How do you do!

All this talk of accents put me in mind of one of the best parts of My Fair Lady, one of my favourite motion picture films, starring Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle.

Accents...

The young fogey put me in mind of accents, regional accents, the various "modern" accents, and so on. Mr Beeler had uploaded a video of some bimbo girl of my generation complaining about people who support Donald Trump, and then welling up about these same people, who apparently view immigrants as subhuman (many of them often are; as Húrin appositely said of the Easterlings, who "immigrated" into Dor-lómin, "they have learned more swiftly from the orcs than we have from the fair folk."). But before we get sidetracked, Mr Beeler noted that her accent was very modern and a clear generational and class giveaway. I daresay. In the days when I went to Corpus Christi church in Covent Garden every week I used to know a man who had a very distinct East End, "cockney" accent. I mentioned him to someone else, just in idle conversation, and my friend (who also knew him) said that Mr East End was, perhaps, a man of the last generation of the "true" cockney accent (the man was an octogenarian), and that with unchecked immigration, and other demographic revolutions visited, especially, upon London, traditional regional accents were disappearing and replaced by a new, uniform, cosmopolitan accent championed by the BBC. Traditional accents are now embarrassing and almost comic to the cosmopolitan types. Whenever they cross roads with somebody like Mr East End, they invariably think that he might have escaped from some Dickensian musical like "Oliver!" Do we lament the disappearance of regional accents? Do we take the position of Professor Higgins in Pygmalion? I tend to go with my father, who once said: "I wish people didn't talk so much like wogs nowadays!"

Of course, I am not entirely immune from this generational phenomenon myself. Last year I met a young man from America who reads my blog. He described my accent as "slightly posh," by which he meant, I think, that I don't talk like most people of my generation. And this is true. I've heard it said of me in my menial job that people think I am "stuck up," which I am not, but I gather, given the known principle that a man's voice and bearing give away more about his class and generation than he can conceal, that this is to do with my accent, what (little) I say, and to an extent my upright posture (I was a dancer; no slouching here!). But nobody can say that I put on airs! You won't find me walking into a pub and ordering a Pinot Grigio in a put-on Received Pronunciation but barely-concealed Essex accent, as I witnessed Sir Les Patterson an old traditionalist acquaintance do once. When the mini bottle with the screw top came, my comment "I never realised you were such a 'coin-a-saur'" fell upon deaf ears. Does that make me a snob? Am I aloof? Or do I just say what I mean and mean what I say? I am resigned to the fact that I could never pass as a human being. I used to think that being queer was the chief thing that separated me from the rest of humanity but I was mistaken; it's popular to be "gay" nowadays. I now realise that I am just different, from the thoughts in my head even to my very marrow. My voice is just a part of that.

Maybe I'll make a video one of these days. I'm sure you're all dying to know what I sound like!

Makeover...

As you can see, I've given Liturgiae Causa its first makeover in several years. I wanted to revert back to what it used to look like under the simple template but I've settled for a purple and red look instead. I rather like it. I have found that you can't beat a white background with black text. I recall past feedback from when I adopted the previous look. Readers complained that italic text on the mauve background was difficult to read. So I have taken that into consideration. Also, in the sidebar, I have placed a new icon. I call upon readers to invoke Our Lady of Kazan with me as I pray God for a renewal of my prayer life and renewed vigour to write better stuff here. Who knows, I might one day be taken seriously!

O Almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men: Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

Walls and bridges...

It seems that amidst losing his temper with desperate saps in his celebrity cult and presiding over tawdry evening masses in the new world, pope Francis has the temerity to pontificate about whether people who build walls rather than bridges are Christian or not, while conspicuously having nothing to say about a more dangerous woman who advocates the murder of children. Now, before we all swoon at the pope's accustomed wisdom, let's take a look at the Scriptures, shall we?

"And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, Having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal; And had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel: On the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb." Revelation 21:10-14.

Ever heard of the "pearly gates?" But there's more. Isn't the Vatican City entirely surrounded by walls? Pretty thick ones too! Monasteries have walls. Prisons have walls to keep dangerous people contained. Does the pope think they should be thrown down? The Chinese built a famous wall to keep out barbarian hordes. Hadrian's wall marked the boundary of Roman hegemony in Britain. In the palmy days when the Index of Forbidden Books was regularly updated, one could reasonably describe that as a kind of metaphorical "wall" to stem subversive ideas. Heavens! The Roman church had a siege mentality in the period between the unification of Italy and the signing of the Lateran Treaty! When the Church is driven into new catacombs (we aren't far from that), the remnant might be glad of a protective wall. And so on.

It seems to this old and cynical young man that building walls is more natural for a Christian than building so many bridges; particularly for the benefit of people who aren't interested in reaching back to you, or sharing your culture, language and traditions, and are actually more interested in harming you, raping your wives and daughters, murdering your sons, and depleting your economy, social benefits and natural resources.

Does this man's arrogance know no limits? Perhaps pope Francis, the most European pope to date, doesn't care much for national sovereignty because he is king of the Vatican City, which is pretty much a non-country? Or does he just have verbal diarrhoea? In any case, I'm sure we can expect many more pearls in the future.

A nerd...

Day One

Nerd: "You know, for someone who has had two hours sleep, I feel surprisingly chipper to-day!"
Me: "Chipper?" Let it go. Walk away.

Day Two

Nerd: "So, what do you do in your spare time?"
Me (not wishing to reveal this place): "Well, I do lots of walking..."
Nerd: "Oh, I'm quite partial to perambulating myself!"
By this point, I'd had just about enough and said: "Right, do you know what that word means?"
Nerd: "Yeah, it means walking..."
Me: "No, it means, 'I'm an arsehole.'"
To that, he had nothing to say.

Would you have said any different?

Progress or Regress?

Νίψον ἀνομήματα, μὴ μόναν ὄψιν.

That's a Greek palindrome, attributed to St Gregory of Nazianzus, which means: "wash my transgressions, not just my face." It was inscribed upon a baptismal font outside the great church of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople. It also found its way to provincial England, where you can find it upon the font of St Mary's, Nottingham. I hope the significance of this palindrome will become apparent as we proceed.

Look at the painting closely; it deserves very detailed study. The stone tower goes up and up to heaven. It is an impressive monument to the genius of man. Its foundations, immeasurably strong, lie in the depths where there are great courts and dungeons, from which it rises up in concentric tiers to a lofty crown, wreathed in clouds. But there is more, and less. The levels of construction are vastly incomplete in places, most noticeably at the foundations themselves, with great protrusions of raw mountainside and crumbling pillars of brick coming down to undermine the strength and stability of the good stone work on the left in a double helix pattern; c.f. Gimli's first impressions of Minas Tirith [1]. This helix pattern is the synthesis of progress and regress laid bare. The higher you scale the tower, the deeper you descend into hell. This is because scaling the tower is a counterfeit ascent, false progress, seeming advancement in spite of God. We marvel at Charles Darwin's theories, now almost universally-believed as self-evident fact. Is this progress or regress? He turned Man into a beast. The biblical life expectancy is seventy years [2], and yet modern science is so cruel as to extend that by another twenty, at the end of which life is wrested from unmanned and witless old men. Is this progress or regress? We balk at the idea of disease, poverty, ageing, slavery, the death penalty; anything that compromises the quality of this life. And yet we extend pregnant women the right to ensure that their unborn children can be profitably murdered, dismembered, and their parts sold right up to their due date. Is this progress or regress? We consider ourselves the exemplar of liberty with our democracies, and we scorn countries like Saudi Arabia, or even Russia. Yet what is "democracy?" To the Greeks it meant "mob rule;" for us it's the selection of obedient, careerist toadies by closed committees of rich, elite political parties. We have come this far from Runnymede, from the days of putatively crude dictatorships and superstition through great charters, civil wars and revolutions in a great epic of liberty. That's the hyperbolic narrative I remember from school. Is this progress or regress?

But there's really no such thing, is there? Progress and regress are cyclical principles, like the helix pattern of the Tower of Babel represented here by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, going round and round in an endless spiral of wrath and ignorance. As J.R.R. Tolkien so insightfully put in his poem for C.S Lewis:

I will not walk with your progressive apes,

erect and sapient. Before them gapes

the dark abyss to which their progress tends

if by God's mercy progress ever ends,

and does not ceaselessly revolve the same

unfruitful course with changing of a name [3].

When truth is withered away from the land, progress is just as static as regress and inevitably comes at a cost, often at the cost of man's immortal soul. True progress is a pilgrim's progress, when a penitent asks of his confessor to wash away his transgressions, turning the spiral of man's wrath and ignorance on itself. His intent is then evangelical from start to finish and back to front. Like St Gregory's palindrome, or how Byrd beautified the turba parts in his Passio secundum Ioannem, rendering them the most poignant of all. When we put aside the false progress of faithless man and put on the garments of Christ we have no more need of Babel-builders and the power of this world, written into sky scrapers and ballistic machines. May we then account ourselves truly blessed to cry:

"Come, let us climb up to the LORD's mountain-peak, to the house where the God of Jacob dwells; he shall teach us the right way, we will walk in the paths he has chosen." Isaiah 2:3.

I was going to integrate more into this post; the liturgy of the dedication of a church; what Ghân-buri-Ghân said of the men of Gondor; &c, but I fear you might find it boring and pretentious.

Notes:

[1] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Book V, Chapter IX.
[2] Psalms 90:10
[3] J.R.R. Tolkien, Mythopoeia.

Thread...

Who needs a tower when a ballistic machine can project you higher?

I refer you to the comments on my post "Come Josephine" (it's a catchy tune, isn't it? Just like all those German hymns penned by the Reformers to spread their doctrine...). I'd be very interested to know what anybody else thinks about aviation.

Recently I have been thinking a lot about the tower of Babel, and other stories of civilisations "going backwards," or forwards...the distinction is in kind not in principle. Pride seems to be the binding tenet of these stories. Man becomes inflated with his own self, his wisdom, his greatness, his empire or lineage and casts true religion aside. True to scripture ("Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall," Proverbs 16:18), he falls. For the Númenóreans, their pride and blasphemy caused the destruction of their antient home and the permanent change of the world. For the people of Babel, their tongues were confused and they were scattered. For us, under the yoke of hedonist and liberal principles, our curse seems to be in reverse of Babel. Where they were scattered, we seem bent on bringing the world to our shores into one people (the irony, of course, and something known well to the reprobate architects of our demise, is that this is impossible socially, culturally and linguistically). Where their tongues merely became confused, our language is, for a people once grounded in the Eternal Word, bastardised, sucked dry of meaning, subject to perpetual change, and usurped by obscene lobbyists thundering for equal pay, equal rights, equal marriage, levelling all distinctions, obliterating all differences. And I put it to you, dear readers, that one of the tokens of this decline from man to beast (thank you Darwin), from Christendom to Europe (thank you...gracious, there are so many) is the flying machine. Mark my words! We will have to pay for our hubris one day.

Come Josephine...

I am at this time suffering a bout of writer's block. I have two posts in mind, both of them thesis material (but not, when finally written down, of that quality I expect), but I find that overcoming apathy, and the kind of dased disinclination that can only come of several months of arising from the pit at 2am, is very difficult. Nevertheless, The Anti-Gnostic put me in mind of this in his latest post on the city and its tower.

Is it natural for men to fly?

The question of what is "natural" is difficult to countenance in this post-modern world. Much of what is now seen as ordinary would have been inconceivable in generations past; much of what is natural to-day would have been seen, whether rightly or wrongly, as unnatural in yesteryear. When carnivorous plants were first described by European botanists, some ecclesiastics wrote of them as abominations. The very idea that a plant could ensnare an animal was unthinkable; it was "against nature." Talk to anyone about the death penalty, which I very much support, and you will invariably encounter stark horror. The idea that the state can judicially end a man's life, which, in the thought of faithless men, is all he has, is unnatural. Even if you get past that, the manner of the man's death is subject to intense scrutiny. What constitutes a "cruel and unusual" punishment? Should the punishment fit the crime? For a nation that tolerates abortion, and even promotes assisted suicide, are we not hypocritical in our condescension of the Arabs whose penal code is written in blood? Who in England to-day, let him be the most sadistic of men, could stomach to see a man disemboweled or gibbeted? I'd like to think I could. I must admit that if executions were still legal and performed in public I would go to them, not to croak but to witness the crime justly strangled to death. This comes more of a profound sense of justice than morbid curiosity.

Paedophilia and to some extent pederasty are the new unforgivable sins. This has nothing to do with Matthew 19:14 but rather more to do with how decadent we have become. Since all manner of sexual acts and identities, between men, women, the other "genders," mute objects (but strangely not yet between brute beasts, or the dead), have become "natural," perfectly normal, we cringe in horror at the idea that a man of thirty might find a boy of fourteen attractive. Do we forget, perhaps, that girls of twelve summers were married to men of forty until the 19th century? Our Blessed Lady herself was probably no more than fourteen when Christ was born, and certainly betrothed to a man twice her age. But if we remember these inconvenient facts at all, we undoubtedly say that those ages, all ages to date but our own in fact, were savage, riddled with swift death, taboo morality and little bliss. By contrast, our own age, riddled with standard of living and striving to level all perceived inequalities, falls into a curious, almost ad hoc morality in these matters, designed to obviate the gross lack of standards and consistency in public perception. Paedophilia is wrong not because interference into the innocence of a child is wrong but because we are desperate to say that we have some semblance of moral outrage. And what does that say about most people? As for the Greek custom, I'd like to know why people think that the arbitrary "so-long-as-he's-over-eighteen" rule has any validity whatsoever.

Times change, sensitivities change. Even for many nominal Christians the idea that something could be "against nature" itself goes against the grain. "Against nature?" That has a prejudicial ring to it, surely? But we all seem to do things nowadays that go against nature. We eat fruit out of season; we marry for love, &c. We do these things unconsciously because we scarce can conceive of any different. We're also unbelievably lazy. That's why people shop online. I don't know if you've noticed but Amazon have recently started to deliver on Sundays. I challenged an Amazon courier once about posting a book I had ordered through my letterbox one Sunday and said that I didn't want to receive it until Monday but I just couldn't get him to understand my position and he left the book, along with my indignation, with me. I had no choice but to leave it in the porch and refused to open it till the morrow. We're also so lazy nowadays that we make journeys light of their time, expense and distance by flying through the air. I have taken longer to arrive at this argument than intended but the fundamental question in this post-Industrial age is: is it natural? Is it proper? Is it in accord with God's will and purpose for man? It's a difficult and certainly hypocritical question to ask for someone who has many times been in an aeroplane, and once a hot-air balloon, but inconvenience and saving face notwithstanding, I cannot eschew the vision I have of "the city and its tower," and the curse that came of the arrogant presumption of the sons of men who thought to reach heavenward. Tolkien wrote very eloquently on this subject, even so (emphasis my own):

"I wonder how you are getting on with your flying since you first went solo - the last news we had of this. I especially noted your observations on the skimming martins [I'd like to read those]. That touches the heart of things, doesn't it? There is the tragedy and despair of all machinery laid bare. Unlike art which is content to create a new secondary world in the mind, it attempts to actualise desire, and so to create power in this World; and that cannot really be done with any real satisfaction. Labour-saving machinery only creates endless and worse labour. And in addition to this fundamental disability of a creature, is added the Fall, which makes our devices not only fail of their desire but turn to new and horrible evil. So we come inevitably from Daedalus and Icarus to the Great Bomber." (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, No.75).

This has to be among the most brilliant of Tolkien's observations, especially the stuff in bold. It is these two, the attempt to actualise desire (which is seldom but morally questionable) and thence create power in this world, that underpin the hubris of both the accursed "sons of men" who built the heavenward tower and the Númenóreans who waged a blasphemous war against the Valar. It is also the driving force behind the "internal combustion" engine and, by incremental degrees, the aeroplane.
You may say that my objection to flying is just as fatuous as those ecclesiastics who wrote against carnivorous plants. The difference is that carnivorous plants exist in nature. Aeroplanes, helicopters, hot-air balloons, blimps and so on exist by man's devising. For centuries men desired to soar above the clouds. Even if we concede that aviation, facilitated by man's devising, procures some good and the desire itself to fly is "natural" (I don't personally think it is), the work might begin well but it is inexorably in the nature of man to turn bad. Legolas and Gimli observed this when they entered the city of men, Minas Tirith. At best it becomes an occasion for laziness, which I would attribute to people who use commercial airlines to go on holiday (or even more reprobate, on pilgrimage). At worst...well, British and German cities during the Second World War suffered irreparable damage due to man's unnatural invention, not to mention the 9/11 inside job. Only the Ringwraiths took to the air to make war in Tolkien.

Like you, I am so lazy that I travel by aeroplane. I don't fear flying like my brother but I don't enjoy it much. In some ways, it detracts from the satisfaction of having made the journey. Like borrowing money to buy something rather than saving up for it. But we have to live in the world as it is to an extent. Flying is inevitable because the alternatives are more expensive and time-consuming. Who could afford to take the time off work to travel to Italy by foot? An old friend of mine once posted to her Facebook a photograph of her standing at a crossroads signpost that said "United Kingdom, 7,000 odd miles," this way with the arrow pointing. I don't know where she was. The sign itself was totally useless except as a curiosity aimed at tourists but I thought then, and still do now, how little that distance means. You can get anywhere in this world within mere hours to-day. The world is becoming both much bigger and much smaller. I expect you know already what I'm getting at. Where does this leave the simple Christian? Can you be a Christian and work in marketing? Can you be a Christian and live in the city? Can a Christian do anything without sin? It seems to me that we are beset on all sides, and some of those sides aren't even watched by most Christians.

What do you think? Perhaps these are ravings!

Sacredness of the King's person...

"The villainy of the Rebels proceeding now so far as to try, condemn, and murder our excellent King, the 30th of this month, struck me with such horror that I kept the day of his martyrdom a fast, and would not be present, at that execrable wickedness." (ed). E.S. de Beer, The Diary of John Evelyn, Oxford University Press, 1959, pp.275-6.

In my last post I thought I'd share something that occurred to me. It was the ontological sacredness of the King's person, violated both by Saruman, who plainly discovered Isildur's remains, and the regicides who dared to constrain King Charles with force of arms and ultimately to cut off his head. There are other vindications in Tolkien of the "Divine Right," as it were. That it is natural is seen most clearly in Frodo and Sam's chancing upon the defaced statue at the Crossroads. The decollated head was rolled aside by the soldiery of the Dark Tower but, as if in reverence for the fallen king, a trailing plant with flowers as of silver stars had bound itself across the brow of the king and in the light of the westering sun it seemed to the hobbits that the king had a crown again. That it is proper is seen most clearly in the Lord Denethor's remonstrance with the young Boromir, who complained that his father was not a king despite the fact that the true king did not return. "In other places of less royalty," said Denethor, custom might dictate that the kingship passed to a lesser lord. "But in Gondor, ten thousand years would not suffice!" On this point it is also noteworthy that both Boromir and Denethor only gainsaid the return of the King under the influence of Sauron; Boromir by his overmastering lust for the Ring; Denethor through the medium of the palantír. And finally, the most important vindication of the sacredness of the king's person is the Royal Touch, and this cannot be passed to a lesser man but is inextricably linked to the King's royal lineage. It's very clear to me that Tolkien thought of the King as both an English king and a Byzantine, or rather Roman, emperor. You just have to look at a map of Europe.

Nine Nazgûl put Eärnur, the last King of Gondor, cruelly to death. Fifty-nine reprobate men signed King Charles' death warrant. But as Frodo said at the Crossroads, "they cannot conquer forever!" In both cases, after long grief and a bitter trial, there was a godly restoration. For England, bewailing the tyranny of wicked men upon this black day, this restoration took place on the King's very birthday, upon the 29th Day of May, to which evening was by providence appointed the Psalm (126):

When the LORD turned again the captivity of Sion, then

were we like unto them that dream. Then was our mouth

filled with laughter, and our tongue with joy. Then said they

among the heathen, The LORD hath done great things for

them.

Yea, the LORD hath done great things for us already,

whereof we rejoice. Turn our captivity, O LORD, as the rivers

in the south.

They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that now goeth

on his way weeping, and beareth forth good seed, shall

doubtless come again with joy, and bring his sheaves with

him.

As therefore we bewail our manifold sins upon Good Friday with ash and sackcloth, yet look forward to the joy of Easter morn, so let us upon this day remember that the shadow is a fleeting thing. There is joy, truth and justice forever beyond its reach!

Bl. King Charles, pray for us.

God Save The Queen!

All the secrets of the tower...

"But King Elessar, when he was crowned in Gondor, began the re-ordering of his realm, and one of the first tasks was the restoration of Orthanc, where he proposed to set up again the palantír recovered from Saruman. Then all the secrets of the tower were searched. Many things of worth were found, jewels and heirlooms of Eorl, filched from Edoras by the agency of Wormtongue during King Théoden's decline, and other such things, more ancient and beautiful, from mounds and tombs far and wide. Saruman in his degradation had become not a dragon but a jackdaw. At last, behind a hidden door that they could not have found or opened had not Elessar had the aid of Gimli the Dwarf, a steel closet was revealed. Maybe it had been intended to receive the Ring; but it was almost bare. In a casket on a high shelf two things were laid. One was a small case of gold, attached to a fine chain; it was empty, and bore no letter or token, but beyond all doubt it had once borne the Ring about Isildur's neck. Next to it lay a treasure without price, long mourned as lost for ever: the Elendilmir itself, the white star of Elvish crystal upon a fillet of mithril that had descended from Silmarien to Elendil, and had been taken by him as the token of royalty in the North Kingdom. Every king and the chieftains that followed them in Arnor had borne the Elendilmir down even to Elessar himself; but though it was a jewel of great beauty made by Elven-smiths in Imladris for Valandil Isildur's son, it had not the ancientry nor potency of the one that had been lost when Isildur fled into the dark and came back no more.

"Elessar took it up with reverence, and when he returned to the North and took up again the full kingship of Arnor Arwen bound it upon his brow, and men were silent in amaze to see its splendour. But Elessar did not again imperil it, and wore it only on high days in the North Kingdom. Otherwise, when in kingly raimant he bore the Elendilmir which had descended to him. 'And this also is a thing of reverence,' he said, 'and above my worth; forty heads have worn it before.'

"When men considered this secret hoard more closely, they were dismayed. For it seemed to them that these things, and certainly the Elendilmir, could not have been found, unless they had been upon Isildur's body when he sank; but if that had been in deep water of strong flow they would in time have been swept far away. Therefore Isildur must have fallen not into the deep stream but into shallow water, no more than shoulder-high. Why then, though an Age had passed, were there no traces of his bones? Had Saruman found them, and scorned them - burned them with dishonour in one of his furnaces? If that were so, it was a shameful deed; but not his worst." J.R.R Tolkien, Unfinished Tales, Part III, Chapter I, "The Disaster of the Gladden Fields."

Bl. Charles ye Martyr, pray for us.

Followers...

I thought the few followers I had left had finally seen the light and removed their subscriptions in droves but I was mistaken. It appears that Google now requires followers to have a Google account rather than an OpenId and all those other methods of following, beyond my head. I pasted this from the news section of my Blogger dashboard. Anybody affected by this change might like to re-subscribe by setting up a Google account (please don't take this as an endorsement of Google by the way), or you may prefer not to. In any case, please read the following:

In 2011, we announced the retirement of Google Friend Connect for all non-Blogger sites. We made an exception for Blogger to give readers an easy way to follow blogs using a variety of accounts. Yet over time, we’ve seen that most people sign into Friend Connect with a Google Account. So, in an effort to streamline, in the next few weeks we’ll be making some changes that will eventually require readers to have a Google Account to sign into Friend Connect and follow blogs. 

As part of this plan, starting the week of January 11, we’ll remove the ability for people with Twitter, Yahoo, Orkut or other OpenId providers to sign in to Google Friend Connect and follow blogs. At the same time, we’ll remove non-Google Account profiles so you may see a decrease in your blog follower count. 

We encourage you to tell affected readers (perhaps via a blog post), that if they use a non-Google Account to follow your blog, they need to sign up for a Google Account, and re-follow your blog. With a Google Account, they’ll get blogs added to their Reading List, making it easier for them to see the latest posts and activity of the blogs they follow. 

We know how important followers are to all bloggers, but we believe this change will improve the experience for both you and your readers.

The liberation of Britain...

I would be the first to complain, as I have complained, about the "zombification" of the people by a wicked and corrupt elite. Nevertheless, to occupy the time between work and the grave and to shut out the modern world, I sit in my room every day, wrapped in a filthy dressing gown, becoming, as it were, a zombie myself. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. But whenever I do emerge from the depths to either update this blog or watch the news, occasionally I come across something cheerful. Fr Andrew's blog is well worth the read. Not only his latest autobiographical sketch but this succinct and erudite account of Mr Cameron's EU negotiation.

My view? Apart from the fact that Mr Cameron is a snake and a charlatan, a total fake with no discernible conviction, this EU negotiation is hot air. The Conservative Party has been fanatically committed to the European project since, at least, the days of Mr Heath. Party membership, even for men who claim the mantle of Christ (see here), clearly depends upon enthusiasm for everything European, and Conservative party members who claim to be "euroskeptic" are just liars. It would be nice for Britain to secede from the godless EU but it won't happen. The United States won't let us for a start, and neither will the other EU member states. If, in the unlikely event that the Referendum (which I don't believe in, and certainly won't vote in) declared that the British people wished to secede, what difference would it make? I can't see the anti-Christian, anti-British legislation passed in Brussels since the 1970's being systematically undone by a new, nationalist government; can you? No, mass immigration will continue, except this time under the pretext of settling "refugees" and "migrants" from the Middle East and, perhaps because of "Boko Haram," from West Africa; all in the name of humanitarianism. The department for international development will not be closed down; the NHS will continue to be an hindrance to the nation's healthcare, despite its godlike aura. Political correctness will continue to reign unchallenged in public services and institutions. Globalisation will continue; the secularisation of the church Established, or disestablished before long. The nightmare of progress will just go on undisturbed.

In other words, formerly Great Britain is without final hope. As Tolkien said of the desolation about Mordor, Britain has become:

"the lasting monument to the dark labour of its [Satan's] slaves that should endure when all their purposes were made void; a land defiled, diseased beyond all healing - unless the Great Sea should enter in and wash it with oblivion." The Lord of the Rings, Book IV, Chapter II.

As I see it, the only hope is for an invasion from Eternal Russia. Come and liberate us with the Gospel! Come, come, with fury and righteous anger to smite the head of the snake! Send out bishops, priests, and monks as an holy army for our deliverance! Come, Holy Rus!