Prayers this Mr Nasty doesn't say "Amen" to

You will hear most of these at Mass from well-off ladies of a certain age whom I would never ask to dance. Please don't bother to point out my lack of charity: I am fully aware of it.

Lord, help us to realise that ...(followed by something I know to be untrue or wicked unacceptable, such as "those who disagree with us are entitled to have their point of view respected" - tell that to St Thomas More).

Lord, help us to accept that ...(I don't bloody well accept it, cuz it an't necessarily so).

Kumbaiya(h) boo! sucks!

Let us pray for those who are going on (an expensive) holiday, that they may be refreshed by a well-earned rest. (Tough on all those who can't afford holidays).

Lord make us grateful for our Catholic schools (including the I.B.V.M. convent which wanted to teach my daughters how to roll condoms on to hockey sticks? Yes of course! Or the headmistress who told a class that Mohammed lived before Christ - definitely! And told her class to go out into the school field and count the birds in the sky (maths)?

May the Spirit... Who? Now look here! If we are talking about the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit, let us say so. Or is "the spirit" Gaia, or Brahma? If (s)he means Jack Daniels, a double, please.

From Father Soggy (on All Soul's): Let us remember our dead families in a very special way (standing on our heads, perhaps?)

Must go and check my blood-pressure.

Dry Times Ahead!

Just back from Mass, where the Priest read the Bishop's Pastoral Letter, in which all Polish Catholics are enjoined to abstain from alcohol during August.

It's even harder here in Advent and Lent, when we are expected to give up alcohol, music, and dancing.

My neighbours, though, claim that beer is not alcohol, only food, that wine is a tonic, and that vodka is medicine (but not in August).

Milton Revisited & some not too irreverent Thoughts on Celestial Plumbing, and an Offer of Assistance.

I have in mind the fifth book of Milton's Paradise Lost, where Adam naively questions Raphael, the Affable Archangel on the more physical aspects of life in Heaven, such as sex and sewage. The second stanza refers to line 438, where Milton is just lovably silly.


If we believe what John Milton
Wrote in Paradise Lost,
Adam, in Eden, entertained
One of the Heavenly Host.

Raphael, the Affable Archangel,
Milton writes, was embarassed a bit
When Adam, curious about Angels,
Asked if they eat, drink, and sh-t.

And Raphael, the Sociable Spirit
Replied that the Heavenly Choirs,
Certainly eat and drink. Consequently
"What redounds, transpires."

Now we know from the Book of Tobit
That Raphael angelically lied,
(My justification for holding
That enemies must be denied

The truth). To return to the question
Of disposing of Heavenly cess
 What do They do with Their excrement?
Why, dump it in Hell, I guess.

I suppose that the eager Blessed Spirits
Would happily volunteer
For a day trip to Hell, to sling all
The Sewage in Beelzebub's ear.

I know that, if I get to Heaven
I'll be the first in the queue
To make an unwelcome delivery
To Hell, of Celestial poo.

The recipient - not Hitler or Stalin.
(From me they have nothing to fear.)
But I'd seek out the liberal Catholics
And bury with dung **** *****
O!

Hypocrisy or Scandal

Rochefoucauld (as everyone knows) said, "Hypocrisy is the tribute paid by vice to virtue", and a good thing too. The wickedness of hypocrisy is not in pretending to be good, a good thing in itself, for by pretending to be what we are not, we may become what we are pretending to be.

The wickedness lies in knowing the good and preferring, if only for the time it takes to commit a sinful act, the evil.

Modern thinkers, or whatever they call themselves, for as long as most of us can remember, or longer, have been decrying hypocrisy (quite rightly) but for the wrong reasons. "If you are a transvestite," they say, "don't hide it. Parade down Oxford Street in your preferred outfit. Be proud. Whatever it is, don't deny it and keep it private. Glory in it - 'come out of the closet' ".

What an inspiring battle-cry!

If a teacher has difficulty in keeping his eyes off girls (or boys) in his class, should he tell them so?

Is a father who secretly drinks far too much forbidden to warn his children about the dangers of alcoholism?

If a devout and good priest succumbs to sexual temptation, what is better, to seek forgiveness, make all possible restitution, and shut up, or publish his confession in the Daily Cloaca and make his fall seem normal and therefore natural, natural and therefore good? This is the sin of scandal.

Should a public figure who is drawn to, and sometimes indulges in, some perversity which he does his best to avoid, publicly acknowledge his lapses, with the risk of making them seem respectable? If an M.P. secretly uses cocaine, is he therefore debarred from voting in Parliament for a bill to make drug use less easy?

We are all bad. We should all condemn what is bad, while trying not to succumb to it. Failure on our part does not deny us the right to continue the pursuit of virtue and condemn vice.

O tempora! O mores! Cremation Plus!

I tweeted disapprovingly about cremation on Twitter and, quick as a flash, these people were following me:

Celestisflights Inc

They describe themselves as:
First and only provider of memorial spaceflights, with ten launches to date containing cremated remains of hundreds of loved ones aboard commercial satellites.

No, I'm not making this up.

O tempora! O mores!

Who is the more kindred spirit?

The following are imaginary:

"Our ********** was such a bright bubbly girl it's hard to believe she's not with us any more. Yesterday we went to the park and let loose dozens of balloons. I think it helped us to come to terms with our loss. Now we have to move on and rebuild our lives.

I am really sorry for the man who took her away from us. He must be a very unhappy, sick person."


"So that murdering evil ******* is in gaol, eating at our expense. He should die horribly after what he did to our child. My cousin is in the same prison for beating up the **** who raped his mother. I think he'll see he doesn't get out alive.

If he does, we will be waiting."

And who would you rather be in a foxhole with?

The Ritual Wringing of Hands

I know little of Amy Winehouse, beyond the facts that she was a singer, had problems with narcotics or alcohol, and is dead, God rest her soul.


Through my work I became familiar with the destructive effects of narcotics, and hope that those who loved her singing, and perhaps accepted her problems as a part of her character, will not emulate her manner of living to its destructive end.  Dostoievsky somewhere recounts the true story of a young Russian girl who drowned herself in order to imitate Ophelia.


Of the massacre and bombing in Oslo, I would suggest some considerations of the misery of the "marginalised", whoever the culprit and whatever his or her religious or political affiliations. People who are, or feel themselves to be, excluded from decisions which affect them, are dangerous to the political status quo, whether they are Irish Catholics remembering the terrible evils wreaked on them by the English and Scottish, proletarian Germans, seeing Hitler as their saviour, Muslims seeing the all-powerful West as the Great Satan, or homosexuals regarding themselves as discriminated against.


The Germans wrecked Europe; Jihadist Muslims seek to wreck the Christian and post-Christian world by imposing Islam; homosexualists, in seeking to affirm the rightness of their behaviour, and supported by governments, are succeeding in wrecking the family bonds which have sustained civilisation.


Would the world have wrung its hands if an "unstable" assassin had slaughtered Hitler and his barbaric followers in the 1930s? I'm sure it would.


I know nothing of Norwegian politics, or of what may be the agenda of the Norwegian Labour Party. But some Norwegians, like some people everywhere, who see their future as intolerable, may well become so enraged that they will embrace violence as their only possible path.


I do not rejoice in, endorse, or even fully understand what happened or may happen in Norway or elsewhere, but believe it to be a fact like gravity. Governments who destabilize the nations who elected them should tread carefully, unless the provocation of outrage is their method of achieving their ends.


Those who are capable of rational thought should take note.

More Governmental Insolence

Another fine post from Linen on the Hedgerow on the Irish attack on the seal of the Confessional. - http://linenonthehedgerow.blogspot.com/2011/07/support-protect-seal-campaign.html

About twenty years ago, I was queing for Confession in Westminster cathedral, when an elderly Irishman sitting next to me whispered in my ear, "Be careful what you say in there. MI5 have bugged the boxes."

I am no "terrorist", but believed him then, as I do now.

God Save Ireland! Listen to this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hHq-jlj6zQ - then weep and pray!

Fine Post on ++ Vin from Ttony at The Muniment Room

Please read it. It is here - http://ttonys-blog.blogspot.com/2011/07/vin-on-kneeling.html

I muted my comment on Ttony's blog. On my own, I can be my usual, nasty, proudly bigoted self.

I have invited into my house, eaten with, and drunk with, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, non-Catholic followers of Christ, and agnostics, all of whom I was proud to call my friends. They have done the same for me. They were, in my view, honourable people, with principles, religious or not. 

I would not allow a disloyal, time-serving, nuancing, Pope-belittling-and-patronising Catholic, lay, ordained, or consecrated, who accepts the current UK law on sex-education, who approves the Soho Masses, and who deprecates everlasting Catholic Doctrine,  to enter my house. I would not eat with him, drink with him, or allow hin to talk to my dog (I have no dog, but no matter).

"Chance would be a fine thing," do I hear you say? It would indeed, and very satisfying use I would make of it.

I hope I make myself clear.

Linen on the Hedgerow on Guardian Angel Hymn

A beautiful hymn, beautifully sung. Richard Collins's blog is a gem.

http://linenonthehedgerow.blogspot.com/2011/07/just-for-sake-of-some-reminiscence.html

Ichabod

Celebrants can smirk and dancers flex and waddle,
Guitars can plunk and strum
To back the hymns' jejune and drivelling twaddle
But still we're sour and glum.
"Give us joy in our hearts, keep us praising," sing the gladdle*,
But for us the word is mum.


We do not ask for joy or gladness,
Sweet fudge, manufactured to please,
But Truth that acknowledges goodness and badness.
Not modish inanities.
The Flesh and Blood of God Incarnate, holy Madness,
Not dull banalities.


We remember a time when we heard Priests saying
Mass, not a service but an Act.
We followed the Order, privately praying.
Transubstantiation was a Fact
Independent of how our minds were weakly straying,
No need to rejoice or react.


Latin was our language, a universal word, it
Was heard in Paris, Bankok or Benin.
The Priest's face a mask as he said Mass; we heard It
As we wavered between Holiness and sin.
Now it seems there's no Hell - presumptive Heaven. We preferred it
When we knew we had to work to get in.


Is it, I ask myself, the same religion
That we knew and believed when we were young?
When theology strove for and had attained precision
And Aquinas's hymns were still sung.
Before the sentimental falling for the 60s vision
And dotty Jesuits and Johnny Kung.




Gladdle - my coinage, I think = a group of very glad people, c.p.rabble

WAG Targets Russia, Greece, Iceland over "unacceptable" use of patronymics

Following the WAG (We Are Genderful) threat to Poland reported yesterday, Mr Bengt Hammertoe, WAG honcho in Moscow, has issued warnings to the Russian Federation, Greece, and Iceland over their use of patronymics.

His statement, released by him this time in English, reads:

"Who do these monster jerks think they are? They are nothing people, mud-brains, twerping religious idioms, backward woodsmans, fixated on unacceptable, outweared conceptions like fatherness and machismhood. The future is now, and it is not theirs, but ours. If they won't regulate themselves according to modern European thinks, they will have us to reckon with.

We are future."

WAG Warns Poland - Come into Line - or else!

Following a complaint from a Lapplander resident in Poland, the European Branch of the anti-sexist watchdog WAG (we are genderless)  has called on Poland to purge the Polish language of sexist grammatical features, such as non-gender-neutral verbs, suffixes, and methods of counting which discriminate against women.

A Pole, asked for his comment, replied, "No to kurwa!"

Down Nightmare Alley - Dr Caring Bung Bashes Bigots

Dr Caring Bung, M.P. for Gowno North, plans to introduce a bill into Parliament in the Autumn, making it an offence punishable with fines and imprisonment to use the terms Mr, Mrs, Miss, or Ms., which he describes as "tainted with bigotry".

Announcing his proposed draconian new measures at a press conference yesterday, Dr Bung said, *These terms of address are outdated, outmoded,  bigoted, divisive, non-inclusive, homophobic, bigoted, religiously orientated, sexist, and non-inclusive. They do not reflect the richness of the British cultural narrative. What is more, they are not inclusive.

"I intend that the new, all-inclusive, non gender/orientation-specific form of address shall be Genderperson, regardless of sex, sexual orientation, or so-called marital status. For titles, there will be Genderlardy, or Genderdamesir, to replace sir, dame, lord, lady, and, for so-called  professionals and clergy, Genderdoctor, Genderbishop, etc. etc.


"All so-called Catholic Clergy, regardless of status, shall be addressed as Genderpedophile or Genderpervert.

"It will be an offence punishable with imprisonment to use the expression 'pervert' in any other context."

Write Your Own News Story & Make Us Laugh

Dr Bengt Hammertoe of the E.U. Rainbow Party has described as "divisive, sexist, homophobic, and unacceptable" the decision by the Government of  ******** to .............

OTHERWISE-FAITHED

Another gem from Father Zuhlsdorf, here at - http://wdtprs.com/blog/2011/07/the-tablet-equates-striking-the-breast-during-the-confiteor-with-child-abuse/

has prompted me to a new piece of nu-speak (I think it is my own) to describe the Tablet:

Otherwise-faithed - heretical, not conforming to Catholic Doctrine. The problem is, when can I use it?

To an abortionist: A Sonnet

I was very angry when I wrote this. I am, still. I am aware that the last line lacks charity. So do I where the abortion trade is concerned.

Caveat Lector!

Mangler of innocent limbs, crusher of skulls,
Vacuuming babies' brains, selling flesh, cells
From your tiny victims to pharmaceuticals,
Your hand, trained to save life, from women pulls

Daily the harmless, helpless, breathless child.
What? Do you flaunt compassion as you trade?
Foul Cromwell, Mengele, Medea all are made
As apprentices by your massacre. Benign, mild,

Smile Stopes, Steele, urbane harbingers of your slaughter
Pleading the same frigid compassion, mad
With ideals void of love. Homes, never made glad
By childish innocence, devoid of holy laughter, 
Will be your monument. You chose Herod's role;
So may Hell's maggots munch your undying soul.

Tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration

To quote from my hero in matters of language:

"If the changes we fear be thus irresistible, what remains but to acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable distresses of humanity? it remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language."Johnson: Preface to the Dictionary

I do not, however, share his pessimism, and will, for my part, speak the English I grew up with, not the upstart new-speak of the chattering drivelling classes.

In the Spirit of Saint Nicholas and Saint Augustine of Hippo

As Saint Augustine of Hippo said, "It is better to allow the birth of scandal, than to abandon the truth."

So let us, in a spirit of Charity and Muscular Catholicism, confront lies and liars, and (but only metaphorically) knock them down.

Richard Collins on Liturgical Music - a Recommended Read

Do please read this very sane post in an oasis of sanity.

http://linenonthehedgerow.blogspot.com/2011/07/its-definite-no-to-guitars-tibetan-nose.html?showComment=1309853583234#c3852075067984073474

A Glossary of Expressions Which Will Not be used, unless clearly ironically, on this blog

Prompted by Mundabor's excellent post - http://mundabor.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/on-the-matter-of-language/#comment-1984

big society - a cheap and empty slogan coined by cheapjack political mountebanks.

bigot - an ideologically-loaded and pejorative term, used to denote one who practices what he or she believes

bisexual - hermaphrodite, or heterosexual and homosexual by turns

caring - compassionate

C.E and B.C.E. - A.D. and B.C.


counsellor - often enough an unjudgmental saltimbanco, richly paid for not giving unwelcome advice

gay - an adjective meaning carefree, happy, light-hearted, but never to be used as a noun to mean homosexual

gender - a term from grammar. For living creatures, the word is sex.

lesbian - an unneccessary word. Homosexual already exists and, being derived from the Greek word for 'same', and not from the Latin word for 'man', can be applied indiscriminately to both sexes

homophobe, homophobic - a piece of linguistic illiteracy, and ideologically loaded. The correct expression is disapproving of homosexuality

hurt - used intransitively to mean feel pain or grief. An unnecessary illiteratism.

move on, moving on - an figurative expression of uncertain meaning coined, no doubt by cheapskate scribblers or "counsellors" to convey the idea of severance from past grief or guilt, as in "I hurt after my termination, but I had to move on."

open society - a somewhat dated expression meaning little more than the acceptance of whatever people feel like doing. A better word would be 'decadence'.

reformation - was nothing of the sort, but the promulgation and enforcement of heresy by an evil and heretical monarchy, supported by a new aristocracy greedy for monastic spoils. The correct term is 'so-called reformation'; "reformation" is acceptable, but uncapitalised and in inverted commas.


termination - used euphemistically to mean 'abortion'.

the great and the good - an oligarchy of the odious and overpaid

transgendered - hermaphrodite

transexual - heterosexual and homosexual by turns

I welcome further suggestions.

HOGWASH, ORDURE OF OXEN, ROUND OBJECTS, GÓWNO

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it", wrote Evelyn Beatrice Hall, not Voltaire, whose biographer she was. I'm heartily sick of hearing it spewed out by defenders of free speech.

Somewhere in Gulliver's Travels, the third book, I think, set in the land of Brobdignag, the giant king of that land remarks to Gulliver to the effect that a man has the right to his opinions, but if they be wrong, no right to publish them, just as a man may keep poisons in his closet, but may not "vend them abroad as cordials".

I heartily agree.

All that libertarian nonsese about fighting to the death to defend the rights of liars and perverters of the truth is just hogwash. Untramelled free speech is for those individuals or groups who have the power, prestige, influence, or money to make themselves heard. The rest of us are largely voiceless and reduced to 'custody of the ears and eyes'.

Free speech? Free for whom?

For the 'great and the good', irreligious idealists, the heirs of demented Marie Stopes, the bbc, newspapers, politicians, advertisers, manufacturers of contraceptives and their mouthpieces; for pharmaceutical companies,  anti-social and anti-family pressure groups, all, all of whom are engaged in attacking the moral structure of the family, of society, such as it is, and religion. They are not engaged in the noble pursuit of Truth, but in the advancement of their own foul agenda: the destruction of religion, morality, the family, the unborn, the untroubled innocence of childhood, the right of the old to proper care without fear of 'assisted dying', and the right of the rest of us to speak the truth.

Their mission is to bind us together, not by love, but by lust, idle curiosity, and greed.

Would I fight to the death for that? Damned if I would.

Be damned to them and to Marcuse and the rest of the Franfurt school, certainly!

A Question - Maybe a Cyber-Question

I have just read a foul comment, anonymous of course, endured by a fellow blogger.

Is there any way, internet-wise, of punching someone's lights out? Legally, of course.

Just asking.

On the Obscurity of Human Perception

Pudor de la Putrefacció del Fetge, a long-forgotten Catalan dadaist poet of the 1920s wrote this haunting epigram on the obscurity of human perception in 1923.

Mentre jo era a casa del psiquiatre, el meu cul va caure. Vaig pensar que era gangrena,
Però ell em va dir que era el meu inseguretat fonamental.

While I was at the psychiatrist's, my posterior fell off. I thought it was gangrene,
But he told me it was my fundamental insecurity.

(My translation)

Brunhilde von Kartoffel zu Kohl: 1900-1937

Brunhilde von Kartoffel zu Kohl was an influential, though now little known, poetess of the Weimar Republic in Germany, and a strong influence on such unsurpassed geniuses as Brecht and Weill.

Her premature suicide deprived the world of a great and very individual talent which would surely have come to full flower in the 1960s.

Here she paints a tragic picture of German womanhood of the 1930s, crushed by male brutality and insensitivity.

Romanze in fünf Stufen

Als wir uns trafen, war ich die Treppe herunter
Und Sie nannten mich die Treppe hinunter Mädchen.
Ich übersprang in den Park,
Und für dich Ich war das Überspringen Mädchen
Später regnete es, und mein Haar war nass
Und Sie nannte mir die nassen Haare Mädchen.
Und dann haben wir zu Mittag gegessen, und Sie nannten mich die brattwurst Mädchen.
Auf der Straße trat ich in einigen Pferdemist
Und Sie nannten mich den Pferdemist Mädchen.

Romance in Five Stages

When we met, I was coming down the stairs
And you called me the downstairs girl.
I skipped in the park,
And for you I was the skipping girl.
Later it rained, and my hair was wet
And you called me the wet hair girl.
And then we had lunch and you called me the brattwurst girl.
In the street I stepped in some horse dung
And you called me the horse dung girl.

(My translation)

Shane at L'Occulta - A Man With Whom I Find It Impossible to Disagree

Please read his latest, on multiculturalism - http://lxoa.wordpress.com/.

His is one of the best blogs around.

HEAR WHAT THE "pro-choicers" ARE OUT TO KILL

A child's untrained voice singing to the Infant Jesus among the millions of voices stifled before birth, but heard by God.

An old Polish Carol: a tiny piece of Heaven.

Well, perhaps the little performer has a cleft palate?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcPzxWHIIt4

Oj Maluśki Maluśki - Not Quite The Carol I Promised

Earlier this year (I think, but my disorganisation is of epic proportions) I posted about a friend who sang a very beautiful carol which his grandmother has taught him 80 years ago. I promised to post the recording I made, but can't find it.


Here is a link to a very similar carol, and I think my friend's was a variant.


It is a lullaby, sung to the Infant Jesus, and full of sadness and premonition of the Sorrows to come.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A_Qm8Yavwc

Or this version, sung by a child - perhaps the most sorrowful -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcPzxWHIIt4


and here  - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAGIeiNR-4Q&feature=related


When I find my recording I shall post it.