At the bottom of the page is a time-line that demonstrates the history of man from the time of     Adam and Eve in relation to the revealed history of God in the world as told in the Scriptures    translated through the eyes of the Church. Imagine the Garden of Eden and the blissful state of the world when Adam and Eve were created knowing nothing about good versus evil because    love had not been betrayed shattering it into thousands of pieces across hours fractured into      seconds. All from thenceforth would need to be painstakingly put together again. But, for some reason Adam and Eve got curious and decided they had the right to know about good and evil. Well, they sure found out ........

Adam and Eve began to experience the results of their choice...they were now confronted with the problem of good versus evil and the new experiences in their souls....fear, shame, embarrassment, suspicion, joy alternating with sadness, uncertainty, as well as the physical and external....pain, heat, cold, work, finding food, old age, death. And yes it was Eve who tempted Adam, but Adam need not have succumbed. He could have corrected his wife because it is the sin of Adam that we inherited. So their offspring were born into this world never having known any other kind.  Even two of their children personified the situation of good and evil with one brother slaying the other.

NOW  LAWS  WERE  MADE and  PUNISHMENT  WAS INTRODUCED..... to keep order in the community, laws that paved the way for the ten commandments....and yes, it seems that what we call 'incest' these days was not a problem then. The Old Testament speaks of it as normal. It became obvious to Adam they were on a downward spiral with death at the end. So he cried out to God asking forgiveness and like a good parent who disciplines his children he made laws for them and the growing community. All would be in turmoil, with wars, crimes, sickness and death. He couldn't get back what he had lost and he had been warned! God heard his cry and decided to give him a chance to redeem himself by accepting just punishment with humility and grace. He did accept it he told God...and gratefully if only he could reverse the death sentence.   That, however, would take more than anything Adam would be capable of, so God said he would send a Redeemer to pay the price for the original personal sin that Adam had committed, then the state of death would be lifted as a result. Adam would suffer the consequences of his action bearing the full weight of remorse and grief as he saw the situation his children had inherited through his choice to test God...this would be his purgatory which God would accept as atonement. Suffering and death would remain during man's earthly existence.  Thus would Adam gain a reprieve for his offspring and himself until the Redeemer came to pay the ultimate price necessary to remove the sin of Adam and the sins of a world that were now rooted in the human soul.

Unlike our forbears, Adam and Eve, we live in  the shattered pieces, and the church invites us to recognise them, gather them up and put them together again restoring the human race to its pre-original-sin condition.   In addition, because so much time has been lost, She - the Church - has the job, also, of enabling us to catch up.  Time does not stand still.   The clock  has been ticking away whilst we are picking up the pieces.   Because of the injury caused by original sin we are far from where we should be. And so we enter the state of wondering, which,  we are told, is a state of prayer for as long as one wonders about what she (the Church) is telling us.  Somehow She has to find a way of taking us backwards and forwards at the same time.   She's pretty bossy about it too, as her definition of 'prayer'  is the only one, and you are not going to find out anything about God, or our condition, unless you do as she says FULL STOP!    One thing for sure though is that I had to find out if I believed what I had been born into.....and I was more than ready to disbelieve....life would be so much easier that way...or so I thought. 

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                                                   THE  CHURCH
                         Picks  up  the  Pieces

The Church states the limit of what is knowable by man, and provides enough information to arouse the curious person to know more and so we proceed with looking at what triggered the chaos experienced  today.  

 FORTY YEARS AGO  the church completed a Council meeting of Cardinals gathered from all over the world to update things....it is known as Vatican II.   It was a 'pastoral' council the first of its kind in the history of the church.  Unlike previous councils which clarified and defined issues as they arose this one was a kind of love-in.  It had the opposite effect to that of preceding councils in that it resulted in the destruction of everything that had been built up through blood, sweat and tears since the apostolic age...even further back than that...to the beginning of time...to Adam and Eve. 


The Church has an axiom: "Lex Orandi, Lex Crendidi".
Translated it means: The Law of Prayer is the Law of Belief.   If you destroy a language you  remove the way a person thinks, communicates and expresses himself.   The external effect is merely the outcome of the dreadful interior destruction.   What has been constructed has collapsed because the building blocks have been removed.    Those perceptive enough to have foreseen the result love her very stones.  Force is then applied to them by way of punishments:  (a) isolating the recalcitrant person (put in coventry) surround him only by speakers of the new (?) language, (b) belittlement and  scorn and banishment.  Well, that is what resulted from Vatican II....the lazy were lulled into acceptance whilst the valiant were shamed, discredited and thrown out.

A great deal has been written on the build-up to this event.   I may add a selection of books
for anyone interested in exploring the subject further, but for the present suffice it to say that grass-roots Catholics such as yours truly began to see and experience a definite change in language - liturgical and from the pulpit.   Simple folk were suddenly challenged about what we believed, group meetings became the order of the day.   Looking back I now see they had terms of reference with preconceived outcomes.  Our whole focus was redirected towards a purely earthly stripping away of the supernatural elements on which the church had been built.  The way we prayed was changed so dramatically that what we had believed from generation to generation was stripped away and with it belief . 

Lex  Orandi, Lex Crendidi.   George Orwell  once warned: “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” And how clearly we see that right here, right now.    There was great suffering amongst the people who had no authority to question what was happening, even if they had been able to put it into words.    Double-meaning words were used in newly issued missals and sacred books and catechisms.   Those over forty years of age who showed any resistence were ostrascised and scorned.   The Sacraments were gradually phased out, and our Tabernacles were placed at the back of Churches, or hidden away.  I will be devoting separate pages to begin reflections on the titled subjects adding and subtracting from them from time to time.  This is to bring out all the truth and beauty of what our good God has done for us and continues to do for us.   Be it said that I am simply giving you a view of the effect on ordinary people in every corner of the globe when the spirit of the Vatican II council hit us.  It was like a slow-moving tsunami.