Funeral Arrangements for Fr. Michael Williams

Torch of The Faith News on Wednesday 05 October 2011 - 10:12:10 | by admin

Fr. Michael Williams - 1969 - 2011
(Picture may be used with permission)


Here are the details from the Archdiocese of Liverpool -

On Thursday evening, 6 October, at 7.30 pm  Michael's body will be received at the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King when Mass will be celebrated. The readings at Mass will be those for the Feast of Saint Michael, that is, from the Mass celebrated around his bed on his patronal feast day.  Everyone who would wish to take part in his funeral is encouraged to come to this Mass.

On Friday, 7 October, the Feast of the Holy Rosary, at 12.00 noon at the Church of the Holy Rosary, there will be the Mass preceding his burial. It will be wise to allow this to be for his family, his closer friends and the parishioners of Holy Rosary. The readings for this Mass will be those from the Feast of the Holy Rosary, a devotion which Michael promoted from the heart.

May he rest in peace.

Please continue to pray for Fr. Michael's family and friends.

We will be posting up a more detailed tribute to Fr. Michael in the days ahead.

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A Priest Forever!

Torch of The Faith News on Friday 30 September 2011 - 20:53:30 | by admin

          Fr. Michael Williams 1969 - 2011
                   Requiescat in Pace

      
             (Picture may be used with permission)

Our dear friend Fr. Mike went home to God last night.

We were very blessed to share Fr. Mike's final moments with his family members and other close friends; including a priest friend who provided Fr. Mike with the spiritual assistance of the Church and led us in the Rosary, Divine Mercy Chaplet and other prayers.   

It was a beautiful and holy death.
 

It was also his feast day.

Please pray for the eternal repose of Fr. Michael's immortal soul and pray that the Lord would give strength and comfort to his family and friends.

The Lord has sworn an oath He will not change
'You are a priest forever,
a priest like Melchizedeck of old' (Psalm 109).

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! Please pray for a miracle for Fr. Mike Williams!

Torch of The Faith News on Tuesday 27 September 2011 - 10:02:40 | by admin

(Please ask permission to use this picture)

Regular readers will need no introduction to our close friend Fr. Mike Williams who recently celebrated his 7th year as a priest.

Sadly, Fr. Mike now urgently needs your prayers!

He has fallen unconscious with a lump on his brain and is in critical condition in hospital.

We are asking people to pray for a miracle for his recovery with the help and intercession of Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman, Blessed Pope John Paul II and St. Philomena - Powerful with God.

Please also pray for his family at this time.

Thank you and God bless - Alan and Angeline

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Please Pray for our Shepherds

Torch of The Faith News on Friday 12 August 2011 - 14:38:58 | by admin

The enemy of souls wages a particularly nasty attack against bishops and priests in order to deceive many souls.

Please pray this prayer frequently for our fathers in the Faith-

Heavenly Father,
in these trying times
when the spirit of the age
threatens Christian values,
give our bishops and priests
holiness of life
and wisdom to direct and guide our
(Archdiocesan/diocesan/parish) family,
so that we may grow in your love.
We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

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Pilgrimage to Knock

Torch of The Faith News on Monday 08 August 2011 - 14:19:14 | by admin

We apologise for the break in blogging due to a visit to relatives in Ireland. This trip included the chance to venerate one of St. Pio’s mittens during an annual novena in a local parish and a pilgrimage to the shrine of Knock.
The pilgrimage to Knock gave us a welcome opportunity for spiritual refreshment through attendance at Holy Mass in the old parish church followed by periods of silent prayer in the Apparition Church and the Blessed Sacrament Chapel.

On the 21^st August 1879, fifteen people witnessed the miraculous apparition for two hours in pouring rain, at the south gable of the parish church at Knock. Shortly before the apparition, Archdeacon Cavanagh had completed offering 100 Masses for the Holy Souls whom Our Lady wanted released from Purgatory. 
 
The church has since been extended and a glass-fronted chapel now encloses the original gable to form the Apparition Church.  

It is always a moving experience to be able to touch the stones from the original apparition gable and to pray and intercede at this sacred site.

As Knock is also the location of Human Life International Ireland’s new headquarters, we also enjoyed a visit to their Guadalupe Centre on Main Street.

The centre was opened in 2010 by Dana and HLI Ireland's Executive Director Patrick McCrystal. At the opening, Patrick had explained,

"In the face of the onslaught against the Church, the Gospel, the beauty of human sexuality and all many in Ireland hold dear, ordinary people countrywide feel helpless. We want to provide the tools for the ordinary people to fight back for their Church, for their marriages, for their children and their grandchildren and for the good of our society in general and for the spiritual well being of our country."

We were impressed by the quality of the materials available at the centre and we were heartened to see such special prominence given to Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Regular readers will recall that, when we host our presentations to marriage preparation couples and RCIA groups, we regularly give out copies of Patrick McCrystal's helpful book Who is at the Centre of Your Marriage – The Pill or Jesus Christ?

We were blessed to meet Patrick’s wife Theresa at the Guadalupe Centre and a couple of the staff members. We were made to feel very welcome and were well topped up with tea and biscuits! We were also very grateful to Theresa for providing us excellent DVD’s of the recent Johnette Benkovic weekend which we have reported on in an earlier blog-post.

Patrick and Therese McCrystal with
His Holiness, Pope John Paul II.

On the way back to the bus, we spotted a blue poster in the centre's front window. In light of our own devotion to the Holy Face and the scale of the Culture of Death in England we were greatly encouraged to see this public defence of truth occurring in the spiritual heart of Ireland.

These people are clearly being raised up by the power of the Holy Spirit for these times. Please do keep them and their vital work in your heartfelt prayers.

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Keep Your Eyes Upon Jesus!

Torch of The Faith News on Friday 29 July 2011 - 09:47:18 | by admin

In order to maintain Christian hope and joy, it is imperative that Christians remain immersed in the immense love of the Lord Jesus. For this reason, we are including today a beautiful prayer for married couples to say together each day. It carries an Indulgence of 300 days and we invite all couples to work at praying it together to restore, build, defend and increase the love and unity in their families. The first version is for married couples with children and the second is for married couples who have not been blessed with children.

O Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, king and centre of all hearts, dwell in our hearts and be our King; grant us by Thy grace to love each other truly and chastely, even as Thou hast loved Thine immaculate Bride, the Church, and didst deliver Thyself up for Her. Bestow upon us the mutual love and Christian forbearance that are so acceptable in Thy sight, and a mutual patience in bearing each other’s defects; for we are certain that no living creature is free from them. Permit not the slightest misunderstanding to mar that harmony of spirit which is the foundation of that mutual assistance in the many and varied hardships of life, to provide which woman was created and united inseparably to her husband.

Grant, O Lord God, that between us there may be a constant and holy rivalry in striving to lead a perfect Christian life, by virtue of which the divine image of Thy mystic union with Holy Church, imprinted upon us on the happy day of our marriage, may shine forth more and more clearly. Grant, we beseech Thee, that our good example of Christian living may be a source of inspiration to our children to spur them on to conform their lives also to Thy holy law; and finally, after this exile, may we be found worthy, by the help of Thy grace, for which we earnestly pray, to ascend into Heaven, there to be joined with our children for ever, and to praise and bless Thee through everlasting ages. Amen.

O Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, king and centre of all hearts, dwell in our hearts and be our King; grant us by Thy grace to love each other truly and chastely, even as Thou hast loved Thine immaculate Bride, the Church, and didst deliver Thyself up for Her. Bestow upon us the mutual love and Christian forbearance that are so acceptable in Thy sight, and a mutual patience in bearing each other’s defects; for we are certain that no living creature is free from them. Permit not the slightest misunderstanding to mar that harmony of spirit which is the foundation of that mutual assistance in the many and varied hardships of life, to provide which woman was created and united inseparably to her husband.

Grant, O Lord, that between us there may be a constant and holy rivalry in our efforts to lead a truly Christian life, by virtue of which the divine image of Thy mystic union with Thy Holy Church, which Thou didst deign to impress upon us on the happy day of our marriage, may shine forth more and more clearly; and so living may we, both of us, ascend into Heaven and be found worthy to praise and bless Thee forever. Amen.

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The Unfolding Scale of the British Holocaust

Torch of The Faith News on Thursday 28 July 2011 - 10:39:24 | by admin

In the days prior to the Papal Visit to Britain in 2010, Edmund Adamus, the Director of Pastoral Affairs for the Archdiocese of Westminster, described Britain as the 'geopolitical epicentre of the Culture of Death.'

Although Archbishop Vincent Nichols swiftly distanced himself from such rhetoric, new figures reported today at http://www.lifesitenews.com/ bear devastating witness to the sheer scale of the ongoing British Holocaust.

In addition to the 7 million surgical abortions, commited in the wake of the 1967 Abortion Act, and the untold numbers of chemical abortions caused by the Pill, contraceptive implants/devices and the Morning-After-Pill; LifeSiteNews report that over 1.5 million embryonic children have been destroyed by IVF in Britain since 1991.

In a response to a request made by Lord Alton, the figures were revealed by Lord Howe in his capacity as Britain's Health Minister. 

The breakdown of the figures reveal that over 30 embryos are being created for every one live birth. More than 3.1 million embryos have been created, 1,455,832 of these were 'discarded', 101,605 destroyed through research, leaving 764,311 frozen.

Lord Alton lamented that this 'creation' and killing of embryos is happening on an industrial scale. He also criticized the government for spending large amounts of money on IVF, whilst only 70 babies per year are placed for adoption. And this in a land which kills towards 600 babies per day through surgical abortion alone.

The ripple-effect of all this IVF also increases the sense in our society that human life is a kind of commodity which causes people in general to be reduced to the status of an object that can be used and discarded at will according to the whims of the present moment. And marriage, that bedrock of all truly human culture, is undermined on a grave scale when the conception of babies is sundered from the natural and unitive marriage act.

In short, love is replaced by efficiency, mechanization and misused technology.

Clearly British Catholics must make prayers and penances in reparation for this dramatic holocaust of the innocent.

Our Lady of Guadalupe - Pray for us!

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Overcoming the Contraceptive Mentality with Charity

Torch of The Faith News on Wednesday 27 July 2011 - 11:12:06 | by admin

Michael Voris also hit the nail squarely on the head in another recent video which discusses the contraceptive mentality and its effects on the Church and society.
He recalled that the widespread practice of contraception paved the way for the general acceptance of abortion, divorce, embryonic stem cell research and homosexual activity; all of which make contraception seem to be the destined nail in the coffin for the Church in the West.

Voris states,

The refusal to teach about contraception in any substantive manner by the bishops, the on-the-ground dismissal of the teaching by the hoards of priests in the parishes, the resulting widespread acceptance of it by the laity; all of this has brought down the entire house. With rare exception here and there, almost nothing is left.

Nevertheless, on our travels to present authentic catechesis on marriage, to young people, engaged couples and RCIA groups, we do discern some very positive signs of hope at times.

For example, we have met some very good priests who are commited to providing a strong formation to the lay people in their care and we have also encountered numbers of people wanting to embrace the full teachings of the Church with sincerity, once these have been explained to them with clarity and with charity.

These people seem to fall into two main groups; older people seeking to join the Church having recently been touched by grace with a deep love of the truth and young people who have grown up in a nihilistic and sex-saturated society and are now keen to learn more of the beauty about human love in the Divine plan.

In one place, where we experienced resistance from some older dissenting Catholics (who rolled their eyes at the mere mention of Natural Family Planning), we were greatly heartened to meet a young couple who had quite recently been converted together and were on fire with love for God and the desire to share the Church’s vision for marriage with other young people. Their love for Jesus Christ and His gift of chastity was attractive and compelling, with much more to offer to their young generation than the hardness of heart expressed by those who perhaps should have known better.  

Our catechetical sessions on Marriage are rooted in the harmony of
Scripture and Tradition, Grace and Nature, Faith and Reason, Doctrine and Experience.
Book us today for your parish or prayer group.

Please pray for the protection and growth of this work for the salvation of souls and the defence of Christian culture.

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On Persecution

Torch of The Faith News on Tuesday 26 July 2011 - 14:01:30 | by admin

The Catholic speaker Michael Voris sounded a clear warning recently in one of his internet video postings.

Michael Voris of
RealCatholicTV's
The Vortex

He cautioned: ‘When the Faith is weakened to such a point that a majority of Catholics willingly surrender it... then history tells us that persecution isn’t that far behind.’

His words have special resonance for Catholics here in England, where to quote the great Eric Hester, it seems that, ‘every kind of dissent is permitted, encouraged and, indeed, financed out of money of the collections of the faithful, but fidelity to the teaching of the Church is clamped down on.’

(Hat/tip to James Preece at http://www.lovingit.co.uk/).

The result of this loss of the true Faith is witnessed very clearly in our own Archdiocese, where public dissenters from the Magisterium, such as the American Bill Huebsch, continue to lead study days for priests and parish catechists whilst parishes and schools close down with depressing regularity, having spiritually and physically contracepted themselves out of existence.

Of course, this is not unique to Liverpool and the same basic situation can be observed in countless dioceses all across the Western hemisphere. And as more and more of the remaining Catholics accommodate their beliefs and lifestyles to the prevailing zeitgeist, rebelling against the moral teachings of the Church and abandoning the Sacraments and prayer, the culture itself becomes increasingly hostile to Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church which He founded and indeed towards believing Christians in general. This is a situation which suggests enormous challenges are ahead for those hoping to remain faithful to Jesus Christ through His gift of grace.

In addition to the attempted redefinition of human sexuality, the deconstruction of the family and the systematic removal of free speech on these issues, the recent calls from elements in the Irish and Australian governments for new laws to harangue priests in the sacred confessional are sure to be echoed elsewhere.

Irish Taoiseach, Enda Kenny

And only last month, Christians in America were distressed to learn that federal officials at the Houston National Cemetery were banning all references to God and Jesus Christ.

This brings us to discuss issues surrounding the horrific and senseless violence in Oslo last week which was condemned by the Holy Father in his call for people to pray for the dead, the wounded and their loved ones and to renounce hatred in the face of such deep sorrow.

Anders Breivik

The mainstream media outlets have been consistently stating that Anders Breivik was a ‘Christian conservative’ based on information taken from his Facebook profile page. This had been encouraged, when deputy police chief Roger Andresen told reporters that Breivik’s website contained information that was, ‘so to speak, Christian fundamentalist’.  Paul Joseph Watson, an English researcher for the American www.infowars.com, has pointed out that the original Norwegian Facebook page was deleted minutes after Breivik’s identity became public.

Thankfully, this original version has been saved and pasted up at http://www.prisonplanet.com/anders-behring-breivik-manufacturing-a-patsy.html . This link provides viewers the opportunity to compare the first Facebook profile with the updated English version which subsequently replaced it.

As Paul Watson explains,

Several things have been doctored up to alter the suspect’s political views. First a section titled “Philosophy” has been added to include “Christian,” and “Conservative.” The media has used this to great lengths…  It seems as if there are two Breivik’s, the original, a socially liberal, pro-Israel neo-con, and the second post-massacre profile of a Christian conservative, white supremacist. The second profile has clearly been embellished to push the notion that Breivik’s rampage was driven by his Christian conservative beliefs.

You might want to inform people of this, to prevent them from buying into the increasing demonization of Christians.

These unfolding events call to mind the famous words of Tertullian, who witnessed the unjust persecution of Catholics in the early Church, If the Tiber reaches the walls, if the Nile does not rise to the fields, if the sky does not move or the earth does, if there is famine, if there is plague, they cry at once, ‘The Christians to the lions!’ (Apology 40.2).  

Clearly the situation at hand is very grave. This does not mean that Christians should panic or become depressed. Rather, it is a wake-up call to become more aware of unfolding realities and to use this time prudently in order to grow in union with Jesus through developing a deeper interior life of prayer with Him. Praying the Rosary as a family is highly recommended as a key means to grow in Faith, Hope and Charity. 

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The Burning Love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Torch of The Faith News on Friday 22 July 2011 - 11:40:16 | by admin

Today is the feast of St. Mary Magdalene.

It is also the day on which St. Margaret Mary was born at L'Hautecour, France in 1647.

The Lord Jesus Christ revealing
His burning love for all mankind
to St. Margaret Mary.

As we celebrate these two great women, who received and responded so strongly to the love of Jesus Christ, it seems approprite to reflect today on some most consoling words from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, regarding the Sacred Heart of the Incarnate Word.

Jesus knew and loved each and all during His life, His agony, and His Passion and gave Himself up for each one of us: 'The Son of God... loved me and gave Himself for me' (Gal 2:20). He has loved us all with a human heart. For this reason, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced by our sins and for our salvation (John 19:34), is 'quite rightly considered the chief sign and symbol of that... love with which the divine Redeemer continually loves the eternal Father and all human beings' without exception (Pius XII: Haurietis aquas 1956) CCC 478.

... and all human beings without exception.

Let us accept His love today, take hold of His outstretched hand with sincere repentance; truly confessing our sins and making a renewed effort to respond to Him as He lifts us from our misery into His peace by His unfathomable Divine Mercy.   

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