The Hermeneutic of Continuity

Brian Gale – author of the novel ‘ Fatherless ’ which has become widely known after being promoted by the pro-chastity, pro-life website One More Soul . Brian was interviewed by Joanna Bogle for the Catholic Herald. On 14 September, he gave the Annual Theology of the Body Lecture at Westminster. Here is a video of the lecture: Here is the question and answer session:

Robert Colquhoun and Greg Clovis will be speaking on Tuesday 11 May at Farm Street. The evening is being arranged to help parents talk to their own children about the gift of sexuality and the virtue of chastity. 6.45pm for 7pm start. There are full details at Robert's blog "Love Undefiled" at the post Parents' Talk . You can view the powerpoint presentation from one of Robert's previous talks: Finding Love in a Superficial Age ; he has two further relevant articles: Parents as primary educators of their children Teaching parents about chastity

Robert Colquhoun has just published his presentation on " Theology of the Body for Schools ". This is a good and straightforward exposition of the Churchs' teaching concerning chastity, together with some hard-hitting information in response to some popular myths.

Stringfellows is a well-known London strip club ... sorry, did I say that? I meant "high-class entertainment venue" which, in addition to "a mouth watering range of dishes from our A La Carte menu", offers: Hundreds of beautiful Angels - fully nude, dancing alongside your table, and at the various stages dotted around the club. Actually, I just checked the mouth watering range of dishes - the range of main courses under "meat" is: Lamb, rib-eye steak, sirloin steak, fillet steak, butterfly steak or ribeye steak with lobster (that's for if yer goin' real posh.) Now you might perfectly well ask why I should be writing about a strip club. Primarily it is in order to answer the assertion of Fr David Gilmore, Anglican priest in Soho who recently got up on stage "(next to the "pole") and told the punters: "if Jesus was alive today he would be at Stingfellows bar having a drink and chatting to the girls" It all sounds like a vint...

God often brings good out of evil. The responses to my post on the filthy sex-ed leaflet from NHS Sheffield threw up a good reply from Kidscape and now Stuart Cunliffe has put me onto Challenge Team UK which is a group of young volunteers who educate teenagers about healthy sexuality. Part of the strategy is to go into schools speaking from a common sense and health perspective, without any religious references. This is perfectly reasonable since we believe that everyone ought to be able to know and understand the natural moral law. The message of challenge Team UK is: • Saving sex for marriage is a positive, realistic and healthy lifestyle. • Saving sex for marriage is a lifestyle of sexual self-control and respect. • Anyone can start over again and choose chastity, which basically means saving sex for marriage. • There can be many negative physical and emotional consequences to teen sexual activity - unplanned pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections and diseases, loss of self...

The other day I received my three copies of "A Pure Heart Create for Me: Theology of the Body Today, edited by Robert Colquhoun and published by Family Publications . The book is a collection of the lectures given at St Patrick's Soho Square last year to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae . The first part of the book consists of lectures specifically on the Theology of the Body and the second part deals with "specific issues for today". There are contributions from Edmund Adamus, Fr Anthony Doe, Fr Richard Aladics, Nicole Parker, Teresa Klepacka and others - the book is well worth reading. My own lecture ("A challenge to the culture") is included in the second part, along with the lecture by Fr Stephen Langridge on AIDS, Condoms and the Catholic Church. Fr Langridge generously acknowledges my own talk on the subject which I gave in his parish a while ago but I am happy to say that his paper is a very good summary of the relevant points with ...

Have a look at this inspiring production "The Change Is On", an educational video produced in Africa and posted in several parts on YouTube. The video is in support of the programme "Education for Life. A Behaviour Change Process." It documents the response to HIV/AIDS in the diocese of Tzaneen, which has implemented a multi faceted and authentically Catholic response, rooted in the Gospel of Life. Here is part 6 as a sample: I will give a couple of quotations that particularly struck me, the first one from Joanna Thabathi. Here we have a Director of Social Services (Mopani District, Limpopo Province) who encourages parents to take responsibility for educating their own children in intimate matters rather than leaving the task to others: "Let us talk to our children. Let us not be afraid of our own children. Let us give them the respect and the guidance that they want; because they need to be guided, they need to be shown the way. Let us not wait for our neighb...

Robert Colquhoun at Love Undefiled has recently posted two interesting talks, each about an hour long, so good for downloading to listen to on car journeys. There is Lord Alton on Deus Caritas Est and Dawn Eden on Cutting to the Chaste .

There is a good article by Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail today (see: The Government's obsession with pushing sex education and contraception is just creating MORE teenage pregnancies ). There is nothing that we have not all been saying for ages but Melanie writes up the basic points with vigour and clarity. For example: The underlying message of providing contraception and sex education is that sexual relationships themselves for under-age children are perfectly normal and acceptable. But they are actually unlawful... Giving the message that an activity is normal and acceptable means inevitably that yet more people will engage in that activity. Dishing out the condoms and offering children a menu of sexual techniques amounts to propaganda for sexual incontinence.

In 2006, the Catholic Youth Service issued a press release on the website of the Bishops Conference of England and Wales, to announce that National Youth Sunday would launch the "LiveSimply" challenge to mark the 40th anniversary of Pope Paul VI's encyclical letter Populorum Progressio . This year's National Youth Sunday is the third one in a row with materials supporting the LiveSimply challenge. James Preece at Catholic and Loving it! suggests: "I think it's fair to say we've covered the LiveSimply theme." He continues: The fortieth year anniversary of Populorum Progressio has passed. I believe time has come to mark the fortieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae with a new promise to LiveChastely. And why not indeed? Even if you agree with the political agenda of "Sustainable Development" it is a bit of an "easy sell" for youth workers. Young people are bombarded from many sources with encouragement to recycle, save the planet an...

Bishop Jaime Soto, the coadjutor Bishop of Sacramento, recently went to speak to the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries conference in Long Beach, California. At the website of the Diocese of Sacramento, you can read the full text of his speech . His Lordship criticised the contraceptive culture, asserted the value of marriage and the family, and promoted the virtue of chastity. Regarding sexual expression in same-sex relationships, he said: Let me be clear here. Sexual intercourse, outside of the marriage covenant between a man and a woman, can be alluring and intoxicating but it will not lead to that liberating journey of true self-discovery and an authentic discovery of God. For that reason, it is sinful. Sexual relations between people of the same sex can be alluring for homosexuals but it deviates from the true meaning of the act and distract them from the true nature of love to which God has called us all. For this reason, it is sinful. At the...

At the beginning of August, Robert Colquhoun started the blog Love Undefiled blog: ... to promote the virtue of chastity, provide an authentic understanding of love, sex and marriage and to build a culture of life. He has been busy writing a good number of articles on various related subjects.

In response to a question asked at my talk on Monday night, I promised to post an item with resources for teenagers related to chastity. Here are just a few. Thanks to a Lynne of A Quiet Catholic for a very good one: Pure Love Club , a good interactive website with quizzes, Q&A and the like. Some young people may like the trendy Phatmass site which has some materials about Catholic living and morality in its Defense directory . It's all good sound stuff. UPDATE : thanks to "mixieblob", here are two more excellent sites: Love Matters - a new one to me. Stand Up Girl - an excellent site I found some time back and had forgotten about. I also mentioned the great Pam Stenzel who talks particularly about the physical and emotional cost of sex outside of the monogamous relationship of marriage. Pam has her own website: pamstenzel.com and it is possible to email her there. Here are two videos posted on YouTube. If you like these, you might want to order Pam's DVD so ...

I very much enjoyed the Hull Faith Forum. The talks are put on for young people of secondary school age but there are also a number of university students who come along, as well as some parents and other adults. Although the deliberately provocative title of my talk (which I also saw posted up outside the Church of St Charles in the City Centre) focussed on the Church's teaching on contraception, I basically gave a talk about the virtue of chastity. I started by recounting some of the things that the Good Counsel Network have told me. We looked at the difference between love and infatuation, the vocation of motherhood and fatherhood, and the meaning of marriage. This was the context for explaining why the Church is right about contraception. Quite a lot all in one go, but I tried to put things simply and straightforwardly. This was more in the nature of a "class" than a lecture so there is not a set of notes as such. The talk was recorded so it might appear as a podcast ...

Archbishop Terrence Prendergast of Ottawa last week spoke at the convocation of Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Academy in Barrys Bay Ontario on Pope Paul VI's encyclical letter Humanae Vitae saying that "Time has shown it to be a gift from Christ to men and women everywhere". Catholics leaving the event said that they had been waiting 25 years to hear such teaching from an Archbishop. In the course of his address, he said, "The encyclical gives the Church a deeper understanding into the beauty of married love and responsible parenthood. It offers a clearer understanding of the harm of contraception and the great value of Natural Family Planning (NFP). Further, it challenges married couples, healthcare professionals and clergy to live and teach these profound truths about human sexuality and dignity." He also reminded clergy of their duty of obedience of mind and will to the teaching. Today, I think that one important point to get across to the young is that they have b...

The fifth talk in the series at the Birmingham Oratory was given by Antonia Tully on "the Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality". As ever, Jackie Parkes has Jane's notes on the talk . Jackie posted this photo of a group of radical subversive pro-lifers at her house :-)

John Smeaton posts today on Why Humanae Vitae was right about contraception . He refers to the visit of Janet Smith who will be speaking at Westminster Hall on 6 March. He also quotes from a presentation he gave in Warsaw last year, in the course of which he told how the prophetic words of Pope Paul VI were being fulfilled in Britain. He also mentioned the Mulier Fortis who spoke out about sex education in the Catholic school where she was teaching.

Making announcements about modesty in dress can be a challenge for the average parish priest. A little humour could help here. Thanks to The Deacon's Bench:Bulletin announcements I'd like to see , we have just that. My favourite: BRITNEY SPEARS CONCERT CANCELLED! Unfortunately, our efforts to get pop sensation Britney Spears to perform a benefit fundraiser for the parish have proven unsuccessful. Her calendar is full. Therefore, those who have been arriving at Mass every Sunday dressed for a Britney Spears concert should know that they don't have to do that anymore. Modest church-going attire will do nicely. We will notify you if the situation changes. H/T Fr Z .

Responding to the Noli circumspicere post, Fr TE Jones said: I always carry a book on the tube to ensure custody of the eyes,but never listen to my MP3 player, earphones make you unavailable, people will speak to you if you are reading. Thus I can ensure I avoid inappropriate conduct and still ensure availability to people. I remember reading once some advice for priests in an old book to the effect that you shouldn't read the breviary on the train in case people were scandalised. Presumably in those days, people knew about the priest's obligation to recite the breviary and might be shocked that he hadn't said it quietly somewhere. Nowadays, it is probably edifying for people to see the priest reading something that is obviously a holy book. It is often presumed that it is a bible. (One of the Mission Impossible films makes this mistake.) Still, I try to arrange the day so as not to have to read the breviary when on the train. It is not always possible and yesterday I knew...

Several meetings kept me in London all day today: one social, one business and one both. The last was in Golden Square followed by a meal at a nearby Italian restaurant. I don't think I will need to eat at all tomorrow. I was careful to memorise the map of that somewhat labyrinthine area of London to avoid ending up walking to Piccadilly via any of the streets that have seedy clubs. Mind you, custody of the eyes is necessary most of the time in central London. I often think of the advice of the book of Ecclesiasticus (9.7) when I am in central London: " Noli circumspicere in vicis civitatis " (do not look about in the lanes of the city). I first saw this quotation in an extract from Louis of Granada in a book of meditations. It is consoling to know that there is nothing new under the sun.