Today is the feast day of St. Pacificus of San Severino (1653-1721), who was canonised in 1839.
Have you ever heard of him? I haven't.
He went deaf and blind at a relatively young age but still held a position of authority in a monastery and worked miracles.
I suppose his reputation suffers from the fact that there are so many Italian saints.
Anyway, I really like that there are lots of days in the year when the saint of the day is pretty obscure, and there are no special feasts.
Today I found myself toying with the idea that there should be anti-political correctness vows in the same way there are baptism vows. I'm always impressed by the solemnity and poetry of the baptism vows, which are renewed at the Easter Vigil:
Do you reject Satan?
I do.
And all his works?
I do.
And all his empty promises?
I do.
Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth?
I do.
And so on. There are three more and they are considerably longer.
Vows concentrate the mind. I think anti-PC vows could go something like this:
Do you reject political correctness in all its forms?
I do.
Do you reject all identities based on grievance?
I do.
Do you reject the conflation of trivial and imaginary harms with serious harms?
I do.
Do you reject arbitrary changes in language in the name of sensitivity-- even if you have to go along with them in some circumstances?
I do.
Do you reject the concept that anybody has less right than anybody else to use a particular word or give an opinion on any subject whatsoever?
I do.
Do you reject the attribution of historical guilt to people for injustices that occurred before they were even born?
I do.
Do you reject weaponized false dichotomies, such as victim-oppressor and transformation-stasis?
I do.
Tell me if I missed anything obvious. (By "transformation-stasis", I mean the sort of rhetoric you're surely familiar with: the appeal to gradual and organic evolution in the past to justify complete transformation in the present.)
I mentioned in a previous post that I was reading a biography of an Irish leftist, one who lived through most of the twentieth century. Reading it, I was struck once again with a thought that has often occurred to me; that all these radical leftists, most of whom had a deep disdain for the Catholic Church and the bourgeois middle classes, somehow managed to stay faithful to their wives and keep their households together. Many of them even raised large or relatively large families.
Actually, the leftist I was reading about did leave his wife for another woman-- but only in his old age, when Irish society had already liberalized around him.
My assumption is that, when lifelong marital fidelity was expected and taken as normal, it wasn't felt as irksome or onerous. Challenges which today are seen as unendurable were simply taken on the chin, par for the course. Nobody thought you were heroic for putting up with another human being for forty or fifty years.
This seems to me typical of the whole movement of Irish society in my lifetime. I watched Irish society secularize all through my lifetime-- the process had already begun before I was born. And it seems to me that the ebbing of Catholicism from Irish life has had all kinds of bad consequences, on a deep level-- that even people who weren't at all religious benefitted from the elevating effect Catholicism had on society.
It comes out in so many things. A sense of the sacred and of awe. A sense of the dignity of the human person. A respect for manhood and womanhood, and indeed childhood. That's just a few off the top of my head.
I've often thought of trying to write a blog post about the ideal of marriage that, it seems to me now, was unspoken but all-pervasive in the Ireland my childhood. It was really quite beautiful. It was anti-romantic and romantic at the same time-- a combination that is, strangely, far from uncommon. The stereotype of the mother and father were both comical, but with an undercurrent of respect and affection. Or so it seems to me.
Here are a list of words. Tell me what associations or nuances they have for you. Perceptive readers will notice a pattern to them.
Guy.
Fellah. (It was hearing someone use this word on a bus that started this train of thought.)
Bloke.
Dude.
Chap.
Lad.
Gent.
Geezer.
Here are the first three verses of "The Brahma", by Ralph Waldo Emerson. There's a fourth verse but it's not relevant here.
If the red slayer think he slays,I don't know what better title to give to this post, which is going to be a quick one, even though I've been thinking about it a long time.
It's one of those very personal and idiosyncratic posts. I really wanted to talk about the enormous fascination particular moments have for me-- moments I hear about, read about, and so forth.
One that has recurred to me a lot recently is the scene at the beginning of A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell, which another blogger has kindly transcribed:
The men at work at the corner of the street had made a kind of camp for themselves, where, marked out by tripods hung with red hurricane-lamps, an abyss in the road led down to a network of subterranean drain-pipes. Gathered round the bucket of coke that burned in front of the shelter, several figures were swinging arms against bodies and rubbing hands together with large, pantomimic gestures: like comedians giving formal expression to the concept of extreme cold. One of them, a spare fellow in blue overalls, taller than the rest, with a jocular demeanour and long, pointed nose like that of a Shakespearian clown, suddenly stepped forward, and as if performing a rite, cast some substance—apparently the remains of two kippers, loosely wrapped in newspaper—on the bright coals of the fire, causing flames to leap fiercely upward, smoke curling about in eddies of the north-east wind. As the dark fumes floated above the houses, snow began to fall gently from a dull sky, each flake giving a small hiss as it reached the bucket. The flames died down again; and the men, as if required observances were for the moment at an end, all turned away from the fire, lowering themselves laboriously into the pit, or withdrawing to the shadows of their tarpaulin shelter. The grey, undecided flakes continued to come down, though not heavily, while a harsh odour, bitter and gaseous, penetrated the air. The day was drawing in.
For some reason, the sight of snow descending on fire always makes me think of the ancient world—legionaries in sheepskin warming themselves at a brazier: mountain altars where offerings glow between wintry pillars; centaurs with torches cantering beside a frozen sea—scattered, uncoordinated shapes from a fabulous past, infinitely removed from life; and yet bringing with them memories of things real and imagined. These classical projections, and something in the physical attitudes of the men themselves as they turned from the fire, suddenly suggested Poussin’s scene in which the Seasons, hand in hand and facing outward, tread in rhythm to the notes of the lyre that the winged and naked greybeard plays. The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure: stepping slowly, methodically, sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance.
I never finished the whole series of novels-- I think I got about half of the way in-- but this particular image delights me. I might say "this particular passage", except-- to be honest-- I didn't remember the passage itself.
In recent weeks, whenever I've found myself looking at steam or smoke-- for instance, when I'm heating up food in a saucepan-- I find myself thinking about this passage. Perhaps because it seems to me as though these moments of sudden contemplation are the very best thing life has to offer.
Another "hypnotic moment" that constantly comes to my mind is the story of Blessed Solanus Casey's first night in a Capuchin monastery, on Christmas Eve, as he was discerning his vocation. Here's an account from Catherine Odell, one of his biographers:
In the midst of a blinding snowstorm, he left Superior on December 20 and headed southwest for St. Paul on the 11:00 p.m. train. From St. Paul, his train then headed east, pulling along slowly through drifting snow to Milwaukee. After a brief stayover there, during which Barney [his birth name] stayed with Capuchins for the first time, he boarded a train again. Down through Chicago and over through Michigan, his train headed for his goal-- Detroit.Chesterton wrote a lot of mediocre poetry, as well as a good few absolutely first class poems. But here's a poem I wouldn't place in either category. It's completely obscure, but it expresses thoughts and aspirations which are very familiar to me. I don't understand the "Hists" reference.
I don't think it is a great poem, but I do think it has one truly great line. Can you guess which one I mean?
I'm reading a book about a left-wing activist (A long-dead, pre-woke left-wing activist.)
The book, however, has been written recently so it uses contemporary leftist rhetoric. It repeatedly uses the word "imperialist".
I always find myself wondering why the (contemporary) left would oppose imperialism.
Is it because they think power should be devolved, that everyone should be governed by rulers who live close to them rather than rulers who live far away? Is it a sort of localism?
That sounds plausible...except the left is overwhelmingly in favour of supranational institutions like the EU, the WHO, the UN, etc. etc. Just look at the meltdown they had about Brexit.
So do the left oppose imperialism because they think people should be self-governing and not ruled by an alien government?
But what could this possibly mean according to the leftist worldview? The whole idea of an allegiance that is based on anything particularistic-- religion, language, ethnicity, folkways-- is anathema to the left. According to the left, the only permissible bond, on a societal level, is common humanity. (Even while they push identity-based grievances, this remains true.)
So how can the left possibly oppose imperialism? On what grounds? I don't get it.
A Marxist: Someone who is infinitely cynical about existing institutions and infinitely credulous about future institutions.
Nationality: Something that you can't find when you go looking for it, but that rugby-tackles you when you're not looking for it.
A few years ago, when I still lived in a house with a garden, I discovered a rock painted as a ladybird hidden under the grass. It was one of several painted rocks hidden there.
I didn't realize at the time (although I was quickly told) that this is part of a trend.
My own belief is that the path to societal re-enchantment lies in Christianity.
But I think delightful little actions like this are re-enchanting in themselves-- guerilla warfare of re-enchantment, so to speak. (Painted electricity boxes are another example.)
I mentioned YouTuber Joe Schmid recent conversion (or reversion) to Catholicism, and the epic seven-hour video he made on the cumulative case for God. (One of only three videos explaining his conversion, which total twenty-five hours.)
I'm working my way through it bit by bit, but I was particularly struck by this section, in which he asks why the universe, if it's "just there", isn't a lot more boring. I've often wondered this myself.
Whenever I've found myself pondering this, I've imagined the universe as an endless block of steel extending in every directions
Here are some of Schmid's suggestions of how the universe might have been (I've modified things I don't understand):
No concrete objects exist.
Only one particle exists.
One particle moves in a straight line forever (or a circle, etc.)
One particle periodically enters into an excited state.
Exactly two particles exist and orbit their common centre.
And he then says: "I could do this forever". Indeed.
Atheists put so much weight on evolution that it doesn't seem to occur to them that even for evolution to occur, the universe had to be a dynamic, rule-governed, complex reality.
To which the atheist might reply: "Well, it just is."
Which reminds me of Fr. Frederick Copleston's reply to Bertrand Russell, in a radio debate on the existence of God, when Russell was sticking to the "arms folded and sitting back" position: "If one refuses to even sit down at the chessboard and make a move, one cannot be checkmated."
I completely agree with this Daily Wire article. The death of the monoculture is a good thing.
I can vividly remember how monolithic pop culture was in my childhood. It was a bad thing. It was a homogenizing, standardizing, deadening force.
Folk culture was dissipating, high culture was almost a memory, but everybody talked about the same TV shows and films and music and toys.
In a small country like Ireland, this could be quite cosy, insofar as it was Irish pop culture that was uniting people. But it mostly wasn't.
Also, people were generally led into same sociopolitical talking points.
There's lots to decry about the internet, but the shattering of the pop culture straitjacket is not one of them.
The sort of nostalgia to which I am most inclined is a nostalgia for particular moments. They might be forty years ago or they might be four months ago. (It usually takes a few months for them to settle into my memory.)
The strange thing is that these moments of nostalgia often have no obvious explanation. I may have been doing something completely mundane when they occur. They might even come at a very stressful time or in the midst of dejection.
Here is my theory: at every moment, we are experiencing and assessing the world according to a multitude of criteria, most of which are dark to our own vision-- that is, we don't even realize we are applying them.
For instance, if we walk into a room, and the colour combination is pleasing to us, we might not even register this consciously. Or perhaps the sound of traffic outside the building is calming at that moment.
Those are only the intrinsic factors, the ones you could list off from examining the particular setting you're in. But there are any number of others. There are psychological factors-- something triggers a memory, an association, a comparison that is somehow pleasing. Or perhaps you were anxious about something which has recently been settled. Or perhaps something in the news that day has pleased you somehow-- it might not even be a good news story, but perhaps a bad news story that you find somehow bracing.
In any case, my theory is that all these factors come together in a given moment, or at least enough of them to cause a flood of wellbeing or excitement or delight. Like a fruit machine with a hundred windows all showing the same fruit at once. (I've never actually used a fruit machine.)
I've noticed that such moments of nostalgia often take years for me to "decipher", and even then they only seem partially deciphered. So perhaps other people are like me in this regard.
Today is the Feast of the Most Holy Name of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Although it's an obscure feast it dates back to at least 1684.
Interestingly, it was removed from the liturgical calendar after Vatican II, but re-introduced by my guy, St. John Paul II-- along with the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus.
I find the "name" feasts very interesting, along with the Feast of the Holy Face of Jesus (which occurs on Shrove Tuesday). I like how anti-rationalistic they are, although that's a negative way to put it. Maybe I could better say they are particularistic.
I do believe that the name of Jesus has a special power. I don't know how to elaborate on that theologically, but it seems an observable fact that just invoking the name of Jesus changes the atmosphere in a room. Of course, that could be explained non-supernaturally. Supernatural or non-supernatural, I'm all for it.
I personally prefer to use the name "Jesus" than "Our Lord", for this very reason. And don't get me started on "BVM", a usage I can't stand, even if it's been used by saints and bishops (as it might well have been, for all I know). I also dislike the abbreviation of Mary Immaculate College in Limerick to "Mary I." (Every year I fight back against "Paddy's Day", despite being a defender of "paddywhackery" more generally.)
I struggle with Marian devotion. It's never come naturally to me. But I keep praying to be cured of this.
Back when I was an agnostic, I wrote a poem about the name of Jesus, though I took it from a rather negative perspective. I wrote this in 2005:
JesusI've just finished watching This Office LIfe, a TV comedy that aired on the BBC in 1984. Someone has uploaded it onto YouTube.
It was written by Keith Waterhouse, who also wrote the novel from which it was based. I read the novel many years ago. I think I was in my early twenties when I read it. It was one of Waterhouse's better novels, though not a patch on his masterpiece Billy Liar.
Both the novel and TV adaptation feature something of an everyman character (or perhaps someone slightly dimmer than an everyman) who goes to work in a company called British Albion, a labyrinthine and bureaucratic company typical of the time. (Or perhaps somewhat more typical of the seventies, when the novel was published.) But the odd thing about British Albion is that nobody seems to know what they actually do.
My memory of the book is that it was a rather light satire on corporate bureaucracy for about half of its length, after which it became an equally light Kafkaesque mystery. I preferred the mystery to the satire. Satirizing office life is shooting fish in a barrel. Besides, how many people are now nostalgic for that "stultifying" corporate environment of the past?
Whether or not my memory of the novel is accurate, the TV version leans much more towards the Kafkaesque mystery. The mild surrealism kicks in very early. One effective visual has a man in a gorilla suit banging on the glass doors of the company's reception area, as a sort of incidental background event. He turns out to be a novelty act for an office birthday party. In a later scene, "Administration Services" is directly across the corridor from "Services Administration", and is staffed by the same guy.
A central plot point involves The Albion Players, the company's own amateur dramatic troupe. I'm guessing that, when the show was broadcast, this was something that might actually exist. I love the idea and I'm sad that this kind of thing became obsolete.
The story itself is absorbing and suspenseful enough to keep you watching, with a few reasonable twists, and an emotionally satisfying conclusion.
The only review of any length that I can find is on the Curious British Telly Substack. Not a single person has reviewed it on IMDB.
I never know whether anyone takes up my suggestions when it comes to these "recommended viewing" posts. So if you do watch it, let me know.
Here is an interesting passage from a Catholic Exchange article about Therese Neumann, a supposed stigmatist and visionary from Germany who died in 1962. (I use the word "supposed" not to convey scepticism, but only because she has not yet had any official recognition from Church auhorities.)
Therese’s sufferings and visions conformed exactly to the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church. Just as she received the wounds of the Crucifixion on Good Friday, so also were her visions and ecstasies aligned to the liturgical calendar. For example, when she initially received the sacred stigmata, it was during the liturgical season of Lent. Although Therese had the wounds of the Passion for the rest of her life, she only experienced the ecstasies of the Passion on Fridays, and only on Fridays during Lent and Advent, and on some of the sorrowful octaves. Thus, her experience of the Passion was connected only to the relevant liturgical days, and never during joyful seasons, such as Christmas or Easter. On the Fridays when she did not endure the Passion ecstasy, she would have a vision of the death or martyrdom of the saint whose feast day it happened to be, in recognition of the liturgical calendar. On All Saints Day, November 1st, she would have a 24-hour ecstasy and see souls of saints from Heaven, and similarly on All Soul’s Day, November 2nd, she saw saints from Purgatory. Based on the timing of the mystical experiences of Therese Neumann, it seems heaven honors with great respect the liturgical calendar; perhaps we should pay close attention to this as well.
This alignment of mystical experience with the liturgical calendar isn't unique to her case, either.
I'm not talking about patriotism based on "shared values" or any of that lark.
I've just started watching the miniseries This Office Life, taken from a Keith Waterhouse novel written in 1978. (I read it a long time ago. It was pretty good.)
The company it's about is called "British Albion Limited."
This seemed pretty common at this time. For instance, there's the Britannia Hospital in the roughly contemporary film of the same name. Both fictional, but realistic.
Why can't British companies call themselves after Albion or Britannia or the Lion and the Unicorn or any of those regal, splendid names?
When is this sort of naive patriotism going to come back?
I especially like "guy in bed" cartoons and I'm going to do more of them.
("Guy" because I'm not good at drawing women. Or, if you prefer, I'm even worse at drawing women than at drawing men!)
This one isn't really a poem, but rather the words to a song. But it can be read as a poem.
I'm not claiming this is great poetry, but I've found myself thinking of it lately. Lines from it have come into my mind unbidden.
I've always liked it. It's gentle, sentimental, and good-natured. It's well-written, too-- there's nothing awkward or crude about it. And it's a reminder of a time when priests in Ireland were admired for being priests-- not for being social crusaders who happened to wear dog collars. I very much like the fact that Father O'Flynn is lauded in the poem for being something of a disciplinarian.
As for the Irishisms:: "Sláinte" is the Irish version of "Cheers" or "To your health!" (you probably knew that), "Father avick" means (rather nonsensically) "Father, my son", and there are two renderings of Irish dialect that might throw you: "onaisy" just means "uneasy", and "Is it lave gaiety all to the laity?" means "Should we leave gaiety all to the laity?".
"Dad and the devil and all" seems to mean "everybody". I've never heard "Dad" used in that way but that's what the context suggests. It's probably a contraction of "Bedad", which is a dated Irish exclamation.
My favourite verse is the one that begins: "Oh, Father O'Flynn, you've the wonderful way with you..."
This poem was written by Alfred Perceval Graves. I never knew, until I looked him up just now, that he was Robert Graves's father. Robert Graves is a poet I've never admired at all, although I can see he had talent. I've never read I, Claudius and I'm never going to. Historical novels are not to my taste.
Father O'Flynn by Alfred Perceval Graves
Of priests we can offer a charmin' variety,
Far renowned for larnin' and piety;
Still, I'd advance ye, widout impropriety,
Father O'Flynn as the flower of them all.
Here's a health to you, Father O'Flynn,
Slainté, and slainté, and slainté agin;
Powerfulest preacher, and
Tenderest teacher, and
Kindliest creature in ould Donegal.
Don't talk of your Provost and Fellows of Trinity,
Famous for ever at Greek and Latinity,
Dad and the divels and all at Divinity,
Father O'Flynn'd make hares of them all!
Come, I venture to give you my word,
Never the likes of his logic was heard,
Down from Mythology
Into Thayology,
Troth! and Conchology if he'd the call.
Och! Father O'Flynn, you've the wonderful way wid you,
All the ould sinners are wishful to pray wid you,
All the young childer are wild for to play wid you,
You've such a way wid you, Father avick!
Still for all you've so gentle a soul,
Gad, you've your flock in the grandest control;
Checking the crazy ones,
Coaxin' onaisy ones,
Liftin' the lazy ones on wid the stick.
And though quite avoidin' all foolish frivolity,
Still at all seasons of innocent jollity,
Where was the playboy could claim an equality
At comicality, Father, wid you?
Once the Bishop looked grave at your jest,
Till this remark set him off wid the rest:
"Is it lave gaiety
All to the laity?
Cannot the clargy be Irishmen too?"
This question haunts me constantly. I think, instinctively, that it should haunt everybody.
And I think this despite the fact that it's hard to make a moral case for this. Banality isn't evil in itself. (Which is, I suppose, why the phrase "the banality of evil" exists. They wouldn't have to be paired if they weren't distinct. Besides, we all know that evil is often cool and stylish-- superficially, at least.)
Life is becoming more homogenized, standardized, rationalized, disenchanted, etc. etc. I'm convinced of this, though it's a hard thing to quantify.
What can we do about it? What can I do about it? I'm not talking about a grand strategy for a transformation of society. What can we do about it in our immediate environment, right now, with our way of life?
What element of eccentricity, colour, romance, contrarianism, visual poetry, and so forth...can we personally inject into our world? How can we re-enchant our immediate environment?
I haven't even found an answer to this myself, but I'm always asking it.
I'm inspired by people such as the Poe Toaster and Ferdinand Cheval. It would be hard to reach the heights of the latter in particular. But we could try!
Of course, you could all be doing this already.
I have a growing urge to draw cartoons so you can expect to see more of them here...whether you want to or not!
I'm a huge fan of both both of these men so this meant entirely affectionately.
I get very tired of people professing to love the "other" America.
Usually the America of Howard Zinn and the Beat poets and Ledbelly and labour activists and Bob Dylan and college towns and Mother Jones and Allen Ginsberg...you know the drill.
Usually it's that. But choose your own "other" America. It can be Russell Kirk's America just as easily.
I love the America of Mom's apple pie and Fourth of July fireworks and "sir" and "ma'am" and Bibles in hotel rooms and the white picket fence and Norman Rockwell and cheerleaders and shiny-suited televangelists and the Stars and Stripes on the porch and get-up-and-go. (I don't have much of the latter quality myself, so I admire it.)
You might say this is all a dream, an ideal, an idyll.
Well, you could say the same about the "other America"-- except that's more of a sour-faced ideal laced with resentment. (I'm not having a pop at labour activists, by the way, or even Bob Dylan. You know what I mean. I'm talking about the ensemble.)
Humans are such aspirational beings that it's really impossible to separate the ideal from the reality, because the reality is always striving towards an ideal.
Give me the Norman Rockwell, Happy Days ideal over the one any old day. (Yes, I know Norman Rockwell was a Democrat. Democrats used to be sane!)
I touched on this subject in this blog post ten years ago. I haven't changed my mind.
That's it. God bless America. The vulgar, dime store America.
(You can point out I have never lived in America. I can point to the millions of real Americans who are happier to chant "USA, USA" than to cheer along with "American Idiot" by Green Day.)
