The Burning Babe, a Beloved (By Me) Christmas Tradition on This Blog

So I'm signing off for Christmas, and for 2025, with my now-traditional post of "The Burning Babe" by St. Robert Southwell.

(Mind you, I feel a little like a guy working alone in a basement who puts up Christmas decorations for himself, because I've never had the faintest indication that anyone else gives a hoot about this tradition of mine, now a decade old. Oh well.)

Here are my previous posts on the poem, including commentary on it:

https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2015/12/more-seasonal-poetry.html

https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2016/12/a-smoking-hot-babe-for-christmas.html

https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2017/12/a-christmas-repeat.html

https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2018/12/a-smoking-hot-babe-for-christmas-again.html

https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2019/12/happy-christmas.html

https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2020/12/a-smoking-hot-babe-for-christmas-again.html

https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2021/12/burn-baby-burn.html

https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2022/12/theres-baby-on-fire.html

https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-burning-babe-with-sting-in-tale.html

https://irishpapist.blogspot.com/2024/12/a-hoary-christmas-tide-tradition.html

And here is the poem itself:

The Burning Babe by St. Robert Southwell

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,

Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;

And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,

A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;

Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed

As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.

“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,

Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!

My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,

Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;

The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,

The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,

For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,

So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”

With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,

And straight I calléd unto mind that it was Christmas Day.

So happy Christmas to everybody and thank you for reading, and especially for commenting-- comments are always hugely encouraging and welcome, much more than you might think. Otherwise I have no idea if anyone is reading or is interested.

(I will probably have very limited internet access over the holidays, so please forgive any tardiness in responding to emails, etc.)

Fifteen Stations of the Cross

I fairly frequently pray the Stations of the Cross in the UCD church. A few weeks ago, I took pictures of them, thinking I might post them here so that someone could actually use them for prayer. (I've often prayed the Stations of the Cross online, as well.)

No, they're not the nicest Stations. But they're fine. Apologies that some of the pictures are a bit blurry.

I include "Jesus Falls a Third Time" twice, since I happened to be very struck by this particular Station in the Sacred Heart Church, Donnybrook, and took a picture of it.

A Quick Thought on the Irish "Ballad Boom" of the 1960s.

I've been watching this documentary about The Dubliners (which seems to be the only documentary about the whole group on YouTube), and once again it has me musing over the 1960's "Ballad Boom".

There's no Wikipedia page on the subject of the "Ballad Boom". In fact, this is the closest I can get to a potted history of the phenomenon. And yet, it's frequently mentioned in Ireland. The term is used familiarly, often expecting the reader or viewer to know what it means.

The article I've linked to puts it like this: "The ‘ballad boom’, so called, refers to a period of some dozen years from the end of the 1950s to about 1970 when there was a nation-wide vogue in Ireland for the singing of (mostly) Irish songs in English by ballad groups: small vocal groups accompanying themselves with guitar, banjo and mandolin, and sometimes including a whistle player or other melody instrumentalist."

What especially intrigues me about the Ballad Boom is its timing, and its relation to the Irish cultural revival. Irish people began to value (and attempt to revive) their indigenous culture from about the late eighteenth century, although it was mostly isolated enthusiasts in those very early days. The real surge came in the late nineteenth century, with the founding of the Gaelic League (1893) and the Gaelic Athletic Association (1884), along with a plethora of other groups.

And after that...it's actually quite hard to trace the energies of Irish cultural revivalism. History books often include vague like this one: "After the heroic period of the Irish Revolution, the bread-and-butter realities of running a new state took over." But that doesn't really explain any cooling of fervour, if there was indeed a cooling of fervour. After all, there had been plenty of poverty during the Gaelic Revival and Irish Revolution, and surely only a small minority of people were actually concerned with building and administering the new state.

In any case, it's generally accepted that radio, television, and the beginning of consumer culture made Irish people more cosmopolitan and "outward-looking". So it seems strange that it was during the nineteen-sixties, the same time as the explosion of rock-and-roll and Beatlemania, that the Irish Ballad Boom took off. Was it part of the same wave, or was it some kind of counter-current? Or does that question even make sense?

Similarly, Irish language baby names grew in popularity long after the Gaelic Revival. As this article puts it: "Names such as Rían, Oisín, Tadhg, Fiadh and Éabha have featured in the top ten in recent years, with Fiadh being the most popular name for a girl in 2021. The only Irish language name to feature in the top 40 for boys in 1964 was Sean, which took the 38th spot that year."

The recent growth of Irish language schools or "gaelscoileanna" (schools where instruction is mostly through the Irish language) is another example: "In 1972, there were only 11 such schools at primary level and five at secondary level in the Republic of Ireland. As of September 2023, there were 188 gaelscoileanna at primary level, attended by over 40,000 students, and 32 gaelcholáistí and 17 aonaid Ghaeilge (Irish language units) at secondary level, attended by over 12,000 students in non-Gaeltacht areas across Ireland."

So Irish cultural revivalism is a curious and complex phenomenon. Is there a pattern underneath its apparent ebb and flow, or rather, its tendency to take different manifestations?

A Beautiful Christmas Meditation from Professor Bruce Charlton

Read it here.

I love this passage especially:

The more we realize how marvellous were the claims of Jesus Christ, the stranger the whole thing seems to be! 

So the better we grasp the reality of resurrection and Heaven - the less convincing seems any possible "evidence" brought out to support it! 

The only way that this can "work" (it seems to me) is when we grasp the-whole-thing all-at-once... when, or if, we understand what it is that Jesus did, and its wonder and strangeness, and simultaneously experience a deep conviction of its reality. 

That's probably what is meant by "faith" - not so much choosing to believe the extraordinary; as that we need to "get it" and "want it" at the same moment: by the same inner act.

"Both get it and want it" certainly expresses how I feel about the Christian revelation. There have even been fleeting moments where I've felt gratitude to have been brought into existence just so I could witness to Christianity, or at least try to.

This puts me in mind of the "scandal of particularity". It seems so strange that God should have revealed Himself in the way He did...almost crude. And yet, how wonderful and how delightful, how poetic! 

Favourite Poems: The Oxen by Thomas Hardy

Since it's Christmas, here's another of my favourite Christmas poems.

I don't have a whole lot to say about it. It's a simple poem, and its greatness more or less lies in its last two lines.

It's very efficient. I've only noticed now that the first verse wouldn't make any sense without the title. Hardy explains the superstition, and sets the stage, in extraordinarily few words.

I must say I can never remember being as credulous (or lacking in cynicism) as Hardy portrays the company in the second verse.

The last verse, and especially the magnificent last line, always makes me sob. It captures the whole tragedy of disenchantment (not only individual, but social and cultural) in a few syllables. I think it captures it even better than Arnold's famous lines about the "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" of the sea of faith-- although that, too, is magnificent and fully deserves its fame.

The Oxen by Thomas Hardy

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.

“Now they are all on their knees,”

An elder said as we sat in a flock

By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where

They dwelt in their strawy pen,

Nor did it occur to one of us there

To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave

In these years! Yet, I feel,

If someone said on Christmas Eve,

“Come; see the oxen kneel,

“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb

Our childhood used to know,”

I should go with him in the gloom,

Hoping it might be so.

Postscript: I've just come across this sad passage, in a Church Times article about Hardy and religion: "On his deathbed, in the darkness of midwinter, he requested that the story of Christ’s nativity should be read to him. Afterwards, he pointed out that there was no evidence to support its veracity." 

Sceptics always seem to want everything in the Christian religion to have independent evidence, rather than accepting cumulative or composite evidence. This standard isn't applied to anything else, as far as I can see. A colleague once lamented to me that there were no modern miracles to attest to the supernatural. When I mentioned the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima, in 1917, she said: "I mean something more recent, though."

(Apologies for the formatting glitch, but I've spent far too long trying to get rid of it already.)

Philosophy in Childhood

Two memories of philosophical thoughts in childhood occurred to me today.

The first was an occasion when I was coming back from the zoo on a bus. I was tired of being on the bus and I wanted to be at home. But it suddenly occurred to me that I never would be at home and I never would be off the bus. I had a strong impression that every point on the graph of life is an independent existence, so the little Maolsheachlann that was on the bus would be a different person to the little Maolsheachlann that was at home. I couldn't have articulated this, but I thought it very clearly in a wordless way.

On another occasion, I was walking home from school and trying to decide whether to get a chocolate bar (specifically, a Fry's Chocolate Cream) in the shop I would pass on the way. I realized that one of two things would happen; I would get the chocolate bar, or I wouldn't get the chocolate bar. But I didn't know which it was going to be! Where exactly would the decision be made? It seemed like something outside of me, somehow.

Maybe that's not philosophy. But it's something close to it, I think.

The Poor Old American Christian Right

I watch all sorts of things on YouTube. I've just been watching this interesting interview of Harold Bloom from the Charlie Rose show, back in 2005.

When I first read Harold Bloom, back in my teens, I felt crestfallen. I thought I had no appreciation of literature at all because Bloom seemed to read everything in a way so different from the way I read it.  All these years later, I've come to think that he produced a great deal of hot air, no doubt along with profound insights. For one thing, his interest in the actual language and lyricism of poetry seems minimal. Like so many people, his interest seems entirely in the meaning. I think that's a huge mistake.

Bloom was a cultural conservative, who gave the grievance industries a well-deserved hammering. But he still lamented the Christian right in America, as he does in this interview, and as pretty much everybody (left and right, religious and secular) tends to do.

I have no time to argue it right now, but personally I have always liked the American religious right and think the attacks on them are lazy and snobbish. I used to like the Hour of Power from the Crystal Cathedral as a kid. I didn't reallly watch it, but I liked the atmosphere and it felt very wholesome to me. I think the world is a much better place for the American religious right.

Favourite Poems: Advent by Patrick Kavanagh

Well, I've posted this poem before. Several times, possibly. But it's Advent, so why not?

This poem was on the Irish poetry syllabus for years, and also appeared in the much-loved anthology Soundings. So it's familiar to most Irish people from their schooldays, and the second line has become (rightly) proverbial in Ireland.

I always felt the final line was a bit of a let-down, a bit on the trite side, but what do I know? Aside from that, the poem is impossible to fault.

Kavanagh is often called a Catholic poet. I suppose he was, in the rather rubbishy sense of "a poet influenced by the Catholic tradition". Séamus Heaney, who was to all appearances an atheist (as well as a mediocre poet, at best) also gets called a Catholic poet. Kavanagh once called Catholicism "a beautiful fairy tale for adults". I think this was his general attitude to the Faith. But he died with the words "I believe...I believe" on his lips. Was it a deathbed profession of faith in Catholicism? I hope so.

In any case, he was always a believer in God, and a deep mystical strain runs through his poetry.

Advent by Patrick Kavanagh

We have tested and tasted too much, lover-

Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.

But here in the Advent-darkened room

Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea

Of penance will charm back the luxury

Of a child’s soul, we’ll return to Doom

The knowledge we stole but could not use.

And the newness that was in every stale thing

When we looked at it as children: the spirit-shocking

Wonder in a black slanting Ulster hill

Or the prophetic astonishment in the tedious talking

Of an old fool will awake for us and bring

You and me to the yard gate to watch the whins

And the bog-holes, cart-tracks, old stables where Time begins.

O after Christmas we’ll have no need to go searching

For the difference that sets an old phrase burning-

We’ll hear it in the whispered argument of a churning

Or in the streets where the village boys are lurching.

And we’ll hear it among decent men too

Who barrow dung in gardens under trees,

Wherever life pours ordinary plenty.

Won’t we be rich, my love and I, and

God we shall not ask for reason’s payment,

The why of heart-breaking strangeness in dreeping hedges

Nor analyse God’s breath in common statement.

We have thrown into the dust-bin the clay-minted wages

Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour-

And Christ comes with a January flower.

A Remaining Christmas by Hilaire Belloc

Here's a lovely Christmas essay by Hilaire Belloc, courtesy of the Chesterton and Friends blog: A Remaining Christmas.

Though I must say, the passage exemplifies both the things that I love and the things that I dislike about Belloc's writing. Belloc could be utterly hilarious at times, but he often engages in a kind of heavy-handed, "yes-I'm-an-old-fogey-just-deal-with it" sort of humour. There's nothing wrong with being an old fogey-- I'm an old fogey, too-- but it's not infallible comedy gold in itself.

Similarly, Belloc delights in descriptive writing, which I find excrutiatingly boring. I had to push myself to get through the long descriptive passages in this essay.

But when he's good, he's extremely good. For instance, in his famous lines on friendship, which I think must be one of the most profound passages of poetry (or prose) ever written:

From quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There's nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.

Or in the passage which I have included among the passages at the foot of this blog: "One thing in this world is different from all others.  It has a personality and a force.  It is recognised, and (when recognised) most violently loved or hated.  It is the Catholic Church.  Within that household the human spirit has roof and hearth. Outside it is the Night."

Happy Gaudete Sunday!

Gaudete Sunday is one of those little gifts hidden in the Christian tradition. I'd never even head of it in my long years of being an agnostic and cultural Christian. Although I love "hype", in the sense that the Nativity scene (to take one example) has been "hyped" over centuries, it's also nice to discover some element of the Christian tradition that is almost entirely without "hype" and yet is very ancient.

The sight of the pink candle on the Advent wreath is also beautiful, and strangely surprising. You'd expect another purple candle, but it's pink instead.

It reminds me of one of the most profound passags in Chesterton's Orthodoxy, which more than any other book made me a Christian:

It is this silent swerving from accuracy by an inch that is the uncanny element in everything. It seems a sort of secret treason in the universe. An apple or an orange is round enough to get itself called round, and yet is not round after all. The earth itself is shaped like an orange in order to lure some simple astronomer into calling it a globe. A blade of grass is called after the blade of a sword, because it comes to a point; but it doesn't. Everywhere in things there is this element of the quiet and incalculable. It escapes the rationalists, but it never escapes till the last moment. 

Now, this is exactly the claim which I have since come to propound for Christianity. Not merely that it deduces logical truths, but that when it suddenly becomes illogical, it has found, so to speak, an illogical truth. It not only goes right about things, but it goes wrong (if one may say so) exactly where the things go wrong. Its plan suits the secret irregularities, and expects the unexpected. It is simple about the simple truth; but it is stubborn about the subtle truth. It will admit that a man has two hands, it will not admit (though all the Modernists wail to it) the obvious deduction that he has two hearts. It is my only purpose in this chapter to point this out; to show that whenever we feel there is something odd in Christian theology, we shall generally find that there is something odd in the truth.

Favourite Poems: The End of the Play by William Makepeace Thackeray

Today was the last lunch-time Mass of the year in University College Dublin, where I work. When the priest announced this fact, the following poem came to mind. (I seem to feel more melancholy about transcience than most people-- unless they just don't talk about it.)

I came across this poem in an anthology called The Library of World Poetry that I bought when I was seventeen. I've never read anything else by Thackeray-- whether prose or verse. But I really like this. And it has a Christmas theme, too.

I'm not saying it's a great poem, but I think it has some great verses. It has some awkward tone shifts, where solemnity is replaced by a kind of hearty grandfatherly tone. (The allusion to grizzled beards and corduroys might be my least favourite part.)

I think the first three verses are wonderful, and the last three verses are wonderful, while the ones in between are hit and miss. My very favourite lines from the poem are these:

Who misses or who wins the prize.
Go, lose or conquer as you can;
But if you fail, or if you rise,
Be each, pray God, a gentleman.

This poem has often made me teary-eyed. I hope you like it.

The End of the Play by William Makepeace Thackeray

The play is done; the curtain drops,

Slow falling to the prompter's bell:

A moment yet the actor stops,

And looks around, to say farewell.

It is an irksome word and task;

And, when he's laughed and said his say,

He shows, as he removes the mask,

A face that's anything but gay.

One word, ere yet the evening ends,

Let's close it with a parting rhyme,

And pledge a hand to all young friends,

As fits the merry Christmas time.

On life's wide scene you, too, have parts,

That Fate ere long shall bid you play;

Good night! with honest gentle hearts

A kindly greeting go alway!

Goodnight! I'd say, the griefs, the joys,

Just hinted in this mimic page,

The triumphs and defeats of boys,

Are but repeated in our age.

I'd say, your woes were not less keen,

Your hopes more vain than those of men;

Your pangs or pleasures of fifteen

At forty-five played o'er again.

I'd say, we suffer and we strive,

Not less nor more as men, than boys;

With grizzled beards at forty-five,

As erst at twelve in corduroys.

And if, in time of sacred youth,

We learned at home to love and pray,

Pray Heaven that early Love and Truth

May never wholly pass away.

And in the world, as in the school,

I'd say, how fate may change and shift;

The prize be sometimes with the fool,

The race not always to the swift.

The strong may yield, the good may fall,

The great man be a vulgar clown,

The knave be lifted over all,

The kind cast pitilessly down.

Who knows the inscrutable design?

Blessed be He who took and gave!

Why should your mother, Charles, not mine,

Be weeping at her darling's grave?

We bow to Heaven that will'd it so,

That darkly rules the fate of all,

That sends the respite or the blow,

That's free to give, or to recall.

This crowns his feast with wine and wit:

Who brought him to that mirth and state?

His betters, see, below him sit,

Or hunger hopeless at the gate.

Who bade the mud from Dives' wheel

To spurn the rags of Lazarus?

Come, brother, in that dust we'll kneel,

Confessing Heaven that ruled it thus.

So each shall mourn, in life's advance,

Dear hopes, dear friends, untimely killed;

Shall grieve for many a forfeit chance,

And longing passion unfulfilled.

Amen! whatever fate be sent,

Pray God the heart may kindly glow,

Although the head with cares be bent,

And whitened with the winter snow.

Come wealth or want, come good or ill,

Let young and old accept their part,

And bow before the Awful Will,

And bear it with an honest heart,

Who misses or who wins the prize,

Go, lose or conquer as you can;

But if you fail, or if you rise,

Be each, pray God, a gentleman.

A gentleman, or old or young!

(Bear kindly with my humble lays);

The sacred chorus first was sung

Upon the first of Christmas days:

The shepherds heard it overhead

The joyful angels raised it then:

Glory to Heaven on high, it said,

And peace on earth to gentle men.

My song, save this, is little worth;

I lay the weary pen aside,

And wish you health, and love, and mirth,

As fits the solemn Christmas-tide.

As fits the holy Christmas birth,

Be this, good friends, our carol still.

Be peace on earth, be peace on earth,

To men of gentle will.

Postscript: Having re-read this poem just now (and having been made teary-eyed by it again), two things strike me:

1) One of the strengths of the poem is its sudden transition, in the last two verses, from a sort of worldlly wisdom that might be Deistic at best, to full-blooded Christian piety. That always gets me. I'd even missed that the whole thing is a sort of play on the fact that "gentleman" might be taken to mean literally the same thing as "men of gentle will".

2) A silly point: if Thackery "lays the weary pen aside" in the second line of last verse, how does he finish the same verse? Maybe he dictated it to someone...

All That Man Is...Apparently

I was very struck today by this blurb on the dust-jacket of a short story collection called All That Man Is, by David Szalay:

Tracing an arc from the spring of youth to the winter of old age, All That Man Is brings these separate lives together to show us men as they are – ludicrous and inarticulate, shocking and despicable; vital, pitiable, hilarious, and full of heartfelt longing. And as the years chase them down, the stakes become bewilderingly high in this piercing portrayal of 21st-century manhood.

Imagine that same paragraph with "woman" substituted for man.

It seems to be an expectation of contemporary society that we should constantly speak ill of the male sex. This is even true of anti-politically correct movements. J.K. Rowling, when it comes to the controversy that has engulfed her in recent years, generally presents it as a case of men infringing on women's rights. Critcs of mass immigration often use the phrases "military-age men" and "unvetted men". I'm not addressing those arguments here, I'm just pointing out that maleness is generally seen as a problem right across the political spectrum. Rhetorically, men are the easy target for both left and right.

I've also noticed that, if you say anything positive about men, there's a conditioned impulse to immediately say something flippant or derogatory about them. It's extraordinary.

It seems to be part of a lose-win mentality (I refuse to say "zero-sum"), where anything nice we say about men is perceived to be anti-woman. Can't we honour and cherish both men and women, in their common humanity and in their glorious differences?

The Light from Within

I've developed something of a Christmas tradition, on this blog, of quoting one of my favourite passages from G.K. Chesterton. It's a meditation on the nativity scene, and it comes from his great work of Catholic apologetics The Everlasting Man. (What a wonderful title that is, incidentally!)

've had a curious experience regarding this passage. Actually, I've had the same curious experience twice. On two occasions, after reading this passage aloud, somebody has told me either that they literally didn't know what Chesterton was talking about, or that the passage didn't move them at all. On both occasions, it was at a Chesterton-themed event in the Central Catholic Library. (But two different people, obviously.)

Well, everybody has different tastes, and I've often been left cold by various experiences that are supposed to be universally enthralling (like listening to Mozart, sadly for me). But I think this passage will appeal to many people.

Here it is:

No other story, no pagan legend or philosophical anecdote or historical event, does in fact affect any of us with that peculiar and even poignant impression produced on us by the word Bethlehem. No other birth of a god or childhood of a sage seems to us to be Christmas or anything like Christmas. It is either too cold or too frivolous, or too formal and classical, or too simple and savage, or too occult and complicated. Not one of us, whatever his opinions, would ever go to such a scene with the sense that he was going home. He might admire it because it was poetical, or because it was philosophical or any number of other things in separation; but not because it was itself. The truth is that there is a quite peculiar and individual character about the hold of this story on human nature; it is not in its psychological substance at all like a mere legend or the life of a great man.

It does not exactly in the ordinary sense turn our minds to greatness; to those extensions and exaggerations of humanity which are turned into gods and heroes, even by the healthiest sort of hero worship. It does not exactly work outwards, adventurously to the wonders to be found at the ends of the earth. It is rather something that surprises us from behind, from the hidden and personal part of our being; like that which can sometimes take us off our guard in the pathos of small objects or the blind pieties of the poor. It is rather as if a man had found an inner room in the very heart of his own house, which he had never suspected; and seen a light from within. It is if he found something at the back of his own heart that betrayed him into good. It is not made of what the world would call strong materials; or rather it is made of materials whose strength is in that winged levity with which they brush and pass. It is all that is in us but a brief tenderness that there made eternal; all that means no more than a momentary softening that is in some strange fashion become strengthening and a repose; it is the broken speech and the lost word that are made positive and suspended unbroken; as the strange kings fade into a far country and the mountains resound no more with the feet of the shepherds; and only the night and the cavern lie in fold upon fold over something more human than humanity.

Before I say what I love about this passage, here's one thing I don't like, and that takes away from my pleasure in it a little bit: the last few lines. Why mention the Magi and the shepherds leaving? To me, it adds an unpleasant touch of melancholy, since the "classic" assembly has broken up. (Yes, I realize the Magi may not have actually arrived until long after the birth.)

But that's a small detail, compared to what's wonderful about it.

I've long been of the belief that "home" is the most powerful word in the English language. At least, it's the word that I find most powerful; more powerful than "love", "we", "yes", or even "God".

It's a powerful word, but it's not a simple word. We all know that you can live in a place for ten years, or any amount of  years, without it ever becoming "home". Similarly, you can come to a place for the first time and suddenly feel you're home. Like in the John Denver lyric:

He was born in the summer of his twenty-seventh year

Coming home to a place he'd never been before.

The idea that the Christmas nativity scene is a place where "all men are at home" is a powerful one, and is also explored in Chesterton's great poem "The House of Christmas". It hardly needs any commentary; I think we all feel it instinctively. But it's quite strange and wonderful, to think that this imaginative reconstruction of something that happened long, long ago, in a culture that is totally foreign to us, can have such a sense of homecoming about it.

One phrase that especially delights me in this passage is: "It is the broken speech and the lost word that are made positive and suspended unbroken". It makes think of those evocative words from Scripture: "A bruised weed shall he not break, and a smoking flax shall he not quench". It puts into words an impression I've had all my life: that, although money talks and political power does indeed grow out of the barrel of a gun, the things that ultimately move the world the most are the most airy and insubstantial.

But my favourite part of the passage is this part, which excites me beyond all words: "It is rather as if a man had found an inner room in the very heart of his own house, which he had never suspected; and seen a light from within."

Reader, how can I express how deeply this stirs the depths of my soul? But perhaps I don't have to. Perhaps everybody, or at least many people, feel the same thing. Why else is that moment in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where Lucy gropes her way through the fur coats into another world, so memorable? Or why else has The Secret Garden enthralled the imagination of so many generations?

Personally, I've had literal dreams about finding "an inner room in the very heart of his own house"; although often it's much more than a room. Similarly, every since I was a child, stories of hidden panels, trap doors, secret passages, and things found in the attic have not only thrilled me, but thrilled me in a particular way different from any other. It's the idea that there are horizons to be discovered, not at the other end of the world, but right where you are; or perhaps, even within your own self.

Jacob Rees-Mogg Explains the Immaculate Conception

Watch it here.

I like Jacob Rees-Mogg-- it would be hard not to like him-- but I've long feared he's mostly a Thatcherite merely posing as a social conservative. It seems clear from this video that his Catholicism is indeed important to him, and integrated with his intellectual view of the world.

And here's another good video in honour of the feast, from the excellent Fr. Brendan Kilcoyne.

I wish you a happy and holy Feast-day!

The Coat-Hanger Christmas Tree

Thirteen years ago, I posted this review of The Coat-Hanger Christmas Tree, a Christmas book that greatly appealed to me in my childhood.

I've just discovered you can read it on the Internet Archive. (You need to register, but it's free.)

No need to tell me how much you hate reading books on a screen if that's how you feel. You don't get any points for that.

The Magi by W.B. Yeats

W.B. Yeats's supremacy as a poet seems so clear to me that I'm baffled other people don't agree. Even his third-tier or fourth-tier poems are magnificent. No praise is high enough.

This one came into my head today, since it's Advent, and since I found myself re-reading "Journey of the Magi" by T.S. Eliot, which is also brilliant. Yeat's poem predates Eliot's by more than a decade. It's hard to believe it wasn't an influence.

I wouldn't call it one of my favourite poems or even one of my favourite Yeats poems, but it's still brilliant.

The Magi

Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye,

In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones

Appear and disappear in the blue depths of the sky

With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,

And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,

And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,

Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied,

The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

I think this is an example of a techinique Yeats liked to use; a long, sinuous, contemplative sentence, finishing with a bold, startling statement.

Here is another example, though it has nothing to do with Christmas:

The Living Beauty

I bade, because the wick and oil are spent
And frozen are the channels of the blood,
My discontented heart to draw content
From beauty that is cast out of a mould
In bronze, or that in dazzling marble appears,
Appears, but when we have gone is gone again,
Being more indifferent to our solitude
Than 'twere an apparition. O heart, we are old;
The living beauty is for younger men:
We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears.

Chesterton on The Vile Assurance of Victory

Because I was rather critical of my idol G.K. Chesterton yesterday, today I want to quote one of my favourite paragraphs from his Autobiography. He is speaking of the public reaction to the Boer War in Britain:

It seemed that all moderate men were on what was called the patriotic side. I knew little of politics then; and to me the unity seemed greater than it was; but it was very great. I saw all the public men and public bodies, the people in the street, my own middle-class and most of my family and friends, solid in favour of something that seemed inevitable and scientific and secure. And I suddenly realised that I hated it; that I hated the whole thing as I had never hated anything before.

What I hated about it was what a good many people liked about it. It was such a very cheerful war. I hated its confidence, its congratulatory anticipations, its optimism of the Stock Exchange. I hated its vile assurance of victory. It was regarded by many as an almost automatic process like the operation of a natural law; and I have always hated that sort of heathen notion of a natural law. As the war proceeded, indeed, it began to be dimly felt that it was proceeding and not progressing. When the British had many unexpected failures and the Boers many unexpected successes, there was a change in the public temper, and less of optimism and indeed little but obstinacy. But the note struck from the first was the note of the inevitable; a thing abhorrent to Christians and to lovers of liberty. The blows struck by the Boer nation at bay, the dash and dazzling evasions of De Wet, the capture of a British general at the very end of the campaign, sounded again and again the opposite note of defiance; of those who, as I wrote later in one of my first articles, "disregard the omens and disdain the stars". And all this swelled up within me into vague images of a modern resurrection of Marathon or Thermopylae; and I saw again my recurring dream of the unscalable tower and the besieging citizens; and began to draw out the rude outlines of my little romance of London. But above all, perhaps, what began to repel me about the atmosphere of the adventure was something insincere about the most normal part of the national claim; the suggestion of something like a rescue of our exiled representatives, the commercial citizens of Johannesburg, who were commonly called the Outlanders. As this would have been the most sympathetic plea if it was genuine, it was the more repulsive if it was hypocritical.

Now, I don't want to get into the rights and wrongs of the Boer War. That's not the source of my interest in this passage.

It's more that Chesterton puts into very eloquent words my own reaction to the liberal-globalist-secular agenda that has been on the ascendant in the West for many decades: "I hated the whole thing as I had never hated anything before.... I hated its vile assurance of victory. It was regarded by many as an almost automatic process like the operation of a natural law; and I have always hated that sort of heathen notion of a natural law."

Although the liberal-secular-globalists have taken a bashing in the last decade or so, and their vile assurance of victory is considerably dented, I still experience a bubbling up of this feeling whenever I come across that horrible phrase, "the right side of history."

First off, who is to say what the "right side of history" is? "History" is constantly changing its mind.

Biut more importantly...even if the liberal-globalist-secular crowd are entirely right, and they have somehow identified the impersonal, unstoppable laws of history that are sure to prevail, like Isaac Asimov's laws of psychohistory...

Even then, and especially then, I would consider it cowardly and craven to identify with the coming thing, the unstoppable force, simply because it's unstoppable and destined to prevail. If I've stood up for what I truly believe to be right, I don't much care what "history" happens to say on the matter

Protestant Bashing and Catholic Triumphalism

I've come to have a very strong dislike of the phenomena mentioned in the blog post title, which I believe are very prevalent in conservative Catholic circles. (Sometimes, bizarrely enough, they can even be found in liberal Catholic circles.)

In his excellent (though frequently over-egged) essay "Notes on Nationalism", George Orwell has this to say about G.K. Chesterton: "Ten or twenty years ago, the form of nationalism most closely corresponding to Communism today was political Catholicism. Its most outstanding exponent – though he was perhaps an extreme case rather than a typical one – was G. K. Chesterton. Chesterton was a writer of considerable talent who chose to suppress both his sensibilities and his intellectual honesty in the cause of Roman Catholic propaganda. During the last twenty years or so of his life, his entire output was in reality an endless repetition of the same thing, under its laboured cleverness as simple and boring as ‘Great is Diana of the Ephesians’. Every book that he wrote, every paragraph, every sentence, every incident in every story, every scrap of dialogue, had to demonstrate beyond possibility of mistake the superiority of the Catholic over the Protestant or the pagan. But Chesterton was not content to think of this superiority as merely intellectual or spiritual: it had to be translated into terms of national prestige and military power, which entailed an ignorant idealization of the Latin countries, especially France. Chesterton had not lived long in France, and his picture of it – as a land of Catholic peasants incessantly singing the Marseillaise over glasses of red wine – had about as much relation to reality as Chu Chin Chow has to everyday life in Baghdad."

Now, I don't think this is at all fair, but Orwell isn't making it up out nothing, either. Chesterton did sometimes become tiresome in his chauvinism towards the Catholic world. The criticism can be taken too far, because he did have valid points to make about the influence of Catholic theology on everyday life. Nor do I like to criticize anyone for idealizing anything; idealization seems like a very endearing fault, if it's a fault at all. It's when we idealize one thing to disparage another that it becomes distasteful, in my view.

An example of Chesterton's attitude is this (admittedly funny) story from his Autobiography:

"In those early days, especially just before and just after I was married, it was my fate to wander over many parts of England, delivering what were politely called lectures. There is a considerable appetite for such bleak entertainments, especially in the north of England, the south of Scotland and among certain active Nonconformist centres even in the suburbs of London. With the mention of bleakness there comes back to me the memory of one particular chapel, lying in the last featureless wastes to the north of London, to which I actually had to make my way through a blinding snow-storm, which I enjoyed very much; because I like snowstorms. In fact, I like practically all kinds of English weather except that particular sort of weather that is called "a glorious day." So none need weep prematurely over my experience, or imagine that I am pitying myself or asking for pity. Still, it is the fact that I was exposed to the elements for nearly two hours either on foot or on top of a forlorn omnibus wandering in a wilderness; and by the time I arrived at the chapel I must have roughly resembled the Snow Man that children make in the garden. I proceeded to lecture, God knows on what, and was about to resume my wintry journey, when the worthy minister of the chapel, robustly rubbing his hands and slapping his chest and beaming at me with the rich hospitality of Father Christmas, said in a deep, hearty, fruity voice, "Come, Mr. Chesterton; it's a bitter cold night! Do let me offer you an oswego biscuit." I assured him gratefully that I felt no such craving; it was very kind of him, for there was no possible reason, in the circumstances for his offering me any refreshment at all. But I confess that the thought of returning through the snow and the freezing blast, for two more hours, with the glow of that one biscuit within me, and the oswego fire running through all my veins, struck me as a little out of proportion. I fear it was with considerable pleasure that I crossed the road and entered a public-house immediately opposite the chapel, under the very eyes of the Nonconformist Conscience."

I'm not going to make heavy weather (no pun intended) of this simple story (although I doubt the "worthy minister" was offering Chesterton nothing but a biscuit-- surely tea or coffee was also on the menu). On its own it would merely be amusing. Possibly the minister was a bit of a prig. But the tone of flippancy (bordering on sarcasm) which Chesterton nearly always assumes when he writes about Protestants, Nonconformists, or the temperance movement does rankle with me.

In Ireland this phenomenon can frequently be found among secular post-Catholics, who like to make ironic jokes about "black Protestants" despite their own contempt for the Church. For instance, the more literary-minded often invoke this famous passage in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:

—Then, said Cranly, you do not intend to become a Protestant?

—I said that I had lost the faith, Stephen answered, but not that I had lost self-respect. What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?

Or the song which Brendan Behan, that pillar of Catholic orthodoxy, sang on a television interview (I've bowdlerised it slightly):

Beware the Protestant minister:
His false reason, false creed, and false faith;
The foundation stones of his temple
Are the gonads of Henry the Eighth.

It's not so much the original occurrence of these quotations that I'm complaining about, as the satisfaction with which so many Catholics, liberal Catholics, and post-Catholics have dwelt upon them. (I can't find quotations now. The problem with an article like this is always that it's  a reaction to a hundred unremembered provocations.)

Please let it be understood that I'm not complaining about this sort of thing because it's "offensive". The last thing I ever want to do is join in the chorus of political correctness. I'm complaining about it because it's so petty, ungenerous, unchivalrous, and redolent of the very nursing of historical grievances which is the underlying atmosphere of liberalism and political correctness.

The Reformation happened a long time ago. I believe that its legacy has been played out for some considerable time. It was probably played out by the time of G.K. Chesterton, but we have less excuse than he did for hanging onto it. I'm sure Protestantism did give birth to secularism, to some extent. But the child doesn't much resemble the father, and the child has long since dumped the father in an old folks' home.

I particularly dislike the concept that Vatican II "Protestantized" the Church or the Mass. We can debate the legacy of Vatican II, and if we did so, I would often be on the same side as the people who make this "Protestantizing" charge. But we should debate the reforms on their own merits, not looking over our shoulders at another religious denomination. That shows a lamentable insecurity-- like the stereotypical woman who's upset because another woman is wearing the same dress. (I'm sure these women exist mostly or entirely in fiction and jokes. It's just an example.)

Constantly defining oneself against someone or something else has obvious perils. One becomes reactionary in the worst sense. Differences become fetishized, and similarities overlooked. As much as I love differences, and generally prefer to celebrate them more than similarities, I think obsessing on differences can lead to a distorted view in this case. Besides, the people who dwell on Protestant-Catholic differences are rarely doing it in a celebratory way.

All Protestant churches are, after all, splintered from the Catholic Church (whether or not they accept this), so they inevitably resemble it to a greater or lesser extent. Nor does it seem unreasonable to assume that schismatic churches sometimes excel the Catholic Church in this or that regard; for instance, Protestants often excel Catholics in Scripture-reading (I mean in frequency and seriousness, rather than interpretation).

(Another example is the King James Bible. In purely literary terms, it's clearly superior to any other Bible in the English language.)

I don't think we should ever refrain, out of excessive sensitivity, from plain talking. Yes, Henry VIII's desire to commit adultery (and pillage the monasteries) was the overriding factor that led to the English Reformation. But it was far from the only one, and there were brave Protestant martyrs as well as Catholic martyrs. Yes, the Church of England today is disintegrating in a puddle of woke. But there have been, and doubtless still are, very holy Anglicans, not to mention untold numbers of sincere Anglicans who were doing their best. The Church of England has made a huge contribution to English culture which is in many ways very admirable. And so on.

It's enough for me that the Catholic Church is (as I firmly believe) the Church founded by Christ; indeed, the one true Church, although I don't see the virtue in throwing that phrase around. Catholicism doesn't have to have the best music, the best artistic heritage, the best customs, or the best anything else. I feel no call to proclaim the virtues of "Catholic culture" or to extol the Middle Ages. I'm mildly interested in the question of whether Shakespeare was a Catholic, and I'll admit that I'd be pleased if it was conclusively proved that he was. But I don't care all that much. I'm uninterested in cathedrals. I don't care for beer. I'm much more drawn to cold, introverted, Protestant cultures than I am to hot, flamboyant Catholic cultures-- fika sounds more appealing than samba! Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh both seem like jerks to me, although I think Brideshead Revisited is a masterpiece.

Conversely, my belief in the truth of Catholicism isn't threatened in acknowledging the virtues and the elements of truth in non-Catholic churches.

(I could pretty much write the same blog post about Irish nationalism and anti-Englishness, by the way.)