Making a Trip to the USA

I am not certain how much writing will happen over the next week as the family is flying out of Heathrow tomorrow to go to the States to see Rhea's mum who has been battling with stage-4 ovarian cancer. Hospice care has come in to see her and the family is gathering together over the next week. It will be nice to see cousins that have not been seen in seven years. So, the kids are looking forward to that. The trip is very important for Rhea as she will spend some sweet time with her mother. Please pray for Jare Whitmore who is facing her terminal illness. She is a faithful Catholic and she is a wonderful witness to the grace given to those who suffer. We hope to all be in Mass together this Sunday. There are 3 children (with their spouses) and 14 grandchildren who will accompany her to Sunday Mass. I can only imagine how wonderful this Sunday's Mass will be!!

Thank you for your prayers!

Anglo-Catholicism and My Search for the Catholic Church

As I reflect on the words of friends who remain Anglo-Catholic in the Church of England, I am reminded of the grace that it takes for conversion to take place. Unlike so many of my former colleagues and good friends, I was not raised in the C of E nor as an Anglo-Catholic. I of course immigrated to England from the States nearly seven years ago. But, I have been in search of the Catholic Church for a very long time. Like G.K. Chesterton says, not all men enter into the Catholic Church in the same way as there are hundreds of gates. That is definitely true for me and for instance there is the difference between those who converted in the early 90's and myself who converted in June 2009. My conversion came through my deep longing and searching for the Church founded by Jesus Christ. I was looking for the Church that I began reading and learning about as I picked up the volumes of the Church Fathers that I purchased for my library. I was looking for the Church where beauty and holiness were coming together and kissing one another in the Sunday liturgy.

My journey into Catholicism began with a love for the liturgy that I had discovered through reading. I wondered where this church was within my own tradition as a Protestant that I discovered in the Fathers. God brought me to High Church Anglicanism that eventually led me to Anglo-Catholicism/Papalism. But when I lived the Catholic liturgy as an Anglo-Catholic priest, there was still something missing. I had not yet arrived in the resting place that the depth of my soul was seeking by simply celebrating the Anglican Eucharist with the liturgy of the Latin Rite Catholic Church. I came to understand that Tradition was set within an ecclesial context that was supported by an authority that was divinely given and in existence to protect the Church from error and apostasy. I came to believe in my heart of hearts that the authority that keeps the Church together was not to be found in Anglo-Catholicism. G.K. Chesterton writes a paragraph in his story of conversion that I could have written myself as someone who experienced the very same transformation of thinking when I knew that being an Anglo-Catholic separated from the See of Peter was not yet really Catholic, no matter what rite I used to celebrate the Eucharist. He writes,

The Church is a house with a hundred gates; and no two men enter at exactly the same angle. Mine was at least as much Agnostic as Anglican, though I accepted for a time the borderland of Anglicanism; but only on the assumption that it could really be Anglo-Catholicism. There is a distinction of ultimate intention there which in the vague English atmosphere is often missed. It is not a difference of degree but of definite aim. There are High Churchmen as much as Low Churchmen who are concerned first and last to save the Church of England. Some of them think it can be saved by calling it Catholic, or making it Catholic, or believing that it is Catholic; but that is what they want to save. But I did not start out with the idea of saving the English Church, but of finding the Catholic Church. If the two were one, so much the better; but I had never conceived of Catholicism as a sort of showy attribute or attraction to be tacked on to my own national body, but as the inmost soul of the true body, wherever it might be. It might be said that Anglo-Catholicism was simply my own uncompleted conversion to Catholicism.

I didn't leave the CofE because I believed it treated me unfairly or didn't want me around. Actually, the CofE provided very well for me and my family and treated me exceptionally well in many respects. There were many who of course disagreed with the theological framework from which I served out my priesthood and ministry but I never felt as if I was not wanted or not provided for. What brought me to the point of making my move to become a Catholic and give up my identity and ministry as an Anglican priest was my longing to be Catholic in truth. I knew that if I was ever going to really live in what the Apostle James called the law of perfect freedom, and be truly free, I was to be really Catholic in truth. This is one of the greatest lessons I have learned in my 17 short months as a Catholic convert--I live my Catholic Faith in perfect freedom. I have never felt more liberated in my faith and love for Jesus and love for the Church and truth than since my time as a Catholic. I have truly been converted in the sense that Cardinal Newman speaks about his own journey into the Catholic Church. To leave Anglo-Catholicism or any other tradition of Protestantism for single issues is not to embrace Catholicism. To leave Protestantism and to become Catholic is to completely leave autonomy behind and embrace the freedom that living under authority provides. I close with a lengthy quotation from Chesterton for reflection and discussion:

The same people who call the convert a pervert, and especially a traitor to patriotism, very often use the other catchword to the effect that he is forced to believe this or that. But it is not really a question of what a man is made to believe but of what he must believe; what he cannot help believing. He cannot disbelieve in an elephant when he has seen one; and he cannot treat the Church as a child when he has discovered that she is his mother. She is not only his mother but his country's mother in being much older and more aboriginal than his country. She is such a mother not in sentimental feeling but in historical fact. He cannot think one thing when he knows the contrary thing. He cannot think that Christianity was invented by Penda of Mercia, who sent missionaries to the heathen Augustine and the rude and barbarous Gregory. He cannot think that the Church first rose in the middle of the British Empire, and not of the Roman Empire. He cannot think that England existed, with cricket and fox-hunting and the Jacobean translation all complete, when Rome was founded or when Christ was born. It is no good talking about his being "free" to believe these things. He is exactly as free to believe them as he is to believe that a horse has feathers or that the sun is pea green. He cannot believe them when once he fully realises them; and among such things is the notion that the national claim upon a good patriot is in its nature more absolute, ancient and authoritative than the claim of the whole religious culture which first mapped out its territories and anointed its kings. That religious culture does indeed encourage him to fight to the last for his country, as for his family. But that is because the religious culture is generous and imaginative and humane and knows that men must have intimate and individual ties. But those secondary loyalties are secondary in time and logic to the law of universal morality which justifies them. And if the patriot is such a fool as to force the issue against that universal tradition from which his own patriotism descends, if he presses his claim to priority over the primitive law of the whole earth--then he will have brought it on himself if he is answered with the pulverising plainness of the Book of Job. As God said to the man, "Where were you when the foundations of the world were laid?" We might well say to the nation, "Where were you when the foundations of the Church were laid?" And the nation will not know in the least what to answer--if it should wish to answer-- but will be forced to put its hand upon its mouth, if only like one who yawns and falls asleep.

Bishop John Broadhurst "Intends" to Join Ordinariate!!

Welcome Bishop John! whenever it is that you prepare to make the move.

A bishop of the Church of England has announced his plan to resign before the end of this year, and join an Anglican ordinariate in the Catholic Church.

Bishop John Broadhurst of Fulham is the first leading Anglican prelate to announce that he plans to accept the invitation offered by Pope Benedict XVI in Anglicanorum Coetibus. The papal document calls for the creation of new ordinariates to serve the pastoral needs of Anglicans who wish to preserve their traditions while entering into full communion with the Roman Church.

Speaking on October 15 to a meeting of Forward in Faith, a conservative Anglican group, Bishop Broadhurst said that he would join the Catholic ordinariate as soon as it was created. Two other Anglican bishops, Andrew Burnham of Ebbsfleet and Keith Netwon of Richborough, are considered likely to join him.

You can listen here.

Father Barron: on The Depressing Pew Forum Study

This is a very interesting discussion that would be good to discuss the evangelisation opportunities we have as Catholic Christians. What makes Catholicism unique and distinctive? What is beautiful about the Catholic Church and its tradition? What are your thoughts? Please feel free to discuss his comments.

Word on Fire

"Ubicumque et semper": Extracts

The Apostolic Letter "Motu Proprio data" by which Benedict XVI establishes the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelisation

"The Church has the duty to announce the Gospel of Jesus Christ always and everywhere. ... Over history this mission has assumed new forms and methods, depending on place, situation and historical moment. In our own time, one of its most singular characteristics has been that of having to measure itself against the phenomenon of abandonment of the faith, which has become progressively more evident in societies and cultures that were, for centuries, impregnated with the Gospel.

"The social transformations we have seen over recent decades have complex causes, the roots of which are distant in time and have profoundly modified our perception of the world. ... If, on the one hand, humanity has seen undeniable benefits from these transformations and the Church received further stimuli to give reasons for the hope she carries, on the other, we have seen a worrying loss of the sense of the sacred, even going so far as to call into discussion apparently unquestionable foundations, such as faith in the God of creation and providence; the revelation of Jesus Christ our only Saviour, the shared understating of man's fundamental experiences like birth, death and family life, and the reference to natural moral law".

"Among the central themes examined by Vatican Council II was the question of relations between the Church and the modern world. In the wake of this conciliar teaching, my predecessors dedicated further reflection to the need to find adequate forms to allow our contemporaries to still hear the Lord's living and eternal Word".

"Venerable Servant of God John Paul II made this demanding undertaking one of the pivotal points of his vast Magisterium, summarising the task awaiting the Church today in the concept of 'new evangelisation' (which he systematically developed in numerous occasions), especially in regions of age-old Christianity".

"Thus, in my turn, sharing the concern of my venerated predecessors, I feel it appropriate to offer an adequate response so that the entire Church, allowing herself to be regenerated by the Holy Spirit, may present herself to the modern world with a missionary vigour capable of promoting a new evangelisation".

"In Churches of ancient foundation, ... although the phenomenon of secularisation continues its course, Christian practice still shows signs of possessing vitality and profound roots among entire peoples. ... We also know, unfortunately, of areas which appear almost completely de-Christianised, areas in which the light of faith is entrusted to the witness of small communities. These lands, which need a renewed first announcement of the Gospel, seem particularly unreceptive to many aspects of the Christian message".

"At the root of all evangelisation there is no human project of expansion, but the desire to share the priceless gift that God wished to give us, sharing His life with us".

The Spirit of Vatican II and the Church of Jesus Christ: Lumen Gentium

13. All men are called to belong to the new people of God. Wherefore this people, while remaining one and only one, is to be spread throughout the whole world and must exist in all ages, so that the decree of God's will may be fulfilled. In the beginning God made human nature one and decreed that all His children, scattered as they were, would finally be gathered together as one. (117) It was for this purpose that God sent His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things,(118) that be might be teacher, king and priest of all, the head of the new and universal people of the sons of God. For this too God sent the Spirit of His Son as Lord and Life-giver. He it is who brings together the whole Church and each and every one of those who believe, and who is the well-spring of their unity in the teaching of the apostles and in fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in prayers.(119)

It follows that though there are many nations there is but one people of God, which takes its citizens from every race, making them citizens of a kingdom which is of a heavenly rather than of an earthly nature. All the faithful, scattered though they be throughout the world, are in communion with each other in the Holy Spirit, and so, he who dwells in Rome knows that the people of India are his members"(9*). Since the kingdom of Christ is not of this world(120) the Church or people of God in establishing that kingdom takes nothing away from the temporal welfare of any people. On the contrary it fosters and takes to itself, insofar as they are good, the ability, riches and customs in which the genius of each people expresses itself. Taking them to itself it purifies, strengthens, elevates and ennobles them. The Church in this is mindful that she must bring together the nations for that king to whom they were given as an inheritance,(121) and to whose city they bring gifts and offerings.(122) This characteristic of universality which adorns the people of God is a gift from the Lord Himself. By reason of it, the Catholic Church strives constantly and with due effect to bring all humanity and all its possessions back to its source In Christ, with Him as its head and united in His Spirit. (10*)

In virtue of this catholicity each individual part contributes through its special gifts to the good of the other parts and of the whole Church. Through the common sharing of gifts and through the common effort to attain fullness in unity, the whole and each of the parts receive increase. Not only, then, is the people of God made up of different peoples but in its inner structure also it is composed of various ranks. This diversity among its members arises either by reason of their duties, as is the case with those who exercise the sacred ministry for the good of their brethren, or by reason of their condition and state of life, as is the case with those many who enter the religious state and, tending toward holiness by a narrower path, stimulate their brethren by their example. Moreover, within the Church particular Churches hold a rightful place; these Churches retain their own traditions, without in any way opposing the primacy of the Chair of Peter, which presides over the whole assembly of charity (11*) and protects legitimate differences, while at the same time assuring that such differences do not hinder unity but rather contribute toward it. (Sounds like Anglicanorum Coetibus and other unifying efforts.) Between all the parts of the Church there remains a bond of close communion whereby they share spiritual riches, apostolic workers and temporal resources. For the members of the people of God are called to share these goods in common, and of each of the Churches the words of the Apostle hold good: "According to the gift that each has received, administer it to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God".(123)

All men are called to be part of this catholic unity of the people of God which in promoting universal peace presages it. And there belong to or are related to it in various ways, the Catholic faithful, all who believe in Christ, and indeed the whole of mankind, for all men are called by the grace of God to salvation.

14. This Sacred Council wishes to turn its attention firstly to the Catholic faithful. Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture and Tradition, it teaches that the Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation. Christ, present to us in His Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation. In explicit terms He Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism(124) and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church. Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved.

They are fully incorporated in the society of the Church who, possessing the Spirit of Christ accept her entire system and all the means of salvation given to her, and are united with her as part of her visible bodily structure and through her with Christ, who rules her through the Supreme Pontiff and the bishops. The bonds which bind men to the Church in a visible way are profession of faith, the sacraments, and ecclesiastical government and communion. He is not saved, however, who, though part of the body of the Church, does not persevere in charity. He remains indeed in the bosom of the Church, but, as it were, only in a "bodily" manner and not "in his heart."(12*) All the Church's children should remember that their exalted status is to be attributed not to their own merits but to the special grace of Christ. If they fail moreover to respond to that grace in thought, word and deed, not only shall they not be saved but they will be the more severely judged.

Lumen Gentium

SOLEMNLY PROMULGATED BY HIS HOLINESS
POPE PAUL VI
ON NOVEMBER 21, 1964

Virtues and Christian Ethics: Renewing Our Views of Law, Freedom and Conscience

One of the approaches I use in counselling settings is the classical Thomistic approach of Christian virtues in helping to change behaviour that lacks virtues yet masks itself as happiness. St Thomas' approach is patristic in its foundation. When there are deep wounds, due to living in a fallen world with fallen people, true happiness can be restored through the activity of a truly virtuous life. A life of virtue results in perfect accomplishment of living out the moral law. True happiness is only found in living a virtuous life of infused grace. In a very interesting article I found on the Internet this morning, the author points out Aquinas' synthesis of moral law and virtues. Fr. Bernhard Blankenhorn, OP writes,

The patristic synthesis of Old and New Testament ethics within the model of the virtues bore great fruit in the Middle Ages, especially in the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas (are you surprised?). Aquinas devoted half of his gigantic Summa Theologiae to moral theology. Interestingly, he did not organize his ethics around the Ten Commandments, but rather around the virtues. Aquinas saw the biblical precepts as supernatural manifestations of the true content of the virtues. The Commandments teach us how to live the virtues. He begins his section on ethics with the question of happiness. First, he determines that we are naturally inclined toward happiness, and that we can only be fulfilled through communion with God, which is fully attained in heaven. The key to Aquinas’ ethics is not duty or obedience, but happiness. We are naturally inclined to the good by our Creator, despite the wounds of sin (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, questions 1-6). By learning and practicing the virtues and seeking out God’s grace, especially in the sacraments, we overcome those wounds and attain a gradually increasing share of our true happiness.

One very important aspect that is often forgotten or confused with the doctrine of moral freedom is that without divine grace man cannot live a moral life pleasing to God. Against Pelagianism and Protestant Reformers, the Catholic Church has maintained the teaching of Saint Augustine on this important issue. Pelagianism taught that by the natural power of free will man could live a moral life without the help of God's grace and the Protestant reformers taught that original sin perverted man and destroyed his human freedom. Augustine reminds us that even with the help of divine grace, human freedom remains fragile and that without the help of divine grace human freedom is more likely to fail than succeed. This is why it is so important for us to remember the wounds of original sin that effect our ability to a virtuous life and happiness without divine grace. This moral life, for Saint Augustine, leads us all to the sacramental life of the Church. This is why it is so important that these truths be taught in the classrooms of our Catholic schools and in the religious life of the school. The overarching concern for the Christian moral life is union with God that results in true happiness. Father Blankenhorn OP reminds us of this in his article.

In Aquinas’ understanding, one shared by the Fathers, freedom is the capacity to do the good, the ability to attain greater human fulfillment. We might call this his fourth crucial insight. It is a strength of character, an ability to come closer to perfect happiness (Pinckaers, Sources of Christian Ethics, chapter 15). In other words, as we grow in virtue, we acquire skills or muscles of the soul. We gain the spiritual strength to choose our true good. The truth sets us free because in knowing and living the truth of Christ, we are able to choose our true good, eternal life with God. Freedom is therefore not primarily the power to do whatever I want. Freedom is primarily the power to act according to my nature, to choose my God-given purpose, my true personal fulfillment.

This brings me finally to the misuse of conscience. The abuse of conscience to be set up as a standard to live contrary to the law of Christ is a huge issue facing many people in the Western church. There are numerous examples where it has been thrown up to me that a person's conscience somehow outweighs the moral law of God being lived out in perfection (maturity). Suddenly, as Fr Blankenhorn says, 'Everything now is up for grabs.' Here again Fr Blankenhorn OP clarifies this in regards to Aquinas' thinking.

Aquinas’ understanding of divine law as a revelation of God’s wisdom (the second insight) and freedom as the ability to choose the good (the fourth insight) led him to posit a particular understanding of the role of conscience in the spiritual life. Today, many people conceive of conscience as inherently in opposition to law. Conscience becomes a means whereby I can excuse myself from the law at certain times and thus gain a realm of personal freedom, the freedom to do what I want instead of what the lawmaker wants. For Aquinas, this makes no sense. Since the revealed moral law shows us the path to our true good, conscience is not a means to escape the law, since such escape leads to slavery, not freedom. Rather, conscience is that power of my soul that helps me to discern how God’s law applies in concrete situations. Conscience tells me how I am to love my neighbor who is poor, not whether I should love him or her. Conscience does not excuse me from chastity, but rather guides me in living out chastity. Conscience and the moral law are essentially in harmony, not in opposition (Pinckaers, The Pinckaers Reader, 321-355).

These are a few items that are worthy of discussion and thought as we return to a patristic emphasis on virtue as the source for Christian morality and ultimate happiness. And so, Fr Blankenhorn rightly concludes,

The solution to the problem lies in returning to a patristic and Thomistic understanding of law, freedom and conscience. The revealed moral law does not consist of arbitrary divine decrees. God truly shows us a glimpse of his face in the revelation made to Israel and the revelation of Jesus Christ. The moral teachings of the Scriptures show us who God is. They teach us how to become like God. This is why the Sermon on the Mount must be the crown of any authentic Christian ethics, for there, Jesus gives us the highest teaching on how to become like his Father. The moral law is a gift, not a threat.

And finally, I could not leave out this jewel in the conclusion of the above artilce as it leaves us with the pursuit of hope and happiness.

Freedom is our capacity to choose to act in a God-like way, not the ability to rebel or follow any inclination. The truth shall set us free. Our conscience must be trained in the truth of Christ, so that we can apply the moral law well in our lives. The purpose of conscience is not to excuse us from God’s way or the teachings of the Church, but to show us how to continue on the path of Christ. Law, tradition, our community and the Magisterium are essential guides for our conscience, not threats.

The catechetical systems that we grew up with had their advantages. The older generation in this room learned the Ten Commandments well. The younger generation learned that blind obedience is not a virtue. Most of us have probably picked up bits and pieces of virtue ethics from our parents, from the lives of the saints, or from a few Dominican sermons. But the challenge for the Church and catechesis remains. Only by returning to the virtue ethics and Scripture-based moral catechesis of the Fathers and Aquinas will we find a way out of today’s ethical wasteland. Just think of how different our society would be if people realized that freedom is not the absence of restrictions on my autonomous self but rather the capacity to choose my true good.

The Difficulty of Obedience

Yesterday we celebrated the memorial of St Bruno, founder of the Carthusian Order. Obedience is not a popular word in our modern society. It comes with all sorts of negative images of suppression etc. There is a dangerous anti-institution attitude permeating the culture of suspicion we find ourselves in today. But, anarchy and autonomy are getting us nowhere along the pathway to perfection. St Bruno taught us that obedience is at the heart of the contemplative life. He said it was the 'key and seal of all our spiritual effort.'

Today we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. The rosary could be seen as the 'hand of Mary' which leads us to the throne of her Son to see his magnificent light through her eyes. She is the icon of obedient love. It is so easy for us to desire to flee obedience. In my spiritual reading from the Carthusians this morning I read the following that requires us to examine our own consciences.

It is so easy to flee from the reality of obedience, contenting ourselves
with fine theories about it. It is so easy to evade it, claiming the right to
affirm our personality on the grounds, we say, that we have received from the
Lord. In reality, when we are honest with ourselves, we cannot but admit that
obedience is not easy. There is a great risk of forgetting this, especially for
us solitaries. Left to ourselves, and living in the sight of God alone, his
light should be our sole guide; but often, the absence of friendly feedback from
our brothers or from those on whom we depend, leaves us drifting at the mercy of
self-will. Why is it that we do not manage to attain to the beautiful
transparency with regard to God that Bruno's first companions had? We would then
be ready for the finger of God to engrave all the secrets of his holy law in our
own hearts as well. Is it not because we turn obedience into somthing
complicated, even repulsive perhaps, instead of looking at Jesus in order to
learn the meaning of it?

Ecclesia De Eucharistia: Re-presentation of Eternal Hope

14. Christ's passover includes not only his passion and death, but also his resurrection. This is recalled by the assembly's acclamation following the consecration: “We proclaim your resurrection”. The Eucharistic Sacrifice makes present not only the mystery of the Saviour's passion and death, but also the mystery of the resurrection which crowned his sacrifice. It is as the living and risen One that Christ can become in the Eucharist the “bread of life” (Jn 6:35, 48), the “living bread” (Jn 6:51). Saint Ambrose reminded the newly-initiated that the Eucharist applies the event of the resurrection to their lives: “Today Christ is yours, yet each day he rises again for you”.20 Saint Cyril of Alexandria also makes clear that sharing in the sacred mysteries “is a true confession and a remembrance that the Lord died and returned to life for us and on our behalf”.21

15. The sacramental re-presentation of Christ's sacrifice, crowned by the resurrection, in the Mass involves a most special presence which—in the words of Paul VI—“is called 'real' not as a way of excluding all other types of presence as if they were 'not real', but because it is a presence in the fullest sense: a substantial presence whereby Christ, the God-Man, is wholly and entirely present”.22 This sets forth once more the perennially valid teaching of the Council of Trent: “the consecration of the bread and wine effects the change of the whole substance of the bead into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. And the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called this change transubstantiation”.23 Truly the Eucharist is a mysterium fidei, a mystery which surpasses our understanding and can only be received in faith, as is often brought out in the catechesis of the Church Fathers regarding this divine sacrament: “Do not see—Saint Cyril of Jerusalem exhorts—in the bread and wine merely natural elements, because the Lord has expressly said that they are his body and his blood: faith assures you of this, though your senses suggest otherwise”.

Ecclesia De Eucharistia

Blessed JH Newman: History's Judgment on Protestantism

To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.

And this utter incongruity between Protestantism and historical Christianity is a plain fact, whether the latter be regarded in its earlier or in its later centuries. Protestants can as little bear its Ante-nicene as its Post-tridentine period. I have elsewhere observed on this circumstance: "So much must the Protestant grant that, if such a system of doctrine as he would now introduce ever existed in early times, it has been clean swept away as if by a deluge, suddenly, silently, and without memorial; by a deluge coming in a night, and utterly soaking, rotting, heaving up, and hurrying off every vestige of what it found in the Church, before cock-crowing: so that 'when they rose in the morning' her true seed 'were all dead corpses'—Nay dead and buried—and without grave-stone. 'The waters went over them; there was not one of them left; they sunk like lead in the mighty waters.' Strange antitype, indeed, to the early fortunes of Israel!—then the enemy was drowned, and 'Israel saw them dead upon the sea-shore.' But now, it would seem, water proceeded as a flood 'out of the serpent's mouth, and covered all the witnesses, so that not even their dead bodies lay in the streets of the great city.' Let him take which of his doctrines he will, his peculiar view of self-righteousness, of formality, of superstition; his notion of faith, or of spirituality in religious worship; his denial {9} of the virtue of the sacraments, or of the ministerial commission, or of the visible Church; or his doctrine of the divine efficacy of the Scriptures as the one appointed instrument of religious teaching; and let him consider how far Antiquity, as it has come down to us, will countenance him in it. No; he must allow that the alleged deluge has done its work; yes, and has in turn disappeared itself; it has been swallowed up by the earth, mercilessly as itself was merciless." [Note 1]

That Protestantism, then, is not the Christianity of history, it is easy to determine, but to retort is a poor reply in controversy to a question of fact, and whatever be the violence or the exaggeration of writers like Chillingworth, if they have raised a real difficulty, it may claim a real answer, and we must determine whether on the one hand Christianity is still to represent to us a definite teaching from above, or whether on the other its utterances have been from time to time so strangely at variance, that we are necessarily thrown back on our own judgment individually to determine, what the revelation of God is, or rather if in fact there is, or has been, any revelation at all.

The Danger of Turning Religion into a Toy: Fr Robert Barron

Catholicism Project: Fr Robert Barron

It was very interesting to read that Archbishop Timothy Dolan compared Fr Barron with Archbishop Fulton Sheen. I have been following Fr Barron and his Word on Fire ministry for some time now. In 2011 this programme on Catholicism will be made available and the above video is from the trailer. I look forward to seeing this. Today, Fr Barron is going to begin a TV programme in America on a national station. It is good to see the best of Catholicism getting this public voice in the States. It would be wonderful to see some of this to get streamed into the UK somehow.

Enjoy the trailer and view Archbishop Timothy Dolan here where he compares Fr Barron to Fulton Sheen. This is great for Catholicism and let us pray for Fr Barron.

Creating Sacred Space in St Thomas More Chapel

This might seem like an odd place to put this but there is good reason for it. As many readers will know, I am the Chaplain at St Thomas More Catholic School in Chelsea. We have a chapel in the school that is very promising (Pugin) for improvements and the creating of sacred space for prayer and Mass. I have just finished fixing the altar and beautifying it. What I did really transformed the altar. This post is really for two sorts of readers:

One, is the local London parish that might have a number of things that could be donated for the beautifying of the chapel and creating traditional sacred space. Here is what I am looking for:

crucifixes (one large to be hung on the wall behind the altar), icons, stations of the cross, candlesticks, small altars (no longer than 4 ft), wall lamps, nice white cloths, blue cloths for our Lady, Blue lights, large sacred pictures/art, curtain/rods to be used as a screen behind the altar (smaller blue one for our lady area), statues (particularly Sacred Heart, Thomas More, etc).

The second sort of reader is the generous reader who would like to financially donate to a project like this one. Of course there is a paypal tab on the right column of the blog if anyone wanted to donate for chapel restoration. I will promise that all monies will be used for the school chapel and nothing else. I will be taking some photos of the "restoring sacred spaced project" as I go along. I

Please know that my budget is nil really and I am simply seeking the generosity of readers so that this chapel can be as beautiful as possible and used for God's glory and the prayer life of young Catholics. If you are interested in helping in any way, please do not hesitate to contact me. I am willing to come to any parishes in the London area to pick up things on offer.

I can be reached by email at jeffrey.steel1 [at @]btinternet.com

Please forward this link on to anyone you know who might be interested and if other bloggers would link to it I would be most grateful!