Ttony reports on an unusual affair that seems to be causing upset among the Dominicans.
St Dominic, painted by Fra Angelico source: Wikipedia>/I>
An invitation was originally extended to John Cruddas MP to speak at Blackfriars Hall in Oxford. For readers outside the UK, Mr Cruddas is a former trades unionist and was a left wing member of the previous Labour government. In the interests of fair play, I will come clean and admit that I consider the last government to have been one of the worst since the War: combining staggering incompetence with venality.
It was also utterly in thrall to the culture of death, in the words of a official of the diocese of Westminster, making Britain the “Geopolitical epicentre of the culture of death”. Mr Cruddas was at the heart of that administration and had an utterly woeful track-record on voting for life issues.
SPUC highlighted Mr Cruddas’ record and voices within the Dominican province were raised against the invitation: why should Mr Cruddas be given a platform to promote himself as a Catholic politician with a record that is so far steeped in blood?
A notable voice raised against Mr Cruddas was that of Fr Leon Pereira OP.
It is understood that Mr Cruddas will no longer speak at Blackfriars Hall and this apparent “win” for Catholic orthodoxy has provoked an angry and vituperative backlash from liberals, who seem incensed that Catholics should expect Catholic politicians to be Catholic in the division lobby as well as on the campaign trail.
Fr Pereira has become the focus of some of these attacks (already a hate figure among the liberals for his decision to withdraw support from CAFOD when he was prior of the Dominicans’ Leicester house), one blogger in particular (linked to in ttony’s article, above) seems to be alleging that Fr Pereira’s origins in Singapore make him unfit to judge a matter of British politics; thereby apparently confirming the old caricature of a liberal as someone willing to trumpet the equality of the races until an immigrant disagrees with them, upon which they retreat into the sort of racial stereotypes that they claim to be opposed to.
Quite why anyone should wish to make such a fuss over Mr Cruddas, an opposition politician who is unlikely to see power for quite a long time and does little to bolster his claim to be a Catholic, is beyond your author.
Please pray for the Dominicans and for Fr Pereira. Please also pray for the conversion of Mr Cruddas and all of those who believe that we should collaborate with the culture of death: it is better that the Church witnesses to the truth from the outside than compromises the teaching of Our Lord for the sake of a seat at the council-table.
Catholicism Pure & Simple 
Thank you for bringing our attention to this important issue Raven.
Once again a brave Catholic priest stands up for Catholic teaching, and gets slandered and insulted by those who talk much of ‘equality, fraternity, tolerance’ and all that….. but only when their warped (and wicked) stances on abortion, euthanasia, active homosexuality etc. are not contradicted. How do these politicians manage to call themselves ‘practicing Catholics’ yet promote or condone these very un-Catholic ideas? Beats me. (Michael Voris is constantly bringing similar scandalous cases of US politicians to light.)
Fr. Pereira can be assured of my prayers.
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“Quite why anyone should wish to make such a fuss over Mr Cruddas, an opposition politician who is unlikely to see power for quite a long time and does little to bolster his claim to be a Catholic, is beyond your author.”
Well, isn’t CP&S making rather a bleeding fuss about it?
Why it should bother, in light of the sentence above, is beyond your Toad.
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