This is from the (UK's) Department of Education and Skills Select Committee on (Homophobic) Bullying (By Evil Religious Organizations like the Catholic Church)
"We have, through the course of the inquiry, become convinced that a lack of accurate reliable data on bullying is one barrier to more effective anti-bullying work."
Yeah, I'd think that not actually knowing whether it is really happening at all would be a bit of a barrier to effectively dealing with it. Well, you know those gay activist groups, light on actual statistics at the Parliamentary Committee hearings.
Left 'em in your other briefcase eh?
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Gen X
I tried to read Coupland's book. Everyone did, but I found it a terrible snore. Frivolous, is what I would call it now. I felt obliged though, since he was a Vancouverite and was writing about my 'generation'. But the rubbish he was spouting just seemed, if you'll forgive the word, irrelevant.
But Gen X I am indeed. Raised on Saturday morning cartoons (Go Speed Racer!), the "Divorced Kids" encounter groups at the Y ("Share with the group how it made you feel when your mother told you she was getting divorced..." not kidding), indoctrination in sexual perversion (anyone remember "Free to be you and me"?) pop-psych group therapy and Cold War night terrors.
I've been listening to Nirvana all afternoon while doing the LifeSiteing and I've just noticed something. Kurt Cobain (remember him?) was my age, or a year younger. He was raised in almost exactly the same circumstances and grew up a hundred miles away from where I did.
Wiki:
It seems absurd to talk about a rock star as an "icon of a generation", absurd even to talk about rock stars as if they matter, but the truth is that his life was a kind of TV miniseries of what happens to people when they grow up the way we did. This is what the sexual revolution hath wrought and the kids don't seem too happy about it, if you ask me.
This is what happens when you do to people what has been done to the children of the late 20th century.
I had a brief conversation with a chap in BC today who does pro-life political work there. He's about twenty years older than me and gets on my nerves. He's a typical BC ex-hippie convert, still trying to be cool while being Christian (Catholic, gawdhelpus) and every time I talk to him I want to yell at him, "Look, just shut the hell up will you? You people are the ones who did this to us."
Every generation needs an angry young man who commits suicide and cuts off a promising artistic career, if only as a warning to parents.
But Gen X I am indeed. Raised on Saturday morning cartoons (Go Speed Racer!), the "Divorced Kids" encounter groups at the Y ("Share with the group how it made you feel when your mother told you she was getting divorced..." not kidding), indoctrination in sexual perversion (anyone remember "Free to be you and me"?) pop-psych group therapy and Cold War night terrors.
I've been listening to Nirvana all afternoon while doing the LifeSiteing and I've just noticed something. Kurt Cobain (remember him?) was my age, or a year younger. He was raised in almost exactly the same circumstances and grew up a hundred miles away from where I did.
Wiki:
Cobain's life changed dramatically at the age of seven when his parents divorced in 1975, an event which he later cited as having a profound impact on his life. His mother noted that his personality changed dramatically, with Cobain becoming more withdrawn. In a 1993 interview, Cobain said, "I remember feeling ashamed, for some reason. I was ashamed of my parents. I couldn't face some of my friends at school anymore, because I desperately wanted to have the classic, you know, typical family. Mother, father. I wanted that security, so I resented my parents for quite a few years because of that." After a year spent living with his mother following the divorce, Cobain moved to Montesano, Washington to live with his father, but after a few years his youthful rebellion became too overwhelming and he found himself being shuffled between friends and family.He was just a kid when he killed himself (yes, he did, and who could be surprised) and so was I. I remember it pretty well. I was living in North Vancouver and working at the North Shore Studios doing short-term wardrobe work and trying to get off the damn IATSE permitee list (never managed it...everyone wanted to be in that union and it was deuced difficult). I was spending a lot of time wondering what had happened to us all. I recall thinking that something appalling had been going on and no one really knew what it was.
It seems absurd to talk about a rock star as an "icon of a generation", absurd even to talk about rock stars as if they matter, but the truth is that his life was a kind of TV miniseries of what happens to people when they grow up the way we did. This is what the sexual revolution hath wrought and the kids don't seem too happy about it, if you ask me.
This is what happens when you do to people what has been done to the children of the late 20th century.
I had a brief conversation with a chap in BC today who does pro-life political work there. He's about twenty years older than me and gets on my nerves. He's a typical BC ex-hippie convert, still trying to be cool while being Christian (Catholic, gawdhelpus) and every time I talk to him I want to yell at him, "Look, just shut the hell up will you? You people are the ones who did this to us."
Every generation needs an angry young man who commits suicide and cuts off a promising artistic career, if only as a warning to parents.
Hey!
There are non-Catholic-Traditionalist conservatives in England!
Who knew?
The Cornerstone just called the NHS "Stalinist". Gosh! They sound like us. "The way forward is compulsory insurance."
Sort of.
Who knew?
The Cornerstone just called the NHS "Stalinist". Gosh! They sound like us. "The way forward is compulsory insurance."
Sort of.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
The Great Ye Bitte of Olde Englande Theame Parke
I asked a young friend from Ynglond if the Old Country had not been turned by the National Trust into one gigantic theme park of itself, with the locals hired to dress up in frothy costume and play themselves.
His rather dry reply: "If they have, it's because in England, there's something to see."
Well, John's latest post is making me laugh because I am, apparently, not the only one to have thought of it:
Work Starts on Dickens Theme Park.
Never mind John. Not to worry. It's like the Lord of the Rings movies. They weren't nearly so good as everyone said, because before they came out, no one had read the book. But because they had seen the films, the book came back. I remember for years getting on a Toronto subway and seeing someone with the big thick tome on their lap nearly every time. More people read Jane Austen without being told to by an English teacher after than ever did before the BBC and Gwynneth Paltrow and the horrible Keira Knightly murdleized them.
His rather dry reply: "If they have, it's because in England, there's something to see."
Well, John's latest post is making me laugh because I am, apparently, not the only one to have thought of it:
Work Starts on Dickens Theme Park.
Never mind John. Not to worry. It's like the Lord of the Rings movies. They weren't nearly so good as everyone said, because before they came out, no one had read the book. But because they had seen the films, the book came back. I remember for years getting on a Toronto subway and seeing someone with the big thick tome on their lap nearly every time. More people read Jane Austen without being told to by an English teacher after than ever did before the BBC and Gwynneth Paltrow and the horrible Keira Knightly murdleized them.
In Search of Catholic England
Well, I've been reading H. V. Morton again and have a strong desire to go and do likewise. It really is a sadness that his work is nearly forgotten now, after so many decades of enormous popularity. His writing always strikes me as originating in a great spiritual generosity. He writes about the people he meets, even the less pleasant ones, in a way that shows he likes and appreciates them. He pokes quite a bit of fun at the American tourists he encounters, but there is no trace of the sneering modern anti-Americanism that we hear so much of in European and British writing now. He quite clearly loves to meet and talk to people and has the old fashioned un-neurotic confidence to allow them to be odd and different. Indeed, finding out what makes people different, and yet still English (or Cornish, Northumbrian, Welsh, Saxon or whathaveyou) is the point of the whole exercise. He is also, if not a Catholic, clearly a believing man.
Anyway, here at last is a writer completely worth emulating. Not high faluting; not 'scholarly' to the point of obscurity; cares not a whit for anything but the ordinary rules of civility and grammar. People have accused him of purpleness but to that I say 'tchah!' Piffle. His prose simply glows and he does not bow to the modern minimalist conventions. He is not a Victorian scholar writing dull incomprehensible treatises on linguistic origins, nor is does he aim to write like a political journalist. He's a man in love; of course he would write glowing poetry. And often subtly funny, in a lovely unstrained way.
Wouldn't it be lovely to write something like this? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to drop, just for once, the hardened cynical glare we usually turn on everything? Lovely, just for a change, to write only about the glories of pointed arches, fan vaulting, pubs, gardens and sea ports and turn a kinder eye on the people inhabiting them?
I think I would like to give it a go. I'm collecting a list of things to go see in England that constitute Catholic England. I'm in Search of Catholic England, it's ancient ruins and whatever survivals I can find. Tentatively scheduled a trip for early September, though have not yet actually bought the ticket, and am taking submissions for itinerary items.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Additional English Saint ~ Fairly Obscure
May 25th
St. Aldhelm, B.C.
Collect
O GOD, who as on this day dist exalt thy blessed Bishop, Saint Aldhelm to everylasting felicity: we pray Thee, that by his merits and intercession, Thy mercy may bring us unto that place whither he is gone before. Through...
For the Legend:
From the Account of St. Aldhelm's Life by William of Malmesbury
Anglia Sacra, xi, I
ALDHELM, who was a Saxon of royal blood, took the habit of a monk in the Monastery at Malmesbury. But he resorted again and again to Canterbury (see below), to sit at the feet of the Abbot Hadrian, and so advanced under his instruction, that not only himself became famous as a teacher, but was also the first Englishman who ventured on publishing books. According to the testimony of Bede, he was a man of wide and varied learning, a brilliant speaker, and wonderfully well read both in ecclesiastical and worldly writers.
He read often, and prayed constantly, so that, to use his own expression, whilst he read, he seemed to hear God speaking to him, ane whilst he prayed, himself did speak to God there present. He was indifferent to hunger, and careless about money. Further, he as far as possible remained inside his monastery, where he proclaimed an unceasing war against idleness and desire. However, when a Church Synod had discussed the corrupt doctrines of the British Christians, and had come to the unanimous conclusion that it was better to lead the schismatics by reason than to drive them by force, Aldhelm took upon himself the task of confuting their errors. This he did by writing a book, which was the means of leading back many of the wanderers into the bosom of the Universal Church.
After the death of Saint Hedda, Bishop among the West-Saxons, Aldhelm was induced, against his own wishes, to accept the See of Sherborne. When he entered on this sphere of duty, he already felt that the end of his life was near, and, to make the bst of what time remained, he preached day and night, visited about his diocese, and practiced fasting, and the like, as much as in the prime of his life. He died four years after his consecation as bishop, in the year of our Lord's Incarnation 709, and was bruied in the Church of Saint Michael the Archangel at Malmesbury.
St. Aldhelm, B.C.
Collect
O GOD, who as on this day dist exalt thy blessed Bishop, Saint Aldhelm to everylasting felicity: we pray Thee, that by his merits and intercession, Thy mercy may bring us unto that place whither he is gone before. Through...
For the Legend:
From the Account of St. Aldhelm's Life by William of Malmesbury
Anglia Sacra, xi, I
ALDHELM, who was a Saxon of royal blood, took the habit of a monk in the Monastery at Malmesbury. But he resorted again and again to Canterbury (see below), to sit at the feet of the Abbot Hadrian, and so advanced under his instruction, that not only himself became famous as a teacher, but was also the first Englishman who ventured on publishing books. According to the testimony of Bede, he was a man of wide and varied learning, a brilliant speaker, and wonderfully well read both in ecclesiastical and worldly writers.
He read often, and prayed constantly, so that, to use his own expression, whilst he read, he seemed to hear God speaking to him, ane whilst he prayed, himself did speak to God there present. He was indifferent to hunger, and careless about money. Further, he as far as possible remained inside his monastery, where he proclaimed an unceasing war against idleness and desire. However, when a Church Synod had discussed the corrupt doctrines of the British Christians, and had come to the unanimous conclusion that it was better to lead the schismatics by reason than to drive them by force, Aldhelm took upon himself the task of confuting their errors. This he did by writing a book, which was the means of leading back many of the wanderers into the bosom of the Universal Church.
After the death of Saint Hedda, Bishop among the West-Saxons, Aldhelm was induced, against his own wishes, to accept the See of Sherborne. When he entered on this sphere of duty, he already felt that the end of his life was near, and, to make the bst of what time remained, he preached day and night, visited about his diocese, and practiced fasting, and the like, as much as in the prime of his life. He died four years after his consecation as bishop, in the year of our Lord's Incarnation 709, and was bruied in the Church of Saint Michael the Archangel at Malmesbury.
English Saint of the Week ~ Not at all Obscure
May 26th
St. Augustine, First Archbishop of Canterbury
Double of II Class
Collect
O GOD, who by the preaching and miracles of blessed Augustine thy Confessor and Bishop, hast caused the light of the true Fiath to shine forth among the peoples of England: grant that by his intercession the hearts of them that are gone astray may return to the unity of they truth; and that we may dwell together in peace according to thy will. Through...
For the Legend
Augustine, a monk of the Lateran monastery in Rome, was sent by Gregory the Great to England with forty other monks as companions, in the year 597, to convert that nation to Christ. At that time King Ethelbert held the chief power in Kent, and, hearing the reason why Augustine came, he invited him and his companions to Canterbury, the chief city of his kingdom, where he generously gave him permission to remain and preach Christ. The holy man, for that reason, built an oratory near Canterbury, where he lived for some time, imitating with his companions the apostolic way of living.
His preaching of heavenly doctrine, confirmed by many miracles and the example of his life, so softened the hearts of the islanders as to draw many of them to the Christian faith, and finally he baptized the king himself, with a great number of his people, to the great joy of his wife, Queen Bertha, who was a Christian. One Christmas day, when he had baptized more than ten thousand in the bed of the river at York, it is related that those who were suffering from any disease received health of body and soul together. He was consecrated bishop by order of Gregory, and fixed his see at Canterbury in the church which he built in honour of the Saviour, where he placed monks to help him in his work. He also built in the suburbs a monastery of St. Peter, which was afterwards called by his own name. The same Pope Gregory granted him the use of the pallium, and the power to organize the ecclesiastical hierarchy in England, sending him a new band of helpers, namely Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus, and Rufinianus.
Having arranged the affairs of his church, Augustine held a synod with the bishops and doctors of the ancient Britons, who had long been at variance with the Roman Church in the celebration of Easter and other rites. But since he could not move them, either by the authority of the apostolic see or by miracles, to put an end to these variations, in a prophetic spirit he foretold their ruin. At length, after having endured many difficulties for Christ, and having become noted for miracles, when he had placed Mellitus in charge of the church of London, Justus of that of Rochester, and Laurence in charge of his own church, he passed to heaven on the 26th day of May, in the reign of Ethelbert, and was buried in the monastery of St. Peter, which thereafter became the burying-place of the bishops of Canterbury and of some kings. The English people honoured his memory with fervent zeal ; and the Supreme Pontiff Leo XIII extended his Office and Mass to the universal Church.
V. Tu autem, Dómine, miserére nobis.
R. Deo grátias.
Warren
often a pest, sometimes clever.
The junk shortage
I was shocked (shocked!) to speak with someone, this last week, who had recently been in Hong Kong. He told me that he had seen a grand total of one (1) traditional Chinese junk in the Victoria harbour, while looking around.
In Hong Kong in the early 1970s, the harbour was still crowded with these beautiful vessels, and as you worked your way around the other coasts of the Crown Colony (as it then still was), you could find dozens of types of hulls and rigging, at every conceivable scale, up to a freighter I once spotted with at least six masts. I had an American friend, who was living aboard one of them with his Cantonese mistress. It was more a moored houseboat than a sea-going vessel, but it could still limp around. Paradise aboard such a craft -- enginelessly rolling and pitching in the water.
To be free of the noise of engines: think of that.
A small, but passage-making junk would be, I have long thought, the perfect vessel to take solo not only around the world, but up canals and rivers. Not exceptionally fast, but I have never favoured rapid circumnavigations. (You miss so much cultural detail in the Space Shuttle.)
It is a boat without a keel, with a fairly flat bottom, shallow of draft and suitable for beaching. Bulkheads divide the holds into watertight compartments; very hard to sink. (Rides like a cork up the combers; all you need is sea legs.) Ladle water into one of these compartments, and you can keep live fish slapping about inside.
The bulkheads brace a wooden hull that makes a hard nut to crack, while tying in the footings of the masts, obviating the need for external stays. The rigging is thus kept childishly simple, and in a rush the sails can be pulled right off the halyards. These sails are battened with bamboo, needing no yards. They can thus be made of cheap sheeting, and repaired with the humblest patching; without hurry, for the battens confine the rips and holes.
Westerners used to giggle at the high, wide stern of a Chinese junk, the forward rake of the masts, and barn-door rudders. The ship seems to be riding down, into the sea. But the arrangement makes sense. It gives a view from the tiller. It allows the vessel to drift harmlessly in a gale, by swivelling its head automatically into the wind, like an inerrant compass. And it will not be pooped in a following sea.
But all of these advantages -- aspects of which Westerners studied and copied into their own sailing rigs over several centuries -- become either irrelevant, or disadvantageous, once a motor is installed, or all handling qualities are sacrificed for speed.
Let me say again what I’ve said before: the whole world is going to hell. Now, in Hong Kong, you have essentially Western over-power boats, including harbour cruise ships decked out tastelessly to look chinoise, but with all the details monstrously wrong, and strictly for tourists. Same story up and down the China coast, according to my other informants.
Junk-rigging itself survives and flourishes on some of the swankest yachts, but the ancient vessel was a whole creature, a perfect unity of its parts, quiet and at peace with itself like the dhows of the Arabs; and like a Micronesian proa, at one with its crew.
A priest of my acquaintance sagely observed, of the now junkless China seas: “It is the universal and homogenous world state with its grasping tentacles again. Maybe that means old junks can now be had cheap.”
Note, they used to be free. You could go to the South China Sea and feast your eyes on junks; to any Far Eastern port. You could insinuate yourself aboard one, by feigning a friendship that might deepen into truth. But now, although perhaps cheap if you can find one, you will have to pay, to put just one proper junk in the water. In other words: Everything that used to be abundant and free, we now have to pay to get just one!
I am totally and unalterably opposed to socialism in any form. But I’m not very happy with capitalism, either, or the tyranny of “progress.” Humans are the problem behind all the systems. They yearn pathetically for cheap comforts, for the easy way out. They all want hot showers, all the time. They all want someone else to pay. I am not an environmentalist either, I carry no brief against comfort, per se, for my propensity is to moralism, not scientism.
Beauty, truth, the good, do not come into the human view except on condition of simplicity of life. And this is the very condition the "universal and homogenous world state" is in the business of eradicating.
Moreover, one becomes acclimatized to luxury, and one will never know the pleasure of a hot shower, or a full meal, if one has never done without them. So that even on grounds of sensuality, “modern convenience” is a mistake. A lethal mistake, when we lose the ability to cope with both major and minor inconveniences.
I have no brief against high technology, either, when it can be isolated for a specific use; only against the technology that slips from our hands as a tool, and pulls us into its maw from dependency, so that we no longer rule the machine, and the machine first rules, and finally consumes us. I'm against machines with skills, and people without them.
What is my solution for the drift of the age? I have no solution, better than to write a junk column from time to time. And to observe that we are creating a world, in which those who love liberty long chiefly for the past.
David Warren
The junk shortage
I was shocked (shocked!) to speak with someone, this last week, who had recently been in Hong Kong. He told me that he had seen a grand total of one (1) traditional Chinese junk in the Victoria harbour, while looking around.
In Hong Kong in the early 1970s, the harbour was still crowded with these beautiful vessels, and as you worked your way around the other coasts of the Crown Colony (as it then still was), you could find dozens of types of hulls and rigging, at every conceivable scale, up to a freighter I once spotted with at least six masts. I had an American friend, who was living aboard one of them with his Cantonese mistress. It was more a moored houseboat than a sea-going vessel, but it could still limp around. Paradise aboard such a craft -- enginelessly rolling and pitching in the water.
To be free of the noise of engines: think of that.
A small, but passage-making junk would be, I have long thought, the perfect vessel to take solo not only around the world, but up canals and rivers. Not exceptionally fast, but I have never favoured rapid circumnavigations. (You miss so much cultural detail in the Space Shuttle.)
It is a boat without a keel, with a fairly flat bottom, shallow of draft and suitable for beaching. Bulkheads divide the holds into watertight compartments; very hard to sink. (Rides like a cork up the combers; all you need is sea legs.) Ladle water into one of these compartments, and you can keep live fish slapping about inside.
The bulkheads brace a wooden hull that makes a hard nut to crack, while tying in the footings of the masts, obviating the need for external stays. The rigging is thus kept childishly simple, and in a rush the sails can be pulled right off the halyards. These sails are battened with bamboo, needing no yards. They can thus be made of cheap sheeting, and repaired with the humblest patching; without hurry, for the battens confine the rips and holes.
Westerners used to giggle at the high, wide stern of a Chinese junk, the forward rake of the masts, and barn-door rudders. The ship seems to be riding down, into the sea. But the arrangement makes sense. It gives a view from the tiller. It allows the vessel to drift harmlessly in a gale, by swivelling its head automatically into the wind, like an inerrant compass. And it will not be pooped in a following sea.
But all of these advantages -- aspects of which Westerners studied and copied into their own sailing rigs over several centuries -- become either irrelevant, or disadvantageous, once a motor is installed, or all handling qualities are sacrificed for speed.
Let me say again what I’ve said before: the whole world is going to hell. Now, in Hong Kong, you have essentially Western over-power boats, including harbour cruise ships decked out tastelessly to look chinoise, but with all the details monstrously wrong, and strictly for tourists. Same story up and down the China coast, according to my other informants.
Junk-rigging itself survives and flourishes on some of the swankest yachts, but the ancient vessel was a whole creature, a perfect unity of its parts, quiet and at peace with itself like the dhows of the Arabs; and like a Micronesian proa, at one with its crew.
A priest of my acquaintance sagely observed, of the now junkless China seas: “It is the universal and homogenous world state with its grasping tentacles again. Maybe that means old junks can now be had cheap.”
Note, they used to be free. You could go to the South China Sea and feast your eyes on junks; to any Far Eastern port. You could insinuate yourself aboard one, by feigning a friendship that might deepen into truth. But now, although perhaps cheap if you can find one, you will have to pay, to put just one proper junk in the water. In other words: Everything that used to be abundant and free, we now have to pay to get just one!
I am totally and unalterably opposed to socialism in any form. But I’m not very happy with capitalism, either, or the tyranny of “progress.” Humans are the problem behind all the systems. They yearn pathetically for cheap comforts, for the easy way out. They all want hot showers, all the time. They all want someone else to pay. I am not an environmentalist either, I carry no brief against comfort, per se, for my propensity is to moralism, not scientism.
Beauty, truth, the good, do not come into the human view except on condition of simplicity of life. And this is the very condition the "universal and homogenous world state" is in the business of eradicating.
Moreover, one becomes acclimatized to luxury, and one will never know the pleasure of a hot shower, or a full meal, if one has never done without them. So that even on grounds of sensuality, “modern convenience” is a mistake. A lethal mistake, when we lose the ability to cope with both major and minor inconveniences.
I have no brief against high technology, either, when it can be isolated for a specific use; only against the technology that slips from our hands as a tool, and pulls us into its maw from dependency, so that we no longer rule the machine, and the machine first rules, and finally consumes us. I'm against machines with skills, and people without them.
What is my solution for the drift of the age? I have no solution, better than to write a junk column from time to time. And to observe that we are creating a world, in which those who love liberty long chiefly for the past.
David Warren
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Is Heaven Going to be Boring?
A friend and I were discussing the odd and sometimes funny ideas we all tend to develop about heaven. Of course, we all say we want to go to heaven, but is it perhaps mostly because we've got a clearer idea of what hell is like and would like to avoid it?
This clip made me laugh because it really does give a pretty good idea of what we more or less unconsciously think The Afterlife is going to be like.
"He's gone native..."
It's a laugh, but isn't it hard to deny? Don't we all more or less agree with Newman's sentiment. He had a painting in his room of the saints adoring and praising God in heaven and every day when he came back to his room had the same thing to say: "What, still at it?"
I can imagine it pretty well myself: Me arriving in heaven, standing at the back of the crowd of saints all Praising away mightily. I nudge the chap next and whisper, "Err...so. Ummm, This is it then?
"Yes, right of course. Lovely isn't it? Forever and ever..? Well well, you don't say...
...
Any idea when's teatime?"
This clip made me laugh because it really does give a pretty good idea of what we more or less unconsciously think The Afterlife is going to be like.
"He's gone native..."
It's a laugh, but isn't it hard to deny? Don't we all more or less agree with Newman's sentiment. He had a painting in his room of the saints adoring and praising God in heaven and every day when he came back to his room had the same thing to say: "What, still at it?"
I can imagine it pretty well myself: Me arriving in heaven, standing at the back of the crowd of saints all Praising away mightily. I nudge the chap next and whisper, "Err...so. Ummm, This is it then?
"Yes, right of course. Lovely isn't it? Forever and ever..? Well well, you don't say...
...
Any idea when's teatime?"
Friday, May 25, 2007
The Vicar of Bray
...a satirical description of an individual fundamentally changing his principles to remain in ecclesiastical office as external requirements change around him. The religious upheavals in England from 1533 to 1559 and from 1633 to 1715 made it almost impossible for any individual to comply with the successive religious requirements of the state.
A satirical 18th century song, "The Vicar of Bray" recounts the career of a vicar of Bray, Berkshire, towards the end of this period and his contortions of principle in order to retain his ecclesiastic office despite the changes through the course of several monarchs from Charles II to George I.
The Vicar of Bray ~ a short history of English religion.
In good King Charles's golden days,
When Loyalty no harm meant;
A Furious High-Church man I was,
And so I gain'd Preferment.
Unto my Flock I daily Preach'd,
Kings are by God appointed,
And Damn'd are those who dare resist,
Or touch the Lord's Anointed.
And this is law, I will maintain
Unto my Dying Day, Sir.
That whatsoever King may reign,
I will be the Vicar of Bray, Sir!
When Royal James possest the crown,
And popery grew in fashion;
The Penal Law I houted down,
And read the Declaration:
The Church of Rome I found would fit
Full well my Constitution,
And I had been a Jesuit,
But for the Revolution.
And this is Law, &c.
When William our Deliverer came,
To heal the Nation's Grievance,
I turn'd the Cat in Pan again,
And swore to him Allegiance:
Old Principles I did revoke,
Set conscience at a distance,
Passive Obedience is a Joke,
A Jest is non-resistance.
And this is Law, &c.
When Royal Ann became our Queen,
Then Church of England's Glory,
Another face of things was seen,
And I became a Tory:
Occasional Conformists base
I Damn'd, and Moderation,
And thought the Church in danger was,
From such Prevarication.
And this is Law, &c.
When George in Pudding time came o'er,
And Moderate Men looked big, Sir,
My Principles I chang'd once more,
And so became a Whig, Sir.
And thus Preferment I procur'd,
From our Faith's great Defender,
And almost every day abjur'd
The Pope, and the Pretender.
And this is Law, &c.
The Illustrious House of Hannover,
And Protestant succession,
To these I lustily will swear,
Whilst they can keep possession:
For in my Faith, and Loyalty,
I never once will faulter,
But George, my lawful king shall be,
Except the Times shou'd alter.
And this is Law, &c.
The British Musical Miscellany, Volume I, 1734. Text as found in R. S. Crane, A Collection of English Poems 1660-1800
On Neo-Cathism
The Vicar of Bray and I have been discussing the origin of that peculiar phenom, the "neo-Cath". I had been going along with the vague idea that it is an offshoot of what Leo XIII identified as "Americanism" combined with post-Conciliar JPIImania of the young combined with the works of the half-converts like Neuhaus and Hahn combined with a lot of bad rubbishy 'folk' music and 80's pop-psychology.
I proposed the idea that the 'neo' phenom did not really come into things in England since there had ben no Neuhaus/Weigel/Hahn/Steubenville to get it all started and that the whole thing rested on the foundation of the political neo-con movement that started out (yes, not making it up,) Trotskyite. I don't think there would be any neo-Caths if there were no Buckley's etc. to give them a boost. And England's political history is very different from that of the US. I contend that there are really only two kinds over there. Marxist/sodomy-loving/feminazi anti-Catholics, (what we like to politely call "liberals") and Trads. The former having control of the institutions of the Church and the latter living like Old Narnians, mostly in hiding, and under the strict limits of theedict of toleration the 1971 indult. I don't think there are many neo's in England.
But the Vicar is quite a bit smarter than me knows more Things and has read more Books. He writes:
I have been asking myself the question whether the phenomenon of the Neo-caths is uniquely an American one. Or, what is the origin of the Neo-caths? On reflection I think we must lay the blame squarely at the feet of Pope Paul VI. Towards the end of his pontificate he began favouring the sort of neo-patristic scholar who was also later advanced under the pontificate of John Paul II and ultimately ascended to the throne of St Peter with Pope Benedict XVI.
What Paul VI wanted was something, not traditional or neo-scholastic, that would put a brake on the inrushing hurricane of the modern world without initiating a reaction in favour of what most were so relieved to be rid of: hence, the neo-Cath. They were originally the scholars who migrated from the journal Concilium to the new journal Communio, "liberals" before the Council who were beginning to have doubts about where it was all going. And isn't a "neo-con" famously defined as a "liberal who has been mugged by reality."
Rome today is certainly rife with neo-Caths and modernist liberals, the twin forms in which the Council manifested itself and will continue to manifest itself until a new theological paradigm arises. (Hint: it will not be neo-scholasticism which was already fatally infected with modernity. Etienne Gilson and other medievalists demonstrated this, alas.)
Are there, then, more trads in England and, if so, why? There may be, although "more" is a very relative term indeed. They seem to be the same bunch of friends that keeps showing up on the internet. But it is plausible, not because England had no links with the American neo-cons (they did, in fact: what else was Margaret Thatcher, e.g.?) but because the English are (I would say rightly) somewhat squeamish about the continental philosophy that presently accompanies the neo-patristic synthesis.
I proposed the idea that the 'neo' phenom did not really come into things in England since there had ben no Neuhaus/Weigel/Hahn/Steubenville to get it all started and that the whole thing rested on the foundation of the political neo-con movement that started out (yes, not making it up,) Trotskyite. I don't think there would be any neo-Caths if there were no Buckley's etc. to give them a boost. And England's political history is very different from that of the US. I contend that there are really only two kinds over there. Marxist/sodomy-loving/feminazi anti-Catholics, (what we like to politely call "liberals") and Trads. The former having control of the institutions of the Church and the latter living like Old Narnians, mostly in hiding, and under the strict limits of the
But the Vicar is quite a bit smarter than me knows more Things and has read more Books. He writes:
I have been asking myself the question whether the phenomenon of the Neo-caths is uniquely an American one. Or, what is the origin of the Neo-caths? On reflection I think we must lay the blame squarely at the feet of Pope Paul VI. Towards the end of his pontificate he began favouring the sort of neo-patristic scholar who was also later advanced under the pontificate of John Paul II and ultimately ascended to the throne of St Peter with Pope Benedict XVI.
What Paul VI wanted was something, not traditional or neo-scholastic, that would put a brake on the inrushing hurricane of the modern world without initiating a reaction in favour of what most were so relieved to be rid of: hence, the neo-Cath. They were originally the scholars who migrated from the journal Concilium to the new journal Communio, "liberals" before the Council who were beginning to have doubts about where it was all going. And isn't a "neo-con" famously defined as a "liberal who has been mugged by reality."
Rome today is certainly rife with neo-Caths and modernist liberals, the twin forms in which the Council manifested itself and will continue to manifest itself until a new theological paradigm arises. (Hint: it will not be neo-scholasticism which was already fatally infected with modernity. Etienne Gilson and other medievalists demonstrated this, alas.)
Are there, then, more trads in England and, if so, why? There may be, although "more" is a very relative term indeed. They seem to be the same bunch of friends that keeps showing up on the internet. But it is plausible, not because England had no links with the American neo-cons (they did, in fact: what else was Margaret Thatcher, e.g.?) but because the English are (I would say rightly) somewhat squeamish about the continental philosophy that presently accompanies the neo-patristic synthesis.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
We thought he was cool
It just goes to show that it is possible for a person really to change with the help of grace.
(ohdearohdear...We. Thought. He. Was. Cool. I'm not kidding. Ugh.)
(ohdearohdear...We. Thought. He. Was. Cool. I'm not kidding. Ugh.)
More English Nuns
Found some nice looking nuns at Oxforshire.
If I ever get to go there, I'll be sure to avoid them carefully. Don't want to spoil a good first impression.
Nice house
Look quite nunny too...
They make recordings of religious books for blind people. Not a bad thing to do. Beats advocating for sea turtles.
If I ever get to go there, I'll be sure to avoid them carefully. Don't want to spoil a good first impression.
Nice houseLook quite nunny too...
They make recordings of religious books for blind people. Not a bad thing to do. Beats advocating for sea turtles.
St Cecilia's Guild provides a free audio-book library lending service to the visually impaired. Most of the titles on offer are of a religious or spiritual nature, but membership of the Guild is open to all the visually impaired, irrespective of religious belief or affiliation. ..Currently there are about 535 titles on offer – approximately 3250 cassettes. An enthusiastic team of volunteer readers is helping to add new titles, while other volunteers try to keep us on top of the admin – with mixed success. Rewinding and repairing tapes is a regular chore. This equipment was the last word in white-hot technology in about 1970!
Kathy Shaidle Murders Star Reporter
Oh. My. GOSH!
I'm thinking that poor little creature just started sizzling, clacking its mandibles together in a weak and pathetic way and then just flipped up on the back of its glossy little carapace with it's spindly legs clawing uselessly at the air.
Kathy is asked why the Charter can't just tell those Catholics to ordain women already. "Why does 5,000 years of religious tradition trump equality rights?"
and gives her the answer at point blank range and both barrels. No phial of Galadriel is necessary.
It's simply self-evident that 5000 year old Christian and Jewish beliefs should automatically trump a shabby, uninspired Trudeaupian document thrown together by a bunch of Marxist and semi-Marxist lawyers back in 1982. Or would be if our culture wasn't the embarrassing, subliterate mess it has become. (Since Islam, Buddhism and all other religions are false, man-made systems, their conformity to the Charter doesn't matter, unless that document can somehow be used to annoy and constrain radical Muslim terrorists, in which case I am all for it.)
Too many godless, stuck-up Frenchmen were involved for the Charter to be anything but a joke. It doesn't even recognize the right to private property, thanks to the interference of Ed Broadbent of the Ash Heap of History Party, to say nothing of rights to even basic self-defence.
(Although miraculously, our robed masters have discovered rights to baby killing and state sanctioned sodomy in this Charter, using their superior morality and mentality! We mere mortals can only prostrate ourselves before such Supreme beings...)
...and keeps going!
...
OK, I give. You win the right-wing-crazy-lady blogger award of the week. I bow to your greatness.
I'm thinking that poor little creature just started sizzling, clacking its mandibles together in a weak and pathetic way and then just flipped up on the back of its glossy little carapace with it's spindly legs clawing uselessly at the air.
Kathy is asked why the Charter can't just tell those Catholics to ordain women already. "Why does 5,000 years of religious tradition trump equality rights?"
and gives her the answer at point blank range and both barrels. No phial of Galadriel is necessary.
It's simply self-evident that 5000 year old Christian and Jewish beliefs should automatically trump a shabby, uninspired Trudeaupian document thrown together by a bunch of Marxist and semi-Marxist lawyers back in 1982. Or would be if our culture wasn't the embarrassing, subliterate mess it has become. (Since Islam, Buddhism and all other religions are false, man-made systems, their conformity to the Charter doesn't matter, unless that document can somehow be used to annoy and constrain radical Muslim terrorists, in which case I am all for it.)
Too many godless, stuck-up Frenchmen were involved for the Charter to be anything but a joke. It doesn't even recognize the right to private property, thanks to the interference of Ed Broadbent of the Ash Heap of History Party, to say nothing of rights to even basic self-defence.
(Although miraculously, our robed masters have discovered rights to baby killing and state sanctioned sodomy in this Charter, using their superior morality and mentality! We mere mortals can only prostrate ourselves before such Supreme beings...)
...and keeps going!
...
OK, I give. You win the right-wing-crazy-lady blogger award of the week. I bow to your greatness.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Just Wait 'Til You See What We Like to Do to Peta People
Heh heh heh...
This just in from an avid (pun?) fan of birds, Benedictine monks and Pope Benedict's theological speculations.
Those nasty monks!
I bet they have the Novus Ordo Mass too!
This just in from an avid (pun?) fan of birds, Benedictine monks and Pope Benedict's theological speculations.
Those nasty monks!
I bet they have the Novus Ordo Mass too!
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
The "I've Got Better Pics than You" Blogger Game...
is always more fun when you cheat.
Fr. Tim has just posted his pics of the CIEL Mass at the London Orat.
He might live in London, but I've got better spies.
Heh.
(too bad I have to smallen them down. They're great pics and give a wonderful idea of how enormous the London Orat is...uurrgghhhh....wrong country wrong country!)
Procession (great birettas.)
Those Oratorians really know how to handle a humeral veil.
Offertory
Consecration
Elevation
Fr. Tim has just posted his pics of the CIEL Mass at the London Orat.
He might live in London, but I've got better spies.
Heh.
(too bad I have to smallen them down. They're great pics and give a wonderful idea of how enormous the London Orat is...uurrgghhhh....wrong country wrong country!)
Procession (great birettas.)
Those Oratorians really know how to handle a humeral veil.
Offertory
Consecration
Elevation
Juicy New UK legislation
I must have recovered (finally) from the horrors of the battle of C-13, because I haven't been so excited by a bit of terrifying legislation in years.
And hooooo BOY is this a nasty one! I feel like an entomologist who has discovered a brand new species of extremely poisonous and noxious spider and is wondering how to turn the horrible thing into undying fame and glory in the geeky bug-scientist club.
A little email from Anthony Ozimic gives the barest of first-glance notes and I can feel myself almost jumping up and down with glee. Who says Britannia doesn't rule any more?
(1) the destruction of human life through greater facilitation of embryo experimentation, including research involving the genetic modification of embryos ('designer babies');
(2) fatal discrimination against the disabled and the sick through greater facilitation of PGD;
(3) the degrading of human life through the creation of human embryos with animal genes, and by a definition which defines man as an animal;
(4) the undermining of the family through the re-defining of the parent, father, mother etc as if these were merely terms denoting changeable social and legal constructs ("agreed father", "agreed mother") rather than unchangeable natural realities with social and legal responsibilities;
(5) the enshrining in primary legislation of anti-life practices currently only permitted indirectly via secondary legislation: human cloning, tissue typing of saviour siblings, sex selection on medical grounds."
And hooooo BOY is this a nasty one! I feel like an entomologist who has discovered a brand new species of extremely poisonous and noxious spider and is wondering how to turn the horrible thing into undying fame and glory in the geeky bug-scientist club.
A little email from Anthony Ozimic gives the barest of first-glance notes and I can feel myself almost jumping up and down with glee. Who says Britannia doesn't rule any more?
(1) the destruction of human life through greater facilitation of embryo experimentation, including research involving the genetic modification of embryos ('designer babies');
(2) fatal discrimination against the disabled and the sick through greater facilitation of PGD;
(3) the degrading of human life through the creation of human embryos with animal genes, and by a definition which defines man as an animal;
(4) the undermining of the family through the re-defining of the parent, father, mother etc as if these were merely terms denoting changeable social and legal constructs ("agreed father", "agreed mother") rather than unchangeable natural realities with social and legal responsibilities;
(5) the enshrining in primary legislation of anti-life practices currently only permitted indirectly via secondary legislation: human cloning, tissue typing of saviour siblings, sex selection on medical grounds."
Sign
Any Anglos who haven't signed up yet?
With the object of publicising the serious historical injustice done to a major British faith group, thereby strengthening the foundations for dialogue between faith communities.
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to make a statement of regret concerning the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Submitted by Leo Walsh
I went down the list and discovered quite a few names of people I knew, either personally or as fellow bloggers.
We comment all the time on the microscopicness of the believing/practising Catholic world. More proof every day that you have to be nice to everyone all the time, no matter how cranky you are feeling, because names get around.
With the object of publicising the serious historical injustice done to a major British faith group, thereby strengthening the foundations for dialogue between faith communities.
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to make a statement of regret concerning the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Submitted by Leo Walsh
I went down the list and discovered quite a few names of people I knew, either personally or as fellow bloggers.
We comment all the time on the microscopicness of the believing/practising Catholic world. More proof every day that you have to be nice to everyone all the time, no matter how cranky you are feeling, because names get around.
Dame Dysobedyent
An instructive 15th century Ynglysh poem:
Why I Can't Be a Nun poses a dilemma: how should a young woman, devoted to piety, live a good life if the institutions originally designed to enhance her spiritual welfare have become residences of sin rather than devotion? The poem reflects poignantly the decline of the conventual life from the point of view of one strongly committed to fifteenth-century spiritual values. The poem is found in a single manuscript, British Library Cotton Vespasian D.ix, 177a-182b, 190a-190b, where it is tucked in amongst treatises concerned with issues of reform - verses of the Lollards against clerical abuses; verses against the Lollards; verses against heretics in Bohemia; verses in praise of the Virgin Mary; and so on. Although the poem attacks sharply enough the failures of ecclesiastical institutions, it does so more in the tone of elegy than caustic satire. The implication is that if nuns were to reform, the persona might find life in a convent congenial to her spiritual life. But since that is unlikely she attempts to work out a personal rule that, though it might be criticized by skeptical men as a dream fantasy, would satisfy her religious longings.
Why I Can't Be a Nun
And whan they had resceyved her charge,
They spared nether mud ne myer,
But roden over Inglonde brode and large,
To seke owte nunryes in every schyre.
Her hertys were alwey on her hyre,
And that scheude they wel in her workyng,
For they were as ferfent as ony fyre
To execute her lordys byddyng.
And schortly to sey, no man abode
That on thys erand schulde be sent.
Into dyvers schyres dyvers men rode,
And one of hem began in Kent.
They token her leve and forthe they went;
And to eche of hem was geven grete hyre,
And therefore they were so fervent
To seke owte nunryes in every schyre.
But the townes names I ovyr pas,
For and I schulde telle alle in fere,
Hyt were a long tale for to here.
But on a boke I dare well swere,
In gode feythe and on womanhode,
None was forgete, fer ne nere,
Thorowgh Ynglond long and brode.
But when they were com home agene
That roden owte message to bere,
Than my fader was fulle fayne
And callede hem to hym alle in fere
And seyde, ``How sped ye there ye were,
How faren the nunnes that ye cam tylle?''
``Welle, syr,'' quod they, ``and made us gode chere,
And yowre desyre they wolle fulfylle.''
``I thanke hem seres, iwys,'' quod he,
``Now am I glade, so God me spede.''
And than my fader loked on me,
``Dameselle,'' quod he, ``now take gode hede,
For yowre entent God do yow mede.
Ye seyde ye wolde be a nune,
But ye may not fulfylle in dede
The purpose that ye have begun.''
``Fader,'' quod I, and sore I wept,
``Wolle ye me here wyth wordys few?
I trow my wylle schalle be accept
Before owre sovereyne Lorde Ihesu,
And to Him I am and wolle be trew
Wythe alle my wylle and obcervaunce,
And I wolle not chonge Hym for no new,
For I love Hym wythe owten variaunce.
``And trewly me repenteth fulle sore
That my wylle may not be had.''
Than my fader lowgh and seyde no more,
But went hys way and was fulle glade.
But than morned I, and was ryght sad,
And in my hert I was fulle wo:
``Alas,'' I thowght, ``my chawnce ys bad,
I trow that fortune be my fo.''
Than hyt befelle in a mornyng of May,
In the same yere as I seyde before,
My pencyfness wolde not away
But ever waxed more and more,
I walked alone and wepte sore
Wythe syhyngys and mornyng chere,
I seyde but lytylle and thowght the more,
For what I thowght no man myght here.
And in a gardyne I sportyd me
Every day at dyvers howres,
To beholde and for to see
The swete effecte of Aprelle flowres,
The fayre herbys and gentyl flowrys
And birde syngyng on every spray,
But my longyng and my dolowrys
For alle thys sport wolde not away.
The byrdys sate on the bowes grene
And syngyng fulle meryly and made gode chere;
Her federys were fulle fayre and schene
And alle they maden mery in her manere.
Than went I into a fayre herbere,
And set me on my kneys allone,
To God I made my prayowre,
And on thys wyse I made my mone:
``Lorde God, that alle vertu hast
And haddyst wythowten begynnyng,
Kepe me that I may lyve chaste
For the corupcion of synnyng;
For thowgh my fadyr and alle my kyn
Forsake me thus in necessite,
Yyt I hope suche grace to wyn
That owre Lord Ihesu wolle resceyve me.
``Sovereyne Lord omnipotent,
Now be my comfort, swete Ihesu.
Before The alle thyng ys present,
Alle that evyr was, and alle that ys,
Alle that schalle be aftyr thys.
Thow knowest alle thyng bothe most and lest.
Now Ihesu kyng of Hevyn blys,
Wysse me thy servant what ys best.
``For now I am alle desolate,
And of gode cownesayle destitute.
Lord, to my mornyng be mediate,
For Thow art oonly my refute,
To The for comfort I make my sute,
To have that joy that lastythe ay,
For her love that bare that frute,
Swete Ihesu, miserere mei!
``I can no more, but trust in The
In whom ys alle wysdom and wyt;
And thow wost what ys best for me,
For alle thyng in thy syght ys pyt.
Loo here I thyne handmayde syt
Dyspysede and in poynte to spylle.
My cawse to The, Lorde, I commytte:
Now do to me aftyr Thy wylle.''
And at that worde forfeynte I fylle
Among the herbes fresche and fyne;
Unto a benche of camomylle
My wofulle hede I dyd inclyne,
And so I lay in fulle grete pyne,
And cowde not cese but alwey wepe,
And sore I syghed many a tyme
And prayed my lorde he wolde me kepe.
And at the last a sclepe was ibrowght
And alle alone in this gardyne.
And than com a fayre lady, as me thowght,
And called me by name - ``Kateryne,''
And seyde, ``Awake, dowghtyr myne,
And to my talkyng take entent.
To bryng thyne hert owte of pyne,
And to comfort the, now have I ment.
``Kateryne,'' sche sayde, ``loke up and have.''
And than I behelde welle her fygure -
I pray to God in Hevyn her save -
For hyt was the most godely creature
That ever I saw, I yow ensuer,
As I wolle telle yow or I go,
For I behelde welle her feture,
Her bewté, and her clothyng also.
And me thowght I was as wakyng tho,
As I am now wythowten lesyng;
And I behelde that lady so
That I forgate alle my mornyng,
For hyt was to me a wondyr thyng
That lady to beholden and see:
Sche was so fayre wythowten lesyng
Bothe of clothyng and of bewté,
Thys that was so godely arrayed.
Sche comfortythe me in dyvers wyse,
And spake to me in dyvers wyse,
And bad me anone I schulde aryse.
And me thowght I rose and knelyd thryes,
And seyde to her wythe grete reverence,
``What ys yowr name, dame empryse?''
Sche seyde, ``My name ys Experience.''
``And, dowghter, my techyng may not fayle,
For what so I teche, hyt ys fulle trew,
And now at thys tyme for thyne avayle
I am com hedyr on the to rew;
And wythe the help of Cryste Ihesu
I hope hyt schalle be for the best,
For suche thynges as I schalle the schew,
I tro hyt schalle set thyne hert in rest.''
``Thanke yow, lady,'' quod I than,
``And thereof hertely I yow pray;
And I, as lowly as I can,
Wolle do yow servyse nyght and day;
And what ye byd me do or say
To yow I promyt obedyence,
And bryng me owte of thys carefulle way,
My gode dere Lady Experience.''
Than me thowght sche toke me by the honde
As I knelyd upon my kne
And up anone sche bad me ryse
And on thys wyse seyde to me:
``Kateryne, thys day schalt thow see
An howse of wommen reguler,
And diligent loke that thow be,
And note ryght welle what thow seest there.''
Than me thowght sche led me forthe a pace
Thorowgh a medow fayre and grene,
And sone sche browght me to a place,
In erthe ys none so fayre I wene,
Of ryalle byldyng so I mene,
Hyt schyned wythowte so fayre and clere,
But syn had made hyt fulle unclene
Wythin, as ye schalle aftyr here.
``What place ys thys that stondythe hyre,''
Quod I to hyre that dyd me lyde.
``Kateryne,'' sche sayd, ``we wyl go nere,
And what you seyst, take good hede.''
Than at the gates in we yede,
Boldly as thowgh we had be at home,
And I thowght, ``Now Chryst us spede.''
Than to the cloyster sone we com,
For hyt was a howse of nunes in trewthe,
Of dyvers orderys bothe olde and yong,
But not welle governede, and that was rowthe,
Aftyr the rewle of sad levyng.
For where that selfe wylle ys reyngyng,
The whyche causethe dyscorde and debate,
And resun hathe none enteryng,
That howse may not be fortunate.
For Arystotelle, who so redythe,
In the fyrst boke of hys Moralité,
Playnely seyethe that every man nedethe
To be ware of the unresonabylité
That comethe of the sensualité,
And not hys bestely condiciones sewe,
But let resun have the soveraynté,
And so he schalle purches vertu.''
But what in that place I saw
That to religion schulde not long,
Peraventure ye wolde desyre to know,
And who was dwellyng hem among.
Sum what schalle I telle you wyth tong,
And sum what cownseyle kepe I schalle,
And so I was tawght whan I was yong,
To here and se, and sey not alle.
But there was a lady, that hygh Dame Pride,
In grete reputacion they her toke;
And pore Dame Mekenes sate be syde,
To her unnethys ony wolde loke,
But alle as who seythe I her forsoke
And set not by her nether most ne lest.
Dame Ypocryte loke upon a boke
And bete her selfe upon the brest.
On every syde than lokede up I,
And fast I cast myne ye abowte.
Yf I cowde se, beholde, or a-spy,
I wolde have sene Dame Devowte.
And sche was but wythe few of that rowght,
For Dame Sclowthe and Dame Veyne Glory
By vyolens had put her owte;
And than in my hert I was fulle sory.
But Dame Envy was there dwellyng
The whyche can sethe stryfe in every state,
And another lady was there wonnyng
That hyght Dame Love Unordynate;
In that place bothe erly and late
Dame Lust, Dame Wantowne, and Dame Nyce,
They ware so there enhabyted, I wate,
That few token hede to Goddys servyse.
Dame Chastyte, I dare welle say,
In that covent had lytylle chere,
But oft in poynte to go her way,
Sche was so lytelle beloved there;
But sum her loved in hert fulle dere,
And there weren that dyd not so,
And sum set no thyng by her,
But gafe her gode leve for to go.
And at that place I saw muche more,
But alle I thenk not to dyscrye,
But I wolle sey as I seyde before,
And yt ys a poynte of curtesy:
For whoso chateryt lyke a py
And tellethe alle that he herethe and seethe,
He schalle be put owte of company,
And scho the gose, thus wysdum us lerethe.
And in that place fulle besyly
I walked whyle I myght enduer,
And saw how Dame Envy
In every corner had grete cure;
Sche bare the keyes of many a dore.
And than Experience to me came
And seyde, ``Kateryne, I the ensuer,
Thys lady ys but seldom fro home.''
Than Dame Pacience and Dame Charyte
In that nunry fulle sore I sowght;
I wolde fayne have wyst where they had be,
For in that covent were they nowght;
But an owte chamber for hem was wrowght,
And there they dweldyn wythowtyn stryfe,
And many gode women to them sowght
And were fulle wyfulle of her lyfe. 1
Also another lady there was
That hyght Dame Dysobedyent,
And sche set nowght by her Priores.
And than me thowght alle was schent,
For sugettys schulde evyr be dylygent
Bothe in worde, in wylle, and dede,
To plese her sovereynes wyth gode entent,
And hem obey, ellys God forbede.
And of alle the defawtes that I cowde se
Thorowgh schewyng of Experience,
Hyt was one of the most that grevyd me,
The wantyng of obedyence.
For hyt schulde be chese in consciens,
Alle relygius rule wytnesseth the same,
And when I saw her in no reverence,
I myght no lenger abyde for schame.
For they setten not by obedyence,
And than for wo myne hert gan blede,
Ne they hadden her in no reverence,
But few or none to her toke hede.
And than I sped me thens a grete spede,
That covent was so fulle of syn.
And than Experience dyd me lede
Owte at the gates there we com in.
And when we were both wythowte,
Upon the gras we setten us downe,
And then we behelde the place abowte,
And there we talkeden as us lest.
And than I prayed Experience for to have wyst
Why sche schewed me thys nunery.
Sche seyde, ``Now we bene here in rest,
I thenk for to tellen the why.
``Thy fyrst desyre and thyne entent
Was to bene a nune professede,
And for thy fader wolde not consent.
Thyne hert wyth mornyng was sore oppressede,
And thow wyst not what to do was best;
And I seyde, I wolde cese thy grevawnce,
And now for the most part in every cost
I have schewed the nunnes governawnce.
``For as thow seest wythin yonder walle
Suche bene the nunnes in every warde,
As for the most part, I say not alle,
God forbede, for than hyt were harde,
For sum bene devowte, holy, and towarde,
And holden the ryght way to blysse;
And sum bene feble, lewde, and frowarde,
Now God amend that ys amys!
``And now, Kateryne, I have alle do
For thy comfort that longeth to me,
And now let us aryse and go
Unto the herber there I com to the.''
Than in thys herber sche let be me.
I thanked her wyth grete reverence,
I pray to God i-blessyd be sche,
Thys fayre Lady Experience.
And whan sche was gone, I wakede anone.
And I thowght how I may governed be,
For nun wold I nevere be none,
For suche defawtes that I have see.
But yyf they myght amendyd be,
And forsake her syn both day and nyght,
God yyf me grace that day to se,
And ellys hyt wolle not be a ryght.
But here peraventure sum man wolde say,
And to hys conceyte so hyt schulde seme,
That I forsoke sone a perfyte way
For a fantesy or for a dreme.
For dreme was hyt none, ne fantasye,
Hyt was unto me a gratius mene
[A piece of the manuscript is torn away here, bearing the last line of this stanza, all of the next, and part of the one following.]
Holy wryt w . . .
Pleynely go rede hyt wh . . .
And hyt ys wretyn in Genesye,
In the fowre and thyrty chapytylle,
How Dyna, for sche bode not stylle
But went owte to see thynges in veyne,
Sche was defowled agenyst her wylle,
And therefore thowsandys of peple were sclayn.
Yowre barbe, your wymppylle and your vayle,
Yowre mantelle and yowre devowte clothyng,
Maketh men wythowten fayle
To wene ye be holy in levyng.
And so hyt ys an holy thyng
To bene in habyte reguler.
Than, as by owtewarde aray in semyng,
Beth so wythin, my ladyes dere.
A fayre garlond of yve grene
Whyche hangeth at a taverne dore,
Hyt ys a false token as I wene,
But yf there be wyne gode and sewer;
Ryght so but ye your vyces forbere,
And let alle lewde custom be broken,
So God me spede, I yow ensewer,
Ellys yowre habyte ys no trew token. 2
[Again the manuscript is damaged and the better part of a stanza missing.]
. . . yng . . . nde gode levyng,
. . . yf they be wythin the contrary
In Holy Schrypture wythowte lesyng
They bene called the chyldryn of false ypocrasy.
Now, ladyes, taketh gode hede to thys exhortacion
That I have tawght yow in thys lore,
And beholde the gode conversacion
Of gode women here before,
Fulle holy vyrgynes many a store,
The whyche levedyn here relygyisly,
And now in joy and blysse therefore
They have possession endlesly:
Seynte Clare and Seynte Edyth also,
Seynte Scolastica and Seynte Brigytte,
Seynte Radegunde, and many mo
That weren professed in nunnes habyte.
They fulle besy were wyth alle her wytte
To be ware of syn, and fle there froo,
And now for evyr they bene qwyte
From alle maner sorow and woo,
Seynte Audre, Seynte Freswyth, and Seynte Emerelde,
Seynte Wythbuge and Seynte Myldrede,
Seynte Sexburge and Seynte Ermenylde -
Of alle these holy women we rede.
[The poem breaks off mid-stanza, apparently incomplete.]
Good Things in England
There has to be something.
* ~ * ~ *
Young Catholic Adults looks interesting.
YCA (Young Catholic Adults) was founded on 7th February 2004 at St. Benet’s Hall Oxford. It is a group aimed at youngadults which will have local prayer groups/events combined with national days of recollection/retreats. Our spirituality is based on our traditional Catholic liturgical heritage.
Many groups involving younger Catholics tend to become polarised and argumentative (in part due to a lack of catechesis), therefore YCA has decided to adopt a positive and charitable ethos based on orthodox Catholic teaching. Our role models are St. John Vianney, the English Martyrs and St. Francis de Salle. Also, it was felt that YCA could provide a more contemplative sprituality than other younger Christian groups around at the moment.
What are the aims of Young Catholic Adults? Its aims are:-
To foster authentic Catholc teaching and spirituality
Promote a spirit of charity as practiced by the great saints of the Church such as St. John Vianney St. Francis de Sales and the English Martyrs. It is principally aimed at young adults, but is open to all.
We aim to promote a spirit of beauty and reverence in the Sacred Liturgy. YCA are loyal to the Magisterium and faithful to John Paul II's teaching with regard to Ecclesia Dei (1988), which means that we use the Traditional Mass.
* ~ * ~ *
The Good Counsel Network
Through and with Mary, the Mediatrix of All Graces,
to Mediate the Mission of Motherhood,
in order to save as many babies as possible from abortion,
using the most effective, morally acceptable means,
to reach, inform and help women.
What is The Good Counsel Network?
A life-affirming women’s organisation which offers a free pregnancy test, free advice, medical information, practical help and moral support to women seeking abortion. We reach out to women seeking abortion who have not been informed about the risks to their physical and psychological health and who have not been presented with realistic alternatives to abortion. We deal with the hardest cases of crisis pregnancy every day.
Our work cannot succeed without spiritual help. We aim to have Mass offered every week "for the conversion of all hearts leading to the end of abortion". A list of Masses arranged for the next few months is shown below. This list is not exhaustive: further Masses will be added as they are arranged.
Please, please make every effort to come to these Masses.
Date Time Place
The second Friday of each month 6.30 p.m.
Traditional Rite* Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, London
* Organised by the Latin Mass Society
* ~ * ~ *
Baronius Press
New editions of Robert Hugh Benson, Chesterton, Newman and Gueranger as well as the main works of the Saints and spiritual writers of the past.
At last, trade in your tatty old TAN edition of the Roman Catechism.
Dolorous Dialogues, Dark Nights, and a Douay for every day of the week.
* ~ * ~ *
Latin Language School
at the
Benedictine Study and Arts Centre at Ealing Abbey
Summer Latin Experience
Welcome to the beginning, intermediate and advanced Latin experience. Encounter the living Latin language. Learn Latin from original texts both ancient and modern. Compose your own sentences. Enjoy listening to spoken Latin and speak Latin yourself. Instruction given in English.
No vocabulary cards! No paradigms to memorize! Just the living language to understand, write and speak.
* ~ * ~ *
And, of course,
Ryde.
It's an open and shut case
If you sing Kumbaya on the Ed Sullivan Show, your community will collapse into heresy within a decade. It's an open and shut case for proof of causation. One thing just leads to another.
The Benedictine Sisters of Erie Pennsylvania today:
And their most famous daughter at a conference on the role of the modern prophet in the Church:
mmmm...
could be...
The Benedictine Sisters of Erie Pennsylvania today:
And their most famous daughter at a conference on the role of the modern prophet in the Church:
Could this be the missing link which explains much of the impotence of modern religion? Is recovering the prophetic role a key to church and cultural renewal? Sr. Joan Chittister and Fr. Richard Rohr will use this conference to unpackage the power, the promise, and the possibility of the prophetic vocation today.
mmmm...
could be...
Monday, May 21, 2007
In the WRONG country
What am I doing here again? So...hard...to...remember...
Mass at the London Oratory, one of the few times in ahh...shall we say, recent history...(ahem) that a High Mass has been celebrated there.
Elevation...
Ecce...
Rapt...
Mass at the London Oratory, one of the few times in ahh...shall we say, recent history...(ahem) that a High Mass has been celebrated there.
Elevation...
Ecce...
Rapt...
Dr. Johnson on the Blogging Phenomenon
He didn't think much of it.
* ~ * ~ *
Among those whose reputation is exhausted in a short time by its own luxuriance, are the writers who take advantage of present incidents or characters which strongly interest the passions, and engage universal attention. It is not difficult to obtain readers, when we discuss a question which every one is desirous to understand, which is debated in every assembly, and has divided the nation into parties; or when we diplay the faults or vitues of him whose public conduct has made almost every man his enemy or his friend. To the quick circulation of such productions all the motives of interest and vanity concur; the disputant enlarges his knowledge, the zealot animates his passion, and every man is desirous to inform himself concerning affairs so vehemently agitated and variously represented.
...
Whoever has, at any time, taken occasion to mention him with praise or blame, whoever happens to love or hate any of his adherents, as he wishes to confirm his opinion, and to strengthen his party, will diligently peruse every paper from which he can hope for sentiments like his own...He that shall peruse political pamphlets of any past reign, will wonder why they were so eagerly read, or so loudly praised...
Many of the performances which had power to inflame factions, and fill a kingdom with confusion, have now very little effect upon a frigid critick...
In proportion, as those who write on temporary subjects, are exalted above their merit at first, they are afterwards depressed below it; nor can the brightest elegance of diction or most artful subtilty of reasoning, hope for much esteem from those whose regard is no longer quickened by curiosity or pride.
Gerrans
The village of Gerrens was named after King Gereint of Dumnonia, one of the knights of the Round Table:
(born c.448)
(Welsh-Gereint, Latin-Gerontius, English-Gereint)
The eldest son of King Erbin of Dumnonia. After the death of his his wife, Prince Gerren spent much time at King Arthur's Court, looking for action and adventure. It was during this period that he encountered the Sparrow Hawk Knight and came to marry Lady Enid of Caer-Teim (Cardiff), a story told in the ancient tales of "Erec (alias Gereint) and Enid" and "Geraint mab Erbin". He inherited the Dumnonian throne in c.497 (or 480) and is recorded as one of the great "Fleet Owners" of post-Roman Britain His castle was once called Caer-Gurrel or Fort of the Ship. He died fighting the Saxons with King Arthur at the Battle of Llongborth (Langport, Somerset) around 480/510. This recorded in a long Welsh poem called the "Elegy for Gereint".
A letter survives addressed to him from Aldhelm on the Easter Problem. It is clear that in the later seventh century the British in Cornwall and Devon still observed Easter on the dates that the Celtic church had calculated, at variance with Catholic practice.
Geraint is venerated as a saint, and appears in the Welsh language classic "The Mabiginion".
He was the last recorded king of a unified Dumnonia, with subsequent kings (eg Doniert, Huwell) reigned over a reducing area of influence that eventually encompassed only a part of Cornwall.
* ~ * ~ *
Another site gives us
Originally the village of Curgurrell, a 6th century Welsh king, Gerennius, settled here and changed its name. The present church of St Gerendus dates from the 13th century, though this has apparently been hallowed land since the time of Gerennius. Like many Cornish churches, its mediaeval octagonal spire acts as an important daymark to those navigating the nearby waters.
More St. Anthony's
From The Churches Conservation Trust
St Anthony-in-Roseland:
St Anthony’s stands behind Place, the home of the Spry family, looking across the creek to St Mawes. The church is unusual in that it still has its original mediaeval cruciform plan, despite being extensively restored in the 19th century. Pevsner thought it ‘the best example in the county of what a parish church was like in the 12th and 13th centuries’.
During the 12th century, much of the land at St Anthony was owned by the Augustinian Priory at Plympton, Devon, and it was during this time that the Prior established the church here. It is thought that the fine Norman doorway was brought here from Plympton Priory, probably by sea.
You go in the Norman door. ..
By the 19th century the chancel was in ruins, and Samuel Spry, MP for Bodmin, employed his cousin, the Revd Clement Carlyon, an amateur architect, to oversee the restoration of the church. Carlyon rebuilt the chancel, and installed the wooden roofs, floor tiles and stained glass. He also designed many of the furnishings, including the chunky pulpit and pews, some of which he may have carved himself.
Look out for what appears to be carved woodwork at the top of the walls. In fact it is tin, stained to resemble wood – a fine example of Victorian ingenuity.
In the north transept you can see impressive monuments to members of the Spry family, spanning three centuries. The most noteworthy is to Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Spry who died in 1775.
* ~ * ~ *
Got the Google thing to send me a photo of the placemark.
In the extreme lower left corner, you can see St. Anthony Lighthouse,
which looks much better close up.
Between the church and the coast the first little blue cross marks the beginning of the path to St. Anthony's Head, the same path H.V. Morton must have taken to see the "tiny bay, nestling between two gaunt cliffs."
I imagine the area leading up to the church must be where the little cottages are where he stayed.
St Anthony-in-Roseland:
St Anthony’s stands behind Place, the home of the Spry family, looking across the creek to St Mawes. The church is unusual in that it still has its original mediaeval cruciform plan, despite being extensively restored in the 19th century. Pevsner thought it ‘the best example in the county of what a parish church was like in the 12th and 13th centuries’.
During the 12th century, much of the land at St Anthony was owned by the Augustinian Priory at Plympton, Devon, and it was during this time that the Prior established the church here. It is thought that the fine Norman doorway was brought here from Plympton Priory, probably by sea.
You go in the Norman door. ..
By the 19th century the chancel was in ruins, and Samuel Spry, MP for Bodmin, employed his cousin, the Revd Clement Carlyon, an amateur architect, to oversee the restoration of the church. Carlyon rebuilt the chancel, and installed the wooden roofs, floor tiles and stained glass. He also designed many of the furnishings, including the chunky pulpit and pews, some of which he may have carved himself.
Look out for what appears to be carved woodwork at the top of the walls. In fact it is tin, stained to resemble wood – a fine example of Victorian ingenuity.
In the north transept you can see impressive monuments to members of the Spry family, spanning three centuries. The most noteworthy is to Rear-Admiral Sir Richard Spry who died in 1775.
* ~ * ~ *
Got the Google thing to send me a photo of the placemark.
In the extreme lower left corner, you can see St. Anthony Lighthouse,
which looks much better close up.
Between the church and the coast the first little blue cross marks the beginning of the path to St. Anthony's Head, the same path H.V. Morton must have taken to see the "tiny bay, nestling between two gaunt cliffs."
I imagine the area leading up to the church must be where the little cottages are where he stayed.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
St. Anthony-in-Roseland
Come with me and see something wonderful and sad.
I was just re-reading one of my favorite passages from H.V. Morton's In Search of England, close to the beginning when he enters Cornwall.
"I had no idea where to make for in Cornwall. One road was as good as another. I took the map and one name curled itself round my heart. I do not think that in the whole length and breadth of England there is a more beautiful name. But to fall in love with a name is like falling in love with a voice heard over the telephone. A meeting might prove fatal. But not to risk the...impossible. I whispered it twice, and took the inevitable road to : St. Anthony in Roseland."
* ~ * ~ *
Roseland.
It is a peninsula in Cornwall and looks like one of the lovliest places in the world. Reminds me of...somewhere.
"The parish is named after St Anthony. The Roseland is thought to mean "the land of the promentory" Rhos being the old Cornish for 'Headland'. The village is situated on the Roseland Peninsula to the east of the Carrick Roads and about 9 miles south-west of Tregony. It is not mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086."
Wiki says:
The Sicilian Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (c.90 BC–c.30 BC), supposedly quoting or paraphrasing the fourth-century BC geographer Pytheas, who had sailed to Britain, said:The inhabitants of that part of Britain called Belerion (or Land's End) from their intercourse with foreign merchants, are civilised in their manner of life. They prepare the tin, working very carefully the earth in which it is produced…Here then the merchants buy the tin from the natives and carry it over to Gaul, and after travelling overland for about thirty days, they finally bring their loads on horses to the mouth of the Rhône.
St Anthony-in-Roseland Parish is in the Carrick district near to the mouth of the River Fal and the Carrick Roads. The area is a rocky peninsula of mainly farmland with a prominent lighthouse, built in 1835 and still operating, and a former gun battery on its South Western promontory. The main family which has been associated with this parish was SPRY. There are very few houses in this small parish.
I found it.
HV Morton continued on to find it too.
I am writing in the tiny bedroom of a cottage is St. Anthony in Roseland. The thatch comes down so low that the upper part of the window frame has a stubby beard. I can see when I look out of the window a clump of trees and a field shaped like a green dome; beyond is a vast emptiness of sky that means the sea. I cannot see the water, but I can hear a steady whisper of waves breaking in the little rocky bay below. That and the song of birds are the only sounds in St. Anthony in Roseland.
I have said that I came here because I liked the name. I came prepared for the worst: for a mine shapft and a street of dreary shops. At Tregoney I left the main road and dived in a labyrinth of lanes so small that there was no clearance between the car and the hedge-banks. Green plants caught me by the arm and seemed to say: 'Don't go on; don't go on; a man who expects St. Anthony in Roseland to look as it sounds is only gathering one more disappointment...'
But I went on; and I came at length to the darkest tunnel of a lane I have ever seen. The hedges had grown up and formed arches the whole length of it; and the lane dipped down and down in green gloom and then rose steeply, in the manner of thse Cornish lanes, bending suddenly to give a view of the sea, startlingly near, breaking on a rocky coast, the high hills lying back spread with neat, cultivated fields. Turning a corner I came to St. Anthony in Roseland.
St. Anthony's Churchyard
St Anthony's Head across to St Mawes Castle, built by Henry VIII between 1535 and 1545
Morton:
Now, if anything you have believed in has continued to be worth your faith, if anything you have wanted has not fallen below the expectation, you will realize my wonder when I saw St. Anthony.
This cottage is in Treworthal, somewhat to the north of St. Anthony
Twenty tiny whitewashed cottages stood dotted about among tall hedges. They were covered with flowers. The bees were busy in the gardens...There was no inn, no post office, and the nearest shop, I learned, is at Gerrans, five miles down those lucious lanes. St Anthony in Roseland seemed lost, and happy to be lost, dreaming beside the sea.
There was no sign of life. The little white cottages covered with briar roses and ivy geraniums stood with doors open, yet no sign of man, woman or child. No one seemed to have heard me drive up. Not a sound!
I was a footpath over a field; below was a tiny bay, nestling between two gaunt cliffs.
St. Anthony's Head
There was no sign of life... I went back to the cottages.
A rosy middle-aged woman, wearing a print apron, was standing at the door of a pink cottage, looking at my car as though it were an unnatural phenomenon.
'I wonder,' I said, 'if you could tell me where I cold stay the night?'
A great bush of veronica was in bloom in the garden, the porch was smothered in geraniums, Canterbury bells stood beneath the windows, and hte paths were lined iwth London Pride.
'Well,' said the woman, 'I've got nothing for dinner, sir, but eggs and cream, because we have no shops, and everything is brought us from Gerrans in a motor car - or else I'd gladly give you my spare room.'
* ~ * ~ *
I discover that the parish of St Anthony has been part of Gerrans (five miles down the road) since 1934, only a few years after Morton visited. It was indeed going extinct. The church still exists and the churchyard is overgrown but "it's a beautifully peaceful place," according to a local historian.
* ~ * ~ *
Morton notes the absolute stillness and asks the question: why is St. Anthony in Roseland so quiet?
"'Well, you see sir, there are no children here now. We are all old. We closed the school years ago. As children grow up here they have to go away and do for themselves. My boy who was in the war, and my two girls are doing well. Some chidlren come back to the farms when their fathers die.'
So that is the secret of St. Anthony in Roseland. It has had its children, they have left the nest, and the old people stay on among the flowers. I looked outside and saw a tumble down shack, half cowshed, half chapel, its wood rotting and its beams falling in.
'Oh, that's the schoolroom. I can remember when it was full every morning; and hte noise and the chatter...'
Now the nettle and the foxglove seek the make a green pall for all that is left of youth in St. Anthony in Roseland..."
* ~ * ~ *
It was settled from earliest recorded times. Cornwall is the home of King Arthur and Tingagel is in the neighbourhood. The original inhabitants were Celts and the Cornish (Kernow) are considered among the five original Celtic nations. The Celtic tribes were pushed back to the westernmost parts of the islands by the invading Saxons. Later the Conquerer came and then Protestantism. It seems, however, that the Cornish culture still survives, though I fear that, as have so many other Real Places in England, it has been turned into a theme park of itself with the local inhabitants of ancient blood hired to play themselves for the tourists.
It seems that the people who had lived in St. Anthony's Parish in Roseland are all gone. The cottages still stand and are renovated and fitted out with the latest appliances in order to be rented out to holidaymakers from the cities.
A theme park of itself.
Update:
With the help of GoogleEarth, I have been able to pinpoint the exact coordinates for St. Anthony-in-Roseland parish church.
50° 8'32.53"N
5° 0'48.67"W
It's the closest I can figure out how to make a link to a GoogleEarth site.
I made a place mark (right on what looks like the East transept) and another one over our house (named "Our House"), and figured out how to make it into a Google Map.
Thus
That gives a direct route from Our House to the East Transept of St. Anthony-in-Roseland church. Which includes the following directions (which also helpfully includes estimated driving times...see especially step 21. Though I don't quite see, if we are swimming, why we need to dither about in France. Why not just swim right there? Maybe the tides are a bit dangerous on that coast. Depends on when you're planning on making the attempt, I suppose.):
1. Head west on King St W toward Close Ave 1.1 km 2 mins
2. Turn left at The Queensway 1.1 km 2 mins
3. Turn left at Colborne Lodge Dr 0.2 km 1 min
4. Turn right at Lake Shore Blvd W 1.1 km 2 mins
5. Take the ramp onto Gardiner Expy W 7.3 km 5 mins
6. Continue on QEW 101 km 1 hour 3 mins
7. Take exit 37 on the left for HWY-405 toward Queenston 0.4 km
8. Merge onto HWY-405 E 8.3 km 5 mins
9. Continue on Queenston-Lewiston Bridge 0.8 km
10. Continue on I-190 S Entering United States (New York) Partial toll road 23.8 km 17 mins
11. Take exit 16 to merge onto I-290 E/Youngmann Expy toward I90 Tonawanda Rochester 15.8 km 11 mins
12. Take exit 1-49 for I-90 E toward Albany 1.0 km 1 min
13. Merge onto New York State Thruway E Toll road 459 km 4 hours 25 mins
14. Take exit 21A toward I-90 E/Mass Turnpike/Boston Toll road 1.5 km 1 min
15. Merge onto New York State Thruway E Toll road 38.7 km 22 mins
16. Continue on I-90 E/Mass Pike/Massachusetts Turnpike Partial toll road Entering Massachusetts 216 km 2 hours 9 mins
17. Take exit 24 A-B-C on the left toward I-93 N/Concord NH/S Station/I-93 S/Quincy 0.7 km 1 min
18. Merge onto Atlantic Ave 1.2 km 3 mins
19. Turn right at Central St 0.2 km
20. Turn right at Long Wharf 0.2 km
21. Swim across the Atlantic Ocean 5,572 km 29 days 0 hours
22. Slight right at E05 0.8 km 2 mins
23. At the roundabout, take the 2nd exit onto E05/Pont Vauban 0.2 km
24. Turn right at E05 9.2 km 10 mins
25. Take the exit onto A29/E44 toward Amiens Toll road 44.7 km 23 mins
26. Take the exit toward Dieppe/Amiens/Calais/A151/Rouen Toll road 1.8 km 1 min
27. Merge onto A29/E44 Toll road 36.4 km 19 mins
28. Take the exit onto A28/E402 73.4 km 37 mins
29. Take the exit onto A16/E402 toward Boulogne/Calais Toll road 71.3 km 38 mins
30. Take exit 29 toward Boulogne-Centre/Outreau/Le Portel 0.9 km 1 min
31. Merge onto N416 1.8 km 1 min
32. At the roundabout, take the 1st exit onto N1 0.6 km 1 min
33. At the roundabout, take the 2nd exit and stay on N1 0.2 km 1 min
34. At the roundabout, take the 2nd exit and stay on N1 1.5 km 2 mins
35. At the roundabout, take the 1st exit 0.9 km 1 min
36. Slight left at Rue Ferdinand Farjon 0.1 km
37. At the roundabout, take the 2nd exit 0.6 km 1 min
38. Slight right at Dover - Boulougne-sur-Mer 48.4 km 1 hour 50 mins
39. Continue on Dover - Boulogne-sur-Mer 0.3 km
40. Continue on Eastern Service Rd 0.5 km 2 mins
41. Turn right at E Ramp 0.6 km 2 mins
42. Slight right at Dock Exit Rd 0.2 km
43. At Eastern Docks Roundabout, take the 2nd exit onto A20 1.0 km 2 mins
44. Slight left to stay on A20 0.5 km
45. At Prince of Wales Roundabout, 2nd exit onto A20/Limekiln St 0.3 km 1 min
46. At Limekiln Roundabout, take the 3rd exit onto A20 0.5 km 1 min
47. At Western Heights Roundabout, take the 1st exit and stay on A20 11.2 km 8 mins
48. Continue on M20 (signs for M20/London/Ashford) 63.4 km 38 mins
49. At junction 3, exit onto M26 toward M23/M4/M25/Sevenoaks/A25 16.4 km 10 mins
50. Continue on M25 56.9 km 34 mins
51. At junction 12, exit onto M3 toward Basingstoke/Southampton 50.9 km 30 mins
52. At junction 8, exit onto A303 toward Andover/Salisbury 45.7 km 30 mins
53. At the roundabout, take the 2nd exit and stay on A303 5.6 km 4 mins
54. At Longbarrow Roundabout, take the 2nd exit and stay on A303 55.3 km 39 mins
55. At Hazelgrove Roundabout, take the 3rd exit and stay on A303 heading to Ilchester/Yeovilton 6.5 km 6 mins
56. At Podimore Roundabout, take the 2nd exit and stay on A303 8.5 km 8 mins
57. At Cartgate Roundabout, take the 2nd exit and stay on A303 5.2 km 4 mins
58. At Hayes End Roundabout, take the 3rd exit and stay on A303 10.3 km 8 mins
59. At Southfields Roundabout, take the 2nd exit and stay on A303 16.3 km 14 mins
60. Continue straight onto A30 30.7 km 21 mins
61. Take the M5(S) ramp to Plymouth/Torquay/Okehampton 0.5 km
62. Merge onto M5 6.7 km 4 mins
63. At junction 31, exit onto A30 toward Bodmin/Okehampton 109 km 1 hour 9 mins
64. At Innis Downs Roundabout, take the 1st exit onto A391 7.2 km 8 mins
65. At the roundabout, take the 2nd exit onto B3274 5.6 km 6 mins
66. Continue straight onto A3058/Truro Rd 91 m 1 min
67. Turn right at A390 4.8 km 5 mins
68. Slight left at B3287 2.9 km 3 mins
69. Turn left to stay on B3287 4.5 km 5 mins
70. Turn left at A3078 34 m
71. Turn left to stay on A3078 9.8 km 8 mins
72. Turn left toward Churchtown Rd 1.7 km 3 mins
73. Slight left at Churchtown Rd 0.4 km 1 min
74. Continue on Tregassick Rd 1.3 km 3 mins
75. Turn left toward Military Rd 2.2 km 4 mins
76. Turn left toward Military Rd 0.4 km 1 min
77. Turn left at Military Rd 0.3 km 78. Turn left to stay on Military Rd 1.1 km 2 mins
To: "St. Anthony in Roseland parish church " UK
The Brighton Gardener
A wonderful blog, having nothing whatever to do with religion, politics, philosophy, Restoration, the End of the World, shoes, Shatner or Radial Symmetry.
Just gardening.
The Brighton Gardener
On Friendship
From a sermon on the nature of friendship:
...which I forwarded to a friend on the west coast whom I miss terribly and who needed a bit of cheering up.
Inspired by the timeless wisdom of Aristotle, my friend writes back with suggestions to a mutual friend who is just now sending out thank-you notes to attendees of a wedding reception a year ago.
"The man who is to be happy will need virtuous friends."
You'll do for now. Thanks for coming to our reception.
or:
"Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods."
Thanks for the toaster.
Aristotle, as you know, tells us in his Ethics that "friendship requires time and familiarity; as the proverb says, men cannot know each other till they have 'eaten salt together'; nor can they admit each other to friendship or be friends till each has been found loveable and been trusted by each." Today we are impatient and stay for none but hurried results. But Aristotle says, "Those who quickly show the marks of friendship to each other wish to be friends, but are not friends unless they both are loveable and know the fact; for a wish for friendship may arise quickly, but friendship does not."
It is telling that Aristotle devotes two whole books of his Ethics to friendship. You do not find a similar investigation in any modern philosopher, something that, to my mind, serves to point up the superiority of Aristotle's practical wisdom. I hope that you have become a friend of Aristotle--sed magis amica veritas--and will return to his Ethics in the years to come and take to heart his dictum, "The man who is to be happy will need virtuous friends."
...which I forwarded to a friend on the west coast whom I miss terribly and who needed a bit of cheering up.
Inspired by the timeless wisdom of Aristotle, my friend writes back with suggestions to a mutual friend who is just now sending out thank-you notes to attendees of a wedding reception a year ago.
"The man who is to be happy will need virtuous friends."
You'll do for now. Thanks for coming to our reception.
or:
"Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods."
Thanks for the toaster.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Obscure English Saint of the Week ~ St. Brendan, Abbot
...also called "the Navigator"
May 16th
For the Legend
BRENDAN is reputed to have been a disciple of Saint Finian of Ireland, and later of Saint Gildas of Brittany. And he himself had for one of his disciples that holy man who is known in England as Machutus, and in France as Malo. Blessed Brendan founded several schools and monasteries, and wrote a monastic Rule which was remarkable for its austerity. He was known in olden times as Brendan the Voyager because of a voyage which he is said to have made to the Land of Promise beyond the setting of the sun in the Wetern Seas; which legend (celebrated by the minstrels of olden times in all the European languages as one of the greatest adventures of all ages) is interpreted by some to mean that he planted a colony of monks in the Americas. This story doubtless encouraged Christopher Columbus and others in their efforts at discoveries in the new world, most of the earliest of which had, among less noble purposes, the making over the seas of a way for Christ's Gospel. Brendan died at the age of ninety-four, about the year 580, and is recerenced as one of the most distinguished monks and missionaries of Ireland.
(For a III Noct., Lessons from Common 10, series I)
Thursday, May 17, 2007
"Symbolic" of What, I Wonder
The Elie, Man., native said he counts meeting the Dalai Lama among the most important "symbolic" events of his time in Ottawa.
Good bye Marcel. I pray most sincerely that you have a sanctifying retirement.
Good bye Marcel. I pray most sincerely that you have a sanctifying retirement.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Monday, May 14, 2007
Brainrot
Whew! All that thinking has tired me out.
A few weeks ago, I searched around for the names of some of the bands that were popular (and which, yes, I liked) bet. 1982 and 89, which was my little flash of teenaged hipness. I was cool for about three years. It was sort of fun, but a lot of work. Gave it up quite promptly at the end of 1989.
Though at the end of the 70's people were starting to cheer up a bit - the oil crisis was over, the Iran hostages were back, international scene was a titch less scary - things hadn't gone too well towards the end of the 80's if I recall. People were starting to think that the whole pop-culture, sexual revolution thing wasn't going to work out after all. AIDS had started and I think we were feeling a bit overstuffed with nonsense. There was a feeling that things were not working out, that the Old World had failed, (and even if it hadn't it was gone anyway) and the revolution that swept it away was failing too. The hippie thing hadn't gone well, and it was the time when the hippies were becoming the boomers and buying up all the properties on the Gulf Islands, getting BMW's and generaly selling out what they had said were their "ideals". The younger folk, their kids, were a bit disgusted with them.
What was left? Artificiality, synth-pop, embracing of fantasies and drugs. (Hooo boy! There were drugs! I think nearly everyone I knew tried cocaine at least once before the end of their first year in university.) It was the hop n' bop life to keep you as distracted as possible from the creeping fear that things are not what they seem to be, that things are not going the way our parents had told us they would. Dark rumours were being whispered, and we were nervous. It was still the Cold War and we were just kids whose parents had told us to "visualize world peace."
We knew it wasn't going to work.
I remember it was about then that the X-Files started too and I thought that it was popular because everyone more or less knew that something was going on behind everyone's backs.
Looking back on the favoured distractions of that time, I'm astonished by two things: how much I still like the music just as music, and how utterly risible the videos were. I think we thought there was something in the whole thing that meant something and that the videos were supposed to be about that. Turns out it was just the beat.
I am happy to report that I seem to recall thinking at the time that the videos were dumb. Does the music industry still do rock videos? Do they allow the musicians to act in them? 'Cause I think we learned that it isn't a very good idea.
Time for a little brazen nostalgia. (This is for you, Jeff.)
Peter Gabriel holds up pretty well I think:
Oh my goodness! The hair! Oh dear...
A few weeks ago, I searched around for the names of some of the bands that were popular (and which, yes, I liked) bet. 1982 and 89, which was my little flash of teenaged hipness. I was cool for about three years. It was sort of fun, but a lot of work. Gave it up quite promptly at the end of 1989.
Though at the end of the 70's people were starting to cheer up a bit - the oil crisis was over, the Iran hostages were back, international scene was a titch less scary - things hadn't gone too well towards the end of the 80's if I recall. People were starting to think that the whole pop-culture, sexual revolution thing wasn't going to work out after all. AIDS had started and I think we were feeling a bit overstuffed with nonsense. There was a feeling that things were not working out, that the Old World had failed, (and even if it hadn't it was gone anyway) and the revolution that swept it away was failing too. The hippie thing hadn't gone well, and it was the time when the hippies were becoming the boomers and buying up all the properties on the Gulf Islands, getting BMW's and generaly selling out what they had said were their "ideals". The younger folk, their kids, were a bit disgusted with them.
What was left? Artificiality, synth-pop, embracing of fantasies and drugs. (Hooo boy! There were drugs! I think nearly everyone I knew tried cocaine at least once before the end of their first year in university.) It was the hop n' bop life to keep you as distracted as possible from the creeping fear that things are not what they seem to be, that things are not going the way our parents had told us they would. Dark rumours were being whispered, and we were nervous. It was still the Cold War and we were just kids whose parents had told us to "visualize world peace."
We knew it wasn't going to work.
I remember it was about then that the X-Files started too and I thought that it was popular because everyone more or less knew that something was going on behind everyone's backs.
Looking back on the favoured distractions of that time, I'm astonished by two things: how much I still like the music just as music, and how utterly risible the videos were. I think we thought there was something in the whole thing that meant something and that the videos were supposed to be about that. Turns out it was just the beat.
I am happy to report that I seem to recall thinking at the time that the videos were dumb. Does the music industry still do rock videos? Do they allow the musicians to act in them? 'Cause I think we learned that it isn't a very good idea.
Time for a little brazen nostalgia. (This is for you, Jeff.)
Peter Gabriel holds up pretty well I think:
Oh my goodness! The hair! Oh dear...
Today's Words
I am "reading" Cicero. This use of the verb is a little loose, since it consists of me looking up nearly every word, working out the case, person, voice etc, and writing it down in my notbook.
Something of a slow process, you may imagine.
To prove that I am doing it, I am putting my daily words up here. For those with such pretentions, a little quiz can be to figure out what speech of Tully's I am "reading".
iudices judex-icis, m. judge; juror 3rd declension, Nom. Pl. Ind.
quid sit quod why it is that...
tot adj. indec. so many
summi summas-summatis adj, noble/high born 3rd dec. abl.
sedeant 2nd conj., 3rd person, pl., active subjunctive - are sitting
potissimum adv., chiefly, eminently, especially
surrexerim surgo, surgere, surrexi, surrectum - to rise. 1st person sing. perfect subjunctive active - I have risen... only subjunctive, for which I am at a loss.
That's it so far.
Time: 1/2 hour.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Just When You Thought You'd Got It All Nailed Down
Life. It just keeps being mundane and banal, despite our best efforts to focus only on the Big Picture, the End of the World, the Collapse of Western Civilization and the Coming Apocalypse.
What has been occupying my thoughts for the last fifteen minutes of this Tremendous Earth-Cracking Crisis Period?
My curtain rods.
When I bought them, they were a temporary measure. Got the cheap kind from the local hardware store because there is a streetlight that shines directly into my face when I am trying to sleep at night. Plus, I was tired of dressing in the bathroom.
Last night the hook that holds them up in the middle popped mysteriously out of the plaster above the window frame into which I inexpertly screwed it and the rod is sagging four inches below the place where the hook was and is irrepe..irrepara...so bent it can't be fixed. Gotta finally go to the curtain rod store and buy curtain rods and install them properly. Hope the world doesn't end before I can do that.
It reminds me of a C.S. Lewis thing, (almost everything reminds me of C.S.Lewis, sorry Kathy)when the children are escaping the White Witch with the Beavers. Mr. Beaver and the children were ready to rush outside with only their coats. Mrs. Beaver knew that life's banalities are what it is really about. She calmly packed them supper and supplies for their journey, despite that the Witch was bearing down on them within the hour with murder on her mind.
It reminds me of a Shatner moment too. Kirk, his ex-girlfriend and son and assorted cast members have been trapped inside the Genesis asteroid by Khan, who is off to commit unknown mayhem with his little purloined Federation ship, having, after twenty years, finally had his revenge on his nemesis.
Kirk, gets off the phone after uttering his undying line (you know what it is...) and, with an almost imperceptible shrug, says, "I'm starved. Got anything to eat down here?"
Life isn't about ecstasies.
What has been occupying my thoughts for the last fifteen minutes of this Tremendous Earth-Cracking Crisis Period?
My curtain rods.
When I bought them, they were a temporary measure. Got the cheap kind from the local hardware store because there is a streetlight that shines directly into my face when I am trying to sleep at night. Plus, I was tired of dressing in the bathroom.
Last night the hook that holds them up in the middle popped mysteriously out of the plaster above the window frame into which I inexpertly screwed it and the rod is sagging four inches below the place where the hook was and is irrepe..irrepara...so bent it can't be fixed. Gotta finally go to the curtain rod store and buy curtain rods and install them properly. Hope the world doesn't end before I can do that.
It reminds me of a C.S. Lewis thing, (almost everything reminds me of C.S.Lewis, sorry Kathy)when the children are escaping the White Witch with the Beavers. Mr. Beaver and the children were ready to rush outside with only their coats. Mrs. Beaver knew that life's banalities are what it is really about. She calmly packed them supper and supplies for their journey, despite that the Witch was bearing down on them within the hour with murder on her mind.
It reminds me of a Shatner moment too. Kirk, his ex-girlfriend and son and assorted cast members have been trapped inside the Genesis asteroid by Khan, who is off to commit unknown mayhem with his little purloined Federation ship, having, after twenty years, finally had his revenge on his nemesis.
Kirk, gets off the phone after uttering his undying line (you know what it is...) and, with an almost imperceptible shrug, says, "I'm starved. Got anything to eat down here?"
Life isn't about ecstasies.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Torch-a-Tree service
As one commenter said...
CarbonCreditKillers.com, they'll kill a tree in your name.
As they say, you can't make a giant, unnecessary, carbon-dioxide-spewing, gaia-crushing, beach-flooding, see-it-from-space bonfire without chopping up and torching a few trees.
I'm sure the trees feel the same way.
CarbonCreditKillers.com, they'll kill a tree in your name.
Our goal is to completely wipe out every Carbon Credit ever bought by selling their nullifying opposite – the Carbon Debit. The guilt and shame that caused people to buy Carbon Credits in the first place will be placed back on them as we let them know that their actions caused us to nullify their credits. They are the cause of us killing trees; they need to face up to their guilt.
Obscure English Saint of the Week
St. Erkenwald, B.C. (That's 'bishop, confessor')
Collect:
ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who on this day dost gladden us with the feast of blessed Erkenwald thy confessor and Bishop: we humbly beseech thy mercy; that, like as we do honour him with our devout observance, so by his loving intercession we may obtain thy healing unto life eternal. Through...
For the Legend:
ERKENWALD was an East Anglian prince who went amonst the East Saxons, and used his patrimony to found the Abbey of Chertsey for monks, and Barking Abbey for nuns, and over the latter he set his sister, Saint Ethelburga. In 675 he was consecrated Bishop of London by Saint Archbishop Theodore, which See he governed in holiness and apostolic might until his death on April 30th in 686.
His feast is kept in some places on November 14th, which was the day of the translation of his body to a great shrine over the high altar of Old Saint Paul's in London. There is relicks were reputed to have been the means of working great wonders for God's people up until their destruction in the sixteenth century.
* ~ * ~ *
As to the last note, I would like to add that I am happy to hear that the English Catholics have not lost their sense of humour. Fr. Finigan tells us that someone named Leo Walsh
I can't remember if there are any British citizens [BTW, when did we stop referring to them as "British Subjects"?] on the list here, but if there are, you can click here.
Collect:
ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who on this day dost gladden us with the feast of blessed Erkenwald thy confessor and Bishop: we humbly beseech thy mercy; that, like as we do honour him with our devout observance, so by his loving intercession we may obtain thy healing unto life eternal. Through...
For the Legend:
ERKENWALD was an East Anglian prince who went amonst the East Saxons, and used his patrimony to found the Abbey of Chertsey for monks, and Barking Abbey for nuns, and over the latter he set his sister, Saint Ethelburga. In 675 he was consecrated Bishop of London by Saint Archbishop Theodore, which See he governed in holiness and apostolic might until his death on April 30th in 686.
His feast is kept in some places on November 14th, which was the day of the translation of his body to a great shrine over the high altar of Old Saint Paul's in London. There is relicks were reputed to have been the means of working great wonders for God's people up until their destruction in the sixteenth century.
* ~ * ~ *
As to the last note, I would like to add that I am happy to hear that the English Catholics have not lost their sense of humour. Fr. Finigan tells us that someone named Leo Walsh
has started a 10 Downing Street petition which reads:
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to make a statement of regret concerning the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
...
With the object of publicising the serious historical injustice done to a
major British faith group, thereby strengthening the foundations for dialogue
between faith communities.
[Hee hee! "...a major faith group" Heh. ]
Fr. Tim writes, "There are 37 signatures at the time of posting so if you
signup quickly you can get your name near the top. (You must be a British
Citizen or resident to sign the petition.)"
I can't remember if there are any British citizens [BTW, when did we stop referring to them as "British Subjects"?] on the list here, but if there are, you can click here.
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