The Evil Breath...

''Fair as an Elf-child is Lalaith,'' said Húrin to Morwen; ''but briefer, alas! And so fairer, maybe, or dearer.'' And Túrin hearing these words pondered them, but could not understand them. For he had seen no Elf-children. None of the Eldar at that time dwelt in his father's lands, and once only had he seen them, when King Fingon and many of his lords had ridden through Dor-lómin and passed over the bridge of Nen Lalaith, glittering in silver and white.

But before the year was out the truth of his father's words were shewn; for the Evil Breath came to Dor-lómin, and Túrin took sick, and lay long in a fever and dark dream. And when he was healed, for such was his fate and the strength of life that was in him, he asked for Lalaith. But his nurse answered: ''Speak no more of Lalaith, son of Húrin; but of Urwen you must ask tidings of your mother.''

And when Morwen came to him, Túrin said to her: ''I am no longer sick, and I wish to see Urwen; but why must I not say Lalaith any more?''

''Because Urwen is dead, and laughter is stilled in this house,'' she answered. ''But you live, son of Morwen; and so does the Enemy who has done this to us.''

She did not seek to comfort him any more than herself; for she met her grief in silence and coldness of heart. But Húrin mourned openly, and he took up his harp and would make a song of lamentation; but he could not, and he broke his harp, and going out he lifted up his hand towards the North, crying: ''Marrer of Middle-earth, would that I might see you face to face, and mar you as my lord Fingolfin did!''

But Túrin wept bitterly at night alone, though to Morwen he never again spoke the name of his sister.
(J.R.R Tolkien, The Children of Húrin, chapter I).

Art: Ted Nasmith. It depicts Morgoth cursing Húrin and his kindred - as the Diabolos, ''master of the fates of Arda,'' as he described himself, the curse of Morgoth was unlike a ''curse'' in the commonly understood sense. Morgoth, as the origin of evil, is not invoking a higher (or lower, as the case may be) power, but intends to bring about the destruction of Húrin by the force of his own gigantic will, by ''designing'' the future of Húrin, mapping out his life, and making him look upon it, unable to hinder it. Of course, this actually took place after the events described, and Húrin got his wish, and saw the Dark Lord face to face. Maybe it was one of those things where we ought to beware of wishing for our heart's true desire, lest we end by getting it?

Sacrilege...

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

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

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

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

I saw this photo here.

Churchianity...

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

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

A fine priest...

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

Papa loquitur...

I thought this was funny!

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

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

Updates...

Hullo readers,

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

Please like my page :)

Sixty Glorious Years!

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

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

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

Two years later...

Well, well, Liturgiae Causa is over two years old. I had quite forgotten, having lost all interest in Liturgy, and polemics. I have had just over 93,000 ''hits,'' according to my sitemeter, and 47 followers, which is more than I had expected. I am genuinely flattered that people think I have anything worthwhile to say. Presently, I think I have nothing to say. Maybe, for example, the fact that the Authorized Version is not an authorized translation for the Ordinariate, that hosts of people see nothing wrong with celebrating St Philip Neri instead of the Pentecost Vigil, and that the papacy still exists actually all make perfect sense, and I am just mistaken, or maybe Christianity is a load of rubbish? But no...I had two posts in preparation, which I have since abandoned. One, about C.S (''Patrimony'') Lewis, containing a few choice quotes by Lewis about the Roman church from his book on prayer Letters to Malcolm, and Tolkien's unpublished The Ulsterior Motive; the other about halal meat in the British food industry, in which I wrote unashamedly that I think Islam is one of the great evils of this world; but it can all go hang. Religion undoubtedly brings out the worst in people.

I have lost my faith, and I am not interested in Liturgy anymore.

From W.H. Auden...

Thanks to a friend of mine. W.H. Auden was very friendly with J.R.R Tolkien, and was one of the more supportive critics of The Lord of the Rings, when it was not very fashionable to be so. I wonder if Tolkien knew of Auden's choice of lifestyle? If he did, he didn't make a fuss about it, or simply cut him off (which seems to be the typical Roman Catholic reaction to it)...

''From high places...

...it is easy to fall low.'' Thus spake Sador, a servant in the house of Húrin, to the boy Túrin, who, after the death of his sister Urwen, asked after the manner of the fate and history of Men.

It is very apposite for our time, I daresay, and I have used that quote before. As C.S Lewis said, post-Christian man is as far removed from pre-Christian man as whores are from widows. I digress. But, how I grieve for the great Fr Hunwicke, feeling for his shame! It seems that, after being treated abysmally by the Roman Catholic church, he has agreed to give a talk for the Latin Mass Society, who are holding a one day conference on Saturday 9th June. There are several speakers, one of whom I have never heard of, and no subjects are given, but it will probably be the usual drivel - that the Ordinariate can serve only to quicken the barren wasteland of Latin Rite liturgical life (with similar hopes for the $$PX), that we all love the liturgical books of 1962, that Benedict XVI is the greatest man who ever lived, and blah, blah, blah. Heaven forbid that they cease this grotesque charade and face the facts!

The liturgical books of 1962 need no explanation here, having been the shibboleth of Liturgiae Causa for these two years. The Ordinariate is in a similar vein - with just as much pretence, historic revision, etc, as Summorum Pontificum. The pope's obsession with the $$PX is certainly telling. John Zuhlsdorf often calls Benedict XVI the ''pope of Christian unity.'' If by ''unity'' he means some sort of relativistic fudge, where a variegation of traditions exist side by side having only their shared communion with the occupant of a certain bishoprick in common, and brought about by aggressive proselytism, then I think he is right. On this point no doubt Roman Catholic apologists would bring up my very own objections, and say: ''well, you spend half your time criticizing Ultramontanism, saying that ''catholicity'' is not synonymous with ''uniformity;'' now you seem to be objecting to precisely the opposite of that. Are our uniate cousins not in possession of a venerable complexity of traditions and devotions, and does not the pope protect them from Latinization?'' Well, he might, but that is not the point. In terms of Western Christians, what do Anglo-Catholics have in common with the $$PX? Absolutely nothing! This is not so much about the externals of Divine Service as cultural and psychological factors. Christians of the Anglican tradition are very different. I can hardly imagine Richard Williamson adding the Sermons of +Lancelot Andrewes to his library because his lord pope is suddenly enthusiastic about Anglicans anymore than I can imagine anyone like the good Fr Hunwicke taking much notice of some ill-informed tract published by the $$PX on the heresies of the Prayer Book of the Church of England (which itself is far more catholic and traditional than the liturgy celebrated eagerly by the author, I doubt not. St Joseph the Worker is not in the Book of Common Prayer. If Rome took Anglicanism seriously, maybe she would look to the Prayer Book kalendar of saints days and see how many discrepancies there are now between that and her own bastardised kalendar, which was before, in many ways, consonant with the Prayer Book). Or maybe, in time, the pope might say something like: ''you are in communion with us whether you like it or not,'' and we can watch a host of longed for (on my part) internal schisms come about.

To come back to Fr Hunwicke, perhaps Rome's very real ancestral disdain for the Church of England is seen most clearly in her refusal to even give him even the honorific title of ''father,'' or ''reverend.'' Now, I am ignorant of much that I ought to know, as a catholic and as a person, but I had hitherto always conceived of conversion as entailing some sort of ''prodigal son'' scenario, and that all the inconveniences of conversion were thrust upon one by people and institutions outside the visible confines of that church or faith community. It seems to me to be quite the opposite with Fr Hunwicke, and that maybe his newfound religion finds him dangerous, or in further need of more draughts of the Ultramontane drug. Who knows? I just find this whole matter very grievous.

Orate pro eo.

Art: Ted Nasmith. A sketch depicting the child Lalaith (Urwen), sister of Túrin, before the Evil Breath came out of Angband. ''Lalaith'' is Sindarin for ''laughter.''

Worthy to be followed...

That if thy right eye cause thee to stumble, pull it out, and cast it from thee; for it speedeth to thee, that one of thy members perish, than that all thy body go into hell. Matthew 5:29.

How Ultramontane was he again?

Not a bit of lace in sight!

20th September, A.D 1902.

To Canon Edwin H. Burton at St Edmund's College, Ware.

I have been missing you horridly at breakfast, though the salutary vision of you fully vested and waiting with lacerating meekness in my sacristy when I rolled out of bed has not yet lost its effect. The nuns (little pink daughters of the penitent thief) are here now; so I get up at 7 o'clock, like an early Christian martyr. Sister Joanna Baptista of the Pinnacle of the Temple L.P.D. of P.T. (the she-superior) is a Tartar and won’t stand no fooling, nor can I imagine her waiting meekly as you did, though she would wear vestments like a shot if I let her. This order is an entirely new idea of my Rector at the German Church (a Bohemian monomaniac): its originality consists in the fact that the members go to the Sacraments several times during the year, abstain from fleshmeat on all Fridays, and endeavour generally to cultivate a spirit of Christian virtue and untarnished morality. These proceedings are rightly supposed to be very gratifying to the better nature of the penitent thief – hence the order’s name.

Also they have 15 little boys, so that when you come at Christmass you shall have no lack of servers. They sing Vespers in the evening in what purports to be the Latin tongue, Sister Philipina Canaria (of the way to Jericho) wearing a cope and a Roman missal, from which she tells me that she always sings Vespers.

They have given me a picture of a gentleman whom I recognise as that illustrious prelate the present incumbent of the Roman bishoprick: I am informed that if I look at it in the proper spirit it will give the pontifical blessing – a striking sight which I am naturally anxious to enjoy. Hitherto I have not succeeded in convincing it of my spiritual propriety. I have told it all the things that I think it would like to hear – that I am dead nuts on encyclicals, that ubi Petrus ibi the whole shew, that Roma locuta est (she never stops) nulla salus est (I hope I haven’t got this mixed); I have even said polite things about its fel. Rec. predecessors of the X and XV centuries; alas, in vain! It hasn’t once burst into: Sit nome Domini benedittumme [sic]. When you come I hope you will start it: it can’t doubt your propriety of spirit!

Adrian Fortescue, D.D.