Romanticism and Traditionalism

Posted on Monday, 12 September, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

A major article has just appeared on the Orthosphere blog – Romanticism & Traditionalism. It is not a new article, but the blog acknowledges the source. The themes given here have resounded with me ever since my university days in the late 1980’s. Here, we see the rapprochement between Romanticism and something called Integral Traditionalism. The latter term has been largely taken over by right-wing reactionaries reacting against late nineteenth-century anti-clericalism and the so-called Modernist movement. Integralismo is full of suggestions of Franco and the Garrotte. Intégrisme, the French term, opposes compromise with La Gueuse (the French Republic) and theological Modernism as condemned in 1907 by Pius X. Integral traditionalism or perennialism refers to the work of René Guénon (1886 – 1951) and others. The problem is that Guénon came from the French Right, even though his thought developed away from strict Roman Catholicism. Sometimes, distinctions are not easy to make. Julius Evola (1898 – 1974) was another proponent of this kind of thought and was close to Mussolini’s Fascist party even though he was never formally a member of it. Both Evola and Guénon progressively distanced themselves from Christianity in their search among other religions for a constant traditional reference.

The description given of Romanticism is the one I have come to believe, namely the view that seeks to correct the classical tendency in the Enlightenment period of reducing everything to reason and convention. The Romantic seeks the natural order of things as opposed to imposed or conventional order. Do we not recognise this idea extending to the life of the Church, allowing some disorder and quirkiness instead of everything being codified and micro-managed to the last detail. The dialectic is already found in the differences between the Franciscans and the Dominicans in the middle ages, the Jansenists and the Jesuits in seventeenth-century France. We have here the interplay between reason and feeling, mind and heart.

What is this Traditionalism (standard pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic explanation)? It is not Archbishop Lefebvre, right-wing ultra-Catholic movements in France and America, the muscular phalange. It is a subject studied in the traditional scholastic discipline of Natural Theology or Theodicy, or what is usually called Fundamental Theology these days in universities – fides et ratio, a frequent theme of the teaching of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. How can God be known by man: by way of rational proof or experience and consciousness? This is the traditionalism of Chateaubriand, Bonald and Le Maistre. Scholasticism has always eschewed fideism on account of its denigration of reason. Traditionalism emphasises faith in tradition as a means of divine revelation. Here we find the later Modernist theme of continuing revelation as opposed to the cut-off point being at the death of the last Apostle. Here, there is less of a distinction between Revelation and Tradition (faith or spiritual knowledge), and the two are allowed some kind of περιχώρησις (I use the Greek term by analogy). The big problem is knowing what is Tradition as opposed to Papal authoritarianism.

An interesting tendency arose in the late nineteenth-century, at a time when spiritually-minded people were getting really restless. We find a new impulsion of the Romantic movement in the work of René Guénon in his remarkably clear criticism of the modern world and the “reign of quantity”.

For Guénon, the modern world “is anti-Christian because it is essentially anti-religious; and it is anti-religious because, in a still wider sense, it is anti-traditional.”

To a great extent, theological Modernism sought to escape from the excessive rationalistic methods and philosophy of Scholasticism in order to rediscover the transcendence and mystery of God and the spirit. Parallel with Guénon, we find the great Russian philosophers Nicolas Berdyaev (1874 – 1948) and Vladimir Soloviev (1853 – 1900). Modern man has lost the sense of going beyond the boundaries of what we call the material world, and only quantum physics seem now to offer a way out, since its rational terms speak to modern man of things that escape our habitual rational and scientific categories. Belief in the survival of consciousness and even personality after bodily death is becoming increasingly a subject taken seriously by science. But, by the by, our world resembles the eighteenth century at the level of the dialectic between reason and transcendence.

The notion of modern man as a “consumer”, a passive spectator of history, was known to Wordsworth and reflected in Guénon’s thought. Berdyaev is not always easy to follow, but his ideas are haunting and attractive. Neither God nor man can be reduced to epistemological categories, but are both transcendent.

When Berdyaev brings “grace” into his discussion, he echoes the original Romantics, whose version of grace was the epiphanic vision, the event answering to a crisis that brings about the conversion of the fallen subject and sets him on the road to true personhood.

Some aspects of Karol Wojtyla’s existential personalism manifest similar themes as he sought to combat Marxist totalitarianism not by political polemics but by the transcendence of the human person made in God’s image.

The forces of materialism have for a long time been seen not to benefit humanity or personhood, but rather to oppress and destroy it. This has been seen in the various Socialist totalitarianisms of the twentieth century and the ultimate dystopia portrayed by Orwell in Nineteenth Eighy-Four. Marx and Engels has nothing better to propose to humanity than capitalism and the work ethic. Nor have the cultural-Marxist “politically correct” “liberals” of our own day. Berdyaev saw the roots of the abolition of divine transcendence and personality in the Renaissance. In the beginning, the Renaissance stood for humanism and creativity, and ended with the Ubermensch supervising gas chambers in Germany and Poland.

For Berdyaev, the principle of modernity is “envy of the being of another and bitterness at the inability to affirm one’s own.”

This is the principle of modern Socialism, the very ideology that is presently suffocating us all in Europe and America. In human terms, the only presently available way to break its stranglehold is through so-called “right-wing” politics – before resisting against it in the name of humanity, personhood and freedom like the Résistance (who were mostly French Communists) during World War II. Is that really what we want?

The spirit of Romanticism lives on as it adapts and changes, seeking the transcendent over the rational and material view of the world.

The Romantic, knowing that he can never achieve perfection in this world, shies from utopian projects that inevitably become coercive and globalizing.

This notion is extremely far reaching. Romanticism has its built-in checks and balances unlike the opposing forms of materialism. We know what we long for, but know that it is not in this life. The England I love and long for is not what I would find on disembarkation in Dover! The lyrical melodies of Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Parry and Purcell point to heaven, another world as “through a glass darkly” as St Paul would have put it. I rejoin Plato’s notion of the World of Ideas of which the particular is only a symbol, and manifestation, an image or a shadow. That World of Ideas is universal consciousness, a notion now recognised by some scientific disciplines.

Thus “a romantic incompleteness… characterizes Christian art,” which takes as a premise, among others, the conviction “that final, perfect, eternal beauty is possible only in another world.”  That the Romantic often succumbs to the frustration inherent in eternal longing, Berdyaev duly notes; but the Romantics themselves knew their vulnerability in this regard well and were wont candidly to diagnose it, as Wordsworth does in “The world is too much with us.”  Berdyaev saw in Nineteenth-Century Romanticism the last pause in the steady descent of the Western world into materialism, utilitarianism, and nihilism, the equivalent of Guénon’s Kali Yuga or Dark Age.

Those of us who become conscious of the Romantic or the Traditionalist within ourselves face an unfulfilled and frustrating life. We tend to see things become worse and worse, yet the “reboot” never seems to come close. Such dissatisfaction, reflected in that epic poem of Walt Whitman, Passage to India, drove man to explore and seek out a new world.

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 neverhappy hearts,
With that sad incessant refrain, Wherefore unsatisfied soul? and Whither O mocking life?

Mankind has discovered everything except other planets and the bottom of the oceans, but we individually still have everything to discover. I remember that feeling in the August of 2009 on approaching the Glénans Islands in a sultry hazy blue as several hundred young people and myself were carried by a small passenger ship to our sailing courses.

The Last Frontier is what we fear the most – death – our transition from the life we know as we leave our very bodies and all our possessions behind. Only there will we begin to find what we only found partially in this world. Perhaps Romanticism gives something of a “sneak peek” into that other world, bringing us into contemplation of the divine and the beautiful, to creating and doing the best with what is left of our earthly life.

I found this article admirable, and I can only encourage my readers to read it with the attention it deserves.

As an afterthought, I wonder whether tradition and traditionalism is truly a part of the Christian message as opposed to a radical remake of the human mind and existence. Did Christ really intend a liturgical and sacramental cult in the manner of Temple Judaism and many pagan mystery religions. Christianity is attractive to the senses as a mystery religion (cf. Dom Odo Casel), but one that rises above Isis and Osiris in Eygypt, Mithra in Rome and Zoroastrianism in Persia and Arabia. This was always be the essential difference between Orthodoxy and Catholicism on one hand and Protestantism on the other.

* * *

Tuesday 13th September 2016. I have given this matter further thought, and can but say that one of the most fatal errors of our day is to use self-descriptive labels. I have come to be strongly suspicious of “perennialism” or “integral traditionalism” as a system, or anything else as a system of thought and praxis. I was quite attracted to some of these themes in the 1990’s and was in contact with some interesting people. Eventually, their interest fizzled out and they turned to other matters like baroque music or heraldry. It was quite an “in” thing in the 1990’s (in a very restricted circle) and is forgotten today.

For this reason, I am quite opposed to associations or groups. Human nature being what it is, you need to be a manipulative guru to keep things like that going, and that is exactly what I’m not. When it comes to relating to other people, the best is the blog (or the old-fashioned book) that is offered to them without any commitment in return. We need to be realistic. You can’t base a Church on such ideas, because churches are exoteric and addressed to the mass of humanity.

What I can do, as I have always done with this blog, is offer thoughts and ideas that may be useful to others but not always so. I have often found ideas by looking at the blogs of others, but without agreeing with everything. Make of it what you will…

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The Chalice on its Side

Posted on Sunday, 11 September, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Courtesy of Fr Allan Barton on Facebook, this is a fascinating image of the Mass in the early sixteenth century.

sarum-chalice-on-sideI assume this is a Mass in England and the Sarum Use or a similar diocesan usage. I assume the child’s face on the altar is a carved one. Notice the chalice on its side on the paten. This is what the Sarum rubric says:

After receiving the ablution, the priest shall place the chalice on the paten, so that if anything remain [in the former] it may drain off [on to the latter]. And afterwards, inclining himself, he shall say. Let us adore the sign of the cross : whereby we have received the sacrament of salvation.

We can take it that the priest is saying the Postcommunion prayer. It is a High Mass because the deacon and subdeacon are visible. They are not in line like in the Roman rite.

In the Roman rite, the priest (subdeacon at High Mass) wipes the chalice with the purificator. It seems that the purificator was not used. I still use the purificator instead of laying the chalice on its side. I take a liberty in doing so, but it seems more practical than allowing the chalice to drain and dealing with the last drops. It would be interesting to research into the history of the purificator in the Roman rite, given that laying the chalice on its side to drain supposes the absence of a purificator.

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Updating my Website

Posted on Saturday, 10 September, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

My website, now renamed As the Sun in its Orb – in fact a former title of this blog, has laid dormant and on “hard standing” like a boat out of water for quite a long time. I have given the matter quite a lot of thought, because I was running a website long before I discovered the blog. I tend to be slow on the uptake with technical developments, and I need a lot of courage to take the plunge. Therefore, the blog is a kind of “running journal”, a web-log that gave the word blog. I think it would be appropriate to turn my website into a kind of “reference library” exclusively on the theme of an embryo movement for the revival of liturgical forms that were not the result of bureaucratic editing or creation from nothing. I therefore remove all the old stuff on Archbishop Hepworth, the TAC, my hair and personal life and the various things that attract only unhealthy curiosity.

If anyone would like the files of the TAC archive for historical research, just ask me on anthony dot chadwick at wanadoo dot fr. I can send separate files or a single zip file.

The index page will refer to three pages: an introduction with an improved version of the text presently at the lower part of the index page. The page that specifically deals with the Use of Sarum will need cleaning up and re-editing, and I intend to give new links to sources where Sarum books and texts can be found on the internet and used for new editions. The third page is on the liturgy in general with the title taken from the Rule of St Benedict – Nihil Operi Dei praeponatur, nothing is to be preferred to the work (worship) of God. This page also wants thorough cleaning up and updating.

This will be an ongoing project, now that I have found the courage to take the plunge. Many links will not be working and need to be updated and made valid again. Rather than the level of reflections that you will find here on the blog, I would like the website to be an objective reference for those who identify with my idea of a “liturgical movement” (for want of a better term). I consciously promote Sarum because it is an Anglican liturgy – it continued to be used from Henry VIII’s break from Rome until the first Prayer Book of 1549. I am English and Anglican. However, my “target” is wider in that there are others in the world who can appeal to their old traditions, whether they live in Lyons, Milan, Rouen, Toledo, Braga or other places where there was a solid local tradition before Tridentine centralism moved in with heavy-handed tactics.

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Christian Men

Posted on Wednesday, 7 September, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

This reflection is totally unconnected with the series of postings on “muscular Christianity”, because I have truly finished with that subject. There is a related subject of the man’s role in the Church. Clearly, men and women have different points of view of worship and being part of a Christian community, in the same way as men and women have totally different perspectives of life. There are “feminine” men and “masculine” women, but a person’s identity is firmly anchored in his or her gender. I won’t go into modern gender theories, because I neither understand them nor sympathise with them.

Men who are interested in church often warm to the liturgy and church aesthetics in the way women don’t. Women fit out homes differently from men. Priorities are different. In my own home, the kitchen is full of carved wooden, metal, plastic and painted hens. I leave my wife to do what brings her pleasure, but a kitchen is a laboratory for preparing food, not for exhibiting an excessive number of useless ornaments. My chapel lacks many things a woman would have in a home: curtains, carpets, plants and flowers (except one bouquet near the altar), asymmetry, etc.

I remember school and the traditional ethos of forming the English gentleman. I have said a certain amount on this subject, based on the notion of harsh discipline, competitive sports and the cult of leadership and strength. There are theories about the “alpha” male which are more or less credible. In my opinion, we should discover ourselves and learn to be ourselves. I would have thought that the chief quality of the gentleman is gentleness, courtesy, ability to learn social skills and to be good with others. These qualities involve good dress, presentation, clear and articulated speech, an appreciation of beauty and goodness. I owe these things to the English vision of education that endeavours to form the whole person, and not only in competitive sport to prepare for the military life, modern business and politics. We had a debating society at school, with an exquisite room for the purpose fitted out in the early twentieth century. There are rules to follow, especially the respect of free speech and another man’s opinion and conscience.

In history, the gentleman was a member of the gentry, typically the aristocracy or the haut bourgeoisie. The Victorian era brought to the word a wider meaning. By the mid century,

By courtesy this title is generally accorded to all persons above the rank of common tradesmen when their manners are indicative of a certain amount of refinement and intelligence.

The category came thus to mean a distinction of education and good manners rather than being born in the “right” family. The gentleman is distinguished by his social skills and good urban manners. The gentleman became a gentle man. A gentleman treats women with deference and courtesy, typically opening doors and asking the lady to go through first. He may never inflict any kind of violence against a lady or indulge in sexual harassment.

Another use of gentleman is as a prefix to an occupation, for example gentleman farmer, suggesting that he is a man of wealth and leisure who can afford to have others do the work for him. It refers to the older meaning of the word, meaning someone of noble birth and then birth into a wealthy family.

In the modern meaning of the word, the Army in England and America uses the expression conduct befitting an officer and a gentleman. In modern usage, many gentlemen are not of noble birth, but have assimilated a certain code of conduct involving courtesy and acceptable presentation in society. Being a gentleman is something that comes from within, an attitude of nobility, much more than being a boulevardier or a fop. This is one thing I noticed at Gricigliano: the manners of men trying to be gentlemen by the exterior but without what it takes from within. I admire the effort made to revive the ideal of the gentleman in the clergy, but somehow, they seemed to miss the bus. It is not about yards of lace and buckled shoes, but what is within the well-bred man. The phenomenon of the rake masquerading as a gentleman is an old one: Regency Corinthians, Dandies, Rakes and Young Blades.

One colourful character I remember from my Gricigliano days was Scott Gibson, a young man of American origin but who had spent almost all his life in England cultivating the image of a foppish gentleman. A convert to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism, he tried his vocation at the London Oratory, but it didn’t work out. He came to Gricigliano and received the Tonsure and Minor Orders. He related many anecdotes, and was largely behind the present distinctive tendency of the Institute of Christ the King to emulate the Oratory of St Philip Neri in many respects, particularly as a caricature. Scott was the butt of many jokes and took it with good humour. What became his salvation was his ability not to take himself seriously. He would go on about his favourite after-shave, a pongy substance called Lords, “for dashing young blades about town”. Scott had the distinction of writing a book, The Italian Baroque Style and the Oratory in London. He died three years ago at the age of 51. With all his eccentricity and flamboyance, he was a good friend and his wit matched his devotion and piety. Even though he was an outrageous fop, his gentlemanly soul came from the interior.

Another characteristic of the idea of masculine Christianity is resilience and stoicism in adversity. That being said, I have known some very brave and resilient women. There are so many saints, and then the example of Edith Cavell who gave her life in 1915 for the men she cared for as a nurse. She was far from being alone in the annals of history. It is not a monopoly of the male sex. The lady is as distinct from the woman as the gentleman from the man. This is a fault I find with many polemicists who blame femininity for problems in the Church. There are great ladies around, as there are some very mediocre ones. The same applies to men.

Some aspire to the quality of a gentleman by particularities like being old-fashioned, smoking a pipe, liking leather armchairs at home or at the Club, growing a handlebar moustache, being conservative in religion and politics. I have known some wonderful characters in London, offering a good pinch of Otterhound snuff from the Kendal works (the English don’t use the Schnupfmaschine), talking posh, spending enormous amounts of money on suits and other articles of urban clothing, the best shoes, etc. The French say L’habit ne fait pas le moine – you don’t become a monk by simply wearing the habit. It is a complete initiation into a way of life of which the habit becomes an outer symbol.

I would prefer to befriend someone of gentle ideals who looks like a hippie than someone in an immaculate suit and sporting a moustache who is a complete hypocrite and fraud. There is a question of virtue, humanity and piety – even if you wear jeans and wear your hair down your back as I do. I have no pretences at being special or good. I live in the country and feel awkward in town (sometimes I need to for my Church, and then you will find me in a cassock, polished shoes and my hair tied up eighteenth-century style). I defy any priest to wear his cassock with modesty, discretion and concern for the feelings of others.

For me, the quality of being a gentleman – like holiness and humility – is something towards which we aspire without ever believing that we have achieved it. Courtesy, kindness, tolerance, respect for others, proper manners, stoicism, resilience, strength of character and everything else is the ideal of virtue we all aspire to become. The greatest men of history were men of virtue and invisible greatness, before what they wore, their eccentricities or the things they enjoyed doing.

The real test of the gentleman is getting on with ordinary people, yes even the most humble. I never forget an institution set up by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, Toynbee Hall, to introduce sons of the gentry to the rough and tumble of the East End. I spend a year there myself back in 1979, and helped out at the soup kitchen of St Botolph’s Aldgate for one evening each week. I was at the time a student at London College of Furniture doing my harpsichord making course.

One thing that does a lot of good is to broaden our minds and our interests. Travel also opens the mind as does exposure to cultures other than our own. Diversity of experience is essential for the balanced human personality as are the values of old humanism and liberalism (as in the early nineteenth century). I am far from the ideal, but the ideal remains. For me, that is true masculinity – and true civilised humanity which goes for men and women, ladies and gentlemen, alike.

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Parry’s Judith

Posted on Tuesday, 6 September, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Most Anglicans know the hymn Dear Lord and Father of all mankind set to the tune Repton. This tune is taken from the great oratorio Judith first performed in 1888 by C.H.H. Parry. Here it is performed last year in Canada.

This performance is a concert recording of the North American premiere of Parry’s Judith, which has been rarely heard, by Pax Christi Chorale & Orchestra, conducted by Stephanie Martin. These talented musicians seem to specialise in performing large scale oratorios, particularly of the Romantic era. This oratorio is monumental and reflects the academic and personal style of Parry, who with Elgar and Stanford raised the profile and genius of English music.

It is truly a thrilling work by this most English of composers, who founded the Royal College of Music and was a keen sailor. Stephanie Martin tells us about the first performances:

Judith’s first performance in 1888 was very favourably received. Though Parry was self-critical and struggled with the score (he was over-extended with other work, and his father died while he was writing it) Judith was an overwhelming success. Parry had Europe’s top musicians backing him up. Hans Richter conducted the premiere at the Birmingham Festival, Stanford conducted in London, and Elgar played violin in the orchestra under Parry’s baton at the Three Choirs Festival.

Playing time is 2 hours and 19 minutes including the applause and introduction. It is worth your time!

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Subtlety

Posted on Monday, 5 September, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

We truly live in a world where discussions are held with bludgeons and steamrollers rather than with finesse and subtlety. The way things have gone when discussing “muscular Christianity” with Deacon Little has brought me to say that I am through with it all, not because he has “‘won” and I have “lost”, but because we seem to be talking past each other. He has not modified any of his sayings in the light to new elements I have introduced into the conversation. The ball is in his court.

My observations also go for the troll(s) (“Martin Pryor” aka “Prior Martin”, “Countess Olivia” and “Countess O”) who try to abuse my blog for purposes known only to him (them). I will add that trolls have personality and other psychiatric issues, and no discussion is possible with them. It is simply best not to feed them or react emotionally.

Fr Jonathan, my brother priest, has written Called to have muscles, to which I commented:

I need to study this question further. Like you, I thought “muscular Christianity” was about the question of chivalry and the fighting of just wars against clearly evil enemies like Hitler or present-day terrorist organizations. Who would not kill or incapacitate a man whose intention is to kill your child – or you? Actually, it is about the cult of ultra-masculinity that is prevalent in America. This is why I wrote an article describing the “cult” of masculinity in the English public school of 50 years ago. Manliness is measured by keen commitment to competitive team sports and a suspicious attitude in regard to art and beauty, the rugby-player philistine.

I suppose that experience in my life gave me a certain frugal lifestyle, more tolerant of cooler temperatures than many others. I am something of a “hard bastard” who gets great pleasure out of a few days in my boat on the sea or a river and camping aboard, the boat being an open dinghy with a boom tent. I take pride in saving money by bivouacking in my van rather than paying inflated hotel bills when travelling. But, my physical condition is average. I am not interested in the “muscular” image that seems to give its name to “muscular Christianity” rather than the question of willingness to do one’s duty for one’s country in time of war or “pro aris et focis” as the old Romans used to say.

I am disappointed that Deacon Little twists the meaning of just about everything I say, and takes my “caricatures” personally. He does refer to the Wikipedia article on “muscular Christian” that refers to the kind of man who is committed to competitive team sports and builds up a “Charles Atlas” body, a hard chiselled face – something not unlike the Aryan soldier “Ubermensch” portrayed in old Nazi propaganda. When I mention that, I am accused of “Godwin’s Law”: assimilating anyone I don’t like to the Nazis. That accusation is unjust. I don’t concern myself with Nazism except as a subject of historical study, but the underlying philosophy in Europe at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th that Hitler exploited to get into power. I have already written such qualifications to my assertions, but the subtleties have been ignored.

For Deacon Little and some of his friends who write comments on his blog, I am an effeminate pansy because I refuse the image of the rugby-player philistine. If he is not prepared to be subtle and nuanced in his ideas, I will not be prepared to continue the conversation – which seems at this stage to be futile.

I think we are all agreed about the moral rectitude of self-defence (even if it means killing) in an imperfect world when we are faced with evil persons, groups or nations. Normally, priests should not bear arms but rather help the victims of war. Perhaps a day might come when we all need to carry a gun to defend ourselves and innocent people against terrorists and criminals. We can only do what the law allows us to do. If being armed becomes necessary, I’m sure we can do so discreetly in our English fashion, since we are culturally different from the Americans. But that is much less a problem of “muscular Christianity” or the caricatures thereof.

That’s my input…

In short, Fr Jonathan is concerned for the question of the just war, defending what we believe to be right. Deacon Little seems to be concerned for the self image of the strong and masculine man – self-consciously * so – and confusing the issue with the question of self defence by means of arms. It is my belief that the two issues should be separated. Many servicemen who gave their lives for King and Country in the first and second world wars were average men from cities and farms alike. They did their duty and we will remember them. But they were not all super-machos!

* In his article and another in his blog, Deacon Little perverts my meaning. I mean by “self-conscious” the same mentality as those who are “come-out” homosexuals or believe that they are persons of the opposite sex trapped in the wrong body. The “self-consciousness” I mean is the element of the “ideology”, meaning the world view of the person who is unable to think critically for him or her self.

Fr Jonathan is a priest as I am, Deacon Little perhaps aspires to the priesthood. As willing as we are to do our duty if we are called to do so, we should be more concerned for the pastoral dimension of our calling, helping the victims of man’s inhumanity to man depending on the situations in which we live.

You don’t need to be the Incredible Hulk to be a good priest! I hope the nonsense will be dissipated so that we can discuss things as balanced adults.

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When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?

Posted on Saturday, 3 September, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I find many good souls discussing these questions about God and the way the world is changing. One such is a parish priest in France with whom I am spending several days to repair the organ in his church. His view of things is quite radical and apocalyptic, but it is difficult to contradict him. This morning I read the article of my brother priest in England, Fr Jonathan Munn: Why worship God?

That’s why I need to worship God. He has no need of me whatsoever, but He loves me and I do matter to Him. I need to worship Him because my own involvement in this world without Him leaves behind a legacy of failure, emptiness and suffering.

This is where I find the essential of this blog post. The mystery of evil dogs me very profoundly too, but it seems to be this “weak” argument that prevents the flame from being snuffed out. Problems are much worse for atheists than for believers. Deny God or whatever name we give to the universal consciousness and the spirit in all creation – and we are left with nothing other than ourselves and the nastiness we have for each other.

Things hit home when the hatred comes from other Christians and clergy, and conversation has become impossible. To be honest, I think of the cleric in America who twists the meaning of everything I say in criticism of his “Muscular Christianity” and the ideology that pervades his thought. I come out of that one dazed and flattened spiritually, faced with the notion that Christianity is about hatred and an “evil God”. Humanity seems to be in the process of being divided into sheep and goats – us and them – almost in a rehearsal for the Last Coming. The idea is utterly chilling.

With God there is hope. Without him there is nothing.

Today I will be finishing the pneumatic system for the basses, then it will be tuning. After that I will be going to collect an outboard engine for my boat – and then home and Sunday Mass in my chapel. Life goes on…

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Wisdom

Posted on Wednesday, 31 August, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

My wife found this (probably on Facebook):

La religion ne  transforme pas les hommes en criminels; ce sont les criminels qui utilisent la religion comme alibi de leur soif de pouvoir.

Translation:

Religion does not turn people into criminals. It’s criminals who use religion as an alibi for their thirst of power.

The quote is attributed to the Dalai Lama. This would need a lot of reflection, study and criticism, because violence seems to be intrinsic to the “satanic verses” of the Koran in a way that even the Old Testament isn’t. On the other hand, if we want to reply to the atheists who blame religion for war and crime, many more people have died under atheistic regimes than under religious intolerance.

Food for thought…

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Top Quality Rattan

Posted on Tuesday, 30 August, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Embryo Parson has written an interesting article in his blog: Catholicism, Liturgy and Manliness. He wrote in kind terms about me and my writings at a theological level. He does give something to reflect on in terms of Muscular Christianity. It is easy to come up with caricatures of the idea through bogus military orders in the Confederate states in America and modern cowboys with their small artillery in wait for some future conflict. The other temptation is the Nietzschian archetype as adopted by the National Socialists in Germany to exemplify their “master race”. Likening anything to Nazism is called Godwin’s Law, the reductio ad hitlerum. My usual error is to presume too much from my readers.

One of the best studies of Nazism is William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich – A History of Nazi Germany. There are other works that go into the methods Hitler, Göbbels and others used to manipulate the masses, notably through Nordic mythology and pagan religion. Many of the archetypes go back to classical Rome and Greece (think of Hercules) and anti-semitism along with anti- just about everything else was the founding myth. I am old enough to remember some awful things said about Jewish people at school in the 1970’s and how they were perverse and self-enriching. Persecution of the Jews goes back a very long way, and that feeling heavily pervaded Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. Hitler invented nothing. He grabbed onto all the most useful archetypes in order to promote his ideology and his own power. Hitler himself was no Aryan super-man, but a sick and mentally ill drug addict. If anything, I don’t compare things to Nazism, but to the less fortunate characteristics of human nature over many centuries. My “error” is not guilt by association or comparison with Nazi ideology, but things in our own times being built on the same underlying philosophy.

I have to admit that I have misunderstood the term Muscular Christianity (Anglicanism), thinking of it as an analogy of the ideology of force and being the strongest. Muscular Christianity has a narrower and less analogical meaning than I thought. Embryo Parson confirms this in terms very similar to the Wikipedia article. It is everything I am not: competitive and devoted to team sports! As I mentioned in an earlier article,  I love being outdoors and active – especially sailing, cycling and bivouacking. I was not a Scout as a boy, but I have great admiration for Baden-Powell’s idea – learning to manage for oneself with very basic means. Scouting also builds a sense of community life and solidarity, much less of one team against the other (unless they actually put on a game of football). I went to an English public school and found much of what is described as “Muscular Christianity”.

The public school in England is not its namesake in America. It is a private establishment, usually having been founded many centuries ago, and elitist by definition. The best-known caricature in the cinema is Linsay Anderson’s If… This version is in English but with Portuguese subtitles.

The film is a caricature and there is a vicious thrashing of three boys in the gym by prefects, the reason for my title. There are plenty of pompous platitudes from the chaplain, headmaster, housemaster and “whips” (prefects or monitors). The film’s producer clearly had experience of public school, and the various themes are based on the life I knew, boarding and sleeping in a dormitory, harsh commands, discipline, academic classes – and above all sport and chapel. We actually had a showing of this film at school! Anderson exaggerated these themes, given under titles during the film. My own school (St Peter’s in York) had reformed many of these aspects in the 1960’s. In my day, the old whacking stool in the gym still existed, but it was no longer used – a relic like the axe and block at the Tower of London.

I only ever heard about a punishment by caning on two occasions, and it wasn’t on me. I got the slipper many times as a small boy at prep school, but not at St Peter’s. They used to say that the British Empire was founded on a liberal use of the cane, always made of top-quality rattan! The cane leaves red welts on the buttocks that often bleed a little, taking some days to becomes less painful and a week or two to heal. You had to take it like a man! I honestly think that the abolition of corporal punishment was a good thing, as it would “break a good man’s heart and make a bad man even worse” as the British Navy said at the end of the eighteenth century about flogging with the cat o’ nine tails. Modern educators have more enlightened notions about character formation and the maturing process than those who believed in repression, pain and fear.

We had sports every day after classes in the afternoon, except Tuesday when we had CCF (Combined Cadet Force), Wednesday when we had the afternoon off and permission to go into town (properly dressed) and Sundays. The default sports were Rugby and Cricket, but we had more choice after a year, so I went more for swimming, rowing and shooting. That satisfied what was required.

Public school religion is very particular, and in an Anglican public school is altogether the kind of religion I described a couple of days ago: God the Policeman! “Manly” religion hasn’t much time for prayer or mystical experience! At school, anyone too interested in religion or spirituality would be severely mocked. Most boys boasted of being atheists and just going through the motions. Our chaplain was Rev. Noel Kemp-Welch, a protégé of Dean Milner White and a graduate of Kings College, Cambridge. The boys called him Bonehead on account of his baldness or Buddha. He was a kind and compassionate man, and a boy with difficulties could go and talk with him. His Confirmation classes were totally devoid of Christian doctrine, and more concerned with ghost stories and philanthropy. The chaplain in Anderson’s If is a pompous man, proud of his experience as a military chaplain and gung-ho, but fundamentally cowardly and weak at the point of a gun. Oh yes, in the 1970’s, school religion seemed to me exhausted and having outlived its time. Only the organ and the choir meant anything to me, together with a desire to know something about God and a spiritual view of life. You would find that more in parish churches outside school than in Chapel. I joined the choir at Holy Trinity, Micklegate – but the Rector was an affable Freemason and an exemplary liberal in the meaning of Christianity without religion! It would take me many years to try to get things sorted out…

Christianity is conveyed by any number of vectors. In the ancient world, it took root by transforming paganism in the western world. It worked just as well in India and China with properly trained missionaries. In the modern world, it is no less in need of some kind of vehicle. That of Muscular Christianity is sport, competition and the cult of the masculine body. Personally, I was more convinced through music and art, and only then was I the least bit curious about the Bible, prayer and knowing more about God. This kind of diversity needs to be respected, and I found it existing sufficiently at my alma mater to have made some impression on me.

We don’t have everything right nowadays with the education of children (unless you have pots of money to spend for elitist schools). What is usually called liberalism is a morass of platitudes founded on various forms of deconstructionist ideology such as the Frankfurt School version of Marxism. What I call Liberalism is what was expressed in the wake of the French Revolution in the first half of the nineteenth century, something very different. Certainly we have to assume our lives as human beings, aware of our mortality.

Is it not possible to be a man without being self-conscious about it?

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Was it ever any different?

Posted on Sunday, 28 August, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Here’s an interesting article – Fair Warning – Religious Re-engineering in Progress.

Quite frankly, is anyone surprised? We had Erastianism in the Church of England, and the French Church under Louis XIV had to say and do the right thing. Febronianism in the eighteenth century had the Church in the mould of rationalism and moralism. The Synod of Pistoia advocated the stripping down of churches and the removal of mystery from liturgical worship. I would recommend the reading of Dom Guéranger’s Institutions Liturgiques that was published in 1841 (sorry, it’s in French). The Romantic movement noticed something wrong with classicism and the stuffiness of eighteenth-century privilege of birth and wealth.  Guéranger was briefly associated with Lamennais about whom I wrote a few days ago.

The alignment of religion with contemporary culture is nothing new. Ultimately, it goes back to the Donation of Constantine or whatever really happened in the year those false papers were forged by the clergy. Today’s conservatives and bigots tend to take things out of context as if everything was perfect in the 1950’s.

I find JV’s observations on Gnosticism interesting. It is a kind of religious anarchism, and we know that human nature in society as a whole is such that things are in order with the right Führer (or Grand Inquisitor) for the right moment. However, individual persons in the light of grace are in no need of law or authority. This freedom of the spirit was expressed by Gnosticism and to a lesser extent by monasticism. Nowadays, monasteries are totalitarian corporations, to the extent that an honest abbot will recognise this to be so. The only difference is that monks voluntarily surrender their freedom and their very personalities – chilling. Many of us at different times in history perceive political authorities as “archons”, celestial or demonic powers. No Church or state can allow such a subversive attitude. Therefore, Gnosticism was exterminated and monasticism was discouraged in periods when the Church was more compliant with the State. There is very little to go on when you want to be yourself but yet a law-abiding citizen of your country and your Church!

Without this inner and esoteric dimension, Christ just becomes a moral teacher giving rules for polite society and how to be a good citizen. There is no further need for mystery or spirituality except as a means of manipulation and control. However, Jesus’ message was essentially radical, except for the passages where he seems to support capitalism and the work ethic, especially through the Parable of the Talents.

What can be done today? Clearly, modern society, popular culture and political institutions have no use for Christianity. Perhaps some politicians feel that Islam would fill the gap and be pliable. Any historian will retort that some thought they could buy Hitler and put him to good use in the 1930’s. Daesh and some other terrorist organisations were set up in something like the same way, and now it has taken on its own terrifying life. Christianity is too compromised by its message of compassion for weakness and self-sacrifice. The only Christians who risk persecution are those who commit terrorist acts against abortion clinics and other activities they deem as immoral. No one minds what people believe! Secular powers have no use for churches and none would recognise any authority in a bishop or even the Pope. Ideas of having secular authorities in the Church’s pocket are illusions.

The Church I joined three years ago accepts being marginalised and shunned by the “mainstream”. It is very simple, accept money from the powers-that-be but pay it back with your own soul. You become beholden. I hope and pray that the ACC will continue not to give way to any temptation, given that we have precious little money for churches or resources to train our ordinands for the priesthood. Churches that resist are compromised sooner or later, or die out as the salt loses its savour.

I have often come up with ideas, but I have no more perception than anyone else. We need to take the best and most orthodox from Gnosticism, especially the Alexandrian Fathers like Origen and St Clement of Alexandria among others. We do well to take the essential of the monastic tradition, beautifully resumed in the Rule of St Benedict, and apply it (by reinterpreting certain things) to ordinary people, including married people or single people working in the countryside or the city. Monasteries have become too much like military boot camps! Asceticism needs to be seen in more interior terms, like preferring frugality to comfort, doubt to certitude. It is a question of being more open to God than becoming compliant for dominant humans. The idea of the monastery needs some deconstruction and made into the secret garden of the soul more than a medieval stone abbey. Ideas of naming ourselves abbots and playing games have to be sacrificed, and we have to be ourselves without any external appearance that can justly be demolished and ridiculed by our critics. I am not interested in any of the externals I saw at Triors and Fontgombault and elsewhere, but in a way of renewing the notion of Christianity within ourselves and our close circles of family and friends.

We have not to fear being marginal and eccentric, nor should we dread those who kill the body but cannot touch our souls. This, for me, is the essential point of this article – even if every last cathedral and church has to go to secular use or rising religious ideologies.

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