Amoris Laetitia: Brightest and the Best would resign

Encouraging news from a priest friend.

He was speaking to his bishop about Amoris Laetitia and discussing whether the Bishops Conference will make a statement on the lines of two bishops who make up the Maltese Episcopal Conference. "No", said the Bishop, "not only would there be division, even war amongst the bishops, at least a strong division between the bishops but in his own diocese he knew that several of the younger clergy would resign from their parishes, and be welcomed by other sympathetic bishops. The problem he said would be with the "brightest and the best, the most hard working especially amongst the younger of the diocesan clergy".

It is unfortunate that the Church has been pushed in such a direction but this is where the Church is today, in a fragile vulnerable situation.

My God, my God why have you forsaken me.

My God, my God why have you forsaken me.

I  have known few people who have suffered torture. I knew Dom Peter de Curzon, a monk of Quarr by the time I became a friend he had separated himself from the community in many ways, he said the Old Mass day after day early in the morning at an altar in the crypt, without a server, "there is me and the whole court of Heaven, no-one else". It had been his practice to eat alone too, a superior had tried to make him join the community an issued an order that no-one should take meals outside of the ordinary times. Fr Peter obeyed and went on hunger strike, saying, "I did not give in when the Nazis tortured me why should I give in now?"

As a young French aristocrat and member of the Resistance he had indeed been tortured, I never asked him what the did but it was pretty obvious that he learnt the connection between stubbornness and fidelity. He would speak of fidelity when all the consolations of faith had vanished or be taken away. It had always struck me that stubbornness, what might be called fortitude, and martyrdom are intimately unconnected.

This perhaps is what real faith is, a relationship with God where all consolation is gone. Jesus' words from the Cross are I suspect about this, all human consolation had indeed gone, that he had 'become a worm and on man'. We know he never lost the Beatific Vision but Cross is the great sign of oblivion and desolation. Being fully human Jesus' knowledge of his Father, is like ours, one of faith. Faith is normally buoyed up memory and experience, in Jesus' case miracles and visions, and inner consolations. The torture of the Passion removed these, agony takes away memory and feeling and places one in the void of the present moment where pain, physical, psychological, spiritual, consumes everything.

The experience of many Catholics in this Age of the New Martyrs is one of absolute desolation, there is little consolation coming either from without or within, many feel they have lost faith or faith has become fragile and tenuous, consolation has gone, prayer becomes like wormwood, the Mass a tedious obligation, all we are offered is the Cross: hold fast, what you are living by is real faith, a faith without consolation or warmth just the rough cold unwelcoming wood of the Cross.

A Happy and Blessed Christmas

A Happy and Blessed Christmas to you all and sincere thanks for your prayer for my return to health.
Now let us offer prayer and penance, our sickness and pain, our fears and worries for the health of Our Holy Mother the Church afflicted on every side by wicked men.

What does the Immaculate Conception say about Amoris Laetitia

Some say that Amoris Laetitia says God tolerates sin, that is impossible.

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception says God demands holiness. Mary the 'All Holy', 'the Full of Grace' reminds us that God loves sinners but is totally intolerant of sin.
Her 'yes' to God, is a 'no' to sin.

Every dogma says no to sin!

If there were no God, we would still have Saint Nicholas

"If there were no God, we would still have Saint Nicholas", or so the Russians used to say. The ancient parish church of Brighton is dedicated to him. East and West there are thousands of ancient coastal churches dedicated to him, a mark of past devotion. There are legends but of him we know very little, or nothing.

The reason for such devotion to him is that prayer to him seems to worked. It is his post-mortem intercession that is important that matters. I suspect that is the reason the great Roman Canon contains its own list, canon, of saints is that 'they worked'.

Nowadays saints seem to be 'made' for political or factional reasons, when they were a rarer commodity, they emerged from the faithful's prayer and pilgrimage, from experience.

Behind the Amoris Laetiia controversy seems to be a sense of a loss of as search for holiness, Even the major protagonists seem to have lost this sense.

I suspect this is one of the reason Cardinal Sarah is calling for a return to 'ad Orientem' worship.
A Church that has lost that sense of Holiness has lost its reason to existence.

Heart Failure

A priest friend suggested I had been hiding out with the Pope, I have to admit I can't help but be a little amused by the Pope being hunted around the Vatican by Cardinals demanding the sweet Vicar of Christ does his job job and respond to their dubia. That like S Philip Neri, whose heart was twice the size it should have been, I had been called to soothe his reported rage, it is not true.
Since Friday 12th Nov I was in the "Heart Failure Unit" of the local hospital. Basically my heart had been working at twice its proper speed and had failed to remove fluid from my body, which I have been peeing in great quantity, I am home now and a fifth lighter than I was,
I should be alright once my heart has strengthened I have been back to hospital to have its rhythm corrected.
I would appreciate prayers.

Hero of Hacksaw Ridge

 
Something good from the States: Mel Gibson's new film Hacksaw Ridge received a 10 minute ovation at the Venice Film Festival, it is about a non-combatant Seventh Day Adventist medical orderly, Desmond Doss, and his repeated efforts to save 75 of his wounded comrades.