Remember Maldon, Thermopylae, Vienna, Lepanto

Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre,
Mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað.

Two lines from the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon, uttered when the English realise that the Danes will win. Translates as:

Courage must be firmer, heart the keener,
Mind the greater, as our strength grows less.

We must remember the courage and resolve of our spiritual ancestors who spilled their blood defending their country from the heathen Danes. We must remember the Greeks who died at Thermopylae, preserving civilisation from Persian barbarity. We must emuate the Austrians and Poles at Vienna, the Christian forces at Lepanto, but with the voice and pen, not with the sword.

We are not asked to shed our blood, but only our tact and sensitivity. Our weapons are voice, pen, and pixel. Our enemy is not a race of heroic barbarians, but coteries of slimy equivocating wordsmiths who seek to destroy Christian values by manipulating and corrupting belief through their manipulation and corruption of language.

We must speak, write, and go down fighting.

Our Lord Is Present In A Very Special Way - Does That Mean Not Really?

When Christ explained the Eucharist
Many followers fled.
The Truth was unacceptable
“Too hard! Too hard!” they said.
Our Bishops are of subtler stuff
They nuance things instead.

We once believed - I still believe -
That bread becomes our God
That wine becomes the Blood He shed
Is this so very odd?
Aquinas gave us words to clothe
Belief, but now we nod

Assent at clerics who recoil
From such crude credal vigour
And think they’d better water down
Aquinas’ divisive rigour
“Our Lord is present in a very
Special way,” they figure.

From fudge and nuance and half lies
And German exegesis
They sound-byte forth a statement that
Has as its central thesis
Whatever is acceptable
Whatever your belief is.

Like slippery salesmen they predict
The punter’s predilection.
Street cred is what it’s all about
Not Nicene Creed conviction.
“Our faiths are custom-made," they smirk
"Just choose from our selection.

"Don’t like Hell? Don’t fret, dear sir,
It’s a discontinued line.
No Purgatory? a wise choice,
Heaven ok? That’s fine!
And now, how would you like to pay,
Up front or down the line?"