“There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that the whole world should be enrolled. And Joseph went up from Galilee to be enrolled with Mary his espoused wife, who was with child.” (Luke 2:1-5) +++ "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's..." (Matt 22:21) +++ “Honour all men. Love the brethren. Fear God. Honour the Emperor [Caesar].” (1 Pet 2:17) +++ “Then Paul said: I stand at Caesar's judgment seat, where I ought to be judged….I appeal to Caesar.” (Acts 25:10-11)
Commander Sir James Bond, KCMG, RNVR, was the fictional creation of British journalist Ian Fleming who portrays him as an officer of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, commonly known as MI6).
He was created in January 1952 by Fleming while on holiday at his Jamaican estate, Goldeneye.
Fleming, a keen birdwatcher, had a copy of a book on ornithology at Goldeneye by an American named Bond. This partly gave him the idea. However, he already had the name in his mind because it was the name of a Dorset family whom he had known of when at school.
In the novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Bond's family motto is found to be Orbis non sufficit("The world is not enough").
In fact, however, there was another family called Bond who had their country seat in Dorset, only some miles from Durnford House, in Langton Matravers, the prep school where Fleming spent an unhappy few years of his childhood.
Their family motto was, indeed, Orbis non sufficit.
One of the family, John Bond, had been a spy for Sir Francis Drake in Elizabethan times.
William Bond, the current head of the family, had his ancestor's journal transcribed after rediscovering it in the family archives. He says Fleming would certainly have been aware of the family and its unusual motto.
The Bonds of Dorset, despite having had a family member who spied for Drake, were Catholic recusants and, later, Jacobites.
Their country seat is Hulme Priory, Wareham, Dorset, an old Cluniac priory later turned into a country house and not too far from the Weld family at Lulworth Castle, another recusant and Jacobite family. They are also both not far from the Royal Armoured Corps Training Centre at Bovington outside Wareham and the Royal Armoured Corps Gunnery School at West Lulworth.
The fictional James Bond may thus have been unconsciously based upon a Dorset Catholic family who supported King James II and VII and the Catholic Stuart dynasty.
Perhaps one can imagine James Bond being another "black sheep" of the family like his notional ancestor, John Bond, who spied for Drake.
Even renegade Catholics are often more interesting than those of other religions!
Ian Fleming, the British journalist who created James Bond. He seems to have subconsciously had in his mind the Bonds of Dorset whose family motto, Orbis non sufficit ("The World is Not Enough"), appears in a Bond book, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. This family were Catholic recusants and Jacobites.
Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Travers Harris, 1st Baronet GCB OBE AFC RAF (13 April 1892 – 5 April 1984), commonly known as "Bomber" Harris by the press, and often within the RAF as "Butcher" Harris, was Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief (AOC-in-C) of RAF Bomber Command (from early 1943 holding the rank of Air Chief Marshal) during the latter half of World War II.
He was directly and deliberately responsible for ordering the deaths of hundreds of thousands of mostly innocent women, children and elderly in Germany during World War II. He ought to have been tried for war crimes alongside the defendants at Nuremberg.
In fact, however, he was laden with honours.
In 1942 the British Cabinet agreed to the area bombing of German cities. Harris was tasked with implementing Churchill's policy which, in turn, was based upon the erroneous and superficial "scientific" guess work of Professor Frederick Lindemann, later Viscount Cherwell.
Professor Lindemann, Lord Cherwell, chief architect of the policy of hate which was the carpet bombing campaign against German cities and civilians who had never been responsible for starting the war. Ironically, he was of German origin.
Harris's preference for area bombing over precision targeting was controversial at the time and hotly contested by wiser heads like that of Sir Henry Tizard, career scientist and head of department in the civil service, who actually knew much better what they were talking about.
Harris was not even dissuaded from his pet idea of "carpet bombing" by his seniors, Portal and Churchill, both of whom had access to better intelligence than Harris, and serious misgivings were frequently expressed about the campaign by airmen, civil servants, military leaders and politicians. Catholic Labour MP, Sir Richard Stokes, and churchmen like Bishop Bell of Chichester, both of whom were members of the Bombing Restriction Committee and were, in addition, in touch with the German resistance to Hitler, were highly critical of carpet bombing civilians.
The British government would have no dealings with the German resistance, preferring to deal largely with Communists due to the pathetic obsession with Stalin of left-leaning Conservative MP and Foreign Secretary, Sir Anthony Eden, later Earl of Avon. Eden was vain, arrognat and politically short-sighted. The result was often disastrous.
The bombing campaign was another result of the thoroughly bigoted, racist and immoral policy of unconditional surrender which regarded all Germans and all Italians as odious enemies.
The Battle of Hamburg, codenamed Operation Gomorrah, was a campaign of air raids beginning 24 July 1943 for 8 days and 7 nights. It was at the time the heaviest assault in the history of aerial warfare and was later called the "Hiroshima of Germany" by British officials.
Gomorrah was originally formulated by Cherwell and Harris who persuaded Churchill. The operation was conducted by RAF Bomber Command (including RCAF Squadrons) and the USAAF Eighth Air Force. The British conducted the night raids and the USAAF conducted daylight raids.
Piles of dead after a "carpet bombing" raid - comparable with the piles of dead in concentration camps
On the night of 27 July, shortly before midnight, nearly 800 aircraft attacked Hamburg. The unusually dry and warm weather, the concentration of the bombing in one area, and firefighting limitations due to Blockbuster bombs used in the early part of the raid culminated in the so-called "Feuersturm" (firestorm).
This created a huge inferno with winds of up to 240 km/h (150 mph) and reaching temperatures of 800 °C (1,500 °F), which incinerated some eight square miles (21 km²) of the city. Asphalt streets burst into flame, and most of the casualties caused by Operation Gomorrah happened on this night (many killed were in shelters).
Horrifying pictures of women civilians burned in the streets of Hamburg by allied bombing
On the night of 29 July, Hamburg was again attacked by over 700 aircraft. The last raid of Operation Gomorrah was conducted on 3 August.
The number killed is unknown as many were simply obliterated without trace.
The first German city to be carpet-bombed was Cologne and many more German cities were obliterated by allied bombing thereafter, including, famously, Dresden in February 1945.
Dresden after the firestorm - children in their carnival costumes were fried alive
Thousands of children were in the streets of Dresden in their carnival costumes and were horribly incinerated. Also present were thousands of refugees from the East, men, women and children. They, too, perished in the firestorm that obliterated Dresden.
Ironically, however, the carpet bombing campaign was a total failure, strategically, lengthened the war rather than shortened it and, according to some, very nearly caused the allies to lose the war.
Tizard had called Cherwell's estimates of the likely damage inaccurate by about 7 times. In fact, they were out by more than 10 times as the post-war Strategic Bombing Survey of Webster and Frankland amply proved.
German civilian morale rose to new heights during the bombing since they became more disposed to believe Goebbels' propaganda about the "terror air raids" and were more willing to defend themselves from these terrifying attacks.
Hamburg as a city had been particularly pro-British before the campaing and a very fruitful ground for building resistance to Hitler. Once the bombing campaign arrived in Hamburg all such pro-British feeling disappeared and the resistance to Hitler evaporated.
But Harris and Cherwell were chiefly interested in revenge killing and were determined to slaughter as much German life as possible - even children.
Marshal of the RAF Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris, or "Butcher" as even his own troops called him, was directly responsible for ordering the massacre of hundreds of thousands of largely innocent German women and children in the "strategic" carpet bombing raids on German cities.
German war production rose to its greatest level during the height of the strategic bombing campaign and Professor Pat Blackett, the chief scientific adviser to the Admiralty during the war, claimed that the carpet bombing campaign actually lengthened the war by between 6 and 12 months by failing to attack industrial and military targets and, instead, concentrating upon the homes of working class families.
The disgustingly brutal Harris was quite clear about his policy and unblushingly stated: "...the aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive...should be unambiguously stated [as] the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers, and the disruption of civilized life throughout Germany. It should be emphasized that the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended and intensified bombing, are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories."
His own airman used to complain to their superiors that they did not relish the policy of killing women and children first and using a Cathedral as an aiming point. Roskill, the official Naval historian, was in no doubt that the Battle of the Atlantic was very nearly lost for the want of 2 or 3 more long-range bomber squadrons, all of which had been taken away to bomb innocent children in Germany.
The strategic bombing campaign is one of the blackest marks upon the good name of the allied air forces and prepared the way for the decision to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the last being dropped right on top of Urukami Catholic Cathedral of St Mary in the centre of Japanese Catholicism by American aircrew which, with terrible irony, numbered Irish-American Catholics among them.
President Harry Truman, Freemason and Democrat Party leader, dishonestly told the American public in a broadcast that Hiroshima was a "military base".
Blessed Emperor Charles of Austria had condemned the bombing of cities and innocent civilians in World War I and forbade his troops ever to do so.
Blessed Pope John XXIII and Vatican II were both entirely right to condemn the concept of carpet bombing, mass destruction and atomic bombing of cities.
Indeed, it is a grotesquely evil moral crime of the highest order.
Blessed Pope John XXIII roundly condemned the bombing of cities and innocent civilians and he was entirely right so to do.
The Feast Day of St Joachim and St Anne, the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, the Immaculate Conception
Leonardo. Virgin and Child with St Anne. c.1498
St Anne is particularly venerated in Brittany because there is evidence that the Celtic Bretons are descended from the same race as St Anne who was a Galatian, said to be the ancestors of the Gauls and the Bretons.
Many Catholic girls have been named Mary-Anne, Marie-Anne or Marianna, which is a combination of the names of St Anne and the Blessed Virgin.
St Jamesthe Greater is the Patron Saint of Spain as Santiago de Compostela.
St James is known as the Greater in order to distinguish him from the other Apostle St James, our Lord's cousin, who was St. John's brother.
With SS. Peter and John he was one of the witnesses of the Transfiguration, as later he was also of the Agony in the Garden.
He was beheaded in Jerusalem in 42 or 43 AD on the orders of King Herod Agrippa.
According to legend, in the early days of the Church, St James was evangelizing the Gospel in Caesaraugusta (Zaragoza in Spanish today), but his mission was making little progress until miraculously, he saw the Blessed Virgin committing him to return to Jerusalem.
In his vision, she was atop a column or pillar, which was being carried by angels. That pillar is believed to be the same one venerated in Zaragoza today. Miraculous healings have been reported at the scene and today the name Pilar is a common name for a girl from Nuestra Senora del Pilar.
Since the 9th century Spain has claimed the honour of possessing his relics.
Legend holds that the remains of St James were carried by boat from Jerusalem to northern Spain where he was buried on the site of what is now the city of Santiago de Compostela.
The magnificent Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela houses the relics of St James and is the destination of those who travel to the city on pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago or Way of St James.
The pilgrimages to St James of Compostela in the Middle Ages attracted immense crowds; after the pilgrimage to Rome or the Holy Land, it was the most famous and the most frequented pilgrimage in Christendom. The pilgrim paths to Compostela form a network over Europe; they are dotted with pilgrims' hospices and chapels, some of which still exist.
In Spain, he is called El Senor Santiago, "the Lord St James", the patron saint of horsemen and soldiers, and of the military-religious Order of Knighthood named after him, the Knights of Santiago, one of the four great and ancient military-religious orders in Spain.
A Knight of the religious-military Order of Santiago, one of the four great such orders in Spain. The Order's symbol is the red dagger cross shown here on the knight's cloak and jacket.
St James was one of those that Jesus called Boanerges, "son of thunder," the brother of John the Evangelist and the son of Zebedee the fisherman from Galilee.
His prominence and his presence in Jerusalem must have been well known, for, scarcely a dozen years after the Resurrection, he was arrested and executed by King Herod Agrippa. This was followed by the arrest of St Peter also, so his death must have been part of a purge of Christian leaders by Agrippa, who saw the new Christian movement as a threat to Judaism.
St James's death is the only biblical record we have of the death of one of the Apostles, and he was the first of that chosen band to give his life for his Master.
He is often pictured as a pilgrim and his emblem is a cockle shell or a scallop shell.
The cockle shell or the scallop shell is the symbol of St James of Compostela
The equestrian image of St James of Compostela crushing the defeated Moors epitomizes the way Spaniards conceived their religious identity for nearly a thousand years.
The Spanish Church was a crusading church compelled to defend itself from the invasion of Islam and to fight to regain its territory over the space of 800 years.
St James appeared to the tired crusaders, led by King Ramiro of Asturias, during the Battle of Clavijo in 844, and led the flagging crusaders to victory against the Moorish army. He was thereafter venerated by the Spanish under the title of Santiago Matamoros or St James the Moorslayer.
Santiago Matamoros, the statue of St James the Moorslayer in the Cathedral of Santiago made to commemorate the appearance of St James during the Battle of Clavijo in 844 to aid the flagging crusaders to defeat the Moorish army
"Well", said George to his beloved girlfriend, Gemma, after they had had a bit of tiff, "Girls do tend to take things more personally, you know, Gemma".
"I don't!" retorted Gemma, thereby instantly (and unwittingly) proving George's very point.
"Exactly my point, darling!" cried George. But Gemma couldn't see it, proving George's point even more thoroughly. George found it hard to suppress a chuckle which only made Gemma furious.
"Women", declared Gemma, "have many faults but men have only two. Everything they say and everything they do!" and flounced off in a huff.
"Oh right!" called George as Gemma's back receded into the distance, "what Feminist cookbook did that come out of?".
It was perhaps an unwise reply as Gemma carefully stored it up for a later occasion. Much later, after a very pleasant dinner á deux at her flat, when George was eloquently admiring her culinary skills, she slyly claimed to be surprised that he liked the recipe since it had come "out of a Feminist cookbook". Touché, thought Gemma gleefully to herself, that'll teach you!
George, thought Gemma, has not learnt the lesson of his own first discovery: we women do take things personally so be careful what you say to us! In so thinking, she was effectively tacitly admitting that George was quite right in the first place. But no way was she going to admit that to George. Not on your nelly!
And so it goes. The unfailingly fascinating, sometimes irritating, never-ending mystery of the relationship between the sexes (or "genders" as the Feminists inaccurately insist upon mis-calling them).
Today, however, there is a fly in the ointment. Indeed that is to put the problem rather mildly.
Feminism really has had a major impact upon society and upon the relationships between people. It really has changed the way we look at each other. But has it been for the best?
Our not so very fictional Gemma is not really a Feminist but she had, like so many others of her age and generation, picked up the jargon of that particular ideology since it had been thrust upon her from an early age at school, by her peers, by TV, film and the media, by government and the law and by so many key organs of society as a whole, even by the Church.
It would have been a miracle if she had not been affected by it. The fact that it seemed to lend respectability to every gripe that a girl might have against a boy naturally gave the ideology an additional attraction.
But what has been the real legacy of this ideology which we call Feminism?
Lara Croft, played by Feminist actress Angelina Jolie, is a kind of fantasy-model for many modern Feminists. Jolie adulterously stole another woman's husband and now lives with him, unmarried, with various children both adoptive and "biological".
Let's just sit back for a minute and look at it objectively - if we can, that is, now that it is virtually the official ideology of most Western countries in the formerly Christian Diaspora.
The most odious legacy of Feminism has undoubtedly been the gigantic change of law in relation to procured abortion. This was, from first to last, the one really big project of radical Feminism, aided and abetted by those unscrupulous men who saw in it an advantage for themselves.
Early Rad Fems like Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan and lapsed Catholic Germaine Greer endorsed this as the big aim and later Rad Fems have pushed for more and more liberal abortion and other so-called "reproductive rights".
There are now something like 42 million abortionsper year according to various sources including the "pro-choice" Alan Guttmacher Institute and PP's Family Planning Perspectives. That's about 115,000 per day.
"Pro-choice" Speaker of the US House of Representatives, "Catholic" Feminist Nancy Pelosi, is another role model for many so-called "Christian" Feminists.
Since the 1970s there have probably been something approaching 1 billion babies aborted, in total, and possibly many more.
When you realise that the population of the entire world is only about 6.7 billion then that is a terrifying statistic.
We rightly agonize over the terrible fate of some 6 million Jews who died during what the Jews now call the Shoah or "disaster".
But what of the abortion Shoah?
According to "pro-choicers" this little cutie was "just a blob of cells" when in the womb and could be justly destroyed therein, her "silent scream" unheard by her heartless killers. And yet there are hundeds of millions like her...
Who will cry for these holy innocents, the children of wrath, done away with through the compliance of their own mothers and often fathers, too?
"Rachel weeps and will not be comforted, for her children are no more" [Jeremiah 31:15].
But what of the hard-hearted who do not weep for their children? What of those by whose own hand their very children were destroyed? Well, even many of them come to weep in later life. The enormity of their actions comes back to haunt them so strong in man is the call of the natural law. This terrible depression and sadness is called "post-abortion syndrome" and now afflicts many millions upon millions of women who are, too, the victims of radical Feminism.
"Rachel weeps and will not be comforted for her children are no more..."
This is the real legacy of radical Feminism.
But that is not all.
The divinely noble and completely unique vocation of motherhood, that mystical vocation by which the human race is continued and perpetuated, is degraded and even mocked by Feminists.
By such mocking the very Mother of God herself is mocked and the most sublime vocation is slighted and abused. And if she is mocked then so is God mocked for He prizes no creature more greatly than He does His own mother, the most Blessed Virgin Mary, our tainted nature's solitary boast.
She who should be the prime model for all women, the Immaculate Conception herself, is slighted and belittled. Modesty, a supreme courtesy, gentleness, humility, docility, long-suffering, patience, deep wisdom and above all charity - these virtues that were supremely those of the Blessed Virgin - are also mocked whenever our Holy Mother is mocked and never more so than by Feminism which might fairly be described as the principal anti-Marian heterodoxy.
I have heard some so-called Christian Feminists saying that women are the "gentler" sex, more "people-oriented" and more caring. Apart from the intrinsic self-contradiction in making such a discriminatory about the entire male sex whilst, simultaneously, complaining of discrimination by men, the statement is anyway dubious.
Some Feminists even go so far as to extol withcraft and devil-worship, pretending to distinguish between good and bad "magic" powers.
Some women are gentler and more caring but some aren't. The Feminists are a prime example of those who so often aren't. Where is the gentility and care in defending the abortion of a defenceless, innocent babe in the womb? And on such a vast and terrifying scale?
The divorce courts are clogged with applications by women seeking to divorce their husbands on the advice and encouragement of a great array of Feminist friends, advisers, counsellors and lawyers.
Fully 75% of divorce petitions in the UK are brought by women - the same in the USA.
The result is yet another disaster for the children born of such broken marriages who then become a tool in the divorce battle.
Few people realise the extent to which the divorce courts, so thoroughly and institutionally "sexist" (to use the favourite Feminist buzz word) but in the wife's favour, frequently strip the husband bare and degrade him before his children to the supposed advantage of the wife. He is ousted from his home (which he may have paid for 100%), is often prevented from seeing his children and is humiliated time and again by the courts. This directly leads to the sad statistical fact that 55% of fathers, within 5 years of the divorce, never see their children again until they have grown up.
Heather Mills explaining why she should have got even more millions in her divorce from Paul McCartney.
The Feminists seek to blame this upon men, of course, but the blame more often lies with the Feminists themselves who persuade the wife that divorce is her moral right and in her best interests. In fact, many wives who were persuaded by Feminists that divorce would be to their advantage, later deeply regret their decision.
Feminists would have men re-created in a Feminist-preferred image (a bit like Lenin's "new Soviet man") but they can never decide what that image is. They are only agreed that it is not like the image which God has given us in the Holy Family.
How many girls remember with the deepest love and affection their own fathers in whom they see God the Father and St Joseph? Yet out of the mouths of some of these very same girls will come the odious words of Feminism castigating all men for "oppressing" women over the centuries. Does God the Father oppress women? Did St Joseph "oppress" women?
How many girls remember with deepest love and affection their own fathers? But when they mouth offensive Feminist slogans against men they should remember that they are abusing other girls' equally beloved fathers, not to mention all those men saints, not least St Joseph himself.
Radical Feminists, and even some supposedly "Christian" Feminists, pretend that God is not a Father at all but really some kind of immanentist "Goddess", an idea with which the most savage and primitive of heathens and pagans would have been at home.
I once heard, from the mouth of a well-known Feminist nun, the arrogant words "What's so great about humble?!". She is now an ex-nun and, indeed, now openly admits what has for a long time been true, that she is also an ex-Catholic. Here, indeed, is a modern version of the "foolish virgin" of Scripture.
Among those who suffer the most deeply from radical Feminism are the children who are often emotionally traumatised for the rest of their lives. The government complains that fathers are absent from the lives of children so that the children suffer but whose fault is that? The very same hypocritical government which allows the divorce courts and the Feminists to bring about this situation in the first place!
Feminism also encourages women to "have it all" - job, career, glitzy lifestyle, "arm candy" or "trophy" husband (get a new one if the old one doesn't match up!), "trophy" children (but not too many, now!) and the whole "me first" and "I love me best" culture of rotten selfishness and self-obsession.
It is this very self-obsession that causes people most harm - psychological, emotional, spiritual and even, ultimately, material.
Few people are as unhappy as the self-obsessed and that includes all too many Feminists.
Many young girls are positively badgered into careers they don't want, to avoid the marriage and family they want (often until it is too late) and to expect to get only the richest, most beautiful, most famous and most intelligent of husbands and to reject all the rest.
This absurdly self-obsessive view often prevents many a young girl from finding a perfectly good and loving husband in foolish anticipation of finding a man with the brain of Einstein, the looks of Robert Redford, the money of Bill Gates and the charm and spirituality of Pope Benedict.
Needless to say such a man simply does not exist.
What a blight upon the life of an innocent young girl with so much to look forward to in life if she is cheated out of marriage by such absurdly excessive expectations.
This is the terrible legacy of Feminism. What error, ironically, could be more harmful to women? Or more afflicting to the already much-afflicted heart of our Lady?
It is truly one of the prime heresies of our age and has re-crucified the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart, and the Just Heart of our good father and lord, St Joseph, more savagely, remorselessly and cruelly than many another heresy.
When "Christian" Feminists abuse men do they mean to include the saints like St Joseph? It's funny how they never bother to make an exception for them...
It strikes right at the heart of the Holy Family by attacking the very foundations of the idea of the family, of motherhood and fatherhood, and of the Divine fatherhood of God, the motherhood of our Lady and the humble justice and charity of the fatherhood of St Joseph.
From such evil, good Lord deliver us all!
Ab omnia mala, libera nos Domine!
Have mercy upon us for so far forgetting the perfect model of our Blessed Lady, the Queen of Heaven, who is the model for all women and, indeed, for everyone, man or woman.
Let us take a leaf out of the book of the blessed St Mary Magdalene who had once been a woman of ill repute and evil life but turned to God and became a true lover of God and men and one of the greatest of Christian mystics.
So greatly did God reciprocate the sorrow for sin of this once fallen woman, and esteem her humility, that He did not hesitate to give her the great grace of seeing Him first after His Resurrection. God resists the proud but he lifts up the humble and contrite to the greatest heights.
That, after all, is the meaning of Christianity and Redemption. Man sinned but God raised him (and her), after redemption, to even higher still heights. So great is the love of God. In the words of the Magnificat:
"He hath scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble."
Let us then pray to our Lady and to the Magdalene, the great saint and mystic, that they will teach us to re-learn again to be humble and contrite for our sins.
Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam...
Another anonymous animal liberationist writes in trying to tell me that the Crucifixion is really all about animal liberation and liberating animals to reason and speak like Balaam's ass.
Yes, really! I kid ye not.
Could this be Balaam's crocodile trying to tell the man in the boat something? Or does he just want to eat him?
He writes:
"Was not the Christian religion born of the crucifixion? Of God, in human form, dying on the cross like an animal without rights?"
and this: "There is nothing in Scripture that states that the Ten Commandments apply only to humans. Far from it, God seems to incrementally introduce fairer treatment for more animals."
and this:
"Men seem to lock themselves into very wicked ways through long tradition, practices which God attempts to save them from."
Total fantasy, of course.
And like many a believer in a fantastic creed, he drives deeper and deeper into fantasy and unreality.
God became MAN, from the womb of the Virgin Mary, in order to save us.
God did NOT (repeat NOT) become an animal.
Our Lord and Saviour, JESUS CHRIST, became MAN for us. He did not become animal.
Et homo factus est...
not
Et animal factus est...
To liken Him to an "animal without rights" and merely "in human form" is a supreme blasphemy, as I need hardly add.
He then fantasises over the Ten Commandments, pretending they are for animals as well as men and that animals can choose not to murder, commit adultery, covet, lie and, in other ways, sin, when he knows perfectly well that they have no such power of free will.
He pretends, next, that it is all about God incrementally introducing "fairer treatment for more animals".
Where does it say so in Scripture, doctrine or tradition?
Ah, err, well.... nowhere actually. But - hey! - why should that worry Mr Fantasy?
And, of course, he is opposed to "long tradition". He has to be! If not he'd have to admit that the Church never taught the nonsense he comes out with and that all Christian tradition is against him.
Poor fellow, I fear we may see him, ere long, manning the barricades in the manner of David Koresh and his Branch Davidians of the aptly named Waco, or Jim Jones, the Jonestown leader in Guyana.
Here is the woman animal liberationist who thought she could have a cosy chat with a Polar bear. It mauled her.
His view is about as far away from Roman Catholicism - or, indeed, any form of Christianity - as even the most bizarre and evil of creeds are.
His is a deadly, evil creed which seeks not to raise animals up to the level of humans (which is, anyway, impossible) but to drag man down to the level of dumb animals.
Man was not destined to be an animal but rather a rational being, free to choose to obey his Creator. Thus, to try to make of him an animal results only in making him far lower than any animal and more like a devil.
Cronos eating his own children by Goya. Cannibalism is the logical flip side of animal liberationism.
If men are no more than animals then they can, like animals, be subject to abortion, infanticide, abandonment, euthanasia, cannibalism and a host of other actions which animals, acting from mere instinct, do to each other but which, for men, endowed with reason and free will, to do to each other, would be deeply evil.
His odious and detestable creed is truly diabolical and, did he but know it, the invention of a satanic mind.
Let us pray for him and those like him that they may be released from the spell that has been cast over them and which has darkened their reason to such an extent that they cannot distinguish, any longer, between men and animals.
A rather well-known animal liberationist. He used to say "I am no admirer of the poacher, particularly as I am a vegetarian". Let us never forget what he did to men, this great "animal lover".
George Archer-Shee (6 May 1895-31 October 1914) was a cadet at the Royal Naval College, Osborne, in January 1908 and became a cause célèbre in 1910 when the issue of whether he stole a five shilling postal order went to the High Court of England.
The Archer-Shees were Roman Catholics and Catholics had been long excluded from a commission in the Navy.
This was much less the case in the Army since many Catholic aristocrats entered the Army. The Navy, on the other hand, was much more egalitarian, taking men like James Cook (later Captain), the son of a labourer, but, on the other hand, taking a much more exclusive stand against Catholics.
Even after emancipation, Catholics did not begin to become Naval officers for quite some time. Archer-Shee was thus in a particular minority as a Catholic.
Royal naval cadets between 14 and 16 were trained at the College, which is in the grounds of Queen Victoria's favourite home on the Isle of Wight, Osborne House.
On 7 October 1910, at the start of term, Terence Back, a fellow cadet, received a postal order from a relative for five shillings.
Archer-Shee, wishing to buy a model train costing 15/6d, received permission to go to the Post Office outside of the College grounds to buy a postal order and a stamp.
When he got back, theft of Beck's postal order had been reported. The clerk-in-charge of the Post Office, Miss Tucker, was sent for and claimed that only two cadets had visited the Post Office on the afternoon in question and that the same cadet who had bought a postal order for 15/6d had also cashed the 5s order.
Archer-Shee's father, Martin, was an official of the Bank of England. When he received the Admiralty's letter telling him that his son was being expelled, he retorted "Nothing will make me believe the boy guilty of this charge, which shall be sifted by independent experts".
Martin Archer-Shee engaged Sir Edward Carson KC, ironically the famous Protestant Unionist lawyer and parliamentarian. Carson was a towering figure in the law as in politics and was regarded as one of the leaders at the Bar.
Sir Edward Carson PC KC, later Baron Carson, the great Irish lawyer and Protestant Unionist political leader was, ironically, Counsel for George Archer-Shee, and bent all his skill to the task.
Carson, who had a strong sense of justice and right which transcended religious barriers, bent his skill and will to the case and resorted to an archaic legal device known as a Petition of Right in order to bring the case, which was a proceeding before the Crown, there being no right of action against the Crown otherwise allowed (Crown immunity).
The case was heard from 26 July 1910.
Carson's powerful opening has come down to posterity. He rose to say:
"A boy 13 years old has been labelled and ticketed for all his future life as a thief and a forger. Gentlemen, I protest against the injustice to a child, without communication with his parents, without his case ever being put, or an opportunity of its ever being put forward by those on his behalf. That little boy from the day that he was first charged, up to this moment, whether in the ordeal of being called in before his Commander and his Captain, or whether under the softer influences of the persuasion of his own loving parents, has never faltered in the statement that he is innocent".
Carson successfully showed that the elderly postmistress, Miss Tucker, could easily have been mistaken. She admitted that the cadets looked alike to her and she was unable to identify Archer-Shee in court.
On 29 July, the Solicitor-General, Sir Rufus Isaacs, later Lord Chancellor in the Liberal government and Marquess of Reading, accepted the statement that George Archer-Shee did not cash the postal order.
He made this statement:
"consequently... he is innocent of the charge. I say further, in order that there may be no misapprehension about it, that I make that statement without any reserve of any description, intending that it shall be a complete justification of the statement of the boy and the evidence he has given before the court."
After various struggles, the government and the Admiralty conceded that compensation should be paid and the family were paid £4,120 to cover their costs, and £3,000 compensation.
Archer-Shee returned to Stonyhurst College where he had been educated before going to Osborne.
He later worked as a banker in the USA but, when war broke out, he returned home to join the Army and was commissioned into 1st Battalion, the South Staffordshire Regiment and the Regiment was posted to France.
Lt George Archer-Shee was thereafter killed at the First Battle of Ypres in 1914.
His body was never found and so his name is inscribed on the Menin Gate of the city of Ypres with 50,000 other brave and heroic soldiers whose bodies were never found.
The Menin Gate at Ypres whereon 50,000 names of the dead who were never found are inscribed - including that of Lt George Archer-Shee, late the 1st Battalion, the South Staffordshire Regiment.
His name is also inscribed on a memorial plaque in the village of North Woodchester in Gloucestershire where his parents lived.
George Archer-Shee's story was the inspiration for Terence Rattigan's famous play The Winslow Boy.
Many considered that George Archer-Shee was the victim of nothing more nor less than residual anti-Catholic prejudice in the Royal Navy - a prejudice which previous generations of loyal and patriotic English Catholics had been forced to endure, over and over again, generation after generation.
I am reminded of the very moving memorial in Arundel's Roman Catholic Cathedral to the Constable-Maxwell brothers of Gwendolen, 15th Duchess of Norfolk and12th Baroness Herries of Terregles.
They were all Roman Catholics and were all killed in the First World War. The inscription reads simply:
"They, too, died for England..."
The Roman Catholic Church of the Annunciation in North Woodchester, Gloucester, wherein a plaque memorial to Lt George Archer-Shee can be found to this day.
The former Roman Catholic Archbishop of Milwaukee, who resigned in 2002 in a sex and financial scandal, admits in an upcoming memoir that he is a practising homosexual.
Archbishop Rembert Weakland said he wanted to be candid about "how this came to life in my own self, how I suppressed it, how it resurrected again".
His new book A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church: Memoirs of a Catholic Archbishop has just been published.
Appointed archbishop in 1977, Weakland stepped down in May 2002, soon after Paul Marcoux, a former Marquette University theology student, revealed he was paid $450,000 out of Diocesan funds by Weakland to settle a sexual assault claim he made against the archbishop more than two decades earlier.
Weakland was later compelled to apologize for concealing the payment and to resign. Weakland was also accused of moving around the diocese priests suspected or accused of abusing minors.
Weakland is now 82, and is planning a move to St. Mary's Abbey in Morristown, New Jersey, from the private house he has occupied since his retirement.
Weakland admits to several such affairs whilst he was the Archbishop. Earlier he had already admitted in court papers that he had assigned a priest convicted of abuse back to active ministry without notifying parishioners.
Weakland has been an enthusiastic supporter of liberal moral, social and liturgical causes and has publicly defend many dissident practices and has warmly praised numerous disloyal Catholics.
Many critics during his pontificate have been proved right, despite Weakland's earlier denials, but Weakland has shown no sorrow or remorse toward them nor has he apologised for his deception and devious misconduct.
On the contrary, Weakland even goes so far as to blame the Church for his own failings accusing the Church of being too rigid and conservative. Apparently, this excuses his taking nearly half a million from Diocesan funds to cover up his own sexual misconduct.
There does not appear yet to have been any apology from either the Archdiocese or from Rome to the Catholics of Milwaukee Diocese, still less to those critics of Weakland who were so marginalised and railed against by him and his allies during his pontificate.
Weakland's case again demonstrates how there is one rule for the orthodox laity and clergy and quite another for the heterodox and abusive clergy, especially if they occupy high rank in the Church.
It is impossible to escape the conclusion that corruption of a high order runs like a vein through parts of the modern Church.
It will remain so unless and until Rome applies proper discipline to abusive and heterodox clergy. They will continue laughingly to thumb their nose at the Church and to abuse and oppress the orthodox, loyal Faithful, for the most part with almost complete impunity.
That the open scandal of such corruption is causing immense damage to the Church need hardly be stated, so obvious is it.
Yet there are still some who think that the chief problem for the Church today is the return of the traditionalists.
You can bet your boots Rembert Weakland thinks so, too!
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Commander Sir James Bond, KCMG, RNVR, was the fictional creation of British journalist Ian Fleming who portrays him as an officer of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, commonly known as MI6).
Ian Fleming, the British journalist who created James Bond.
