WISHING ALL MY READERS A HAPPY AND HOLY EASTER

WISHING ALL MY READERS 

A HAPPY AND HOLY EASTER

Resurrection Morning

 GENE

 PS

And it's axiomatic of course that these greeting extend to Detterling, Delia and Sebastian.

Detters you may be gone but you are not forgotten at the Good Yarn Friday Night Club. We regularly talk and joke about you. And we continue with our little party game, 'Detterling is the sort of man who...' For example: 

'Detterling is the sort of man who reads the contents of his spam folder.'

'Detterling is the sort of man who joins in with the 'Clap Hands' Gloria in church.'

But the consensus is that the best contribution so far is mine:

'Detterling is the sort of man who would hang a Jack Vettriano print in his living room.'

Dancer for Money

Art print by Jack Vettriano

Nurses protest plan to introduce abortion on demand

by Simon Caldwell

posted Wednesday, 28 Mar 2018

 

(Getty Images)

Nearly 400 nurses condemned a possible move by their own union to back 'decriminalisation' of abortion

Nearly 400 nurses are protesting against a possible move by the Royal College of Nurses to support a campaign for abortion on demand.
A total of 396 nurses have signed a letter to Janet Davies, the chief executive of the RCN, objecting to moves to possibly align the College with a campaign to support the proposed decriminalisation of abortion.
“If these measures were to be implemented, it would mean the introduction of abortion on demand, for any reason, to at least 28 weeks and possibly up to birth,” the nurses said in the letter.
“As nurses, midwives, healthcare assistants and nursing students, we object to a new extreme position being forced upon members of the RCN,” the letter said.
“We represent a variety of positions on the issue of abortion, but believe that supporting so called ‘decriminalisation’ is out of keeping with both our duties as responsible professionals and the expressed wishes of British women with regards to the legality and regulation of abortion.”
“This move to introduce a radical abortion law is being promoted by a small group of campaigners with extreme views on abortion,” the letter continued.
“Whilst they are entitled to hold the convictions they do we must not let them impose their agenda on the RCN and risk severely damaging its reputation as a professional body.”
The rebellion comes after a survey was carried out by the RCN to find out if members would support the campaign for decriminalisation.
Determining the policy was described in the minutes of a meeting of the RCN in December as an “operational priority”.
Some 435,000 nurses nationwide have since been asked if they are in favour of criminal sanctions being removed from abortion law, with “yes” or “no” being the only recorded responses.
The results of the survey will be used to “inform” the RCN as it decides whether to back the campaign driven by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), the largest private abortion provider in the UK.
A briefing paper sent out to members informs them that the Royal College of Midwives, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the British Medical Association have all put their weight behind the campaign.
Some of the nurses who objected to the RCN survey say they suspect that the exercise was being “manipulated”.
Their suspicions are likely to have been heightened by revelations about the influence within the RCN of senior members of BPAS and Marie Stopes.
They include the role of Mandy Myers, the director of operations at BPAS who, according to the Mail on Sunday, has “helped to guide RCN abortion policy for at least a decade”.
Her work has involved the co-authorship of an RCN report on abortion which was published last year.
Called “Termination of Pregnancy: An RCN Nursing Framework”, the document frequently speaks of the alleged need for the greater involvement of nurses in abortions.
It concludes by encouraging RCN members to “become more politically aware, so that as nursing practice expands and more evidence becomes available, care around termination of pregnancy could be further extended to nurses”.
Steven Fouch, a nurse from Kent who helped to draft the letter of protest, said he shared concerns over the role of hard-line abortion activists.
“There seems to be some evidence that there is a strong push supporting decriminalisation,” said Mr Fouch. “We feel that there is an agenda being pushed by a small minority.”
He added: “The real worry if decriminalisation went ahead and they effectively scrapped the 1967 Abortion Act is that the freedom of conscience clause, which is part of that Act, would be scrapped and therefore the legal protections that nurses have not to be involved in abortion would be removed. That is a real concern.”
Beverley Hanson, a nurse from Truro who signed the letter, said: “I personally think that you go into nursing to look after people and make them well and to give people the maximum of their life.
“For me to do anything that goes against life is totally wrong,” she continued. “It is against the ethics of what we should be doing as nurses.”
She said abortion was already “extremely accessible” and that anyone who wanted one within the upper time limit of 24 weeks was in practice allowed it.
“But once you have decriminalisation that opens the door for people to choose the sex of their baby,” she said. “There would be no grounds, nothing at all, to deter sex-selective abortions.
“Decriminalisation would open the floodgates for sex selections and late abortions and things like that.
“On a practical level I hope that there won’t be an increase in late-term abortions but I suspect that inevitably there will be.
“At the moment late-term abortions are usually for disabilities but if you decriminalise it up to birth you could have people insisting on abortions at 32 weeks, or 34 weeks even, simply because they have changed their minds or felt under pressure for whatever reason.”
Lord Alton of Liverpool said that it was encouraging for pro-life Parliamentarians “to see a grassroots revolt by nurses”.
“These nurses are right that their Royal College should not be using its resources to campaign for even more abortion,” he said.
“In former times nurses could have relied on their Royal College to protect and represent them. Not anymore. Ideology seems to have taken the place of conscience.”
In the last few years, polls have consistently shown that a larger proportion of women want more, not fewer restrictions on abortion.
A ComRes poll in May 2017 found that only one per cent of women wanted to see the time limit for abortion extended above 24 weeks.
Ann Furedi, chief executive of BPAS, told the Mail on Sunday that it was fanciful to suppose BPAS might swing opinion at the royal colleges.
“The fact organisations were choosing to back their campaign ‘isn’t evidence of fabulous manipulation of the royal colleges, it’s really about professionals drawing the same conclusions as us,” she said.

A disturbing incident...

A disturbing incident...

 

Yesterday afternoon I drove over to Mount Vernon Hospital to visit a former teaching colleague who has suffered a coronary.

As I approached the hospital two fat sows were leaning over a wall smoking. I wound down the car window. Both slappers looked to be in their mid-thirties. "You cannot smoke here, this is hospital premises," I informed them.

Fat slag number one responded:

"Listen mate we'll smoke here if we effing-well want to. This wall is the boundary of the hospital. What's it got to do with you anyhow you effing c**t? Eff off."

At this point fat slag number two chimed in:

"Yes, that right. You 'eard 'er. On your way you effing curb-crawler."

It's a sad reflection on our times that an upright citizen can be abused in this foul-mouthed way simply for pointing out to others their civic responsibilities.

Jacob Rees-Mogg: I try to say the rosary every day

by Staff Reporter

posted Tuesday, 27 Mar 2018

Jacob Rees-Mogg (Getty Images) 

 

 

The Catholic MP also spoke of his love of the Old Rite Mass

Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has said he tries to say the rosary daily and also praised the Tridentine Mass in an interview for a political website.
In a wide-ranging discussion on his faith with the website ConservativeHome, Rees-Mogg that although he tries to keep his Catholic faith a private matter, he feels obliged to answer honestly when people ask him about it.
“I don’t aim to ‘do God’,” he said, but “I get asked questions that relate to my faith and I answer the questions that I am asked.
“I don’t see my role as being a proselytising role or a theological role or a teaching role, but I think one has to admit and bear witness to what one believes.”
He said that he has never had any real doubts about the faith, nor wondered whether it was all true. “I’ve always believed it, even though as a child I did not enjoy going to church,” he said.
The MP also confirmed that he did not have a Tridentine Mass at his wedding, despite repeated claims, but instead had a Novus Ordo Mass in Latin. He explained that the celebrant thought that people unfamiliar with going to church would start chatting during the long periods of silence.
“I do go to the Tridentine Rite when it is available near me in Somerset,” he said, however he does not go out of his way to look for an Old Rite Mass. “The New Rite is in all senses valid, it is not a lesser rite, it is not a subsidiary rite,” he added.
Nonetheless, the Old Rite still has a particular appeal. “I think it is richer, the texts are fuller – a lot has been taken out for the New Rite – it focuses more centrally on the Eucharist, rather than on the other parts of the Mass which in my view are less central, and it is more thoughtful – there is more silence.”
In terms of his own prayer life, Rees-Mogg said that he tries to pray the rosary every day, although not the “full 200 Hail Marys”.
The Catholic politician faced a media storm last summer when, in an interview, he stated his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. However, Rees-Mogg said that as a backbencher he has little say over such issues.
“The issue is whether you would try and make it party policy, not whether you would vote one way or another as a matter of conscience.” He explained that many parliamentary votes depend on what the party leadership says, rather than individual MPs.
“I think what people are worried about is that somebody who is Catholic might influence the party bosses to make them insist that their religious view became a whipped vote. I am very clear that I would not seek to do [that], I think that is a matter for people’s consciences.”
“There is clearly in parliament no majority for my views on life,” he added, “but as an individual MP I would vote in favour of life.”

Cardinal Dolan: Democrats have abandoned Catholic voters

by Staff Reporter

posted Friday, 23 Mar 2018

Cardinal Dolan (CNS) 

 

‘The party that once embraced Catholics now slams the door on us,’ the cardinal wrote

The US Democratic Party has abandoned the many Catholic voters who once supported it, the Archbishop of New York has said.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Cardinal Timothy Dolan said that by embracing radical pro-abortion ideology and blocking legislation to help poorer families attend Catholic schools, the Democrats has alienated voters who were once loyal to the party.
The cardinal highlighted two significant historical figures from the archdiocese’s history: Archbishop John Hughes, the first archbishop, and Dolores Grier an African-American convert who became the archdiocese’s vice-chancellor.
“The two causes so vigorously promoted by Hughes and Grier—the needs of poor and middle-class children in Catholic schools, and the right to life of the baby in the womb—largely have been rejected by the party of our youth,” Cardinal Dolan said.
“An esteemed pro-life Democrat in Illinois, Rep. Dan Lipinski, effectively was blacklisted by his own party. Last year, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez insisted that pro-life candidates have no place in the modern Democratic Party,” he added.
He said that the situation was particularly bad in the State of New York.
“In recent years, some Democrats in the New York state Assembly repeatedly blocked education tax credit legislation, which would have helped middle-class and low-income families make the choice to select Catholic or other nonpublic schools for their children. Opposing the bill reduces the ability of fine Catholic schools across the state to continue their mission of serving the poor, many of them immigrants.
“More sobering, what is already the most radical abortion license in the country may soon be even more morbidly expanded. For instance, under the proposed Reproductive Health Act, doctors would not be required to care for a baby who survives an abortion. The newborn simply would be allowed to die without any legal implications. And abortions would be legal up to the moment of birth.”
Cardinal Dolan said the situation “saddens me, and weakens the democracy millions of Americans cherish” because “the party that once embraced Catholics now slams the door on us.”

Aborting unborn children with Down syndrome is ‘genocide’, UN told

by Catholic News Service

posted Friday, 23 Mar 2018

(Getty Images) 

 

'This is a prenatal death sentence given to people who are completely innocent,' a speaker said

Aborting a child with a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome is a gross violation of human rights and anti-discriminatory commitments, and can be considered genocide, according to speakers at a March 20 panel at the United Nations.
“Here at the United Nations there is much sincere talk and normally passionate action to fight against unjust discrimination,” said Archbishop Bernardito Auza, Vatican nuncio to the United Nations. “But as firm as these commitments are in principle, many delegations, UN agencies and active members of civil society tolerate gross violations of these commitments in practice.”
For example, groups that claim to advance the rights and equality of vulnerable women and girls are notably silent when pre-genetic screening followed by sex-selection abortion ends the lives of those they claim to defend, Archbishop Auza said.
“Such tacit cooperation in this lethal form of discrimination against girls is, at least, inconsistent,” and the inconsistency is even more pronounced in what is happening with those prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome, he said.
“Despite the commitments made in the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights, including that of the right to life, by all persons with disabilities,” he continued, “so many members of the international community stand on the sidelines as the vast majority of those diagnosed with Trisomy 21 have their lives ended before they’re even born.”
Down syndrome, or Trisomy 21, is a genetic condition caused by the presence of all or part of a third copy of the 21st chromosome. Down syndrome causes a distinct facial appearance, developmental delays and mild to moderate intellectual disability.
Archbishop Auza said children with Down syndrome “and their families are simply among the happiest groups of people alive, and the world is happier because of them.”
He cited a 2011 study published in the American Journal of Medical Genetics by Harvard University researchers. It “showed that 99 percent of those with Down syndrome say they are happy with their lives … 99 percent of their parents said they love their child with Down syndrome, 79 percent said their outlook on life is more positive because of their child, and only 4 percent regret having their child,” he said.
A CBS News report in August 2017 said Iceland was on the verge of eliminating Down syndrome births.
“What it really meant was that it was eliminating those with Down syndrome because 100 percent of parents of babies who receive a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome were choosing to end the life of their son or daughter,” Archbishop Auza said.
The growing availability of systematic prenatal screening is associated with increased abortion rates for babies with Down syndrome in Europe, Australia and China, according to Mary O’Callaghan, a public policy fellow at the Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame.
She said in many places, babies with disabilities are exempted from laws that limit abortion based on gestational age or capacity to experience pain.
O’Callaghan said the Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities prohibits “laws which explicitly allow for abortion on grounds of impairment,” yet Yadh Ben Achour, a member of the U.N. Human Rights Committee, said in November 2017 that defending those with disabilities “does not mean that we have to let a disabled fetus live. This is a preventive measure.”
In the United States, approximately 6,000 children each year are born with Down syndrome. O’Callaghan said 67 percent of pregnancies with a Down syndrome prenatal diagnosis are aborted.
She said abortion of babies with Down syndrome is “deeply embedded in obstetrics” and leads to a “substandard model of care that allows for elimination but not treatment.”
O’Callaghan quoted the late French geneticist Jerome Lejeune, who said, “Medicine becomes mad science when it attacks the patient instead of fighting the disease.” Lejeune identified the chromosomal abnormality that causes Down syndrome and was the founding president of the Vatican Pontifical Academy for Life.
Mikayla Holmgren, a 23-year-old Minnesotan with Down syndrome, described her joyful life as an award-winning dancer, high school graduate and current student at her parents’ alma mater, Bethel University. She is enrolled in a two-year certificate program there for individuals with intellectual disabilities.
She won the 2015 Miss Amazing Junior Miss pageant for girls and young women with disabilities and competed for the Miss Minnesota title as the first woman with Down syndrome to compete in a Miss USA state pageant.
“God made me a voice for those who cannot speak,” she said. “There are countries that would like to get rid of people like me. This makes me sad.”
Kurt Kondrich, a retired Pittsburgh police officer, became a full-time advocate for people with Down syndrome after his daughter was born with Trisomy 21.
He, his wife, Margie, and their daughter, Chloe, were instrumental in passing a 2014 law that requires health care providers in Pennsylvania to provide information about services available to women who get prenatal diagnosis indicating their babies have Down syndrome.
Abortion of children with Down syndrome is prenatal genocide, Kondrich said. He also described it as the ultimate form of prejudice, bigotry and prenatal bullying. “This is a prenatal death sentence given to people who are completely innocent,” he said.
Kondrich said his grown son, Nolan, is “a better more caring man” because of his relationship with Chloe. “Think of all the missing siblings,” he said.
Deidre Pujols, wife of Major League baseball player Albert Pujols, vice president of the Pujols Family Foundation and mother of a 20-year-old daughter with Down syndrome, said the prenatal elimination of millions of babies with Down syndrome worldwide evokes troubling parallels to Hitler’s quest for the perfect race.
The modern version includes “comfort talk” to expectant parents about making life easier without a disabled baby, she said.
Free will is a dangerous gift, she said. If populations can be profiled, devalued and eliminated before their first breath, why should caregivers suffer the burden of elders with Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease, she asked.
Dr. Patricia White Flatley, co-founder of Research Down Syndrome, described recent strategic approaches to address cognitive and medical issues after many years in which there was “widespread disinterest” in such research.
Although Down syndrome “is widely recognized to be associated with an increased incidence of some medical conditions, including congenital heart abnormalities, autoimmune disorders, and leukemia, it is less well-known that, compared to the general population, those with Down syndrome have a much lower incidence of certain other health disorders, including cardiovascular conditions, strokes and breast cancer,” she said.
The Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations co-sponsored the panel titled “No Room in Rural Villages, Cities and Homes for Those With Disabilities? Are Girls and Boys With Down Syndrome Being Left Behind?” The other co-sponsors were the Pujols Family Foundation, the Center for Family and Human Rights, the Jerome Lejeune Foundation and the film “Summer in the Forest,” being on March 23.
Held in observance of the 13th World Down Syndrome Day on March 21, the panel was a side event to the 62nd session of the Commission on the Status of Women.

By embracing abortion, US Democrats have alienated Catholics

by Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith

posted Friday, 16 Mar 2018

Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi (Getty Images) 

 

 

Pro-life Democratic candidates have disappeared, making it harder than ever for faithful Catholics to back the party

According to one American political website, the “abortion debate is over inside the Democratic party.” Just when it seems that Donald Trump may be heading towards a rebuff in the midterm elections, according to those picking over the results of the Pennsylvania special election, analysis of the same contest leads to the conclusion that the Democrats are now the party of so-called abortion rights, and thus the party that does not recognise the rights of the unborn. As the McClatchy website says of the victorious Democrat in Pennsylvania:

Lamb is not an outlier, not anymore. Nine months from Election Day, political veterans eyeing the House landscape struggle to even identify a single Democratic House hopeful — of the hundreds running — who openly opposes abortion rights.

This is surely deeply significant. There used to be pro-life Democrats, but not anymore it seems. To be a pro-life Democratic candidate is now almost impossible because, among other reasons, none of the big donors will fund such a candidate.

So, what does this mean for Catholics, by which of course I mean proper Catholics, Catholics who believe in what the Church teaches about the universal and absolute right to life?

First of all, it means that voting Democrat is now harder than ever. Watching the Presidential campaign from this side of the Atlantic, I was amazed by the resolutely pro-abortion stance of Hillary Clinton. I do not mean that her belief in liberal abortion laws shocked me – far from it, for that was no secret. What shocked and dismayed me was the way that at no time in the campaign did Mrs Clinton ever reach out to pro-lifers or do anything to conciliate them.

There was a time when Democrats did try to acknowledge the concerns of the pro-life movement: we had Bill Clinton talking about abortion being “safe, legal and rare”, which implied that it was not a good thing. And on one occasion, back in 2005, Mrs Clinton herself said that abortion represented a “tragic choice” for many women, and seemed to be seeking some sort of centre ground on the matter. But that seems like a long time ago now. Since then Mrs Clinton and the Democratic party have doubled down on their support for abortion. Nancy Pelosi does not just defend abortion in general, she defends all abortions, it seems, even those which seem the hardest to defend. Her use of the phrase “sacred ground” reveals her support of abortion to be doctrinaire and ideologically driven.

It strikes me that if Mrs Clinton and the Democrats in general had been just a little less hard line, then perhaps a few more people would have voted for them, and perhaps Mr Trump would not have made it into the White House. That is, of course, just a thought. After all, aren’t elections traditionally won by fighting over the middle ground? And it also strikes me that a lot of people voted for Trump, not because they liked him more, but because they disliked him less, and because they knew that Trump would reverse the packing of the Supreme Court with advocates of abortion. Indeed, the fact that the Democrats would never ever appoint anyone to the Supreme Court who was against abortion meant that Trump was able to make the opposite promise which represents something of a Holy Grail for all of us who are pro-life.

The current Democrat position is distressing, and I hope it will change. We need pro-life Democrats, because we need elections in which we can at least in theory vote for either party. And the Democratic party needs to be more democratic and less monolithic. It needs to recognise that some of us in conscience will never accept abortion, and that conscience has rights. As do unborn children. Until it does that, the Democrats present us with a political wasteland that has been laid bare by an ideology that has destroyed all of which it disapproves. If the abortion debate is truly over in the Democratic party, that does not bode well for the voters, or the party, or the health of political America.

Don’t just admire Padre Pio, imitate him, urges Pope

by Junno Arocho Esteves

posted Sunday, 18 Mar 2018

Pope Francis places a stole on a glass case containing the body of St Pio (CNS)

Francis visits birthplace of popular Italian saint

Many people admire Padre Pio, but too few imitate him, especially in his care for the weak, the sick and those who modern culture treats as disposable, Pope Francis said during Mass at the saint’s shrine.

“Many are ready to ‘like’ the page of the great saints, but who does what they do?” the Pope. “The Christian life is not an ‘I like,’ but an ‘I give myself.'”

Pope Francis celebrated the Mass outside the shrine of St Pio of Pietrelcina with about 30,000 people after visiting children in the cancer ward of the hospital St Pio founded, Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza (House for the Relief of Suffering).

In his homily, the Pope reflected on three words that both summarised the day’s readings and, he said, the life of Padre Pio: prayer, smallness and wisdom.

Smallness, he said, calls to mind those whose hearts who are humble, poor and needy like the young patients cared for in Padre Pio’s hospital and those who in today’s world are unwanted and discarded.

Departing from his prepared text, Pope Francis said he remembers being taught in school about the Spartans, who, “when a boy or girl was born with malformations, they would take them to the top of the mountain and throw them over.”

“We children would say, ‘How cruel,'” the Pope said. But, “brothers and sisters, we do the same. With more cruelty and more knowledge. Whatever isn’t useful, whatever doesn’t produce, is thrown away. This is the throwaway culture. The little ones are not wanted today.

“Those who take care of children are on the side of God and defeat the throwaway culture, which, on the contrary, prefers the powerful and considers the poor useless,” he said. “Those who prefer the little ones proclaim a prophecy of life against the prophets of death of every age.”

Only with wisdom, motivated by love and charity for others, can true strength be found, he said. Christians aren’t called simply to admire great saints like Padre Pio, but rather to imitate their way of fighting evil wisely “with humility, with obedience, with the cross, offering pain for love.”

Prayer, he said, is “a gesture of love” that is often stifled by excuses and leads to Christians forgetting that without God “we can do nothing.”

“We must ask ourselves: do our prayers resemble that of Jesus or are they reduced to occasional emergency calls? Or do we use them as tranquilisers to be taken in regular doses to relieve stress?” the pope asked.

Padre Pio recognised throughout his life that prayer “heals the sick, sanctifies work, elevates healthcare and gives moral strength,” he said.

Pope Francis began his day of tribute to St Pio with an early morning visit to Pietrelcina, where the Capuchin saint was born in 1887.

Thousands waited outside the square of the Chapel of the Stigmata which houses a piece of the elm tree Padre Pio sat in front of when he first received the stigmata – wounds on his feet, hands and side corresponding to those Jesus suffered at the Crucifixion – in September 1918.

Pope Francis entered the chapel where he prayed privately for several minutes before making his way to the square to greet the faithful.

Standing in front of an image of a young Padre Pio bearing the wounds of Christ’s crucifixion in his hands, the Pope said that it was in Pietrelcina that the future saint “strengthened his own humanity, where he learned to pray and recognise in the poor the flesh of Christ.”

“He loved the Church, he loved the Church with all its problems, with all its woes, with all its sins – because we are all sinners; we feel shame – but the spirit of God has brought us here to this church which is holy. And he loved the holy Church and its sinful children, everyone. This was St Pio,” Pope Francis said.

Recalling the time in Padre Pio’s life when he returned to Pietrelcina while he was ill, the Pope said the saintly Capuchin “felt he was assailed by the Devil” and feared falling into sin.

Departing from his prepared remarks, the Pope asked the people if they believed the Devil existed. When only a handful of people responded, he told them it didn’t seem “they were totally convinced.”

“I’m going to have to tell the bishop to give some catechesis,” he said jokingly. “Does the Devil exist or not?”

“Yes!” the crowd responded loudly.

Christians, he continued, should follow the example of the Capuchin saint who did not fall into despair but instead found refuge in prayer and put his trust in Christ.

“All of theology is contained here! If you have a problem, if you are sad, if you are sick, abandon yourself in Jesus’ arms,” the Pope said.

GRANNY BARKES FELL IN WOOLWORTHS

GRANNY BARKES FELL IN WOOLWORTHS
 

Granny Barkes fell in Woolworths ... she'll get a free ride in the  ambulance Ha! Ha! Ha!... The just man falls seven times...  Look! See the tracks of Santa's feet on the hearth... I'll break your ould desk... Say what may the tidings be, on this glorious Christmas morn?... He's lost his apple cake... Look! Look what Mairead has made!... That would bury Dick and Diamond... Indeed he went all the way to the whiney nough... I'm getting a wheelbarrow tomorrow: it's brand new ... I can't sleep with excitement... This is a day above all days... No, we are off to school, c'mon Eddie... I heard a roar between  two hills... L to the water Jimmy Harte... I wish that day would come back again... And flying my kite... What happened to your lorry Jim?... Lay on MacDuff... Edward's day out... He cut down a tree from the hedge of the car road with a hatchet - yes, but it's his birthday... I don't know ... maybe so. I think they did... Look at the size of the flakes! Look at the size of the flakes!... There's a stepmother's breath in the air... He stole matches... Oh! I love to play when the decorations are up... If I was you I'd build a wall... The Irvines of the wheel, the wild men from Borneo... Time waits for no man, not even John Roy... Jeremiah, blow the fire; puff, puff, puff... Blue ink, black ink, and good red ink... See that sycamore tree? By the end of November there won't be a single leaf left on it... Secundam scripturas... Has he no ears?... Hey! Don't touch that coal scuttle, that belongs to Stanton Bailey... That's the biggest laugh I've had since I put salt in the sugar bowl last week... I'll get ye Tony... James Hugh Monaghan from Dernee,  a warrior I do beliee... Hurling by bum, hurling by bum... You are very unsatisfactory... Man attacked and thoroughly beaten; attackers make off in a posh car... I was reading The Messenger...  Drinking buttermilk all the week, whiskey on a Sunday... Back to back, belly to belly, don't give a damn about Yarnarelli... Come day, go day, God send Sunday... The chocolate tree, the sweet tree... The waters wild went o'er his child and he was left lamenting... 'Ma mither is a queen', said he... This new wheel of fortune has just come from France... John Johnston's horses are in your corn. Night's for rest, night's for rest... There's a yellow rose in Texas... "Hot diggity, dog ziggity, boom, what you do to me, when you're holding me tight."...  A field in Larne... Would it be physical?... A stew boiled is a stew spoiled... The Minster-clock has just struck two, and yonder is the Moon... Boys obtuse... And the hunter home from the hills... Wait 'til I get another stone for you Cyril... McAree, McAra, McAvarn K-Kunny, put in your white foot 'til I see if you're my mummy... Bara lynsey, bara lynsey... Patch upon patch sown without stitches; come riddle me this and I'll give you my britches... "Hold on, my door was hit too."... Joe Worthington, Joe Worthington you'd sit till you'd rot... Come to the water fit a thank ye, fit a thank ye, fit a thank ye... I washed my hands in water; water never run, and I dried them in a towel that was neither wove nor spun... Here comes I Wee Devil Doubt, the pain within, the pain without... Peeping round the door in the khaki there to see the old pair once again... When I was a lad so was me Dad... Ta Ra Ra Bam, Ta Ra Ra Ching, Ta Ra Ra Bam, Ta Ra Ra... 'Twas on a Sunday evening that Barlow's it was robbed: Mrs Barlow went down to the room to get a treacle scone, but when she saw the moneybox, the money it was gone... Genitori, Genitoque Laus et jubilation...  He relies too much on his effing muscles... The Protestant boys are loyal and true: they are in me eye says Donal Abu...  What's the 'with thee' for? What's the 'with thee' for?...  On a brick-coloured ticket, that's brick Pat... All in!...  Water! Water!, er , Tea! Tea!, with two lumps of sugar and a spot of milk... I wonder, yes I wonder, will the angels way up yonder, will the angels play their harps for me?... Whistle and I will come to you me lad... Get that Teddy Boy haircut out of my sight!... The one with the black bucket is the best... The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass... Sandy Row on an Easter Monday, every day's like an Easter Sunday... Willie Ruckie... Milled today, fed tomorrow... It's long and it's narrow, it's not very wide, it wears a green selvage on every side... Tilly Versailles... Yes and truly you are best... No more tomorrows in your career... Dr Whitehead... Piss, Piss  Iceland dog!... Tickets are sixpence each and I hope you all win... Andera Keck K-Keck K-Keck K-Keck... We sell only the best E..E..English C..C..Coca Cola... Aye but, naw but, could you cut turf?... Hollyhocks! Hollyhocks! over Bobby Lyttle's garden wall...  "You took the coat hanger to it."... The seas obey, the fetters break and lifeless limbs thou dost restore... You could easily stand on Kelly's hills and count his skinny ribs... Barefooted thatcher, Pa Bunty... Have you got a wagon to put these wheels on?... Lauda Jerusalem Dominum,  Lauda Deum tuum Sion... Man attacked and thoroughly beaten, attackers make off in a posh car... Swiftly, silently and unseen... You see Missus D; there's the cow and there's the gate... C'mon... let's get home for the beef and spuds... Ecce Panis Angelorum... Dee daw Marjorie Raw... You're idle for stelk... Saucepan gossiper... Corduroy for every boy, cordurat for every cat... We're the boys that fears no noise, we are the bold Drumarda boys... On Saturday night we all got tight and Cassidy brought us over...  Silver Saturday, jink night... Listening to the footsteps of the boys from Tedd... Dick Nan's: just the spot for a picnic... Listen to me George: "Would you like white stones on your grave?"... The bespectacled roadman...  Chick a boom, chick a rack, ... chick a boom,  chick a rack, and the yellow skirt goes swinging...  Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years, Scrooge replied. He died seven years ago, this very night... Too strong Grandad, too strong... Go on Balfour!...  Santa Agatha, ora pro nobis... "Pope Pius XII died during the night."...  The Ypres Salient at Night... Histracy... Wherefore have you left your sheep on that stony mountain steep?... Hi for a toffer  and hi for it still; and hi for the wee lad lies over the hill... The river eddy  whirls... Beati Michaeli archangelo... Put a table in the hall and it will do fine... And he fully did... Jimmy Hicks is not in hell... Rushe came down last night... I know my nick name... Uncle Merry... For aye for guide: very good neighbours, but keep your back to us... Apostrophe at the Post  Office today... Let the reindeers go. Let them go!...  Good morrow Mick... No-one will  read your papers... Oh! Hugh is staunch...  Jack's in Diviney... Smithers... You're only making a faddle (fardel) of yourself... The image of a girl... Deeper than the wishing well... Ballina, Balnabroka, Anahinahola, don't show the white feather wherever you go... Carolina  moon... What a beautiful day! What must heaven be like?... Do you know our d'Brian?...  You're nice Miss Rice.... I see said the blind man... The fish in the pond are seeing  red as Bobby is fishing with Coates strong thread... And those who come from  distance far are always late for tea... Oh! to be in Doonaree... All day all night  Marianne; down by the seaside sifting sand... Look at the way he's twisting that  stick... He won't know himself in this lovely place... You've given me a taste of fame... There was a wild colonial boy  Jack Saltey was his name. Geoff Duke. Elenore Gee! I think you're swell... The people they call me Calypso Joe. Peas ... er, from our garden. Delish... Oh! my diploma... I win a pound... The ancient ring post snapped like a matchstick... I think, I think, that she's the mostest of the lot, and furthermore she is the only chick I got... Nicolette, I can pick 'em!... Raddle diddle da ha ha... A great time of day to be in such good humour... They all wore black coats and black top hats and they turned and went up to your room... Deep, deep river, away, away... Early morning light, Rat ta-tat ta-tat ta-tat. Rat ta-tat ta-tat ta-tat...

Rowan Williams and Richard Dawkins oppose expansion of Catholic schools - Disgraceful! says Gene

by Nick Hallett

posted Tuesday, 6 Mar 2018

Lord Williams of Oystermouth, former Archbishop of Canterbury (Getty Images)

 

 Richard Dawkins

They said changing admissions rules for new faith schools would be 'divisive'

The former head of the Anglican Communion has joined Richard Dawkins in attacking a policy that would allow the Catholic Church to open new schools.

Dr Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, co-signed a letter to the Daily Telegraph saying it was “difficult to bring to mind a more divisive policy, or more deleterious to social cohesion” than removing an admissions cap that prevents new faith schools from selecting more than half of their intake from their own religion.

The cap effectively prevents the Catholic Church from opening new schools because, once they reach the 50 per cent limit, they would have to turn away students because of their Catholic faith – something that would violate canon law.

However, the letter implies that children do not really have any religion, saying that removing the cap would allow schools to “label children at the start of their lives with certain beliefs and then divide them up on that basis.”

Other signatories to the letter include Andrew Copson, Chief Executive of Humanists UK, Rabia Mirza, Director of British Muslims for Secular Democracy, and Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston.

In their 2017 general election manifesto, the Conservative Party pledged to remove the cap, calling it “unfair and ineffective” and acknowledged that it prevented the Catholic Church from opening new schools.

The manifesto reiterated a pledge that Prime Minister Theresa May had made shortly after taking office the previous year.

In December 2016, the Diocese of East Anglia said it was ready to open eight new Catholic schools once the cap was lifted, citing a desperate shortage of school places for Catholic children.

In November 2017, the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales launched a petition calling on the government to keep its promise. “By forcing Catholic schools to turn away Catholic school children on the basis of their faith, the very principle of a Catholic parent’s right to choose a Catholic education is under threat,” the petition said.

In January this year, Damian Hinds was appointed Education Secretary, raising hopes that the government would honour its promise. Hinds was educated at a Catholic grammar school and has previously called for the government to lift the cap.

So sorry about Newcastle University getting stuffed by St John's Cambridge on University Challenge

So sorry about Newcastle University getting stuffed by St John's Cambridge on University Challenge

Hi Detters,

So sorry about Newcastle University getting stuffed by St John's Cambridge on University Challenge. 
 



My only regret is that it wasn't St John's Oxford that stuffed them.

 Tee! Hee! Hee!

GENE