Upon Father Finigan's Orders

Upon the orders of Fr Timothy Finigan, I am now reading the Autobiography of GK Chesterton, having finished The Thing. Well 'orders' is just a lie to see if this title will get a few extra readers! But While talking to Father about Chesterton (soon to be made a Saint), he mentioned quoting the start of the Autobiography, on his blog I think. And then he did quote it to us by heart;

Bowing down in blind credulity, as is my custom, before mere authority and the tradition of the elders, superstitiously swallowing a story I could not test at the time by experiment or private judgment, I am firmly of opinion that I was born on the 29th of May, 1874, on Campden Hill, Kensington; and baptised according to the formularies of the Church of England in the little church of St. George opposite the large Waterworks Tower that dominated that ridge. I do not allege any significance in the relation of the two buildings; and I indignantly deny that the church was chosen because it needed the whole water-power of West London to turn me into a Christian.

It really is very good altogether, and I don't care that the c of E did not like it. They thought that it was too much about Chesterton! Autobiography! But more on this another day.

See you all on Saturday

60 Years A Priest!

God bless you Papa! Nice Vestments too!

Today Is A Holy Day Of Obligation

Today is the Feast Day of Ss Peter & Paul and is still a Holy Day of Obligation in England & Wales. I say this because some such Days have been moved to Sundays, so some people are not sure which are which, and some Parish newsletters have not mentioned it. But in short, Go to Mass!

Sign Petition To Protect Pakistan's Christians

Aid to the Church in Need asks you to add your voice to the British Pakistani Christian Association's call for peace, justice and human rights for all people of Pakistan.

Please show your solidarity with Pakistan's suffering faithful by adding your name to the petition.

I have posted on Pakistan before. Photo is of murdered Catholic Pakistani minister, Shahbaz Bhatti. There is a March on Saturday.

Immaculate Heart of Mary Pro-Life Prayer vigil - London 2nd July

If you are unable to attend the Chesterton Conference in Oxford on the 2nd, the following should be of interest to you;

A Little Miracle?
There was a Marian pro-life prayer vigil on 28th May. It was a powerful and prayerful experience. There was also at least 1 confirmed turnaround. However, it didn't end there. From that day onwards there was a total of 13 turnarounds in two weeks. That hasn't happened before. If you receive emails from Good Counsel or read their blog you'll see what I mean. It was felt that such results were a special blessing from Our Lady. With this in mind, there will be another vigil. There will also be an announcement about some serious news which will require our prayers and pro-life efforts.

What:
Prayers of consecration and reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary for the unborn, their parents, and the abortion employees. We will of course have trained and experienced counsellors throughout.

When:
Saturday 2nd July 2011 (Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary)

Where:
Bedford Square London WC1B. Same location as last time and 40 Days for Life. Nearest tube stations are Goodge Street and Tottenham Court Road. You can take any bus going to Tottenham Court Road or Gower Street.

Time:
8.30am-1pm. You can come for all or part of the vigil.

Contact:
daniel-40days[AT]hotmail.co.uk (the AT should be @ when actually sending an email. This is done to prevent spam.

And you may even make it along to the end of the Pakistan Protest March defending Christians in that country. But if not do sign the Petition.

GK's Weekly, The Thing, Introduction

As you will have seen I am reading The Thing by GK Chesterton. Having read the first hundred pages or so, it dawned on me that some Catholic paper or other really should just reprint the whole thing in parts each week. I then remembered that I'm the only person around here (or anywhere else for that matter) with any sense, and so here it will appear each Saturday. It will be called GK's Weekly in honour of Chesterton's paper of that name. The posts will all be longer than anything that I would read on a blog, but that's The Thing.

INTRODUCTION (I)

IT will be naturally objected to the publication of these papers that they are ephemeral and that they are controversial. In other words, the normal critic will at once dismiss them as too frivolous and dislike them as too serious. The rather one-sided truce of good taste, touching all religious matters, which prevailed until a short time ago, has now given place to a rather one-sided war. But the truce can still be invoked, as such terrorism of taste generally is invoked, against the minority. We all know the dear old Conservative colonel who swears himself red in the face that he is not going to talk politics, but that damning to hell all those bloody blasted Socialists is not politics. We all have a kindly feeling for the dear old lady, living at Bath or Cheltenham, who would not dream of talking uncharitably about anybody, but who does certainly think the Dissenters are too dreadful or that Irish servants are really impossible. It is in the spirit of these two very admirable persons that the controversy is now conducted in the Press on behalf of a Progressive Faith and a Broad and Brotherly Religion. So long as the writer employs vast and universal gestures of fellowship and hospitality to all those who are ready to abandon their religious beliefs, he is allowed to be as rude as he likes to all those who venture to retain them. The Dean of St. Paul's permits himself genially to call the Catholic Church a treacherous and bloody corporation; Mr. H. G. Wells is allowed to compare the Blessed Trinity to an undignified dance; the Bishop of Birmingham to compare the Blessed Sacrament to a barbarous blood-feast. It is felt that phrases like these cannot ruffle that human peace and harmony which all such humanitarians desire; there is nothing in THESE expressions that could possibly interfere with brotherhood and the sympathy that is the bond of society. We may be sure of this, for we have the word of the writers themselves that their whole aim is to generate an atmosphere of liberality and love. If, therefore, any unlucky interruption mars the harmony of the occasion, if it is really impossible for these fraternal festivities to pass off without some silly disturbance, or somebody making a scene, it is obvious that the blame must lie with a few irritable and irritating individuals, who cannot accept these descriptions of the Trinity and the Sacrament and the Church as soothing their feelings or satisfying their ideas.

It is explained very clearly in all such statements that they are accepted by all intelligent people except those who do not accept them. But as I myself, in my political experience, have ventured to doubt the right of the Tory colonel to curse his political opponents and say it is not politics, or of the lady to love everybody and loathe Irishmen, I have the same difficulty in admitting the right of the most liberal and large-minded Christian to see good in all religions and nothing but evil in mine. But I know that to publish replies to this effect, particularly direct replies given in real controversy, will be regarded by many as a provocation and an impertinence.

Well, I must in this matter confess to being so old-fashioned as to feel something like a point of honour. I think I may say that I am normally of the sort to be sociable and get on easily with my fellows; I am not so much disposed to quarrel as to argue; and I value more than I can easily say the generally genial relations I have kept with those who differ from me merely in argument. I am very fond of England even as it is, quite apart from what it was or might be; I have a number of popular tastes, from detective stories to the defence of public-houses; I have been on many occasions on the side of the majority, as for instance in the propaganda of English patriotism during the Great War. I could even find in these sympathies a sufficient material for popular appeals; and, in a more practical sense, I should enjoy nothing more than always writing detective stories, except always reading them. But if in this much too lucky and even
lazy existence I find that my co-religionists are being pelted with insults for saying that their religion is right, it would ill become me not to put myself in the way of being insulted. Many of them have had far too hard a life, and I have had far too easy a life, for me not to count it a privilege to be the object of the same curious controversial methods. If the Dean of St. Paul's
really does believe, as he most undoubtedly does say, that the most devout and devoted rulers of the Catholic Church, when they accepted (realistically and even reluctantly) the fact of a modern miracle, were engaged in a "lucrative imposture," I should very much prefer to believe that he accuses me, along with better men than myself, of becoming an impostor merely for filthy lucre. If the word "Jesuit" is still to be used as synonymous with the word "liar," I should prefer that the same simple translation should apply to the word "Journalist," of which it is much more often true. If the Dean accuses Catholics as Catholics of desiring innocent men to die in prison (as he does), I should much prefer that he should cast me for some part in that terrific and murderous melodrama; it might in any case be material for a detective story. In short, it is precisely because I do sympathise and agree with my Protestant and agnostic fellow countrymen, on about ninety-nine subjects out of a hundred, that I do feel it a point of honour not to avoid their accusations on these points, if they really have such accusations to bring. I am very sorry if this little book of mine seems to be controversial on subjects about which everybody is allowed to be controversial except ourselves. But I am afraid there is no help for it; and if I assure the reader that I have tried to start putting it together in an unimpaired spirit of charity, it is always possible that the charity may be as one-sided as the controversy. Anyhow, it represents my attitude towards this controversy; and it is quite possible that everything is wrong about it, except that it is right.

Mass For Good Counsel At St Patrick's Friday 24th June

For the last six months or so a group of youngsters have been coming to the Good Counsel Mass on the 2nd Friday of each month at Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane, at 6.30pm. After Mass they would go out for dinner. They are now starting to have Mass at St Patrick's details below. As well as this the Mass at Corpus Christi will still continue.

Juventutem London have moved to St Patrick's, Soho. This will be our first Mass in the new location. The Mass at 6.30pm will be offered for the Good Counsel Network. (But the collection will be for Juventutem)

Celebrant: Fr Patrick Hayward
Deacon: Fr Seán Finnegan
Subdeacon: Fr Timothy Finigan
Preacher: Fr Aidan Nichols OP (Author of; GK Chesterton, Theologian)

In choir: Fr Ray Blake

Music provided by Schola Abelis, University of Oxford Gregorian Chant society.

After the Mass we shall move to the square for a picnic if conditions are favourable. Otherwise, we shall go to a restaurant as usual.

For more details about the Masses organised by Juventutem London click here. We're especially keen for people to realise that the Mass is not only for people between the ages of 18-35, but that the social afterwards is!

Photo

Saint Etheldreda: Abbess Of Ely On Tv & A Walking Pilgrimage

At 7am on Thursday 23rd June a 60 minute programme about this Saint will be on EWTN (sky 589). Despite her vow of purity and desire to serve the Lord as a nun, St Etheldreda is forced into marriage by her Father. She miraculously escapes and becomes the Abbess of Ely (No, not the place in Cardiff, but a place in Norfolk, no doubt named after that part of Cardiff!)

Not only this, but later this year, 26th-28th August, there will be a walking Pilgrimage from Ely (No, still the one in Norfolk) to Walsingham. There will be lots of fun, singing, praying, nice Old Rite Masses and even some walking, but no running we hope. (Remember the very wise bears in Prince Caspian).

GK Chesterton On Voting For Nick Clegg

When thinking about Terry Pratchett and Chesterton last week, I went to look at Orthodoxy by GKC. It was very nice to find the following message written in 1908 by Chesterton for the students et al who voted for Nick Clegg in the last election;

THE ETHICS OF ELFLAND

When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: "Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is." Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy. But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics. I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armageddon; but I am not so much concerned about the General Election. As a babe I leapt up on my mother's knee at the mere mention of it. No; the vision is always solid and reliable. The vision is always a fact. It is the reality that is often a fraud. As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in Liberalism. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals.

Croeso I Gymru, Archesgob Stack!

Maybe that should be the other way around. Your Grace, don't worry about learning Welsh, although it would be a good thing. Worry about The Church in Wales, things are not good. There maybe signs of hope, but I don't see them when I'm there!

Sign up to say the Rosary for Archbishop Stack or any other Bishop you want to pray for. Photo here.

Todays Conference Cancelled

I just spoke to a lady at our local Parish, who was on her way to the Pro Ecclesia Et Pontifice Conference in Westminster Central methodist Hall. It has been cancelled I told her, for final details see here.

Large Turn Out For Annual GK Chesterton Pilgrimage

Well I'm quite large! So we loaded up the coach in London and 45 minutes latter we were there, at the Grave of the great man himself. We all said the Prayer for the Beatification of GK Chesterton and then went for lunch. I pushed the crowds away from the grave ("move back you two") first to take a photo of my son.

What Chesterton and his friend Belloc would have thought of lunch is beyond me. 75% of us are Pioneers so we don't drink alcohol and the other 25% of the people on the Pilgrimage had only just turned four, and so were lucky to be in the pub at all! Down with teetotalism up the Pioneers!

We then moved onto St Teresa's Catholic Church, GKC's Parish, only to find the front doors locked, which should have been open and the side door which should have been locked, open! So we pushed a few things that blocked the door out of the way and we were in! Very nice, do see the website for photos and details. We said the prayer again, in front of the Statue of Mary given to the Church by GKC himself. We let Fr Higgins, the PP know about the doors before we left. I sure Chesterton wrote about a Higgins, must look that up sometime.

Next years Pilgrimage will take place on Thursday 14th June, the 76th Anniversary the the death of Gilbert Kieth Chesterton. Anyone interested in walking there from Campden Hill, Kensington, London, should let me know. We will hopefully have Mass (High?).

Marconi scandal, Chesterton & All That

Allegations and rumours centred on insider trading in Marconi's shares and involved a number of government ministers, including Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer; Sir Rufus Isaacs, the Attorney General; Herbert Samuel, Postmaster General; and the Treasurer of the Liberal Party, the Master of Elibank, Lord Murray.

The allegations included the fact that Isaacs' brother, Godfrey Isaacs, was managing director of the Marconi company. While some have seen anti-Semitism in the charges, the majority of those accused were not Jewish, and the allegations, whether true or not, were well-founded and serious enough to be brought to public attention. Particularly active was the New Witness, edited by Cecil Chesterton. This was a distributist publication founded in 1911 by Hilaire Belloc as Eye-Witness, with Cecil's brother G. K. Chesterton on the editorial staff.

Cecil Chesterton, expected to be sued by the government ministers under the nation's libel laws, which put the burden of proof on the defendant. Instead, Godfrey Isaacs, Marconi's director, brought a criminal libel action against him. The New Age (June 12, 1913) described the trial this way:

If circumstantial evidence were ever sufficient to justify a charge, we do not doubt that in the case of Mr. Godfrey Isaacs v. Mr. Cecil Chesterton, the latter and not the former would have won. The case of Mr. Chesterton was admittedly based on circumstances and on such reasonable deductions from them as on the face of the facts any average mind would have felt impelled to draw. Unfortunately, however, for him the circumstances themselves proved insusceptible of any further evidence than their own existence.

The court ruled against Cecil Chesterton and fined him a token £100 plus costs, which was paid by his supporters. Some supporters claimed the decision would have gone differently had Cecil's lawyer aggressively gone after the accused ministers who were at the heart of the scandal. In the next issue of the New Witness, Cecil Chesterton repeated his allegations against the ministers, who still did not sue. (I got this from Wikipedia) For more details see the biography of G. K. Chesterton by Maisie Ward.

Marconi has since gone bust! And on 14th June 2011, the 75th Anniversary of the death of GK Chesterton, Marconi House in London caught fire!

GK Chesterton, Terry Pratchett & Suicide

I have been told that Terry is a fan of GKC, nothing wrong with that, we all should be. But it is an amazing coincidence (sorry God, just using this term so as not to offend the fools out there) that today ends the 9 days of the Pro-Life prayers to GKC and today State Sponsored TV (BBC) will show Terry watching someone else kill themselves. Tomorrow is the 75 anniversary of the death of GKC, were he still alive I think he would suggest that Terry needs to read a few more of his books!

Just being totally ridiculous for a minute and putting God out of the argument, let us consider a couple of points. Many people who attempt suicide fail and go on and live happy lives, assisted suicide does not fail. Secondly, you and I do not know what the future holds, we do not even KNOW for sure how we will feel tomorrow. Alison Davis, of No Less Human wanted to die for years, but is now very happy that no one helped her!

Just looked on the internet and found this lot here;

Author Terry Pratchett writes that Chesterton "in small doses taken regularly is good for the soul" [Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p. 90].

Pratchet and co-author Neil Gaiman dedicated their novel Good Omens:
"to the memory of GK Chesterton, a man who knew what was going on".

Also a character in the book (Good Omens) states that Chesterton is:
"the only poet in the twentieth century to even come close to the Truth."
[Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p. 90.]

Terry Pratchett also writes:
"It's worth pointing out that in The Man Who was Thursday and The Napoleon of Notting Hill he gave us two of the most emotionally charged plots in the twentieth century..."
[Source- Wisdom and Innocence, p. 90]

As I have a signed copy (that is a funny story, for another post) of Wisdom and Innocence, maybe I should get around to reading it now. You can borrow it when I'm done Terry.

Do also see John Smeaton's blog for how to complain to the BBC and ideas of what to say.

Prayers For SSPX

[Considering the signs], Messa in Latino [joined now by Rorate Caeli and, we hope, by all of you, in your churches, chapels, families, prayer groups] takes the liberty of begging all to join in prayer during the entire Pentecost Octave, invoking Almighty God:

That the Fraternity of Saint Pius X may be granted an official position within the Church.

For this intention, under the advice and with the approval of priests who collaborate with Messa in Latino, from Pentecost Sunday to Trinity Sunday, we ask all to say this prayer:

VENI, Sancte Spiritus, reple tuorum corda fidelium, et tui amoris in eis ignem accende.

V. Emitte Spiritum tuum et creabuntur;
R. Et renovabis faciem terrae.
Oremus:
DEUS, qui corda fidelium Sancti Spiritus illustratione docuisti: da nobis in eodem Spiritu recta sapere, et de eius semper consolatione gaudere. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

COME, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Thy faithful and kindle in them the fire of Thy love.

V. Send forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created
R. And Thou shalt renew the face of the earth.

Let us pray:
O GOD, Who taught the hearts of the faithful by the light of the Holy Spirit, grant that, by the gift of the same Spirit, we may be always truly wise, and ever rejoice in His consolation. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

And to offer their daily rosary for this intention.

We invite Priests to please add this intention to their personal memento at Holy Mass.

Chesterton Quote Found At Last!

GKC Conference & Pilgrimage and lots of people who can remember things they have read by him, and tell you where they read them! Oh help! While I may be Chesterton's biggest fan, lets go by weight, I've read less than half the books he wrote and remember nothing! I have spent years however telling GKC's story about a gate across a road, but could not remember which book it came from, and sometimes would wonder if it was not Belloc's story instead.

So in absolute fear of meeting anyone who has read a lot of GKC, I turned to my secretary and sent her to London to get me some books! (Sorry in-joke, St Aquinas would get it). So I'm now reading The Thing by GKC, for the first time. Then I find the following at the start of the chapter, The Drift From Domesticity;

IN the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease.

The hard thing about quoting Chesterton for me is that I want to quote the whole book! This quote is great, I have used it to defend many many things, be it Altar Rails, Communion on the tongue, Adoration, The Old Rite Mass or the Old Rite Mass!

Chesterton Conference 2nd July 2011

A one day conference to be held on Saturday July 2, 2011, at the Catholic Chaplaincy, St Aldates, Oxford, at 10 a.m.

For directions, see the Oxford University Catholic Chaplaincy website

The speakers will be Lynette Burrows, Dale Ahlquist (of EWTN fame), Father Ian Ker and Dr William Oddie.

Chesterton, wrote his brother Cecil, ‘is primarily . . . the preacher of a definite message to his own time. He is using all the power which his literary capacity gives him to lead the age in a certain direction.’

‘The very sound of his name’, the historian Sir Arthur Bryant put it at the time when he died in 1936, ‘is like a trumpet call.… If any literary name of our age becomes a legend, it will be his…. He was the kind of man of whom Bunyan was thinking when he drew the picture of Mr. Greatheart.’

His premature death was seen as the stilling of a prophetic voice at a time when it was desperately needed: Eliot wrote of his sense of loss at Chesterton's ‘disappearance from a world such as that we live in.’

By the end of the last century, his prophetic voice was being rediscovered. Chesterton’s distaste for state socialism, his suspicion of monopoly capitalism, and his support for the independence from imperial domination of small nations like Poland had once more become understood as being at the centre of Catholic thinking, and they were validated by the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet bloc.

His anti-modernism was paralleled by Pope John Paul’s counter-revolution against the theological liberalism of the 1960s and 1970s, a liberalism even more powerful (as it had also been during the first decade of the century) within Protestantism; here, too, Chesterton’s transcendentalist arguments against the immanentism of his own day seems almost uncannily prescient.

Chesterton’s ideas on on marriage and the family, on eugenics, above all on the dignity of the human person and the central importance of the defence of free will in a determinist age, all became uncannily relevant to the world of the twenty-first century.

The conference on July 2 will explore this new understanding of Chesterton as a prophet for our own times.

Application Form

Simply print out and post this straightforward form.

This is from the Chesterton Society

Don't forget the Chesterton Pilgrimage 14th June.

Cardinal Burke And All That

So Cardinal Burke is not coming to England (again). Was this the fault of any English Bishop, Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, the Cardinal himself or my four year old son and myself? When I find out, I shall be very cross and make the said culprit come round and explain to my son, why he will not now be meeting the Cardinal!

In the mean while please do start saying the following Litany daily, you can order a printed copy or ten from HLI. And don't forget to sign up to say the Rosary for Cardinal Burke and any other Bishop you like or dislike!

A LITANY ON BEHALF OF BISHOPS
Lord have mercy on us.
Christ have mercy on us.
Lord have mercy on us.
Christ hear us.
Christ, graciously hear us.

God, the Father of Heaven, have mercy on us.
God, the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy on us.
God, the Holy Ghost, have mercy on us.
Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us.

Holy Mary, Queen of Heaven and earth, pray for us.
St. Joseph, Protector of Holy Mother Church, pray for us.
St Michael, all Archangels, special servants of Bishops, pray for us.
St John the Baptist, Herald of the Lord, pray for us.
St Peter, pray for us.
St Paul, pray for us.
St Andrew, pray for us.
St John, pray for us.
St Thomas, pray for us.
St James, pray for us.
St Philip, pray for us.
St Bartholomew, pray for us.
St Matthew, pray for us.
St James, pray for us.
St Simon, pray for us.
St Thaddeus, pray for us.
St Barnabas, pray for us.
St Matthias, pray for us.
O Holy Apostles, our first Bishops, we beg your intercession on behalf of your successors;

St Thomas Becket, pray for us.
St Blaise, pray for us.
St Boniface, pray for us.
St Cyprian, pray for us.
St. Ignatius of Antioch, pray for us.
St. Irenaeus, pray for us.
St John Fisher, pray for us.
St. Polycarp, pray for us.
All martyred Bishops; pray for us.

St Athanasius, pray for us.
St Alphosus Liguori, pray for us.
St Ambrose, pray for us.
St Anslem, pray for us.
St Augustine, pray for us.
St Basil and Gregory Nazianzen pray for us
St Bonaventure, pray for us.
St Cyril of Alexandria, pray for us.
St Cyril of Jerusalem, pray for us.
St Francis De Sales, pray for us.
St Hilary, pray for us.
St Isadore of Seville, pray for us.
St Peter Chrsologus, pray for us.
St Peter Damian, pray for us.
St Robert Bellarmine, pray for us.
All Bishops-Doctors of the Church, pray for us.

St Albert the Great, pray for us.
St Ansgar, pray for us.
St Charles Borromeo, pray for us.
St Ildephonsus, pray for us.
St Methodius, pray for us.
St Nicolas, pray for us.
St Norbert, pray for us.
St Patrick, pray for us.
St Richard, pray for us.
Sts. Timothy and Titus, pray for us.
St William, pray for us.
St Wulfran, pray for us.
All Bishops who have spread the light of Christ; pray for us.

St Leo the Great, pray for us.
St Pius V, pray for us.
St Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.
St Pius X, pray for us.
All Saints who have helped further the Faith through teaching, pray for us.

That all bishops will maintain complete obedience to the Holy Father, we beseech Thee, hear us.
That all bishops will remain faithful to the Magisterium of the Church, we beseech Thee, hear us.
That all bishops will defend the Faith and moral teachings of the Church, we beseech Thee, hear us.
That all bishops will uphold the true teachings of the Ecumenical Councils, we beseech Thee, hear us.
That all bishops will allow and defend all duly authorised Rites of the Mass, we beseech Thee, hear us.
That all bishops will staunchly defend the unborn, the elderly, the sick and all defenceless people, we beseech Thee, hear us.
That all bishops will provide for true and complete education of the Faith for all souls in their care, we beseech Thee, hear us.
That all bishops will exercise the powers of their office to defend the faithful against heretics, apostates, and false prophets and teachers, we beseech Thee, hear us.
That all bishops will use their authority and powers to correct errors and falsehoods, we beseech Thee, hear us.
That all bishops will stand up for the rights of the Church when infringed upon by the State, we beseech Thee, hear us.
That all bishops will develop a great devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, we beseech Thee, hear us.
That all bishops will be living examples of the virtues, we beseech Thee, hear us.
That all bishops will look to their saintly predecessors as examples of how they should carry out their vocations, we beseech Thee, hear us.
That all bishops will encourage true vocations to the priesthood and religious life, we beseech Thee, hear us.
That all bishops will boldly proclaim the message of Our Lady of Fatima, we beseech Thee, hear us.
That all bishops will concentrate their energies more on the spiritual than on the material needs of the faithful, we beseech Thee, hear us.
That all bishops will teach and preach the truth of Humanae Vitae and Familiaris Consortio.

O God, look with favour on Thy servants, Thy bishops, whom Thou hast appointed as teachers and defenders of Thy faithful here on earth. Grant that by word and example they may assist those over whom they have been placed, so that shepherds and flocks may together attain everlasting life, through Jesus Christ, Our Lord. Amen.

First Anniversary Of The Death Of The Pill (tablet)

A year ago today The Pill died as a Catholic magazine when it went public with a pro-abortion edition.

GK Chesterton Novena Starts Sunday 5th June

GK Chesterton died on the 14th June 1936, so please say the following prayer, with an Our Father, Hail Mary and a Glory be, each day, starting on Sunday, leading upto this 75th Anniversary. For printable prayercards.

God Our Father, Thou didst fill the life of Thy servant Gilbert Keith Chesterton with a sense of wonder and joy, and gave him a faith which was the foundation of his ceaseless work, a charity towards all men, particularly his opponents, and a hope which sprang from his lifelong gratitude for the gift of human life. May his innocence and his laughter, his constancy in fighting for the Christian faith in a world losing belief, his lifelong devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and his love for all men, especially for the poor, bring cheerfulness to those in despair, conviction and warmth to lukewarm believers and the knowledge of God to those without faith. We beg Thee to grant the favours we ask through his intercession, for end of abortion [and especially for ……] so that his holiness may be recognized by all and the Church may
proclaim him Blessed. We ask this through Christ Our Lord. Amen.
www.Catholicgkchestertonsociety.co.uk

Happy Feast Of The Ascension

The Gospel being read at Mass at Good Counsel today. Father Leworthy FSSP was the Priest, Conor was serving. I took the photo, having finally worked out how to turn the flash off first! For another photo see Maria Stops Abortion.