Karl von Hapsburg beatification poster (draft)

St Andrew's & Edinburgh indult update!

The Cardinal Archbishop has given permission (how many years on?) for an indult Mass every Sunday (11:15 a.m.) and Holy Day of Obligation (5:45 pm) in St Andrew's, Ravelston, Edinburgh. Git'chur Ryanair tickets and get to Edinburgh.

Cleft palate abortion doctors investigated

Jasper Carrot: "Anglicans. What's the point?"

Here's

a useful Anglican enforcing the law!

How unutterably cool is this? Not mediocre at all.

Look,

one of the pope's episcopal ancestors was Henry Benedict Stuart!

ha ha great stuff indeed! This has made my week. I am going for a celebratory herbal vodka.

Not mediocre: another abortionist sees what he is doing

Former abortionist in Belgrade speaking in Austria about the abortion that
changed his life.

In Deutsch

Tips for attending the old rite Mass

Here

is a useful post for anyone who has never been to Mass according to the 1962 missal, or who has been and hated it/couldn't work out what on earth was going on (me, the first time, and more, that I went).

If you are looking for Tridentine Mass in Scotland phone up Una Voce, there are a few that the bishops allow to be discreetly publicised but they allow others so long as they are not publicised at all.

Could someone look in the code of canon law and tell me about this thing called a "private Mass"?

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly and the Mediocre

Here is a shiny new website collecting all those heartwarming or giggle-inducingly-dreadful stories about cardinals that one reads and then can never find when they would be useful.

Cult of Mediocrity Example 1

Chap offers to give oodles of money to more or less any bog standard local authority school, on the one condition that the school be run by a board of governors and not the local authority. Well, we cannae be havin' that, can we? Ah mean, folk might get above themselves. Who'd they think they are, wanting to be different?

Katy Grant reports and comments in the Scotsman.

Petrol on the fire

A new report has appeared indicating that the injectable contraceptive Depo Provera can triple the risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease (STD). This new research has sobering implications for the AIDS epidemic in Africa and our role in it. The U.S. foreign aid establishment would sooner eat ground glass than admit it, but it is very likely that our family planning programs have been aiding the spread of the HIV virus. The bottom line? As the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa rages out of control, we have been recklessly promoting and distributing drugs which make women even more vulnerable to the deadly virus. We have been pouring gasoline on a fire.

(Steve Mosher, Population Research Institute, by email)

The Catholic Church: "the most rightly ordered expression in history of the one Church of Christ" - George Weigel

Contributed by A Friend, who asks "Remind me, what supposed to be the difference between a Neo-Conservative and a Modernist? Perhaps it’s 'sociological' …"

Here is the article.

Portugal follows Malta's lead

Does anyone remember the reputed response of the Maltese junior foreign secretary to a BBC interviewer's question as to the Maltese government's response should Rebecca Gomperts attempt to bring abortion facilities to Malta?

He said something along the lines of blowing the Dutch boat out of the water. The journalist protested that this was a little extreme, but the Maltese said "We would consider it an act of war against Maltese citizens." Why can't journalists, e.g., get their heads around this? The point, and the whole point, is whether or not you are killing people.

Anway, re Portugal, an article from a few days ago and a more recent one.

Serviettes

Pope Gelasius in his ninth letter (chap. 26) to the bishops of Lucania condemned
the evil practice which had been introduced of women serving the priest at the
celebration of Mass. Since this abuse had spread to the Greeks, Innocent IV
strictly forbade it in his letter to the bishop of Tusculum: "Women should not
dare to serve at the altar; they should be altogether refused this ministry." We
too have forbidden this practice in the same words in Our oft-repeated
constitution Etsi Pastoralis, sect. 6, no. 21.

Benedict XIV, enc. Allatae sunt, 1755