Up-Date From Ireland - Part two

 

RTE upsets Catholic Ireland (again)

Part Two

                    Presenter Ryan Tubridy has dominated the printed media and other media outlets. It has been said if a story is on the front pages for nine days in a row, it sticks. For example, if a minister or some high profile person is in the main news for nine days on the trot, it can usually result in them resigning from their post. This situation has been on the headlines of every single national newspaper for nine days on the trot. This is the tenth day, and on the headlines of all newspapers, save one, leading with a budget coming up. It has trumped every other consideration or event. In five newspapers on Sunday morning, there are 50 stories relating to the RTE/Tubridy affair. Twelfth day now, and it is still the headline in all the newspapers. For another anomaly of this saga I was somewhat bemused to see a photograph on the front page of the Irish Times of the RTE staff out protesting outside of RTE’s studios. They held banners stating things such as ‘truth matters,’ etc.; I was wondering if they had gone to the Pro-life office and asked them for a loan of their banners, they would be useful for the day. 

The Politicians, too, are wagging their fingers. With elections looming in the not too distant horizon they have to be seen to be doing something given that RTE receives taxpayers money. Plus, its good for the image to be seen speaking tough on something on which they know they have the wind at their back (they're so brave, these Irish politicians), though they have to thread someone lightly as it's the media, especially who have given them their oxygen of publicity and most likely enabled them to be where they are. There is no mention of the oversight the government should have had in how RTE handled its financial affairs, as the taxpayers fund about 50% of its revenue. So, many of RTE's management and presenters and their managers will be hauled before the Oireachtas Committee on Finance (somewhat similar to the Parliamentary Committee on Finance). There is also the possibility of a Garda inquiry as the top managers had their slush fund to enable them to go to the top sporting events, etc. Other issues are coming to light as well.  You may accuse me of gloating and being gleeful; well, you would be right. Or maybe another way of putting it, I'm glad that everything that has been covered is now being uncovered, and I'm hoping that justice will be done. However, I don't think my 'gloating' is on a firm basis if I'm hoping for effective results, that is. What do I mean by effective results, that RTE and staff would see Christianity as part of the Irish Heritage, even their own heritage? Basically, they would get right with Jesus, and if not at least, have respect for  Christian values and those who profess them. A hard ask given that media sees sensation as their bread and butter. How things have turned that they are providing the sensation at the moment. Those whose task it is but the Politicans and RTE are part of the same circle. Even Conor Mc Gregor has come out and called the rte set, posh yahoos and Irish politicians lizards. He may have  a point.

                              It’s even possible that things could go from bad to worse. Its claimed that 15% of people don’t pay the licence fee. I don’t know where they got that 15%,  is it 15% of the whole population over 18 or 15% of households. Also a poll done by one newspaper arrived at a figure of 30% of people saying they will not pay their tv licence. They are assuming that everyone is glued to RTE and those not paying Ryan Tubridy’s  hidden bonanza oh er sorry tv licence are getting a free ride on the backs of the compliant television licence fee paying cohort, so it has been speculated that they will bring in a compulsory household broadcasting charge,  just another step to bring in their totalitarian agenda.

                   The biggest anomaly to me in all this is that a nation is up in arms, politicians and the media over 375,000 euros paid covertly to a presenter. These politicians and jounalists who have spared no effort using every subterfuge to have abortion introduced into Ireland hoodwinking the citizens with spurious arguments to have the people vote for the barbaric murder of young children while still in their mothers wombs are worked up over 375,000 euros. 31,000 young babies murdered by the death squads of the political and media class since the introduction of abortion in Ireland.   375,000 euros couldn’t even begin to compensate for the loss of one of these vulnerable innocent lives. 

By prayer Crusader St Rita 

Dublin              

                   

Up-Date From Ireland - Part one

 

RTE upsets Catholic Ireland (again)

Part One

I don’t know if you have heard of the goings on at RTE (Public Irish broadcasting channel). It is said that they are going through their greatest crisis since its foundation. As I have virtually turned off the Irish media I’m just going on from what I have gleaned from newspaper headlines as I walk past shops and the occasional news on the radio. I have listened back in to RTE a bit see how they are reporting the situation.

From what I have gathered, it turns out that their star presenter Ryan Tubridy was paid 375,000 euros more, over a five-year period, than his stated earnings. The management at RTE had done a backdoor deal with Tubridy called bartering, where they would prop up his salary to the estimated cash that he would have received from promos, advertising, etc, that he couldn’t engage in due to having to remain impartial to these products services, etc. Apparently, it was legal, but the clandestine nature of the deal caused the problem. They seem like rabbits caught in the headlights. Tubridy even denied that he knew anything about these payments to his account. One wonders if he had been docked 375,000 euros over that time, would it have similarly gone unnoticed? It also seems to be that it was only the rte director general Dee Forbes who knew about and signed off on the deal (but that all has to be investigated). She has been suspended from her position. In short, she’s gone for good. In 2021 he was involved in a sacrilegious play in which a news presenter in a ‘Christmas play’ made an in which he referred to God raping Our Lady. There was understandable outrage, and Dee Forbes stood over the mockery and would not apologise for it. Many people went, myself included, to have a prayerful protest. Eventually, she was forced to back down and apologize after so many complaints, probably the highest number of complaints they ever had. I wouldn’t think it was anything to do with the fact that she had done something wrong (though we can never be sure; maybe the prayer had some effect) but more to keep her job.

There are many angles and questions to the story. One is the people are suffering in the cost of everyday living while this presenter has an annual salary of over 440,000 euros, it was as high as 495,000. The optics haven't gone down well with people. While licences are rising and people are constantly threatened, fined, and even imprisoned, this celebrity is rolling in at their expense. It hasn't gone down well with the lower staff and journalists at RTE either; it appears that they are fuelling much of the backlash. While they have been told to cut down on costs in each department, they have been told to cheap lodgings if they go to report on a matter, etc., to make savings. It's going to top up Ryan Tubridy's bank balance. It must be said that Tubridy too has his supporters. Listeners for whom he can do no wrong, saying that he's a great presenter, he deserves it, and that we are a nation of begrudgers. Totally swept off their feet with stardom. It should be noted that Tubridy and one of his guests, a 'comedian', mocked the Holy Eucharist on his show, calling the Eucharist haunted bread with Tubridy's approval. God usually has his ways of sorting things out.  

By Prayer Crusader St Rita

Note this post was written in 2023

Here is a link to a Catholic Herald article critical of RTE 

https://catholicherald.co.uk/the-last-priests-and-nuns-in-ireland-a-missed-opportunity-to-move-beyond-the-same-old-tropes/

Africa stands against same-sex blessings

 

The Magisterium of the Media

They're not on the side of Christianity

As we have studied the media over the past twenty years, it has become even more evident that the media controls society and the churches. The Main Stream Media tells us what we can say, do, and think or believe. In addition, traditional Christian and especially Catholic teachings are vilified. We are not allowed to teach or believe the time-honoured moral teachings of the Church, for they are considered hateful. The media at virtually all levels and genres are totally in sync; there are core beliefs one cannot cross or express views contrary to. These core beliefs of the secular media go against moral theology, that abortion is health care and a woman's right to choose; homosexuality is a lifestyle choice and must have the same moral standing as any other people in society. Feminism is a modern virtue for a woman. However, the whole gender issue and its impact on women's sports that is putting young girls off sports is the girls' fault and not the men in their space. Women's toilets and changing rooms are no longer for just biological females, and we are told that it is hateful to exclude biological men.

The Catholic Church has been targeted like no other by those who run and operate in the media; they are relentless, and they double down on their core values. To oppose these views is a modern hate-filled heresy. Is this why we have so many Woke bishops and even a Woke Pope? The MSM elected them? Who is responsible for Fiducia Supplicans? Well, yes, this pope and his Prefect of the CDF (We've come a long way from Pope John-Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger); however, who made it possible? I'm not letting Francis off the hook; he and his sidekick should not have been so spineless in the face of mass media opposition and the German Church.

Nevertheless, although many faithful Catholics are hurting and disturbed by these recent events, they try not to be and stay in the Church. I'm hearing of people leaving for the Eastern Orthodox; however, they have many problems. They may be united against Same-sex blessings (and indeed, this has ruined Francis' wish for unity with them), but that's about all they are united about. 

 

The African bishops are making a stand against Fiducia Supplicans consider writing a letter of support to their bishop's conference; you can bet the extremely active alphabet lobby people will be sending loads of hate letters to them, and the media are already attacking the Africans, doubling down on supporting Same-Sex everything.

 

Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu

Show your support to the African bishops:

Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu

Cathédrale Notre-Dame du Congo

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Congo

Kinshasa, KINSHASA, Congo-Kinshasa

Congo

 

Prayer Crusader St Philomena

Pope allows same-sex blessings

 

Rome has Fallen

Woke Pope goes for Broke.

As this is our Christmas Post, I was hoping to write something on the media and Christianity at this festive time. The media has celebrated a Christian festival for at least over a month. It's been everywhere: on the TV, on the radio, in the shops, and in schools. Alright, but I hear you say this is mostly the secular side of Christmas; however, it is all underpinned by the birth of Jesus Christ, God-made-man, and people know it.

However, on the eighteenth of December, the Prefect for the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith released the declaration Fiduca supplicans allowing the blessing of couples in an irregular situation and couples of the same sex. Although it purports not to change any doctrines, it actually does. Many clergy on the left, for example, Fr James Martin, say that, in effect, it is a game changer. For it explicitly allows the blessing, not of individuals but of couples, together, of the same sex, who are in a relationship! It comes with forty-odd pages of notes that state that these blessings are not marriages, liturgical, etc., etc., blah bla bla. The usual worm-tongue speck of this pope.

It appears that from the beginning of Pope Francis' Pontificate, he has been trying to change the church's teaching on all the major moral issues. Particularly on homosexuality, he seems obsessed with it. He has actually failed to do that through the various synods he has called; for example, on the family 2014, it failed to get approval on irregular families, so he turned to young people and had a synod on youth, again, was unable to get young Catholics to endorse homosexuality. The Synod on Synodality just passed, even failed to do it when it seemed loaded in that direction. It seems the Africans, Eastern Europeans, and Asians resisted the woke mob, led by the Cardinal Tobin and Cupich and the likes of Fr James Martin, the fanatical Gay everything priest. Fr. Martin was quick off the mark and has already committed to a same-sex blessing. So, having failed to get this through the Synod, Francis did it anyway. It's as if the Catholic Church is now run by a gangster junta in the Vatican led by a banana republic styled dictator!

Fr James Martin gives a blessing to a same-sex couple.

It is indeed a wicked act to drop this on the faithful the week before Christmas; I am seeing so much hurt and upset on faithful Catholic social media sites. The hurt being expressed by faithful Catholics is palpable, as is the gloating of the mainstream media, The BBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Guardian (although Fiduca supplicans does not go far enough for this hideous destroyers of civilization).

So the Vatican is changing church practice but claiming that they are not changing doctrine, which is hypocritical. "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness" (Isaiah 5:20).

It is an arrogant act indeed to allow these blessings. This has not happened in the history of the Church; what makes Bergoglio think that he knows better than the saints, the teachings of the Church, Sacred Scripture, and Jesus Christ? At the very least, there is utter confusion, and who is the author of chaos, Satan!

Although this is sad new indeed to end the year, remember that God came into the world and became man to save humanity from sin. Therefore, being loyal to the historic teaching of the Church that stream back to Jesus and remaining in the Catholic Church no matter what will save us. So despite the bad news I wish you a merry Christmas and a Woke free New Year.

Prayer Crusader St Philomena

The Three Musketeers on the Index

 The Past Isn’t Even Past

A fond farewell to Catholic Truth and its Catholic Truth (Scotland) blog after twenty-four years fighting for the Faith; it will be sorely missed. “Ae farewell and then for ever.”

             The newsletter once published a letter in which I replied to a priest who had said he could never make any sense out of why The Three Musketeers had been on the Index of Prohibited Books.  We learn what we learn in the course of our formal education – and even that in itself is subject to the vagaries of an individual’s schooling – then we forget much of it if not quite all.  What might remain to us is a general impression that can serve as a broad foundation for our future prejudices; but in many cases we do not retain even that, and the entirety of our attitude to any particular subject will be formed on the basis of our cultural environment, which is to say our media environment.

             Having mentioned historical fiction we must give it some further consideration because it is necessarily the most vivid and engaging material that sticks in the memory and shapes our understanding of history, and that will very often be fiction whether written or broadcast.  Who controls the past controls the present: who controls the present controls the future because the past isn’t really even past as our interpretation of history underpins our social, political and cultural attitudes.  Indeed, much of our political development in the nineteenth century may be traced to the embrace by conservatives under the n--- D--- of the Catholic alternative to the Whig interpretation of history understood as a Tory version. We are who we are because we think we were who we think we were, and that includes being a ‘we’ in the first place as well as what ‘we’ might think of ‘them’ whoever ‘they’ might be.

             Returning to my example, The Three Musketeers is a work the contents of which are generally transmitted to British youth at an early age while the details of French history are not.  That transmission might possibly include reading the book itself, or extracts from it, in the mid-teens, but more often does not.  There are simplified texts and illustrated versions for the under-tens along with films and television series so children encounter it repeatedly.  Was that your experience? 

             The condemnation of the amatory fictions of the Alexandres Dumas, père et fils, along with the younger Dumas’ pamphlet advocating divorce, was not due to their ‘amatory’ nature – censorship on the basis of decency was a matter primarily for the secular authorities – but because such beguiling and exciting works draw readers into their creators’ mindset or general outlook.  That is more true of broadcast works than written material because they are usually imbibed in a more passive manner with less discernment on the part of the consumer.  Hence works proceeding from the dangerously flawed mentality of undesirable types like the Alexandres Dumas should be avoided as simple entertainments – and should be consumed only warily if at all. 

             The Dumas were Bonapartists, (the father even joined the self-proclaimed emperor’s meritocratic aristocracy) and their works were shot through with all the attitudes and opinions that that implies.  If you had the experience I described of an early introduction to The Three Musketeers, might I ask how much of it you believed, and how much of it sticks in the memory?  The book presents the court of Louis XIII as having been a thoroughly decadent nest of intrigue with a weak and ineffectual cuckold of a king, a flighty adulteress of a queen and a scheming villain of a minister; a regime, in short, ripe for revolutionary overthrow even then in the days of French glory.  Yet these were among the greatest figures in the history of France!  Of course, there is an implication that what had been true of one branch of the traditional monarchy was true also of that reigning at the time of publication in the 1840s.     

             As was normal under a Catholic polity, and had been the case with our own Lords Chancellor before Henry VIII’s time, the first minister of France (the keeper of the king’s conscience) was ordinarily a bishop made a cardinal as a mark of papal approval of the close connection between Church and State, and with it between secular and divine law, under such an arrangement.  To depict Cardinal Richelieu as a scheming villain amounted to an attack upon the clergy (backed up by the characterisation of various other clerical figures across the Dumas’ oeuvre) and not an argument but rather a certain measure of pressure in favour of disestablishment.

             The Dumas did not promote the excesses of the Revolution but its general objectives and its outcome as realised, in their opinion, under their supposedly imperial hero.  Similarly, in our own day, popular historical fictions such as Dame Hilary Mantel’s (adapted for stage and small screen) Wolf Hall Trilogy, tend not to endorse the contentious actions of their protagonists, but by their choice of heroes and villains, their characterisation of people real and fictitious, and their interpretation of events by which they impose an artificial narrative arc upon carefully selected facts they make clear where their creators’ sympathies lie and they insinuate all manner of ideas deep into the intellectual subconscious of the consumer.

             As we all know, the imposition of an ideologically contrived narrative is not restricted to material presented as fiction but transforms narrations of historical events, objective facts, into effective fictions.  While events as they occur certainly have a coherence in the light of divine providence, the coinage of eternity is not spent in a television studio packaging the past in neat and tidy parcels congratulating today on having evolved through history into a wonderfully enlightened present.  Written history may be flawed in many ways, but one definite advance in modern practice is that in print the inclusion of footnotes indicating sources, and giving at least some clue as to where facts and their interpretation can be distinguished, has become almost universal.

             It is quite clearly possible to create historical narratives, whether of fact or fiction, in which that which is believed to have occurred is presented in a manner compatible with Church teaching by rejecting the Pelagian myth of constant moral progress under the weight of human effort, or the alternative of natural evolutionary development in the direction of freedom from antiquated moral norms.  It is also possible to create narratives in which the ‘boo and hooray’ words and names accord with the perspectives of faithful Catholics in wherever the narrative is set.  The EWTN films we promote do exactly that.  What is not possible, however, is a narrative that is both narrative and a neutral presentation of life as it actually happened.  ‘The past is another country’ we do not have a visa to visit; historiography is not only possible but obligatory if we are to achieve an understanding of history that might allow us to build the future we want to see, but history itself is irrecoverably impossible to grasp.  The past remains ever with us in its moral, social and political effects precisely because we can only ever see it recreated one way or another, interpreted for us or against.

             Preciosa in conspectu Domini. Mors sanctorum ejus

            Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints

While the media decry the Ugandan legislation and demand retribution from the international community and individual western nations, I can see only the blessed fruit of the life and faithful witness in death of St. Charles Lwanga and his companions in martyrdom by which their country has been brought to this happy liberation from the horrors of their history.  

By Prayer Crusader St Philip Howard

Saltburn film review

 

Saltburn

Brideshead Revisited on steroids

Note this is a spoiler review, but I wouldn't recommend anyone to see it anyway!

I went to see the film Saltburn more for research, as I'm writing a book about a Traditional Catholic at Oxford; I'm looking at pretty well everything related. I even recently bought second-hand a DVD of a film called The Riot Club, another poorly made sensationalist exploitative film about wealthy students. It is based on the real-life Bullingdon Club, where the men-only young toffs Club members smash up Oxford restaurants and then pay eminently for its renovation. You can't make this stuff up, but it's true..

                It is, of course, impossible to compare the two stories Saltburn and Brideshead. In contrast, Brideshead Revisited (the book) was about final redemption and finding God, but Saltburn is the complete opposite. It's an evil, nasty little film with no redeeming qualities about a manipulative bisexual poor Oxford student who wheedles his way into an already quite decadent wealthy nobility. He manages to get into the circle of friends of a rich student and is invited to the family's stately home 'Saltburn' we are then taken through scenes of drug abuse, extreme swearing (I've never heard the F-bomb used so much), the film is sexually charged throughout. It has a strange approach to this type of decadence, some quite original and disgusting; this is one for those who say women are worse than men in this regard; the writer and director is a woman, Emerald Fennell. This film is all about finding evil; even one of the leads, Felix Catton, dies at the centre of a maze beneath the statue of a horned god.

                The other leading man, Oliver Quick, is a manipulative bisexual and murders the entire family one by one and makes them look like accidents, getting left the stately home 'Saltburn.' I'm afraid I didn't stay until the end. The sight of this Oliver Quick, played by Barry Keoghan (shame on him), dancing through his now Stately Home rooms was more than I could stand, especially as his manhood was often on show and the actor seemed partially aroused. Disgusting, So I can't tell you what the actual ending was.

                This film was too eager to shock but was very predictable. It is a  film to avoid, and happily, there was only one other person in the cinema when I saw it!

Prayer Crusader St Philomena.

Marks and Spenser Christmas advert

 Marks and Spenser Christmas advert

Doing its best to provoke a boycott?

Have the ad agencies who work for the big retail corporations learnt nothing? With Bud Light using a Trans "woman" to advertise its beer and Target in the USA trying to saturate its stores with rainbow Alphabet People clothes, then having to contend with an almost apocalyptic loss of customers, we now have the big stores with huge budget Christmas advert mini films that appear to try and trash Christmas.

            Perhaps the worst of these is the Marks and Spenser Christmas ad for 2023; it has nothing to do with Christianity, nothing to do with the birth of Christ, all to do with trashing Christmas as a Christian religious feast and, what is more surprising, trashing secular Christmas as well. The 'inclusive, diverse' actors got the message across spectacularly that this is a horrible time of the year, and they are bored with it. They look like they hate it, throwing Christmas games away, setting gift tabs on fire, taking a Christmas toy, Father Christmas, and whacking it with a stick. We see women drinking and getting drunk while white heterosexual men are absent, as are children.

            However, Marks and Spenser did apologize, but not for what you think. Was it for making such a miserable advent? No. Was it for completely ignoring Christianity? No. Was it for violently attacking Christmas toys, showing unhappy women getting drunk? No. It was (and this is entirely ridiculous) for showing Christmas cracker hats in the fire just because they were red, green, and white in colour. The hats you see are the colour of the Palestinian flag, and some idiots thought that it was anti-Palestinian! The fact that the Italian and Mexican flags are also the same colours and they are also colours associated with Christmas was missed by these idiots. So Marks issued the most obsequious apology one could imagine and deleted the clip. The Waitrose Christmas ad is no better; no children, no Christianity, no old people, just a bunch of diverse fat morons stuffing themselves. Only Lidil dares show a happy white family (with children) enjoying a traditional Christmas. Well, I know where I will be shopping this Christmas, and it will not be at Marks and Spenser!