A woman stands alone on a quiet street. A police officer approaches and begins questioning her as to her business. She answers politely that she is standing there. Finally, he asks her if she is praying. She answers that she might be, in her own head. Would she be happy to come to the police station? No, of course she would not, she has done nothing wrong. Then the police officer utters the words, ‘you’re under arrest.’ The woman is summarily searched, read out her rights and led away to the waiting police car, all because she admitted she might be praying.
This is not a scene from an Orwellian nightmare, it occurred in Britain in 2022. Nearly two centuries after the repeal of England’s anti-Catholic penal laws, a Catholic was arrested and charged for the crime of praying inside her own head. Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was detained, questioned and charged, along with Catholic priest Fr Sean Gough, whose own ‘crimes’ were to hold a sign announcing that he was praying for free speech and to drive a car with a pro-life bumper sticker. The magistrate’s court threw out the charges as the prosecution was unable to provide evidence that the alleged thoughtcrimes had taken place, but the relief was short-lived. Only three weeks later, Isabel was arrested a second time, this time by six police officers.
Isabel is not the first woman to be arrested for praying on the streets of Britain. During lockdown, a 76-year-old pensioner named Rosa was caught praying during her daily walk. A police officer arrested and detained her, though in her case, the police were forced to admit fault and her fine was withdrawn.
The campaign to create so-called ‘buffer zones’ around abortion centers has raged for years. Led by the abortion industry, who naturally resent losing business when women change their minds, the argument behind the ‘back off’ campaign appears to be that women are by nature fragile and need protection from individuals holding peaceful vigils outside abortion facilities. Before the recent change in the law, some individual councils put their own prohibitions in place, the most notorious being the seaside town of Bournemouth, where signs were erected listing a number of banned activities inside the ‘safe zone’, including: “holding vigils where members audibly pray, recite scripture, genuflect, sprinkle holy water on the ground or cross themselves if they perceive a service-users [sic] passing by.” In a move that went virtually unnoticed in the media, public acts of specifically Catholic piety were banned on certain streets of Britain.
In March of this year, Parliament voted in favor of a nationwide ban on consensual conversation and silent prayer outside abortion facilities, a move that was denounced by the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children as ‘an outrageous assault on civil liberties.’ There were many spurious arguments used to justify this outrage, but perhaps the most ludicrous came from a Conservative MP who – having previously been friendly to the pro-life movement – claimed in an email to a concerned constituent: “The clincher for me was the assertion that meeting at clinics was prayerful at which the point was made that prayer was not geographically limited which, obviously, it isn’t.”
It is almost too easy to knock down such an argument by pointing out that speaking, thinking, and debating are not geographically limited either, but what free country would set about to ban these activities? The trouble is that freedom of speech and thought are under equally ferocious attack in Britain, and in the very settings where such freedoms should be most ardently protected. With tedious regularity, stories find their way into the British press, detailing cases of individuals forced out of jobs and publicly shamed for the nebulous crime of causing offence; a teacher humiliated in front of her pupils for addressing her class (at a girls’ school) as ‘ladies’; a maths teacher banned from the profession for ‘misgendering’ a pupil; a police chairman sacked for questioning whether or not senior police officers should wear rainbow lanyards; an eminent scientist publicly vilified and forced abroad for cracking an ill-judged joke; a Catholic doctor’s competence questioned because he is…a practicing Catholic.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak felt it necessary to intervene in an attempt to silence a ‘gender critical’ professor last week. Professor Kathleen Stock was eventually able to speak at the Oxford Union with an enhanced security presence, whilst two hundred students protested outside, other protestors stormed the debating chamber and one young man glued himself to the floor.
The Government’s Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, which became law in May, was meant to protect the rights of both students and teachers to express opinions without fear of censure, but the hounding of Professor Stock raises the question as to whether the new law has the teeth to change a culture of fear that has been growing in academic circles for years. When I first began giving talks at universities fifteen years ago, censorship was unheard of. By the time I gave my last talk, before the pandemic struck, I was being investigated for ‘any potential controversy to my name’, an article was written in the student rag warning of my appearance, and I was harassed by protesters.
I also witnessed the emergence of a more sinister trend – a demand for self-censorship. A UK-based magazine invited me to write an article on feminism, helpfully detailing precisely what I ought and ought not to write. Needless to say, I did not contribute the article. A pro-life group at a prestigious university invited me, along with a colleague, to speak at an event. The invitation contained instructions as to what topics and words we were to avoid, culminating in the organizer cancelling the event in a fit of temper when my colleague ignored the attempt at censorship. In some respects, I sympathized with the students’ paranoia, but a climate of self-censorship is the surest sign that a society has ceased to be free in any meaningful sense of the word.
To give some perspective on the current situation, no one in Britain is facing torture, imprisonment in the gulag or a public hanging for expressing an opinion. The climate of fear is being stoked more by the process itself than the potential consequences of speaking out of turn or standing in the wrong place on a public thoroughfare. When Catholic student Julia Rynkiewicz was suspended by Nottingham University after one of her lecturers made a complaint about her involvement with a student pro-life group, she was able to fight for re-instatement and eventually received an apology. However, she was put through months of severe stress, facing the possibly of losing her chance to qualify as a midwife.
The process has become the punishment. Dr Dermot Kearney fought against attempts by the abortion lobby to get him struck off, but only after enduring a length period in limbo where his career and reputation hung in the balance. Isabel Vaughan-Spruce and Fr Sean Gough walked free from court and – hopefully – will do so again, but the experience of being arrested multiple times, searched, interrogated and detained will inevitably take its toll.
At the time of writing, journalist and campaigner Caroline Farrow faces another court appearance over ‘misgendering’ and other comments she may or may not have made on social media. The police are pushing to be given powers over Farrow’s personal life that one would expect to be reserved for convicted paedophiles and gangsters. These powers (and the list is not exhaustive) include: allowing an ‘Offender Manager’ to prohibit her use of any social media without written permission; giving the Offender Manager access to all her passwords and PIN numbers; granting police officers the right to enter her home at any time between 8AM and 8PM; the right to seize all electronic devices for inspection at any time. These attacks on Farrow’s privacy and personal freedom have been described by the police as ‘an appropriate course of action.’
It is to be hoped that the courts will throw out this case, but whatever the outcome, Farrow has already been punished many times over for refusing to self-censor. She has been arrested in front of her terrified children, questioned, detained, had her electronic possessions confiscated, and been hauled through the courts. It is hardly unreasonable that the majority of people observing these events might decide to keep their opinions to themselves.
In Britain today, trust in the police is at an all-time low, following the rape and murder of Sarah Everard by an off-duty police officer. Besides the loss of public confidence, funding cuts and a lack of trained officers has left the police badly overstretched. Only 6% of burglaries, 4% of thefts and 1% of car thefts result in criminal charges, with most victims of burglary receiving no call-out from the police at all. Only 1% of rapes result in a charge and yet the police apparently have the resources to send an entire team of officers to arrest one woman engaging in silent prayer. The police can still dedicate many hours of a specialist team’s time, trawling through a journalist’s social media accounts because someone finds her offensive.
A cynic might say that the police are allowing themselves to be used as a private mafia to intimidate and wear down the inconvenient. But it is hard to avoid cynicism in George Orwell’s Britain.
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In these cases, and in general more and more frequently, in truth, I can’t help but make my own the Lincoln’s eternal words: ““I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had no where else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.”
Per crucem et passionem tuam. Libera nos Domine, libera nos Domine, libera nos Domine.
I came to this conclusion in 2012 and haven’t gotten off my knees since. At some point, you get directed to the world AFTER this one. Foster a love for the souls in Purgatory – our next step in the journey. Pray they bless you with their wisdom, their understanding, their life’s conditions. It will elevate your soul to a whole new plain. Pax Christi te, Amici!
Do they still allow free speech at “Speaker’s Corner” in Hyde Park? Or, has that been banned too? If only some speech is allowed, then there is in actuality NO FREE SPEECH in Britain.
My mother was born in England and I can confidently say now that I am ashamed of my British heritage.
There was a controversy over a speech given several years ago in Hyde Park and I think the speaker got into trouble for being overly provocative and causing some sort of civil disturbance. I don’t remember the outcome but I suppose limits on free speech are enforced there also.
Brilliant article on a surreal and frightening state of affairs. Thank you for your efforts
In the U.S., we’re already seeing signs that vast majority of us who are just “regular people” (including many homosexuals) are getting fed-up with suppression of free speech in the name of “love.” Most of us who are sane and decent do not want to go back to a time when homosexuals and other “different” folks were criminalized and often in danger of their lives. But most of us do not want to lose the precious freedom to think freely and speak in public at appropriate times about our own personal beliefs, often prompted by deep religious convictions, ethnic and family traditions, and/or personal philosophies developed over time based on our education and life experiences. We’re beginning to see public protests and demonstrations condemning oppression and judgmentalism, various brave celebrities (especially athletes) condemning the suppression of beliefs and speech, and even the press coming out with protests about the extremism of “wokeness” that can even cause people to lose their jobs! In this country, liberals used to say that they disagreed with conservatives, but they would fight to the death so that conservatives would have the choice to believe and speak out about their beliefs. I think that some liberals are recalling this love of personal freedoms and beginning to realize that they need to join with conservatives and others to re-capture “freedom of speech” or they may eventually find themselves on the receiving end of suppression! I think the “tipping point” is on the horizon, and our American love of freedom of beliefs and speech will triumph over the tantrums of a very small (but very visible, thanks to the media and the computer) minority that is demanding that we be criminalized for not enthusiastically embracing and celebrating their rainbow! I only fear it will take an outrageous and tragic incident to bring about this “tipping” back to the sanity of free speech–the same free speech that allowed the “woke folk” to promote their message of tolerance of those they love and intolerance of those they despise. If we don’t “tip,” the terrible alternative is for the U.S. to eventually become a terrorist-run country in which a public prayer earns torture or even execution–and I think–I hope–I pray (so far, I still have freedom to do that in secret!) that we are better than that.
Rome
A UK media personality pointed out that 3,300 British were arrested last year for their social media posts and only 400 Russians were arrested for the same thing.
Of course I imagine the consequences differed.
Don’t think it won’t happen here! For shame! Pray, pray, pray!!!
So odd and disgusting that Britain has no evident problem with arresting people ASSUMED to be praying. Yet apparently they have a great deal of trouble finding the spine to deal with violent Muslim groomers and offenders. The Brits have picked the wrong side to defend, the side of suppression and totalitarianism. Churchill must be rolling over in his grave.If the Brits were going to embrace a lack of civil freedom and respect for religious tolerance, Churchill could have just stepped aside and not bothered fighting WWII. They are letting their freedom go with a whimper. Pathetic.
I believe that the “grooming gangs” were primarily Pakistanis. It was an issue concerning a group of men of that particular ethnicity, not with Muslims in general.
Muslims in general have been the cause of numerous terror attacks in Britain,including train bombings, as they have in France. These were not only conducted by Pakistani attackers. The grooming is an additional issue affecting thousands of young girls. What is different is that these groomings are not conducted by deranged individuals, but conducted by groups, who view these girls as “less than” because they do not observe Muslim religious standards of totally covering up, not making eye contact, etc. This makes them legitimate targets to their attackers. Law enforcement has been slow to get to the root of these particular problems for fear of accusations of racism.
Immigration is not always a plus when the new immigrants bring violence with them, and refuse to learn the language and adopt the customs and beliefs of their new nation. Sweden has been taking a hard look at the issue,especially crime, and announced recently they are revamping their immigration laws to be less wide open and more demanding of new immigrants, requiring them to adjust THEIR behavior to Swedish standards.Those who refuse will be deported. Sounds like an idea.
Well, not so long ago Irish Catholics were the cause of numerous terrorist attacks in Britain. Thanks to them and their Manchester bombing you see few public rubbish bins available today.
Pakistan is part of the Commonwealth and Pakistanis fleeing from Idi Amin carried British passports when they entered the UK.
I think failure to enforce the law to protect young girls from harm lies with the Yorkshire police.
Both the grooming gangs and local police treated the girls differently because they came from a lower socioeconomic class. Not because of how they dressed.
UK Pakistanis were targeted not so long ago for harrassment and violence. “Paki-bashing”
was a real thing.
I believe in transparency in the news and free speech but I also think we should be careful to not expand the criminal actions of one group to an entire religion. Or nation. That’s one reason you still encounter anti Catholic and anti Irish prejudice in Britain today.
I don’t believe in pretending to be willfully blind. Surely you must be aware of the case of Mahsa Amini, a woman who was beaten to death in Iran because she was targeted by “morality police” for allowing her hair to be seen outside her head scarf. Demonstrations about her death continue even today. Such morality police can be seen striking women with sticks in the videos of the botched US withdrawal from Afghanistan. This has NOTHING to do with social class and EVERYTHING to do with forcing people to submit to your interpretation of religion. I have seen no reports in Britain of gangs of white men grooming groups of muslim girls. And I am not especially interested in who is offended by the truth. Local police SHOULD enforce the law, but will NOT if orders are given from the top to ignore certain crimes for issues of political correctness.
LJ,
I apologize. I don’t know how to reply in the correct order to your 2nd comment but if you read about the Rotherham grooming gangs, the socioeconomic issue was an important part of the problem. And all sorts of people exploit others in Britain. It’s in no way unique to Muslims, Pakistanis, or any other ethnic group. One of the most vulnerable populations to be sexually exploited are newly arrived immigrants.
Political correctness though can affect the ability of law enforcement to properly do its job. That’s true for any public agency.
we white honkies are, and always have been the greatest threat to humanity the world has ever known. Know the enemy……that is ourselves/Hypocrits who fiddle whilst Rome burns.
We recently acquired an illuminated “calendar” that was made in the mid 1400’s. It is beautiful. It came from England and was owned by 5 generations of very devout Catholic women. The calendar, or what we would call a sacred Psalter has centrally-located Latin script with golden lettering. It’s astounding in and of itself; but it is FAR more than that. Beginning in 1534, these women took turns writing of the atrocities of the Protestants through the reformation in England. Every page of the 365 pages of this Psalter is covered in beautiful script by the hand of each of the owners of this text. Every spare space of vellum was not preserved save for the original Latin text in the middle. My wife and I are working through the book one page at a time to bring the comments of these devout women into our day. We received this treasure on the Feast Day of Corpus Christi. We’re on page 4. The first sentence of this extraordinary book reads like this: “King Harry the 8, in the 26 year of his reign & in the year of our Lord 1534 put out a proclamation commanding all his subjects to call the pope Bishop of Rome under severe penalty & even if the name of the pope should be found in any book the party who owned the book should be guilty of treason, so this, every calendar, every index, the writings of the holy father the canon laws, the school of divinity were sacred & blessed where ever the name of the pope was found: as you may see with your own eyes in this same calendar it being writ long before Harry the 8 was born & a visible witness of this absurd barbarity & boundless (aspiring?) church maggot.” Every one of these women would have lost her head had this text been discovered in their day. We need to take heart. Absurd persecution has been happening at the hands of aspiring maggots like King Harry the 8 for centuries. Deo Gratius!
That is amazing! Have you considered publishing a transcription of the writing or even a facsimile of the book?
Hi Leslie, Yes! I want to share it – it’s a beautiful and profound glimpse into the lives of faithful & church loving, God fearing Catholic women from the Middle Ages. It’s a “heritage” item and I will be making it available as I can. So far, the original writer/owner lists 5 arguments why the priests/bishops of the Protestant Reformation were not able to “present” the body & Blood of Christ – for her, there were deficits “wants” meaning things lacking, in the ordination formulas that were used. She’s adamant that the Protestants are NOT ordaining priests to confect the sacraments. She says they lack the grace, therefore, lack the sacredness, therefore the protestants lack a church. She quotes St. Jerome, she uses Latin with ease, she’s bright, educated and a very capable writer and thinker. This severely challenges the notion that the church was structured to keep women “dumb”. This woman and her companions (as I have read ahead in some parts) are very bright. Deo Gratius!
I’d be greatly interested in reading a transcript of this chronicalling of Protestant England’s persecution of Catholics. It would a must-read.
Dear Deacon, I would be happy to provide you a link to the upload where I will be putting each page into a Dropbox folder for (some) people to review, interpret and comment. We have been advised to wrap and set the book aside until after it has had a chance to acclimate to our environment. It won’t be before late July that we will re-open the book to take scans and upload each page. If the law of averages hold, there are about 15,300 separate lines that need to be deciphered. If you have a special skill in interpreting Medieval cursive hand-writing, I will send you a link to the Dropbox when I have all the pages uploaded. If you will pray for the endeavor, I would be grateful! Deo Gratias!
Is anyone in Britain launching a lawsuit to revoke the Public Order Act of 2023? Best to challenge this thought crime law now before it becomes a precedent for other thought crimes.
Where is the Pope on this ???
MIA, sad to say.
This is perhaps the strongest reason for the view that we are close to The Second Coming! With fake catholic politicians and church men willing to serve Caesar than Christ. In NI we have the fact that the atheist Republic of Ireland is sponsoring to train midwives in Belfast and yet butchers the unborn with a near evangelical zeal!!!! Indeed the Royal College of Midwives supports abortion.
But it is a perfect time to witness to Christ even to the extent of losing everything perhaps even our lives, which I suspect that many in the alphabet soup mafia and their twinned abortion confederates would love! Come rope, Come rack! Jesus mercy, Mary help!
If we are close to the Second Coming of Christ, then we are seven years closer to coming of the Antichrist and the establishment of his One World Empire and his One World Religion.
For that to be the case, then the conversion of the Jewish nation to Christ, and the period of peace indicated by Our Lady at Fatima, must have been set aside.
One of the roots of this problem is the attitude of many members of the UK Parliament. ‘Short termism’ is their guide. Anything that is likely to damage their constituents’ opinion of them at a future election is to be avoided. In their narrow view, the best guide to that opinion is the organised and often violent output of extremist minority groups. Hence Parliamentary support for ill-considered legislation that aims to reflect ‘popular’ opinion.
Whatever happened to the traditional ”rights of English men”?
As we, the west, rush headlong into nuclear ww3, we see gorbels propoganda war has clearly won. The devils in power led by bullyboy usa and we, its lapdogs, eu/uk etc ensure he gets a free ride! Democracy is clearly an illusion. None of these devils represent the majority and never have done. We Christians knew soon they would come for us…..they have now!
“The truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Goebels.
We walk into it throughout history until eventially its too late to stop it. We see on EWTN etc not a peep about the nazi zionists attacks on The Arabs since 1948. Stealing their lands, their homes and their lives. Not a peep.
We, the west, bomb The Middle East back into the dark ages. Not a peep outta we the christians. Yet we bleat on and on about injustice in China, Russia, Africa as they stand up to western tyranny. Thats us btw!
We are highly selective in our morals and ethics just as the devil is. Still we know “The truth will set you free” but pretend we cant hear……
It’s all so crystal clear, yet still we pretend we cannot see…..
This is why we must focus on all those who do stand up for God and ALL his creation. God will truly bless them as the rest of us pass by into perdition!
I live in an over 55complex of 29 flats in the UK. All white. They hate Christians and think we are a joke. See, the truth will set us free….wakey wakey folks.
“The truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Goebels.
We walk into it throughout history until eventially its too late to stop it.
FIRST THEY CAME
By Martin Niemöller
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.
God in All Things
By Gerard Hughes (Jesuit)
Told to make himself at home, Jesus begins to invite his friends to your house. Who were his friends in ‘the Gospels, what kind of people were they, and what did respectable, religious people say about them? Who is coming along your road now, what is happening to the curtains in the house opposite, and what is happening to local property values? How are things hi your own family and with your own circle of friends, now that Jesus’s friends are also calling in?
You may then decide that it is not right to keep Jesus confined to your own house, so you arrange for him to give a little talk in your parish church. You remember the little talk he once gave to the chief priests, the scribes and the ‘Pharisees as them that the tax-gatherers and the prostitutes would enter the kingdom of God before they did. He gives substantially the same sermon to the faithful of St Jude’s parish church. There is uproar, and the parish loses its principal benefactors.
You return home with Jesus, who has now become the major problem or your life. As you ponder the question, ‘What am I to do with him, you know you cannot ask him to leave, for he is the Lord of all creation, so what are you to do? Perhaps. you could look around the house carefully, find a suitable cupboard, clear it out, clean it up, decorate it no expense, and have good strong locks put on the door. You then invite Jesus to step inside, turn the lock on him, put flowers and a candle in front of the cupboard door, and every time you pass, you bow deeply, You now have Jesus in your house and he does not interfere any more!
Is this an image of what we have done with God? We lock Him away in the sacred, supernatural, heavenly, spiritual cupboard, where we can show great reverence, hold splendid services of worship, singing praises arid thanking God for the blessings bestowed on us and the prosperity granted us, This religious behaviour keeps Jesus out of the way, so that God no longer interferes in our everyday life.