Earlier today I posted a slight piece on Slavery. Now I reprint a slightly more substantial post from 2021.
G K Chesterton reminded us of all the Christian Galley Slaves whose freedom followed the smashing of the Turkish Battle Fleet. So as the Woke pull down the statues of those who had even tenuous links with the Slave Trade, should we not erect new statues to those who, at Lepanto and through the centuries, liberated Christian slaves from the tyrants who had stolen their lives?
Perhaps the piazza in front of Westminster Cathedral should host a massive new baroque statue of our Lady of Victory, surrounded by triumphalist bass-reliefs showing those who collaborated with her in this great Liberation. Probably, the Catholic Bishop of Plymouth should perform the Act of solemn Blessing, in view of all those English people in our south West who were kidnapped for the slave markets by the Barbery corsairs. Naturally, the kings, dictators, and warlords of North African countries would wish to take part in the ceremony and to offer formal Apologies for what their ancestors did.
Writing, as Chesterton did, a poem about a Spanish sea victory is not really the sort of thing that proper Englishmen do; we were brought up on stories about the defeat of the Armada. And we were brainwashed by the notion that 'English Victory' was woven seamlessly into a consistent narrative of our Island Race protected by our Silver Sea (soon to be renamed the Mare Plasticum?) against Philip of Spain and Buonaparte and Hitler, who were all foreigners.
But ... surely ... we Catholics are counter-cultural. British politicians may preach fatuous sermons about British Values and the importance of brainwashing immigrants to this country with the Values implicit in sexual promiscuity and widespread abortion. But their sick preoccupations serve simply to remind us that the British Values they prose on about are dirty-minded imposters dancing on the graves of the English Catholic martyrs; cavorting and absurd Whig clowns hypocritical in their (doubtless looted) Phrygian caps.
And perhaps we need a gallant band of Christian youth to go on a cutting-out expedition ... today!! ... and to recover the Ottoman flags captured at Lepanto, which poor misguided Montini, S Paul VI, cravenly handed back to Brother Turk. What a wonderful piece of news that would be in tomorrow's headlines!
Chesterton reminds his readers of the Christian slaves labouring deep within the Ottoman galleys, each witless in his quiet room in hell / Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell, / And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign. But as we take up the joyful story ...
... Don John of Austria has burst the battle line!
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate's sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for the bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!
3 comments:
Evangeline, you could not be more on target. The West has been castrated by liberalism (in its myriad, nefarious emanations: laissez faire and plutocratic capitalism, socialism, communism, racial fanaticism, and more). But in my opinion the master stroke that has given the Left victory after victory is their manipulation and corruption of women---with many and glorious exceptions. The female virtues of compassion and nurturing; their natural (and admirable when not corrupted) propensity for sensitivity and emotion; and their generally less-developed sense of justice have all been a Devil-sent to the mostly male manipulators of leftist revolution---men who, if we study history carefully, do not much care for women. We need our men to be fearless in confronting the lies of liberalism and women mindful of their Christian dignity and God-given partnership with men in forging sane, just societies---such as the ones the Left is dismantling, one stone at a time, in the name of a bogus justice and unnatural equality. Any doubts about the latter? Just look around plant and animal nature, the fruits of human striving and achievement, the existence of Heaven and Hell, the reality of saintliness and perversity---these show clearly what a dangerous lie the Enlightenment-engendered notion of "equality" is (not to be confused by the sentimentalist, by the way, with "equality before the law" or even "equality of opportunity"---good in themselves). As long as we labor under that superstitious fantasy of "the idol equality," we will not get to even first base: be certain of that. St. Joan of Arc, St. Edmund Campion, glorious Franciscan Martyrs of Morocco---pray for us!
The Pilgrimage to Saniageo yields many rewards. But for me one of the greatest was to discover in the cathedral museum (almost empty of visitors on a wet afternoon in 1999) spread out unguarded on the surface of a very large table, the standard of Don John of Austria, that was flown from the mast of the "Real" at Lepanto
A brilliant piece, Father. Keep your canons trained on the Wokery.
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