A poem by John Medlin

Some readers may know of John Medlin who used to be the General Manager of the Latin Mass Society and editor of their magazine, ‘Mass of Ages.’ Since retiring from the LMS he has devoted some of his time to his great love for poetry. His work can be seen on his poetry blog www.medlin-the-writer.blogspot.co.uk All of his work is influenced by his commitment to religion and a good number of his poems reflect specific Christian commitment (i.e. Catholic!)

   His recent poem, ‘The Anthropological Turn,’ is a timely dissection of how we arrived at our current horror of “the dictatorship of relativism” and proposes the heroism of St Damien of Molokai (the leper priest) as a corrective. It can also be read on his poetry blog here

   The term “the anthropological turn” was used by Catholic thinkers, such as the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, to describe the revolution in thinking in the 1960s (at least in the West) which put man rather than God at the centre of all things.

 

THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL TURN          

A fist of lightning sunders the packed cloud

On Sinai’s peak; thunder engulfs the slopes;

Moses, exultant with the Tables, browed

With light, descends to mould men’s fears and hopes:

Moral truth is given and hence endowed

Is beauty – golden cherubim and tropes

Adorn the Ark. A proud propitiating

People is created, lacking but one thing.

The Nazarene, transfixed with the Divine,

On Shabbat day completes the Torah’s lack:

“Stretch forth thy hand” – a flesh-transcending sign            

Is given, pity more flagrant than God’s back

Seen by Moses in the cloud. Like sweet-scent wine

Compassion infuses dogs-in-a-pack

Humanity, and though men riot like fools

Their wounds are bound by hospitallers and schools.

Later, the harmonic circle is smashed:

Vaunting men, in love with experiment,

Scrub Revelation’s face until it’s washed

Raw. Diderot’s book swells to a testament,

Newton by the sea of knowledge is splashed,           

Paine’s pot of rights boils to a sacrament;

Hume demands freedom to die in his sins;

In France the clash of guillotines begins.

The wheel turns. A Sixties scientist re-presents

The fruit; Eve swallows and fecundity

Is balked. Man centres self and the ornaments

Of being are smashed in a futility

Of drugged desires. Harsh New Age hierophants

Propose fault-free fulfilment and absurdity                          

Is raised a god. Two thousand years of symbols

Are overthrown by dancers beating timbrels.

Destruction triumphs. Pornography swamps

The internet; man’s primal itch inflamed,

Aggression surges and motel room romps                             

Turn rapes. Enthused, unnatural rights are named –

Gay marriage, gender choice – what tawdry pomps!

Careerist women have the boardroom tamed;                       

Children are objects, abortion’s in demand:

Moloch counts dollars with a blood-stained hand.                

Saint Damien sweats in Hawaii’s heat,

Dressing ulcers, digging graves. The leper priest,

In the eternal wrapt, with bandaged feet,

Scarred face and dragging legs, dies for the least

Of his charges. There’s no despair, nor bleat

Of woe, instead a pure-eyed grasp of the feast

Of being. Fulfilment’s not in drugs or vice

But in hands gone leprous in sacrifice.

====================

© April 2013 Revised June 2016

Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour review

"Where are the Protests?"

Exploitive scene from the play
Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour

That was the question asked by one of our members and Prayer Crusader under the patronage of St Anthony of Padua when he saw posters advertising a nasty little play called "Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour" in Liverpool. I did some research and it looks as appalling as the title suggest. It is a play about Scottish Catholic schools girls and their exploits in areas of drink sex and death.

Here are some quotes from a review in the Chronicle Live, North East based on line news app.

The Billy Elliot author has called it “Trainspotting for girls” and likened it to his own Cooking for Elvis.

Anyone familiar with that early play will recall its stand-out sex act as a crude but funny surprise.

Here the crudity is more of an onslaught and may offend some, not only Catholics. A description of a sexual encounter in a hospital was too much for me.

I’m pretty sure the girls weren’t quite as bad as this when I was at school. And it was a rough school.

The play is obviously pandering to the perverse, has nothing to do with Catholicism and has probably more to do with the authors own fantasies than real life. It is exploitive in its very nature and to portray young girls this way when there has been so much child abuse and exploitation by so many in media is discussing in its own right. It should go far in the secular media's sex filled world. As the reviewer put it "Sex is the rocket fuel that powers this latest play by Lee Hall."

The question asked was where are the protest, yes indeed where are they have we been so badly brow-beaten by the media that we Catholics who should so something now feel so helpless?

This is one of the blasphemies against the Immaculate of Mary and for which we are called to make reparation.

to see full review . http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/whats-on/arts-culture-news/ladies-perpetual-succour-review-lee-10178663

BBC Woman's Hour arrogance towards Poland's laws

Re: BBC Woman's Hour – irresponsible support for pro-abortion activists in Poland

On 9^th May, Woman's Hour included a 10-minute discussion about the availability of abortion in Poland, and in particular about attempts to make it more readily available by distributing the abortion pill, RU 486, via a drone which was launched in Germany and crossed the border into Polish air space. This action was taken by “Women on Waves”, an organisation which has previously provided abortions to women from countries where abortion is legally restricted, by taking the women to a boat in international waters and performing the abortions there. A “Women on Waves” representative was one of the two interviewees taking part in the Woman's Hour discussion; the other was a “pro-choice” (i.e. pro-abortion) woman from Poland.

Link to the discussion: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b079m0gk

RU 486 is not the “morning after pill” which prevents a pregnancy from being established, but a succession of two doses of hormonal medication designed to be taken during the early stages of pregnancy. The first dose disrupts the nourishment provided by the mother's body to the foetus, so that the foetus dies. The second dose, taken a few days later, causes birth-type contractions of the uterus so that the dead foetus is expelled. This is called a “medical abortion” and is intended to be used only in the early stages of pregnancy, the “first trimester”, from conception to about 3 months (12 weeks). In later stages of pregnancy, abortion is carried out by surgery (“surgical abortion”).  

Listening to this programme (not as it was broadcast, but a few days later) I became concerned about three issues.

Firstly, accuracy.

One of the interviewees stated that a “medical abortion” is no more dangerous than a spontaneous miscarriage, at least in women who are 4 to 10 weeks pregnant. This assertion was not challenged by the interviewer.

However, the Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research (January 2015) has reported on a study carried out over 12 months between 2013 and 2014 on a group of women in India who had self-medicated with RU 486 (available to them over the counter) without medical oversight. Nearly three-quarters of the group had taken the pill before 63 days (9 weeks) of pregnancy; nevertheless, there was a high proportion of complications, and more than 50% of the group had required post-treatment surgery, in some cases including treatment for sepsis, and in some cases requiring blood transfusions. The researchers concluded that “unsupervised medical abortion can lead to increased maternal morbidity and mortality. Strict legislation is required to monitor and also restrict the sales of abortion pills over the counter”.

Wikipedia quotes a scholarly article “Diagnosis and management of miscarriage” from The Practitioner of May 2014, which states that most miscarriages will complete without additional interventions. So medical abortions clearly are far more dangerous than spontaneous miscarriages.

Secondly, social responsibility. There seemed to be implicit approval by the BBC's interviewer of the action of the “Women on Waves” in sending the drone into Poland, although this action apparently distributed potentially dangerous medication with no safeguards whatsoever. High doses of hormones in pill form were dropped randomly with no guarantee that they would not be picked up by children, or would not be used by women into the second or even third trimester of pregnancy, when complications would be more likely and more serious. Nor was there any attempt to warn women of possible adverse effects of using the medication. In the UK, medical abortion is provided only under the guidance of a doctor, and the abortion itself is medically supervised so that any complications can be immediately diagnosed and treated.  Does the BBC think that UK legislation is unnecessarily protective of women, I wonder?

  

Thirdly, bias. Two women were interviewed, both “pro-choice”, and their underlying assumptions were not challenged by the interviewer, still less by any pro-life interviewee who would surely not have been hard to find. The BBC's charter requires that programmes should demonstrate a balance between opposing points of view in contentious cases such as this one. What is the point of having a charter if its requirements are ignored? I have had occasion to write to the BBC before on “life” issues, specifically about its documentaries relating to assisted suicide, in which a similar bias was shown,  running completely counter to its charter.

By the Prayer Crusader under the patronage of St. Teresa of Avila

CUT - Please let them know what you think, BBC complaints http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/

Postal address:

BBC Complaints
PO Box 1922
Darlington
DL3 0UR

Hollywood and gender bending

The Darkness of Hollywood

Deadpool Pansexual Superhero

I have always visited the cinema; I am interested in film as I am in TV. Hollywood and film in general has often had its bad and black moments. But at the moment I sometimes feel it is going through one of its darkest times.  I recently walked out of the cinema during a showing of the "Hateful Eight" film, I don't know why I thought I could watch it, what I actually wanted was to see the results of a film shot in Panavision Super 70mm, and see how this camera handles the vast Wyoming landscapes, how much detail it captures in the shadows etc. However, following pretty impressive opening and establishing sequences it went downhill fast. The human eye of God’s creation still is a far superior camera.

                Another dark trait in modern film making is gender ideology and all things relating to same-sex attraction. Being male or female is very straightforward, you are in fact either one or the other; this is determined at conception by your chromosomes: - you are either XX female or XY male. That some people feel they are not the sex of their body is more to do with social conditioning rather than science. Again the media, the TV and film are doing their best to confuse people, but there is a simple word for this state and it is perversion - a perversion of God's creation - and films out at the moment are doing their best to corrupt people, films like Carol: same-sex attraction between an older woman and a young woman, The Danish Girl about sex-change surgery and gender "change". Then there is the Deadpool a Pansexual superhero, now he will have sex with anyone and anything, but superheroes are for kids, are they not? The trailer to this move has received standing ovations! Western culture is in serious trouble. Now there is news that the next Star Wars film will have a strong homosexual content. If they do film part of it on Skellig Michal off the Irish coast, I don't think our patron will be happy about it. St Michael the Archangel pray for us in our hour of battle.

Here is part of an article from Life Site News, it states what we have always known at CUT, that Homosexuals and other perverts have control of Hollywood and indeed most of the Main Stream Media.

LGBTQ activists tell Hollywood: ‘Our strategy is you: The entertainment industry’

Fr. Mark Hodges 

An image from "The Danish Girl," just one of several recent big-budget

Hollywood films positively portraying transgenderism.

The Danish Girl screenshot from Life Site News

                                                          

LOS ANGELES, April 5, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) -- The 27th Annual Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) Media Awards took place at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles on Saturday.
At the awards ceremony, gay activists admitted that their strategy to influence the American people toward acceptance of homosexuality was through the media of television, movies, and mainstream news.
Oscar winner Patricia Arquette introduced GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis, who, now that the acceptance of homosexuality is nearly universal in American culture, could with candor explain, "With over 100 anti-LGBT bills in state and local levels, our strategy is you: The entertainment industry."

Mother Angelica our tribute

Our Tribute to Mother Angelica

Mother Angelica RIP - Photo EWTN

Mother Angelica and her Miraculous TV station EWTN

There have been a number of miracles surrounding Mother Angelica during her life as a nun. Recently I met someone from EWTN and he related this true story to me

He told me that when Mother Angelica was just starting up EWTN she had some huge satellite dishes delivered but she had no money to pay for them. She asked the truck driver to unload the satellite dishes and she would send the money on as soon as she found it. Mother was of course profoundly confident that she would find the money. However, the truck driver said “look Mother I have strict orders that these need to be paid-for”, he wanted $50,000 before he would unload them or he would take them back.

Mother Angelica desperately wanted these dishes so that she could start to transmit her programmes. So she tried very hard to persuade the driver to leave them but with no luck. The truck driver still said no. She asked him wait for a little while she went into the chapel to pray. The truck driver said Ok (he probably thought that he could do with a break).

After praying for half an hour or so there was still no answer and no plan came into her head so she went out again to have another go at persuading the driver; Mother never gives up! She starting to talk to the driver again, – just then one of the sisters came running out saying that mother was wanted on the phone. Mother said she can’t come to the phone now, this is just too important.

So the sister ran back to the phone to ask the caller to call back, but the caller said he would hang on. The sister came out to Mother Angelica again saying the man is hanging on and he is ringing from a yacht in the Caribbean. So Mother pleads with the driver to wait for a few minutes hoping to come back and continue with her efforts to persuade him.

The man on the phone was a Catholic multi-millionaire who was impressed by some of Mother’s booklets or literature, and he wanted to make a donation to Mother’s work and that of the sisters. Mother Angelica said you don’t happen to have $50,000 do you? The Millionaire said yes when do you want it? Mother said you couldn’t transfer it now could you? You see I have these satellite dishes in a truck outside and the man won’t leave them until he’s paid. The millionaire said: Sure, I will get on to my bank right away.  Mother goes back out to the truck driver, tells him she has the money and where should she transfer it; the driver gives her the instructions. Mother Angelica gives them to the millionaire. The truck driver then gets onto his headquarters and finds that everything’s paid for.  He is stunned, and unloads the dishes.

This is a true story, just shows the power of prayer.

Prayer Crusader under the patronage of St Philomena and Bl Dominic Barberi 

Have a peaceful Easter Nicky Campbell

A Happy Peaceful and Prayerful Easter To all members of CUT the Prayer Crusade and people of good will

First some very good news for this Easter for everyone who has switched off the TV and no longer pays the licence fee. More and more people are throwing out the TV and they are not even bothering to catch up on-line. See Telegraph no TV report

I guess they, like the rest of us are sick and tired of the bigotry, the bias the pro-abortion and pro-homosexual/gender ideology everything nonsense which  the Corporation spews out on a daily basis.

The BBC licence fee of course also pays for BBC Radio and the more I listen to it the more  sickening it becomes. Today Radio 5s agenda of ultra-liberal bias was sadly evident again.

Cornwall County Council bullied by BBC Radio and a pop Star

Über-"Liberal" and arch bully of

Radio 5 (in our opinion)
Nicky Campbell
photo wikipedia

A noisy pop group has been ordered by Cornwall County Council to keep the noise down below 40 decibels when practicing in their father's garage. A neighbour had complained to the council and under an Environmental and Health act, and the group were asked to keep the noise down. Fair enough you may say?  Not when the BBC is involved. Anyone who has had the misfortune to suffer because of noisy selfish neighbours would applaud Cornwall County Council, but not the father of a member of the group who wrote to a pop star Dave Grohl of the Rock group The Foo Fighters. Whose lyrics encourage youngsters to play this loud music in their garages. Grohl wrote to Cornwall County Council on the group's behalf (no thought of course about the poor neighbour who's been driven to despair by the noise). The BBC got hold of the story and naturally took the side of the noisy group. 

This morning 24/03/2016 I heard the awful Nicky Campbell interview the band and their father on BBC Radio 5's breakfast show. There was no thought for those who suffer from this type of selfish and arrogant behaviour, just pressure on Cornwall to provide facilities for Rock groups to practice. The father of a group member said that they don't have anything to do on the Lizard peninsula - nothing to do! They live in one of the most beautiful parts of the Country, surrounded by wonderful countryside and sea.

So the band need a place to practice? Ok let the Foo Fighters fund a sound proof practice room, this should not be a case where Cornwall Council fund on the council tax places where noisy bands should play.

News from Ireland

The post below was written before the Irish election, when there was a Fine Gael-Labour coalition. Its interesting to note that despite the successful recovery of the Irish economy (not for all granted) the coalition which oversaw it is struggling to form a government could it be that despite all the crowing by the liberals over same-sex marriage and abortion there are still nearly half of the Irish people who reject it. As for the Labour party who pushed the hardest for these liberal reforms, their vote has collapsed from 30 seats to 7. There's still a lot of fight left in faithful Irish Catholics. Be interesting to hear what our Prayer Crusader with St Rita thinks about this?

No more Newstalk!

          Sometime ago I decided I wasn’t going to listen to Newstalk ever again unless there is a complete overhaul in the place and that seems unlikely. The reason for this is its promotion of abortion among other things. The first instance was on the Pat Kenny show; he was interviewing some woman who worked or had worked in the abortion mills doing late term abortions. No challenging of her but rather treating her like a saint, someone who was providing a useful necessary service to society. The last straw came when on the George Hook programme ‘the right hook’ (he can be sometimes sympathetic to the Catholic church e.g. he wanted the Angelus to be kept broadcast, but this time he was way off the mark) he was interviewing the minister for health Leo Varadkar. He was asking him questions about ‘fatal fetal abnormality’  (a spurious term put out by pro abortionists as there is no concrete proof that they are fatal and many babies do live). He said to Varadkar: ‘I know that you are pro life’, - this after Varadkar had voted to legalise abortion up until birth in cases where the woman is suicidal. It’s one thing to be pro abortion but to pat him on the back and call him pro-life is a double insult. So ended my listernership to Newstalk, until, Christmas morning while I was driving along, I turned on the radio and hit the wrong button by mistake and turned on Newstalk. Sure enough there was a programme talking about the festival of Christmas and seeking to undermine it by saying that the festivity existed long before Christ was born, when they celebrated the gatherings of the harvest and the church took over this festival with Christmas. I turned off and haven’t listened since and haven’t looked back. So no more reporting of them unless I hear it from another source.

          RTE continues its programme of de-Christianisation: an incremental type of ethnic cleansing, a purging of the airwaves of Catholicity. This time it’s the removal from its classical music station, RTE Lyric FM, of the programme, ‘Gloria’. It was on Sunday mornings, 7am to 10am; it featured music such as Gregorian chant, the Palestrina choir and other great classical religious music for three hours. It’s not that the programme wasn’t popular or the music not beautiful, it’s just that it was Catholic so therefore had to go. These actions are the fare of brutal communist states.

Enda Kenny

Irish Taoiseach (PM)

Image The Journal

their poll says 73%

are not happy for him to

continue as the country's leader. 

            You may have heard that here in Ireland we are nearing the end of an election campaign. Fri 26^th is polling day. The polls are suggesting a hung Dail. The situation is that even if the two top parties join together they may not have enough to form a government. It would be the equivalent of Labour and Tories joining together and being barely able to govern. None of the political pundits are able to forecast what type of government will take power. People are so disenchanted with politicians. So it’s going to be interesting to see what is going to happen.

             From the debacle of abortion legislation in 2013: some td’s were kicked out of the Government for opposing the introduction of abortion, one of whom was Junior minister Lucinda Creighton. She has set up a new party called Renua. Besides being against abortion she also wants to abolish the TV licence. She follows the privatisation path and (this is my guess) most likely it’s because she thinks RTE should raise its own revenue. However, one of her downsides is she supported the ‘homosexual marriage’ referendum. She at one time supported abortion and changed her views on it; maybe on reflection she will come to see the errors of sodomy and its ill consequences for society.

              The UK too will have a referendum soon. It’s interesting to note the split in the tory party over the issue. Ireland this year will celebrate 100 years of the war of independence from the English. It’s ironic that 100 years later England now is deciding on its independence from Europe. There is a prophecy by some saint, possibly saint Malachy, which states that ‘A week of centuries after Ireland has been under English rule England will enter is own civil war.’ (It’s about 700 years thereabouts since England conquered Ireland.)  Whatever the troubles in England at the moment, in the end Our Lady’s immaculate heart will triumph.

                    So for the moment God bless

By the Prayer Crusader under the patronage of St Rita, Dublin.