De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

In this episode we discuss the new Puritanism as exposed in the recent arrest of a mother of five over an allegation someone made that she had posted something on the internet that she didn't. When we fail to teach the truth and people have less and less idea of objective moral truth. We also discuss the growing trend of Anglicans swimming the Tiber and becoming Catholic. Is it far to say that the only thing that separates Anglo-Catholics from unity with Rome is a failure to embrace the moral obligations? What draws an evangelical Anglican like the former bishop of Rochester to come home to Rome?

I thank God for brave Catholics like Caroline Farrow who are willing to put their own well-being at risk in pushing back against the false and dangerous ideologies which are being foisted on our children presently. This situation is particularly pernicious - the woman who reported Caroline has received half-a-million in sterling from the government to promote her false ideology. Indeed the whole country seems to have gone transgender crazy over the last couple of years, the number of children being referred to gender identity clinics has quadrupled in the past five years . Some sources quote a 4,000% rise in children with gender dysphoria in the US. But where are our bishops in this argument? Well they don't say much at all, as Cardinal Sarah says in his new book , they are terrified of upsetting the media, but they have promulgated deeply problematic & heretical guidelines for our schools on so-called LGBT issues , and drew dismay when they tweeted in support of ...

As a person of Irish heritage, I feel drawn to comment on this, or at least to point my readers to some useful facts about this horrible story. It first broke in 2014 and I posted about it here , giving an eye witness account of the experience in the Bon Secours home.  Now with the release of the results of the investigation into the contents of the grave, the media storm has been re-ignited in full force ! What a great opportunity to beat the Church up! Caroline Farrow has done a great deal of work looking to forensically discover the truth behind the stories, see here . There is a lot of vicious hatred being poured out in the direction of the Catholic Church in Ireland at the moment as a result of this. No one seems particularly interested in the truth. Caroline says: One of my points is that while institutional cruelty did exist actually this order doesn't seem to have a bad reputation, like some of the other orders and interestingly, up until this scandal ...

Right, now I have your attention... Caroline Farrow has written a really interesting reflection on the Catholic theology of the family and fertility. It raises many important points which will resonate with Catholics who are in engaged in the melee of family life. For example, the term Natural Family Planning could have negative connotations with contraceptive over-tones. Indeed, it is a fact that such secular institutions as the NHS and the BBC both refer to NFP as a method of contraception. Caroline points out that some non-Catholics consider that NFP is a method of contraception and to say it is not is merely to enagage in semantics. Of course, Catholics argue that there is nothing in any way contraceptive about natural family planning because a couple practicing NFP do nothing at all to prevent procreation or to render the act infertile either before, during, or after sexual intercourse has taken place . The sexual act may in fact be infertile (i.e. it may not be possib...

It seems everyone is blogging about Tina Beattie. There's some great stuff out there, and, to be honest, I'm not sure I have much to add. It does seem ironic that this happened at the same time that I had written about Fr. Kevin Hegarty's article in the Mayo News . It seems to me that many of the issues are the same: a person in a privileged position in terms of audience, speaking about something in a misleading way. I am very interested in what's going on though, so I thought I would provide you, dear reader, with my own synopsis of the best bits of the story so far. Basically, Tina had planned lectures at the University of San Diego, but they have been cancelled by Dr Mary Lyon, President of the University, because of her ‘dissent publicly’ from the Church’s moral teaching. (yeah!). The full story is on Deacon Nick Donnelly's excellent blog . Now Tina isn't happy about this, and has written a response : ‘I do not know the exact reasons for t...

On Monday, my wonderful Parish Priest contacted me in a panic. He had been contacted by the local paper and asked to write something on the Catholic position regarding locked in syndrome. Basically, a reporter was writing a 'for and against' feature on the issues raised by the national case of Tony Nicklinson, a sufferer of 'locked-in-syndrome' who is fighting for a change in the law so that a doctor can lawfully help him to die. After an extremely busy weekend, Fr. Kevin had run out of time to respond, and asked me to step in and produce something by 4pm. Once I got over my initial panic, I looked up the CDF Declaration on Euthanasia  in order to re-appraise myself of the salient points of the argument. Read through, made some notes and then put finger to keyboard. Having finished, I contacted my friend Caroline Farrow , who is far more media savvy than I am, for advice on getting the article vetted. She said she'd have a look for me and suggested I contacted SP...