tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post7299039199276907152..comments2023-12-16T16:17:43.886+00:00Comments on Fr Ray Blake's Blog: Bogle on BlairFr Ray Blakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05584140126211527252noreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-15331033898582335172006-10-19T23:05:00.000+01:002006-10-19T23:05:00.000+01:00I am sure there is someone at the image consultanc...I am sure there is someone at the image consultancy looking at everything on the net that concerns the Leader. Or it could be the intelligence services....Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-66791087802089885352006-10-19T18:39:00.000+01:002006-10-19T18:39:00.000+01:00...and a copy sent to Fr Michael Seed and any othe......and a copy sent to Fr Michael Seed and any other priest with whom Blair has contact?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-71948563049000782702006-10-19T17:28:00.000+01:002006-10-19T17:28:00.000+01:00Can all these comments, plus the original piece, b...Can all these comments, plus the original piece, be sent to Tony Blair? We all seem to agree with one another but there's not much point in that and it just might do him (and everyone else) some good if he were to read these remarks. Edited, in some cases.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-87113157553312269662006-10-19T11:31:00.000+01:002006-10-19T11:31:00.000+01:00To call Cherie Blair a cafeteria Catholic would be...To call Cherie Blair a cafeteria Catholic would be bland. She makes a cafeteria look like a North Korean restaurant.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-44787162670015984542006-10-19T09:05:00.000+01:002006-10-19T09:05:00.000+01:00Cherie Blair
"Women still do not get due respect ...Cherie Blair <br />"Women still do not get due respect in the Church which is why, in the opinion of many people, it gets some things wrong like its teaching on contraception."<br />Daily Telegraph 6 June 2005<br /><br />"In addition to the fringe meetings, and to continue our 75th anniversary celebrations, Cherie Blair helped to cut a special birthday cake at our stand at the Labour Party conference. We also gave away a vibrator to a lucky winner, which got The Observer’s Pendennis in a bit of a spin!"<br />FPA (Family Planning Association) ArchiveAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-19356964228963971772006-10-19T08:55:00.000+01:002006-10-19T08:55:00.000+01:00If he thinks the Catholic Cgurch is true, then he ...If he thinks the Catholic Cgurch is true, then he should join it. now. If he is unsure then he should remain where he is.<br />If he is more concered by power than conscience, then he has no place amongst us.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-80401990909378113352006-10-19T08:44:00.000+01:002006-10-19T08:44:00.000+01:00Actually, I'm sick of standing up for Blair. If h...Actually, I'm sick of standing up for Blair. If he wants to worship in our Cathedral, then he should revere the opinion of our Pope and the faith of the Church, and if he really wants to become a Catholic, he should bear witness to Christ in his political life to profess that faith.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-43711279790441040082006-10-18T23:17:00.000+01:002006-10-18T23:17:00.000+01:00Children, children, be kind to one another and lea...Children, children, be kind to one another and learn to tolerate one another. Otherwise you will have to sit next to one another in purgatory for what will feel like very along time. Be kind|Fr Ray Blakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05584140126211527252noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-36742826017619358462006-10-18T20:55:00.000+01:002006-10-18T20:55:00.000+01:00If it would help, Petra, I am also of East Europea...If it would help, Petra, I am also of East European peasant stock. My father was a Slovene from the far northern Croatian region of Medjumurje. And from the stories he used to tell me, it was clear that growing up on the farm, with shoes on his feet only during the winter months, falling asleep at school because he was so hungry all the time, was highly unfunny.<br /><br />Please don't think I'm playing down the unique gravity of abortion - what I'm saying is that there are a lot of grave sins you can commit notoriously and publicly, and which should by rights be a bar to being received into the Church unless properly renounced and repented of.<br /><br />And you're wrong about the context in which Pius XI was teaching. Quadragesimo Anno was written in the 1930's to update and review Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum which had been written forty years earlier specifically about the condition of the industrial working class.<br /><br />Leo had been Apostolic Nuncio to Belgium, and he had an opportunity to observe the conditions in which workers lived there, and in Britain which he used to visit incognito.<br /><br />Divini Redemptoris was specifically about atheistic Communism. The Pope's remedy was to remove the appeal of Communism by prescribing that the State intervene to reduce and eventually eliminate propertylessness among the working class, a vision developed further by Hilaire Belloc in his Essay on the Restoration of Property:<br /><br />"But social justice cannot be said to have been satisfied as long as workingmen are denied a salary that will enable them to secure proper sustenance for themselves and for their families; as long as they are denied the opportunity of acquiring a modest fortune and forestalling the plague of universal pauperism; as long as they cannot make suitable provision through public or private insurance for old age, for periods of illness and unemployment. In a word, to repeat what has been said in Our Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno: "Then only will the economic and social order be soundly established and attain its ends, when it offers, to all and to each, all those goods which the wealth and resources of nature, technical science and the corporate organization of social affairs can give. These goods should be sufficient to supply all necessities and reasonable comforts, and to uplift men to that higher standard of life which, provided it be used with prudence, is not only not a hindrance but is of singular help to virtue." (Divini Redemptoris n.52)<br /><br />The point about the State intervening to legislate a floor below which wages must not fall is that, without it, as Churchill observed, the good employer will be undercut by the bad, and the bad by the worst, and "there is no reason why this state of affairs should not continue in a squalid welter which compared with our brief lives is indefinite."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-74552013053454564552006-10-18T17:57:00.000+01:002006-10-18T17:57:00.000+01:00I agree with Gladys very much so, but if Blair is ...I agree with Gladys very much so, but if Blair is a protestant, which he has remained throughout his tenure, then he hasn't believed what the Church believes about abortion, therefore isn't it a case of "forgive them, for they know not what they do?" Throughout his tenure at number 10, he has never actually been a Catholic, therefore who are we to judge him according to Catholic faith and morals?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-45370149373653281862006-10-18T17:30:00.000+01:002006-10-18T17:30:00.000+01:00Michael, I have never heard anything so silly. As ...Michael, I have never heard anything so silly. As someone of eastern European peasant stock I was brought up to repect the opinions of the offspring of the aristocracy, but you fail to understand the context of Pius IX's statement. He was speaking in the context of mass starvation in Europe at the time and therefore of the obligation governments to ensure a minimum wage simply to keep body and soul together.<br />Read what the catechism has to say about abortion in comparison to other sins, understand the Church's teaching.<br />I know that I have now let myself and everyone else in for a long, long answer, for which I appologise.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-72733955026522824072006-10-18T12:55:00.000+01:002006-10-18T12:55:00.000+01:00I'm aware, Father, that authorising a sin against ...I'm aware, Father, that authorising a sin against the fifth commandment is not of the same species as authorising a sin against the tenth, nor as committing the sin against the first and fourth in which enrolling in Freemasonry consists. The point is that, egregious as the legal authorisation of abortion is, any of these would be a bar to receiving Holy Communion, or to becoming a Catholic.<br /><br />But Scripture brands wilful murder and defrauding labourers of their wages as sins crying to heaven for vengeance (James 5:4), and equates depriving a man of his livelihood to murder (Sirach 34:20-22). <br /><br />Furthermore, the Papal encyclicals I quoted in my previous posts use the peremptory term "must" in their admonitions to State and employer.<br /><br />In any event it can easily be a mortal sin for a person in public authority, given the grave responsibilities of office, to fail in his duty to see that as many people as possible who need to work in order to live have a genuine opportunity to do so, and that employers are held to their natural duty to pay a family wage, on pain of guilt of theft.<br /><br />Unless I am mistaken theologians generally hold that the employer who underpays when not himself under constraint would sin in a grave matter as soon as the aggregate amount of underpayment equalled or exceeded a day's wage actually paid.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-37875568078032365782006-10-18T12:16:00.000+01:002006-10-18T12:16:00.000+01:00Michael,
The killing of the innocent. in the womb...Michael, <br />The killing of the innocent. in the womb is not the same as failure to "supply needs" or even provide a just wage, what this should be is always going to be subject to a particular political view point. Authorising the killing of the innocent, is always objectively evil. <br />Politicians may well think that they cannot overcome particular ills within society, in which case they have a moral duty to do all they can to improve a situation. <br /><br />Last year there was a serious attempt by many politicians to reduce the age of abortion, Mr Blair washed his hand of that.Fr Ray Blakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05584140126211527252noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-56286865402245254532006-10-18T11:56:00.000+01:002006-10-18T11:56:00.000+01:00Allow me to be provocative. Ann Widdicombe was Und...Allow me to be provocative. Ann Widdicombe was Under Secretary of State at the Department of Employment in 1993, and was promoted to Minister of State at the same Department in 1994.<br /><br />She was accepted into the Catholic Church without having arranged for her heavenly record card to be adjusted in regard to the obligation to safeguard:<br /><br />(1) Full employment (Pius XI <i>Divini Redemptoris):</i> "The State must take every measure necessary to supply employment, particularly for the heads of families and for the young." (n.75)<br /><br />(2) The family wage (Pius XI <i>Quadragesimo Anno):</i> "In the first place, the worker must be paid a wage sufficient to support him and his family." (n.71)<br /><br />On the other hand, if she had done her Christian duty Margaret Thatcher might have paid her a visit and put her to a martyr's death!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-70413784154024833762006-10-18T11:41:00.000+01:002006-10-18T11:41:00.000+01:00"Sorry, we don't accept public sinners (or in the ..."Sorry, we don't accept public sinners (or in the case of Blair), wilful murderers into the Church."<br /><br />We need to hear that more often, we believe that if we are "in Christ", we have become a new creation, and God dwells in us. <br />Faith is a supernatural gift but if someone has it, we should see the outward manifestion of people's lives. In the case of public figures, by the causes they support. In the case of politicians by their voting record.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-66326039901548948962006-10-18T10:56:00.000+01:002006-10-18T10:56:00.000+01:00Fr Boyle is absoluetly right to describe any possi...Fr Boyle is absoluetly right to describe any possible conversion by Blair as a 'scandal' given the public knowledge about his record on moral teaching. Such a comment by a priest is a brave one, not an "objectionable" one. Charity works both ways.<br /><br />While Blair's heart and mind are known only to God, the public manifestation of a conversion, where he will in effect declare his support for everything the Catholic Church teaches, while also publicly repudiating that teaching by his public voting record, will indeed be a cause of scandal. There is nothing "objectionable" in pointing out this fact.<br /><br />Fr Seed (or, indeed, anyone else involved in this) needs to exercise great prudence here.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-63263790195127546302006-10-18T09:39:00.000+01:002006-10-18T09:39:00.000+01:00There does seem to be an aweful lot of priests in ...There does seem to be an aweful lot of priests in London who specialise in the spiritual maladies of the very rich and powerful or powerful. <br />Does it come from the top?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-35499086533281938812006-10-18T09:35:00.000+01:002006-10-18T09:35:00.000+01:00The Blairs are obviously committed to their family...The Blairs are obviously committed to their family, what we need are politicians committed to the FAMILY then society might actually chang dor the better, but who is there?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-62221874457799549282006-10-18T07:56:00.000+01:002006-10-18T07:56:00.000+01:00It's not just Tony Blair, it's the whole constitut...It's not just Tony Blair, it's the whole constitution since 1688.<br /><br />When Elizabeth I definitively broke with Rome she shackled the Church of England in violation of the common law which was then supreme over statute. For Magna Carta had it that "the Church in England shall have her rights entire and her liberties inviolate."<br /><br />The English Reformation was carried through by force of statute, and was unconstitutional until 1688, by which time the law of God had become unknown to the courts and been displaced by Act of Parliament.<br /><br />Lord Reid stated, in Pickin v British Railways Board [1974], the rule that puts the courts in perjury of Her Majesty's Coronation Oath: <br /><br />"In earlier times many learned lawyers seemed to have believed that an Act of Parliament could be disregarded in so far as it was contrary to the law of God or the law of nature or natural justice, but since the supremacy of Parliament was finally demonstrated by the revolution of 1688 any such idea has become obsolete."<br /><br />Let's remember that the next time a Sovereign swears to "uphold the law of God and the true profession of the Gospel."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-80042498537326160882006-10-18T07:46:00.000+01:002006-10-18T07:46:00.000+01:00Writing as a priest who has worked in London, I wo...Writing as a priest who has worked in London, I would have to observe that Fr Seed, while a charming man, is notorious for giving only perfunctory instruction to illustrious convertsAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-60941413678883176242006-10-18T00:38:00.000+01:002006-10-18T00:38:00.000+01:00I agree with Fr Boyle, it would be scandalous to r...I agree with Fr Boyle, it would be scandalous to receive Blair into the Church in the foreseeable future. Salvation comes through repentence, Blair has been consistent in his support of abortion. In that sense he has been complicit in the abortion of so many. The Church has taught consistently that those who take part in abortion are by that very act excommunicated. If anything a politician like Blair, is more guilty than a frightened girl on a sink estate in the East End.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-17220377839252847262006-10-17T23:58:00.000+01:002006-10-17T23:58:00.000+01:00It'll certainly be an interesting first confession...It'll certainly be an interesting first confession!<br /><br />However, is it really "scandalous" for him to become a Catholic? I find that an objectionable thing for a Priest to say, as you are meant to be eager for the salvation of souls, whatever they have done. You doubt his motivations, but perhaps the Holy Spirit will touch his heart. We're not a club are we? "Scandal" suggests, "Sorry, we don't accept public sinners (or in the case of Blair), wilful murderers into the Church."<br /><br />You could have said the same about St. Paul had you been a Christian at the time. He was after all, persecuting Christians violently before his conversion.<br /><br />Someone I know said the exact same thing about Ann Widdecombe. Did she vote against the Iraq war? Or in favour?<br /><br />Well, I don't agree with much of what Mr Blair has done, but I'm sure Fr Michael Seed has enough wisdom to know WHEN Mr Blair is ready and is in full communion with the Church, in mind and heart. You never know, maybe one day he will be a public penitent.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-21552309251097193952006-10-17T22:56:00.000+01:002006-10-17T22:56:00.000+01:00It would be scandalous for Blair to become a Catho...It would be scandalous for Blair to become a Catholic. Fr Seed needs to be reigned in.Father John Boylehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10581732723849634398noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-9254901374105146362006-10-17T14:24:00.000+01:002006-10-17T14:24:00.000+01:00tc,
Which one?tc,<br />Which one?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31069882.post-70847651260699891282006-10-17T12:42:00.000+01:002006-10-17T12:42:00.000+01:00Monstrous, to think that he might actually be rece...Monstrous, to think that he might actually be received into the Church but then Fr Michael Seed, their chaplain seems to welcome anyone. The joke in the Westminster diocese is, "six good dinners and your in."<br />I would think that as he represents himself as an "almost" Catholic, the Cardinal should correct any misunderstanding the Blairs might have.<br />I regard him as an unrepentant public sinner.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com