Le Tocsin

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

One year after launching, the circulation of Le Tocsin exceeds 4000!  And this is from idividuals opting in one at a time.

“FIRE IN THE DARKNESS THAT COVERS MODERN EUROPE” The Pentecost pilgrimage is the most important annual event happening anywhere in the world today. PÈLERINAGE DE PENTECÔTE (Friday 6th June - Tuesday 10th June 2014)

With acknowledgement to the Remnant

It begins on the day before Pentecost when thousands of traditional Catholics from every corner of the planet 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 depravity known to man, butchering her babies, euthanizing her elderly, destroying the Christian family and the sacrament of matrimony.  And, yet, in the midst of all this decay, 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; a spectacle that must cause the masters of the secular asylum and modernists bishops palpitations and nightmares in equal measure.

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 our forefathers, saints and martyrs.  The Pilgrimage to Chartres is fire in the darkness that covers modern Europe.

The total cost for the English chapter is £260 (£130 for children under 12).  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's 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 details of the English chapter for Chartres contact: Julie and Francis Carey, Chartres 2014, 27 First Avenue, Amersham, Bucks. HP7 9BL Telephone: 0149 4729 223; email:chartres@duc-in-altum.co.uk Further information and updates will be posted to their website: www.chartresuk.blogspot.com.

 

Domine non sum dignus The words of the Roman Centurion to Christ

Domine non sum dignus
ut intres sub tectum meum
sed tantum dic verbo
et sanabitur anima mea

Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter under my roof: but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed.

A Centurion was highly respected in the Roman army.  He had acquired his position by merit, having risen through the ranks.  St Luke tells us that the Centurion who spoke to Jesus had been a kindly man who had built a synagogue at his own expense.

Though he possessed power and authority, he was conscious of its origin and limits, and showed great humility before Our Lord.  Our Lord marvelled at his faith, surely a singular tribute for any man to receive.  We should reflect on the quality of our own faith and ask whether Our Lord would find anything to marvel at.

The words of the Centurion were recommended by Origen (184/5-253/4 AD, an early Christian scholar) and St John Chrysostom (c 347-407AD, Archbishop of Constantinople, and an important Early Church Father) as a prayer before Holy Communion and are repeated thrice in the traditional rite of Mass in preparation for Holy Communion - with the word "servant" replaced with the word "soul".  We should say this prayer with fervour and sincerity, imitating the humility of the Centurion.  

To do so requires us to be aware of the gravity of sin, even venial sin.  A devout Holy Communion will wash away venial sin and help us to avoid them in future.  However, if we have had the misfortune to lose the grace of God through mortal sin, we should not go to communion but try to make a sincere act of perfect contrition and say the Centurion's prayer with all the more devotion, make a spiritual communion and then go to confession as soon as possible so that we can return once more to the heavenly banquet.

THE MEME

By Don McGovern

A meme is defined as a cultural assumption that is transmitted by repetition and that replicates in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes - or perhaps a better analogy would be that it replicates like a virus.  The meme to be successful must sink into the sub-conscious of a people, and this is mainly achieved by aggressive repetition.  The poet John Oxenham wrote, "The high soul climbs the high way, the low soul groups the low, and in between on the misty flats the rest drift to and fro."  The thought processes of the masses groping about on the misty flats today are almost entirely governed by memes.

An example of one very enduring meme is that Christ and His apostles were poor.  Where did that meme come from? - out of the left of course.  Christ and His step father were skilled tradesman, why would they be poor?  As for the Apostles, St Peter had his own family fishing business that was so successful it could afford hired labour - so why do we assume he was poor?  As for St Joseph, do we really believe that God would choose a man to take care of the Christ Child and His Holy Mother who was incompetent at doing so?  Money is the receipt that society gives to its members for contributing, if the Holy Family were poor it is because they were not contributing - is it possible for a Catholic to really believe that?  When Mary Magdalene poured expensive oil over Christ, Judas protested and suggested that it ought to have been sold and the money given to the poor.  Christ responded, "You have the poor among you always, so you can do good to them when you will; I am not always among you."  Would that response have made sense if Christ perceived Himself as poor?  At His Crucifixion the Roman Soldiery considered His cloak to be of such good quality that it would be a crime to damage it, so they cast lots for it - would that make sense if Christ was wearing the rags of the poor?

Some memes are mercifully short lived or geographically restricted.  The meme that Jews were some sort of inferior race that was a threat to civilisation was a meme very successfully propagated by the German Nazis, but it mercifully ran out of most of its steam with the military defeat of its propagators.

The meme that the French Revolution was the result of a brave and noble peasantry rising up against a cruel aristocracy has been far more enduring.  The truth, as opposed to the meme, is that the French Revolution was the process by which those who enjoyed economic power extended their grip on political power, and the poor were the biggest losers.  A similar meme that is still with us is the one that tells us that General Franco was some sort of evil right-wing dictator.  The truth is that General Franco was only persuaded to draw his sword reluctantly in defence of the innocent after the Spanish Communists (financed and radicalised by Moscow) had slaughtered over nine thousand innocent unarmed priests (plus bishops, nuns, laymen and even junior seminarians) and burned innumerable Catholic institutions to the ground.  Had it not been the hard left that Franco defeated, he would have been universally regarded as a hero of the common man.  He also had the misfortune of opposing Moscow (and defeating its machinations vis-a-vis Spain) at a time when Stalin and Churchill were allies. 

There are a couple of enduring memes around the American slave trade.  One meme heavily implicates the Catholic kings and queens of Europe, especially the Spanish and Portuguese thrones in the slave trade, completely ignoring the historical fact that most of the movers and shakers in the new world slave trade were Masons, the arch-enemies of Catholicism, and for that matter the arch-enemies of monarchy - they cut off the head of the French King remember.  Another meme around the same issue is that this was one of the worst examples of slavery in the history of the human race, blithely ignoring the facts that the Arabs of North Africa have practised slavery on a vast scale for over fourteen centuries, and still practice it to this day.

Another enduring meme is the one that tells us that the Northern Ireland troubles are the result of Catholic and Protestants hating one another.  Ignoring completely the fact that the dispute has little or nothing to do with religion and that one of the early leaders of the IRA was a Protestant and the current leaders are Communists.  As I say, because the meme resides in the subconscious, facts have little power to weaken or dent it; the meme moves, exists and has its being in some spire outside and beyond the real world.

A more recent meme is the one that tells us that unborn children are, well, not unborn children.  That is one meme that is showing signs of beginning to run out of steam, but it still has legs and unfortunately some considerable way to go.

Another recent meme that has been surprisingly successful is the global warming meme, which has more recently morphed into the climate change meme.  Memes just like viruses will sometimes mutate to protect themselves.  Because the meme largely exists in the subconscious, those infected often reveal the meme by self-contradiction, which can be amusing for those not infected by it.  Recently for example ITV wheeled out their science correspondent to inform us that there was a consensus in the scientific community that the recent flooding in the West Country and elsewhere was caused by global warming.  They then switched to their field correspondent wading down a flooded river, who one can only assume had not read the script, because he eagerly pointed out a marker on the river bank that was at least two meters above the level of the current swollen river, and informed us that this was where the river came to in the 1960 floods.  If this was not funny enough, he then pointed out a further marker a couple of meters higher even than the first one, and informed us that this was where the river rose to in the 1929 floods.  Most viewers would I suspect not have noticed how hilarious all this was, because, as I say, a successful meme resides in the subconscious and is therefore safely beyond the reach of rational thought.  Readers should note that when the media say things like this is the worst flood since 1960, they are actually saying this flood is not as bad as the 1960 flood.  We have since learned that some of the experts behind this meme had a few weeks earlier sent a memo to local authorities in the area warning them to prepare for an exceptionally dry winter!  Note: the dates given above are arbitrary - I don't remember the exact dates referred to.

The most recent meme successfully propagated by the left, and most memes come out of the left, is the one that homosexuality is innate, like being left handed or blue eyed.  This meme is now firmly lodged in the sub-conscious of possibly a majority of the folk that make up the North Atlantic civilisations, notwithstanding the fact that there is not a single shred of scientific evidence to support it, indeed the promoters of this meme don't even pretend to advance scientific arguments (unless you believe asserting that it is genetic without advancing a scrap of evidence to back your assertion, qualifies as science).  This is one meme has been implanted solely by aggressive repetition.

A better and more accurate analogy for homosexuality would almost certainly be smoking. I hasten to add that I am not suggesting that sodomy and smoking are morally equivalent, merely that the two addictions are strikingly similar in their origins and progress.  Smoking could be described as a disgusting unhealthy addiction usually acquired in one's early teens, which like all addictions is extremely difficult to break.  Some, like the members of ASH and the sodomite collective, militantly embrace their addictions, and champion it as some sort of noble right.  Others seek to break their addiction; some of whom will succeed but many sadly will fail.  And many of those who do succeed, unhappily, subsequently relapse.  Another fact that fits the smoking analogy perfectly is that one is usually first introduced to it by an older boy.

As I say, most memes exist within the secular asylum and come out of the left.  The Church before Vatican ll was a meme free zone.  Since Vatican ll and its rapprochement with the world, the meme has sadly seeped into the Catholic blood stream.  For example, the notion that a large body of Catholics, the SSPX, who embrace every last iota of the Catholic faith without mental quibble, who acknowledge the Pope as head of the Church and pray for him daily, and whose bishops are not excommunicated now (if they ever were) are nevertheless, on the basis of legal quibbles, outside the Church.  Whereas those innumerable modernist bishops and clerics who ignore Rome, Catholic tradition and the dogmas of the faith (and their contracepting flocks) are nevertheless, by some bizarre double standard, in full communion - in full communion with what precisely one might reasonably ask.

Another meme is the notion that the Novus Ordo, a post-Conciliar rite of Mass fabricated by a committee under the direction of a Freemason, with input from six heresiarchs, is "ordinary", whereas a rite of Mass that has been celebrated in its essentials for 2000 years, indeed in many features even extending back into the Jewish church, and which has been celebrated by all our saints and martyrs, is "extraordinary".  Those well-meaning traditionalists who repeat these silly labels are actually helping reinforce the meme and giving it substance.

How do we tell a meme from a fact?  Well one clue is that the meme is usually maintained by intolerance, aggression and anger.  If one is promoting truth, anger has no place or indeed reason to exist.  A simple illustration: if I'm teaching a child that two plus two equals four, I might take four oranges and separate them into two sets of two, put them together again and invite the child to count them.  However, if I want to teach the child that two plus two equals five there is no way I can calmly demonstrate it; I am forced to resort to aggressive repetition.  And if the child resists my attempt at brain washing, I will naturally very quickly become frustrated and angry.

If you want to see a meme in action, join a prayer vigil outside an abortion clinic; you will be very lucky to get through an hour without witnessing at least one instance of irrational, and seemingly bizarre, anger feeding of a meme.  Those seething with meme inspired rage will make completely irrational statements: in 2013 for example, while quietly praying my Rosary outside an abortion facility with my wife, I was accused of single handily blocking a five meter wide pavement, asked whether I was aware that there was a war in Syria and accused of being a f*****g bigot for embracing a weeping young woman - in addition, a significant number of completely incoherent comments were shouted in my general direction.  Another clue that you are dealing with someone infected by a meme is that those infected seldom hang around.  Their normal modus operandi is to shout some irrelevant comment in your direction and then immediate step on the gas to put distance between themselves and you.  It is as if they are terrified that you may actually be inconsiderate enough to seek to engage them in rational debate.

"Judgementalism" is merely a rude term for the responsible application of adult understanding and perception

I've reproduced the following letter without permission from the letter pages of the Catholic Herald.  It is one of the best letters to appear on this subject to have been published.  It was written by a Dr Eric Coombes, Farnham, Surrey, whom I regret I don't know from Adam.  - Ed.

Sir, Writing as if Jimmy Saville's "cheapening the tone of the BBC with the nauseating Jim'll Fix It and encouraging the young to enjoy pop music" are unconnected with his ruthless exploitation of young girls, A.N. Wilson neglects an important matter (Notebook, October 19). The Saville scandal may provide the clearest demonstration yet of an engineered process of cultural degradation, in which the corruption of the arts is inseparable from the corruption of intellectual life and morality. Continuing unchecked since the 1960s this has produced a copious flow of poison saturating society, especially in the context of education. As we saw with the Jonathan Ross affair, it has been increasingly facilitated and even promoted by the BBC.

Saville was a grotesque prototype of the contemporary celebrity, sustained by ruthless media manipulation in a role for which the complete lack of admirable qualities is not a disqualification but a requirement. He represents the abdication of adult responsibility, which is now so far advanced that the very distinction between childhood and adulthood is being erased, so that many people never grow up, and society is infantilized. The adult-aged child may become a celebrity, like Russell Brand, and be invited on to discussion programs, to be received respectfully for the incoherent and intemperate expression of fatuous opinions. Success, or at least fame, as a comedian is now sufficient qualification for membership of the panel on Question Time.

Saville is an early example of a contemporary type: the sinister buffoon, who appears in many guises and is often found in positions of power. Loathsome as Saville's behaviour was in itself, it was facilitated by the degradation of the culture in which he flourished and which, then as now, advances itself by promoting hostility to the very notion of judgement.  But "judgementalism" is merely a rude term for the responsible application of adult understanding and perception. Would an adult have needed to know about Savile's sexual propensities before doubting the wisdom of making that preposterous figure an object of admiration for the young?  Should it not have been enough to perceive that he was a child in the body of a man peddling trash, with the wilfulness and irresponsibility of a child, but with the presumed appetites of a man?

Mr Wilson is disgusted by the crassness of the culture in which Saville operated, but does not seem to see its full significance as providing the conditions for elevating Saville to his absurd status and for comprehensive betrayal of the young. This is the lesson that should (but probably will not) be learned from this appalling story.

Yours faithfully: Dr Eric Coombes, Farnham, Surrey.

This has to rank right up there as a contender for "Quote of the Year" already!  - and we are only in February.

“In climate research and modelling one has to recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear system, and so long-term forecasts of the future climate condition are not possible” -  from the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR), 2001, p774:

So why are we wasting billions based on the IPCC’s long-term forecast of the future climate condition?  I don't know - ask Prince Charles.

Hats off to Fritz Vahrenholt and The Neglected Sun for this reference.  St Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle!

The Land of the Free is at it Again Obama's diplomats at the UN ask for the reference to the “inherent right to life, liberty, and security of person” of every human being, from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to be deleted.

By Stefano Gennarini, J.D.

NEW YORK, February 28 (C-FAM) Angry over not getting a same-sex-friendly definition of the family into a new UN document, the Obama Administration tried to delete language agreed upon by the founders of the UN and repeated in documents since then.

Regularly contentious in recent decades, the family has been a diplomatic football with one side eager to recognize “diverse forms of the family” while the other holds on to the understanding that the family is the “natural and fundamental group unit of society” taken directly from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Behind closed doors, US negotiators asked to replace the definition of family from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with a lengthy new description of families that have “diverse forms and functions” and express “diversity of individual preferences.”

The proposed definition excluded the notion of the natural family, based on the union of a man and woman, as the norm for the procreation and upbringing of children. The US effort was ultimately rejected by UN member states.

The move puts the United States in an odd position. MORE

Once clerics (whether they be priests, bishops or popes) lose the faith, they seemingly inevitably yield to the temptation to prostitute their office as a bully pulpit for their personal prejudices.

Once clerics (whether they be priests, bishops or popes) lose the faith, they inevitably yield to the temptation to prostitute their office as a bully pulpit for their personal prejudices. Archbishop Nichols is a case in point, he appears on prime time television, his hooded eyes staring into the middle distance, and will pontificate on anything under the sun except Christ, Our Lady, the Church, the sacraments, the Real Presence or sin. It's a pity one cannot find a book-maker willing to take odds that he will not mention anything for which he was specifically ordained, you would be on a dead cert winner. You would have thought that if Christ and His Church are necessary for salvation, he might be slightly tempted to drop the occasional hint. Instead, he is like a man who on seeing a small child standing on a railway line with a high-speed locomotive approaching, calls to the child to button up its jacket against the cold.

I have to admit that I have never been a fan of Archbishop Nichols.  Prelates who organise special liturgies sensitively tailored to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersexual, asexual, pansexual, polyamorous, demisexual and other self-constructed deviant personages, are simply not my cup of tea.  Further, supposedly Catholic prelates who pay public homage to Hindu gods, when tens of thousands of our forefather in faith have embraced a cruel martyrdom rather than offer one grain of incense to such, certainly don't get my vote.  One can but wonder what happened to the commandment: I am the Lord your God, you shall not have strange gods before Me.  I'm not alone in my distaste for Nichols, these are sentiments I know are shared by thousands of my fellow Catholics.  I have often wondered whether such men, and Nichols is just one among many, legitimately hold office.  Which doctor of the Church wrote, "A man who is not of the household, cannot be head of the household"?

Nevertheless, I did concede that Nichols had one redeeming feature: he abstained from the cringe-making social gospel platitudes (the economics of Judas as one commentator neatly summed it up) that are the stock in trade of Anglican prelates.  Sadly, with his recent outburst about the benefit system reforms, a subject on which he is as qualified to pontificate as my postman, he has now squandered even this one, admittedly small, redeeming feature.

There is no greater pleasure in life than watching a smirking liberal being comprehensively stuffed by a conservative who actually knows his subject.

By: Graham Moorhouse

One of the great pleasures in life is watching a smirking liberal being comprehensively stuffed by a conservative who actually knows his subject.

Sadly, it doesn't happen too often, because the left, which has all but total dominance of the media, picks its fights very carefully. When it does happen it is almost always an accident, they thought they had picked a minnow to take on their shark, but hadn't done their homework properly - one of the dangers of overconfidence of course.

Some forty years ago, I was invited by Radio 4 to debate the issue of the killing of handicapped newborn babies by withholding basic care with the chairman of the BMA. What they didn't know was that I had heard the doctor in question debating this issue on a number of occasions and, having a good memory back in those days, knew all his well rehearsed arguments off by heart - indeed, I could have delivered his speech for him.
When I entered the studio, I opted to speak first, and started to take apart his arguments one by one.  Listeners unfortunately could not see what I could see, the good doctor was sitting across the studio from me, and I watched his shoulder go down, then his jaw drop open, his eyes grow wider, then his head finish up in his hands as I methodically demolished all his prepared arguments before he could even open his mouth, leaving him with no shots left in his arsenal of lies.

I cannot remember all the debating points, and it would be tedious to relate them all in any case. But I do remember one of his propaganda ploys, it went like this: nowadays we have an armoury of advanced techniques to keep people alive, but sometimes the truly compassionate choice is to withhold this technology. I've been taught to get my retaliation in first, so I started by saying, "Modern medicine has a great deal of advanced technology at its disposal to keep people alive, but this debate is not about advance technology, unless the good doctor opposite and the BMA now regard a mother's breasts or a bottle of milk as advance technology." It was at this point his shoulders visibly slumped.

One such golden moment recently was when they invited Anthony Ozimic from SPUC to debate gay "marriage" against three left-wing opponents (the left prefer the odds stacked in their favour) on Breakfast TV.  They clearly thought that odds of three to one would be sufficient. They also thought they had picked a minnow, but found they had a deadly Exocet on their hands.  To enjoy the video click here.  Anthony, you can be sure, won't be invited back any day soon.

To enjoy a real classic, watch Ann Coulter take on the smug, smart-aleck lefty, Jeremy Paxman.  It doesn't come across on the video unfortunately, but those who watched it live tell me that at one point one could actually see Paxman blushing.  To enjoy this cheer-up moment click here.

A more recent moment was when the smirking liberal, Piers Morgan, confronted Dr Michael Brown concerning the hot-potato issue of homosexuality.  Dr Michael Brown, since coming to faith in 1971 as a 16 year-old, heroin-shooting Jewish rock drummer, has devoted his life to Christ.  Piers obviously thought he would be easy meat - how wrong he was.  To enjoy watching him chew up Piers into small bits and spit him out, click here.  Poor Piers never saw what hit him, and Dr Brown, you can be certain, also won't be invited back anytime soon.

One of the reasons media lefties get so comprehensively stuffed when they make the mistake of going up against a competent opponent is that they live in such a strange rarefied bubble. You see, the media's idea of diversity is to have a Black secular liberal, a lesbian secular liberal and a wheel-chair bound secular liberal all in the same office.

On the Lighter Side Don't mess with old guys

An old guy looks out of his bedroom window and saw two hoodlums braking into his garden shed. He dialled 999 and explained what was happening. The police responded, "I'm sorry, we have no one we can send at the moment. Lock all your doors and stay inside, we will attend the incident as soon as manpower becomes available."

The old boy puts the phone down, counts to thirty, picks it up again and said, "Don't worry, there's no urgency; I've shot them both," and put the phone down.

Within ten minutes there were two ambulances, an armed response unit, a fire tender, a paddy wagon and two police cars on the scene, and the two hoodlums were arrested red handed.

The senior police officer at the scene said to the old man, "I thought you said you shot them!"  To which the old boy responded, "I thought you said you had no one you could send.

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