St Mary Mother of God

There has been a spate of this recently. Please keep your eyes and ears open and if you see people who look suspicious please ring the presbytery bell and alert us to the people. We can confirm if they are genuine or not. We have a new surveillance system but it is only a help.

From Fr. John

John Humphreys interviewed a young Muslim girl last week who believed that wearing the veil is an essential part of her religion. When John Humphreys pointed out that objectively it was not part of Muslim teaching, she said she believed that for her it was. I could understand the interviewer’s frustration because, in saying what she did, she just slammed the door on any kind of rational debate.

Few people, if any, are convinced by argument. That means it will be difficult, if not impossible, to have dialogue with radical Muslims among whom I would include this young girl. But good honest folk who have been going about their business, wearing jewellery that has been the custom in our country for centuries, have been sucked into a debate which has come about by extremist immigrants who think the whole world should revolve around them and seemingly are hell bent on destroying everything that is sacred in our Christian country. And powerful people are so afraid of being counted succumb to the every whim of this very small but vociferous minority.

It seems odd to me that Muslims can go around in burkas and demand that they wear veils in school but it is still against the law for a catholic priest to wear his cassock in pubic or a catholic to marry the heir to the throne. Perhaps the next step will be the removal of the crosses on the Union Flag?

But worse is to come if secularists get their way in compelling faith schools to take 25% non-Christians. It could mean that the 25% could try and gain control of a school’s governing body, thereby eliminating religion from the catholic school altogether. It is time to wake up to what is going on and do something about it.