THE MAJORITY OF SOULS ARE LOST

The most egregious turd floating by me on the torrid tide of a recent Sunday homily at the Church of Nice was a suggestion of women priests.



But it seemed the dumbing-down of the Mass texts was the main thrust of this discourse, which followed a piece in Welcom by Bishop Charles Drennan of Palmerston North bewailing the "clunky sentence construction and awkward vocabulary which has tested us all".



'All'? +Charles must mean all the bishops: it's to them that Pope Francis has re-assigned responsibility for approving liturgical translations. And reading +Charles' piece in Welcom, I can understand his difficulty with compound sentences, which apparently is shared by the other bishops.



+Charles might also be speaking for ‘all’ our priests, but he should know he's not speaking for all the laity. He should know that not all women are so childish or ignorant or proud as to object to the Catechism's common sense and time-honoured use of the  masculine article to include women - a practice which he calls 'ideology'. Methinks +Charles has perhaps been captured by feminist ideology. Catholic women, one would hope, have more important things to think about than 'inclusive language'.

Such as, for example, working out our salvation “in fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12). That's the core business of the Catholic Church, and the language of the Sacrifice of the Mass must serve that principle by raising minds and hearts from the mire of quotidian life to gaze upon eternal realities. Oops, sorry, is ‘quotidian’ an example of ‘awkward vocabulary’? ‘Daily’ life, then.



When NZ’s bishops have dragged the liturgical texts down to the level of the lowest common denominator, will they then turn their attention to the Mass Readings? After all, St Paul wasn’t lavish with his full stops – which in this particular homily we were told are inserted into the Mass at will, and the language changed at will to make it ‘easier’ for the priest to read even now, before the bishops have their way with it. And many are the terms St Paul used which need explaining, as has always been the case, let alone the mysteries they describe. That’s a pastor’s task: to explain them.



But when a pastor can tell his flock that God’s commandments are actually ‘requests’, one sees that to expect competent explanations of readings and liturgical texts is hopelessly unrealistic. To command something, we were told, is not ‘loving’, and so a God who loves us wouldn’t command us.



St Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church, was in accord with a great number of other saints when he stated that “the majority of souls are lost”. If that were the case in St Thomas’ time, how many are lost now, after hearing homilies denying the Ten Commandments, or suggesting women priests?



We will never have women priests, because our Blessed Lord chose men (viri), because that was God’s will.  God commands because His commandments are imperative. Because He loves us, He commands us to do what is necessary to gain eternal happiness.

If we don’t do it, we’re lost. For ever.

WATCHING COCKROACHES (Letter to Dom Post, October 31)

As the old hymn goes, “And the banners of darkness are boldly unfurled ...”

Since the appointment as Prime Minister of Jacinda Ardern (but not the endorsement of her evil agenda, which most voters rejected) who Jane Bowron would characterise as she does deputy PM Winston Peters, as "living in sin", and the first leaders of our nation to do so (Rocking feel-good factor and Fat Freddy's Drop, October 30), our newspapers have given a lot of space to extolling the long-vilified harms of euthanasia, prostitution and ‘decriminalising’ abortion (which means full-term babies being stabbed in the neck and dismembered). The latest evidence is Bowron’s insulting and ageist attack on Bill and Mary English.

It's rather like watching cockroaches scuttle out of the shelter of a pot plant shifted from its long-held position. It's gutter journalism.

Should we get used to it?

SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH GREEN-TINTED SPECTACLES (Letter to Dom Post, Oct 24)

Professor Alexander Gillespie’s strongest argument in favour of a referendum on legalising cannabis (Referendum better than political pot luck, October 24) – and, one suspects, in favour of legalisation – is to hit the gangs who profit by drug-peddling.

 

But if I may lob the brick of reality through Gillespie’s ivory tower window, since legalising cannabis in 2012 Colorado, to quote a federal law enforcement official, has become “the black market for the rest of the country”. In the words of a representative of the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, legalisation of pot has “inadvertently helped fuel the activity of the Mexican drug cartels”.

Organised crime filings have skyrocketed in Colorado.Colorado now leads the country in youth use of marijuana, with Washington which has also made its use legal, not far behind. More minors are using drugs, with more arrested, there are more deaths caused by driving ‘high’ and more pot-related poisonings and hospitalisation.

 

All of which seems a ‘high’ price to pay for giving users permission to feel good and to continue to see the world through green-tinted spectacles.

OUR CATHOLIC BISHOPS FAILED TO GIVE US A HEADS-UP

Deep night has come down on this rough-spoken world
And the banners of darkness are boldly unfurled

The lyrics of a hymn I played at Mass this morning reminded me, unhappily, of our new Government. How many Catholics voted for Labour and Jacinda Ardern? 

When they voted, did they know that:

·         Jacinda Ardern is on record as opposing the principle of marriage defined as between one man and one woman.

·         She supports adoption by homosexuals.

·         She supports decriminalisation of abortion, which would mean partial-birth abortions, as in Victoria. She believes abortion should not be a crime because it’s a ‘health service’. As Ken Orr of Right to Life NZ has said, this would lead to ‘further exploitation, coercion and abandonment of women’.

·         She supports the legalisation of euthanasia – administering lethal injections to the elderly, the terminally or mentally ill, or helping them to kill themselves.

·         She opposes the decriminalisation of non-abusive smacking and worse, she opposes parental notification of teenage pregnancies.

·         She opposes a ban on street prostitution. 

Jacinda Ardern is without doubt well-intentioned, but we know where good intentions lead us: to Hell – that place described so graphically by Jesus Christ but now denied by the ‘Church of Nice’.

With their anodyne election statement the Catholic bishops failed to give us a heads-up on this thoroughly sinister and anti-Christ agenda. They must now face reality and speak out against the consequences which are only too likely to follow.

And the tempest-tossed Church - all her eyes are on thee,
They look to thy shining, sweet star of the sea.

Mary, Mother of God, pray for us. May God defend New Zealand.

BEYOND THE COMPREHENSION OF STEPHEN HAWKING (Letter to Dom Post, Oct 18)

Joe Bennett (Are we about to hit self-destruct button?, October 18) would have us all shaking in our shoes at the prospect of being put in a zoo by artificially intelligent machines.

 

But if consciousness is ‘just the product of a brain’ and includes ‘beliefs’, that means animals – who also have brains - have beliefs and act on them; but they don’t. They do not have beliefs.

 

It follows that humans, because they do have beliefs and act on them, possess a faculty other than the brain, a faculty which endows the human with knowledge of good and evil. That faculty is the soul, and it is utterly beyond ‘programming’.

 

The brain is mortal, whereas the soul is eternal and, thank God, is his concern and care. No matter how many ‘bits’ of the brain we might reproduce electronically, the soul is and always will be beyond the reach and comprehension of Stephen Hawking, however how ‘well-informed’ he may be.

SAINT MARY OF THE ANGELS: What's going on?

At Saint Mary of the Angels, Wellington, at two consecutive weekday Masses recently there were two Priests concelebrating.

At the 'Lamb of God' although the congregation was not large, the usual gaggle of 'Ministers of the Eucharist' assembled beside the altar, and having received Holy Communion proceeded to minister the Sacrament while one of the Priests sat down, presumably to make his thanksgiving.

Point One: the only 'Minister of the Eucharist' is the Priest. Lay ministers are 'Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion'. Why 'Extraordinary'? Because they're required only when a congregation is so large that it's not possible for Communion to administered only by the Priest(s) without unduly delaying the end of Mass. Sadly - but logically - that's rarely the case.

Point One, a): 'Only out of true necessity is there to be recourse to the assistance of extraordinary ministers in the celebration of the Liturgy ... If there is usually present a sufficient number of sacred Ministers' (Priests or Deacons) 'for distribution of Holy Communion, extraordinary ministers may not be appointed. Indeed, in such circumstances those who have already been appointed to this ministry should not exercise it' (Redemptionis Sacramentum). I didn't know Redemptionis Sacramentum said that, but I resigned some time ago from this ministry for that very reason: we're not needed (also to avoid giving Holy Communion to non-Catholics, but that's another story).

Point Two: 'The practice of those Priests is reprobated who, even though present at the celebration,
abstain from distributing Holy Communion and hand this function over to lay persons' (Redemptionis Sacramentum). 'Reprobated' means 'disapproved of, censured, condemned. Of God: reject of condemn (a person); exclude from salvation' (Shorter Oxford).

Point Two, a): I approached the Priest in question after the second Mass I attended, to ask why he allowed lay people to administer Holy Communion in his stead. Either he's deaf (I whispered, "Excuse me, Father", but from close quarters), or he's opposed to people 'talking' after Mass (see above). He didn't acknowledge my presence.

Maybe he doesn't know the mind of the Church on this subject. Or maybe he's one of those who ridicule the Magisterium of the Church as manifested in Redemptionis Sacramentum.

But I've had enough of priests thumbing their noses at this document, approved in 2004 by Pope St John Paul II, and allowing or encouraging these abuses of the Body and Soul of Jesus Christ our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. No wonder congregations aren't large enough to justify the assistance of Extraordinary Ministers.


A footnote: Rather than carpark notices saying "Cars may be clamped or towed", how about "Mass and churchgoers welcome; other cars may be clamped or towed"? Friendlier.

BREAST CANCER'S SERIAL KILLER (Letter to Dom Post, October 14)

Breast cancer in New Zealand is “a serial killer”, says survivor Fay Sowerby.  But I wonder whether  anyone at the Breast Cancer Health Summit will have the nerve to unmask and denounce the stalker: abortion.

 

Many, many studies show that a woman’s chances of breast cancer are greatly increased by abortion, especially in a first pregnancy.

Of course, people like Planned Parenthood who make billions from abortion are in denial. Pharmaceutical companies are in denial, and for the same reason.

 

One hesitates to suggest that ‘breast cancer clinicians, scientists, health professionals’ are in denial – but how many of them have had an abortion? How many have wives, partners, sisters or even mothers, who’ve had an abortion?

 

We would all shrink from adding to the suffering of breast cancer patients and survivors by naming a major cause which is self-inflicted, but professionals who know it have a duty to do so.

For as long as we continue to let the stalker of abortion, disguised in so many deaths as breast cancer, go free, women who don't know the risk will continue to walk into his arms and quite likely die.