The Only Safe Space in the World

Virus normalcy, the so-called 'new normal', is for Christians almost certainly more abhorrent than it is for people of other religions and of no faith. Of course, we have people of other religions (Freemasons) and of no faith (atheists) in the Hierarchy of the Catholic Church and that is probably our biggest problem, as well as the fact that Pope Francis (wildly popular with Freemasons and atheists) leads the way in this feature of modern Catholic life. None were more keen to adapt to the new normal as Francis and none will I suspect be so keen as he to lead us to whatever hellish, inhuman, dystopian landscape the new normal leads us. Nearly all Bishops fell like dominos after Francis and we should never forget that terrifying precedent. Let us pray we are not reminded in Autumn.

The reason that I would argue the new normal is incompatible with Christianity is because ours is a passionately human Faith, our Faith loves our humanity in its imperfection and its vulnerability, because even though it is divine, it is incarnational. It is viscerally human. Our God is the Lord who spits on the earth to form clay and uses it to open the eyes of men born blind. God risks everything to show us His love. The Lord condescends to become human, to experience our frailty, to win us. Our Faith teaches us that we don't readily seek out transmittable illness and suffering for ourselves, but that because God is with us, whether we live or whether we die, we inhabit a vale of tears in which risk is unavoidable. Everything in this world is temporary, including us.

Our Saints, our mystics, our Church fathers taught us that we should live in this world as we in reality are, as if we are passing through, as vulnerable and as short-lived in the sight of God, as a votive candle lit in the evening that burns down and is gone by the morning. St Francis of Assisi, St Clare of Assisi, so many Saints taught us that neither wealth nor health offer any valuable protection in this world, God alone is our Guardian and Protector, our Provider and our Saviour.

St Paul: Shipwrecked in Malta, risk-levels high

If we live, says St Paul, we live for the Lord and if we die, says the Apostle to the Gentiles, we die for the Lord. Our death and judgement is meant to be at the forefront of our minds, not to produce terror within us, but holy and filial fear of offending God. If we sin, we are promised forgiveness if we sincerely repent. When we die, we want to be embraced by the Lord in His mercy and dwell forever in the presence of his holy ones. We live as men already under sentence of death, we hope for merciful reprieve from the Divine Majesty when we die. Our ordinary human state is corruptible and wretched, but we are made holy by God, the God who divinizes us with His very self and we are called to be holy both in body and soul. Our bodies, if faithful, will on the last day be glorified beyond all our understanding. Health in this world is a blessing, but perhaps even more of a blessing is to be chastened even in a small way in this world, so that we yearn for the next.

Godlessness produces societies governed by fear

Inimical to Christianity is the idea of the self-isolation of the human race, of sealing ourselves from dirt, bacteria and the potential proximate physical dangers inherent in the world, of seeing our humanity as diseased to the point of the fearful avoidance of others, of fearing real communion with others or with, God forgive us, our Eucharistic Lord. These things fly in the face of the Gospel we have received. We accept crosses, we understand that health is here today and could be gone tomorrow. Before us, all who lived have died, death approaches us all, and despite fact that we have never experienced it as individuals, the same prospect of death awaits us all. To those with even the greatest faith, death is an experiential unknown, a human mystery so profound we cannot begin to plumb its depths, as we slip away from a temporal realm, out of time itself and into eternity.

As Christians, we refuse to live our lives in any other world but the fallen world, the real world, but our souls and our minds are enlightened by the Holy Spirit, we are animated by the Spirit of Christ, He lives and works in us, we try not to impede His life in us as we strive to live in the power of the Holy Spirit in that world, to extend the Kingdom of God, to bring the light of Christ to others, to bring eternal Salvation to the world, the promise of Heaven to those who repent, who are baptised and who believe in the Lord Jesus and live by His Commandments. Jesus leads us in our Passover to the endless world where there is no sadness, no suffering, no illness, no death, only joy, for these former things have passed away.

In the first instance, our very understanding that God became man in Jesus Christ radically awakens in us a new reality, a new world, a new reality, a supernaturally new normal, as liberated adopted sons and daughters. In Jesus's suffering and death, we see the divine Person suffering in His humanity which is the same as our humanity, though He is sinless, having taken human flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, taking upon himself a human Body and offering it to His Father in His Passion and Death, taking it up to God the Father at His Ascension. Our Baptism has claimed us for God, it has not claimed us for the world and its dictates. We do not live to bring danger or harm to others, but we are a people for whom the whole concept of 'social distancing' is repellent. We are the very ones called to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, shelter the stranger, the homeless poor, visit the sick and imprisoned, embrace risk for Christ.

We see in the prevelance of a secular Government-led 'new normal' all the hallmarks of a Christless, hopeless world in which just about everything and everyone is in a real sense sacrificed upon the Altar of Public Health, the essential needs of our humanity for love and friendship, our humanity itself is sacrificed, ignoring the Sacrificial Victim immolated on the Altar in every Catholic Church. We are now asked even to worship health, by clapping on Thursdays. Almost all Government annoucements during the past eight weeks have been aimed at our most basic, primal fears, our fear of suffering and death and the suffering and death of our loved ones. All of these fears and terrors, Jesus experienced in His Agony in the Garden of Gethesemene. All of these fears we face or will face, with Him and in Him.

The Christless world cannot possibly defend itself against the panic-producing mantras of Government and media. We have all been taught to be afraid, children will be also, but the Lord it is who tells us, 'Be not afraid!' A Christless world cannot defend itself from Government that treats citizens as dumb, unteachable infants who need the Government's constant 'protection' from disease and suffering. The rejection of the Fatherhood of God leads inexorably to whole nations falling into the arms of the State which becomes presented to us as the ultimate protector and guardian of humanity, however tyrannical it becomes. Inherent in Government propaganda is the idea that illness, suffering and death are entirely unnatural, alien to our experience in this world, and that such things can and should be banished, at the cost of many intrinsic freedoms, despite the fact that people have been dying of transmittable or non-transmittable diseases in one form or another for thousands of years.

The Church: Ark of Salvation, Hospital for Sinners

For the Church, the adoption of a kind of pseudo-secular messianism, led by the new 'infallible' high priests of science and medicine, that proclaims humanity itself can save itself from even the threat of pestilence, whether the disease's survival rate is incredibly high or low, constitutes a major threat similar to and even more alarming than the neo-pagan belief adopted globally that humanity can save the seas, the air, the earth from climate change and that this should be a central concern to us all. Both ideas are ripe for exploitation by those who work for Antichrist and, if he's around, the Antichrist himself. For the Church, or at least the Hierarchy, to imitate Government in its web of deceitful doctrines that we can create a 'safe world', a 'disease-free future' in which the air and sea can be as clean as hands freshly washed and sanitised is a gross insult to God as well as a grotesque lie.

It is sin that imperils each and every one of us and threatens every day our eternal happiness. Nothing and nobody is truly safe, but for the man and woman who live in the grace, love and friendship of God and persevere in it to the end. Our Lord Jesus Christ established the Church to be the City of God in which men dwell with angels, not the City of Man in which men live under the constant influence and persuasion of demons and hostile powers. Christians and all men are already being guilt-tripped that by merely breathing they imperil the lives of their countrymen while Government slaughters the unborn and euthanises the infirm. No hospital is truly safe. The only safe hospital is the hospital for sinners: the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is the sole safe space in the world and, alas, for the vast majority of Catholics, that safe space has been locked by fearful Bishops. It is a safe space not because it is as sanitary and bacteria free as a clinical laboratory outside of Wuhan but because it is the place in which man meets his holy Redeemer who loves him, saves him and sanctifies him.

Here in this place, God dwells with men

There a man or woman can find refuge from a hostile world that seeks man's downfall in a thousand ways. Before the Tabernacle, man can be close to the Heart of God, the Heart of Jesus Christ and pour out his soul, he can weep for his sins more readily in this sacred and safe space where God resides. In this safe space, guarded by holy angels, holy water and holy images, man can entrust all his most sordid and guilty secrets to a Confessor who acting in the Person of Christ, will bring healing and heavenly consolation and strength to the penitent sinner. Sinners, lost in a world of confusion, dread, anguish of soul, can obtain forgiveness here as in no other place in the world. Man can ascend the highest mountain peak and be no closer to God than he was at street level, yet he can walk mere yards into a Catholic Church and find Him there and be found.

None of us wants to lose anyone close to us earlier than we think they should die, but we run the greater risk of thinking of ourselves as minature gods who can defeat death by a power or method rejected by God Himself. God's way of defeating death was to defeat it masterfully by the power of the Cross, the acceptance of the Chalice of suffering in order to obtain for us a deathless death, a death which leads to our birth to true, eternal Life. Death will either become for us a supreme sacrament of love that unites us eventually and eternally to God the Most High, or plunge us into eternal death, shame, terror and sorrow. Our judgement will unveil for us our whole life, our exterior life and our inner life, a fearful thing, but our Lord calls us to prepare by a holy life, not by a life lived in fear of microbes, where the fear of transmission surpasses and extirpates the fear of the Lord. Whether we are near or far from God, weak or strong, He wants us to trust Him and live for Him, love Him, die for Him and in die in Him.

We cannot both forget God and be fully alive

Whatever you think of the risks of transmission, this is not edifying at all.

We can take some precautions in this world, but in reality the Christian life acknowledges a world of risk, Jesus Christ established the Church precisely because it is a world of risk and the greatest risk of all time, for all times until His Second Coming, is the risk that we will be eternally lost to God, the risk that in our concern for temporal comfort and temporal protection from all this world can assail us with, that we will forget God. The great crime of Bishops is that they have contributed so much to the idea that we can forget God in times of pandemic, that the only safe space on Earth can be locked, that God and His Church are not as important as health, health which is always transient, that we can be saved by anything but the Precious Blood of Jesus. May God raise up Shepherds who will teach us that this world is passing and that nothing is as important as the love of God, nothing is as important as Salvation and nothing is as important as the Holy Eucharist, the Sacrament of Holy Love. Our Lord did not die bloodied on the Cross to create a hygienic, zealously sanitised world, but to wash away the world's sins in His Precious Blood, to make men zealous for His Salvation. We can all imagine and have already seen an episcopal response to the virus far more zealous for sanitation than for sanctification.

It is sad, though entirely predictable, that a post-Coronavirus world has given us a post-Coronavirus Pope Francis. Though marked by a radical streak of at times painfully staged Peronist populism, Romans presumably once enjoyed the Pope with the 'human touch', but the Francis who taught us to 'touch the flesh of Christ in the flesh of the poor' has died and the Francis who maintains whatever arbitary social distancing regulations the Government has mandated has arrived.

The leper kissing St Francis of Assisi belongs now firmly back in the 12th century, not the 21st. The Francis who kissed babies and men covered in boils has passed away to reveal the Francis for whom all mankind is a now a threat to other men. Who knows? Perhaps he will return to his 'touchy-feely' style, once Mr and Mrs Gates and their friends embedded in Governments have attempted to vaccinate seven billion bodies either with or without their consent. I'm certain Mr Gates will get a fair hearing in Rome and I personally dread the Hierarchy's response in the long-term to all that the powerful elites may wish to visit upon humanity, upon Christians, upon the Church.

We probably all have much to suffer, the Lord has warned us beforehand, but in the end the Immaculate Heart of Mary will triumph. Christ is victorious. Whatever we can do to contribute to that triumph over evil, even if it is only by our sufferings and our prayers joined to hers, may her maternal intercession for us embolden us to do it. Worse than Covid-19 is assuredly the tyranny that follows in its wake but worse than the tyranny that follows in its wake is the possibility of eternal damnation. There may be fearsome choices ahead, may Our Lord Jesus Christ give us grace to persevere in our Faith to the end.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us.

St Maximillian Kolbe, pray for us.

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.

Bergoglio Land

Pray for the heroic fortitude that will save our souls, so that we might endure all that Christ's enemies have in store for us, pray for the restoration of the public Mass and for the reopening of all the churches in the world, that the Church of God may enjoy complete liberty in Her worship.

The Government, God, You and the Great Lie

"I can speak my mind because it's a free world" is a phrase most of us have used at some point in our lives. That world that we considered 'free' is now coming rapidly to an end. We will, I think, regret the great incursions into human life made by the State over the years, incremental incursions that have gathered pace and become deeper and deeper since the creation of the welfare state in the 50s. All of them - without exception - have been presented to us as being 'for our good'.
 
No matter what you think of Governmental responses to the Coronavirus, responses which the Hierarchy of the Church has parroted like a State-appointed Ministry of Religion, it seems to me that some things can now be universally accepted. Firstly, that for better or worse, the State has accrued extraordinary power over citizens, powers that were always there for the using but now like nuclear warheads on a Soviet parade are brought out into full daylight in shock and awe.

The Spanish Influenza of 1918

It is as if Covid-19 has lifted the lid on a dormant reality we were living under all the time. All that is required is an emergency and everything is swept away. We all thought we lived in a 'free country', albeit one with a corrupt, self-serving Establishment, but it turns out all that is required is a contagion crisis and any semblence of 'normality' or of freedom disappears into thin air. Nearly without question, whole nations accepted what would normally be deemed tyranny, a tyranny made only excusable by disease.


It is staggering. Unfortunately, because we have been so brainwashed since our earliest youths, there are a number of assumptions being made about the role of government that, if accepted without question, make the situation as it stands now inevitable and unavoidable. The first assumption we make is that:

Public health is the responsibility of the Government (aka the Government will save us!)

We have been groomed to believe that the Government does not simply make policies for public health but is in charge of public health and we have accepted incredibly meekly that in a time of public health crisis, the Government automatically becomes in charge of everything. Public health isn't something that falls out of government influence, but I'm not sure that even in times of pandemic we should accept Government's assurance that we should,

'Stand well back, citizens for we, your beloved Government, will handle this!'

Why do we expect a bureaucratic mega-institution like the UK Government to handle this? Why are we suddenly asked to believe that the UK Government is our salvation?

The truth is that Government does very little for us that is good, and that when it does, there is invariably a catch. I was most grateful when a couple of years ago I poured the contents of a steamer, including the vegetables, over my right foot and an NHS nurse treated it and dressed it. I am full of admiration for those who work days and nights in the service of the sick and injured.

However, the idea that the Government and even its new Golden Calf, the NHS, is a shining beacon of virtue is much overdone and I don't believe the hype. Government can become like that abusive husband who says, 'I love you and from this day forward will cherish you', who provides for his wife but then says, 'But now you're in my house you're not allowed to go outside and you're not allowed any friends.' Did I say 'like that abusive husband'? Sorry, the Government IS that abusive husband.

The NHS oversees countless abortions and has a culture of soft-euthanasia, almost an unwritten code, by starvation, dehydration and painkillers which most of us will not witness until a family member dies. Personally, I wouldn't trust the NHS with an elderly patient on a venitlator, fighting for his or her life. I don't know how endemic it is, but the NHS seems to have a huge problem with preserving the lives of the elderly. In certain circumstances, it is actually very effective at bumping people off. And if the NHS is going to separate family from the elderly person concerned, that is even more worrying, because it is often only family that notice when an NHS hospital is doing something objectively evil to a patient, like starving them or dehydrating them to death which has for years become a routine part of 'end of life' care.

The second assumption we have been groomed to believe is that even if it turns out the Government can't save us:

'Your government cares about you!'

Powers given to government can do many things for good or for bad, but we should all at least accept that the Government does not care about us, whether we as individuals live or die, or find ourselves eating out of bins on the streets. It doesn't care, it cannot care, it does not love, it cannot love. Individual leaders may have enormous capacity to care about the fate of people in general, but as for the apparatus of the State, forget it. Individual doctors or nurses have the capacity to love patients and care for them with dignity, but they don't guide policy, they enforce it, they are not the NHS, the NHS is a bureaucratic machine, cold, heartless, brutal, sterile. Care homes are meant to care for people, but almost everyone I know has had friends or family members in a care home where the 'carers' were inhuman beasts who treated patients with shocking disregard, leaving dirty sheets unchanged, treating them with contempt. Care homes also have that special reputation for bumping patients off before their natural end. It's all so professional!

We currently have radio and TV announcements, even moving images on advertisement boards at bus stops telling us to 'Protect the NHS'. So, we now have the State telling us to protect the State and that protecting the State is the single most important thing we can do with out lives. Nevermind if you, for example, don't have the Coronavirus, but some other deadly or painful condition. You're meant to 'protect the NHS' which you thought was there to protect you and wait it out until Covid-19 patients exist no more, which could be never. And if you're awaiting a hip replacement, or you're a cancer patient, or you can't walk because you've poured the contents of a steamer on your right foot or something, you should still do the decent thing and clap the all-glorious State every Thursday at 8pm. Everyone must clap. Clapping helps the nurses, you see. They live on your applause. It is their oxygen. Thank you, NHS! Alas, because so few people from outside the NHS can get into hospitals to see what is going on, for all we know the State could be executing the elderly left, right and centre and we'd still be clapping the NHS. I trust in the goodness of God that this is not the case, but in all honesty, who knows what is going on in there, other than incredibly creepy hospital staff dancing routines while Death maraudes through hospital corridors and body bags are removed to go to the local crematorium with no autopsy necessary, thank you very much.

As for me, I don't want to live in a country where the State is supreme completely and above the individual and society itself (even in times of emergency). I have no reason to believe that just because we live in a time of pestilence, the British State is benign and 'cares'. Why should I believe that the British State is benign? The British State sends young men to die in futile and pointless wars based on a tissue of lies in the middle East and it never apologises for doing so. The British State approves the killing of 200,000 abortions a year. What's benign, precisely, about that industrial scale of mass murder? It uses aborted children in medical research! How benign! Why should I believe that a Governmental ideology that only a while ago was trumpeting 'gay marriage' as a boon for individual freedom, equality and love, suddenly professes that each and every individual must do his bit to sacrifice their natural freedoms for the sake of the greater good, in a manipulative twist of utilitarian logic that borders on philosophical and legislative schizophrenia?

Don't get me wrong, we, the British people probably thoroughly deserve evil and tyrannical overlords, we have grievously sinned, we have departed from the law of God, we treat our true Saviour with indifference and contempt, we have stained our land with the blood of the unborn, embraced every form of paganism, we live our lives as if God does not exist, but let us not pretend to ourselves that what is being erected in a time of crisis is the fruits of a loving, benevolent Government that always puts its citizens first. There is no reason to think this is the case, no reason at all and the relentless propaganda machine that accompanies this disease only makes me feel more dis-eased with the entire situation.

After 4 weeks of lockdown must we really be told again and again to 'stay 2 metres' apart. You told us, we get it, are we dumb cattle who need telling 50 times a day?! Are you, Government ministers, really concerned that we do this for public health or are you preparing us for a future of dystopic perpetual isolation from each other just to see whether you can exercise that kind of dictatorial power, where natural loving bonds between kith and kin are eradicated? Certain forces at work seem to love 'the new normal', so forgive me if I believe there are some ulterior motives going on here. This leads me to underline another assumption that is dangerous and which is going to be less accepted by the British people:

The measures we, the Government, enforce in response to this pandemic will be for your good! Trust us!

It seems glaringly obvious to me theat, no matter where you stand on the conspiracy theories circulating about this disease, that the long arm of the State is going to ask, then demand, further sacrifices of individuals in our country - most likely, all individuals - that will erode or eliminate forever freedoms we have long since taken for granted. It will doubtless all be done with that cheery British 'wartime spirit' and Boris Johnson, our little Churchill, will lead the charge.

Government, advised by a relatively small group of 'experts', who almost always seem to be working nowadays under some elusive ideological lines, in the pay of certain long-established foundations and elite individuals, will endeavour to eradicate the disease (with our co-operation, of course). In order to return to 'normal life', I dare say we will be mandated to accept some form of vaccination 'for the greater good'. We will be told that clinical trials have guaranteed its safety (but there are always side effects, no medicine is perfect etc, etc.) and we will all be asked to trust that the Government is being totally 100% honest with us that the vaccine will provide us with 'digital immunity' of some kind. Once under the loving embrace of a Government certificate of cleanliness, those who have not accepted the immunisation will be 'unclean', potential disease carriers. Will people who don't entrust their bodies to a Government under the influence of billionaire population controllers such as Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation be entitled to any semblence of 'normal life'?  I, for one, doubt it.

And in the name of public health and for 'the greater good', would not greater surveillance and monitoring of society be necessary, to ensure that cities and towns remain as sanitary as they can be? To ensure that all the cattle are behaving as they should behave in times of danger, threat of disease and the snares of pestilence? Shouldn't we all accept the loss of privacy, the loss of freedom, to preserve and care for the vulnerable, you know, for the sake of the greater good?

The technology is there, we have it, so it would be irresponsible not to use it, eh?

Wherever it came from, however it got here, the Great Lie at the heart of this pandemic will be the lie that removes all operation of life as we had hitherto known it. 

The Great Lie is that you and I belong to the State when in fact you and I belong to God.

The Great Lie is that the State can be, or is, or ever will be Almighty God, your Protector.

God alone is God.

 God alone can be trusted without question with your whole life, your secrets, your fears, your future, your relationships, your life, your death.

I would love to be able trust our Government with these things, but I'm sorry, I don't!

Let us turn to God, the true Lord, that He may deliver our land and our people!

Jesus is Lord!

The Stage is Set

There is, I don't doubt, a thin line between suspicion, a healthy cynicism informed by observation of recent times and boggle-eyed paranoia.

The unique pontificate of Jorge Bergoglio has, almost every week, provided Catholics grounded in the perennial faith with an abundant harvest of reasons to have a deep mistrust of Francis, a trend which seemed to reach a crescendo with the veneration of an Andean idol in the churches of Rome last October.

I need not repeat the plethora of other Francis infidelities, unbelievable statements, nefarious deceptions, tyrannical moments or outright betrayals of Christ and His faithful to which observing Catholics have been witness.

In every way, Pope Francis behaves as an enemy of Christ and His glorious Cross, upon which He hung for the Salvation of the World. This Salvation won for the human race was eternal in its nature, by no means confined to temporal benefits, though temporal benefits are not excluded from God's generosity, for all good things come from Him, through His Son, Jesus Christ.

Pope Francis has eyes, ears and words only for this earthly life. He has intimated as recently as yesterday that humanity has indeed offended grievously and needs to reform and repair the damage that has been done. Unfortunately for Catholics, this work of repentance and reparation does not touch upon the Commandments of God, nor does Francis touch upon the scourge of grievous, mortal sin by which we cannot doubt the One True God is offended.

Yes, even in a time of pestilence, when men and women are dying, dying without the Sacraments, of debilitating disease, Francis cannot bring himself to prepare a watching world for judgement or eternity, his focus is solely on invocation that pleads that temporal disaster may be averted. And even in this time of pestilence, Francis cannot invoke the mercy of God and lead the flock in penitence for our having offended Him, despite the fact that idolatry pure and simple took place within and without Vatican building walls last October.

Francis with Jeffery Sachs at Vatican ecological meeting

Forgive me then, if I do not gush with praise at theatrical displays of piety in a deserted St Peter's Square in the pouring rain. Is there any reason at all that a man who has lived for the camera as much as Francis would do anything in the eyes of the whole world that was authentic and genuine now? Because of disease? Because people are dying? Even now, even with Italians suffocating to death, presenting themselves before the judgement seat of God after they breathe their last, even now, Francis cannot teach the flock of a God who punishes sin, corrects sinners and brings us to our knees that we may discover Him once more and die to sin, rather than die in mortal sin and be lost forever.

Francis, however, is doing something. He isn't inactive. What is he doing? Francis is setting a stage and out of the greatest catastrophe to befall the world since the Second World War, Francis is sketching a narrative, a grossly fantastical secular narrative devoid of any reference to true religion, one which he expects all of us, Catholic or not, to believe. It is, essentially, the atheistic, even communistic dogma with which we have been bombarded in what can only be called psychological warfare for years and years.

The pillars of the theatre stage being erected would seem to be, astonishingly, no public Mass anywhere in those regions affected by the virus (which is more or less everywhere!), not even in Catholic Poland! St Peter's is still open, but I am told that's just about it. Edicts have been passed down by virtually every Bishops Conference that Church doors are to be locked in the faces of Catholics. It is, apparently, the merciful thing to do, just as it is merciful to liberate Catholics from Friday abstinence because disease. Note that Francis does not entreat God that these buildings for the worship of God re-open and daily passes over the fact that the public worship of God has ceased, as if this is simply an irrelevance.

Instead, Francis points you, just like secular governments and media are doing, to the new (imposed, for you didn't choose this) reality of your domestic life, to the tireless and heroic work of medical staff, to operating within a 'non-essential', freedom removing lifestyle and to a pseudo-spiritual belief that the Earth is crying out to humans, who militant environmentalists consider a plague on that same Earth, to respect her authority and pay homage to her.

To Francis, it matters not whether even all the Churches in the world are closed, whether all Sacraments are withheld from the laity, all Confessions go unheard, the Sacrament of Marriage is completely abandoned, the sick and dying are left unanointed, no new priests are made or even whether any Baptisms take place! Nowhere has he lamented this cruel and tyrannical reality, the deprivation of the graces that make dead sinners live again! This, seemingly, does not concern him and to add injury to his gross insult to God, even suggests to God's people that this virus has shown us 'what really matters' and that God Himself and the life of grace are not included in his list. Incredible! And then, his work of shame is even applauded because the scene was 'moving'. Francis, I expect, is happy to use 'moving ceremony' as a vehicle to extend his false teachings if that's what gets people's attention.

'A global pandemic won't benefit me at all, oh no. How awful!'

Temporally speaking, Francis has not, as far as I know, protested, nor even lamented that the epidemic has caused virtually every government in the world to impose absolute tyranny on its people 'for the public good'. Can we imagine St John Paul II saying nothing about the fact that all of Poland was shut down but for pharmacies and supermarkets, that all of her churches were shut down, that no Sacraments were being dispensed, that all human freedoms had been removed from entire populaces? Emergency powers have been invoked across the Western world that involve a total takeover of civic and public life and nothing may happen without expressed governmental approval. Does Francis pray that freedom and democracy may return to the World and that citizens may once more enjoy the natural rights which have been taken away from them in the outbreak of a pandemic? No, he does not.

Therefore, please forgive me also if I retain just that quiet suspicion that the outbreak of this disease is just a little bit too convenient by far for incredibly powerful players on the world stage, for whom Francis is obviously at the very least an ally, if not an active and key particpant or agent. Everything he says supports the work of the totalitarian, godless, ecological, pagan and atheistic and even Satanic beliefs of the powerful men of this world. Francis is, in the midst of pestilence, giving a spiritual dimension to the agenda advanced by such groups as the United Nations and global governance advocates such as Bill Gates, George Soros, and nobody can protest it because everybody is imprisoned!

Chemtrail activists be like: "Remind me...How did this virus get in our city, again?"

As time goes on, we can therefore thoroughly expect Jorge Bergoglio to give tacit, if not active, vocal agreement to the new and radical solutions which will inevitably be proposed or imposed on us, Catholic or not, in that brave new world, that heartless dystopia into which we already find ourselves plunged. If government drones start following us down the street, will Bergoglio protest? I think not. If our movements, puchases, habits are monitored, if men are arrested for seditious acts like visiting Grandma, will Bergoglio protest? I think not.

If this lockdown is deemed so 'successful' for the global environment and the health of 'Mother Earth' that it is suggested to be a quarterly occurence in the year for the Earth to 'heal', will he protest? I think not. If capitalism is deemed to have 'failed' and a system of communism is proposed or implemented because governments basically destroyed capitalism in order to 'prevent public health deteriorating', will Francis oppose it? I think not. Will he tell us, like he told Chinese Catholics to simply be 'good citizens' who obey every freedom-crushing instruction given to us by the secular authorities? Well, he has form, this is what he told the poor Chinese Christians whose Churches are locked, later to be most likely demolished. It is, I am afraid, the nature of the beast to do precisely this. It comes as second nature to the second beast.

Friends, do not be deceived. Be not deceived! Hold fast to what has been passed onto you, pray much for our deliverance, we all have much to endure, much tribulation to undergo, but just as you should not be deceived, neither should you be afraid. God is with us! Be not afraid! Jesus, our Leader and our Captain, will not abandon us, nor will He leave us all alone. Observe what the lawless one does during this time and pray for protection against the deceits, theatrics and falsehoods with which you will be presented, for they will surely come, they will come as surely as the Lord Jesus will come to rescue His flock as Chief Shepherd and Lord and King.

Come then, Lord Jesus! Jesus, I trust in You!

Viva Cristo Rey! 

Imagine...

Our Lady of Walsingham, pray for us.

Wartime Reflections 1

Before social distancing: St John Paul II embraces Cardinal Stefan Wysynski

These are extraordinary times, are they not? First of all, a blessed and happy Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord to all readers. In this time of peril, insecurity and anxiety let us often repeat in our hearts the Holy Name of Mary, for her name and the name of her Divine Son, Jesus, is peace itself. Mary is peace, Mary is refuge, Mary is consolation, Mary is our Mother!

What was just weeks ago unthinkable has passed into reality, embedded itself into our existence, all has changed in the blink of an eye. So many thoughts pass through my mind during these days, I will express a few of them, but none bring me feelings of hope and comfort, but for the promise of the Immaculata: 'In the end, my Immaculate heart will triumph'.

Each and every country, I think in the entire world, apart from than those which need not invoke 'emergency powers' such as China, has done so to combat Covid-19, the Coronavirus. Britain is on a 'war-footing' which enables the government to suspend each and every cherished freedom we all took for granted. Ostensibly, wartime powers are invoked to do battle against an invisible but potentially deadly foe, the virus, but the series of human tragedies this policy will create is, well, unlimited and unfathomable and I am not entirely alone in a deep suspicion that a biological evil has already brought with it a series of spiritual evils so malignant that only immersion in prayer, especially the Holy Rosary, can offer us a spiritual vaccine. Indeed, the host of evils could not be treated in a single blogpost.

Before I begin, let us offer an Ave or three or more to the Blessed Virgin that both pestilence and this new vision of society will pass quickly, that the age of plague, quarantine and authoritarian social order will not be with us throughout the Summer and the year and beyond.

Some observations will resonate with you, others less so. Queuing outside a supermarket, each person 2 metres apart to enter was a bleak experience. Brightonians, if not Britons as a whole, are generally a sociable people, if not as tactile as Italians, talkative nonetheless. All of that has all but gone in a single day and the atomisation of individuals has been carried from the home to the street. Nobody is relaxed, nobody. Each and every face looks set on edge, marked by fear and concern for stepping outside of the infection rules. Nobody smiles. Across the street, I see two people talking at 2 metres length apart, but their voices are conspicuous by their presence. Everyone else is deathly quiet, as if characters in some dystopian film set. All of a sudden, the Brighton that once was, that most 'free-spirited', decadent and hedonistic of places, has vanished to be replaced with a laden atmosphere of total and utter order. A man at the entrance to the supermarket permits 16 customers to be in the store at any one time and it is all so chillingly sensible. Upon entrance customers are told they may buy no more than three of any item and everybody nods approvingly, as if happy to be instructed, for everyone knows that existence is now a day-by-day experience and everybody has learned to hate the hoarders, including the hoarders themselves. Everything has been suspended, including people's plans. I don't think anybody is thinking about tomorrow.

Wandering around the store, virtually everyone is taking compulsive care to observe the 2 metre rule and the wall-to-wall, heavy duty messaging by Government through media makes me nervous even of picking up an item since it has been handled by suppliers and supermarket staff. I pick something up, I put it back and then I pick it up again in case I am a carrier. Fear of infection or of being an infectee has penetrated my consciousness, hand eczema which had healed has returned because of all the handwashing. Everything I touch has microbes. Dear God! Everything is sanitized, everything must be clean, bacteria is now my enemy and I am changed. The simplest of tasks demands an extreme duty to others that a month ago would have seen me laying on a couch talking to a therapist and I guarantee that whatever the rate of infection of this illness, almost everybody has been infected by this mindset and this was day 2 of the quarantine. Whatever the immunity from the virus is, nobody is immune from the effects.

At the toilet roll aisle is a rare sight, there are about 30 8-packs of toilet roll. Relief not completely unlike that of someone who has reached the lavatory on time seems to flood the faces of all who approach the toilet roll section, as if having reached the Promised Land. I look at one lady's face and she's smiling, I say, 'Oh my, it's a miracle!' we laugh and go our separate ways, only for a sudden seriousness to take over my mind, as if a malevolent hand of dark paternal authority has been at work in the toilet roll aisle, an aisle that seems to shout, 'There is toilet roll now, because you have obeyed. Keep obeying and your fill of toilet roll will be secure', or more simply, 'Your arses belong to us, now'.

At a self-checkout and pin-pad that looks recently cleaned, but not so recently that it is still wet ('Someone else has touched this before I got here!'), I purchase my goods. A young couple are buying at the next but one self-checkout and I can hear them discussing the new regime involved in the shopping experience, saying something about feeling vaguely 'criminal'. I turn and say, 'Ah yes, we are all on an ASBO now'. They laugh, nervously. I laugh, nervously. ASBOs, as very long-term readers of this blog will know, are 'Anti-Social Behaviour Orders'. I have a friend who was on one, one of Brighton's most irritating but enduringly loveable beggars called Jason, who was in and out of jail, but who eventually got off drugs and excessive drinking and lives, albeit bored out of his skull, outside the city. Now that he isn't in Brighton, the one-time rebel without a cause is very well-behaved and has a long-term room to call home, something he always wanted. He fought the law and the law, eventually, won. His movements were heavily restricted and on some pavements he could only walk on the left / right side of the road, depending on the road. Does this sound familiar?

When Jason wasn't in prison, he was more often than not homeless. Brighton's homeless population seems to have reduced. When I do walk past them, whether I give them a milkshake or sandwich or not, they look so miserable now. After all, people weren't carrying much cash before, they're not carrying any cash now. Major outlets aren't accepting it 'at this time of Coronavirus'. Many are addicted to various things, their lives too are turned over, where are the dealers now? They are all locked up in their homes. Yes, astonishing order has been imposed on a city of dissolute life, an order of breathtaking severity, in equally breathtaking speed, of a kind that no earthly dictator could wish to achieve in weeks or months.

Remarkably, I don't see any police on the streets. It is as if they are unnecessary. No police are talking to homeless people telling them to move on, most seem to have moved on already, Lord alone knows where. Brighton is now governed by a pervasive fear. Everybody has had their text message from the government to 'Stay at home', and everybody is at home for the vast majority of the day. The few people you see around are either doing their once a day shop or doing their once a day bit of exercise, though I swear the numbers of people who used to walk for exercise on the streets of Brighton was negligible. Most people were walking to go somewhere, do something, walking was not an end in itself.

There are a number of highly disturbing things about this new society that has blanketed almost the whole world, but perhaps the most disturbing thing is how quickly we could all get used to this and even embrace it. In darker moments, it feels is as if a think-tank like the Tavistock group is running a psychological experiment on entire populations to observe how successfully obedient to the State populations can be in a time of pandemic. The raw power of the wartime conditions could lead any government to consider extending the emergency situation well beyond a season, or even two seasons into perpetuity. Right now, there is no crime. There is not even public sin or offense. No buskers, no football louts, no fights on Saturday nights, no girls throwing up outside a nightclub, no lusty affairs, no hook-ups going on. There are no rambunctious street-drinking homeless people, no needles in alleyways, even the usually filthy streets of Brighton look free of litter, the odd bus glides down the main road every now and then, the busy urban streets, if you close your eyes, it almost sounds like the countryside.

Yes, I can see how the open prison model of society, in a time of real or even perceived threat, could bring entire national States much to celebrate so much that not only would the boot on the human face be welcomed forever by the personnel of an all-powerful State, but the people themselves, realizing how much simple, regulated and ordered life could be, would even caress the boot resting gently upon their face.

My God, I have written a great deal, I shall close there. I have not yet even touched on the fact that my parish church is closed, that all parish churches are closed, that Baptism is for now forbidden, that the children of the Church may not approach the Sacrament of Confession and that nearly all men, women and children are entirely cut off from the daily Sacrifice. Brighton's priests are cut off from their people and, in desperation, livestream the Most Holy Sacrifice, not knowing who, if anyone, will watch and pray. Pray and stay close to Jesus in prayer and do watch, with Eucharistic hunger, the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Our Lady of Walsingham, pray for us.

Martyrs of England and Wales, pray for us.

Lord Jesus, deliver us.

Pray also for the liberation of Pope Benedict XVI, in whose Cross we are all sharing now. For where the Head has gone, the Body has surely followed. My, my, what a prophet he was.

Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret. - Fr Joseph Ratzinger, 1969

Now That We've Stopped Talking About Pope Francis

There is something unreal about the sense of chaos now enveloping almost the entire world over Coronavirus, COVID-19, a sense of doom and anxiety is etched on the faces of those who still walk the streets, the media talks of nothing else and why would they? They seem to relish this kind of event.

Everything is out of control, the world is entering turmoil over a disease. For us Catholics, this is a reality check, as we are plunged suddenly into a more intense spiritual struggle than we have hitherto perhaps ever experienced.

Firstly, we are confronted with death and judgement. Well, we are, if we are Catholic and have a Catholic understanding that upon our death our souls will undergo our private judgement in the light of God Himself.

Suddenly, all our personal hopes, dreams, ambitions are being placed at the back of our minds as we contemplate just how close we could be to imminent death. This should spur us on to place ourselves at the foot of the Cross, implore God's mercy, seek the Sacraments of forgiveness and healing and desire God in prayer.

It should move us to be reconciled to others we have offended or been offended by, to forgive our enemies, to love God and our neighbour and to live in God's grace. It should move us to live a deeper Lent than we had anticipated.

In a way, it is liberating to have a different plague to confront other than Pope Francis and his hireling Bishops. Many of these men have switched the lights off in the churches and shut up shop, leaving Catholics who long for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, for our Eucharistic Lord, for the sight of statues of Our Blessed Lady and the Saints, the Sanctuary Lamp, the Tabernacle, for the Confessional light switching from red to green.

Millions of Catholics have been abandoned by Bishops precisely at our hour of deepest spiritual need. The supermarkets remain open for food for the body, but public Mass has been suppressed by Bishops, starving the Flock of Christ of food for the soul. It is unfathomable, if in purely human terms, understandable.

The Bridegroom has been taken away from the Bride, the Eucharistic Lord from many of the Faithful, in circumstances that can only feel apocalyptic. Bewildered by the present, two thoughts pass through my mind as if along parallel lines.

What if I die during this outbreak?

What if I live through this outbreak?

I look at life now through the prism of death, the end of earthly existence, fear of judgement and hope of eternity, I look at death through the prism of continuing life, one which involves complete uncertainty and fear about what could emerge from a crisis like this. Like all Catholics, in all of this, I have nowhere to turn but to God, Who alone has every right to my complete trust.

Bishops have abandoned the Faithful. God is faithful. What will emerge from this crisis? We do not know for certain but many imagine the worst. Death by virus? God is faithful. Death by vaccine? God is faithful. Communism? God is faithful. World Government? God is faithful. The Antichrist? God is faithful. Mass apostasy? God is faithful. The UN taking over our cities? God is faithful. Microchipping of the human race? God is faithful. All my conspiracy theories becoming true? God is faithful. Evil being paraded triumphant in the Vatican? God is faithful. Freemasonry lauding it over the Church on Earth? God is faithful. Camps for those who dissent from the edicts of a ruthless dictatorship? God is faithful. Imprisonment? God is faithful. Poverty, penury, pain, destitution? God is faithful? Death at the hands of the wicked? God is faithful.

God is faithful.

Whatever emerges from this, we know now that we can take nothing with us on our journey to eternity and what we have stored here is mostly rubbish. Apart from toilet roll. Toilet roll is useful.

God is faithful and all of his judgements and commandments and His promises are to be trusted. Jesus Christ is truly Saviour, Jesus Christ is truly Lord and King of Heaven and Earth, He has no rival, He is with us in life, He is with us in death, His victory is assured, and He will crown those who trust in Him, who turn to Him and turn away from sin, seeking His mercy and His love.

Jesus, Son of God, Sovereign Lord and Divine Bridegroom, look down from Your Heavenly Throne and have pity and mercy on me, a poor and wretched sinner. Spare me, O just God.

Have mercy on us, O Lord.

Spare us, O just God!

Come, Lord Jesus!