Silence...

Silence is golden, silence is awkward, silence is many things. But it is not liturgical!

Peter Hitchens...

It's hard not to admire Peter Hitchens. His articles are bethought of a mind both subtle and profound, and very sharp. He knows much more than I do about British constitutional history and politics, and has a sincerely felt conviction in the defence thereof against the ineluctable tides of secularism, indifference and philistinism. I don't agree with his every view, particularly his commitment to Zionism, but he argues for his positions with clarity. I know from experience that he doesn't suffer fools gladly. I wrote to him once about a painting in his house (I assumed it was his house) which reminded me of the view of London from Shooters Hill, with a few other comments about his latest book "Short Breaks in Mordor." I was amazed that within ten minutes I had a reply, which was both strangely complimentary and condescending. The impression I got was that because I didn't have an encyclopaedic knowledge of his every published work, I was an idiot; although I must stress that he did not say that. I felt "stung;" that seems the best word. I never wrote back.

He has recently been very spirited in the defence of Bishop George Bell, an heroic and saintly man cheaply discarded by the Church of England on an (almost certainly false) accusation of paedophilia. Mr Hitchens is to be commended on this. He also occasionally appears on BBC's The Big Questions, a faith discussion show hosted by Nicky Campbell on Sunday mornings. I seldom watch this because the BBC scrapes the multicultural barrel of Britain to undermine the sanctity of the LORD's Day by discussing such things as: "is there more truth in Shakespeare than the Bible," and "is it fair that we have bishops in the House of Lords?" at a time when we all should be in church. But Mr Hitchens' forbearance is formidable, and he once said, in response to some hackneyed feminist drivel, "no wonder nobody goes to church these days, if they believe this sort of flim flam is what goes on on Sunday mornings!" He is absolutely right.

Mr Hitchens, very much like me, is a lonely voice in a howling wilderness. I would there were more journalists like him. Presently the only one I can think of is Polly Toynbee, but she is only like Mr Hitchens in the sense that they are of a similar standard, class and generation. Their views couldn't be more different, and, unlike Mr Hitchens, Toynbee represents a worldview I heartily detest. As usual, I digress.

There are two articles by Mr Hitchens that I would recommend. The first, from 2011, a response to the "riots" we saw in London that summer. The next, a response to the parliamentary vote to bomb Syria in December. He's a good egg.

Facebook...

I had a very active Facebook account until about four years ago, when I deleted it. I had initially set up my account to keep in contact with friends of mine from Heythrop who were moving away, moving up in the (mostly ecclesiastical) world, because at the time I became acutely aware that Facebook was fast becoming the sole means of maintaining human contacts in a globalised world. I can't say that I didn't enjoy using it. I uploaded lots of photographs, was "tagged" in quite a few too. Many people found my posts humorous and insightful, as they sometimes do here. These are all gone forever now, even if I can remember half of them or see them in my mind's eye. You see, as sometimes happened with my books, I purged them completely. I didn't simply request that my account be deactivated, to be restored at any time I fancied to return, I deleted everything manually (which took some hours), and then submitted a request for permanent deletion.

Why did I do this? There are many reasons. One was my near obsession with using the service, which is never a good thing. Upon waking I would instantly turn on my iPhone and go through the app, checking notifications, looking at friends' posts and pictures, and so on. Another was the pent-up envy that came of being constantly exposed to the lives of people better off than myself. "Look at me, I'm on holiday!" or: "we're having a brace of lobsters for dinner tonight, and champagne." What was also apparent, and certainly depressing, was the absolute contrast between my work and my social life, which came together on Facebook. People at work would send me friend requests, just as my real friends would (and not seldom people I'd never met). Most of these I accepted, just to save face. Since we spend most of the year with our work colleagues it wouldn't do to offend them by letting them hang! But I found this mingling of the two worlds troubling, not because I am a different person in either but because I wanted to keep work and leisure strictly separate. I remember feeling distinctly embarrassed when a friend (of a friend), a rather obsessive chap, made a number of verbose comments on a photograph in which I had been tagged by my friend Nina. When I next saw her she asked who he was, and I could see that she also found the situation embarrassing; a situation exacerbated by my attempt to delete his comments, which was met with: "my comments seem to have disappeared. What I had said was," &c.

Occasionally, although I later stopped caring, I would ask work colleagues what they thought of "my Facebook." The general consensus was: "well, I don't understand your posts most of the time." One woman, Mary, even said: "I don't like it when you use big words," which made me feel very sad for her. Having, therefore, work colleagues as Facebook friends just exemplified how different I was from them and by extension how lonely and peculiar I was by nature.

After I deleted my Facebook account I sent a circular e-mail to many of my old friends explaining my decision. Some wrote back with promises of contact, even meeting up, open invitations to visit them, and such things. None of them ever materialised, and even the few who remained in contact with me whittled away one by one, sooner for those who genuinely didn't care, later for those who made some effort. Some begged me to come back, one ostensibly on the grounds that she found the traditional means of contact (such as writing) a waste of time! I don't have sentimental feelings about these people to-day. People move on and if my list of friends has shortened considerably to a small nucleus of true friends then I think my decision to end my connexion to this suspicious online mob was a good one.

Of course, now that I am in a new job (since October) I am having to reject repeated intercessions from new colleagues for me to set up a new account. Karen (with whom my manager thinks I am having an affair!) is especially keen. The girls are doing a Cancer Research walk in the summer. As I think I said here, I can think of worthier causes than that but registration was through Facebook, and it would have been nice to have been asked. I do but pay the price for my conviction, I guess.

Vintage Dame Edna...

This is from the Parkinson Show, sometime in 1982 (before I was born, if you can believe it!). I want that tea pot!

"Game of Thrones"...

My brother watches "Game of Thrones," and keeps trying to get me to watch it. "It's right up your street," were his words. I sometimes marvel that even members of my own family don't understand me, or have any idea about my taste. The little that I have seen of this series, the gratuitous depictions of sadistic sex, the foul language, the pseudo-mediaeval setting, a pagan pantheon, poor acting and just a general sense of arbitrary, tawdry nastiness together make this one of the programmes I am least likely to watch, let alone enjoy, right up there with Downton Abbey and Jerry Springer. But then I am not particularly keen on any contemporary television programme, for any number of reasons. It might use the metric system; it might have an ethnic presenter; it might be politically-correct in other ways. If it isn't bad enough leaving my house to be confronted with the modern world, I'd rather not see it on my television screen. And what I have seen of this "Game of Thrones" series suggests that it very much caters for a modern audience, who see nothing wrong with fornication, and bestiality, and not believing in the true God.

Do any of my readers watch this series?

Glee...

"Less doth yearning trouble him who knoweth many songs, or with his hand can touch the harp. His possession is his gift of glee, which God gave him."

So says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, as quoted by J.R.R Tolkien in one of his letters. I am terribly glad that my head is full of hymns, madrigals, poems and large chunks of the Psalter. Boredom is something we all feel at whiles but at least with the memory of these things we can stave it off. I have a very mind-numbing job. "Pick, scan, pack, scan," that's my routine four hours out of the day, four days a week. As I undertake my menial tasks my mind naturally wanders. I can walk in the glades of Ithilien with Legolas as he sings of Nimrodel, breathing deep of the abundance of parsley, sage and lily flowers that grew there in peace and listening to the distant music of water falling over stone in swift cataracts; or I could sit in choir in Notre Dame de Paris (circa 1450) on some high feast as the Cantor bids the clerks of Mattins begin the first nocturn with his rod of office. That pious longing and profound regret is, to my mind, the beauty of holiness, but to others is "liturgical fetishism." But I digress.

As I sat on the bank of the River Darent the other week I listened to the swift-flowing river and thought of Ulmo, that kingly yet lonely Ainu who kept in his heart most faithfully the will of God. It's said that in water, Ulmo's province, is heard yet an echo of The Music of the Ainur. For those of you who don't know, The Music of the Ainur is Tolkien's cosmogonical myth, the primeval angelic chorus in which was conceived the world and all its history. Before all things God had made the Ainur, the holy ones, and taught them many things, and the greatest of them was music. Now he would speak to them, propounding to them themes of music and joyous hymn, and their minstrelsy arose in splendour about the divine throne. On a time God told the Ainur of a great theme, unmatched in its vastness and glory than aught else that he had revealed before, and he bade them "make a great and glorious music of this theme," whereat the harpists and lutanists, flautists and pipers, organs and countless choirs singing with voices began a great music, and God listened. Has anybody thought about this in detail? Has anybody endeavoured to conceive of the majesty of this music, its length and structure, or its intricate subtleties and harmonies? How did it begin? Did it begin with thunderous acclamation like "fecit potentiam" of Victoria's eight-part Magnificat, or quiet and sweetly like Morley's summer madrigal "Now is the Month of Maying?" Was it liturgical? Readers will not be surprised to learn that this is my conception of The Music of the Ainur! Like the twenty-four elders with their harps and vials before the throne in prophecy, this music was both adoration and proclamation, a telling of things known from eternity and yet new, with each chord in praise of the divine majesty. But who read the lessons? Who superindended the service? Who ruled the choir? Was time observed in some way? There was no moon, sun or stars. Singing of something so grand as the world from its infancy to the days of eternity must have taken some time, maybe even the six days of Genesis. We're told that those with the deepest understanding of the Music were those who sang not but hearkened, like archdeacons in a mediaeval choir. Perhaps these (among them Gandalf, as he became) were the proto-theologians and liturgists of Middle-earth!

Oh, I know The Music of the Ainur is myth but I do think that Orthodoxy (that is right worship), just as water in any stream, salty sea or mill pond, is redolent of it. And isn't that the whole point of divine worship? To make it as a mirror image of the angelic chorus and liturgy in heaven? Those who say otherwise, be they slack modernists who say there is no point or time in the fullness of liturgy, or traditionalists who say likewise (those apt to label me a "liturgical fetishist," for example), have profoundly missed the point. I put it to you that the prime purpose of life is to worship God in spirit and truth, and the beauty of holiness...and it seems to me that a low mass, without song, just doesn't come close.

I go over these things constantly, as I follow the "pick, scan, pack, scan" routine or sit watching a shallow river in rural England.

As a curious aside, please note what Ilúvatar says of existence: "those things that ye have sung and played, lo! I have caused to be - not in the musics that ye make in the heavenly regions, as a joy to me and a play unto yourselves, alone, but rather to have shape and reality even as have ye Ainur, whom I have made to share in the reality of Ilúvatar myself." Aquinas, anyone?

A question of sport...

To-day's Google widget is a reminder of 120 years of the modern Olympic games. If you ask me, Theodosius Augustus was right to abolish the Olympic games with all the other pagan relics of the antient world, and their "revival" is most unfortunate. I have nothing against physical fitness and healthy competition but when these things become, as they have ostensibly become in our time, obsessive, and occasions of pride and lust (not to mention obscene - the so-called "paralympic" games are an abuse of human dignity), I think it behoves us to remember Christ's words to the Pharisees about making clean the outside of the cup (the physical body) at the expense of that which is within (the soul). I used to work with a girl called Emma. Pleasant enough as godless people are to-day, she knew little of Jesus, but spent a considerable amount of her time going to the gym, watching her calories, moisturising her skin, flossing her teeth (she used to brush her teeth after every meal), waxing her body hair, getting drunk and fornicating with various men. She made no efforts at all to read books, or to to listen to (real) music, or go to the theatre. She was a cultural and spiritual desert; an impressive-looking but hollow shell. Anybody in this world can lift weights, or run a distance, but if you are ignorant of the literature and musick of your country, you cannot really be conversant with its history or character; you know nothing at all about what your ancestors thought and believed, and crucially you cannot pass that onto your children. To read, to listen, to experience; these things make us who we are, not contests of sport or Weight Watchers. And if you are ignorant of the Bible, well...in what sense can you claim to be civilised?

I would quite happily see the abolition of the modern Olympic games, not because it is a revival of paganism (would that it were! At least pagans had the natural light, ere the Gospel encompassed the Empire), but because I see it as tacitly encouraging the kind of person Emma was. A hollow shell, apt to be filled with the modern world. Not much room there for the Gospel. Beauty fades, the body soon withers. We're stuck with our souls for eternity.

This is becoming all too frequent...

"The reality is that the Gangster Bankers who created and financed Communism also control the 'British' Parliament from behind the scenes. The House of Commons is no more than a House of Traitors. For years politicians of all parties have furthered the plans and ambitions of the Money Power, not looked after the interests of the British people. There could be no more clear evidence of this than Coloured Immigration.

"Against the clear wishes of the indigenous British people and in a manner which can only be described as treasonable, an estimated 10 million racially unassimilable aliens have been brought into our already overcrowded island. The incomers include: West Indians, Africans, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Iranians, Vietnamese, Tamils, Philippinos, Arabs, Egyptians, Indonesians, Malaysians, South and Central Americans, Chinese, Greek and Turkish Cypriots, &c; not to mention vast numbers of 'nearly-Whites' from southern Europe. Now we face the prospect of further millions from Hong Kong—and Turkey, if Turkey's application to join the 'European' Common Market is successful. The hostility which these various ethnic groups bear for us, the 'host' community, is often only exceeded by the imported ancestral hatreds which they nurture for each other.

"Why is this being done to our country? Because the almighty International Bankers—Rothschilds, Warburgs, Rockefellers and their associates have decided that all the peoples of the world are going to have a World Government imposed on them whether they like it or not, and breaking down the identities of the various sovereign nations is best achieved by mixing up their populations. As the pro-World Government spokesman Rabbi Abraham Feinberg put it: 'One World—One Race: the deliberate encouragement of inter-racial marriage.'

"Britain has been selected by the Bankers to be their first victim nation in the context of the Common Market and other developing World Government structures. To ensure that the planned destruction of our nation is total and permanent the Bankers have determined that our unique Anglo-Saxon-Celtic people must be obliterated as a distinct ethnic group by means of forced race mixing with hordes of Blacks, Browns and Yellows who are being deliberately brought into our country for this purpose.

"Eustace Mullins, in his book History of the Jews, quoted a speech by Rabbi Rabinovitch in Budapest forty years ago, which shows clearly what the intentions of the Jewish Bankers are: 'Mixing the dark with the white means an end of the White man..... thus the White Race will disappear and our most dangerous enemy will become only a memory.'

"The politicians you vote for have been fully co-operating with the Bankers in this strategy. To speed up the process of the destruction and decay of our race and nation and to create room for more new alien immigrants, the British people are being deluged with mass media propaganda to induce them to reduce their numbers by means of abortion, sterilization, vasectomy and contraception. Remember that mass media hacks, like Parliamentary politicians, are simply the obedient servants and handsomely-paid hirelings of the International Jewish Conspiracy.

"Our race and nation is now being destroyed. What are you doing about it? A vote for any of the Parliamentary political parties is a vote of support for the Satanic Bankers and the destruction of your own kind." The Longest Hatred: An Examination of Anti-Gentilism.

Send in the clowns...

See here for David Sullivan's succinct analysis of what I've spent the past week and more complaining about. Sedevacantism is far more sensible than mainstream traditionalism but it cannot exist outside the framework of modern Romanism, the construct of 19th century Ultramontanism, which is why it is inherently fallacious as a position. Traditionalism is worse in that it seeks to be respectable, where Sedevacantists can be dismissed (unfairly?) as fanatics, but it seeks justification for its existence by recourse to positive legislation of the contemporary "magisterium." Tradition simply doesn't come into it, to say nothing of the bogus "hermeneutics" (a posh word for reading what you want to read) traditionalists apply to contemporary magisterial texts, on such things as "climate change," or references to dubious 20th century genocides.

It seems to me that if you want to be a Roman Catholic, just be an ordinary one. Swim with the tide, and faster. To be a "traditionalist," of whatever sort, is both to have given up the struggle, and to be too selfish to move on. They're both the same. Since the Western patrimony is objectively dead and found only in the libraries of cathedrals and universities, I don't really see how to identify as a Roman Catholic, and to believe in Roman Catholic teachings, has anything to do with concern about such ephemeral things as the hymns of Prudentius or where the thurifer stands at solemn vespers. Prudentius never belonged to the modern Roman church anymore than Luther did after he proclaimed his heresy. Would either of them have believed in papal infallibility, or accepted the teaching implicit in Nostra Aetate (to pick one document) that we're all the same, really? Here my detractors would point out Newman's "doctrinal development" and say that I am being cynical. Maybe I am cynical. But what is "doctrinal development" but relentless progress? Just like the evolution of mankind or scaling that skyward tower built by the sons of men. One pope, in the seventh century, might have (rightly) condemned episcopal hubris; and then another, over a thousand years later, proclaims himself the embodiment of the whole Church. It's a non sequitur!

If you accept all this as divinely sanctioned, following the only scripture pericope known to most Roman Catholics (you know which one), that's up to you. You are at liberty to do so. But what I don't understand is the attachment people feel, who accept this "doctrinal development," to the externals of what tradition they think fitting to hold onto. As such, I have come to be deeply suspicious of anything even remotely "high church" within Roman Catholicism. Why would you be concerned about the hymns of Prudentius, Ambrose and the other Latin Christian poets when these have been replaced by divinely-sanctioned authority? Or arbitrarily brought back as the case may be! Why feel regret at all about the passing of much that was so sure and venerable by swift and nondiscriminating legislation? Surely communion with your local priest, that's right! the trendy one who insists you call him "Bob," is more important? Why not avail yourselves of the treasures at his command? Join the fun! Swim with the tide! Because by fighting against the tide you're surely putting yourself at variance with the mind of the Church? Sentire cum ecclesia, and all that. What did we say about relentless progress? If the church has said: "Oh, we don't pray in this way, or believe such things, anymore; that's how Christians prayed and believed in savage, politically incorrect ages," then surely it is your bounden duty to obey without question and ignore the tradition, doctrine or discipline that has latterly been driven into a vast, underground lumber room, like so much embarrassing furniture (like Limbo, or the sale of Indulgences), and the doors sealed? Otherwise you're just doomed to despair, to be forgotten within a generation. Just as before railways each town had its own "time zone," reckoned by a sundial, so before the Council of Trent there was a rich plurality of liturgy and tradition in each town and province. Who remembers it?

Rome has no intention of ever undoing the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, or abolishing the Novus Ordo. To do so would be to undermine her self-proclaimed infallibility. Like the discords of Melkor in The Music of the Ainur, these things have simply been taken up into her narrative, except that this narrative will not end in the triumph of good but the declension of noticeable difference between Roman Catholics and people of other faiths, even atheists. In purely business terms, if you're not with this programme, if you're not fully flexible, adaptable, if you do not embrace change and diversity...then you might as well just pack up and leave!

Or you could remain Sedevacantist, or Lefebvrist, or neo-conservative, or traditionalist. But what do you have that cannot be found, better and healthier, within the Orthodox Church?

Under the yoke...

I have often been ridiculed and insulted for holding fast certain of my views. I have been proscribed, banned from commenting on certain blogs and, where I am not (yet) banned, simply ignored. I am also used to ridicule in civil life; mostly from people I have worked with (nearly always my own age), though not seldom strangers around town. I have been heckled and abused on the bus, refused service in a wine bar, even assaulted in my own home. I am used to it. I recently deleted a comment left by a renegade priest in the Netherlands who said that I was a "crackpot," whom "nobody could ever take seriously," and then suggested that I should be locked up for life in an insane asylum, gagged and muzzled and denied access to the Internet. To have elicited such shameful contempt, I think, says more about the abuser than the abused. Is he fearful of my words as those of a true seer? Why do my views touch a nerve so raw in him that he must make recourse to such harsh censure?

What views might they be? That the Pope of Rome is the Antichrist? That this can be proven from Scripture and even the testament of past Bishops of Rome, most notably St Gregory the Great and Preacher of Dialogues? Or my view that Lefebvrism is a pagan cult? Or that Mother Teresa was morally depraved? That Lady Diana Spencer was a dull ingrate whose death was both timely and many times deserved? Or perhaps people find my political views, or my views about Jews, blacks and the adulteration of British culture by mass immigration and secularism distasteful? I am not apologetic about holding these convictions. I regard myself as having a coherent, defensible moral position, and I think that if I did nothing else but breathe, eat and sleep people would still find reason to hate me. It is not unreasonable to imagine that some of my detractors genuinely wish I was dead.

The man who left the unpublished comment is one of the more enthusiastic proponents of the "social kingship of Christ," that disturbingly modern ideology (very much like Joseph the Worker) with its uttermost source in Papal hubris before God, and before the Italian people. I don't think I have discussed this before but the "social kingship of Christ" is a ruse. What it actually means is papal hegemony, the theocratic manipulation of world politics by priestcraft and sorcery, and power. Power of him in this world over me. Power to have me locked up in an insane asylum, gagged and muzzled, &c, and you might ask why? Free thought? For holding popes, garlanded with so many titles and responsibilities, to high standards? For being openly queer, perhaps? And people wonder why I'm not keen!

I must say the "social kingship of Christ," as I have described it, sounds an awful lot like the Islamic "Pact of Umar," or the old "dhimmitude." Albeit somewhat relieved by the Turks (largely under pressure from Britain and France), the principles of dhimmitude were observed throughout the Muslim world wherever there were people of other faiths, mostly Christians and Jews. It was systematic humiliation. Dress codes (of inferior cloth), doorway height, permitted mounts, an inferior legal status, the exaction of punitive taxes, and even the occasional ritual slap in the face, all served to reinforce the dominance of the Mosque and the humiliation of the Church. Christianity was tolerated in principle, but Christians were not allowed to build or repair churches, they were not allowed belfries and they were certainly not allowed to proselytise among Muslims. Dhimmitude was also an effective means of weaning converts to Islam. If you reverse the names, change Muslim to "traddie," and "Christians" to "Patricius," and you can tell what kind of humiliation people wish to see me suffer. And I have no doubt at all that some, perhaps all, traditionalists wish for the revival of the old Temporal Power in this way so that they can heap these humiliations upon their foes. Not all traditionalists are embarrassed by the Fourth Lateran synod, as Fr Hunwicke said the other day.

Thank God for the liberty of the Gospel, that's all I can say!

The first time...

It didn't look that clean when I was there! What must have been fifty years of corrupt, Wahhabi fuel was caked on the walls.

The year 2003 was a very formative year for me. I was 15 years old. When I had a meeting with the school's "careers adviser," I had said that I wanted to do something "religious" for my "work experience." A week later she approached me in one of the corridors and said that there was a vacancy at St Paul's Cathedral, and I jumped at the opportunity. From my earliest days I had been fascinated by Wren's church, and I used to draw it a lot. Its indomitable dome, with its splendid galleries, the iconic statue of St Paul over the portico. As I recall, it was always disappointing that the church was Anglican instead of Roman. I had been there as a little boy, of course, and on a clear day I could see it (as one cannot see it now, what with shards and gherkins obscuring the view) from the top deck of a bus going over Shooter's Hill. On my first real tour of the cathedral, on my first day, the virger had told me that the empty vaults about the nave were designed for statues of the saints, were Britain to become a Roman Catholic nation again. When I think about this assertion now I'm not actually so sure, and think that the vaults might have been designed for secular memorials instead, like the scandalous Wellington monument with its ugly equestrian figure. Although I do recall that there was a movement in Anglo-Catholic circles in the mid-20th century (my old friend Jeffrey was part of it) to have the High Altar moved to beneath the dome, in tawdry imitation of a pagan basilica in some other country. Does anybody know aught about that?

On my first day I had a meeting with the HR Manager, who gave me three options about placement. The first was to work in the cathedral shop, the second was to work with the Cathedral Stewards, and the last with the Virgers. I chose to spend my two weeks with the Virgers. I then had my first meeting with the Dean's Virger, who then beckoned the youngest on his staff (only eight years my senior) to give me a tour of the place. I reckon the two weeks I spent at St Paul's as two of the most enlightening and privileged of my life. I met the Bishop of London, +Richard Chartres, on one of the morning rounds. We were delivering mail and I knocked at the door of his house at the Old Deanery, expecting some secretary or servant to answer, and there he was in the flesh, a towering and truly episcopal character, and a nice man. He asked me some routine things about my school, and aspirations (in those days "respected theologian and canon lawyer," quite normal for a boy of 15), and I saw him celebrate a liturgy in the cathedral on my last day, although I cannot remember the occasion. I met an Anglican nun during my stay too. I have forgotten her name but I do remember feeling embarrassed eating with her. She had a frugal lunch and I had brought a large piece of chocolate with mine. I had never heard of Anglican religious before then. One of the older Virgers was very interesting, and tested my hagiographical knowledge as we went through one of the vintage copes together. I didn't do so badly but my former prejudice that Protestants knew less about saints than Roman Catholics was dashed on that afternoon.

My two weeks at St Paul's was also the occasion of my very first Latin liturgy. On one afternoon, one of the Anglo-Catholic Virgers (incidentally, that's how they spell it there) and I went to...now this is embarrassing because I can't remember the name of the church. It was within walking distance of St Paul's, it was an Anglo-Catholic church, and it was for a service of Benediction. I think it was St Alban's, Holborn, but I'm not sure. I remember enjoying the Latin, which I had studied at school, but looking aghast at these Protestant chaps prostrating before their mute host at veneremur cernui (of course, these days I would look aghast at anyone who bowed before a round, bewitched disk). This was in stark contrast to the sober Evensong I attended at the cathedral that evening, which was a special service for retired yeomen, I think.

My Irish grandmother came up to see me on one of the days. We went for lunch south of the river to a French restaurant and on the way back we met the Dean, Dr John Moses. He had seen me about the place and, like the Bishop, asked me the politest questions. He didn't know my grandmother but they clearly knew some of the same people and got on rather well.

I miss the two weeks in June that I spent at St Paul's. I liked it so much that I would go into town an hour early to catch the end of the said Communion service in St Dunstan's chapel and help out in the vestry. I learned much more about liturgy there than I ever did in my own parish church, and it wasn't until the November that I attended my first "traditional Latin Mass" ('62 vintage), a low Mass, at the London Oratory and came away, thoroughly dissatisfied, and thinking that the Church of England did it better.

Retractions...

I've been asked to retract what I have said about Marcel Lefebvre as so much vindictive, even hysterical, nonsense. With the greatest respect to those who have asked this of me in good faith, I don't have any intention of retracting what I have said. Do you suppose that I do not mean what I say? Are you perhaps jealous of the alleged good person and sincerity of Archbishop Lefebvre, and his cause, which has been manifestly divisive and the cause of abiding hatred? Over the years I have inveighed most sharply against the liturgical books of 1962 as the monstrous, lukewarm, utterly contemptible creature, and indeed the bane of my life. Why then would you think that I would be reticent about the man chiefly responsible for the exaltation and dominance of these books? This man laid waste the tradition he claimed to defend! He has exerted such an horrible influence over the traditionalist movement, which might, but for him, have born fruit in blessedness, that I sometimes wonder if he had sold his soul to the Devil! I hold Lefebvre indirectly responsible for my own expulsion from Blackfen, which was a complex and painful matter but was largely to do with the sundry objections I raised against 1962 interpolations into the rite we celebrated as a parish, as a Christian community. I also hold him responsible for that disgraceful letter, signed by, among others, Mgr Andrew Wadsworth (who had a hand in that grotesque new translation) and Fr Sean Finnegan (ironically mad about Sarum), which put a permanent end to the late and much-missed Arthur Crumly's heroic attempt to recall tradition at Corpus Christi Maiden Lane.

And so, for my "character assassination" I am so far from being sorry that I have come to despise the remonstrance of men, however sincere, in this matter and am resolved to persevere in vehement zeal, according to the example of Christ, who, in His zeal, called His adversaries a generation of vipers, blind hypocrites, and even children of the Devil. What could be more intemperate, or "hysterical" or "vindictive" than this? Is this soft generation so accustomed to flattery that we have become numb to genuine outrage? What about Truth? Are we so accustomed to lies dripping with honey that when Truth stabs into our minds as a light into a dark place we shriek with terror? Do men not attribute bitterness, recrimination and such things to me unfairly? Christ saith: "Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men." Far be it from me to add to where Christ left off, but what's the use of salt if it is not pungent, or the sword if it is not sharp? What did the Angel of the LORD say to the church of the Laodiceans? "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." Let the man who does the work of the LORD deceitfully be accursed!

Am I to be thrown into the fiery furnace for not bowing down before the image of Archbishop Lefebvre? Just like the Prophet Daniel and the three Holy Youths who would not do obeisance to the image of Nabuchodonosor.