De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth Diocese has issued a Pastoral Letter (14th May 2017) entitled God is Calling You . In it, he discusses vocation and challenges us all to pray for vocations, and offers some important questions which we can put to those who are seeking election to Parliament in June. I found an interesting correlation with this and Dr Joe Shaw's most recent post on Fatima  which talks about the potential of Catholic Social teaching, properly lived out, to fundamentally change the world for the better: As a former active and senior member of the Communist Party, both in the Spanish Civil War and in industrial Glasgow, Fraser was particularly interested in the connection with the conversion of Russia. He goes on to argue that, quite aside from any spectacular supernatural intervention, Russia's conversion would be inevitable if the Church's social teaching was manifested in the daily lives (including the work lives) of Catholics around the world. P149 I...

Yesterday I posted an article by Deacon Nick Donnelly bemoaning the current state of British politics. As we approach a General Election which many commentators consider will constitute a key change in the political landscape of our country, faithful Catholics feel marginalised and disenfranchised with the political system. In this, we are not alone, but the reasons we feel this way are probably minority issues which contradict directly the direction of social change adopted by the main parties. The apathy and disaffection felt by the rest of society is, interestingly, having the same effect as it is on Catholics—pushing us out to the fringes as we feel increasingly abandoned by mainstream parties. On Twitter today, the fallout from Nick's article yesterday is a discussion about the merits or otherwise, of supporting UKIP. Lucas Cambrensis has provided his own response to the feelings of disenfranchisement resulting from the political process in which he draws attention t...

Deacon Nick Donnelly of Protect the Pope offers some advice on who Catholics can vote for in the upcoming general election in a recent article which has been banned by a local paper because of its "political content". Deacon Nick explains: The editor of the Barrow Evening Mail has banned my article on the General Election from their weekly Christian Comment section. He gave the following reason: 'It is highly politicised and as we are now in purdah (the period running up to an election during which newspapers must be extremely careful of what political content they publish), it is not appropriate for publication I'm afraid.' Here's my banned article: Every General Election I am faced with a dilemma as a Christian – which candidate and political party can I vote for in good conscience? As a Christian I no longer trust the Labour party because of their actions against the Church when last in government. It was Tony Blair who destroyed the network...