Le Tocsin

“The true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries nor innovators, but men of Tradition”– Pope St Pius X

"The Devil was always a liar" - We did take the Champs Elysees! But we did so peacefully!

On Sunday the 24 March 2013, what was possibly the largest demonstration in French history took over the centre of Paris to protest against gay "marriage" and adoption. The secularists responded by ordering a news blackout and sending their police to tear-gas women and children and the elderly. The German Nazi Party was also conceived in the bowels of militant sodomites, and famously used similar methods to deal with peaceful opposition. The picture show your typical enemies of the state after having been tear-gassed  An English friend who lives in France, filed the following report:

Thanks for the regular news bulletins from the UK. I've not heard how it went in Trafalgar Square, but I can tell you the "disinformation machine" in France has been working overtime again.

As in January, there were well over 1 million people on the streets of Paris yesterday. If you know the place, imagine the stretch of wide avenue leading off from the Arc de Triomphe (avenue de la Grande Armée), reaching the very large Porte Maillot (location of the Palais des Congrès and the landmark hotel tower la Concorde), continuing over the Périphérique into Neuilly-sur-Seine all the way along to La Défense (the towering business quarter on the west of Paris). Protesters were also stretched along the "Esplanade de la Défense" towards the "Grande Arche de la Défense".  So, look it up on a map, picture it if you've ever been there, and then look at the official figures given by the Interior Ministry of 300.000 people (less than the figure they gave in Jan of 340.000 !!!). You can laugh or cry.

Then, pause. Because that was not the full size of it. Because of the numbers, the protesters also filled the several "back-up" avenues including avenue Foch which leads on to the place de l'Etoile (arc de Triomphe). This avenue was also absolutely packed. People were arriving from all sides.

So, the space officially allocated was too small, tensions rising, and the determination to be heard, growing. Added to this, the disdain with which the government has treated this debate since the start had brought many many people to boiling point. Although the main cordon of the demonstration was relatively calm with frequent messages from organisers to remain calm and peaceful, people had had enough. And for all those outside of the official zone, there was much frustration.

The Prefet de Police had refused the organisers' request to occupy the Champs Elysées. Manuel Valls, Interior Minister, had only days before the demonstration also retracted permission to occupy half of the Place de l'Etoile (arc de Triomphe roundabout from which the Champs Elysées depart) with a sniding remark that the organisers "...just go and demonstrate from Corbeil to Evry, you're not having the Etoile. I decide !" (Corbeil and Evry are insignifcant minor towns in the "banlieus" of Paris).

In the weeks and days leading up to the demonstration, the media had applied a blanket blackout. NOT ONE WORD on the upcoming momentous rally. Fortunately we now have the Internet. Since January, protesters have been posting photographs of banners stretching across motorway bridges ALL OVER the country, every trip by President Hollande and his ministers has been interrupted by hecklers. At a recent Book Fair, 2 protesters presented the President (divorced from Ségolène Royal with whom he has 4 children, and currently "living" with a companion with whom he is neither married nor even civilly-contracted but who lives the merry life on tax-payers money) with 2 books : "Marriage for Dummies" and "Demonstrations for Dummies".

Back to the day. The pressure was mounting (space too small, so many people, frustrations). The police at the Etoile were heavily outnumbered. The huge swathe of people was pushing and pushing amidst shouts of "We want the Champs Elysées". The police started to panic. Tear gas was fired into the crowd and against the first rows to push them back. And here it is important to counter the downright lies of the Interior Ministry who dared to say that extremists had been involved. The primary victims of the gas were parents and children, and the elderly. It was a diabolical reaction by the police authorities.

As it turned out the gas attack was probably the trigger for the subsequent events. News of the police actions reached the main cortège of demonstrators very quickly via mobile phone. I was myself with my family on the avenue of the Grande Armée, some 200 yards from the podium. I received the news from a friend who had been separated from his wife who had herself been victim of the gas. That was our cue. We made our way through the crowds and in fact it was relatively easy to travel around the Etoile in a large enough circle avoiding all the police barricades. At this point, there had a begun a steady but constant and very calm flow of demonstrators from all the overflows towards the Champs Elysées.

Now, whether the incomptent authorities had really believed their own jibes prior to the event when they said they were expecting only 100.000 people, or whether they were actually encouraging scuffles to take place is unknown. The father of a 14-year old who had to have artificial respiration administered for 1/2 an hour following the tear gas, spoke with a frank police officer. Here's what he said:

"We're not used to this kind of demonstration. When you park too many people in an inadequately-sized space, it's obvious that there will be overspill and scuffles. They'll say there's 10.000 of you but in truth there's more than a million people here. We know it, they know it. It's a damn shambles throughout the gendarmerie and the police ; we're managed by amateurs".

As the main show continued on one side of the Arc de Triomphe, steadily a flow of demonstrators was making it's way around the Etoile through the smaller axes, and towards the Champs Elysées. The Champs had been blocked at the Etoile by a barrage of HUNDREDS of police with their vehicles but it was remarkably easy to simply walk around and reach the famous Parisian avenue. The crowds on the Champs Elysées grew. And with every new wave of arrivals cheered on by those flag-wavers already there, more and more people filled it. By 5pm, the Champs Elysées was FULL on 2/3 of it's length with THOUSANDS of demonstrators. The police were at that point completely submerged and protesters even began a sit-in on the tarmac preventing some CRS (anti-riot police) minivans from departing the scene.

The crowds were jubilant and perfectly well-behaved. The chants here, were however more determined and political : "Hollande, démission". The Marseillaise was sung many times.
As word spread more and more people spilled onto the "plus belle avenue du monde". The media speak of 10s of people. Don't believe them. There are some AFP photos which prove that the Champs Elysées was swamped with people, no traffic passing, all the way from the Etoile, right down to the Franklin Roosevelt roundabout which leads off to the Elysée Palace.
Eventually, having occupied the terrain for over 2 hours, people started to gather at the lower end of the avenue chanting "Apéro chez François" (apéritif at François')!

People generally dispersed around 6:30pm but a few hundred stayed on. Some even set up their tents here, trying to start up a "French Spring" movement but it didn't last long before the CRS finally moved everyone on at 8:30pm.

The official organisers have "condemned" any scuffles that may have happened and the overflow into the Champs Elysées (despite this being practically blacked-out by the media).
It's sad to say, but the only way to grab the attention of the media and the government is when it "gets out of hand".

This will not be the last of it...  If you want REAL information, visit www.lesalonbeige.blogs.com  It's full of photos, videos and the TRUE story on lots of news items.

“FIRE IN THE DARKNESS that covers modern europe” - PÈLERINAGE DE PENTECÔTE (17th to 23rd May 2013) - “The Pentecost pilgrimages are the most important annual events happening anywhere in the world today.”

With acknowledgement to the Remnant

It begins on the day before Pentecost when thousands of traditional Catholics from every corner of the world join their French brothers and sisters at dawn beneath the spires of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.  Three days later it ends in the city of Chartres, as some fifteen thousand dust-covered traditionalists complete the challenging march and kiss the stones of the ancient Cathedral of Notre Dame de Chartres.  Much of what happens in between defies description.

Yes, Europe is in the process of banishing the old Faith from her shores!  She’s busy legalizing every conceivable human depravity, butchering her babies, euthanizing her elderly, destroying the Christian family and the sacrament of matrimony.  And, yet, in the midst of all this putrefaction, over the hill comes a jubilant band of thousands upon thousands of Catholic pilgrims from every corner of the globe, marching six abreast, in a column that takes an hour and a half to pass any given point, announcing to the whole world that the old Faith is still alive and in rude and hearty good health.

For three days, even secular France cannot ignore this strange and wonderful pilgrim parade, flanked by countless priests in muddied cassocks and purple stoles, the all but forgotten keepers of Europe’s altars.  Throngs of scouts lovingly carry statues of Our Lady on their shoulders; banners of the saints are raised high for all to see; pilgrims sing forgotten hymns, renew broken vows, and celebrate Mass in the Rite of their forefathers, saints and martyrs.  The Pilgrimage to Chartres is fire in the darkness that covers modern Europe.

The total cost is £250 (£125 for children).  This includes Coach travel to France, two night's hotel (B&B) accommodation (one in Paris and one in Chartres), 2-nights tented accommodation, Pilgrimage Registration, pilgrimage booklet, 3-course meal with a quarter bottle of wine on Monday evening, a quartet of charming, erudite guides who will take you places you never knew you wanted to go and return by Coach Tuesday.  It is the bargain of the millennium!

Plus, at no additional cost, spiritual direction and confessions on the hoof, as many rosaries as you can manage, every hymn you ever thought of singing, three magnificent traditional High Masses in breathtaking settings (the memories of which you will take to the grave), All-night Exposition, hearty French breakfast every morning, medical facilities, wake-up calls, plenty of bread and water rations, hearty evening soup, as much wine as you can carry (if you're quick), blisters, chilblains, shin splints, bruises, aching muscles, in short, an unrivalled opportunity for penance! - everything, in fact, for the right-thinking Catholic to achieve salvation.  What more could one possibly ask?

Seventy miles may seem daunting, but that said, a nine year old boy and a priest in his eighties completed the march with the British contingent one year.  And free transport is provided by gloating Frenchmen for Brits who fall by the way side.

For free information pack, contact: CHARTRES 2013
27 First Avenue, AMERSHAM, HP7 9BL
Tel: 01494-729-223 or Email: Chartres@duc-in-altum.co.uk

Arbemus Papam

Joseph Shaw, the chairman of the LMS, has written a splendid blog explaining the right attitude of Catholics to the papacy: click here to read.  Nevertheless, I remain unconvinced that the only alternative to being an unorthodox Catholic or a poorly instructed Catholic is to be a Pollyanna one.

Our new pope certainly doesn’t appear to be the “Dirty Harry” pope I had been praying for.  I didn’t come out of my seat punching the air when his name was announced, as I did when Cardinal Ratzinger was elected - but that was more because I knew the liberals would be needing valium to cope with the news.

One’s first impression is that he is so quintessentially a Conciliar man that he has about as much chance of stemming the current hemorrhaging away of Christ’s Body as a man with a Kleenex tissue would have had of stemming the deluge of water through the side of the Titanic.  One fact we do know is that Cardinal Bergoglio’s seminaries in Buenos Aires are empty.  This in a gloomy sort of way sums up the Conciliar church; the election to the highest office in the Church of a man incapable of even inspiring “laborers” in his own backyard.   If that doesn't concern you, then his eulogizing the writings of Cardinal Kasper, whom he described as “a talented theologian, a good theologian”, should chill the blood of any genuine Catholic.  Kasper! – spare us Oh Lord!

Liturgically, my worst fear is that he is another Philistine who will drag us back to the dark days of the “bread and circus” liturgies of JP2, but we will have to wait and see.  As Paul VI’s doctrinally dumbed down, heretic-accommodating, banal, man-centered Novus Ordo rite is the primary reasons we are in the current mess, clearly this is an issue of the very gravest concern.  However, tempering that concern, I believe it will be impossible for him to reverse Benedict XVI emancipation of the traditional Mass.

Pope Francis appears solid on current hot-button moral issues: contraception, abortion and the latest bizarre preoccupation of the metropolitan elite, sodomitical “marriage”.  But it is a measure of just how far we have sunk into mediocrity in the last forty years that Catholics actually get excited that the pope is not soft on such diabolical evils.  However, against this we have the usual pious sound bites about how we should all be kind to homosexuals, which I don’t dispute for one minute, but we all have our own weaknesses and sins, so why is this brand of sinner so frequently singled out by our Conciliar shepherds for special affection?  I know of no one who feels it’s a good idea to round off a Saturday night out by giving some poor homosexual a good kicking; no doubt such do exist and shame on them.  Indisputably, homosexuals are the focus of a disproportional amount of violence, but almost all of that comes from within their own community.

The media has been eagerly telling us that when Pope Francis was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he moved out of the Archbishops residence into a flat, cooked his own meals and commuted by bus.  It’s not made clear how taking on a flat in addition to the Archbishops residence and firing the cook aided the poor.  Personally, I prefer ecclesiastics to wear their hair shirts under their vestments, and I’m afraid the current fashion for social gospel posturing leaves me cold.  One can but cringe at the recollection of Cardinal O’Brien jetting off on some carbon belching tour to promote global warming awareness.  It is all part of that “diabolical disorientation of the Church starting at the top” of which Heaven has solemnly warned us.  Our Lord said, “What profited it a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose his own soul.”  Or in modern street argot, “Being poor could be the very least of your problems sunshine!”  However, I suppose social gospel posturing could be described as traditional, given that the very first example involving a senior prelate came from Bishop Iscariot, who castigated Mary Magdalene for spending too much on Our Lord, and suggested she would do better to focus her ministry on the poor.

I’m maybe clutching at straws but Pope Francis is reputed to have a great devotion to our Blessed Mother.  If that is true, dare we hope that he is the pope who at last will obey Heaven and consecrate Russia to Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart?  However, there is even a downside here: he warmly welcomed the patently phony Medjugorje seers to Argentina.  Nevertheless, make of it what you will, but he did unexpectedly stop and pray for some time at the tomb of St Pius V - could there be a pope dearer to the hearts of traditionalists?

In the final analysis, it hardly matters.  The Conciliar church Pope Francis embodies is imploding before our eyes. The Pollyanna Catholics who keep telling us how wonderful things are (or soon will be) are like a band playing upbeat rock music on the decks of the Titanic whilst up to their necks in rapidly rising water.  Traditionalists are growing steadily, but sadly nowhere near as fast as the Conciliar church is imploding, so unhappily we must resign ourselves, humanly speaking, to a smaller Church.

The tragedy is the Church did not wither on the vine; it was killed off by Vatican 11, and by those for whom the super-dogmas of Vatican II were, and still are, more important than saving souls.  When I became a Catholic over fifty years ago, Mass attendance in England and Wales was over 3,000,000 and steadily rising, now it is under 900,000 and rapidly declining, and that rapid decline started the day after the Council closed its doors.  Further, the chances of finding orthodox men among those still going to Mass is considerable less than the chances of finding a beef burger that is 100% beef.  I wonder how many Catholics are aware that the number of priests in active ministry had shrunk by nearly 50% within a mere seven years of the imposition of the Novus Ordo.

One thing this election may usefully teach traditionalists is to stop wasting time looking longingly to Rome for some pope on a white charger galloping over the hill to our rescue.  We are in the Conciliar church folks and that ain’t going to happen.  Salvations is from Christ and we must all roll our sleeves and pitch in to help rebuild His devastated vineyard.

All Catholics have a obligation to pray for our new pope, because, make no mistake, the wolves will already be circling.  And let’s never forget the grace of office: Pius IX was elected on a liberal ticket and turned out to be one of the greatest popes of the nineteenth century.  And even Paul VI, the pope who wantonly vandalized our liturgy, was notwithstanding able to give us Humanae Vitae.

Sow seeds and leave the harvest to God

Ten years ago, Fr Andrew Southwell offered a traditional Mass in my home to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary.  A friend invited a local Franciscan; the one good man in a cesspool of dissent.  That good man, about eight years ago was put in charge of the Franciscan retreat centre at Pantasaph near Holywell.

When I was leading a pilgrimage to Holywell in 2012, the same good priest told me that both he and a colleague were interested in learning to celebrate the traditional Mass.  I put him in touch with the delightful Canon Meaney ICRSP who was at the time in charge of the Institute of Christ the King’s traditionalist mission at New Brighton, some forty miles away.

Imagine my pleasure then when I recently received the following poster.  Please pass this on to as many of your contacts as possible, especially if they live in the North West and can easily access this retreat centre.

Errors in February’s Newsletter

Many of you complained that the following link entitled “if this doesn’t cheer you up nothing will,” didn’t work.  The reason it didn’t work was because some junk DNA had attached itself to the link.  If it doesn’t work this time, remove anything that appears after the “html” bit.

http://slantedright2.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/happygram.html

Others complained that the link to the very sobering lecture by Michael Voris on Hell didn’t work.  That was my fault, I tried to embed a video into an email, which just goes to show what a technical dummy I am.  The following link should work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpiDdUwoF8k

 

 

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40 days for life London

On Saturday (9th March) there were two turnarounds at Bedford Square Abortuary. This means in London alone there have been more than 20 mothers who decided not to murder their babies in response to this latest prayer campaign - far more than ever before. 

Let's continue to pray for dramatic transformation in our nation - that many hearts and minds will change and many will find healing and hope.

Here’s one homosexual whose hand I would be pleased to shake

Dietrich von Hildebrand wrote, “Modern man is always spoiling for a battle, except for the one battle that really matters, the battle with himself.”  The following gentleman is obvious a wonderful exception.  Do say a prayer for him.  I stumbled upon the following comment on the bottom of a web site:

“I am a Catholic who struggles with homosexual temptations - thanks be to God, I have not sinned with any other person, and I go to confession regularly when these tendencies lead me into sin.

When I was younger, I tried my vocation in the seminary - while never meeting any of the horrors described in this article, nor, thank God, suffering temptations to criminal acts!  I am very grateful to the Lord for making me realise I was in the wrong place, and therefore left the seminary.

I can honestly say that I felt (and feel) the compelling worth of the holy priesthood, but as the Pope himself has ordered, persons not delivered from homosexual temptations cannot rightly be accepted as seminarians.  Having been in this situation personally, I can but agree with his wisdom.

I would have been a gravely compromised priest had I remained and been ordained, as I was not cured of my homosexual tendencies (though I hasten to add, I had no attraction to anything criminal, thank God) - they remain an affliction, and I beg the prayers of readers to help me.”

The Keith O’Brien scandal may provide us with the key to understanding other wacky statements by senior clerics

I was never a fan of Cardinal Keith O’Brien.  His lack of gravitas, utterly inappropriate to the dignity of his high office, and his tendency to run with the hares while hunting with the hounds, left me shaking my head sadly.  With hindsight, his statement a few years ago to the effect that he had no problem with active sodomites teaching in Catholic schools was so off-the-wall that it ought to have started alarm bells ringing back then.  Nevertheless, recent revelations came, while maybe not as a complete surprise, quite definitely as a genuine surprise.

The Keith O’Brien scandal may provide us with a useful key to understanding other similar wacky statements by senior clerics.  For example, the senior cleric who when asked on prime-time television whether the Church would ever bless sodomitical unions, who, instead of grasping with both hands the God-sent opportunity to evangelise and explain the beauty and purpose of human sexuality, lamely responded “who knows”.

One must ask oneself why the four priest concerned in the Keith O’Brien scandal have just crawled out of the wood, all singing in unison thirty years after the event.  Are they homosexual priests who where seeking revenge for the Cardinal’s recent strong stand against the oxymoron of gay “marriage”?  If so, there is no fury like that of a queer scorned it would seem.

Stonewall’s spokesman trotted out the usual claptrap to the effect that the Cardinal was a complete hypocrite and should apologise to the Scottish gay community.  I would have thought that the Cardinal’s outspoken opposition to sodomitical “marriage” was one of the lease hypocritical acts of his entire now sadly tarnished career.  If opposing gay marriage when you personally suffer from this particular sexual pathology is hypocritical, then Stonewell need to explain this to all the high-profile homosexuals who are currently actively opposing gay marriage.  On Stonewall’s logic, a man caught shoplifting at fourteen would be barred for life from speaking out against thieving.  Ah well, I suppose that’s what passes for rational thought in the secular asylum.

The real problem is the homosexual Mafia in the Church, this must be dug out root and branch, whether they be cardinals or curates.  Click on the thumbnail below for Michael Voris’s superb lecture on this subject:

You couldn’t make it up (the hilarious antics of a senior English cleric).

A senior English cleric is “rumoured” to have flown to Rome recently to beg the powers that be to withdraw the current Apostolic Nuncio.  The reason given was that England doesn’t need any more bishops like Davis and Egan.

The same aging post-Conciliar modernist was standing in St Peter’s Square a few months ago, when, spotting Bishop Mark Davis on the far side of the Square, he remarked to my priest informant, “That’s the sort of man you get when my back is turned.”

The diseased and spiritually barren Worlock bloodline is beginning to dry up.  His protégés, who have sat on their purple clad arses for the last forty years while Christ body haemorrhaged away under the yoke of their modernist apostasy, are clearly becoming seriously rattled.  And if that doesn’t cheer you up, nothing will.

At last, the Church’s immune system has started to kick in, as we all knew it must sooner or later; Christ’s body is beginning to awake from its post-Conciliar coma and return, howbeit, painfully slowly, to robust good health.  In the meantime, the antics of our aging post-Conciliar Judases should be seen as little more than the involuntary twitching of dead men walking - undoubtedly revolting and alarming, but of no serious long-term import.  One is reminded of those geriatric comrades who still turn out to hobble round Red Square waving their flags every May Day.

Suggested action: write to the Apostolic Nuncio and express your heartfelt appreciation of his recent appointments: Archbishop Antonio Mennini (Apostolic Nuncio to Great Britain), 54 Parkside, Wimbledon, London, SW19 5NE - and also to Rome expressing your appreciation of the new Apostolic Nuncio.

Are my children going to grow up in a country that they can call their own?

Nigel Farage was recently interviewed by Russian Television.  The interview is worth watching just to hear his description of the British political classes.  It comes about three quarters the way through the interview.  In case you haven’t the patience or the time to watch it all, I’ve transcribed it below:

“We are run by a political class of people.  They all go to the same schools.  They all go to the same Oxford colleges.  They all take the same degrees.  They all marry each other’s sisters.  And they all finish up going from research offices straight into Parliament.  You can’t put a cigarette paper between them in terms of policy.  They have no hobbies or interests, or what Denis Healy used to call “hinterland”.  They don’t even collect stamps these people.  They spend their weekends sitting round together talking about politics.  They are utterly disconnected from the thoughts, hopes and aspirations of the ordinary working family in this country.”

Click on thumbnail to follow link: