How very reassuring that Cardinal Mueller has been prepared, on the record, to say that Christian people have the right to hear what their bishops are saying in Synod.
This is not the first time that Cardinal Mueller has stood up for the rights of the plebs sancta Dei.
10 October 2014
Bishop Kieran Conry
I feel immensely disquieted by the Bishop Conry business. Not because of his sins. We are all sinners, so who am I to throw stones at others? Who has set me up to judge others? It is not given to me to know whether the sins I have committed were greater offences against the graces given to me than were his sins against the graces he received. The safest way is for me to assume that they were, and to repent accordingly.
No; it is his statements, as given in that most public of fora, the Press, that disturb me. Perhaps, in his very understandable panic, he has said what he did not mean to say. We can all 'misspeak'. But, as they stand, his words seem to be so dreadfully revealing. True, he has uttered some words of regret and of acknowledgement that he did wrong. But ...
"I would like to reassure you that my actions were not illegal and did not involve minors". Indeed? So if someone with a pedophile orientation falls victim to his temptations, that is reprehensible, but if someone with a heterosexual orientation falls victim to his temptations, that is a matter for 'reassurance'? Three decades of schoolmastering left me with a conviction that extra-marital relationships contributing to acrimonious marital breakdown often abuse the adolescent children of a marriage very gravely.
"I will now take some time to consider my future". Not "I will accept the immediate judgement of my superiors how I might best atone for my sinful and sacrilegious way of life by living in penitential retirement". Indeed, 'sin' does not feature in Bishop Conry's pronouncements. "I" and "my" seem to be logically as well as syntactically prominent terms. His words almost suggest that his 'consideration' might not necessarily exclude the question of whether to spend that 'future' with some woman.
"In some respects I feel very calm. It is liberating. It is a relief." This is what I find hardest: his ... apparent ... chilling serenity with regard to having lived for years, as he appears to admit (I pray God that I may be misunderstanding his words), in a state of unrepented mortal sin and, in that state, having repeatedly approached and confected the Sacraments; perhaps even having accepted Episcopal Consecration while aware of an ineradicable propensity for womanising (I remember being shown a published account as long ago as 2002 of his alleged conduct just before his Consecration).
"I have been careful not to make sexual morality a priority". This is rather as if an errant banker were to say "At least I am not a hypocrite: I have never made public statements about the importance of financial probity." And, surely, a Bishop's sacred duties do include making appropriate statements, when necessary, about the many various areas of morality, including sexual morality?
"I don't think it got in the way of my job. I don't think people will say I have been a bad bishop". This gets to the heart of the question. It is apparently Bishop Conry's view that being a Bishop is 'a job'; that it is to do with the efficient performance of certain external actions and has no relationship to striving, with the help of God's grace, to conform ones own life to the person of Jesus Christ and to the imperatives of His Gospel.
Even the greatest admirers of S John Paul II sometimes concede that he did fail to get a grip upon the appointment of Bishops in the Catholic Church, so that local hierarchies became self-perpetuating oligarchies. It would not be difficult to incorporate l'affaire Conry into such a narrative. Res scrutanda est usque ad radices.
And it is sometimes suggested that a de facto and totally unintended result of Vatican II was a loss in many quarters of any dread of Sin and of any consciousness of the absolute need for Grace. Bishop Conry, if his words do truly manifest the man, would be a perfect illustration of that.
A symbol ... indeed, a victim ... of his times? A weak and self-obsessed man, poorly formed at seminary; a product of that facile anthropological optimism which characterised the Church in and after the 1960s; a man who deserves our prayerful sympathy rather than a judgement which it is most certainly not ours to pass?
May God sanctify his dearly beloved child Kieran, and all of us, miserable sinners, et, dimissis peccatis nostris, transform us all ever more closely into the likeness of the Incarnate Word.
No; it is his statements, as given in that most public of fora, the Press, that disturb me. Perhaps, in his very understandable panic, he has said what he did not mean to say. We can all 'misspeak'. But, as they stand, his words seem to be so dreadfully revealing. True, he has uttered some words of regret and of acknowledgement that he did wrong. But ...
"I would like to reassure you that my actions were not illegal and did not involve minors". Indeed? So if someone with a pedophile orientation falls victim to his temptations, that is reprehensible, but if someone with a heterosexual orientation falls victim to his temptations, that is a matter for 'reassurance'? Three decades of schoolmastering left me with a conviction that extra-marital relationships contributing to acrimonious marital breakdown often abuse the adolescent children of a marriage very gravely.
"I will now take some time to consider my future". Not "I will accept the immediate judgement of my superiors how I might best atone for my sinful and sacrilegious way of life by living in penitential retirement". Indeed, 'sin' does not feature in Bishop Conry's pronouncements. "I" and "my" seem to be logically as well as syntactically prominent terms. His words almost suggest that his 'consideration' might not necessarily exclude the question of whether to spend that 'future' with some woman.
"In some respects I feel very calm. It is liberating. It is a relief." This is what I find hardest: his ... apparent ... chilling serenity with regard to having lived for years, as he appears to admit (I pray God that I may be misunderstanding his words), in a state of unrepented mortal sin and, in that state, having repeatedly approached and confected the Sacraments; perhaps even having accepted Episcopal Consecration while aware of an ineradicable propensity for womanising (I remember being shown a published account as long ago as 2002 of his alleged conduct just before his Consecration).
"I have been careful not to make sexual morality a priority". This is rather as if an errant banker were to say "At least I am not a hypocrite: I have never made public statements about the importance of financial probity." And, surely, a Bishop's sacred duties do include making appropriate statements, when necessary, about the many various areas of morality, including sexual morality?
"I don't think it got in the way of my job. I don't think people will say I have been a bad bishop". This gets to the heart of the question. It is apparently Bishop Conry's view that being a Bishop is 'a job'; that it is to do with the efficient performance of certain external actions and has no relationship to striving, with the help of God's grace, to conform ones own life to the person of Jesus Christ and to the imperatives of His Gospel.
Even the greatest admirers of S John Paul II sometimes concede that he did fail to get a grip upon the appointment of Bishops in the Catholic Church, so that local hierarchies became self-perpetuating oligarchies. It would not be difficult to incorporate l'affaire Conry into such a narrative. Res scrutanda est usque ad radices.
And it is sometimes suggested that a de facto and totally unintended result of Vatican II was a loss in many quarters of any dread of Sin and of any consciousness of the absolute need for Grace. Bishop Conry, if his words do truly manifest the man, would be a perfect illustration of that.
A symbol ... indeed, a victim ... of his times? A weak and self-obsessed man, poorly formed at seminary; a product of that facile anthropological optimism which characterised the Church in and after the 1960s; a man who deserves our prayerful sympathy rather than a judgement which it is most certainly not ours to pass?
May God sanctify his dearly beloved child Kieran, and all of us, miserable sinners, et, dimissis peccatis nostris, transform us all ever more closely into the likeness of the Incarnate Word.
9 October 2014
Better News
The second Sunday of our visit to England's North, we had a much better experience than we did in Father Etiam Vaticanior's church. I was grateful for it: one does not want to come away from Mass miserable and depressed two Sundays running.
This time, the Novus Ordo was done in an almost legal way ... and more importantly, in a reverent and joyful way. A sermon was preached, for which the pastor had clearly worked hard to bring the liturgical readings for Holy Cross Day ... Crouchmass, as we call it in the Patrimony ... to life for his people, so as to connect both with their intelligences and their emotions. We were allowed to say the Creed. Fr Etiam could benefit from being sent on a Placement to this church so as to learn how to do liturgy from his brother priest and from the servers, musicians, and people.
I make two points in a sincerely humble and purely positive way.
(1) The pseudo-Hippolytan Eucharistic Prayer II was used. The GIRM expects Prayer I, the Roman Canon, to be used on Sundays and festivals, or at least Prayer III. I believe I have read somewhere that the Bishops have a canonical duty to moderate the Liturgy within their jurisdictions; I wonder how often they draw this point to the attention of their presbyters, since my impression is that this particular abuse is so common as to be almost universal.
(2) The hymns chosen had no relevance to the Festival of the Holy Cross. Perhaps Father had not drawn this point to the attention of his Director of Music? This created a thematic dissonance.
This time, the Novus Ordo was done in an almost legal way ... and more importantly, in a reverent and joyful way. A sermon was preached, for which the pastor had clearly worked hard to bring the liturgical readings for Holy Cross Day ... Crouchmass, as we call it in the Patrimony ... to life for his people, so as to connect both with their intelligences and their emotions. We were allowed to say the Creed. Fr Etiam could benefit from being sent on a Placement to this church so as to learn how to do liturgy from his brother priest and from the servers, musicians, and people.
I make two points in a sincerely humble and purely positive way.
(1) The pseudo-Hippolytan Eucharistic Prayer II was used. The GIRM expects Prayer I, the Roman Canon, to be used on Sundays and festivals, or at least Prayer III. I believe I have read somewhere that the Bishops have a canonical duty to moderate the Liturgy within their jurisdictions; I wonder how often they draw this point to the attention of their presbyters, since my impression is that this particular abuse is so common as to be almost universal.
(2) The hymns chosen had no relevance to the Festival of the Holy Cross. Perhaps Father had not drawn this point to the attention of his Director of Music? This created a thematic dissonance.
8 October 2014
Synodus Occulta
I am interested in exploring the ecclesiological significance of the current Synod. I invite comments from those better qualified in these matters than I am.
What puzzles me most is the fact that it is secret. I had always rather liked the idea (cf S Irenaeus) that Bishops in Synod are not clever individuals pooling their bright ideas, but Bishops with the charisma certum Veritatis bearing public witness to the authentic Teaching handed down by the succession of Bishops in their own Particular Church as part of the convergent witness of all the Churches; and that this is to be contrasted with the twaddle cooked up privately in Smoke Filled Rooms by Gnostic teachers with their alleged secret paradoseis. I don't mean that there's anything wrong with Bishops getting together privately and informally to share, off the record, their ideas about how to handle some crisis: but that, surely, is not a Synodus. Or is it?
Nor do I like the power that this secrecy gives to the Press and to the Vaticanologists. Because, whether the micromanagers like it or not, reports and spinning will happen. And not least when some bishop feels that the official report is, from the point of view of his contribution or opinion, unbalanced. Spilling the beans to the Press in such circumstances is, I believe, called 'briefing'.
I believe that B John Henry Newman's well-known remarks in the aftermath of Vatican I would naturally apply a fortiori to a mere Synod: manipulation of synodal process might detract from the Magisterial authenticity of what emerges.
What puzzles me most is the fact that it is secret. I had always rather liked the idea (cf S Irenaeus) that Bishops in Synod are not clever individuals pooling their bright ideas, but Bishops with the charisma certum Veritatis bearing public witness to the authentic Teaching handed down by the succession of Bishops in their own Particular Church as part of the convergent witness of all the Churches; and that this is to be contrasted with the twaddle cooked up privately in Smoke Filled Rooms by Gnostic teachers with their alleged secret paradoseis. I don't mean that there's anything wrong with Bishops getting together privately and informally to share, off the record, their ideas about how to handle some crisis: but that, surely, is not a Synodus. Or is it?
Nor do I like the power that this secrecy gives to the Press and to the Vaticanologists. Because, whether the micromanagers like it or not, reports and spinning will happen. And not least when some bishop feels that the official report is, from the point of view of his contribution or opinion, unbalanced. Spilling the beans to the Press in such circumstances is, I believe, called 'briefing'.
I believe that B John Henry Newman's well-known remarks in the aftermath of Vatican I would naturally apply a fortiori to a mere Synod: manipulation of synodal process might detract from the Magisterial authenticity of what emerges.
6 October 2014
Father Etiam Vaticanior
I wrote not long ago about Fr Nominis Obliviscor; presumably his often-asserted devotion to Vatican II is what prevents him from preaching in August. While travelling North to visit a Daughter, we stopped off for an overnight break and I experienced a clergyman even more apparently totally committed to Vatican II than dear old Obliviscor. Not only did this gentleman, on the first Sunday in September, fail to preach a homily; he also omitted the Creed (and he appeared to have mislaid his chasuble). Needless to say, despite the GIRM, he also used the pseudo-Hippolytan Eucharistic Prayer II at a Sunday Mass.
Not that this meant that we got out of Church any earlier, which troubled my digestive tract because I had spotted an Italian Restaurant offering Lobster Thermidor. Time saved by omitting Homily and Creed was consumed by innumerable hymns (including, of course, Make me a Channel). And after the Acclamation following the Consecration, the congregation sang something metrical rather than one of the legal responses (which made the Therefore at the start of the Anamnesis completely meaningless). And after the Peace there was a long sentimental-sounding chant in which the only word I could hear and recognise was Shalom. Not being familiar with any of this stuff, or knowing the words of the formulae concerned, I found participatio actuosa totally impossible. I have not felt so marginalised and alienated by any Christian worship for many years.
Not that I am a fundamentist advocate of invariably Doing the Red and Saying the Black. My first point is this: the omission of elements positively required by the post-Conciliar liturgical dispositions, homily and Creed, had every appearance of being done to make space for other elements which neither the Council nor the subsequent Revisers felt it necessary to provide. In other words, the service was, if you think about it, a decisive vote of no-confidence in the Novus Ordo as constructed in the late 1960s. Fr Etiam did not value what it does prescribe, and he did value elements which it fails to contain. Not even the most rabid traddy could have expressed more eloquently than this priest did his evident conviction that the Novus Ordo, as authorised, fails to provide for the needs of God's people.
The second thing that struck me was the joylessness of both the priest and his elderly congregation ... there was a real atmosphere of the Dreary and the Shabby. What is more truly joyful for a devoted priest than preaching on the Gospel Words of the Redeemer; what is happier to hear than God's People saying together the 'Nicene' Creed with its moving, thunderous, affirmations of the God from God, the Light from Light, the True God from True God, His Incarnation, Passion, Death, and Resurrection? What is more heart-lifting than the Roman Canon with the rising climactic anaphoras of Hostiam puram, hostiam sanctam, hostiam immaculatam, panem sanctum vitae aeternae et calicem salutis perpetuae; with its momentous bringing together of Heaven and Earth in the Supplices te rogamus? What have all the vacuous hymns and the moaning chants of the 1970s got to compare with the wonders which the Catholic Church actually provides and requires? I am reminded of Cardinal Nichols' wise words a few days ago, in his brilliant address to the Ordinariate, about how what we do should not be "a matter of personal taste, of subjective likes and dislikes"; that we should not "satisfy our own tastes or personal preferences", our "individual personal preferences and likes and dislikes which are so often contentious"; "personal and subjective taste" should be disciplined. Particularly important, and, I suggest, potentially valuable to clergy like Fathers Obliviscor and Vaticanior is His Eminence's beautifully expressed intuition that "often ... I am fashioned more deeply ... by what I do not particularly like". Even if clergy keen on "Vatican II" have strong personal and subjective dislikes of sermons and creeds and chasubles, and regard the Eucharistic Prayer as a troublesome detail to be disposed of as rapidly as possible, might they not be "fashioned more deeply" by forcing themselves to take seriously "what they do not particularly like"?
I didn't cheer up till I got to the lobster, a masterpiece of Divine Creativity and Human Synergy, well worth waiting for. But it still depresses me to think of the pabulum which the plebs sancta Dei are apparently expected to make do with in some areas within the mainstream Church. And who will be in that particular church in fifteen years' time when the present congregation are all dead?
You will be glad to hear that things were toto caelo better the following Sunday, when we went to a different Novus Ordo church, further North up in Northumberland. I will write about this later.
Not that this meant that we got out of Church any earlier, which troubled my digestive tract because I had spotted an Italian Restaurant offering Lobster Thermidor. Time saved by omitting Homily and Creed was consumed by innumerable hymns (including, of course, Make me a Channel). And after the Acclamation following the Consecration, the congregation sang something metrical rather than one of the legal responses (which made the Therefore at the start of the Anamnesis completely meaningless). And after the Peace there was a long sentimental-sounding chant in which the only word I could hear and recognise was Shalom. Not being familiar with any of this stuff, or knowing the words of the formulae concerned, I found participatio actuosa totally impossible. I have not felt so marginalised and alienated by any Christian worship for many years.
Not that I am a fundamentist advocate of invariably Doing the Red and Saying the Black. My first point is this: the omission of elements positively required by the post-Conciliar liturgical dispositions, homily and Creed, had every appearance of being done to make space for other elements which neither the Council nor the subsequent Revisers felt it necessary to provide. In other words, the service was, if you think about it, a decisive vote of no-confidence in the Novus Ordo as constructed in the late 1960s. Fr Etiam did not value what it does prescribe, and he did value elements which it fails to contain. Not even the most rabid traddy could have expressed more eloquently than this priest did his evident conviction that the Novus Ordo, as authorised, fails to provide for the needs of God's people.
The second thing that struck me was the joylessness of both the priest and his elderly congregation ... there was a real atmosphere of the Dreary and the Shabby. What is more truly joyful for a devoted priest than preaching on the Gospel Words of the Redeemer; what is happier to hear than God's People saying together the 'Nicene' Creed with its moving, thunderous, affirmations of the God from God, the Light from Light, the True God from True God, His Incarnation, Passion, Death, and Resurrection? What is more heart-lifting than the Roman Canon with the rising climactic anaphoras of Hostiam puram, hostiam sanctam, hostiam immaculatam, panem sanctum vitae aeternae et calicem salutis perpetuae; with its momentous bringing together of Heaven and Earth in the Supplices te rogamus? What have all the vacuous hymns and the moaning chants of the 1970s got to compare with the wonders which the Catholic Church actually provides and requires? I am reminded of Cardinal Nichols' wise words a few days ago, in his brilliant address to the Ordinariate, about how what we do should not be "a matter of personal taste, of subjective likes and dislikes"; that we should not "satisfy our own tastes or personal preferences", our "individual personal preferences and likes and dislikes which are so often contentious"; "personal and subjective taste" should be disciplined. Particularly important, and, I suggest, potentially valuable to clergy like Fathers Obliviscor and Vaticanior is His Eminence's beautifully expressed intuition that "often ... I am fashioned more deeply ... by what I do not particularly like". Even if clergy keen on "Vatican II" have strong personal and subjective dislikes of sermons and creeds and chasubles, and regard the Eucharistic Prayer as a troublesome detail to be disposed of as rapidly as possible, might they not be "fashioned more deeply" by forcing themselves to take seriously "what they do not particularly like"?
I didn't cheer up till I got to the lobster, a masterpiece of Divine Creativity and Human Synergy, well worth waiting for. But it still depresses me to think of the pabulum which the plebs sancta Dei are apparently expected to make do with in some areas within the mainstream Church. And who will be in that particular church in fifteen years' time when the present congregation are all dead?
You will be glad to hear that things were toto caelo better the following Sunday, when we went to a different Novus Ordo church, further North up in Northumberland. I will write about this later.
5 October 2014
Changing tastes
If you are in Oxford, don't fail to go and have a look, within the next few days or weeks, at S Anne's College (occasional readers might need to be reminded that this distinguished institution is the Alma Mater of my wife and of two of our children).
The 'Gatehouse Tower', which for a few decades incorporated the College Lodge, is in the process of demolition. This is of interest because, when it was built in the 1960s, it was the delight of fashionable architectural pundits. Sir Nikolaus 'Bauhaus' Pevsner wrote " ... a building of wit, if one can say that of a building. For here is the Tudor-Gatehouse-Tower re-incarnate. ... Altogether an original and attractive little building".
Sic transit gloria mundi. When we were undergraduates, it was not yet even built, and the College Lodge was still incorporated into the side of one of the Victorian houses which constituted the College Buildings. Back in those days when the colleges had not yet totally abdicated moral responsibility, women undergraduates had to be back in college by 10.00, and so the shadowy garden in front of that Lodge was where admirers said good-night after an exciting evening spent reading the Nicomachean Ethics together in the Radcliffe Camera.
Oh dear, how old I feel.
The 'Gatehouse Tower', which for a few decades incorporated the College Lodge, is in the process of demolition. This is of interest because, when it was built in the 1960s, it was the delight of fashionable architectural pundits. Sir Nikolaus 'Bauhaus' Pevsner wrote " ... a building of wit, if one can say that of a building. For here is the Tudor-Gatehouse-Tower re-incarnate. ... Altogether an original and attractive little building".
Sic transit gloria mundi. When we were undergraduates, it was not yet even built, and the College Lodge was still incorporated into the side of one of the Victorian houses which constituted the College Buildings. Back in those days when the colleges had not yet totally abdicated moral responsibility, women undergraduates had to be back in college by 10.00, and so the shadowy garden in front of that Lodge was where admirers said good-night after an exciting evening spent reading the Nicomachean Ethics together in the Radcliffe Camera.
Oh dear, how old I feel.
4 October 2014
Yet more Environment and Being Natural
I'm rather getting into The Environment ... while renewing old acquaintance with the quite remarkable art collections in Alnwick Castle, I found myself reading a little book hand-written by the first Duchess of Northumberland, one of the two Elizabeths who conveyed the honours of the ancient but extinct Percy family and its Earldom of Northumberland to the Smithsons in the middle of the eighteenth century. It details her own rules of life, including her self-imposed rules for washing. Apparently she did wash her hands every day, but once a month (sic) was good enough for her teeth, her feet, et cetera, and what she called a "bidet wash". And she was no peasant but a member of the most refined and genteel Georgian oligarchy.
How fascinating. It got me thinking about the use of water in our society. How much does it cost to purify water to the standard we expect in 'first world' countries? And to put taps into every human residence?Having expensively (I suspect) treated it and conveyed it, we individually use it to carry away not only what is delicately called 'body waste', but also the contents of our frequently voided bladders. We bath or shower at least once a day. Young women, I am led to believe, very commonly wash their hair (using electrical current to dry it) at least twice a day. The water which is thereby deposited into our sewers is full of the chemicals they have used to make their hair look the way that advertising and the media have instructed them is correct. I interpret television commercials to mean that shampoos used do in fact damage the hair, so that things called Conditioners have to be used to conceal the damage. If I'm getting all these details wrong, I'm sure someone will put me right.
How have we reached a situation in which hair so artificially treated, and bodies so obsessively washed (and caked with deodorants), are believed to be 'Natural'? And is it true that the contraceptive medicaments which our society pours into waste-water make fish develop the wrong gender characteristics? Why do we hear so little about the 'Environmental' costs and consequences of such a culture? Does it have anything to do with the imperatives of aggressive and greedy Capitalism?
How fascinating. It got me thinking about the use of water in our society. How much does it cost to purify water to the standard we expect in 'first world' countries? And to put taps into every human residence?Having expensively (I suspect) treated it and conveyed it, we individually use it to carry away not only what is delicately called 'body waste', but also the contents of our frequently voided bladders. We bath or shower at least once a day. Young women, I am led to believe, very commonly wash their hair (using electrical current to dry it) at least twice a day. The water which is thereby deposited into our sewers is full of the chemicals they have used to make their hair look the way that advertising and the media have instructed them is correct. I interpret television commercials to mean that shampoos used do in fact damage the hair, so that things called Conditioners have to be used to conceal the damage. If I'm getting all these details wrong, I'm sure someone will put me right.
How have we reached a situation in which hair so artificially treated, and bodies so obsessively washed (and caked with deodorants), are believed to be 'Natural'? And is it true that the contraceptive medicaments which our society pours into waste-water make fish develop the wrong gender characteristics? Why do we hear so little about the 'Environmental' costs and consequences of such a culture? Does it have anything to do with the imperatives of aggressive and greedy Capitalism?
3 October 2014
"Nature and the Environment"
Do I really, as I suggested, rather with my tongue in my cheek, in a recent piece, 'loath Nature and detest the Environment'? Well, in one sense, not really. I have spent hours peering through binoculars at fulmars and their chicks in Ireland, shags in Cornwall, choughs both in Ireland and in Cornwall, seals etc. etc.. I have enjoyed long afternoons alone (Pam was playing golf) on a ruined, deserted and overgrown jetty in the County Kerry watching the kingfisher; the otter; and the grey mullet coming lazily in with the tide; no companion with me but a can of Beamish and a pencil wherewith to turn the First Leader in the Irish Times into Latin. Pam and I often make unsuccessful attempts to identify fungi. Sadly, we were also unsuccessful recently in our attempts to see red squirrels in Northumberland; grieved to learn that an adenovirus is now an additional problem for those so very shy and so very English creatures.
But I favour the conservation of such species for my own pleasure; as objects or extensions of my own subjective aisthesis. I view them with the same interest as that with which I would try to reconstruct conjecturally a damaged memorial stone in the Latin tongue, work out from quarterings on a hatchment the history of a long-since defunct family, find the strawberry in a Comper window. My fun; my intellectual stimulus. What I find objectionable is an ideology which has grown up and which surrounds 'Nature' and 'The Environment' with reverence, even deference, and sometimes even what looks like a whole invented morality. (Whom should I blame as the begetter of the idea that Morality is derived from Nature? Wordsworth? Heidegger?) Take the concept of Biodiversity. We are under an obligation, it is suggested, to preserve threatened species and to expand the numbers of different species in the world around us.
Really? What about the small-pox virus? Or Ebola? How much do we welcome their spread? Do we encourage it? But they are parts of Nature, aren't they? Should I explain to my GP that he is wrong to discourage promiscuous young people from providing Welcoming Habitats for Chlamydia? What about fleas? Are they part of Nature, and, if not, why not? What about those wonderful little creatures, lice? Cockroaches in your kitchen and the maggots spreading from the bit of beef which slipped down behind the cupboard? And Weather is Environment, isn't it? Tsunamis are to be welcomed, aren't they? Volcanic eruptions? Floods resulting in the spreading of Bubonic Plague by large black rats? (Perhaps Dr Dawkins will write us a book, with enlarged colour photographs, about the elegant and beautiful symbiosis between the rats, their fleas, and the plague.)
Not all, but a lot of the fashionable nonsense about Biodiversity relates to furry and cuddly mammals with nice eyes; and to other 'attractive' species. As far as anything else is concerned, we are totally ruthless. When you are settling down to an out-door tea party in summer and five wasps immediately appear, how welcoming are you? How sincerely do you rejoice when you discover that these same wasps have created one of their fascinating nests in your attic? You surely wouldn't get the Council Pests Department to come and destroy it, would you?
Recently a television 'Nature' presenter in England called Humble revealed that she liked going around naked so as to be "closer to Nature". She (and the journalist who wrote the story up) apparently saw no inconsistency between this affection for 'Nature' and the decision she said she and her husband had made "never" to have children. How 'Natural' are antiovulant contraceptive pills ... or whatever method she uses to achieve her elected infertility? She tells us that "We usually get up at 6 a.m. to feed the animals". One assumes that she seizes the opportunity to do this naked. I'm sure her house is exquisitely smelly (smells are 'natural') after she comes back indoors with animal excrement all over her (of course) naked feet (mammal excrement is 'natural', isn't it?). And Humble says that "there is something joyous about it [going naked]". I admire her ability to find 'joy' in circumstances which most of us would give a lot to avoid, like going out stark-naked to feed the pigs in a sub-zero temperature, two hours before dawn on a January morning. (Goose pimples are 'part of Nature', aren't they? And icy winter winds straight from Siberia? Or is Nature confined to agreeably warm days and a beneficent Jet-stream?).
Some people moralise about those species or natural phenomena which somehow appeal to them ... bunnies or Summer sunsets. Show them anything even moderately inconvenient ... wasps or the Common Cold virus ... and they are all for slaughter. Suddenly murderous, they swarm through their beloved Environment like armies of croaking Daleks shouting Ex-ter-min-ATE.
It is this modern superstition with its concomitant 'morality' and its silly suggestions about a Moral Obligation to encourage Biodiversity that I find odd. One reason for my feeling is that I suspect it of being a newly created 'easy morality' functioning as a substitute for a Christian (or other) morality which is found difficult or inconvenient.
So this is why I would (if by raising a finger I could do so) exterminate the adenovirus which is attacking the red squirrels in Northumberland: I am smitten by the idea of watching red squirrels while, not possessing a microscope, I have quite simply never learned how beautiful and fascinating an adenovirus can be. The very purest subjectivism.
But I favour the conservation of such species for my own pleasure; as objects or extensions of my own subjective aisthesis. I view them with the same interest as that with which I would try to reconstruct conjecturally a damaged memorial stone in the Latin tongue, work out from quarterings on a hatchment the history of a long-since defunct family, find the strawberry in a Comper window. My fun; my intellectual stimulus. What I find objectionable is an ideology which has grown up and which surrounds 'Nature' and 'The Environment' with reverence, even deference, and sometimes even what looks like a whole invented morality. (Whom should I blame as the begetter of the idea that Morality is derived from Nature? Wordsworth? Heidegger?) Take the concept of Biodiversity. We are under an obligation, it is suggested, to preserve threatened species and to expand the numbers of different species in the world around us.
Really? What about the small-pox virus? Or Ebola? How much do we welcome their spread? Do we encourage it? But they are parts of Nature, aren't they? Should I explain to my GP that he is wrong to discourage promiscuous young people from providing Welcoming Habitats for Chlamydia? What about fleas? Are they part of Nature, and, if not, why not? What about those wonderful little creatures, lice? Cockroaches in your kitchen and the maggots spreading from the bit of beef which slipped down behind the cupboard? And Weather is Environment, isn't it? Tsunamis are to be welcomed, aren't they? Volcanic eruptions? Floods resulting in the spreading of Bubonic Plague by large black rats? (Perhaps Dr Dawkins will write us a book, with enlarged colour photographs, about the elegant and beautiful symbiosis between the rats, their fleas, and the plague.)
Not all, but a lot of the fashionable nonsense about Biodiversity relates to furry and cuddly mammals with nice eyes; and to other 'attractive' species. As far as anything else is concerned, we are totally ruthless. When you are settling down to an out-door tea party in summer and five wasps immediately appear, how welcoming are you? How sincerely do you rejoice when you discover that these same wasps have created one of their fascinating nests in your attic? You surely wouldn't get the Council Pests Department to come and destroy it, would you?
Recently a television 'Nature' presenter in England called Humble revealed that she liked going around naked so as to be "closer to Nature". She (and the journalist who wrote the story up) apparently saw no inconsistency between this affection for 'Nature' and the decision she said she and her husband had made "never" to have children. How 'Natural' are antiovulant contraceptive pills ... or whatever method she uses to achieve her elected infertility? She tells us that "We usually get up at 6 a.m. to feed the animals". One assumes that she seizes the opportunity to do this naked. I'm sure her house is exquisitely smelly (smells are 'natural') after she comes back indoors with animal excrement all over her (of course) naked feet (mammal excrement is 'natural', isn't it?). And Humble says that "there is something joyous about it [going naked]". I admire her ability to find 'joy' in circumstances which most of us would give a lot to avoid, like going out stark-naked to feed the pigs in a sub-zero temperature, two hours before dawn on a January morning. (Goose pimples are 'part of Nature', aren't they? And icy winter winds straight from Siberia? Or is Nature confined to agreeably warm days and a beneficent Jet-stream?).
Some people moralise about those species or natural phenomena which somehow appeal to them ... bunnies or Summer sunsets. Show them anything even moderately inconvenient ... wasps or the Common Cold virus ... and they are all for slaughter. Suddenly murderous, they swarm through their beloved Environment like armies of croaking Daleks shouting Ex-ter-min-ATE.
It is this modern superstition with its concomitant 'morality' and its silly suggestions about a Moral Obligation to encourage Biodiversity that I find odd. One reason for my feeling is that I suspect it of being a newly created 'easy morality' functioning as a substitute for a Christian (or other) morality which is found difficult or inconvenient.
So this is why I would (if by raising a finger I could do so) exterminate the adenovirus which is attacking the red squirrels in Northumberland: I am smitten by the idea of watching red squirrels while, not possessing a microscope, I have quite simply never learned how beautiful and fascinating an adenovirus can be. The very purest subjectivism.
2 October 2014
When I'm dead ...
One of the most tedious features of modern life is the proliferation of public seats in Beauty Spots, with sentimental little brass plaques ('He loved this place'). I have made it clear to my family that I utterly forbid such a waste of money to commemorate myself. But, out walking the other day, a formula which could be used on such a seat occurred to me.
IN MEMORY OF THE REVD JOHN WILLIAM HUNWICKE MA Oxon
HE WAS A SPLENETIC MISANTHROPE
WHO LOATHED NATURE* AND DETESTED THE ENVIRONMENT*
DO NOT SIT HERE
___________________________________________________________________________
*I'll gloss these terms in a later post.
IN MEMORY OF THE REVD JOHN WILLIAM HUNWICKE MA Oxon
HE WAS A SPLENETIC MISANTHROPE
WHO LOATHED NATURE* AND DETESTED THE ENVIRONMENT*
DO NOT SIT HERE
___________________________________________________________________________
*I'll gloss these terms in a later post.
1 October 2014
Fr Michael Moreton
I have been told that Fr Moreton's Requiem and Funeral will be in the ancient Church of S Mary Steps in Exeter, which he served so long and so faithfully, at 11.00 on Friday 10 October. CAPD
Theresa May and the Zeitgeist
I dislike the Party Conference Season, not least because it showcases pushy politicians in grisly surroundings seeking adulation and applause by promising the crazed party faithful deeply questionable legislation. (At least the Nuremberg rallies took place in spaces made unintentionally amusing by their mutated-Deco architecture.)
Theresa May, one of those hoping to lead the Conservative Party after David Cameron is knifed for losing the next election, wants to go down in history as the one who thumped the Islamic 'extremists'. So she has just promised legislation outlawing Thoughtcrime ... well, at least the crime of daring to express ones views. If she gets her way, it is to be made illegal to express 'extremist' views which might cause "harassment, alarm, or distress" to others.
As we all know, the aggressively ideological section of the homosexual community does a very good line in feeling hurt and Distress and outraged victimhood when faced with any expression of views which goes against its own dogmas ... I mean the sort of people who get kicks out of taking to court proprietors of guesthouses who decline to give double beds to same-sex couples, or cake-makers who decline to bake their 'wedding' cakes.
A populist desire to thump the Islamists is, in itself, a distinctly iffy basis for legislation. Thumping them with legislation which will, undoubtedly, eventually, probably sooner rather than later, be used against Catholics (and Orthodox and Evangelicals and Orthodox Jews) is deeply worrying. We would become a country like Vietnam, in which only an expurgated version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church could be published.
Constitutional reform is never off the British political agenda. I pray for the preservation of that delightful anomaly, the House of Lords. I can imagine a situation in which Their Lordships might be the only bulwark against such deeply anti-libertarian projects as those envisaged by May and Cameron. Politicians who are free to ignore party discipline and who never need to trim their actions in order to secure re-election are the best sort of safeguard against ideological tyranny driven by populist hysteria.
Theresa May, one of those hoping to lead the Conservative Party after David Cameron is knifed for losing the next election, wants to go down in history as the one who thumped the Islamic 'extremists'. So she has just promised legislation outlawing Thoughtcrime ... well, at least the crime of daring to express ones views. If she gets her way, it is to be made illegal to express 'extremist' views which might cause "harassment, alarm, or distress" to others.
As we all know, the aggressively ideological section of the homosexual community does a very good line in feeling hurt and Distress and outraged victimhood when faced with any expression of views which goes against its own dogmas ... I mean the sort of people who get kicks out of taking to court proprietors of guesthouses who decline to give double beds to same-sex couples, or cake-makers who decline to bake their 'wedding' cakes.
A populist desire to thump the Islamists is, in itself, a distinctly iffy basis for legislation. Thumping them with legislation which will, undoubtedly, eventually, probably sooner rather than later, be used against Catholics (and Orthodox and Evangelicals and Orthodox Jews) is deeply worrying. We would become a country like Vietnam, in which only an expurgated version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church could be published.
Constitutional reform is never off the British political agenda. I pray for the preservation of that delightful anomaly, the House of Lords. I can imagine a situation in which Their Lordships might be the only bulwark against such deeply anti-libertarian projects as those envisaged by May and Cameron. Politicians who are free to ignore party discipline and who never need to trim their actions in order to secure re-election are the best sort of safeguard against ideological tyranny driven by populist hysteria.
Banned!
Another category of comment ... yet another ... which I have decided to exclude are those which make libelous comments about myself!
Someone has submitted ... three times! ... a claim that my ordination in the Catholic Church was delayed for sexual reasons.
I had hoped that I would never have to deal publicly with that episode, which is best left to moulder in the archives. But the facts are these.
A Catholic bishop, aware of my strong preference for the Extraordinary Form, deemed that I should be refused a 'positive votum' lest I should go around causing liturgical disorder and division.
This was subsequently sorted out on a personal basis. I came to appreciate the motives ... and person! ... of the bishop concerned and, I think, he came to see me in a different light. He asked to perform the Ordination himself, and he leaned over backwards to behave with great graciousness. I am left with no hard feelings against this bishop. On the contrary, I esteem him very highly and acceded to his request that I remember him in my prayers.
The author of the comment seems to have a deep visceral detestation of the Ordinariates and of everybody and everything connected with them. If he is a Christian, I ask him in the name of Christ, and for his own good, his own happiness, to stop reading my blog.
Someone has submitted ... three times! ... a claim that my ordination in the Catholic Church was delayed for sexual reasons.
I had hoped that I would never have to deal publicly with that episode, which is best left to moulder in the archives. But the facts are these.
A Catholic bishop, aware of my strong preference for the Extraordinary Form, deemed that I should be refused a 'positive votum' lest I should go around causing liturgical disorder and division.
This was subsequently sorted out on a personal basis. I came to appreciate the motives ... and person! ... of the bishop concerned and, I think, he came to see me in a different light. He asked to perform the Ordination himself, and he leaned over backwards to behave with great graciousness. I am left with no hard feelings against this bishop. On the contrary, I esteem him very highly and acceded to his request that I remember him in my prayers.
The author of the comment seems to have a deep visceral detestation of the Ordinariates and of everybody and everything connected with them. If he is a Christian, I ask him in the name of Christ, and for his own good, his own happiness, to stop reading my blog.
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