Fantastic increase in confessions

"Let me see, that's the fifteenth person today making it,
ermm, umm, a 65% increase over last Saturday's stats."

Madeleine Teahan of The Catholic Herald has reported on an apparent 65% increase in the number of Catholics receiving the sacrament in our Cathedrals in England and Wales. You may read it HERE.

Some, even, are attributing this phenomenon to the coming of Pope Benedict's successor, Pope Francis.

Well, I genuinely would not like to pour cold water on this report especially, as an increase was verified by Fr Tim Finigan at Our Lady of the Rosary, Blackfen.

But, I have to take issue with the research processes as carried out by the Bishop's Conference of England and Wales.

It seems that they carried out this exercise by email and phone.

Well, that's OK but you do need to have a sound understanding of research methodology before you set off down this path.

Put crudely, you need to know how to frame your question; you see, there is a desire in human nature, to give a response that is pleasing to the questioner.

Therefore, using a commercial example, you might pose the question: "Have you seen an increase in the sale of widgets since we launched our television advertising campaign?"

This will undoubtedly produce a "yes" response, or, at least, a strong bias in that direction.

So, if the Bishops' man or woman phrased the question linking it to the advent of Pope Francis, I am not exactly saying "Phew!  Blow me down! That is amazingly good news"

Furthermore, I am rather sceptical about forming a quantitative research conclusion from an exercise that, by its nature, is informal.

Have priests in Cathedrals been keeping a tally over the past few years, as to how many attendees there have been at the 4pm Confessions session?

I very much doubt it and, unless they have done this, it is impossible to arrive at an accurate result figure.

Fr Tim's response, however, falls into the qualitative category and is perfectly good and fine. He has noticed an increase in young adults (especially) attending Confession and that is excellent news and accurate research on a quality rather than quantity basis.

So the report from the Bishops must be viewed with some reserve.

As a learned professor friend of mine said to me yesterday: "Of course, if you start from a base of zero then just five confessions is going to look like a bxxxxy good result!"

How do you like your Martini?

Shaken?..................Stirred?.......


I like mine forgotten....

From his last interview:-

"Our culture has aged, our churches are big and empty and the church bureaucracy rises up, our rituals and our cassocks are pompous," the Cardinal said. "The Church must admit its mistakes and begin a radical change, starting from the Pope and the bishops. The paedophilia scandals oblige us to take a journey of transformation.

See The Catholic Herald for the full story

Coming off The Pill

In my formative years, when hookers were only found on rugby pitches and generals were the only people with aides, there were three main Catholic publications in church porches throughout the country.

Their readership was quite distinct in both class and character.

At the cheap and cheerful end there was The Universe, the working Catholic man's newspaper.

The Catholic middle classes read the broadsheet Catholic Herald and, as Sister Catherine Walsh OP used to say: "It's the only Catholic newspaper run by Catholics, boys". And so it was and still is.

And then the Upper Class Catholics had a rather upper class publication called The Tablet. This was and is, in magazine format and carried rather more copy than pictures; it would then have been described as  "an intellectual read".

I think this hierarchy still stands except that The Tablet, as we all know, has become the mouthpiece of  liberal crassness; somewhat left of Arthur Scargill.

But it still retains, (among Catholics of the cafeteria variety) a sort of air of pseudo intellectuality, of being unassailable as an organ of the thinking Catholic.

The once exclusive readership has drifted so that both the lower and middle classes like to be seen with a copy under their arm.

It lends them, so they believe, a sort of pew credibility; it adds an air of 'better than thou' to those who buy a copy and then, on returning home, consign it to the re-cycling bin unread.

A group of young Catholics has started a campaign aimed at closing down The Tablet, (Tabula Delenda Est) I wish them every success in their endeavours.

But we all need to challenge this false air of intellectual authority that surrounds the editorial team and their Directors at The Tablet.

We need to question those who wave their copy around as proof of their forward thinking capacity and charitably point out the truth of the matter to them.

The Tablet is not now the thinking Catholic's magazine; it has evolved into 'Pseud's Corner'.
Please inform your Bishop, Parish Priest and you fellow parishioners of this fact.

In this clip below you can see three Catholics.

Can you tell The Tablet reader from The Universe reader or The Catholic Herald reader?

There's also a final clip showing an interview believed to be with a young Clifford Longley

Who am I? Where am I going? What am I doing?

The recent meeting of Catholic Bloggers (Guild of Blessed Titus Brandsma) was, much as I dislike the phrase, thought provoking at the very least.

The lively talks, debates and more informal discussions over a pint at lunchtime, nudged me into indulging in a little navel gazing. I felt that a different and better sense of direction was needed as far as my blogging activities were concerned; I needed to review what I was posting and to assess what end result I was looking for.

The need to "know myself" was brought to the surface by meeting so many gifted and talented bloggers and followers - an "inspiration" of Catholic bloggers would be a good collective noun to describe those at Blackfen.

So, I set to, in the days after the meeting, to reflect and brood on the sort of blogger that I am.

My starting point was inspired by Mary O' Regan's sparkling talk on Journalism and Blogging.

I fell back on the old question that could be found in every sales training manual of the 70s - "What sort of an animal am I?" Except that, I decided that it would be more relevant if I aligned my blog with a newspaper so that the question would be: "What sort of newspaper am I?"

Sadly, I came to the conclusion that I am rather more Daily Mail than Daily Telegraph - more into sarky headlines and comment, short, snappy sound bites in print. Pretty much middle of the road in intellectual terms, appealing to the lowest common denominator.
You see, The Daily Mail is not a paper that I greatly value or admire so I was a shade crestfallen that my soul seeking had me flat on my face at the first fence.

And then I thought (desperately) that few Catholic bloggers could be aligned or identified with just one publication; in reality we are an amalgam of publications.

With this thought in my mind and with the idea of gaining a better yardstick for my own analysis, I decided to look at some of my fellow bloggers just to see how this exercise would shake down; I restricted it to British Catholic bloggers as my knowledge of the US media is hazy to say the least.

So first on my list was A Reluctant Sinner and The Path Less Taken. Those were, I decided definitely 60% Catholic Herald and 40% Daily Telegraph.

Whereas, A Tiny Son of Mary, is certainly 100% Catholic Herald.

Hilaire Belloc is  95% Times Literary Gazette  with 5% of The Catholic Herald while That the Bones You Have Crushed May Thrill has a most interesting profile broken down more as a cocktail of Catholic Herald, Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail - with a liberal dash of Big Issue!

I must call a halt there lest I unintentionally cause offence (not my style at all!)

So, then back to my profile; perhaps I could gain a little ground in the credibility stakes by segmentation also.
With a little bit of mental rearrangement I found that I could honestly regard my blog as now only being 75% Daily Mail. Good but not good enough, how would the remainder turn out?

Well, only 5% could be assigned to the Daily Telegraph and the same for The Catholic Herald. That brought me up to 85%.

Then, inspiration struck and I allocated 10% to Private Eye. Excellent!
But I still had 5% to go.

Much head banging and wailing and then.......

...........Help! Au secours! I now have to "man up" and say that, if I am brutally honest, that odd 5% probably belongs to The Sun newspaper! Wotta result!

Hold the Front Page!

Apparently, The Catholic Herald has covered my Summorum Pontificum song on its front page. On their website I can just make out the words, 'Blogger Hails Latin Mass on Folk Guitar'. Is it a folk guitar? I thought it was an acoustic guitar but then what does it matter? It's still an instrument from the pits of Hades!

Long live His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, gloriously reigning.

Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto, sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper in saecular saeculorum. Amen.

I won't let it go to my head... "Look everybody!"

Anyway, in other news, Fr Gabriel Amorth has suggested that the Harry Potter books and yoga are about as good and healthy for us spiritually as rock and pop music. He has a point. The Potter books encourage children to dabble in witchcraft and the occult. Witchcraft and the occult are about seeking power over people, time and places through mediums and spirits. Yoga teaches people that they are on the road to 'enlightenment' through the self when in fact the only light of the World is Lumen Christi.

Try telling that to Telegraph readers though.

I just got back home from St Mary Magdalen's Catechism Evening. Hoards of the Catholic press were camped outside my front door. Flippin' media! I'm going on that Leveson inquiry next week. Why don't they leave me in peace!?

"Mr England," they said, "give us your thoughts on the Eurozone crisis?!"

Obviously, I replied, "When the Eurozone returns to Our Lady, then Our Lady will return to the Eurozone!" 

Ah, the press lapped it up. Lapped it up, they did.

Could this be the defibrillator that Britain needs?

World Youth Day, Madrid appears to have been an overwhelming success but so was Australia last year and so will be Brazil in 2012, I am sure.

Spain has been languishing in a horrid form of part time Catholicism, pick it up when it suits you but put it down when you want to sin. Aaargh! The sin word but, believe me friends (as they say on the evangelical broadcasts), Spain has been on a downward spiral for many years.

Not so many years ago the Spanish Government actually appointed a Catholic woman, Pilar Salarruliana to head up a parliamentary commission to counteract the phenomenal growth in occult practices that were seen as a threat to the stability of the social and religious framework. I am not sure if this post still exists but in the mid 90s the Spanish Government was forecasting over a million  followers of 'dark cults' by the year 2000. Then they had over 6oo sects including groups such as The Pyramid of Seth and The Black Hand.

The Commission uncovered (among many other scandalous episodes), communities of nuns who worshipped Satan, groups of witches indulging in animal sacrifices and a host more demonic influences goings on.

World Youth Day must have hit hard at such practices and, hopefully, will be a wake-up call for the Spanish people, so why not a WYD for Great Britain?

In the wake of the riots and the growth of secularism and materialism and disobedience in Austria, this must surely be the electric shock that the nation needs to bring it closer to Christ.

The indomitable William Oddie of The Catholic Herald thought that this was a runner in his 2010 article below:-

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2010/10/04/lets-bring-world-youth-day-to-britain/

And Catholic Gadfly (he who posts on what abouts? such as 'what about' having a procession/presentation of scapulars at Mass/Crowning of Our Lady etc). Also believes that a WYD GB is needed. All good 'what abouts' by the way.

So, what about it?  A World Youth Day Great Britain.......  

.....Who is the one to kick the ball into play? Archbishop Nichols? Archbishop Mennini? Wayne Rooney? Paul Smeaton? Joseph Shaw?....A.N. Other?

Is it time to throw in the towel in the war against drugs?

Father Alexander Lucie-Smith thinks so and has written an article to that effect for The Catholic Herald. He states some truths (as one might expect) and they are, in the main, the fact that we are  not winning the war against drugs and many people are dying as a result and that, prohibition doesn't work. No one could argue with those views.

My GP also agrees with him. I don't. Heroin, crack cocaine and even folksy old cannabis all have a lethal effect on the minds and bodies of those that take them.
Up goes the cry: "So does alcohol and smoking cheap cigars" but that is not the case. Alcohol and nicotine are not instantly addictive, indeed, many who consume alcohol never become addicted. Cigarette addiction can be overcome, not easily but I did it so it can't be that hard.

In addition tobacco and alcohol are less harmful in their side effects. Not many alcoholics attack old ladies in order to grab a few pounds in order to buy a bottle of whatever it is they drink.

Fr Lucie-Smith says he believes that legalising drugs would be in line with Catholic Social teaching. Very unsure of that claim. There is not, as far as I can make out, a case for allowing individuals the freedom to ruin their lives and those of their loved ones on the basis that, by allowing such freedom, it would call a halt to the drug cartel murders and tortures.
You see, if we follow the Father's line of thought we should be legalising brothels and letting the abortion clinics get on with their bloody work.
Admittedly, legalising prostitution would put a halt to the activity of pimps and protectors and allow the girls a clear run at earning a crust. And the abortion clinics would be able to cut back on their security regimes, safe in the knowledge that no Catholic is likely to breach the front desk and so on.....except that, it just wouldn't work, especially as far as drugs are concerned.

Firstly, the Government would have to establish discrete centres where addicts could be assessed and prescribed their weekly dosage. You could not allow family surgeries to be overun with wide eyed druggies desperate for their prescription. Security levels would have to be high and the drugs delivered via Securicor. That is going to be costly but then, so is the war against drugs and associated crimes. 
But, being realistic, as soon as addict 'A' has collected their allocation, addicts 'B, C and D' are going to be lurking around the corner waiting to mug him and take his stache. Why? Because they either want more than their weekly allocation or, they can sell the drugs to A N Other who desires more than his fair share.
Then there are the dealers who, in order to supply a market above and beyond the NHS one, dilute cocaine and heroin with dangerous but cheap substances in order to increase their profits and the mortality rate.
And then we have the party goers (the acid party goers) who want something a little bit more hallucinatory than boring old coke and heroin and they want it in pill form so that they may be taken as and when required. Some enterprising person is going to be manufacturing these out of refined run of the mill prescription drugs mixed with a bit of fertiliser or whatever it is that renders it lethal to one in 100 of its consumers.

In short, the drugs trade will carry on, albeit in a changed fashion. People will still die from overdoses or dodgy cocktails, dealers will kill dealers over territorial disputes and robberies and killings aimed at providing extra funds to buy extra drugs will still take place.

At source, in Columbia, Afghanistan and other less than healthy spots, the growers will still grow to order, still be robbed by the cartels who, in turn will rob and murder each other because the supply end of things will not change. It will still be a dog eat dog business, supporting other crimes such as prostitution, slave trafficking and terrorism.

I do not have a solution to the drugs issue other than it should not be beyond the whit of man to curtail drug running into an island nation more than is happening at present. We should also implement an effective drug education programme that starts in the primary school sector and carries on throughout the secondary stage. I do not mean one module each week, I mean one every day - it needs to make an impact.

However, I do know that legalising the chemicals that poison personalities and destroys lives would only be aiding and abetting one being.......the one who loves drugs above all other things on Earth - Satan!