A recent book about George V (GeorgeV Never a Dull Moment, Jane Ridley) suggests that he was "fighting a one-man war against the twentieth century". Some readers might join me in considering that this was a fairly laudable thing to be doing. Not because that century was the only epoch in which horrible things happened (although the two World Wars and the genocides against the Armenians and the Jews take a bit of beating), but because his reign ... particularly the last part of it ... exhibited the seeds of corruptions which were to become explicit ... and disastrous ... in our own time. I have recently written a few words on the Cult of Sterility which is discussed in some Christian literature from those years.
But it was hardly a "one-man war". There were teachers, even in Anglicanism, who stood out against the perversions of Christian morality which took hold in the 1920s and 1930s. Permit me to remind you of Bishop Charles Gore.
Gore was founding Principal of Pusey House in this University, where I worshiped as an undergraduate and had the honour of a Senior Research Fellowship when I returned to Oxford; later he was Vicar of Radley, a few hundred yards from where I now live; then Bishop of Oxford; also Founder of the Community of the Resurrection, of which our much-loved Mgr Robert Mercer of the Ordinariate is a member. You can find ... I admit it ... in his writings attacks upon what he saw as the failings of the Catholic Church, and teaching upon Biblical Inspiration which might have been unpopular in the pontificate of S Pius X.
But it is my strong conviction that blessed Benedict XVI intended us to bring into the unity of the Catholic Church all that was good in our inheritance; setting it when necessary within a Catholic context so that it may be corrected and completed.
The Lambeth Conference, a gathering with no canonical status but considerable 'moral' authority, used to gather together, every ten years, all the bishops in peace and communion with the See of Canterbury. Its meeting in 1920 spoke very sternly about the immorality of Contraception. By 1930, on the other hand, this teaching had radically changed. Gore spoke about this change, with no holds barred! I urge you to read his arguments at anglicanhistory.org/gore/contra1930.html. He was, like Pius XI (Casti connubii) and S Paul VI (the Pope of Humanae vitae) a prophet who foresaw the complete overthrow of Christian sexual morality in the final third of the twentieth century. The 1930 Lambeth Conference was indeed the thin end of Satan's wedge; the dirty work was to be finished off by the 1968 Lambeth. Gore admired the Catholic Church for bearing a witness to Truth and Purity which his own Communion had, to his distress, abandoned. He also wrote well about the High Priests who served before the 1930s Altar of Modernity, the HG Wellses, the Bertrand Russells, the Margaret Sangers, the Eugenicists, Racial Hygienists and Euthanasiacs, worthy Precursors of Adolf Hitler's Gestapo and of the Thought Police of our own time. Gore has a lovely tone of righteous and faintly surprised indignation.
At this when the wolves are knocking at the door of the Catholic Church as they once did at the door of the Three Little Piggies, Gore is a Christian Teacher with a message directly for us. A 'Patrimonial' gift to the whole Church Catholic? Why not read him?
7 comments:
What I find very significant (among other things) in Bishop Gore’s treatise is the emphasis on ‘self-control’. Significant, in that this concept is mostly lost on the people of today, especially the young. This became very evident in the 1960s when “Free love” and ‘If it feels good, do it…” became mantras of the young – and the not so young.
In religious life much emphasis was placed on ‘self-denial’ – the notion that you advanced in holiness by denying even legitimate things in life, to avoid being overly attached to material things. But it was not just for those in Religious Life, it was the underpinning of Fast and Abstinence, which was incumbent on all the faithful – lay, and religious alike.
There is always a price to pay and the greater the desired reward, the greater the price. Or as economists like to put it: “There is no free lunch”.
The real villian of Lambeth was Cosmo Lang, who would later be part of the conspiracy to dethrone the King.
"Worshiped"? Whatever can that mean?
And thank God that conspiracy succeeded.
Seeing as George V got (admittedly!) murdered by his doctor, and seeing as the murderer apparently did it to please his friend, the heir... well, it seems that Wallis Simpson wasn't the villain of the piece. Much though she tried.
I don't know if you follow the YT channel, They Got Away with Murder, but that was the subject of one of his recent eps. He's a UK law guy, but has had some really good episodes about US crime as well. Includes a lot of research and doesn't rehash old hash, or say surprising things without foundation.
Seeing as George V got (admittedly!) murdered by his doctor, and seeing as the murderer apparently did it to please his friend, the heir... well, it seems that Wallis Simpson wasn't the villain of the piece. Much though she tried.
I don't know if you follow the YT channel, They Got Away with Murder, but that was the subject of one of his recent eps. He's a UK law guy, but has had some really good episodes about US crime as well. Includes a lot of research and doesn't rehash old hash, or say surprising things without foundation.
Deimater:
I just saw your comment, all these months later.
If you are so foolish as to thank God for the success of a conspiracy that led to the last vestiges of royal authority being destroyed, and a puppet king, acceptable to the unelected, hidden "establishment" being put in his place, then you are doubtless gullible enough to accept that the abdication had anything to do with a woman, and that Edward VIII was a Nazi sympathizer- neither of which are true.
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