An invitation...

Since we are faced with a civilization of increasing faithlessness, disguised as "inclusion and diversity," and wave upon wave of Muslim migrants, many of whom are undoubtedly Al-Qaeda and ISIS affiliates, I see no real hope for the preservation of Christianity in these Isles and on the Continent. I would therefore extend to Mr Putin in Russia an open invitation to invade and annex Europe to Orthodox Russia, and call upon anybody willing to assassinate the pope of Rome on the grounds of his despicable support for the new world order and for representing an institution fraught with corruption, superstition and riddled with falsehood. Destroy the Papacy as Napoleon and Garibaldi would have done! Let us begin a new Glorious Revolution and rejoice in the liberty of the Gospel; turn tyranny into kingship, and faction into faith. Let us pray for a return of the Emperor; not some German prince of a disheveled house but a true heir to bl. Constantine XI, or of St Nicholas II.

There is no hope left in the West, only the doctrines of inclusion, diversity and multiculturalism. Since the pope and our whole political class (save a few renegades) are on the side of these pernicious doctrines, inherently anti-Christian, put them out! Let them be scourged and humiliated; driven forth like cattle. We can either sit idly by as we become aliens in our own land, or do something. A new crusade, a glorious revolution, a reconquista. Something needs to happen or we will become thralls, more so than we are now. Something must happen, pray God.

God save The Queen!

Knock...

As Erasmus went to Walsingham in 1513 so my uncle and I went on a mock pilgrimage to Knock on Sunday 20th September. It was a flying visit on our way back to Donegal, forty minutes or so, so I didn't explore the place properly. I have to say I went expecting the worst and I was not disappointed. It was about midday when we arrived. As we got out of the car the heavens opened and a heavy downpour started so my uncle and I went into the parish church to look around. There were plenty of people in the pews but there was no mass going on (I won't bother to try and amplify the word "service" or "liturgy" by implying that anything other than mass or exposition goes on there). The church is like most other 19th century papist churches I've seen in Ireland, with an altar piled high with pillars, shelves and candles - that is, all the things that should not be on an altar - and the usual gimcrack of plaster Josephs and Marys. The church was carpeted so I can't imagine people sing much there.

Presently we went out into the rain. Some people reciting the rosary walked past us and we saw queues of people waiting for Mass cards in various booths. We then went into the shrine, outside of which I saw a square of stone which people were touching and with which people were blessing themselves. The shrine, like the basilica, is a modern building made of plain glass and concrete, completely lacking in decoration, with black wooden benches and a sense of "modernism," an obsolete albeit all-encompassing word which can only describe the tasteless, valueless and ugliness of most modern churches. Mass was being celebrated therein by an American priest from Wisconsin. It wasn't as bad as the "wiggly worm" church in Stranorlar but matched the architecture, even to the use of Eucharistic Prayer II. For much of the mass I was staring intently at the white statues and altarpiece which depict the vision that took place there in 1879. I recalled the description given me by a friend of mine, that the vision was very uncharacteristic of 19th and 20th century visions. The presence of St John the Evangelist in posture of preaching, for example, and the Paschal Lamb. My friend thinks this adds credibility to the vision but I am not so sure. Of course I am open to remonstrance from those who know better.

Look at the "Jesus" in the window. Doesn't the head look too big?

After mass we went to a kiosk and paid a euro each for a candle. These the man took, lit up and placed by a wall. We then went into the basilica, where another mass was going on. I took one look around the hideous, empty place and walked out. I said to my uncle: "I think we've seen enough for one day," and so we went to the souvenir shops. Outside of these were baskets of holy water bottles in the shape of "our lady of Lourdes," among other tacky and useless merchandise. I spoke to an elderly woman with strawberry hair who was sorting out the holy tea towels about the shrine, and she described a miracle that took place on her mother-in-law's deathbed thirty-two years ago. She had taken holy water from Knock and touched her mother-in-law's lips, and the miracle was that her mother-in-law, who was Presbyterian, licked her lips. I asked if the holy water had saved her mother-in-law's life but she said that it hadn't. I'm sure there were many pilgrims at the shrine with similar miraculous stories to tell.

Back in the car my uncle told me the story of the family trip to Croagh Patrick a year ago. Daniel, my young cousin, had suggested setting up a holy shop at the base of the mountain selling various healing rocks (all dug up from their back garden) and plastic saints, and that it could be a very lucrative form of income for them. I daresay it could be. I mean, if the tat shops at Knock selling Padre Pios, miraculous medals and sacred heart mugs were relying on me for business they'd go bust. Still, de gustibus non est disputandum. What makes me angry is the idea that these credulous and unsophisticated people go about with the temerity to think that their religion of plastic holy water bottles is the one and only true faith, outside of which there is no salvation. Jesus nowhere said: "no one cometh to the Father except through tat." I'd rather a cold cup of Protestant truth than a crunchy bowl of TLM cereal with a papal croissant.

A word on statues: Contrary to popular misconception, I do not have any theological objection to three dimensional images. Christianity is an incarnational religion, after all. I myself own a white alabaster bust of St Mary and the Christ Child, which is in a modern classical style. My favourite church is the Saint Chapelle, which is full of statues and a miracle of stained glass. My objection is to the propriety of depicting Christ the Saviour, His blessed mother or any of the saints, on an obviously inferior object. And that goes for anything ecclesiastical; vestments, liturgical books, language, everything. If it is not the best then it is rubbish.

I may go back to Knock but the likelihood is I won't. What do you think? Have you been to Knock? What were your impressions? Comment below.

Pity...

The LMS noticeboard makes humorous reading. Very humorous indeed. Just like "if I were a wiggly worm," at the church in Ulster. It all comes of the arrogance of popes and the credulity of the people in communion with him. If you really cared about tradition you'd put him out!

Ireland...

The view from nanny's back garden in the quiet of the world.

I have been in Ireland for two weeks so please indulge the lack of posts. At any rate I thought it best to keep quiet while away, given the remarkably poor reception of my opinion of Anjezë Bojaxhiu. My sojourn in Co. Donegal was intended to be a break away from the nightmare of my own home but it soon proved to be a blend of newfound pain and a feeling of homesickness, albeit not for England.

Some years ago my mother told me that I took my first steps in a Donegal town called Rathmullan, which is across the Swilly from Inishowen, Ireland's most northerly peninsula (ironically in the Republic, or South, of Ireland). This curious piece of information has always seemed significant for me, given my especial fondness for Donegal, its kindly people and beauteous countryside. You might say that it has given substance to that sentiment of belonging, often articulated in the quaint form "this is home," which, fond though I am of England, I have never quite felt here, at least not in suburban London. At the same time I can but recall and resonate with the words of Iris Murdoch, an Irishwoman as put off Irish politics and religion as I am: "I feel unsentimental about Ireland to the point of hatred." I thought of these words as I drove from Eglinton in the North to the Border and saw the familiar signs of sectarianism along the way; the Ulster flag in one town, and in another a defaced sign to Londonderry.

Ireland's most northerly point at Malin.

Nonetheless I forgot all that as I crossed the Border and saw for the first time in four years the rolling contours of Ulster's emerald hills and breathed in the turf after a light rainfall. I could scarcely believe that I had left behind so fair a place for four years! My heart was full of it. I had met my uncle Russell from BBC Radio Foyle at the airport and together we went to see nanny in Ballybofey. Nanny didn't feel up to going to church on Sunday (13th) so I went alone instead. I'd be surprised if there was an Orthodox church anywhere in Ulster (there might be one in Belfast) so, resigned to the wicked choice between Papist, Presbyterian or Church of Ireland, I chose the latter. I went to the early morning CW Holy Communion at Stranorlar across the River Finn, which was a said service, quite plain but dignified and strangely without the ethos of a low Mass. Then, for some levity, I decided to go to the Papist church of Mary Immaculate. My friend said afterwards that I might well have had the distinction to have been the only man in Ulster to have been to both a Papist and Protestant church on the same day! But the disparity between the dignity and simplicity of the Anglican church and the banality and philistinism of the Papist was startling. At the Anglican church they (I should say we) sang "The royal banners forward go," in honour of the Holy Cross. At the Papist church, which, unlike the Anglican church, had a choir, they sang the "Butterfly song," one stanza of which begins "if I were a wiggly worm (!)" The priest seemed to struggle with the New translation which, given the choice of hymn, seemed doubly ridiculous, and what was funnier was that the congregation, who used the old Mass books printed in 1976, responded defiantly with the Old! I shook hands with as many congregants as I could find during the "sign of peace" because, unlike traddies, I am not rude, and went away after the thirty minute travesty rejoicing in the inferiority of Rome. It was the thrill of seeing one's bitterest enemy drowning in a mire of his or her own shit.

Shit like this! I took this outside one of the many tat shops in Knock. It seems strange to me that people who claim to worship the LORD Jesus Christ are willing to slap His face on the cheapest, most tawdry junk. I almost bought a holy tea towel. Almost...

Nanny was going into University Hospital Galway on Tuesday (15th (more on that some other time)) so I went to stay with my uncle Keiron and his wife Cathy in Manorcunningham (locally called simply "Manor"). One day, apart from the family, I saw no more than three people, so rural their house is. It was bliss. Keiron and I drove down to Galway on Saturday (19th) to visit nanny in hospital. We passed through Donegal town by Ballyshannon, following the road through the hills, and drove through Mullaghmore by the coast in Sligo. Classiebawn Castle, Lord Mountbatten's old retreat, is, for me, a poignant and lonely monument to the memory of the many victims of IRA brutality. I crossed myself thrice as I watched that castle by the sea go by; for Lord Mountbatten, that he might rest in peace; for Her Majesty The Queen, and for a united Ireland. On we drove through Drumcliff, past the cemetery at St Columba's, which is Yeats' final resting place. We saw some people, tourists most likely, gathered at the cemetery, presumably around Yeats' grave, and I was reminded of Yeats' profound yearning for a simpler time in Ireland, reflected in those eternal words from The Hour-Glass:

The stream of the world has changed its course,

And with the stream my thoughts have run

Into some cloudy, thunderous spring

That is its mountain-source;

Aye, to some frenzy of the mind

For all that we have done's undone

Our speculation but as the wind.

Lovely.

Presently we came to Mayo, a county I had hitherto not visited. We drove past Knock. Going south you can see the spire of the basilica over the hills on the left. We didn't stop then but we did on the way back (more later). I don't recall much about the Mayo countryside of particular note. It reminded me of the flat fields around Naas and Athy in Co. Kildare. Boring. That all changed when we drove into Galway. Years ago my uncle Russell gave me an out-of-date guide to Ireland from the 1960's. We have no family in Galway, so we'd have no reason to visit it, but I was always intrigued by the farmlands of Galway, which are all separated by stone walls rather than foliage or wooden fencing. At last, after a four hour drive, we arrived in Galway city. We checked in at the hotel and went to see nanny, under the care of Professor McAnena. She was in St Finbarr's ward. I was glad she was under the patronage of an actual saint because the other ward on that floor was "St Pius." She was in good spirits. I had brought her some flowers from her garden, carefully avoiding chrysanthemums (which she dislikes, and which we all associate with sickness). I could think of little to say besides: "I'm worried about you, nanna," and some half-hearted comments about various things. When Keiron went to see the nurse about nanny's chart, I had a few moments alone with her. Nanny then spoke words of comfort and wisdom that I shall never forget. But visiting time was cruelly brief so we had to go. Keiron and I had our supper and went to a traditional pub to drink till closing time. To lift our spirits we joined in the music, some of which was familiar to me; ballads like Star of the County Down, and The town I loved so well, about nanny's own Londonderry.

Lough Swilly from just south of Rathmullan.

On Sunday (20th) we went to the hospital to take nanny to church. I had wanted to visit the 14th century church of St Nicholas but nanny wasn't aloud out of the hospital so we had to settle for a quick CW service in a modern inter-denominational chapel which begun with All things bright and beautiful. It's extraordinary how potent cheap music can be; the whole thing was reminiscent of a funeral. Because of signs up saying "winter vomiting outbreak," we had to leave after the service so I kissed nanny goodbye and left.

The hills around Dunlewy. It was raining.

I had planned on writing about my drive around Donegal and our mock pilgrimage to Knock but since my visit to Ireland was inextricably linked up with my grandmother's failing health I don't think I can continue, so perhaps another time. I will say this, though. I visited Glendalough in the Wicklow Mountains less than a month after my grandfather's death. There is little in Ireland of beauty that I have not seen in my life, but the blend of sorrow, consolation and awe that I experienced in those fair hills in my youth I count as one of the chief memories of my life, touched as I was then by the fair memory of my grandfather. Keiron and I drove through Rathmullan, familiar from time past, by the Swilly road to Portsalon and thence by the loughs to Kerrykeel, Kilmacrenan, through the ragged solitudes of Glenveagh to Dunlewy and Gweedore in the Gaeltacht and then south through Ardara to Donegal town, then back to Manor via Ballybofey. I have seen those hills, towns and loughs before. I have breathed in the salty wind off the Atlantic from Donegal's lonely strands and stared into unimaginable depths from the shores there. That was then, when the joy of youth was upon me and I knew neither grief nor pain. But their beauty now was of a different kind, enriched by their connexion with my nanny, just as the hills of Glendalough smote my heart on that autumn day in 2001 when I saw them last. It rained for much of the day as Keiron and I drove through the hills and by the sea, not to be wondered at in Eire, but to my mind it was as if the county itself cried for nanny. I think what I am trying to say, in a roundabout way, is I am going to move to Donegal one day. We all know England is finished, and the same can be said for most of Ireland, but there remain for me in Ireland islands of good faith, of honesty and tradition against the flowing stream of Yeats' world. Unlike the "migrants" moving to Europe, though, I at least have a family connexion and sound reason to remove thither.

The Little Flower...

I received some criticism for my latest in the series of "Saints and Fables," and I think to shew some good will to my Roman Catholic readers I might direct them to a short account of my visit to Westminster Cathedral in the autumn of 2009 here. I haven't edited the text so please indulge the immature and saccharine flavour. It was a raw, completely honest account of a true religious experience. Nothing evil can counterfeit what I experienced that evening. And I count myself blessed to have been there, blessed by God Himself through the medium of a true saint of the Church.

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, pray for us!

Mother Teresa...

Christopher Hitchens was a "champagne socialist," which in most respects discredits anything he might say. His most famous publication, "God is Not Great," which is riddled with silly errors of fact and hyperbole, puts him beside Richard Dawkins as one of the wiser fools of this world. Nevertheless I think this account of Mother Teresa deserves wider attention. Please note that while Hitchens confuses Pius IX with Pius XI this in no way detracts from what is otherwise a fair assessment of Teresa's life and work.

I never much liked Mother Teresa for the same reasons I dislike pope Francis. It's the kind of philistinism and hypocrisy that goes with humility in public and the embrace of "the poor" just in time for a photo opportunity. In other words, "it's about me." There's a scripture for that (attend ye):

"Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein. Then said Jesus, Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this. For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always." John 12:4-8.

And another:

"But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly." Matthew 6:3-4.

In the light of God's Word, I am astounded by the millions of people, and they're not all Roman Catholics, who are taken in by this cult of personality, the "living saint" as one man puts it, or as Hitchens puts it, this auction of credulity and hyperbole. Is it just me? Is there some mandate for this kind of celebrity poverty in Scripture that I can't see? Because it's a tendency in the Roman Catholic church that goes back at least to Francis of Assisi, that mediaeval demoniac who confused taking up the Cross with material suffering and want, and the infamous "stigmata" upon his person as a miracle rather than what I consider to be a trick born of the idolatry and superstition of the Roman church. Teresa never had "stigmata," but that was of no consequence because her personal sanctity was seen as axiomatic by the world's corrupt political class and whose missionary industry was the praise of the whole world. "And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved." (Matthew 10:22). I'd rather go with the Word of God than the silly rhetoric of Ronald Reagan about "citizens of the world."

She is not yet "Saint" Teresa of Calcutta but we can already add her to the martyrology of bogus saints we have already examined so far. The only thing that I can in Teresa's favour in this respect is that she actually existed. This series has been in abeyance for months but when I return from my short break in Her Majesty's Western Isle I might take it up again.

Christians vs Muslims...

This was depressing reading. A sample:

"Most recently in Sweden, two small families of Christian asylum seekers from Syria were harassed and abused by approximately 80 Muslim asylum seekers also from Syria.
"The Christians and Muslims—described by one Swedish newspaper as “fundamentalist Islamists”—resided in the same asylum house.  Among other humiliations, the Muslims ordered the Christians not to wear their crosses around their necks and not to use communal areas when in use by Muslims.
"After continuous harassment and threats, the Christian refugees who had managed to escape the Islamic State left the Swedish asylum house “fearing for their own safety.”"

I have nothing especially against Muslims. The few whom I have known in my short life have been reasonable, peace-loving people who have taken a genuine interest in my beliefs which, as you know, I love sharing. And contrary to the popular, hysteric misconception among Westerners, they are not all goat-eating, pyjama-wearing, bearded, nihilistic lunatics who despise liberty. But it's unfortunate that there is a strain, dormant until recently, in their religion; a Qur'anic predicate in fact to wage a religious war against us, for either real or contrived grievances. I don't blame them! America and its deluded allies have caused nothing but problems for Muslims the world over, and American military intervention in the Muslim world actually justifies everything Osama Bin Laden ever said. (I confided to a friend of mine recently that I'd never admit this publicly, but I'm passed caring what people think. I'd like to have met Osama Bin Laden. Just think! A Christian and a Muslim united, despite the sundering gulf of our respective beliefs, by our common hatred of Israel and America!).

Roy Jenkins, responsible for many of the pestilential reforms that dethroned Christ in British politics.

Foreign policy is one thing, domestic policy is another, but in neither have we worked in our own best interests. In fact, for the past fifty years successive parliaments have consistently pursued policies that have put a noose around our necks that over the years have tightened considerably. I can't speak for America but the left-wing liberal reformers who have run the United Kingdom for the past fifty years have, with deliberate intent, destroyed everything that was exemplary about this once great, respected and feared nation and empire. Our education, police force, drug laws, the off-shoring of manufacturing jobs, de-industrialisation, no-fault divorce, race-relations, theatre censorship, Sunday trading, abortion, capital punishment, the family, state benefits, Europe, and many things beside are just some of the subjects that have been visited upon this country and changed it for the worse. Mass immigration is my bête noire these days, a deliberate policy that has demographically transformed the country forever. All these things, which have their uttermost source in creeping apostasy, have turned the British people into a cynical, greedy, entrepreneurial, secular, lawless and fornicating society with no sense of nationhood, no common religion, and ruled by career politicians who don't care twopence what their constituents think. I'll never forget the words of Alastair Campbell, one of Tony Blair's henchmen, "we don't do God." That's as sad, but frank, a perspective of where we are in the world, and that was more than a decade ago.

But Muslims are not as faithless as we are. One of the common complaints, and indeed it's one of my own, about the Muslim communities that live in the UK is that they don't integrate. But given what I've just said about the kind of society we have created, it's a very naïve expectation to make of them. I read on another blog recently the story of two fat, butch lesbians kissing in public, and a Muslim mother shielding the eyes of her two children to spare them the sight. There are two things to say about that: either the lesbians should keep their unnatural attachment clandestine, or the Muslim woman should not have covered the eyes of her children. It reminds me of that saying attributed to Mrs Thatcher: "there's no such thing as society." She probably meant something else but she's absolutely right. And the reason she was right is because all the things that are the backbone of a society and civilisation; that is a common religion and morality, the family, a common language, a common history, heritage and culture, have been systematically broken by the battering ram of secularism, the immigration of millions of foreigners of differing languages, cultures and religions and skin colour to our shores, and positive discrimination in all public services and institutions on the basis of minority status, which is practically the doctrine of political correctness. All these things have undermined and disunited the British people. I would say that it must stop but it's too late for that even if it could be stopped.

I find it offensive, and a bit intimidating actually. But this is the norm in Oxford Street, particularly in Selfridges, and places like Woolwich. Where are the English women?

The lesbians and the Muslim mother represent people of all shapes, sizes, colours, faiths, creeds, genders (all twenty-six of them), sexual orientations, abilities, handi-capabilities, &c. who are already here. With the imminent prospect of swarms of migrants from the Muslim world coming to our shores within the next few months, you can be quite sure that there will be more, and uglier, confrontations between the sexual deviants promoted by our supposedly rule-of-law society, and the religious conservatism of practising Muslims. But it won't stop at sexual deviants. You will process on Palm Sunday through a neighbourhood of devout Muslims at your peril. You will be seen buying pork chops or wine in the supermarket and you may be attacked on the way home. And then there are the inevitable terrorist attacks; yet more innocent peoples' lives destroyed. I say inevitable because it is blatantly obvious to anyone with eyes to see that many of these putatively "desperate" migrants are affiliates of ISIS or Al-Quaeda. And we can accurately predict the response of our pompous, ineffectual and fatuous political class. They will repeat the usual lies about "Islamism" having nothing to do with Islam and then call upon "Muslim community leaders" to curb the thoughts and sympathies of the male members to root out "extremism." At the same time, they will do nothing to increase our security and actually deter our enemies from committing further atrocities on British soil. But what they will do is accelerate and increase the Orwellian surveillance society in the form of more cameras, more interference in private communications, mandatory I.D cards, and generally crippling most of our liberties. Orwell might have been forty years too early but by 2024, riveted into the home of every family in the UK, there will be a one-way television screen through which we will see nothing - which might be an improvement! - but through which we will be watched by Big Brother.

And what of the private taboo of Christian faith? I think all of us are too keenly aware of the relentless attacks on Christianity in this country. The banning of public displays of Christ's Holy Cross, or something as innocuous and charming as a Nativity display; renaming Christmass and Easter so as not to offend atheists and faith minorities; the Sunday trading laws that clearly undermine the sanctity of the LORD's Day; the "rights" of false gods and false religions, alternate lifestyles, people of no religion, &c. In my experience, Muslims take Christians seriously when Christians take their religion seriously. What they are troubled and disturbed by (as indeed am I) is people who have no religious opinions whatever; when people come to any disposition without a religious basis. For years this has been public policy. In the succinct words of Mr Campbell, "we don't do God." But what of "the Church by law Established?" That's a phrase that goes back to the Canons of 1604 but has almost no significance to-day. A few Anglican Bishops may sit in the House of Lords but the Church of England has supinely allowed this national apostasy to come to pass. But does the Church of England bear the whole burden of this responsibility? I don't think so. We all do, or at least our fathers and grandfathers did. And the national apostasy, and the common Christian impotence to affect public policy in this United Kingdom, whose head of state is a Christian crowned in an explicitly Christian ceremony, shews most clearly the absolute failure and hypocrisy of secular democracy. And its insidious origin. No political party manifesto ever advocated the abolition of Christianity; no Prime Minister or Home Secretary ever stood up in the House of Commons and declared his intention to systematically undermine Christian principles. Instead the secularism in which all public services and institutions are enshrined has come about by the slow, incremental tide of reforms, laws, decrees, treaties and the permissive society. And it's critically because of secularism, the faithlessness of our political class, that we have absolutely no idea how to engage the Muslim world in what is obviously a religious war for them. Or indeed how to deal with the ineluctable tide of unwanted, unwelcome migrants flooding the Continent. Muslims the world over, in the Middle East, the United States, Canada, Australia, France, Germany and here in the UK, are just as devout and serious as they ever were; even as we were a century ago. We, on the other hand, have replaced the Word of God with lies; faith with sentimentalism; and Christian benevolence with subservience.

I can only end too long a post by saying that we are doomed; we are irrelevant. We have been tightening the noose for fifty years. When these migrants come they will kick away the stool and that will be it. Western Civilisation hung from a gallows of its own making by the rope of its own hubris and faithlessness. Then comes the triumph of Islam in Europe, the land of old Christendom; and not by military conquest but by the even more effective means of just moving here in large numbers.

Merciful God, who has made all men, and hateſt nothing that thou haſt made, nor deſireſt the death of a ſinner, but rather that he ſhould be converted and live: Have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Hereticks, and take from them all ignorance, hardneſs of heart, and contempt of thy Word;
and ſo fetch them home, bleſſed Lord, to thy flock, that they may be ſaved among the remnant of the true Iſraelites, and be made one fold under one ſhepherd, Jeſus Chriſt our Lord; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

We can either pray even so or just give up and become Muslims.

O LORD, make thy servant Elizabeth...

O LORD, make thy servant, Elizabeth our Queen, 

to rejoice in thy strength;

give her her heart's desire, 

and deny not the request of her lips;

but prevent her with thine everlasting blessing, 

and give her a long life, 

even for ever and ever. Amen.

In This Great Service...

See here for a theological and political defence of Monarchy. Royal Unction is a Sacrament, just as much in continuity with the Word of God as the Eucharist and Baptism. Kings and Queens derive authority from God Himself by their anointing.

Vivat Regina Elizabetha!

H/T: Ad Orientem.

God save The Queen!

To-day Her Majesty Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God Queen of this United Kingdom, surpasses that miserable old bag Victoria as our longest reigning monarch. God be praised for The Queen, a Sovereign who has represented tradition and constancy during the long years of our decline. May there be many more! Westminster Abbey will be marking the day by ringing the bells. As for me, I'm afraid I'm too poor at the moment to properly celebrate the day but I'll certainly be thinking of and praying for The Queen.

Unxerunt Salomonem Sadoc sacerdos et Nathan propheta regem in Gihon et abierunt laeti dicentes vivat rex in aeternum alleluia!

Vivat Regina!

Vivat!

Vivat!

Vivat!

God save Queen Elizabeth!

Long live Queen Elizabeth!

May The Queen live for ever!

Fear, fire, foes!

Wouldn't it be ironic if the two whole families received into the Vatican City State turned out to be Roman Catholics, perhaps even of Latin Rite, where the Muslim family taken in, by command of the supreme ecclesiastical authority, by some poor, credulous but obedient priest murdered him in his sleep for being an "infidel." They might even do padre the honour of blowing up his church, but not before desecrating the tabernacles and smashing the statuary. I imagine that might go ignored by the mainstream media because we mustn't let grotesque hate crimes and acts of religious war get in the way of beached corpses and the crude dinghy boats full of "desperate" people whom pope Francis seems to prefer over the cultural, linguistic and religious integrity of Europe.

I agree with every sentiment expressed here by Dr Michael Scheuer, including what seems to be call for revolution. Of course, I would go further than sending the new migrants back to the Middle East and Africa and call for the enforced repatriation of all non-Europeans from the Continent and restore Christianity as Europe's "state religion;" maybe even set up an Inquisition of sorts with myself as Grand Inquisitor (a dream job). I'm quite certain I'd do a much better job of defending Christianity than this fatuous pope.

God save The Queen!

Saints Ferdinand and Isabella, pray for us!

By the way, in a most cowardly fashion I deleted a post I published on 20th April, a "manifesto" of about thirty points outlining what I would do if I were "king for a day." In the light of this migrant crisis I might compose another. As for the Catholic Monarchs, the present Spanish government might have distanced itself from the praiseworthy actions of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, but I haven't.

Migrants or Moochers?

We hear a lot these days from sanctimonious liberals and high ecclesiastics about the EU "migrant" crisis. Pope Francis says: "countries that turn away migrants should seek God's forgiveness," and Vincent Nichols says: "We must keep at the front of our minds; these are people, human beings, families like our own." On my Twitter feed the other day I saw this: "they are human beings, made in the image of God, just like me," from a friend who is, sadly, another text book liberal. Just who do these people think they are? Because it seems to me that the very people crying out to let swarms (to quote, for the first and last time, our very own Mr Cameron) of foreigners overrun our green and pleasant land are the last who would actually do something for them. It is iniquitous and tantamount to hypocrisy. Why doesn't the pope invite ten thousand of these people to stay with him in the Apostolic Palace? I'm sure he can find room enough there since, in a shew of spurious humility, he decided not to live there. Is Vincent Nichols going to personally open the doors of his living quarters to "temporarily" shelter some of these allegedly "desperate" people? I sincerely doubt it. No, as is ever the way with liberals, they'd rather obviate the burden of responsibility in themselves and condemn others for their sullen fear and indignation at the visible prospect of their streets and neighbourhoods being turned into multicultural ghettos with no common language, culture or religion in the space of a few months and years just because we are told to have a moral responsibility to feel compassion for those fleeing tyranny and persecution; tyranny and persecution, I should say, that was created by career politicians with their senseless, reckless and utterly reprehensible interventionist foreign policies. And these ghettos are already here. There are places in London such as Woolwich and Peckham in which you'd have a hard time finding a white face, and the odd white face probably belongs to a Romanian or a Slav. And my own town Sidcup is fast going that way too. What will it be like when thousands upon thousands of these "migrants" end up here? It will be civil strife and poverty. Remember the London "riots" four years ago? That was a very multicultural affair!

Compassion is a trite word in this crisis. It's a word, much like the words "racist" and "bigoted," that is bandied about by the metropolitan elite to silence and denigrate those of us who don't like seeing African men walking about in pyjamas in our streets, as I saw only yesterday, or resent the erosion of our national identity and culture and its replacement by a pernicious void. But compassion, if it is genuine and not a fleeting sentiment, must be founded upon practicalities and immediacy. It seems to me that modern communications are so fast - with the Internet and television, and so on - that a burden is imposed on our compassion for which it was not designed by God. If you know someone, at your church or in your street, that is in distress - by sickness or grief, and so on - then obviously it is your Christian duty to feel compassion for them and undertake the works of mercy for their benefit. But that is a world apart from seeing in the news images of beached corpses and grieving parents who speak in a foreign tongue! Is it your duty to feel compassion for them? I don't think that it's possible, nor do I think that it is within Christ's ordinances to even try. I suppose that's a tangential way of saying: "charity begins at home." But using the said images as a pretext to bring about what is effectively a demographic revolution in Europe is a gross injustice to the indigenous people, and no amount of bogus compassion can excuse that.

What is worse about this cynical compassion is the gullibility and idiocy that seems to go with it. The compassion is presumably felt by those who are, understandably, distressed by the undoubtedly pre-selected images on the television. But the gullibility and idiocy lie in the assumption that these people are genuinely fleeing persecution, and can therefore legitimately be classed as "refugees" or "asylum seekers," and not simply opportunistic moochers looking for a higher standard of living. If they really were refugees, why did they not stop their journey in Turkey, which is a democratic and secular state, or go into Golan instead? Or why do those fleeing from Africa not stop in the Balkans? Why are they absolutely determined to get to Germany, Britain and France? Genuine refugees do not start fights with local police. Genuine refugees do not chant slogans in unison in the middle of Budapest. Genuine refugees do not spread themselves over train tracks, intimidate the local people and bring cities to a grinding halt. Genuine refugees are hungry, terrified and in need of succour; not forceful young men. And a refugee, like the Infant Christ Our LORD, will no doubt go back into his own country when the trouble is past. I don't think that these "desperate migrants" have any intention of going back. Instead, it will be just as we have experienced over the past sixty years of unstopped and unstoppable immigration. These people will come here, they will suck our welfare, housing and healthcare systems dry and turn Europe into the places from which they've fled. They won't bother to learn our language, they won't bother to adopt our manners and way of dress, they won't adopt our religion, they won't buy from our shops, they will have no respect for our Royal Family; they will just live in their own communities, speaking their own tongues and with our "police service" and PC culture (pun intended) they will be given a free reign to say and do exactly as they please. And we can only look on in sullen fear, afraid to raise any objection because we are seen to be without compassion, racists and bigots.

So in the name of Great Britain (or what's left of it), of old St Mary's Dowry, I declare my total and unflinching opposition to the reception of any of these migrants. It's a terrible shame that things have come to this pass. I do not delight in seeing wailing mothers and the other unpleasant (but, as I've said, pre-selected) images, but it's out of my responsibility and control. All I care about is the Church, and my family and friends, and my enemies for those of you ready to quote Scripture at me. But who knows, maybe my empathy and experience will be infinitely widened one day when, not long from now, I am forced to flee, like many a Christian Englishman, from this once homogeneous, white Christian land. Till then, I will not suffer to be called bigot just because I have the misfortune to be English and Christian in a nation that once gloried in those things.

UPDATE: It's encouraging to see exactly the same sentiments expressed here by Dr Michael Scheuer.

Memories...

I was at this conference. It took place about two weeks before I started at Heythrop. The last one I attended was a cheap and trivial convention by comparison, at the London Oratory in 2008, I think. The sort of occasion where gin might be advertised but you have to bring your own tonic. Watching this I feel like a bitter and twisted old man looking back at a time of comparative enthusiasm and hope. Just like typing up this inventory of mine this week and going over old editions of "Mass of Ages," and looking at the supplements. In those days all the "traditional masses" could be squeezed onto two sides of A4, "by kind permission of the bishops." The furniture has changed since then but not the situation, and it looks to me like what progress there might have been given the hope of that time has plateaued. With the publication of Summorum Pontificum I envisioned weekly pontifical liturgies all over the country, a revival of sung office using a pre-1956 template (I didn't know too much about pre-1911 then), and decent Holy Weeks. But I was wrong. And not for the first time.

Does anybody know why C.I.E.L doesn't have a real website? I noticed that years ago but I was sure there used to be one on which you could buy their publications and look at photos, transcripts, and so on. But if it's anything like the changes to the LMS website much that was useful and embarrassing for them (such as the Bayswater High Mass video from 1988) has been made to disappear. It never happened.

My views, again...

Apparently, I have "weird, crazy and even heretical" ideas. I'd have thought after six years of writing a blog people might better understand my views; nevertheless, here goes.

First of all, I am Christian. I believe in Jesus Christ which suffered death and harrowed Hell, as I have heard mine elders tell. I was baptised into the Papal communion as an infant and was devoted to that communion in purpose of heart and mind until about the age of twenty-two. I was a traditionalist attached to the "traditional Latin Mass" for some years until I realised that I had very little in common with other traditionalists, most of whom were, if not invincibly ignorant, actually opposed to Tradition in my understanding; and many of them holding a number of alarming political and social beliefs, such as non-recognition of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, some of them being ardent republicans (like so many Jews), and an unbelievably tribal view of the Church of England to the extent that, until the craze for "Anglican Patrimony" with Benedict XVI's ordinariates, one woman told me she would never even open a Book of Common Prayer. I was turned out of my parish soon after I stopped believing that concealing the burden of Britain's idolatry in me was virtuous. Since then I have moved further and further away from Papalism and the traditionalist movement, to such an extent that these days I would sooner endorse the Roman Catholic Womenpriest movement than Una Voce or the $$PX, and would gladly lead most traditionalists into the London Oratory, lock the doors and set light to the building.

Having said that, I have fond memories of the ordinary, non-partisan Roman Catholics from my old parish, and many Roman Catholics of my acquaintance are better Christians than I am. Nevertheless, I am firmly convinced that Popery is a gross distortion of true Christianity and that the Papacy is the sole dividing force within the Christian religion, the title "supreme pontiff" notwithstanding. All major schisms that have rent Christ's Church over the ages can be laid squarely at the feet of the Bishop of Rome, who is, in his own words, the vicegerent on earth of Jesus Christ. Indeed, I think as much of the Bishop of Rome these days as I think of your average Rabbi; bankrupt, and with not a scrap of priesthood about him.

So we've established that I don't think much (or indeed anything) of the pope, what about my other views? I'm not good at open questions but I'll do my best. As a Christian I believe that the prime purpose of life is to worship God in Spirit and in Truth. That is liturgical. As a traditional Christian who believes in the Creeds and submits to the decrees of the eight General Councils, I believe that the only way to worship in spirit and in truth is by adhering to the catholic principle of continuity with the times past; that is by dutifully following the forms and orders of worship as practiced by our long fathers of old. This is why I vehemently reject all arbitrary, abrupt and gratuitous changes made to the sacred liturgy by centralized authorities who can, with the stroke of a pen, undo what took centuries to construct. For cynical traddie types that does not mean that I think that communal worship in an upper room with basic implements and not even the luxury of a printed book is authentic or desirable but there is a qualitative difference between superstitious obeisance to an institution that makes changes every time the wind blows just because it can, and remaining steadfast in Tradition. Like the Glastonbury monks, who were later turned out when they would not relent, who refused to accept the reforms imposed on them by the Norman usurpers "because they had grown up in the custom of the Roman Church." This is the exemplar of true traditionalism, not faithless practitioners of the 1962 rite.

What else? Well, I am a mediaevalist. I believe that there was something more hale about the Western Church in the Middle Ages compared with what came after the Reformation. The rich and sometimes flowery traditions; devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, pilgrimages, books of hours, pointed architecture, and the universal, yet not uniform, celebration of the Roman Rite; all worthy of praise. I tend to agree with Giles de Bridport who said: "The Church of Salisbury shines as the sun in its orb among the churches of the whole world in its divine service and those who minister it, and by spreading its rays everywhere makes up for the defects of others." I think that the so-called "Tridentine Rite," even in its authentically Tridentine form, is impoverished by comparison; howbeit the Sarum Use as much surpasses the 1570 missal in beauty, ceremony and tradition as the 1570 missal surpasses the bastardised rite of 1962. But I do not adhere to the fundamentally mistaken principle that eld necessarily guarantees value. Although I said I was a mediaevalist, I do not believe that all liturgical "developments" of the Middle Ages were inherently good. Among these were the evolution of low Mass, the cult of the reserved sacrament, superstitious elevations, the visible decline of choral celebration of the hours outside of cathedrals and monasteries, and there is much else beside. Some of these things it was the wisdom of the Second Vatican Council to restore or correct, even if those reforms were distorted, misinterpreted or never took on in the desired way. Among the praiseworthy reforms of that synod were the correction of the antient Breviary hymns, hitherto mutilated by Urban VIII; the provision of high Mass without subdeacon, the effective abolition of low Mass as a distinct form of Mass; the restoration of concelebration, which went into abeyance in the Roman Rite at some point in the Middle Ages (although Aquinas mentions it as normal in his day); a widening of diaconal prerogative, to correct another abuse of the Middle Ages; and there are many besides.

Notice the "Margate" one. There really ought to be no Popish bishops in England.

I entered the traditionalist world as a credulous and immature teenager who saw around me a banal and distasteful church, the church of John Paul II, and I believed, wrongly, that the Second Vatican Council was entirely to blame. These days I believe, rightly, that the present situation was inevitable from the time when the pope added the Filioque to the Creed and claimed universal and immediate jurisdiction over the Church. That leads to a vision of the Church as a mistress of slaves; slaves who are told what to believe and how to worship, or else. It leads to the destruction of the diaconate and episcopate. Leaving aside the question of the validity of Roman orders (they are objectively null and void) and Paul VI's abolition of the minor orders; I would argue that there are but two orders in the Papal communion to-day; Pope and priests. Bishops, being appointed by the pope directly, are just the pope's vicars and oracles in the dioceses, and deacons are of no importance at all, notwithstanding the efforts of Vatican II to revive that order. Monasticism has been severely compromised by the proliferation and recognition of other religious orders, the worst of them being the Franciscan order, of whose pestilential influence on the Roman Rite and the abasement of other liturgical rites in the Church there is not a single good word to be said. The tragedy of the contemporary Roman communion was wrought centuries before the fathers assembled in St Peter's in 1962. In such a system as I have just described, what room is there for Tradition? How can you say "just say no to 1965," as NLM's own Peter Kwasniewski delights in saying, and yet accept papal interference in the Creeds, the true form of which were cast in two silver tablets by pope Leo III, of memory eternal, for the love and preservation of the Orthodox Faith? As for me, I consider the Filioque to be an insignificant issue. What matters for me is the question of the pope's right to legislate of his own volition, independent of a General Council of the Church. There is no justification in Scripture or Tradition for what the Papacy is to-day, or has been for centuries. You can dress it up and quote Matthew 16:18 however much you like, but I am 100% convinced that papal supremacy, whether that is in the form of pope-mobiles and crowds of deluded cheerers, or papal coronations, or the old Papal State, or papal infallibility, it is at best a dangerous heresy and at worst the very seat of Antichrist in the Church. I met someone recently who described himself as a "papal minimalist." What on earth does that mean? Either the pope has all these powers of jurisdiction and interference, and can exercise them at his whim, or he doesn't. He either speaks infallibly, as infallibly as the Word of God, or he speaks fallibly like you or me. Either there exists a unique petrine ministry, which is necessary for the existence of the true Church, or there doesn't and it's all a load of rubbish. There is no reason the Bishop of Rome should be appointing the Archbishop of Westminster, or any bishop outside Italy. None whatsoever. That is papal supremacy in action, and it must stop.

I've gone on long enough. Suffice it to say that my view of the Papacy is the only one I can presently think of that could be considered even remotely "crazy," or "weird," or heretical" by Roman Catholics; but I'll amplify that and say by "traditionalist" Roman Catholics. Nice Roman Catholics like Dr Robert Taft, SJ, would probably agree with me in most respects, and he belongs to the Jesuit order, an order of priests under the immediate jurisdiction of the pope. As for my other views, I make no apology for them, many of which are considered "extreme," such as my aversion to wogs and Jews, and my view of the Jewnited States of America as the greatest evil empire the world has ever seen. But do any of you really care? I have no influence anywhere. What I did find disturbing was walking past a police car the other day on my way down to Blackfen (yes, there), and seeming to hear on the car radio my name mentioned. So I wonder, given my "weird," "crazy" and "heretical" views, whether I am on some database of possible terrorists. Maybe my mother's advocacy that I am just a "harmless crank" might not come in handy next time...

Memory eternal...

I'm afraid I've been too busy to fittingly mark Tolkien's anniversary, let alone finish the "necromancer" post I've been writing for weeks on the other blog, and I shall be in Ireland next week. So I call upon you to remember blessed John Ronald who reposed in The LORD forty-two years ago to-day.

I have writer's block. I've been sat here for two hours trying to think of something insightful to say about Tolkien and death but one cannot simply summon the muse. So I'm going to think about the Ents and the Entwives to-day, and hope that when the land under the wave is lifted up again then hope in their search and reconciliation is lifted up too.

We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the Name of the LORD.

J.R.R Tolkien, 1892-1973

Requiescat in pace.