De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

Today's Gospel reminded me of a theory a friend of mine often mentions regarding the current stormy waters in the Church. That is that, with the proliferation of what seems to me to be straight heresy, we get to see clearly who the good guys are. Much of the heresy may well be dressed up in sophistry and casuistry, but it is pretty straight insofar as mooted changes directly contradict Christ's very plain words in Scripture as well as the Church's consistent settled teaching on divorce, contraception, homosexuality, you name it really. For me, when the wind blows like this, we get to see who is who. Who changes with the political wind, and who stands with Christ and the Cross. Like the darnel and wheat we grow in an environment with people who seem to agree with us on important issues but often do not. Some will pretend to align themselves with the Church to gain power or advantage for themselves. Some are harbouring a dark secret that they will not renounce and w...

Sometimes we need the "democracy of the dead" to understand the supernatural reality we Catholics are a part of...we need the experiences of the saints to inform our limited temporal perspective. As our approach to sin and hell seems so watered down these days, it is well worth watching this reflection from Father Paul Nicholson on St Veronica Guilliani. I'd love to hear what you think and if it makes you think; it certainly made me think!

My life is far from perfect, I have many issues, struggles, and challenges that I deal with every day, as do all of us. In today's society, mediated & transmitted to us as it is by Facebook and Twitter, I think it can often seem that everyone else has all the fun, that everyone else's life is perfect. This can lead you to think that you are the only one struggling. This is not true. everyone struggles. This morning, as regularly happens in my life, I found myself in conversation with someone, face to face, about the troubles in their life. There are lots of petty troubles in this persons life which seem to be fairly obviously about a lack of spiritual depth, but he just does not get that. He regularly asserts his general affinity with Catholicism, but states that a lot of it is rubbish. When I ask him what bits he is referring to, he demurs to answer, usually saying something like "Let's not get into that!" Why does this chap always, always , want to ...

I saw the above tweet today, the first thing it made me do was look up the Scripture: Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God. ~ 1 Cor 6: 9-10 Of course, classically, if you do not think much of the Bible, you're not going to be too worried about what it says. So it doesn't form much of an argument in any religion to say "Our ancient book says..." it's just not a convincing argument for non-believers for very obvious reasons. I read this article today on the BBC website: ' Culture war' of gay conversion therapy . As you might expect, it takes the line that gay conversion therapy is "kooky"; "There are lots of kooky therapies out there for all sorts of things and we don't ban them, we warn against them....