"You don't believe any of this....?"

Himself started watching something last night that looked interesting to me, but as I've more or less given up tv, (though yeah, I check the weather, and whether or not our country had gone to war....,) for Lent, I left the room.
He turned it off shortly afterwards, I asked what gives? and he said, "Oh, you know, the kind of programming they put on this time of year, we're being utterly objective and scientific and historical about all this Jesus stuff, and they make a big deal about anything that contradicts the Bible or common understanding, but if any hard facts support Christian tradition they downplay them...."
"Oh,"... he added, "and you know how they get jackasses or crazies for all the talking-head parts."
Yep, yep, I do know...
But, Department of Silver Linings, we don't have an Established Church in the US.

Few things in life are more reliable than that the BBC will celebrate Holy Week by running a story which causes controversy about Christianity; the only thing more reliable is that it won’t do the same about Islam during Ramadan. The latest, to be found here reveals that nearly a quarter of ‘Christians’ do not believe in the Resurrection. However, 1 in to people with no religion said they sort of believed in some way int e Resurrection, prompting this: ‘The Church of England said it showed many people held religious beliefs.’ I fear what it really shows is the failure of the Established Church in this country to do much in the way of religious education. One of the more remarkable bit of the piece was a vicar saying that: ‘”I think [people answering the survey] are being asked to believe in the way they might have been asked to believe when they were at Sunday school.’ Quite apart from the fact that it is doubtful that many people even go to Sunday School, one wonders quite what she thought was being taught at Anglican Sunday Schools? Then, with all the confidence of a modernist who doesn’t know better, she pronounced: ‘”So to ask an adult to believe in the resurrection the way they did when they were at Sunday school simply won’t do and that’s true of much of the key elements of the Christian faith.” She tells us that” And an adult faith requires that it be constantly questioned, constantly re-interpreted, which incidentally is very much what modern church is actually about.’ Indeed, and in that apercu lies much of what has gone wrong with the Church of England.

One wonder, then - if asked in a survey, does the quoted vicar think the Anglicans of the UK would deny that they loved their Mums? Because, of course, they wouldn't love them in the same way they had when they were children....

The Catholic Fringe Unraveling On Both Selvages, and Overplaying One's Hand

A bit of hubbub of late over some ordained persons' calling out of some unordained persons, in some cases by name, (one of said ordained persons being in the habit of threatening unordained persons with civil lawsuits,) following the unordained persons having called out other ordained persons by name, some consecrated persons by name, and even, in several cases, an installed person whose name is... well, known to virtually the entire world.
Some of all of this is deserved, other instances are unfair, some of it is bullying and clericalist, some of it is barking mad.
Hardly is anyone in these wars ever 100% wrong, there are often good reasons, up to a point, and very often, perhaps usually, good intentions. (We must assume that last, until the assumption is proved wrong.)
Even the ill-intentioned will begin with the reasonable and kind and inarguable.
Sometimes people give themselves away, of course, frequently by overplaying a hand,
Ah ha, the observer says to himself, I was with you up till now, you first point was undeniable and laudable but I see now that that was merely a set-up to this balderdash, an attempt to lull us into amiability so you could sneak in some poppycock.
Man cannot keep himself from Going Too Far.
Been discussing the failed 1998 translation a great deal with a friend lately,
While I admit there are some clunky moments in the one in use today, I overall drastically prefer it to the rejected one.
But there are other words and phrases spurned by TPTB that I would have endorsed, and more, endorsed the agenda behind them - but the reformers, as so often, went too far.
They knew, they had to know, that eventually, when push came to shove the Catholic Church was not going to allow the Anglophone Catholic Church, no matter how many of us like to think of ourselves as an autonomous sect, NOT to say, "I believe," and "and with your spirit," and "for you and for... many," (I actually think they could have sneaked that one in with "THE many.") Perhaps not on this go 'round, but eventually, and couldn't we finally have a few decades of liturgical calm now?
(Oh, and for the record, sometimes clunky is waaaaaaay better than curt.)
I digress.
Anyway, the Rad-Trad fringe has a lot of right on its side, and honest, it is possible to decry the feminization of ministry, and see it as a wedge issue for the impossibility that looms so large in the spiralist agenda*, the ordination of women, without despising women. (I promise you, I am not a self-hating gyno-American.)
But likewise, it would be easier to believe die-hard traditionalists oppose women in Holy Orders on loving theological grounds is so many of them did not openly display such contempt for women. Protestations that no, of course not, women are not held in less regard by the Church would be so much more credible if Aquinas hadn't said we were “deficiens et occasionatus”, if so many functions besides the confection of the Eucharist were not reserved to priests, and oh, yeah, the priesthood is reserved to men.

A contributing factor in the social recognition of the role of women is a greater appreciation of their responsibilities in the Church: their involvement in decision-making, their participation in the administration of some institutions and their involvement in the formation of ordained ministers.

Well, yeah.... it could be.
And it could have been.
For centuries.
And the longer it took the Church, it still takes Her, to come 'round, the harder it is to believe that Her denial of the presbyterate to women isn't just part and parcel of Her denigrations and ignoring of other charisms woman might have to offer Her and all of mankind.
Anyway, among the much criticized bloggers, there's a fellow who in a newish thread is arguing against "sacramental trans-genderism,"
Good for him, good turn of phrase, and he's right, mostly.
But he can't let a side comment go without answering it with this stupidity:

universal suffrage was one of the worst ideas in human history. Personally, I'm all for head of household landowners being the only ones allowed to vote. They have the most skin in the game.

That's right.
Not everyone who is entitled to vote knows what he's dong, so let's limit it.
Oooh. Interesting.
How?
I.Q. test?
Determining the potential voter's logical acuity or moral fiber?
No.
By wealth and ownership of material goods.
And he caps it off with the inanity about "skin in the game."
Um, no. LITERALLY wrong.
His ideal voter may have capital staked, he may have money on the game, but we each of us, literally, have one, our own, skin in the game.
His idea is as contemptible as the idiot's in the UK who think young people's votes should count more than that of their elders in the BREXIT referendum, since they'll probably live longer with the consequences.
-------
(*Those who hold it might prefer the phrase "progressive agenda," but it aint' progress when you're going around in circles.

"Liturgical Material Assuring Us the Man With the Scythe Won't Have the Last Word"

A perfectly wonderful piece, from an Anglican perspective, on the immense value of the Christian funeral.
I don't know Stewart Dakers, but he is, as he so felicitously describes his state in life, "in the queue" when it comes to being the secondary locus of attention at a funeral, i.e. getting up there.
By virtue of my Church work, and even more so, of my enormous family, I have been to many more funerals than most people, it seems, going back to childhood. I am often shocked to know people quite middle-aged who tell me they have never been to one.
(My very earliest memory is of a dead man in a large, pretty box, in a tidy, sweet, if somewhat dark, stone house - the wake of our parish's pastor in his own rectory. It wasn't in any way, shape or form, scary, and I have sympathy for those whose experience, or lack thereof, leads to the dread I find many adults have of the dead and of funerals.)
Mr Dakers paints himself as a bingo-playing senior citizen, but he writes with an edge and wit many an urban hipster would envy.

And then, on top of that, he's simply right in his thought and opinion.

I attended a better funeral a couple of weeks earlier. It took place in a crematorium, whereas Enid’s affair had been in a real church. So in a sense the contrast was the greater. We sat in silence until the coffin was brought in with those wondrous ominous words
I am the Resurrection and the Life…
which set the tone for a sustained focus on the divinity of love and the hope of eternal life. Even without the accoutrements of a holy building, there was a feeling of belonging to a larger universe, a sense of the transformational.
In this secular age, sceptical of the numinous, the religious funeral demands from us the spiritual literacy which can surrender its cerebral convictions to an incredible hope. If that ingredient is removed, if every departure is presented as an event from which we are urged to move on, to draw a line under, then it does not take a psychiatrist or a theologian to identify a major source of contemporary angst.

"Theology needs to 'catch up' with gestures"?

I do not pretend for a moment to have any special insight into the relationship between the Church and the Anglican communion, or what the schism caused by Henry VIII's desire for a male heir and a woman who was not his wife entailed, or how any of this confirms or confuses the Ordinariate.

But I am having great difficulty wrapping my mind around the idea of theology - that is, received and discerned truths about God, His wishes, and mankind's relationship to Him and to those wishes - conforming itself to the gestures made by churchmen, rather than the other way 'round.

Fr Tony recalls that the documents of the Second Vatican Council recognized those elements of the Church which exist beyond the boundaries of the Catholic Church, adding that recent ecumenical efforts have been looking at the implications of that statement in the search for reciprocal recognition of ministry.
While he notes that such recognition is still not fully possible, he cites many gestures to show a growing respect and recognition of the ministry exercised by Anglican bishops. In particular he recalls the gesture of Pope Paul VI, 50 years ago, of giving his own episcopal ring to the Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey. Theology, Fr Tony says, “needs to catch up” and find the “theological underpinnings to these gestures”.
He adds “I think it’s true to say we don’t use the language of ‘null and void’ any more” as that’s “clearly not what is spoken by the gestures, generosity, and warmth which we see time and time again”.

Just because one does not use certain language because it will not advance ones cause does not make that language inaccurate, does it?
I suppose "imaginary" and "non-existent" are equally injudicious.... 

The "Truths We Could Not Otherwise Endure" Come to Us "Transfigured By Ceremony"

Colm Sinclair sends home [a letter] to explain to his parents why he took the unthinkable step of becoming a Catholic: “What saves us is ceremony … Ceremony makes everything bearable and beautiful for us. Transfigured by ceremony, the truths we could not otherwise endure come to us … It is this saving ceremony that you call ‘idolatry’ and ‘mumbo-jumbo’.”
This salvific “ceremony” was of course the Mass. Completing the letter, Colm walks to a nearby church to experience the beauty of the liturgy: “The celebrant entered … Once again, for the thousandth time, Colm watched the ancient endless beautiful ceremony, the exchange of gifts between earth and heaven, dust and spirit, man and God. The transfigured Bread shone momentarily in the saffron fingers of the celebrant.”

Never heard of George Mackay Brown before, need to learn more.
Stunning
When did I stop reading?
I literally cannot remember the last time I read a novel, and I used to be omnivorous, with the emphasis on novels.
What happened?
Look at this, from Brown's "An Orkney Tapestry" -

“There is a new religion, Progress, in which we all devoutly believe, and it is concerned only with material things in the present and in a vague golden-handed future. It is a rootless utilitarian faith, without beauty or mystery … The notion of progress is a cancer that makes an elemental community look better, and induces a false euphoria, while it drains the life out of it remorselessly.”

Brilliant, and dead on.
Where would we be without converts?

That all may be one.

Christian Britain?

(My Republican, in the Irish sense, sister would have fits that I used the word Britain, which she says does not exist - it is part of the "Celtish Isles.")
Interesting piece recently, can't remember where, that says the dire "fact" that everyone "knows" about the faith fading away in the UK is based on faulty and agenda-driven reading of statistics.
But now comes this, in the Economist:

Well, "gates of hell" and all that....

How Could That Be an Act of God? It's Not the Way That I Would Have Done It, If I Were God

The oddest blog, from December, from an outlet that bills itself as an "international Catholic weekly newspaper."
The author, a "religious journalist," according to a note in Wiki, is apparently a convert to the Faith, but seemingly not one who buys into all that religious claptrap, that Catholic mumbo-jumbo, that Papist palaver. Not "Catholic" but "Catholish"?

Intercessory prayer?
Whatever for?

One might think it would be better to cut out the middle man or woman

Miracles? But it would be,

a very small God who can be manipulated and used to send signals to the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints, about who is and who is not in heaven.

The Lord still working wonders to increase someones faith, you know, the way He did in the Gospels? Like Mary McCarthy and the election of Nixon, he has his doubts-

Has this miracle helped to persuade a single person who previously doubted it? 

Apparently not anyone he knows, so that's that.
But, not very originally, what it finally gets down to is that whole, existential, why would God do something nice for one measly little person, when He, you know, permits evil?

One only has to think of the millions of desperate prayers for deliverance offered up by the terrified victims of the Nazis, not just by six million murdered Jews but by as many as two million Polish Catholics and others who shared the same ghastly fate. A God who does miracles in answer to prayers just to let us know that Mother Teresa is in heaven, but who leaves all those other prayers unanswered with so much suffering unrelieved, is a very strange God indeed.

So it's not Catholic practice he has a problem with, or Christianity, or even Monotheism - it's belief in a God who intervenes in human existence, period.

It's God.

I can't help him there.

But he seems just about right for the Tablet.

"Culture of Death"? Of Authentic Liberality and Conscienscious Objection

The promoters of the Culture of Life are often mocked for over-reaching when they expound on its opposite number, a purported "culture of death."
Don't be silly, there's no such thing, no right-minded person is pro-death, we just differ on our approach to....
You know the drill.
You've heard the drill.
You've been drilled.
So how is it that "respectable" people are insisting, not just on a right to die, on "euthanasia," and yes, occasionally, hard though some try to disguise the activity, on a right to seek the death and actually compass the death of ones child or parent or patient with or without the victim's consent or even knowledge...
How is it that these fine folks support not just the right to die but the right to force others to be complicit in these murders in violation of consciences?
Oh, those annoying Catholics!
A Belgian death advocate Dr Wim Distelmans bemoans the sad truth that
 “a majority of hospitals and nursing homes in Flanders are still Catholic today. If the right to euthanasia is refused there, that will be a problem.”
Strange, is it not, that conscientious objection has long been a hallmark of what pleases to call itself, "liberal" thinking?
Let's look at a hard case:

Following the fall of France in 1940 Britain remained the only European power at war with the Axis of Germany and Italy. Given that its foes had formidable military might and effective control of almost all of Western Europe the UK faced an existential crisis. Only a narrow channel and a few aeroplanes stood between Britain and invasion.  Faced with this situation the country was militarised and organised to an hitherto unprecedented level. Yet in the midst of all this it remained possible for individual British citizens to register as conscientious objectors and opt out of involvement in the defence of the nation. Thousands indeed did so, most notably perhaps Quakers and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
No tyranny, of course, would tolerate such a category under any circumstances let alone in time of war. In that era however making such provisions was considered to be a key defining category for a liberal democracy. It was one of the things that made them morally superior to dictatorships. Majority rule on its own was insufficient, fascist and communist countries after all claimed that mandate for themselves. Freedom of speech, of the press and of assembly on their own were not enough either. It was necessary also to guarantee that no person would be compelled to act against their own deeply held and well formed conscientious principles except in circumstances more urgent and extreme than an attack by Nazi Germany.
In the light of subsequent events it is noteworthy that it was the Left that spoke out most strongly in support of the rights of CO’s. Dealing with questions about CO’s in broadcasting the Prime Minister Winston Churchill said “the rights which have been granted in this war and the last to conscientious objectors are well-known, and are a definite part of British policy. Anything in the nature of persecution, victimisation, or man-hunting is odious to the British people.”...
Nor was this liberal [note!] opinion confined to the United Kingdom. In 1944 another world leader enunciated the same principle “State absolutism….consists in fact in the false principle that the authority of the state is unlimited and that in face of it… to appeal to a higher law obliging in conscience is not admitted.”...
These liberal principles articulated by Pope Pius XII were applauded by the New York Times “Pope Pius expresses as passionately as any leader on our side the war aims of the struggle for freedom when he says that those who aim at building a new world must fight for free choice of government and religious order. They must refuse that the state should make of individuals a herd of whom the state disposes as if they were a lifeless thing.”
 In the West today, some 70 years later, however liberal voices often demand ‘one law for all.’...The contemporary idea that religion is a purely private matter appears to lead on to the further notion that religious or conscientious beliefs are exactly the same in type or intensity as any other belief about, say, the right colour of socks or whether the Oxford comma should be used.
To me, though, it seems that the opposition to providing opt-outs on the grounds of conscience is based more on a desire to hammer opponents over the head than on any thought through philosophical basis. ... They might argue that expressing sexuality or having an abortion [or committing suicide?] are necessities but having a conscience is a luxury. 

So...
Is it?
Is having a conscience a luxury, Belgium? (Brave Little Belgium, I always say in my head. Should I amend that to Brutal Little Belgium?)

"Sin"

Don't you hate it when hysterics are right? (It's like when hypochondriacs are sick, or professional victims call attention to actual anti-Catholicism.)
Julia can be an hysteric.

(Diana Quick was extraordinary, she didn't act that unactable monologue, she simply was. that. person. That character whom Waugh had tried un- almost successfully to write, she made real the unrealistic words he had given her, she created Julia Flyte Mottram who simply had not existed until her performance.)

He's quite right. They know all about it... All in one word - one little flat word that covers a lifetime. "Living in sin". Not just "doing wrong", as I did when I went to America, doing wrong, knowing it's wrong, stopping doing it, forgetting it. That's not what they mean...
He means just what it says. Living in sin - every hour, every day, year in, year out. It's always the same. It's like an idiot child, carefully nursed, guarded from the world.
"Poor Julia," they say, "She can't go out. She's got to take care of her little sin. It's a pity it ever lived, but it's so strong. Children like that always are. Julia's so good to her little mad sin."
All those years when I was trying to be a good wife, in the cigar smoke, when I was trying to bear his child, torn in pieces by something already dead. Putting him away, forgetting him. Finding you - the past two years with you, all the future with you or without you.
It's a word from so long ago - Nanny Hawkins stitching by the hearth and the nightlight burning before the Sacred Heart.
Me and Cordelia with the Catechism in Mummy's room before luncheon on Sundays.
Mummy carrying my sin with her to church, bowed under it. Mummy dying with my sin, eating her more cruelly than her own deadly illness.
Mummy dying with it.
Christ dying with it nailed hand and foot, high among the crowds and soldiers. No comfort except a sponge of vinegar and the kind words of a thief. Hanging forever, over the bed in the night-nursery. There's no way back - the gate's barred. All the saints and angels posted along the wall. Thrown away, scrapped, rotting down. Nameless and dead. 

And -

How can I tell what I shall do? You know the whole of me. You know I'm not one for a life of mourning. I've always been bad. Probably I'll be bad again - punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy. That is what it would mean, starting a life with you - without Him. One can only see one step ahead.
But I saw today there's one thing unforgivable, like things in the school-room, so bad they're unpunishable, that only Mummy could deal with.
The bad thing I was on the point of doing that I'm not quite bad enough to do - to set up a rival God to God.
It may be because of Mummy, Nanny, Sebastian, Cordelia, perhaps Bridey and Mrs Muspratt - keeping my name in their prayers.
Or it may be a private bargain between me and God.
That if I give up this one thing I want so much, how ever bad I am He won't quite despair of me in the end. Now we shall both be alone. And I shall have no way of making you understand.  
Yes, I've been thinking way too much, or at least too disjointedly, about sin.

But I think the Synod fathers would have made a much better go of it if they had just watched the last two episodes of the grandest, finest mini-series of all time.

The Catholic blogosphere is full of hysterics right now. And some of them, even when they are right, are so hate-filled I am ashamed for them.
And that goes for both Ratzingerites and Kasperites, which division of the Body of Christ doesn't exist, of course, Cdl Marx, sorry to have brought it up!

Eff-Crap

EffCap is the pronunciation of an acronym for what is, essentially, the way every Christian is called upon to react to Liturgy, his duty, when it comes down to it.

F. C. A. P. He must, yes, MUST, try to engage in -F-ull, -C-onscious, and -A-ctive -P-articipation.

None of this needs to be perceptible to anyone but God, it must be said. He does not owe the song leader decibels, nor the celebrant visible attention as indicated by gaze locked upon him.

The "action" is most importantly, interior.

But do not neglect the way one may aid ones fellow in the pew by strong singing when called for, how one can teach children and neophytes in the vicinity by modeling postures and gestures!

Sadly, I have lately had recourse to a newer term and acronym - "EffCrap." The "r" is for "raucous."

Full Conscious Raucous Active Participation? NEVER called for!

But alas, it is ubiquitous.

I always enjoy Colin Mawby's "Vivace" newsletter. If you don't subscribe to the newsletter? so do it already!

Anyway, the latest issue recounts this horror-

In some churches it has become fashionable to applaud the musicians at the conclusion of a service. ... I write as a liturgical musician, but I question whether this is right.
The main purpose of liturgy is the worship of God. ...
One of the problems of the liturgical reforms is that many services have become man-centred rather than God-centred and applause underlines this approach.
Does a congregation ever applaud God or the Word of God? I have never experienced this although I recall a church where after the Consecration the priest called out: “Three cheers for God: hip, hip!”

Can you even?
I can't....

"Messy Church"

 

I. CAN'T. EVEN.

Father Hunwicke has a post about the appointment of an English church. Both IN England, and belonging to the CHURCH of England.

So, English.
Really, really English.

I was recently looking round an Anglican country church ... and I was struck by the oddity of its arrangements. There were two side chapels. The South chapel was decently set out with a veiled aumbry and a white light (albeit electrical). In the argot of old, we would have used the term 'Moderate High Church'. But the matching altar to the North was arranged for ... prayer. There was a large candle on the step before the Altar, its live flame burning brightly; there were the usual accoutrements for prayer: prayer trees, magical stones; there was an educational display which, among other things, told visitors that the bread and wine of the communion service remind Christians of Jesus.
How revealing; that whoever was responsible for such dispositions had no natural inclination to feel that the place for prayer might just possibly be before the Blessed Sacrament Reserved. Faced with two chapels, she invited people to use for prayer the one which did not contain the Reserved Sacrament (let us not on this occasion get into a discussion about what that aumbry really contained). And the notice board revealed that one was invited to attend "Messy Church", which I suspect does not relate to the French Messe or even to the Italian Messa.

Augustine of Canterbury would be so proud.
(I can only say that when I was young and stupid, when I intended to be a Catholic priest, I intended to be very high indeed, Latin processions and Benediction and all, so it doesn't necessarily follow that nonsense follows from allowing women to play at priestly duties - it may well  be that womenpriests follow from nonsesne.)

Let Us Not Forget the Late, Great Henyrk Gorecki, Please!

I'll read the rest later, but in asking if a great composer (James MacMillan,) can help a tone-deaf Church, Damian Thompson says of MacMillan's 4th Symphony,

The Fourth is a masterpiece; perhaps the first great symphony written by anyone since the death of Shostakovich.

To which I reply, WHAAAAAAAAA?
What about,

?
(Maybe I have my dates wrong, Damian.)

Frankincense.... of CRANKincense?

I thought this was a little far-fetched:

Church incense could become illegal [in the United Kingdom] as an “unintended consequence” of the new Psychoactive Substances Bill, which aims to outlaw all forms of “legal highs”. 
The Bill, which will make it a criminal offence to sell “any substance intended for human consumption that is capable of producing a psychoactive effect”, has attracted considerable criticism. One problem, according to Professor Les Iversen, chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, is the inability to prove psychoactivity in a court of law, “which is pretty fundamental to a Bill that seeks to ban psychoactive substances”.
Two ecclesiastical bodies have expressed concern “that use of incense in worship would be an unwitting casualty of the new legislation”. The Association of English Cathedrals said last week “that the term ‘psychoactive substances’ in the Psychoactive Substances Bill can be interpreted so broadly that it risks criminalising the use of incense in cathedrals, churches and other places of worship as, we assume, an unintended consequence of the Bill’s drafting”.

I thought someone was really makin' a stretch, no one, (at least, no one who isn't already stoned,) is gonna claim incense get you high....

But not so, according to no less an authority than Scientific American.

Burning incense has accompanied religious ceremonies since ancient times. Its fragrant presence may be more than symbolic, however—a May 20 study in the FASEB journal suggests that a chemical commonly found in incense may elevate mood.
Raphael Mechoulam of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his col­leagues injected mice with incensole acetate, a component of the resin of the Boswellia plant. This resin, better known as frankincense, is an ingredient in Middle Eastern incense. The chemical reduced anxiety and depressive symptoms in the mice. In the anxiety test, for example, injected animals were less fearful of open spaces as compared with mice that were given a placebo.

And we know that if a law can be interpreted stupidly, it's pretty much guaranteed that it will be.

Which is why, if you are going to make a law, or change a law or tell someone about a law... for pete's sake do it right? word it with some precision?
Not namin' any names, Uncle George....

Parliament Rejects Suicide Bill, Praise God

Even as in our country California is throwing itself into the pit, in the UK, Parliament has handily rejected their "assisted dying" bill.

The vote, which came after almost five hours of impassioned debate on both sides, resulted in 330 against the Bill and 118 in favour, a majority of 212.
The Bill, proposed by Labour MP Rob Marris, was based on Lord Falconer’s Bill which ran out of time in the House of Lords before the general election.
It would have allowed people with fewer than six months to live to be prescribed a lethal dose of drugs; they would have to be capable of taking these themselves. Every case would have had to be approved by two doctors and a High Court judge.
When the issue was last debated in Parliament in 1997 it was rejected by 234 to 89.

Deo gratias

Yes, it does seem possible that it is only a temporary victory, as we, as a society, move closer and closer to, (in this case, quite literally,) embracing death, (giving people poison is always presented by Death's minions as the "loving" thing to do, the kind, the merciful way,) but ethics and morals are in such a state of chaos now, bigger battles will no doubt be fought, and will prove some kind of tipping point before suicide triumphs.

Not saying which way we shall tip....
But for now,

"Hey, Kali, my Son gave me a message for you..."
 

MacMillan's Fourth Symphony

Someone on Twitter had a link to a BBC performance of this, and following I found myself on a page which reminded me that I was, um, in America, and not to listen to the BBC page.

But, James MacMillan's Symphony No. 4 is available on the Tube of You, here.

Excellent, I thought.
I had only ever listened to his sacred and liturgical music before.

But I began to listen with some disappointment, that is not a tonal language I "like," oh, I can't understand that, and certainly not for 2/3 of an hour, what is he trying to do -- and then suddenly it burst into beauty.

Modern yet neo-Romantic, richly orchestrated, surprising...

I certainly don't entirely "get" it on first hearing - which is wonderful!

I intend to listen several more times in the next few days.

Bravo!

You Know Why Know-Nothing, Nativist, Anti-Immigrant Blather is Wrong?

I thought it was the lack of charity, the denial of the principles on which this country was built, but I had it all wrong.
It's plumbing.
Let one immigrant explain it for you. (Don't worry, she is in no danger of being sent back where she came from, or rather, "from whence she came." I don't want to be called out for, you know, dangling.)

A Once Thought Endangered[?] Species, Rising Like the Phoenix

No, nothing to do with poor Cecil.... though it is Cecilian, after a fashion.

I am not a subscriber, but Church Times, (British and Anglican church, that is,) has a piece on the resurgence of plainchant, (the "oldest continuously sung repertoire in Western Europe." Was the qualifier of "Europe" necessary?)  that others may wish to, and have the means to, read.
It is in reference to Christopher Hodkinson reflecting on the publication by the RSCM of a guide to plainchant, and a revision of a work by Dr Mary Berry, .(all bow.. eh, Scott? :oD) whose current successor Mr Hodkinson is (not sure how many others in the years intervening...).
He also had this to say, about a Mass in Barking, (a place name I admit to having always loved) -

There are rare moments in life when we are privileged to see the world not merely as it is, but as it could be.
One such was a rainy Sunday morning a few months ago, when I was able to attend Mass in a parish I hadn’t visited before. By the time Mass began the church was packed full, with close to three hundred people present, including many families with children (fifty of the younger ones went out to the Sunday School during the Liturgy of the Word). A team of about eight boys processed with the priest to the altar, carrying candles and incense.
During the Introit, as at the Offertory and Communion, the small choir chanted the Proper texts of the day in English using Adam Bartlett’s Simple English Propers with light organ accompaniment. The music for the antiphon was provided to the congregation so that they could join in, but there was also time at each of these points to sing good, time-honoured hymns. As Mass continued, the priest sang his words to the tunes in the Roman Missal, and the congregation responded confidently. The Ordinary of the Mass was sung in Latin chant: Mass XI (Orbis factor) rather than the more widely-known Missa de Angelis. The strength of the congregational singing suggested deep familiarity with the Gregorian melodies, and this was demonstrated in stunning fashion at the Alleluia, where the whole congregation joined the choir in singing one of the authentic Gregorian Alleluia tones, complete with its melismatic jubilus.
Considered from an artistic point of view, the Mass demonstrated a pleasing aesthetic unity: a happy marriage of English and Latin chants and with some familiar hymns interspersed. In other words, the music served the liturgy, and was for the most part an integral part of it, so that the aesthetic experience was also a liturgical experience. The essential key to achieving this was the priest singing of his parts: the sung dialogue between priest and congregation impressing silently upon us that music was the medium by which the words of the liturgy became the praise of Almighty God.
Where, you might wonder, was this remarkable parish, this model of good liturgical praxis? This was a typical Sunday at St Mary and St Ethelburga, Barking.
At first sight Barking might seem like an unlikely venue for the scene I have described. The church is a modest brick building constructed in the 1970’s, with pews on three sides of the altar and a leaky roof. The congregation I saw was as diverse as any in the country; people who might be described as ‘White, British’ were certainly a minority, and the parish could hardly be described as wealthy. The choir consisted of a handful of faithful volunteers, led by an organist who helps out playing sacred music on Sunday mornings even though his real métier is jazz piano on Saturday nights. Perhaps the only indisputably excellent feature of the church is its small pipe organ, a chamber instrument with a lovely tone which was donated to the church some years ago.
If you are familiar with English parish life you will already realise—it could hardly be otherwise—that the liturgical achievements of the parish are largely due to the tireless work over many years of the parish priest, Fr William Young. Possessed of few resources and largely self-taught, he has nevertheless achieved a genuine realisation of the spirit of the liturgy in his parish; a celebration that is at once genuinely inclusive, culturally rooted and faithful to the practice of the Church.
If this can be achieved in Barking, it is hard to see why it cannot be achieved everywhere.

Also, word of a workshop

That's What I Am!

I often haven't the faintest idea what Eccles is talking about, what with my ignorance of British politics and my confusion about the various forms of Catholic and Catholish Christians over there, but even when I don't know the players, the scorecard amuses.
I learned a new word:

God-botherer

(He's talking about a pol who isn't "the right sort of Christian. [the right sort] doesn't let his religious beliefs affect his actions in the slightest. You wouldn't catch [said right sort] letting his conscience get in the way of what was politically expedient.")

I am a God botherer.  :oD

A Foxy Fox on Foxes

In the category of There'll Always Be an England, the possibility of a repeal of a ban on fox-hunting is getting people hot under the... you know, so many people wear collarless shirts even when "dressed up," I don't know how that phrase should end.

But Inspector Hathaway doesn't like the creatures.

When Mr S caught up with Laurence Fox at the Spectator summer party, the Lewis actor – who used to go hunting in his youth when it was legal – had little time for his namesakes:

‘I love the Countryside Alliance. Anyone who has had chickens loves fox hunting. I mean I had chickens, I don’t like foxes.’

"Luvvie"

Those Interwebs are good for expanding ones vocabulary.
Thanks to the Catholic Herald, I have now looked into the meaning of "luvvie," and it seems about right.

A piece by Madeleine Teahan, (I adore British names, don't you? even real ones sound as as if they could be Dickensian, or Byatt-esque,) explores why celebrity actors are all on board with everyone going Young Werther, or Lupe Velez:

the luvvie attraction to assisted suicide goes much deeper than a mere yearning for control. Explaining his support for the practice, [someone of whom I'm afraid I have never heard] said: “The issue is not really of death but of how you live out that last chapter, those last sentences.” Luvvies, you see, regard death as the final scene in their personal drama, and that is why they take their departure extremely seriously.