Are you introverted, selfish and something of a miser?

Mean? Moi?

Do you, for example, keep yourself to yourself and squirrel away your valuables in a drawer somewhere?

Do you insist on keeping things that you love, secret.......known only to yourself?

And do you refuse to share your riches, even the smallest amount, with your fellow man?

Well, let me put this as sensitively and charitably as possible.

You are a miser; a mean person who thinks only of their own needs and ignores those of your fellow man (sorry, person).

You are guilty of selfishness and greed, not to say avarice and lust and you must change!

Your liberal Catholic contemporaries (and some of your orthodox ones) are deserving of your charity.

Here are some guiding points to help you become less self centred and more charitable:-

1. Attend Mass in the Extraordinary Form and, what is more, tell your friends and family about it. You may lose a few (quite a few) in the process but, hey, at least you are saving them from the sin of culpable ignorance - the sin of wilful ignorance is now firmly in their court.

2. Oppose all the wishy washy words and actions of parish liturgists, greeters, choreographers, members of ACTA and others of the same ilk. They are a cancer eating away at the heart of the Faith and, without giving them too much credit for being taken seriously, should be spiritually head butted whenever possible.

3. Keep up a line of communication with your Bishop, even though it's like trying to empty the sea with a limpet shell. Be kind to him, remember he may never hear the words: "Well done thou good and faithful servant"

4. Evangelise your fellow Catholics but, again, don't beat them over the head with the complete works of Michael Davies. Speak softly to them and gently point out the facts.....ask them to look in their spiritual mirror and reflect on whether they look like a soldier of Christ.

5. Tackle your parish priest, not in the rugby sense (although, it might have to come to that). Ask him why, if Andrea Bocelli can sing modern music and then switch to La Traviata and Nigel Kennedy can play jazz as well as classical, why can't he say the Latin Mass?

6. Share yourself with others. Don't rush off after Mass, stay and have a cup of coffee with some of the nutters and aged nutters that went to make up the congregation. They need you, they need to know that they are not alone and that others are coming along who will shoulder the burden of being a traditional Catholic. You have a lot to offer so please share it.

7. Attend a pilgrimage, pro life vigil or retreat - graces will flow to you that will help you become generous with your spiritual wealth.

8. Display your finery whenever possible. Say Grace before meals in public as well as private, refuse the Sunday football match if it clashes with Mass (and tell your friends why), pray the Rosary on the train, in the surgery, at the cinema, anywhere, in fact, where you have a minute to spare.

9. Give away your possessions; orthodox books, dvds, pictures and statues (you have far too many anyway). They may help inspire and enthuse a fellow Catholic.

10. Buy up Rosaries on Ebay, get them blessed and give them away to your friends, to the sick, the aged and infirm and to young children. That is a gift more precious than pearls.

So, forget all that hogwash about being judgemental and remember that you once received the Sacrament of Confirmation.

That was not a one off sacramental experience, that was a lifelong suit of armour enabling you to be a soldier for Jesus Christ until such time as He calls you.

Then, and only then, can you lay down your sword and hang up your coat of mail.

"Would you like to light a candle?"

Setting the world on fire

There does not seem to be an abundance of good news (as opposed to Good News) in the Catholic Church at present and, at times, I find myself thanking the Lord for all the converts that He breathes the gift of Faith into.

Where would we be without our converts?

Who would chip in and correct us cradle Catholics when we make so many of our assumptive mistakes?

And God bless those converts who have made the double somersault.

The first somersault was when they were received into the Church; and the second....when they found their way to orthodoxy and the Old Rite Latin Mass.

I am especially impressed by those young men who converted to the Faith and then became priests. What a journey they have undertaken - and on our behalf.

So, when I read of young Catholics setting up an evening of evangelisation, my attention span suddenly bursts into life.

And when that evening of evangelisation takes place at my old parish church of St Patrick's, Soho Square, I tend to spill my evening glass of embalming fluid in my haste to read all about it.

Fr Alexander Sherbrook is the PP and an excellent man at that.

He would qualify for a five star excellent rating if he celebrated the Latin Mass but you can't have everything.

This account featured on Big Pulpit - always worth a daily read and the actual post is HERE.

Read it and rejoice.

As October looms closer.....how about a game of Critical Pursuit?

October 2012 is the launch period for the Holy Father's push to evangelise the world, or, in the case of the bulk of Catholics in Europe, to re-evangelise them.

I say this because there has been a deal of bitter comment of late about "traditionalists" and "liberals" and it seems to me that, while there is certainly no need for this, there must be some recognition that the touchy feely liturgies and the disregard for Catholic teaching  means that the two groups (if I may call them that) are poles apart.

It is the liberals who need the re-evangelisation process because, quite frankly, they have lost the plot - they've forgotten what the Catholic Faith is all about. They don't give a damn about the Church's teaching on contraception or gay "marriage" or women priests and they may also be a bit iffy about abortion.

Now please, if you do wish to leave a comment, do not make it an anonymous one. I do try to be reasonable but, of late the Anons have been pushing their luck a bit.

But back to the point of all this; those most in need of re-evangelisation are the young adults and those still in the secondary education system, products of liberal Catholic catechesis.

They have been fed the most awful junk diet of slush and error that it is possible to imagine and they need some real organic bread and wine to ensure that they remain Catholics for life, not just until they have flown the nest.

Stay with me while I indulge in my fantasy of winning some 3 million pounds on the National Lottery.
I would take a fair old lump of that cash and invest it in producing a board game designed to entertain and, while it entertains, to also educate.

I am not an academic but I have designed a fair few training programmes aimed at teaching people (from the age of 3 up) to play a game that is good fun but also, subliminally,  teaches, at the same time.

                           Life may be Trivial but Eternal Life is Critical


And so it is, I would launch onto the market (and send 10 free sets to every Catholic Secondary School in the country) my version called 'CRITICAL PURSUIT'.

The game would, as I know you are fully aware, comprise questions regarding Catholic teaching on faith and morals...a sort of Monopoly type version of the Catechism.

It might not be the number one selling game at Christmas but I will bet a few ten pence pieces that the Bishops of England and Wales will not be coming up with anything half as effective!

What to do about the masses?

No, not the Masses, the masses. The millions of Catholics who never watch EWTN, read a Catholic publication, belong to a religious group and who mistakenly believe that blogging is something rather distasteful and dirty.

They know nothing of Summorum Pontificum, of Catholics being murdered in Pakistan and massacred in Iraq, to them Rick Santorum sounds like an instruction in Latin, in red, of course!

To them, IVF is a great and wonderful scientific advance and abortion is not nice but, when push comes to sweeping things under the carpet, it's OK.

They probably could not name more than two bishops of their country and, there are great lumps of Catholic knowledge that they have forgotten.
Like........

A destination for many Catholics

....they have forgotten that there is a dress code for Mass, that chattering loudly before and after is totally wrong, that there is a need to abstain on Fridays, go to Confession and Holy Communion during Lent, to be in a state of grace before going to Holy Communion, to kneel to receive the Body of Christ.....and they are not to blame for all of this.

No matter who is to blame, that is not what this post is about, it's about re-evangelisation......about informing, educating and guiding those who are lost and do not know it.

I do not mean, in any way, that these souls are inferior, necessarily than any other group of Catholics but two things of major importance struck me at the Guild of Blessed Titus Brandsma meeting last Saturday.

The first was that we  some Catholic bloggers are erudite in the extreme; that was more than obvious at the meeting. Their posts reflect their knowledge and their gift of communication but, much of what they write would go way above the heads of the group that I am focusing on, the average Catholic man or woman on the London bus or Manchester tram.

There is a need to find a means of communicating, without condescension and without patronising them, that gets the message of change, renewal and reform a la Benedict, across to them so that they begin to appreciate that it is forty plus years since they looked in a mirror.

The sector that I speak of are not the straightforward working class Catholics so much as the liberal Middle Class; they are the ones who have moved to Anglican mode and pick and choose their moral code according to their whim of the day.

Gregg, at A Brief Encounter has a good and informative post about Lent.

It is brief and simplistic but it flags up the main points that are not widely known, certainly by non Catholics and, uncertainly, by Catholics en masse.

With a marketing hat on I would say that posts and articles aimed at this section of the faithful need to be written in a language style that they comprehend, and it must still hold the attention. That does sound patronising does it not? But it's basic communication savvy.

Our Lord did not mention the Hypostatic Union when he was on earth but he did speak in the parable format that his audience knew and understood.
He, of course, was the ultimate communicator.

Now, not many editors will be tripping over themselves to "dumb down" the intellectual style of their magazine or newspaper but Catholic bloggers could do so very easily.
Not in every post, perhaps just once a week or fortnight there could be an inspirational post that would have both mass appeal and Mass appeal.

Providentially, I have never suffered with overtly intellectual overtones!

How do you evangelise a Zombie?

I have worked, during most of my career with young people aged from 16 years of age up to 24 and beyond. They came from all sorts of backgrounds and had all sorts of beliefs or none at all.

A third of them were excellent students, well behaved and diligent. Another third were just there; they existed, they scraped through their assignments and they finally passed through the system (I can identify with that sector, I was like that in my time so don’t give up hope on them  completely).

The final third are the walking dead; some College staff referred to them as “the knuckledraggers” – what unkind person could have used that phrase?

But, it was true. They grunted at times, they were, largely, unwashed, they could not actually string a sentence together and they could not hold a knife and fork.
 They could not tell you who Churchill was let alone Jesus Christ.

Amazing but true.

The problem is, of course, that these are the children of the latch key kids generation.
Their parents came home after school (if they ever went there) to an empty house, not a home.

Food came from the freezer and was microwaved to an instantly edible mush. It was consumed in front of the television (porn videos from under dad’s side of the bed?) and it was eaten using only the fingers. Easier and it saved on the washing up.

If you think that I am painting a damning picture, you are right. But it is also true. And this is the next, evolved generation. The generation that are adept at playing computer games for 12 hours at a stretch, the generation that has lost the art of communication.

Now as Catholics we have a mission in life to lead others to Christ. Not in a Jehovary sort of way, that is crass. Not in a Protestant TV  evangelical sort of way, they wouldn’t watch it. And certainly not in a happy clappy, cheery wavy, Catholic charismatic sort of way. That way only fools the charismatics.

The Holy Father has charged the Bishops to evangelise in 2012 but I’ll bet you a meal for two at McDonalds that no attempt will be made to make contact with the massive numbers, possibly hundreds of thousands that I speak of.

Why? Because it’s hard. Because the number of clergy the Church has that are versed in communicating with young dissidents does not run into double figures, because the ideas cupboard is bare; not only bare, the Bishops have forgotten that it ever existed!

We need new ideas, new ways of approaching this group. They are so tragic, sleepwalking to Hell. They need saving.

But who will save them?

And more to the point – how will they be saved?

Watch this space for some attempt at answering this troubling situation in a few days time.

This is how to communicate and inspire

I am not a particular fan of Tim Collins, late of the British Army. But his eve of battle speech to his troops is an excellent example of how one in authority should convey the ethos and aspirations of a society that should then be employed in the fight to come.

How I wish that we had a majority of Bishops who could make known (to young people especially) the essence of the Catholic faith and explain why that faith is the only one that will win the battle against the forces of evil.

Given on 19th March 2003

"We go to Iraq to liberate not to conquer. We will not fly our flags in their country. We are entering Iraq to free a people and the only flag which will be flown in that ancient land is their own. Show respect for them.
There are some who are alive at this moment who will not be alive shortly. Those who do not wish to go on that journey, we will not send. As for the others I expect you to rock their world. Wipe them out if that is what they choose. But if you are ferocious in battle remember to be magnanimous in victory.
Iraq is steeped in history. It is the site of the Garden of Eden, of the Great Flood and the birthplace of Abraham. Tread lightly there. You will see things that no man could pay to see and you will have to go a long way to find a more decent, generous and upright people than the Iraqis. You will be embarrassed by their hospitality even though they have nothing. Don't treat them as refugees for they are in their own country. Their children will be poor, in years to come they will know that the light of liberation in their lives was brought by you.
If there are casualties of war then remember that when they woke up and got dressed in the morning they did not plan to die this day. Allow them dignity in death. Bury them properly and mark their graves.
It is my foremost intention to bring every single one of you out alive but there may be people among us who will not see the end of this campaign. We will put them in their sleeping bags and send them back. There will be no time for sorrow.
The enemy should be in no doubt that we are his nemesis and that we are bringing about his rightful destruction. There are many regional commanders who have stains on their souls and they are stoking the fires of hell for Saddam. He and his forces will be destroyed by this coalition for what they have done. As they die they will know their deeds have brought them to this place. Show them no pity.
It is a big step to take another human life. It is not to be done lightly. I know of men who have taken life needlessly in other conflicts, I can assure you they live with the mark of Cain upon them. If someone surrenders to you then remember they have that right in international law and ensure that one day they go home to their family.
The ones who wish to fight, well, we aim to please.
If you harm the regiment or its history by over-enthusiasm in killing or in cowardice, know it is your family who will suffer. You will be shunned unless your conduct is of the highest for your deeds will follow you down through history. We will bring shame on neither our uniform or our nation.
[Regarding the use by Saddam of chemical or biological weapons] It is not a question of if, it's a question of when. We know he has already devolved the decision to lower commanders, and that means he has already taken the decision himself. If we survive the first strike we will survive the attack.
As for ourselves, let's bring everyone home and leave Iraq a better place for us having been there.
Our business now is north!"

Certainly, in the aftermath of the Irap liberation there is much that we may criticise but, if the Archbishop of Westminster wrote a similar letter regarding the Catholic faith, I for one would be flocking to his banner.