News Item: : Christmas in Post-Modern Britain
(Category: Torch of The Faith News)
Posted by admin
Thursday 22 December 2016 - 12:35:29

The blasphemously offensive ''LGBT decorations'' which are sadly being sold in the UK for £13 this Christmas.

During his Christmas message in 2013, Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury warned that, without a commitment to re-evangelization, Christianity could die out in the British Isles within just one generation.

This is particularly sobering when one reflects on the Catholic origins of our civilization: careful scholars of British history observe that the work of St. Augustine's 6th-Century mission, in drawing the Angles and Saxons into the unity and obedience of the Catholic Faith, was a key factor in the emergence of a people known collectively as the Angli.

Or the English, to you and I.

And yet, one only has to look about to see many families that were once raised as devout Christians sliding into indifference and even outright neo-paganism in these times.

Last Christmas we lamented the fact that the Christmas edition of our local free paper featured letters from people arguing that religion should be kept out of the public sphere to avoid hurting the feelings of ''good moral secularists''.

We also expressed our concerns in the light of the fact that Baroness Butler Sloss had only recently announced the conclusions from the Orwellian-sounding Commission on Religion and Belief in Public Life. During December 2015, this two-year commission of enquiry suggested that Britain is no longer a Christian country; and thus called for British public life to be systematically de-Christianized. Whilst the executive-director of the National Secular Society complained that the report did not go far enough (!), elements of its contents were warmly welcomed by the senior-rabbi of Liberal Judaism and the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain...

Fast-forward to Advent 2016 and three disturbing news stories have emerged this week, which further illustrate this rapidly advancing trend of de-Christianization.

1. Blasphemous ''LGBT decorations''      

Another example of the blasphemous ''LGBT decorations'' which were designed in California and are now being sold in the UK.

England's Premier Christian Radio has reported on these blasphemous ''LGBT decorations'' which are being sold by Zazzle in the UK for £13 a set. As Christian Concern's excellent Andrea Williams explained in an interview with Premier: ''The idea of putting a Joseph and a Joseph with the baby Jesus, or a Mary with a Mary is blasphemous''.

Thankfully, the amount of Christian backlash to these blasphemous mockeries of Our Blessed Lady, holy St. Joseph and Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, has been sufficient to make Zazzle ''consider'' removing them from sale.

However, that organization makes no apology for the offensive blasphemy. Instead, in a truly secularist fashion, they suggest that, if the offending items were to be removed from sale, it would be done ''out of respect for fellow human beings''.

Ironically, in a society which has forgotten that it was Catholic Christendom which provided the fertile soil for authentic human rights and duties to develop, Zazzle's approach is taken as a form of moral high-ground...

We are grateful to Christian Concern and Premier Christian Radio for speaking out so clearly on this serious issue. At the same time, we must ask: why are the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales leaving it to the evangelicals to speak out (again)?

2. A New ''LGBT-friendly'' Oath of Allegiance to the State?!!!

Over at EWTN GB, Deacon Nick Donnelly has highlighted the dangerous fact that the UK Government is considering whether or not to impose a new ''Oath of Allegiance to British Values'' on all state employees.

Now, given the influx into these small isles of so many Muslims and various people from other cultural backgrounds - Tradition in Action suggests that the UK registered 3.2 legal immigrants, 500,000 illegal immigrants and 117,000 refugees in 2015 - the requirement to sign up to British values could potentially be a good thing.

However, that all rather depends on who is defining those British values these days...

Indeed, Deacon Donnelly warns that the British Government is considering a legal imposition for state employees to sign up to ''secularist values''.

How about this comment from Dame Louise Carey as a troubling bit of evidence for that: ''Regressive attitudes. While many people in the UK appear to be seeing religion as increasingly less important and, in some cases, less of a force for good, for others, religion is very important in their daily lives. Within this latter group there appear to be some who are keen to take religion backwards and away from 21st-Century British values and laws on issues such as gender equality and sexual orientation; creating segregation and pulling communities apart.''

This called to my mind G.K. Chesterton's witty remark that, when secularists accuse us of belonging to the Middle Ages, it is good form to take that as a compliment!

Note once again, though, the pattern of ''creating the problem'' and ''providing the pre-planned solution''. In this case, the ''solution'' appears to be the imposition of an ''Oath of Allegiance'' to be required of all elected officials, civil servants, council workers and possibly staff of the BBC and even the National Health Service (NHS).

Hey, job prospects just get better all the time for orthodox Catholics in the UK. Not...

Of course, Catholics in this country have been here before, in light of King Henry VIII's disgusting Oath of Supremacy which led to the martyrdom of great saints like Ss John Fisher and Thomas More, the persecution of thousands, and the social exclusion of faithful Catholic families for many generations to come.

As Deacon Donnelly reflects in his EWTN GB article: ''If Teresa May's government goes ahead and frames an Oath of Allegiance to British Values that contradicts the Catholic Church's doctrines on marriage and sexuality then Catholics would again be persecuted in the United Kingdom.''

3. Catholic Priest in our Archdiocese Raided at Gun-Point

Please say a prayer for the parish priest of St. Vincent de Paul church out in Parr, to the east of St. Helens.

At 6:25pm Father answered the door of his presbytery to be ''greeted'' by three men, one of whom has been reported to have been armed with a handgun. The three robbers forced the priest to empty the safe at St. Vincent de Paul church and hand over the cash. The monies in that safe had been collected for an orphanage.

The fact that an act like this can happen just days before Christmas, and in a town with such a deeply Catholic history as St. Helens, demonstrates just how far our country has fallen into a state of post-Christian desuetude.

It seems the police have caught a couple of these men and are now holding them for questioning.

Please pray: that these men will receive the grace of sincere repentance this Christmas; for the priest who has been left understandably shaken by the incident; and for other priests that we know who often feel anxious at this time of year when there are Christmas collections, dark evenings and unknown visitors. 

On a Happier Note

This being the run up to Christmas, we wanted to end today with a more upbeat conclusion.

Last Christmas, I celebrated the fact that the local council of the town where I grew up had continued their long tradition of erecting a large roadside Christmas nativity scene next to one of the biggest road-junctions in the area. I was particularly thankful to see this still happening in days when Christian culture is in retreat in so many places.

When we were kids in the 70's, Mum used to take us to see this crib-scene, and to look at the baby Jesus in the manger, during the Christmas holidays from school. In the 1990's, I remember the late Canon Michael Culhane leading public Rosaries of witness there, with parishioners from English Martyrs church in Litherland.

Anyway, it is great to see the public nativity scene is there again this year. This is nothing short of amazing in the present cultural climate. We express our thanks here to Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council and any other agencies involved.

Let us all do our best to Keep Christ in Christmas! 

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This news item is from Torch of The Faith
( http://www.torchofthefaith.com/news.php?extend.1503 )