TIA,

Christmas is coming. I have not forgot you in my thoughts and prayers. I remain steadfast in my Traditional Catholic faith. Thank you for subscribing me to the Family Catholic News. That is a good paper. I was hoping Pope Benedict XVI would not do the Assisi event. One minute he seems to sway Traditional, then he goes modern on us. The beatification of Pope John Paul II was disappointing but not surprising.

Oh well, we just keep going and praying til the Church comes to its senses. Again, thank you for helping me find the traditional Catholic faith.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Keep me in your prayers,

     Yours in Jesus and Mary,

     K.M.

Dear Tradition in Action,

I notice a reader from Scotland, J.P., recently wrote to you asking about raising arms against the government should the need arise. In his letter he indicated that homeschooling is not a viable option, and your response advised him to challenge the legality of this.

I should point out that, while it is very uncommon, it is perfectly legal in Scotland for any and all families to home-educate, and there is a growing number of families choosing to educate their children this way. It is normally referred to as home-education rather than homeschooling over here. It may be the case that individual schools and education authorities pretend that it is not legal, and they may and try to place obstacles in the way, but the law is actually very clear. All parents have a duty to provide an education for their children, but that education can be provided either through schools, or by another means, provided it is supplied and isn't an excuse for truanting. We have a choice in this, and we don't even have to follow the national curriculum- few home-educating families do.

My wife and I home-educate our three children, and we are part of a small but strong network of families in Glasgow who support each other in this. We know of support networks in other parts of the country too. In addition, there are several other families who attend the SSPX churches here who also home-educate. We have decided on home-education because, as J.P. states, the public school system is a disaster, and we just can't use them. I have little doubt our children will lose their Faith if we send them to Catholic schools, and I would rather see them illiterate.

While we may not have the same level of resources in this country as perhaps people do in the USA, there are still opportunities out there. If it would be helpful, I don't mind if you pass our email address onto J.P. so that we could discuss this further if he is interested. There are also several websites and forums that would provide information and support if he just enters "home-education Scotland" into a search engine. The organization, Catholic Truth Scotland ran a conference on home-education in Glasgow some time ago, which was well-attended and very helpful.

Our hope is that J.P. finds something that may help.

I truly enjoy reading your website. It is an excellent resource. Please keep it up. I wish you and your families every blessing as we prepare to celebrate Our Blessed Lord's Nativity.

     M.R.



The Editor responds:

Dear Mr. M.R.,

Thank you for your words about our website, your amiable Christmas wishes and your letter. It clarifies the situation of home education in Scotland.

Our correspondence desk will forward to you the e-mail address of Mr. J.P. and vice-versa, so you may help each other in this important initiative to preserve the spiritual and cultural life of your families.

May Our Lady of Good Success bless your endeavors and bring to you and yours many graces in this expectation of the Birth of the Divine Infant.

     Cordially,

     A.S. Guimarães

TIA,

How long, O Lord!? How long will this 'new springtime' last?

T.H.




The Abominable Nichols
Dear TIA, 

I received the message below from a friend in the United Kingdom.

     F.R.

We know that Nichols is capable of anything. This photo shows him receiving the Hindu red mark on the forehead when he visited the Hindu temple in London during the November 2009 Interfaith Week. His own press office reported at the time that he had “offered flowers at the altar of Hindu deities” (although they quickly took it off the Westminster website).

When he was Archbishop of Birmingham he also allowed a chapel there to be used for a celebration of Mohammed’s birthday. Last week he came out strongly, once again, in support of homosexual “civil partnerships” (while trying to differentiate it from “marriage”).

But what else would you expect from a man who promoted explicit sex ed for 9 year-olds in Birmingham. He is abominable. Yet they’ll almost certainly reward him with a red hat in due course. Heavy sigh...



TIA responds:

Dear F.R.,

Thank you for forwarding this message to us.

Indeed that visit of Archbishop Vincent Nichols to the Hindu temple was an important landmark of the conciliar inter-faith dialogue in England. We also covered that visit. You may find more details on it here.

     Cordially,

     TIA correspondence desk

Dear TIA,

I believe that the article below on Brother Guy Consolmagno is timely, since the Living the Faith conference in Denver this coming March will feature Brother Guy. If Br. Guy wants to baptize aliens, he is way off base, since they are not children of Adam. His evolution endorsement is both troubling and irrational. In addition to Brother Guy, the conference will feature the NCR progressivist reporter John Allen, billed as an "international Vatican news correspondent." Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia will be speaking as well, presumably to balance the ticket.

All are welcome in the Denver Church, which George Weigel described a few years ago as "arguably the most dynamic diocese in America today." The Ratzinger-reformed Church is wonderfully inclusive - everyone is invited, as long as he wears a syrupy smile. "Can't we all just get along?" said Rodney King 20 years ago. That is changed by the Church into the pretense of "There is room for everyone." And all opinions are considered worth hearing; therefore the Vatican II Church stands for almost nothing.

TIA, among others, has the job of Elias, to console the few thousand souls who have not yet bent their knee to Baal, while the Church, from pope to parishioner, has worn itself out genuflecting in that direction.

     P.O.B.



The Vatican Scientists Approve of Evolution and Alien Life

Paula Duffy
2011-12-01 - The Vatican's senior scientist Brother Guy Consolmagno is ready to greet alien life and will be happy to baptize any of them should the opportunities present themselves.

Brother Guy Consolmagno has said it before, but reiterated his welcoming attitude in London this week. The Daily Telegraph reported Consolmagno's comments prior to his attendance at this week's British Science Festival.

"I’d be delighted if we found life elsewhere and delighted if we found intelligent life elsewhere," he said. But the odds of us finding it, of it being intelligent and us being able to communicate with it - when you add them up it’s probably not a practical question."

In 2009 the Pontifical Academy of Sciences held a conference in Rome on the study of life beyond Earth, with scientists and religious leaders.

Among them was Brother Consolmagno's colleague Father Jose Funes, a Jesuit astronomer who said at that time, "As a multiplicity of creatures exists on Earth, so there could be other beings, also intelligent, created by God. This does not conflict with our faith, because we cannot put limits on the creative freedom of God."

Some might be taken aback by those statements because of the men's association with the Vatican hierarchy but Consolmagno was a practicing lay scientist for a decade and a half prior to coming to the Catholic Church. …

Mixing science and religious dogma doesn't prevent Consolmagno from taking a clear position on the theory of evolution and its detractors who tout creationism as the alternative theory.

"The word (creationism) has been hijacked by a narrow group of Creationist fundamentalists in America to mean something it did not originally mean at all. It’s bad theology in that it turns God once again into the pagan god of thunder and lightning."

Bold topics for sure but the interest in exploring them indicates that Catholic hierarchy understands how science and religion can co-exist on this planet as well other places in the heavens. (full text here)

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  John Paul II Participates in a Zoroastrian Ritual

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