Essays in Idleness

They were Buddhist monks, and one in particular, who told me that I should become a Catholic, or at least a good Christian. That was the path to my salvation, and not some flight into exoticism, such as Buddhism or another “oriental cult.” Oddly, I agreed with him, even at the time (over half a century ago), for I was allergic to the “peace brothers” and marijuana addicts I had met on the road to India; the “white hippies” as a girlfriend called them, with reference to the bedsheets they were wearing. All seemed, at least partially, motivated by resentment to the “established” Western religions which they had abandoned. Those who began to understand the “orientals” were, paradoxically, the more intelligent of them, and often the confirmed Catholics. Those who did not were the unrepentant children of the middle class. (“Consumptives,” I called them, in preference to “consumers.”)

That was when I was indulging in a phase of “comparative religion,” which consisted chiefly of reading beuks. It is one of many religion substitutes. Yet in a certain sense, I still suffer from it; for once acquired, curiosity does not easily whither away. I have “a taste for religion,” in its variety, which I had even when I called myself an Atheist. (“Agnostic” seemed so wet.) Religion — readers should eventually research the meaning of this word — is, to my mind, not exhaustively doctrinal. It has the power to cleanse, and bring relief from materialism.

What were the true religions? From childhood (in Pakistan) I was able to determine that Islam, in either Sunni or Shia form, was actually a false religion, rather a violent, totalitarian political movement, with sometimes superior architecture and calligraphy. On the other hand, Sufism — the persecuted mystical form of Islam — is unquestionably religious. The rites are musical and poetic, and Sufis seek interior purification, often more than external show.

Among the Jews, I was impressed by the joyful Hasids; the pious and orthodox; indeed, by the orthodox in all religions, perhaps even in Shinto Animism. This, through every traditional liturgy, turns one’s awareness naturally to God, and one’s attention to the mystical reality that underlies the whole Creation. It does not reinforce the self-seeking middle class, however, although, to be fair, tedious middle-class values help to sustain a good, functioning conscience, and discourage cheating.

One does not collect such souvenirs, but some time in 1970, I think, a copy of the Economist (in the old larger page size) tumbled into my lap. I was sitting in a (partly busted) rattan chair in Bangkok, during my youth. The cover of this magazine reproduced a panel from some lively old war comic, showing weaponized GI’s in action. The headline — “Oh no, not Korea again!” — struck me as quite funny. Those were the days when the Economist ran genuinely witty captions, and before it became a worthless magazine, for economic or political information.

Korea, remember, was the transition, from an America that won crucial wars, to an America that knew how to lose them.

Vietnam was the real issue, at the time, in 1970. I was in the course of learning, at first hand, how the Americans were indisputably winning the War in Vietnam, but with the help of Walter Cronkite, throwing victory away. More than a million Vietnamese, and more than two million Cambodians, would pay with their lives for this American betrayal (adding all relevant deaths, including drownings at sea). Since, a few million more have been sacrificed to the Yankee narcissism, so eloquently expressed by their Democratic party. President Biden’s absurd walkaway from Afghanistan was a theatrical example, but there were hundreds more. That “the media” will only mention thirteen fatalities, from that monstrously evil abandonment, suggests the amount of truth one may extract from such sources.

The United States had not only won the vexatious War in Vietnam, with a huge, incompetent bureaucracy and an incredible expenditure on mostly redundant technology, but President Nixon and his Kissinger had also got North Vietnam to acknowledge this at the Paris Peace Talks. South Vietnam would be, by agreement, free of satanic Communist infiltration. But then the Communists, as usual, entirely ignored their diplomatic commitments, and the U.S. Congress voted to cut off military supplies (including even bullets) to the dependent South Vietnamese regime, directly contradicting formal American guarantees. Fifty-one years have now passed since 30th April, 1975: the day of infamy on which I learnt that “progressive opinion leaders” were not only blackguard liars, but in multiple other ways, remorselessly evil.

I look at all the “diplomatic” efforts to end the War in Iran “peacefully,” and withdraw American arms, before the Twelver regime is utterly exterminated, as what will be the next example. Defeat will again be somehow pried from the jaws of certain victory. No?

Today has been the patronal feast of the House of Savoy, and thus the Feast of the Holy Shroud, since Pope Julius II proclaimed it in 1506; and in my lifetime, the “Shroud of Turin” has been substantiated in an obvious way. It seems to have been precisely what was claimed for it — the winding sheet used to wrap Jesus’ slain body where it lay dead, and also as it “awakened,” or was initially Resurrected. I don’t think we can say, correctly, that He “was resurrected,” for who would be responsible for such an act except the Very God, who was and is Christ? (So much for Musalman complaints that we are polytheists.)

For those with access to a traditional Catholic missal, yesterday was the Feast of the Invention of the Holy Cross — commemorating the discovery of that very Crucifix, buried by the pagan Romans under many, many, cartloads of earth, stones, and muck, at the location of Golgotha in Jerusalem. It was exhumed, dug out, uncovered, by St Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, seventeen centuries ago (almost exactly). To those who are sceptical of this assertion, it ought to be explained that “Invention” is derived from the Latin invenio, meaning “uncovered.” (Alethea in Greek: proven, true.) The discovery was made in a very public way. Not hidden.

It is a curious feature of the Christian religion that, from Bethlehem forward, physical details of its existence have been available. Our faith has always been fully supported to whatever standard of proof pertained through the successive days since, and so the denial of Christ has been ludicrous, continuously over this time. For that matter, the archaeological evidence for Judaism remains, at the original sites, in contemporary Israel and beyond her borders, from Egypt to Babylon and Persia.

Today we are doing tests with “advanced technology,” which the Shroud, unsurprisingly, continues to pass. Don’t be naïve. Go check it out.

A wise brain will get you into trouble, especially if you are Christian. It is your fellow Christians to watch out for. The solution, of course, is to carry the trouble to them. It is a solution that requires a surplus of will and courage, and of course, you should expect to die young — if not from assassination, from exhaustion. Apparently, you don’t have to be able to read, or not very well, know biology, or chemistry, or physics. This seemed largely true of St. Catherine of Siena, the Catholic Saint (and Patroness of Rome!) to whom my attention was first called, because she died on my (earthly) birthday, although she is not celebrated until the day after.

I was not even a Christian then, although, as a white boy, in compulsory attendance at church, and willing to be educated — like some children today, but not all. I was an irritating child, asking too many questions, and not at all liking my beatings (especially from Brother Berg). My family were, as well as I could understand, “post-Protestants,” which meant we did not normally go into Holy Places, except when we were visiting a foreign country. I was, to some degree, impressed by the “Dogans,” at least those in Pakistan around St Anthony’s School on Lawrence Road in Lahore. Alas, they habitually beat the education right into you (through the right ear, I believed), whether or not this service had been requested. My papa chose the school despite its Roman association, for its high academic standards, thinking, “I have a bright boy, he’ll never become a Catholic.” They had me a full year past the age of seven.

Today, “Our school” (as St Anthony’s is still called) “offers Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Computer Labs.” … In the old days it only offered books, and your parents had to pay for them.

I suppose I wasn’t such a bright boy, after all. I made it to the age of fifty, then caved. St Catherine of Siena, pray for me.

“Beauty will save the world,” we read in The Idiot, by Dostoevsky. The words are spoken by the Idiot, himself, Prince Myshkin, and as we gather throughout Dostoevsky’s major works, Beauty is also indistinguishably related to two other “absolutes” found in Plato and Aristotle — Truth, and Goodness. They are the three transcendental values, too fundamental to be limited by physicality.

This is indeed something to know about Beauty: that it cannot be picked off a shelf. Therefore, in trying to define Beauty, I would be misleading the reader. That we all, however, know what “Beauty” means, within our own cosmic being, even if we choose contradictory examples, I take for granted. More precisely, we begin to know.

We all know what “God” means, even when we are denying Him.

By being born, we came to the beginning of an understanding; and know, sometimes, that it cannot be lost, that it will not disappear. For Beauty is, Truth is, Goodness is. They cannot be segregated, or visited in compartments, the way “efficient,” well-organized people claim to do. There is too much “thereness” in them.

Those who not only read, but think, are also in the habit of thinking about Beauty, and of considering it in its relations. We cannot help this, if we are open to human experience. An effect of humility is produced by the presence of Beauty, easily distinguished from the desire of ownership, if one has a brain that can be used. This is because we are placed, by Beauty, in the presence of the Divine, and what belongs to the Divine does not belong to us. A work of art might belong to me, but that cannot make it Beautiful. It communicates through contact — through being apprehended — but not by belonging to anyone. It is transient, inasmuch as it can be destroyed. It can save us from destruction, but cannot escape our destructive urges.

Yet after destruction, and even during, it continues to be, though now detached from what tried to kill it.

One way to think of Beauty is not as a thing, but as a “wavelength,” on the analogy of light. To my mind, the presence of Beauty in nature, but also in a man-made thing, is a specific indication of Divinity, or Godliness.

When we live in a “beautiful environment,” we have reason to hope. The presence of ugliness is a mark of the opposite, or if you will, of the Devil. Through ugliness we are constantly receiving reasons, instead, to despair. One see this, for instance, in the ugliness of our cities, and the vileness of our consumer and mass-market goods. Perhaps all automatic or machine production is essentially vile.

Among reasons we look to the past, and to the ages before this mass market existed, is for relief from the oppression of ugliness.

A certain amount of peace may be had upon realizing that the whole world is screwed, as it were, and cannot be unscrewed within our lives or the lives of any of our children, down an indefinitely large number of generations. I have been called a pessimist, but if I had said this at any time in the past, surely I would have been proved right by now; so why argue?

Argument might get one killed, although, if one is Catholic, one may have the great hope of martyrdom. I, especially, need to be martyred, because it may be my only chance to get into Heaven. But it may still be a miscalculation, for only valid martyrdoms are likely to count, and everything else is mere accident, or reprehensible suicide.

There is, however, hope in the universality of Divine grace. God cannot be angry with us, really, except out of love. He can forgive many things we would not, ourselves, dream of forgiving — when His forgiveness is pleaded for. But Our Lord hasn’t promised Salvation to all, only that He — incredibly — loves us.

Indeed, these are among the many things that He has told His Church — personally. For He came down to earth. And we are like the woman caught in adultery: “Go, and sin no more.”

Our pope recently listed several things that are “priorities” for the Church, such as world peace and the environment; and all, he says, should come higher than sexual morality. In fact, none of the various things he mentioned are important, and no one, including no Roman Catholic (Armenian, Copt, Greek Orthodox, &c), has the slightest influence over the acquisition of, say, world peace, or how any of his other selected preferences might be, even unreliably, achieved.

These are collectivist, and plainly political aims; the stuff on which the non-religious like constantly to spread voluminous bullshit. Indeed, it is quite sad to watch a pope sink into secular preaching, and give the kind of advice to statesmen that even I could give.

One’s sexual behaviour is, however, among the several items that one can certainly do something about, if one is inclined to become a Christian hero. That is why it is infinitely more important than world peace:

For a Christian Soldier should be chaste.

One of the Signs of the Times is people telling the truth, but with the intention of lying. For examples, I will identify the prime ministers, chancellors, presidents, &c, who continuously bleat their disapproval of “Islamophobia.” The Canadian prime minister likes to sermonize about how Islam and Christianity are much alike, and nearly interchangeable. And so does the pope, it seems, when, as frequently, he is visiting abroad. A cheerful man, he is endlessly good-willing to his Muslim hosts.

So why don’t we all — Christianists and Islamists — just get along, an observer might be thinking. Why all this violent threat and prattle? It is because we are killing each other, an unusually candid politician might say.

To be more precise, in virtually every one of the last fifty thousand incidents of multi-victim terrorism, we were not “killing each other,” but Islamists were specifically executing Christians and Jews, across Africa, Eurasia, and the Americas. To be fair, it wasn’t quite all, however. They were also slaughtering Hindus and Buddhists. That is how the term Islamophobia — “an irrational fear of Islam” — came to be invented.

But who could be perpetrating such a shocking, unpredictable crime? We all are — as every one of us, not himself Muslim, is given to understand. But in truth all those prime ministers, chancellors, presidents, &c, are among the guilty. They are frightened by the large Islamic populations they have let in to their respective countries — both legally and illegally — and they are terribly scared. For what if they don’t do what these Muslim voters demand? There are daily incidents to remind these politicians who is in charge.

Are these worthless, garbage people (the politicians, not the terrorists)? In the Crusading tradition, they should “grow a pair.” The worst the Mussulmans can do, after all, is continue to kill us.

So, down with Islamophobia!

When we say that God has saved us, though we are referring only to physical and historical facts, nevertheless, we should allow that God does, and usually has. He does this in a “conventional” way, or without grandstanding. (We cannot know which events are miracles, anyway, and which are not, as we cannot see events developing from Divine angles. We only acknowledge visible miracles because they are shocking.) The conventional way, that God arranges to supply benignities, is by the very design of this world.

But it is easy to make a mess of things, down here. Anyone who is evil can do this himself, without much effort. However, to correct for the errors requires — not Divine intervention, but a background Divine plan. This is because correcting errors is vastly more complicated than making them; and if, from the beginning, the errors had not been anticipated, we would be overwhelmed.

What if, to use yesterday’s example, as the result of foolish “democratic” policies, unmarried women have, in large numbers, gone completely mad, and in their lunacy, have forgotten to get married. But then, children will become very scarce, the population will decline, and many other horrors will be statistically demonstrated. What will God do about this?

He will do nothing; for He has already installed the desire to be fruitful and multiply within each woman in a unique, beautiful way, and within each man, likewise (although crazy male behaviour is also quite possible).

And God, Who created every living soul, did the installations. Eventually, after they have tried the various ways to become mental cases, they (and the men, too) will discover they still crave a peaceful, holy life; in which, for instance, most women get married and settle down, and those who don’t become nuns, or old maids.

Patience alone will guide us to this restoration, plus a few spontaneous virtuous acts by the heroines and heroes of our time. For God created a world in which there must be splendid behaviour, as well as nutjobs and psychopaths.

Readers of Canadian literature and history in college will all be aware that Stephen Leacock was an imperialist, racist, and deeply misogynist; for that’s the kind of “education” that is taught in universities these days.

I like to recommend, for starters, Leacock on “The Woman Question,” written while he was campaigning against the female franchise, and temperance, shortly after the Great War — while walking barefoot under a big straw hat with an open bottle of scotch, through downtown Orillia, daring the local constabulary to arrest him. He knew that he would lose this contest, and that the emancipated women would then vote to bring in the so-called “temperance movement,” to prevent the (overwhelmingly male) heroes coming home from battle, from having a drink. He wrote very effectively on the phenomenon of “the awful women,” then gaining influence, but you will have trouble finding it, for the awful women of today have had it banned.

The essay, incidentally, argues that women already have the “right” to practice almost every profession. The problem is that they can’t do it. Put them on one of the great skyscrapers then being built, and they will fall off, &c. It was an instructive and deeply amusing essay.

Helen Andrews (née Rittelmeyer) has recently improved the argument, making it more explanatory than my own observation that the women’s vote swung nearly every Canadian election in the last century. For instance, that is why we got the Trudeaux. Subtract the women’s vote, and we would hardly ever have been bothered by a Liberal government.

Mrs. Andrews’ thesis is not quite this, but that the feminization of our society is what has given rise, more recently, to “Wokism.” It is what happens when the “movers and shakers” in our society start thinking like women, or are actually replaced by women, whether by fashion trend, or sex-change.

“Suicidal empathy” is what Gad Saad calls it. It also explains why Islam is taking over in the West.

But American polling shows that married men, and married women, and unmarried men, voted the same way, by fairly wide margins, and for the Republicans in the last three elections. The problem is unmarried women, who voted more than two-thirds for whoever was running against Trump. Think it through, gentle reader. Mature, grown-up women are innocent of the charge that has been brought against them. Happily, only unmarried women are the demonic, whose vote must be taken away.

Sometimes, the nicest thing you can do for a dear old friend, is to lay him out. Perhaps he was drinking, and made a terrible fool of himself. Ideology is like that. Those under its fatal influence are capable of behaving in the most appalling and undignified ways. But like the old cinema trope, the answer to a crisp smack across the face, should be, “Thanks, I needed that.” By now, the Iranians are ready to thank us. It doesn’t matter if they do, however. We must continue laying out their government.

I travelled, modestly, in Iran, last century, in the later days of the Shah. At the time I was very much impressed, both by the monuments of ancient Persian civilization, and by the nation’s success in mastering modernity. It was a free and prosperous place, ahead, it seemed, of all the alternatives in “third-world” Asia, and the Shah’s prediction that his country would soon catch up with Western Europe was quite plausible. My adventures I told elsewhere; I wasn’t nearly as aware of politics and history as I am now. (I was scandalously young.) Indeed, part of my coming of age was to experience how totally freedom could be lost, at the savage fanatical hand of a very proud, evil man: Khomeini. And how naïve, stupid, and useless, were his opponents.

Iran should have been sharply slapped in 1979. That was the time for invasion, forty-seven years ago, in response to the taking of the American hostages. Done properly (with the “martyrdom” of Khomeini), two generations of Persians could have avoided their appalling subsequent fate. Alas, America was then in the hands of Carter, a smug moron. This was because America no longer knew anything about politics, and less than nothing about “Democracy”; and did and still does not realize the advantages that Imperialism, Colonialism, and Monarchy, confer.

By boiling and draining then mashing together some russet potatoes, and cabbage, with lots of haddock fish (perhaps poached in buttermilk), and a few square yards of butter, then tossing in a prawn or two for something to discuss, together with whatever comes to hand in the pantry, … one can be reasonably sure of a good time. Lent is over, I know, but who cares? We may continue to make glorious fish receipts and merrily pig-out in just this way, without delaying the American and Israeli bombings in Iran (and Lebanon! never forget to shell Hezbollah!) — that were promised for no later than eight o’clock p.m.

But darn that Trump. He has negotiated a ceasefire again, when all I was worrying about was that he might be running low on missiles and explosives. We will need these if China invades Taiwan, and there will be so many targets to hit on the mainland. (Always pack a few extra!)

As Edward Feser, whom I occasionally read with respect, assured me, the president’s Internet posts are quite deranged, and the war with Iran does not follow Just War principles for either cause or conduct. Francisco Suárez might not approve. My enthusiasm for the physical destruction of Hamas, Houthis, and whatever in Persia starts with an H, was almost restrained. The idea that they share an ideology, and that this ideology could be erased, are two which I hold dear. One need only continue bombing and shooting them up, as we did with the Nazis. Make Persepolis into Dresden: we can always build it back when Iran’s oil money starts flowing again.

The trick is not to leave anything standing, as we neglected to do with the Communists. Always go for the unconditional surrender, or like bedbugs they will infest us again. Our failure to completely kill off Communism had terrible consequences.

Too much War only leads to Peace; too much Peace only leads to War. I thank my former Indian girlfriend, who taught me that.

Unlike Western politicians (all of the others, so far as I can see), Mr Trump understands this, and actually prefers peace, for some reason. He likes to use tactics, including some good ones, and knows how to scare people. (Especially his allies.) You don’t have to actually kill everyone to get your way; that would be too time-consuming. Even Germany was left with a few people still breathing, after World War Two.

These are words I am still trying to make sense of: “He is risen” goes so far beyond what is acceptable to common sense, as to put the very idea of common sense into scandal. Everything that you have seen or heard dying, stays then dead, for as long as you watch or listen. Or is revived, perhaps, by a medicine man or other miracle worker; but does not revive himself. If he did, it would be fair to say that the world has been transformed. This is what happened.

That He was and is God, I can accept, yet it is the least surprising of His theological aspects. What is more shocking is that this God, who evidently exists — one God, I should think, in no more than one universe — has deigned us worth the conversation. For that universe is large, and I think we can prove it is large; and we the tiniest speck in that immensity. Our size alone would make us worth ignoring. The very existence of life, on any scale, for instance this thin film around one isolated planet within this immensity, seems small, exceptional, and proportionally very close to nothing. To us, the comparative may seem quite extreme. But to God. …

We cannot know what remarkable things exist, and will be found, eventually, later. But we can know how astounding it is for us to be here. And too, how astounding the love that has touched us.

Christ, in His Crucifixion, calls us away from the simpering that is not prudence.

My friend notes that in his book, The Contemplative Hunger, Father Donald Haggerty mentions that Dorothy Day kept by her bedside a quotation from Dostoevsky — “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”

Perhaps today we should begin to grasp this; that Love is never a fully “romantic story.” The world may think it is, but our world has had its mind formed by television and the Internet. This world cannot even remember why this Friday is called “Good.”