Crannóggy Island

The first year of ministry after his ordination in 1951 brought Father Joseph Ratzinger to the Munich parish of  Heilig Blut  (Precious Blood). During the Nazi regime, this parish had two lay martyrs, Ludwig Baron Leonrod and Franz Sperr, and two priest martyrs, Hermann Josef Wehrle and Alfred Delp, SJ. They protested the cruelties of Hitler and his minions and had been executed as witnesses to Christ.    Expressing admiration for the brave testimony of these men for the spiritual truth of Jesus Christ over materialistic ideology, o n May 24, 1952, he penned the following words in the autograph book of a girl in one of his religion classes in Munich::   However the winds blow You should stand against them. When the world falls apart Your brave heart may not despair. Without the heart’s bravery which Has the courage to withstand unshakably The spirits of the time and the masses, We cannot find the way to God And the true way of Our Lord. ( In remembrance ...

Thanks to Ray Sunshine for bringing this to HJ's attention and apologies for mistakenly deleting his comment.  There were dramatic scenes in Brussels on Tuesday at the "National Conservatism Conference" offering " a harbinger of what a police state in the heart of Europe might look like,"  according to the Catholic Herald . After the conference began, local Brussels police arrived at the Claridge building hosting the conference, and proceeded set up barricades in front of the event venue, preventing any further attendees, journalists or speakers from accessing the event. Eric Zemmous, the French politician, who was due to appear at the conference but was barred from entering when he turned up, said the city’s left-wing mayor had deployed the police like a “private militia” to stop a conservative conference from happening in Brussels. As the situation escalated, eventually Belgium Prime Minister Alexander De Croo felt compelled to speak out: “What happened at th...

(This is a tortuous interview with Dawkins on LBC ... the interviewer being as bad as the interviewee!) Richard Dawkins declares himself to be a “cultural Christian” and believes Christianity is a “fundamentally decent religion” that is better for society than Islam. “I do think that we [Britain] are a culturally Christian country. I call myself a cultural Christian. I’m not a believer but there is a distinction between being a believing Christian and being a cultural Christian and so, you know, I love Hymns and Christmas carols, and I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos. I feel that we are a Christian country in that sense. It’s true that statistically the number of people who actually believe in Christianity is going down, and I am happy with that, but I would not be happy if, for example, we lost all our cathedrals and our beautiful parish churches. It would matter if we certainly substituted any other religion, that would be truly dreadful.” Dawkins says he was “horrified...