To my good readers

I don't normally like to bother people with requests of this kind but if any of you could say a prayer or two for the "aged parent" I would be very grateful.  Apparently the hospital beckons.

With every good wish to all of you...

ap

Noted Queer gets award from Queers

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...it's a duck

http://eponymousflower.blogspot.com/2016/09/jesuit-james-martin-wins-award-for.html

And in other news, rain causes wet streets.

Russia finally calls a spade a spade: The US supports ISIS

After Saturday's coordinated US/Israeli strikes on Syrian government troops, which allowed ISIS to gain new ground in that war-ravaged land, Russian foreign ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova decided to put her foot down and speak some bold truths to our UN Ambassadress Samantha Power. Zakharova is one tough cookie and it is great to see someone speak out against the supremely arrogant likes of Power.

Here's the news story:

https://www.rt.com/news/359753-zakharova-power-russia-syria/


Naturally, the little boys in Tel Aviv who instigated the Syrian mess and are using Washington as their attack dog remain delicately unmentioned here by Russia.  In charity I will presume that they have good reasons for not also calling out Israel even though they are fully aware of who the masterminds are in this war.  But that the USA was finally publicly accused of doing what everyone around the world knows it is doing is at least refreshing.

In the meantime, Christians continue being murdered in Syria by the two nations most intent on eradicating Christianity in the Middle East.

Maria Zakharove at left.  At right the hideous Samantha Power

TODAY: Trying to protect its citizens, Syria is attacked by US and Israel

Today America and Israel struck Syrian government forces who are trying to protect their country from the ISIS terrorists.

Here is the news report:

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/09/us-launches-open-war-on-syrian-government-forces.html

What we are now seeing is the complete absence of any pretense.  We are seeing pure, naked aggression against Syria, fighting for its life against the terrorists sent by the US and Israel.  It is not "the terrorists" destroying Syria; they are mere pawns, cannon fodder created by mandarins in Tel Aviv and Washington to do the dirty work, the prep work so to speak.  Yes they are monsters; are they any worse than the ones who created and sent them?  But even so they were being defeated by Syrian forces with enormous help from Iran and Russia and Hezbollah.  So in the face of these setbacks the big boys, the deciders, decided to act. Today after the so-called cease-fire US and Israeli jets in an obviously coordinated campaign swooped into the country to destroy Syrian army personnel, the same personnel protecting its citizens.

Let us sort this out.

The US/Israeli alliance is fighting the Syrians who are fighting the terrorists.  These two cruel regimes did not attack terrorist positions.  Oh no.  They attacked the Syrian government positions defending their nation against the US/Israeli trained terrorists.  A Syrian spoke out about this two years ago.

I will make this short in the hopes that as many as possible will see through the clouds of fog that have obscured our visions for decades.

Why did the USA and Israel do this?

1.  The Yinon Plan.  Please peruse the details of this plan.

2.  Israel wants to steal the Golan Heights from Syria, because of its strategic position and its wealth.

3.  The war mongering lunatics and Dr Strangelove's (like Ashton Carter) in Washington are itching for a new world war, so that International Finance can pick up the spoils, as they always do.

4.  This is another attempt to goad Russia, one of the nations working with Syria to stop the destruction of their country, into taking the bait and responding militarily.  That way the US can have its little war...which will turn into a big war.

5.  It is also political.  It will help war monger Hillary and hurt less-war-inclined Trump.  (But now that Trump has selected one of the worst neocon idiots in the world to be his "security adviser", James Woolsey, it is no longer certain that he would honor his pledge to work with Putin.)

6.  To further annihilate the Christian presence in the cradle of civilization.

With today's move it is no longer possible for rational people to continue to avoid seeing the true reality of what is going on.  Perhaps what we are seeing is that the Iranians were not too far off the mark when they called America "the great Satan". Here are two horns on the head of the great Satan working together to destroy the Christians and innocent Muslims in the Middle East.

Our Lady of Damascus, pray for them, and for us.

UPDATE:  https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/us-bombs-assads-troops-isis-makes-dramatic-advance-result/

Why iz it that there are so many more horse's azzes than there iz horses?

http://catholicstandard.org/Content/News/News/Article/The-Problems-of-Priest-Politicians-The-Urgency-of-Lay-Leadership/2/2/7236

(h/t Canon 212)

Satanic: Testimony of a Syrian

From Global Research (h/t Patrick Foy):

Two years ago, “Majd” wrote these words on a Facebook posting:

“ I am Syrian… living in Syria in the middle of everything. We have seen horrors. It was never a revolution nor a civil war. The terrorists are sent by your goverment. They are al Qaeda Jabhat al Nusra Wahhabi Salafists Talibans etc and the extremist jihadists sent by the West, the Saudis, Qatar and Turkey. Your Obama and whoever is behind him or above him are supporting al Qaeda and leading a proxy war on my country.

We thought you are against al Qaeda and now you support them.

The majority here loves Assad. He has never committed a crime against his own people… The chemical attack was staged by the terrorists helped by the USA and the UK,  etc. Everyone knows that here.

American soldiers and people should not be supporting barbarian al Qaeda terrorists who are killing Christians, Muslims in my country and everyone.

Every massacre is committed by them. We were all happy in Syria: we had free school and university education available for everyone, free healthcare, no GMO, no fluoride, no chemtrails, no Rothschild IMF- controlled bank, state owned central bank which gives 11% interest, we are self-sufficient and have no foreign debt to any country or bank.

Life before the crisis was so beautiful here. Now it is hard and horrific in some regions.

I do not understand how the good and brave American people can accept to bomb my country which has never harmed them and therefore help the barbarian al Qaeda. These animals slit throats and behead for pleasure… they behead babies and rape young kids.

They are satanic. Our military helped by the millions of civilian militias are winning the battle against al Qaeda. But now the USA wants to bomb the s**t out of us so that al Qaeda can get the upper hand. 

Please help us American people. They are destroying the cradle of civilization. Stop your government.

Impeach that bankster puppet you have as president… support Ron Paul or Rand or anyone the like who are true American patriots. but be sure of one.thing..if they attack and I think they will….it will be hell.

Be sure that if it were to be a world war, many many will die. Syria can and will defend itself and will sink many US ships. Iran will go to war..Russia and China eventually if it escalates… and all this for what ? For the elites who created al Qaeda through the US government and use it to conduct proxy wars and destabilize countries which do not go along with their new world order agenda !!?

American people…you gotta regain control of your once admirable country. Now everyone hates you for.the.death you bring almost everywhere.

Ask the Iraqis…the Afghans…the Pakistanis…the Palestinians…the Syrians…the Macedonians and Serbs…the Libyans…the Somalis…the Yemenis ….all the ones you kill with drones everyday. Stop your wars, Enough wars. Use diplomacy..dialogue…help..not force.”

Read the whole article here.

The Facebook Censorship Coalition

That notable Irishman Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the Facebook empire, is officially collaborating with the Israeli government on a plan to censor views they don't like.  Ho-hum.  Does this surprise anyone?

I find Facebook to be utterly stupid in concept, even while agreeing that occasionally some enterprising souls can use it to get some truth out into the world.  But putting aside the idiocy of its concept we now see a plan to control the occasional good speech therein, and controlling speech is always the forerunner of a totalitarian dictatorship waiting in the wings.  The good that this internet site can sometimes do will now find itself at the tender mercies of a collaboration between the so-called state of Israel and the ridiculous Zuckerberg, friend of presidents and Popes.

From Glenn Greenwald:

LAST WEEK, A MAJOR censorship controversy erupted when Facebook began deleting all posts containing the iconic photograph of the Vietnamese “Napalm Girl” on the ground that it violated the company’s ban on “child nudity.” Facebook even deleted a post from the prime minister of Norway, who posted the photograph in protest of the censorship. As outrage spread, Facebook ultimately reversed itself — acknowledging “the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time” — but this episode illustrated many of the dangers I’ve previously highlighted in having private tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google become the arbiters of what we can and cannot see.

Having just resolved that censorship effort, Facebook seems to be vigorously courting another. The Associated Press reports today from Jerusalem that “the Israeli government and Facebook have agreed to work together to determine how to tackle incitement on the social media network.” These meetings are taking place “as the government pushes ahead with legislative steps meant to force social networks to rein in content that Israel says incites violence.” In other words, Israel is about to legislatively force Facebook to censor content deemed by Israeli officials to be improper, and Facebook appears eager to appease those threats by working directly with the Israeli government to determine what content should be censored.

Read the whole article here.

"To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize."  (Voltaire)

Beelzebublian Lunacy

 Western children are being indoctrinated with a philosophy fed into their young minds via media and education, one in which the usual claims to ‘compassion’ and ‘inclusivity’ are used as cover.

Gender is fundamental. It lays the groundwork for who you are and your role in the tribe. For this reason – one must assume – it is under attack by the Cultural Marxists, aided and abetted by their point-of-sale dispensers, the liberal progressives.

In Brighton, England, according to the Guardian, thousands of parents were recently asked to state the gender their four-year-old children “most identify with” in a letter sent to them by the local council.

The letter said: "We recognise that not all children and young people identify with the gender they were assigned at birth or may identify as a gender other than male or female, however the current systems (set nationally) only record gender as male or female.

"Please support your child to choose the gender they most identify with.

"Or if they have another gender identity please leave this blank and discuss with your child's school."

In the same piece, the Guardian reports that Cllr Emma Daniel, head of Brighton's equalities committee, said she was aware of "concerns" over the wording. She told the Sun: "We have inserted the additional text about gender identity in response to calls from families, young people and schools to show an inclusive approach.

"There are increasing numbers of children and young people nationally identifying as trans."

Daniel added: "We will review this to see whether we can make it clearer that we consider discussions around gender identity to be an option for parents rather than an obligation."

So, in Brighton at least, the thin end of the wedge is firmly in place. It will be hammered home using the same method Cultural Marxism always uses: professed compassion for a tiny or imaginary number of people used to pollute the minds and milieux of the vast majority by imposing upon it some new reason to be weak, freakish, foolish, unnatural or perverted – meanwhile, holding the threat of accusations of bigotry and lack of compassion over its head if it so much as blinks before the social-engineering project it has no say in, but must pay for, becomes the new status quo.

Read the rest of the article here,

Another good article here, along the same lines:  https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/05/robert-ringer/culture-war-heats/

Russia, Then and Now

A lovely article by Peter Hitchens, which is a must read.

Hitchens is wrong about the Ukraine and Crimea, and his disdain for Putin is, ironically, in contradiction to what he writes about the resurgence of Christian Russia.  He characterizes him as a tyrant.  We should be so lucky to have such a "tyrant" in America.

When Hitchens describes the rebirth of this land which began after Communism was swept away and the essence of Christianity started to creep back into the lives of the people, it awakened in me some new hope for Catholics who now live in this surreal world of disorientation and the almost total absence of the essence of Catholicism in their lives.  When the horrible "regime" of Modernism from Rome on down to the tiniest country church is at last swept away like the Bolsheviks were swept away perhaps Catholics will again experience a rebirth like the one occurring in Russia.  The Russians had to see just how bad life was without Christ when under the Communists.  Perhaps this is why God is allowing the decimation of the Church by its own leaders, so that we, too, will see how life is without Christ.

Then afterwards, hopefully, rebirth.  May God hasten the day.

Like most Englishmen, I grew up with a natural dislike of “abroad” and a belief in the inferiority of all foreign things. I think it took me five visits to France before I began to regret leaving that lovely country rather than to rejoice at my return to our safe and familiar island.

It often strikes me as quite funny that I spent so much of my life as a foreign correspondent, a profession for which I am so unfitted. When I went to live in Moscow in 1990, I felt that I had somehow betrayed my native soil. (I was born in the middle of the Mediterranean, but these are technicalities.) I still recall a brief return from the U.S.S.R. to my hometown of Oxford, during which I was asked for directions by an American tourist. “You must live here,” he said, impressed by my historically detailed advice. “No,” I confessed with a strange feeling of guilt. “I live in Moscow.” For the first time in my life I had chosen to live in foreign parts, and very strange and hostile parts they seemed to be.

Yet the experience of living in that sad and handsome place brought me to love Russia and its stoical people, to learn some of what they had suffered and see what they had regained. And so, as all around me rage against the supposed aggression and wickedness of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, I cannot join in. Despite the fact that Moscow has abandoned control of immense areas of Europe and Asia, self-appointed experts insist that Russia is an expansionist power. Oddly, this “expansion” only seems to be occurring in zones that Moscow once controlled, into which the E.U. and NATO, supported by the U.S., have sought to extend their influence.

The comparison of today’s Russia to yesterday’s U.S.S.R. is baseless. I know this, and rage inwardly at my inability to convey my understanding to others. Could this be because I have been unable to communicate the change of heart I underwent during my more than two years in the Russian capital?

Let me try again, starting in a Moscow street called Bolshaya Ordynka. The existence of this place, at the end of the Soviet era, was a great shock to me. Moscow in 1990 was at first sight a festival of concrete. Its cityscape was the Leninist word made flesh, arrogant proletarian lumps deliberately defying all concepts of beauty and grace, the very suburbs of hell.

But Bolshaya Ordynka was not like this. Here was the Moscow of Leo Tolstoy, with trees and low classical houses, not ordained by some gigantic bureaucratic plan, but sweetly proportioned to human needs. On it stood a church with the haunting name of “The Consolation of All Sorrows,” something badly needed at that time of nervous shortage, abrupt catastrophe, and the ever-present fear of a midnight putsch with tanks grinding along the streets. (In August 1991 I woke from a fretful sleep to find those tanks coming down my Moscow avenue, Kutuzovsky Prospekt, barrels aslant in the morning light, throwing up dust as they tore the road to bits.)

This modest street, Bolshaya Ordynka, could outdo Paris in loveliness. Here, under many grimy and bloody layers of Leninism, neglect, and about three wars, lay Russia, a very different thing from the U.S.S.R. Unlike the U.S.S.R., it was profoundly Christian, rather glorious, and no particular threat to the West. Perhaps the Bolsheviks had not, after all, destroyed and desecrated absolutely everything, and a lost nation was waiting quietly to return to life.

Read the whole article here.

Wolfie Loves Hillary

Our favorite neocon, Paul Wolfowitz

He also loves killing people.

From Philip Giraldi:

Many issues characteristically beloved by Democrats are being raised to disparage Donald Trump. The man has been maligned as a racist, a bigot, as unfit for office and even described as a psychopath, presumably in contrast to Hillary Clinton who loves people of every color and shape as long as they are not living next door and will faithfully vote Democratic after they are afforded entry into the United States and amnestied. Hillary, who has held nearly every senior government office that a human being can reasonably aspire to but the one she is currently lusting after, is unlike Trump only sufficiently deranged to kill people if they live somewhere in the third world and can’t do anything about it.

A persistent line emanating from the “national security” experts who have flocked to Hillary’s side is that Trump would threaten the safety of the United States. That many of the crossovers are neoconservatives who have brought us a number of unnecessary wars in the past fifteen years is pretty much ignored by the media just as the argument that the U.S. has a presumptive right to intervene militarily wherever and whenever it chooses is generally accepted. The latest talking head who stands firm for national security is Paul Wolfowitz, who was interviewed by the German magazine Der Spiegel on August 26th. Some readers might recall Wolfowitz. He was the number two at the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld. A forceful advocate for the Iraq war, he is famous for having observed that the Iraqis would welcome the American invasion and that the war would pay for itself rather than the $5 plus trillion that it has actually cost. How he came to the latter erroneous conclusion is not very clear, though it may have had something to do with looting Iraq’s oil reserves and exporting them through a pipeline to Israel, an idea that was once floated by Wolfowitz’s godfather Richard Perle.

Wolfowitz has never been apologetic. He now claims that he was deluded by the information provided by the intelligence establishment into believing that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, an odd claim as he himself was largely responsible for the bad intelligence through his setting-up of the Office of Special Plans, a separate organization within the Pentagon intended to critique and supplement what CIA was producing.

Read the whole article here.

Mr Ron Neff examines some past political history

From one of my favorite sites, The Last Ditch.  Although I am not an anarchist  (I'm something else that is impossible in the USA, a Monarchist), this anarchist site is always an amusing read for their especially sardonic humor and trenchant insights into the collective insanity that now shapes our country.

Mr Ron Neff has written an interesting piece which I recommend.

You can read the whole article at The Last Ditch (click on "new article by Ron Neff"), but it begins thusly:


In 1975, I met a man I shall call Cameron.

Cameron ran a local Western Islands bookstore. For you youngsters, Western Islands was the publishing arm of the John Birch Society and it operated a chain of bookstores. It is not clear to me whether the JBS still operates any bookstores, but given the state into which independent bookstores have fallen, I suspect that it does not.

The store Cameron ran offered many more books than those published by Western Islands. Despite its size, he was able to display titles attractively and in an orderly fashion. I visited it often — it was there that I first heard of the Council on Foreign Relations and its role in the ruling of the United States — but not nearly as often as I wish I had. Cameron was an intense guy, prone to overstating things, I thought, but always interesting. I was sorry to notice that I was often the only person in the store.

The store had fairly limited hours: there was no possibility that Cameron could base his living on the work he did there. Or that the store could afford to pay for employees to remain open during ordinary business hours. It was above all a labor of love for him. And the exact status of the store's ownership was never clear to me. Was Cameron a franchisee? Or merely a hired manager? Events suggest that the latter is not plausible. He was probably something in between. To keep body and soul together, he worked at a nearby Safeway as a check-out clerk. Whenever I saw him there, I made a point of going through his line just to say hello and maybe exchange a few words. He always seemed happy to have someone to talk to and he always had some little bit of information to impart that was new to me.

In the election of 1976, conservatives were alarmed that if Gerald Ford were defeated by Jimmy Carter, the latter's left-wing policies and positions would, if put into effect, spell the end of the middle class. Their concern was not entirely misplaced. In 1976, the United States was still in the throes of high inflation and high unemployment, which threatened to do just that. (A whimsical image for the former may be seen in the opening credits of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," where Mary is shown looking with distress at the price of a package of meat in a grocery store, and resignedly tossing it into her shopping cart.) As a point of reference, the dollar had lost nearly 50 percent of its value from the previous ten years. (Since then, it has lost another 75 percent. But that's another story.)

In the event, I suppose it may be said that the only thing that saved America's middle class from Carter's policies was something no one could have foreseen: the fact that the oligarchs of Carter's party were so unhappy with having lost control of the nominating process that they determined to destroy his presidency. The culmination of this effort came with Ted Kennedy's fake primary challenge in 1980. I say "fake" because Kennedy — after causing the death of a female campaign worker in a 1969 drunk-driving incident — had no chance of winning anything other than a protected senatorial re-election bid in Massachusetts. (How the Democracy destroyed the Carter presidency is one of the subjects of Walter Karp's Liberty Under Siege, a discussion of which may be found in my article "'Any Day Is a Good Day to Fight for Liberty.'") But even a fake challenge to a sitting president weakens him in the eyes of a public not conversant with the conventions of political theater.

(I interrupt my flow of thought here to note that in 1969, Kennedy was not in favor of making abortion legal. Once the Supreme Court had overthrown the laws of all fifty states, however, he became one of abortion's champions. My friend Joe Sobran sometimes speculated that his many re-elections despite the scandal of the death of Mary Jo Kopechne were pay-off for that support. Or perhaps that his support was the price he paid for re-election support. I suppose they amount to the same thing.)

Bits and Pieces

Ancient Arabian dreadlocks.

Who knew?  I am forever grateful to Hollywood for these important groundbreaking historical discoveries.

Hillary Clinton, like her addle-pated Republican predecessor, tells us that if elected she "will end evil in the world".  I presume that means she will commit suicide on inauguration day.

Big Buggery has published a "shame list" of those colleges that don't do enough to promote buggery.  I'm quaking in my boots.

Creating Problems, then Creating Solutions.  The government/media complex is cramming into our heads, 24/7, that "foreign interests", specifically "Russian", are messing with the elections this November.  Thus, the media/government alliance creates this idiotic preposterous "problem".  But fear not: it has already suggested the solution to the problem it has created out of nothing.  The solution?  Federal control of the elections.

After the carnage in Milwaukee recently the usual sources told us that unemployment and poverty were the reasons for fatherless young black males to riot, shoot at police and loot.  We're trying to remember how many riots and burnings occurred during America's Great Depression of the 1930s.

The Vatican wishes to know which acts of mercy we have performed lately.  I have performed one.  I have refrained from assassinating Cardinal Schonborn.

Mr Donald Trump has been warning voters about the dangers of political correctness while crying rivers of tears over the plight of poor, downtrodden sex deviates and assuring us that in his administration they will be protected.  From who?  Cake bakers?

The 1959 version of "Ben Hur" was directed by William Wyler, the director of such classics as "The Letter", "The Best Years of Our Lives", "The Big Country", "The Westerner", "Wuthering Heights" and "Roman Holiday".  The director of the 2016 version was the director of such classics as "Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter".

Death Throes of an Empire.  The further degradation will continue apace now that the USA joins Israel in placing women in combat.  Any father, brother or husband who would allow this is unworthy of the name father, brother or husband.

The pot calls the kettle black.  President Obama says Donald Trump is unfit to be president.

Herr Frau Merkel assures her German citizens that Germany will always be Germany....after importing a few million Africans.  Will Africa be Germany, too?

Contest: Which one is Merkel and which one is a Morlock from "The Time Machine"?

The NBA has officially announced that it will shun North Carolina due to its common sense bathroom law. Look at the bright side, North Carolina: at least the rapes of white girls will dwindle considerably with all those "athletes" being in another state.

Pope Francis and all his sycophants, clerical and lay, want us to "contemplate the earth".  OK.  (pause) There.  I've contemplated it.  What's next?  (Maybe my navel?)

Robert Spencer, loyal toady to not-so-ex Trotskyite David Horowitz, is running around the world along with agent provocateur Pamela Geller doing everything he (and she) can to stir up Muslim hatred towards Christians while warning the world about Muslim hatred against Christians.  Perhaps I am too obtuse to understand the wisdom of this approach.

In order to combat the over-hyped danger of the Zika virus, the State of Carolina just sprayed half the state with a pesticide that was supposed to kill the virus-carrying mosquitoes.  It killed things all right: untold millions of bees.  Great job, South Carolina!

Apparently Russians really are stupid, if what is reported in their worldwide website Russia Today is any indicator.  Once a respectable dispenser of news no one else would publish, RT is now on a crusade to paint every white American as a murderous racist, gleefully shooting "unarmed teens" as a fillip before breakfast.  Dear RT, would you do me a favor?  If I paid for the travel expenses, would you send one of your journalists to spend a day in some of the more interesting parts of Detroit?

A general in the Israeli Defense Forces claims that Israel has raised occupation "to an art form".  Tell me again why the historic inhabitants of the Holy Land are a bit upset.

Our "Pope of the People" is always so busy meeting with the little people, the downtrodden, the people who have no say in things, like Mark Zuckerberg.

"Oh, thanks Mr Zuckerberg, I mean, 'Your Highness!'"

Desperation.  The "Great Right Wing Conspiracy" is back!  Dear Hillary who discovered this nefarious conspiracy while her husband Bill was president has uncovered it once again lurking around the internet.  When she becomes El Supremo she will be certain to root it out, so she informs us.

It took awhile to get me interested in something called "the burkini incidents" in France.  It also took awhile to decipher what a "burkini" was.  Apparently, however, some writers think that this episode, allowing Muslim women to dress rather modestly at beaches, is akin to the end of the world or something.  Are there not more important things to worry about in the world?

Poor Mark Zuckerberg.  After spending over $300 Million on a spacecraft that would be able to spread his mindless propaganda to those poor, unenlightened peoples of Africa that aren't able to waste their lives listening to blather, he had to watch his rocket explode on the launching pad.  My heart goes out to this great humanitarian (and friend of Pope Francis).

In Syria most of the weapons and vehicles captured from the ISIS terrorists, which have been demolishing the Christians there, turn out to be American made.  I simply cannot imagine where they got them.

Archbishop Stanislav Shevchuk of the Ukranian Greek Catholic Church (a man I do admire), is disturbed about what he calls "Russian aggression" in Ukraine.  Oddly enough he provides no evidence of this aggression.  Also oddly, he is less worried about the rise of Goldman Sachs, homosexual advances, radical Ukranian groups funded by George Soros and the reducing to penury of his fellow Ukranians by the forces behind the 2014 coup in Kiev.

The new Russian "Religion Law" has outraged Mormons and various sects of Bible-thumpers because it seems to ban them from getting too influential there.  At the same time Russia is allowing Catholics to come to Russia to meet with Orthodox believers.  While we have mixed emotions about that development at least it might help certain Orthodox see that not all Catholics have horns coming out of their heads.

Recently two European priests, one from Austria and one from Spain, presided over sacramental "blessings" of two sex perverts joined in wedded bliss.  The thundering silence from their Ordinaries was indeed impressive. [Update: it is possible the Austrian priest will face some kind of censure from his Ordinary.  We hope it will be more than "no dessert after supper for you, Father".]

Uh-oh.  The newly elected president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte has just referred to Philip Goldberg, US ambassador to his country, as a "gay son of a bitch".  He also called US Secretary of State John Kerry "crazy".  How refreshing to hear the unvarnished truth for a change, and coming from a world leader no less.  Surely a nice little regime change will be coming his way real soon.

Can we all get together as friends and pray that George Soros will die?  Soon?  Not that such a thing would end the world's evils of course but at least one head of the hydra would be cut off.

We could also pray that George has a Road to Damascus conversion.

Everyone who is praying for Pope Francis has their own preferred way of doing it but mine is to say a Hail Mary for him so that he will come to his senses before the Church is totally destroyed.

Father Francis Coveney: "the Providence that gave joy to my youth"

Lake Bunyonyi, Uganda

With the kind permission of Father Francis Coveney, we present some of his recent reflections upon his work in Uganda.

THE PEARL OF AFRICA

Just after Mass in November 2008 a young couple spoke to me:

“Good morning Father, we want to see you about getting married.”

“Congratulations. Have you already decided where you are getting married?”

“Yes Father - in Kampala.”

“Very good. Are you both from Uganda?”

“Yes Father.”

“Whereabouts in Uganda are you from?”

“He’s from central Uganda. I’m from Western Uganda.”

“Oh!  Which part of Western Uganda.?”

“Kabale.”

“Which parish in Kabale?”

“Christ the King Parish.”

“How is my friend Fr Narcisio Bagumisiriza?”

“Do you know him?”

“Yes I taught him in St Paul’s Rushoroza.”

“That’s strange, my father went there. I wonder if he knows you.”

“I wonder if I know him. What’s his name?”

“Rukundo.”

“That must be Serapio Rukundo. I remember him very well. Do give him my best wishes next time you speak to him.”

“Actually he’s visiting London next week.”

And so I met Claire and Julius - and Claire’s father again after almost forty years. I invited him round to supper and reminisced about old times when we were both young. Serapio was still able to quote sections from “A Man for All Seasons” at length. His class had put on the play and he was cast as Thomas More: now he was a minister in President Museveni’s government. A good role model to have – even though he hadn’t heard that Thomas More is now the patron saint of politicians.

It was a pleasant evening and almost inevitably I was invited to their wedding in Kampala the following January. I wasn’t too sure whether this was a serious invitation – until a very impressive invitation arrived through the letter box a few weeks later. I needed to get a move on. A few phone calls to arrange cover - and I was able to book the flights and arrange jabs, anti-malaria tablets and a visa.

*****

“Coca Cola welcomes Pope Paul to Uganda” the posters said.

Paul VI had just visited Uganda from 31 July to 2 August 1969 and ordained twelve African bishops in Kampala - including four bishops for the four dioceses of western Uganda, the former Vicariate of the Ruwenzori. Amongst these were Bishop Barnabas Halem’Imana for Kabale Diocese and Bishop John Kakubi for Mbarara Diocese.

Uganda is a beautiful country and was dubbed “the pearl of Africa” by Winston Churchill when he visited East Africa as Under Secretary of State for the Colonies – and Kabale is generally reckoned to be the most beautiful part. (In fact the Missionaries of Africa used to say

it was a mistake to send a man to Kabale on his first appointment – as he wouldn’t want to go anywhere else afterwards!) If you doubt this – just google “Lake Bunyonyi” and you will see just how beautiful the area around Kabale is.

I arrived in Entebbe airport on 13 August with Gerry Hands from Drygrange who was going to teach in Mbarara for a year while I spent two idyllic years in Kabale.  I was met by my uncle Frank, a Fidei Donum priest who had been teaching in Rushoroza since 1966. For Christmas we stayed at Ruwesero in Rwanda where Trevor Hartley and Fred Robinson from Shrewsbury were teaching. There was an assassination attempt on President Obote the afternoon we crossed the border – and we heard on the radio at Ruwesero that the borders had been closed indefinitely but in fact they were reopened only a few days later. More excitement (and tragedy) followed a year later when Idi Amin staged a military coup in January 1971.

*****

Claire’s father met me at Entebbe and took me to Lourdel House in Kampala, the house of the Missionaries of Africa in Kampala, to see if they had any spare rooms. They did – and by another coincidence the superior, Rene Brossard, had taught with me in St Paul’s. He had just been recalled to Switzerland and was leaving Uganda for good – just two days after Julius and Claire’s wedding.

I was treated with great kindness and friendliness by everyone I met – and especially by those middle aged men I had taught when we were all forty years younger. I had grown a beard in a vain attempt to kid them that I was older than I really was. (No need for that any more!)  I have always found the hospitality of the people of Africa – and of the missionaries working there - both inspiring and humbling. Fr Narcisio arrived from Kabale for the wedding and then took me on a trip down memory lane to Mbarara, Kabale, Rushoroza, Mutolere, Kisoro and his parents’ homestead in Toro – where we took a short cut to avoid road works and ended up in a dead end in a banana plantation much to the amusement of the little boys who perhaps had never seen a white man before. 

Changes I noticed include a huge increase in traffic both in Kampala and on the major roads, an amazing number of people using mobile phones (apparently Germany decided to target its aid programmes on the provision of a mobile phone network), more motor bikes than push bikes – and most men and boys wearing long trousers and shoes rather than khaki shorts and bare feet.

In 1969 there were about 20 African priests in Kabale Diocese and 30 European and North American priests (Missionaries of African and Comboni Fathers). Now there almost 100 priests in Kabale Diocese – and all of them are Africans. This pattern is repeated throughout Uganda: many African priests and now very few missionary priests.

This is a very healthy state of affairs for the Church – but it does mean that the grants from Propaganda Fidei now have to stretch much further and the extra financial resources provided by the friends and families of the missionary priests have almost completely disappeared. Most of the African priests live in real poverty – and the old red Mill Hill/APF boxes that used to provide so much assistance are in danger of being overlooked by Catholics in favour of charities that have more street-cred. And yet the Church in Africa provides so much materially as well as spiritually – in particular education establishments of every kind, hospitals, dispensaries, social work of many kinds and credit unions.

A whole series of amazing coincidences enabled me to work in Uganda in the first place and to return in such happy circumstances - except that I firmly believe it was Providence not coincidences, the same kindly Providence that gave joy to my youth and continues to fill me with joy and so many blessings.

Fr Francis Coveney, South Woodford, June 2009