England has been watered with the blood of martyrs - it now seems that this will continue

May 4th is the Feast of the English Martyrs, commemorating the 324 English Catholics executed under Protestant rule and later beatified, and in many cases canonised. 

They include St John Payne. 

Just after I went down from the University I smelt incense in the priest hole in Ingatestone Hall where he was arrested. 

I am bitterly sorry that it took many wasted years and several mystical experiences before I became a Christian and Catholic.

On my second visit to Ingatestone Hall many years later the old Lord Petre, a bachelor, had died. I met the new one and told him the story. 'Oh you smelt it too, did you?' he said with the broad smile of a man who was at ease in Zion.

It is worth reading the saint's life and those of the other martyrs.

Evelyn Waugh wrote the life of St Edmund Campion, describing the saint being hanged, drawn and quartered and making the observation that the Church of England in those days had some way to go before it became the institution portrayed in Anthony Trollope's novels.

'REVEALED: How the People's Pope shielded sexual predators in the clergy – including one priest accused of violently raping nuns'

'Truth must prevail over false piety, especially when a conclave looms. And the cold, hard truth is that in governance no less than on matters of doctrine, Francis’s pontificate was, in Cardinal Pell’s words, “a disaster in many or most respects; a catastrophe”.' Edward Fese, an American Catholic philosopher.

This article puts in one place the four biggest stories Damian Thompson has been writing about for years about how the late Pope protected sex offenders and crooks in the clergy including in the College of Cardinals - the Mail should have published it while Francis was alive. There are many, many more stories too, though with less evidence. Francis was a bad pope and a very strange man indeed. These four scandals are only 'exposed by Damian Thompson in the sense that the world media has preferred to write well of Francis, seeing him a sleft-wing and progressive. Had Benedict XVI behaved like Francis he would have lived in the centre of a hurricane of media outrage.

Blasphemy

1989 was a turning point for many reasons and not just in Eastern Europe. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, condemned Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and demanded that the government expand the Blasphemy Act to cover other religions, including Islam. But was it blasphemous even from a Muslim point of view? Reza Aslan , the Iranian-born American Muslim writer, thinks the passages about the satanic verses 'are perfectly in line' with many traditional commentators on the Koran.

“I had an argument with Prince Charles at a small dinner party. He said—very typically, it seems to me—‘I’m sorry, but if someone insults someone else’s deepest convictions, well then,’ blah blah blah . . ." Martin Amis

Auberon Waugh, whom I thought a great bore in print (charming in real life), constantly repeated that the British Council in Rawalpindi was burnt down because in an article in which he had said that a sort of baggy khaki trousers worn by some Muslim men were known by British soldiers as 'Allah catchers'. Before 1989 that story didn't seem memorable but did seem slightly amusing. Waugh got fired by the Times for that.

Quotations

"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." Jonathan Swift

"I was recently informed by someone close to the subject that about half of all post-graduate science students at British universities are now Chinese. This is not necessarily a bad thing

Saint Anselm's Roman Catholic Church, Pembury, Kent published this on Facebook

The mainstream media is often poor these days. It is found peddling narratives (to skew our vision) over carefully researched fact. Just look at the reporting of Francis death. Then look at these photos.

 
Media narrative: ever so ‘umble Pope Francis moved out of sumptuous old fashioned Vatican apartments to have a simple bedroom.
Truth: it was costly and difficult for the Vatican to accommodate his maverick call to live in a hotel. Meanwhile the rooms were barely different:

Hilaire Belloc never lets you down

"The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine, but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight."

Pope Francis

"That was a tough 12 years, not gonna lie."
Fred Simon

Francis asked a boy praying with his hands together “Are your hands bound together?” After he left, the boy went back to praying as before. 

“The first 10 years of Pope Francis's pontificate are one of the darkest chapters in the history of the post-Reformation Catholic Church.” Damian Thompson, former editor of the Catholic Herald, March 13, 2023

Pope Francis changed everything, even if he changed very little

'There is not, and there never was on this earth, a work of human policy so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church. The history of that Church joins together the two great ages of human civilisation. No other institution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable.'

Lord Macaulay's words are the best thing that wonderful writer even penned. His Protestant Whig soul was inspired.

But John Kenneth Galbraith told Gary Wills in 1972 "Of all the changes I have seen in my lifetime , the greatest by far is the one in your church .” Growing up after the Second Vatican Council the Catholic Church (in England) did not feel old at all. It felt a creation of the early 1960s.

And this had a huge impact on the world in every way, far beyond religion. For many centuries, perhaps since the Roman Empire, the Church represented the pole of conservatism and tradition. Suddenly it became innovative, liberal, democratic and radical. This more than anything else launched the 1960s cultural revolution which has led to feminism, political correctness, woke, the world we inhabit.

Pope Francis, even though he cunningly played with the liberals, gave the impression he was remodelling the Church again like a one man Third Vatican Council. This has had a vast effect.

Only the Catholic Church....

 

Mr. Ashenden resigned as Chaplain to the late Queen and became a Catholic after a Muslim was invited to recite from the Koran that Jesus is not the Son of God in Glasgow's Episcopal Cathedral. He now writes for the Catholic Herald.  

A simple fact

'Jesus didn’t write a book. He founded a Church.

'The Bible came from the Church, not the other way around.

'To accept Scripture and reject the Church is to forget who preserved, discerned, and canonised the Word.-

Patrick Coffin

How many very tedious and uninformed discussions would be avoided if everyone accepted this obvious historical fact. Educated Protestants do.

Journalist Gideon Levy is the noblest Israeli

Two very admirable things Pope Francis did were to call for peace in Ukraine and Gaza.

Saying Russia was not entirely to blame for the Ukrainian war and calling the Israeli actions genocide were very unpopular in the Western media, unlike most things he said which non-Catholic journalists loved. 

He called up the people in a Catholic church in the Gaza strip each day. 

Thinking about his outspoken condemnation of Israel I feel like quoting Gideon Levy quoting Daniel Blatmann, in an article in the English edition of Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz three days ago.)

Francis glowered a lot

A number of people have praised Pope Francis's smiling face. This surprised me. I remember him scowling a lot. Some people said they disliked the look of him when he first walked out on the balcony after his election. I too had a had feeling about him then. Blogger Steve Skopje who has since lost faith wrote recently:

"When I decided to start my little revolutionary publication, OnePeterFive, it stemmed from the strong, inexplicable sense I had, when I first laid eyes on Bergoglio as he emerged as Pope Francis, that there was something deeply evil at work. It was a powerful, preternatural experience, one I later learned was shared by a number of people around the world — enough to make it more than a coincidence. Too few to be sure what it meant."

He was an angry man who on one occasion slapped a member of the public. He swore a lot too, but he also prayed for hours a day and had a great devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

He is about to be buried in one of my favourite churches where others popes are buried including a much greater man, Pope St. Pius V who created the coaltion which led to the defeat of the Mahometan fleet at Lepanto which saved Christendom. Francis told us that Christendom no longer exists.



He said that the Church should not add burdens to people but burdened Catholics by telling them to share his views on climate change, economics, immigration and capital punishment on top of all the almost innumerable other doctrines we have to believe. In fact the Pope is not infallible on climatology or politics but Catholics do not realise that they are not bound to assent to all his thoughts.

Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it: a beautiful funeral for a miserable sinner

Why is Biden who favours partial birth abortion and gender reassignment at the late Pope's funeral? 

Why wasn't he excommunicated, come to that? I believe Pope Benedict XVI ordered this but Cardinal McCarrick, as he then was, didn't pass on the order.

Editorial in Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz this morning is headlined: 'Don't Look Away: Israel's Annexation of the West Bank Is Already Here'

From the editorial:

At a time when the Israeli right has adopted the "Trump vision" of transferring two million Gazans for the sake of creating an American Riviera and the Israel Defense Forces is preparing the ground there for a supposedly temporary extended stay on which the infrastructure of renewed settlement is being established, annexation of the West Bank is no longer moving at a snail's pace. It has risen to its feet and is proceeding apace.

The annexation is already here. By the time it is formally declared, it will already be too late to stop it – the process will have been completed.

That is the modus operandi of the settlers and the government – to do everything short of a formal declaration, knowing that no one is paying attention and that no one really cares.


From inside pages:


Sources in Washington say that the White House is not pressuring Netanyahu to end the war – in part because it does not want to jeopardize his coalition.




Einav Zangauker, mother of hostage Matan, said she was told by "senior officials" that Netanyahu is trying to secure a partial deal that would mean her son remaining in captivity as "personal revenge" for her criticism of the PM.

Quotations

Sexual desire, when reciprocal, gives life to a conspiracy of two people against the rest of the conspiracies going on in the universe.
It's a conspiracy of two.
The plan is to offer the other a chance to breathe amidst the pain in the world.
John Berger, "My beautiful"
(Translated Milton Fernandez)


Describing Israel’s military campaign in November 2023, Pope Francis said, “this is not war, this is terrorism”, which led the editor of the Jerusalem Post to accuse him of “unconditional support for Hamas”.


"Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can't help but think that, before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East." Father John Sheehan an American Jesuit, June 5 2002

“Rivers do not drink their own water; trees do not eat their own fruit; the sun does not shine on itself and flowers do not spread their fragrance for themselves. Living for others is a rule of nature. We are all born to help each other. No matter how difficult it is…life is good when you are happy; but much better when others are happy because of you.” The Upanishads. Misattributed to Pope Francis.

The new British Foreign Secretary

 

David Lammy is now British Foreign Secretary but no cleverer, despite studying at Harvard Law School. When he was on the BBC's quiz programme 'Celebrity Mastermind' he said Marie Antoinette won the Nobel Prize for physics, Henry VII became king when Henry VIII died and Red Leicester is the blue cheese that accompanies port. It is the Henry VII answer that disturbs me most.

Previous Foreign Secretaries included Castlereagh, Canning, Salisbury, Curzon .....

The legacy of Pope Francis

I was told by a well-known English priest long ago not to let Francis rent space in my head and I prefer to think about Benedict XVI.

For a long time I ignored papal news, but it became impossible.

I remember the deal with the Chinese Communists allowing them to appoint bishops, the arrest of Cardinal Zen by the Chinese Communists and the silence with which the Vatican greeted the news, the protection of a series of priestly sex criminals and embezzlers.

The suppression of the Tridentine Mass broke Benedict XVI's heart and those of many other people. 

It was cruel. Pope Francis was, by all accounts, ruthless and, I suspect, sometimes vindictive.

His personal austerity was fine but I wish it had been a private thing. As Archbishop of Buenos Aires he travelled by bus, often with a journalist present. 

The papal apartments that he did not use needed to be cleaned and kept in order, while he took the room at a hostel where another priest could have lived.

At a time when Europe was being invaded by infidel economic migrants he urged governments to accept more, though in practice almost all who got here were allowed to stay. Pope St Pius V who organised the Catholic alliance which defeated the Turk at Lepanto was made of different stuff

Former Archbishop Vigano, whom Francis excommunicated, says he told Francis about McCarrick's crimes to no result. He said today, "His soul has not disappeared. He will have to account for the crimes he has committed." "Crimes" may be harsh and Vigano is a bit crazy now but, as Francis memorably said, who am I to judge?

Not all priests or popes, unfortunately, have been especially nice men. May God have mercy on Francis's soul.

The Pope has died

I prayed yesterday for the Pope's abdication and a good successor. Now we learn of his death.

I am certainly not happy he has died, but certainly not sad. 

The best Pope in many centuries was followed by the least gifted.

Pope Francis died two weeks after former Cardinal Theodore "Uncle Ted" McCarrick who was credibly accused of sexual offences going back to the 1980s. 

Pope Francis was his protégé and that of the group of cardinals who called themselves 'the St Galen Mafia'. They got Francis elected. Francis then cancelled the restrictions that Pope Benedict XVI had placed on McCarrick. 

In a talk at Villanova University in Philadelphia six months after Pope Francis's election, Mr McCarrick said:

“Before the Conclave, nobody thought that there was a chance for Bergoglio”

"A very interesting and influential Italian gentleman” [asked me], ‘What about Bergoglio?’

"And I was surprised at the question.

"I said, ‘What about him?’

"He said, ‘Does he have a chance?’

"I said, ‘I don't think so, because no one has mentioned his name. He hasn't been in anyone's mind. I don't think it’s on anybody's mind to vote for him.”

"He said, ‘He could do it, you know.’

"I said, ‘What could he do?’

"He said, ‘He could reform the Church. If we gave him five years, he could put us back on target.’

"I said, ‘But, he’s 76.’

"He said, ‘Yeah, five years. If we had five years, the Lord working through Bergoglio in five years could make the Church over again.’

"I said, ‘That’s an interesting thing.’

"He said, ‘I know you’re his friend.’

"I said, ‘I hope I am.’

"He said, ‘Talk him up.’

"I said, ‘Well, we'll see what happens. This is God’s work.’

"That was the first that I heard that there were people who thought Bergoglio would be a possibility in this election."

Mr. McCarrick continued: 

“[Francis] has an understanding of human nature, an understanding that, though he says some things that maybe would surprise us, but the interesting thing is that if you examine what he is saying, it is what the Church has said all the time. Maybe not what the canonists have said all the time, or what different theologians have said all the time. But the teaching of the Church all the time is the teaching of Pope Francis.”

And:

“If he has two years, he will have changed the papacy. The longer he is in, the more I think it is likely that we could say that he has changed the papacy".

Quotations

"If you're going to do a thing, you should do it thoroughly. If you're going to be a Christian, you may as well be a Catholic." 

Muriel Spark, a Jewish convert to Catholicism

For if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time."

Thomas De Quincey, "A Second Paper on Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts" (1839)

"He died in exile: as with all men, it was his lot to live in bad times." 

Jorge Luis Borges 

Oriental wisdom

British parliamentary procedure, insurance systems, steam power, and public education were all described in considerable detail in Chinese texts of the 1830s. Yet despite this, major misconceptions endured. Many still believed British land warfare capabilities were weak, and that tea embargoes would collapse the British economy. Yan Sizong declared: Once the barbarians fail to obtain tea and rhubarb, they will fall into illness… Their whole nation can hardly survive.

Britain through Chinese Eyes: Anglo-Chinese Relations before the First Opium War Sebastian Yang

Christ is risen!

The Resurrection of Christ, Piero della Francesca

The Jesus Seminar, a group of liberal, publicity hungry New Testament scholars who were very fashionable in the USA around the turn of the century, disbelieved most of the Gospels, thought Jesus never claimed to be the Son of God and his corpse was probably thrown into a shallow dirt grave, where it rotted away or was eaten by wild dogs. 

In fact few non-Christian historians doubt the crucifixion happened (the contemporary Jewish historian Josephus records it) and that something happened very shortly afterwards to create a movement which swept the civilised world. 

The non-Christian New Testament scholar Gerd Lüdemann said ‘It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’ death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.’ 

The Resurrection, Sir Edward Burne-Jones (All Hallows Church, Allerton)

These experiences were also enough to lead Peter and Paul to suffer death rather than renounce their faith that Jesus had risen from the tomb and was the Son of God. Their martyrdom under Nero is not questioned by any historian, as far as I ever heard. Peter is said to have been crucified upside down at his request because he did not believe himself worthy of the same death as Jesus, but this seems to be a legend.

The resurrection is the most significant thing in the history of not only the West but the world, whether or not you believe it happened.

Talleyrand met a young man at a party who asked him for his advice about how to start a new religion. The renegade bishop turned pagan replied, 'First die and on the third day come again'. 

Mark Liberman gives advice on begging the question, an expression almost always used 'wrongly'

Should we join the herd and use "beg the question" to mean "raise the question"? Or should we join the few, proud hold-outs who still use it in the old "assume the conclusion" sense, while complaining about the ignorant rabble who etc.?

In my opinion, those are both bad choices. If you use the phrase to mean "raise the question", some pedants will silently dismiss you as a dunce, while others will complain loudly, thus distracting everyone else from whatever you wanted to say. If you complain about others' "misuse", you come across as an annoying pedant. And if you use the phrase to mean "assume the conclusion", almost no one will understand you.

My recommendation: Never use the phrase yourself — use "assume the conclusion" or "raise the question", depending on what you mean — and cultivate an attitude of serene detachment in the face of its use by others.

Mr Liberman's full note on this point is here. 

I read it two or three times over the years when, as just happened, somebody 'misuses' the phrase, to remind myself what the row is about. That might mean I am a pedant, which I am, but one who dislikes the sort of (false) pedantry that objects to, for example, England being used when United Kingdom is meant or 'his' to mean 'his or her'.

Serene detachment is a good policy when it comes to grammatical errors and towards people who hold political views you strongly dislike.

I am not setene, however, about using decimate to mean reduce to one tenth (it means reduce by one tenth). I dislike split infinitives and very, very much dislike 'presently' used to mean 'at present'. 

Yet these solecisms also have a very long pedigree. 

I suppose I need to be Zen.

One thing I shall not be serene about. Conduit has two syllables and rhymes with pundit.