Monday 15 June 2020

Covid19 Virus or Plague



Much has been written, spoken, reported about this new intruder into the life of this society. Its called Covid19 and declared a pandemic.
As daily reports keep coming via the airwaves though emails, news reports, internet, notices on shops, businesses, lifts, buses, door posts and all other places, we in 21st century are faced with an enemy not experienced before.
Trying to come to terms with our normal liberties suddenly taken away and having to do what is determined for us as best  measure, I have realised that the modern human has not in recent memory of at least one hundred years had to account to anyone or even be forced to do as told.
The needs of the modern person, work, life activities, study, travel and even worship have been removed from our convenience and freedom and forbidden to participate. 
An interloper has snuck into human life and created a deep fear. dug deeply and entered our space.  An interloper which coiled through global society with such speed that it could almost be suggested that it was planned to erupt simultaneously and has remained like an overstaying guest. 
Fear, a primitive emotion embedded into our psyche as a means of alert, an alarm system, which warns of danger has embedded itself into society. Fear of something fearful and dangerous.
Fear as an alarm system is good.  It alerts to danger and assists in escape.  However, fear can also be destructive because it paralyses, and worse, urges decision making during a time of instability. 
The daily reports of the dangers of C19, the percentages of those affected and those who have succumbed.  The 24/7 reporting of the disastrous state of society.  The losses which this virus has created. The disruption of life as we know it.  The constant negative narrative all create an atmosphere of fear and danger..
World leaders and their response to the virus have been interesting to observe.  A virus which has developed a language of its own.  "social distancing" "lockdown" "self isolation" "strict hand hygiene"  is the language spoken by all countries.
This pandemic, as WHO called it, has paralysed employment and  thus crushing of nations' employment and economy to such a degree that it may mean that some of the nations may never recover.  
And with the engendered fear, the lockdown, the isolation, the social distancing, the demands that all succumb happily to the new rules of life and do as our leaders (at times power relishing) demand of us or police activity and fines imposed.  What society are we reminded of? The thought means more fear.
What type of virus is this that has such power to even shut down worship? what type of virus is this that can bring society to its knees?
And why such drastic responses when the "virus" has been loitering in the background for months? why such speed for global control of all humanity?
Or perhaps it's not a virus after all.  A virus which we usually are rid of in a matter of days, but could it be instead a "plague"?  Such an ugly word and fearsome word and fear creating word.  Is this the problem? a "plague" like the ones we have heard and read about which  happened in the past? but because of global media availability the word "plague" could cause panic whereas "virus" is a regular visitor in all households and  recognised and manageable.
Unusual days, unusual times but the visitor an old intruder who has returned with a modern name and visiting much larger vulnerable humans. 





Sunday 13 October 2019

A Ritual Dis honoured


Dear friends in my last issue of newsletter (issue 132) I spoke about a service that some abortion facilities offer the aborting women, that is, the services of a Doula.  A doula is meant to be a pregnancy and delivery support, one could say, companion for this last part of the journey.
Abortion facilities have taken this noble task and now use it to stand by the woman as she has her abortion.

then her job is to calm her down and allay her fears.  Etc. It seems that abortion facilities (never use the word clinics because clinic implies medical care, healing not killing) are able to take some beautiful life element and turn it into something grotesque.

A new “service” came to my attention in early September.  Service whereby a late term abortionist in USA (Dr? Leroy Carhart) offers to the aborting woman/parents the opportunity of viewing, holding, cuddling, taking photos, having a footprint of the baby, funeral services.  This after the baby has been killed by abortion and delivered dead.
I must admit to sitting down and shedding many tears of anger and frustration.  After twenty three years I keep thinking that I cannot hear anything more that will distress me but yes this story broke my heart.
I’ve held a dead baby (not abortion) in my arms over thirty years ago and then followed with the mum behind the tiny white coffin and to this day I cannot forget the look of the dead infant or the unnatural stillness of her mother.  Her mother was in shock and distant. Away. During the burial she did not look at the tiny coffin, or little doll like infant.   Holding her hand it was like holding the hand of a person dying. Cold. No tears, just not there.
I’ve seen my week old baby sister in her little white coffin and remember the look on her face. Her gently closed eyes and beautiful lashes. I can still see them. This over 45 years ago. I remember the coffin sitting on our laps in Dad’s car and his stoic face as we drove to the cemetery (mum still ill in hospital) to bury her.  I still have her certificate and her plot number.  I remember the awful grey, different, unusual weird colour on her face and her gently closed eyes.
Like they would open any minute and she would smile.  Like a little baby doll in a beautiful white lacy dress and such tiny hands.  I remember Carmelina and the image of her and the image of my friend’s baby and I remember the image of our family friends whose 7 month old little boy died of SIDS and the parents so still. Not crying. Just still.
These images of death of infants never go away because the death of a baby is so unnatural.  It’s not meant to happen that way. Babies are born and they grow and become older and so forth. And when they die through miscarriage or stillbirth (unintentional death) are never forgotten. The day, time, moment remembered. 
So how can this abortionist invite parents who have ASKED that their baby be killed by him in some gruesome method then offer them what he considers consolation?

How can he offer spiritual recommendations?  How can he offer or place in their minds an image of the infant that they asked to have killed and then this image, in the dark of night returns to memory to haunt them. ?
 How can he suggest that they hold the baby that he killed at their request?
How can he suggest a viewing, just like any “normal” death?
How can he suggest that once the process of healing begins they might want a memory of their child?
If the abortion and death requires a “process of healing” then surely the murder of their child must mean something to them because there is a “process of healing” which will happen.
How can he convince himself and others that he and his practice offer the parents “kindness, courtesy, justice, love and respect for over 45 years?”
Who’s the courtesy, kindness etc. for?  The Parents? what about the baby?  Big enough to be viable, what does he offer the child? A Potassium injection to the heart, Partial birth abortion or some other more gruesome death? 
Has he killed so many babies that he has lost all sense of right and wrong? All sense of humanity? All sense of being himself human being. Of simply feeling.   This surely must be it.
What kind of wickedness has overcome this society that these things can happen?
Are these deaths sacrifices to atone for the sins of parents, women eating of the fruit again, and men being absent, society, and humanity? 
He has much information on his website which one can read with horror and shudders.
He does not shy away from the term “baby” he knows what he is doing. Indeed his response in an interview when asked if he has a problem with killing a baby, he said “I have no problem if it’s in the mother’s uterus”
Is this where the theory about a child not being human being until it is outside of the mother’s body?  So what is it immediately after the birth if not the same baby before birth or is this law cop out?


 We gave to Caesar something that he should never have had and I suppose Caesar plays god with it.

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Conjugal Honour (Casti Connubii Pius XI).

 Love of husband and wife joined together in pure intimacy.

 Contemporary society seems to have lost the understanding and the meaning of conjugal honour (Casti Connubii, citing the Angelic Doctor) or even the will or knowledge of how to protect conjugal honour.

 Why?

Perhaps many reasons can be cited for this loss of knowledge but first what might we call conjugal honour? My understanding of conjugal honour is that union between husband and wife in which no other can share or enter in.  Only a trothed couple may share that conjugal honour. That intimate community which resembles that of the divine community. A community where life abides.  No other community can say that they contain that mystery which is in married state with all its secrecy, laws, language and love. No other community demands such honour as does the conjugal community.
it’s in this community which both (husband and wife) enter and vow to remain united until the time comes for one or the other or both to go.  Sometimes leaving the community individually at other times together, hand in hand, they move to that greater community of which their own conjugal community was a forerunner and foretaste of. We have in our contemporary time, in our day lost the sense of conjugal honour and its meaning because of the slow changes in sexual understanding and morality which has entered this time.
“It was because you were unteachable” he said “that Moses allowed you o divorce your wives, but it was not so from the beginning” (Mt 19:8).
 It’s because in the past two generations we have been found to be unteachable and a pseudo type of relationship became confused with conjugal intimacy and conjugal honour.  A forced and artificial application of the conjugal state has been forced upon society. A societal invention.  A pseudo conjugal state which cannot even contemplate but only simulate the intimate community where conjugal honour resides and its where “life” can abide.
Beginning with  “living together”  which can be said to be a trial run or even a probation marriage where if difficulties appear the intimate community of the couple can be disbanded  or even when desires wane and something new is sought then that community which can envelope and protect life is abandoned. 
The couple entering pseudo marriage cannot establish the intimate community which lasts the term of life, the same life that they hide from view because of the agreed temporariness of their pledge based only on physical responses.  Otherwise the union would be sought to be made whole and total.  The Conjugal union would be so honoured that it would seem to be right that that union be protected from intrusion into that intimate community so that life residing there would know that honour.
Probation intimacy, divorce, make to fade that intimate community (where love abides) because both are a rejection or refusal of that knowledge about conjugal honour. Conjugal honour has slowly been withdrawn from the intimacy of the couple.
Rejection of conjugal honour cannot see that in every woman is written the code word   “mother.” In that conjugal community “mother” has a special meaning. And male has the code word “father” with its own special meaning. These two words are the result of honour given to both who’ve entered that special intimate community which constitutes married state or marriage. Conjugal honour is deeply written into the sexual act and may not to be violated because “it was not so in the beginning” (Mt 19:8.)
Loss of conjugal reverence has led to abortion to exponential growth.  Loss of knowledge about conjugal reverence has meant that there are several generations who have not known or been taught about holiness of the body and how the body has been designed to be honoured because it has been created to be a part of an intimate community in the image of divine, because like the divine it was designed to perpetuate life.   Not a group or community of people gathering with the same beliefs and ideals but an intimate community so holy and where  only two may enter and be held together there to continue the work of furthering creation.  The template community designed by God “in our own image” (Gn1:27). This new intimate community is to imitate that love and life.  We have abortion to horrendous degrees. We have purposely sterile relationships.  We have death demanding calls, because first there was a loss of honour. Loss of conjugal honour. Loss of conjugal awe. Loss of conjugal reverence and unholy intrusion into that space of intimacy where only honour, respect, reverence, and awe should have abided because this sacred place is the office of the nature of love.  The understanding what intimate love is and be manifested.  
Modern sexual couplings (experimental/life choices/refusal of conjugal intimacy) cannot declare conjugal honour because of the pseudo nature of  that intimacy fails part of its mandate, donation from him to her and her to him and their individual donation gives a gift of wholly and completely of themselves to the other. No other can ever replicate the original donation.
Within every marriage there abide three persons, the husband, wife and Holy Spirit (lord and giver of life) who enters the union and remains.  The spirit does not know how to be party to fourth or fifth, sixth, intrusion. The holiness of that union is so because the Spirit has accepted the vow of fidelity and the spirit does not know how to be unfaithful.Understanding of the language of the body not in prudishness but with respect, reverence and awe because it’s the way God deemed the mystery of life
A return to the understanding of how God desired life must needs be the new overtures spoken to humankind which must speak again to man and woman and speak to them of their precious spousal nature which is not to be used and abused, discarded,  because reverence for their bodies has been rejected and the community of intimacy invaded and the gift  designed in that community, the infant discarded, but they are to hear their true story which is that they have been created for life and great honour.
The new language must the speak truth within these times, the truth which has been lost or even forgotten or a distant memory, as the echo of something which happened long ago.   It must speak of the conjugal mystery an honour due to it which tabernacles life. It must do this because due to the loss of such knowledge the language spoken in this day serves death. The new language for recovery of treasures of the Garden (conjugal intimacy) must speak of Holiness and speak the word life.

 Dear friends I hope you like the above I began thinking about this and its meaning when I came across the words “conjugal honour”. I have pondered much about this as I scan our society and its trajectory.

 

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Sunday 13 May 2018

So this is not Life?


His Holiness Pope Francis.
 
Our defence of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate, for at stake is the dignity of a human life, which is always sacred and demands love for each person, regardless of his or her stage of development. Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned and the underprivileged, the vulnerable infirm and elderly exposed to covert euthanasia, the victims of human trafficking, new forms of slavery, and every form of rejection. We cannot uphold an ideal of holiness that would ignore injustice in a world where some revel, spend with abandoned live only for the latest consumer goods, even as others look on from afar, living their entire lives in abject poverty.

We often hear it said that, with respect to relativism and the flaws of our present world, the situation of migrants, for example, is a lesser issue. Some Catholics consider it a secondary issue compared to the “grave” bioethical questions. That a politician looking for votes might say such a thing is understandable, but not a Christian, for whom the only proper attitude is to stand in the shoes of those brothers and sisters of ours who risk their lives to offer a future to their children
 
 --- Gaudete et Exsultate Rejoice and Be Glad #101-102

 
The  Holy Father Pope Francis has for some years been persecuted unmercifully and called many names and titles (false prophet, anti-Christ) by supposedly “good Catholics” which should make us all hang our heads in shame.  One pro-life group especially has used social media to carry out a campaign of division since this Pope was elected.  Pope Francis has even been accused of not being “pro-life” the quote on this page are his thoughts in his latest exhortation. He defends not only those in the womb first but then all kinds of suffering human beings.

We work hard to save a child from abortion (rightly so) but then stand by whilst human trafficking of enormous proportions is carried out in our day and age.  Trafficking of young little children for the purpose of sexual gratification by wicked/evil individuals and groups? As someone said to me recently “because of their innocence and “virginity” What have we become that we have businesses which would do this to children.
Yes we’ve worked and will continue to work hard to save babies in the womb because we believe that they have a right to their life as a gift given to the parents even if they don’t know it and we have saved the child in the womb only to let that child be exploited, used, abused, starved, beaten?  Is being pro-life only about life in the womb but nothing else? Are we pro-lifers sabotaging our language just as surely as the pro aborts and pro choicers who sabotage the word “choice” and “rights” are we going to do the same? With the word “pro-life? Meaning only life in the womb?  Are we only interested in life in womb or life of a child in its continuum? Life is life. A child is a child even when they are being raped and then passed on to someone else etc. etc. to do the same.  Child trafficking isn’t to give a needing child a wonderful life and opportunity it is to give some badly damaged individual distorted pleasure.

We all remember an image of a little 3 year old Syrian boy found washed up on sea shore about 2-3 years ago.  It broke all our hearts seeing that little one floating face down in the water.   Dead. Have we
so quickly forgotten? Was the life of that child whose parents let him live (not aborted him) but then he was lost due to place of his birth and right/wrong political landscape?
What about pro-life and euthanasia where elderly are now fearful of going to hospitals just in case they never leave hospitals alive. Or even the disabled whose life is deemed valueless. Is this not Pro Life?
We all of us write about our horror and euthanasia, indeed at this moment we have the story of a distinguished elderly professor who has gone to Switzerland to have himself done in. 
Or even the tragic story of young Alfie Evans whose life was deemed so useless that even with all the world’s attention and offers of help from others professionals, hospitals etc. the courts and hospital and not his parents chose and carried out their decision that the child must die.
 
The Holy Father is recognizing these matters as pro-life matters and we must fight to reclaim the entire meaning of value of life beginning at conception, its hospitality in the womb and then deep respect for the humanity from birth to end of life.  Life is a continuum it always begins with the union of a sperm and ova and concludes in a human whose life was intended for good and joy and mirror the image of its creator and co-workers (parents).
This little two year old Alfie Evans, just like the little boy washed on sea shore tugged at heartstrings of all throughout the world, i.e. all who followed the story.   After being removed from life support he died in the early hours of Saturday morning after having breathed on his own for 24 hrs.  In a hollow voice the little one’s father said: “My gladiator lay down his shield and gained his wings at 02:30…absolutely heartbroken. I love you my guy.”  

his mother also spoke of his little wings and flying.  This is not pro-life work? What is it then?
And this only a matter of short time after the other child Charlie Gard, at the same hospital and same illness, was also doomed to die.  This should never have happened.  The hospital or the courts or no one but the parents are the guardians of their child. Or has big brother started flexing his muscles with the youngest in the womb, disabled, and elderly? Already?
 Is this what we can expect in the future?  Is this not pro-life matters?
This child Alfie Evans had been granted Italian citizenship to be able to be taken the Vatican-owned Bambino Gesù children’s hospital which had offered to take the child for further diagnosis and treatment, but enter the British courts which repeatedly refused to allow the transfer, ruling that it is not in the child’s best interest. So the courts and the hospital and maybe even the janitor at the hospital deemed that it was in the child’s best interests but not the parents? Stopping these matters, is this not pro-life?  Where were the parent’s rights to determine which way to go with their child? Their child.  Or does this mean that already when someone goes into hospital for treatment they lose their rights?  This is not life matters? We pro-lifers don’t fight this? Is it too hard?

How interesting in the same week a prince was born.  The media and world rejoiced (and rightly so) but another young prince (to his parents) was intentionally left/made/forced to die.  There is a tragic irony in that isn’t there?
 

The Holy Father Pope Francis, supported and prayed for the child and family and offered to encourage public prayer for them who met with Alfie’s father last week, has offered public prayers for Alfie and his family several times, including at a general audience and in several twitter posts
 “Moved by the prayers and immense solidarity
shown little Alfie Evans, I renew my appeal that the suffering of his parents may be heard and that their desire to seek new forms of treatment may be granted,” he said Monday on Twitter.
But the final and tragic decision was to keep the child at that Hospital and die.  One must ask the questions what that hospital had to hide to fight so hard to keep that child there.

All of this saga not pro-life? 

He was spared from death in the womb to be insisted that he die by same people who would no doubt have carried out many abortions.


If I were a British mother I would not take my child near that place because immediately you enter the doors you lose rights over the outcome and treatment of your child. 
When the Holy Father speaks about poverty this is considered much much less of a pro-life matter.
Have we forgotten the images of little ones with bloated bellies and hollow eyes? Or even desperate mothers offering an empty breast for comfort to her dying little child?
 This is not pro-life?  What are we doing when we can say that these matters are not pro-life?
What are we doing playing with words or semantics.
We must not forget that life is always life and death, no matter how it occurs, is always death.

             

 

 
 

 
 

 


 
 








 





 

 
 
 

 

 
 
 

Sunday 10 December 2017

Male and Female He Created them


In the beginning God created male and female, human, one being, one nature, but separate, different yet together.  An image of the Divine Trinity.  One Being, one nature yet entirely different. (Gen 2:23). This very real difference yet sameness of nature (male and female) is not reducible and cannot be denied or changed.  The differences yet the sameness are inscribed in the essence of both male and female. 

The principle of this difference between male and female is then tempered and strengthened and confirmed with free will to lead to a communion of body and spirit without reservation and without need to return to the womb for comfort.  The womb of the past is replaced by a new womb where male and female tie their bond to one another.   “This is why a man leaves his mother and father and cleave to his wife and they shall be as one flesh” (Gen 2:24).

Human beings have a nature perfectly attuned to complementarity without which there is disunity and dis-communion.

In a society like modern society which is fixated with over sexualised images and over sexualised language and innuendo, the call for deconstruction of marriage seems not unexpected because marriage means something else. It has deeper meanings, an external manifestation of an internal and eternal ecstasy. An overflow of love. So a society which does not see marriage in its deepest meaning must surely decline into something we witness today. 

Marriage in its original design was for male and female. God formed the Y chromosome (him) and  the X chromosome for her, and together they formed the XY “male and female He created them.”  However the XY is to be carried by the male so that he in his giving donates the son or daughter to each other. She on her behalf donates only what she has been given and that is her X chromosome but also the gift of carrying the joined XX (daughter) or XY (son) on their behalf.

Imagine he carries the gender she carries and delivers their fruit of that union.

As I ponder on the words “male and female He created them” I am always sent into deep thought.  We are told that God created Adam from the soil and then breathed into his nostrils His very breath, then God put Adam into a state of ecstasy or “deep sleep” and from Adam “made” Eve as companion for the man. Which means that Eve received her “God-ness” from “man?” In silence, where not even “Adam” may see the moment of “creation.” How?  From the same soil?  No. Woman is to be more refined so she can clearly “hear” the voice of “life” and respond. In the moment of “conjugal ecstasy,”  is the moment when God formed Eve for man. One like himself (human) but different who like him creates.  So that on His own He has desired to have leave open the way for His own “gift” to them, life to be received.  Creator God says that from deep within and alone Adam (man) is incomplete and on her own Eve (woman) is incomplete. 

What intricate mastery there is in this idea of creation?

And also how did God “Take out” from Adam the X chromosome to create Eve from it?  Enter the Holy Spirit.  We know that the Holy Spirit “Overshadowed Mary” who could only have within her X chromosome, so how did she deliver an XY (son) and not a (daughter) but she did miraculously conceive Jesus. Could the same Holy Spirit “overshadow” the X chromosome taken from Adam and birth Eve? The Holy Spirit, the spirit of Life created the first prototype and told them to continue his work by being fruitful and multiplying.
Is the sin of Adam and Eve against the Holy Spirit the Lord and Giver of life and that is why Jesus says that sin against the holy spirit cannot ever be forgiven because it is the Holy Spirit who “overshadows” creation to make it come into being? And rejection of what the Holy Spirit has brought into being is a rejection of the desire of the Father brought about by the Holy Spirit.
It is the Holy Spirit who says yes to the new idea and work of creation of God. It is the Holy Spirit who overshadows the x or y and enlivens these so that long before there is even a hint of conception a new creation has been knitted together by the overshadowing, which of course, means in secret and away from vision.
The theme of overshadowing or tabernacling is important because we encounter this right at the beginning of time, the beginning of all creation and throughout scriptures in cloud overshadowing Moses on Sinai, Cloud overshadowing the people of Israel as they travelled through desert, the Cloud overshadowing Jesus and Peter James and John on Tabor. And of course the overshadowing of Mary to conceive Jesus.
And this overshadowing and tabernacling in the form of a cloud or pillar of fire or quiet whisper, or hand which covers cavern on the mount in order to protect as the Lord passes by, the burning bush which bears the Lord without being consumed, is believed to be the Holy Spirit. The Shekinah. The Kabód, the Glory of Yahweh which created them male and female, at the spoken word.  the mysterious genders which makes them same but very different. This makes them have a need for one another and fulfil the words of God “it is not good that the man should be alone, I will make for him a helper fit for him.” (Gen. 2:18). And to fulfil the command to be “fruitful, multiply, fill the earth” (Gen. `:28). Man without woman, and woman without man cannot fulfil this command. Each alone is barren.