Rome Watch Winter 2008

The announcement, just before Christmas that former Prime Minister Tony Blair had been officially received into the Roman Catholic Church comes as no surprise to the readers of Romewatch. In spite of bitter criticism this magazine has for years said he was a crypto Papist, with a Roman Catholic wife and children, with secret masses in No.10 Downing Street and much more. Now he has taken the final steps into the embrace of the Anti-Christ of Prophecy. We wonder how he can link his new found Romanism with his pro-abortion stance and if as a Middle East envoy he will be influenced by the Vatican?

This man was one of the architects of the St. Andrews sell out and was never a friend of Ulster or the Protestant people.

(Published by the Catholic Truth Society, London in 1961, includes the following profession of Faith)

I, N.N., having before my eyes the holy Gospels, which I touch with my hand, and knowing that no one can be saved without that faith which the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church holds, believes and teaches; against which I grieve that I have greatly erred, insomuch as, having been born outside that Church, I have held and believed doctrines opposed to her teaching; I now enlightened by the grace of God, profess that I believe the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church to be the one true Church established on earth by Jesus Christ, to which I submit with my whole heart. I firmly believe all the articles that she proposes to my belief; I reject and condemn all that she rejects and condemns, and I am ready to observe all that she commands me. And especially I profess that I believe:

One only God in three divine Persons, distinct from and equal to each other that is to say, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. The Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation, Passion, Death and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ; and the personal union of the two Natures, the divine and the human; the Divine Maternity of the most holy Mary, together with her most spotless virginity; and also her Immaculate Conception and her bodily Assumption into heaven; the true, real and substantial presence of the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, together with His Soul and Divinity, in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist; the seven sacraments instituted by Jesus Christ, for the salvation of mankind: that is to say, Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Eucharist, Penance, Extreme Unction, Holy Order, Matrimony. I also believe in Purgatory, the resurrection of the dead, and everlasting life. The primacy, not only of honour, but also of jurisdiction, of the Roman Pontiff, successor of St. Peter, prince of apostles, Vicar of Christ Jesus. The veneration of the Saints and of their images. The authority of apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions, and of the Holy Scriptures, which we must interpret and understand only in the sense which our holy Mother Catholic Church has held, and to whom alone it belongs to judge of their meaning and interpretation; and everything that has been defined and declared by the sacred Canons and by the ecumenical Councils, especially by the Holy Council of Trent, and by the Council of the Vatican.

With a sincere heart, therefore, and with unfeigned faith I detest and abjure every error, heresy and sect opposed to the said Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church. So help me God, and these Holy Gospels which I touch with my hand.

Catholic churchgoers outnumber Anglicans in England for the first time since the Reformation, according to new research.

A study by the Christian Research organisation has found that Church of England services are no longer the most popular form of worship. The large influx of migrants from Eastern Europe in recent years has swelled the numbers attending Masses across the country. Estimates for church attendances in 2006 reveal 861,800 Catholics worshiped at services every Sunday, compared with 852,500 Anglicans.

Former executive director of Christian Research Peter Brierley, who helped compile the data, said: “Part of the reason for the increase is you have got large numbers of immigrants coming in from Catholic countries especially Poland. There’s been a substantial number of Poles coming in and 85 per cent of them are Catholic, so that’s going to boost your numbers.”

The Church of England said in September that attendance figures had been relatively stable since 2000. Previous figures suggested that around 1.7 million people attended Church of England worship each month and just under one million every Sunday.

Mr Brierley said the pronounced drop in numbers over recent decades had slowed in the last few years.He added that new mission churches were “attracting a fair number of people”.

Former Eurovision winner Dana jokes with First Minister Ian Paisley and his wife Baroness Paisley during her book launch at Parliament Buildings

Dana may be a good moral woman and an opponent of abortion but she is a devout Papist, who has sung for the Pope and recently was seen on Eternal World Television singing a song in praise of the supposed Apparition of Mary, at Knock Shrine. The words include:-

Strange company for Dr and Mrs Paisley, no place for a Separatist (?) Protestant who spent 60 years preaching:-

TWO elderly Irish priests are facing charges of misappropriating millions of dollars from a church in the United States.

THE Vatican has been linked to attempts to alter an online encyclopedia entry that made allegations about Gerry Adams’ involvement in the Troubles.

The inventors of a new internet scanning device say that it can trace who has edited the Wikipedia website. They claim that a computer registered to the Holy See was used to amend facts about the Sinn Fein leader.

Wikipedia is popular partly because anyone can log on and update or change its entries, although this has also been a source of controversy because any disgruntled individual can make malicious entries. The scanning tool, developed by researchers at the California Institute, can trawl the 5.3 million edits and match them to the net address of the editor.

The Vatican computer apparently identified by the device is said to have been used to remove a link to newspaper atones about a double murder in 1971. The articles made reference to Mr Adams. It is unclear how many people have access to Vatican computers. No one at the Holy See was available for comment.

The scanner makers claim that a number of high profile groups may have edited online entries. A computer on the CIA network allegedly amended the profile of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Scanner inventor Virgil Griffith admitted his device cannot ascertain whether the author of the edits was acting on behalf of an organisation or merely using their computer, but he did “know that edit came from someone with access to their network”.

ONE of Ulster’s best known priests has voiced concerns that members of the cloth celebrating more than one mass in a day could soon find themselves over the legal limit for drink driving.

Enniskillen based Fr Brian D’Arcy said the issue had become a concern for some priests in Northern Ireland after it emerged there would be a reduction in the blood alcohol limit for drivers.

According to church law, wine which has been consecrated must be consumed as part of the mass, leaving members of
the clergy with no other choice but to drink.

“The shortage of priests has resulted in those who are currently ministering having to say multiple masses, and often drive from church to church to do so, having drunk from the chalice in each church. Perhaps it could be enough for you to fail a drink driving test. I don’t like to use the word wine, as it is Christ’s blood in the Eucharist but it still has all the characteristics of wine when in the blood stream.” said Fr D’Arcy. But he pointed out that the use of non alcoholic wine was not an option because the Vatican had banned its use in the Eucharist in the past.

Catholic doctrine states that wine is an essential part of the Eucharist. Permission to use “mustum” or grape juice can be
granted by superiors to priests affected by alcoholism or other conditions. But this is discretionary and a medical certificate
must be presented.

Currently the limit in both Northern Ireland and the Republic is O.35pc breath alcohol concentration, but it is expected to be reduced both sides of the border within 18 months.

“After doing several masses, I often have to drive off immediately to visit some person who may be very ill in hospital. As a pioneer I am conscious of the danger now that there is zero tolerance here in Northern Ireland of alcohol for people who are driving and I assume the zero rule is due soon in the South.” Fr D’Arcy said.

A north Galway priest, who asked not to be named, said the problem was greater in rural parishes. “Even if I only took a
mouthful of wine from the chalice at all three masses I feel that this could put me over the legal limit for driving,” he said. “But if a call comes in that somebody is nearing death, I have no choice but drive to where that person is and give him or her
the last rites.”

Priests in larger towns and cities may be affected too according to Fr Stephen Farragher, administrator in Tuam.

“I would often have three masses in the one day and while I had not thought about the impact of drinking the wine, it is
probably now a factor that needs to be seriously considered,” he said. Fr Farragher said he was not sure about the strength
of altar wines, but he feels that this might be an area that also needs investigating.

A notorious paedophile priest who admitted abusing 25 children in the US is now living in Dundalk, Co Louth.

Oliver O’Grady (61), spent seven years in California State Prison after being convicted of four counts of “lewd and lascivious”
acts on two young brothers in 1993. The former cleric, who is originally from Limerick city, was deported back to the Republic in 2001 and has moved to a number of addresses since his return.

One worried resident, who did not wish to be named, said he became concerned after learning that the child abuser had
moved to rented accommodation in the town around two months ago. Describing himself as a “worried citizen”, the man
said he felt parents would be “extremely anxious” that a serial sex offender was living in the area.

“It’s a disgrace that somebody like this can move to an area and the people that are living there can be left completely unaware of his past. People are entitled to know,” he added.

Senior Garda sources said they were aware of O’Grady's presence in Dundalk. “He has registered with Gardai although that
is not a necessity and we have been in touch with him a number of times. We are aware of his address and are continuing
to monitor him,” the source said.

However, Gardai are limited in the actions they can take as O‘Grady is not known to have broken any laws in Ireland so is not subject to sex offences legislation. He registered with Gardai voluntarily.

Last year, O’Grady was the subject of a disturbing US documentary entitled Deliver Us From Evil that caused child welfare
campaigners to demand greater co-operation to monitor child sex abusers on an international level. The former priest is the
subject of a number of multi-million dollar lawsuits in California. In one case, Jon and James Howard, the brothers he assaulted, were awarded record $30 million but a judge later reduced the figure to $7.5 million.

Following his return to the Republic, O’Grady was reported to have been living in rented accommodation in Thurles, Co
Tipperary, where he had previously studied to be a priest in St. Patrick’s College. He was ordained in 1971 for the Diocese of Stockton in California.

There was a public outcry in April last year after it was learned that he was living in the Phibsborough area of Dublin, close to a primary school.

The Catholic Church in California has also been accused of. failing to protect children from the predatory sex offender who
admitted on film abusing women, boys, girls, including children as young as nine months old.

A second round of dialogue between the World Council of Churches (WCC) and Pentecostals was inaugurated earlier this
month.

A group of seventeen Protestant, Orthodox and Pentecostal Christians met in Baar, Switzerland. The meeting in Baar began and ended each day with prayer and Bible readings according to different church ‘traditions’.

Harold D. Hunter, International Pentecostal Holiness Church, led a conversation on the “ecclesial gift of charisms”. Marina
Kolovopoulou, Church of Greece, and Cephas Omenyo, Presbyterian Church of Ghana, led a conversation on the “ecclesial
gift of sacraments”. Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Finnish Pentecostal Mission, presented an overview of Pentecostal bilateral
dialogues with the Roman Catholic Church, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and conversations with the Lutheran World Federation. He stressed how this work has “laid the foundation for continuing Pentecostal involvement in the struggle for the unity of the Church of Christ”.

The group set for its agenda continued theological dialogue on the nature of the church, beginning in 2008 with a study of the marks of the church Oneness, Holiness, Catholicity and Apostolicity. As the conversation progresses, the group will
continue in 2009 with discussion on the nature of mission.

In Baar, the group was hosted at the Roman Catholic Focolare Centre and enjoyed an evening of fellowship and culture with
the community there. Group members worshiped with local Reformed, Free Evangelical and Syrian Orthodox churches. The
group will meet again in October 2008.

A notorious paedophile priest will be handed a cheque for €25,000 (£18,900) when he leaves jail later this year. The money has been donated by supporters who continue to believe he is innocent, despite his guilty plea to child sex abuse.

Parishioners of former Co.Donegal Catholic priest Eugene Greene, sent the donations in Mass cards and Christmas cards
during the almost eight years he has spent in prison. In 2000 Fr Greene (80) became the oldest priest in Ireland to be prosecuted for child sex abuse. He pleaded guilty to abusing children - usually altar boys - in various parishes in west Donegal.

A mother of one of his victims said she was “hurt and shocked” that some people still maintained Greene's innocence.
Greene committed a string of assaults from Annagary to Gortahork on Donegal’s west coast between 1965 and 1982. At his trial, brutal and horrific details of his crimes were recalled by some victims. Witnesses told the trial the priest had said that what he was doing was a “secret“ between them and God.

The Co Donegal priest was eventually jailed after pleading guilty to 41 charges of rape and indecent assault against at
least 26 boys. He is due for release from the Midlands Prison in Portlaoise in Angust.

THE Catholic Church is to advertise for priests on beer mats to attract more recruits.

The move is a desperate bid by church leaders to avert a growing crisis as the number of priests in the UK is now the lowest since 1940.

Mats will carry the slogan “Get collared for the challenge of a lifetime”. It will also be on London Underground posters. The
drinks mats will be handed out at youth festivals and church groups in the capital.

Parish Priest, Fr Terry Tastard, from Brook Green, West London, said: “This campaign might break down the stereotype
with the church. It might make people see it as extending to all aspects of life.”

If a success it could be extended across the country. The problem was highlighted yesterday by Cardinal Cormac Murphy
O’Connor, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.

In a letter to his Westminster parishioners he warned many parishes may have to cope without their own priest.

But Britain still has one of the highest ratios of priests to parishioners in the world - one for every 850 Catholics.

The chatter inside the Vatican on the case of suspended Monsignor Tommaso Stenico is most surprising for the absence of
outright denials. A member of the papal council that supervises priests, Stenico faces a Vatican tribunal after getting caught on Italian TV making advances to a younger man, telling him “homosexual sex isn’t a sin, son.”

Officials and observers of the Holy See express two gut reactions: concern that Stenico, 60, will spill the beans on similar
cases, or hope that he will, forcing the tribunal to clean up an “underground” culture of homosexuality in the papal city. Virtually no one is denying everything, except for Stenico, who says he is not gay and that he was just posing as “a thief among thieves” to test a theory that the gay population is out to damage the church.

Gay priests are nothing new, of course. And in church circles there have long been concerns about a supposed “homosexual ring” in the Vatican, only no one had any idea how real or extensive the ring was. Now, at a time when many Roman Catholics remain angry about the church's secretive handling of priest sex abuse scandals, the Vatican will be under heavy pressure to investigate itself fully. While Catholic doctrine doesn't condemn homosexual orientation, sodomy is one of only four sins that the church says “cry to heaven for vengeance?” The general feeling among Vatican officials is that
if they don't take decisive disciplinary action, this could get very ugly.

A woman told a court recently that she was abused when she was 16 at meetings to discuss the possibility of her becoming a nun.

Now aged 45, the woman claimed Fr Patrick Crilly had sat her on his knee, kissed her on the lips and put his hand inside her clothing on a number of occasions in the basement of a pastoral centre at Derry’s Bishop Street in 1977.

Fr Crilly (63), of Tobermore Road, Desertmartin, Co Derry, who was at the time in charge of vocations in the Derry diocese,
has denied four counts of indecent assault.

At Derry Crown Court the alleged victim told a jury of six men and six women that she came from a very traditional Catholic family in a rural part of the diocese. She said she was introduced to Fr Crilly when she expressed an interest in becoming
a nun and he started collecting her from the family home after school and taking her to the pastoral centre to discuss her possible vocation.

The woman said that on one occasion Fr Crilly asked her if she knew what celibacy meant.

“He went on to ask me did I know what happened on the first night of a marriage,” she said. “I was quite taken aback by the
question and I said 'no' because at that time I was quite naive.”

She claimed that on another occasion Fr Crilly had guided her onto his knee and kissed her on the lips.
The woman said afterwards that the level of abuse became more serious and Fr Crilly had touched her in an inappropriate
way.

She said he had told her that she should tell her parents that she was helping him with paperwork.

“My feelings were that I felt as if this cannot be right. How could it be right? But I always felt I am with a priest, this is a
person who said Mass this morning, this is a person who knows the difference between right and wrong and who am I to question them,” she said.

The woman said abuse had stopped when she told Fr Crilly she had started a relationship with a boy.

Brian McCartney QC, defending, suggested to the woman that her evidence implied she went back willingly “week after week and fortnight after fortnight” to be abused in the same way. He said Fr Crilly would say they only met at the pastoral centre three times and on one occasion she became emotional over isolation within her family and academic problems at school.

“He embraced you. He just felt you needed a hug and that was a hug given out of Christian decency,” the lawyer said.

Denying this, the woman said: “I can even recall the smell and taste of his mouth and the smell of his breath.” The trial continues.

THE first purpose built Roman Catholic town in America has opened its doors to the public.

Ave Maria, ten years in the making, has been called the ‘cleanest town’ in the U.S.

Pornography will be banned and shops will sell only ‘family orientated’ goods, but reports that the town bans birth control
have been denied.

A Catholic university for more than 1,000 students and a cathedral sized oratory with the largest crucifix in the U.S. at 55ft high will open later this year.

The £200 million town is the dream of Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan, who sold his business in 1998 for £500 million. More than 11,000 homes are being built on the site, which is spread over 5,000 acres near Naples in South Florida. Streets will have a religious theme with names such as Assisi and Annunciation.

Mr Monaghan, 70, said: ‘We wanted to build a major Catholic university in the southern part of the U.S. with the highest
standards. We will be offering a dynamic Catholic and educational community.’

THE Vatican in Rome has ordered all Roman Catholic organisations to stop donating money to Amnesty International in
protest at that organisation's stance on abortion.

Amnesty previously had been neutral on the subject of abortion but, in April, it said that countries making laws about
abortion should drop them because tough anti-abortion penalties led to a high proportion of backstreet abortions.

Mexico City recently passed a law decriminalising aborton. Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Pontifical Council for
Justice and Peace at the Vatican and one of Rome's leading prelates, said the inevitable consequence of the Amnesty decision will be the end of all financing from Roman Catholic organisations and individual leading Roman Catholics.

Amnesty said it had never received Vatican funding and one of its statutes stated that it should be independent of all governments, political parties, churches, religious organisations and groups.

The Jesuits in History £3.00
Rome’s Tactics £2.00
The Reformation in Revelation £2.00
Women Martyrs of the Reformation £3.00

It is not the aim or intention of Rome Watch to incite hatred of Roman Catholics but rather, by use of International Press reports already carried in newspapers, to show the religious and political advances of the Papacy in the light of Bible Prophecy, which foretells an end-time World Religion, Government and Economy.

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