Friday, February 5, 2010

Fr. Ray Blake on the Natural Law

We have to hand the quote of the week to Fr. Ray Blake on the other side of the pond in the UK. The blogging priest is the pastor of Saint Mary Magdalen in Brighton.

He fisks some coverage in the secular news of Pope Benedict's blunt and to-the-point ad limina address to Britain's bishops. 


The newsagencies seem to have ignored, the idea of "natural law", perhaps because it is not a phrase upper most in the Ecclesdon Square vocabulary. Yet for anyone concerned with "justice and peace" issues, it obviously should be.


In what sense does Ms Harman's "Equalities Legislation", which incidently is Labour's only "big idea", violate the natural law?


It bases human rights on sexual orientation, the tendency is therefore to reduce human beings to being a set of genitals attached to a person, rather than seeing first and foremost a human being a mind, a soul who has a certain sexual orientation.

Do read the entire post, which is not that long if you want to see where we are headed here in the US.  What comes after the above is an account of a very disturbing practice taking place in nursing homes and Fr. Blake rightly asks, if 11 year olds will be next.

If you liked that post, you will probably also like his post on another part of the Pope's ad limina address in which he said the bishops must recognize dissent for what it is.  Below, fellow UK priest, "His Hermeneuticalness" - Fr. Tim Finigan, holds up a copy of the UK's leading dissident Catholic rag, The Tablet.  It has a "sister" paper here in the US called The National Catholic Reporter. It has come to be known by more popular names among faithful Catholics around the world familiar with it: "The Bitter Pill", "RU-486", and most appropriately, "The Suppository".  Fr. Finigan was the target of relentless attacks by The Bitter Pill for daring to offer the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite - just one per Sunday - at his parish in Blackfen. As seen in the photo below, Fr. Finigan took it all in stride.



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The obedient are not held captive by Holy Mother Church; it is the disobedient who are held captive by the world!