A Reflection on Pope Francis

 During the past hundred years the proportion of Catholics has remained fairly steady at about 16% of the world's population which has more than trebled. However, the centre of balance of the Church has dramatically changed. In 1910, Europe was home to about two-thirds of all Catholics, and nearly nine-in-ten lived either in Europe (65%) or Latin America (24%). By 2010, by contrast, only about a quarter of all Catholics (24%) were in Europe. The largest share (39%) were in Latin America and the Caribbean.

 

This change was reflected by the installation of Pope Francis, the first non-European pope for over a thousand years with his different, non-European, cultural background. Additionally. as the first Jesuit pope with their charisms of being grounded in love for Christ, focus on discernment and animated by the spiritual vision of their founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola, to help others and seek God in all things it is not surprising that his modus operandi has come as shock to many in the west. 

What has Pope Francis done? To start, the pontiff has achieved a great deal by living simply, speaking his mind, promoting frugality, and working for peace and justice. Pope Francis makes the news regularly with his latest reforms and proclamations. He has simplified annulment rules that have been overly complicated for centuries, threatened to shut down the Vatican Bank if it didn't embrace transparency and reform, and moved toward liberalizing the Vatican's stances on the environment, and the economy. He has also placed women in high positions within some of the departments. It must be noted that he has not altered or changed doctrine or dogma rather he has modified the way it is implemented.

In the process, he's angered conservative Catholics around the world, and traditionalists who feel he's going too far, too fast. But the reforms continue apace, and likely will for Francis's entire papacy. 

 

His first encyclical  published in the year 2013 the Apostolic Exhortation “Evangelii gaudium”, is the true ‘guiding manifesto’ of his Pontificate, in which he calls for a new evangelization characterized by joy, as well as the reform of ecclesial structures and the conversion of the papacy, so that they may be more missionary and closer to the purpose intended by Jesus. For this reason, also in 2013, the Pope established a “Council of Cardinals” whose task is to study a project to revise the Apostolic Constitution “Pastor bonus” on the Roman Curia, dating back to 1988.

 

Since this beginning he has published other encyclicals dealing with the family, “Amoris Laetitia,” and the duty of care that we owe to the world, “Laudato si’ on Care of our Common Home.”

 

Like all of us Pope Francis is not without fault, but nobody can doubt his determination and zeal to carry on with the work and mission of his predecessors who have sat in the Chair of Peter to evangelise the world. His determination to carry on with his work can be seen by the start of his “Synod on Synodality” that will come to fruition later this year.

Virgin to Sky!

For various reasons, mainly increasing in price I decided that I was leaving Virgin Media and joining Sky for TV, Broadband and TV. I am now, eventually, on Sky and this is the Saga!!

Leaving Virgin was not easy to say the least. The first telephone call ended with me completely losing my rag, and slamming the phone down. The issue being that the person at the other end of the phone kept trying to persuade me to stay, questioning the details of my new package with Sky and refusing to listen to what I was saying (I probably wasn’t listening to him either). The second call went much better and I thought that we had agreed a disconnection date; but the next day I received a letter (printed not email), detailing my new revised contract with Virgin. On the third call we did agree a disconnection date (a couple of days after the sky installation date, just to be safe).

 

What I hadn’t appreciated is that there are really only two main providers of broadband and telephone infrastructure. Virgin Media who have an all-fibre infrastructure and currently do not let other companies use it or sell it. The other is BT/Openreach who use a mixture of fibre and copper and do let third parties, including Sky, sell it.

Install day came. The TV dish etc were installed ok and work perfectly. As always there are differences in how things work but we now, more or less get easily get what we want. My main gripe is that being red/green colour blind I cannot tell whether the Sky box is on or off.

 

The broadband/phone is another story. The first installer was a subcontractor to Openreach who said that for various reasons he needed a cherry picker to get to the top of the nearby telegraph pole and then left.  Eventually on the 20 April (install date was meant to be 3 April) a crew that included cherry picker, mobile hoist on the back of a truck plus engineer arrived and everything was installed and now works ok. My main complaint, and I have raised this as an official complaint is that I ended up managing it all including asking Virgin to keep my service active for another few weeks. If Sky sell it then they should have been on top of the process. The Sky help desk team have been very helpful, but my non-installation should have been picked up and someone should have been contacting me, not me doing the chasing.

 

Broadband so far has been reliable, albeit much slower, around 35 mb/sec compared to 200 plus that I was getting. As I am not a gamer or run a home business what I get is quite fast enough for me and the household. That is one thing that Virgin do not understand; that for oldies like me superfast speeds are not needed. If we had five or so heavy active users than maybe 200 plus is required. Putting my prices up by around £40 per month, then offering 500mb/sec by way of compensation is not for me.

 

Now the pains of leaving Virgin and getting the new system installed are behind me I am reasonably happy. I am due to get some money back from Sky/Openreach due to the delays. I will report back on how easy this process is!!

Rugby - a once great game slowly fading away

I think that one aspect that many forget is that rugby was never designed to be a spectator sport. I know that we cannot go back to the "good old days". But when my dad was taking me to Twickenham back in the fifties the vast majority of the crowd were either players, former players plus some wives or girl friends and children. The vast majority knew and understood the laws of the game and were appreciative of the finer points and the "dark arts". This was also true of the brave few who stood on the touchline at their local ground on a Saturday.

I would suggest that the majority of the crowds today have never played or not played since school. Do not understand the laws (not sure if I do anymore) and just want a spectacle with lots of "hits" and some occasional deft ball handling. The administrators see ££notes rather than wanting to see people playing the game no matter how ineptly My own playing was not that spectacular to say the least, but I loved it.

What I would love to see from the RFU is a clear concise statement of their vision for the game at all levels. I am also waiting for the pink pigs to come flying past my window.

The slow ending of Amateur Rugby?

 For sometime now it has been my belief that the Rugby Football Union wants to do away with amateur rugby. That it would like to move to the American Football model of the game just being played at school, college(university) and then a relatively small number of professional clubs.

I doubt if they will do it overnight, but this article in the Guardian suggests that they are moving along that track.

Click here to read the article

Thought for the Day!

 Here's a thought for the day - if the world needs to go green before 2030/50  

(1) have you stopped to work out the tonnage of: Silver, Copper, Lithium, Gold, Platinum, Palladium and rare earth minerals its going to take to make the solar panels, wind turbines, EV cars etc?

(2) Have you also worked out the amount of fossil fuels and mining that its going to take to extract, process & transport those metals and minerals?

(3) Have you also worked out that the major metal deposits are on diminishing returns/grades and the average time for a new discovery, say in copper, to come online and produce is over 20 years?

(4) Regardless of whether you're pro "green revolution" or not there's a lot of fossil fuels and mining that's going to happen before the new tech is even useable & it would be refreshing if the media actually told those facts to the populous who seems to think the tech comes "guilt free."

Budget Secrets

 Back in the day" nobody but a few close advisors knew what was going to in the Chancellor's budget. The cabinet were only told a few hours before and people resigned if a "budget secret" was accidentally revealed prior to the speech.

Today it seems as if the world and his wife know what is in the speech days before the main event.

Why did this come about and is it a good thing? Answers on a postcard please or alternatively as a comment to this post!

The Harry and Meghan Saga

 I have desperately being trying to avoid the Harry/Meghan soap opera. But with publication of Harry's book "Spare" it is impossible as it seems to fill every type of media and all the news broadcasts..

One of the (many)things that puzzles me is why Harry felt the need to talk about what he did in Afghanistan, particularly saying how many people he killed. I was born in 1947 and my dad, like many of his generation, fought in the war. Again like many of his contemporaries he had many stories to tell - but none of them had anything to do with fighting. Walking through Blackwell tunnel at night to visit my mum in the Mile End Hospital following her massive leg injuries in an air-raid - dad was at Biggin Hill at the time. Playing "international rugby" for the Shetlands v the Orkneys! A guards drill instructor trying to teach him to change step whilst marking time, he was at an RAF OCTU in Devon at the time. Having his first Chinese Meal (in India)… the list goes on. But never anything about fighting. Whenver I asked him anything about what he really did regards fighting he adroitly changed the subject. All of my friends dad's did the same. According to the stories you would have thought that the war was one long holiday camp interspersed with trips abroad- we all know that the reality was very different. But they never spoke about it.
So why did Harry feel the need to tell? I guess that we will never know why, but in my book it diminishes him.

Is it just the Arabs that we don’t like, or perhaps just some Arabs?

 I am not sure when I have heard so much cant and hypocrisy over anything as the hot air and virtue signalling that is taking place over the Football World Cup which is taking place in Qatar. Let me begin by making my position clear.

 

It should not be taking place in Qatar. 

 

There is no doubt in my mind that it is only as a result of industrial scale bribery and corruption that it is taking place in such a hot country in the middle of the football season in many leagues across the world. There is also no doubt that several thousand people died constructing the stadia and that the living conditions of the construction workers was and is appalling.

However, the argument now seems to be focussed on the treatment of those who are LGBT+. We seem to be quite happy to deal “normally” with other countries whose position on LGBT+ is similar to Qatar. According to Human Rights Watch, as reported on the BBC website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-43822234 , there are 69 countries that have repressive LGBT+ legislation. These include many African countries and some Asian and other countries. We seem quite happy to play Pakistan at cricket and LGBT+ legislation doesn’t get a mention.

 

Some American states still have anti-gay legislation on their statue books. The US Supreme Court has ruled it unconstitutional although one Supreme Court Justice has said that the ruling should be looked at again!

 

So why are we so “hot & bothered” about the LGBT+ issues at this event, whilst we let other events pass by without notice? COP27 has just taken place in Eygpt. Contemporary Egyptian law does not explicitly criminalize same-sex sexual acts. Instead, the state uses several morality provisions for the de facto criminalization of homosexual conduct. Any behaviour, or the expression of any idea that is deemed to be immoral, scandalous or offensive to the teachings of a recognized religious leader may be prosecuted using these provisions. These public morality and public order laws have been used against LGBT people, in addition to the supporters of LGBT-reform.

Perhaps it is just some Arabs that we don't like?