“If I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible what was the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: ‘Men have forgotten God; that is why all this has happened.”

“If I were to say what caused these riots and what has ultimately swallowed up our nation of 60 million, I would repeat the words: ‘Men have forgotten God; that is why all this has happened.” The CVM on the UK in 2011.

Unemployment, social deprivation, poor education, family breakdown, and MTV-styled morality: That is why all this has happened, so we’re told. On the surface, maybe. But at the core, NO! Men have forgotten God!

The solution? Oh dear! How do you turn a nation back to God, back to Catholicism! I don’t know. But there is a way to make the perpetrators of these riots reflect and maybe, just maybe turn to God.: A sentence of silence, solitary confinement.

“You should rejoice that you’re in prison. Here  you have time to think about your soul.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn again.
And in Russia they had REAL prisons (and maybe still have), places of REAL deprivation.

 Yet he wrote in The Gulag Archipelago: 

“Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we
are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.”

In a REAL prison, where the body is deprived of its comforts, the mind is deprived of its amusements, the soul begins to transcend its presumed meaning and direction.

 “If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be the unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfilment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it.

True, Solzhenitsyn was no Catholic but the brutality of Communism made clear the void left by Materialism.

“My wish for you… is that your sceptic-eclectic brain be flooded with the light of truth.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (The First Circle)

 The light of Truth cannot be plugged in and turned on. Only when man unplugs and turns off, will the intense glow of God’s Love penetrate.

“To stand up for truth is nothing. For truth, you must sit in jail.”
A sentence of silence maybe the only medicine possible to cure the cancer of the God-void. Only when man is void of everything else, will the God-shaped
peg find its mark.

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” (St Augustine)

PS: Enjoy the Pictures!

He was popular and well-liked among his peers and will be sorely missed.

Please also pray for his mother. Stuart was her only remaining son, her eldest had died of drug abuse some years back.

Please see the attachment below.

Stuart Horsman RIP

All encyclicals have great importance in their time but some transcend time because the root of the problem they remedy are a constant and fundamental threat to the physical, moral and supernatural wellbeing of man. Rerum Novarum is one such encyclical. And as you will see, many of the basic rights we take for granted, have their origin in this encyclical.

Of new things Is quite an apt title. Leo XIII was the first pope to address matters of economics and politics in an authoritative, papal document.

“But Religion has nothing to do with politics or economics!”shouted his critics in protest. WRONG! It is the soul and compass of all
political and economic systems. The King is not dead, the King does not sleep. It is YOU who are dead, for you have separated the Church from the State, like the soul passing from the body.

Pope Leo XIII rubber-stamped Christ back into the heart of public life: “We affirm that if the Church is disregarded, human striving will be in vain”.

His Holiness could no longer remain silent. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing and the fruits were rotten. Work conditions were unhealthy, wages low. There was a lot of cruelty against women and children, and a growing gap between the rich and the poor. For the majority of businessmen, money was their only aim. Predictably, the working class rebelled with riots and machine wrecking.

How was society to resolve this increasing polarity between the rich and the poor? Socialism became fashionable. It proposed to divest the wealthy of their riches and evenly divide the spoils to all. A very attractive proposal to the “Lazarus” class of this world, daily feeding off the crumbs of the rich.

NO, said the Pope. Socialism is pernicious. It strips man of the fundamental right to provide for his own on his own (land). It strips work of its individual character, creating monolithic movements of men’s minds and bodies, cogs in the great socialist machine without a face.

So if Socialism is out, Capitalism must be the Catholic Church’s choice? Firstly, the Catholic Church does not have a preference of
societal governance, just as long as the moral precepts are upheld, the common good is served and the Church is given its freedom to guide her children to God.

So, does Capitalism live up to all these things? And if not, why didn’t Pope Leo XIII strongly condemn it like Socialism? In short, Capitalism does all of these things (maintain moral rectitude and the common good, support the Church), but very poorly. Man was born with original sin. He has strong tendencies to evil. Without the cleansing of baptism and a strong injection of the Holy Ghost, he will naturally gravitate to sin and commit evil. This is Capitalism. It is reformable with the help of its mother the Church, but without an infusion of Christian principles and laws, it is doomed to destruction, self-destruction.

So though Capitalism isn’t intrinsically evil, it was not purpose-built for the job. Its origins are simply not Catholic, but Protestant
(with and unhealthy injection of Jewish backing and money).

In the next posting, I’ll explore the principles laid out by Pope Leo XIII, principles we need in the quest for a Christian State.

Sure, we had our hiccups. I poured the tea for the first guest we saw. The dark fluid caused alarms to ring in my mind. A somewhat light colour had been expected. But after sending one of the helpers to buy milk, I was content that at least we had provided the quintessential English hospitality of a cup of tea!  However, my relief was short lived when someone asked  ”Do you take sugar?” But quick thinking brought McDonalds to the rescue! ;-) And then we couldn’t find many of them. The homeless have a knack of blending into the stonework, to the pleasure of the local council, but to our disappointment.

However, I was comforted by the thought that in Sacred Scripture, numbers are significant but quantities mean nothing. The greatest battles were won with the smallest armies and the smallest numbers signify the greatest mysteries. The signification of three needs no explanation. But what of six? Judas Machabeus originally called up six thousand men, and won many victories over an enemy of far greater number. Ok, we’re not six warriors, but we did strike a dent in the demonic plan in expanding the work of the Divine Plan.

And, lastly, I have to say, we really enjoyed it. Though our guests were getting well fed and watered, a fire was set in my belly, filling me with much joy. There’s something blessed about meeting up with God again in these people.

So all in all, a well-spent afternoon: making a difference and igniting a fire in our bellies.

This posting is to explain what AV is (most don’t have the foggiest) and why, as Catholics and, equally as citizens, its implementation would be disastrous for our country.

Under FPTP, the candidate with the most votes wins. It’s that simple.
Under AV, the person with the most votes doesn’t necessary win. What? Let me explain (now pay attention, it does get complicated).
To get elected, a candidate must get at least 50% of the votes available. So what happens if no candidate achieves this? Firstly, remember that voters can list more than one candidate in an order of preference (however, voters are free to list only one candidate).
When there is no majority choice, the candidate with the least votes is eliminated and all second preference candidates (who are still in the contest) on the ballot papers of the eliminated candidate, receive that vote. If this doesn’t produce a clear majority vote for a candidate (50% or more), then the process repeats with the redistribution of the votes of the next candidate with the least votes based on the 3rd preference.

So what is so wrong with that?
Under FPTP, you vote for the person who you want to represent you. If you don’t care, you don’t vote.
Under AV, candidates will get into power by receiving “second-rated” votes, quite likely ticked without proper thought or insight into the candidates worthiness.
AV violates the nature of the vote and will take advantage of people’s apathy to politics.

It is also wide open to tactical abuse. This is more complicated to explain, but put simply, parties will get supporters to vote in such a way that their candidates are less likely to be eliminated. And this isn’t a simple case of listing preference. Confused? This link should explain it better: http://www.av2011.co.uk/Q8.html

If AV does get in, then the only choice we have is to tick the box next to the candidate of choice (affectively voting like under FPTP). Therefore your vote cannot be transferred to another candidate.

FPTP is not a perfect system, but it is fairer, more transparent and proportional than AV. Know where your vote goes. Vote “NO”.

St Joseph’s Soup Kitchen (mobile soup kitchen, I should say) will be serving the royal ambassadors of Christ; giving food, drink, comfort and a listening ear to the homeless of Winchester on Sunday, 1st of May, The feast of St Joseph the Worker (though liturgically moved to the Monday).

Ambassadors of Christ? “For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink….as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:31-45). The “least brethren”  are the people we are least inclined to: dirty and smelly homeless, drug addicts, alcoholics, the mentally disturbed (and in some cases our family members or spouses!). These ”low lives” are presented to us as God’s representatives, as Christ on the cross begging our compassion and charity.

To respond to this call, we will be expanding the work of the Catholic Volunteer Movement (CVM), which is already operating in Canterbury and Oxford. I will be writing in detail on the CVM, its history and ethos, in a later posting.

We will inaugurate our apostolate on a historically important day.

On this day, in 1776, Adam Weishaupt founded the Illuminati in Bavaria, Germany. This was a secret society whose founding principles were reflected in all future subversive movements, geared toward national government control and ulitimately a new world order fashioned under their fists.

To counter this ursupation of the natural and divine orders, Pope Pius XII established the feast of St Joseph the Worker on 1st May 1955, to extend the paternal mantle of St Joseph from the Universal Church (a feast given to us by Pope Pius IX in 1870) to all workers and labours, not only to “supernaturalise” all work, but also as an antithesis to the slavery of the worker under Communism and, dare I say, Capitalism.

It is also important to note that the Catholic Worker Movement, in 1933, 1st sold The Catholic Worker in Times Square , NY, to the shock of many Communists selling The Daily Worker (CVM and CWM sound the same? I’ll cover this in a later posting).

In the spirit of our great traditions, we will be the spreading the Gospel message to the least of our brethren, knowing that in every one in Christ in need…… ”as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me.”

St Joseph Pray for us.