St Helier

16 July is the feast day of St Helier, patron saint of the "capital" of Jersey and of one of the twelve civil parishes on the island.

Helier was a 6th century hermit who came to the island of wandering from what is now Belgium, through Normandy and eventually to the island. On arrival in Jersey Helier settled on a rocky outcrop just offshore that is now called the Hermitage Rock. From this viewpoint he could spot pirates and other ne'er do goods sailing toward the island and warn the people onshore.

Legend has it he was beheaded by pirates on 16 July 555.

If it wasn't pouring down I'd take a picture of l'Hermitage to put up so here is one from Wikipedia instead:

Within you

I thought this was worth sharing.

Bishop Michael Evans - RIP

Bishop Michael Evans of East Anglia passed away on the evening of 11 July. Bishop Evans had been ill with cancer since November 2011. There is a good obituary at A Reluctant Sinner' s blog.

R.I.P.

Oh dear BBC

Models of Theology

This is just too good to resist drawing attention to.

Acts of the Apostasy has a "Various Approaches to Theology" posting today. Some of the gems there are:

• Defeatist theology;
• Personalist theology;
• Spirivaticanical theology (my favourite); and
• Vaginal (gulp) theology.

A good laugh and a serious point in one blog post. Check it out

A God and Church in the image and likeness of Sinead

Oh dear...

In a newspaper column on Sunday, Sinead O’Connor called for the formation of a new Catholic church.

"We need a church that honors the sacraments and does not dictate who God can love or not love," she said.

"If we stick to the sacraments and honor them fully, the rest will follow."

Her comments come after her recent announcement of the end of her third marriage to Steve Cooney (57) after eight months.

The 45-year-old had married her most recent husband on tour in Europe last summer.
The mother of four has often spoke about suffering from bipolar disorder.

Her new album "Home" is set to be released in June. The singer-songwriter is preparing for a tour of the UK in Ireland over the summer months.

Shall we start by honoring (sic) the Sacrament of marriage then Sinead?

Original article available here

And the madness continues

In March I posted that Celtic manager Neil Lennon was Living under intolerable pressure.

This morning brings the frankly unbelievable news that mail bombs have been sent to Lennon, Paul McBride QC (a lawyer used by Celtic FC and Lennon), and Labour politician Trish Godman (a Celtic fan). The story is all over the British media but here's just one link from the BBC.

It's probably worth remembering that Lennon stopped playing for his country because of death threats. He has had several death threats since and has been attacked in the street in Glasgow. In January this year he had bullets sent to him in the post - as did two other Celtic players (both Catholics from the bastard statelet of Northern Ireland).

Why is this happening? Because he is an uppity taig, a fenian who doesn't know his place and challenges the establishment that's why.

It's enough to make you despair.

Where in the world

is St Malachy? Well here's where I was for Mass this afternoon.

Holy Family cathedral basilica, archdiocese of Nairobi.

The Holy Father on modern exegesis

The common practice today is to measure the Bible against the so-called modern worldview, whose fundamental dogma is that God cannot act in history – that everything to do with God is to be relegated to the realm of subjectivity. And so the Bible no longer speaks of God, the living God: no, now WE alone speak and decide what God can do and what WE will and should do. And the Antichrist, with an air of scholarly excellence, tells us that any exegesis that reads the Bible from the perspective of faith in the living God, in order to listen to what God has to say, is fundamentalism; he wants to convince us that only his kind of exegesis, the supposedly purely scientific kind, in which God says nothing and has nothing to say, is able to keep abreast of the times.

Jesus of Nazareth, p 35-36

Friends, readers, detractors

Please pray for the immortal soul of Brian, who died on 14 March 2011.

Absolve, we beseech Thee, O Lord,
the soul of Thy servant Brian,
from every bond of sin,
that being raised in the glory of the resurrection,
he may be refreshed among the Saints and Elect.
Through Christ our Lord.

Amen.