The Latin of the Vulgate is not vernacular

One correspondent comments on a passage from my Anglo-Catholic correspondent.

I think he is worth quoting:

"The Latin of the Vulgate is not a vernacular in any sense. Send your correspondent to read Fr Uwe Michael Lang. It is called the 'Latin Vulgate' as it is the counterpart of the 'Greek Vulgate', it has NOTHING to do with vernacular; the language of the scriptural and liturgical Latin is legal and literary, not populist".

So there you have it, Miss Anglo-Catholic; and, indeed, vernacular-obsessed modern Catholics, too.

In fact, of course, the Hebrew, Greek and Latin languages are important to us because they are the languages of revelation, not because they are vernacular languages. they gave us the Old Testament (Hebrew), the New Testament (Greek) and the language of the Church's teaching and law inspired by the Holy Ghost (Latin), corresponding to Father, Son and Holy Ghost, respectively.

Sorry, Miss Anglo-Catholic, English is simply not one of the languages of revelation.

Get used to it.

St Jerome, translator of the Bible into Latin, in his Scriptorium, shown here in a stylized medieval portrait

Eusebius Hieronymus Sophronius, better known as St Jerome, was born sometime between 340 and 347 AD in Stridon, a town on the border between the Roman provinces of Dalmatia and Pannonia (now on the Italian side of the modern Italian-Croatian border).

He received a classical education and was tutored in Rome by the grammarian Donatus. At age eighteen he was baptized in Rome by Pope Liberius. He was well read in the Pagan poets and writers.

Jerome traveled extensively throughout the Roman Empire. He began formal theological studies in Trier. He moved to Aquileia in 370, where he met St Valerian. About 373 he headed to the East.

From 374 to 379 Jerome led an ascetic life in the desert southwest of Antioch. During this period he heard Apollinaris of Laodicea, a leading Bible scholar, who later left the Church. In 379, he was ordained a priest at Antioch by St Paulinus.

Jerome went to Constantinople about 380 to study scripture under St Gregory Nazianzus. In 382 he returned to Rome, where he became secretary to Pope Damasus who suggested that he revise the translations of the Gospels and the Psalms.

When Damasus died in 384, Jerome had to leave Rome, because his outspoken, often harsh criticism of Roman society created enemies. His travels returned him to Antioch, then to Alexandria, and finally to Bethlehem in 386, where he settled in a monastery.

There he translated the Old and New Testaments into Latin. This translation was recognized eleven centuries later by the Council of Trent as the official version of the Bible: the Vulgate.

In 410 Rome came under attack by the barbarian Alaric, creating numerous refugees who sought safety in the Holy Land. In the interest of providing for them Jerome wrote, "I have put aside all my study to help them. Now we must translate the words of Scripture into deeds, and instead of speaking holy words we must do them."

St Jerome died at Bethlehem from a long illness on 30 September 420.

He is buried in the Basilica of St Mary Major in Rome.

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Pride and Prejudice: "Anglo-Catholic" fantasies

Here is evidence that the more remote and indefensible of "Anglo-Catholic" historical fantasies can still find a home in the bosom of at least some Anglicans, even today when there is simply no excuse for anyone to believe such unhistorical nonsense.

Here is a post I received from one such correspondent:

"The Anglican Church is one of the three great Catholic faiths: Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican. A study of the history of the time demonstrates that the Church of England did not leave Catholicism, it only left the authority of popes and the Vatican political apparatus. There was no effort to "reform" the faith, only to reform the political machinations which taxed the English people (rents paid to monastic foundations), then gave the money to the rulers of France and Spain so they could make war on England. Henry VIII closed the monasteries to stop that practice.

The simplistic reason often given for the break with Rome is that the pope wouldn't give Henry a divorce from Catherine of Aragon so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. The more complicated reason is that England had suffered terribly through civil war, and without an heir (Catherine did not bear a son), more civil war was a very real threat. (It is quite true that Henry became every woman's worst nightmare husband, and a glutton and a tyrant. That doesn't change the history of the Church of England.)

The beginnings of education of the common people led to and was furthered by translating the Bible and the liturgy into the vulgate -- the common language. This had its precedent when Scripture was translated from Hebrew and Greek into Latin, culminating with Saint Jerome's Vulgate translation.

Anglican priests are ordained in the apostolic succession. Anglican religious orders include Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, Claretians and many others. See: http://orders.anglican.org/arcyb/communities.html.

Since its inception, Anglicanism has been influenced by "dissenters," who wanted to eliminate any traces of Roman Catholicism from their liturgy and doctrines. This has led to "the Church with an identity problem," in which there are Protestant-leaning parishes and Catholic-leaning parishes. But in its pure form, Anglicanism is correctly referred to as Anglo-Catholic".




I had to correct such nonsense even if it meant bursting this correspondent's particular fantasies.

"Your particular fantasies have been so completely, so utterly and so thoroughly demolished by better scholars than I (Newman, for one) that it is hardly necessary for me even to comment.

The Anglican Church is not a church. It is a cautionary tale as to what happens when men try to invent a faith of their own after ignoring God's law.

A study of the history of the time demonstrates amply that the Church of England was the invention of men like Henry VIII and William Cecil to serve their own selfish and political ends.

It is a pure construct of men.

William Cecil, 1st Lord Burghley, the effective consolidator of the Church of England - liar, cheat, robber, murderer and political villain of the first order, he was responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent men and women for no other reason than their religion

Moreover, it could not have left 'the Vatican political apparatus' since there wasn't one.

The popes lived in the Lateran palace at that time, not the Vatican, and began to live in the Quirinal palace more and more after it was built by Pope Gregory XIII in 1573.

They continued to do so until the Italian revolutionaries seized the Papal States in 1870 and later forced the popes to live in the Vatican palace.

Whoops! Another historical boo boo by yet another ill-informed Anglican.

Anglicans make ridiculous statements about the Papacy and the popes without ever bothering to read and research the truth. There is simply no excuse for it.

Go and find out the truth instead of regurgitating prejudice and fiction!

There is, of course, no evidence that English monasteries gave all their rents and taxes to France and Spain, let alone to make war against England.

Henry VIII closed the monasteries in order to steal their property and income which, since they used their income to feed and clothe the poor, was effectively stealing from the poor.

Gin Lane by William Hogarth.
The Protestant Reformation reduced the common people of England to extreme poverty and, often enough, utter destitution and degradation as Hogarth so well illustrated.

You will see that Henry closed the small monasteries first precisely because they were easier prey to his greed.

Read Cobbett's History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland, if you dare. You will get a true picture of what the syphlitic, wife-murdering, robber of the poor, Henry VIII, really did. And Cobbett was an Anglican, by the way.

There is nothing 'complicated' about the fact that Henry divorced Catherine and then took up with other women. Lechery was but one of his many vices.

There is nothing simplistic about condemning his destruction of the monastic system of welfare for the poor just to satisfy his own endless greed.

Ditto his odious murder of his mistresses and many others who got in his way.

The common people were never so persecuted, hunted, harried, down-trodden, ill-educated, starved, beaten and mercilessly oppressed as they were after the Protestant Reformation, as Cobbett amply proves.

St Jerome's vulgate translation was done by, with and through the express authority of the Holy See by whom St Jerome was made a prelate and, later, Doctor, of the Church.

Anglican priests are not ordained in the apostolic succession.

Anglican religious orders are a nice idea but they are outside the Church.

There is no 'pure' form of Anglicanism.

Anglicanism is incorrectly referred to as Anglo-Catholic or Catholic. It is Protestant and has no authority from the Holy Spirit to teach.

That does not mean that Anglicans won't be saved but they must take care to avoid knowingly turning away from what they know (or ought to know) is the truth.

The Anglican 'church' is a false 'church' but with some good people in it.

I encourage you to leave it, join the true Church and so save your soul.

If you wish me to recommend some good clergy to whom you might go for instruction in the true faith, I would be very happy to do so.

In the meantime, God guide and bless you and, above all, help you to instruct yourself accurately about historical truth".

And there is a great deal more one could write about the Anglican Church but that will do for the present, I think.

Queen Elizabeth I: one of the most odious of tyrants ever to mis-govern England

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James Bond and the Bond family of Dorset who were Catholic recusants and Jacobites

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.

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29 July: anniversary of an Anglo-American war crime in Operation Gomorrah

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.

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26 July: St Anne, the mother of the Blessed Virgin

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 Joachim and St Anne, pray for us!

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25 July: The Feast of St James the Greater

St James the 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

Sancte Jacobe Majore, ora pro nobis!

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Provocative thought for the day...

"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 abortions per 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...






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