The Feast of the Purification
Today’s feast day is listed in the post-conciliar calendar as the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple. As one born on that day in the pre-conciliar era I prefer to keep to the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Candlemas, even though it also undoubtedly features the Presentation of Our Lord.
I attach a link to an article which appeared in the SSPX website for the District of the USA regarding this feast and which allows us to reflect on it. In the antiphon of today’s Mass we are told that ‘the old man held the Child in his arms, but the Child governed the old man’. Might that be a rule for us all.
Independence Referendum – Scotland
The referendum on Scottish independence looms later this year. Thus far, and we expect till the end, the principal arguments seem to be less about independence per se and the principle of subsidiarity (without which independence is a nonsense, and which can be applied equally well in a State such as the UK), but rather about the same socio-economic arguments that belabour parliamentary elections. Indeed the SNP (Scottish National Party), a left-wing, social- democrat party seems to be aiming its pitch at the goodies the Scots will enjoy, if independent, that they will not if they remain within the UK.
Whether Scotland will be a more moral nation is a not up for debate – unless it is the morality of secular socialism. Thus the nation will remove Trident (which thus far has killed no one) but retain abortion law which has killed thousands. All the existing Scottish parties subscribe to “progressive” policies such as same-sex ‘marriage’ and one cannot see a Scottish parliament resisting for very long other “progressive” policies in the field of family law and public morality. Indeed there is every indication that Scotland, even without independence, might develop into a Nordic Social Democratic State of the Swedish model.
True, hearts may have skipped a beat when the SNP in their latest party political broadcast, displayed an unborn child, “Kirsty”, in utero, who asks, if, in a post-referendum Scotland, it will be ‘a Scotland where I can reach my full potential’.
Now the supreme optimists among us might have taken such interest in the unborn as some sort of sign that all unborn children in Scotland will be allowed to reach their full potential, rather than only those who happen to be “wanted” to use the parlance of the family-planning and abortion industry. Alas such optimism is misplaced because there is no indication that any of the political parties in Scotland would be willing to remove legalised abortion from the statute book.
It can be argued of course that the situation in the UK is no different – that is true, but then what true benefits will come to Scotland from independence if we end up but little more than a clone of the UK? If Catholic Ireland has been unable to resist the pull in that direction, what hope is there for an increasingly secular Scotland? About which, more later.
Papal Phone Calls
We refer those of our readers who have not yet read of the Gnocchi and Palmari affair to this translation of their article, ‘We don’t like this Pope’, which sparked a phone call from the Holy Father.
Harts Students’ Catholic Doctrine
Herewith Chapter VII – The Unity and Trinity of God Other chapters may be found under the Catechetics button on the Menu.