of seeing the elderly not as the gift of wisdom and experience they embody, but as a burden. Instead, we need to recognise the contribution that they bring society. The Mandir is making a very important contribution to this in organising events such as the recent Health Fair that empower the elderly to live life to the full. Thus, we are joined together in our concern for the elderly and their well-being, as we are joined in our concern for everyone who is vulnerable and in need of attention in our society.

It is also very good to see that young people are at the heart of your community and that they are offered opportunities to develop both their physical and spiritual health. Providing young people with opportunities for exercise can give them a positive focus for their overflowing energy, and those who “come to play can learn to pray” to use your own words. Again and again, it has become clear during interfaith week that our hope and our trust must be placed in the young generation of today, so that they in their boundless and admirable enthusiasm, may try to achieve for future generations what this society has not been always able to offer – peace, understanding and community.

It is with admiration that I see the many events and opportunities on offer in this complex for the wider community, and I salute the valuable contribution that you are making to the peaceful world we all strive to create. The concern and care that is shown here for our natural environment is just one example of the many causes on which we can work together.
In these and other ways I hope we can work together for the common good of all members of society.

So, once again, let me thank you for this wonderful opportunity of dialogue and of being together to pray, and for your very warm welcome to all your guests here this evening. It is truly inspiring to see the beauty of this place, and no less inspiring to see the commitment to helping the community that comes with it.

My hope and my prayer is that the simple candle, which I am pleased to bring to you this evening, may be a sign of the lovely light of God in our lives and a sign of the prayer which, in return, we offer to God. May peace and truth be the gift that God bestows on us all.

Archbishop Vincent Nichols
21 November 2009