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Thursday 24 July 2014

A Reminder of A Great Document


When the Book of Genesis speaks of "help", it is not referring merely to acting, but also to being.Womanhood and manhood are complementary not only from the physical and psychological points of view, but also from the ontological. It is only through the duality of the "masculine" and the "feminine" that the "human" finds full realization.
8. After creating man male and female, God says to both: "Fill the earth and subdue it" (Gen1:28). Not only does he give them the power to procreate as a means of perpetuating the human species throughout time, he also gives them the earth, charging them with the responsible use of its resources. As a rational and free being, man is called to transform the face of the earth. In this task, which is essentially that of culture, man and woman alike share equal responsibility from the start. In their fruitful relationship as husband and wife, in their common task of exercising dominion over the earth, woman and man are marked neither by a static and undifferentiated equality nor by an irreconcilable and inexorably conflictual difference. Their most natural relationship, which corresponds to the plan of God, is the "unity of the two", a relational "uni-duality", which enables each to experience their interpersonal and reciprocal relationship as a gift which enriches and which confers responsibility.

St. John Paul II



SPUC Update


Society for the Protection of Unborn Children
3 Whitacre Mews, Stannary Street
London, SE11 4AB, United Kingdom
Telephone: (020) 7091 7091
Email: information@spuc.org.uk
http://www.spuc.org.uk
 
Morning-after pill should be handed out in maternity wards – BPAS

smeaton20120510

Thursday, 24 July 2014

Morning-after pill should be handed out in maternity wards – BPAS

Ann Furedi of BPAS
Morning-after pill should be handed out in maternity wards – BPAS [Telegraph, 23 July] 

Book now for SPUC's national conference, 5-7 September
SPUC's national conference takes place once again at the Hayes Conference Centre, Swanwick, Derbyshire, from 5-7 September. This will be a fantastic opportunity to hear international speakers on a range of pro-life topics, and get up to date with all SPUC’s campaigns. It is a must for all SPUC branches. We are delighted that our speakers this year will include Bishop Philip Egan, Roman Catholic bishop of Portsmouth. See the conference programme To book, download the booking form and return it to SPUC with the conference fee. If you have any questions about the conference, please contact Katherine Hampton, the conference organiser, by email to conference@spuc.org.uk or by telephone on 020 7820 3137. [SPUC, 16 July]

Re-advertised post: Personal Secretary to the Chief Executive
SPUC is looking to recruit a Personal Secretary to the Chief Executive based at its London HQ. The post is part-time (15-25 hours per week, negotiable). Salary details available on request. The deadline for applications is 15 August. This is a re-advertised post. [SPUC, 23 July]

Abortion
  • The wife who's aborted two babies - because she's too selfish to share her husband [Mail, 24 July]
Embryology
Euthanasia
Comments on this blog? Email them to johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk 

Sometimes, People Need To Read

http://www.churchmilitant.tv/scripts/vort-2014-07-22.pdf

Shades of this blog! I have many article on this point. Remember, all the problems in England started with someone wanting an unlawful, in the eyes of God, marriage. Maybe reading the Michael's text, rather than listening, will bring it home.

Please, American Catholics, wake up! Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.



My prophecy years ago

http://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2014/07/23/casseurs-de-barbes-et-sarcelles-les-peines-sont-elles-honteusement-clementes_4461772_4355770.html

Europe will fall into anarchy and America into tyranny.

Some people are waking up.

Czech Republic To Hold Eucharistic Congress

http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=22110&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+CatholicWorldNewsFeatureStories+(Catholic+World+News+(on+CatholicCulture.org))


London-based reporter notes....

http://www.zdnet.com/snowden-plans-to-work-on-anti-surveillance-technology-7000031805/

Old Reminders from An Ex-Teacher

If you have not read this book, do so now.


23 Feb 2012
... the list is long. St. Thomas Becket, pray for us. I have suggested before here, all reading Robert Hugh Benson's Lord of the World, for another perspective on the importance of the independent Papacy, until the end of time.



15 May 2012
Yet another far-reaching view was Robert Hugh Benson's excellent book Lord of the World, mentioned before on this blog and written in, wow, 1907. Pay attention, as the man or woman who will supposedly bring peace to a ...

16 Nov 2012
In the meantime, get and read two books--Robert Hugh Benson's None Other Gods, and Lord of the World. And a special note to Therese and Anita; everyday time we sang the blessings for our absence sisters, I prayed for ...

12 Sep 2013
And, I must add that we need to beware....read Lord of the World. New York Times. 'Recent events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do ...

17 Oct 2013
They've sacrifices their collective sovereignty, for the EU, a concept Robert Hugh Benson talked about in Lord of the World, a book amazingly prophetic, when compared to "times like these..." People need to take this story ...

30 Nov 2013
For years, and those who have read this blog know this, I have been recommending Robert Hugh Benson's Lord of the World. The recent Belgian bill on child euthanasia and some things happening in America make me ...

30 Nov 2013
The choices Frank makes are those contrary to the world, the flesh, and the devil. His choices reveal his ... Supertradmum said... Thanks, James-it is not as dramatic as Lord of the World, but it is seriously a guide to holiness.

21 Jan 2014
I almost insist people walk through any shopping mall on a Saturday afternoon and observe how far people have strayed from anything close to Holiness. Might I add reading Fr. Robert Hugh Benson's "Lord of the World" as ...

13 Jun 2013
This is one prophecy that Robert Hugh Benson got wrong in his great book, The Lord of the World. One hundred years ago, although he could imagine Great Britain turning evil, he could not envision Ireland doing so. Tragic.

19 Apr 2014
I think Robert Hugh Benson was influenced by their martyrdom, using some imagery of the atrocities in his book, Lord of the World. I have put a few links below to get you started. This time of history, 1793-1796 must be taught.

Umm, I thought this is what parents did, not robots

Just like a good personal trainer, we want the robots to be able to guide the child toward a behavior that we desire,” said Brian Scassellati, a computer science professor at Yale and principal investigator for the study.

read more here

http://freebeacon.com/issues/feds-spending-10-million-to-build-robot-companions-for-children/

"You can't be serious?"

Are you scared yet?


Since becoming chairman, Goodman has been pushing to expand protections for all media and has noted how Democrats on the panel have been eager to nick at freedoms for conservative media while Republicans have been voting for broader protections even for liberals like Democratic financier George Soros.
He recently warned that conservative online media, like the Drudge Report, could face regulation as Democrats move to tighten the so-called “media exemption” that lets the press cover politics any way they want.
In the case of the Ryan book, publisher Grand Central Publishing sought the broad media exemption from regulation, but Democrats rejected that and pushed for a different, commercial, exemption that imposes rules over the publisher’s politics and book pricing. Republicans went along and the commission approved that 6-0.

Read more here  

Hello to Readers in Slovakia


Yeah! New Book!

I shall get back to Predestination, but a friend of mine just sent me Disinformation, and I am jumping into it.

Of course, I shall share tidbits with you.

Fake coupon hit Canada and the USA--disinformation on a lesser scale.



St. Alphonsus Ligouri and Pius IX via Fr. Cantalamessa

A hymn from the book:


1. From starry skies descending,
Thou comest, glorious King,
A manger low Thy bed,
In winter's icy sting;

2. O my dearest Child most holy,
Shudd'ring, trembling in the cold!
Great God, Thou lovest me!
What suff'ring Thou didst bear,
That I near Thee might be!

3. Thou art the world's Creator,
God's own and true Word,
Yet here no robe, no fire
For Thee, Divine Lord.

4. Dearest, fairest, sweetest Infant,
Dire this state of poverty.
The more I care for Thee,
Since Thou, o Love Divine,
Will'st now so poor to be.



"Nothing else is worth our living for...." Obedience and The Will of God

I have been looking at the actual sermons of young Cardinal Manning in his handwriting. His handwriting and mine are so similar, I was taken aback by the comparison.

I am reading "Obedience The Only Reality". It is superb, especially coming from a very young curate.

One of his points is that the great intellectual and reasoning powers we have been given by God to often become separated from the soul, the spiritual part of man. When this happens, Manning clearly states that anxiety, pain, sorrow and "the season of death" face men and women with the abolishing of these gifts they have refused to use.

The only "thing" we actually have in this world is our own spiritual life, which we take into the next world, he writes.

Everything we have done or spoken, states Manning, will either harm or help our spiritual life. He writes, "Of all the encumbrances, goings on of this busy life, of all its deeds and achievements, and possessions, how small a remainder shall be found after that fiery trial has done its work." He is referring to the final judgment, the keen accounting of God of our lives.


Manning asks how shall our works, our thoughts, our imaginations, self-persuasions and other deceits stand up to the sight of God's scrutiny.

The clergyman then goes on to say that the disobedient are condemned already. And, those who take part in the eternal obedience of Christ, the following of the will of God, use the gifts of grace given to them.

Here is another direct quotation: "Nothing else is worth our living for....Obedient or disobedient, we must be real or unreal, unperishable or perishing."

Manning states that the first step in holiness is to see what it is what God's will is for each one of us; then, to abandon everything else.

"What we are is a revelation of His will towards us. Our lot is a reality, the works of our calling are real, as long as they are done as a service to obedience. Within these bounds there is nothing which does not bear upon Eternity....Obedience to the will of God is work of direct and simple consciousness. It is to be wrought in us by its own self-confirming power. It is by doing the will of God, by recognizing it in all the changes of life; by reading it in the course of this troubled world; the Expression of the Divine Mind; by bowing ourselves down before it, it whatsoever guise it might reveal itself; by yielding ourselves in gladness of mind both to do and to suffer it, counting it a holy discipline, and a loving correction of our own willfulness, and by praying Him ever to stay His hand, till the mind of self be abolished from our regenerate being;--by this means it is that we are changed from a shadow of a fleeting life to the abiding realities of the Eternal world, being made partakers of the will of God."

Would that we heard sermons like this today! If you want to read more of this thrilling sermon, go here.
http://www.pitts.emory.edu/collections/mss002/ManningCatholicSermons/ObedienceTheOnlyReality.pdf

to be continued...



Manning to Gladstone on The Death of Caroline Manning

"God has been graciously pleased to lead me into a way that is desert, and to bid me to serve Him with entire surrender of myself."

And a few years later he wrote to Samuel Wilberforce concerning Caroline Manning's death: "For my part, I doubt if anything else would have made me so love and yearn for the unseen world as to counterpoise the stifling hold with which the world we see and act in weighs one down."

This is an exact example of one giving one's will to God, even in grief and loss, and railing, in some pagan manner, about fate or doom. Manning saw that God's will was for him "to toil in Christ's Church in warfare here on earth."

A Cardinal of the Church Militant.....


Idiom of The Day

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7f/WWI_English_dud_bomb.JPG/220px-WWI_English_dud_bomb.JPG

damp squib (plural damp squibs)
  1. firework that fails to go off, due to wetting.
  2. (idiomatic, by extension) Anything that doesn’t work properly, or fails to come up to expectations
from Wikitionary http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/damp_squib

Tract of Newman Number One


Tract No. 1 (Ad Clerum) http://www.newmanreader.org/works/times/tract1.html

Rather timely considering the Anglican decision last week...

Thoughts
On
The Ministerial Commission,
Respectfully Addressed to the Clergy

{1} I AM but one of yourselves,—a Presbyter; and therefore I conceal my name, lest I should take too much on myself by speaking in my own person. Yet speak I must; for the times are very evil, yet no one speaks against them.
Is not this so? Do not we "look one upon another," yet perform nothing? Do we not all confess the peril into which the Church is come, yet sit still each in his own retirement, as if mountains and seas cut off brother from brother? Therefore suffer me, while I try to draw you forth from those pleasant retreats, which it has been our blessedness hitherto to enjoy, to contemplate the condition and prospects of our Holy Mother in a practical way; so that one and all may unlearn that idle habit, which has grown upon us, of owning the state of things to be bad, yet doing nothing to remedy it.
Consider a moment. Is it fair, is it dutiful, to suffer our Bishops to stand the brunt of the battle without doing our part to support them? Upon them comes "the care of all the Churches." This cannot be helped: indeed it is their glory. Not one of us would wish in the least to deprive them of the duties, the toils, the responsibilities of their high Office. And, black event as it would be for the country, yet, (as far as they are concerned,) we could not wish them a more blessed termination of their course, than the spoiling of their goods, and martyrdom.
To them then we willingly and affectionately relinquish their high privileges and honours; we encroach not upon the rights of the SUCCESSORS OF THE APOSTLES; we touch not their sword and crosier. Yet surely we may be their shield-bearers in the battle without offence; and by our voice and deeds be to them what Luke and Timothy were to St. Paul.
Now then let me come at once to the subject which leads me to address you. Should the Government and Country so far forget their GOD as to cast off the Church, to deprive it of its temporal honours and substance, on what will you rest the claim of respect and attention which you make upon your flocks? Hitherto you have been upheld by your birth, your education, your wealth, your connexions; should these secular advantages cease, on what must CHRIST'S Ministers depend? Is not this a serious practical question? We know how miserable is the state of religious bodies not supported by the State. Look at the Dissenters on all sides of you, and you will see at once that their Ministers, depending {2} simply upon the people, become the creatures of' the people. Are you content that this should be your case? Alas! can a greater evil befal Christians, than for their teachers to be guided by them, instead of guiding? How can we "hold fast the form of sound words," and "keep that which is committed to our trust," if our influence is to depend simply on our popularity? Is it not our very office tooppose the world? can we then allow ourselves to court it? to preach smooth things and prophesy deceits? to make the way of life easy to the rich and indolent, and to bribe the humbler classes by excitements and strong intoxicating doctrine? Surely it must not be so;—and the question recurs, on what are we to rest our authority, when the State deserts us?
CHRIST has not left His Church without claim of its own upon the attention of men. Surely not. Hard Master He cannot be, to bid us oppose the world, yet give us no credentials for so doing. There are some who rest their divine mission on their own unsupported assertion; others, who rest it upon their popularity; others, on their success; and others, who rest it upon their temporal distinctions. This last case has, perhaps, been too much our own; I fear we have neglected the real ground on which our authority is built,—our APOSTOLICAL DESCENT.
We have been born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of GOD. The LORD JESUS CHRIST gave His SPIRIT to His Apostles; they in turn laid their hands on those who should succeed them; and these again on others; and so the sacred gift has been handed down to our present Bishops, who have appointed us as their assistants, and in some sense representatives.
Now every one of us believes this. I know that some will at first deny they do; still they do believe it. Only, it is not sufficiently practically impressed on their minds. They do believe it; for it is the doctrine of the Ordination Service, which they have recognised as truth in the most solemn season of their lives. In order, then, not to prove, but to remind and impress, I entreat your attention to the words used when you were made Ministers of CHRIST'S Church.
The office of Deacon was thus committed to you: "Take thou authority to execute the office of a Deacon in the Church of GOD committed unto thee: In the name," &c.
And the priesthood thus:
"Receive the HOLY GHOST, for the office and work of a Priest, in the Church of GOD, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained. And be thou a faithful dispenser of the Word of GOD, and of His Holy Sacraments: In the name," &c.
These, I say, were words spoken to us, and received by us, when we were brought nearer to GOD than at any other time of {3} our lives. I know the grace of ordination is contained in the laying on of hands, not in any form of words;—yet in our own case, (as has ever been usual in the Church,) words of blessing have accompanied the act. Thus we have confessed before GOD our belief, that through the Bishop who ordained us, we received the HOLY GHOST, the power to bind and to loose, to administer the Sacraments, and to preach. Now how is he able to give these great gifts? Whence is his right? Are these words idle, (which would be taking GOD'S name in vain,) or do they express merely a wish, (which surely is very far below their meaning,) or do they not rather indicate that the Speaker is conveying a gift? Surely they can mean nothing short of this. But whence, I ask, his right to do so? Has he any right, except as having received the power from those who consecrated him to be a Bishop? He could not give what he had never received. It is plain then that he but transmits; and that the Christian Ministry is a succession. And if we trace back the power of ordination from hand to hand, of course we shall come to the Apostles at last. We know we do, as a plain historical fact: and therefore all we, who have been ordained Clergy, in the very form of our ordination acknowledged the doctrine of the APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION.
And for the same reason, we must necessarily consider none to be really ordained who have not thus been ordained. For if ordination is a divine ordinance, it must be necessary; and if it is not a divine ordinance, how dare we use it? Therefore all who use it, all of us, must consider it necessary. As well might we pretend the Sacraments are not necessary to Salvation, while we make use of the offices of the Liturgy; for when GOD appoints means of grace, they are the means.
I do not see how any one can escape from this plain view of the subject, except, (as I have already hinted,) by declaring, that the words do not mean all that they say. But only reflect what a most unseemly time for random words is that, in which Ministers are set apart for their office. Do we not adopt a Liturgy, in order to hinder inconsiderate idle language, and shall we, in the most sacred of all services, write down, subscribe, and use again and again forms of speech, which have not been weighed, and cannot be taken strictly?
Therefore, my dear Brethren, act up to your professions. Let it not be said that you have neglected a gift; for if you have the Spirit of the Apostles on you, surely this is a great gift. "Stir up the gift of GOD which is in you." Make much of it. Show your value of it. Keep it before your minds as an honourable badge, far higher than that secular respectability, or cultivation, or polish, or learning, or rank, which gives you a hearing with the many. Tell them of your gift. The times will soon drive you to do this, if you mean to be still any thing. But wait not for the times. Do not be compelled, by the world's forsaking you, to recur as if unwillingly to the high source of your authority. {4} Speak out now, before you are forced, both as glorying in your privilege, and to ensure your rightful honour from your people. A notion has gone abroad, that they can take away your power. They think they have given and can take it away. They think it lies in the Church property, and they know that they have politically the power to confiscate that property. They have been deluded into a notion that present palpable usefulness, produceable results, acceptableness to your flocks, that these and such like are the tests of your Divine commission. Enlighten them in this matter. Exalt our Holy Fathers, the Bishops, as the Representatives of the Apostles, and the Angels of the Churches; and magnify your office, as being ordained by them to take part in their Ministry.
But, if you will not adopt my view of the subject, which I offer to you, not doubtingly, yet (I hope) respectfully, at all events, CHOOSE YOUR SIDE. To remain neuter much longer will be itself to take a part. Choose your side; since side you shortly must, with one or other party, even though you do nothing. Fear to be of those, whose line is decided for them by chance circumstances, and who may perchance find themselves with the enemies of CHRIST, while they think but to remove themselves from worldly politics. Such abstinence is impossible in troublous times. HE THAT IS NOT WITH ME, IS AGAINST ME, AND HE THAT GATHERETH NOT WITH ME SCATTERETH ABROAD.