Uncanny ... the way my topography overlaps that of Waugh, although not, of course, simultaneously. He was at the College where I spent nearly three decades teaching ... he and I were at the same undergraduate College ... he was married in the Church which is now the Ordinariate Church in London ... he loathed the destruction of the authentic Roman Rite (although he died before the worst of its corruption was engineered) ...
As PF, reportedly, sits huddled over the draft of his intended document destroying Humanae vitae, I recall a jolly passage from Waugh'ss novel Black Mischief, written in 1932, not long after he became a Catholic.
It is situated on an imaginary island in the Indian Ocean, called Azania, which is portrayed as enduring 1930s-style 'Modernity'.
" ... the Emperor assimilated the various books that had arrived for him by the last mail. Worst of all, the pageant of birth control was proving altogether more trouble than it was worth; in spite of repeated remonstrances ... it continued to occupy the the mind of the Emperor in precedence of all other interests. He had already renamed the site of the Anglican Cathedral, Place Marie Stopes.
"'Heaven knows what will happen if he ever discovers psycho-analysis,' remarked Basil, gloomily foreseeeing a Boulevard Kraft-Ebing, an Avenue Oedipus and a pageant of coprophagists ..."
Yes ... even that unseemly preoccupation of PF!!
Black Mischief was viciously attacked by a periodical called The Tablet.
Dear Father. The vast majority of the Church Militant have, long ago, surrendered to the heresy of pro-contraception.
ReplyDeleteOf nominal Catholics few would be the number to object were a woman clothed in vestments to say the Mass for them; they'd dutifully, especially the men, line up to receive the fake Eucharist in their hands and afterwards happily explain to the press "This should have been done long ago."
It's all on the progressive express and headed for every Catholic gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, out house and dog house in Christendom and who wlil stop Engineer Bergoglio?
Is it you Cardinal Tagle?
Is it you Cardinal Cupich?
Is it you Lieutenant Weinberg?