Anagnostis comments on my post below in which I referred to the death of Anne Read, RIP. I hope he doesn't mind if I repost his comments more prominently.
God grant eternal rest to Anne and consolation to all her family and friends.
Anne Read, of Suffolk, North Wales, London, Sussex and Reading latterly was, together with her late husband David, an old and very dear friend and godmother to one of my daughters. Her professional career (as dancer, then singer, then educator) was remarkable - but less so than her heroic spiritual struggle which culminated on the Vigil of Candlemas last week(on the anniversary of her husbands death eight years earlier, and of my first wife Julie's, nine years before that - a strange and wonderful synaxis).
Anne converted prior to her marriage but, like Alice Thomas Ellis, she "had only been Catholic five minutes before it all turned upside-down". She and David spent the remainder of their lives totally dedicated to the restoration of everything that had been swept away with such crass brutality and disregard, leaving the "lay contemplative" without a place to lay his head. In the seventies, they toured the States with Archbishop Lefebvre, founding and training scholas; in the eighties and nineties, in retirement in rural Sussex, they provided unstinting assistance - spiritual, practical and financial - to the burgeoning but beleagured Traditional movement wherever they found it; they were never partisan or ungenerous in relation to any group or individual. Only God knows how many priests, seminarians and disorientated laity they helped and encouraged, how many vocations they fostered, how many acts of kindness great and small enabled some friend or casual aquaintance to hang on when everything seemed most hopeless. The love and kindness she lavished on me and my family, through all of our ups and downs, are among the greatest blessings of my life.
Anne's training as a dancer and operatic performer built upon her native elegance - there was, externally, always something of the aura of the diva about her, to the extent that those who didn't know her well sometimes imagined her haughty and a little unapproachable. Nothing could have been further from the truth. She was the most warm and loving of friends, but also always tremendous fun. I remember her calling me on an anniversary of David's death to tell me of having woken sad and lonely, only to discover a letter on the doormat that turned out to contain a royalty cheque in respect of a recording of David's, some years earlier - "Batman Begins". I can hear her uproarious laughter as I type, and I can see her, glass in hand, recounting some outrageous theatrical anecdote or other.
Nunc dimitis servum tuum Domine. May her memory be eternal.
(If any other bloggers are attending the funeral, I'd be delighted to meet you. I'll be the one signing himself right-to-left, to Anne's considerable dismay, though she always defended me nevertheless, sometimes quite fiercely. She knew the details of my own journey better than anyone. I shall miss her more than I can say).
Wednesday, 8 February 2012
Monday, 6 February 2012
Whistling in the dark
So, how have you two been? Sorry to have been away so long but let's not pretend you missed me! A belated happy Christmas and a happy new year likewise. Happy birthday too, if you've celebrated one since I last saw you!
Richard, a long-time US reader, comments on my last post of 5 December that two months is quite enough rest for one blogger. Alright, buddy, alright! That's the American work ethic in operation for you ;-)
Looking out on the winter scene that greets me in the garden, my mind goes back to struggling through the snow to Mass yesterday in my wellies when practically everyone I passed greeted me like some long-lost friend. If this is what the bad weather does for community relations, then I say bring it on more often. It reminds me of the old Milton Jones joke:
"I ordered a book off the internet. It was called How to have absolutely nothing to do with your neighbours . Unfortunately, I was out when it was delivered ..."
Why do people communicate when the weather is bad but ignore each other when the sun is shining? You'd think it would be almost the other way around!
There is in that observation some dim and distant echo of one of the reasons I haven't blogged in the last couple of months. What's the point, I've been thinking. It's all hot air anyway. But then, I suppose when you live in evil times, you experience the cultural equivalent of the heavy snow fall. You have to speak to your neighbour. Times are too bad not to. It won't melt the snow and it won't de-ice the roads, but it might lift a spirit or two. That's no bad thing. It's like whistling in the dark.
Actually, as evil as the times are - pardon my Puddleglumness - happy story after happy story has rolled into my in-box in the last few weeks. One reader of this blog has given up his job and is heading to the south of France to begin El Camino at Arles before applying to enter a religious order. Another reader of this blog, and an old pal, has been accepted for his diocese where, God willing and with the bishop's full backing, he will be ordained for the Extraordinary Form. Another niece or nephew will be heading my way in early summer. My own happy news is that I have almost cracked the technique for making a tomato tarte tatin.
As everyone knows deep down, these are the things that matter. One must find one's consolations where one can. Victoria Mildew, another long-time reader, has had some more positive news about her very serious cancer. Do remember her, nevertheless, in your prayers.
Not all the news has been so happy of course. Anne Read of Reading - a lady who could put the salvo in the Salve Regina after Mass - has gone home to her reward. She was happy to be going, I understand. Please pray for her and for those she has left behind.
That's it for now. It's so much whistling in the dark, but needs must when the devil drives.
Richard, a long-time US reader, comments on my last post of 5 December that two months is quite enough rest for one blogger. Alright, buddy, alright! That's the American work ethic in operation for you ;-)
Looking out on the winter scene that greets me in the garden, my mind goes back to struggling through the snow to Mass yesterday in my wellies when practically everyone I passed greeted me like some long-lost friend. If this is what the bad weather does for community relations, then I say bring it on more often. It reminds me of the old Milton Jones joke:
"I ordered a book off the internet. It was called How to have absolutely nothing to do with your neighbours . Unfortunately, I was out when it was delivered ..."
Why do people communicate when the weather is bad but ignore each other when the sun is shining? You'd think it would be almost the other way around!
There is in that observation some dim and distant echo of one of the reasons I haven't blogged in the last couple of months. What's the point, I've been thinking. It's all hot air anyway. But then, I suppose when you live in evil times, you experience the cultural equivalent of the heavy snow fall. You have to speak to your neighbour. Times are too bad not to. It won't melt the snow and it won't de-ice the roads, but it might lift a spirit or two. That's no bad thing. It's like whistling in the dark.
Actually, as evil as the times are - pardon my Puddleglumness - happy story after happy story has rolled into my in-box in the last few weeks. One reader of this blog has given up his job and is heading to the south of France to begin El Camino at Arles before applying to enter a religious order. Another reader of this blog, and an old pal, has been accepted for his diocese where, God willing and with the bishop's full backing, he will be ordained for the Extraordinary Form. Another niece or nephew will be heading my way in early summer. My own happy news is that I have almost cracked the technique for making a tomato tarte tatin.
As everyone knows deep down, these are the things that matter. One must find one's consolations where one can. Victoria Mildew, another long-time reader, has had some more positive news about her very serious cancer. Do remember her, nevertheless, in your prayers.
Not all the news has been so happy of course. Anne Read of Reading - a lady who could put the salvo in the Salve Regina after Mass - has gone home to her reward. She was happy to be going, I understand. Please pray for her and for those she has left behind.
That's it for now. It's so much whistling in the dark, but needs must when the devil drives.
Monday, 5 December 2011
Work avoidance
I'm not avoiding you lot, honest! It's just been one heck of an autumn. As countless people have now said to me wistfully, becoming a parent, getting a new job and moving house are generally considered three of the most stressful things to do, and we have done them all within the space of a couple of months. I know! What can I say, other than that it was unavoidable? Not for us the long, cold separation of husband-working-away-from-wife and wife-at-home-with-newborn-infant. The job surely came at the providential moment, and what else could we do but answer the call? We see it as a letting go - love is proven in the letting go, as C. Day Lewis wrote in another context - and, at the same time a leap into the unknown.
That said, our new town is becoming a little less unknown. My move to a Midlands university persuaded us that Birmingham was the place to go - against all stereotypes and its dreadful reputation - and we have not been disappointed. Birmingham is in point of fact a magnificent city of a thousand hues, from its green and leafy outskirts to its pug-ugly, greying 1960s architecture. I can leave the latter but I'm very grateful for the former.
Actually, there us much less of the 1960s greying architecture than I had feared. Birmimgham is still filled with the civic grandeur that the Chamberlains brought to town. Moreover, the square and lawns around the Anglican cathedral make a welcome Georgian contrast with the pedestrianised steel and glass splendour of the far more recent Bullring Shopping Centre.
And then there is the city's heart, or rather its belly: le ventre de Birmimgham, with its crowded fruit and veg market
where they sell amazing produce at £1 a bowl, and its glorious meat and fish market where you can buy everything from finest, unplucked game to dull-eyed, staring sheep heads.
This isn't the plastic-wrapped cosmopolis in its low-fat pomp; rather, it is like something lurching out of the Middle Ages, vulgar, red-raw and ponging to high heaven but deeply human to the core. I bow to this temple of food as often as I can.
But the true religion of Birmingham is its Catholicism: it is extraordinary how it seeps out of all its pores. From the magnificent St Chad's along one of the Queensways, to the Oratory on the Hagley Road.
It was no mistake a pope just had to come here to beatify the first English beatus who ever walked these streets.
So, you see, with all that, and my many parental and professional duties, I might be excused even light blogging, were it not for the temptation of the soap box. And what do I feel like ranting about at the moment? Er, perhaps I must leave that for another time. Duty calls me away ...
That said, our new town is becoming a little less unknown. My move to a Midlands university persuaded us that Birmingham was the place to go - against all stereotypes and its dreadful reputation - and we have not been disappointed. Birmingham is in point of fact a magnificent city of a thousand hues, from its green and leafy outskirts to its pug-ugly, greying 1960s architecture. I can leave the latter but I'm very grateful for the former.
Actually, there us much less of the 1960s greying architecture than I had feared. Birmimgham is still filled with the civic grandeur that the Chamberlains brought to town. Moreover, the square and lawns around the Anglican cathedral make a welcome Georgian contrast with the pedestrianised steel and glass splendour of the far more recent Bullring Shopping Centre.
And then there is the city's heart, or rather its belly: le ventre de Birmimgham, with its crowded fruit and veg market
where they sell amazing produce at £1 a bowl, and its glorious meat and fish market where you can buy everything from finest, unplucked game to dull-eyed, staring sheep heads.
This isn't the plastic-wrapped cosmopolis in its low-fat pomp; rather, it is like something lurching out of the Middle Ages, vulgar, red-raw and ponging to high heaven but deeply human to the core. I bow to this temple of food as often as I can.
But the true religion of Birmingham is its Catholicism: it is extraordinary how it seeps out of all its pores. From the magnificent St Chad's along one of the Queensways, to the Oratory on the Hagley Road.
It was no mistake a pope just had to come here to beatify the first English beatus who ever walked these streets.
So, you see, with all that, and my many parental and professional duties, I might be excused even light blogging, were it not for the temptation of the soap box. And what do I feel like ranting about at the moment? Er, perhaps I must leave that for another time. Duty calls me away ...
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Thank you, America
It's proving rather difficult to get anywhere near the blogging platform these days. But I cannot let tomorrow's Thanksgiving celebrations in the USA pass by without acknowledging them. In Europe it remains deeply fashionable to hold the US in contempt. There is an odd kind of American conservative who even does this, convinced of the inferiority of American culture as opposed to the European.
But the problem is wrongly posed. America is in some senses only an extension of Europe, a sometimes strange and a sometimes successful experiment undertaken by Europeans for reasons we all know about. Those who first celebrated Thanksgiving were Europeans on a trip which had only just lasted slightly longer than a journey on Ryan Air. They were hardly the first European settlers though; the Spanish were there some time before them. What am I saying in fact? Well, that European culture is American culture. It belongs to America inevitably.
Of course, I don't mean to downplay America's essential otherness in comparison to the European thing. Its deliberate setting aside of so much of the old continent's ways partly explains why it belongs to what is known more broadly as the New World. But where can I flee where I will not find myself? The traffic back and forth between the US and Europe has been constant for good and for ill.
Even now, America has perhaps a greater chance of preserving what made the civilisation of Europe so distinct: its Christianity. While significant parts of Europe promise in the next few decades to become as lost to the Church as the African and Middle Eastern dioceses in partibus infidelium, the US seem to offer up case after case of the invigoration of Christian life, a renewal in contemplative communities, courage in the public square. Arguably the heterogeneity of its current episcopate has allowed it to begin to escape from the sickman blues of Vatican II more quickly that a local church like England and Wales where parochialism and cronyism are still ingrained.
And then there are all the things which make me smile about the US. The ubiquitous air conditioning, the easy cuisine, the help-yourself-to-my-fridge hospitality, Wendy's, Taco Bell, Kansas City, Santa Fe and Washington DC, the muppets ...
the redundant expressions like 'How can I help you today?' (as opposed to tomorrow, I suppose?) and the sudden uppitiness of the shop keeper when Englishmen innocently ask if he has anything 'cheap' for sale.
I suppose when one spends one's formative years in a country, as I did in the US as a young man, it marks one deeply in ways that one cannot change. I'm sure that is true for me. But, still, it is en pleine connaissance de cause - as the French say - that I'm deeply, deeply thankful for the US, for the funny, irritating and delightful companions of my American sojourn, and to everything from its glorious landscapes to it crappest tin-pot beer, for being there and for being that irreducibly annoying, inexorably pleasing country strung somewhere between here and the other side of the planet, its heart free of irony and its waistline slung amicably a little lower than it ought to be.
Which reminds me of a true American anecdote with which I will finish.
Pat had been some kind of ranger in a vast American country park. For all I knew, he was friends with Yogi Bear. In any case, he was a blood-red American, and one time over coffee he asked me with pride and a rhetorical flourish why America had never been invaded.
'I don't know, Pat, so go on and tell me,' I replied.
'It's because we all have the right to bear arms' he said, beaming a smile and with just a small glimmer of stars and stripes in his eyes.
'That's interesting,' I said, 'but it does make me wonder, Pat: have you ever seen the sea?'
He looked at me totally puzzled, so I pressed him further, 'Surely you're aware that the US is bounded on either side by oceans that are thousands of miles wide.'
'Hmmmm,' he conceded, 'but we'll be ready for anyone who ever crosses them!'
Perhaps the conversation has been embellished in the remembering. No matter. What else is remembering for? But I like to think he is somewhere there still, slurping his coffee and making sure his guns are ready for when the invaders arrive! I meanwhile am free in my mind to wonder freely down all the lovely roads I remember from Virginia to New Mexico.
God bless America! And today of all days: God bless, America.
But the problem is wrongly posed. America is in some senses only an extension of Europe, a sometimes strange and a sometimes successful experiment undertaken by Europeans for reasons we all know about. Those who first celebrated Thanksgiving were Europeans on a trip which had only just lasted slightly longer than a journey on Ryan Air. They were hardly the first European settlers though; the Spanish were there some time before them. What am I saying in fact? Well, that European culture is American culture. It belongs to America inevitably.
Of course, I don't mean to downplay America's essential otherness in comparison to the European thing. Its deliberate setting aside of so much of the old continent's ways partly explains why it belongs to what is known more broadly as the New World. But where can I flee where I will not find myself? The traffic back and forth between the US and Europe has been constant for good and for ill.
Even now, America has perhaps a greater chance of preserving what made the civilisation of Europe so distinct: its Christianity. While significant parts of Europe promise in the next few decades to become as lost to the Church as the African and Middle Eastern dioceses in partibus infidelium, the US seem to offer up case after case of the invigoration of Christian life, a renewal in contemplative communities, courage in the public square. Arguably the heterogeneity of its current episcopate has allowed it to begin to escape from the sickman blues of Vatican II more quickly that a local church like England and Wales where parochialism and cronyism are still ingrained.
And then there are all the things which make me smile about the US. The ubiquitous air conditioning, the easy cuisine, the help-yourself-to-my-fridge hospitality, Wendy's, Taco Bell, Kansas City, Santa Fe and Washington DC, the muppets ...
the redundant expressions like 'How can I help you today?' (as opposed to tomorrow, I suppose?) and the sudden uppitiness of the shop keeper when Englishmen innocently ask if he has anything 'cheap' for sale.
I suppose when one spends one's formative years in a country, as I did in the US as a young man, it marks one deeply in ways that one cannot change. I'm sure that is true for me. But, still, it is en pleine connaissance de cause - as the French say - that I'm deeply, deeply thankful for the US, for the funny, irritating and delightful companions of my American sojourn, and to everything from its glorious landscapes to it crappest tin-pot beer, for being there and for being that irreducibly annoying, inexorably pleasing country strung somewhere between here and the other side of the planet, its heart free of irony and its waistline slung amicably a little lower than it ought to be.
Which reminds me of a true American anecdote with which I will finish.
Pat had been some kind of ranger in a vast American country park. For all I knew, he was friends with Yogi Bear. In any case, he was a blood-red American, and one time over coffee he asked me with pride and a rhetorical flourish why America had never been invaded.
'I don't know, Pat, so go on and tell me,' I replied.
'It's because we all have the right to bear arms' he said, beaming a smile and with just a small glimmer of stars and stripes in his eyes.
'That's interesting,' I said, 'but it does make me wonder, Pat: have you ever seen the sea?'
He looked at me totally puzzled, so I pressed him further, 'Surely you're aware that the US is bounded on either side by oceans that are thousands of miles wide.'
'Hmmmm,' he conceded, 'but we'll be ready for anyone who ever crosses them!'
Perhaps the conversation has been embellished in the remembering. No matter. What else is remembering for? But I like to think he is somewhere there still, slurping his coffee and making sure his guns are ready for when the invaders arrive! I meanwhile am free in my mind to wonder freely down all the lovely roads I remember from Virginia to New Mexico.
God bless America! And today of all days: God bless, America.
Saturday, 12 November 2011
Friday, 4 November 2011
Goodbyeee
Ttony's going. I hope it was nothing I said, yet I fear that it was. Indeed, he says it was. Oh dear. I don't follow your logic, Ttony, but I sympathise enormously.
Well, good bye, old chum. Hope you'll come back one day. And in honour of your last post, here's another in keeping with the cold and chilly season that is settling in right now
Well, good bye, old chum. Hope you'll come back one day. And in honour of your last post, here's another in keeping with the cold and chilly season that is settling in right now
Tuesday, 1 November 2011
So no agreement [updated AGAIN!] ...
This story already has a bizarre life. It was posted on Rorate Caeli yesterday afternoon, but then disappeared. I picked it up when someone sent me the link to Ignis Ardens, a traditionalist forum based in the UK, which among other things regularly publishes the newsletters of the SSPX's district superior, Fr Paul Morgan, in GB. The forum post there contained a link to the November letter published on the SSPX's GB website which I verified as valid yesterday afternoon. As of 2 November, the link from Ignis Ardens has gone dead.
According to that letter, the consensus of the SSPX's superiors was that no agreement with Rome is currently possible (see: (now a dead link). It is a report which I have not seen anywhere else:
Hence the stated consensus of those in attendance was that the Doctrinal Preamble was clearly unacceptable and that the time has certainly not come to pursue any practical agreement as long as the doctrinal issues remain outstanding. It also agreed that the Society should continue its work of insisting upon the doctrinal questions in any contacts with the Roman authorities.
I'm fascinated. It really isn't for Fr Morgan to be making such an announcement before Bishop Fellay has made it... or is something else going on here?
Watch this space ...NEWS NOW IN:
Rorate Caeli relays a press communiqué from SSPX Headquarters today:
Following the meeting of the Superiors of the Seminaries and Districts of the Society of Saint Pius X in Albano (Italy), on October 7, 2011, several comments have appeared in the press on the response Bishop Bernard Fellay [Superior General of the Society] would give to the Roman proposals of September 14, 2011. It is recalled that only the General House of the Society of Saint Pius X is entitled to make public an official communiqué or authorized commentary on this matter. Until further notice, reference should be made to the communiqué of October 7, 2011.
Curiouser and curiouser...
According to that letter, the consensus of the SSPX's superiors was that no agreement with Rome is currently possible (see: (now a dead link). It is a report which I have not seen anywhere else:
Hence the stated consensus of those in attendance was that the Doctrinal Preamble was clearly unacceptable and that the time has certainly not come to pursue any practical agreement as long as the doctrinal issues remain outstanding. It also agreed that the Society should continue its work of insisting upon the doctrinal questions in any contacts with the Roman authorities.
I'm fascinated. It really isn't for Fr Morgan to be making such an announcement before Bishop Fellay has made it... or is something else going on here?
Watch this space ...NEWS NOW IN:
Rorate Caeli relays a press communiqué from SSPX Headquarters today:
Following the meeting of the Superiors of the Seminaries and Districts of the Society of Saint Pius X in Albano (Italy), on October 7, 2011, several comments have appeared in the press on the response Bishop Bernard Fellay [Superior General of the Society] would give to the Roman proposals of September 14, 2011. It is recalled that only the General House of the Society of Saint Pius X is entitled to make public an official communiqué or authorized commentary on this matter. Until further notice, reference should be made to the communiqué of October 7, 2011.
Curiouser and curiouser...
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