12 December 2017

Obituaries

Fr Zed, and the Obituary writers of the Times, often combine to remind us wrinklies of the imminence of Death ...

Firstly, King Michael of Romania. He visited us several times at Lancing; we provided the Romanian royal National Anthem and treated him as befits a ruling Monarch. In the slippery years from 1930 to 1950, years (as General Kim Philby, I believe, put it) of the King Carols and the Prince Pauls, of Fascist strong men and ambitiously unscrupulous Marxists, His Majesty ... kindly; decent; honourable ... deserved better than he got. The detail of his life which I liked best was that after he used his royal prerogative to sack and arrest Marshal Antonescu, the Man of Steel was confined in the strongest room they had in the Royal Palace. Which happened to be the room in which the Royal Stamp Collection was kept safe. Let us hope that he did not interfere with the perforations or smudge any of the postmarks. Somehow, there is just a whiff of P G Wodehouse about this, yes?

And now, Enoch Powell's widow has died. I never met her, but we did once have Enoch himself to dinner. My main recollection is that we discussed Rhetoric, Classical and modern, and the sad days upon which that noble art had fallen. With due and deferential reference to his own eminence in this field, I asked him who else, in the politics of the early 1970s, he believed to be considerable in the art. With no hesitation, he replied "Michael Foot". I had not known, until I read it in last week's obituary of his widow, that the Powells and the Foots, at the opposite extremes of politics, were close friends who often dined together.

Quorum animabus propitietur Deus.

4 comments:

  1. Obviously Michael Foot had more nobility about him than Benn who refused to campaign with Powell against the Common Market (as they lyingly called it)

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  2. These statements are very serious, and confirm that the words of Bergoglio are not errors as result of extemporaneous distractions, but they are statement of position, that are in stark contrast to the revealed Word and the Holy Scripture, and tend to deny the divine action that God the Father has manifested in His Son Jesus, the Man God, the Saviour of the world, that through His death on the Cross has defeated evil. http://www.difendiamolaverita.it/en/letsdefendtruefaith/lets-defend-the-true-teachings-ofchrist/the-miracle-of-the-loaves-and-fishes-is-not-the-truth-simply-they-did-not-finish/

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  3. Well, it has been said that politics makes strange bedfellows.

    And it does for what Catholic would have imagined that the Abp of Milan (future Pope Paul VI) Montini would have been taking meetings in Milan with the infamous American radical, Saul Alinksy.

    Apparently the Apb,, Alinsky and Jacques Maritain were all vibrating in unison to the integral humanism music and for which soothing songs Vatican Two was to supply the libretto.


    No more Mean Mr. Mustard Militancy but, rather, love was all we needed.

    Well, it was Paul VI who told the clergy of Rome that he could exercise discipline against heretics and the malign miscreants but he preferred to to be loved.

    Yes, the papacy is all about the person of the Pope is nothing new...

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  4. Had Britain listened to his speech on immigration, it would not be in the dreadful state this once great country finds itself. Indeed, had the whole of Europe and North America listened.

    To say nothing of the churches.

    He was indeed a prophet without honor...

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