Today is the memorial of St Thomas More and St John Fisher.
For an excellent piece about these two great English martyrs click here and scroll down.
O God, who in martyrdom
have brought true faith to its highest expression,
graciously grant
that, strengthened through the intercession
of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More,
we may confirm by the witness of our life
the faith we profess with our lips.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. +Amen.
Catholicism Pure & Simple 
What can be said?
St Thomas More like St Thomas a’Becket before him placed the Love of God before the Love of King. So we contrast Henry VIII with Henry II the one who submitted to Christ and Public Penance and the other who brought shame on this Country.
St John Fisher is to my mind one of the greatest martyrs in the Church. Like His names sake St John The Baptist He was a Voice crying in the wilderness in defence of the Papacy and Holy Matrimony. The wilderness was the abandonment of the Faith by those English Bishops who apostacised. Cardinals wear Red to signify Blood the Holy Blood of martydom!
It is the greatest gift to a Nation are Holy Martyrs!
St Thomas More and St John Fisher Holy Blood has sanctified London. As we know that the Church will return and Triumph in Jerusalem because that City and Land is sanctified by the Blood of the Lamb. We know without doubt that the Holy Blood of St More and St Fisher means that London and England will again be Catholic.
The Anglican Church celebrates on July 7th
“Thomas More, Scholar, and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, Reformation Martyrs, 1535”
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”We know without doubt that the Holy Blood of St More and St Fisher means that London and England will again be Catholic.”
You could get pretty tempting odds on that with Ladbrokes, Roger. Might not live to collect this millennium, though.
More, Dickens and Toad share the same birthday. (Feb 7)
This conclusively proves that astrology is scientific and true.
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Toad the Conversion of England has been expressly fortold many times. But few or many she remains Our Lady’s Dowry. Now here you go again with glib worldy remarks that don’t stand up.
It is this modernism and materialism that dulls the mind.
The first thing is Providence, A belief in Providence this comes from omnipresent and omnipotent. Fatima was something very rare a Public and announced miracle. Rare because so much of the Bible was privately recorded. Fatima is at the level of Moses!
Astrology The Catechism
“..All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to ‘unveil’ the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone..”
But the Mazzaroth is very very ancient and yet is consistent in interpretation it is mentioned in
Job 38
[31] Shalt thou be able to join together the shining stars the Pleiades, or canst thou stop the turning about of Arcturus?
[32] Canst thou bring forth the day star in its time, and make the evening star to rise upon the children of the earth?
[33] Dost thou know the order of heaven, and canst thou set down the reason thereof on the earth?
Genesis 1
[14] And God said: Let there be lights made in the firmament of heaven, to divide the day and the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years:
Now we have an extrodinary example in the Gospels the Magi. The signiifcance of the Magi is this. We know that there is a difference between the Hebrew Old Testament and the Martyrology in timescales of the lives of the Patriachs from Adam. The difference is a few hundred years. The Temple was the custodian of the sacred text and yet there is this difference! Now the Magi arrived at Jerusalem seeking the Child, their guide was a study of the Mazzoroth.
Notice how the written text revealed Bethlehem as the Birth Place and the Magi source as to the time of Birth. So the intriguing question arises that the Temple knew of the timing of the Messiah BUT changed the ages of the Patriachs to make it seem that this was still a long way off.
The Mazzoroth intriguingly has been described as a Gospel so close to the Life of Our Lord. Chaucer refers to the Ram (Aries) and Easter. We have a Virgin (Virgo) , Pisces (Fishes symbol of the Church) , Libra (the scales in Judgement) Fatima occured under Libra. Actually the Feasts of the Church follow the liturgical year which under the Jews was the Houses of the Moon and actually closely follows the Mazzaroth.
The question of course is what was used before the Bible was written? How did the line of Adam to Noah record or recall the sacred Truths of the Faith?
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The patron of our parish here is the saint of the day himself as can be seen here and here. Must dash off for his Solemn Vespers soon, actually.
Here’s some cheerful news: the Church of St Thomas More is packed to the rafters (inside up and downstairs) and to the front fence (outside) for all four Masses on Sundays. We don’t seem to have the low attendance problems you folk do for some very odd reason. The reverse in fact – we need to split current parishes, not amalgamate them.
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I love it when people like our dear GC boast (in a Pauline way) about strongholds of the Faith. I don’t think my parish can compete with hers (although we do have over 8400 parishioners, nominally speaking) – but whatever, we’re not likely to have to cleave anytime soon. But soft! Do I mean cleave, as in *split*, or cleave, as in *adhere*? Must ask Roger.
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Crikey! Golden’s link says More bought 27 acres in Chelsea for thirty pounds.
Now Cheyne Walk alone is worth well over double that. There’s inflation for you!
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JH, visitors I get from the Western world usually comment on how much parish life here reminds them of parishes thirty or forty years ago where they’re from. I think they’re mainly referring to the numbers present at Mass,the packed car-parks, the young together with the old and whole families attending together, even lots of teenagers. One said recently that he felt instantly transported back to his childhood parish when he walked through our church door and that the “feel” of our parish could have been that of any Catholic parish one or two generations ago.
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Wish I’d been part of that world from times gone by, Golden. It will rise again. So it shall.
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Ah, the nostalgia!
Beefy Irish Priests, with faces the colour of a very acceptable claret, bellowing threats from the pulpit about birth control to a congregation of sullen Irish families of twelve, itching and sweating in their Sunday best suits and boots.
No mention of abortion or paedophile priests. Didn’t exist! The good old days.
(They will return!)
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Oh, yes! Dear Oireland. A Nation Once Again:
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Beefy Irish Priests, with faces the colour of a very acceptable claret, bellowing threats from the pulpit about birth control . No, Toad, somehow I don’t think he meant that either, though we did have quite a few French priests of the Société des Missions Étrangères de Paris (MEP) (II think they had to do make do without the claret). However, as a result of that particular drought they did manage to build lots of quite lovely churches up, down and across the length and breadth of South-East Asia.
Here’s one of their young peres down in Singapore more or less saying what I’ve been saying. You really need to give yourselves a good shake and talking too, all you westerners, and get back to filling up the car-park several times each Sunday. Simple.
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Toad was, of course, nostalgically re-channelling (?)* his tadpolehhood in the suburbs of North West London in the early 1950’s, not his days as a cabin boy on a three-masted sloop in the South China Seas.
(He made that last bit up.)
”You really need to give yourselves a good shake and talking too, all you westerners, and get back to filling up the car-park several times each Sunday. ”
The car park is full, all right. It’s the church that’s the problem. Toad knows of a church in Ealing (Anglican, alas) which makes a fortune renting out parking spaces for shoppers all week.
* Is re-channelling even feasible?
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What is wonderful is to see how theses Holy Martyrs cult as Saints has spread! St Thomas More is the Good Lawyer, Politician, Patriot, Father! But he put God first.
St John Fisher knew as a Priest that St Peter as Christ Vicar was above the temporal (King). Saints are living (that is what the Church teaches!) and their intercession and example grows like a mustard seed!
St Joan D’Arc is another such example!
The Communion of Saints transcends Nations and eons One Holy Catholic Church!!
Yes the Conversion of England and back in the Fold of the True Church!
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I didn’t know there was such a thing as a “three-masted sloop”, but you’re right, Toad, although the last of the three-masted ones dates back to even before you were born unless one or two of them, like you, have been preserved as artefacts of purely archeological interest.
btw: It’s not the South China Sea. Around here we call it Golden Pond. Sniff.
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Toad didn’t know there was such a thing as a three masted sloop, or not, either.
He made it up, because it sounded right in that context.
He does that sort of thing a lot.
To be honest, (for once) he suspects a lot of ‘facts’ are made up like that, because they ‘fit’.
But he doesn’t know. Perhaps they are all ‘true.’
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