'THE AGE FOR LOVE': A NOVEL BY JULIA DU FRESNE

My novel 'The Age for Love' has been released for publication as an 'indie' today.

20 years in the making, it will be available on KDP Select (Kindle DIrect Publishing) for $2.99 and on Smashwords for free (for a limited period).

For your copy, go to smashwords.com or amazon.com (Kindle). You can then download it on kindle, your iPad or any other reading device.

For a taster, here's the blurb:

Sheela Tree is the “strange name, a name for keeping strangers company”, chosen for her career in theatre by Marie Cassegrain. 

Marie is the only daughter of Neils, a New Zealander whose parents are Danish-born Lutheran, and Leila, born in Taranaki and steeped in the traditions of Irish Catholicism. 

It’s a mix described by a prominent psychologist, consulted by her parents on behalf of her brother Laurence, as a recipe for disaster - an opinion echoed by Sheela’s analyst Max Hatfield, “who thinks she’s just a lush”.

Her childhood with five brothers inside what amounts almost to a pale - their Catholic parish in a Hawke’s Bay town in the ’50s - is revealed during Sheela’s treatment in her 20s for addiction to drugs and alcohol. 

The “strangers” she comes across include aspiring thespian Barrie Gore, with whom she becomes only too familiar, whose father Cosmo is “chairman of the vestry at St Cuthbert’s and a pervert”, and whose mother Violet is “a collector, a bully and a snob”. 

There’s the mystic Graham Mikes, who reads Juvenal and experiences “divine dazes”; Patrick Blackmoor, director of the NZ Theatre Company and “a pimp of the sophisticated kind”; Father Edmund, a monk given to giggling;  Xavier Neyens, a French set designer and “man of passions” and Dr Grayson Lamb, who finds the women and girls he refers for illegal abortions in Christchurch “passive, even submissive” - and takes advantage.

Even the Cassegrain family are strangers, or so they seem to “the broom brigade”, the shopkeepers and accountants of the local Chamber of Commerce and the farmers on the Power Board, Neils’ employer in Potangotango, “a quintessential Nazareth”.

Her mother Leila’s forte is fainting, sometimes rehearsed, sometimes not; her engineer father Neils might be described as charming, if charming were “a word with currency in Potangotango”; her difficult, disruptive brother Laurence is bipolar and bisexual.

The Catholic Church is examined at a time when, like bulimia and hate speech (not yet invented), there was no whiff of sex abuse. A priest can be ‘fab’ or “choleric”, wear a roman collar and get away with it. Sex outside marriage is sinful – but indulged. “You knew people did it, and incredible though it seemed – imagine Mrs Redmond-Hogg, so thin and mild, or Mr Rozbicki with his gumboots, his accent and harelip – even Catholics did it.”

We glimpse New Zealand’s academia in the days of Roger Hall’s Middle-Age Spread and its runaway success; the city of Cologne during WWII, and the hidden life of a little NZ monastery.

Seen through the eyes of a family like the Cassegrains, the social mores of small-town New Zealand in the ‘50s are anything but boring.

Incidents of a troubled childhood – one, her mother forbids her to mention - prefigure a teenage pregnancy and illegal abortion. Years later, at the Mas de l’Ange, a commune in France frequented by theatrical types and governed in the spirit of Eros by her lover Xavier, Sheela is confronted by the same dilemma, this time resolved in that same spirit by Xavier, in the US.

But Sheela, who in New Zealand had barely registered the existence of a tangata whenua, is eventually surprised by a “yearning for something unique to Maori” which brings her home to the hill where, her father had said, the sun always came out, in “the most beautiful place in the world”.

Making a vineyard here, guided by the mystic Graham Mikes and an unlikely newcomer, Sheela finds the lives she had lost and new life for herself - but one which those earlier losses mean she may still lose.

PRE-FRONTAL BRAIN CORTEX IMMATURITY ISN'T LIMITED TO TEENAGERS - letter to NZ Herald

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Yes, police should never chase fleeing drivers, because yes, it gives some coppers the thrills. 

Yes, we should perhaps not allow teenagers to drive unless with a licensed adult, because “their pre-frontal brain cortex is not developed enough to allow them to assess risks before or after pursuits”.

And no, for the same reason we should not allow teenagers to have abortions, even with parental consent - which is no longer required - because some parents and doctors would rather these kids “err on the side of mindless attitude”, have ‘relationships’, and just get rid of the consequences. 

But getting an abortion gets other consequences, some that will dog them till the end of their days.

It seems to me that pursuing police, mindless parents and doctors, and any members of Parliament who’d vote for further liberalisation of the abortion law, would prove that pre-frontal brain cortex immaturity is not limited to teenagers.

MEA CULPA, MEA CULPA ...

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Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa …

It's confession time. Yesterday at the pro-life vigil outside the Hastings hospital a friend of mine, one who's absolutely honest - the sort of friend you need these days, in the Catholic Church if nowhere else - told me I'd made a mistake.

She'd been informed by someone in the know that a blog post of mine concerning Fr Nathaniel Brazil, a set of vestments, and Our Lady of Lourdes parish in Havelock North, was incorrect. Fr Nathaniel's mother hadn't given him a set of rose vestments and OLOL had not refused his offer of same.

For one thing, Fr Nat's mother has been dead for years, she said.

So I apologise to Fr Nathaniel, who's now been sent to fresh pastures for the Lord in Whanganui, and who's had quite enough to put up with from people and fellow priests in the Church of Nice, without a Rad Trad giving him grief. Although knowing Fr Nathaniel, who once and sadly only very briefly, graced Holy Trinity Parish, I don't think he'd have bothered his pretty head about it too much. I apologise also unreservedly for any comments I made which might have upset any OLOL parishioners.

Because for another thing, Our Lady of Lourdes has much more serious concerns. I'm reliably informed that the priest celebrating Mass there last Sunday suddenly became ill and had to call on another priest, providentially present in the congregation, to take his place.

It seems the situation in Palmerston North Diocese in regard to the supply of priests is even more dire than when Fr Bryan Buenger departed Tararua Parish last month. 

But God save us please, from any ghastly 'lay-led' Sunday services. (I know they're ghastly because in the days before I grew up, as it were, I conducted them myself on weekdays sometimes.) We all have still have a choice, thank God, in churches and times for attending Holy Mass. Almost everyone has a car and if there's no Mass where you usually attend, you can offer those who don't a ride to Mass somewhere else. 

And that 'somewhere else' could be, in the PN Diocese, the Traditional Latin Mass, in a tiny church in Ashhurst (every Sunday), St Anthony's Whanganui (daily) and DUNSTAN'S FUNERAL PARLOUR for heaven's sake, in Napier (every third Sunday) - all of which of course are SSPX.

To those who are horrified at the suggestion, because 'The SSPX is in schism!" I would say that Bishop Athanasius Schneider, requested by the Holy See to visit SSPX's two seminaries, afterwards stated that "There are no weighty reasons to deny the clergy and faithful of the SSPX the official canonical recognition, meanwhile they shoud be accepted as they are.

"The issue of Vatican II should not be taken as the "conditio sine qua non" since it was an assembly with primarily pastoral aims … and possesses a temporary value, as … pastoral documents do. … There is on both sides (Holy See and the SSPX) an over-evaluation and over-estimation of … Vatican II."

Bishop Schneider goes on to recommend "... canonical recognition of the SSPX on behalf of the Holy See. Otherwise the often repeated pastoral and ecumenical openness in the Church of our days will manifestly lose its credibility and the history will one day reproach to the ecclesiastical authorities of our days that they have "laid on the brothers greater burden than required" (Acts 15:28), which is contrary to the pastoral method of the Apostles.

And anyway, according to an international expert in Apologetics who was then living in New Zealand, the Papal Nuncio at the time was unable to deny his assertion that the NZ Church has been in schism (separated from the Church of Rome), since the 1980s.

If enough of us attend the Traditional Latin Mass it might mean that Bishop Charles could upgrade it from a country church to its proper place, in the cathedral, and the Holy See could accept the SSPX as they should be: "as they are".



P S: Of course, none of the above is to distract you from my wrongdoing. Honest. But as the Gospel for the Divine Office this evening says, Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, and then you will be healed (Jas 5:16). 

So here's praying for you, people!

CONCERNING AN INCIDENT AT A MASS IN THE PN DIOCESE YESTERDAY

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Ash Wednesday was celebrated in Palmerston North by a bunch of Rad Trads (Catholics faithful to the Church's Magisterium), gathered in a private home to hear an international expert on Apologetics and Defence of the Catholic Faith.

If I hadn't heard his talk, I'd probably draw a veil over an incident at Holy Mass in a church in the Palmerston North Diocese yesterday, the First Sunday in Lent. But his talk made us realize that veils have been drawn over wrongdoing in the Church for far too long, so here goes.

A faithful Massgoer, having proclaimed the readings (beautifully), had moved from his pew straight across the aisle, after the Prayers of the Faithful, to an empty pew right behind the three small altar boys sitting at the front. 

The faithful Massgoer had noticed (who hadn't?) that the boys didn't know what to do (like Brown's cows they were, said an onlooker afterwards, and she was so pleased the F.M. had moved behind them). 

Father's M.O. is to tell the altar servers what they're supposed to do, audibly, throughout Mass. I suppose Faithful Massgoer thought he could assist silently, from the pew behind them so save Father instructing them from the altar. I'd seen him do this in the past.

But this time, Father interrupted Holy Mass to address the Faithful Massgoer by name, loudly enough I should think for most of the congregation to hear, and told him to return to his pew. He told him his help wasn't needed, the servers didn't need 'other adults' to tell them what to do. Faithful Massgoer did not return to his pew; he stayed put and kept his head down. 

But at the Consecration, the altar server on the end of the pew looked round for Faithful Massgoer's Mum, who for years has indicated to them that they should kneel for the Consecration, and again after the Lamb of God. It's going against the grain for them the poor kids to do it, as almost all of the congregation sit and the kneelers were whisked away years ago, with only little kneeling pads as a substitute. F.M.'s Mum can't remember because she was pretty upset, she said, but she thinks that as usual she gave them the nod and they knelt.

And this was the real issue: lack of reverence for the Holy Eucharist.

In the church foyer after Mass FM's Mum could hear, while giving another Massgoer a basketful of home-grown apples, that Father and Faithful Massgoer were having a conversation. Father sounded conciliatory. Faithful Massgoer sounded calm and measured. 

He was explaining to Father how he'd been a small altarboy himself once, and had been very grateful for the sacristan who nodded and gestured and encouraged him from the pews when he had to serve Mass for a crusty old priest famous for hitting Faithful Massgoer,  during RE at their country school, over the head with a map of the Holy Land.

He also explained to Father that it was good to be humiliated, and thanked him for the opportunity. He told me afterwards that Father probably thought he was being sarcastic.

He wasn't.

Thank God it was  Faithful Massgoer who Father picked on. Many, many people have left the Church because of something "Father said", and it wasn't something said in front of the whole congregation during Sunday Mass; and Faithful Massgoer would be sorely missed by an aging, dwindling congregation. 

Fortunately for Father, Faithful Massgoer is exactly that. Faithful.

That international expert on Apologetics also told the Palmerston North Rad Trads that the Latin Mass is more pleasing to God than the Novus Ordo. 

This incident clearly illustrates one reason why that is so: In the celebration of the Latin Mass it would not be possible for the priest to interrupt the Sacred Rites to tick off a Massgoer for helping little altar boys, or for any other reason. It is inconceivable that such a thing could happen.

Because the priest isn't facing the congregation. He can't see the altar boys (always boys, not girls) or any unruly Massgoers. He's facing the altar and facing God, serving God.

What's more, the altar boys are well trained - before, not during, Mass. They have to be, because the Ritual must be scrupulously observed by them as well as by the priest. The Latin Mass is taken seriously, even by the altar boys - who don't sit in the pews with the congregation, but separate from the hoi polloi, in the sanctuary.

Go figure.

That's why the sanctuary of the Latin Mass is a breeding ground for future priests. If you don't believe me, ask the SSPX.

Donna Te Amo says:

Actually the altar servers did know what to do as they had served Mass earlier that week -one boy suffers from anxiety which is why he looked uncomfortable. We are lucky to have such a wonderful priest in our area!

I say:

We're certainly very blessed to have such a priest - in fact, any priest. I believe it's because of St Therese's intercession in response to her Prayer for Priests at Adoration in our church, for so many years, that we have a priest, and we must pray for him and for all priests. 


Linda Clarke says:

I don't believe a priest should interrupt the Rite except for an
extremely serious reason.

There is a lot of talk these days about 'Parish Family' and
'Community'.   Wasn't the F.M. working exactly with the intention of aiming to be helpful and instructive to children who were unsure?    A priest not happy with a parishioner's aim to help could easily speak pleasantly to them later on in private.

Satan doesn't care how people are distracted at Mass, so whether they are distracted by altar boys being taught during the Rites or by being aghast at one of the faithful being humiliated, is all the same to him.

Thank you again, Julia, for pointing out the reverence due to our
Lord.   The more Protestant that Catholic Churches become, the less the Catholic truths will be honoured.  Let's not forget that most Protestants do not believe in Transubstantiation, and the remains of the 'meal' may even be thrown to the birds, as I have seen done.

I say:

I actually deleted a lot of what I'd written before making this post this on last Sunday's Mass, the reason being that the next morning I was reminded, in Divine Intimacy, of the text, "Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful" (Lk 6:36).

  

THE BAD PRESS CATHOLICS GET IN THEIR OWN PARISH NEWSLETTER

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If Catholics feel disheartened, disillusioned and dismayed about the bad press they're getting over sex abuse and coverups, how do they feel about the bad press the Church gets in their own parish newsletter?

Disgusted, I reckon.

Holy Trinity's latest, out today, features Pope Pius XII,  whose documents the Vatican have announced will be released next year, as "helping or ignoring the plight of Jews during the holocaust. 

"He has often been criticized by Jews for his apparent silence (but) some Catholic leaders say Pius helped European Jews." I call that ambiguous to say the least. 

Ambiguity is perhaps the defining characteristic of 'the spirit of Vatican II', of the Novus Ordo and the current papacy. I call it a pretty feeble endorsement for a Pope who saved 700,000 Jews from the death camps, hiding many in religious houses throughout Italy.

In 1945 the representative of the Italian Hebrew Commission affirmed that: "Above all we acknowledge the Supreme Pontiff and the religious men and women who, executing the directives of the Holy Father, recognized the persecuted as their brothers and with effort and abnegation hastened to help us, disregarding the terrible dangers to which they were exposed." 

In the same year, 1945, 80 representatives of Jewish refugees from various concentration camps came to Rome to "express their great honour at being able to thank the Holy Father personally".

The great Albert Einstein has said that, "Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing the truth. I am forced to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly."

When Pius died, Israel's Prime Minister Golda Meir, paid him tribute: "When fearful martyrdom came to our people, the voice of the Pope was raised for its victims … We mourn a great servant of peace".

Catholics should know that Pope Pius' strenuous efforts to save Jews from the Nazis were universally acknowledged until the mid '60s, when a generation who hadn't experienced WWII were suckers for a KGB campaign of misinformation and lies which had failed in the '40s.

It's more than feeble, it's disgusting that an organization calling itself 'cathnews.com' and which I suppose is a regular feed for many NZ parish newsletters, should join a smear campaign started by Communists, spread by liberal, socialist-minded Catholics and now served up as Sunday reading in the pews.

What we need is a jolly good, morale-boosting homily on the days when the Church was a force to be reckoned with, when Hitler saw the Catholic Church as an enemy of the Third Reich, a homily extolling a great Pope, a pope to be remembered and revered as one of the heroes of the 20th century.

The Lent of pain and suffering in the Church caused by ambiguity, vice, coverups and lies are grist to God's mill of mercy and justice: great popes will come again. 

You won't have heard this morning's verse before the Gospel, because our NZ priests don't bother with it any more, so here it is:


Cast away from you all the crimes you have committed, says the Lord, and make for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit.

Adelie Reid says:
Yes. Apparently one of Hitler's top men said he feared no one but that little man in white. Referring to Pope PiusXII.

Paul Collits says:
P12 was an absolute champion in all sorts of ways, including his attitude to our older brothers and sisters in the faith.
I say: Que?

'Anon' says: 
Priests tell me they often have the problem that ferocious parishioners or church staff take control of the parish newsletter and try to use it as their own private outlet. I don't know if this is one such instance.

I say: In this instance, that's not the way I'd put it. 

  

TRUDEAU'S STATUS WAS ALWAYS MOCKSTAR (Letter to NZ Herald).

So Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been unmasked as a bully and a hypocrite. At last.

He says he's a Catholic, yet he pledged $650 million to fund abortions overseas, reproductive ‘health’ and sex education. 

He insults pro-lifers and in a totalitarian policy oppressing Christians insists employers swear a pledge not to undermine ‘rights’ to abortion, LGBTTIQ and transgender ideology. All of which makes him a funny sort of Catholic.

Killing unborn children is the most grievous version of overt bullying, but as a rabid advocate for abortion Trudeau is also a covert bully, manipulating and pressuring women – with no properly informed consent - into a procedure that not only kills their child but brings physical, emotional and spiritual damage in its train.

So much for “going viral for promoting women”. 

Trudeau’s ‘rockstar’ status was always mockstar.

Paul Collits says:

Yes, the Boy Prince is for the high jump, one hopes.

I say: How has Canada been deceived for so long? There's something seriously rotten in that nation - and in its Catholic Church.

FORCED IN PN CATHEDRAL TO LOOK AT TEEN-BOPPER BOTTOMS DRAPED WITH ONLY A FRILL AROUND THE WAIST

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A Catholic bloke, a pretty normal guy, not a pervert as far as I know, has asked me to think about what Catholic blokes in the Palmerston North Cathedral, the ones who kneel for the Eucharistic Prayer that is, sometimes have in their direct line of sight.

As a 'kneeler' myself, I think it's bad enough that unless I close my eyes I have to look at men's bottoms, which is one of the reasons I close my eyes. (You can't win; I've been criticized for closing my eyes because that's not being 'community'. But keeping your eyes on the 'community' and perhaps being fearfully distracted or even talked to, instead of gazing upon the Trinity within, is making 'community' into a god.)

I'd never thought before about what male 'kneelers' have to look at. Not just other men's bottoms, but women's bottoms. Girls' bottoms. Teeny-bopper bottoms, often draped with little more than a frill around the waist.

Do priests in their 'presider's' chairs in the sanctuary, far from the madding and sometimes maddening crowd, ever think of this? Do bishops?

The Eucharistic kneel-or-sit-or-stand-whatever-takes-your-fancy stance in the PN Diocese is a debacle, and has been ever since Bishop Peter Cullinane sowed seeds of confusion among his hapless congregations.

In 1975 we were told to stand for the Eucharistic prayer, kneel for the Consecration and stand again afterwards. But for some people that was far too energetic and sometime later it was countermanded. 

We had become in the interim, apparently, according to +Peter, "a Resurrection people, a standing people", homus erectus', people who if their Lord and Saviour were suddenly to appear before them - as He does invisibly, at the Consecration - would not fall on their knees like Peter or Thomas, but just stand and gape. 

Not only do we fail to bend the knee, we can't even bow (or curtsy if you're female) - as we surely would, were it the Queen who'd turned up.  

At Our Lady of the Southern Star Abbey - as I try to call it, rather than the secular term 'Kopua' - except for visitors from other dioceses they still stand for the Eucharistic Prayer (those who are still capable of standing, that is). 

When I suggested kneeling for silent prayer as a possible penance, as Pope Francis has requested, for the sex abuse crisis in the Church, my Dutch confessor there was pretty horrified. "We must look after our bodies!" But I have a German doctor, a pretty thorough sort of chap, to look after my body. I need a priest to look after my soul. And don't say, for that you need a spiritual director. yes, I do, but I don't know of any reputable spiritual directors on offer. Please, contradict me.

Anyway, we look forward to +Charles Drennan sorting the kneeling/standing debacle out for us, now he's got over the WYD Panamania and returned to the bosom of his people of Palmerston North.

It's Ash Wednesday, which prompts me to think about returning 'to dust' - although the school children at Mass this morning were certainly not required to think about life on earth ever coming to an end and what might happen next. Oh no. They had to promise to 'give something to God'. Tweaking centuries'-old prayers of the Church at will (but that's another subject). 

I was thinking myself also, about titanium and whether it ever returns 'to dust'. About how if Catholics had continued to kneel throughout the Eucharistic Prayer, there might not now be so many expensive titanium Catholic knees, and so many alas now buried six foot under?  

'Anon' says:

Julia, as a male I find it extremely annoying, staring at standing female backsides at close range, as I kneel myself.  

Each time I remember +Peter years ago, rushing to bring in the next stage of the progressive reform agenda he somehow thought the Church needed. He blew it badly, because standing only half caught on in Palmerston North and its rejected in most other places.  

His 'standing' reform was too cute and the timing was wrong.  From the debates I have heard among fellow parishioners, it remains highly divisive to this day.

A male Catholic colleague told me it is not adultery if you look once, you have to look once to see it is something you should not look at again.  Its adultery though if you look a second time (he didn't mention the third time, but I assume that's not allowed either).  

So, often I have to close my eyes or look down during the Eucharistic Prayer. Then later on in the Mass I get to shake the hand and greet the nice lady whose backside was so in my face I had to make an effort not to look.

Bishop Charles Drennan, its a mess that is not going away, please fix it.

Teresa Coles says:
Peter and I had a good laugh over some of your comments. Yes it is only Palmerston North Diocese that doesn't kneel. 

Peter and I often used to travel from Onga Onga to St Peter Chanel in Hastings every Saturday or Sunday before we moved to Taupo so we could kneel for the Consecration.

It annoys me now to see young people sitting at times when they should be kneeling.

I say:
It's especially awful when the young people are actually 'altar servers', as at St Joseph's in Holy Trinity Waipukurau, on Ash Wednesday. I could see they thought they should kneel but all the other children were sitting so they did too.

St Peter Chanel's in the PN Diocese so if people were kneeling they must have had a faithful priest there. I'm thinking, Philipino.

Sharon Crooks says:

Someone might like to remind Bishop Charles (again) that he inherited the ‘General Instruction of the Roman Missal (2010)’ and as Secretary to NZ Bishops’ Conference, he should be obliged to endorse the said instructions that tell us to “kneel from the completion of the Sanctus (Holy, Holy, Holy) until after the Amen of the Eucharistic Prayer, except when prevented on occasion by ill health, or for reasons of lack of space, of the large number of people present, or for another reasonable cause.”  It goes on to say that the faithful are to “kneel again after the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) until the distribution of Holy Communion. During the period of sacred silence after Communion, they may either sit or kneel” (GIRM # 43).

To cater for anomalies, the GIRM also offers instructions for doing ‘as told’ when the congregation is large and space is lacking, but how many Masses fit that criteria?  Basically, there needs to be a darn good reason why we wouldn’t kneel.  It seems like particularly poor leadership to turn a blind eye to your ‘own’ instructions and then encourage (by your silence) such disrespect for our Lord and Saviour!  Cardinal Ratzinger captured our local liturgical lethargy quite accurately when he said  “...a faith or a liturgy no longer familiar with kneeling would be sick at the core.”  (‘The theology of Kneeling’ from his book ‘The Spirit of Liturgy’).  I’d say things are beginning to look a bit ‘green around the gills...’

Paul Collits says:
Not to mention churches reconfigured so that it is almost physically impossible to kneel in the pews.

Bob Gill says:
Reminds me of when I asked PN cathedral staff recently why no pew kneelers are provided. Our bishop's response: "It didn't happen on my watch".

I say:
We all know whose watch it happened on. But now it's your watch Bishop Charles ,and it's your job to fix it.

Bob adds:
It makes you wonder if those sitting actually believe in the Real Presence.
I notice also that those standing instead of kneeling during the Consecration don't copy the celebrant when he genuflects at the moment of Consecration - not a single person from my observation. Did Palmerston North forget to tell them about that crucial point, or is it just more evidence that they don't believe in the Real Presence?

I say:
Lex orandi, lex credendi: the way we pray is the way we believe. I'm afraid you're right, Bob - most Catholics no longer believe in the Presence of Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour in the Eucharist.

One has only to spend hours in the church as I am blessed to do, practising the organ, to realize that. No one comes into St Joseph's Church to speak with or to listen to the Lord.

Sir Raymond de Souza, who spoke to a private meeting of Rad Trads in PN on Wednesday night, made the point very emphatically that the chief reason for this and most other ills is that doctrine and dogma have not been preached in the NZ Church for years.

He said he was shocked when he told the Papal Nuncio that New Zealand was entering schism from Rome and the Nuncio did not deny it. That was in 1987.

LIFTED OUT OF THE DITCH, DRAWN INTO HEAVEN

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Shoot the bastard!

This comment, on my last-post-but-one (The word Pope Francis' man forbade the bishops to utter to the press),came from a Protestant. An honest, down-to-earth, sincere, church-going Protestant. He was referring to Pope Francis. And he won't be the only man in his congregation with such sentiments.

I publish his remark only to illustrate the depths of disrepute into which the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, led by the Pontiff and hierarchy, has fallen; how the Bride of Christ has suffered from guilt by association with the homosexual clergy, the cover-ups and the laissez-faire, modernist mentality currently running the show.

As today's Gospel proclaims: Can the blind lead the blind? do they not both fall into the ditch? (Lk 6:39).

With Cardinal John Dew in Welcom bewailing "a Church with too few people, an unsustainable financial burden (and) a declining number of priests", the situation we're in today might well be described as a ditch - where we find ourselves alongside the traditional Latin Mass, tossed there by the architects of Vatican II.

We can climb out of this ditch only by means of prayer, without which St Augustine says no one will save their soul. 

Today's Gospel also tells us that a good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit. Cardinal Dew draws a picture of rotten fruit which begs the question, which tree do they come from? 

I don't expect him to answer, so I will. The trees are Vatican II, mostly naively but sometimes willfully, misinterpreted and manipulated by the modernist clergy. And the Novus Ordo, ditto. The new Mass, ambiguous and permissive, gets tweaked and embellished according to the ego - more or less - of the priest, and according also to his theology which under NZ's Bishops' Conference is very likely also more or less modernistically heretical.

It's time now for the laity to come to the help of the Church, our Mother, with the prayer of Mary the Mother of God - the Rosary, and the Mass.

Fed as a child and nurtured as a teenager by the Latin Mass, and now longing to return to it, I believe the suppression of the traditional Latin Mass was the chief tool used for demolishing the Church from within by the Communist importations attested to by Bella Dodd, aided and abetted by naïve, well-meaning clergy deluded by visons of a utopian, socialist World Church.  

  

The traditional Latin Mass, as Fr Chad Ripperger FSSP says, "leaves one with a sense of being drawn into heaven with the priest. This draws us into prayer and gives the sense of the transcendent and supernatural that are key in the spiritual life.  The Latin provides a sense of mystery. The beauty of the ritual … all these things lead to contemplation, the seeking after that which is above.

"We cannot be satisfied with a liturgy that is the work of our own hands. 

We need the work of God back … we need God."

Bob Gill says: 

Many have been led to believe that the situation of the 'declining number of priests' cited by Cardinal Dew in the Wellington Archdiocese is happening all over the world. Not so.

Father Bryan Buenger, until recently Parish Priest of Tararua in the Palmerston North Diocese, has returned to the US to the Phoenix Diocese which is currently celebrating its greatest year ever, with 40 or so priests-to-be in its seminary. 

Its bishop, Thomas Olmsted, is a champion of orthodoxy.

I say: What a wonderful, positive illustration of a good tree bearing good fruit! 

Bob adds: You tell it how it is, Julia, without being nasty. We need more of that proactive rhetoric!
Some countries are lucky; they have a Catholic forum to sound off on and they can ge questions on their faith and associated matters raised/answered either directly or indirectly. Not so in New Zealand because, as far as I know, your blog, Julia, is the only non-Church controlled avenue we have for voicing thoughts and opinions. 
Carry on the good work!

I say: thanks Bob. I'd love to know what other NZ blogs are doing this sort of stuff. Surely mine can't be the only one!