under the patronage of St. Gabriel

Statement of Purpose

This Web site has been produced for secondary school and university students, as well as for adults who, through circumstances beyond their or their parents' control¹, have never had a thorough Catholic schooling.

Aware of the great demands placed on students' time and mental energy, and of the often confusing and conflicting expositions of the Faith that they may have come across to date², CatholicSchool.org.uk aims to fill the gaps in their knowledge by providing online, or otherwise directing them to, standard Catholic school materials such as were in wide use in Britain for much of the last century.

Beyond this, it is our hope that we can encourage students to apply traditional Catholic standards of intellectual integrity to the whole range of liberal learning.

Click here for a discussion of the urgent social need for Catholic learning and practice in Britain. Note that Socialist/Liberal/Secularist persecution of Catholics is now runaway 30/12/07).

Shock update (9/4/07) – drive-by media journalist finally getting the plot? Note the conclusion: “[A]s many people as possible ought to believe in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ”. It is hoped that this Web site will go some way towards demonstrating that such belief is an intellectual, rather than a merely “moral”, necessity³.

Preliminary note

Although this Web site strives to be rigorously academic in its presentation and discussion of the above matters, there comes a time, if one is to avoid the fallacy of academic detachment, when conclusions have to be drawn and stated. It is our conclusion that the present malady affecting the British nation extends far beyond a corrupt political elite, encompassing the population as a whole, to the point where readers may well ask what the problem is. The source of that malady, we state without hesitation, is the “permissive society” introduced in the 1960s.

Like most people – even including admitted permissivists – we are reluctant to engage in any extended commentary on the social evils of fornication, simply because of the unpleasant nature of the subject. Unfortunately, this is perhaps one of the reasons why this moral sickness has persisted for so long: most people are too embarrassed to talk candidly about it. We will therefore attempt to address the problem by speaking of it in terms of the analogous social ill – that is still widely recognised as such – of rogue salesmanship.

The business of the rogue salesman, of course, is not inherently sinful, but it does, in the way that he practises it, become a source of harm to people, including himself. What he is doing may not in fact be illegal, and, if questioned about it by third parties, he may well reply that the deal was entirely consensual, and not to be compared with taking candy from a baby, which is illegal. The rogue salesman may even establish a lifelong relationship with his customers, who could also convince themselves that they have warm feelings for him, and that those feelings are reciprocated. We know, however, that what the rogue salesman is doing is dishonest, manipulative and downright immoral. He knows, and we know, that he deceives his customers. (In some Western countries this cheating has actually been made illegal, as the principle of “let the buyer beware” has given way to objective standards.)

If the rogue salesman truly were “best mates” with his customers – an impression that he likes to convey as he attempts to get what he can from them – he would not be afraid of abiding by a legally enforceable commitment to honesty and fair dealing. What happened in the 1960s, however, was that the Government and Parliament gave every British subject licence to practise “rogue salesmanship”. The State broadcasting company even banned moral watchdogs from its programming. So occurred the “legitimation” of a person whose social acceptability should never have extended further than, perhaps, being portrayed in television as a “lovable” sitcom character in the dramatic tradition of the Machiavel.

As we have mentioned, this legitimation has become so widespread – even to the extent of being compulsorily taught in schools – that, regardless of the thoroughness of the arguments we may present in the following pages, regardless of the many bloody conclusions that “rogue salesmanship” leads to, we may be greeted here with an apathetic cry of, “So what?”. It is not our point to avoid this cry. It is simply the duty of Catholicism to point out that our moral concern should be for the well-being of all, and not merely the most conniving. It is up to the reader to consider whether he or she wishes to subscribe to that purpose. (While so considering, it is worth remembering that Christianity is about repentance, not innocence. Were it about the latter, we would already be lost, since the Liberal State dominates our children's education.)

“Fear not therefore”

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