De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

  Writing  in Lifesite  yesterday, Dr. Joseph Shaw makes a point that cannot be over-stressed regarding Catholic education. As the deadline for the introduction of new PHSE legislation draws ever closer, Dr. Shaw is speaking out, having tried to discuss the matter with bishops and even instigating a prayer vigil outside Westminster Cathedral . As any of us who have tried to engage have come to expect, the only received responses were formulaic & patronising telling Shaw and his co-enquirers that everything would be fine. The incoming legislation is deeply problematic. As Dr. Shaw writes , this "legislation is imposing a program of “Personal, Health, and Sex Education” (PHSE) that demands that choosing not to kill the child in the womb is just one acceptable option among others, and that Christian marriage is just one lifestyle choice alongside same-sex unions and every other possibility. We know from the lesson plans, produced not only by the government, but by t...

A number of friends have drawn my attention to Melanie Phillips' article above which addresses the crazy news coming out of the Church of England at the moment regarding the ever pernicious and aggressive transgender agenda. This is further to a "bullying Guidance" document released to CofE schools, which, much like the disgraceful Catholic Education Service document released recently, purports to be about stopping bullying whilst actually being a tool to further a clear anti-Christian agenda with the most impressionable children. This prompted the resignation of one of the Archbishop of Canterbury's closest advisers at the weekend, as I reported here . With regard to this resignation, Melanie Phillips suggests: Ashworth’s protest, however, is a far deeper one about the church’s general embrace of secularism. The true message of Christianity, she says, risks being drowned out by people who prefer to discuss social justice because “if we talk about sin...

Following numerous posts on this blog and elsewhere regarding the scandal of the Catholic Education Service issuing guidelines for schools which carried a clear and blatantly anti-Catholic anthropology which they have admitted was copied directly from websites which support an LGBTQI lifestyle, a petition has been raised to ask for clear guidance from the bishops. Please consider adding your name to this! Caroline Farrow writes: A number of concerned Catholic parents all over the country have been writing to me, expressing their worry that their child's Catholic school is embracing transgenderism and adopting an approach of validating children's gender dysphoria. As well as being a potentially devastating approach for the individual children experiencing this, it's also affecting other children who are being co-opted into accepting that gender is fluid and forced to share changing rooms and facilities. A petition has been launched to encourage the bishops to issue ...

I think this post on the Muniment Room has some really important and necessary insights. It really joins together the dots so that you can see how things fit together. It begins by examining the position of Catholic Voices , how much authority does the organisation  have to speak on catholic issues? Who guarantees their Catholicity? These are questions which were voiced at the organisation's inception. Officialy, the authoritative source about Catholicism in the UK is the Catholic Communications Network (CCN) of the CBCEW. Catholic Voices then, is a conduit; a simple way for a media outlet to find an "every day Catholic" to comment when it needs somebody who isn't an official spokesman for the Church (mind you, when was the last time you saw any "official spokesperson for the Church"?). However, Ttony reports "that any call to the CCN asking for a Catholic comment on an issue of the moment gets forwarded routinely to CV and that, furthermore,...

Further to the #CESScandal featuring in the Catholic Herald this weekend, Counter Cultural Father has posted an excellent summation of the points he, Caroline Farrow and Dr. Joseph Shaw  and myself have been trying to make about the issue. Although the Herald article concludes that "If this document is a mock exam for the CES, it may need to improve its game by the time the real tests begin" The general tone of the article appears overly benign and fails to draw attention to many of the very real issues with the CES document. As my pseudonymous associate asserts, these are numerous and manifest: The approach The overall thrust of this document is that we should not bully people who identify as gay or bisexual (or whose parents or carers do) because gay and bisexual people are just as good as us, but different. That is wrong. We should not bully them because we should not bully anyone - even if they (or their parents) are bad. The risk of the approach taken is t...