I think it was some time last autumn [="Fall"] that the great Doctor Brichtelmestunensis used his blog to repeat some wise teaching of Carfinal Biffi:
" ... the Antichrist presents himself as a pacifist, ecologist and ecumenist ... Today we run the risk of having a Christianity that puts Jesus with His Cross and Resurrection into parentheses. There are also relative values .... love for peace ... respect for nature ... If these are given an absolute value or uprooted from or placed in opposition to the proclamation of the fact of salvation, then they become the basis for idolatry and are obstacles on the path to salvation.".
I mean no disrespect towards his Eminence (or his Reverence) when I observe that this truth is already part of the established literature of demoniological discourse. For example, in the Summa Contra Daimonia, the Archidiabolus is shown offering the following instructions to his Daemoniomathetes (Epistula VII circa finem) about the art of seducing souls from authentic Christianity:
"Let [the soul] begin by treating [X-ism or anti-X-ism] as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of the partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the 'cause', in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of [X-ism or of anti-X-ism]. The attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affirs are treated primarily as material for obedience. One you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours -- and the more 'religious' (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here ..."
While you're thinking carefully about that, I'll just nip off and burn a pinch of incense before Pachamama on my Greta-altar, and chant a mantra or two for the Coloured Peoples' Lives Matter More Than Whitey Foetuses Confraternity.
Wow! This is one of your best, Father.
ReplyDeleteDear Father Hunwicke,
ReplyDeleteHave you done the whole of Screwtape into Latin, or (secundum morem Papae Francisci*), only the title?
Would you consider this project for the time left to you down here? It would be such a gift to the Church, and allow future generations of non-English speaking seminarians the possibility to study its wisdom!
(*veniam peto!)
Dea4 Father. Few men understand that Hell will be an eternal political election.
ReplyDeleteSatan will announce that two candidates have been chosen to run for his personal assistant and each will be given one thousand years to present their case and agenda after Satan announces that everyone in Hell must remember everything said because it might be on the finals.
As the votes are being counted, Satan introduces Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the entertainment during the vote count. Accompanied by the theme song to The Benny Hill Show, a nude RBG jumps around on a pogo stick repeating the Ginsburg Rule and shrieking about sexism.
After nearly two thousand years, Satan takes the stage and announce, "There have been voting irregularities and we will have a re-do of the election.
As he makes his announcement all of the pro-abortion SCOTUS Justices repeatedly screech, "I object, I object."
What's all this about "the time left to you down here?" Ad multos annos!
ReplyDeleteDear me, O Scribe. Neither you, nor Father Hunwicke, nor I are eternal.
ReplyDeleteWe know neither the day nor the hour. And there is a great deal of Screwtape, so one was not anticipating a swift departure.
Point taken, O Josephus. Of course, we might just quality to be around at the Second Coming, though in my case this is most unlikely. It's also a matter of regret that I will not live to see the Coronation of King William V and Queen Catherine.
ReplyDelete