"Consider yourselves already dead"

The American Catholic yesterday carried a fine post featuring clips from the 1949 film '12 O'Clock High'.

Gregory Peck plays a WW2 USAF commander who addresses his aircrews about to embark on a fraught and dangerous mission.

His message could apply to us all today (see yesterday's post HERE).

I am not being either alarmist or fatalistic when I state that, within a very few years, we will have Catholic martyrs in the west just as, today, we have them in the east.

If trends continue at the current pace, in 20 years time we will have full blown Sharia law on the streets of London.


Try walking down Oxford Street in 2033 dressed in a mini skirt and sleeveless blouse (if you are female, of course).

Or strolling back from the off-licence with a bottle of Vino Collapso about your person.

You will be fortunate to escape with a flogging.

So Wingco Peck's message is an apposite one, a mantra that we Catholics should adopt (if a martyred saint has not already laid claim to it).

With a rather large leap of the imagination into a world of fantasy (something that I am increasingly good at these days), one might imagine Gregory Peck as the Pope addressing his cardinals.

Those words might cause a certain tightening around the collars amongst their Eminences.

A foretaste of what may be to come perhaps?