New Unity

Posted on Sunday, 23 December, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I am just about set for the organ removal from Newington Green Unitarian church to re-install the instrument in the parish church of Vermenton in the Yonne region of France. I have been making use of the skills I acquired from a tiny fragment of an apprenticeship with Harrison & Harrison of Durham and a three-year course in harpsichord making at the London College of Furniture from 1978 until 1981. I am not a professional organ builder, but I concentrate on doing what I can do well, namely the experience I had with a tuner working for Harrison’s who taught me about the nuts and bolts of overhauling, repairing and tuning organs. My first and most ambitious “job” was a 1913 Arthur Harrison organ from Holy Trinity Fareham which I installed in the old abbey church of San Martino al Cimino near Viterbo in 1995 after it had been in storage at my old seminary since 1991.

My organ work has been considerably reduced over the past twenty years, but some priests of a religious community I got to know during my diaconal stint in the Morvan have asked me to find and install an organ in the large medieval (heavily restored in the nineteenth century) church of Vermenton.

I have various resources for finding redundant organs in England, and I was precisely seeking a two-manual instrument with mechanical action, easy to dismantle and reassemble with a minimum of repairs or restoration and which can be transported in a 3 1/2 ton van which can be driven with a car licence. The typical specification involves four or five stops on each manual and a bourdon on the pedal. As I corresponded with those responsible for disposing of organs, the “successful” one is in Newington Green Unitarian church. I am due to be there with my hired van in the third week of January to take the organ down and bring it to France.

Newington Green Unitarian church is a handsome eighteenth-century building which underwent some modifications in 1860.

Here is the organ I am to move.

The instrument is basically Victorian, installed at Newington Green in 1902. It bears the builder’s plate of Henry Potter. The instrument was examined in the 1970’s by Noel Mander, a highly reputable London organ builder, who had no knowledge of Potter. Mr Mander surmised that Potter was a journeyman working for Bishop & Son. Manders did some work on the instrument, and when the bellows was opened, they found out that this instrument was built by Banfield of Birmingham in 1862, for Lord Calthorpe of Elvetham Hall. It is without any real tonal distinction, but I am confident that I could improve it by opening up the pipe feet a little to enhance the natural harmonics of the pipes. It was regularly tuned up to September 2016 and is still playable.

I plan to work from the Monday to the Friday morning so as to get back to Dover for the night ferry. Why are they disposing of this instrument? It is mainly because the church has received a grant for restoration of the building in a general state of wear and tear. I also suspect they will be removing the Victorian pews to create a more versatile space to be used for different social and cultural functions. They have a grand piano and use other instruments, and obviously have no need of an organ, which in any case would have to be dismantled for the work on the church. It will therefore have a new life in France.

This evening, I began to do some research on this community, because my father has spoken very kindly about one of his friends who is a Unitarian minister in Kendal. I also from time to time follow the blog of Adrian Worsfold, who is a Unitarian, which is more concerned with politics but occasionally discusses ecclesiastical eccentricities. I knew very little about Unitarianism, even though I had contact with the Quakers when I was at Wennington School in 1971. The two denominations are completely distinct. The name distinguishes them from Trinitarians, in that they deny the Trinity. There is one God, and Jesus was a good man and spiritual guide, but not God. In this, they are distinct from nearly all Christian denominations – approaching a more rigorous monotheistic notion of God like in Judaism and Islam. They also reject original sin, predestination and the inerrancy of the Bible. They are now the most liberal and radical of all Christian denominations. Unitarianism seems to be a reaction against some of the excesses of classical Protestantism. Its roots were in the mid sixteenth century in Transylvania and Poland. They faced fierce persecution from the Roman Catholic Church in continental Europe and the Anglican establishment in England.

One distinguished member of the Newington Green community was Mary Wollstonecraft, the pioneer of feminism, wife of the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement and mother of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (who married Percy Byssh Shelley). Mary Shelley‘s best known work is Frankenstein. Unitarianism appealed to many Romantic authors and philosophers through its radical position in regard to establishment churches and dogmas. It seemed ideal for an anarchical mindset and a passionate desire to serve the cause of humanity and justice. Newington Green is located in the constituency of the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has received considerable publicity for his involvement in the Parliament debates over Brexit. Here, Jeremy Corbyn is interviewed in the Newington Green church about Mary Wollstonecraft.

Like many of the Romantics, like William Wordsworth, Madame Wollstonecraft was inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution. She also saw the work of the hard-line Jacobins and the guillotine bloodbath – and quickly returned to England in fear for her life. Whatever we may think about left-wing politics today, it is interesting to see a politician’s ideas rooted in the depth of Romantic thought and the profound vision of a new world and age. With this in mind, the allegation of Mr Corbyn calling Theresa May a “stupid woman” with a sexist overtone is quite striking, especially as he affirmed that he eschews all sexism and misogyny.

Returning to Unitarianism as a philosophical expression or religion in a very restricted meaning of that word, I see many themes with which I can sympathise (though I am a Trinitarian – to the relief of my Bishop!). One is a great intellectual freedom in interpreting sacred texts and the notion of the human conscience. It is also a theme of various forms of liberalism and modernism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, largely arising from Romanticism.

The Newington Green community is quite surprising, now named New Unity. If you go to their site, you will be quite astonished by the fact that it defines itself as a non-religious church. I assume they are using the vocabulary of the average English person of our times, used to seeing religion as a source of intolerance, bigotry and violence. I assume that is what is meant. Also, they repudiate the idea of a supernatural God (what is “supernatural” for them – since I would soften the distinction made by classical theology between natural and supernatural). Anyway, let’s get ahead. It looks to me like a humanist philosophy aiming for the nobility of spirit I have often mentioned in my articles. Believe in Good, the idea being to seek the good in every person.

We believe that there’s potential for good in every person, no matter how wounded they may be, or how buried that potential may lie.

We believe that although today’s world is riven with injustice, we must always hope for – and work towards – a kinder, fairer future.

We believe that the world can be good – and can grow ever better. And this responsibility lies firmly in our own hands.

Why be a church community? The idea of a secular humanist church with an atheist minister is new to me, but there are aspects from which we other Christians could learn from rather than trying to take advantage of the rich and powerful of this world. This kind of idea is very widespread in the world, especially in South America with the basic communities and liberation theology. My criticism of those would be the fact that Marxism is a very flawed philosophy of human nature and analysis of economic systems like capitalism.

It promises to be a very rich experience for me as I discuss things with people as I pack organ pipes into rolls of newspaper and the wooden crates I have made. I am persuaded that institutional Christianity has a lot to answer for and many of its woes have been of its own making. I assume those people believe that Christ existed and had a beautiful message to convey, at least that. I will not be trying to persuade them that I’m right, but rather to understand how they relate to our modern world and whether they have any notion of transcendence. Perhaps the theme of Romanticism may serve as a bridge to enable us to understand each other and dialogue.

I look forward to this new adventure… I am again brought to that wonderful poem of Walt Whitman:

Down from the gardens of Asia descending radiating,
Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad progeny after them,
Wandering, yearning, curious, with restless explorations,
With questionings, baffled, formless, feverish, with never-happy hearts,
With that sad incessant refrain, Wherefore unsatisfied soul? and Whither O mocking life?

Ah who shall soothe these feverish children?
Who Justify these restless explorations?
Who speak the secret of impassive earth?
Who bind it to us? what is this separate Nature so unnatural?
What is this earth to our affections? (unloving earth, without a throb to answer ours, Cold earth, the place of graves.)

Yet soul be sure the first intent remains, and shall be carried out,
Perhaps even now the time has arrived.

After the seas are all cross’d, (as they seem already cross’d,)
After the great captains and engineers have accomplish’d their work,
After the noble inventors, after the scientists, the chemist, the geologist, ethnologist,
Finally shall come the poet worthy that name,
The true son of God shall come singing his songs.

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Sol Invictus!

Posted on Friday, 21 December, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Today is St Thomas and the winter solstice here in the northern hemisphere. Let the daylight not only be unconquered but grow as a sign of grace from the Incarnate Son of God!

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Blue Flower delayed

Posted on Thursday, 20 December, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I’m afraid the Blue Flower normally scheduled for Christmas 2018 is going to have to be delayed. One reason is a series of vast technical translation orders taking up time and energy. Bread-earning work has to take priority. Another, frankly, is my diminished capacity for work since last summer due to anxiety, partly due to our political crisis in England and its consequences in Europe, and also for reasons closer to home including sorting out my paperwork for my French driving licence, residence permit and nationality application. These applications went in a month ago, and the system works very slowly. France will give us a period of grace beyond Brexit Day during which we British expats will not become illegal immigrants before having obtained our documents.

I have started an essay combining the themes of cosmopolitanism and nobility of spirit as expressed by German Idealism and Romanticism and other sources in history. I have also had difficulty establishing a coherent plan to unite the various fragments I have been writing.

In January, I will be going to England to dismantle and transport an organ from a Unitarian church in north-east London. Fortunately, it seems to be a straightforward instrument with nine stops, tracker action and two manuals, so something in which I have experience. To take short breaks from my translating work during the day, I have been organising the job and assembling tools and materials. I need also to make a pipe crate for the 4-foot bottom and tenor octaves. The van is hired and the boat is booked, so I hope there will not be political demonstrations in the ports either side of the Channel. The organ is going to a church in the Burgundy area of France, and I will probably do the reassembly, repairs, adjustments, voicing and tuning in February-March 2019. The dismantling and transport will take a solid week and then I count on finishing the reinstallation in about two to three weeks assuming there are no complications.

It might also be my last time in England for some time depending on the consequences of a no-deal Brexit from 29th March 2019. The leavers think it will be hunky-dory after only a few weeks of chaos. I am more sceptical. We’ll see what happens. We also have problems in France, but the Gilets Jaunes protest is morphing and contracting as the weeks go by.

I will try to do my article and an editorial in early and late January and February, and maybe publish the second issue of The Blue Flower for Septuagesima or Lent.

Fr Jonathan Munn has written me a nice article on Transcendence, Truth and Reality: A Mathematician’s Fumble. I invite others to send me anything they would like to write so that this initiative may continue to contribute to thought in our troubled times. If you would like to contribute in this spirit, please see The Blue Flower and contact me by sending a comment. I will be able to find your e-mail address and I will write to you asking for an e-mail with the attachment in MS Word format (doc or docx).

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Cry to the Night

Posted on Wednesday, 19 December, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Words fail me as I look at the news and Facebook pages and see the blindness descending upon England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. It now seems late in the day to denounce details of the political process leading to Brexit and a new definition of democracy in our country. To speculate would lead to my being accused of scare-mongering. Who knows? The honeymoon might be quite glorious. Then what? It is said that if there were to be a new referendum, “leave” would win again, and perhaps by a much bigger majority.

In these gloomy Advent days, I mediate on the words of Novalis in his Hymnen an die Nacht, which I read in English translation. I also find inspiration  in my favourite Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev. Both he and Freidrich von Hardenberg were inspired by the great German cobbler and mystic Jakob Böhme. The theme of the night (the Ungrund) pervades Christian mysticism, especially the Carmelite saints like John of the Cross and Theresa of Avila. Holiness comes through suffering and long periods of desolation and spiritual hardship. Winter is a time when the days are at their shortest, but the true Sol Invictus, the incarnation of God in Christ, brings us light and inner deliverance within from whatever can befall us.

Without comparing our political crisis (there is another in France and all over Europe – and elsewhere in the world) with past tyrannies, I quote Thomas Mann in the mid 1930’s:

How on earth will it end? This nightmare has been going on for three years, and who knows how long it will last. The barbarous and reactionary forces have made a pact with everything that is the enemy of intellect and culture, a diabolical pact of fear and bitterness. Erudition and thinking are obviously unwelcome, and the savage, sadistic propaganda spreads a political view that is hostile toward the future and lacks any vision or ideas. Nowhere can one descry anything grand or noble.

Berdyaev reflects the ideas of Joachim of Fiore, the best-known being that of the three ages. The Age of the Father corresponds with the Old Testament, obedience to God’s Law. The Age of the Son would be from the Advent of Christ to about 1260, the New Testament. Then would come an Age of the Holy Spirit, heralding the freedom brought by the Christian message. In this new age, the institutional Church would be replaced by something like the Franciscan Order. The Church never condemned Joachim himself for heresy, but many aspects of his theories were condemned, notably by St Thomas Aquinas. Some of the movements he inspired were severely persecuted by the Inquisition. There is almost a Romantic aspiration to an age of beauty and light.

The aspirations to such a new age and renewed humanity proved to be largely illusory, as the same legalism and inhumanity continued, firstly in the institutional Church, then in political authorities and man’s lust for money and power. The “blue flower” is beyond our grasp in this world, but is the object of our love and yearning. It is not a new religion, but a fulfilment of Christian revelation, true universality that transcends both globalism and nationalism.

We look through a glass darkly (cf. I Corinthians xiii.12 –For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known). In the religion of freedom and the Spirit, there will not be authorities, rewards and punishments. The legalistic idea of Christianity has to disappear as we are transfigured within.

After this night of Advent, of winter and the dark days ahead for our country (though I am clear about the shortcomings of globalism and European federalism), we can only aspire towards and try to create a new human and humane fellowship. How? I don’t know. We have our churches and liturgies and our silent witness in the darkness. Joachim was wrong about the year of his promised Age of the Spirit. We have yet to pass through shadows and the night. Nature is devastated by man’s greed, history is denied and changed by materialism and the mind is taken away by psychological manipulation. Humaneness is disappearing as we don’t care about each other and horrible acts of cruelty are committed. As Nietzsche cried out, it is if God himself had died. We must ourselves die and face the hereafter with courage.

However, man is not condemned because he carries within himself a spark of divinity, and image of God, possibilities of greatness, beauty and sublimity. We participate in Christ’s universal consciousness. This is something we can believe in and be encouraged to withstand the evil day and everything we have to suffer.

Like democratic centralist politics, lukewarmness is no longer an option. We enter a time of radical choice and division, where we have to eschew “moderate” Christianity and seek the mystical way, not even more polarised political ideologies and violence. Pope John Paul II was often criticised for his “cult of man” in his vision of human dignity and transcendence. Here is one characteristic quote from this man who lived in the darkness of both Nazism and Communism:

As a Christian, my hope and trust are centred on Jesus Christ, the two thousandth anniversary of whose birth will be celebrated at the coming of the new millennium . . . . Jesus Christ is for us God made man, and made part of the history of humanity. Precisely for this reason, Christian hope for the world and its future extends to every human person. Because of the radiant humanity of Christ, nothing genuinely human fails to touch the hearts of Christians. Faith in Christ does not impel us to intolerance. On the contrary, it obliges us to engage in a respectful dialogue. Love of Christ does not distract us from interest in others, but rather invites us to responsibility for them, to the exclusion of no one . . . . Thus as we approach the two thousandth anniversary of the birth of Christ, the Church asks only to be able to propose respectfully this message of salvation, and to be able to promote, in charity and service, the solidarity of the entire human family.

Revelation of God is accomplished in man and humanity. We also live a terrifying crisis of our creativity, not only through poetry, music and art – but also our capacity to make families and procreate children.

Before we see the light, we must face an age of darkness and destruction, where evil seems to triumph over God himself and becomes inevitable and banal. We are afraid of being “replaced” in the world with which we have been familiar all our lives, but our own culture is shallow and ugly. Yet our aspiration and longing can never be taken away. But, this is not a passive longing, but also a determination to transfigure the world through creativity. God will help those who help themselves and discover our transcendence.

Like Thomas Mann and Berdyaev in the 1930’s, we stand on the brink of the abyss and cry to God in our prayers and supplications. We are torn apart, crushed, disappointed, ignored by those who don’t care, and we live in dread and anxiety. The monster of the 1930’s was finally defeated in 1945 at the cost of millions of lives and monuments of human culture destroyed forever. We are still reduced to tears by the atrocities committed against innocent men, women and children more than seventy years ago. Have we learned the lesson? I don’t think so entirely. I was born into an era of optimism and aspiration to freedom and joy, a reaction against the war and social conservatism. Many errors were committed, but there was an aspiration at the bottom of the anarchy of “flower power” and drugs. Liberalism has come to an end, and we must face authoritarianism and the brute struggle for money and power all over again. We can guess the form that will take, not of military dictators but a class of obscenely wealthy oligarchs leaving the rest of us to find a new way to rebuild some kind of new civilisation.

We are concerned about being on the right or wrong side of history. The present time has brought a sense of hopelessness and anger against the old elites and the dinosaurs of this world. Nothing is endless or inevitable. History has not ended with neo-liberal capitalism, nor with blind and angry populism, but will go on beyond our own limit of earthly life.

The end is a Divine-human matter. And the final word, which belongs to God, will include a word of man, as well.

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Simplifying Things…

Posted on Sunday, 16 December, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

It is Gaudete Sunday (3rd of Advent) and O Sapientia in the Use of Sarum. I am feeling very worn down by the comings and going of the efforts of Mrs Theresa May to save her “deal” with a Parliament that doesn’t want it, and the EU that has had enough of re-negotiations and will not allow any further changes.

Brexit can be delivered only on one of three conditions:

  • A hard border with customs and checks between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland
  • The invasion and colonisation of Ireland by the UK
  • Handing Northern Ireland over to the Republic of Ireland (allowing citizens to keep their British nationality if they wish, and their being given Irish nationality)

The first is likely to be the one that happens, causing a revival of the troubles between Sinn Fein / IRA and the UK. There are several truths about the consequences in the UK and Europe, and I am through with discussing them because I can only go by what everyone else is reading too. Brexit cannot be delivered otherwise than by letting the clock run down, and it would happen automatically with all the consequences that will ensue.

I read this in a Facebook group, and it makes a lot of sense. If only…

If only MPs had the courage to say:
“We respect the will of the slight majority of those who voted in the 2016 Referendum, but we are duty-bound to act in the best interests of our constituents and the country; therefore we are aborting the flawed attempt at leaving the EU, believing it would cause huge damage to the UK and will be putting our energy into reforming the EU and fixing the domestic issues which caused the protest vote in the first place.”

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The Possessed

Posted on Tuesday, 11 December, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Not having written anything political since the third of this month, I have to say that the last couple of days have shaken me to the core. Two heads of state, for totally different reasons, are at the point of having lost credibility – namely Mrs Theresa May and Monsieur Emmanuel Macron. The only difference is that Brexit is supposed to be a national populist movement, led by an establishment figure, and the Gilets Jaunes is a spontaneous popular movement against the establishment for reasons that go beyond fuel taxes and low wages.

I listened to the speech given by Mrs May to the Commons yesterday, the reply given by Mr Corbyn and a few hours of questions. I only heard later about the Mace representing Royal authority being picked up, which is a scandalous gesture in Parliament, akin to sacrilege in a church. How Mrs May has been able to commit several acts of contempt of Parliament is one week is beyond me. How can she as a human being take the immense pressure and stress, and persevere against the pressure to resign? She is fighting a Zweifrontenkrieg against both the leavers in her own party and the remainers in the opposition and minority parties.

Why the title of this posting. We truly reach a point that seems to be akin to the political and moral nihilism of the period preceding the Russian Revolution, therefore the novel by Dostoyevsky The Possessed (Бесы, Bésy). Something I found on YouTube has impressed me with its apparent clarity of thought, a discussion between an American and an English former lawyer and editor of a journal and website called The Duran. These two gentlemen do not hide their affinity with Putin’s Russia, another subject of obfuscation and confusion in the western world. They don’t discuss Dostoyevsky, but the associations came together in my mind. Here is the interview:

My thoughts go way beyond the romantic idealisation I entertained of the European Union to the real threats we face in what little remains of this year and 2019. What I have understood from yesterday’s debate in the Commons and this dialogue between two pro-Russian pundits is that Mrs May knows she will never get a deal through Parliament, yet she refuses to resign or come to a compromise. She kept repeating herself and evaded all awkward questions coming from the Scots or the opposition. The hypocrisy and emptiness came over to nearly all the MP’s present and us watching it from afar via television or internet. The reason given of seeking “reassurances” from the EU and European heads of state lacks all credibility. Only two possibilities remain: the hardest of hard Brexits with no preparation made for anything. If this is not a nihilist agenda, I don’t know what is. Are all those men and women in Parliament and the Government complicit to the destruction of our country and some kind of revolution we can’t yet imagine? The second possibility is that it will be a war of attrition, une guerre d’usure – bore us all to death through the hopelessness of it all, and quietly rescind article 50 and hope those who voted “leave” in 2016 wouldn’t mind too much.

Conspiracy theories are possible, namely Mrs May being an instrument of some kind of dark state consisting of bankers and all sorts of creepy people in league with the Devil. I read all that kind of stuff in association with Hillary Clinton on the other side of the Pond. I am reserved, but we would be naive to think that Mrs May is in this mess all alone with a good part of her own Party against her and then with the constant threat of a motion of no-confidence, a general election and Corbyn in power. The problem is that a motion of no-confidence at present would fail. The gridlock has rendered the political establishment incapable of acting. Of course, there will be protests and emergency debates, but there will be no answers before late January 2019. By then, only two months will remain until 29th March 2019, unless article 50 gets extended and we go Norway. That too would have to be approved by Parliament, which is unlikely.

Europe itself is in crisis. This side of the Channel, Greece is in a mess, right-wing populism is spreading and we see the spectres of Mussolini in Italy and Franco in Spain. Even Germany has its crowds of fanatics. Just after Macron promised a number of concessions to help low-earners (I am one myself) make ends meet, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, scarcely more intelligent than Peppone in the Don Camillo films, called on the Gilets Jaunes to continue their revolution next Saturday (15th December). “I believe that Act 5 of the citizen revolution in our country will be a moment of great mobilization“.

Je crois que l’ de la révolution citoyenne dans notre pays samedi prochain sera un moment de grande mobilisation. Mais bien sûr, comme tout un chacun, je m’en remets à la décision qui sera prise par tous ceux qui sont dans l’action.

At this point, more than 54% of people surveyed recently were of the opinion that Macron had given enough for the demonstrations and riots to be stopped. Marine Le Pen, president of the National Rally (previously National Front), the populist right,

accused the president’s “model” of governance based on “wild globalization, financialization of the economy, unfair competition.”

We seem to have the parallel in England with characters like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage! There is also the caricature of Lord Snooty with his top hat. Are these the ones who would make hay out of the utter failure of the political establishment like the Soviet Union in 1989?

My own certitudes have been rocked and they continue to sap my energy and creativity. It goes much further and deeper than Brexit or no-Brexit, cheap diesel to continue to be able to move around despite living in the countryside. It is the prospect of knowing that we “had it so good” (remember McMillan in the 1950’s) and that the party is over. This may be a hard time for a all, probably short of a war or something more apocalyptic. It has happened before in history and will happen again.

Dostoyevsky saw the writing on the wall in 1870 with events in Russia and the Paris Commune. They used live ammunition in those days! Communism existed long before the Russian Revolution and has changed its form. Unlike some Americans, I don’t fear a revival of Communism, neither in any European country or the EU. Maybe the EU can be influenced on more cultural and humanist lines, maybe even some notions of Christian culture, spirituality and morality. The current regime, however, is the very force Marx thought his system would conquer, that of money, capital and inequality. The Marxist system discredited itself, but some elements of all historical revolutions had genuine grievances against the wealthy elites, be they Tsars, kings or vulgar billionaires. I notice the collusion between May and Corbyn, Le Pen and Mélenchon, perhaps a new kind of populism that seeks to avoid the errors of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler.

Somehow, the Kingdom of Heaven will triumph over this darkness and evil that is falling down on our world like a leaden cloak. We seem to be at the stage of France in 1789 and the Terror of 1793, the run-up to the revolution in Russia a hundred years later. Some of the Gilets Jaunes took a mock guillotine crudely made of pieces of wood to a demonstration, and a Photoshopped image portrayed a real beheading machine in a square in central Paris. The symbolism is shocking as comparisons are made. Another comparison can be made, however, that of the peaceful work of Pope John Paul II in solidarity against Communism with the shipbuilding workers of Gdansk in the 1980’s. I remember December 1989 when a university friend came to tell me that the Berlin Wall was down. Now what is collapsing is the neo-liberal capitalism that thought it was the end of history and nec plus ultra after Перестройка (perestroika) and глaсность (glasnost) Indeed, we all yearn for openness and transparency, two things we lack in my native England.

It is too early to tell what is going to happen, whether our future will be peaceful or violent, whether it is possible to bring Christ into such a confused and uncertain world, at a time when the Church is seen as complicit with the wealthy and unconcerned for ordinary people. Christianity is possible only in new ways that we have not yet learned. The alternative is Islam or Evangelical Christianity with their messages of theocracy, bigotry and simplicity to those who are unaccustomed to religious culture. Something is changing…

I stay far away from the rioting. It is pointless and shows what collective humanity does best – insane destruction and hatred. I understand the American’s need for weapons in such incertitude and fear, but I remain a pacifist. I see no point to the fighting. Maybe things will get really bad and we will lose our freedom and our homes. We can only deal with that if and when it happens. Perhaps Macron will hold out here in France and learn more about populism and the devotion we all have to our countries and cultures – pro aris et focis, for homes and hearths, as the old Romans used to say. I am more doubtful about Mrs May and her nemesis on the other side of the Clerk’s Table and the dispatch boxes. I am as much in the dark as our two pro-Russian friends who had the discussion.

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Palmar de Destroya

Posted on Sunday, 9 December, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Update: His former Holiness is going to court – El ex papa de El Palmar, procesado por intentar robar su antigua iglesia con una careta de payaso. Markus Lundberg is quoted on Facebook as saying –

The trial against the Palmarian ex-pope and his wife will soon begin. But when trying to rob the church did they really use clown masks? Dressed entirely in black but with clown masks in the middle of the afternoon … They are certainly not the brightest of people.

* * *

Here’s some more juicy stuff about the totalitarian cult in Palmar de Troya in southern Spain. They have put up a website for their “true church” – which is only a caricature of other Churches calling themselves one-true-churches. Here it is – – – ta-daaaa!

Iglesia Catolica Palmariana – English page

Some might remember that the predecessor (Gregory XVIII) of their present pope and his wife (a former nun) tried to get into the enclave to steal things, got beaten up and arrested by the police and are in prison. See Ex-Pope and Wife Attempted to Rob Basilica (with links to articles).

Indeed the Spanish press has described this cult as a monument of human madness –

El Palmar de Troya es considerado por los especialistas un monumento a la demencia humana.

Their church is very impressive for those who like elaborate baroque styles.

A word of warning to those attracted to flamboyant Spanish churches and old-time popes: this is a totalitarian cult that has left many people’s lives ruined through psychological manipulation and exploitation of the vulnerable. It is possible that the whole thing was founded as a scam to make money as suggested in the film Manuel y Clemente.

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Sarum Calendar 2019

Posted on Saturday, 8 December, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

The Sarum Calendar for 2019 has been added to Dr William Renwick’s Documents page. You can download it from there. It begins from 1st January, so if you need the current Advent, you need the final month of 2018. It is in English and follows the Gregorian calendar.

I warmly recommend the rest of this valuable site which is completing the resources we have for the Use of Sarum and its chant.

Dr Renwick’s site is sometimes inaccessible for technical reasons. If this is so, the text in question is as follows:

* * *

Kalendar
The Kalendar appearing here contains in the third column the information provided in the printed Sarum Kalendars such as that found at the front of the Breviarium 1531. In the fourth column appears the information found in the Pica which appear scattered throughout the Breviarium. Generally speaking the latter takes precedence over the former where they differ. This Kalendar is provided firstly as a guide to those who wish to follow the Sarum Liturgical Kalendar throughout the course of the year, and secondly for those who wish to gain an understanding of the nature of a typical Sarum or pre-Tridentine liturgical year. These Kalendars follow the Gregorian or Western calendar rather than the Julian calendar.
Kalendar 2013
Kalendar 2014
Kalendar 2015
Kalendar 2016
Kalendar 2017
Kalendar 2018
Kalendar 2019

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Saint Claus

Posted on Thursday, 6 December, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

This says it all. It’s his feast today. The name Claus comes from the German Klaus, meaning Nicholas.

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French Revolution II ?

Posted on Monday, 3 December, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I have in my life seen demonstrations (the 1984 protest against the abolition of private education) and even a little rioting from a safe distance, but nothing compared with these scenes from Paris. Tear gas is horrible, through its effect of violently irritating the eyes, nose and throat of anyone who gets a whiff.

This second video is from the press in France, hoping I am not forbidden from linking to it via YouTube without copying it or hiding its character of someone’s intellectual property.

I am out in the country, so I see little gilet jaune activity. I attempted to go to Rouen a couple of weeks ago by car, but had to turn round because the way was blocked. I sympathise with this movement against excessive and arbitrary tax hikes by President Macron, but I have nothing to do with any violence and I take no part in blocking roads and punishing the ordinary population. What good does that do? I have a folded yellow vest on the dashboard of my van, symbol of solidarity with the majority of the movement that is peaceful and respectful of law and order.

The scenes in Paris are terrifying. The police are using non-lethal weapons like tear gas and water cannon, no guns. The rioters and looters are using cobblestones picked out of the road and any throwable object. An old lady has been killed in her house because she was drawing her curtains just at a moment when a tear gas grenade went through the window pane and hit her on the head. There has been a number of deaths, hundreds of injured – both police and rioters – and hundreds of arrests.

The unrest began in mid-­November to protest rising costs of essentials like fuel for motor vehicles and electricity. It is definitely a populist movement without any leadership or organisation. Thus it could be infiltrated by groups of anarchists and “professional” rioters and hooligans of both extreme right and extreme left ideas. There is a Facebook page that has been “liked” 54,399 times. The movement spread from the issue of fuel taxes to a wider protest about French economic policy and the growing difference between rich and poor, and the apparent indifference of the establishment elite to ordinary working people.

As I said to my wife this evening, I see things internationally and in the light of history. It isn’t just France. There is the for and against Brexit in my country, fascists in Italy, a revival of Franco’s integralist Catholic ideology in Spain, Alternative für Deutschland in Germany. All of a sudden we have an embryo Axis. One by one, other European and non-European countries are going the same way: Brazil, Poland, Hungary, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium. How long will it be before budding wannabe dictators tap into the popular energy and hatred to rise to power? I have sometimes read some horrible hateful things written also by Americans on Facebook and elsewhere on the Internet. In a way, I understand the blowback against liberalism and the kind of capitalism that doesn’t care tuppence about the poor and homeless. On the other hand, it is all so dangerous, an erupting volcano.

What is the political alternative to Macron, if he is prevailed upon to resign? It seems to be down to Mme Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Melenchon. Perhaps we have less to fear from the populist right in France than Brazil or Spain. Who knows?

It is worth reading this Guardian article Paris rioting: French government considers state of emergency over ‘gilets jaunes’ protests. What do I think with my experience of French life? The future of this unrest is uncertain. The police and security services will find out (or already know) who the violent rioters are and what unites them. Hundreds of them have already been arrested and will be sanctioned by the law. There seems to be no real ideology or agenda other than violence and destruction for their own sake.

President Macron seems to make the vital distinction and has said he would listen to the legitimate concerns of ordinary people.  Will he revise his policies? The ball seems to be in his court to show concern for the people and realise that poverty is for real.

Elsewhere in France, there have been blockages and tyre-burnings in most towns. Shopping centres, roads and toll booths and government buildings have been the main targets of disruption. All the gilet jaune people I have met have been peaceful.

Obviously, the rioters would like to light the flames of revolution to incomprehensible ends. People have been killed, and there is talk of allowing the army on the scene with guns and live ammunition if the rioting continues. There was a state of emergency caused by Islamic terrorism, and there is talk of another, but no decision so far has been made.

Macron seems ready to listen and negotiate the taxes and means to raise money for environmental projects. It is unjust to punish low income people living outside towns having to drive to work because there are no other forms of transport, with a patronising exhortation to “change their ways”. This will cause long discussions about environmental politics. You can only get people to stop polluting when affordable alternatives are offered like electric or LPG cars and reliable public transport. The infrastructures are not in place, even though the railways here are a lot cheaper than in England.

I don’t think we will see the guillotine reinstated in the Place de la Concorde any time soon! I see Macron as the last bastion of neo-liberalism in France and what separates us from the consequences of populism that would sooner or later become a dictatorship. On one side, I want to avoid being alarmist, but on the other, I cannot help wondering how much is going to be consumed in this raging fire.

Here is a sobering analysis of the situation – Why Macron has France in revolt.

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