Good News

The discovery, reported by Eye of the Tiber,  of a planet that could host and support the Maryknoll Fathers opens the way for a humane solution to the problem. 

Whilst there are technical problems to be solved and the costs would be not indifferent, the advantages in term of quality of life here on earth would be worth the expense. Once the first batch has been sent, many others could follow. Entire South American seminaries could be sent away without any further question. That the Jesuits would be ideal colonisers is also obvious.  

The costs would be substantial. But we could still ask Francis, who is very rich and generous, to cover the costs himself.

Mundabor

 

 

The Ape-Friendly Homos And The Obese Gorilla

Spot the red hat

Father Z reports of the ways rich perverts give grants to – get ready for this – Catholic institutions to promote their perverted agenda within the Church. All this is done under the sun, and in tax-efficient way.

One is not surprised at the extent of such evil: sexual perversion is evil, and it is fully illusory to believe that when Satan has got hold of a soul to the point of making her desire what is most disgusting, he will not try to push these souls more and more deep into a cesspool of hatred of Good, and open war to it.

What one, though, asks oneself is the following:

1. How much does the local hierarchy know of this? Or better said: how can they claim they do not know about this? Any trust or entity under the supervision of the Diocese must surely have yearly reports of their ins and out, regularly scrutinised by their supervisors. Every University must, surely, be subject to the diocese's scrutiny if it wants to carry a link to the Church in her name? We are not talking of pocket money here, but of substantial amounts which, being the objects of tax records, must certainly make it possible to trace their movements and ascertain their destination, to the last cent.

2. One reads such news and wonders to what astonishing degree of incompetence and cowardice the Church in the West must have sunk, if perverts even think it possible to undermine it by openly giving fodder to the enemies inside of her. If our prelates did their job in a halfway acceptable way, the Gorilla-friendly Homos would at least fight their satanical battle from the outside. As it is, they are indirectly told: “welcome! Help us lose souls! Can you spare some change, Gov?”

But then one reflects that this a country where a leading member of the hierarchy has the courage, in one of the rare moments in which he is not eating, to shout “Bravo” to someone not only outing his sexual perversion, but endorsing a sodomitical – and his sodomitical – lifestyle.

I therefore wonder who is worse: the homo Apes undemining Catholic teaching, or the obese Gorilla doing exactly the same, under his red hat.

Mundabor

 

Urgent: Put Some Sense Into “Dissent”!

Let’s have a survey!

 

 

Father Z has an interesting blog post, alerting us of a mock “survey” now launched by one of those “we are so committed to Catholic Truth, that we want to change it” people.

The survey is here.

It is a thing of one minute or two to go there and provide them with six short Catholic answers to their mock survey, that is very suggestive already in the way it is posed.

Click happily the link to the survey, then, and show these people how proper Catholicism looks like!

 

Feel free to post here some or all of the answers, too, if you so wish.

Mundabor 

 

Clerical Adultery

Brilliant homily yesterday, as the priest pointed out briefly but sharply that those clergymen asking for “changes” in the way the Church understands marriage and adultery are asking the Bride to betray the Bridegroom, and are committing adultery in their heart as they condone and even justify the adultery of others.

Short and sweet. Very well thought, and very well said.

There are still smart and faithful priests in this now disgraced Kingdom.

Mundabor

 

Church And Sacraments

http://en.gloria.tv/?media=570469

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The Church does not create or invents the sacraments, but receives them from our Lord, who instituted them accordign to His will.”

Interesting video from Gloria TV about so-called women’s ordination, that has relevance beyond the issue itself.

Whilst in normal times it would be superfluous to give relevance to such topics, we do not live in normal times and it is therefore apposite to repeat what should be repeated.

I very much fear in October some half cataclism is going to come to us, and I am rather certain whatever happens in October, in Germany and in other countries the clergy will generalise the sacrilegious practice of giving communion to public adulterers, the only thing to be still decided being the excuse they will use to do so.  One is reminded of the Dutch schism, and if you reflect even JP II needed several years to finally move the steamroller you can imagine how the decidedly more revolutionary Francis will tacitly allow the worst abuses to happen, under the mantle of a “mercy” that is fake because not rooted in Christ’s laws, and hypocritical because no trace of it can be found in his dealing with the FFI, culpable of the terrible heresy of Catholicism. 

But the Church does not create or invents the Sacraments, but receives them from our Lord, who instituted them according to his will. It is, therefore, not for the Church – not in a pretended dostrinal way, and not even under the excuse of mercy or pastoral care – to tamper with them.

Enjoy the video.

Mundabor

The Power Of The Comment Box

You’ve got pageviews…

And it came to pass a horrible, horrible rag that epitomises everything that is wrong with 50 years of post- V II madness had to close its comment box. The situation is still ongoing as I speak, though I do not think it will last for long. Perhaps, as you read these lines things will have already reverted to normal; or, rather, pervert.

You see, a blog is very different from an Internet magazine. A blog is like a living room, the intimate space the blogger shares with a few selected friends who share his own vision of the world. The “private” blogger isn’t interested in traffic, or popularity. He wants to make some points with those who can understand them and hopefully share them with others in turn. He runs, if you want, an Internet salon.

Not so for a magazine. A magazine is a commercial outfit operating in the publishing industry. It must make profits, and it needs traffic to survive. The more popular it is, the better.

Now: as those of you know who can observe things, in a big site traffic is driven mainly by the comments. If an Internet presence has a vast audience, the article of the day is merely the starter. What really counts are the duels developing from it, and attracting a crowd of people eager to watch the fight and support, perhaps even commenting themselves every now and then, their own heroes. Most viewers are “lurkers”: they don’t write, but follow what other people write. This is whence the pageviews, and the advertising revenues, mainly come.

Every magazine has this faithful clientele, because many commenters tend to frequent and, so to speak, set up tent in one or two of these magazines, and those who like – or hate – them soon notice it and come back regularly. Many a viewer will visit the same site several times in a day, to watch the good men fight against the bad ones and take encouragement from them. This, not the articles in themselves – though they must be somewhat good to attract quality commenters – is what drives the traffic.

You can understand from this what a tragedy it is when a magazine closes the comment box. It will have to rely exclusively on the content professional writers create for them, but it will renounce to all that content that amateur commenters write for them gratis et amore Dei – basically at the only cost of the moderation for the site – and the attending excitement, and manly joy for a manly fight, they create. Take this away, and see your viewers’ statistics go south faster than Obama’s approval rates.

This sounds like a death knell to me, as I can’t imagine this is a viable business model. A successful Internet presence lives of the content generated for it by the readers, which drives up the stats, which drives up the ads revenues, which covers – and hopefully more than covers – the costs. Take that away, and you have taken the blood out of this publishing organism.

What has, then, happened by the scandalous rag in question? I seriously doubt they think they can have a permanent, successful Internet presence without the comment box. More probably, they have seen their combox permanently overrun by commenters hostile to their own editorial line, and therefore representing a threat for their own credibility. They are now, if you ask me, reorganising their moderation criteria in order to get a different set of commenters without discouraging too much the controversy they absolutely need to let the entire exercise work.

Not an easy task. Not if you are a bunch of deluded nutcases considered deranged by all but the likes of Michelle Obama.

We will see how this pans out. I am curious to see how they will tackle this problem.

Bad luck to them.

Mundabor

Another One Bites The Dust

The poison pill reports in the usual whining way an Argentinian priest suspended in 2010 for his support for so-called “gay marriage” has now been defrocked.

Makes sense, as if one supports so-called gay marriages one can’t call himself a Christian, let alone a Catholic priest.

I hope the chap is thrown on the road without a penny to live on (McDonald’s is hiring: a very honest job), but frankly I doubt it.  He will, very probably, continue to scrounge at the expense of the Faithful of the Church whose enemy he is. 

The apostate complains saying “thirty years of service to God’s people mean nothing”. One has the impression the years of service to God’s people have been rather zero.

Please reflect it isn’t really thinkable this man would have been defrocked if he had repented. Three years is a long time. This must be a very obdurate one. At this point, one must wonder about his own so-called “orientation”, too.

The Church must get rid of these people.

The lady above (starting from 2:00) has the right attitude… 

Mundabor

Pope Francis: What About The Mad Nuns?

Sometimes, the broom was preferred to the bus....

The excitement and shock about the changes of the few days (in just 24 hours, it would seem the Hermeutic Of Continuity With The Seventies has taken a solid lead) caused me and many others to forget some rather secondary issues, like the bunch of acidic women of very questionable femininity promoting abortion, illegal immigration, and homosexuality and calling themselves “nuns”, principally because they scrounge from the effort and sacrifice of past generations of devout Catholics.

Now, the mad nuns may not be such an important issue as institutionalised sexual perversion, but they will probably become a good litmus test to see how the present Pontiff will deal with the issue of dissent.

The interesting matter here is that the mad nuns tend to hide behind the finger of their “social engagement” (notice they love traveling with the bus, too; it must be some kind of socialist mania; “nuns on the bicycle” would be healthier, methinks…), which in their eyes justifies pretty much everything they do, from the issue of abortion to the one of sodomy, not to speak of “wymyn” priest. Now, the newly elected Pontiff is also, we are told, very much focused on amassing treasures of social justice on earth, but he seems very distant from the viragos on pretty much every issue not directly stinking of socialism. If, therefore, he will chose to fare a soft line against the wymyn, we will know his engagement in favour of Christian doctrine stops short of damaging Socialist mantras. If, on the other hand, he will crush the dissent we will know this is one who doesn't wait 45 years to act when he sees the need for it.

One of the mad nuns has, in an interview to a rag calling itself “Catholic”, expressed the wish that an “Italian solution” may be found: the burying of the acts in the most forgotten drawer of the Vatican bureaucracy, never to be touched again as long as the “sisters” live (which, let it be said, won't be for very long).

Sister Mad might be proven right, but the style of the Pontiff seems rather to indicate he is not very much the type for this kind of insabbiamento, and whatever his decision he'll take care to let us know his take on the matter.

I have more than half a feeling that the wymyn won't be the only ones to be bitterly disappointed by the allegedly “progressive” Pope. But I am in incurable optimist and I also thought Cardinal Scola would make it, so don't even think of giving any credibility to my gut feelings.

Mundabor

 

The Witch Files, And The Meek Popes.

Strong Pope: Urban II.

Absolutely wonderful blog post from Father Z, which I suggest you click before you do anything else.

The list of astonishing evil – or pervert, or both – females, all of them nuns, who have reached some notoriety through their satanic positions is shockingly long.

Particularly dismaying is the fact some of these nuns were (are; will be?) not only tolerated, but supported by their own order. The scale of demonic devastation is barely conceivable even in the eyes of an average  European.

At this point, I wonder how this could be allowed to go on for so long, and why the reaction is still so mild. I do not doubt the phenomenon will be destroyed one day. But my impression is it will be rooted by biology, not by Rome.

I personally see the root of this evil in the root of pretty much all the evils which have affected the Church in the last half century: Vatican II.

Vatican II was not only a shift – a seismic shift, I would say – in the way the clergy looked at their own role; most tragically, it was a shift in the way Popes have begun to interpret their role. Fifty years after the start of Vatican II, millions see it as somewhat wrong that a Pope should punish or threat anyone; a thought that must have been simply inconceivable to the Church of the past; the Church which started crusades, put heretics under trial, and openly defied Emperors.

Modern Popes are seen, rather, as decorative old men dressed in white, helping us to feel good every now and then by reminding us of things we all agree about, and therefore conveniently uncontroversial (the news of today: Pope criticises sex tourism. I frankly struggle to see the headline here). The idea that Popes may have, and legitimately so, teeth is not really there. A world who wants to make of Jesus an environmentally friendly pacifist will obviously insist in making of a Pope a decorative practical irrelevance.  

This is, if you ask me, why it took many decades before the Vatican hierarchy started the work of eradication, and this is why the work will be so long and unduly gentle as to make the biological solution probably more effective than the theological one.

We do not know what will happen in future, but my take is the witches will continue to bark around as aggressively as they always did, and the Church reaction will be limited to some expression of disapproval from this or that high prelate.The leitmotiv will be, as always, that the Church doesn’t punish.

When this happens; when some slight verbal condemnation has been expressed, all moderate Catholics will start to say the Church has reacted, because we live in times in which words are confused with acts.

If you ask me, this mentality – this meekness that is not an absence of aggressiveness, but an outright weakness; and weakness is always recognised by the Enemy – not only causes countless souls to get lost in the end (and I can frankly not imagine any sincere Catholic doubting of this very simple fact) , but it is even bad PR politics.

People are naturally attracted from leadership. The more so, when this leadership is exercised by the man who has a right to it more than any other on earth. A Pope with the guts to wage open war to heresy and secularism, rather than being “meek”, will attract the hate of the progressive crowds (who want the death of Christianity anyway; see HHS mandate), but will, in time, deeply impress all those who still keep in themselves a small flame of Catholicism alive. 

There is no organisation on earth who can mobilise as much as the Church. No other organisation has the helping hand of the Holy Ghost, and no other organisation has the profound grip on people’s soul the Church has. After fifty years of devastation and attempted suicide, the Church in the US can still make Presidents tremble. Just imagine where they would be now if the work had been started ten or fifteen years ago.

Whenever Popes recognise this and act accordingly, they are hailed as great Popes; when they are meek and weak they are remembered, if ever, as a lost occasion.

O for a warrior Pope.

Mundabor

 

LCWR’s “Theology” And The Licence To Bark

She was angry at the Vatican.

On the “God and the machine” blog (yes, I know: he writes on Patheos) we find an interesting article describing the self-made theology of Barbara Max Hubbard. The lady would be, to us, totally irrelevant as one of those ridiculous new-age-cum-gandhi charlatans going around, but unfortunately she is not, because she was invited to talk at the LCWR annual conference, in which apparently – and unsurprisingly – such plainly heretical/heathenish talk found a great echo.

The inconsequential bollocks she dishes to her listeners is best described with the words of Philip Neri at the Domine, da mihi hanc aquam blog: “I would add a few descriptive words myself, but I might die in my sleep unabsolved of serious sin”.

I am not surprised that people able to tell themselves nuns and to encourage such blasphemy have the gut to complain because they have been corrected. The old witches have not been punished nearly as harshly as they have richly deserved. Therefore, they can now bark as loud as they can without fear of exemplary punishment. 

Once again, I have the impression the approach used with the, erm, ladies was far too mild. They will  only do what is absolutely necessary to avoid worse measures – I can’t imagine it to be much;  some soon-forgotten reiteration of fidelity to Church teaching should do -, after which they’ll probably continue their work more or less undisturbed. Who is, I ask, going to stop them? The Vatican? How so, if years of unashamed paganism has led to nothing more than a gentle rebuke and slow “help” to clean up the shop a bit in the next, what was it, five years?

The reaction to the conclusion of the apostolic visitation shows it doesn’t make sense to be mild in these matters. The liberals bark exactly as loud, the witches remain as unrepentant as they were before. An exemplary punishment (as in: choice between abiura or excommunication for the leaders; suppression of the entire LCWR; suppression of the worst of the religious orders member of the LCWR) would have silenced “progressive” “Catholics” the world over and sent a clear message the party is now at an end, and such antics will not be tolerated.

Alas, it is in the style of this pontificate to be always in the middle of everything: half supporter of traditional liturgy, half of the neocatechumenal way; half commander-in-chief, half encouraging uncle; harsh in words against dissent, but far too mild in action.

Make no mistake: dissent will continue unabated, and will perhaps be emboldened by the absence of exemplary measures.

They all know now they still have licence to bark.

Mundabor

“Call To Disobedience” Still On The Internet, Cardinal Schoenborn Still Fast Asleep

No, he is sleeping, really.....

It would seem unbelievable that in a world that reacts to news in a matter of hours, the heretical call to disobedience from around 250 Austrian priests is still online.

Furthermore, no news has reached the internet of any serious disciplinary proceeding against the initiators of this uprising. We all know how fast a priest can be suspended pending investigation, and the news made public so that what these priests say or have said is not confused with priestly ministry. This doesn’t seem to apply to heretical priests calling to disobedience, at least not if Archbishop Cardinal Schoenborn is in charge.

This uprising has in the meantime more than 250 priests as followers, but the internet site has not been updated so we don’t know how many they have become in the meantime. The only reaction of Cardinal Schoenborn has been some obligatory meowing centred on the need of obedience, without a word of clear condemnation of the delirious theological position of the rebels.

As I write, all the priests calling to open disobedience, and whose names can be read under “Mitglieder” on the internet page, so openly shameless and sure of impunity are they, continue to be in good standing and continue to spread their heretical ideas and to confuse the faithful.

This call to disobedience is demolishing the Church in German-Speaking Countries with every day that it is allowed to stay online. It gives the Austrian Catholics the impression that rebellion be legitimate; it makes it more probable that such rebellion may spread to other German-speaking countries; it makes a mockery of the office of the priest and of his promise of obedience.

Every day that such a scandal is allowed to survive, Cardinal Schoenborn makes himself beautiful with the vast mass of Austrian “rebels lite”; those who don’t know much about Catholic doctrine, but pay the “church tax” the Cardinal is clearly after and are now, polluted by the heresies their own priest have encouraged, refusing to pay en masse; at the same time, the Cardinal gives these “catholic lite” the impression that they do have a leverage against Rome. Fools all of them, but the biggest fool is the Cardinal, who doesn’t do anything sensible (obligatory meowing not being anything sensible) to stop this and allows his desire for popularity and Kirchensteuer-money to come before sound Catholicism, the prestige of the Church and the soul of his sheep.

The initiative has started on the 19th June. If the Cardinal had been awake – and thinking about Catholicism rather than about his Kirchensteuer proceeds – the initiative would have been stopped in a matter of hours, the responsible suspended pending investigation, and an example given to everyone. This is what a shepherd does who doesn’t want heresy to spread among his sheep. Cardinal Schonborn does, of course, the exact contrary and we now have more than 250 priests in the uprising.

I can’t imagine any better way to help them to spread the heresy than the sort of fake ex officio rebuke, but in practice complete inaction, that Cardinal Schoenborn is staging.

This scandal must be stopped; the initiators and all those who have given their support suspended, investigated and asked to offer a complete retractation or – better, say I – be defrocked. Most of all, the priests responsible must be ordered to take the site down, now.

Mundabor

 

 

The “Council” Of Dissenting Geriatrics

She met a lot of like-minded people of her age.

And so the delirious “council” of dissenting geriatrics has taken place. Without mass, mind, as the smell of canonical consequences for those priests foolish enough to participate was too strong for even one to be found.

The video you can see here (From Father Z’s blog) gives you some sample of the deluded world in which these people still (that is: not for very long) live: they challenge the Church of Christ because “Christ challenged the hierarchy of his days” (hel-lo? They weren’t Christians!); they want to “invite everyone like Christ would have done” as if Church teaching were merely a matter of all happily singing together; they talk of “lesbians and gays” (and whoever else is generally associated with these words) as if one were excluded from the Church merely because one has a perversion, at the same time trying to make the perversion approved.

The video would be mildly amusing if it was about progressive Episcopalians; it being about people calling themselves “Catholic”, one wonders why the warden allowed them to go out.

As you can see from the video, the crowd was, on average, clearly old. These are people who were young in the heydays of LSD and who could never get to grips with simple concepts like, erm, obedience. Their smug expressions show all the arrogance of those who think that they can question 2000 years of Church teaching, because it doesn’t match with their own “liberal” mindset. Fools.

As already stated, the announced ecumenical mass did not take place, being substituted with the usual “kumbaya-can’t you feel the spirit-oh let us feel all new age together” bollocks. A demonstration of (pun not intended) impotence and irrelevance as you couldn’t find a better one. Mildly amusing, though, and useful to instruct the faithful.

There’s unrest in the geriatric department of the madhouse.

It won’t last for very long.

Mundabor

Father Longenecker On Difficulty And Doubt

No, He did NOT get it wrong.

Beautiful blog post from Father Longenecker about the attitude of Catholics (or those who call themselves so) regarding the problem they encounter in understanding or accepting Catholic teaching on various issues.

Father Longenecker puts is very well when he writes that:

[…] a difficulty is the attitude which says, “How can that be so?” whereas a doubt is the attitude that says, “That can’t be so.” The first is open, engaged, intelligent and searching the tradition in order to understand the teaching. The second puts on above the tradition and the teaching by insisting that one knows better than Holy Church.

Catholicism is not easy. Some of the truths therein contained can be disconcerting, seem to fly in the face of common sense and sometimes are, in fact, a challenge to our ability to accept the Truth. It is only normal that, put in front of them, the Catholic be at first (and before being properly instructed and guided) somewhat at a loss to understand and perhaps a bit lost altogether. What is not normal (for a Catholic) is that he reacts to his difficulties by appointing himself as judge of the validity of Catholic Truth.

A Catholic knows that he has to accept Catholic Truth. Every bit of it. If he has a problem with it, it is a clear sign that he must work in humility to overcome his difficulty. But he must realise from the start that the problem is not about who is right, but about how long will it take for him to understand why he is wrong.

The attitude cannot be: “I disagree with this, so the Church must be wrong”. This is as Catholic as Mohammed, or David Cameron. The attitude can and must be: “I must be wrong on this and I now want to understand why“. Without this fundamental humility (and fundamental wisdom) no spiritual progress is possible; on the contrary, our ego will give us countless excuses to indulge in our little power games. Just notice the smug undertones of all who say “I disagree with the Church on (put here a doctrinal matter)….” to clearly realise the speaker’s barely hidden satisfaction at feeling so important or rebellious or – funny, this – clever.

Credo ut intelligam, non intelligo ut credam. “I believe that I may understand, I do not understand that I may believe”. The acceptance of Truth comes before the full understanding of the Truth and it is what makes this understanding possible in the first place. It is through my humble acceptance of Truth that the instruments to understand it are given to me. My intellect, left to himself, will never lead me to the Truth, but will invariably become the useful idiot of my ever-expanding ego.

Before the open dissent comes a sin of pride; the extraordinary idea that Christ came on Earth and died for us, but somehow neglected to foresee that the Church would betray his teaching until we, oh so clever, come to its rescue; the idea that God is not able to found a Church which keeps His teaching intact, and needs us to cure Her from several centuries of misogyny, or homophobia, or inability to understand modern times.

As I have said, this attitude doesn’t sound very clever. Perhaps you can make this clear to the next wannabe church-founder expanding on how he wants to improve on Christ’s work.

Mundabor

 

 

 

The Papal Visit And The Thing With The Crowds

Lambeth Walk, New Style. Photo: Matthew Lloyd/ Getty Images

This is the last day of the Papal visit; the great day of the Beatification Mass – the main reason for the visit – and of the farewell; obviously, this is also the day for some reflections.

We have, in the last days, seen a lot of people (many more than expected, actually) on the roadside, cheering and waving flags or just showing sympathy for a man of whom they perceive, more or less dimly, the intellectual and spiritual stature. We have listened to people saying what a beautiful experience it was to see the Pope, share this moment & Co.

I wonder, though, how many people have experienced not only an exciting moment, but a change; how many people have thought, during these days, at least once that if the man is spiritual and a good chap and firmly opposed to abortion, perhaps one should need to give some thought as to whether legal abortion is really fine; if the Church is an important spiritual instance operating for the good of men, whether Her opposition to contraception and divorce is really so wrong; if the Church is still the moral guide of our civilisation, if homosexuality is compatible with it.

I wouldn’t expect a radical change, but at least a moment of reflection; a pause in which uncomfortable questions are posed to one’s own internal tribunal; to be hastily cast aside perhaps but – once the seed has been planted – ready to germinate when more opportune times come (which sadly often means: bereavement, disease or some other minor or major life’s earthquake).

Allow me to say that I am not very confident that this, or any other papal visit, will have a lasting effect. The vast majority of the people on the roadside, and watching TV, will deal with the Pope as they deal with any other media entertainment: something used for the excitement or interest of the moment and to be rapidly cast aside to follow the next excitement. Hence the oceanic masses greeting John Paul II whilst the pews kept emptying; hence the vast number of people who have “seen the Pope”, but haven’t accepted one word more of what he says than they already did; hence the usual “but” mentality (as in “I am a Catholic, but…” ) we will so often hear from, I am sorry to say, the vast majority of those on the roadside.

The age of the media induces people to confuse media events with reality; journalists are – interestedly, and for obvious ego reasons – particularly prone to this mistake. The truth is that media don’t change people, Papal visits don’t change people, “historic speeches” don’t change people and all those talk of a visit which would “energise” a community is merely empty talk of cowardly bishops who do not want to do their job.

People change with constant effort, repeated daily; with the good and sincere (and truthful, and uncomfortable) homily delivered every sunday; with the trust slowly building in an institution perceived to fight for what is right instead of pandering to common prejudices and conveniences; with the relentless hammering of the unpopular truths no one wants to hear. People change if there is a serious, daily effort on the ground with our friends, our families, our colleagues whenever possible. Media events come and go and in two months’ time no one will talk of this visit anymore. A good priest, a good friend, a courageous bishop are there all the time.

It would be extremely dangerous, I think, to take refuge in the numbers of people cheering the Pope, or assisting at the Papal Masses, to conclude that Catholicism in England is on the right way; it isn’t. It is plagued by amateur (or cowardly, or outright atheists) Bishops, by feeble priests preaching the Gospel of the Easy Platitudes, by distracted sheep for whom dissent is a way of showing intelligence and a critical mind.

These are real issues, and they will not change with a Papal visit.

Let us, therefore, remember this visit for what it is: the joyous occasion of an important Beatification, with some entertainment thrown in (a bit of Popemobile here; a bit of Susan Boyle there). Bet let us not be under the delusion that this visit will change absolutely anything as long as the work on the ground is – as it certainly is today – so evidently deficient.

Mundabor