The Holy Catholic Church Western Rite
Metropolitan's Page
Easter Pastoral Letter
Ordered to be read at all Masses on Easter Day
Christ is risen. He is
risen indeed.
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.
My Dear Brothers in the Episcopate, Reverend
Fathers, and all Faithful People of God
Greetings in the Risen Christ!
“He is risen. He is not here” - St Mark’s Gospel 16:6
On that first Easter Day Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome had come to the Sepulchre to anoint the dead body of Jesus but only to discover that His body was not there. An angel had told them “ He is risen. He is not here” but they could not take it in. They could hardly realise that Jcsus, whose dead body was lifted down from the Cross just three days ago, was dead no longer — that He was once more a living man.
There is no angel to tell us this Easter Day that the Lord is risen, but instead the Church. There is no better evidence than that of the Church — not even the Gospels. We must not think that the Church learns about the Resurrection just because it is written in the Gospels: rather it is vice versa. Tite Gospels are a sort of diary that the Church wrote when the Resurrection events were fresh in her mind - but the fact is that even if there was no New Testament - no Gospels - the Church would still remember them. You see (he Church was there when it happened; the Church saw him risen, lived with him for forty days after He had risen from the dead, and saw him ascend into heaven. Through the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit who, according to Christ’s sure promise, keeps the Church ‘in truth’, the fact of the Resurrection is as fresh to the Church today as it was twenty centuries ago, and she bears witness to the Resurrection now as then.
Thus it is that we proclaim today that the Church is the surest witness to the Risen Christ - that, after being dead for the space of three days, Hc rose again, bodily, from the dead.
There is, however, a fundamental difference in what the Church says and what the
Angel said to the women on that first Easter Day. The Church does not say: “He
is risen, He is not here”. The Church says “He is risen and HE IS HERE.”
The Catholic Church is rightly described as the Sacrament of Christ because she
is the outward, visible sign of His risen, living presence. This truth is why
the Church can proclaim with the utmost certainly: HE IS HERE.
The Church proclaims that Christ IS HERE, living in and through His Church, so that YOU may fully share the New Life of His Resurrection from the dead. Indeed, the authentic identity of the Catholic Church is NEW LIFE IN CHRIST, the new life of the Resurrection.
May we all raise our hearts in joy and thanksgiving this Eastertide, that each single one of us is called, not only to share in Christ’s Resurrection, hut also to spread abroad the Good News to those who know it not, that Christ is truly risen
+ Leslie - Metropolitan Archbishop
I publish this Pastoral Letter, as I believe it is message worthy of repetition in our fallen world, when so many folk are increasingly concerned about so many things that don’t really matter. The fact of the resurrection of Jesus above all things needs to be firmly established in all our minds
***************************************************************************
The Archbishop’s Notes on the
bodily Assumption of Our Lady into heaven.
BLESSED BE HER GLORIOUS ASSUMPTION
Mary died like any other mortal, but shortly after death her body was re-united with her soul. Her body was ‘assumed’ or taken to heaven.
All the following beliefs are fundamental to the Holy Tradition of the Faith:
The Nicene Creed states that we look for ‘the resurrection of the dead; and the life of the world to come’, and in the Apostles’ Creed we state that we believe in ‘the resurrection of the body’. What does this mean? It means that at the Last Day, when Christ returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, those who are redeemed will again be clothed with a body - like unto Christ’s resurrection body. And not only man’s body but the whole of the material order will be transformed at that time; Almighty God will create a new heaven and a new earth. This is what is meant by our belief in ‘the life of the world to come’.
Holy Tradition teaches that in Mary’s case the resurrection of the dead at the Last Day has been anticipated.
She has already passed beyond death and judgement and lives in ‘the life of the world to come’ (or ‘the Age to Come’).
A human being has already made it all the way……. This is the great source of hope that the bodily Assumption of Our Lady into heaven affords to all believers. Mary is but one step ahead of us. What has already happened to her will, when Christ returns in Glory at the Last Day, happen to all those who are redeemed.
The
Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady into heaven should therefore be celebrated
in every parish, mission and congregation of this Church with the utmost
solemnity and thanksgiving. It is the greatest of Our Lady’s feasts and a
holyday of obligation.
The Glorification of Our Lady belongs to the inner life of the Church and was
never a part of the public preaching of salvation.
“It is hard to speak and not less hard to think about the mysteries which the
Church keeps in the hidden depths of her consciousness.
The Mother of God was never a theme o1 the public preaching of the
Apostles; while Christ was preached from the housetops, and proclaimed for all
to know in an initiatory teaching addressed to the whole world, the mystery of
his Mother was revealed only to those within the Church.
It is not so much an object of faith as a foundation of hope, a fruit of
faith, ripened in Holy Tradition. Let us therefore keep silence, and let us try
not to dogmatize about the supreme glory of the Mother of God.” (V
Losky, Panagia’, in The Mother
of God
edited by E.L.Mascal page 35.)
In the words of the Introit for the Feast of the Assumption:
“Rejoice we all in the Lord, keeping holyday in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary; in whose Assumption the Angels rejoice and glorify the Son of God...”
August 2009
Archbishop predicts death of Christianity in Britain
In an outspoken message Archbishop Leslie Hamlett, Metropolitan of the Holy Catholic Church (Western Rite), expresses his fear that secularism will virtually kill Christianity in Britain.
He calls on all Christian leaders to unite in condemning the sins of society and
proclaiming the possibility of repentance and a better way of life. He accuses
the mainstream Churches of succumbing to the cheap and sentimental emotion that
they mistakenly call compassion, which is ‘nothing but a combination of
political correctness and the superficial values of soap opera.’
The Archbishop singles out for attack the Prime Minister, who cultivates the
image of a family man while lacking the courage to restore marriage to its
former official status.
The Archbishop’s comments reflect his visits to the Church’s congregations in South Africa and Hispanic parishes in El Paso, Texas. In both he witnessed rapid and enthusiastic growth in the midst of poverty and deprivation - a striking contrast to the declining faith in prosperous Britain.
The full text of the Archbishop’s message is as follows:
I wish I could greet with a reassuring message. But, as I look at the state
of our nation and the minimal impact of Christianity within it, I find it
impossible to be optimistic about the immediate future.
Islamists speak out boldly, yet Christians appear reluctant to proclaim that Christianity ie Almighty God’s complete and final revelation given to the world, and therefore that there can be none other.
I cannot avoid the fear that unless the Churches acknowledge the crisis and introduce a radical change of approach Christianity will come close to extinction in Britain within quite a short time. Christ’s One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church will not die - it will continue to grow and flourish beyond these shores - but its survival in this country may well come to depend on the fragile witness of a few scattered remnants of the faithful.
We live in a corrupt society that is rapidly running out of moral resources. The symptoms are only too familiar. A hedonistic culture is fuelled by those who get rich by encouraging instant gratification. Sex screams at us from billboards, pervades every kind of advertising and becomes the staple fare of magazines and television programmes. Parents should look closely at the magazines their young daughters read, because the encouragement of precocious sexual activity is a rapidly-spreading disease (literally so, because sexually-transmitted infection has reached unprecedented levels among our teenagers).
The response of our government is to allow young girls to buy abortion pills
over the counter and young boys to be sodomised by predatory adults. This is a
government led by a man who claims to be a Christian and promotes an image of
himself as a family man’, yet it lacks the guts to restore the former status of
marriage as the only officially-recognised form of sexual relationship.
‘Families come in all shapes and sizes,’ said a government minister, thus giving
a blessing to child abuse. What other term is there to describe the plight of a
young child exposed to the uncertain care of a single mother and a succession of
boy friends? What else can we call a situation where divorcing parents shatter
their children’s security and perhaps plunge them into a set of confusing
relationships with a new parent or a new set of brothers and sisters? We vilify
paedophiles, but we should be equally forceful in condemning the cruelty
inflicted on children by inadequate substitutes for lifelong marriage.
In a society that delights in triviality and transient novelty the very idea of
marriage to one person for life will seem laughable. Lust at first sight must he
satisfied by brief relationships that last until boredom sets in. It is
frightening to think of how many of today’s young people will face a bleak and
lonely old age.
Perhaps they will find the answer in euthanasia. Certainly it seems likely that
the killing of inconvenient people is going to be the big growth industry of the
21st century. It is, of course, already well established. The abortion industry
was responsible for approximately 200,000 murders last year, and there appears
to be no reason why productivity should slacken. Abortion on demand means that
unborn children can now be killed simply for being a nuisance, and it is only a
matter of time before people who become a nuisance by living too long will he
routinely dispatched - in the name of ‘compassion’ of course.
As we survey this steady corrosion of moral values can we draw encouragement
from a determined counter-attack by the mainstream Churches? The short answer is
- no. The Church of England gave up the fight long ago, and has been content to
soften its moral teaching to conform to every passing social trend. The
once-powerful disciplines of the Roman Catholic Church are crumbling, and while
the Pope continues to maintain a consistent stand his bishops seem incapable of
matching his resolution.
Most religious leaders in Britain are like rabbits caught in a car’s headlights.
They appear mesmerised by the advance of secularism, incapable of countering it
with vigour and conviction. Fearful of falling numbers, they make one craven
concession after another to the slack ethos by which our society lives, which
can be summed up roughly as "It’s my life and I can do what I like with it. I
know my rights. What do you mean - responsibilities? It’s not my fault. You’ve
no right to criticise me."
Well, here is a Christian reply. The sickness of Britain is the result of sin.
The sins are hardly new. They have familiar names like lust, envy, greed,
sloth....and when they enslave a society the consequences are depravity, misery
and chronic discontent. Sin is the great barrier that stands between us and God.
But, through the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we have
been given the means of sweeping the barrier aside. We have been given the
chance to find salvation by choosing to live a new kind of life. And we have
been given the means of living that life through membership of the Church which
Christ himself founded. This is the central message of Christianity. We all have
the power to lift ourselves out of the mire of sin into a better life.
So why do the Churches find it so hard to drive this positive message home? The
answer is that they have succumbed to the cheap and sentimental emotion that
they mistakenly call ‘compassion’. They are reluctant to condemn sin because
they prefer to fall in with the secular view of sinners as victims of their
circumstances, incapable of taking responsibility for their actions and
therefore not to be blamed.
This pseudo-compassion is regarded as ‘Christian’, but in truth it is nothing
but a combination of political correctness and the superficial values of soap
opera.
Real compassion involves a concern for the soul. Jesus Christ never tolerated
sin. He condemned it whenever he found it - but almost every sinner he
encountered came away changed for the better. Christ founded a Church to
continue this work of confronting sinners with the truth of their dangerous
situation, releasing them from their bonds and opening up to them the new life
of salvation. Hence the maxim ‘Hate the sin but love the sinner’. Real
compassion – loving the sinner – starts by pointing out the sin and then offers
the remedy. In a good old-fashioned phrase, we have a duty to save souls. So
there is no compassion, only cruel betrayal, in reassuring someone that he is
not sinning when in fact he is.
The Holy Catholic Church (Western Rite) will be faithful in its duty to speak
out with force and clarity against the sins that imprison so many in Britain
today. And it will be equally forthright in pointing out the escape route - -
repentance and the opportunity of new life in Christ for everyone who resolves
to accept it.
I call on all other Christian leaders to abandon soft words and bland clichés
and to join me in attacking robustly the sin in our society and pointing out a
better way. This is the radical approach I referred to at the beginning of my
message. Even at this late hour it could prevent the death of Christianity in
Britain.
Unfortunately I have no great hope that the call will be heeded.
3rd August 2006
If you are new to this site and would like to know more
about the Church,
then
CLICK HERE
Metropolitan's Pastoral Letter
Home l Editorial l Metropolitan's Page l How to Find Us l
Questions & Answers l Reflections l Issues l Why do Catholics do that? l Sermon of the Month
'Unreformed' - the magazine of the International Church