Tuesday 25 May 2010

Quantum inter nos silentium...


In the short time (it seems longer) since I gave up the old blog and started this one, I have been busy with various commitments. I did miss blogging (despite the wise comment left by a good reader on the old blog - someone who suggested that I give up blogging generously and not look back) and spent many idle days just reading, or even festering in front of the TV (although I wouldn't miss it if it were done away with). I am, as you know, no longer a student and I have been consistently overdrawn for well over a year, but I have come to accept that this is ''my lot'' for the time being. As Oscar Wilde (my hero) would say: I have become married to poverty, but unlike St Francis, the marriage is not an easy one. Budgeting is hard and I don't think I am intelligent enough to stick to one but it seems the only sensible way forward.

Updates: I left the application for a new degree until far too late and so when I received the email telling me that King's College had no more vacancies on their Classics degree I was disappointed, though not surprised. I am now stuck with the prospect of a very plebeian approach to my education - fitting my Degree around my work life - but I have only myself to blame. I could wait until enrollment for the academic year 2011 but my mother was strictly against this, and to an extent so was I. My only consolation is that it will still be a University of London degree. Again, would that I had gone to Oxford to study...

Anyway, I am currently low on blog post ideas and so any suggestions from readers would be welcome. I have spent most of the time sorting out the template. I hope that it doesn't seem too austere. A very happy Pentecost to you all!

6 comments:

  1. "I am now stuck with the prospect of a very plebeian approach to my education - fitting my Degree around my work life"

    I am a little worried when I see élitist statements like this. Be very grateful if you can do just that!

    When I went to Uni we were in the middle of a recession, I couldn't get a job, and ended up quitting Uni!

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  2. Your new Blog certainly does not seem "too austere". Au contraire, typographically-speaking, I think it looks marvellous. Congratulations.

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  3. I too like the template of your blog, which I am very glad to have discovered. I stumbled upon your former blog just a few days after your last message, but enjoyed reading some of your posts on it.

    As for ideas for posts:

    1) Recognizing the interconnectedness of worship and belief, how one can observe the liturgical schism without regarding as heretics and antipopes the pontiffs who instigated and have maintained it.

    2) The perversion of evening Mass and the accompanying three-hour (or one-hour, no difference really) Eucharistic fast.

    3) The place in the liturgy of "idea" feasts (Christ the King, etc) and those commemorating private revelation (Our Lady of Lourdes, etc).

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  4. scotus nouius,

    Many thanks for your kind comment and suggestions. I have made note of them and will perhaps devote one or two posts to your ideas in future.

    Can I ask, though, where you were referred from?

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  5. Scotus Novius' suggestions would make for some interesting posts indeed.

    The idea of heretics and antipopes is clearly very much part of 'Traditionalism' and the 'Heresy of Ultramontanism' to pick two 'Bad Things' from Patricius' list.

    Evening Mass bu**ers the order of the Liturgical Day. Before its general introduction in the 1950s (there were various isolated indults going back to the eighteenth century) Mass, in theory at least, was celebrated after one of the Hours depending on the liturigcal rank of the day. The general principle being the more festive the day the earlier Mass was celebrated. Destroying the Eucharistic Fast was a devastating blow to authentic Tradition. The point is that the Eucharist is the first food of the day and the idea of imposting a set time period of fasting, mixing penitential ideas, absurd. Three hours, one hour, fifteen minutes - indeed there is no difference at all.

    As to 'idea' feasts in the Kalendar I would question their value. Generally the older celebrations of mysteries and the obits of Saints are superior to modern creations - a notable exception IMHO being the Solemnity of St. Joseph.

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  6. Patrici,

    In both cases I found your blogs through comments you made on the St Lawrence Press site.

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