Tuesday 27 June 2017

Fr. John Southworth was Martyred on this Day on 28th June 1654


From http://www.youngcatholicadults.co.uk/saints.htm:-

"(Portrait above) Born 1592. Fr. John Southworth came from a Lancashire family that chose to pay heavy fines rather than give up the Catholic faith. He was arrested under the Interregnum and was tried at the Old Bailey under Elizabethan anti-priest legislation . He pleaded guilty to exercising the priesthood and was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. At his execution at Tyburn, on 28 June 1654, he was not “drawn and quartered” as sentenced."

St John Southworth, priest & martyr, pray for your flock in London! This week the Saint's body is venerated in the nave of Westminster Cathedral.

Sunday 25 June 2017

The offices from the Benedictine Monastery of Le Barroux

 
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Illuminated.bible.closeup.arp.jpg

The offices from the Benedictine Monastery of Le Barroux (of Sainte-Madeleine), in France, are available on their website every day and can be found by clicking the link on the right-hand sidebar of this blog.
 
As their website states:- "The story of the Monastery of Sainte-Madeleine is a liturgical story. From the outset, it was the treasure of the Latin liturgy and Gregorian Chant amassed over centuries which captivated the monks. An art of praying which seemed to them newer and fresher than more recent innovations. A school of prayer in which they felt the desire and the strength to approach God through prayer. In this, they are doubtless followers of the initial intuition of their founders."
 
 
 

Photograph - Sung Requiem (Anniversary) at Prinknash Abbey 17th June


The photograph above relates to a Sung Requiem (Anniversary) at Prinknash Abbey, 17th June (Fathers Day weekend) for Dr. M Barker. Special thanks are due to Fr. MacDonald (Celebrant), Joshua Cruden and Fr. Hargreaves for organising the singing; together with the servers, many of whom were serving the Old Rite for the first time!

Tag. Sung Mass in the Old Rite at Prinknash Abbey.

Tuesday 13 June 2017

Is Pope Francis about to Resign?


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Pope_Francis_at_Varginha_%282%29.jpg


The Catholic Herald has the following story:-

"Pope Francis has asked cardinals resident in Rome to inform him when they leave the city, and the address of their stay....A letter from Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Dean of the College of Cardinals, reminds the prelates of the “noble tradition” of informing the Secretariat of State whenever they travel outside of Rome."


Why would he be doing this? One explanation is that the Cardinals need to be near Rome because of an impending consistory(due to a resignation). However, there are other explanations too. Time will tell.

It is true that Cardinals were (years ago) expected to let the Vatican Secretary of State their whereabouts; yet, this rule has not been enforced for years! 

Young Catholic Adults National weekend at Douai Abbey 20th-22nd OCTOBER 2017. Booking Now Open





 Young Catholic AdultsNational weekend  at Douai Abbey 20th-22nd OCTOBER 2017. Featuring Fr. Lawrence Lew OP., and Canon Poucin ICKSP.
 

BOOKING NOW OPEN!

To book see:-  https://v1.bookwhen.com/youngcatholicadults-douai2017

On this Day in Fatima 100 Years Ago.....




 

"The war raged on.  Europe was no stranger to war; but the ferocity and the scope of this war were unprecedented.  The slaughter proceeded on an industrial scale.  And there were the new horrors, beyond all description: the blood and mud of trench warfare; poison gas; primitive tanks, whose operators could not expect to survive more than a few minutes in an engagement; and air raids over cities.  While the three shepherd children of Fatima were keeping their appointment with the Mother of God in the Cova da Iria on June 13, 1917, 18-20 German bombers struck the city of London in broad daylight, in one of the worst air raids of the war.  Four hundred people were injured, and 162 -- including 46 children -- perished.  

The peace that had fled the world had also fled Fatima, particularly in the home of Lucia dos Santos.  After the first apparition of Our Lady at the Cova da Iria, her little cousin, Jacinta, promptly broke the children's firm resolution not to tell anyone what they had seen; and thus began in earnest the sufferings the children promised to undergo for the conversion of sinners.  From this point forward, the children were hounded by inquisitors, both pious and profane, and curiosity-seekers.  But Lucia bore the added burden of persecution right at home.  Her family treated her with contempt; and her mother, who had a great horror of lying, employed every means, including corporal punishment, to make her daughter admit that she was lying.  It was hoped that the children would forget about the alleged apparitions amid the festivities of June 13th, the feast of St. Anthony of Padua.


But the children did not forget.  At noon on the feast of St. Anthony, the children were not at the festa, but at the Cova.  Lucia records in her Fourth Memoir:

As soon as Jacinta, Francisco and I had finished praying the Rosary, with a number of other people who were present, we saw once more the flash reflecting the light which was approaching (which we called lightning).  The next moment, Our Lady was there on the holmoak, exactly the same as in May.

"What do you want of me?" I asked.
"I wish you to come here on the 13th of next month, to pray the Rosary every day, and to learn to read.  Later, I will tell you what I want."
Amid the rending torments of nations, heaven remembers individuals, even the least of them, down to the last detail.
I asked for the cure of a sick person.

"If he is converted, he will be cured during the year."

"I would like to ask you to take us to heaven."
"Yes.  I will take Jacinta and Francisco soon.  But you are to stay here some time longer.  Jesus wishes to make use of you to make me known and loved.  He wants to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart."
Some time longer...The Mother of God has a gift for understatement.  Jacinta and Francisco would both leave this world within three years, but another 88 years would pass before Our Lady would come for Lucia. 

"Am I to stay here alone?"  I asked, sadly.

"No, my daughter.  Are you suffering a great deal?  Don't lose heart.  I will never forsake you.  My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God."
As Our Lady spoke these last words, she opened her hands and for the second time, she communicated to us the rays of that same immense light.  We saw ourselves in this light, as it were, immersed in God.  Jacinta and Francisco seemed to be in that part of the light which rose towards heaven, and I in that which was poured out on the earth.  In front of the palm of Our Lady's right hand was a heart encircled by thorns which pierced it.  We understood that this was the Immaculate Heart of Mary, outraged by the sins of humanity, and seeking reparation.

In her Third Memoir, Lucia looks back on the effects of this second apparition on her and her cousins:

...Our Lady told me on June 13, 1917 that she would never forsake me, and that her Immaculate Heart would be my refuge and the way that would lead me to God.  As she spoke these words, she opened her hands, and from them streamed a light that penetrated to our inmost hearts.  I think that, on that day, the main purpose of this light was to infuse within us a special knowledge and love for the Immaculate Heart of Mary, just as on the other two occasions it was intended to do, as it seems to me, with regard to God and the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity.

From that day onwards, our hearts were filled with a more ardent love for the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  From time to time, Jacinta said to me: "The Lady said that her Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way that will lead you to God.  Don't you love that?  Her Heart is so good!  How I love it!"

In the Fourth Memoir, Lucia describes more particularly the effects of this apparition on Francisco:
...Francisco was deeply impressed by the light which, as I related in the second account, Our Lady communicated to us at the moment when she said: "My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the way which will lead you to God."...

He remarked sometimes:

"These people are so happy just because you told them that Our Lady wants the Rosary said, and that you are to learn to read!  How would they feel if they only knew what she showed us in God, in her Immaculate Heart, in that great light!  But this is a secret; it must not be spoken about.  It's better that no one should know it."

But greater secrets -- and greater sufferings -- were to come."

Friday 9 June 2017

"The Devil’s Cleverest Ploy is to Persuade you that he Doesn’t Exist.” By Archbishop Chaput




 Source:By HazteOir.org - https://www.flickr.com/photos/hazteoir/6811047527/in/photolist-pRXHhK-bnSp8V-bnSpgK-bhjYxa,
CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41557387

“Never forget, when you hear the progress of the Enlightenment being praised, that the devil’s cleverest ploy is to persuade you that he doesn’t exist.”
— Charles Baudelaire


Archbishop Charles Chaput (USA), O.F.M. Cap. writes:-

"Leszek Kolakowski was an unusual man of letters. A fierce critic of the Church as a young man, he was a leading Marxist philosopher in Poland until he asked too many awkward questions about Soviet life under Stalin and got exiled to the West.  He went on to become a fan of John Paul II and one of the great scholars of the last century.

Exactly 30 years ago, Kolakowski gave a lecture at Harvard entitled “The Devil in History.” Early in the talk, the mood in the room became restless. Many of the listeners knew Kolakowski’s work. They knew he could be playful and that he had a wicked sense of irony. But they couldn’t figure out where he was going with his lecture.

Present that day were the historians Tony Judt and Timothy Garton Ash. About 10 minutes into the talk, Ash leaned over to Judt and whispered incredulously: “I’ve got it. He really is talking about the devil.” And in fact, he was.[1]

It was a moment when the little bigotries of our intellectual class were laid bare.  Apart from Judt and Ash, the audience was baffled that an urbane public intellectual, fluent in five languages, could really believe in “religious nonsense” like the devil and original sin. But that’s precisely what Kolakowski did believe.  And he said so again and again in his various works:

An example: “The devil is part of our experience. Our generation has seen enough of it for the message to be taken extremely seriously.”[2]

And: “Evil is continuous throughout human experience. The point is not how to make one immune to it, but under what conditions one may identify and restrain the devil.”[3]
 
And: “When a culture loses its sacred sense, it loses all sense.”[4]

Kolakowski saw that we can’t fully understand our culture unless we take the devil seriously.  The devil and evil are constants at work in human history and in the struggles of every human soul.  And note that Kolakowski (unlike some of our own Catholic leaders who should know better) was not using the word “devil” as a symbol of the darkness in our own hearts, or a metaphor for the bad things that happen in the world.

He was talking about the spiritual being Jesus called “the evil one” and “the father of lies” — the fallen angel who works tirelessly to thwart God’s mission and Christ’s work of salvation.
This is why the evangelization of culture is always, in some sense, a call to spiritual warfare. We’re in a struggle for souls. Our adversary is the devil. And while Satan is not God’s equal and doomed to final defeat, he can do bitter harm in human affairs. The first Christians knew this. We find their awareness written on nearly every page of the New Testament.

The modern world makes it hard to believe in the devil. But it treats Jesus Christ the same way. And that’s the point. Medieval theologians understood this quite well. They had an expression in Latin: Nullus diabolus, nullus redemptor.[5] No devil, no Redeemer. Without the devil, it’s very hard to explain why Jesus needed to come into the world to suffer and die for us. What exactly did he redeem us from?

The devil, more than anyone, appreciates this irony, i.e., that we can’t fully understand the mission of Jesus without him. And he exploits this to his full advantage. He knows that consigning him to myth inevitably sets in motion our same treatment of God.

So what’s the point of my column this week? Jeffrey Russell, who wrote a remarkable four-volume history of the devil, noted that the Faust character is the most popular subject in Western paintings, poems, novels, operas, cantatas and films after the characters of Jesus, Mary and the devil himself.[6] That should tell us something. Who is Faust? He’s the man of letters who sells his soul to the devil on the promise that the devil will show him the secrets of the universe.

Faust is the “type” of a certain species of modern man; a certain kind of artist, scientist and philosopher. Faust doesn’t come to God’s creation as a seeker after truth, beauty, and meaning. He comes impatient to know, the better to control and dominate, with a delusion of his own entitlement, as if such knowledge should be his birthright. A prisoner of his own vanity, Faust would rather barter away his soul than humble himself before God.

There’s a lesson in Faust for our lives and for our culture. Without faith there can be no understanding, no knowledge, no wisdom. We need both faith and reason to penetrate the mysteries of creation and the mysteries of our own lives.

That’s true for individuals, and it’s true for nations. A culture that has a command of reason and the byproducts of reason — science and technology — but lacks faith has made a Faustian bargain with the (very real) devil that can only lead to despair and self-destruction. Such a culture has gained the world with its wealth, power and material success. But it has forfeited its soul."
***
[1] Tony Judt, “Leszek Kolakowski (1927-2009),” New York Review of Books, September 24, 2009
[2] Leszek Kolakowski, My Correct Views on Everything (South Bend, IN, St. Augustine’s Press, 2005), 133
[3] Ibid., 128
[4] Ibid., 271
[5] Jeffrey Burton Russell, Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1986), 33.
[6] Ibid., 58

See Archbishop Chaput's blog at:- http://catholicphilly.com/2017/06/think-tank/archbishop-chaput-column/sympathy-for-the-devil/
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