Fr Hart, an American “Thomas Mann”?

Posted on Thursday, 25 July, 2019 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

In days gone by I had some quite serious differences with Fr Robert Hart, mainly because I defended my former Archbishop (John Hepworth) and what he was trying to do, namely bring the TAC into communion with Rome as a kind of “uniate church” using Anglican liturgical forms. Fr Hart was extremely critical of Archbishop Hepworth and of all who continued to be loyal to him. I believe in loyalty – as long as the person and the cause are just. Finally, what happened happened. The Ordinariates as established by Pope Benedict XVI were based on Forward in Faith bishops who had been in dialogue with Rome since the 1990’s. Some TAC clergy applying to Rome or their local Ordinaries were selected according to normal canonical principles and joined the Ordinariates. It has become a world apart.

Archbishop Hepworth dropped off the edge of the earth, figuratively-speaking. He has been seen recently at the church of St Mary of the Angels in Hollywood and St Agatha’s, Portsmouth. Someone I know said that some think of him as the great pioneer of the Ordinariates and that he was prepared to be some kind of “martyr” by throwing away his priestly vocation. At the same time, he still styles himself as an Anglican archbishop. So, I will let the reader judge for himself.

I joined (or re-joined) the ACC in 2013, and Fr Hart and I are fellow priests in full communion. The cause of the previous difference has ceased, and I have had to recognise that my loyalty went beyond a reasonable point. I believe in a priest’s loyalty to his Bishop, but this relationship is ordered to its finis operis – the good of the Church and the raison d’être of both priest and bishop. Fr Hart is more Prayer Book and 39 Articles than I am. My own sympathies are known, but they are not counter-Reformation Roman Catholic either. Fr Hart suffered from the polemics, as I did. Both he and I have moved on. I admire his assiduity as a parish priest and his plain-speaking sermons. He continues to post these sermons to The Continuum, and also writes his own reflections.

I would like to draw your attention to Kittels and Quislings. As an amateur of C.S. Lewis, Fr Hart loves playing with the English language and showing the need to say what we mean and mean what we say. Fr Hart is an American, and lives in that country where too many Christians would like to take the route of having the State act as a civil arm to enforce the Church’s moral principles.

At this very moment of history we are witnessing something that distinguishes people of conscience from the common herd.

I have the impression of reading Thomas Mann facing the rise of Nazism in the 1930’s or Rob Riemen right now in his books that I have already mentioned in this blog: Nobility of Spirit and To Fight Against this Age. The one unique thing about Christ, as expressed in the Canonical and the Gnostic Gospels, is that compassion for the weak is the true mark of our valour, not the capacity to dominate the weak and make the most money from them. Yes, indeed, I see a photo of a baby born without a brain and somehow is alive, but totally disabled and dependent. A part of me would euthanise the child and a part of me would heed the implicit teachings of Christ and see the child as a human being and whose life is sacred. What about the child’s mother? I am left sad, confused and even angry that such things happen to some people. To write what he has written, Fr Hart is a Christian humanist, and it is a great reassurance to read his reflections.

Now, we English and Americans share the predicament of our new Prime Minister, and their President, both men with messy blond hair – and with similar populist views. I am not going to return to political polemics in this blog, but I will not hide my concern.

If you are overly loyal to a political party or to a candidate eventually you will find yourself arguing to defend injustice and atrocity.

Never was a truer word said. I am as afraid of what populism can become, its potential for developing into a monster. Read Thomas Mann and his heart-rending words in the face of the beast! Riemen describes the way a journalist of Russian origin, Leone Ginzburg, is interrogated and tortured to death by the Gestapo during World War II. The words put in the mouth of the torturer are reminiscent to those of Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor. The Beast has indeed been with us for a very long time. Just a few quotes:

You are so high-minded where your beloved truth is concerned and, yet you do not countenance authority. Why this absolute need for freedom and democracy? Why? I do not understand that.

What if Columbus or Copernicus had put the discovery of America or the turning of the earth to the vote?’ Well, any comment? And Plato, our divine Plato, was he not prophetic when he predicted that all democracy would end in tyranny? People cannot handle freedom; it makes their lives too difficult. When it comes to this, Dostoyevsky, in his books, merely copied Plato. Didn’t it all come true? Did you see how millions cheered for our great leaders, precisely as the immortal Grand Inquisitor described it? Give the people freedom and it will lead to rampant misconduct. This will be followed by more clamoring for ‘values and norms,’ and the very next leader who is nominally gifted in the art of rhetoric will be idolized again. You yourself have seen it happen. What makes you think things will ever change?

“Why do you despise Fascism? Is your democracy really that much better? Will its leaders be any better than those of our Fascist Utopia? I’m not stupid: we’re going to lose this war. Another year, maybe two, but then this adventure is over. I have no problem with that. Our ideas will remain, people will learn from what we know. Mark my words: ‘democracy will be restored across the globe’ with a great sense of drama. And then what? We are the ones who invented the power of propaganda, of images, and the intoxication that comes from being part of the masses. We are the ones who have understood that people are more interested in appearance than in substance. Do you really think that even one political party could survive if it were able to ignore this truth? Do you really think that a politician who wants no part of this can still be successful? Pretty pictures and rhetoric—that, my friend, is our legacy, and no one will escape it.

“What I truly don’t understand is how you can possibly think that democracy and your culture can coexist. The masses are not interested, because their heads want no questions and their bellies want to be fed. Politicians are not interested, for their power depends on the stupidity of the masses. And the truly powerful, those who have the money, are not interested, because culture costs money. Have you ever been in America? I have—nice people, nice people, but no culture. Believe me, fifty years after the restoration of democracy across the globe, culture will be banned. Commerce and money will reign supreme, and unless something is market oriented, democratic, and efficient, it won’t exist. Your publishing house, your books, and your journal will be the first victims. And there, where books can still be found, they won’t be read. Everything will have to be new, sexy, and appealing. That’s what sells, that’s what people want. Would you please just admit that democracy and culture cannot coexist? It was predictable, it was tried anyway, and it failed. So be it.

The tormenting thing is that the Gestapo torturer with blood on his hands offers a tempting message with which we can sympathise, at least on the surface. That is our attachment to high culture that can only come from an elite. But the price is high, astronomic – human life and the dignity of the person. We have to read the small print at the bottom of the page.

Perhaps Donald Trump and Boris Johnson are not fascists. I could venture to surmise that the Fascists and Nazis had an ideology, but these two men have none – other than money and their personal interests. Powers of the darkness of this world? Then our weapons can only be spiritual, and this is why I have ceased to commit this blog to any political cause. We have to rely on the power of prayer, but we still have minds to analyse and understand the dangers and sophistry of the same old arguments that try to return and seduce us.

Sobrii estote et vigilate: quia adversarius vester diabolus, tamquam leo rugiens, circuit quærens quem devoret: cui resistite fortes in fide.

* * *

Just to add an idea or two since I wrote this little article, we tend to get worked up seeing one side of a dialectic or binary situation. This is how politics works. One thing I have noticed since the 2016 referendum is the absence of discussion of previous burning issues like Islamic terrorism. Has it gone away? What happened to Al Qaida and ISIS? Lone killers driving their vehicles into groups of people? Mass immigration of refugees from war-torn Islamic countries and economic migrants from Africa? The “replacement theory” according to which our European culture would be replaced by an Islamic theocracy?

I see nothing good in national populism and the simplistic ideas blaming single issues for the evils of the world. The opposite tendency is something else we bewail, the various kinds of political correctness we sometimes attribute to cultural Marxism or the Frankfurt School “critical theory”. The truth is that we all find something appealing in both “sides” representing a single authoritarian and collectivist ideology. We seem to be living amidst oscillations of history between the consequences of World War I, the grinding poverty of the Depression, the rise of fascism (in its broadest meaning) in Germany, Italy, Spain and to a lesser extent in France and England, the defeat of totalitarianism and the Trente Glorieuses, the disillusionment of the 1970’s and the Thatcher era, and so forth. It represents the thesis and antithesis theory of Hegel. It represents the movement of history to which we in this present life are subject. We can only fight it within ourselves.

I have the impression, that, if anything, the present absurd situation in England will shake up many certitudes and people who feel entitled. Nothing can be understood literally, since Johnson lies like he breathes. Isn’t that what politicians do, like chickens laying eggs? There is something underneath. For me, the essential message is to be independent from the obnoxious politics of both right and left – and to learn to be free.

I finish by quoting the Epilogue of Rob Riemen’s Nobilty of Spirit:

Epilogue

And what about us? Are we still searching for the nobility of spirit?

Don’t look for it in the world of the media, the world of politics, the world of noise. The spirit was never there. Don’t go to academia. They have expelled the spirit. And the churches? There is a reason they sound hollow. The world of fame? There we would go astray.

In an old European city, the poet, ninety years old and shackled to his bed but with a mind that is still clear, hears that his dearest woman friend has died. Czeslaw Milosz writes:

What did I learn from Jeanne Hersch?

1. That reason is a great gift from God and one should trust in its capacity to know the world.

2. That they were mistaken who undermined confidence in reason by enumerating its determinants: the class struggle, libido, the will to power.

3. That we should be aware of being imprisoned in our perceptions but should not therefore reduce reality to dreams, illusions, produced by mind.

4. That truthfulness is a proof of freedom and falsehood is typical slavery.

5. That the appropriate attitude in the face of existence is reverence, and this is why one should avoid the company of those who debase it through sarcasm and who praise nothingness.

6. That—even if this shall lead to an accusation of arrogance—intellectual life governs itself by the rule of a strict hierarchy.

7. That the addiction of the twentieth-century intellectuals is le baratin—chatter devoid of responsibility.

8. That in the hierarchy of human activities art shall be placed higher than philosophy but that a bad philosophy can corrupt art.

9. That there is objective truth; out of two conflicting statements one is true, the other false, except in the cases when contradiction is legitimate.

10. That independently of the fate of natural religions one should conserve a “philosophical faith,” e.g., the belief in transcendence as an important ingredient of our humanity.

11. That time condemns to oblivion only these works of our hands and minds that do not help—century after century—to build up the great house of civilization.

12. That in our own lives we should not despair because of errors and sins; the past is not closed, it receives meaning from our present actions. (Translated by Adam Zagajcwski)

For us this is a didactic poem, a paean to the nobility of spirit. An eccentric woman. She would never be queen. She was a true philosopher.

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Farnborough Abbey

Posted on Monday, 22 July, 2019 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

During my recent visit to England (for my Diocesan Council of Advice in London), I visited a friend of mine who is a medical doctor and a philosopher. I spent many hours discussing profound things, but also meeting his wife and friends with their own young children. I was surrounded by children – quite an experience – with all the characteristics of beings discovering their world so vividly. One of those children is a baby who needed to be baptised. Timothy and I were invited to the christening at Farnborough Abbey.

Sunday Mass was celebrated in the 1962 Roman Rite with some modifications allowed for monastic communities, with which I was familiar in abbeys like Fontgombault and Triors. Farnborough is a very small community, but yet has a mitred abbot. Information about the community and its fascinating history can be found at Farnborough Abbey. I was most intrigued about the use of the organ, a fine Cavaillé-Coll instrument played by an equally fine lay organist. It was a time of prayer, memories of my Roman Catholic days and a totally different perspective through bitter-sweet experience. The Mass, attended by about ten very serious lay faithful and the families of mixed origin (Italian, Polish, etc.) and the children, was followed by the very simple baptism. Being a monastic and not a parish church, there is no font, so the baby Bernardo was baptised using a copper basin on a table.

We went outside to the green facing the church, where there were the customary photographs. I was wearing my cassock and old style cravat with my hair tied back. The Abbot came up to me and asked who I was. I gave him my name, and he repeated it with surprise and almost veneration. I detected no cynicism or sarcasm. The monks of Farnborough read this blog and have appreciated my article about the liturgy and certain other subjects. The Abbot, a plain-speaking man from Durham, said a number of things – like for example that he could write my obituary in most glowing terms. To which I replied that I would have to “fall off my perch” first! It was a moving experience to be treated as a famous celebrity by this Abbot. I was also plain about my experience in Triors and knowing that monastic silence promotes knowing about everything and listening to every conceivable bit of gossip. Silence heightens the senses and our wonder about things that most people don’t notice. To this day, I can stare at a single leaf on a tree and contemplate it for several minutes!

He was probably quite taken aback by my being as Northern as he and also plain talking. Many idealise the monastic life, but I am so aware of its humanity and the way grace works with the human condition here and now, without ambition or standing above the communion of the community. Ora et labora: the monastic life is divided between the long hours of singing the Office and doing mundane tasks like maintaining the buildings and grounds or in some craft – or study when it wouldn’t cause pride.

It was a profoundly touching experience for me, that will encourage me to put more renewed work into this blog for the sake of Christian education. There is something in common between a lone priest at his computer and the monastic community that generates prayer and divine grace. It was also for me a kick up the backside to return to the Parable of the Talents and consider my priesthood and my vocation to Christian education. I have been through a hard year “of discernment”. This meeting with a wise and experienced abbot was a sign to me, even though I no longer belong to his institutional Church. Even there, he was most sensitive and did not attempt to get me “back into the fold”, knowing that such would be my spiritual and vocational death.

A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory.

I thank God for such men of discernment, of good northern English plainness, a shot in the arm of grace and joy. I returned to Dover and France elated, driving through the Surrey hills to the smells of honeysuckle and the flowers in the gardens. This is surely a foretaste of heaven in these summer days.

Gratias tibi agimus, propter magnam gloriam tuam!

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Elitism

Posted on Sunday, 7 July, 2019 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Many of us have mixed feelings about elitism, whether it is the Aristocracy, very rich people or associations of people manipulating the world, if we believe in the various conspiracy theories. Like in the late eighteenth century, should not these privileged few be killed or stripped of what they have so that everyone can be equal?

Egalitarianism is clearly an illusion. Some people can run faster than others, have greater intellectual capacities, be able to make things with their hands that many intellectuals cannot do. A doctor or a company director will be paid better than a factory worker, and will be able to live in a nicer home and enjoy what money can buy. When the inequalities go beyond a certain point, we have the Parable of Dives and Lazarus. The rich who become richer at the expense of the poor and disadvantaged will pay a high price. Elitism also describes the nobility of spirit of those who have a finer understanding of life than materialists or those who live only for pleasure and sensations.

Any defined group of persons is elite from its very nature. The Church is an elite, and the clergy and monastics even much more so. Having skills and experience makes us into an elite. Good garage mechanics and carpenters are an elite by being able to do things most of us are not trained to do. It is the same for those who play a musical instrument, read music or speak a foreign language. The problem enters the picture when elites think that their qualities entitle them to dominate society. I have often grappled with this notion, educated as I was in an English public school where the ethos is turned to excellence and competition. Winner takes all! Privilege comes with responsibility and concern for others. The rich Oxford and Bullingdon Club student who burns a £50 banknote in front of a homeless person deserves the harshest punishment.

I am not trained in sociology, but I see elitism as extremely diverse. In society, it tends to be a matter of high birth, money, initiation in various “I’ll scratch your back and you will scratch mine” societies. An elite society is closed and difficult to join, often maintaining its mystical aura with secrecy. We can see where things are going with the clergy of various mainstream Churches, the lack of accountability and concern for “ordinary” people. Apart from aristocratic (etymologically from the Greek “rule by the best”) birth, elites will form themselves from groups of people who have something in common and are good at it. We all like privileges, being a cut above the average. We are either born into it, are given it or earn it by personal achievement.

The big question is knowing whether the world can be changed for the better by elites and people of merit, or by majorities who vote the elites into power. That is a problem of politics, and I have no pretence of having an answer. I am not concerned with political elitism, the aristocracy or those who are stinking rich. What seems particularly unjust is when elites exist for their own sake and make a special point of excluding new entries into the elite. The big problem with egalitarianism is knowing where the line is between limiting the selfishness of the elite and discouraging talent, commitment, hard work, merit, achievement.

Elitism vs populism has always been an issue in history. There has always been competition to be the best, and there has always been the notion of merit without being concerned about being better than others. Some days ago, I read an illuminating article about four stages of human development: mimicry, self-discovery, commitment and legacy. Most people remain in the first stage, worried about following fashions and what the neighbours think about X or Y. A few begin to seek to discover themselves rather than imitate others. Commitment is about acting on your discovery of your true vocation and purpose in life, leading to building something you leave to the world when you die, something you will be remembered by. The article is worth reading with a critical mind.

I have written before on the nobility of spirit and aristocracy of spirit a notion so beautifully described by the contemporary Dutch writer Rob Riemen, Nikolai Beryaev and the ancient philosophers. I seem to belong to elites – the priesthood of the Church, a fairly privileged family, an education, owning a house, and so forth – but I do believe we have have the responsibility to share. We are not called to give to the poor person in such a way as he becomes what I was and I become what he was. St Martin gave half his cloak, because he still needed something to keep him warm. We are called to help others to find opportunities to read, study, discover – and be elevated from their previous narrowness and disadvantage.

One of the finest aspects of Plato’s work is the notion of the Philosopher King in The Republic. The word philo-sophia means love of wisdom coupled with intelligence, a desire to serve and wanting to embrace a simple life. These rulers run the utopian city of Kallipolis. The Philosopher King loves knowledge, but not merely education. He has access to Ideas that lie beyond forms and manifestations, sees the being and not merely the appearance.

Have Philosopher Kings existed in reality? Plato had a friend called Archytas who ruled Tarentum in what is now Italy. Dion of Syracuse was a disciple of Plato. He wanted to establish an aristocracy of wisdom, but met a sticky end. In the Roman Empire, mostly undistinguished for humanity and wisdom, Marcus Aurelius is remembered for his Stoical literature describing his devotion to service and duty. As a political notion, the notion of the philosopher king is open to the whims of human nature and abuse by those who are less than wise.

Some of us belong to elites and have received privileges. However, we should not live to achieve power and status, but rather to seek to serve wisely. That is the very idea expressed by Christ: “For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many“. True elitism is the wise use of our talents, true stewardship and our responsibility for the world and people around us, in whatever way is possible for each of us.

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Church of Hope

Posted on Thursday, 4 July, 2019 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Just this morning, I came across the blog of Adam DeVille, an Eastern Rite Catholic intellectual who is trying to grapple with the various problems with bishops, priests, sexual abuse and something for which there seems to be no solution or hope.

I have ordered his book Everything Hidden Shall Be Revealed: Ridding the Church of Abuses of Sex and Power. Its price won’t break the bank and I am willing to approach the subject with an open mind. This morning, as over a period of years longer than I can remember, I mulled over the problems of clericalism, authority and obedience (the Church’s “leader principle” – I won’t mention the term in German!) and what all that has to do with Christ.

Whether the Church is declining or growing is anyone’s guess, since anything written on the subject is biased. In my life here in France, I hardly ever meet anyone who goes to church, and when they do, it is for “cultural” reasons. I had experience of clericalism in traditionalist circles, and those bishops, prelates and priests could be somewhat self-important. I have not been a victim of sex abuse by a priest and I have not personally seen any convincing evidence. It has happened, and continues to happen, but thankfully outside my personal experience. I once had a married Anglican incumbent of a parish begin to run fingers over my thigh when I was 18, not a Roman Catholic priest. For me, it sufficed to tell the reverend gentleman to stop – and he did. I was lucky. What I can say is that abuse is not always a consequence of totalitarian authority and clericalism, but simply being human and in some state of moral weakness. I am less absolute in my analysis than those who say there is too much authority or too little of it.

In the same blog, I was interested by another article Wanted: A Theology of Disobedience in the light of the Jesuit psychoanalyst Carlos Dominguez-Morano. How far can one go in a plan to reform the Church? My own reaction was “Burn the lot and God would recognise his own” – and I realised that I had quoted the words of the Inquisitor as he ordered the wholesale destruction of the Cathars! Perhaps one just walks away and comes to terms with a materialistic life – or joins another religion or belief system. That’s what most people have done.

The clericalism we bewail comes in different forms, old celibate bishops and priests with cobwebs in their birettas, but also the bureaucracies, committees and groups of activists in the Church of England and various other “established” entities. Perhaps smaller “families” of Christians might help, like the old Little Gidding community or Dreher’s Benedict Option. They might help to an extent and for a time, but the same realities keep coming back again and again. Our little continuing Anglican churches seem to have come out of the “bishops’ brawls” of the 1990’s. The G4 offers a lot of hope with the possibility of being in communion with the Polish National Catholic Church, the Nordic Catholic Church and the Union of Scranton. How long will it be before corporate groupthink saps away the last remnants of human intelligence and critical thought? I can only hope the experiment survives for a few years until some other prophetic inspiration comes up.

Left to myself, I become that much more cynical and at the limit of nihilism. My nausea on occasionally reading articles about Brexit brings me to give Calvin that much more credence for his particular take on total depravity. I was then brought to the idea that often comes up in our days – that optimism and pessimism are our own choice. The glass is half full or half empty. I have read stuff on the Internet, and it occurs to me that most British people want Brexit. Many people in Europe want authority and a life without freedom or responsibility – even if it might mean some new form of “national socialism”. Freedom is only possible or desirable for those who are ready and prepared for it spiritually. What else can I say? There simply isn’t one truth for everyone.

What of the future? Utopia? Dystopia? The one idea that enters my head is that whatever happens, humanity will survive and take an unexpected direction. New forces will come into play. When the old is consumed by fire, only then can the new be built from necessity and man’s creative ingenuity. My reader might ask me why I say so little of God or Christ. It is simply because our present time, including the Church, has little time for anything other than the power and wealth of the elite. In such times of human evil, God remains silent, and the only sign he will give will be that of Jonah.

Most of the time, I have nothing to say on my blog, and my posts are rarer. When there is little to say, silence is the best counsel. Perhaps that is truly a part of a Benedict Option: silence and contemplation, far away from the mendacious caricatures of church and civilisation.

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Mass Tourism

Posted on Saturday, 15 June, 2019 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

A few days ago, I was involved in a Facebook discussion about mass tourism, one that was provoked by a recent accident in Venice involving a cruise ship that crashed into a dock because the engines could not be stopped. The posting was put up by one of my sailing friends who wants to spend time in his cruising dinghy that sails, rows and sculls. This video is thought-provoking:

Another person asked the question of whether my friend in the sailing dinghy was also a tourist. In the discussion, I suggested that there was a world of difference between a discreet man and his boat quietly exploring a place and a crowd of tourists who have not the slightest understanding or respect of the place. The sight of a big cruise ship towering over the buildings is impressive as much as the diesel fumes being belched out of the funnel is dismaying.

It is always the same dilemma. Venice needs tourists to make a living. My wife and I went there on our honeymoon in 2006, going there by train and staying in a small hotel. Other than that, we were autonomous and discreet as we visited churches and museums, taking advantage of Il Vaporetto (boat acting as a bus). We both speak Italian reasonably well and we ate in restaurants other than the big tourist places. Our way of life had to be simple, since we did need to watch the money! Contrasted with my friend in his dinghy, or us in a simple hotel and enjoying the week we had, the sight of hordes of “human cattle” coming down the gangplank from the ships is quite frightening. As humans become more numerous, the more intelligence and culture evaporate and one is faced with the lowest form of bestiality. A historical place needs a source of income, and can handle limited numbers of people, but there needs to be something to limit the numbers – perhaps by banning immediate access to ocean-going ships and limiting the size of hotels.

Tourism was once the preserve of the aristocracy, and the travels of men like Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and John Henry Newman are known. Almost invariably, the only means of travelling long distances was by sea in an era when only a few short railway lines were in place. The history of tourism is a subject in its own right. As with any other issue featuring the notion of growth, how long can the pollution of the air by increasing numbers of aircraft and ships go on? Does mass tourism really benefit people by offering them an exposure to new cultures and ways of life?

An old friend wrote an article about Aylesford Priory… which seems by its architectural design to be more geared to hosting mass pilgrimages than being the home of a community of contemplative Carmelite monks. In the light of a reflection of mass humanity in general, there seems to be an idea according to which the more mass pilgrimages are encouraged in places like this community, or in places where the Mother of God is alleged to have appeared in apparitions like Lourdes and Fatima, the more spiritual humanity is occulted. It is my experience. I have been both to Lourdes and Fatima. I am moved on seeing some very poorly people in their last hope for healing and relief of pain and disability. Fatima is also a special place, where people are seen inflicting discomfort on themselves by walking on their knees. Perhaps the most spiritually moving scenes are when the persons can be seen in their individual approach rather than as one of a herd of “human cattle” moved around in coaches.

I remember my time at the Benedictine Abbey of Triors as a working guest. Days when coachloads of pilgrims arrived with Don Gobbi to preach to them were so anxiety-provoking. I would excuse myself and go away for the day in my car to visit some place alone, or be in the natural beauty of the Vercors mountains.

Still on the same theme, I visited the tall ships moored in Rouen of the Armada 2019. I went with a friend yesterday morning, and the levels of the crowds was not too bad until about 11 am, and then they came flooding in. The boom, boom, boom of popular “music” blared out of speakers. The star ship was Hermione, a reproduction of an eighteenth-century frigate. She was open to visitors, but there was a huge queue, and people would be admitted at the same rate as those who finished their visit and disembarked by the second gangplank. The effect of so many people is dismaying. By the early afternoon, I could not get away quickly enough to catch my train back to Yvetot where my van was parked to get me back home.

What can we learn from such experiences? Certainly independence and self-reliance are our conditions for finding our humanity and our souls. I can only give my personal reflections in these matters, because other people need more social contact and a feeling of being a part of the larger scale of humanity. For many years, I have felt the need to live in the country, spend leisure time either alone or just with my wife in conditions of self-sufficiency. I am self-employed and have to balance independence against a monthly workload that goes up and down. When visiting churches, the best is to be completely silent and to spend time in prayer before going to seek out the details of its history and architecture. God is always found in silence and inner peace, not in noise and outward manifestations. Perhaps it is the brief Quaker influence I found almost fifty years ago.

I do believe it is good for people to stay away from the tour operators and to become more self-reliant when they go on pilgrimages or holidays. Even on a budget, it is possible to go somewhere by car or train, camp or bivouac and “recharge our batteries” in greater simplicity. We don’t have to be “cattle”. Perhaps one of the greatest sources of suffering is human stupidity, unawareness and ignorance – all of which are made more acute in the massed crowd.

We just need to be ourselves and find God in our inner spirit.

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In Homage to Bernard Moitessier

Posted on Monday, 3 June, 2019 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I have often written about Bernard Moitessier (1925 – 1994), the French (born in Indochina) sailor who dared to sail around the world non-stop and single handed in the 1968 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race. Instead of winning the race, he decided not to return home but to continue to Tahiti in the Pacific Ocean. Whatever he might have believed in, perhaps something inspired by Buddhism, he was a free spirit whom no one could imprison. A friend of mine here in France who is also a sailor knew Bernard Moitessier in the last years before his death from cancer.

Here is a brief presentation of Bernard Moitessier in French:

Je continue sans escale vers les îles du Pacifique parce que je suis heureux en mer, et peut être, pour sauver mon âme.

It was a great privilege to sail up to Le Bono from Port Navalo last Thursday and moor for the night as part of the Semaine du Golfe. I did not visit the grave of the great man of the sea, but he was present in my thoughts. I was visited by an interesting man by the name of Vernier Alavoine who was intrigued about the possibility of living for a week in such a tiny vessel as mine. His wife took the photo above. Vernier had spent more than a year with a scientific team on the remote windswept islands of Kerguelen. It must have been quite a spiritual and self-revealing experience for him!

I have put other photos up on my Facebook page.

O my brave Soul!
O farther, farther sail!
O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God?
O farther, farther, farther sail!

Walt Whitman

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More about Archbishop Ngô-Đình Thục

Posted on Wednesday, 22 May, 2019 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I have been reading the book I mentioned in my posting Tic-Tac-Thuc on Archbishop Ngô-Đình Thục who had lived off the top of the hog in Vietnam with his nasty brothers, a little like Saddam Hussein in Irak. I’m afraid the story, which seems plausible enough to me, is not edifying. It is difficult to conceive of the validity of the Sacrament of Order conferred in “sordid” conditions and outside any real ecclesial context.

The story is little different from that of other bishops at the origin of “lines of succession” of independent bishops. Ngô-Đình Thục was no traditionalist but rather thought in terms of Catholicism inculturated into Asia and his native Vietnam. It would seem that his money had run out and he needed generous benefactors like Dr Heller in Münich, editor of Einsicht and arch-sedevacantist. For that reason, he was prepared to write up a piece of doggerel to support the sedevacantists after having been responsible for the Palmar de Troya fiasco.

I recommend reading this book for a realistic evaluation of this prelate and his misfortunes once the tyrannical regime of his brothers was over in Vietnam. It is time for sobriety.

I am grateful to be far away from that world of bishops of bugger-all and closer to my own English origins. Diversity is indeed what we need in the Church, but being a little more serious than some of those little tin-pot popes and prelates.

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Clericalism and Priesthood

Posted on Wednesday, 22 May, 2019 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I received one of those circular e-mails this morning, and it contained three links:

The second article is a response to the first from a fairly “conservative” point of view.

This entire reflection seems to be based on the problems caused by priests who are guilty of sexually abusing children and having the benefit of an institution that covered up for them in a way that suggests the omertà of the Mafia. Pope Francis blames clericalism for these problems. Obviously, as a priest and a bishop, this Pope must surely make a distinction between the clerical status and the gift of the sacramental priesthood.

The pressure is on to abolish the priesthood, or at least reduce it to a secular function. Perhaps what would replace it would be a clericalism of civil servants, politicians, doctors, lawyers, notaries, bailiffs, police officers and anyone who has a position of authority over others.

A short while ago, I watched a film about a paedophile priest in the Archdiocese of Lyon and the way everything was mishandled by Cardinal Barbarin. Such things cause an incredible amount of bitterness, not only the sinful acts of a perverted priest but also the priority given to the institution by those in authority rather than correcting wrongs and caring for the victims and their families. Sometimes, the abuse was not merely the sinful lust of an isolated priest, but was institutionalised in places like orphanages and places where children were taken into care.

Should the entire Church be closed down and chased out of existence? It happened in Reformation times, the French Revolution, as a result of virulent anti-clericalism in countries like France and Italy from about 1870 to World War I. What happens when those who destroyed the Church prove to be far more evil and commit worse crimes. Perhaps the Christian ideal in priests made them a little less evil than their secular counterparts.

The first article features the agony of a priest who suffered from the clerical establishment. At some time, he left the priesthood and, overcome with grief, lost all motivation to continue even attending Mass. However, there is a note of ideology as he lobbies for various typically left-wing causes. He uncritically blames the shortcomings of the Vatican II reforms on the conservatives. He blames clericalism for everything. What is clericalism?

Clericalism, with its cult of secrecy, its theological misogyny, and its hierarchical power, is at the root of Roman Catholic dysfunction.

I doubt he would read this blog, but I would advise him the same way as I think about my own life. He is still too preoccupied with the Church from which he felt alienated, too worried about other people, too bitter to find his soul. Looking at it most radically, he has three choices – suicide, addiction to alcohol and drugs, or moving on and finding a new spiritual life in another way, not necessarily in a church or an organised religion. He speaks of “fasting” from the Sacraments and formal church attendance. For him, such torture is not required for his salvation. Perhaps he needs to become a virulent anti-clerical and political activist, or take a step back and go inwards. Hatred has a horrific effect on the soul. He could learn to sail, buy a yacht and sail to a Pacific island like Bernard Moitessier. Build where others destroy – that is the way of Christ.

If it is all about women, is it really any better for example in the Church of England where women are at parity with men or even in a dominant position? Is a new type of clericalism about to replace the old? There is also the other favourite accusation: collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. Many bishops saw opportunities to work with authoritarian and totalitarian political regimes, the old story of the Grand Inquisitor! This broken priest confused different issues like the role of women and the all-male and celibate clergy. There is the question of status as in any institution, religious or secular. As mixed up as they with left-wing ideologies, some questions ring true like repression in the domain of sexuality, the threat of hell and the power of the caste.

This is a dimension this fellow neglects, that of clericalism that is not specific to priests, deacons and bishops. The problem is wider than a power base of celibate men in the Church. The same thing can happen in any human organisation where the alpha dogs take control of the pack. This happens especially in the police, in which the best men for the job have to be strong, aggressive and uncaring for those they have to apprehend. All professions in which people are highly trained for a particular role can become preserves of arrogance and elitism: politics, law, medicine, business and others. Faced with the ignorance of most people in these domains, the elite will assume authority to put an end to needless discussion. It is not a problem of the Church, but it is a human problem, shared with many species of animals. Some are made to dominate and compete, and others are made for more individualistic lives.

It seems absurd to destroy something because there are abusers. Otherwise, where do you stop? If you don’t want priests any more, then you have to put laypeople in charge of the Church, unless you want to be rid of the Church too. In that first article, it is difficult to discern what kind of church that former priest wants. One thing he does not say is that he would recommend the American Episcopal Church or the Church of England that not only has married clergy but also women clergy and a high importance given to lay participation. Yet all the problems of corporate humanity remain, with the limitations of groupthink and the abolition of imagination and initiative.

I believe that the solution is not destruction of the old and the imposition of some “new orthodoxy” with all its “hot button” issues like feminism and homosexuality – but diversity in the forms a church can take. Certainly, the Church (in its most generic meaning) needs to have room for less institutional forms and need for centralised control. I am much more sceptical about episcopi vagantes and micro-churches. Some are highly inspiring and are ministered to by men of integrity. I have a great amount of esteem for initiatives of other historical eras, like the Quakers, where a community of ordinary people define themselves as friends and meet for silent prayer and spontaneous witness of their spiritual experience. This would not be a reason to destroy the sacramental church and the liturgical life, but there needs to be diversity. Many people do not relate to rites and liturgy, and their personalities are very different from those who do.

There were many initiatives in France after the end of the war. There were worker priests who were often criticised for becoming too involved with far left-wing politics, certainly in reaction against the bishops who collaborated with the Nazis. There was an awareness of a need for some kind of “osmosis” of the priesthood into the lives of ordinary people, if we put the political ideologies to one side. Priests have suffered spiritually for decades, for centuries, and people in the parishes went to church for the wrong reasons. My own experience can testify to a tyranny of the laity in some parishes, where the priest is bullied out of existence. Even relatively conservative dioceses have no vocations and the last seminaries are closing. The only interface many people now have with the Church is a faceless bureaucracy. Why bother?

I returned to a version of Anglicanism that is conservative but without being authoritarian or totalitarian like some of the traditionalists. There is less of a sense of control and repression, of bullying and dominance.

The issue of the priesthood, as distinct from the clerical status and the institutional church, is one that needs a lot of thought. Is the priest only a cleric? Does the idea of an “ontological” priesthood need to be put aside for the sake of being on a par with something like civil servants and functionaries? I know what I was taught in seminary – being an alter Christus, a living icon of Christ. This is too often a meaningless slogan, but the idea needs to be meditated.

How well do we know Christ? A lot less well than we think…

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Nostalgia and Hope

Posted on Tuesday, 21 May, 2019 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Fr Jonathan Munn recently wrote a Sunday sermon on Remembering the Future. The theme is nostalgia, the good old days. It is a very powerful emotion in us, and commercial advertisers find it very effective. For example, an industrial baker would portray the words of an elderly man remembering his boyhood in something like the 1920’s, how he used to go to the bakery on his bicycle to buy bread for the family. As good for you today as it has always been. The implication is that it is possible to bring the past back, or at least find something that had not changed.

As a youth of 23, I arrived in France – also on a bicycle – in the hope of finding a diocese or a religious community that had not changed, that had remained “pre-reformation”. Unfortunately my sense of Sehnsucht trumped my rational faculties, because such a thing is easy to find out by reading and talking with people. Of course, there were the traditionalists with their modern authoritarian political ideology, but there were also a few parishes as would not have been possible in England in the early 1980’s. The first I went to visit was Le Chamblac and Fr Montgomery Wright, featuring in my posting With the passing years… I’m not sure this English (of Scottish ancestry) priest would have represented French Catholicism in the 1870’s, 1770’s or 1470’s. He was a unique character who marked my life and that of many others. Some of the parishes, like that of Belloy en France with Fr Lourdelet or Bouloire with Fr Jacques Pecha, were quite “traditional” but much less eccentric than the former Anglican in Normandy. Most of these priests belonged to an association called Opus Sacerdotale, which was behind the foundation the Institute of Christ the King in which I was ordained a deacon. Unlike the Society of St Pius X founded by Archbishop Lefebvre, Opus Sacerdotale concentrated more on the priestly identity formed by the Ecole Française and the fathers of St Sulpice in the seventeenth century than the theme of Christ the King expressed in authoritarian government and the denial of freedom as an inalienable right.

I never did find what I was looking for, namely the product of origin, the “real thing”, except those few parishes and a couple of monasteries of the Solesmes Congregation. They were islands struggling to survive, and which did better with the arrangements made by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The secret garden of our nostalgia is within us. Not only can we only search within ourselves, but we cannot escape from ourselves. We follow ourselves to the ends of the earth for our entire lives. I find Continuing Anglicanism  nearer to that idea than authoritarian traditionalist Roman Catholicism, but we have to be true to ourselves and allow ourselves to yearn for what is beyond our ego.

A few days ago, I had an interview with the French authorities in view to my French citizenship (I will be allowed to keep my British nationality). As the conversation developed, the lady asked me to write her a resume of my life, but something more than what I would present for my translating work. As I began to write, I felt the past events of my life pressing down on me, like a judge pointing a finger and saying with a loud voice “I accuse you of a wasted life!“. Is there any coherence, any teleology, or am I just a wreck at the age of 60? I felt the same reproach coming from my wife, but I don’t believe that was her intention. Where were those waters of Babylon by which I sat and wept?

Strangely, I have never experienced my own past as something to worship and idolise. I am thirty years younger than my father (who is doing very well for his ninety years). Logically my 1960’s should have been to me like his 1930’s. I have often heard of the 1930’s or 50’s like some “golden age”. Perhaps people were more courteous and a worker was more concerned to do a good job for the sake of pride. The 1930’s were also a time of poverty and anxiety. There was the Great Depression and the rise of fascism in Europe. The flamboyance of the 1920’s was over. I suppose I experienced the end of the Trente Glorieuses in the mid 1970’s, as our country seemed to have lost its soul and ideals. We had to be more careful with our money as strike followed strike, as did the electrical power cuts. Were those “good days”? My memories of schooldays were those of boring and stuffy old men, and of philistines and bullies. Finally, those days were neither good nor bad. It was my time slot for my youth. I have now arrived at the age of sixty, and I feel no different – other than the odd aching knee or painful gout in a foot. I used to think that sixty-year-old men were very old!

Humanity has essentially remained the same. Individually we can show great inspiration and genius. Collectively, going by the evidence of British politics, humanity shows very little sign of either emotion nor intelligence. We have computers and cell phones, which can be very useful. I use both, and sending an e-mail or making a phone call from just about anywhere beats writing a letter, putting a stamp on the envelope and going to the letter box – or finding a phone box and hoping we have the right change. Yes, I remember the A and B buttons and the four penny coins! Now, we have devices that out-perform Star Trek – except that we can’t (yet) be beamed up or down from the Enterprise.

There are ideologies that would deprive us of this technology, like for example the old Luddites or some of the environmentalists. We would adapt, either adapt or die. I am probably better equipped through living in the country and having practical skills. But it would be hard, having to saw wood by hand or using energy sources like running water. It might seem an ideal. Some people do go off-grid and live in the wild. I admire them, but I wonder if they find their teleology or meaning of life.

Are people less respectful now than in the past? I doubt it. Just differently.

I experienced nostalgia differently. For me, it was like that of the Romantics, a period hundreds of years ago, and filtered, refashioned and projected not into the present but into the future. This is an element of that concept in German Romanticism of Sehnsucht, the archetypical Blue Flower of Novalis. There are many aspects of the future we can fashion and influence, putting the Idea before the supposed external reality. This is Idealism and something that brings Hope and the onward movement we need to live. In the thought of Heraclitus, life is fire, movement, progress from opposition of thesis and antithesis.

This emotion is of capital importance at a time (the same thing has been in other times too) when church religion seemed to be dead and only good for being discarded as unfit for use. When we cannot rely on the outside world and “other people”, then we have to rely on ourselves. To do this, we have to be able to desire and hope. We sometimes receive glimpses of that desire that calls of God and the joy of knowing him. We are given a sense of wonder and awe through experience, whether of the liturgy or nature. Rather than being threatened with punishment by authority, we are drawn to beauty and the sense that the object of our love lies beyond our reach. We must never give up, but continue to reach. Some might ask us why we reach for something that is unattainable. Don’t we get frustrated? Isn’t it better to reach for things we can have and possess? No, because something else will always be beyond our reach. We begin with a radio, then a bicycle, then a motorcycle, then an old car, then a new car, then a Ferrari, and then a helicopter, and an aeroplane, the biggest mansion in the world, and so it goes on. My material possessions are something like in the lower-middle of all that. There are things I would like (like a sailing yacht), but I have to establish priorities – because I am not alone and there are other things to consider first. That is common sense, but in the midst of all these things and cares, there is the big hope and desire that is never quenched.

We need a sense of direction in life, and perhaps our Sehnsucht can be “managed” by developing achievable goals, milestones and a sense of achievement with each one. In the spiritual life too, we need to be like the mustard seed planted in good earth so that we can take root. Paradoxically, failure in some of these intermediate goals can bring us humility and a clearer view of the supreme desire and hope.

This is how I see my life, rather than the finger-pointing judge. I have come to understand that there is a single thread running through all the successes and failures. The passing years have brought me to understand that the utopia will never be found outside myself. Those colourful parish priests have died. Some of those parishes have been allowed to continue with other priests, others closed down in an act of vengeance from a spiteful bishop. The monasteries have continued, of more consolation to retreatants and visitors than the monks who live under a totalitarian regime. The seminary I went to has changed, perhaps for the better with age and experience. What is old is not always ideal. Static traditionalism as in the thought of Parmenides explains how “all reality is one, change is impossible, and existence is timeless, uniform, and necessary”. I remember reading Owen Chadwick’s book From Bossuet to Newman, contrasting the immobilist notion of Christian Tradition held by the scholastics and Newman’s theory of organic development. The latter notion is a major dimension in Pope Benedict XVI’s thought.

This notion of organic development is an aspect of our personal lives as in history in general and theories of religious tradition. Newman would use the analogy of nature to try to distinguish healthy changes from ruptures and acts of destruction like the Protestant Reformation. The theory, like all theories, is an imperfect analogy. A part of our Hope and Sehnsucht is to move beyond the tyranny of time to an existence where movement, change and dynamics bring joy and happiness, not bitterness and disappointment.

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Tic-Tac-Thuc

Posted on Wednesday, 15 May, 2019 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

In this way, Archbishop Pierre Martin Ngô-dinh-Thục was irreverently referred to by someone I knew in Fribourg in the late 1980’s – Tic-Tac-Thuc. By then, he was already banalised and ridiculed in contrast with Archbishop Lefebvre, and compared with colourful characters of earlier times like Arnold Harris Mathew and René Vilatte.

I have just acquired Edward Jarvis, Sede Vacante: The Life and Legacy of Archbishop Thục, Apocryphile Press 2018. I have it on my Kindle reader, so will fill in time whilst waiting for tides and that sort of thing when I will be out in my boat. Like Bishop Duarte Costa of whom I wrote in The Boys from Brazil, the fact that Ngô-dinh-Thục was a genuine Roman Catholic archbishop did not remove the stigma of being a sort of “Godfather” of Vietnam’s ruling clan under his brother Ngô Đình Diệm who was killed with his entire family by the Communists. Thục escaped, leaving only intrigue, money, secret deals and the Vietnam War.

I have yet to read this book. If the book by the same author on the Brazilians is anything to go on, I am likely to find out some very interesting things. I never met Archbishop Thuc himself, but I did read many things about him, mostly apologetic from various sedevacantist groups in France and the USA. His detractors advance a thesis of the invalidity of ordinations and episcopal consecrations conferred by Thuc on account of mental incompetence. Frankly I do not believe this to have been the case.

He was responsible for the Palmar de Troya sect acquiring valid Catholic orders, and later for a number of more or less respectable episcopi vagantes. That is of course if a mechanical “line of succession” is all that is needed to transmit the Sacraments of the Church… Since this subject attracts the curiosity of those who like religious gossip, here is a page giving links to what I have written in the past on Palmar de Troya and sedevacantism. I am not ready or prepared to throw myself into polemics on these subjects, for the simple reason that I was through with Roman Catholicism when I joined the ACC for the first time in 1995 and the TAC in 2005. The French have the expression jeter de la poudre aux yeux, which is usually translated into English as smoke and mirrors.

Sedevacantism is easy to undo once you have rejected the claims made about the Papacy by the first Vatican Council in 1870 and the prevailing interpretations of the notion of infallible magisterium and what happens when or if a pope teaches formal heresy. If such doctrines have no credibility, as Anglicans and the Orthodox hold, then sedevacantism is perhaps the easiest way to refute the absurd claims about the prime bishop of the Roman Catholic Church.

I was myself ordained a priest by a bishop consecrated by Clemente Dominguez y Gomez, himself consecrated by Thuc in December 1975. I received ordination to the priesthood sub conditione by my present Bishop to give assurance of the integrity of my priesthood in respect to the faithful of the Anglican Catholic Church. It also brought resolution to my troubled path as a deacon and priest trying to be of service to various marginal groups claiming to be Roman Catholic.

It is without doubt that I will discover many things about that sad figure of the Vietnamese bishop exiled in Italy, in southern France and finally in America. I have for a long time been convinced that he was not deprived of his mental competence, but that he was not a man of integrity, or at least one who was motivated by hatred and cynicism. More later, when I finish the book…

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