15th October 2014

I am just playing with the keyboard again and thinking as I go on. I am really trying to follow the task of New Evangelisation as publicly as possible and also with my head down. This is the internet, simultaneously public and private. Going to church helping in church activities etc.  is preaching to the converted; but I cannot stand at a street corner shouting as some did in my youth.

The Pope is right to talk of this new effort that is required to bring people to God. But is it "new" is it not the same task that Jesus commissioned to his disciples. Do we not have an Institutional Church, the church of St Peter that now Pope Francis leads? Is this church aware that being right as the institute does not mean that it can forget to be  the guardian of  the Church of Love that is witnessed by St John and Our Lady?

It is this Church of Love that is let down by such as the following. 

Parliament in the UK passed a law making it illegal to not allow same sex partners to adopt  children. In other words, if  any Adoption Society refused to let a same-sex couple adopt one of the children in its care; then there would be the strong arm of the law dealing out punishment.

The law was promulgated, our Hierarchy complained and then I received a letter from our Bishop inviting me to attend a mass to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Local Catholic Adoption Society and inside that letter there was another closed envelope which on being opened informed all supporters of the society that as a result of the change in the law it was to wound up and closed. 

Where is the Church of Love in this? The Institute represented by the Hierarchy of England and Wales is present, dealing with the State of the UK and offering homage to the secular power! But where is the love that should have defended its right to care for the souls of the abandoned ones; where was this Love?

It reminds me of the Reformation in England when only one of the then hierarchy was able to offer resistance to the Government of the King. I have seen over the recent years only one open expression of regret for the deplorable abandonment of these parentless  children. Why were we not ready to stand up and be pilloried by the secular media for our illiberal wish to place the cure of souls of innocent children above the self-indulgent wishes of a group of people who define themselves by their pride in their devotion to sin. ( I say pilloried by the "secular media", but the  Catholic media I am abandoning,  is not much more trustworthy or truthful either.)

|St John Fisher of Beverley  Martyred Bishop of Rochester

Galatians 5:18-25

If you are led by the Spirit, no law can touch you. When self-indulgence is at work the results are obvious: fornication, gross indecency and sexual irresponsibility; idolatry and sorcery; feuds and wrangling, jealousy, bad temper and quarrels; disagreements, factions, envy; drunkenness, orgies and similar things. I warn you now, as I warned you before: those who behave like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. What the Spirit brings is very different: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control. There can be no law against things like that, of course. You cannot belong to Christ Jesus unless you crucify all self-indulgent passions and desires.

Since the Spirit is our life, let us be directed by the Spirit.