Englishman in Africa

Our Fabian Society 'Progressive' demons must be swept away. They should all be in prison, vile people.

This Encyclical of Pope Leo needs to be read fully (I haven't yet), then thought about, then prayed on, before a single word of commentary is made. We all do it, I know. Read a Tweet that says this & that, take it as serious commentary, and that's one's mind made up.

I'm getting older, the fire has died a bit. I'd hoped for talks between Rome and the FSPPX, hoped for an end to conflict, for peace. But for that, the "bridge builder" (Pontifex) has to be just that. Unfortunately he doesn't appear to want to build bridges with Catholics.

@TheAshesCometh @WG_RumblePants No, I am wrong. PU played only for India.

@TheAshesCometh @WG_RumblePants Polly Umrigar.

Who are the Cricketers to have played for both India and Pakistan? @WG_RumblePants have a shot.

The popular narrative of a "Dark Ages" devoid of intellectual progress is a historical distortion. Medieval Catholic scholars were the custodians and innovators of Western thought. Here is what actually happened. When the Western Roman Empire collapsed, Catholic monasteries preserved much of classical learning. Benedictine monks in their scriptoria copied classical texts by hand, and they played a significant role. But the story is more complex. Greek philosophy survived in significant part through the Islamic world, where scholars translated and preserved Aristotle and other thinkers during the medieval period. When these texts returned to the Latin West, it was often through translations from Arabic in the 12th and 13th centuries. Byzantine scholars fleeing Constantinople in 1453 also brought Greek manuscripts directly to Italy. While Western monasteries preserved crucial texts, claiming all surviving manuscripts passed through their hands oversimplifies a richer transmission story. Then came the universities. Bologna (1088). Paris (c. 1150-1200). Oxford (teaching documented from 1096). These institutions emerged under Catholic ecclesiastical influence, particularly Paris and Oxford, which developed from cathedral schools with strong ecclesiastical ties. Bologna began as a lay student guild before receiving papal recognition. The university as a degree-granting corporate institution, with its faculties and structured disputation, is a distinctly medieval development. And the method itself. Scholastic disputation required scholars to state the strongest possible objection to their own position before answering it. Aquinas built the entire Summa around this structure. That is not superstition. That is intellectual discipline. Roger Bacon, a Franciscan friar, advocated for empirical observation and experience in the 13th century. Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, developed early theories of optics and the natural world using systematic reasoning. The "Dark Ages" narrative originated with Petrarch in the 14th century, who contrasted his era unfavorably with the classical world. Enlightenment thinkers later amplified this framing, but they did not invent it. The historical record reveals centuries of genuine intellectual activity. What part of this surprises you most?

St. Ephrem the Syrian, a 4th-century deacon and poet, provides crucial evidence for the ancient origins of Marian devotion. Most Protestants assume that calling Mary "Theotokos" (God-bearer) was a Roman Catholic invention from the medieval period. Ephrem destroys that argument completely. Ephrem died in 373 AD. The Council of Ephesus, which formally defined "Theotokos" as orthodox doctrine, wasn't until 431 AD. Yet Ephrem's hymns were already saturated with this theology decades before any council made it official. That's not any one region inventing a doctrine. That's the whole Church confirming what faithful Christians already believed and prayed. His Hymns on the Nativity don't treat Mary as a passive vessel. They present her as uniquely holy, set apart, the one through whom the Eternal Word took flesh. This wasn't pious poetry disconnected from theology. For Ephrem, Marian devotion was Christology. You cannot confess the full divinity of Christ without acknowledging what that means for the woman who bore Him. He also wrote from within the Syriac tradition, completely independent of Rome's direct influence. Eastern and Western Christianity converged on the same Marian theology because they were drawing from the same apostolic deposit. When Protestants say "Marian devotion is a Catholic invention," they have to explain Ephrem. A Syrian deacon, writing hymns in Aramaic, in the 300s, saying exactly what Catholics say today. The data was always there. The tradition was always there. Which Church Father most changed how you think about Mary?

At times, being a Catholic today is like living with a once-beautiful mother who has turned into a lying, alcoholic hag; & a father who used to love reading you bedtime stories but is now a uncaring abuser. You know you cannot leave. You love them and hate them at the same time.

The Book of Revelation shows a woman clothed with the sun, crowned with twelve stars, giving birth to the Christ child. Most Protestants see this as a symbol of Israel. But read what comes right before that verse. It changes everything. A thread.

@UcheMaryOkoli What a silly post. The transatlantic lve trade didn't exist for 16 of those centuries and was condemned in that same Century ....

It actually took the church 18 centuries to admit to having a direct hand in the trans-Atlantic slavery. Wow!

@BruvverEccles @jfwduffield Do we have to play anyone with peroxide hair? He must be a poof.

@jfwduffield Jacob Bethell has a British passport. He chose to play for England rather than WI. Mind you, since he hasn't played any first-class cricket for ages, he shouldn't be selected for test matches.

Who knew the England team relying on foreign mercenaries who prioritise the IPL over test cricket was a bad idea? Bethell is a West Indian & should be playing for the West Indies.

73!!! He's almost a cretin. Oh wait, we knew that ...

I am waiting for the uprooting of the evil. Start Holy Father with those around you, the practicioners of poofery, the heretics, the destroyers.

@UcheMaryOkoli The core problem is that they don't accept Christ's divinity or that His earthly Mother therefore needed to be absolutely worthy to bear Him.

To the Catholics on the timeline, I need your help. What is the most nonchalant yet charitable response to "Mary was not sinless" i can give? A response that won't send me to hell. Help me, please.

Don't forget that Masonry is rife in the Judiciary.

ANC, a bunch of absolute wasters devoted because of their Soviet educations to Marxism, rigiid thinking and to Russia who have destroyed their own country.

@igorsushko And did she have any?

Russian propagandist filmmaker Anna Tits traveled to Russia-occupied South Ossetia in Georgia for the premiere of her own film glorifying the invasion of Ukraine and drowned drowned in Liakhva River immediately after. Her corpse was found 35km downstream.

@kellyrootbeer @MemoryMedieval Alamein. D-Day

@MemoryMedieval Bernard Montgomery

Post an overrated commander

YET AGAIN the comments don't even begin to examine the reasons why the FSPPX believe that the state of the Church provdes a state of necessity. Judgement, judgement, judgement all round. With zero understanding nor even interest. Do *ANY* of you have any Catholic Spirit AT ALL?

@BruvverEccles @LeadingEdgePod Bill Bowes' is astonishing too.

@LeadingEdgePod Look at Hedley Verity's average!

Most County Championship wickets, 1930–1939 🏏 The 1930s bowling numbers are outrageous. Tom Goddard leads the decade with 1,536 wickets and 144 five-wicket hauls. A Gloucestershire off-spinner who started as a fast bowler before reinventing himself into one of the most prolific spinners in county history. Then there’s AP “Tich” Freeman: 1,442 wickets, with an absurd 175 five-wicket hauls. Even in a decade of huge bowling workloads, that wicket-taking rate is ridiculous. But the most staggering record might be Hedley Verity: 1,304 wickets at just 13.20, striking every 36.81 balls. A Yorkshire and England great, and later a tragic wartime story after dying from wounds suffered in the Second World War. Bill Bowes was another Yorkshire giant - 1,074 wickets at 15.20 - while Bill Voce, one of the Bodyline fast bowlers, took 974. The 1930s were packed with elite bowlers, but Goddard, Freeman and Verity were on another level. #CountyCricket #Cricket #CountyChampionship Stats by redballcricketstats.com