Three things...

...before I return to reading The Wanderings of Húrin and the Tale of Túrin and the Foalókë.

The photos from the LMS travesty in Yorkminster can be seen here. Notice the Roman cut vestments, the presence of clergy in choir (why could they not have High Mass?! It's utterly ridiculous to have a ''sung Mass'' without Ministers if there are clergy in choir), and all the lace etc. How very expressive of Medieval English liturgical life! I am sure the Dean and Chapter were distinctly underwhelmed, but then I almost forgot - the standard of Liturgy provided by the Church of England is nearly always superior to that of Rome (I recall the notorious Papal Visit back in September, particularly the visit of the Pope to Westminster Abbey - the watered-down ''evensong'' was far better than the Mass in Westminster Cathedral the next day!). I daresay the Roman Church is not worthy of her own liturgical patrimony.

I was amused to see in my sidebar a post on Ad Orientem entitled: ''Church of England Cathedral opens its doors to sorcery;'' but disappointed to read that this was unconnected to the LMS incident. It's interesting all the same - the Church of England has simply gone the way of the Devil, like so much of the modern world, but then so has the Roman Church - at least our Sovereign Lady Her Majesty The Queen is not puffed up with arrogance and hauteur like the bishop of Rome, and I daresay knows more about Liturgy!

Our esteemed ''liturgical'' (Patricius usque ad lacrimas risit!...though since I am not an arrogant git, I don't usually refer to myself in the third person) cousin in America, the so-called ''liturgical pimpernel,'' has been writing about me again, and my newfound pre-Peasant (that is to say, pre-Sovereign Lord blessed Pius X) Diurnal, specifically about the date 1882. He repeats the now oft-heard argument about what he likes to call ''cafeteria catholicism.'' I don't claim to know all the answers, and I never once said that such-and-such a year is the year of liturgical sublimity in the tragic history of Roman liturgy, but would certainly not wish to sacrifice my knowledge of Liturgy upon the altar of Ultramontanism as so many traditionalists have done. You know, commit intellectual suicide by saying ''what do I know? Let Mother Rome look to it! We have the 1962 Mass of Ages!'' My new Diurnal is, as it were, a window into a lost world. It is by no means the 1568 Office, whole and in tact, and I would personally rather pray using the Sarum legenda, Psalterium and Breviary, but, as the saying goes, beggars can't be choosers. My 1882 Diurnal is more a link to the Fathers than the 1961 Breviary, which is a pathetic and shadowy hodgepodge of half-remembered traditions and mutilated Psalmody, authorized by modern Rome, and used by so-called traditionalists. How much Office does the Pimpernel say, I wonder? And if at all, what would he use? Knowing the likes of him, I daresay the 1961 Breviary (Roma locuta est, and all that). So before you judge me and the Tradition to which I adhere (and to which modern Rome does not), why don't you bugger off and say some real Office of your own (assuming you know how) and stop this sickening fawning over modern Rome. If I cared about the fate of your church I would say that it would do you no good whatever; the next pope, or the one after that, would simply fail to meet with your hopes, and you would return to the days of the Ecclesia Dei commission, or something less to your liking than even then.

But as the saying went in Beleriand in the days of the War, ''malice that wakes in the morning is the mirth of Morgoth ere night.'' And so, I'm awfully sorry if the tone of this post was not to your liking, O Pimpernel! Personally I relish being treated so, especially in America. I do not, after all, breathe an air of undiluted incense, and perhaps it is all some indication that my beliefs about RC traditionalists (that they are a bunch of conceited, decidedly untraditional, Ultramontane types) are correct!

The above painting is by the Tolkien illustrator John Howe, and depicts Glaurung, sire of Dragons - much more in keeping with Tolkien's description of the Urulóki.