Wednesday 23 March 2011

For those...


...who clutch at their Fortescues, blissfully unaware that this great man had little to nothing in common with Ultramontane Traddies, who represent the basest form of Christianity (akin to extreme homophobe Baptists in America) and revel in the triumph of pietism and Popery over Tradition (this includes those who see nothing wrong with the pseudo-festival of Joe Worker supplanting the traditional feast of Sts Philip and James, which even in the Prayerbook Kalendar of Saints is on May 1st - may such people be excommunicated and anathema):

A Letter to Canon Edwin H. Burton at St Edmund's College, Ware (20 September 1902)

I have been missing you horridly at breakfast, though the salutary vision of you fully vested and waiting with lacerating meekness in my sacristy when I rolled out of bed has not yet lost its effect. The nuns (little pink daughters of the penitent thief) are here now; so I get up at 7am, like an early Christian martyr. Sister Joanna Baptista of the Pinnacle of the Temple L.P.D. of P.T. (the she-superior) is a Tartar & won’t stand no fooling, nor can I imagine her waiting meekly as you did, though she would wear vestments like a shot if I let her. This order is an entirely new idea of my Rector at the German Church (a Bohemian monomaniac): its originality consists in the fact that the members go to the Sacraments several times during the year, abstain from fleshmeat on all Fridays, & endeavour generally to cultivate a spirit of Christian virtue & untarnished morality. These proceedings are rightly supposed to be very gratifying to the better nature of the penitent thief – hence the order’s name.

Also they have 15 little boys, so that when you come at Christmas you shall have no lack of servers. They sing Vespers in the evening in what purports to be the Latin tongue, Sister Philipina Canaria (of the way to Jericho) wearing a cope & a Roman missal, from which she tells me that she always sings Vespers.

They have given me a picture of a gentleman whom I recognise as that illustrious prelate the present incumbent of the Roman bishoprick: I am informed that if I look at it in the proper spirit it will give the pontifical blessing – a striking sight which I am naturally anxious to enjoy. Hitherto I have not succeeded in convincing it of my spiritual propriety. I have told it all the things that I think it would like to hear – that I am dead nuts on Encyclicals, that ubi Petrus ibi the whole show, that Roma locuta est (she never stops) nulla salus est (I hope I haven’t got this mixed); I have even said polite things about its fel. Rec. predecessors of the X & XV centuries; alas, in vain! It hasn’t once burst into: Sit nome Domini benedittumme [sic]. When you come I hope you will start it: it can’t doubt your propriety of spirit!

4 comments:

  1. This is great! Thanks for posting. I would never had suspected that Fortescue could be so amusing! And I say this not as someone who clutches their Fortescue, but as a someone who clutches O'Connell!

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  2. One who carps about both nuns and popes in equal measure: that's my kind of cleric!

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  3. Fortescue: Also they have 15 little boys, so that when you come at Christmas you shall have no lack of servers.

    This statement isn't reassuring. I want to give Fortescue's comrade the benefit of the doubt, but talking about minors like that is ick to say the least.

    Also, why is it that Fortescue's writing (e.g. "I have been missing you horridly at breakfast, though the salutary vision of you fully vested and waiting with lacerating meekness in my sacristy") immediately strike me as that way? Sublimation or just flowery prose? Is this "friends with benefits" or just literary convention? Dunno. Simply baffling for postmoderns.

    sortacatholic

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  4. I have for some time greatly admired the way in which Fortescue combined a life of scholarship, action and prayer. His sometimes scathing comments about Ultramontanism only increase my esteem for the man.

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