Sol Invictus and the Rite of Spring

Posted on Sunday, 2 December, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

We Christians usually come out with the same gripe each year when supermarkets start selling Christmas goods in October and Easter eggs and chocolate for children are on the shelves before the Epiphany Octave is over!

Perhaps there is something that will put things into perspective and give us more peace of mind. Before Christianity, there were feasts around the winter solstice and the vernal equinox, as there are for the autumnal equinox (harvest rites) and St John’s Fire at the summer solstice. In the early centuries, the Church was able to Christianise these celebrations of the four seasons, and thus to evangelise the population. In recent years, the reverse has happened as Christmas has reverted to its Yuletide origins and Easter leaves place to the rite of spring, of fertility – when it is not forgotten entirely. Going the whole hog, the winter celebration is entirely commercialised and simply brings in money from consumers to business.

The Sol Invictus (“Unconquered Sun”) was a mystery cult in the late Roman empire, instituted by Aurelian on 25th December 274. Some scholars believe there were earlier roots. It seems to have been popular until about 387 but St Augustine still found a need to preach against it in the fourth century. This date of 25th December corresponds with the VIII Kalends of January in the Roman calendar. One very strange thing about the Gregorian calendar of 1582 was keeping the date of 25th December with the two-day difference from the solstice on the 23rd of the month. The whole idea of Gregory’s calendar was to correct the discrepancy between the dates of the solstices and the increasing error factor in the Julian calendar, and I refuse to enter into Old Calendarist polemics.

Why was this date chosen for the birth of Christ? The connection between Christ and the Sol Invictus has been a popular theory, but is far from proven. There is a considerable amount of speculation about the birth of Christ. The Gospels give clues but no real information. Luke and Matthew associate the birth of Christ with the days of King Herod. Luke places the birth during the Census of Quirinius, which only happened ten years later in AD 6 as described by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. We have a rough ballpark of the year, which would be 6-7 AD. For the month of his birth, some speculation suggests mid-September to early October. A winter birth seems highly unlikely.

We thus have the use of a pagan feast to be understood allegorically as Christ growing in our lives like the lengthening days after the solstice. The old Roman feast Saturnalia took place on 17 December (old style) and later expanded with celebrations to 23rd December. As was customary in the early Church, the idea was to remove the pagan meaning of these feasts and replace it with Christ. It was very early in the Church’s history when the Epiphany was introduced on 6th January. Christmas became generalised as the winter feast by the fourth century. 25th December also refers to the Jewish feast of the Dedication on 25 כִּסְלֵו (Kislev).

There is another influence in the pagan winter feast, that of Yuletide connected with the god Odin and the pagan Anglo-Saxon Mōdraniht. Christmas-tide came from this influence. Some modern pagans have revived this feast, but our secular feast has retained the yule log (usually a chocolate cake in the form of a log) and the Christmas tree.

Many Christians bewail the reversal of the Christian meaning of the pagan winter feast. Cribs are disappearing from public places. Traditional carols are replaced with songs about Santa Claus and winter in general. Santa Claus is of course based on St Nicholas of Myra, and has been deprived of his episcopal insignia and Christian meaning. We arrive at the modern pagan winter feast. It goes beyond paganism in most of our society, and is reduced to banal marketing and the consumer culture.

Some village mayors here in France have the courage to set up a Christian crib in view of all passers-by. After all, we still have calvaries and statues of Our Lady and the Saints. We should do all our best to be Christian witnesses in all this noise and hubbub of commercial Christmas, Noël, Natale, Weihnachten, etc. It is an unpleasant experience to find supermarkets in full Christmas marketing from as early as October. As the feast approaches, we have Black Friday and the blinding brightness of the lights, tinsel, decorations, packets of chocolates and bottles of booze in special packets. It becomes quite sickening to see the piles of turkeys, many of which will remain unsold after Christmas. From Boxing Day, the first Christmas trees are thrown out of people’s homes, the ageing pine needles having messed up their floors. From January, the first Easter eggs begin to appear.

There’s not a lot we can do as Christians. We have to go inwards as with living our faith in this world in general. The liturgy is of the highest importance with Mattins / Lauds and the three masses: In Gallicantu in the night, daybreak and Puer Natus. The significance of the night is very powerful, away from the drunken parties, for the night has its own sacredness as attested in the writings of mystics like Jakob Böhme and Novalis. The night is a symbol, as attested by Christian mystics like St John of the Cross, of suffering, authenticity, truthfulness, our longing for our return to God. The night is very powerful in Germanic paganism, and was lamented and lived to the full by Von Hardenberg’s Hymnen an die Nacht. It is not accidentally that monks sing Mattins in the night or the small hours of the morning. These hours of darkness and silence are of great importance. The famous German carol Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht! is full of this symbolism.

Then we have the Officium of the Mass of the sixth day of the Octave (Sunday in the Octave in the Roman rite):

Dum medium silentium tenerent omnia, et nox in suo cursu medium iter haberet omnipotens sermo tuus, Domine, de caelis a regalibus sedibus venit.

For while all things were in quiet silence, and that night was in the midst of her swift course, thine Almighty Word, O Lord, leaped down from heaven out of thy royal throne.

Thus Christmas is a time of quietness and silence. One of my finest Christmas days was spent alone in that cold December of 1995. I did my duties as a deacon for Bishop Hamlett at his church in Staffordshire, but I was not invited anywhere. I spent the day alone, ate some roast duck and drove up north to my parents the following day. It was at the same time sad but illuminating.

We cannot do anything about the secular feasts, but they are no longer the celebration of the Incarnation of the λόγος of God, that admirabile commercium of God becoming man so that man can become God. We have our churches, our catacombs, our quiet corners in our homes. On Christmas Day, everything is utter silence as people still sleep. Whether it is snowing or whatever the weather is, the silence is deafening as it extends from that holiest of nights. This is the gift of Christmas. Certainly we contemplate the family of Joseph and Mary with the newborn infant, but above all we contemplate a much deeper mystery of the new creation and redemption of the fallen world.

In the meantime, we live through Advent and prepare for that time of utter peace and silence through the great prophecies of Isaiah and the eschatological dimension of our liturgy.

I would like to leave my readers with this quote from Dom Odo Casel (Das Christliche Kultmysterium, Regensburg 1932, tr. London 1962, pp. 67-68):

When, therefore, the church year celebrates historical occurrences and developments, it does not do so for its own sake but for that of eternity hid within it. The great deed of God upon mankind, the redeeming work of Christ which wills to lead mankind out of the narrow bounds of time into the broad spaces of eternity, is its content.

Yet this content is not a gradual unfolding in the sense that the year of nature naturally develops: rather there is a single divine act which demands and finds gradual accustoming on men’s part, though in itself complete. When the church year fashions and forms a kind of unfolding of the mystery of Christ, that does not mean it seeks to provide historical drama, but that it will aid man in his step by step approach to God, an approach first made in God’s own revelation. It is the entire saving mystery which is before the eyes of the church and the Christian, more concretely on each occasion. We celebrate Advent, not by putting ourselves back into the state of unredeemed mankind, but in the certainty of the Lord who has already appeared to us, for whom we must prepare our souls; the longing of ancient piety is our model and master. We do not celebrate Lent as if we had never been redeemed, but as having the stamp of the Cross upon us, and now only seeking to be better conformed to the death of Christ, so that the resurrection may be always more clearly shown upon us.

* * *

Additional note: Dr William Tighe pointed me to an article, Calculating Christmas, The Story Behind December 25, which does show up a lack of critical thought on my part – by failing to notice that the Sol Invictus feast in ancient Rome was instituted only in the third century. We could almost say that what has happened in our own time happened then: Christian Christmas was replaced by a pagan feast. The 25th December was already celebrated as the liturgical day of Jesus’ birth.

December 25th as the date of the Christ’s birth appears to owe nothing whatsoever to pagan influences upon the practice of the Church during or after Constantine’s time. It is wholly unlikely to have been the actual date of Christ’s birth, but it arose entirely from the efforts of early Latin Christians to determine the historical date of Christ’s death.

And the pagan feast which the Emperor Aurelian instituted on that date in the year 274 was not only an effort to use the winter solstice to make a political statement, but also almost certainly an attempt to give a pagan significance to a date already of importance to Roman Christians. The Christians, in turn, could at a later date re-appropriate the pagan “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” to refer, on the occasion of the birth of Christ, to the rising of the “Sun of Salvation” or the “Sun of Justice.”

We could attempt to re-Christianise Santa Claus, as is done in some parts of the world where the cult of St Nicholas of Myra is pronounced like in Switzerland, Germany and parts of Italy. But, that is unlikely to have much of an effect on the modern secular Christmas or whatever non-religious people want to call it. We Christians would be wasting our time.

We live in a plural world as at other times in the Church’s history, and life brings us to have a foot in two camps at the same time. I too will certainly have pretty coloured lights on the outside of my home, and we will have a Christmas tree, of which my wife is particularly fond – since she collects decorations and baubles. On my side, I try to keep the prophetic and contemplative notion of Advent and follow the liturgy through to the great silent night and day of the Nativity.

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I fell asleep and had a dream….

Posted on Wednesday, 28 November, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Actually I read this Independent article – Voting down the Brexit deal could lead to the Queen forming a new government of Remainers – here’s how

The idea is that if Mrs May’s deal gets voted down in Parliament, the Queen would spare her country the perils of the no-deal Brexit. She would form a coalition government and have it work for the common good and not for the sake of political parties knocking spots off each other. This journalist seems to think it would be possible.

The fledgling administration would then seek to achieve a majority for a confidence vote. Its platform on Brexit would be to pause Article 50, while it ran a second referendum on the choice between Remain and a hard Brexit. On the basis of previous statements, the EU would willingly grant a postponement for this purpose.

But resolving the Brexit imbroglio in this way would not be the only prize. A coalition of the centre would have been created in government. It could then constitute itself as a new party. Once the European issue had been sorted, it could seek the authority of a general election to reshape British politics for a generation, rejecting both extremes, and based on a free market economy but not a free market society, combining responsible capitalism with social justice.

The electorate could then make a positive choice, rather than voting either Conservative or Labour because of the deficiencies of the other.

Crises beget opportunities. This is a big crisis, and an even bigger opportunity.

Once again, national unity could be brought back to my blighted native country, and freedom of movement for both British and continental Europeans would survive the bungled stupidity. Maybe this would be Her Majesty’s swansong and greatest gift to us her loyal subjects…

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Revolution?

Posted on Wednesday, 28 November, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I have just found this piece on Facebook written by an Orthodox priest:

These last few years the country has been is something of turmoil, what with exiting the EU, the Church of England turning itself upside down, the Labour Party run by an unelectable marxist and the Tories by a disloyal globalist. Then it all coming to a head with the Brexit fiasco with the government attempting to disobey the electorate. There is no credible political or spiritual leadership in the nation and there hasn’t been any for close to a decade.

In fact, the UK is going through a revolution almost as difficult as 1548 and 1642 combined. This is a genuine, if bloodless revolution. Whether it has the potential to become violent, I don’t know. For the moment the people on all sides have restricted themselves to internet complaints and a few large street demonstrations.

However, if the Brexit fiasco turns into the situation being promoted by Mrs May (almost alone it would seem) then I can’t be sure that the situation will remain so “calm”.

Meanwhile the Church of England continues its catastrophic decline as it adopts one socially radical position after another, distancing itself ever further from any recognisable form of Christianity and seemingly cosying up to the extreme left and moslems.

The so-called Archbishop of Canterbury has no moral compass himself and is incapable of leading the nation, he has become a joke even amongst his own clergy.

One can hope that the outcome of this revolution, one way or another will be a country free of the German EU and entirely its own master. However I see no hope whatsoever of the Church of England reversing its present gallop to oblivion, nothing can or should save it. The question is: Could anything replace it as the moral leadership of the country? The Roman church is declining almost as fast and with invisible leadership, so no hope there I’m afraid.

So we may emerge in a few years time, maybe after a change of political leadership, free of the EU, but without any spiritual core or leadership and that is a frightening prospect.

He writes from a “leaver” point of view. What I find significant is the latest “deal” worked out by Mrs May has unified the opposition of both “leavers” and “remainers” against it. According to some analyses I have been reading, there seems to be a situation like the tripartite stand-off in the old western movie The Good, the Bad and the Ugly where each looks to the other two wondering whom he is going to shoot first.

These three parties of the stand-off would be the Deal, No-Deal or No-Brexit. The consequences of no deal are terrifying because they are largely unknown and unpredictable. The deal is so badly botched to be credible and reversing Brexit and continuing the status quo seems to be “more of the same”.

I have had the impression of something very precisely orchestrated, but which could also be total chaos. This is the thing with “conspiracy theories” – sometimes they are true, partially true or untrue. Take your pick… In a more “normal” world, the dialectic between the Tories and the Whigs would make the governing side accountable, and this is what prevented a revolution from happening in England at the time of the Great Reform of 1832.

Where can it all go? The Orthodox priest brings out the question of the two main political parties representing Scylla and Charybdis the two opposing rocks that would wreck a ship just as efficiently. We have an “unelectable marxist” and a “disloyal globalist”. Is there a moral high road in all this? Perhaps the “disloyal globalist” is deliberately making such a mess of things that the fear of “no-deal death” would bring Parliament to make the only decision possible: call off Brexit even without a second referendum, gambling on people not feeling too strongly about it. Either way, there is going to be trouble.

There is no credible political or spiritual leadership in the nation.

This is serious, and needs thought. Our priest friend offers the thought that we are already in a state of revolution, though there has not been any significant amount of violence – so far. Can we compare the UK of 2018 with France of 1789? King Louis XVI was trying to do something to help the population, but it was too little and too late. The aristocratic elite, linked to the ecclesiastical elite, became the object of hatred of the mob and the Jacobins. The tension had been building for decades. The aristocracy still exists and the UK is a Kingdom, but the target of hatred is not so much the Monarchy but the vested interest and obscene wealth. The EU is globalist, but so are the chief proponents of Brexit – who are doing it for money. I see no real populist support behind Brexit, quite the opposite.

The issue of populism is developing in my mind, and the concept is very difficult to understand in the current context. There is no real leadership other than political parties all over Europe which are cashing in. The polarisation is going extreme right and extreme left, the former defining itself by the problem of mass Muslim immigration, with particular attention drawn to the criminal and fanatical elements. The left is deprived of any original thinking or intellectual content. The game seems to be played, not by the people, but one group of obscenely wealthy billionaires against another group of obscenely wealthy billionaires. Perhaps the conflict itself is all smoke and mirrors.

I am forced to observe the extreme naïvety of our Orthodox friend. Germany itself is in a state of flux with the possibility of Frau Merkel standing down and being replaced by a more strongly nationalist party like Alternative für Deutschland. Perhaps British nationalism is better than German nationalism, even when it is not Nazi or fascist… What about French nationalism? I suppose all those “foreigners” are the enemy and we Brits can look forward to the new Empire on which the sun would never set. This is not the reality of 2018, not even 1918, devastated as it was by the Great War.

The influence of Christianity is not something we can count on for improving the ills of a country or a continent or a world. The whole notion of Christ the King was an attempt by the Roman Catholic Church to bring people to put themselves under Christ rather than worship their Führer or Duce in the years between about 1922 to the end of World War II. The western world rejected the notion of Christendom from the time of the Enlightenment, and Romanticism only partially succeeded in any kind of revival. In China, before their revolution, they had Confucius, but no longer. The only principle in western society to which most people relate is money. That is the damning indictment.

I am not counting on the prospect of a revolution, because politicians have a way of averting the worst because of their knowledge of history. I see how Monsieur Macron is dealing with the gilets jaunes by relenting on some of the contested agendas – like charging tolls for entering cities with a motor vehicle. This is what Mrs May’s deal is all about – creating the circumstances in which revolution would be averted by maintaining and hopefully improving the status quo. There may be a lot of demonstrations and riots, but they will not go anywhere unless they get the support of both the police and the armed forces! That is more than unlikely.

Everything is going to depend on money and spending power, consumption – until the resources are depleted and increasingly at a premium. Emmanuel Macron is a very shrewd man, talking as he is of a new social contract, bringing us to think immediately of Rousseau and the situation in the late eighteenth century. Whether this is just hype and hot air, or something much more meaningful, only time will tell.

As for nobility of spirit and a moral reference, all we can do is ourselves to be Christians and constantly refer to the Gospel and the way of Christ. We must teach, not by competing with modern marketing techniques, not by force, but by example and a kind of love that money cannot buy. We can only be a leaven in the desert.

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Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?

Posted on Tuesday, 27 November, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Some comments were made about the beautiful vestments used for the Sarum Mass at Hampton Court. There is a frequent argument for punishing the Church and stripping it down to nothing, a kind of creeping nihilism that has spread into the arts and all western culture over the past century. Of course, the title of this posting is the question asked by Judas to Jesus, apparently shocked over the waste of an expensive ointment.

I reproduce the thread from Facebook, hiding the names concerned.

Q Hmm, not my cup of tea I have to admit. In these days of huge misery and poverty I’m afraid I feel very uncomfortable when the church flaunts its wealth in sumptuous fabrics and displays of silverware. I’d rather honour God by feeding the hungry. But that’s just my view.

A Quite. Once the articles have been made and given, you may as well use them. I think someone made that kind of remark to Himself once, to which he replied ‘The poor you will have always with you.’

And by that logic, we ought also to sell off the crown jewels, the palaces, the coaches, and all the other state flummery.

A Every time I see a high church posting, i know it’s merely a matter of time before the spirit of the Iscariot prompts a negative reply 😉

A You would be surprised how much money is spent throwing old liturgical items away and then having new altars and vestments made in post-modern style. Then there are no complaints about the money not being given to the poor. These vestments are about 100 years old. Sell them? To whom? Shouldn’t the prospective buyer give his money to the poor?

A Also of course one isn’t normally allowed to sell church paraphernalia and especially not the silverware.

A I think this reaction, which is not uncommon, shows that people think of well- designed, well made beautiful things as being expensive and frivolous and don’t see less beautiful but equally or more expensive equivalents as being equally frivolous. It fascinates me that plain, functional styles never appear materialistic. Like the perceived difference between an elegant, well made, pre-owned and therefore recycled Georgian dining table and a rough, brand new, inelegant piece of ikea pine sold as a kitchen table which costs about three times what the Georgian one did and won’t last a third the time. People unconsciously associate good taste, timelessness and thoughtful use of resources as materialism.

Q N. You are right of course; a fascinating understanding of perception. But when I made my initial comment I wasn’t actually thinking that, or suggesting that such items should be sold, but rather how it appears to people outside the church and the image that the church, wittingly or unwittingly, presents to the world. I have seen so many comments online from people whose very negative view of the church is based on its perceived wealth (as seen in buildings, works of art, vestments etc etc), the highly publicised cases of sexual abuse, and the perceived (and totally untrue) lack of any action to help those in need. I realise that this was the wrong place to have that discussion, so I apologise.

A I see this point of view and I agree that society has an unfortunate opinion of the church sometimes- which I am sure is encouraged by the ultra- secular media. I don’t think taking away the beauty of holiness as it is given in this and other traditions and contexts would have a positive effect at all though- the people who have this opinion would not suddenly start going to church, they would just have a savage satisfaction that they had crushed something they didn’t approve of. Also, this is a powerful way of making beauty accessible to people who can’t personally afford it and to reach their souls through all of their senses- if they are that way inclined. This country has a rich tapestry of church traditions and cultures to appeal to almost anyone and this is the one that reaches into the souls of some, including myself. That’s perhaps why I was a tad defensive! Apologies here too.

Q No, you weren’t being defensive – you made a really good point, and a very thought-provoking one. And the beauty of holiness is wonderful, however one finds it. I tend to find it in much simpler surroundings, but that’s just my taste. But I am very bothered by people’s perception of “The Church” and by extension of the whole of Christian belief and practice, and I am equally troubled by our very broken world and country, and I am struggling to reconcile the two. On a purely personal level I think my beliefs have been pared down to the bare minimum – love God, love your neighbour, feed the hungry etc – and I am currently struggling to find any relevance in ritual, vestments and all the paraphernalia. I can see that they have a beauty, but that’s all. I’ve had to do a LOT of rethinking over the past few years and I don’t think I have yet come out the other side!

A The church which lent the vestments, St Mary’s, Primrose Hill, has a long history of engagement with the community since the day it was built. They have run a night shelter for rough sleepers for some years . Vestments do not figure highly on their expenditure list!

This is an example of a sensitive dialogue with the person who came out with this frequent objection to beauty in liturgy and culture. Ever since World War I, many in the west feel that they are undeserving of any beauty or consolation in life for whatever part in them contributed in their mind to the mass killing and destruction. A similar reaction occurred after World War II. German churches are among the plainest and most whitewashed, and modern buildings incorporate a desired ugliness and anti-aestheticism.

This is something I see reflected in our current political discussion of the collapse of traditional centre-left-right party politics and the desire for punishment and self flagellation. The Russian Revolution was largely brought about by nihilism, a theme found in Dostoevsky’s Demons (The Possessed – Бесы). Nihilism in this and other contexts is a belief that traditional morals, ideas, and beliefs have no value. It is also the belief that society’s social and political institutions are so corrupt they should be destroyed.

This is a feeling many of us can encounter when considering the Church and the big questions of sexual abuse by priests and bishops of children and vulnerable adults. It is understandable, but it can only lead one way…

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Sarum Mass at Hampton Court

Posted on Monday, 26 November, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Yesterday, Sunday 25th November, Mass was celebrated according to the Latin Use of Salisbury with the setting Missa Puer natus est nobis by Thomas Tallis – sung by the Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal. The Mass itself was that of Christmas Day (odd) rather than the Sunday Next before Advent.

I would have loved to go to it, but it was impossible due to distance and cost. Unfortunately, filming the liturgy was not allowed, so all we have is a few discreetly taken photos.

The splendid vestments were lent for the occasion by Fr Percy Dearmer’s church, St Mary’s Primrose Hill in London.

The final one here is the most “iconic”, the priest holding his arms in the form of the cross at the Unde et memores, a feature shared with the rites of Paris, Rouen, Lyon, the Dominican Order, most monasteries not using the Roman rite, etc.

I have done a couple of videos myself, but only of low Mass.

There is also a famous celebration in the 1990’s by the Roman Catholic priest Fr Sean Finnigan.

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Populism

Posted on Friday, 23 November, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

As events unfold in England, I find my comments columns becoming very symptomatic of the polarisation now occurring all over Europe. Most of us are too parochially-minded to see things clearly, not that I have any pretensions. We are sucked up into a vast “movement” that makes us increasingly suspicious of that very word.

Are we returning to the 1930’s? The Guardian article For hard-right revolutionaries, Brexit is cover for a different end is quite frightening in the bewildering swirl of allegations about big business and manipulation by demagogues. One such person to watch out for is Steve Bannon,

Steve Bannon is being talked about a lot. This gentleman is President Trump’s former strategist, ousted from his White House post. Over the years, especially from 2015, I have been noticing collusions of events in the world. It is the old thesis-antithesis-synthesis dialectic of Hegel as we were flooded with news about war and atrocities in the Middle-East, leading to large numbers of Muslim immigrants into most European countries, but some went to the Americas. We were told all sorts of things about them. Then there was Daesh aka ISIS who began to take the world back to the era of Vlad Dracul the Impaler, and many terrorist attacks in Europe. The ironic title “religion of peace” was coined and we all found it increasingly difficult to distinguish between ordinary Muslim people and the Jihadists and terrorists. I was no exception in the movement that led to Donald Trump in the USA and Brexit in my own country. I was mercifully spared from voting by the “15-year” rule that takes suffrage away from Brits who have been out of the country for more than fifteen years.

Two years after the election of Trump and the referendum in England, the dots begin to be joined, and what we see is quite ugly. We live in a world of smoke, mirrors, Trojan horses and lies. Here in France, we learned of some very severe tax hikes in diesel and petrol prices, and that the gilet jaune would be the symbol of the protest against this policy aimed at punishing the population for the use of motor vehicles instead of public transport. The gilet is the safety vest all motorists are required by law to have in their cars in the event of a breakdown and being visible on the road in poor visibility conditions. The problem is that we don’t all live in Paris. Those of us living in the country depend on vehicles for work and everything until such time as there will be a viable alternative. An ecological reasoning become opposed to the social condition of ordinary cash-strapped people. Battery technology isn’t yet well enough advanced for electric vehicles to be viable in these conditions. Perhaps in 2040 but not yet. It seemed to be a social movement with which I solidarised by putting the gilet on my dashboard. I mention this movement because of the way far right-wing people rode on it piggy-back, or even initiated it anonymously. They started blocking traffic and committing acts of violence. My gilet is now back with my toolbox and safety equipment kit in the back of my van!

President Macron seems to be a strange mixture of Thatcherite capitalism and resistance to the new populism. Much as we don’t like being made to pay more for things, I see many signs of good sense in this young man’s ideas. He represented a break from the old post-Gaullist centre-right and centre-left oscillation, and faced off Marine Le Pen in the final televised debate before the May 2017 election. If you understand French, here it is:

For you to judge… I found it very revealing. Macron is obviously trying to satisfy the populist cravings of French people whilst refusing the excesses of nationalism and populism.

Different parts of Europe are reacting differently to the populist challenge, as are the United States of America and countries like Brazil. How concerned should we be? Asking the question differently, are we all enthused about a political philosophy that defines everything in terms of The Enemy? If we suggest that we are going back to the 1930’s and the rise of Hitler, people will poo-poo us and accuse of being victims of Godwin’s Law. We are not returning to that era, because the historical circumstances are not the same, nor is the popular culture or use of technology. It will not be the same. This is why future demagogues will not have a Charlie Chaplin moustache or yell at the crowds in German with an Austrian accent! We must move beyond appearances and analyse the essential philosophical and ideological characteristics. Propaganda will not be crude like that of Josef Göbbels, but would use the latest technologies of targeted advertising and psychological manipulation.

The extent of populism is quite alarming, and has entered mainstream politics in some countries. It is at its strongest in eastern Europe, Sweden, Greece, Austria and France. Mainstream parties have had to adopt populist rhetoric to be able to compete, as Sarkozy tried to do against Marine Le Pen and her father.

Populism is not an ideology, but rather a kind of self-definition in relation to The Enemy, legitimising “the people” and demonising “the elites”. It can take root on the extreme left as well as the extreme right. A populist is any politician who claims to represent the unified will of the people against foreign migrants, elites, “political correctness” and minorities. For the sake of comparison, Hitler was clear in Mein Kampf that “the enemy” was Judaism and Jews. Without the dialectic, it is impossible to build the needed pitch of fanatical fervour. Another characteristic of populist politics is the use of the referendum, which is certainly what certain elements in the Conservative Party manipulated in 2015-16.

Another characteristic is attacking the judiciary and the media. Immigration is a hot-button issue. As a right-wing manifestation, we find nationalist ideology and “Christian values”. We ought to stop and think about this for a moment. I am a Christian myself and a priest. From 1981, I became exposed to traditionalist Catholic conspiracy theories and this kind of dialectical thinking. Was this not Christ’s “you are either for me or against me”, the fundamental choice between good and evil, God and Satan? I bought it for many years, and I came to France in 1982, met men like Dominique Cabanne de Laprade, a nationalist fanatic who participated in an assassination attempt against General De Gaulle. The Roman Catholic Church is still full of it, from Pope Francis’ Peronist leanings to Opus Dei. Whether it was the Society of St Pius X or the officially recognised communities, the ideology was the same, us or them. It was more polite and refined at Gricigliano, and I recognise that Msgr Wach did try to take some of the bitterness out of the aspiration to a new Christendom. Many steps back, and I would discover Friedrich von Hardenburg‘s Christenheit oder Europa, not an apologetic argument for restoring some kind of theocracy, but rather an analogy to promote a form of cosmopolitanism. Before that, I discovered Catholic Modernism, the old Romantic-inspired Liberalism in France, Russian philosophers and other thoughts that began to set me free to discover another kind of traditional Christianity. To this day I grapple with the contradictions between Christian conservatism and populism and a higher and nobler understanding. Hence came my attraction to Romanticism and philosophy in the meaning of searching for and loving wisdom.

Many Christian values are not very Christian in my view. I have been faced with the worst intolerance and bigotry, against which Christ answered Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves (Mt xxiii. 15). Churches have paid the price, and they are closing down as Christianity no longer represents the least reference in anyone’s life. It happened in the 1790’s, again in the 1900’s and again now. When this kind of abuse is committed, and I haven’t even mentioned the stinking corruption and rank hypocrisy of priests who abuse children sexually and the bishops who cover them up, it does not go unpunished! Myself, I have to look within and find a new way of understanding Christ in order to survive as a Christian believer and a priest. The Christian life has nothing to do with politics, and especially not with populism. I carry on walking in the gloom, confident that God will show me the light.

I leave it to the experts to analyse how populism relates to different cultures in different parts of Europe and the world. I am more interested in examining the ideology and philosophical elements. As I mentioned, there isn’t much of an ideology – just hating your enemy enough to give you a sense of identity and self-worth.

What do populists want to do? We have plenty of examples of revolutions in history. “The Movement” is too diverse to be predictable. Its influence in British politics is only indirect, mainly through business connections. The main single-issue themes is some form of ethnic cleansing, presently by means of deportations and rigorous screening at the frontiers, and blowback against “political correctness”.

Those of us who identify with more mainstream ideas tend to assume that our democratic institutions and liberalism are stable and enduring, but we are perhaps too optimistic. The first victim of such changes is the rights of populations, not only Muslims and homosexuals, but also immigrants from different parts of the world and from the poorer European countries. Political institutions can be eroded and undermined by money, plenty of it. For those in favour of a hard Brexit, the enemy is the European Union and any freedom of movement of “queue jumpers” as Theresa May put it a few days ago.

It is all much more subtle than Europe in the 1920’s and 30’s or South America with its various tin-pot military dictators and coups d’état. We are having to learn to distinguish populism from democracy (though democracy has its limits, because freedom presupposes self-knowledge and nobility of spirit). It is tempting to curtail freedom of religion for Muslims, but would we apply the same laws of secularism to ourselves? We are still at the stage where populism can fizzle out under the weight of its own weakness and incoherence. In some places, it can force mainstream politics to make concessions in regard to some of the desire restrictive policies, but without disturbing the system too much. In other areas, it could mean a situation like the fall of the Weimar Republic between 1929 and 1933 and the rise of Hitler.

According to some articles I read, populism is limited in its influence. I see how careful Macron is being in dealing with the gilets jaunes – keep the police from being too heavy-handed and letting the movement fizzle out in exchange for some compromises. With skilful management, surely levels of support for Le Pen on the right and Melenchon on the far-left will remain tolerable low. The gangs of thugs in Germany and Austria can only make a lot of noise, but the memory of the Nazi regime remains from 1945. Nigel Farange has largely discredited himself and his hypocrisy been demonstrated when it was revealed that his children have obtained German passports to “Brexit-proof” them. One limiting factor is fragmentation and internal conflict. Will the mainstream parties rise to the challenge and find new meaning to their existence other than being run as a business for lucrative ends?

One victim in this new populist movement is the distinction of powers in the modern state: legislative, executive and judicial. No one must be above the law. This is something that went wrong with Sarkozy in France when he and the French Government attempted to take control of the high court in 2007 (Cour de Cassation). My wife knows the legal world well, and has often remarked how badly the legal system was damaged under that government. This is one sign and harbinger of very bad news!

The countries to watch at present are Poland, Hungary, Austria, Italy and Sweden. It may be a wake-up call for the European Union to reform its structures and get its act together. Brexit causes a lot of anxiety across the board, especially if it winds up as a no-deal job next 29th March. Without the EU, what is the alternative? Steve Bannon’s Movement? Might we see a division between central-eastern Europe and western Europe? Revolutions always buckle under the weight of their own instability and lack of any real social philosophy. Much will depend on the ability of the mainstream political scene to reform itself from sleaze, stupidity and other forms of corruption. I am quite chilled by the stupidity and ignorance of most people, or at least a “critical mass” who have been influenced by the demagogues, by fashion and groupthink.

I conclude this little piece with a reflection on the very question of freedom. We all want to be in control of our own lives, and most of us can judge that point where the limit of our freedom is the beginning of the other person’s. Like people under the Hitler regime or in Soviet Russia, we abhor being parts of a machine or tools for an agenda that clearly violates every principle of God and man. Freedom is an insuperable problem at a philosophical level, and it is a reason why I began to explore Nickolai Berdyaev and the German Idealists and Romantics who inspired him. Freedom is a consequence of the nobility of spirit, which comes through self-knowledge and suffering.

I find these themes in the Romantics, in Thomas Mann who faced the totalitarian machine of his country, Oscar Wilde as he struck the wall of Victorian England like a bird hits a window pane. This notion of freedom of perfection, as Fr Pinckaers taught us at Fribourg, is something lofty, noble and inspiring. We will also find a philosophy of the human person in philosophers like Jacques Maritain and Karol Wojtyla. It is the true Christ who is within each one of us. We are free to desire and we desire to be free, free to follow our calling in life and find our purpose. The Machine can only break us and leave us as dead shells of humanity. We get to know ourselves through knowing others, and this is the essential message of cosmopolitanism. This is something the great explorers of old could tell us.

Before going out and disturbing others with slogans and ideologies, we have first to work on ourselves. I will expand on some of these themes in a new article I am working on for the Blue Flower. Self-awareness is a part of that nobility of spirit that comes through the discovery of the divine spark within each of us, which Christ calls the Kingdom within. The Parables in the Gospels bring us nearer to this mystery which is never fully possessed in this fleeting life.

Be yourself! That is the best way to imitate Christ.

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England on the Psychiatrist’s Couch

Posted on Friday, 16 November, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I have come across this intuitive article in the Guardian – The paranoid fantasy behind Brexit. Ironically, as I write this little posting, I am listening to a CD I have just bought of the choir of York Minister in the “old days” of Dr Francis Jackson – featuring private recordings by one of the songmen. In particular, there is the monumental eighteenth-century anthem of William Boyce, O where shall wisdom be found? Indeed, where is wisdom found in the current events in Westminster?

You will doubtlessly read the article and come away from it with your own ideas. What particularly struck me was the place of the second world war in our lives, the last time every civilised country had to fight against a regime of madmen and criminals, namely Nazi Germany. I am aware that this event has been a powerful archetype in my own life, even though I was born a few days more than a mere fourteen years after the Führer blew his brains out in the bunker. My parents were in the thick of the war, but too young for active service. My grandfather was a Captain in the Green Howards Regiment, was captured at Dunkerque fighting to the last and sent to an Oflag near Linz. Every Remembrance day, we honour and remember all those who were killed in action or who died from their injuries. It brings tears to my eyes as if I were personally involved in either of those conflicts. Last Sunday, I joined my Bishop, a few of our priests and his congregation in this act of Remembrance and the blessing of a seat permanently installed outside the church. We were as present in this intention as the Queen herself at the Cenotaph in Whitehall.

My childhood was filled with films like the Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare. There were many such operations in real life involving self-sacrifice and heroism. I still watch the golden oldies from time to time. This is the way we English boys were brought up. We even had play battles between groups of boys calling ourselves Allies or Germans. I even had the fantasy as a child of offering my life for my country in battle, a martyr of England! The reality is somewhat better portrayed in the more recent film Saving Private Ryan. There is nothing glorious about war. It is futile and a horrible waste of resources and human lives. It was necessary against Hitler, but it was all caused by the victors of World War I wanting Germany’s pound of flesh. Had there not been such financial pressure against Germany, Hitler would have remained a failed art student and unknown man in the streets of Vienna and Munich.

I know what it is like for my compatriots because I am myself English. I remember the independence of Rhodesia from the dwindling British Empire on the news in the 1960’s. Since I came to live in France and a couple of other European countries, I enjoyed joking about pompous gentlemen from the 1900’s and men old enough to remember the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857, coughing through their snuff-stained moustaches. In a way I became a caricature of my Englishness as I enjoyed the antics of the Romantic Ladies in their imaginary Empire of Romantia. I am not so sure about their sado-masochistic antics with their pupils, but they wrote funny stories in their reviews and were very amusing on their Imperial Home Service cassette tapes. They still have documentation on Romantia.

The jokes and humour fade when things become serious, and grown men in the British Government start thinking along the same lines, trying to out-churchill Winston Churchill and his Finest Hour. We are not at war, and the countries of the European Union are not anyone’s enemy. Sure, things need to be improved as in any human organisation, but the founding ideas are based on the rule of law and human rights. This European aspiration goes back to the League of Nations founded after the Armistice of 1918 and developed into the United Nations after 1945. The UN developed along cosmopolitan and globalist lines (which can lead to evil in the hands of the wrong people) and the Common Market came in for questions of money and trade. That became the European Economic Community and the European Union. The EU was blamed by the British press for many things, like the shape and size of bananas, all of which turned out to be myths, totally untrue.

The idea of being in a state like May 1940, when the Drôle de Guerre was over and Hitler launched the Luftwaffe against Britain, gives us the comforting idea of being a united people and a proud nation. Which schoolboy has not been inspired by that great film of the 1960’s The Battle of Britain? This is what people do in times of adversity and threat. We put aside our differences and we fight the enemy. But the EU is not Hitler, and no planes and ships are being sent to invade Old Blighty! I almost wish Macron would sprout a bicorne and become the new Napoleon, but it is a stupid fantasy. The enemy in war is war itself.

Much of the Guardian article is centred on Len Deighton’s SS-GB and Robert Harris’ Fatherland, novels of alternative history and Germany winning the war. Deighton is a good thriller writer, and I ought to be getting this book for bedtime reading or while travelling by train or waiting in a waiting room at the doctor’s, etc. The psychology portrayed is significant: cosmopolitanism against nationalism. In Deighton’s book, the political elites go along with the SS goons, collaborate, and only nationalists resist. It didn’t quite happen like that in France, where many of the resistants were Communists, but by no means all. My grandfather-in-law was a devout Frenchman, and helped a good number of Jewish people to escape the concentration camps. Others sabotaged the railways and the infrastructures the Jerries needed for their logistics. The point here is blaming cosmopolitanism for the kind of people who would collaborate. It is not always as dualistic as some of us might like.

The other point is nostalgia for the old Empire, and I am no longer talking about dotty ladies in the north-east London suburbs! Those of us with a smattering of historical knowledge would know that the British Empire committed many atrocities in India and invented the concentration camp in South Africa. To what extent was this Empire a civilising factor rather than the rape and pillage of peoples for their wealth and resources? I prefer to come to terms with the more bitterly realistic version. We have sinned and must atone. It seems to mean the mass immigration now happening, though many immigrants die on the way and are deported as soon as they are discovered to be illegal aliens. One idea persisting in our country is that we are either an empire or a colony, a vassal state of a corrupt superstate. There is a third possibility, of being a country with our culture and talents to offer the world, all in working for a peaceful world where people will no longer be oppressed, raped and pillaged.

In my various readings of articles, I find that there is a greater risk of some ideology along the lines of Fascism or Nazism among nationalists than cosmopolitans or globalists. The populist movement is highly nebulous, and can only have any effect if it gets a political authority on board or the armed forces. Otherwise it have to work through mainstream politics, and can be carefully watched. I find some Fascist themes in the new regime in Italy, where the economy is going badly, worse than Greece a few years ago. That being said, the militaristic and occultist themes of Nazism are nowhere to be found today, at least in mainstream politics and not confined to groups of fanatics. We feared the reunification of Germany. Neo-Nazism in Germany remains marginal even if its popularity is alarming.

I am no expert on these matters, but I have read quite a lot on the 1919-45 period, William Shirer in particular. Nazism was a unique phenomenon and cannot be reproduced now. It involved the personality of Hitler, the circumstances around the Treaty of Versailles and the war reparations. France was the most exacting in the person of Georges Clemenceau. Hyperinflation and poverty radicalised the population and Hitler played on all the old archetypes involving anti-Semitism and the old Teutonic myths reflected in Wagner’s operas. It all went together in a unique historical construction. Other regimes have been cruel and insane, but nothing on the scale of Nazi Germany. Were the combination of circumstances to happen again, what would make any of us go along with it? Did not some of these horrors occur under the British Empire?

We remember and honour the dead of the two wars, but we must cease to allow them to be our references – other than learning from history. We don’t need the Allied victory to be a country to be proud of or affirm our national unity in virtue and humanism. We can try to be a Christian leaven in the wilderness and rise to the sublime heights of the human spirit. I live in France, a country that suffered the Occupation and the settling of scores in 1944, but French people have got over the war.

I also see things as an Englishman who has learned to live in France, Switzerland and Italy. I am also a Germanophile, admiring the culture of that country’s great composers, poets, writers and philosophers. My German isn’t very good, but I love that language, hearing the poetry of Göthe, Novalis and others. How that country became Nazi beats me. It was certainly the German’s love of order and deference to authority. We too in England tend to trust our leaders and abide by the law. I had German friends at Fribourg University, and this marked me profoundly. I feel more sympathy with German Idealism than with Thomism or Aristotelian scholasticism. There is also a fervent mysticism in Germany that filtered its way to England in the middle ages.

I have felt misled by reactionary ideas in alt-right websites, and I try to see reality in the light of Ockham’s Razor. Seek the simplest explanation and be extremely careful of unverified conspiracy theories. The left-wing “snowflakes” and “liberals” have been caricatured without mercy by conservatives, though some of them have behaved in ways that deserve their reputation as the most illiberal and intolerant. Life is not binary or Manichean. There are shades of grey between the extremes.

Here in France, I have often heard that the EU was remotely Napoleon’s idea. Again the historical circumstances do not match in any more than distant analogy. Maybe Hitler wanted to unify Europe, but the EU has been in place for decades, but no one is being tortured or put in concentration camps. Could the EU become a superstate like the United States of America? Perhaps that would be a good idea. There is cultural diversity in the USA, and even diversity of languages. I managed to learn French, and a reasonable level of Italian and a bit of German. It is good for us to learn languages and learn about people in those countries. I had a most unpleasant time visiting Dachau, but I felt it to be duty when I visited Bavaria in 1999. I then visited Munich, its lovely churches, drank some delicious beer and drove through the mountains to Salzburg in western Austria. What a beautiful country!

We have a lot to get over, isolated as we are on our isles. It takes only an hour and a half to travel by sea from Dover to Calais, half an hour by plane from London to Paris. Our communications are instantaneous all over the world by internet. I love my country and my culture, but not our insularity.

I remember the Falklands war in 1982, just before I set off for France. In the summer of 1982, I arrived by ferry in the port of Portsmouth and saw a naval frigate with a massive black hole in its side – one of the Junta‘s missiles bought from some shady arms dealer. I had worried, as a lad of 23 years that I might be conscripted and sent to war. But, this was not World War II, but something eight thousand miles away needing only the professional Navy and Marines. I remember the jingoism, but which was wearing thin already with many of us. There was no risk that I would be sent over the top as cannon fodder! Many did lose their lives, and nearly all the inhabitants of the Falklands wanted to remain British. I think Thatcher did the right thing, but could have been a little less jingoistic about it.

I continue to follow the news, and many of us entertain a theory according to which Theresa May is playing the game to the very end, ready to press the “Kill Brexit” button just before she gets ousted and replaced by someone like Rees-Mogg. Over the past day, several Cabinet ministers have resigned, and she knows that the most recent agreement with the EU will not be accepted by Parliament. A no-deal Brexit would be too devastating for any other than someone thinking of emulating – – – Hitler. “My way or the highway”, me or chaos. The enemy isn’t Brussels, but elements in Westminster that need to be got rid of but without creating blowback. Could Mrs May be ready to sacrifice herself, knowing that she would go down in history as a hypocrite and a liar?

This whole thing has become very divisive, and I have to accept that “leavers” voted out of conscience, doing what they believed to be right for our nation and native country. We have to respect each other, and try to get the best understanding we can by reading the right sources – not just the newspapers. I would probably have voted to leave two years ago, influenced as I was by the propaganda – not only in England but also here in France. France too has suffered from uncontrolled immigration, a very heavy weight on the social system and also from the increase in the number of countries in the Union. There are real problems. Brexit will not solve them. The EU is not Hitler.

My country needs to come to terms with no longer being an empire. Perhaps the Monarchy will go in time. I am attached to the Monarchy because it is a symbol of national unity and part of our culture, and I hope it can have its place in a state belonging to a wider Union. I don’t see why it can’t. Republics are not always the best things, and they can be quite boring! But, history goes on and things will happen in the future. We must resist the temptation of nostalgia for war. War destroys and kills, and brings nothing good.

I believe that the Brexit now being attempted will fail and Britons will recoil from a no-deal Brexit. The UK has always had a singular status in the EU. We have been allowed to keep customs and immigration controls at our borders. We have kept our currency, so that we can, theoretically, survive a failure of the Euro. We use both Imperial and Metric weights and measures. These differences have been respected and tolerated. The only way ahead is to rescind Article 50, with or without a second referendum (the first in 2016 was vitiated by illegal finance and misleading propaganda), and participate more fully in an institution that needs reforms and more transparency in things like regulations and flows of immigration. If things were improved in countries like Syria, Afghanistan and Irak, people could live in their own countries instead of being so desperate. Surely the UK could help to this noble end of helping the victims of greedy billionaires and religious fanatics. Perhaps we could build an Empire of Love and Humanity, but we can only do that with other countries.

May the coming feast of Christmas bring peace and understanding into our divided families and communities. This is truly a time to turn to Christ.

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Strangers and Foreigners

Posted on Thursday, 8 November, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

It is quite amazing to happen upon Fr Jonathan Munn’s new article “Loyal to a church that has passed away”. In this article is the eternal notion of our being foreigners and strangers in this world that exacts our compliance. It is entirely my experience as someone with Aspergers autism. Being a foreigner, from somewhere else, an exile, is part of our Christian condition in a world that has only accepted Christianity as a principle of Christendom when it gave money and power to the strong. I often think of these themes as I collate my documents to ask France to accept me as one of its citizens in order to conserve the freedom of movement I presently have beyond the impending Brexit.

The notion of exile and nostalgia is present throughout the Old and New Testaments:

Psalm 137: By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept : when we remembered thee, O Sion. As for our harps, we hanged them up : upon the trees that are therein. For they that led us away captive required of us then a song, and melody in our heaviness : Sing us one of the songs of Sion. How shall we sing the Lord’s song : in a strange land?

1 Chronicles 29:15: For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.

John 15:18-19: If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

John 17:16: They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

1 Peter 2:11: Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul.

My article of yesterday evening gave a taste of my own experience in the Church of England. The present rebuild of the organ in York Minster will bring back something that has not been heard since about 1960, but which remained graven in the memories of people I knew in the 1970’s. I may have feelings of nostalgia, but the 1970’s were not a good time for me, living through school, my short time with Harrison’s and coming to terms with being an organ builder not being my vocation, feeling lost and rudderless and ending up in London on a harpsichord-making course which was a poor substitute. The Church of England was something I saw from organ lofts, something to keep at arms length even though something fascinated me. I was drawn to prayer and the Christian ideal as a schoolboy, but I related so little to the Church. It was the same with the Roman Catholic Church and my seminary days.

My own vocation to the priesthood flowed out of my love of church music, which is a part of the whole experience of the Catholic liturgy. I was nurtured by that great cathedral with its parish churches of the medieval city of York. Some of the clergy warmed to me as I sought for something I would never find in this world. Canon Reginald Cant was one of them in his kindness and gentlemanly manner. I considered the priesthood in the Church of England, but the barriers were so high I did not have the strength to even try it. It towered over my head!

Fr Jonathan came to the ACC straight from his own experience of the Church of England. I had about fifteen years of experience of the traditionalist wing of the Roman Catholic Church with its “muscular politics” and lack of compassion in accordance with the very principles of the Gospel.

I have had my own brushes with Fr Little, as he has varied over the years in his own way in and out of American “classical Anglicanism”. The American Christian is one who “gets out” and “proclaims the Gospel”, either a commercial pitch to get paying customers back into the empty churches in a secularised world, or an effort to build a “Christian civilisation” which is in reality the dominance of the strong and wealthy using a religion as a means of control. I don’t accuse Fr Little of such a vast scale of transformation of Christ’s teaching into a political ideology, because he is a little continuing Anglican priest, as Fr Jonathan and I are. Fr Little has varied between hard Calvinism to Arminianism, Anglo-Catholicism in the Prayer Book version or a more pre-Reformation version.

I myself have a preference for the “English” (Dearmer, etc.) style and pre-Reformation liturgies, but I am a priest where the prevailing tendency is closer to traditionalist post-Tridentine European Catholicism without the integralist politics. I am not a sectarian and I tolerate the fact that tastes are not a subject of dispute. Would I be happy in a Church that was exactly all my own ideas and tastes? Perhaps a slight tension keeps things straight and in harmony with the whole.

I don’t know Fr Little well enough, and he is something of a mystery for me. The quote on Fr Jonathan’s blog with its reproach of doing things the old way seems to be a comment rather than something reflecting his own conviction. The ACNA has “modern” liturgies and the “entertainment” style. The American world of mega-churches is so alien to us in Europe and the UK. Perhaps conforming the churches to the world draws people in, takes advantage of the incoming financial resources and helps to work towards a new Christian theocracy. Is that Christian?

I am thankful that I didn’t become a priest in the Church of England or the Roman Catholic Church. All the time, here in France, I read stories of solitude and depression in parish priests in the countryside. I know a few personally, and I know I wouldn’t have the strength to withstand the ingratitude, hostility and apathy of parishioners imbued in their ideologies. Little has changed since George Bernanos and the Journal d’un Curé de Campagne, except that it is worse now.

We are strangers in a world that rejects Christ unless he comes in useful for this or that political agenda. What we do in the ACC, Sarum or Anglican Missal, is of little interest to most, yet people of non-religious backgrounds can be “sparked”. One example was Andy and Samantha who live next door to our Bishop and started helping out with practical things. It worked partly through the relationship of friends, and partly through discovering something other-worldly in our liturgy. We have no “sales pitch” and I for one would be put off by such an approach. I am so viscerally repelled by advertising and marketing, that such an approach would repel me or kill me from within. The thought of someone invading my intimate being is knowledge of the kind of totalitarian darkness that would take over the world if we let it do so.

I see the world of fashions, of people living for the ideal of material comfort and social status. Being diagnosed with Asperger autism made me aware of why this value in life meant nothing to me. Not all Christians aware of their alienation from The World or The Pit as some called it share the same condition, but experience of life has brought it together. Some things are innate, and other things are learned from experience.

I don’t know whether conservative Christianity will be longer lasting than populism in politics. Things are changing so rapidly. The assumption is that only old people and ageing Boomers are interested in liberalism and democracy, and that young people want the “old-time religion”. In both religion and politics, the assumption does not have universal validity. Myself, I am not a conservative, but a liberal in the old meaning of this word (at a philosophical level) and attracted by transcendence and beauty in man’s aspiration to the world of the spirit. I am not interested in power and control over other people. I am deeply influenced by the 1960’s and the reaction against that stifling conservativism of the post-war establishment with its gung-ho attitude. I don’t take drugs, live in a hippie commune or listen to their “music” – but there were valid aspirations. It is not a question of following fashions but being free and spiritual as human beings made in God’s image.

The new “liberalism” is a conservative ideology that cannot admit being superseded and passed by as history continues its way. Any salt that loses its savour is no good for anything. The old liberalism (before economics stole the word) was concerned with freedom of the human being to leave this world of conformity and slavery to become fully human and divine. Fidelity to our traditions is not conservatism!

Thank you, Fr Jonathan, for writing such a timely thought.

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Spinarseholes!

Posted on Wednesday, 7 November, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I spent most of my teenage years in York and was fascinated by the Minster organ. I occasionally got to play it (outside services) and the exhilarating experience would be something like flying a fighter jet! I knew John Rothera who was an alto songman in the Minster choir for many, many, years from the 1950’s. He did not approve of the Walker rebuild of the organ in 1961, when tonal changes were made to make the organ into an eclectic instrument with both romantic and baroque characteristics. Whilst sipping tea in his house full of collected items, up a little alley near Monk Bar, John would relate so many anecdotes about events and people in the Minster community.

One such legend was the tuner for the north-east of England employed by the venerable firm of Harrison & Harrison in Durham, who went on his rounds on a tricycle. They were different days! Laurence Elvin, who wrote The Harrison Story (Lincoln 1973) relates this extraordinary man.

C. F. Bause, tuner, was based at York for many years and looked after York Minster organ; Sir Edward Bairstow had a high regard for his work and thought he was the “Cat’s whiskers”! He was well known on his Yorkshire tuning round for he travelled to many places on his tricycle! He rode considerable journeys on this even after retirement and was only just prevented by his daughter from cycling to Durham to visit his old firm on his eightieth birthday. He died in November 1968 aged eighty-four, having worked well into his seventies. Bause once related to Dr. Philip Marshall the following delightful anecdote: On a tuning visit to the Durham Cathedral organ, Bause had to break off while Mattins was sung. He sat in the loft with Arnold Culley, organist from 1907-32. The Te Deum setting was in a large leather folio which Bause had to hold on the music desk on account of its unwieldiness. Culley had been having trouble with one of his Lay Clerks and in the middle of the Te Deum asked Bause to look over the side to see if the offending Lay Clerk was singing. He did so, letting go of the book with disastrous results, for it fell on to the manuals and landed on Culley’s knee!

Bause was on one of his last visits to York Minister in about 1960 and talked with John Rothera at the time just before the contract was awarded to J.W. Walkers in Suffolk for the rebuild of the organ. John said to Bause, I think Francis (Jackson) wants to turn this organ into a spinet. The irate tuner turned to John and snarled – Spinarseholes!

The tide has now turned in the organ building world, at least for this organ which is now dismantled and being restored by Harrison & Harrison in their new workshop in Durham. It is a proud firm, for which I worked for a few months as an apprentice in 1976. It didn’t work out for me, but they remain one of the finest organ building firms, and most of England’s cathedral organs are their work. Little is available about the exact specification of the project, but a certain amount of information is available on the firm’s website.

What particularly pleases me, as would have delighted John Rothera had he still been with us, is this:

With the organ reassembled the speech and balance of the whole organ will be reviewed and adjusted. The work of 1917 and 1931 will be regarded as the reference for this task, and our approach will be dedicated to the recreation of the aesthetic of this earlier scheme.

This reference is the work of Harrison & Harrison in 1917 and 1931, the great tradition of the English cathedral organ with high-pressure reeds and an almost divine voice. I heard old recordings in John’s home, played on his old Ferrograph tape recorder, of the organ as it was before the 1961 Walker rebuild. Here is a recording of Dr Francis Jackson playing one of his own compositions in 1956 on the pre-Walker organ.

I look forward to the work being completed in 2020, and may even make the effort to attend the opening recital and services at York Minster. I am thrilled at this prospect, and delighted that the tide has indeed turned. I’m sure Mr Bause will have prayed for this intention!

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Democracy

Posted on Monday, 5 November, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Most of us are familiar with the famous quote of Churchill in a speech to the House of Commons in 1947:

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…

He was obviously quoting someone else’s idea. The problem of course is the meaning of the word democracy, as Churchill expressed it in other speeches. There is of course the apocryphal saying attributed to him, which is more dubious:

The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

It was said that Churchill could be extremely cynical, but not about democracy. At the time of his more profound utterances on the subject, he had only very recently seen the alternatives in Germany, Italy and Spain!

A lot of journalism these days is sensationalist and shoddily prepared and researched. As I have tried to inform myself as best as possible about the Brexit question, I have tended to find the Guardian and the BBC the most sober and objective sources. I rely on the internet rather than printed newspapers, and I admire the stand of the Guardian in asking for voluntary donations rather than put up a paywall. The Daily Telegraph has always been the mainstay of my family, but it has a paywall and many of the article titles are quite alarming as is the political tendency taking it somewhere to the Right of traditional English Conservatism. Much of Google News involves articles in the Daily Express and the Sun, promoters of bigotry and ignorance. The Daily Mail has been taken over by Remainers, but the audience it targets isn’t exactly me. Blogs and Facebook groups can feed us with things to read and add to the soup bubbling in the pot, but only so far.

The Freedom of the Press was one of the founding tenets of nineteenth-century Liberalism along with religious freedom, freedom of association, the separation of Church and State. The idea of a free press would serve to compartmentalise the political and social life of a country between the elected political parties and government, on one hand, and the legal system and press which would call political wrongdoing to account. Nowadays, with the Internet, we can all be journalists and pundits on the topics that interest us and our readers. Like good journalists, I try to be sober, objective and truthful – and all that depends on good sources of information and a critical mind – and above all, a “bullshit-o-meter”.

No single source is perfect, and we all tend to favour our own opinions and convictions. It is not without reason that there are four Gospels in the canonical Scriptures, three of them being called synoptic. There are also many other ancient writings, some also called gospels, notably in the Nag Hammadi collection of texts. Exegetes compare all these writings and arrive at a synopsis – something that is very helpful is establishing authenticity and objectivity, understanding the meaning of what Jesus and others said. The work goes on in comparison with other data and sources of information like archaeology and known Jewish and Roman texts. This is the way we should be reading sources and writings on current affairs.

A remarkable article is James Miller’s Could populism actually be good for democracy?

What I find remarkable is Miller’s depth of philosophical and historical reflection. I would go as far as saying that this is the best of journalism. The voter needs to be educated about the basics of political and social philosophy, questions like the common good, the purpose of law and how it works, questions of individualism and collectivism and how balance can be achieved. Much of our political philosophy and law is based on Christendom, but not all. Quite a lot is based on ancient Greek and Roman law, thus the need to have knowledge of works like Plato’s Republic. Obviously, this is out of the reach of most ordinary voters, but it would be unjust and unrealistic to make people sit examinations before being allowed to vote! In an ideal world, the press would educate the people according to their capacities and culture. I think this Guardian article goes a long way, though to a more cultured audience. The gutter press is a clear sign of the limits of the Liberty of the Press.

What is going on today? It is all very confusing, and when people feel that the wool is being pulled over their eyes, they become afraid. The conspiracy theory is often an attempt to understand clearly when there is nothing to be understood. When we read terms like National Populism, shivers go up and down our spines as we suspect a return of Nazism. Quite apart from the taboo put up by Godwin’s Law, the historical circumstances from 1919 to 2019 are totally different. The founding myths are totally different. We do not have the militaristic tradition of the Prussian army of World War I or easy credence in the many occultist themes that fascinated people in the late nineteenth century. There are parallels, however, like the rejection of mainstream party politics. Hitler rode piggyback on the failure of the short-lived Weimar Republic. We have to be critical if we are going to make any historical comparisons. However, I would give some credence to the idea that 1914 to 1989 was one long world war with two periods of truce and cease-fire. Nazism was discredited by the Nuremberg Trials, and Communism collapsed in 1989 (the iconic date). Men like Mélenchon here in France or Corbyn in the UK may have their activists still calling strikes and blocking roads, but their ideology is passé.

At the base of it all seems to be the idea that everything is the same whether the government is Conservative, Labour or Liberal. Unemployment, inequalities, law and order, economics and taxation, everything else. What about a revolution? Most people know that revolutions kill a lot of innocent people and bring out the worst in the dictators who rule the roost. Mob rule is even worse! Miller advances essentially the idea that democracy can be defended by challenging it. Human nature becomes complacent and corrupt until we know that we are worse off not having what we’ve got now.

Many political agendas are obviously illiberal, whilst being democratically elected. Eastern Europe is decreasingly tolerant towards Islam (which is understandable in view of the atrocities we read about, committed by Al Qaida, ISIS, etc.). There is a new push in the UK to bring back capital punishment, and the price of crimes like rape and drug dealing is going up. If a majority of people called out for re-establishing public executions by hanging, drawing and quartering or feeding them into a sausage machine between the west end of Oxford Street and Marble Arch, is that a mandate to the country’s government? Miller takes the logic to the reductio ad absurdam to bring us to question the limits of democracy. Tolerance is wearing thin with the erosion of law, order and decency.

This limit of democracy goes back all the way through history. It was opposed by some of the ancient Greeks as it was by Edmund Burke who called democracy “shameless”. The French Romantic Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) idealised the emerging ideology in America, as

John Adams warned, “there never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide”.

Democracy as an ideal is only very recent in history, forged under the shadow of the guillotine in France and “re-arranged” by the Romantics. When injustice went beyond limits, people would revolt and usually end up hanging from the gallows, but the message survived. These disorders would create a kind of tension against the status quo, a kind of Hegelian dialectic view of history: thesis-antithesis- synthesis. The famous liberties in the early nineteenth century expressed the will of the people. The difficult thing was linking these popular actions with the mainstream national government. From this came the system of voting for the most trustworthy politician to express this popular synthesis. The way it happened under Robespierre in France left a lot of people with very short necks! In many countries, dictatorial regimes would claim a popular mandate, giving rise to the Communist expression “enemy of the people”, an idea rendered totally meaningless.

Democracy, as Churchill observed, is weak and unstable, but what are the alternatives? That is a good question from a man who declared war on Hitler in 1939 and brought our country through the worst days of darkness.

The Brexit question has brought something home to me, just like so-called liberalism or traditionalist integralism. The two sides excite intolerance, anger and hatred. Wicked billionaires belonging to a sinister oligarchy or “human reptiles” are seeking their advantage from two contradictory positions. I remember my dogmatic theology professor mentioning in the 1980’s that the pope was being attacked by “traditionalists” and “liberals” for the same reason from two opposite viewpoints. I drew the conclusion of calling the two either Scylla and Charybdis in reference to the two ship-wrecking rocks in Greek mythology or Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The opposing forces actually seem to be representing the same agenda understood in different ways. This is one big obstacle to democracy.

What is liberalism? This is one that Miller takes to heart. To begin with, democracy is not liberalism. The two concepts are distinct. I sympathise with liberalism in its early nineteenth-century meaning in association with Romanticism, but not with contemporary movements using that word to mean the opposite – illiberal, intolerant. I empathise with that movement of two hundred years ago, as with some aspects of what I experienced as a child in the 1960’s. Liberalism must be linked to “nobility of spirit” as Rob Riemen coined it, because it was the only way in the 1930’s to avoid getting sucked into the Seig Heil fervour. There has to be something more than the intellect in humanity.

I belong to a Church whose entire raison d’être is the battle against liberalism, that liberalism being meant as the denial of the sacred, relativism in doctrinal teaching, the de-sacralisation of the liturgy, the overturning of traditional moral teachings and the ordination of women. This was in the 1970’s in America a religious populist reaction in the face of the vacuous complacency of the mainstream Anglican churches worldwide. I know of no Anglican Catholic Church bishop who would advocate being in a totalitarian regime under someone like Franco or Pinochet, resurrecting the Inquisition with the right to torture people, working towards a theocracy, etc. All the Anglican Catholic bishops are much more liberal (with the small “l”) than some of the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox traditionalists you find on Facebook and elsewhere! The difference is felt, and I am at home in an Anglican Catholic Church that has become stable and peaceful. May it never become complacent and vacuous!

Back to secular politics, why entrust our fate to the idiotocracy of people who are stupid enough to support incompetence, corruption and self-destructive policies. That is transparently an idea from a remainer, but could have been one from a leaver two years ago.

What are the alternatives? Aristocracy and Monarchy? We have both in the UK, but the political system is run almost like a republic, with the Queen giving her Royal Assent to new laws. She has little choice about the matter unless she wants to create an incident like Queen Victoria did in her innocence. I have spent time with French monarchists, and I have even met the Duc d’Anjou at a ceremony in Paris. Dieu et la Roi! – in the late twentieth century… It just isn’t serious. In Europe, we were finished with dictators in 1945 and Franco went largely unnoticed outside Spain until he died his death in 1975. Again, I was on holiday with my family in Spain in 1969 and the police made everyone stop on the road. A convoy of big black cars with tinted glass passed by. Apparently Franco was in one of them. It was an amusing anecdote of my childhood. Well, what else is there?

Perhaps we can learn a lot from Plato and ancient Greece, the Philosopher Kings. How do you make sure they are lovers of wisdom and not using the words as a euphemism for something else? In the State like in the Church, there needs to be more participation to counter the tendency to clericalism and lust for power. The jury system in Crown and Assise courts is a leftover from this ideal, the final judgement being made by ordinary people without knowledge of law, and a summing up by a judge. Ordinary people need to have the power in a real way and not delegate it to those who are less and less trustworthy. The problem with this is the lack of education and training for the tasks in question. You have to know the law in order to administer it to punish a criminal or settle a civil dispute.

The idea attributed to Churchill seems to come from Plato. The crowd of people has no knowledge of justice and truth. There is little that is less intelligent than a crowd of people, for example at a football match. Some have come to the conclusion that human intelligence disappears when the group numbers more than three!

Miller tells us that

Polybius also argued that democracy had a potentially constructive role to play. He suggested that the most durable political regime would be a republic that combined the three pure forms of government (monarchy, aristocracy and democracy) into interlinked branches that would check and balance each other, enabling a well-ordered republic to navigate the winds of time “like a well-trimmed boat”.

Indeed, many factors contribute to the trim of a boat in the water and under sail. The mainsail and the jib exert contrary forces to give the boat lee helm and weather helm according to the point of sail and the strength of the wind. The UK has had this combined government for centuries, and it has given stability at times when European countries were constantly at war and rent by revolutions and riots. England always had the knack of avoiding revolutions by instituting reforms asked for by the people. This Pax Britannica is a gift that subsides even though we no longer have an empire. But it too is fragile, and we see the effect of our Queen is extreme old age and many incertitudes in her family and succession.

Rousseau came up with the idea of a social contract. This was unheard of in eighteenth-century France. Those in power could use force when necessary, but it was accountable to the ordinary people. A contract is bilateral, a binding agreement. He saw the writing on the wall already in 1763. The French Revolution needs a lot of study from different points of view, using historical methodology and trying to understand the different powers in play. It was a bloodbath, literally, but it gave us modern France. I have lived in this country for decades, but I still find myself not coming to terms with the mentality and culture of French Republicanism. I now confront it at the Mairie and the Préfecture as I go and sort out paperwork for my citizenship. Apparently, there will be an examination about our knowledge of the French Republic and its ethos. All I will be able to say sincerely is that it is something foreign to me, but I know of no viable alternative at present. One is usually rewarded for candour, because a candid person can be trusted with the noble ideas at the basis of what they are trying to do in their own French way.

I think I would feel even more at sea in the USA. I have come across nastiness on Facebook, gun-toting rednecks, people with such extreme opinions as would make us wince in Europe. How is that possible in a country that extols freedom, tolerance and the best of the human spirit? Over there, it seems so normal, and almost a natural check between the extremes of liberalism and demagogy. It works over there. For how long? There are people over there calling Trump “Hitler”, but it doesn’t wash. The ideologies are totally different as to the reason for authority, law and order. Trump is an American and was nurtured in that culture.

Public opinion is something that can be so easily swayed and manipulated by demagogues and others through a captive press and modern internet communications. The old films of German crowds in the 1930’s are impressive. Observe their expressions, not so much the leaders and military men, but the women and children. It all depends on education. But whose education?

Miller is of the opinion that modern democracy is a sham “whether liberal or socialist or nationalist”. However, any regime is accountable to ordinary citizens at the polls. How about this: we are in “a world in which faith, deference and even loyalty have largely passed away, and the keenest of personal admiration seldom lasts for long” according to the historian John Dunn, quoted by Miller. When democracy is threatened, people will cling to it, however fickle they show themselves to be in periods of peace and prosperity.

If someone like Hitler were to appear on the scene today, how far would he get? We like to believe that he would be dismissed as a crank because of our having learned the lessons of history. All the same, there are people reacting in the same way now as Hitler’s criminal cronies did in the 1930’s and during World War II. One idea that came into my mind was the possibility of a return to feudalism, but the old landlords had obligations to their serfs as the billionaire oligarchs lack them or the least amount of care. That could one day become something very messy.

We are just going to have to follow the movement, remaining awake and critical. How attached are we to our freedom? What does freedom mean? I arrive at no conclusion, any more than Miller or any honest thinker. It might go very badly or might lead to another reign of peace and freedom. It goes far beyond the European Union or the erstwhile British Empire. It goes far beyond Europe as populism spreads to South America and around the world. A fire has been lit. We can but pray lest we enter into darkness…

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