It is one thing for Churchmen to encourage the sharing of celebrations for a few hours on our Patron Saint's Feast Day but that is not what St. Patrick devoted his vocation to ensuring. (Continued below)
To comment on the above article is particularly challenging so I intend to rely on the two wonderful years training I received at a Jesuit college in England studying under English Jesuits and English Christian laymen during my initial studies for the Catholic priesthood which were cut short because of my less than robust health.
St. Patrick came to Ireland to teach us God's Christian Truth which was not meant to be limited to one day of celebration. God's Word is meant to be honoured and lived every moment of every day for the rest of time no matter how many thousands of years the Earth will be allowed to last.
Each and every single human being on this Earth is already in eternity but our Good God has ordained that we should spend His time that He has allotted to each one of us by using our "time-out" as it were, on Earth, searching for The Truth, His Truth, with all the wonderful faculties He has blessed us with to enable us to gain the eternal Destiny He has already prepared for each and every one of us. The result of anyone's misuse of this "time-out" here on Earth is unthinkable!
Almighty God has absolutely no problem performing miracles; we are surrounded by them each and every morning we are spared to wake up to. Through prayerful intercession He has no problem performing miracles at His discretion on the sick and infirm. Through the precious souls He has gifted with the knowledge and ability to serve others, the precious souls He has empowered to minister to others religiously, institutionally and socially He trusts that His Kingdom will become a reality on Earth as Jesus taught us to pray, "... Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven..."
Satan however has other ambitions and in the most devious ways is using the frailty of our human nature to destroy God's loving designs.
The fact that satan will never succeed in his hellish ambitions does not unfortunately deter unwise people from allowing themselves to be duped by empty allurements thrown up by the powers of darkness.
So-called Political Correctness has formed shackles around our God-given wills that are preventing many otherwise sane people from challenging the evils that are going on all around us. The consequence of this mental disorder, this mediocrity, is allowing a powerful and corrupting ideology, presently suffocating the social welfare of humanity in a whirlpool of greed and selfish anti-government interference, an almost unobstructed path towards total control of our lives.
It is an ideology that is recruiting the most highly educated people in our society to the detriment of their morals and the morals of those around them.
People cannot effectively defend themselves against what is being done to them unless and until those same people know and understand the nature of the enemy we are facing.
We are now in an era of financial terrorism. We are at the mercy of those who would control the whole world, the devil's ambition, if allowed to, and the people of Northern Ireland are also suffering victims of this evil plot at this time. In fact our political representatives throughout Northern Ireland are actively assisting in this devilish programme in which our whole population is living in fear of their financial welfare, the responsibility for which our Westminister Government has handed over to the Bank of England which is controlled by an unelected clique of faceless people.
Even our local Down District Council chose not to distance itself from this chronic greed and is allowing ordinary house-holders within Down District to pay massive mortgages and rents on dwellings that are unfit for human habitation - according to the law. Down District Council, for decades, have ordered that all the house-holders even in these totally defective dwellings (terralux-built dwellings) be made, by law, to pay exorbitant Rates payments on these illegally built dwellings when these dwellings should be knocked down and rebuilt according to the law - as they should have been built in the first place. Unfortunately, Down District Council chose to protect the perpetrators who organised this massive housing fraud years ago by making present house-holders pay the price for bailing out those perpetrators and protecting them from prosecution of a criminal fraud - rather like the banks at this time being 'bailed-out' and protected by our naive government from prosecution!
Too many people have become thralls to corrupted political parties and secular institutions. Matthew 6:24 quotes Jesus eloqently stating that "No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will stand by the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." Too many precious souls have 'put the cart before the horse', as it were, and opted to surround themselves with a selection of material gods. Matthew 6:33 quoted Jesus in counselling such people when He stated, "But seek first the Kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things shall be given to you besides."
Pope Benedict has found it necessary, on three recent occasions that I am aware of, to call on politicians to exercise Christian judgement in their important work of political endeavour. Politicians in Northern Ireland, with very few exceptions, fall very far short of this ideal.
Every Christian-minded person has a God-given duty and therefore a God-given right to expose and oppose in the clearest of terms each and every injustice that is visited upon him or her self and that of their neighbour by any institution from Government down.....
This "Power of the People" through which Almighty God channels His Bountiful Grace is the way to thwart the evil that surrounds us.
With the utmost respect, I find it is my duty to call on the seven Reverend Gentlemen who reside in Downpatrick, who have dedicated their life's work to God and who issued the statement quoted in the article above, to act responsibly in the case my family have been suffering from for over 34 years as a direct result of the conduct of our local Council with headquarters in their town of Downpatrick, to challenge Down District Council's appalling conduct in this case, as the late Rev. C. D. Adams formerly minister at Spa Presbyterian Church so courageously did until his death, and join with our family in seeking a solution once and for all. The alternative is that anyone who is not prepared to challenge this evil actually becomes part of this same evil.