Essays in Idleness

A note of apology to many readers as my “inbox” fills and fills: I owe many of you replies including notes of thanks; but at the moment am struggling to catch up. Be assured there is no one I have intentionally ignored, beyond the few who only spit poison; and that I continue to gain from reading so many good comments, ideas, memoirs, corrections, and kind messages of encouragement. And in particular, let me express my immense gratitude to those who sent (much needed) donations this past week, after my little hint last Saturday.

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There are at least six named Saint Sabbas (according to the Catholic Encyclopaedia of 1917, now digitally parked here). The last died as recently as 1237. But the one in our old missals for today was the fourth and greatest in this chronological succession. A hermit from Cappadocia, who was called to Jerusalem, this Saint Sabbas (439–532) founded several monasteries in Palestine and Syria, including the great lavra that came to bear his name. “Mar Saba,” as it is called in Arabic, is still there, overlooking the Kidron Valley, south-east of Jerusalem in its gorges opening towards the Dead Sea. Or at least, it was still there when I last checked, about eighteen years ago, and the couple of dozen monks remaining were still under the Rule of their founder — the 1,483rd anniversary of whose death we commemorate today.

His chapel at Rome, the basilica of San Saba, dates from more than a century later, when a flood of Christian refugees was arriving from the Mohammedan conquest of the Near East.

Those were days rather like today in Europe: the desperate hordes washing in (albeit then without terrorists mingled). And yet the paradox is that the little islands of Christendom which remained, to endure Muslim rulers, are being erased, finally, only in our generation.

Whereas, in our own realms, so many ancient and magnificent abbeys, cathedrals, chapels and churches — with their art, libraries, and other extraordinary cultural riches, and their careful records of the toiling generations — were destroyed in much less time during the Reformation, and atheist Revolutions in France, Russia, and elsewhere. Islam has proved, in the balance, an incredibly destructive religion; and yet Christian schismatics torched, smashed, desecrated, or bureaucratically dismantled, far more of the heritage of Christian Civilization, from within.

And this accounting overlooks the more horrible loss, of Christian souls, alienated from the source of salvation by those who appropriated not only their outward relics, but the very flesh and blood of Jesus in their Mass.

To me, Saint Sabbas, of whose life we know enough to write a fairly detailed biography, is a symbol of fortitude for our own times. Whatever is destroyed, we must rebuild; whatever is depopulated, we must repopulate; whatever is lost we must find again, and will, with God’s help if we pray and listen. Even in the days of Saint Sabbas — the later fifth and early sixth centuries — so much of the Christian mission consisted of recovering what had already been lost, or was being lost, to the devils. In fortitude we rededicate ourselves to build, and rebuild, better than the world can take away — not only in the externals of material culture, but more deeply in Christian hearts. For inscribed in them is the knowledge borne of Heaven in the Deposit of our Faith: that we, gathered in the Body of Christ, will never surrender.

The Prince of Pessimists, Joseph Arthur, self-elevated Compte de Gobineau (1816–82), put it this way against the Darwinians: Nous ne descendons pas du singe, mais nous y allons. (“We do not descend from the ape, rather we are going there.”)

One may read a hatchet job on him in the Wicked Paedia, based on the ravings of his Canadian biographer, the half-wit, Alan T. Davies. Or one might dig for a rounder picture in long forgotten, pre-Internet sources. Or one might even condescend to read Gobineau himself, starting with his delightful travel sketches, and continuing with his rather joyous attacks on the degeneracy of the post-Mediaeval world. True, he could be read as an outrider of Nietzsche, with half-baked racial theories that anticipate Heidegger and Hitler. But that is to read him anachronistically. His preferential option was for art and aristocracy, not for low-class thugs.

Suffice to say Gobineau did not think well of democracy, and more or less correctly predicted the course of world history through the century after his death. For that, he may never be forgiven.

Indeed, the only reason I can think of to read him today (and one will not often find him in print) is that he is coruscating, luminous, dazzling, transformative, penetrating, incredibly funny, and wildly entertaining. Try to defend him in the academy, however, and you are a dead man.

Now here I am wandering astray. (Gobineau’s asides are extensive and wonderful.) I had intended to comment today on Evolution, as a matter of conscience, having not taken a good kick at the Darwinoids for some time. Let’s see if I can get this Idlepost back on track.

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The notion of Evolution is very old; all of Darwin’s and Wallace’s ideas were discussed among the ancient Epicureans. Anaximander of Miletus anticipated the whole argument for “natural selection” twenty-four centuries before the publication of The Origin of Species. Indeed, he delved much deeper into that cosmology with his hypothesis of the apeiron as the boundary condition of this and all worlds: our origin within “the indefinite.” (Darwin was no philosopher, as howlers throughout his works reveal.)

What Darwin added was the cheap veneer of the Victorian idea of progress: the undefended (and indefensible) assumption that evolution was moving onward and ever upward. A trained philosophical mind would hardly take this for granted. As Gobineau points out, “descent” should instead be visualized as a movement downwards; as a true descent from the primary and original, through fissure, into the chaos of multiple competing species; and in the case of the philosophical monkeys, down from the trees.

Of course there are “causes.” Everything has “causes,” till we trace back to the singular and irrefutable Fact of God.

Take bipedalism for instance. True, there is a post-modern school that has advanced the “endurance running hypothesis,” which holds that various human characteristics developed from what they imagine to be the advantages of marathon running — which we can do better than pretty much any other species. Those others may often run faster, but we have stamina. (So have the four-legged horses, but put that out of your mind.) This developed, along with our gangly long legs, out of bipedalism. Meanwhile our freed-up arms “evolved” the capacity to throw rocks with telling accuracy.

Like all evolutionary arguments, and other just-so stories, it is circular. Man developed marathon running skills because he became so adapted. We can prove this because, look, he developed marathon running skills. Another way to describe this form of reasoning is, “fatuous.”

Ditto the timelines. According to the experts, using their expert reasoning, we have a coherent, “progressive” series. It goes something like this. … Primates, 70 million years ago. … Apes, 30 million years. … Homonins, 2.5. … Homo sapiens, 0.5. … Homo sapiens sapiens, 0.2. … Artists, 0.05. … Farmers, 0.02. … (Jews, 0.005; Christians, 0.002; Hippies, 0.00005; et cetera.) … This does not show that things are speeding up. Instead it displays the logarithmic, slide-rule mentality, gradually converting to the metric system.

But we might get somewhere by turning this backwards and upside down. Our hairy quadruped ancestors, in my view, must have been running fast, being the pointy-head sort of quadrupeds, who don’t notice predators coming at them till it is almost too late, then must tear off so suddenly as to become half-airborne. This is how bipedalism developed. The stamina followed, because they were so terrified they didn’t know when to stop.

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Now, my favourite evolutionary theory emerged only in the last century. Technically it begins with some German pathologist, Max Westenhöfer, inhaling fumes in his surgery back in the 1920s. He was I think the first to propose that man evolved from some sort of “aquatic ape.” But his dull Teutonic colleagues eventually talked him down, and so he exits from the evolutionary picture. (He also had the cool idea that bipedalism preceded quadripedalism in mammals, as in reptiles — before he ran off to reform the public health system in Chile.)

Instead we turn to my childhood hero of marine biology, Sir Alister Hardy. (His two volumes on The Open Sea, from the late ‘fifties, are mesmerizing, boy’s-own classics.) He also came up with this clever and highly amusing wet-ape idea about 1930, independently, but kept it to himself for another thirty years, in view of his need for professional advancement. By the time he mentioned it, he had managed to make it sound tediously Darwinist. And besides, he had already copped all those honours that universities are shy about taking away.

Hardy’s version is the best, because when it comes to oceans, he “knows everything that can be knowed.”

You see, our ancestors from the primitive ape-stock were forced out of the trees by competition from other, tougher monkeys. They wandered, homeless, down to the seaside, to live on clams, oysters, sea urchins, and various intertidal species that are notoriously easy to catch. This must have been in the tropics, where it doesn’t get so cold, for he soon found himself out there in the water, with perhaps the tougher monkeys hissing from the beach. … Take it from there, labcoats!

The academy politely ignored this hypothesis. Hardy himself, after feyly attempting to defend it in the pop-science press, moved on, as we say.

But meanwhile Desmond Morris, with his tabloid eye, picked up on it in his bestseller, The Naked Ape (1967). And then the feminist, Elaine Morgan, saw the sisterhood angle, and followed it through The Descent of Woman (1972). She continued, dragging it from there to her death, a couple of years ago — more welcomed in the academy than her predecessors who had been, to put a fine point on it, white males. Homo sapiens, you see, evolved the way we did thanks to our dusky, female qualities.

Her presentation of the hypothesis, somewhat less sophisticated than Hardy’s, is nevertheless as plausible as any in the “evolutionary biology” field. And it is more attractive than most. Just think: Mermaids!

And the environmentalists could buy in, too. Just think: Littorals! Wetlands!

And the sociologists: How we love to take baths!

And hooo, there were a lot of galleries to which she was playing.

The palaeo-anthropologists had some trouble; still have some objections to the hypothesis in light of innumerable awkward facts; but given the times, they went easy on her. She was after all a big hit on TV.

Proboscis monkeys! (They always get my attention: the ones in Borneo with the funny noses.) I’ve forgotten how they come into it, except, they like to hang around mangrove swamps.

Let me be clear: I love this hypothesis. Please don’t put it down! … There may be no fossil evidence, whatsoever; but don’t be so negative. For this is all soft-tissue stuff. Hardly ever makes it into fossils.

A hairless monkey, flopping about like a sea otter, were it not for those groovy prehensile ape limbs and toes. And with a brain developing like a dolphin’s, from the high nutrients in a seafood diet. Soon we are far ahead of our old neighbours, the brutish chimpanzees, through encephalization (rising brain-to-body meat ratio, and thicker synaptic density, too, as in the case of the clever squids). One might argue that not all fish-eaters get so smart. But as a Catholic, I don’t want to ruin this story.

It explains, for instance, why our larynx descended, from nose to throat. This was needed to close off the trachea, while diving. Helps, too, in gulping air when returning to the surface. And we can hold our breath way longer than any ape. This made our rivals so much easier to drown.

Did you know a human baby can hold its breath underwater for nearly a minute?

That’s where I bought in, at the end of the ‘eighties. You see, I had a human baby with me at the time, and took him to a pool to teach him what water is like, and maybe how to float. Matthew, let us call him; my “wiggly worm.” (Multiple double-jointed thanks to Down’s syndrome.) Carried him gently into the shallow end of the pool, but then he broke free. Squirted right out of my arms, then surfaced twenty feet away — in the deep zone, giggling and rather pleased with himself. Meanwhile I had been panicking, of course. Took me quite a while to catch him after that, as he jetted about, like a merry octopus. Decided I’d have to learn swimming from him.

Consider, gentle reader: the buoyant adiposity, or chubbiness of babes. And then, this cheesy varnish on their newborn skins, like the pups of certain pinnipeds. And then, the many delivery complications that could be neatly avoided if mommy would only agree to give birth in a water tank.

Slam-dunk, I would say.

Yet it gets better. We can explain our bipedalism by this buoyancy in the water. … I can’t, perhaps, but there are others who can. For Ms Morgan was joined by other researchers, once funding was raised: old pros who could supply “the gods in her gaps”; master craftsmen of the just-so story; people with degrees in biology.

Go for it, gentle reader. We are all secretly aquatic apes. And this is great news, now that rising sea levels have been identified as our most pressing planetary concern. Hardly a problem for us, surely. All we need do is go back: … Weee!

(It’s true, I am like Gobineau. But more optimistic.)

Perhaps the most useful public policy, in light of the latest “homegrown” Muslim terror hit, in San Bernardino or wherever, would be to offer free police firearms training to a large civilian constabulary. Not to everyone, of course. That would be too expensive, and besides, there should be background checks to make sure members of this constabulary were not insane, delusional, Democrats, or whatever. Too, there should be some minimum age: seven strikes me as about right. (It is roughly the “age of reason” for the reception of Communion in Catholic teaching, as I understand.) Of course, parental guidance should also come into play.

Gun range training helps to mature people, too; though this is just a bonus.

The alternatives are all worse: we must continue expanding “Homeland Security” or its cumbersome likes in other national jurisdictions. This is both expensive and inconvenient. Police, ambulances, the National Guard, are all very well, but it takes some minutes for any to arrive on a scene where seconds are important. Whether or not the killers are Muslim, we need assurance that they will be cut down within a handshake of initiating their rampages. (Dead within two seconds is the Israeli ideal.) The psycho, in turn, needs to be assured that if he has more than, say, one target, there is a strong statistical likelihood that at least one of them is not only armed, but trained to extinguish him without delay. This way the police may concentrate their efforts on profiling the more sophisticated bombers.

Perhaps I should explain, especially to non-American readers, that the idea of an armed citizenry did not originate in 1776. The right to defend oneself is twinned with the right to life itself. The Catholic Christian culture has been aware of this all along, as were the Hebrews before us (to say nothing of the cavemen). “Police” were the bureaucratic invention of the eighteenth century; self-defence begins with the self to be defended. The police, as security guards, firemen, ambulance crews, soldiers and sailors of land, air, and seas, are simply people we hire to serve the same purpose and let us sleep sometimes. But so far as we are adults, we do not need nannies. Nannies are for kids.

Swords were effective in the old days; handguns are more practical today. Cross-bows and sling-shots are awkward for use in tight indoor spaces. My argument for “concealed carry” is to improve the odds against the criminal. Let him not be entirely sure who is carrying, and who is not. Let others, contemplating anti-social behaviour, reflect on the same.

We need also to restore a pro-active approach towards the psychotic and other “mentally ill” — which sympathizes with their afflictions, but keeps them under close surveillance. The alternative — close surveillance of everyone — is not only too costly, but a demonstrable moral evil.

Apart from this, my recommendation would be, “as you were.” We need to restore a society in which we can, indeed, go about our business without spot checks, or other intrusive security arrangements. I may be generally opposed to the use of aeroplanes, as a means of public transport, but airport search queues are a ridiculous way to discourage their use.

We need further to restore a society in which the odd massacre, that happens anyway, is taken in stride. “Bad things happen,” as they say, and it is foolish to get so emotional about them.

“Let me be clear,” as the USA’s delusional president likes to say, as prologue to his many public hallucinations. You can’t ban guns, or even register them, without a means of enforcement; and no such means will be found that is not implicitly totalitarian.

Moreover, his vapouring on the topic is logically incomplete. Shouldn’t he also demand the registration of pipe bombs and IEDs?

Montaigne, who idleblog’d back in the 1570s and ’80s, has a post on the sumptuary laws with which I can only partly agree. He argues that they defeat their own purpose, as a check on extravagance, especially in food and clothing. They do not in fact much reduce vanity and insanity among the public at large, nor discourage emulation of the high-born and well-placed. Rather they encourage the great evil that Plato identifies in his Laws, among the young and the pretentious. These errants disdain tradition and good taste. They chase trends in dress, diet, dance and song. They are conspicuous consumers, who beslaver the fashion gurus and entertainment stars.

This, according to Plato; and Montaigne is inclined to agree that change is a bad thing in itself, unless it is away from evil. Customs should be maintained, and laws honoured, particularly those “to which God has given some ancient duration, so that no one knows their origin or that they were ever different.”

All wise men are conservative, of course, but the wisest are extremely reactionary, and profoundly religious — Plato even more than Montaigne. All, in principle, oppose extravagant posturing, but there may be disagreement on how to suppress it. There is little sense in making exceptions for kings and lords, Montaigne thinks. This only encourages envy in the lower born, who then put value on whatever they are denied: turbot, for instance; or velvet and gold braid. They begin to associate such shallow things with rank, as if superiority could be reduced to flash and ostentation. And thus, by small increments of impudence, in defiance of all sumptuary laws, they set themselves on familiar terms with their betters.

For as Montaigne knows, equality is the enemy of civilization. The careful preservation of class distinctions requires stronger buttressing than any sumptuary laws can provide. We must find better ways to diminish the young, and undermine middle class pretensions.

He suggests the best way might be actually to reverse the sumptuary laws, as they were in the France of his day. He cites, for instance, Zaleucus, the Locrian lawgiver from the seventh century BC, who forbade gold ornaments and crimson to the common people — but with an exemption for mountebanks and “tumblers.” (Courtesans?) He allows the free woman to be accompanied by one chambermaid at most — except when she is drunk. She may not wear gold jewellery or a lace dress — unless she is a registered whore. A man may not wear a gold ring, or dress in too fine-woven a robe — unless he is a pimp.

And so forth.

Yet in a broader view of history, let me humbly suggest, the conventional sumptuary laws have proved reasonably effective. We find them in the rise, and at the peak, of all the higher civilizations. We find them abolished or ignored in all periods of decline and decadence. (The Roman novelist, Petronius, to my mind, is a subtle and ingenious observer of these connexions, though as this day is winding down, I must leave him to another.)

Whether the imposition of sumptuary laws, or more daringly, their re-imposition, could effect an improvement in public manners, is a more open question. Correlation is not causation, it could be said. Gentle reader may however wish to help me draught a model sumptuary code, that would be appropriate for times like these.

Looking about me in this pseudo-Christmas shopping season, I think it would at least be worth a try.

Sad news from San Francisco, today. It seems Mark Zuckerberg, who has by age thirty or so amassed a fortune of some forty-five billion (thousand million) electronic dollars with his “Facebook” obscenity, intends to loose “99 percent” of this holding. He and his paediatrician wife, Priscilla Chan, announced this in the most sick-making, sentimental way they could think of: framing it as a letter to their (presumably illiterate) newborn daughter. Their huge fortune is now earmarked (if they are telling the truth) to “advancing human potential and promoting equality” — i.e. the usual smug liberal and progressive stodge. I stagger to think of the harm so much money may do.

And yet hope springs eternal, even in worldly affairs. Perhaps, when the stock bubble finally bursts, Facebook will implode. The company could go bankrupt and its shares fall to nothing, in which case the “philanthropic” scheme evaporates, too. Or even if some of the money can be expended, we must compare the scale. The income from, say, 44 billion will be at most a few billion a year, which is an amount the USA government already spends every hour or two — almost all of it in ways destructive of public morals. We must keep our sense of proportion.

On the other hand, much “leveraging” is got by devoting most of the private money to lobbying for specific, massive, social engineering schemes, that will further empower our liberal elites, while burnishing their already blinding self-regard. It costs comparatively little to line the pockets of the few, rather than the many. An expert once told me that a dollar of lobbying will typically leverage one hundred from the tax revenues, plus another hundred in government borrowing. A little can be made to go a long way.

America’s present “open borders” immigration policy is a good example of how focused lobbying can get results (i.e. more Liberal-slash-Democrat voting fodder; more inexpensive nannies), even when an overwhelming majority of the general population are appalled by the idea. The Zuckerberg lad is already a big contributor to that cause.

Lobbying works, and here’s why. No senior public official could want to retire on a state pension, however large, when he can have more millions by playing the game well. Look at the “before” and “after” accounts of almost any prominent politician. He goes into office very charming, and comes out very rich. It is a far more lucrative trade than anything in business or finance — even in such specialized forms as bank robbery. Better, by modern methods of mutual back-scratching, for there is much less legal risk.

But let us suppose all Zuckerberg’s cash spills into the usual media-promoted “good causes” directly. Even foundations that raise money for the victims of well-publicized natural disasters have been known to spend as much as 5 percent of their takings on the needs of the victims themselves (when photo ops are needed). The Zuckerbergs’ sop letter mentioned education and medical research as possible targets for at least some of their largesse.

In the case of schools, there is an increasingly obvious, inverse relation between positive academic results, and spending. The higher the teachers’ salaries, the lower their standards, thanks to unions and the like. But most of any fresh load of sugar will be “invested” instead in administrative expansion, where only negative results can be achieved.

Medical “research” does similar direct damage. Huge foundations are created to “fight” every imaginable human ailment, and find new ones on which to build fresh fundraising efforts, should any of the old ones go stale. Grand sums are expended on “public awareness” campaigns, to encourage hypochondria and psychosomatic disorders. (I suspect, for instance, that the chief cause of lung cancer today is grisly health warnings on packets of cigarettes.) Money is raised in billions to “find a cure” for whatever. (Snake oil sales were on a much smaller scale.)

At the most elementary level, people should try to understand cause and effect. Vast numbers come to rely upon the metastasis of these soi-disant “charitable” bureaucracies. And if a cure is ever found, they will all be out of their overpaid jobs. Moreover, it is almost invariably some isolated, eccentric, unqualified and unfunded tyro, who makes the fatal discovery. That is why one of the principal tasks of any large medical foundation is to locate these brilliant “inventor” types, and sue them into surrender.

Does gentle reader know that almost all the increase in human longevity, over the last century or so, can be attributed to people washing their hands and taking showers? And most of the rest to better sewage disposal? Or that it took until almost the middle of the last century for life expectancy in the West to rise to levels last seen in the parish records of the Middle Ages? Which was when “modern” hygienic practices were last observed. (Large, centralized hospitals are the most efficient spreaders of infection today.)

Painkillers are nice, and I’m inclined to keep them, only if we realize that the blessing is mixed. They turn our minds away from futurity; they displace faith in God, to faith in doctors. They create the mindset that embraces “euthanasia.”

Of course, the main focus of contemporary liberal “philanthropy” is not on saving lives at all; rather on killing off babies — in Africa, by first choice. It is what the proggies used to call “population control,” until they invented better euphemisms. That is what truly gladdens the peons in the foundations of all the Bills and Melindas; and lights the corridors of the United Nations. That and the (still historically recent) “climate change” agenda.

A last word on statistics. It depends how you count. Count all those aborted as “dead,” and it will be seen that life expectancy is once again falling; that infant mortality has been steeply on the rise. The international toll is unbelievably high; far higher than from the plagues and genocides through all previous history. And this without anticipating the possible effects of divine retribution.

“Ah, but you will not define this ‘freedom’ of which you speak, will you? O monster of tyranny!”

The words were courageously addressed by me, to an important public figure exhibiting bombast and pomposity — rhetorical qualities with which I was earnestly trying to compete. We had fallen into some sort of debate in his impressive mansion or palace; and his other guests were cheering him along.

Perhaps I should mention this was happening in the dream from which I woke this morning. My words seem still ringing in my ears, more than twelve hours later. I was quite pleased with them. On awakening, I struggled to write down what I could remember of our exchange, which I was losing to the filled stomachs of all those whom he had grandly fed. Their catcalls invited me to sit down. My host’s own words were mocking.

I dream; I seem to have extraordinary dreams sometimes, and this one was suitably set, in a rich architectural interior. It was the great hall of some resplendent Elizabethan or Jacobean noble house, with the sense of some intricate mazed garden outside, and a perfumed summer evening. My eyes had been drawn down from the high rafters; the words seemed to have been placed in my mouth, and spoken almost involuntarily. But mostly I was fixed upon the explosive debate, in an interior anachronistically upholstered. (Look at all these steatopygous retainers plump in their cushions, I thought.) My host, while he spoke, small and round to begin with, was inflating like a balloon.

Well, to be perfectly frank with you, gentle reader, he was the late Maurice Strong. Him who “invented the environment,” as (possibly) the silliest of our governors-general once said in his praise.

Let me not speak ill of the dead, just yet. I had once some encounters with the man, which were unpleasant, at least for me. But it would have been out of his character, I think, to confront anyone. That was a job for specialists.

The point of the dream, perhaps — were I Dante I would write it as an allegorical poem, then explain it in silken Italian prose — was to fix an idea in my mind for Saint Andrew’s Day; and by projection through the mysterious Advent season. Something to do with the natural law; with divine freedom and predestination. Something about the Apostle who was brother to Simon Peter, and his journey to the Scythian north. (Eusebius took this from Origen.) Or somehow, all of this was mixed together in my dream.

We do not have unrestricted freedom, or we could fly. We can by no contrivance win unrestricted freedom, for we die. We can have only the illusion of unrestricted freedom, in our pride, or in our dreams. And yet such freedom as we have is real, and is to be found in the path before us — along which not even God will compel us; not even God. And that because it was His part, in His perfect freedom, to grant us this right; together, should we choose, with this aloneness.

Men cannot free men, as it were, from their bondage to this freedom. We can set men free from manacles and chains, but not from the conditions in which men live. We must not promise what no man can deliver.

Advent marks the beginning of the road, before the Incarnation, to the meeting with our Guide in the Crèche at Bethlehem; then with Him to the Cross; finally to the Resurrection and the heraldic achievement of our freedom, from Death. Yet that death is no symbol.

In my dream, I was aware of the crossed beams of the Saltire in the hall above; of the maze long planted in the garden outside; and it seemed when I awakened that these were emblems of the crossroads and the journey ahead. How shall we be guided? And to what, or to Whom?

My title today is, if I’m not mistaken, a souvenir of “the ’Fifteen.” … Here, I have found it: Lord Bolingbroke to the exiled King James III, a.k.a. James Francis Edward Stuart, a.k.a. the Old Pretender. … Or maybe I have not. For upon adjusting my spectacles I see it is “James Rex” to the Duke of Berwick, the 23rd of August, 1715. … But I’d swear Bolingbroke had coined this excellent phrase. … Perhaps I am getting old.

Jacobites among my gentle readers will know the whole story. (And if you’re not a Jacobite, why are you here?) It did not end as well as could be hoped, and neither did “the ’Forty-five,” but hey. Not everything works out on this planet. Some strings still need tying, later on.

My own Jacobitism trails off, somewhere between the sublime and the ridiculous, with the Cardinal Duke of York — arguably King Henry IX and I, to his death in 1807, at Rome, there. His somewhat unreliable, predeceased brother, King Charles III (a.k.a. “Bonnie Prince Charlie”), produced no (legitimate) heir, and so we must bid a sad adieu to the Stuarts. Thereafter I will take the de facto, and so, God Save the Queen!

I was unhappy with the (ironically labelled) Glorious Revolution, of 1688; with the Bill of Rights, 1689; with the Act of Union, 1701; with the Act of Settlement, 1707; and with a few other things, gentle reader.  (And I condemn them thrice, on behalf of the Kingdom of Scotland, the Kingdom of Ireland, and the Kingdom of England. … Er, and on behalf of the Kingdom of Canada, too.) I’m still unhappy, but what can one do?

And where were we? Ah, yes: with Bolingbroke encouraging His Majesty King James III not to dawdle. He thought the time right to recover the British throne, now that poor “Queen” Anne was dead, and the Protties reduced to fetching some wretch from Hanover who could not even speak English. They’d had to go to the very bottom of the Stuart line to dig him out.

The route to Westminster lay through Scotland, aye Scotland, and it was time for him to book the trip. James did get there eventually.

Unfortunately, neither the rightful King, nor his general, Lord Mar, was quite ruthless enough when the shills of the Hanovers came hunting.

We had them by the numbers at one point. But aheu, we pulled our punches.

What can I say?

*

Here’s what.

Advent is upon us, and the Feast of Saint Andrew, too, and one full long year has dribbled by since, on a hopeful lark, I resolved to file these Idleposts daily. (Deciding more recently to leave Sundays to the priests.) Rent also falls, by coincidence, at the end of each month; and while my readership grows and grows, the contributions through PayPal have been ailing.

Gosh! do I hate begging. I’m not holy enough for that, just yet. And besides there are several who embarrass me, by sending too much or too often. You know who you are; so know that you’re excused.

But the rest of you, please, don’t pull punches.

Ah, “the gloopy ear, the screaming banshee moments.” (Mrs S.) My mama had them; I used to have them, too. And wish, now, that I could have them all back, only to have my wee childers again, back in my arms. For they are transformed, after less than twenty years.

Among my correspondents there are several mothers; one in particular (Mrs B), blest with a bag of small daughters, at least four of them I think, “growing like weeds.” I fear, sometimes, that she may be a Saint, for there is something about Saints that a sinner (such as I) finds rather terrifying. A reminder of how far I am from Heaven, perhaps.

And among her anomalies (in the field of the innumerable), is an ability to appreciate the present as the past, the past as the present, the future in the now. Though perhaps many, especially women, can do this.

She told me for instance of a moment looking upon her youngest, frightfully misbehaving. Suddenly, instead of shrieking at the sniffling, mischievous child, she became strangely calm. There came the vivid sense that she has this little one, now and not forever. Life will move on.

It was, as she described it, a nostalgia for the present. The wee child may one day have childers of her own; but then she won’t be wee any more. Take her in your arms now; hold onto the moment with all your heart. For in this moment you have returned — paradoxically, to the forever.

*

Some years ago in London — the middle of the Great Wen — I found myself standing in the future. Truly, I was standing in my old neighbourhood at Vauxhall. A quarter century had already slipped by, from the time when I had lived there. I had hesitated to return, knowing I would not find what I had left. I was right to hesitate.

For many things were changed, in that neighbourhood, which had not much changed the hundred years before: for instance the very streets of tenant-owned workmen’s cottages, a few dating back to the time before Victoria was Queen. And the independent baker, and butcher, and costermonger, who had served these people, as their predecessors had, through generations; and the “cafe” (one syllable) in the market of Wilcox Road, serving “beans egg and spam.” I knew they would be gone.

All my old neighbours would be gone, too, for the Borough of Lambeth had expropriated, then obliterated all these beautiful small houses — to build geometric anthills for the New Socialist Man. And the shops to serve them, were now avatar franchise operations. The old corner bakery and its “scone rounds” (fresh and warm, by six in the morning), to me almost a shrine, lost as the chapels after Henry VIII. Food now plasticized and dispensed from a miniature supermarket; a travel agent (inconceivable before), with big posters, offering the relief of brief translocation to some beach in Spain. I wanted to weep for the horrible evil that had been done to these people — to “my people,” as I remembered them — as I searched for decaying fragments of what had once been. There was no sense of “coming home”; only my own overbearing, righteous indignation.

Then walking to, and along the Thames Embankment, images of those old neighbours flashed into mind; and I could say a little Ave for each as in memory they fluttered by. Each, who would now be decades older; the old ones, probably dead. The living scattered as refugees by the progressive demons, now beyond tracking down. How I had wished to find the old pub, and in it the recognized; the hope of reunions.

The Sun, he was blazing that day.

I wandered to the threshold of the Tate Modern. (“Huh? What is this?”) … And all around the gleaming millennial monuments from the Age of Blair. … (I having stepped out of the shy Age Before Thatcher.)

Brother Sun, unBritishly blazing: on fresh metal and glass, and dappling the waves of that Strong Brown God, still flowing (“till I end my song”). And on all these shining young: so many. …

(“I had not thought death had undone so many.”)

*

We have little visions in our lives; I had one then. It was, “I am standing in the future.” It was, more completely, “I, Tiresias, have come back from the dead, and now I am standing in the future.” Of course I cannot hope to understand it, for I am from some former time. The world has moved, and buried all my kin, and now I am a Wraith. The living pass by, and do not see me. They could be walking through me.

And not the many changes, but Time itself, is the mystery within this mystery: time present and time past; time future. And all these shining young, once unconceived, now living in a variation of the “present perfect” that no grammarian can describe, and poets only try for. Look upon all these now living: Do they not know?

What a fool I had been, not to have known, then, in the present of the past, the past of the future. But only God can give this grace: to know that we are not elsewhere, but here. And the gift to cherish it.

We may assume that Sponge-Bob and Snoopy overhead, for the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade in New York City, are fitted with cameras today. If not, there are drones enough to cover all the angles. Police sharp-shooters are set out on every roof; police dogs everywhere sniff for explosives. (I am copying the New York Times here, lacking my own newsroom.) From my Scotch genetic heritage, I wonder what it costs.

But to their credit the Yanks don’t just cancel the parade, the way the Belgians lock down Brussels. The Europeans are quicker to concede their daily lives to fear of Muslim killers — the enemy many of their politicians still dare not name. The fear is understandable, but the concession is foolish, cowardly, and shameful. (Foolish because it is rewarding the terrorists for their attack.)

It is what follows promptly on all those street signs reading, “We are not afraid!” In fact they are scared witless, as I can see from many reports. For there are few men left in Europe; or more precisely, few with chests. And only a few more left in North America, under constant attack from the politically correct, so that the terrorists need not even bother with them. The masses save their cojones for the Black Friday sales.

And now we watch the passive aggression of a Europe aroused by fear — lashing out by instinct at the blameless and defenceless. For it remains true, the great majority of Muslims have no intention to disturb the peace, whatever silly thoughts they may be secretly entertaining. For after all, they are cowards, too. The very people who might deserve some mercy, will be first to get it in the neck. By now, Europe has a long tradition of this; the whole wide world, for that matter, is included in this tradition, of punishing the defenceless for the crimes of their neighbours — who know where to hide.

To me, it seems, as it seemed to me also on the morning of 9/11, that we have essentially a police problem, made so much more expensive when we do not let them follow it to source.

It is unwise to allow unrestricted immigration anywhere, to a people unacculturated. It is asking for trouble, and it fetches trouble, not occasionally, but invariably. Refugees from anywhere must be held back at the frontier, generously treated, but admitted only a few at a time. It would be no different if they were Shintoists or Parsis: no settled people should be overrun. The more exotic they are, the more cautious the “we” should be. I put that in quotes because the “we” is universal; it is hardly “racism” except insofar as racialism is universal, too.

And this is true whether or not the refugees include potential terrorists. There is no population in the world dominated by psychopaths; that is not nature’s way. And we cannot tar the world’s billion Muslims with one administrative brush. We, who are Christians, must always take them case by case, and suffer the consequences of making a few mistakes.

Thus far, I must sound like a liberal.

But here I will not: It is to the disadvantage of the Muslims themselves to be walled in a camp of “political correctness,” exempt from focused search and challenge. It is to their ultimate cost that police dare not “ethnically profile,” in pursuit of their wrongdoers. For in the end they become interchangeable, and the “host” people turn against them every one. You do not pend up a dam, until it finally bursts. This is in itself among the oldest political principles.

The response to Islamic psychopaths should not be allowed to transform our lives. It is a police business, backed up by military only when necessity requires. The task is to track them down to source, and as the nice phrase has it, squash them like bugs — the malefactors, and not the harmless. And the more we succeed, the more the great majority of Muslims will account us just. For they, too, are threatened by the enemy within, and those of goodwill are already very likely to co-operate in the hunt.

*

But as it is USA Thanksgiving, my love to all gentle Stateside readers. “The Lord hath done great things for us; we offer thanks unto the Lord.”

And that grace having been said, in the heart, kill and eat a turkey for me!

One could not wish to referee a pea-shoot between Erdogan and Putin. Indeed, one would not have wished to insert oneself, at any time in the last few centuries, between Russian and Turk. No one should be surprised, in the convoluted sky trails over Syria, that the two national leaders, both of whom seem to me “functioning psychotic,” are now engaged in a display of animal virility. I wish there were some peaceful way in which they could both lose.

For both sides are totally in the wrong. NATO membership tips Turkey to our favour, but only because she has not yet been expelled. When we complain that the Russians have been targeting not the Daesh, but only the few Syrians whom we are supporting, we should remember that the Turks’ principal target is our ally, the Kurds. And while the Russians might have no objection, in principle, to bombing the bejabers out of the Daesh, the Turks notice they are a Sunni stick in the eye of all the proxies by whom they like to feel surrounded. Even the Russians have a mild interest in preserving the Daesh as a taunt against the West, and a cuckoo within the (endlessly fractious) camp of the Sunnis, to whom the Russians are de facto opposed.

In a region, too, where auld acquaintance is ne’er forgot, the present-day Turks recall every dönüm of the auld Ottoman estate. (That was a cute substitution for “acre.”) The auld rivalries with the Persians and others never became new rivalries; they continue, within the Islamic spiritual configuration, like fires in a coal seam. The fact that Russians and Persians have combined helps explain their trauma. And when the (Obamanative) Americans seek friends in Tehran — looking for love in all the wrong places — the Turkish paranoia becomes almost understandable.

And then, there are the Europeans, who once stopped them at Lepanto and Vienna. This deep history remains current event, at a time when they are happily hosing down the continent with Sunni Syrian refugees, and the many who pretend; and is why so many of “the people” cheer them on against Hollande and the New Franks.

We lack this tribal (to say nothing of historical) memory in the West. We cannot understand, after the zombification of public, secular education, why everyone can’t just get along. (“All you need is love,” et cetera.) And we pay, ever more, for our lack of understanding; and for having no masculinity ourselves — also needed in the good cause.

And one could go on drawing the overlapping and intersquiggling strands of relationship between false friends and real enemies throughout a larger Middle Eastern contest between Shia and Sunni Islam, a chart in three dimensions now beginning to resemble a bowl of spaghetti. That conflict was already in progress the day “Bush” landed in Iraq; without, incidentally, any voluntary Turkish co-operation. (They could see that Saddam Hussein was the Sunni between Ayatollahs and Assad; and they knew that “Al Qaeda in Iraq” — now evolved into “the Daesh” — was Saddam by another means.)

Thanks to rank idiocy in the White House, the Americans walked out of an uncomfortable situation in which they were holding up more than one pillar. As so often happens, it wasn’t the going in, but the coming out, that brought the roof down. For a brief and wonderful moment “Bush” had all national players confined within their own barracks, except the Persians with their “outreach” to Hezbollah and Hamas. And given the extraordinary throw-weight of the American ordnance on their doorstep, even they were outwardly behaving. Après lui, le déluge.

But I still don’t think World War Three is happening (or Five, if one counts like a neoconservative). So why worry?

My best reason this morning is because of “democracy.” UnWestern as both may be (and I am very slightly biased towards the nominal Christian), both Erdogan and Putin have been “elected” by franchised masses possibly more ignorant, and certainly more bloodthirsty than our own. Note that each leader was speaking more to his domestic audience, than to the world, in his “icy” remarks after the shootdown event. Both had been pushing their luck to impress their respective jingo trolls: Putin by his Syrian and international policy of aggressively buzzing NATO airspace; Erdogan by explicitly warning that the next time that happened, the Russians were going to lose a plane. Which of course, Putin took as a challenge, wanting Erdogan to lose face; Erdogan wanting to disfigure Putin’s. What I began by describing as a “display of animal virility” is conducted in the view of huge national electorates, before whom neither dares to back down, O Lord.

That is how, incidentally, the First World War started; with all the “democracy” made safe by that — politicians who had played the gallery, and thereby manoeuvred themselves up to, then over the brink.

Maxentius to his neighbours.

*

Saint Catherine of Alexandria, and of the broken wheel; Virgin and Martyr; patron of preachers and philosophers — whose body was flown by angels to Sinai — and whose Feast in the Holy Mass we celebrate today — pray for us, earthbound. And pray for those monkeys out there, in the middle, as the javelins fly.

And pray for all Saints: for they alone ever change anything. And thus I mean to include all Saints to come.

It is well, I reflect on this Feast of Saint John of the Cross, that there were no bloggers in sixteenth-century Spain. Saint John himself would never have been among them; nor Saint Teresa of Jesus, though the poor woman might have been sorely tempted. These two, among the three dozen or so Doctors of the Church — the whole Church — were, ignoring other things, at the spiritual heart of the “Discalced” Reform of the Carmelite Order. It was the kind of “reform” that deeply appeals to me, for in its nature it pulled the Order back to its regenerative roots. Ditto, I think, with the Mercedarians and other orders, being turned wonderfully backward in that age. For it was the century of the Reformation, across Europe; and thus the Counter-Reformation in which, whatever the Protestants were doing, the Catholic Church had become deadly serious about mending her ways, and ending the decadence that the Protestants had exposed. No such amendment is painless.

Somewhere up here in the High Doganate, in addition to the works of those two from Ávila, which are simply astounding and must be read by all, is a copy of the useful Handbook of the learned E. Allison Peers, to their lives and times (1954). I almost fear touching it again, from having once got migraines trying to follow a daily story through decades in which there are e.g. five distinct Graciáns, and innumerable Diegos, and bless me if I could tell them all apart. Especially as some wear black hats on one page, and white hats on another, and the excellent Peers is so oppressively fair-minded that one almost wants a blogger with a scythe. Some are coming and going from Rome, some are Bishops and Abbots, commanding in place, and some, of the Royal Court, are sometimes more religious than the professed. Except the Saints, who emerge as the only level-headed, we have a cast of thousands, or dozens at least of major players, any of whom may suddenly veer, from wild arrogance to obsequious contrition. Imagine if they all had blogs.

One might say none of it really matters any more. The Discalced Carmelites emerged, from the wreckage of an older Order that wasn’t about to surrender its interests to such holy upstarts; yet in the end, towards the end of the century, all was (reasonably) fitting and good. Or rather it does matter: to understand sometimes the infighting and human political nastiness, which is the background for sudden irruptions of the Holy. God knows what He is about, as Newman said in his prayers, and His Saints do His bidding, often without knowing what they are about. (‘Twas Newman, too, who said that we walk to Heaven backwards.)

The Church is not some sort of Edenic, whole-earth alternative to worldly strife. (That we find only in a well-sung Mass.) Sometimes it gets worse in here, than it is out there. Catholics should not fail to understand that, by reading a little history; and potential converts, too, should not let it get in their way. For in the end no Nuncio, no Prince, no King, no Abbot, no Bishop, and not even the Bishop at Rome, has charge of her. From them, except perhaps Saints and Martyrs, comes little not admixed with chaos.

But in the end, Christ rules. Okay?

Getting up in the middle of last night, for whatever reason, I could not help noticing a Wraith — for only thus would I describe it — fleeing down my little hallway out of sight, having emerged from a shelved doorless closet. Yes, definitely a Wraith, I concluded, from its Edward Gorey style and appearance, to say nothing of the way it preserved an angle as it flit, disturbing like a reverse italic. Did not pursue it; knew it would escape. At least, they always do in the literature.

What was a Wraith doing in the High Doganate, I naturally wondered. The tenant before me died in this place, but he was quite male, the Wraith seemed female. Or rather, something between a she and an it, and nightgown’d accordingly. The feet, I noticed, were bare and hardly moving as they dashed along an invisible platform, perhaps twelve inches above the floor. Perfectly silent. The height, after mentally straightening her angle, would be four foot at most. The face was distinctly angular in profile, and the shoulders seemed uneven. The left eye was twisted, though not towards me. There I must leave my police description for she, or it, went by me fairly quickly.

I should mention, too, (your honour,) that I’ve seen something like this before, but not often, and only once in this country. Perhaps it is because not enough people have died here yet, and only one in a million leaves a Wraith. But that is just theory; we must deal with facts. Theories only make the facts disappear.

Do I believe in ghosts? Of course not. What do you take me for, a Pagan? Ditto gnomes, elves, dwarfs, fairies, hobgoblins, leprechauns, pixies, and — well, I’m not sure about witches (but we won’t go there).

Perhaps I should specify the lights were still out, and my Wraith was quite visible notwithstanding, yet did not appear self-illuminated. (I live in a city, there is ambient streetlight.) Nor was she a creature of my sleepy eyes, or rather, the sharpness with which she appeared and disappeared was noteworthy. I might also mention that for some reason, fear did not enter into the experience, though I must say my alertness was raised. And when I considered her — now under full electric lighting, with a cup of strong tea — I could not think of anything in recent experience, including my diet of the previous day, to account for such a phantasm.

It is anyway a mistake, in my judgement, to become immediately “subjective” in such things, as modern science insists in the cause of its false “objectivity.” A good old-fashioned police witness, ideally formed in the Sacrament of Penance, knows to separate what he saw from his inferences upon it. (Which does not mean he suppresses those inferences, only that he flags them as his own.)

For the real method of modern science, or more precisely scientism, is to deny whatever it can’t explain. Then affirm what it previously denied, once it thinks of a plausible explanation.

I simply saw what I saw, and can’t begin to explain it.

My paternal grandmother, from Torquay in Devonshire, and raised by Anglican nuns (she was the unwanted daughter of a Torquay prostitute, in a brothel with a French clientele, hence my proud assertion of French ancestry), often saw ghosts, and said they sometimes followed her around, as, for instance, to the New World from the Old, when the nuns sent her on her way. She was not even slightly mad; only half English. I do now suddenly remember that she told me in childhood there is a species of Wraith that inhabit such as large closets, and are loath to stray very far from them. Perhaps I had disturbed one of those.

Her husband (my grandpa) never listened to her on such matters, and neither, much, did anyone else, but I was a curious child, so she told me everything. I would not go so far as to say that any of her stories were probable; but I think she believed them herself. She claimed, too, the ability to communicate, not with all ghosts, but certainly a broad selection of them. She was also, by claim, somewhat clairvoyant, and especially so on her deathbed, by which I sat on her last night, now forty-six years ago. But all that for some other occasion, I am running late on this Idlepost today.

An item linked by my Chief Indianapolis Correspondent (this one) caught my attention last night, and gave me something to pray on. The essay, by a wise Evangelical, is on the lust for respectability. I know it so well. Embraced, this lust consumes us; rejected it returns again and again, and I would play the Pharisee if I denied its attraction.

The storms seemed worse in my youth, though perhaps only because I still stood a chance of becoming a respectable person. I think back to a time when all I wanted was a lot of income, a pretty girl, and people to take me seriously. It was fortunate for me that the little angel, who has ever ridden on my right shoulder, and sometimes speaks into my right ear, is a mischievous little thing. Not from my own will, but the angel’s, have I been saved from various grave temptations, from time to time. (And sometimes not.) The angel puts an idea in my head, for something clever to say or do, and the consequence is, that I don’t get the prize. (Who knew that God employs mischievous spirits?)

Allen Guelzo’s article reviews the capture of Evangelical Christianity in those USA, by the forces of politically correct respectability, in the course of the last generation. It explains why they are no longer “an embarrassment,” having learnt how to remain silent when called to the service of Our Lord. For contrast he recalls, from his own youth, a certain retired Professor of Apologetics, into whose motives he had inquired. Why had he recklessly devoted his whole life to philosophy, and Christian teaching?

“Why, to protect Christ’s little ones,” the old man replied.

The young Guelzo was gobsmacked, and remains so still; and I, too, am impressed by the profound simplicity of the answer. Here was that rarest imaginable thing: a man teaching in a university, disposed to truth and light. What a scandal! … But of course, it happened a long time ago.

And of course, such a man was hardly respectable, even then. Today, like Saint Paul, he’d likely as not be run out of town. There is no secular university on this continent that would dream of giving such a man a job, let alone tenure. He could learn to shut up, or he could seek another trade. (Fireman, for instance: Christians seem welcome wherever there is a fire.) And how I know the envy of the “tenured,” and of the prizes that could be won, if only I wasn’t so ashamed, in the presence of my Maker.

How often one is offered a reward, if one will just shut up about Jesus. It is the price of admission, even into the rightwing media. I was asked if I would pay it, just the other day. But by now I prefer braying at the Moon.

“In every example where the courts, the celebrities, or the culture-makers, have trampled heedlessly on biblical norms, there are some initially robust outbursts of resistance, then a nervous glancing around to see whether anyone has joined the resistance.” O Lord, have I noticed this phenomenon myself: the case of the disappearing allies.

Governor Winthrop is cited, addressing the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay. After much rhetoric on Truth, and suchlike, he concludes: “We shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.”

As Guelzo puts it: “Winthrop and his fellow exiles gave themselves over hostage to applause.”

Christ Himself was leery of large audiences, and did not seek any of the forms of respectability then available in Roman provincial society, including that of the Pharisee preacher. He ended not with laurels, but tacked to a Cross, wearing the crown of thorns that is the ultimate award for moral and spiritual perfection. And his final homily was from that Cross, and in those startling words echoed from a Psalm through His torment: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” …

Before, “Into thy hands I commend my spirit.” (At which Jesus died; but the Psalmist continues: “Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord.”)

Words not addressed to the crowd; and not at all in fashionable garments. Christ our exemplar has turned His attention entirely to the Father, as he leaves our world, having done nothing but the Father’s will through the length of his sojourn. We saw him “respectable” in society, only in a moment riding on an ass, the palm fronds thrown before him: entering Jerusalem by the humble eastern gate. (Well, this wasn’t very respectable, either.)

There is the, usually droll, question, “What would Jesus do?” Right question, perhaps, but in the wrong tone. Better would be, “What would Christ have me do?” For his Life was not a catalogue of situations and responses, and God did not create us to do what has already been done. He did not make us for statistical purposes. Instead He made each to be a new Saint, providing each with the light to show his steps forward, like the lantern on a miner’s hat — not towards, but away from the light of this world, by which we are dazzled.

But of course, this is a “counsel of perfection,” as I notice all of Christ’s counsels were. No one, among us sinners, can be completely free of the desire to avoid the embarrassment that comes from standing alone; only the saints and martyrs overcome it.

Even in death, we want to make a show, so that even if we failed to make tenure, we might still be respectable in the eye of Fame. Guelzo here cites Thomas of Canterbury, in T.S. Eliot’s play, who is surprised by his final temptation — which is to Martyrdom itself. We want a crowd when they carry us away; we want to know our last words will be recorded; so people may finally learn that we were right all along. We hardly want to go through all this, and not get credit. Not with our reputation at stake.

What a comedown, to have spent one’s life preparing for this final act, and no one there to see it. To find that the audience has all gone away. It is the last and most terrible temptation, to do other than God’s will.

Which is to throw that bag of swag away; to discard the lust that fondles it, and the fear of life without it at one’s side.