Sacrilege...

Imaginary conference with Mr John Hunwicke, a minister of the ''Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham,'' formerly Father John Hunwicke, priest of God in the Church of England. (As of now, in deference to my conviction that Roman orders are absolutely null and utterly void, I shall cease to refer to any Roman cleric by the sacerdotal title ''father'').

Mr Hunwicke, for forty years you believed yourself to be a validly ordained priest, is that correct? My question is, at what point did you cease to believe this, and why? Surely if Grace (which is not a comodity dispensed by clerics, even very important ones) exists outside the confines of the Roman church, which claims to be the True Church of Christ, was there any need of your ''re-ordination?'' Do your newfound Roman Catholic friends think anything at all of your lifelong ministry in the Church of England? And what would you say to them that claim that the quality of your old 'blog waned the closer you came to your conversion to the Roman church?

Answer me all that, and I'll shew you a green dog. Incidentally, a Roman priest admonished me yestereve that we ought all to rejoice in John Hunwicke's ordination to the Roman presbyterate. ''We'' ought? said I. The once great man has been deluded and manipulated by a gigantic fraud, seduced by the scarlet whore, whose mission seems to be to trample Tradition under foot. Wherefore, then, should we all rejoice at what is demonstrably sacrilege of the worst kind? Upon seeing such photos as these I felt just as I felt years ago when I read that Gay Rights activists had thrown used condoms onto the altar of a church in New York - disgusted.

Oh well, at least the Ordinariate has to give all that money back to the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament. As a friend said, ''That should finish the Ordinariate off nicely.'' May it please God!

I saw this photo here.

Churchianity...

Since Sunday I have been making a fuss about appropriate liturgical commemorations and proper Last Gospels. I even began the composition of a post about it, along the lines of: if you were an employee in a business and your line manager back checked your work and found that you hadn't done your job properly, you'd be in serious trouble; but then I thought, who cares? Just like in the manager's meeting I attended on Monday afternoon, which I spent annotating all the points raised with ''D B'' (don't bother) in various scripts, I shall just withdraw my support from churches that can't be bothered with Divine Service completely. What's the point in wasting one's breath upon people who don't want to understand? Maybe it's the tat value of a genuflexion at Et Verbum caro factum est that did it, or perhaps the extra few seconds saying a few prayers was too much for the congregation to bear, who knows?

As of now I shall restrict attendance at Eucharistic services to the three Great Feasts of the year, and Holy Week as my services are required. That way I shall be considerably less scandalised, and therefore less miserable, for the duration of this sojourn in the wilderness.

A fine priest...

This splendid photo is of Fr Henry Joy Fynes-Clinton, 1874-1959, a prominent Anglican Papalist, who was from 1922 unto his death rector of St Magnus the Martyr at London Bridge (which he beautified extensively). Coeval with the great Dr Adrian Fortescue, Fr Fynes-Clinton was very interested in the Eastern churches, and in the spirit of his catholicism re-founded the Fraternity of Our Lady de Salve Regina in 1922. There is a reasonable wikipedia article on his life here. I am privileged to know a few good men who knew Fr Fynes-Clinton personally.

Papa loquitur...

I thought this was funny!

By the way, the C.S Lewis text to which I referred (I think) in the last post is: Homo post-Christianus non similis homini pre-Christiano. Tantum distant ut vidua a virgine: nihil commune est nisi absentia sponsi: sed magna differentia intra absentiam sponsi venturi et sponsa amissi! (The Latin Letters of C.S Lewis, no.23). Perhaps I should have substituted the word ''whore'' for ''widow,'' though. In hindsight it would have worked better; I am not, after all, interested in or experienced in other religions than Christianity, and the former has a nasty, misleading connotation.

I am at this time re-reading The History of Middle-earth in anticipation of the 75th anniversary of the publication of The Hobbit. Perhaps this is not the best way forward, since The Hobbit was not at first conceived as part of the history of Middle-earth - one of the reasons Christopher Tolkien refused to compile a ''history of The Hobbit.''

Updates...

Hullo readers,

As some of you may have noticed (notwithstanding the dramatic fall in my stats) I have given the 'blog a makeover, in some ways to better reflect my present inferior circumstances. Well, post-Christian man is hardly the same as pre-Christian man, is he? I feel like a whore (as any apostate would) if I'm honest, even if my conscience (trained to the domination of...things) is a nagging old lady and puts me off breakfast. Anyway, if any of you use Facebook I have created a page for Liturgiae Causa, which I shall use on a semi-regular basis to post updates and whatever else I feel is apt to the renewal of things liturgical.

Please like my page :)

Sixty Glorious Years!

I'm going to have to keep this brief, as I am giving the 'blog a rest (for a while), but the matter is too important not to say anything.

It is my belief that Our Sovereign Lady Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is the best lady in Europe (if not the world). She quickens in me a sense of piety and devotion which no liturgy, no sermon, no bishop has ever bestowed. She is certainly the last Christian symbol of British government, for which even people who despise the Royal Family (a fair number of Roman Catholics) ought to be grateful. My family come from a region of the United Kingdom where two very different figures, The Queen and the pope, are as much adored in one community as they are reviled in the other. In fact, both my parents are Jacobites (a position which doesn't make much sense to me), although they did go to Epsom Derby on Saturday. But I look to my maternal grandmother (a communicant member of the Church of Ireland), who has much cordial affection for The Queen, and know by her wisdom and example who are the real enemies of the Church - namely them that despise The Queen and the Monarchic institution. Royal Unction is as much a sacrament as the Holy Eucharist, and kingship is the only legitimate form of Christian government. It is as Tolkien said, ''δημοκρατία was not in Greek a word of approval but was nearly equivalent to 'mob rule'; and...Greek Philosophers did not approve of it,'' (Letters. no.94). (Tolkien believed in unconstitutional monarchy by the way). This is not going to be a treatise de monarchia (for which Lord knows I am not qualified), but as someone who believes in Monarchy, Aristocracy, Monasticism and the Family, which together form the foundation of a good Christian society, I thank God to have been born in England and rejoice to be a subject of The Crown. Sixty years of fidelity to God and her people! She is the only thing that stands in the way of tyranny.

I commit Her Majesty to the care of St Edward the Confessor, patron saint of the Royal Family, and invoke on Her all the temporal and spiritual blessings in The Lord. God save The Queen!