Essays in Idleness

Saint Athanasius of Alexandria (the Apostolic, the Confessor, the Patriarch, the Great, c.296–373) is still making converts to the one Holy Church. He is venerated, still, across Former Christendom — by Catholics, by Protestants, by Greeks and Russians, by Armenians, by (many) Copts; by more, as we wobble East across the sunstroking deserts of Araby. He was what Gregory Nazianzem called him, soon after his death: “Pillar of the Church”; and others later, “Pillar of Orthodoxy.” Author, at least in spirit, of Quicunque vult — the Athanasian Creed — addressed as its incipit proposes to, “Whosoever wishes to be saved.” It varies from the Nicene and the Apostles’ creeds in one important respect. It piles anathemas upon the heads of Arians and all other heretics, and so has been suppressed since Vatican II.

Verily, Saint Athanasius was known to his own time as, Athanasius Contra Mundum (“against the world”) for his willingness to defend genuine Church teaching, when necessary, alone.

This man spent his whole life fighting — emperors, bishops, archbishops, society ladies, opinion leaders, other fashionable and heretics of all kinds — starting from the top with Constantine the Great. For forty-five years, Athanasius was himself Archbishop of Alexandria; but nearly half that time he spent in multiple exiles, or otherwise on the run. For the defence of the actual Christian Faith isn’t easy, and could get you martyred in the best of times. Not, be it noted, impossible to understand, for the Faith is perfectly coherent; only hard to uphold against myriad temptations.

In “the spirit of Vatican II” of the ’sixties, continuing through the “new evangelism” of today, we have in our hierarchy, and the sleepwalking at large, a “modern” school of thought and feeling. Their desire is to teach a Faith that will be more accommodating, or at least, less offensive to the unChristian world around us. This means, in practice, not teaching it at all, for in truth our faith is highly offensive. The “Church of Nice,” as rude people call it, is the principal opponent of the Church of Rome; for Christ was many things, but “nice” He wasn’t. An Athanasius, alive today, would still be fighting to the last ditch.

He is alive today, come to that; and he is still making converts for the “traditional” side — which is to say, the faction within the contemporary Church that remains unapologetically Catholic.

One of those was Louis Bouyer (1913–2004), raised Lutheran in Paris, and in the murky years just prior to the last World War, a French Lutheran minister. He made a careful study of Athanasius, and in the course of anno 1939, he became a Catholic. Indeed, the Church has often benefited from well-educated Lutherans, coming as it were for tea, and staying. Some of them are crack Latinists, and at the moment they seem to be the Latin translators of first resort in a Vatican sadly deficient in its own native tongue. (Lord: send us more Lutheran converts, to teach us this language and remind us of our Faith.)

Athanasius brought Bouyer over, and many more — to a Church which, post-War, began falling into terrible confusion. He was in the middle of the Second Vatican Council itself, or rather, of the preparatory work for it, after which he increasingly withdrew from what he called “ecumenical craziness,” comparing the atmosphere among the more progressive delegates to that of Alice in Wonderland. Yet in the rear, he was among those instrumental in assuring that the documents of the Council were not infected with demonstrable heresies.

Pope Paul sent him into the liturgical squabbles that came after; in the end, Bouyer (a good friend and teacher to Ratzinger, incidentally) was, like Athanasius, in the middle of everything. His verbal gift for putting things truthfully, without pulling punches, made him (like Athanasius) a frequent outcast; yet to the middle he invariably returned. Blessed Paul VI, who could be cowardly (and understandably, like many other popes), wanted to give him a red hat, but backed off before the fury of the liberals — especially the “cradle case” liberal bishops in France. (I use this insulting expression for those born into Catholic homes who think they own the religion.)

That the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris, François Marty, did not like him, might be guessed by the way Bouyer described Marty in print: as a person of “crass ignorance, … devoid of even the most basic capacity for discernment.”

That he did not get along with the liturgical reformers, might be seen in Bouyer’s characterization of Annibale Bugnini — the father and factotum of the Novus Ordo — as méprisable (“contemptible”), as, aussi dépourvu de culture que de simple honnêteté (“as devoid of learning as he was of basic honesty”). He describes the “reformed” Novus Ordo Calendar as, oeuvre d’un trio de maniaques (“the work of a trio of maniacs”). And other things I learnt from Father Hunwicke’s blog.

More importantly, he tells the story of how these very evil men manipulated Pope Paul — how they kept him in the dark, fed him lies, poisoned him against Archbishop Lefebvre and other competent and ingenuous advisers.

Bouyer wrote other acidic works (let us recommend, The Decomposition of Catholicism, 1969, to those suffering from low blood pressure). But they are dwarfed by his major studies, not only liturgiological, but theological, historical, and spiritual. Bouyer was an authority on his fellow Oratorian, Newman. His wartime tract, The Paschal Mystery, is an extraordinary thing, in which all strands of Christian understanding wind and bind together. Bouyer’s is among the greatest Catholic minds of the twentieth century; he should not be reduced to a figure of controversy. He was of very deep learning, and staggering breadth. His own life was also edifying.

Bouyer left, too, the manuscript of his refulgent Mémoires, finally published last year. They are fiery and Athanasian. Those who have struggled with the book, in French, will be gratified to learn that it is now in English (and available here).

I have yet to obtain my copy, but my impression through all the French, and reviews, is that this book offers perhaps the best available insight into what befell the Catholic Church, “in the spirit of Vatican II,” together with a reliably factual “secret history” of the whole catastrophe.

We will need it for the fight of coming generations, as we struggle to defeat the operation of that demonic “spirit of Vatican II” within the Church, and to expunge its traces — until that happy day when only specialist scholars will remember that the Novus Ordo ever existed — rather in the spirit of Athanasius, whose master was only Jesus Christ.

How delightful, for an angel to turn up in the frame of a photograph taken from the Curiosity Rover on the surface of Mars. The photograph may be found at the NASA website (here): gentle reader should not take long to spot the being in question, a little north-east of the centre. While I’ve never been a confident angel sexer (or “genderer” to those of you politically inclined), it is evident from enlargements that this one is female, with breasts and long hair, which I would guess to be red in colour. She is standing on a small rock and, calculating from the scale of the picture, she is just shy of four inches high.

True, other observers have identified her as Lady Liberty, or the goddess Venus, or a Martian Girl Guide on watch, and the British tabloids call attention to the low cut of her gown. Others think she is an ancient statue. One might imagine a parasol in her right hand, a shield in her left, but look closer. These are all fanciful suggestions. The figure is that of a small angel.

Well, yes, it is a low-cut gown, but more in the Jane Austen fashion than that of a TV babe at the present day. Perfectly chaste to a mind that is chastened.

Strong wings are visible behind this figure (the camera has captured the solar glint on the topfolds of these wings), and I would say the “parasol” is actually a flaming sword. She is, after all, a Martian angel, not an Earthling angel, charged to defend the honour of that planet, and not ours. Notwithstanding, an angel is an angel, and the family resemblance between theirs and ours is plain enough.

I was rather expecting Curiosity Rover to find such figures, in its rambles about Gale Crater. In the absence of visual distraction to creatures biologically engendered and endowed, they would naturally stand out better in photographs. On Earth, they tend to be obscured by stronger colour and shading contrasts on the palpable objects; they pale within our denser atmosphere. Paradoxically, they are easier to pick out in our moonlight, especially when the Moon is full.

The bodies of the angels are simulacra — they are without extension, as Aquinas has explained — yet as we know from innumerable other sources, they can be manifest in space and time. Sometimes they appear as heralds, to one event or another; but the human mind is not well-attuned to angelic motion or message. We are capable of mistaking them for elves or pixies, for fairies or leprechauns of some sort; and vice versa, leprechauns for angels. I am content simply to observe.

[I have made a few revisions in light of correspondence.]

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Over the weekend, I touched upon a major public health crisis, perhaps the most consequential of our time: that of excessive cleanliness. The cause of it is obvious: spilt religion. Spiritual rituals of purification have been “materialized,” and the sleepwalker begins to wash hands, like Lady Macbeth. We, at least here in the FWFC (the Far West of Former Christendom) no longer feel comfortable in our skins, nor able to cope with the plainer facts of life. We compensate for irreligion not only by obsessive showering and bathing, but by attempts to sterilize everything in sight. The result is the progressive disintegration of our immune systems, setting us up for terrible plagues, that will eventually be triggered by minor allergens.

Moderation in all worldly things: Mediaeval Man kept himself clean, and bathed frequently enough. The sensible practices of the Ancient World were simply carried forward. In my experience the people of what Mao called the Third World are also cleanly by disposition. There is a human and animal instinct to wash, which is not unreasonable. Indeed, it is universal (“catholic”). But in our present circumstances it has come off the rails.

As ever, the actual history contradicts received progressive views. Should he inquire, gentle reader will find that neurotic health obsessions arose not in the Middle but in the Modern Ages — specifically, in the sixteenth century, coterminously with the Reformation. Strange notions, such as the belief that disease spread exclusively through water, led to a period when bathing was replaced with perfuming. That, along with witchcraft and other hysterias arose at many (chiefly north European) locations. From one extreme, we swing to the other. Our own dietary and environmental neuroses, the omnipresent fads and frauds, are prefigured in that age when Western civilization was losing its spiritual poise.

But this is a huge topic. One hardly knows where to start, for one must face down mental infirmities (“Omigod, I’m using the wrong soap!”) long reinforced by vested commercial interests. A walk down any supermarket cleaning aisle will make my argument, admirably. Dangerous industrial bleaches and detergents; germicides, herbicides, pesticides; all kinds of lethal chemicals and extractions, originally designed for extreme situations, are now shamelessly hawked to the mass market for everyday use. Environmentalist hysterias have in turn launched yet more formulaic products, often as dangerous, and based on even falser claims — taking people “to the cleaners” by exploiting their ignorance, their cravings (often artificially induced), and the lassitude that is the ground condition of superficially frenetic modern life.

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We must start somewhere, however, and why not here?

Water is one of the two essential elements in almost every cleaning process. The other is scrubbing. Only the water could cost money, and invariably it is over-used. People rendered inhuman by their ugly jobs imagine themselves physically exhausted, and hence avoid effort on the scrubbing side. They hire illegal immigrants to do this for them — then paradoxically go jogging (with their heads plugged into demonic music); or indulge in other vain and showy physical activities. (Tennis, anyone?)

If you can’t really afford an Hispanic or Filipina (materially or spiritually), then DIY. Household cleaning provides a wonderfully complete exercise regime, which will also spare you the cost of a gym membership.

On the Internet, we read sweet young things giving plausible advice. They’ll say, “This is how it was done by my grandmother!” But these kids today have grandparents who were baby boomers. For better advice, we need to go farther back. No grandparent born later than 1899 can be trusted; for the economy of (impostured) “labour saving” burst forth just after the Great War.

And so, as a public service, I will transcribe a few notes which, I admit, go back only two-thirds of a century. I shall plagiarize from my late mama’s scribbles, clippings and marginalia, beginning the year she was married. But I specify that most of this was in turn copied from a sainted mother-in-law, and a mother back in Cape Breton — both born in the more reliable age. Or from a woman’s encyclopaedia that was, even in 1948, splendidly out-of-date.

I append only what I have tried myself, and stuck with, up here in the High Doganate; and have overwritten some of mama’s notes with my own comments. I recommend each of these household hints, on grounds that it will get things clean enough, short of space-station bacteria free.

Note that a few cheap simple ingredients are all you need. Some double as edible. Note also that they are easier to find in immigrant corner stores than in large supermarkets, whose managers don’t like the profit margins on them.

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Scouring powder. Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), not Comet. If the issue is serious, add borax and salt. The joke of scrubbing with industrial caustics is, they micro-engrave enamel and other surfaces. Think for a moment. This gives germs a place to hang out.

Sink, tub, and tile. Vinegar and water. Leave it wet for twenty minutes before scrubbing with a sponge. (For sponges, you may grow your own loofies in the garden by the hundred; or buy them from Whole Earth for $19.99 apiece.)

Toilet cleaner. As everyone knows, Coca-Cola makes a superb toilet cleaner. But if you don’t have any in the house (and why would you?) go with undiluted vinegar. A nice trick: pour a bucket of water down the toilet first, which clears the bowl and lowers the water level.

Odours. A wee bowl of baking soda in the ice box or fridge. Borax around the toilet. Tobacco smoke is a marvellous incense for the public areas; pipe by preference, but cigar and cigarette — all good. Frankincense and myrrh also recommended; and surplus fresh herbs trampled on the floors. (This is not the place to discuss personal deodorants.)

Laundry detergent. You can make your own: soap flakes, washing soda (sodium carbonate), borax. Soak the hard stuff overnight in a tub of water; perhaps with a splash of vinegar. And vinegar in the rinse. And remember, throughout the centuries, and even today in that Third World, washer-women use water alone. Verily, water that fish swam in.

Mould and mildew. The best bleach is sunlight — from the Sun, ventilated by a gentle breeze. Borax is pretty effective, too. Hydrogen peroxide might also be mentioned, because it is less lethal than chlorines.

Lime and mineral deposits. Vinegar, vinegar, more vinegar. A good use for a plastic bag, and a rubber band, is to put vinegar in the former and use the latter to clamp round a shower head or other faucet. Leave it on overnight. Stuff comes off like a charm in the morning. Vinegar takes the calcium out of kettles, of course. (You didn’t know that? Oh, Lord.) … And by the way, get a proper full-strength vinegar, not the diluted fairy salad kind.

Spot remover. Borax dissolved in hot water. Let cool, then rub with a clean sponge. This goes for carpets as well as laundry. For wine stains, every chemistry student will tell you to use salt. This lifts the wine, and leaves a salt stain instead. Never take advice from young chemistry students.

Drain cleaner. Vinegar, baking soda, boiling water. You need kids for this. They will want to watch what happens when the vinegar hits the soda.

Window cleaner. Vinegar in water. Newspapers to rub. (The electronic editions can’t even wrap fish.)

Eyeglass cleaner. A slightly dampened microfibre cloth will leave nor streaks nor splotches. But that is post-modern, so until further notice, wash them with the glassware in the kitchen sink.

Plastics. Are essentially unwashable. Put all plastics in the municipal garbage.

Floor cleaner. Less vinegar, more water. Add washing soda or soap flakes if the floor is really filthy; olive oil rubbed in wood to shine. The correct position for floor washing is prayerfully on your knees; but mops are admissible if you are dressed for the grand ball.

Upholstered furniture. A decadent invention. Discard.

Shoe shine. Rub with inside of banana peel, buff with paper towel. Beeswax for waterproofing. But if you have to renew the blacking, no alternative to commercial shoe polish is in sight. Alas, it vents neurotoxins, like most other things from the big box stores. These tend to reduce your brain to porage, and in extreme cases could turn you into a liberal.

Paper towels. According to my mama, the one useful, disposable invention of the twentieth century. You wipe up the worst of the grease and gunk with them, making what’s left a snip. And they are biodegradable, flammable, or flushable — as convenient. A bit extravagant, perhaps, but children can save you lots on paper towels. (“Finish everything on that plate or I’ll kill you.”)

Disinfectant. You don’t need it unless performing open-heart surgery in your living room. Alcohol for topical antiseptic (e.g. inferior blended whisky). Borax will do around the toilet. It is true I use full-strength (made-in-India) Dettol sometimes, but only because the smell takes me back to childhood in Lahore.

Dusting. Sheep-wool dusters, which capture the mites electrostatically rather than tossing them back in the air. (Shake the thing out, outside.) For wiping: a cloth dampened only by your own wetted hand — as every English butler once knew (and would still know, were there still English butlers).

Vacuum cleaner. Makes enough noise to induce fits of violence, and is otherwise vile and evil. Get rid of it. Buy a broom.

Dishwashing and laundry machines. Likewise to be banned. Hand-washing anything is a sensual pleasure, yet highly compatible with philosophical and theological contemplation. The trick is raising the tubs to a comfortable height, and supplying the requisite counter and sorting spaces (i.e. shelves) — especially if you have “back issues.” Plus low stools, so you may put short children to work, or sit yourself in an indoor pond environment.

Dishwashing. Washing soda is the thing, a tablespoon stirred into the water. Or soap flakes, which you can make yourself by grating; or a bar of traditional tallow soap (I swear by Clarim, the Portuguese brand), for which grandma used to own a metal box with holes. You won’t get bubbles, but you don’t need them. Instead the water will look grey. But the dishes will come out clean enough. A shot of vinegar in the rinse tub, and they will sparkle.

Soap. You don’t even need shampoo; “conditioners” are for rakes and dandies. If you are a girl, perhaps I might allow you to use glycerine soap, instead of tallow (or lye); but it is rather expensive.

Brass, copper, pewter. Salt and vinegar, thickened into a paste with flour. On old copper and brass, lemon juice is arguably better. It will not destroy the patina.

Chrome and stainless steel. Cloth dipped in vinegar.

Silverware. Toothpaste is perfect, and a soft toothbrush. (Making your own toothpaste is for a later class.)

Rust removal. Steel wool dipped in vegetable oil.

Filth in the soul. That’s a job for the priests. Go frequently to Confession.

In general. Memorize choice liturgical and biblical passages, the Psalms, and other great poetry (such as Dante, in Italian); plus dramatic passages when working in tandem (from Aeschylus, or Shakespeare) that can be recited in dialogue, with “voices off.” (Or for a sonnet, say alternate lines.) And of course, learn to sing, including madrigals and other part-music for all family and communal labour. There is also a heritage of agreeable work songs; and you may want to compose your own.

For work should be joyful, not only in practice, but in blesséd memory.

“Be thou opened,” Christ commands, in the Gospel of today’s (Old) Mass, from the seventh chapter of Mark. And immediately the ears were opened, of the deaf mute, “and the string of his tongue was loosed.” The same would be a miracle if the rest of us could be cured of this condition, and Christ would put his fingers into our ears to clear them, and touch our tongues with His spittle; for then we might, as the Bible saying goes, “speak right” — a skill which first requires good hearing. Speak to be heard when there is an occasion.

The deaf mute was brought to Him, but in curing the man, Christ took him a little away from the crowd. The detail of the saliva is meant to arrest our attention — a salvation that is “mouth to mouth” — deeply invoking the Sacrament, as well as performing the mysterious Act of Baptism. We are taken aside, we are given this gift of audition. We are freed from the constricting mental box in which we have been hiding; and suddenly it is conceivable that a deaf mute will hear and proclaim.

A curiosity of today’s Mass, it seems to me, is that it offers one formula after another for possible use in a grace at table, beginning with the beautiful Collect:

Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui abundantia pietatis tuae, et merita supplicum excedis et vota: effunde super nos misericordiam tuam; ut dimittas quae conscientia metuit, et adjicias quod oratio non praesumit. Per Dominum nostrum.

“Almighty and everlasting God, whose abundant goodness exceeds all that Your supplicants can desire or deserve; pour Your mercy upon us, forgiving us the sins of which our consciences are afraid, and adding to us what we dare not ask. Through Jesus Christ Our Lord.”

It would be good if we could let Christ into our homes. And here I am thinking not only for meals, but as part of the whole daily routine, or ritual. (More on this tomorrow; I shan’t go from sublime to ridiculous today.)

A pious old widow lady suggested this (husband dead, children grown and moved away): that she cleans house now for a Houseguest instead — for the Holy Spirit Who abides, and for Her Lord in the day that He will come for her. She does not want to be caught out, or the door to be locked against Him. She hopes He will find Himself expected.

“Nor dog nor cat” she is keeping, in her spry eighties; nor tenant; and these kids today, they move too far to drop in for a meal. And so perhaps a little lonely; but she knows it is a passing phase.

The one thing I will say for Donald Trump is that he adds to the amount of slime, crud, drek, scuz, grime, stain, grunge, and feculence in the political order. I noticed this last night, when I called up excerpts from a televised “debate” in which there were seventeen aspiring Presidents of the United States; so many, they had to be presented in shifts.

Most of the others seemed clean-cut and hygienic, to a fault. I was especially impressed by Carly Fiorina, who seemed (superficially of course) the only full adult on the stage. Indubitably the leading woman in American big business through the Tech Bubble era, she was also widely celebrated as “one of the worst CEOs of all time” both before and after she was sacked by the Hewlett-Packard company. This could be her ticket to the country’s highest executive office, according to something called the Peter Principle. For she is not unknowable like the rest of them. She has a track record.

Trump, the other big businessman on stage — and he a roaring capitalist, no mere high-level employee — is by contrast a child in both mouth and gesture. He keeps rising in the polls, with another pip each time he says something exceptionally coarse and boorish. I had never listened to him before. I found him the audio-video equivalent to a face-full of ammonia. His aggressive tweets and call-outs after the “debate” (no such thing is possible on television, hence the giggle quotes) were duly noted. A “tough guy” with an incredibly thin skin, he does not seem capable of dealing with any criticism — at all.

Megyn Kelly once made an on-air mess out of me; I can easily understand wanting to get back at her. I would think Trump’s allusion to her menstrual cycle was low, however; his poorly-veiled threats to her and to others also seemed short on the wit and charm scales. But then, my history of failure in predicting what will work in politics is as long as the present century. Or longer: for I didn’t think a blackguard and guttersnipe like Bill Clinton could be elected; and thus shouldn’t have guessed Barack Obama wouldn’t last a week, once the cameras were turned on him.

My theory — or should I call it a hypothesis? — is that Trump is what you get, in response, after several decades of political correctness. I would compare the situation to that which has been brought about by obsessive cleanliness in the material environment.

You see, gentle reader, the human immune system requires education, rather as the rest of the creature through the body-and-soul matrix. Too, good bacteria lurk among the bad. Sterilize everything, the way the post-modern housewife and househusband have been taught to do, thanks to mass advertising, and your kiddies will grow up strange.

A little more than a generation ago, about one in ten North Americans suffered from known allergies. It is now something like one in three; rates for asthma now approach half of all children, according to numbers flashed by me; and the same explosive increase may be seen across the board from minor hay fever, eczema, hives, and the like, to major auto-immune diseases too controversial to name. Not only the proportion of the afflicted, but the degree of their affliction has risen dramatically. The mortality rates from asthma, for instance, have become impressive.

“Political correctness” is the spiritual equivalent of these hand sanitizers one sees everywhere. True, one is better protected today against minor, ineffectual germs in the environment. But then something like The Donald comes along, and we have no defences.

A friend of mine — an artist — is a proponent of euthanasia. Or more precisely, as he holds that euthanasia is immoral, he advocates public executions. Or rather, private ones, but in clinics covered by the medicare plan.

He thinks: “Everyone should be put down on their eighteenth birthday.”

“Sorry, eightieth birthday did you say?”

“No, eighteenth.”

When I asked him to qualify “everyone,” he refused. He said that it is true, some need putting down more than others, and some (he mentioned Shakespeare, Dante, Michelangelo, Titian) would actually be worth keeping around. “But it would be invidious to pick and choose.”

His argument is that, in most lives (he reckons nearly all), everything interesting has happened by the age of seventeen. This includes every experience that can be freshly apprehended, and every exciting thought that will ever be entertained.

“After age seventeen, not one in a hundred is still mentally alive, or has anything to express beyond his immediate appetites. From that point they’re just fixated on sating them, in a highly repetitive way.”

He figures that by simply banning contraception and abortion — which he anyway considers to be “moral imperatives” — enough orphans would be produced to sustain the population. But when I queried the implications of this, he demurred.

“Details, details,” he insisted. “I’m not a policy wonk.”

Up here in the High Doganate, we like to keep an open mind, and consider proposals from all possible angles. (Blame Aristotle for this; blame Thomas Aquinas; blame cheap whisky.) But we rebel against hypocrisy, and naturally we asked our friend how he had allowed himself to reach the age of sixty.

He was hardly surprised by this question.

“You’re being obtuse. Suicide is another thing, I’m entirely opposed to that. It is morally insupportable; as you have said yourself, it is a form of murder, ‘self-murder’. You can go to Hell for that.”

“But isn’t killing others a form of murder, too?”

“Not when it is an established state policy, and everyone is treated equally.”

I had to admit he was perfectly democratic.

“But how would you sell it in the public square?”

“Oh, that part is easy. It can be presented as a remedy for anthropogenic global warming; as a way to preserve the Amazon Rain Forest, and species diversity. Not that I care; I’m not a politician.”

“But wouldn’t people towards their eighteenth birthdays try to run away?”

“Not in Canada, they wouldn’t. Peer pressure would make them turn up punctually at the clinic for their execution appointments, with their tax forms all in order. If anyone didn’t, the outrage would be huge. Their own friends would hunt them down; there’d be no place to hide. But long before that, the scofflaw would have thought better of the matter.”

All good points. He understands the Canadian character well enough.

“But in the States?”

“Yes, I can imagine a few making it to the outback down there. But hey, the very fact there were redneck survivalists would make the rest all the more eager to obey. Remember: these are people who elected Obama. Twice.”

“Hmm, interesting,” I concluded.

That people believe what they want to believe, was among the discoveries of my adolescence. Reading obituaries of Robert Conquest (1917–2015; died Monday), the shock of this discovery comes back. I was then both an Atheist and a Cold Warrior. This insight into human nature and denature appeared to buttress both of these convictions: for it seemed to me that the Communist Party and the Christian Religion were products of blind faith, perpetuated by people who “wanted to believe,” and therefore believed what they wanted.

Much was once said about the Alice-in-Wonderland parody of the Roman Church that the Communist Party offered. Immortal Christ founded the one, infallible Marx the other. Officially-recognized “apostles” followed from each (Peter, Paul, John, in one case; Lenin, Stalin, Mao, in the other). The Party like the Church is a bureaucracy, under a hierarchy to be obeyed without thought or hesitation. Each has a form of “confession,” and all the other “sacraments” can be paired. Advancement requires strict fidelity to doctrine. Both institutions hunt “heresies” and canonize “saints.” They thrive on persecution. The utopia of perfect Scientific Socialism is a destination like Heaven. And so on: I haven’t the energy to redraw the whole chart.

That the Communist faith is “materialist,” and that of the Church “spiritual,” makes the parody more amusing. One might also say that Satan is a parody of Our Lord. In logic, however, a parody does not constitute a refutation.

Briefly in passing, my own later discovery that the Christian Religion is true, did not at first exhilarate me. Not in the least, with my pride invested. It made me feel quite the fool, and I flinched at the prospect of telling old friends — especially the Christian ones — that I had been so wrong, when I had been so smug about it. I could not possibly have “wanted to believe” what I now found myself believing: that Jesus Christ had “really happened”; that His claims were valid in the terms presented, and truthfully recorded; that the whole history of the Christian Religion (I certainly wasn’t a Catholic yet) followed, however implausibly, from those scandalous facts. Somehow, I would have to cope with this embarrassing revelation.

Well, I found myself comprehensively wrong on the subject of Christianity. History has absolved me, however, on the subject of Communism.

It has absolved Robert Conquest even more. His grand works of historical investigation — The Great Terror (1968), documenting the incredible extent of Stalin’s purges; and, The Harvest of Sorrow (1986), surveying the catastrophic effects of his collectivization — were books of remarkable ambition; of bold conception and real consequence. Other writers had (often at the cost of their careers) reported upon Soviet failings. But they had done so in ways modest enough to be ignored, or dismissed by the fashionable Left as “biased.” The broad, massive, systematic nature of Conquest’s researches was something new. It cracked even the faith of many diehard Communists. The history he told fit together; it was all meticulously sourced; it was overwhelming. There was, as it rose on the horizon, too much to deny.

Yet others could still simply block it out. For people believe what they want to believe, and may resolutely look away from what they do not want to see, or even chute the cocksure laugh, in the face of the mounting tsunami of evidence that finally washes them away.

Conquest was also a light or minor poet, and verse translator, of skill, talent, and integrity. He moved, privately, more in literary than in political circles. His closest friends were such as Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin; another was Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

He was no ideologue, and judging by the way he burned through wives, not a moralist either. Outwardly, in the tiny glimpse I had of him, he was not passionate or irascible. Inwardly, he was surely “driven.” But I would count him as a detached artist, working in a rather unusual modern genre: the author of elaborately proven epics of debunkment.

It was not Conquest, incidentally, but Amis who proposed that the revision of The Great Terror, published after the Berlin Wall fell, should be re-entitled, I Told You So, You Fucking Fools. But Conquest was content with, A Reassessment. He presented his facts emotionlessly. This magnified his impact, as historian. When he had a provocation to offer, that he was entirely unable to resist, he would put it safely into verse form, so that it wouldn’t be noticed.

*

Questions of what really happened, in history whether ancient or modern (and “all history is modern history,” as Wallace Stevens said), can never be ignored. We cannot build a mighty edifice upon a squalid lie. It will collapse.

From the beginning, the Christian Apostles (and apologists) earnestly insisted the events they recounted had happened in fact, unenhanced by imagination. They were not, by character, storytelling men. The consistency of their testimony, to death, was part of what convinced me nearly forty years ago that they were actually telling the truth. Since, my experience as a journalist has reinforced my judgement: that these narratives have the ring of truth, in the main, as in so many small details.

The Epistle today, on this Feast of the Transfiguration, is from an encyclical by our first Pope (II Peter 1: 16–19). Saint Peter expressly denies that he, or by extension any other Apostle, is a fabulist, a “cunning deviser” of useful and convenient tales. He adamantly insists that he witnessed the Transfiguration himself, along with many others then still alive. Peter, like Paul, puts everything on the line. If he is lying, Christianity is not just an inspiring story, parts of which might possibly be true. For in that case, the whole thing is a lie, a fraud, an imposture, and not one part of it can be trusted.

Peter is meeker in the way he puts this; Paul is more forceful; but all the Apostles said the same — that they were there, that they saw things with their own eyes. That Christ is Risen.

So that, either they are telling the truth, or all are shameless liars — and too, ingenious liars, with a curiously inhuman ability to stick to the same pre-arranged story, over decades and over thousands of miles in their evangelical wanderings; and under torture, and to the death. This is hard, irrefragable stuff: a plain either/or, leaving no room for wiggle. You confront the alternatives.

Or, you look away, and steep your life in bullshit.

The Christian who thinks he can take what he wants from the Gospels, and leave the rest — that he can believe what he wants to believe — is deluding himself. He has banked his soul on the proposition that the Apostles were dishonest, calculating men; that the foundation of the Church lies in the same squishy muck as the foundation of the Communist Party, and every other humanly-contrived institution; that its long survival can be attributed only to luck. That, necessarily, Christ is a lie, a cheap lie designed to sucker and manipulate the masses. Certainly this is the Marxist view.

But for my part, I just can’t believe it. For as far as I can see into history, no conspiracy on that scale has ever been pulled off, nor could be. If it happened it would have been a miracle in itself — a demonic miracle. In which case, all the Saints are in Hell.

Nobody knows what country music is, or if someone does he has concealed it from me. I took it for an aerial collision of hillbilly boogie and cowboy swing, crashing into a honky-tonk bar with a banjo and a scatter of Gaelic fiddles. But I could be wrong.

As a lad I took to country and folk, in opposition to rock and metal, by the same instinct that drew me to Bach and Purcell and Mozart. It was musical. In retrospect I see that it was also religious, in the very broad sense of being animated by spiritual “concerns,” starting from a tragic view of life, yet hopeful, at the boundary of sin and redemption. As opposed to just sex and drugs. In that country universe, a melodic and harmonic and often comic joy carries a narrative in which things do not always work out; in which people don’t always get what they want, or even what they deserve; in which one mistake leads to another, until something bad happens. But as good narrative, it does not preach. It just sits back and describes.

I also took to jazz, with the help of my father, but I am writing here of low-class popular music, such as was shared and actually sung by e.g. my fellow high school students in an Ontario small town, dangerously close to a big city. Some time in the late ’sixties they began to divide into two camps. I will call this in my ignorance the country/rock divide. The rock people would migrate to the city, where they would live prosperously sterile lives; the country people would stay home and get hard jobs and raise children.

Not always in practice, or course, but consistently in principle: rock was from the outset an expression of alienation, starting from one’s family and immediate neighbourhood, and ending with an alienation from music itself. (To say nothing of sanity.)

Counter-currents should not be discounted, entirely: there were rock bands whose members had some musical training and might know, sort-of, how to play their instruments — the band Chicago swims into memory; along with irrepressible poets like Dylan, Simon, Cohen, or even a Beatle or two — a folk stream within the stone rock that broadened its melodic and lyrical capacities and made it, sort-of, compatible with country music.

Something should be mentioned of rhythm here, and the thumping base that inculcated “tribal.” It was barbaric, but also, hypnotizing. It pulled things into itself, like a black hole, dislocating the brain; it required drugs other than alcohol to appreciate. It should never have been tolerated. It went with lyrics that were rude and lewd, and I would guess some learned person, with tremendous stamina, or indifference to pain, could trace the further decline through punk and rap.

One could also hear, as the years passed, country music being lured into this hole, by the scent of money — into this death trap of contrived “relevance,” with its inevitable “rights” posturing, and the lifestyle that was rich and famous. But I know so little of popular music, today, that I cannot trace this history myself, and will be content with a swathing condemnation.

The music of the Church is another matter. Chant is its natural condition, and the Baroque assimilation of the new, “classical” genres worked only when they were carefully adapted to the strict requirements of the liturgy (of course, usus antiquior), and the internal, spiritual movements of the Mass. Modern hymns (Romantic era and forward) have, to my mind, no place in a church, though lots of room outside it. They are instead part of an “outreach,” or Christianizing of the world beyond the narthex, which we re-enter going down the steps. In a healthy society (one that is not poisoning itself) the “secular” music, or music of the streets and the taverns, will be shot through with nutrient religion.

For the musical mission of the Church Catholic is, as I see it, two-fold at the present day. First, to chase irreverent music out of the sanctuary, in the spirit of Christ whipping the money-changers. Then second, to invade their larger “marketplace,” systematically, with a view to eradicating godlessness entirely. We need, in effect, to re-invent country and folk traditions, from the hymn to the ballad, and the dancing jig, as loving expressions of life itself. And this, I suppose, is where Protestant and other converts can help us, for as a result of the desecration of the Mass (novus ordo), inside, we Catholics have also become deaf and unmusical outside the Church. Music is crucial to the binding of family, and neighbourhood, and to the direction of the human soul. We cannot simply surrender it to the Devil, in the Islamic manner.

This does not mean a cheap moralizing music, but a recovery of the poetry that embraces life in all of its facets, including sin and its explication. Great music, as great literature and art, conveys truths. It is the theatre of the world, in which the truth happens; or more succinctly, “the music of what happens” (Seamus Heaney quoting an ancient Irish definition of poetry, I think).

*

Woke this morning with an old country song in my head. Not that old: less than forty years, and therefore from the terminal phase of this art in its decadent, Nashville form. But it is good in its kind and will do as an example of something that embodies “truth to life,” without a heavy hand. I transcribe the lyrics below, minus repetitions, from the way Emmylou Harris sang it, back when she was young and before she became a “landmine commie.” (My crush on her is incurable, however.)

I’m sure she didn’t write it. (Gentle reader can do my homework for me.) She just knew how to sing it, perfectly with the fiddles.

Note, that the movement of the language is Shakespearean. Which is to say, like that of the later Will Shakespeare, it plays recklessly over the demands of drawing-room syntax and scansion, to convey movements of association, thought and feeling, that formalized language would only stiff. Colloquial, one might say, but not what the liberal academics mean by that. Rather, sharply elevated colloquial, tuned to serve the dramatically explosive:

Mary took to runnin with a travellin man,
Left her momma cryin with her head in her hands:
Such a sad case; so broken hearted.

She say, “Momma gotta go, gotta get outta here,
“Gotta get outta town, tired a hangin around:
“Gotta roll on, tween the ditches.”

Lord, she never woulda done it if she hadden got drunk,
Hadden started runnin with a travellin man,
If she hadn’t started taken … those crazy chances.

She say, “Daughter, let me tell yabout the travellin kind,
“Everywhere they goes such a very short time:
“He’s a long gone, before you know it.”

She say, “Never have I known it when it felt so good,
“Never have I knew it when I knew I could,
“Never have I done it when it looked so right.”

Down in the swampland, anything goes;
It’s alligator bait and the bars don’t close:
It’s the real thing, down in Lou’siana.

Didj y’ever see a Cajun when he really got mad?
Really got trouble like a daughter gone bad?
Gets a real hot, in Lou’siana.

Oh, the stranger better move it or he gonna get killed,
Gonna hafta geddit or a shotgun will:
Ain’t no time … for lengthy speeches.

Just an ordinary story bout the way things go,
Round around and no body knows
But the highway: goes on forever.

We are, and always have been homo rumoris, according to Jonah Goldberg in his (often) weekly newsletter; if not homo rumusculi, or homo fabulationis. Well, homos of one kind or another. That is to say, the whispering mob of rumour mongers, triflers, fabulists and storytellers, benign or possibly malign, was around long before the discovery of electricity; and in Goldberg’s view, as mine, it can have a useful function.

Morality requires shame, and the vindication of justice requires shaming people. The question has never been, should people be shamed? It has rather been, what should they be shamed for?

I would pause here, to consider the Catholic approach, embodied in the Sacrament of Penance, and contrast it with our North American Puritan conventions, going back to Salem, Massachusetts. That is to say, the focus on reconciliation with God, as opposed to reconciliation with peer pressure, or with the whited sepulchres who by their righteous sermons inspire the crowds. But this does not change the fact that we are, regardless of our religion, all humans — with copious actual sins to confess.

Are God and the mob always on the same side? Now there is a question that answers itself promptly.

Even the West Mercia Police were able to distinguish them, during an incident in Telford, Shropshire, on 14th March. It was one of those wee passing items in the news cycle, that grabbed my horrified imagination, so that I flagged it for this later use. Though in itself, only one horror among many, many.

A poor, distraught man had climbed to the top of a multi-storey car park, by the town’s shopping mall. Even from a distance, his emotional state could be seen; and from his position on the ledge, that he had contemplated suicide.

A crowd of teenagers gathered below. It was a Saturday, school was out, and the inmates lounging about this palace of consumerism. And there were some older, too — full adults — also with their social media in their hands, to capture the scene. (“Citizen journalists” shall we call them?) According to witnesses, at least twenty at a time were filming this exciting piece of “breaking news.”

But the man did not jump; he was frozen.

And so the crowd, getting bored, began to taunt: “Go on, do it. … Jump!”

The police were trying to reach him; trying to talk him back to safety. But the man could not hear them; he was mesmerized by the audience he had somehow summoned. They were screaming. He could see people running about, from one side of him to the other, to get better pictorial angles for their iPhones. He had their full attention; he had become the focus of a public demand to be entertained.

Time passed: more than two hours. The crowd’s frustration was growing. But with the man still at the edge of the car park roof, frozen by despair, they could hardly tear themselves away. A narrative like this requires a resolution.

“Go for it! … Now! … Do it! … Stop effing about! … Jump! … Do it!”

Finally, he obliged.

So that now he is dead, and beyond democracy. He cannot hear “the voice of the people” any more.

A second mob quickly formed, on the Internet, in response to the news report — to shame the members of the first. Clicking from their armchairs, cubicles, and car seats, the middle-class English declared themselves appalled. Mild, by the usual standard of public outrage, and utterly ineffectual; yet the noise was there. And when I looked for Comments, I found that these spokesmen for a forgotten mercy and compassion were, to a man, blood-curdling in their demands for retribution.

The West Mercia Police were likewise infuriated, promising legal action against those who had physically and verbally interfered with their work, if people would kindly step forward and identify the malefactors.

“Ah, to be in England, now that Winston’s out.” (That was how Ezra Pound put it, with his usual perspicacity as idiot savant.)

*

A mob is a mob is a mob. I was struck, too, glancing through Comments on articles about the shooting death of Cecil the Lion, by the bloodthirstiness. Most wanted the hunter dead, if not first tortured. But if, I should think, they had the means to kill him, another angry mob would come forward after that, to shame the shamers, and demand their punishment in turn.

For the time being, the Internet is mostly virtual. Further advances in technology will be needed, to allow for the dispensation of populist justice in “live time.” At present, unless one has command of a national guard or other armed forces, one must make do with information alone, such as broadcasting workplaces and home addresses.

Or, in the case of the AshleyMadison.com hackers, the identities of 37 million customers, who use this “matchmaking” site specifically to arrange adulterous liaisons. They may be “named and shamed” — curiously from the motive of punishing the website for inadequate attention to “privacy concerns.” And there is consternation about this, even though (as Goldberg mentions) adultery is considered an insignificant thing, these days. To many, it is no more a sin than sodomy, so what is the big deal? Yet oddly, it continues to matter to the adulterers’ live-in mates, and to their children, so far as their moral and emotional callusing is not yet complete. And so: “Let them suffer!”

Goldberg calls himself a Burkean conservative. (I think of myself as more the Jeremiah type.) There will always be something to shame; there will always be moral indignation. We can never become true libertines, for we are inextricably human; and seem to be “hard wired” to judge and to punish, others as well as ourselves. And by some kink, others in preference to ourselves.

Nothing has changed in this regard: the Internet is wringing with moral indignation, and the pundits are kept busy by it. Goldberg rightly sees that the effect of the imposed, ideological libertinism — as it is taught by our current elites, through the schools and the media and the courts they control — is only to change the rules of the game. The game itself continues. What is condemned was previously applauded; what is applauded was previously condemned; but the mob moves on. So long as it is still provided with scapegoats to damn, in the Forum of public opinion, one sin will do as well as another. And, new sins will always be invented to fill the spaces from which the old sins were winkled; the Macbeth witches promised no less.

Nature, it is said, abhors a vacuum; but it is important to discern that the Devil does not. He flourishes, for the vacuum has ever been his pleasure; his tube into the human heart. For him, the vacuum is like the caress of a breeze on a warm summer day; or like the puff of feather fans, as his enablers pump the air out of the old, crumbling Christian civilization; that gentle sucking action. Hell itself, like the inaudible whoosh of the black hole, a music to his ears; and all of God’s creation to be sucked, downward ever downward, as we glide down, to death beneath death beneath death.

[Recycled, and slightly rewritten from a couple of years ago.
One does this sort of thing in August.]

*

There is a nice alpine orogeny, running from Afghanistan, across the roof of Asia, then into Yunnan, through most of Burma, upcountry Thailand and Indochina. It is all contiguous, all elevated, all rather wild — this vast territory enheaved, where three continental plates collided. (Supposing one buys into the hypothesis of “continental drift,” which I’m beginning to find “too plausible.”) About a decade ago it received a name from the Dutch historian, Willem van Schendel. He called it, Zomia, from a root that means “highlander” in many Tibeto-Burman languages. Think of it as Appalachia, but on a hundred times the scale, and of twenty times the historical depth.

Notwithstanding my Gaelic genes, I was schooled to despise, or glibly to romanticize, the Highland types. (Two sides of the same flipping coin.) Everyone was schooled to do this; and with great ease, government and media have since “stereotyped” enemies of the State who lurk in such remote places as, “The caves of Afghanistan!”

But of course, the intrusion into their midst of rudely psychotic persons with post-modern ideologies, and lethal post-modern weapons, is what actually occurred. The Pathan and other hill tribes of the “Northwest Frontier” came to serve Al Qaeda as their ancestors often served the British: at gunpoint.

From my own experience, travelling in such parts, I would say the hill people wanted only to be left alone. To travellers they have no objection; are hospitable to a reckless degree. Their violence is directed instead against invaders; and they have little difficulty distinguishing an innocent tramping fool from an embodiment of evil, such as a government official. They had, they have, no aspirations whatever, to conquer the little creatures down on the plains, who call themselves “people” but seem to lack many of the defining characteristics of full-fledged, free-born men and women.

I cannot get my head entirely around Zomia, owing to its size. The scholars who now employ the term as a geographical concept disagree about its extent; van Schendel himself excluded everything west of Ladakh. The Tibetan massif is a different world from the lower mountains to the east and south, both geographically and culturally. The latter territories are more densely and variously populated. Inhabitants of the former (that massif) have more in common with the pastoral “hordes” of Mongolia and Central Asia; but were once more secure in their mountain fastnesses. Historical migrations from there and from elsewhere, through mountainous southern China and into South-east Asia, were vastly more complex; and whole peoples passed over and by each other at different altitudes.

Yet it is true to say they have all, always, been Enemies of the State, up there in the mountains — hence, too, our sneaking rightwing attraction. In the 1950s, thanks to curmudgeonly sociologists, even the highlanders of Appalachia were enjoying some good press. This spread to the liberal anthropologists when they began to realize that these Hillbillies had preserved folk customs and attitudes from the earlier and freer society of the rebellious Thirteen Colonies; and that there might be some point to their counter-cultural rejection of the later mass-market America. (In other words, the mass market for Whole Earth hippiedom was being conceived.)

It is of the easternmore reaches of Zomia that Yale’s celebrated anarchist anthropologist, James C. Scott, characteristically writes. A recent book is entitled, The Art of Not Being Governed (2009, and already out-of-print). I seldom read such books, but skim them with enthusiasm. The professor, who also raises sheep, has been at his hobby horse for nearly half a century now, starting about the same time my own father was travelling among “the Hill Tribes of Siam,” and learning to love them as this author does.

During the Vietnam War we got to know these people — “Hmong” has become our generic term — as perhaps our most effective allies against Uncle Ho. They truly hated Communism, and a few other things, in common with hill people everywhere: slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labour. And, epidemics. For they often live to advanced ages, and fear Lowlanders less as soldiers than as carriers of disease. Verily, territorial warfare strikes the Highlander as one of the diseases the Lowlander is carrying (according to Scott with my enthusiastic, if tacit, agreement).

In a sense, these are the things — various forms of legislated slavery — that define the State, or arguably, Civilization in the narrow (“civic”) sense. Men are put under burden, and told it is for their own good. They learn to salute Power; to obey, to conform, to march, and to serve the poster politicians, shouting Heil! as each new, fashionable, Dear Leader motors by. But there are men who don’t like to do this; who are too independent to appreciate “democracy,” and would rather move to the hills. Or else, they get chased there.

My own Caledonian ancestors showed all the traits, including the murderous contempt for Lowlanders. They showed, too, as if Zomians, considerable wit in the invention of methods for remaining stateless. They dodged the bullet for centuries, until the Highland Clearances finally caught up, and the jackboots of the Modern State kicked them over the hills and into the oceans.

I shall leave the curious reader to follow the proper nouns to the proper sources, should he wish to learn more about the Higher Asians — with their incredible range of ethnicities and languages; their resistance alike to literacy and to positive law; their millenarian and prophetic tendencies; their chameleon skills; their mobility — and with that, their ingeniously successful techniques of swidden agriculture (usually more varied and complicated than “slash and burn”).

At the opposite end of the spectrum of human barbarity, we have the urbane. Total mutual incomprehension can be assumed between these extremes. Glancing through rebuttals to the Zomian theses, from the Po-faced academic elite, I am again and again arrested by their unreachable stupidity. The agents of Po cannot understand (except in little twinkles) that these people do not subscribe to the premisses of political and economic “science,” any more than to the other premisses of the Lowland mindset; don’t get, that the hillsman does not consider himself inferior to the “insects of the plains,” and does not long for “inclusion” in their termite colonies.

*

It seems all my life I have been reading the English travellers, and those of other countries who penetrated the wilderness, and came to understand the motives of “primitive” peoples — invariably from some calling in themselves, to which settled suburban life did not answer.

For instance, Charles Waterton’s Wanderings in South America, which came back to me from a flea-market stall, after years of wandering on its own. (The same copy with my name in the front.) It is a memoir of deep incursions into the woods of Guiana in the early nineteenth century, to stuff birds, and collect snakes, and gather other items for his extensive cabinets of “natural curiosities.” Waterton was a brilliant naturalist, whose descriptions of new species, and explanations of their physiology and behaviour, have stood up through all the subsequent Official Science.

Too, he was a fine Recusant Lord, from the vicinity of Wakefield, where the Catholics never quite gave up — just as their ancestors had never quite agreed to the Norman Conquest. He counts among the great English eccentrics; if also, alas, as a pioneer of the “ecology” business, for he surrounded his large estate with a tall wall, to protect the private wilderness around his moated castle, back home in Yorkshire. Conversant with both worlds, he adopts the prejudices of the British aristocracy, when mocking the tribesmen of Guiana; and of the tribesmen when mocking the British aristocracy — remaining Trump-like in his own indifference to criticism.

The History of Progress is highly biased, as I may have mentioned before in these electronic pages. It omits much more than half of human nature, and overlooks every fact that doesn’t fit. We need another account that will take in the whole, re-orient our attention to the immortal, and rescue us from the corvée frame of mind. A Highland version of history, if you will; a free man’s guide to how things really are, with some hints for escape from the labyrinth of totalitarian “good intentions.”

Indeed, Waterton found this just where I did, in the Gospels.

I try not to have “interesting” opinions on Scripture, and when I have them anyway, to mull them through myself, rather than sharing them with any who will listen. For it is not my place to usurp the role of the orthodox priest as interpreter, or to propose novelties. And even if, as sometimes happens these days, the priest is preaching heresy, it is not my place to add more. Rather, to recover, starting in myself, a few plain meanings.

For Christ’s teaching was meant for all men (including, all women). That’s the first clue that the more arcane interpretation of Scripture is unlikelier to be the correct one. Native reason, too, instructs us to start with the obvious, and pause — ideally, forever — before skipping to the Gnostic explanation, which only a few favoured “insiders” could possibly appreciate. Verily, we should examine our motives, before passing over what is plain to the brain.

For even the mystical turns out, on mystical examination, to be surprisingly plain, as a far countrie is revealed to plain sight when we travel to it. It remains “mysterious” in the human sense, of a puzzle, only because we haven’t got there yet. And there is always more beyond our getting: infinitely more, in Jesus Christ.

And so it behooves us to be plain, not arcane, when faced with plain matters, and to remain in the condition of faith, knowing Christ will not tax us beyond our means. There will be no mystery in the questions that appear, immediately before us. Only denial (that famous river in Egypt) prevents us from seeing what is directly before our eyes.

But here I am sounding like the Pharisee again, thanking God that I’m not like that Publican over there. (You see him? … Well, if you went to church you would.)

My mistake, openly advertised I hope, began with the words, “I try.” The implication is that others don’t; that I’m up against a wall of trees filled with obfuscating howler monkeys. Whereas, usually I’m up against the tendency to obfuscation in my own noisy soul. When what “I try” is to justify myself, I am playing the Pharisee for sure.

For it is very easy to manoeuvre into the position of smug, from any starting place that is not genuinely humble. The notion that, even if I’m bad, I’m not that bad, leaves open the low window for the devil we just saw officiously out the front door.

We live in glass houses it has been said; which, as any competent devil will observe, contain a lot of windows. Why throw stones and risk cutting hisself, when so many are habitually left open? And besides, stones wake up all the neighbours. Instead he carries a can of WD-40 in his toolkit, for the squeaky hinges. And a ball of wax for my creaky drawers. Never forget that he’s a smoothie; hardly trying to make a spectacle of hisself.

Saint Irenaeus (according to my 1962 Saint Andrew Daily Missal, which I can recommend to anyone) tied the two lessons in today’s (Old) Mass together — Paul’s to the Corinthians, and Luke’s to the planet — by a single scintillating observation. He defined man as, “the receptacle of God’s gifts.”

Saint Paul tells us to stop questioning each other’s gifts; Saint Luke, in effect, to stop questioning each other’s lack of them. (Jesus speaks through both Apostles.) The gifts we have are sufficient for our needs; more than sufficient, quite frankly — for beyond this, they are also sufficient for our contribution to the common weal.

Humility is enjoined in either case. It is incidentally the mark of the Saint: “a spirit of complete and constant dependence on God.” Which is among the reasons the Saints are so various, for contrary to current assumption, God is not narrow, boring, and repetitive.

He only repeats what we haven’t yet learnt, as we are obliged to discover. From the human side, this is called “punishment,” and it is invariably thoroughly deserved. That is what the Publican grasps, and the Pharisee apparently doesn’t. And it is because he gets it that the Publican, instead of trying to justify himself, beats his breast for his own sins, and begs only for mercy.

And note, with Christ, that it is the prayer of the Publican that is answered. And note further, that this really isn’t very surprising.

Instead, it is quite plain.

Lucky for me I’m not a dentist, and therefore can’t afford to shoot a lion in Zimbabwe. That means I don’t have to hide from the angry, democratic mob. (Millions of them on the Internet, demanding capital punishment for this solecism alone.) And what is worse, their post-modern reasoning.

Instead, I can sit here quietly with my tea, and indulge my own post-modern thoughts. And read old poems about Africa:

Young muscular Edwardian
Swings through trees,
Stops carnage at Karnak,
Whole trains at Windhoek,
Dances waltzes simianese.
Lord Greystoke jad guru! …

Truth to tell, even if I were rich beyond the dreams of avarice, like a dentist, I would probably want to shoot something else. For after all, lions are cats, and cats have souls. Everybody knows that; or at least, everyone on Facebook and Twitter. (Do dogs have souls? Depends on the breed.)

Maybe I wouldn’t shoot anything at all. The automobiles seem to be taking care of the raccoons. (We have glorious big ones in Parkdale, here; big like bears! Take out the front of your Honda.)

And anyway, I’m more into books.

A dumb yellow drum
Hangs down from the night.
For the rite of the Dum Dum
Come the cousin apes.
He who would wear Bond Street
And opera capes
Prefers loin cloths of
Impeccable cut.
Lady Jane Greystoke jad guru! …

Will the media be there, I wonder, when the beta male in that lion pride steps up to fill Cecil’s empty … paws? For he will then, I would think, in the lion way, snuff all of Cecil’s kittens. That’s what the new alpha lion does, according to the best BBC documentaries. He starts by wiping out the old lion’s progeny.

Sort of the way Mugabe did, when he came to power.

Perhaps someone else has made this point: I haven’t surveyed the controversy as thoroughly as I might have. Only enough to see that Cecil spent most of his time smiling for the cameras.

Nigel (or whatever the beta-male lion was called) must have spent his time sulking, and dreaming of the day. You know, that very moment — the moment Cecil got blammed.

For alpha males (whether lions, or dentists) don’t waste much time thinking about the optics. But beta males are Darwinian; they think about what it’s going to look like, every day. (A little sidelight there, on evolutionary biology.)

“There is no gay in a lion pride.” You can quote me on that. … Er, on second thought, don’t quote me.

Instead, quote James Reaney. He’s a white male who is safely dead:

Mazumba waves his spear!
Oh the white beach and the green palms!
Stygian night between the ears!
Oh Prince of slaughter do not bungle
My jugular vein within the jungle.
And springboks flee across the plains
From apes with silver headed canes.
Edward VII jad guru!

No, no, I have changed my mind. I think maybe I’d like to shoot a Barbary Lion. Nobody’s done one of those, lately.

They are something to look at: narrower faces, meaner expressions than your standard East African. A bit taller, too, and heavier: hard to miss. … (Easier to weigh them, once they are stuffed.) … Lots of testosterone (before that)!

The last one was observed to be extinct, by the Frenchman who shot it, in Morocco back in 1922. Or so it says here. (It says something different in the Wicked Paedia.) But someone said he saw a live one in the Atlas Mountains, a few decades after that.

Let’s go for it, I say.

Barbaries are (unless they were) big-hair lions: rich, dark, resplendent manes, of hippie length. (Such a wonderful target!) Indeed, better than hippies, because sans the ponytail, and the thinning on top. More closely related to the lions of India, I have heard. Ate lots of natives in their heyday, I’ll bet.

And Christians, I suppose, in the Forum. The Romans must have got their lions from around there.

(As a child in what was once British India, I used to wonder on this account. What was the score this month? How many lions had killed villagers? How many villagers had killed lions? And which side were we rooting for?)

Yes, yes, suddenly I see it: the head of a Barbary Lion would look rather fetching over the hearth. Glaring across the library towards a crouched Bengal Tiger, atop the glass cases on the opposite wall.

So I’ll also need to bag a Bengal Tiger.

And get me a place with a grand hearth. And maybe a higher ceiling.

(But darn, I forgot. I’m not a dentist. I can’t afford swag like this.)

Íñigo López de Loyola, better known to us as Saint Ignatius of Loyola, whose Feast we observe today (in both the traditional and the novel Calendars), was a valiant and gallant soldier. He had more than proved himself in the field, from teenage years through his twenties. Indeed, he owned a reputation for swashbuckle and vainglory; had repeatedly won lethal duels. These Iberians can be mighty proud; Íñigo was the picture of machismo, in his cape and tights, his jewelled boots — the dagger and the sword hanging loosely. It was suicide to provoke him.

But even super-soldiers take unexpected hits, and when the Navarrese stormed the fortress of Pamplona, in May of 1521, Íñigo took a cannonball in the legs.

We are assured that surgical operations in those days, some centuries before modern anaesthesia, were often worse than the original injury, and our heroic Basque gentilhombre, now thirty and no longer in the flush of youth, found himself laid up for a while. And, as luck would have it, starved of his usual reading materials. He preferred the sort of chivalrous tales that Cervantes did such a fine job of mocking. He was stuck, instead, with De Vita Christi, an encyclopaedic devotional work by the (then dated) Ludolph of Saxony. The rest, as we say, is history.

Lounging about like an idler — not his accustomed mode — the future saint conceived an Idea. It was that the Church needs an army, too. Through a rigorous system of prayer and contemplation (seven-plus hours a day), founded on the hints in Ludolph’s book (which could be read as a fourteenth-century Carthusian self-help manual), this Idea was subtly developed. The Ignatian Spiritual Exercises offer a boot-camp approach to Catholic mysticism. The religious order that grew out of them, with the energy, too, of remarkable companions, was “militarist” by nature. But it is a remarkable kind of “hybrid warfare” that Saint Ignatius and his friends “invented” — one in which conventional weapons played, and can play no part.

Enemies of the Jesuits — and from the beginning, they had plenty — might characterize the whole order as a “mind game.” They could never be counted on to do what was expected; they had the tactical genius for surprise. (We all remember the Monty Python skit: “Fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.”) Yet rooted often, as in the case of Saint Ignatius, in a holiness itself inscrutable. God, unquestionably, helped them on their way, into spiritual battle, with an intellectual machinery always state-of-the-art, and a discipline that seemed to pass beyond the human.

That was then, this is now.

There are, in practice, so far as I can see, two Jesuit orders today. I have met “men astutely trained” in both. One is traditional, the other is novel. The traditional “faction” remains loyal to the teaching of the Magisterium under the most intense fire; I could name a few people. The other — but I will not name — thinks it knows better, and is looking cleverly ahead. As one “progressive” Jesuit once told me, “I am loyal to the Church as she will be, and to the Popes of the future.”

Jesuits have provided, for several generations now, perhaps the principal opponents of Church teaching from within, a kind of self-assembled Fifth Column. Where would e.g. “liberation theology” be without Jesuits, who wink at arms running and violent acts? Who purposefully confuse “the poor in spirit” with “the poor in goods”? Who think with their superior expertise they can analyze the most abstruse social and economic questions; and like some of the more advanced Muslims, serve the will of Allah here on Earth, as a revolutionary vanguard.

Perhaps a third group could be identified, a “middle way,” balanced on the knife edge between the two, and sometimes adeptly skating. It has been said that our current Pope — the first Jesuit in that office — is on this edge. From each side he appears to be on the other; but from back or front, entirely on his own. He is certainly not a Marxist, for instance. But he is certainly not an anti-Marxist, either. Nor is he ambiguous. Only a Jesuit could be like that: a whirling dervish of charisma. I had this sense reading Laudato Si’ — in many free-spinning passages I thought, “the exact opposite of what our Church so desperately needs, in a time of terrible doctrinal confusion.” …

But who am I to judge?

Having read something of the Jesuit missions in China, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, I became aware of a “grand strategy.” It was not in any sense a compromise; not an attempt to offer a syncretic version of Christianity to a Chinese court and intellectual milieu of great sophistication. It was rather (to my mind) an exercise in the Socratic. Concede everything that could be conceded to the Chinese mind and high culture; then win the argument on Chinese terms. It was an incredibly brash “strategic vision.” It was conducted, brilliantly. It failed, utterly.

Perhaps Pope Francis has the same brash vision: to concede to the post-modern mind and culture, such as it is, everything it takes for granted; then win the argument on post-modern terms. I hope this is not the plan, however, for still more is now at stake: and there are days when it seems we are down to playing for our last marbles.

The Jesuits were invaluable in the Counter-Reformation. It was often their discipline that held the line, in very unpromising circumstances, at what had suddenly become the Church’s northern frontier. They were Jesuits who conceived ingenious schemes to retrieve the morale of increasingly isolated Catholic communities. Their approach was not, actually, “take no prisoners”; rather it was, “never give an inch”; nor miss an opportunity to move the front line forward; and, count on reinforcements from the rear. For they had an astounding faith, beneath their astounding self-confidence.

Be, and stay, at the forefront of science and of art, of literature and society. Appropriate everything of value and of use, for the Church’s operations. In our contemporary sporting idiom: the best defence is a terrifying offence.

The humble and contrite owed them.

And to my mind (with its monopoly on the thinking at this website), that is rather what we need today, when again our front line is faltering. Not a diplomatic accommodation to defeat, but sudden, shocking, forward thrusts, against an Enemy who has become complacent.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola, pray for us; remind us how it is done.