My Conversion

A few people have inquired about reading my conversion story so here is an attempt at a summery that isn’t too long winded. First a little background, at 17 I started attending Socialist Worker Party meetings at Ilford library. This was the beginning of my relationship with Communism that would span most of my adult life culminating in my membership of the Marxist/leninist Communist Party of Britain. I suppose like most  ‘materialists’ I put off thinking any deeper about the big issues of life and just accepted the vague Darwinist approach to explanations of life’s origins and purpose but a catalyst of events including my Uncle dying and my first child being born lead me to think a little deeper about these things. On discovering the much hidden fact that the Big Bang Theory was in fact put forward by a Roman Catholic Priest working alongside Einstein coupled with the reality that Soviet Russia had banned the Big Bang Theory for reasons of a theological beginning gave rhythm to an already strained reasoning within Socialist explanations. My time in Ireland made me see things with fresh eyes, I had never been out of Protestant Britain and like most under the yoke of the Union flag didn’t question abortion much, being in a Catholic country changed that for me. My conversion was a slow burning fuse for a long while until a tipping point was reached with many factors on many levels working in unison until I made my decision whilst still a member of my Communist Branch whom I had fell out with almost entirely over Irish policy surrounding the Good Friday Agreement. Just before I announced my resignation to the Party along came an ex Catholic Priest to join my branch which obviously created quite a stir, one out to the Church and one in from the Church. We had some quite lengthy debates for some time grappling with each other intellectually. At some point in all this when I lost my Uncle and heard my Dad cry for the first time I finally bowed to Christ and opened my heart to him and this is when I had my experience of what I can only  explain as the Holy Spirit descending and filling every cell in my body. I will never forget that moment as long as I live and do feel that presence every time I look back and properly realize the reality of Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Department for International Development’s pro-abortion approach to maternal mortality
Why are maternal health and sexual and reproductive health such priorities for DfID? DfID is working to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). There are eight MDGs, each focusing on a different area of aid for developing countries. The deadline to achieve these goals is 2015. MDG 5 is expressed as follows: ‘By the same date [2015], to have reduced maternal mortality by three quarters, and under-five child mortality by two thirds, of their current rates.’ However, MDG 5 has been hijacked by pro-contraception and pro-abortion advocates, by introducing a target and monitoring within MDG 5 referring to universal access to ‘reproductive health’. The International conference on Population and Development 1994, and the Beijing Women’s Platform 1995 are commonly cited by anti-life advocates. However, the documents from these meetings are absolutely non-binding and have never been internationally agreed upon. In fact, many countries have expressed strong reservations and objections to large parts of the documents. In this area, DfID has chosen to work with world leaders in abortion and contraception advocacy and provision. – (SPUC briefing package)
CAFOD’s Support for MDG’s
The agreement to halve world poverty by 2015, encapsulated in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) demonstrated strong consensus that the international community has a shared responsibility to end global poverty and meeting the MDGs must remain a priority up to this point. CAFOD’s report ‘100 Voices’1 demonstrates that a successor global development framework is important to people and organisations working with poor communities across the world, and that it should build on the gains of the MDGs. (Building from the Ground Up – How the foundations of a post-2015 framework should translate into change for people in poverty)

Please veiw and consider signing.

https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/his-excellency-right-reverend-john-arnold-end-the-promotion-of-corporations-supporting-abortion

Thankyou,

Stefan Gillies

Solidarity with the French in their struggle against the perversion of marriage – Piper in the midst of battle!

I recently raised a petition concerning CAFOD/Caritas involvment with Amnesty International. The petition successfully persuaded them to remove visible links to Amnesty on their website. I am pursuing the conflict of interest issue further with a new petition highlighting that Y Care International is the international relief and development agency of the YMCA movement in the UK and Ireland and aswell as being at the Hyde Park ‘IF’ event promoted by CAFOD is on The Boycott list of supporters of Planned Parenthood.

Please veiw and consider signing.

https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/his-excellency-right-reverend-john-arnold-end-the-promotion-of-corporations-supporting-abortion

Thankyou,

Stefan Gillies

Bella Premunt Hostilia ~ a blog by Stefan Gillies

You have come to know that they are all feeble, all colaborators and criminals in the universal slaughtering of souls; and that they are responsable for it. Accountable. Responsable to souls who send themselves to damnation – it was you who let them be damned by doing nothing, so you yourselves damn yourselves for letting God’s souls send themselves to damnation.
Since you have come to know that, you have become two-faced, two -faced towards your father, two-faced towards your mother, towards your brothers, towards your big sisters, towards your friends, because you make out that you love them and you can’t love them. And so everything in your life rings as though it had a crack running through it, a crack through your love as a daughter, a crack through your love as a sister, a crack through your love-affairs; a crack through your friendships; a crack through your own feelings: your whole life is two-faced and rings with a crack running through it.

Charles Peguy
The mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc – translation Jeffrey Wainwright 1984

Bella Premunt Hostilia ~ a blog by Stefan Gillies

CRUX  SACRA SIT MIHI LUX – NUNQUAM DRACO SIT MIHI DUX

Stages in the descent of the human mind towards the negation of all religion –
Protestantism – Modernism – Atheism

“State-policy and church-policy are conjoint, But Janus-faces looking diverse ways”
Cardinal Pole to Mary Tudor

Margaret Pole the Blessed, Countess of Salisbury

“Sed in mundo videmus res diversarum naturarum in unum ordinem concordare, non ut raro et a casu, sed ut semper vel in maiori parte. Oportet ergo esse aliquem cuius providentia mundus gubernetur. Et hunc dicimus Deum.”

“But in the world we find that things of diverse natures come together under one order, and this not rarely or by chance, but always or for the most part. There must therefore be some being by whose providence the world is governed. This we call God.“

Aquinas – Contra Gentiles, Chapter 13:35

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THE OATH AGAINST MODERNISM

Given by His Holiness St. Pius X September 1, 1910.

I . . . . firmly embrace and accept each and every definition that has been set forth and declared by the unerring teaching authority of the Church, especially those principal truths which are directly opposed to the errors of this day. And first of all, I profess that God, the origin and end of all things, can be known with certainty by the natural light of reason from the created world (see Rom. 1:90), that is, from the visible works of creation, as a cause from its effects, and that, therefore, his existence can also be demonstrated: Secondly, I accept and acknowledge the external proofs of revelation, that is, divine acts and especially miracles and prophecies as the surest signs of the divine origin of the Christian religion and I hold that these same proofs are well adapted to the understanding of all eras and all men, even of this time. Thirdly, I believe with equally firm faith that the Church, the guardian and teacher of the revealed word, was personally instituted by the real and historical Christ when he lived among us, and that the Church was built upon Peter, the prince of the apostolic hierarchy, and his successors for the duration of time. Fourthly, I sincerely hold that the doctrine of faith was handed down to us from the apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same purport. Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical’ misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously. I also condemn every error according to which, in place of the divine deposit which has been given to the spouse of Christ to be carefully guarded by her, there is put a philosophical figment or product of a human conscience that has gradually been developed by human effort and will continue to develop indefinitely. Fifthly, I hold with certainty and sincerely confess that faith is not a blind sentiment of religion welling up from the depths of the subconscious under the impulse of the heart and the motion of a will trained to morality; but faith is a genuine assent of the intellect to truth received by hearing from an external source. By this assent, because of the authority of the supremely truthful God, we believe to be true that which has been revealed and attested to by a personal God, our creator and lord.

Furthermore, with due reverence, I submit and adhere with my whole heart to the condemnations, declarations, and all the prescripts contained in the encyclical Pascendi and in the decree Lamentabili, especially those concerning what is known as the history of dogmas. I also reject the error of those who say that the faith held by the Church can contradict history, and that Catholic dogmas, in the sense in which they are now understood, are irreconcilable with a more realistic view of the origins of the Christian religion. I also condemn and reject the opinion of those who say that a well-educated Christian assumes a dual personality-that of a believer and at the same time of a historian, as if it were permissible for a historian to hold things that contradict the faith of the believer, or to establish premises which, provided there be no direct denial of dogmas, would lead to the conclusion that dogmas are either false or doubtful. Likewise, I reject that method of judging and interpreting Sacred Scripture which, departing from the tradition of the Church, the analogy of faith, and the norms of the Apostolic See, embraces the misrepresentations of the rationalists and with no prudence or restraint adopts textual criticism as the one and supreme norm. Furthermore, I reject the opinion of those who hold that a professor lecturing or writing on a historico-theological subject should first put aside any preconceived opinion about the supernatural origin of Catholic tradition or about the divine promise of help to preserve all revealed truth forever; and that they should then interpret the writings of each of the Fathers solely by scientific principles, excluding all sacred authority, and with the same liberty of judgment that is common in the investigation of all ordinary historical documents.
Finally, I declare that I am completely opposed to the error of the modernists who hold that there is nothing divine in sacred tradition; or what is far worse, say that there is, but in a pantheistic sense, with the result that there would remain nothing but this plain simple fact-one to be put on a par with the ordinary facts of history-the fact, namely, that a group of men by their own labor, skill, and talent have continued through subsequent ages a school begun by Christ and his apostles. I firmly hold, then, and shall hold to my dying breath the belief of the Fathers in the charism of truth, which certainly is, was, and always will be in the succession of the episcopacy from the apostles. The purpose of this is, then, not that dogma may be tailored according to what seems better and more suited to the culture of each age; rather, that the absolute and immutable truth preached by the apostles from the beginning may never be believed to be different, may never be understood in any other way.
I promise that I shall keep all these articles faithfully, entirely, and sincerely, and guard them inviolate, in no way deviating from them in teaching or in any way in word or in writing. Thus I promise, this I swear, so help me God. . .

…

“If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me” – St Joan of Arc on questioned at her trial of her presence in grace

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, oil on canvas 1854 – Louvre, Paris

“For the contemplative liturgical prayer is sometimes the source, sometimes the result of the Lord’s visits.” (Dom Guéranger)

“The truth of globalization as a process and its fundamental ethical criterion are given by the unity of the human family and its development towards what is good. Hence a sustained commitment is needed so as to promote a person-based and community-oriented cultural process of world-wide integration that is open to transcendence.” – CARITAS IN VERITATE