Monthly Archives: April 2021

Catholic Church, Christianity, Religion

‘Lead us not into temptation’ – an explanation

It was reported recently that Pope Francis changed some wording in the ‘Lord’s Prayer’, The Our Father. It seems an extraordinary thing to do after centuries of the particular wording he objected to. It is even stranger that an explanation of the translation from the Greek to the English is laid out in the Catechism of the Catholic. Do he and his advisors not read the Church’s documents on such an important matter. Dr Pitre of Catholic Productions explicates the meaning of ‘Lead us not into temptation.’

Catholic Church, Culture, My books, Religion

Feelings die not in silence

DUE JULY 2021

THE STORY

It is January 1957. Without warning, Virginia Pearson breaks her engagement to academic Philip Stevenson to enter the convent of the Suffering Saviour. She says she has an irresistible calling. Philip is devastated. Though living up to the responsibilities of his academic position, he slides into depression, too much drink, and a series of short-term relationships.

Virginia makes friends with the beautiful self-effacing Aine O’Riordan who enters the convent at the same time. Strange inexplicable happenings torment the sensitive and withdrawn Aine. Virginia tries to comfort her, but Aine’s anxiety forces her out of the convent. She leaves Virginia behind to deal with an atmosphere of foreboding that seems to infect the life of the convent. (Descent into Hades: A Spiritual Journey, Book 3 of the Conciliar series relates what happens to Aine.)

Virginia, now Sister Agnes, is suspicious of fellow postulant Margaret McGuigan, now Sister Catherine, and her manipulative ways. She wonders about her role in the communal infection. Agnes barely suppresses her suspicion and antagonism toward Catherine through their religious training to their university course in 1962.

But the privilege of attending university brings fresh problems for Sister Agnes. Philosophy lecturer Phil Stevenson leads her tutorial group. It does not take long for them to realize their relationship has not ended, despite Agnes’s supreme efforts to keep Philip at bay.

The dark events in the convent, the leftist bullying on campus, the conflict with furtive, manipulative Sister Catherine, and her love for Philip have her rushing toward a crisis in which she acts out of character.

FEELINGS DIE NOT IN SILENCE is Book 2 of the Conciliar Series.

The themes of the ‘Goddess’, neo-paganism, the occult and Gnosticism are a thread through the story.  The Second Vatican Council and the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s (1965-1975) are the background to the Conciliar series.

Series title: The Conciliar Series.

My books

Update on my writing

I have spent the last six months revising and reassessing my writing activities. That included examining covers (replacing them if required), writing, text formatting, and the outlets I use for my books. It has been a gruelling process revising the text of published titles and writing the two new titles, TIMES OF DISTRESS and EDITING CONSTANCY (which has just received its first 5-star rating on Amazon). One can view the new covers on my books page.

Until now I have relied on Amazon to sell and distribute my books – a period on an exclusive basis. I have now decided to go ‘wide’, that is, distribute my books through a select group of online retailers and bookshops. In addition to Amazon, my books will be uploaded to Kobo, and D2D. With these online platforms my books will be available through associated outlets around the world. They include the Dutch online retailer bol.com. In Australia, my books are available through Angus & Robinsons, Bookworld and Booktopia.

My fiction writing, which is my focus, fits into two genres.  First, there are my ‘Catholic’ novels, in the style of Evelyn Waugh, Grahame Greene, and Morris West.  I deal with similar issues as these Catholic writers. (See The Catholic Novel page.)

I am presently rewriting and reorganizing my first two Catholic novels to add to a new series of six titles. The first title in the new CONCILIAR series, TIMES OF DISTRESS was released on 31 October 2020, in paperback and ebook formats. The second book in the series FEELINGS DIE NOT IN SILENCE is due for release July 2021.

Second, I plan a series of titles in the romance genre under the pen name AINSLEY WILSON. This is to distinguish my romance titles from my books in the Catholic novel genre.

Love relationships are a way of exploring the human person. I like Jane Austen’s stories because of the satire and social commentary she weaves through her entertaining romantic stories with their engaging tensions. EDITING CONSTANCY (pub. 2021) is the first in a Jane Austen romance series. A second Jane Austen story is planned for 2022.

Catholic Church, Culture, Radicalism, Religion, Western Civilization

Who emptied the Church after Vatican II?

This is an interesting review of an interesting book. The key proposition in the book is that powerful factors outside the Second Vatican Council were the efficient cause of the Church’s collapse and not the council documents themselves, despite the shameless leftist political agitation in the council’s session. Fr Jennings writes that historian of religion Callum Brown observed:

For organised Christianity, the sixties constituted the most concentrated period of crisis since the Reformation; but what was at stake became perceived as the very survival of Christian society and values. In this respect certainly, the sixties may turn out to have been more important than even the Renaissance and Reformation. (p. 135)

I lived through the 1960s as a young adult and I can well believe it. The cultural revolution turned everything on its head. I look closely at the student radical activity at Sydney University in my book TONY ABBOTT AND THE TIMES OF REVOLUTION.

*****

Why have all the Catholics gone?

A masterful examination of historical, moral and theological factors in the diminution of the Catholic Church in the UK and US after Vatican II.

by Fr Gavan JenningsMar 11, 2021

Mass Exodus: Catholic disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II
by Stephen Bullivant, Oxford University Press, 2019, 309 pp

Stephen Bullivant is Professor of Theology and the Sociology of Religion, and Director of the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society. He holds doctorates in Theology (Oxford, 2009) and Sociology (Warwick, 2019). He has written several books on the Catholic faith, the loss of faith, and atheism.

The book is essentially a dispassionate, intensely scholarly examination of the question whether the unprecedented “mass exodus” of Catholics from the Church since the 1960s is a direct consequence, as many believe, of the reforms inaugurated by Vatican Council II (1962-’65).

Bullivant begins his investigation by looking at one of the great aims of the Council: to stir the lay faithful of the Church from passivity and insularity and to waken in them their baptismal call to holiness and apostolate. Instead, the Council appears to have succeeded only in having the faithful disaffiliate as never before in Church history.

From this unprecedented falling away in the years following the Council, it is tempting to draw the inference: post concilium, ergo propter concilium (after the Council, therefore because of the Council). And so “One of the primary purposes of this monograph is to investigate whether, how, and to what extent that implication is true — at least, in Britain and the USA” ( p. 12).

Read the rest here…