This evening I came across this on Facebook:
"don't kid yourself; just because you say things that folk find hard to hear and harder still to concur with doesn't make you a martyr for truth. It just makes you wrong. And a gobs***e"
I could not help thinking this might apply to me, though it might not. I still suspect it.
*shrugs*
Sunday 31 October 2010
Saturday 30 October 2010
In Praise of Mary (II)
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
How can I begin to praise Thee, O my Mother?
We are approaching the Feast of All Saints; and Thou, my Mother, art the greatest and the Queen of all Saints. Yea, Thou art my Queen and the Queen of Heaven crowned. Thou hast greater love in Thine Immaculate Heart than all the love of all the mothers in the world put together. Thou desirest nothing more than that God be loved and that souls be saved.
Grant that I may love Thee, Mary; grant that I may love Thee. Thou dispensest the graces of God. He that loves Thee cannot despair; Thou givest hope to men. He that loves Thee will love Thy Son. How can a man love Thy Son Jesus, when he loves not Thee?
Let all be devoted to Thee, my Mother; let all know and love Thee! How soon the world would be rescued from its deplorable state, if only it knew and loved Thee! Let us love Thee, and let us never faint. Thy children are never lost. Let us be children of Thine, then we shall be brothers to Thy Son. Let us imitate Thy virtues, most especially (1) Thy humility, (2) Thy charity towards God, (3) Thy charity towards Thy neighbour, (4) Thy faith, (5) Thy hope, (6) Thy chastity, (7) Thy poverty, (8) Thine obedience, (9) Thy patience, (10) Thy prayer.
If we knew Thee better, how much the better should we know Thy Son! He Who, though He was God, lived nine months within Thy womb, dependent utterly on Thee, His Mother, for His bodily life. Think, good Mother, that Thine acceptance, Thy Fiat! brought about His Incarnation: indeed, if it is not too much to say, the fate of the world hinged upon Thine answer. Most perfect of all the creatures of God! Greatest of created beings, greater than the Seraphim! With love more ardent than theirs! Ah, Mary, would that we all had a tithe of a tithe of Thy fortitude and Thy willingness to do God’s will; that we all could say to God, Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum. How reluctant we are, and how resistant, to co-operate with the impulses of grace! How cowardly we are in God’s service! How huge a mountain seems the smallest request God asks of us! Yet all that is evil in us comes from ourselves, and all that is good is a gift of God. All that we have of our own is evil. Every good thing we have, from existence downwards, comes from God. Let that humble us! But, oh! will anything humble us, proud as lions as we are? Alas! how easily we imitate the lion in his pride! But when a difficulty approaches we are as timid as a mouse. Grant us the grace of diligence, O Mary, that we may overcome this coward’s sloth.
Thou art most beautiful, Lady! Would to God that I could love Thee as thou dost deserve! That I might serve Thee as a knight his lady! Thou art my Lady, and I thy servant—but what an inept and miserable servant I am! How lazy and reluctant to obey my mistress! How selfish and proud! Thou knowest that my words are true. Oh, grant that I may love thee more! Let me not allow myself to neglect serving You on account of fatigue, hunger, or thirst! Let me not neglect to say one Ave, though I be ever so exhausted! What excuses do we not have for sloth!
Lady, listen to my supplications when I call upon Thee! Grant me, Mary, for the sake of Thy Son and for my own sake, the grace of holy purity. Grant that I may be constant and fervid in devotion to Thee. And do not let me babble when I pray to Thee. Let me not rattle through rosaries unthinking; let me hear what I am saying when I pray! Grant that I may persevere in the recitation of Thy Rosary until the day of my death; let me never forsake devotion to Thee; rather, let me increase in it until I die. Mary, pray for me. I am Thy slave—but an unfaithful slave deserving of severe punishment. Indeed Roman masters had (in law) power of life and death over their slaves—I am deserving of death at Thy hand. Thou art without sin—therefore Thou canst cast the first stone—yet Thou wilt not, such is Thy mercy.
Teach me how to serve Thy Son: for none has served Him as well as Thou. Thou art the greatest of Saints. Thou art the Mediatrix of all graces. Every grace that comes from God is dispensed through Thy beautiful hands.
Thou art the Cause of our Joy, and, as St Bernard said, “the reason for my hope.” How many souls hast Thou not rescued from hell! How many sinners hast Thou not converted by Thy prayers?
How foolish are they, then, who, knowing the great source of confidence and the great refuge they have in Thee, neglect to call upon Thee! How foolish are they who neglect and despise devotion to Thee, those who look upon Thy Rosary as a devotion for the simple and for old women, and not equally for the learned and for young men. Let us pay no heed to the proud and haughty critics and scholars (who so proud as the scholar, save the heretic?) who sneer at devotion to Thee: let us pay no more attention to them than to those who object that in venerating Thee we are somehow making Thee equal with God. No: let us pay no heed to those who scorn us; and we know how many there are who scorn those who serve Thee, and especially there are those who scorn those who say the Rosary. It is astonishing how widespread this cancer of derision is. It stems from pride and is contagious.—Say the Rosary in public, and see how people mock you, and how the number of people who deride you will grow. It is extraordinary.
O my Mother, I ask of Thee this, that I never shall neglect to call upon Thee. I know that if I call upon Thee I shall be secure; but I fear lest I should abandon Thee. It is my own negligence I fear.
Mary, in my last and darkest hour I pray Thee come to me, and carry me safely over the dread chasm of death. I pray for the grace to spend every moment from this one until the article of death in preparation for that journey. I pray Thee lighten the darkness of this journey. Amen.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
(30th October, 2010, Vigil of All Saints’ Day)
How can I begin to praise Thee, O my Mother?
We are approaching the Feast of All Saints; and Thou, my Mother, art the greatest and the Queen of all Saints. Yea, Thou art my Queen and the Queen of Heaven crowned. Thou hast greater love in Thine Immaculate Heart than all the love of all the mothers in the world put together. Thou desirest nothing more than that God be loved and that souls be saved.
Grant that I may love Thee, Mary; grant that I may love Thee. Thou dispensest the graces of God. He that loves Thee cannot despair; Thou givest hope to men. He that loves Thee will love Thy Son. How can a man love Thy Son Jesus, when he loves not Thee?
Let all be devoted to Thee, my Mother; let all know and love Thee! How soon the world would be rescued from its deplorable state, if only it knew and loved Thee! Let us love Thee, and let us never faint. Thy children are never lost. Let us be children of Thine, then we shall be brothers to Thy Son. Let us imitate Thy virtues, most especially (1) Thy humility, (2) Thy charity towards God, (3) Thy charity towards Thy neighbour, (4) Thy faith, (5) Thy hope, (6) Thy chastity, (7) Thy poverty, (8) Thine obedience, (9) Thy patience, (10) Thy prayer.
If we knew Thee better, how much the better should we know Thy Son! He Who, though He was God, lived nine months within Thy womb, dependent utterly on Thee, His Mother, for His bodily life. Think, good Mother, that Thine acceptance, Thy Fiat! brought about His Incarnation: indeed, if it is not too much to say, the fate of the world hinged upon Thine answer. Most perfect of all the creatures of God! Greatest of created beings, greater than the Seraphim! With love more ardent than theirs! Ah, Mary, would that we all had a tithe of a tithe of Thy fortitude and Thy willingness to do God’s will; that we all could say to God, Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum. How reluctant we are, and how resistant, to co-operate with the impulses of grace! How cowardly we are in God’s service! How huge a mountain seems the smallest request God asks of us! Yet all that is evil in us comes from ourselves, and all that is good is a gift of God. All that we have of our own is evil. Every good thing we have, from existence downwards, comes from God. Let that humble us! But, oh! will anything humble us, proud as lions as we are? Alas! how easily we imitate the lion in his pride! But when a difficulty approaches we are as timid as a mouse. Grant us the grace of diligence, O Mary, that we may overcome this coward’s sloth.
Thou art most beautiful, Lady! Would to God that I could love Thee as thou dost deserve! That I might serve Thee as a knight his lady! Thou art my Lady, and I thy servant—but what an inept and miserable servant I am! How lazy and reluctant to obey my mistress! How selfish and proud! Thou knowest that my words are true. Oh, grant that I may love thee more! Let me not allow myself to neglect serving You on account of fatigue, hunger, or thirst! Let me not neglect to say one Ave, though I be ever so exhausted! What excuses do we not have for sloth!
Lady, listen to my supplications when I call upon Thee! Grant me, Mary, for the sake of Thy Son and for my own sake, the grace of holy purity. Grant that I may be constant and fervid in devotion to Thee. And do not let me babble when I pray to Thee. Let me not rattle through rosaries unthinking; let me hear what I am saying when I pray! Grant that I may persevere in the recitation of Thy Rosary until the day of my death; let me never forsake devotion to Thee; rather, let me increase in it until I die. Mary, pray for me. I am Thy slave—but an unfaithful slave deserving of severe punishment. Indeed Roman masters had (in law) power of life and death over their slaves—I am deserving of death at Thy hand. Thou art without sin—therefore Thou canst cast the first stone—yet Thou wilt not, such is Thy mercy.
Teach me how to serve Thy Son: for none has served Him as well as Thou. Thou art the greatest of Saints. Thou art the Mediatrix of all graces. Every grace that comes from God is dispensed through Thy beautiful hands.
Thou art the Cause of our Joy, and, as St Bernard said, “the reason for my hope.” How many souls hast Thou not rescued from hell! How many sinners hast Thou not converted by Thy prayers?
How foolish are they, then, who, knowing the great source of confidence and the great refuge they have in Thee, neglect to call upon Thee! How foolish are they who neglect and despise devotion to Thee, those who look upon Thy Rosary as a devotion for the simple and for old women, and not equally for the learned and for young men. Let us pay no heed to the proud and haughty critics and scholars (who so proud as the scholar, save the heretic?) who sneer at devotion to Thee: let us pay no more attention to them than to those who object that in venerating Thee we are somehow making Thee equal with God. No: let us pay no heed to those who scorn us; and we know how many there are who scorn those who serve Thee, and especially there are those who scorn those who say the Rosary. It is astonishing how widespread this cancer of derision is. It stems from pride and is contagious.—Say the Rosary in public, and see how people mock you, and how the number of people who deride you will grow. It is extraordinary.
O my Mother, I ask of Thee this, that I never shall neglect to call upon Thee. I know that if I call upon Thee I shall be secure; but I fear lest I should abandon Thee. It is my own negligence I fear.
Mary, in my last and darkest hour I pray Thee come to me, and carry me safely over the dread chasm of death. I pray for the grace to spend every moment from this one until the article of death in preparation for that journey. I pray Thee lighten the darkness of this journey. Amen.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
(30th October, 2010, Vigil of All Saints’ Day)
Friday 29 October 2010
Thursday 28 October 2010
Tuesday 26 October 2010
Monday 25 October 2010
Saturday 23 October 2010
Friday 22 October 2010
Continued
VIII. De Introitu, Kyrie eleison, et Gloria in excelsis.
1. INTROITUS semper eodem modo dicitur cum Gloria Patri, ut in Ordinario, præterquam tempore Passionis, et in Missis Defunctorum, ut etiam ibi annotatum est.
2. Kyrie eleison, dicitur novies post Introitum alternatim cum ministro, id est, ter Kyrie eleison, ter Christe eleison, ter Kyrie eleison.
3. Gloria in excelsis dicitur quandocumque in Matutino dictus est Hymnus Te Deum, præterquam in Missa feriæ quintæ in Cœna Domini, et Sabbati sancti in quibus Gloria in excelsis dicitur, quamvis in Officio non sit dictum Te Deum.
4. In Missis votivis non dicitur, etiam tempore Paschali, vel infra Octavas, nisi in Missa beatæ Mariæ in Sabbato, et Angelorum: et nisi Missa votiva solemniter dicenda sit pro re gravi, vel pro publica Ecclesiæ causa, dummodo non dicatur Missa cum paramentis violaceis. Neque dicitur in Missis Defunctorum.
IX. De Orationibus.
1. IN festis Duplicibus dicitur una tantum oratio; nisi facienda sit aliqua commemoratio, ut dictum est supra.
2. In Festis Semiduplicibus occurrentibus ab Octava Pentecostes usque ad Adventum, et a Purificatione usque ad Quadragesimam, dicitur secunda oratio. A cunctis, tertia ad libitum.
3. In festis Semiduplicibus occurrentibus ab Octava Epiphaniæ usque ad Purificationem, dicitur secunda oratio, Deus qui salutis, tertia, Ecclesiæ, vel pro Papa, Deus, omnium fidelium.
4. In festis Semiduplicibus, a feria quarta Cinerum usque ad Dominicam Passionis, secunda oratio de feria: tertia, A cunctis.
5. In Semiduplicibus a Dominica Passionis usque ad Dominicam Palmarum, secunda oratio de feria, tertia Ecclesiæ, vel pro Papa.
6. In festis Semiduplicibus, ab Octava Paschæ usque ad Ascensionem, secunda oratio de S. Maria, Concede nos, tertia, Ecclesiæ, vel pro Papa.
7. In festis Semiduplicibus infra Octavas occurrentibus, secunda oratio dicitur de Octava, tertia, quæ secundo loco infra Octavam ponitur.
8. Infra Octavas Paschæ, et Pentecostes, in Missa de Octava dicuntur duæ tantum orationes, una de die, alia, Ecclesiæ, vel pro Papa.
9. Infra alias Octavas, et in Vigiliis quæ jejunantur (excepta Vigilia Nativitatis Domini, et Pentecostes) dicuntur tres orationes, una de die, secunda de S. Maria, tertia, Ecclesiæ, vel pro Papa. Sed infra Octavas S. Mariæ, et in Vigilia et infra Octavam omnium Sanctorum, secunda oratio dicitur de Spiritu sancto, Deus, qui corda, tertia, Ecclesiæ, vel pro Papa.
10. In Dominicis infra Octavas occurrentibus dicuntur duæ orationes, una de Dominica, secunda de Octava, et in die octava dicitur una tantum oratio, nisi facienda sit aliqua commemoratio.
11. In Dominicis dicuntur tres, ut in Ordinario assignantur, quibusdam exceptis, ut suis etiam locis notatur.
12. In festis Simplicibus, et feriis per annum, nisi aliter in propriis locis notetur, dicuntur tres, ut in Semiduplicibus, aut quinque: possunt etiam dici septem ad libitum.
13. In feriis Quatuor Temporum, et ubi plures leguntur Lectiones, hujusmodi plures orationes dicuntur post ultimam orationem ante Epistolam, ut suis locis in Proprio Missarum de Tempore.
14. In Missis votivis, quando solemniter dicuntur pro re gravi, vel pro publica Ecclesiæ causa, dicitur una tantum oratio: sed in Missa pro gratiarum actione additur alia oratio, ut in proprio loco notatur. In aliis autem dicuntur plures, ut in festis Simplicibus.
15. In votivis beatæ Mariæ secunda oratio dicitur de Officio illius diei, et tertia de Spiritu sancto: sed in Sabbato, quando de ea factum est Officium, secunda oratio erit de Spiritu sancto, tertia, Ecclesiæ tuæ, vel pro Papa. In votivis de Apostolis, quando ponitur oratio A cunctis, ejus loco dicitur oratio de sancta Maria: Concede nos, famulos.
16. Si, cum plures dicuntur orationes, occurrat fieri commemorationem alicujus Sancti, ea ponitur secundo loco, et tertia oratio dicitur, quæ alias secundo loco dicenda erat.
17. In conclusione orationum hic modus servatur: Si oratio dirigatur ad Patrem, concluditur, Per Dominum nostrum, etc. Si ad Filium, Qui vivis et regnas cum Deo Patre, etc. Si in principio orationis fiat mentio Filii, concluditur, Per eumdem Dominum nostrum, etc. Si in fine orationis ejus fiat mentio, Qui tecum vivit, etc. Si facta sit mentio Spiritus sancti, in conclusione dicitur, In unitate ejusdem Spiritus sancti, etc. Alia quoque in dicendis orationibus serventur, quæ superius in Rubrica de Commemorationibus dicta sunt.
X. De Epistola, Graduali, Alleluia et Tractu, ac de Evangelio.
1. POST ultimam orationem dicitur Epistola. Qua finita, a ministris respondetur, Deo gratias. Et similiter quando leguntur plures Lectiones, post singulas dicitur, Deo gratias, præterquam in fine quintæ Lectionis Danielis in Sabbatis Quatuor Temporum, et in fine Lectionum feriæ sextæ in Parasceve, et Sabbati sancti.
2. Post Epistolam dicitur Graduale, quod semper dicitur, præterquam tempore Paschali, cujus loco tunc dicuntur duo versus, ut habetur in Rubrica in Sabbato in Albis.
3. Post Graduale dicuntur duo Alleluia, deinde versus, et post versum, unum Alleluia. Tempore Paschali, quando non dicitur Graduale, dicitur aliud Alleluia, post secundum versum: et quando dicitur Sequentia, non dicitur post ultimum versum, sed post Sequentiam.
4. A Septuagesima usque ad Sabbatum sanctum non dicitur Alleluia, neque dicitur in Missis de feria in Adventu, Quatuor Temporibus, et Vigiliis quæ jejunantur, exceptis Vigilia Nativitatis Domini, si venerit in Dominica, et Vigilia Paschæ et Pentecostes, ac Quatuor Temporibus Pentecostes: nec dicitur in festo SS. Innocentium, nisi venerit in Dominica.
5. A Septuagesima usque ad Pascha, ejus loco dicitur Tractus, qui Tractus prædicto tempore in aliquibus feriis non dicitur, ut suis locis ponitur: nec dicitur in feriis a Septuagesima usque ad Quadragesimam, quando repetitur Missa Dominicæ.
6. Dicto Graduali, seu Alleluia, seu Tractu, dicitur Evangelium, Et in principio Evangelii dicitur, Dominus vobiscum. R. Et cum spiritu tuo. Deinde Sequentia sancti Evangelii secundum N. R. Gloria tibi, Domine. In fine Evangelii a ministro respondetur, Laus tibi, Christe. Quod etiam dicitur in fine illius partis Passionis, quæ legitur in tono Evangelii, præterquam in Parasceve. Postea, si dicendum est, dicitur Credo.
Thursday 21 October 2010
I find this fascinating
MISSA quotidie dicitur secundum ordinem Officii, de festo Duplici, vel Semiduplici, vel Simplici: de Dominica, vel Feria, vel Vigilia, vel Octava: et extra ordinem Officii, Votiva, vel pro Defunctis.
I. De Duplici.
MISSA dicitur de Duplici illis diebus, quibus in Kalendario ponitur hæc nota Duplex, et in festis mobilibus, quandocumque Officium est Duplex. In Duplicibus dicitur una tantum oratio, nisi aliqua commemoratio fieri debeat. Alia omnia dicuntur ut in propriis Missis assignatum est. Quando dici debeat Gloria in excelsis, et Credo, inferius ponitur in propriis Rubricis.
II. De Semiduplici, et Simplici.
MISSA de Semiduplici dicitur quando in Kalendario ponitur hæc vox Semiduplex. Præterea in Dominicis, et diebus infra Octavas. In Semiduplicibus tam festis, quam Dominicis, et infra Octavas, dicuntur plures orationes, ut infra dicetur in Rubrica de Orationibus. Infra Octavam dicitur Missa sicut in die festi, nisi propriam Missam habuerit; in Dominicis vero sicut in propriis locis assignatur. De Simplici dicitur Missa sicut de Semiduplici, ut suis locis ponuntur.
III. De Feria, et Vigilia.
1. MISSA de feria dicitur quando non occurrit festum, vel Octava, vel Sabbatum in quo fiat Officium B. Mariæ. In feriis tamen Quadragesimæ, Quatuor Temporum, Rogationum, et Vigiliarum, etiamsi Duplex, vel Semiduplex festum, vel Octava occurrat, in ecclesiis cathedralibus et collegiatis cantantur duæ Missæ, una de festo post Tertiam, alia de feria post Nonam.
2. In Vigiliis autem et feriis Quatuor Temporum, vel feria secunda Rogationum, quæ veniunt infra Octavam, Missa dicitur de Vigilia, vel feriis supradictis cum commemoratione Octavæ: præterquam infra Octavam Corporis Christi, in qua in ecclesiis cathedralibus et collegiatis cantantur duæ Missæ, una de Octava post Tertiam, alia de Vigilia post Nonam: In Missis autem privatis dicitur Missa de Octava com commemoratione Vigiliæ. Si autem in die Vigiliæ, vel prædictis feriis fiat Officium de aliquo festo, tunc dicitur Missa de festo cum commemoratione Octavæ, et Vigiliæ, vel feriarum prædictarum. Quod si Vigilia occurrat in die alicujus festi ex majoribus primæ classis, in Missa non fit commemoration de ea, sicut nec in Officio.
3. Si festum habens Vigiliam celebretur feria secunda, Missa Vigiliæ dicitur in Sabbato, sicut etiam de ea fit Officium: excepta Vigilia Nativitatis Domini, et Epiphaniæ.
4. Missa Vigiliæ in Adventu occurrentis dicitur cum commem. feriæ Adventus, licet de ea non sit factum Officium: Vigilia Nativitatis excepta.
5. Si in Quadragesima, et Quatuor Temporibus occurrat Vigilia, dicatur Missa de Feria cum commemoratione Vigiliæ.
6. Tempore Paschali non dicitur Missa de Vigilia, nisi in Vigilia Ascensionis, quæ tamen non jejunatur, sicut nec Vigilia Epiphaniæ.
IV. De Missis Votivis S. Mariæ, et aliis.
1. IN Sabbatis non impeditis festo Duplici vel Semiduplici, Octava, Vigilia, feria Quadragesimæ, vel Quatuor Temporum, vel Officio alicujus Dominicæ quæ supersit, in præcedens Sabbatum translato, dicitur Missa de S. Maria secundum varietatem temporum, ut in fine Missalis ponitur.
2. In Adventu autem licet Officium non fiat de S. Maria in Sabbato, dicitur tamen Missa principalis de ea cum commemoratione de Adventu, nisi fuerint Quatuor Tempora, vel Vigilia, ut supra.
3. Aliis diebus infra hebdomadam, quando Officium fit de feria, et non est resumenda Missa Dominicæ præcedentis, quæ fuerit impedita, (exceptis feriis Adventus, Quadragesimæ, Quatuor Temporum, Rogationum, et Vigiliarum) dici potest aliqua ex Missis votivis, etiam in principali Missa quæ vocatur conventualis, secundum ordinem dierum in fine Missalis assignatum, cum commemoratione feriæ, de qua factum est Officium. Quæ tamen Missæ, et omnes aliæ votivæ, in Missis privatis dici possunt pro arbitrio sacerdotum, quocumque die Officium non est Duplex, aut Dominica cum commemoratione ejus, de quo factum est Officium et commemoratione item festi Simplicis, si de aliquo occurrat eo die fieri commemorationem in Officio. Id vero passim non fiat, nisi rationabili de causa. Et quoad fieri potest, Missa cum Officio conveniat.
V. De Missis Defunctorum.
1. PRIMA die cujusque mensis (extra Adventum, Quadragesimam, et tempus Paschale) non impedita Officio Duplici, vel Semiduplici, dicitur Missa principalis generaliter pro defunctis sacerdotibus, benefactoribus, et aliis. Si vero in ea fuerit festum Simplex, vel feria, quæ propriam habeat Missam, aut resumenda sit Missa Dominicæ præcedentis, quæ fuerit impedita, et infra hebdomadam non occurrat alius dies in quo resumi possit: in ecclesiis cathedralibus et collegiatis dicantur duæ Missæ, una pro Defunctis, alia de festo Simplici, vel feria prædicta. Sed in ecclesiis non cathedralibus nec collegiatis dicatur Missa de die cum commemoratione generaliter pro Defunctis.
2. Præterea feria secunda cujusque hebdomadæ, in qua Officium fit de feria, Missa principalis dici potest pro Defunctis. Si autem fuerit propria Missa de Feria, vel de festo Simplici, vel resumenda sit Missa Dominicæ præcedentis, ut supra, in Missa de die fiat commemoratio (ut dictum est) pro Defunctis. Excipitur tamen Quadragesima, et totum tempus Paschale, et quando per annum Officium est Duplex, vel Semiduplex: quibus temporibus non dicitur Missa conventualis pro Defunctis, (nisi in die depositionis Defuncti, et in anniversario pro Defunctis) neque pro eis fit commemoratio. Missæ autem privatæ pro Defunctis quocumque die dici possunt, præterquam in festis Duplicibus, et Dominicis diebus.
3. In die commemorationis omnium Defunctorum, et in die depositionis, et in anniversario Defuncti, dicitur una tantum oratio; et similiter in die tertia, septima, trigesima, et quandocumque pro Defunctis solemniter celebratur: in aliis Missis plures, ut de feriis et Simplicibus dicetur infra in Rubrica de Orationibus.
4. Sequentia pro Defunctis dicitur in die commemorationis omnium fidelium Defunctorum, et depositionis Defuncti, et quandocumque in Missa dicitur una tantum oratio: in aliis autem Missis pro Defunctis dicatur ad arbitrium sacerdotis.
VI. De Translatione festorum.
IN dicendis Missis servetur ordo Breviarii de translatione festorum Duplicium et Semiduplicium quando majori aliquo festo, seu Dominica impediuntur. In ecclesiis autem, ubi titulus est ecclesiæ, vel concursus populi ad celebrandum festum quod transferri debet, possunt cantari duæ Missæ, una de die, alia de festo: excepta Dominica prima Adventus, feria quarta Cinerum, Dominica prima Quadragesimæ, Dominica Palmarum cum tota hebdomada majori, Dominica Resurrectionis, et Dominica Pentecostes cum duobus diebus sequentibus, die Nativitatis Domini, Epiphaniæ, Ascensionis, et festo Corporis Christi.
VII. De Commemorationibus.
1. COMMEMORATIONES in Missis fiunt sicut in Officio. De festo Simplici fit commemoratio in Missa, quando de eo in Officio facta est commemoratio in primis Vesperis. Quando autem de eo fit commemoratio tantum ad Laudes, in Missa solemni non fit commemoratio de eo, sed in Missis tantum privatis. Excipitur Dominica Palmarum, et Vigilia Pentecostes, in quibus nulla fit commemoratio, etiam in Missis privatis, de festo Simplici occurrente, licet facta sit in Officio. De Dominica fit commemoratio, quando in ea agitur de festo Duplici. De Octava fit commemoratio, quando infra Octavam celebratur aliquod festum, nisi illud festum fuerit de exceptis in Rubrica Breviarii de Commemorationibus. Item quando infra Octavam fit de Dominica.
2. De feria fit commemoratio in Adventu, Quadragesima, Quatuor Temporibus, Rogationibus, et Vigiliis, quando Missa dicenda est de festo illis temporibus occurrente. Sed in ecclesiis cathedralibus et collegiatis, ubi plures sacerdotes quotidie celebrant, in feriis, Rogationibus et Vigiliis prædictis; quæ habent Missas proprias, dicuntur duæ Missæ, una de festo, alia de feria, Rogationibus et Vigilia, absque ulla utrumque commemoratione: in festis tamen majoribus primæ classis nihil fit de Vigilia occurrente, ut dictum est supra.
3. Quando infra Hebdomadam dicuntur Missæ votivæ, post primam orationem semper dicatur oratio ejus de quo fit Officium, ut supra explicatum est in propria Rubrica.
4. Quando fit commemoratio de feria Quatuor Temporum, pro feriæ commemoratione dicitur prima Oratio, quæ concordat cum Officio.
5. In faciendis commemorationibus servetur ordo ut in Breviario. De Dominica, ante diem infra Octavam: de die infra Octavam, ante ferias prædictas: de feriis prædictis, ante festum Simplex: de festo Simplici, ante orationes quæ secundo vel tertio loco dicendæ assignantur, et hæ dicantur ante orationes votivas: in quibus votivis servetur deinde dignitas orationum, ut de sanctissima Trinitate, de Spiritu sancto, de SS. Sacramento, de S. Cruce, ante votivam de B. Maria, et de Angelis, et de S. Joanne Baptista, ante Apostolos, et similiter in aliis.
6. Si facienda sit commemoratio pro Defunctis, semper ponitur penultimo loco. In Missis autem Defunctorum nulla fit commemoratio pro vivis, etiam si Oratio esset communis pro vivis et Defunctis.
7. Quando dicuntur plures orationes, prima tantum et ultima cum sua conclusione terminantur: et ante primam et secundam orationem tantum dicitur Oremus, ante primam dicitur etiam Dominus vobiscum.
8. Cum vero dicuntur plures orationes, et una oratio eadem sit cum alia ibidem dicena, oratio hujusmodi, illa scilicet quæ eadem est, non alia, commutetur cum alia de Communi, vel Proprio, quæ sit diversa. Idem servetur in Secretis, et Orationibus post Communionem.
(From Rubricæ generales Missalis, from an old (1866) Missal. I am pleased to find that that Latin is not difficult at all. The only trouble I had (at all) was with the words "quod" and "diversa".
Wednesday 20 October 2010
Sunday 17 October 2010
Saturday 16 October 2010
On Progressivism & The Barbarians
There seems to be hardly any intellectual virus more tenacious than this particular strain; yet the emptiness of the idea should be self-evident to any thinking person. The idea is that the present is better than the past, because this is the present and the past is the past, and consequent upon this piece of monumental imbecility is the idea that anything old, however venerable it really is, is unworthy of attention and contemptible. This strange mentality is enamoured of buzzwords, particularly the word forward as well as the very obvious progress. They both mean the same thing, of course. We must move forward! (Why?) You are stuck in the past! You cling to ancient and outmoded ideas! Your outlook upon life is medieval!
Anyone who seriously thinks in this way needs to examine this philosophy and see what basis it has in reason. It is true that certain advances have been made in medicine, and discoveries in the physical sciences generally: and I think it is this discovery that creates an illusion of progress. Something once discovered is unlikely to be forgotten for a long time, generally speaking. And continuous discovery creates an impression that things are getting better, and insofar as the expansion of knowledge in particular fields is concerned, this may be the case. But to extrapolate from this that old things are to be done away with and new things to be welcomed is stupid.
I hope the reader does not think, when I use words such as "stupid," "monumental imbecility," "self-evident to any thinking person," I am merely extolling my own opinions and despising those of others. I would not use such words, or any words, if I were not determined to insist upon reality. I have no desire to irritate people for the sake of it; that would be odious and futile. I sincerely hope and pray that I would never descend to such depths. I should also make it clear that when I use words, I try to express my meaning in the words that give that meaning. It is amusing, sometimes, to see people infer subtexts that I had not intended. It is also somewhat vexing.
I hope nobody thinks that because I object to the Progressivist Philosophy (if it can be called that) I think that old things must always be revered because they are old, and that new things must be resisted because they are new: this would be the exactly opposite error, of precisely equal gravity to that which I am opposing. I am suggesting that we consider reasonably what is new and what old, that we exercise due caution in rejecting old things and accepting new, that when old things become noxious they must be reformed or done away with, and that when new things are harmful they must be cast away.
I find that this Progressivist outlook tends (though not invariably) to belong to that category of persons whom Belloc called "The Barbarians," mentioned by Frederick D. Wilhelmsen in his essay on Belloc. Here are Wilhelmsen's words:
“The Barbarian” within is the man who laughs at the fixed convictions of our inheritance. He is the man with a perpetual sneer on his lips. He is above it all: he judges the poor believer in the street or in the church, some old woman huddled before a shrine of the Virgin mumbling her beads, and he judges her harshly. It is hard enough to come by belief and to live in it, but to throw it away for a cheap joke is despicable. Such are the Barbarians.
And these are Belloc's:
The Barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is ever marvelling that civilization should have offended him with priests and soldiers .... In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this, that he cannot make: that he can befog and destroy but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilization exactly that has been true.
And these are Belloc's also; and with them I conclude:
We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.
15th October, 2010
Anyone who seriously thinks in this way needs to examine this philosophy and see what basis it has in reason. It is true that certain advances have been made in medicine, and discoveries in the physical sciences generally: and I think it is this discovery that creates an illusion of progress. Something once discovered is unlikely to be forgotten for a long time, generally speaking. And continuous discovery creates an impression that things are getting better, and insofar as the expansion of knowledge in particular fields is concerned, this may be the case. But to extrapolate from this that old things are to be done away with and new things to be welcomed is stupid.
I hope the reader does not think, when I use words such as "stupid," "monumental imbecility," "self-evident to any thinking person," I am merely extolling my own opinions and despising those of others. I would not use such words, or any words, if I were not determined to insist upon reality. I have no desire to irritate people for the sake of it; that would be odious and futile. I sincerely hope and pray that I would never descend to such depths. I should also make it clear that when I use words, I try to express my meaning in the words that give that meaning. It is amusing, sometimes, to see people infer subtexts that I had not intended. It is also somewhat vexing.
I hope nobody thinks that because I object to the Progressivist Philosophy (if it can be called that) I think that old things must always be revered because they are old, and that new things must be resisted because they are new: this would be the exactly opposite error, of precisely equal gravity to that which I am opposing. I am suggesting that we consider reasonably what is new and what old, that we exercise due caution in rejecting old things and accepting new, that when old things become noxious they must be reformed or done away with, and that when new things are harmful they must be cast away.
I find that this Progressivist outlook tends (though not invariably) to belong to that category of persons whom Belloc called "The Barbarians," mentioned by Frederick D. Wilhelmsen in his essay on Belloc. Here are Wilhelmsen's words:
“The Barbarian” within is the man who laughs at the fixed convictions of our inheritance. He is the man with a perpetual sneer on his lips. He is above it all: he judges the poor believer in the street or in the church, some old woman huddled before a shrine of the Virgin mumbling her beads, and he judges her harshly. It is hard enough to come by belief and to live in it, but to throw it away for a cheap joke is despicable. Such are the Barbarians.
And these are Belloc's:
The Barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is ever marvelling that civilization should have offended him with priests and soldiers .... In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this, that he cannot make: that he can befog and destroy but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilization exactly that has been true.
And these are Belloc's also; and with them I conclude:
We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.
15th October, 2010
Friday 15 October 2010
On Transubstantiation
HOC EST ENIM CORPUS MEUM.
St Dominic Barberi replied to someone pestering him about this matter: "Our Lord said, 'This is My Body.' You say it is not His Body. I prefer to believe Jesus Christ."
The words of Institution could not possibly be plainer.
If someone believes that Jesus Christ is God; that He is the Truth; then they must believe that all His Words are true, and that He does not waste words. It is perfectly logical to deny that the Bread and Wine are changed into the Body and Blood of Christ and that the Bread and Wine themselves utterly cease to be - if one does not believe in the Divinity of Christ in the first place. But one who believes that Jesus Christ is the Truth must believe that all his words are true. There is no word more incontrovertible than the word est, is, ist, è, εστιν. Could Our Lord have used a clearer word than is, when He uttered the words of Consecration? If when He said, "This is my Body," it was not His Body, then there would have been a disjunction between what He said and what He thought: a lie: and Who will dare to accuse Jesus Christ of a lie? He said, "This is my Body;" he did not say "This is a simulacrum of My Body," or "This represents My Body," or "This is kind of like My Body," or "This is a symbol of My Body;" and with good reason: for if that had been the case, He would have been instituting a more or less pointless ceremony. No: he said, "This is My Body," and those who try to interpret those four words, which are as plain as the sun at noonday, nay, ten thousand times plainer, in any manner besides their literal and obvious signification, implicitly accuse Jesus Christ of a lie.
A metaphor, you say? No. Is it conceivable that Jesus Christ would have allowed the slightest ambiguity in this solemn moment? If what He was doing was something other than changing the bread He held into His Body, why did He use such a turn of phrase? What would He have said if He had intended to change bread into His body? It may be said that He could have used a formula which expressed the process of change. But clearest and most unambiguous of all are the words "This IS My Body."
What are we to understand by the word is? Any metaphorical or symbolic interpretation of the word is makes it absolutely synonymous with is not; and this is at worst a lie and at best a noxious waste of words. Can we accuse Our Saviour of either of those things?
Such a metaphor, at such a moment, would be pointless and dangerous.
It may be objected that if Jesus Christ could, and did, carry out this act, it does not follow that we can. We cannot change a created thing into the Uncreated Creator. No: and that is why Our Lord then said, Do this in memory of Me. Some will use the words "in memory of Me" as an argument against Transubstantiation; yet how they negate the words This is My Body I am at a loss to understand. When Our Lord uttered the words Do this in memory of Me he was giving His Apostles Sacramental Power: the Power to do what He was doing: to change bread and wine into God the Son, that the Faithful might be nourished by God the Son. That is the meaning of the words "Do this." And that sentence, Do this in memory of Me, was the formula instituting the Sacrament of Order, which gave the Apostles the Sacramental Power, I say, to confect the Eucharist, but also, importantly, to ordain their successors, that other men (viri) might be able to perform their office of priests of Christ.
Let it be clearly understood that the priesthood is not a job; it is the possession of Sacramental Power whereby a man (vir) participates in the Omnipotence of God.
(15th October, 2010. (St Teresa of Avila))
St Dominic Barberi replied to someone pestering him about this matter: "Our Lord said, 'This is My Body.' You say it is not His Body. I prefer to believe Jesus Christ."
The words of Institution could not possibly be plainer.
If someone believes that Jesus Christ is God; that He is the Truth; then they must believe that all His Words are true, and that He does not waste words. It is perfectly logical to deny that the Bread and Wine are changed into the Body and Blood of Christ and that the Bread and Wine themselves utterly cease to be - if one does not believe in the Divinity of Christ in the first place. But one who believes that Jesus Christ is the Truth must believe that all his words are true. There is no word more incontrovertible than the word est, is, ist, è, εστιν. Could Our Lord have used a clearer word than is, when He uttered the words of Consecration? If when He said, "This is my Body," it was not His Body, then there would have been a disjunction between what He said and what He thought: a lie: and Who will dare to accuse Jesus Christ of a lie? He said, "This is my Body;" he did not say "This is a simulacrum of My Body," or "This represents My Body," or "This is kind of like My Body," or "This is a symbol of My Body;" and with good reason: for if that had been the case, He would have been instituting a more or less pointless ceremony. No: he said, "This is My Body," and those who try to interpret those four words, which are as plain as the sun at noonday, nay, ten thousand times plainer, in any manner besides their literal and obvious signification, implicitly accuse Jesus Christ of a lie.
A metaphor, you say? No. Is it conceivable that Jesus Christ would have allowed the slightest ambiguity in this solemn moment? If what He was doing was something other than changing the bread He held into His Body, why did He use such a turn of phrase? What would He have said if He had intended to change bread into His body? It may be said that He could have used a formula which expressed the process of change. But clearest and most unambiguous of all are the words "This IS My Body."
What are we to understand by the word is? Any metaphorical or symbolic interpretation of the word is makes it absolutely synonymous with is not; and this is at worst a lie and at best a noxious waste of words. Can we accuse Our Saviour of either of those things?
Such a metaphor, at such a moment, would be pointless and dangerous.
It may be objected that if Jesus Christ could, and did, carry out this act, it does not follow that we can. We cannot change a created thing into the Uncreated Creator. No: and that is why Our Lord then said, Do this in memory of Me. Some will use the words "in memory of Me" as an argument against Transubstantiation; yet how they negate the words This is My Body I am at a loss to understand. When Our Lord uttered the words Do this in memory of Me he was giving His Apostles Sacramental Power: the Power to do what He was doing: to change bread and wine into God the Son, that the Faithful might be nourished by God the Son. That is the meaning of the words "Do this." And that sentence, Do this in memory of Me, was the formula instituting the Sacrament of Order, which gave the Apostles the Sacramental Power, I say, to confect the Eucharist, but also, importantly, to ordain their successors, that other men (viri) might be able to perform their office of priests of Christ.
Let it be clearly understood that the priesthood is not a job; it is the possession of Sacramental Power whereby a man (vir) participates in the Omnipotence of God.
(15th October, 2010. (St Teresa of Avila))
Thursday 14 October 2010
IN ARTICULO MORTIS
Dread thought, whereat I shudder and I tremble,
That moment, hated moment, needs must come
Within a lifetime's instant—to dissemble
Cannot be done. The distant thundering drum
Is not so distant after all. More sound
And more, and quicker, threat'ning as an axe
To sever me from me. I look around
At all that I have known; think of the tracks
Trod by my wayward spirit. I can no more;
What is this? I am dying, must be gone,
God knoweth where. Reality is sore:
What am I when it snaps? Let me live on!
No, I must die; temptations fierce assail;
God help me! Am I ready? Michael, Mary,
Saints, pray for me! I languish, now I fail;
Have mercy on me, Lord; can I be wary
In this my evil hour? I am, I fade.
The Fury's shears! No more! avaunt! avaunt!
Ah, terror!—Mercy! I to calm am sway'd;
But sure a dreadful spectre comes to daunt.
I now approach the End; some seconds more:
Christ, Mary, cling, I love You, be my shields;
One only thing of You I do implore:
Let me awaken in Elysian fields.
(14th October, 2010.)
That moment, hated moment, needs must come
Within a lifetime's instant—to dissemble
Cannot be done. The distant thundering drum
Is not so distant after all. More sound
And more, and quicker, threat'ning as an axe
To sever me from me. I look around
At all that I have known; think of the tracks
Trod by my wayward spirit. I can no more;
What is this? I am dying, must be gone,
God knoweth where. Reality is sore:
What am I when it snaps? Let me live on!
No, I must die; temptations fierce assail;
God help me! Am I ready? Michael, Mary,
Saints, pray for me! I languish, now I fail;
Have mercy on me, Lord; can I be wary
In this my evil hour? I am, I fade.
The Fury's shears! No more! avaunt! avaunt!
Ah, terror!—Mercy! I to calm am sway'd;
But sure a dreadful spectre comes to daunt.
I now approach the End; some seconds more:
Christ, Mary, cling, I love You, be my shields;
One only thing of You I do implore:
Let me awaken in Elysian fields.
(14th October, 2010.)
Wednesday 13 October 2010
"The End of Christendom" (FBN)
Sometimes it looks as though the civilization which began in our Europe is lying on its bed of death.
Christendom, that is, Europe, or Western Civilization, was fathered by ancient Rome and mothered by the Faith. The Roman Empire, in time, came to cover most of Europe; and, when the Empire was declining, and had proceeded too far in that decline for the Faith to save it altogether, it was gradually converted from a by then decrepit Paganism to Catholicism, renewing and revivifying its spirit. Who knows what barbarism Europe would have descended to if it had lacked the Faith? (Hint: look around you.)
The soul of Europe, then, is Catholic and is Roman. The last to assume the title of Emperor in Europe was, I think, Napoleon. But things are to be judged as they are, as things, and not by their names: and the Empire, which is Christendom, which is Europe, still exists - for the time being.
We are all aware of the great religious disaster of the sixteenth century - which is miscalled "The Reformation" - and how it destroyed the unity of Western Christendom. It need hardly be said that the only feasible manner of gaining Christian unity is by a return to what was lost at that time. But that is by the bye. We are aware, I say, of the lamentable revolution which is glorified in anti-Catholic books, pamphlets, documentaries, on websites and by cities and by nations. We know how that came as near as anything to destroying Europe, and how in a manner it succeeded. We are aware, also, of the secularization of much of Europe (though not of Ireland, South Germany, or Poland) by the present day; and we are aware of the vacousness and imbecility of the New Secularism. It is difficult to know whether to laugh or to cry: we feel like Gargantua when Pantagruel was born and Badebec died, though the parallel stops there.
We are aware, of course, of the immorality, emptiness, and despair, of the generation in which we find ourselves. We live in an age in which the use of the reason seems to have come to end, an age in which men gratify themselves at the expense of all else, an age in which the meaning of the word love is not known, in which people are bewildered by a lack of purpose in their lives, in which there is rampant impurity, in which many people are mentally ill: an age of self-will and self-idolatry: and the explanation is simple. God is not loved. This lovelessness is a disease and a contagion. It is like a heresy; nay, it is a heresy; a disease of the intellect, which will spread over all the earth like the plague that it is if it be unchecked.
We, we of the Faith, and we alone, have the remedy for this demonic evil. For we alone possess the Truth of God; and we alone have the efficacious remedies for sin, thanks to the love of God, His Truth (which we alone possess in its entirety), and the power He has given to His Priests. The Catholic alone is sane: for he is in tune with reality.
We are aware of these evils - the religious revolution of the sixteenth century, the decline of morality in the twentieth, the despair of the beginning of the twenty-first - and they may tempt us to think that our civilization is approaching its end. Indeed it looks more likely than at any previous time in our history.
While this notion has some justification, I think it may be exaggerated by a misreading of history.
We tend to imagine that for a thousand years before the so-called Reformation the Catholic Church existed in unquestioned and unparalleled splendour. I doubt if that era lasted for two lifetimes (say 1220-1350, that is, from after the victory at the Battle of Muret (1213) to the time of the Black Death); and perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the Church's zenith was but one long lifetime - from 1220 to 1300. But in any case at the Black Death there came a crash, as is hardly surprising, and perhaps it was that shock that was the ultimate cause, in terrestrial terms, of the Reformation.
The Church has always, we must never forget, been hated by its enemies, and always has the potential to do so. When we think what the Church claims to be, and indeed is: the expositor of revealed Truth, taught by God, and reprimanding man for his lust, for his avarice, for his ambition, for his pride; and when we think what man, of himself, is: then it is not difficult to understand why there should be such a conflict between man's sinful nature and the Catholic Church.
The Church has, therefore, always had enemies within and without, terrestrial and infernal.
I think one of the reasons we think of the Church as having been an impregnable monolith for a thousand years is because from the Council of Trent until the Second Vatican Council the Church had a certain monolithic character to it: and that was necessary, to preserve and renew the life of the Church. But the Church does not need to be always as monolithic as it then was; it needs to live and to breathe in the present.
But the Church has often had a precarious life; and if we had lost the Battle of Muret to the Albigensians, then Europe would have been stifled and destroyed by a peculiarly vile creed indeed. Were it not for the conversion of the great Clovis, we might be Arians who say that Jesus Christ is not God. We were nearly wiped out by Islam in the seventh century, and by the Scandinavian Pagans, and by the infamous Mongolian hordes - "the Huns:" perhaps this all-out attack from all sides was the fiercest we have ever had to endure. These attacks lasted on and off for centuries. It is true that the Faith itself stands immovable in the midst of these things, and that the Catholic Church cannot be destroyed; but this does not mean that it could not at any time be, for instance, destroyed in a whole nation, or a whole continent. The Church, and the civilization she has mothered, very frequently looked as if they were doomed to extinction.
And we find ourselves at the present time in a similar predicament. It looks as though our civilization is doomed. Our families, which are microcosms of the State, are breaking down. Our society is coming apart like the pieces of a jigsaw-puzzle. These things have their roots in doctrine, of course: in the minds of men. We can trace, if we will, the history of how people thought: the process whereby divorce became acceptable (it was introduced into English law in 1669 and was made generally legal for all in 1857); the process whereby so many became indoctrinated in the contraception mentality; the process whereby our nation apostatized; the process whereby cohabitation became not only socially acceptable but almost universal; I could go on and on. I am not going to.
I think we shall endure. We have lived through times of peril in our past history, and we have weathered the storm. This is no guarantee, it is true; and this seems to be the greatest storm through which we have had to pass. But all is not lost, and there are Saints upon this earth yet. God will not destroy Sodom for forty good men, nor for thirty, nor for twenty, nor for ten: and God knows that we deserve a worse fate than Sodom did. But there is much to hope for: not least the Mercy of God. And if we hope in that Mercy, and only if we hope therein, we shall be saved.
For my part, I think we shall endure.
(13th October, 2010.)
Christendom, that is, Europe, or Western Civilization, was fathered by ancient Rome and mothered by the Faith. The Roman Empire, in time, came to cover most of Europe; and, when the Empire was declining, and had proceeded too far in that decline for the Faith to save it altogether, it was gradually converted from a by then decrepit Paganism to Catholicism, renewing and revivifying its spirit. Who knows what barbarism Europe would have descended to if it had lacked the Faith? (Hint: look around you.)
The soul of Europe, then, is Catholic and is Roman. The last to assume the title of Emperor in Europe was, I think, Napoleon. But things are to be judged as they are, as things, and not by their names: and the Empire, which is Christendom, which is Europe, still exists - for the time being.
We are all aware of the great religious disaster of the sixteenth century - which is miscalled "The Reformation" - and how it destroyed the unity of Western Christendom. It need hardly be said that the only feasible manner of gaining Christian unity is by a return to what was lost at that time. But that is by the bye. We are aware, I say, of the lamentable revolution which is glorified in anti-Catholic books, pamphlets, documentaries, on websites and by cities and by nations. We know how that came as near as anything to destroying Europe, and how in a manner it succeeded. We are aware, also, of the secularization of much of Europe (though not of Ireland, South Germany, or Poland) by the present day; and we are aware of the vacousness and imbecility of the New Secularism. It is difficult to know whether to laugh or to cry: we feel like Gargantua when Pantagruel was born and Badebec died, though the parallel stops there.
We are aware, of course, of the immorality, emptiness, and despair, of the generation in which we find ourselves. We live in an age in which the use of the reason seems to have come to end, an age in which men gratify themselves at the expense of all else, an age in which the meaning of the word love is not known, in which people are bewildered by a lack of purpose in their lives, in which there is rampant impurity, in which many people are mentally ill: an age of self-will and self-idolatry: and the explanation is simple. God is not loved. This lovelessness is a disease and a contagion. It is like a heresy; nay, it is a heresy; a disease of the intellect, which will spread over all the earth like the plague that it is if it be unchecked.
We, we of the Faith, and we alone, have the remedy for this demonic evil. For we alone possess the Truth of God; and we alone have the efficacious remedies for sin, thanks to the love of God, His Truth (which we alone possess in its entirety), and the power He has given to His Priests. The Catholic alone is sane: for he is in tune with reality.
We are aware of these evils - the religious revolution of the sixteenth century, the decline of morality in the twentieth, the despair of the beginning of the twenty-first - and they may tempt us to think that our civilization is approaching its end. Indeed it looks more likely than at any previous time in our history.
While this notion has some justification, I think it may be exaggerated by a misreading of history.
We tend to imagine that for a thousand years before the so-called Reformation the Catholic Church existed in unquestioned and unparalleled splendour. I doubt if that era lasted for two lifetimes (say 1220-1350, that is, from after the victory at the Battle of Muret (1213) to the time of the Black Death); and perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the Church's zenith was but one long lifetime - from 1220 to 1300. But in any case at the Black Death there came a crash, as is hardly surprising, and perhaps it was that shock that was the ultimate cause, in terrestrial terms, of the Reformation.
The Church has always, we must never forget, been hated by its enemies, and always has the potential to do so. When we think what the Church claims to be, and indeed is: the expositor of revealed Truth, taught by God, and reprimanding man for his lust, for his avarice, for his ambition, for his pride; and when we think what man, of himself, is: then it is not difficult to understand why there should be such a conflict between man's sinful nature and the Catholic Church.
The Church has, therefore, always had enemies within and without, terrestrial and infernal.
I think one of the reasons we think of the Church as having been an impregnable monolith for a thousand years is because from the Council of Trent until the Second Vatican Council the Church had a certain monolithic character to it: and that was necessary, to preserve and renew the life of the Church. But the Church does not need to be always as monolithic as it then was; it needs to live and to breathe in the present.
But the Church has often had a precarious life; and if we had lost the Battle of Muret to the Albigensians, then Europe would have been stifled and destroyed by a peculiarly vile creed indeed. Were it not for the conversion of the great Clovis, we might be Arians who say that Jesus Christ is not God. We were nearly wiped out by Islam in the seventh century, and by the Scandinavian Pagans, and by the infamous Mongolian hordes - "the Huns:" perhaps this all-out attack from all sides was the fiercest we have ever had to endure. These attacks lasted on and off for centuries. It is true that the Faith itself stands immovable in the midst of these things, and that the Catholic Church cannot be destroyed; but this does not mean that it could not at any time be, for instance, destroyed in a whole nation, or a whole continent. The Church, and the civilization she has mothered, very frequently looked as if they were doomed to extinction.
And we find ourselves at the present time in a similar predicament. It looks as though our civilization is doomed. Our families, which are microcosms of the State, are breaking down. Our society is coming apart like the pieces of a jigsaw-puzzle. These things have their roots in doctrine, of course: in the minds of men. We can trace, if we will, the history of how people thought: the process whereby divorce became acceptable (it was introduced into English law in 1669 and was made generally legal for all in 1857); the process whereby so many became indoctrinated in the contraception mentality; the process whereby our nation apostatized; the process whereby cohabitation became not only socially acceptable but almost universal; I could go on and on. I am not going to.
I think we shall endure. We have lived through times of peril in our past history, and we have weathered the storm. This is no guarantee, it is true; and this seems to be the greatest storm through which we have had to pass. But all is not lost, and there are Saints upon this earth yet. God will not destroy Sodom for forty good men, nor for thirty, nor for twenty, nor for ten: and God knows that we deserve a worse fate than Sodom did. But there is much to hope for: not least the Mercy of God. And if we hope in that Mercy, and only if we hope therein, we shall be saved.
For my part, I think we shall endure.
(13th October, 2010.)
Tuesday 12 October 2010
My Note "On 'The Real World'"
It is a hilarious irony that those who are the most enamoured of this phrase are precisely the same people who are the least interested in reality. Doubly ironic is their obliviousness to this fact.
There are few of us who have reached manhood who do not know how gruelling and ghastly the real world is. But many of us also know that this so cruel world is, in its essence, good: for existence exists and is good. (That statement is, in its skeleton, the proof for the existence of God, by the way. God is Existence. Existence cannot create itself; yet we know existence exists. So there must be an Uncreated Existence.)
Now the Reader, if he knows me and certain facts about me, will not be surprised to learn that I have had the "real world" insult offered to me. It is somewhat like a man's curse issued against another turning back upon himself. There is a great and dreadful irony in it. The reference was, of course, to my religion.
Now the reason I hold my religion is because it is the true one. I am not a Catholic because I hold an opinion to that effect; opinion is naught compared with Truth. I was reading Urquhart's translation of Rabelais this evening and came across these words: "Believe it if you will, or otherwise believe it not, I care not which of them you do, they are both alike to me, it shall be sufficient for my Purpose to have told you the Truth, and the Truth I will tell you." [1] I agree with all of that, except that I do care which you do: though indeed, for my sake, my allegiance is to Truth and to Reality, and not to you. If you want to live in an imaginary world of your own creation, furnished with moral relativism and substituting emotion for thought, and to tell me that gender is a social construct and that (as nearly became, or did it actually become, law in California?) "people are not born male or female," then that is up to you. If you want to be damned then that is up to you; the demons will welcome you; but I love you, and would have it otherwise. "Zeal," as a Saint has said, "springs from love."
It is not my purpose in this Note to provide any of the many converging proofs of the objective truth of Catholicism. I do wish, however, to point out two arguments which I find very strong. They are (1) the eternal hatred of the Catholic Church on the part of Her enemies (with its concomitant the eternal love of Her friends and devotees), and (2) the multiplicity of the character of what I shall call confirmed Catholics. By "confirmed Catholics" I do not mean those who have received that awe-filled Sacrament; I mean (a) those raised Catholic, who left the Church and returned; (b) those brought up Catholic who never the left the Church, but whose Faith was confirmed by the experience of life; and (c) converts (I do not include those contemptible men who "convert" for reasons of politics or expediency), whose sincerity none can question. I shall take these two in their turn.
For the first, I shall take the liberty of a long quotation from the great and holy Hilaire Belloc, in his magnificent book Survivals and New Arrivals: Enemies of the Catholic Church Old and New.
The curious have remarked that one institution alone for now nineteen hundred years has been attacked not by one opposing principle but from every conceivable point.
It has been denounced upon all sides and for reasons successively incompatible: it has suffered the contempt, the hatred and the ephemeral triumph of enemies as diverse as the diversity of things could produce.
This institution is the Catholic Church.
Alone of moral things present among men it has been rejected, criticized, or cursed, on grounds which have not only varied from age to age, but have been always of conflicting and often of contradictory kinds.
No one attacking force seems to have cared whether its particular form of assault were in agreement with others past, or even contemporary, so long as its assault were directed against Catholicism. Each is so concerned, in each case, with the thing attacked that it ignores all else. Each is indifferent to learn that the very defects it finds in this Institution are elsewhere put forward as the special virtues of some other opponent. Each is at heart concerned not so much with its own doctrine as with the destruction of the Faith.
Thus we have had the Church in Her first days sneered at for insisting on the presence of the full Divine nature in one whom many knew only as a man; at the very same time She was called Blasphemous for admitting that a Divine personality could be burdened with a suffering human nature. She was furiously condemned, in later ages, for laxity in discipline and for extravagant severity; for softness in organization and for tyranny; for combating the appetites natural to man, and for allowing them excess and even perversion; for ridiculously putting forward a mass of Jewish folklore as the Word of God, and for neglecting that same Word of God; for reducing everything to reason—that is, to logic, which is the form of reason—and for appealing to mere emotion. Today She is equally condemned for affirming dogmatically the improbable survival of human personality after death, and for refusing to admit necromantic proofs of it—and pronouncing the search for them accursed.
The Church has been presented, and by one set of Her enemies, as based upon the ignorance and folly of Her members—they were either of weak intellect or drawn from the least instructed classes. By another set of enemies She has been ridiculed as teaching a vainly subtle philosophy, splitting hairs, and so systematizing Her instruction that it needs a trained intelligence to deal with Her theology as a special subject.
This unique experience suffered by the Church, this fact that She alone is attacked from every side, has been appealed to by Her doctors throughout the ages as a proof of Her central position in the scheme of reality; for truth is one and error multiple.
It has also been used as an argument for the unnatural and evil quality of Catholicism that it should have aroused from the first century to the twentieth such varied and unceasing hostility.
But what has been more rarely undertaken, and what is of particular interest to our own day, is an examination of the battle's phases. Which of the attacks are getting old-fashioned? Which new offensives are beginning to appear, and from what direction do they come? Which are the main assaults of the moment? What is the weight of each, and with what success are they being received and thrown back?
I say, this cataloging of the attacks in their order of succession, from those growing outworn in any period to the new ones just appearing, has been neglected. A general view of the procession is rarely taken. Yet to make such an appreciation should be of value. The situation of the Church at any one time can be estimated only by noting what forms of attack are failing, and why; with what degree of resistance the still vigorous ones are being combated; what novel forms of offensive are appearing. It is only so that we can judge how the whole position stood or stands in any one historical period.
Now the historical period in which we have most practical interest is our own. To grasp the situation of the Catholic Church today we must appreciate which of the forces opposing her are today growing feeble, which are today in full vigor, which are today appearing as new antagonists, hardly yet in their vigor but increasing.
As for the Faith itself it stands immovable in the midst of all such hostile things; they arise and pass before that majestic presence:
"Stat et stabit, manet et manebit: spectator orbis." [2]
And there is something wonderful in seeing the Church ever immovable, against the intelligent forces of evil that try to wound Her as much as they can, and the stupid agents of evil who try to destroy Her: who know not that She cannot be destroyed, so feeble is their grasp of the reality of spiritual things.
Secondly, when one examines the nature of those who become Catholics, there is no common thread linking them, none at all, apart from their humanity and their Catholicism. All Catholics, but it is true of converts (and that is to be noted), are about as like to one another as a hairbrush to a glass of water, as the sun to a frog, and as a tweed jacket to a roast potato. I do not mean that there will not be similarities in personality and common interests in golf or art or Romantic poetry or philately or the Renaissance in France or tectonics or the works of Catullus. I mean that there is no such thing as a typical Catholic, whereas there is such a thing as a typical Anglo-Catholic or a typical Calvinistic Methodist or a typical Plymouth Brother.
I find these two things, among twenty thousand others, strong arguments in favour of Catholic truth; and these myriad taken all together I find amount to a certainty.
The Catholic Church is the prime reality of the world.
Crowns and thrones may perish, kingdoms rise and wane,
But the Church of Jesus constant will remain.
All great States and civilizations come to their end: Carthage, Venice, Rome. There is nothing that endures. But there is one thing which shall endure until the end of time; and it shall endure until the end of time, yes, because Christ has given his promise - but what is a promise? A promise is an assurance of Truth with reference to some act either begun in the future or already begun and continuing into it. A promise coming from Jesus Christ, Who is Truth itself, will not be broken.
I have not endeavoured to prove Catholic truth in this essay; if the Reader cares enough about reality, he may read some Catholic books for himself to find out the Church's dogmas and the reasons behind those dogmas. If he does not care about reality, he will attack the Church anyhow and in any way, "without," as Defoe put it, "knowing whether Popery [be] a man or a horse."
I should wish to emphasize the distinction which must be made between holding a strong opinion to the effect that something is true, and knowing that something is true: as the Catholic knows that his religion is true, and that all other religions, whether they be Muslim or Protestant or atheist, are, precisely insofar as they contradict Catholic truth, false. It is those who are clinging tenaciously to opinion, rather than those with a sure and certain knowledge of truth, who write such charitable remarks as this:
May the faeries at the bottom of your garden keep your milk fresh, the elves under your bed ease your muscles while you sleep and the ignorant fool inhabiting your body wake up to the world soon. [3]
Perhaps people who write such things should read the Pilgrim's Progress, paying particular attention to the character of Mr Worldly-Wiseman. He is very busy these days.
Finally, I pray that all my Readers may have awakened in them an interest in reality. For reality is great and terrible; and reality is much more interesting, also, than the warpings and falsifications of it caused by religious bias. "Reality," it must be said, "is harsh to the feet of shadows." [4]
[1] Rabelais, François, "Garguanta et Pantagruel," tr. Urquhart, Navarre Society Limited Edition, vol. 2, p. 73.
[2] Belloc, Hilaire, "Survivals and New Arrivals," "http://www.ewtn.com/library/answers/surviv.htm"
[3] Glendinning, Robbie, comment on Stuart Abram's link to the Youth Declaration to the UN on abortion and family rights
[4] Lewis, C.S., "The Great Divorce."
There are few of us who have reached manhood who do not know how gruelling and ghastly the real world is. But many of us also know that this so cruel world is, in its essence, good: for existence exists and is good. (That statement is, in its skeleton, the proof for the existence of God, by the way. God is Existence. Existence cannot create itself; yet we know existence exists. So there must be an Uncreated Existence.)
Now the Reader, if he knows me and certain facts about me, will not be surprised to learn that I have had the "real world" insult offered to me. It is somewhat like a man's curse issued against another turning back upon himself. There is a great and dreadful irony in it. The reference was, of course, to my religion.
Now the reason I hold my religion is because it is the true one. I am not a Catholic because I hold an opinion to that effect; opinion is naught compared with Truth. I was reading Urquhart's translation of Rabelais this evening and came across these words: "Believe it if you will, or otherwise believe it not, I care not which of them you do, they are both alike to me, it shall be sufficient for my Purpose to have told you the Truth, and the Truth I will tell you." [1] I agree with all of that, except that I do care which you do: though indeed, for my sake, my allegiance is to Truth and to Reality, and not to you. If you want to live in an imaginary world of your own creation, furnished with moral relativism and substituting emotion for thought, and to tell me that gender is a social construct and that (as nearly became, or did it actually become, law in California?) "people are not born male or female," then that is up to you. If you want to be damned then that is up to you; the demons will welcome you; but I love you, and would have it otherwise. "Zeal," as a Saint has said, "springs from love."
It is not my purpose in this Note to provide any of the many converging proofs of the objective truth of Catholicism. I do wish, however, to point out two arguments which I find very strong. They are (1) the eternal hatred of the Catholic Church on the part of Her enemies (with its concomitant the eternal love of Her friends and devotees), and (2) the multiplicity of the character of what I shall call confirmed Catholics. By "confirmed Catholics" I do not mean those who have received that awe-filled Sacrament; I mean (a) those raised Catholic, who left the Church and returned; (b) those brought up Catholic who never the left the Church, but whose Faith was confirmed by the experience of life; and (c) converts (I do not include those contemptible men who "convert" for reasons of politics or expediency), whose sincerity none can question. I shall take these two in their turn.
For the first, I shall take the liberty of a long quotation from the great and holy Hilaire Belloc, in his magnificent book Survivals and New Arrivals: Enemies of the Catholic Church Old and New.
The curious have remarked that one institution alone for now nineteen hundred years has been attacked not by one opposing principle but from every conceivable point.
It has been denounced upon all sides and for reasons successively incompatible: it has suffered the contempt, the hatred and the ephemeral triumph of enemies as diverse as the diversity of things could produce.
This institution is the Catholic Church.
Alone of moral things present among men it has been rejected, criticized, or cursed, on grounds which have not only varied from age to age, but have been always of conflicting and often of contradictory kinds.
No one attacking force seems to have cared whether its particular form of assault were in agreement with others past, or even contemporary, so long as its assault were directed against Catholicism. Each is so concerned, in each case, with the thing attacked that it ignores all else. Each is indifferent to learn that the very defects it finds in this Institution are elsewhere put forward as the special virtues of some other opponent. Each is at heart concerned not so much with its own doctrine as with the destruction of the Faith.
Thus we have had the Church in Her first days sneered at for insisting on the presence of the full Divine nature in one whom many knew only as a man; at the very same time She was called Blasphemous for admitting that a Divine personality could be burdened with a suffering human nature. She was furiously condemned, in later ages, for laxity in discipline and for extravagant severity; for softness in organization and for tyranny; for combating the appetites natural to man, and for allowing them excess and even perversion; for ridiculously putting forward a mass of Jewish folklore as the Word of God, and for neglecting that same Word of God; for reducing everything to reason—that is, to logic, which is the form of reason—and for appealing to mere emotion. Today She is equally condemned for affirming dogmatically the improbable survival of human personality after death, and for refusing to admit necromantic proofs of it—and pronouncing the search for them accursed.
The Church has been presented, and by one set of Her enemies, as based upon the ignorance and folly of Her members—they were either of weak intellect or drawn from the least instructed classes. By another set of enemies She has been ridiculed as teaching a vainly subtle philosophy, splitting hairs, and so systematizing Her instruction that it needs a trained intelligence to deal with Her theology as a special subject.
This unique experience suffered by the Church, this fact that She alone is attacked from every side, has been appealed to by Her doctors throughout the ages as a proof of Her central position in the scheme of reality; for truth is one and error multiple.
It has also been used as an argument for the unnatural and evil quality of Catholicism that it should have aroused from the first century to the twentieth such varied and unceasing hostility.
But what has been more rarely undertaken, and what is of particular interest to our own day, is an examination of the battle's phases. Which of the attacks are getting old-fashioned? Which new offensives are beginning to appear, and from what direction do they come? Which are the main assaults of the moment? What is the weight of each, and with what success are they being received and thrown back?
I say, this cataloging of the attacks in their order of succession, from those growing outworn in any period to the new ones just appearing, has been neglected. A general view of the procession is rarely taken. Yet to make such an appreciation should be of value. The situation of the Church at any one time can be estimated only by noting what forms of attack are failing, and why; with what degree of resistance the still vigorous ones are being combated; what novel forms of offensive are appearing. It is only so that we can judge how the whole position stood or stands in any one historical period.
Now the historical period in which we have most practical interest is our own. To grasp the situation of the Catholic Church today we must appreciate which of the forces opposing her are today growing feeble, which are today in full vigor, which are today appearing as new antagonists, hardly yet in their vigor but increasing.
As for the Faith itself it stands immovable in the midst of all such hostile things; they arise and pass before that majestic presence:
"Stat et stabit, manet et manebit: spectator orbis." [2]
And there is something wonderful in seeing the Church ever immovable, against the intelligent forces of evil that try to wound Her as much as they can, and the stupid agents of evil who try to destroy Her: who know not that She cannot be destroyed, so feeble is their grasp of the reality of spiritual things.
Secondly, when one examines the nature of those who become Catholics, there is no common thread linking them, none at all, apart from their humanity and their Catholicism. All Catholics, but it is true of converts (and that is to be noted), are about as like to one another as a hairbrush to a glass of water, as the sun to a frog, and as a tweed jacket to a roast potato. I do not mean that there will not be similarities in personality and common interests in golf or art or Romantic poetry or philately or the Renaissance in France or tectonics or the works of Catullus. I mean that there is no such thing as a typical Catholic, whereas there is such a thing as a typical Anglo-Catholic or a typical Calvinistic Methodist or a typical Plymouth Brother.
I find these two things, among twenty thousand others, strong arguments in favour of Catholic truth; and these myriad taken all together I find amount to a certainty.
The Catholic Church is the prime reality of the world.
Crowns and thrones may perish, kingdoms rise and wane,
But the Church of Jesus constant will remain.
All great States and civilizations come to their end: Carthage, Venice, Rome. There is nothing that endures. But there is one thing which shall endure until the end of time; and it shall endure until the end of time, yes, because Christ has given his promise - but what is a promise? A promise is an assurance of Truth with reference to some act either begun in the future or already begun and continuing into it. A promise coming from Jesus Christ, Who is Truth itself, will not be broken.
I have not endeavoured to prove Catholic truth in this essay; if the Reader cares enough about reality, he may read some Catholic books for himself to find out the Church's dogmas and the reasons behind those dogmas. If he does not care about reality, he will attack the Church anyhow and in any way, "without," as Defoe put it, "knowing whether Popery [be] a man or a horse."
I should wish to emphasize the distinction which must be made between holding a strong opinion to the effect that something is true, and knowing that something is true: as the Catholic knows that his religion is true, and that all other religions, whether they be Muslim or Protestant or atheist, are, precisely insofar as they contradict Catholic truth, false. It is those who are clinging tenaciously to opinion, rather than those with a sure and certain knowledge of truth, who write such charitable remarks as this:
May the faeries at the bottom of your garden keep your milk fresh, the elves under your bed ease your muscles while you sleep and the ignorant fool inhabiting your body wake up to the world soon. [3]
Perhaps people who write such things should read the Pilgrim's Progress, paying particular attention to the character of Mr Worldly-Wiseman. He is very busy these days.
Finally, I pray that all my Readers may have awakened in them an interest in reality. For reality is great and terrible; and reality is much more interesting, also, than the warpings and falsifications of it caused by religious bias. "Reality," it must be said, "is harsh to the feet of shadows." [4]
[1] Rabelais, François, "Garguanta et Pantagruel," tr. Urquhart, Navarre Society Limited Edition, vol. 2, p. 73.
[2] Belloc, Hilaire, "Survivals and New Arrivals," "http://www.ewtn.com/library/answers/surviv.htm"
[3] Glendinning, Robbie, comment on Stuart Abram's link to the Youth Declaration to the UN on abortion and family rights
[4] Lewis, C.S., "The Great Divorce."
Monday 11 October 2010
Stuart's Note
Of the rights of unborn children, the right education of children and sundry other matters
by Stuart Abram on Monday, 11 October 2010 at 22:21
The following was to-day (11/x/10) posted in response to my facebook post requesting my friends to peruse and sign up to the Youth Declaration to the UN. This can be found at http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.c-fam.org%2Fyouth%2Flid.2%2Fdefault.asp&h=6abba . In response to this, an acquaintance of mine posted two comments, the more substantial of which I reproduce below in its entirety:
Unwanted children become problems in society, giving parents the choice to abort a fetus before it is a sentient being reduces the problems in society.To over stress the role of the family marginalises those who do not have family, for what...ever reason. Marginalising people causes problems in later life.Gender, as in one's self identity of gender, is not an objective thing and to try and force people into one gender or another if they are not subjectively of those genders is psychologically harmful, because gender roles are not black and white, but shades of grey.
I agree that unborn children, once they are children, have rights that must be protected but those rights are not the same as those of a child.I agree that the right to life is an important measure but this statement denies the right to death that we must consider moving forward as we continue to increase our ability to stay alive until decrepitation.I agree that sexual education needs to instill a sense of responsibility, self respect and understanding of the full effects of sexual acts, but this bill denies that sex outside marriage can ever be a good thing. Couples who do not see if they are sexually compatible before they wed are demonstrably less happy and psychologically stable than those who do sleep with each other while courting.I agree that exploitation is a very bad thing that we all need to be protected from but this statement denies that any work in the sex trade is not exploitative. However in a well regulated sex trade it can be a fulfilling job that gives rise to wealth. In societies where it is treated as wholly wrong far more exploitation occurs because the demand still exists.
As for point 2, a parent has a DUTY not a RIGHT to educate their child with the truth. Religious education, in the common form of gentle indoctrination is extremely harmful to children, and those raised in highly religious homes are intellectually inferior for the rest of their lives.
Other than points 3 & 5 I cannot agree with any of the points in this statement wholly, or with the subtext, because the world would be worse off if any of the rest of them were fulfilled.
Let us deal with the points in turn. I apologise to the reader if this is somewhat dull, but it suits the purposes of our sport. My interlocutor disputes that unborn children do not possess rights as they are not 'sentient' and/or it is convenient to give parents the 'right' to dispose of them before they become an inconvenience. The first response to this is that logically, parents should therefore have the right to kill newborn children until about the age of two, when they might first be categorised as 'sentient'. Birth, by this standard, is a mere stage in the progress to the magical moment whereupon one becomes 'sentient'. Logically this argument also leads to a 'right' or even perhaps a 'duty' to dispatch those whose understanding is impaired to such an extent that they are not 'sentient'; so all you depressives, mental defectives, sexual deviants (i.e. those married and with children, without the desire to have the right to kill them) and those with learning difficulties should step forward (if you are capable of this) and prepare for extermination.
One wonders what 'problems' are solved by the extirpation of the unborn. Financial and emotional difficulties have always been problems for any society yet in a country with a generous and comprehensive Welfare State and a National Health Service of which we may be rightly proud (and which is free at the point of delivery), one wonders at what point necessity requires or permits the killing of innocent life. Forgive my impatience with this, but it was an eminent member, respectable without question, of ancient Jewish society that remarked that it would be better for one man to die for the country than for the nation to perish. Although one can understand the mathematics and the temptation of it, to kill a being fully capable of human life for advantages that in almost all cases could be given by a proper and generous use of public services seems cowardly and murderous in the extreme.
This first paragraph is trapped in what appears to be a web of emotivism and illogicality. The force of the first line is that children themselves cause these problems, as if they had called themselves into the world to wreak unconscionable havoc ('Unwanted children become problems in society'), ignoring the responsibility of human beings in the first instance to conduct themselves in such a way as the dignity of sexual congress requires. A short attack then ensues on the position of the family; those who find themselves not belonging to one should not be harmed, it is argued, lest one feel 'marginalised' (although in that case there is nothing to be marginalised from, if there is no family). This ignores the vast amount of scientific research that shows that stable, married family life is the best context for the raising of children and the sexual maturity of both parties. To marginalise the family risks marginalising a great deal of people who will not haave the structures of friends, school, university or profession to cling onto. For many people still, the family, even in its degraded state, is their only hope and their only refuge. The most deprived themselves have most to lose from the fall of the traditional family and of sexual morality; the effects on the middle and upper classes may be mitigated by wealth and advantage but for these people, it hits hardest, eating away at their very selves. The poor, of all people, have most need of strong families. One last point is that marginalising people causes problems later on. I agree. That is why I am in favour of the only structure where one is really welcome, come what may, the family.
The argument on 'gender roles' is curious. On face value it would appear to be right. We assume 'roles' when we act in a play, for instance. But biological gender places upon us roles and obligations that go beyond any notion of playacting. The respective and equal (albeit different) dignities of fatherhood and motherhood, whether exercised conventionally or 'spiritually' in some other role such as being an aunt or uncle or nun or priest, stem from a biological and ontological difference that is universally accepted in the light of reason. Only when we do construct 'gender roles', assuming that a certain pattern of individual outward behaviour and sexual conduct (as opposed to a full-understanding of the procreative role) constitute a certain 'gender' does the argument begin to become tenable. Yet this divorces humanity from reality in an extreme idolatry of the will. According to this we are whatever we say, and perhaps feel. In that case, I am a Persian elephant called Friedrich III. According to this argument, no one could disabuse me of this notion no matter how unpersian, unelephant-like and unFriedrich-like I may be. That I am free to ignore my humanity or the biological facts of my existence does not mean they are not there.
There follows a litany of non-sequiturs. My opponent concedes that 'unborn children, once children, have rights that must be protected', yet 'those rights are not the same as those of a child'. One wonders whether, given the fact that babies and the unborn are not sufficiently 'sentient', this is perhaps a less unlovely method of extermination than forcing a miscarriage, cutting a child up (potentially while still alive) in the womb or sucking its brains out. Burning alive perhaps. This no doubt is part of the apparent 'right to death' that he is now convinced exists, in the Name of Progress no doubt, despite its absence from the ECHR and the entire corpus of English Law. Until the 1960s, English Law forbade (attempted) suicide and to this day forbids assisting or abetting it (cf. Suicide Act 1961). The 'right to death', which historically seems to quickly morph into the 'right to kill' frankly does not exist. As apparent proof of this, the concomitant duty of the right to kill becomes the duty to die, we are to 'moving forward as we continue to increase our ability to stay alive until decrepitation [sic]'. One wonders when the National Institute for Geriatric Advancement will come into being to 'move forward' those felt to have had a good innings.
My opponent, perhaps surprisingly, is agreed that 'sexual education needs to instill a sense of responsibility, self respect and understanding of the full effects of sexual acts', yet he advocates, on utilitarian grounds, that sexual relations outside of marriage may be beneficial, helping couples to discern whether they are 'sexually compatible', on psychological grounds. The immediate impression this gives is of treating sexual congress as a game. It is eminently reasonable that those who treat it as a game will prefer the company of those who do likewise. They may indeed derive greater pleasure and satisfaction from their 'love-making', but in doing so they will probably have missed the point entirely, taking the pursuit of pleasure very seriously. The inseparable union of two beings, in my interlocutor's eyes, is no such thing. It is temporary and really quite tawdry, little deserving of respect or awe, save insomuch as we derive self-satisfaction from it. Gone is the notion of inviolable gift to the other, of self-sacrifice and surrender, which are rightly quite difficult and demanding. Gone is the adventure of love. Newly arrived is the boredom of self-seeking.
The final eye-rolling episode in this litany of unreality is that on exploitation; all exploitation is bad it seems, but perhaps not all the time. One would love to know how he derives the conclusion that prostitution 'in a well regulated sex trade it can be a fulfilling job that gives rise to wealth'. Having worked with the down and outs of Paris, had friends who worked in the porn trade or even sold themselves, I can assure him and you, dear reader, that I have never met a 'happy whore'. Addiction cannot be thought of in the same light as professional commitment, nor whatever residual pleasure may remain in the sexual act as 'fulfilment'. Only a rather warped humanity could be fufilled thus. The sordid sum that indicates, in rather specious language, that it 'gives rise to wealth' underlines this with an unlikely and unintended eloquence.
In this unhappy and irrational world of sexual experimentation, gender-by-preference and careerist whoring, religious parents seem to have a 'duty' to educate their children in its truth. We are self-rightelously informed that, 'Religious education, in the common form of gentle indoctrination is extremely harmful to children' but, presumably, killing them in the womb or afterwards (see my argument above), downplaying any notion of family beyond the convenient or politically acceptable, abandoning them to the worst of their desires, discouraging them (implicitly) from having any sort of objective, gender-based identity, teaching them that picking a sexual partner or spouse is rather like picking flavours of ice-cream at Sainsbury's and that prostitution can be a fulfilling, profitable activity is not. We people of faith destine such benighted children, apparent, to be 'intellectually inferior', perhaps because they will not give way to the unreason, unreality and intellectual blindness of my dear accuser. Would they perhaps not be classed as 'sentient'? Would they be encouraged (or forced) to 'move forward' for the common good?
Give me the 'obscurantism' of Catholic Christianity with its love and protection of human life and right from conception until natural death, the dignity of the marital act, objective gender and the condemnation of sexual exploitation any day over the pompous, blind, hypocritical, dangerous, illogical, irrational and uncaring approach, suggested by what warped 'reason' I know not, suggested above by my foe. May the Lord englighten his mind and soul and bring us together in the last day as friends in joy.
Sunday 10 October 2010
Has there ever been such deceit and treason as in the crisis of 1688? Woe!
I have just signed the Statement of Youth to the UN and the World. I hope many will support it.
Somebody on Facebook commented on Stuart Abram's link to it: "this declaration would harm the world if anybody in power took it seriously, I can't believe you support it." Yes, my friends, I am afraid we cannot ignore those who cannot punctuate, for the world will not ignore them.
I have just signed the Statement of Youth to the UN and the World. I hope many will support it.
Somebody on Facebook commented on Stuart Abram's link to it: "this declaration would harm the world if anybody in power took it seriously, I can't believe you support it." Yes, my friends, I am afraid we cannot ignore those who cannot punctuate, for the world will not ignore them.
Saturday 9 October 2010
Friday 8 October 2010
Wednesday 6 October 2010
Tuesday 5 October 2010
It is curious to note that most historians of the battle, allowing a rate of sailing of some 3 1/2 knots and the length of the line to be between 9 and 10 miles, think that the Dutch and English fleets took some three hours to pass each other. They forget that, with the fleets sailing in opposite directions, the time should be halved. The relative speed of passing was not 3 1/2 knots but 7. There is here no necessity to read Einstein." - Belloc, brilliant as usual.
Belloc, brilliant as usual. (James II, p. 98, note.)
Monday 4 October 2010
Sunday 3 October 2010
Sunday, the 27th in Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time seems to be dragging on for ever...
Monday, the 4th of October, is the Feast (or Memoria, as it is in the new calendar) of St Francis of Assisi.
St Francis, pray for us!
I should know more about this Saint. He is a Saint to whom I am not really devoted at all, and have never really felt much attracted to for some reason. All the same, I think I should learn more about him.
Monday, the 4th of October, is the Feast (or Memoria, as it is in the new calendar) of St Francis of Assisi.
St Francis, pray for us!
I should know more about this Saint. He is a Saint to whom I am not really devoted at all, and have never really felt much attracted to for some reason. All the same, I think I should learn more about him.
Saturday 2 October 2010
Mere, fait il, au roi del ciel,
Qui plus iez douce de nul miel,
Qui plus iez douce et savoureuse,
Plus debonaire et plus piteuse
Et plus souef et plus benigne
Et plus tres sainte et plus tres digne
Que ne porroit langue retraire,
A bone fin me daingne traire.
Ha, mere au roi qui tot cria,
Ainz nus de cuer ne te pria
Cui ta douceurs feïst le sort.
Dame en cui toute douceurs sort,
Sacree virge debonaire,
Ne sai que dire ne que faire
Se ta douceurs ne me regarde.
M'ame et mon cors met en ta garde.
Qui plus iez douce de nul miel,
Qui plus iez douce et savoureuse,
Plus debonaire et plus piteuse
Et plus souef et plus benigne
Et plus tres sainte et plus tres digne
Que ne porroit langue retraire,
A bone fin me daingne traire.
Ha, mere au roi qui tot cria,
Ainz nus de cuer ne te pria
Cui ta douceurs feïst le sort.
Dame en cui toute douceurs sort,
Sacree virge debonaire,
Ne sai que dire ne que faire
Se ta douceurs ne me regarde.
M'ame et mon cors met en ta garde.
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