A Nice Notice for this Blog

In a blog post which begins by mourning the sad death of a blogger called Zman, and then turns to theme of blogging in general, Professor Bruce Charlton has some nice things to say about this blog:

As an example of a recent example of the kind of blog post I like best; here is (non-famous) blogger Irish Papist; with a very personal and honest, free-associational development of ideas on the theme: Everything comes back to religion.

As often said: writing is thinking (or it can be); and here you can sense IP thinking as he writes; and share his excitement at the insights as they emerge from the exploration.

I've been sampling Irish Papist on-and-off for several years - long enough to have decided he is a Good Bloke; and from this assumption I find that he produces a stimulating post every so often, that seems to set off associations and notions in myself.

Well! Not only did that please me greatly, but it may have been literally an answer to a prayer. This morning I asked God for something to happen, today, that would encourage me.

I first heard about Professor Charlton on Edward Feser's blog (which I still follow) and I then bought his book Thought Prison, about political correctness. (It can be read online here.) It's amazing how few books have been written about political correctness, even all these years later. Thought Prison actually took political correctness very seriously, instead of treating it as some kind of joke or freak. I've followed his blog on and off since then.

His thoughts on blogging are very interesting, and indeed timely. The Chesterton and Friends blog recently had a post mourning (or at least commenting on) the disappearance of most Chesterton blogs. Blogs seemed so terribly voguish not so long ago and they are already passé.

Professor Charlton says: "There has to be some kind of basic affinity with the blog persona - but especially with the person we infer behind that persona. I say infer, because we don't need to know much specifically about the blogger "in real life" - so long as what we do know is honest and unpretentious."

I personally think this is true, not only of blogging, but of all reading. The author's voice is what draws me.

He goes on: "Blogging benefits from a careless attitude of freedom, and the ability to shrug-off those times when posts don't take-off or just don't gel."

Amen! The almost throwaway nature of blogging is something I cherish. Anything goes in the pot. I suppose its progenitor is the newspaper column, such as the "As I Please" column written by George Orwell, or the Keith Waterhouse columns I read as a kid (in book form), or "Cruiskeen Lawn" by Myles Na Gopaleen, which is legendary in Ireland. And Chesterton, of course.

Blogging is especially valuable for sidelights, or what I might call "second order" considerations-- for which I have an appetite which may be unhealthy. To take an example: I can't tune into a debate (whether a recent debate or one stretching from the dawn of civilization) without also getting interested in the debate itself, aside from the truth or falsehood of the issues at question. I get fascinated in the contours and dynamics of the debate.

Somebody once rebuked me for this, comparing me to the spirit in Lewis's The Great Divorce who is unwilling to enter Heaven because he would prefer to theorize forever. And I accept there is a danger of this.

But this interest in "second order" matters seems natural enough to humans. I remember being surprised, in my teens, when I would read Tory politicians' memoirs and find them to have a great affection for House of Commons customs, characters, and camaraderie. I'd rather assumed that Thatcherites would see Parliament as a sort of necessary evil, like government itself. I feel the same surprise when agnostics and atheists have opinions and preference about the Catholic Church or the Church or England. But I find this endearing rather than frustrating, myself.

JFK in Ireland...1945!

John F. Kennedy came to Ireland as a reporter in July 1945, fifteen years before his election as President. I write about it in this week's Ireland's Own.

Rules for Conversation

Here are some rules for conversation I've come up with, over years of floundering in the conversational ocean. I have no expertise or authority in this realm whatsoever.

They mostly start with "Don't". Maybe this is negative but I don't care.

1) Don't try to prove how funny, clever, or well-informed you are. I've come to the conclusion that most conversation falls into this category, at least between people who don't know each other that well. This despite the fact that most of us fall into a median zone of all these characteristics. And if you rise above that level, well, why do you need to prove it?

Nothing is more irksome than somebody continually trying to be funny or witty. Most people are funny when they're not trying.

Go to the other extreme. If somebody mentions an arcane or obscure fact, and you already knew it (and can even outdo your clever-clogs interlocutor with an even more obscure, related fact) don't let on. Just smile and nod and act impressed.

2) Don't use the royal "we" or talk about your kids incessantly.

3) Don't bring up your own accomplishments. Even from considerations of egotism, this is good policy. It's surely much better to eventually get a reaction like this: "I say, old boy, you never told me you'd single-handedly foiled a terrorist attack..."

4) Don't make everything about you, and don't make your own experience the yardstick of everything someone else says to you. If somebody has rhapsodised about their favourite TV show for twenty minutes, for God's sake don't say: "I don't watch much television myself..." Or if somebody tells you about a Facebook meme, don't say: "I'm not on social media myself, it's probably marvellous for some things but I never quite got it..."

I know you really, really want to do this. But don't.

5) Don't back someone into a conversational corner. There are some phrases which just kill a conversation. Like: "Well, it's whatever you're used to, isn't it?". Or: "I suppose everybody has their own opinions on these things." Conversation should open up, not close down.

6) Be giving of yourself in conversation. Nothing is worse than talking to someone who, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde:

Has set a seal upon his lips

And made his face a mask.

Unless you already have previous reason to be hostile or suspicious towards somebody, try a little self-abandon. You don't have to tell them your deepest, darkest, most intimate thoughts. But let them in a little bit.

7) Be easily impressed, but not gushing.

8) Never use words such as Kafkaesque, Manichaen, or Foucauldian.

9) Don't assume someone agrees with you on subjects which are, at least to a foreseeable extent, matters of controversy. This might put them in an awkward situation of either introducing a strain into the conversation, or swallowing their opposing point of view.

10) Don't probe for personal information. This should go without saying but doesn't.

11) I honestly think that classic advice holds good: Just be yourself. Most people are perfectly likeable underneath all the pose, performance, and insecurity.

Everything Comes Back to Religion

"Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless."

This C.S. Lewis quotation (from Surprised by Joy, my favourite book) pretty much expresses my view of the world before I accepted Christianity. I was an instinctive sceptic and agnostic, but I wasn't at all happy about that. I had virtually no interest in scientific progress, although I enjoyed science fiction. I was interested in ghost stories, folklore, traditions, ceremony, ritual-- everything that was, in fact, giving way to "progress". Even as a child, I can remember feeling depressed that there was nowhere left on earth to explore. As soon as I was old enough to know the word, I started (pretentiously) calling myself an obscurantist.

That everything gets worse (or at least, less interesting) was, to me,...well, I was going to write "an article of faith", but it wasn't even an article of faith, in truth. It was just a fact. I didn't think about this much. It was pre-reflective.

Even today, now that I believe in God and the miraculous and the supernatural, I'm still haunted by this worldview. Or at least, something very similar to it.

The world itself, without the supernatural and the religious, doesn't seem satisfying to me, or ultimately that interesting.

Take history. I've started reading the book pictured above, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada by Mark A. Noll. After some time reading secular history I grew increasingly bored with it.

The more you dig down into secular history, the less interesting it becomes. The story of mankind is the story of power politics, the quest for status and prestige, for supremacy. And, where it's not power politics, it's basically utilitarianism. We are all utilitarian most of the time. People stopped telling stories around the fire because the TV was more convenient-- and, frankly, more entertaining. I hate Aldi and Lidl and Tesco, but I give them my custom because I can't afford not to. And so on.

Take nationalism as another example. I'm a nationalist, in the sense that I strongly believe the nation should be preserved and cherished. But really, the emergence of a national culture is generally an accident of history. People developed a distinct culture because of geographical barriers, or some such mundane explanation. There's nothing mystical about it. Perhaps asking people to cling to their national cultures, in the face of the overwhelming pressure of globalization, is like asking people to avoid supermarkets for family-run firms.

They might do it for a while. The Gaelic Revival is proof of that. But, as the Radiohead song puts it, gravity always wins. Whatever aspects of national cultures will survive (if any) will ultimately depend on their price-tag of inconvenience. Sentimentality will go so far and no further. Many people will eagerly sacrifice their lives for their fatherland. But very few indeed will sacrifice their convenience, or their hunger for novelty.

When nations emerge for reasons other than an accident of history or geography, it can generally be traced to religious reasons, even if not directly-- as, for instance, with modern Israel and the USA.

I've recently written about Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man. Fukuyama thought that history had, in a sense, ended with the end of the ideological battle between the West and the Soviet bloc. Democracy and capitalism now reigned supreme, even if wars might continue.

But how much of the conflict in history has ever been ideological, anyway? Very little, I would suggest. It's overwhelmingly been about power politics-- not under the surface, but on the surface. I'm reminded of the infamous reply of the Athenians when the neutral islanders of Melos complained about being invaded, during the Peloponnesian Wars: "The powerful take what they can, and the weak yield what they must." Might it be said, in fact, that the Cold War was an anomaly in being ideological? What was ideological about the Napoleonic Wars, or World War One, or indeed most wars?

I believe, contra revisionists, that Brian Boru was fighting the Danes to defend the Christian faith and Gaelic civilization. But why was most of his career spent fighting all the other Gaelic petty kings?

I'm especially baffled by the nostalgia of Catholic integralists for the political order of Christendom. What was it except an incessant dogfight between kings and aristocrats, using peasants as ammunition? Aside from the Crusades, it very specifically wasn't about religion because-- as intregalists always approvingly emphasise-- everybody was Catholic.

I'm not denying there are exceptions to this primacy of power politics in conflict. It really seems to be the case that the American Civil War, to a great extent, was fought for the sake of freeing slaves. People from all over Europe volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War, for whatever side they believed in. But the exceptions are just that, exceptions.

And the great exception is, of course, religion. There have been religious wars, even if power politics generally played a role in these as well. Personally, although I hate all war (as does every ordinary sane person), I've never understood why fighting over religion is wrong in principle. Religion seems as good a reason to fight as any other, and better than most.

The point I'm making about history applies to everything else. Literature, for instance. It seems obvious to me that literature quickly descends to decadence and triviality when it ceases to be nourished by the religious impulse, however distantly it is receiving that nutrition. I don't have the energy to make that argument right now. Probably most of my readers already agree.

"Life is first boredom, then fear" wrote Philip Larkin, somewhat famously. In history, I suggest, the order is reversed. We've had millennia where life was mostly fear for most people-- fear of starvation, sickness, or violent death. In developed societies, this is now changed to boredom, whereby we live comfortable but humdrum lives, in commuter towns and office blocks, and entertain ourselves by watching stories about fear and violence.

This is a huge overstatement, of course. I don't even think it's true, ultimately. But there is a certain truth to it. Without religion, the human story is a pretty paltry thing.

Work Day and Holiday

I've been reading train-related ghost stories recently. It's really been getting me in a railway spirit. I haven't been on a train in years. (Light rail not included.)

Anyway, it reminded me of this poem that I wrote some years ago. I can't remember if I published it here before. It's not on the blog now. It describes a real experience I had.

I've written hundreds of poems, but I'd say I'm actually happen with a dozen at most. This is one of them. It was published a few years ago in The Lyric, a traditionalist verse magazine in the USA.

I am quite proud of this poem because I think the question in the last stanza is an important one. Who has the best perspective on a place, a situation, or anything else? An insider? An outsider? Somebody else?

I think this applies to a lot of things. For instance, Catholic Ireland used to be seen (arguably) in a rather romantic and sentimental way by the Irish themselves. Today (inarguably) it's seen through a filter of cynicism and disillusionment. Which is right?

It's not a perfect poem by any means. The second verse is a bit awkward. But "holiday fizz" is good, I think.

I also like poems that take a very ordinary experience and find meaning and poetry in it. That is the idea behind the Suburban Romantics manifesto.

Anyway, here you go. 

(Whenever I offer poetry or anything to do with poetry-- online or in an interpersonal situation-- I brace for apathy. I was at a coffee morning on Thursday and I ventured to express my views on the decline of poetry to a colleague, since she had recently given a presentation on a poetry-related theme. After a few minutes of listening to my captivating theories, she announced she was going to get more coffee and didn't come back. Oh well. I keep trying.)

Work Day and Holiday

I sat alone on a morning train

And savoured the landscape's novel glory.
A new world gleamed past the window pane
And seven free days stretched out before me.

We came to a town, and suddenly
A crowd of commuters filled the carriage
En route to office and factory,
To lab and station and school and garage.

Soon each was lost in a mobile phone
A laptop, a book, or a magazine.
A handful, glued to their earplugs' drone,
Stared out at the vista so often seen.

I sat there, robbed of my holiday fizz,
And thrust in the role of the raw outsider.
But which of us saw the place as it is--
Was it them? Or me? Or both? Or neither?

Another Win for the Culture of Death

The House of Commons in the UK has narrowly voted in favour of "assisted dying" for terminally ill people.

What is there to say about this? The arguments have been well-rehearsed. My friend Angelo Bottone has an excellent article on the inevitable creep of euthanasia laws once they are established. The slippery slope is not only real but demonstrable.

Euthanasia is deeply disturbing. There seems to be a foundational, cross-cultural, cross-ideological consensus that one of the main purposes of society (even its overriding purpose) is keeping people alive. When there is an earthquake or a wildfire or a terrorist situation, expense and effort is no object when it comes to saving lives-- every last life.

Similarly, suicide is universally seen as a bad thing, something to be prevented. We have suicide hotlines, counselling services, suicide watch in prisons, and so forth.

How long will this consensus exist in the shadow of euthanasia? There is only an academic difference between the proposition: "I will help you kill yourself because you want to die", and "I will help you kill yourself because I agree that your life has ceased to have value."

What is the value of life, anyway? Once you start to quantify it, you are in very dangerous territory. It either transcends all such calculations, or it's already on a scale of more and less valuable.

A very dark day. God help us!

Dream Cities

I'm as worried about A.I. as anybody else, but I'll admit I've dabbled with it. Sometimes I've used it to generate pictures for this blog when I can't find anything suitable online.

Another thing I've used it for is to create visualizations of my dream cities.

For a long, long time (I can't remember how long) I've had dreams-- dreams in both a literal and figurative sense-- of marvellous, futuristic cities, cities which satisfy particular deep-seated yearnings of mine.

When the dreams are literal, they're often of the high-rise suburb where I grew up, Ballymun. But Ballymun transformed into something more like a science-fiction film.

My dream cities are never clearly imagined, because I have very little visual imagination or visual recall. But they have a few essential characteristics:

1) They are bustling. I love activity. I love the phrase "the city that never sleeps". I love the title of the Smiths song, "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out". I love the word "public". Basically these cities are hotel lobbies (or airport concourses, or train stations, or conference centres) on a grand scale-- not quite, but close enough.

2) They are completely interior with no windows-- or, if there must be windows, high windows and/or skylights. The sky and the moon and the stars are beautiful, but...well, I don't know why, but I like indoors to be utterly indoors. I like the concentration of that. I especially like rooms within rooms within rooms.

3) They have balconies, flags, escalators, and fountains. Especially fountain. Is there any more moving symbol of life-- public, collective, intergenerational life-- than a fountain?

4) They have many levels.

The A.I. website I was using doesn't always follow one's instructions to the letter, though.

This one is my favourite and the closest to my ideal. I like mirrorballs, as well!

I'm rather afraid that everyone else will find these visions to be nauseating rather than beautiful! Sure, I can appreciate the poetry of a little village in the middle of nowhere which is in harmony with the sounds, sights, and cycles of nature. But in all honesty, I prefer these!

Would You Like to Read a Horror Story?

It's less than four pages long.

If you would, drop me an email at Maolsheachlann@gmail.com.

If you wouldn't, have a nice day. But not too nice.

The Poetry of Long Corridors

Who do you think wrote the following stanza?

All hail, Sublimity! thou lofty one,

For thou dost walk upon the blast, and gird

Thy majesty with terrors, and thy throne
Is on the whirlwind, and thy voice is heard
In thunders and in shakings: thy delight
Is in the secret wood, the blasted heath,
The ruin'd fortress, and the dizzy height,
The grave, the ghastly charnel-house of death,
In vaults, in cloisters, and in gloomy piles,
Long corridors and towers and solitary aisles!

The answer is Lord Alfred Tennyson, and he wrote it by the time he was eighteen. It's a stanza from a longer poem, "On Sublimity".

For some time now, I've been embarked on the ambitious project of reading all of Tennyson's surviving poetry, from his juvenilia onwards. Some of his juvenilia is as good as the mature works of many acclaimed poets-- at least in patches.

My three favourite poets are W.B. Yeats, Philip Larkin, and Lord Alfred Tennyson. Of those three, I think Tennyson is the least regarded today. Part of the reason is that he's hard to pigeon-hole. He's as classical as he is romantic, as optimistic and he is pessimistic (though shading towards pessimism), as backwards-looking as he is forwards-looking, and so forth.

The stanza above reminds me of some other poems I love very much, including Byron's ode to the ocean (from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage) and Keats's "Ode to Melancholy".

I especially like "long corridors and towers and solitary aisles". I love the word "corridor". I think it's a little poem in itself!

Associations

I was sitting in the front pew of the UCD church today, trying to commune with God, when I found myself thinking of associations.

This isn't at all unusual. I think about associations all the time. I'm thinking about them more and more, actually.

I don't have a picture of UCD's church handy so I'm going to swipe one from another website, and hope they don't mind.

You can just about make out the tabernacle there, underneath the Taizé cross and the randomly-patterned stained glass. It's a very simple tabernacle, gold-coloured with a cross on the front. It's much better than the atrocity the church had until recently-- a similar box, but with a chaos of colours on the front as though it had been painted by a toddler.

I actually like Our Lady Seat of Wisdom very much.

As I was saying...looking at the tabernacle, I began to feel certain associations. I seemed to hear the voice of a young-ish, rather bookish woman saying: "I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys..."

Actually, I didn't imagine her saying any specific words, but I imagined her quoting the Song of Solomon.

And why? Because that seemed somehow in keeping with the atmosphere of the place, with the aesthetic.

This atmosphere even had a period attached to it. For me, it was the sixties or seventies in Ireland, or even a little later. I think this was about the period a fairly bookish young woman might find the Song of Solomon to be especially beautiful and quotable. She needn't even have been a particularly religious young woman.



This was a time in Ireland when, although liberalism was certainly making inroads, an ordinary young person might be expected to have a certain sentimental attachment to Catholicism. But the poetry of the Song of Solomon would speak to a new respect for sensuality and sexuality.

Do you see what I'm getting at? Catholicism, to me, is associated with a whole range of different aesthetics and associations. Usually very specific associations and aesthetics. It's like there are different aesthetic or atmospheric strains of Catholic devotion. And I like most of them.

Some of these "strains" are attached to particular periods and places, and some aren't. They're very hard to put into words.

For instance, nineteenth century Catholicism has (to me) a very particular flavour, a certain austere intellectualism mixed with a baroque romanticism. Perhaps it all boils down to the personality of John Henry Newman, and the very specific mixture of masculinity and femininity in that complex figure.

Here's another example. Some years ago, they used to have mid-week Eucharistic adoration in the Holy Spirit Church in Ballymun. It was always to the backing of soft devotional music, guitar music with pious ejaculations sung in different languages.

Regular readers will know that I am not a fan of internationalism. But I liked the internationalism of this backing music. I was a friendly, non-threatening sort of internationalism. There were "swirly" sounds between the music.

The gleaming gold monstrance harmonised very pleasingly against the warm colours of the church. The whole experience was very soothing. It made the love of God seem very tender and healing.

Another example is the sort of atmosphere invoked (for me) by the groups of statues you sometimes see outside Irish Catholic churches; that is, large white statues, often showing Calvary scenes, usually quite weather-beaten.

Tenderness and softness don't come to mind here. Rather, heroism and purity and sacrifice. Hardness. But it's just as moving and elevating an "atmosphere".

Here's the thing; I find it very difficult to approach God except through the intermediary of one of these atmospheres, one of these aesthetics. It's not for me to say whether this is a good or a bad thing. But, unless convinced otherwise, I'm assuming that it's not a bad thing.

I'm grateful for these associations. They point me to God.

There's a much bigger point arising out of all of this. I suspect that I am not unique or special, and that many (or even most) of our loyalties, beliefs and even our quests come from associations such as these-- whether in religion, politics, working life, love, or any other realm of human activity. How much of our lives are determined by a fragrance, a particular tone of voice, a pattern of light and shadow, that grasped our imaginations at just the right moment?

The Silly Season

I probably shouldn't blog when I'm in a bad mood, but I'm irritated by an article in the Catholic Herald which is an example of a tendency I really dislike in Catholic writing. I won't mention the author, but you can read it at the link below. The headline is "Paul McCartney's Catholic Pulse":

https://thecatholicherald.com/paul-mccartneys-catholic-pulse/

McCartney's music, don't you know, has been shaped by his Catholic background:

You can hear it if you listen closely—not in grand declarations, but in the tremble beneath the chord changes. Catholicism doesn’t shout; it seeps. And in McCartney’s work, it’s everywhere. It’s in the longing, the ache, the dignity of sorrow that feels too ancient to be accidental. The Beatles may have been the soundtrack of a cultural revolution, but underneath the haircuts and heresies was something older, quieter, heavier. Something liturgical. Even when the lyrics weren’t explicitly religious, the emotional architecture often was: guilt, grace, reverence, loss, redemption. Take “Let It Be.” Most hear a gentle plea for peace, a soft balm in the chaos of the times. But listen again. That “Mother Mary” isn’t just his mum. It’s the Blessed Virgin, cloaked in the ambiguity McCartney has always favored. Raised on Hail Marys, candle smoke, and the slow solemnity of Sunday Mass, McCartney didn’t need to spell it out. Catholicism teaches you that not everything sacred has to be brazenly broadcast—it can be whispered, veiled, encoded in melody.

Well, really. Couldn't you say that about any music that you happen to like?

Paul McCartney must be one of the most interviewed people in the history of the human race. If his Catholic background was important to him, he would have said so by now. It's clearly not important to him.

As for the "Mother Mary" reference in "Let It Be"...McCartney is an affable fellow and has always been happy to have this interpreted in a religious way, if anybody wants to do so. But he's said quite explicitly that it refers to a vision of his mother.

This kind of thing is reminiscent of the Greek father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding who insists that every word is ultimately derived from Greek. It's endearing in that case, but in a published article one expects a more serious argument.

It wouldn't be worth mentioning if it was an isolated case. But there are a lot of articles like this.

(For a group of Liverpudlians of Irish extraction, what's remarkable about the Beatles is how little their Catholic or Irish upbringing seems to have influenced them. George Harrison's last album featured a song mocking the Church.)

The Pope and Nationalism

In his Pentecost sermon, Pope Leo had some words of criticism for "political nationalism": "Where there is love, there is no room for prejudice, for 'safety' zones that separate us from our neighbors, for the exclusionary mentality that, tragically, we now see manifesting itself even in political nationalisms".

What does any of this mean? Is exclusion always a bad thing? Is it "exclusionary" that only believing Catholics in a state of grace can receive Holy Communion? Is it "exclusionary" that only men can be ordained? Is it "exclusionary" that Catholic marriage only exists between a man and a woman?

Is it "exclusionary" that national sentiment is directed towards our countrymen and women, rather than the rest of the world? Doesn't everybody in the world have their own nation, whether or not that nation has its own state?

What is nationalism? There are plenty of definitions out there, but to me it's simply belief in the institution of the nation and a desire for this institution to survive. This doesn't seem controversial or radical to me.

It seems especially odd that recent Popes have been so hostile to nationalism, when nationalists are generally supportive of social conservatism, religion, and the sanctity of life. Globalists, on the other hand, usually oppose all these things.

I'm particularly baffled by the Holy Father's use of the word "now": "The exclusionary mentality that, tragically, we now see manifesting itself in political nationalisms."

Is it really the case, as so many commentators (including Pope Leo) seem to assume, that the wave of populist nationalism passing through the developed world is something new? Is it not, rather, a delayed reaction to the thing that is really new: the project of globalism, which includes demographic change on a scale never seen before? I don't think the populations of Europe and the Americas have suddenly become nationalist. I think they always were (at least in a latent way) but they have only now woken up to the project of their ruling elites.

These are well-rehearsed arguments on this blog. I apologise to regular readers who may be bored by them. But they come to mind again in the light of Pope Leo's words.

It would be helpful if Pope Leo were to release an encyclical or other document on the place of the nation in the modern world, and particularly on how the plurality of human cultures are to be protected without the nation and nationalism. Until then, with all due respect to the Supreme Pontiff, I remain a nationalist-- a cultural nationalist primarily, but a political nationalist as well.

Another Thought on Fascination

 I was writing about fascination recently. I wrote:

This whole business of fascination is, inevitably, fascinating in itself. Human beings are remarkable creatures. One would assume we have the same basic bundle of desires and objectives, each of which would ultimately boil down to some animalistic imperative. But in fact, as C.S. Lewis once wrote, "we are inveterate poets". It seems to me that what draws us to any activity, pursuit, or allegiance is usually that our imagination has been seized in some way. And everybody's imagination seems to react in a very individual way. So perhaps it's rather futile to attempt to communicate a fascination.

I've been reading the first volume of a multi-volume biography of John F. Kennedy by Nigel Hamilton, Reckless Youth. The passage below caught my attention. It's a quotation from a friend of Kennedy, who wrote an article about the sinking of Kennedy's boat during WWII, an event which won Kennedy hero status: "What appealed to me about the Kennedy story was his night in the water, his account of floating in the current, being brought back to the same point from which he'd drifted off. It was the same kind of theme that fascinated me always about human survival... It was really that aspect that interested me, rather than his heroics. The aspect of fate that threw him back into a current and brought him back again. His account of it is very strange. A nightmarish thing altogether."

I once wrote a whole blog post on the genesis of artistic works (read it here), where I wrote:

I've often suspected that the real motivation for any work of art is a burning desire to share some image, atmosphere or moment which is intensely personal and specific. Let me put it this way; a woman might write an eight-hundred page novel which contains all sorts of deep observations on human nature, on memory, on language, on any number of other universal themes-- but the real essence of the novel is not any of these, but a short description of a mother brushing her daughter's hair before a mirror, while snow falls outside. This is what the lady yearned to express, to give life to; everything else was really just to keep the readers and the critics happy. All the philosophising can be analysed to death; this is irreducible and living.

This suspicion, in fact, is given support by many of the accounts I've read of the origin of creative works. Dracula grew out of the image of Jonathan Harker being surrounded by the three female vampires in Castle Dracula, until they are beaten back by Dracula himself. The Chronicles of Narnia all grew out of the image of a faun carrying parcels in a snowy wood. The Stand by Stephen King (a book of 1424 pages in its uncut version) grew out of a phrase King heard in a sermon on the radio: "Once in every generation the plague will fall among them." 

Even the way in which an author (or anybody else) is fascinated by something is incredibly specific. Take this often-quoted excerpt from an interview Samuel Becket gave: "I am interested in the shape of ideas even if I do not believe them. There is a wonderful sentence in Augustine. I wish I would remember the Latin. It is even finer in Latin than in English. ‘Do not despair; one of the thieves was saved. Do not presume; one of the thieves was damned.’ That sentence has a wonderful shape. It is the shape that matters." Beckett insisted his interest in the phrase (which he used in his work) was not theological, although it's well-known that he liked to be enigmatic.

My own experience is that even supposedly simple tastes, such as eating, can be affected by the imagination. Apparently Winston Churchill once told a waiter: "Take away this pudding. It has no theme." I can understand that.

I'm interested in this phenomenon for its own sake. But I also think it has a relevance for politics, society, history, religion, and pretty much every other field of life.

Happy Pentecost

Pentecost is one of my favourite moments in the Bible and one of my favourite mysteries of the Rosary. (My other favourites are the Presentation and the Transfiguration.)

I like the "shock and awe" of Pentecost, the presence of powerful imagery: a mighty wind and tongues of fire.

Despite much searching, and despite its popularity with painters through the ages, I've never been able to find a depiction of Pentecost that satisfies me. Every single depiction is too understated for my liking. Surely any attempt to portray Pentecost visually should be a case of "go big or go home". (Also, the "mighty wind" is generally left out. Obviously, you can't directly portray wind, but you should be able to imply it with a little imagination.)

So I'm going to be a terrible, terrible person and use an A.I.-generated image for this post. I'm not happy with that one, either, even though it took several efforts to find one that was even nearly suitable.

Saints of the Yellow Fever

In the summer of 1878, in Memphis in Tennessee,
There walked through the streets of the city a demon no eyes could see.
It brought with it desolation; full five thousand lives were cut short.
In the guise of the Yellow Fever, King Death held a gruesome court.

Nobody knew where it came from, and nothing could hold it back.
Its shadow fell further than Memphis, this plague they called “Yellow Jack”.
It ravaged through New Orleans, St. Louis, and Vicksburg, too
And twice ten thousand pitiful souls it swiftly, painfully slew.

Whoever could leave the cities had left, whoever could flee had fled,
And only the poor were left behind, to tremble among the dead.
And yet, in this Valley of Darkness, one fellowship chose to toil:
All valiant priests of the Catholic faith, and many from Erin’s Isle.

O’Brien and Fahey and Kelly, McGarvey and Mooney and Ryan,
All names of the Christian soldiers who fell on this dread battle-line.
When one had died of the deadly plague, another would take his place.
The Saints of the Yellow Fever, the infantry of God’s grace.

When all had abandoned the dying, God’s ministers still came near
To give them the precious Viaticum, their last confessions to hear,
To take from the arms of dead mothers the poor infant left all alone,
To hold a last drink to burning lips, to witness a dying groan.

In the city of Chattanooga they still speak of Patrick Ryan
From Nenagh in Tipperary, a young priest as brave a lion.
His tomb lies in the Basilica. The valiant path that he trod
Has won him the love of its people, the title of Servant of God.

So hail to the martyrs of Memphis, their brothers wherever they fell,
A beacon to burn for the ages, a breathtaking story to tell.
McGarvey and Mooney and Kelly, names bright with an unfading gloss.
The saints of the Yellow Fever, who fell at the foot of the Cross.

All of the details in this "ballad" can be found in the book Heroes and Heroines of Memphis by Father D.A. Quinn, which is freely available to read on the Internet Archive.

You can read about Fr. Patrick Ryan in many places, including my article in the Summer Special of Ireland's Own, which is in the shops as I write this.

I've long had the plan of writing a series of poems and ballads glorifying Irish Catholic history. My aspiration is for these poems to get into general circulation. So if you like this "ballad", please feel free to share it on social media or anywhere else.

Blog Thoughts

Once again I find myself pondering the point of my blog. It's been going now since 2011, so I intend to keep it going indefinitely. But I often find myself what direction I should take it in-- if any particular direction.

When I started it, I had the idea that it would be fairly newsy, essentially a series of responses to attacks on the Catholic Church in the Irish media. That idea didn't last very long.

I sometimes wonder whether it should be more "substantial"-- for instance, book reviews, movie reviews, commentary on current issues, articles on aspects of Irish Catholic history, that kind of thing. This would involve a fair amount of disciplined research.

I suppose the most recurrent theme in my blog is "fascination". I constantly seem to be trying to communicate some fascination or other, often a rather elusive one. Those are the posts that mean the most to me, but I don't know how much they appeal to other people. Communicating fascination might be more the province of poetry-- but it's hard to get anyone to read poetry.

This whole business of fascination is, inevitably, fascinating in itself. Human beings are remarkable creatures. One would assume we have the same basic bundle of desires and objectives, each of which would ultimately boil down to some animalistic imperative. But in fact, as C.S. Lewis once wrote, "we are inveterate poets". It seems to me that what draws us to any activity, pursuit, or allegiance is usually that our imagination has been seized in some way. And everybody's imagination seems to react in a very individual way. So perhaps it's rather futile to attempt to communicate a fascination.

I must admit I was rather disappointed that my "Irishness in Everyday Life" didn't get more of a response. I even asked various Facebook friends who are still on Facebook to share it. It seemed to me like the kind of thing that might spark a wider discussion.

Are blogs passé? I can remember back when they were almost comically modern.

The funny thing about my blog is that virtually nobody I know in "real life" actually reads it. On the other hand, as more and more people are speaking out against the ruling ideology in Ireland, I'm quite proud I have proof that I was opposing it for a long time, when it was neither profitable nor popular.

Ladies and Gentlemen

For once, my blog post title is purely descriptive. I want to write about the phrase "ladies and gentlemen"-- that and nothing else.

The single biggest shock to me in the onslaught of political correctness was when, in 2017, the London Underground announced (no pun intended) that it was no longer going to use the phrase "ladies and gentlemen".

One person suggested I was overreacting, calling the news "trivial". I don't find it trivial at all. Language is a very important battlefield, a truth very well understand by radical social reformers.

My friend Roger Buck has used this formulation when it comes to describing the progressive mindset: "Thou shalt be abstract, thou shalt be abstract, though shalt be abstract."

Everything that is specific and particular is suppressed for fear that somebody will be excluded, somebody will be offended. In the case of "Ladies and gentlemen", the fear is that people who consider themselves neither male nor female (a very small minority) might be upset.

I'm staggered that people can't see where this logic leads, if followed. All colour, charm, and character is to be drained from language, and from social institutions, for the purely negative aspiration of not hurting anybody's feelings. What about the feelings that are hurt by this imposition of sterile sameness?

Read this advice from the Equality Institute (whoever they are), if you have the stomach. It reminds me of the chilling line from Orwell's 1984: "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words."

Thankfully, the phrase still seems to be in common currency...for now.

Here is a list of all the things I love about this phrase:

1) It evokes both the difference and the complementarity of the sexes.

2) It's graceful and genteel. It conjures an image of men in dinner jackets and women in chiffon and taffeta-- even if everybody is wearing jeans and t-shirts.

3) It immediately creates an atmosphere. If somebody clears their throat (or taps on a microphone) and says "Ladies and gentlemen", a strain of formality has been infused into proceedings.

4) It's friendly.

5) Ladies come first. Which is chivalrous. Which is nice.

6) In acknowledging the principal division of any gathering (unless it is same-sex), it acknowledges that we are more than pebbles in a pile.

7) It is a link with the past.

Encouragement

In this excellent discussion, John Lennox (a Christian mathematician) and agnostic Alex O'Connor agree that "the conversation is shifting" when it comes to belief in God. Skip to that section here, though the whole conversation is interesting.

Alex O'Connor mentions this report from the Bible Society, one of the many indications that religious practice is increasing in Britain.

Deo gratias!

Four Men on a Balcony

Last night I was feeling very gloomy, but I cheered up after watching this video from Jimmy Akin, my favourite Catholic apologist and evangelist. The subject matter might be dismissed as rather insubstantial-- it's a comparison of the different ways the last four Popes greeted the pilgrims in St. Peter's Square, immediately after their election.

I actually don't think it's insubstantial at all. But, even if it was, the whole premise of the video delighted me. I love anything that skips over the surface of history, so to speak. Like an article about James Bond theme tunes, or general election traditions, or memorable blackouts. I like the idea of jumping over years and decades to link particular moments and create a distinctive capsule history.

I specifically liked this video because it looks at a very particular tradition, one that occurs rarely and irregularly, and that's seldom considered apart from the whole drama of the papal election.

I love tradition for many reasons. One reason is that traditions so often combine opposites in a pleasing way. The tradition of the Pope appearing on the balcony is, of course, one that touches on profound and grave spiritual realities. It's very serious, and it's surrounded by all the dignity and pomp of the Vatican.

But it's also a party atmosphere. The square is full of smiling faces, of people of all sorts-- chanting, clapping, carrying signs.

It's a funny thing, a strange thing-- watching the video, I felt "the healing fountains start", at the sight of these cheering crowds over five decades,

I suppose, without realizing it, I have started thinking of the life of faith as all suffering, crisis, controversy, and endurance. I'm sure this has something to do with the storms of the last pontificate, and something also to do with the constant attack on the Faith in the modern world.

There is, of course, a profound joy in Christianity even in the face of suffering, loss, tribulation, etc. But it was refreshing (and more than refreshing) to be reminded of simple joy, lighthearted joy.

Another pleasure I took in the video, which I take in all Jimmy Akin's videos, is his very calm and genial presentation.

To turn to the content of the video...I found it very surprising. Of the four Popes, which would you imagine to be the most animated and exuberant when he came to the balcony?

To my own great surprise, it was...Pope Benedict! Yes, it was the shy scholar-Pope who waved both his arms, clenched his hands in a triumphant gesture, and wore a huge smile.

Now, who was the least animated and expressive?

Again to my surprise, it was Pope Francis. The author of The Joy of the Gospel simply stood on the balcony and stared at the crowds, hardly even smiling. He waved a few times, that's all.

Well, one might easily say, perhaps he was simply stunned and overwhelmed. And perhaps he was. But it's still a striking contrast.

Pope John Paul II was not quite as animated as Pope Benedict, but much more so than Pope Francis. He raised his palms upwards to heaven in a gesture that he seems often to have used, judging by pictures. It's as though he was urging the faithful upwards.

The video stirred up, once again, my love for St. John Paul II.

All through my life, he always appeared to me as an icon of pure goodness. I can remember there was a large photograph of him on the wall of my very first classroom. The image radiated a grandfatherly benevolence.

I am most definitely a JPII Catholic, even though I only started practicing my faith during the pontificate of Benedict. I think I absorbed the influence of the great Polish Pope without ever paying a huge amount of attention to him. Around the turn of the millennium, I bought my father a thick biography of JPII called Man of the Century, for Christmas, though I only skimmed it myself.

Perhaps more than anything else, John Paul conveyed a tremendous strength and solidity, truly the "rock" of St. Peter. And yet, when I turned to his writings, I discovered a graciousness and fundamental optimism which is quite a contrast to the embattled tone of many conservatives.

That's what I experience most when I read his writings: optimism. Somehow, the road doesn't seem quite as difficult as before.

When I watched Pope Benedict come to the balcony, actual tears came into my eyes. We know what it cost him now. We also know how viciously he was slandered and demeaned by the media.

As for the new Pope, my reaction is pretty much the same as everybody in my own theological tribe: I am impressed by the dignity and gentleness of his bearing. There is a sense that normal service has been resumed, and I pray that this is doesn't turn out to be false.

Which brings us back to Pope Francis.

In the video, Jimmy Akin said that he was reluctant to criticize Francis when he was the reigning Pope. Now that this is no longer the case, he is more willing to do so.

This was my attitude as well. After an initial reaction of dismay, when I was pretty vocal-- especially about Amoris Laetitia-- I resolved to be more respectful and restrained. Especially as I witnessed the gleeful abandon with which many Catholic commentators were laying into the Holy Father. Increasingly it seemed as though everything he said or did became a trigger for denunciation-- even when it was perfectly reasonable.

However, much of what he did and said did actually distress me.

His first appearance on the balcony was a good (albeit minor) example. The media loved the fact that he appeared in simple white papal robes. But virtually all conservative Catholics were perturbed by it. As G.K. Chesterton once wrote: "Humility will always, by preference, go clad in scarlet and gold; pride is that which refuses to let gold and scarlet impress it or please it too much." More to the point, ecclesial garments aren't there for the glory of the wearer but for the glory of God, and for the sake of symbolism and tradition.

Perhaps Pope Francis has been too harshly criticized for this. After all, John Paul the First refused to don the traditional papal tiara, and every subsequent Pope has followed his example. But how far can you go in jettisoning ceremony and tradition? Would a Pope eventually have to emerge on the balcony in jeans and a t-shirt, the ultimate in humility?

In my workplace, I've long been bothered by the phenomenon of longstanding employees choosing not to have any kind of event when they retire. A colleague who worked in the library since I was an infant didn't even tell anyone she was retiring until that very day, and asked for no fuss about it at all. This really bothered me, especially since she had been a mentor and a friend to me for so long. It seemed wrong not to have some kind of marker.

Recently, I said to another colleague: "The event isn't just for the sake of the person leaving. It's for other people just as much". He agreed. (Of course, there might be good reasons someone doesn't want to have an event-- for instance, if they are just too emotional. I asked not to have any kind of workplace event when I was getting married, since I was so stressed by all the questions about the preparations and didn't want to encourage them. I regret it now, though.)

A lot to say about one video, I know. But it really did make an impression on me.

From Our Studio in Spokane...

One of the things I've noticed about myself recently is that I'm taking more and more pleasure in little things. This is happening spontaneously and it's not part of some kind of philosophy, unless it's unconsciously so.

Words, for instance. I've loved words all my life but my pleasure in them is growing all the time. This can be a bit lonely because nobody ever wants to talk about words or phrases. A throwaway comment that you like this or that word is considered OK, but keep it going for more than a minute or two and people give you funny looks.

For instance, I was quite hopeful that this post on words and phrases (which I hugely enjoyed writing) might spark some discussion but only one person commented. I'm very grateful they did.

But I'm not talking about words today. I'm talking about TV studios. And YouTube studios.

Earlier today I was watching a segment from the Michael Knowles show. When I first became aware of Michael Knowles, I didn't like him very much. He had a smug and snarky air about him that I found off-putting. But then I heard him doing some more serious interviews, such as one with Bishop Robert Barron, and I realized he's a serious thinker.

I really like his new studio. It's very cosy and classical. I wonder why all studios aren't more like this.

Dark wood, a window, soft light, a painting, a Victorian desk lamp...what else could you ask for?

It's really ridiculous how much balm it brought to my soul. I was feeling quite dejected when I clicked on the video and it improved my mood.

Why doesn't every room look like this? A few days ago, I was watching The Hound of the Baskervilles, a 1957 Hammer horror starring the immortal Cushing-Lee duo. The scenes set in 221B Baker Street gave me the same vast pleasure.

I wouldn't want any human artform to settle into a dreary sameness, and that includes interior decoration. But this sort of cosy Victorian look seems to me the pinnacle of domestic comfort.

It's said that we all tend to get nostalgic for whatever was current in our childhood. Well, that's certainly not the case with me and television studios. The late eighties and early nineties were an era of hideous studios, at least in Ireland.

What kind of atmosphere should a studio try to create? In my view, it should be a warm, cosy, familial sort of atmosphere. A window opening onto the world is also appropriate.

Many producers seem to think it's more important for a studio to project modernism, excitement, the cutting edge. Lots of glass and bright lights seem to be the usual way to create this atmosphere. I don't like this at all and find it unwelcoming.

I also really like the studio of EWTN's The Journey Home programme.

(By the way, here's another little thing that gives me a lot of pleasure. I was reminded of it when I was writing this post. It's the phrase "home media". I'll often read about particular films on Wikipedia and, as you doubtless know, Wikipedia articles are broken down into different categories. For films, one such category is "Home Media". It's such an elegant phrase. It makes the simple act of putting a DVD on seem comparable to a cinema visit. At least, it does to me.)

A Thought on Atheists Returning to the Faith

Yesterday, I came across the YouTube channel of a young Irish man who is a recent convert to Catholicism from atheism. (Not a revert, as he was raised atheist.) He gives an account of his journey from New Atheism below.

https://youtu.be/Kyu3kqqXGxk?si=HT55XLM_qvr8fHcc

This has become a rather common phenomenon. I've ceased to be surprised at stories of young men (and others, such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali) who have gone from New Atheism to believer.

Of course, I'm delighted at this phenomenon. But I'm surprised that evidence rarely seems to be the main consideration. In fact, most of these converts are quite explicit that they left atheism, and particularly New Atheism, because it was emotionally unsatisfying, or because it gave their life no meaning, or because it proved helpless against various cultural menaces such as woke.

I feel a sense of bemusement at this. I can vividly remember the high tide of New Atheism. The battle was entirely fought along the front of evidence. Where is the hard evidence? Extraordinary claims demanded extraordinary evidence. Why should I believe in Christ rather than Thor or Osiris? We must follow truth wherever it leads. Those of who took it upon ourselves to defend Christianity accepted these terms.

Now, it seems, it wasn't really about hard evidence at all. I'm not criticizing anybody for that. It makes perfect sense to me that the existential questions would come first. But it shows how misleading rhetoric can be.

(I should say, incidentally, that the video above may not be a good example of this. I see, on this chap's YouTube channel, that he has a lot of videos about philosophy and he seems very thoughtful indeed. Doubtless he was just giving a simplified account in this case because he only had a few minutes. But I think it's generally true.)

Something similar has happened with regard to politics. Twenty years ago, a young person who took an interest in politics, and who wasn't on the left, was most likely to be a libertarian. "What right has anyone to tell anyone else what they should or shouldn't do, if they're not harming anyone else?" That was their great standard. I found it hard to answer that question then, as I do now, even though I'm not a libertarian.

And yet many of the former libertarians have now become social conservatives, nationalists, or communitarians of some kind. Their rationale is generally something like: "I realized libertarianism couldn't prevent the bad social and cultural changes that were happening" But that's not really an answer to their question.