Funny But Sad, Too

Father Ray Blake's blog recently had a post here about the distinguishing marks of Catholics in the past - fish on Fridays, crossing yourself when passing a Catholic Church, and so on.

Here, Catholics (94% of Poles), do not normally greet a Priest with "Dzień dobry." (Good day), but "Szczęść Boże." (God bless). On parting, "Z Bogiem." (With God)

More formal, and used when speaking to a priest you don't know, or a Religious, is "Niech będzie pochwalony Jezus Chrystus!" (may Jesus Christ be praised!"). The correct reply is, "Na wieki wieków, amen." (for ever and ever, amen.) A direct translation of the beautiful "saeculae saeculorum". This is not old-fashioned, but normal.

Now this is true: At a year-end school party for us teachers, I was talking in English with the Parish Priest, a rather hip guy, though totally orthodox. We were joined by another teacher, who cheerily exclaimed to the Priest, "Hey! I speak English too! Yo m*th*r f*ck*r!"

The Priest, a heavy metal fan, took it all in his stride. I explained quietly to the teacher what he had just said.

Funny, but sad too. O tempora! O mores! 

Must-Read Post from "the hell with it"

A fine post on Death and repentance :  the hell with it

Don't You Know There's a War on? Watch Out for Your Children!

A fine and angry post on Redneck Reflections (the Tyranny of Tolerance) here, about the evil being pumped into our children and grandchildren.

Millstones and necks, anyone?

Personal resolution: nil tolerance for the enemy.

Organ Transplants, Brain Death, Some Nasty Thoughts (Revised)

Having read Vital Organ Transplantation - Not Truly Dead, by Paul A. Byrne, MD, and Fr. Peter Damien Fehlner, FI here, I am even less likely to bequeath my organs for transplant. Apparently people declared brain-dead have embarrassingly revived just as they were about to be cannibalised. So much for the omniscience of doctors and scientists.


I never much liked the idea of having no control over who would benefit from my post-mortem fleshly endowments. I would not wish to prolong the life of someone whose views I detest, or whose actions are a mortal danger to others. Let the so-and-so die.

Looking at the Four Last Things, I suppose that if my destination was Heaven, I might have some embarrassment in explaining to a fellow denizen that his or her beloved child was in the Other Place thanks to the actions or words of someone who, without my transplanted organs, would have been dead too early to have let them astray.

If I were in Hell, I would no doubt rejoice with the devils in the damnation of yet another soul. Horrible.

An interesting moral conundrum. Father Tracy, S.J. who received me into the Church, rather disapprovingly called such speculations Spanish Questions.

If I could specify the kind of beneficiary - ah! That would be another matter - faithful priests and religious, the poor, the homeless, the so-called underclass, children, my friends or family. But sadly no chance of that.

Nor am I much attracted by the idea of some medical know-all declaring me dead in order to enhance his c.v.

So, very sorry Dr Amby Shuss, Ms Medea Bashfoetus, Ms Mybody Mydecision, Professor Jim Hawker-Dawker, erika steinbach, Christians for Choice, Bishop Gongseeker, all you trouser-rolling Freemasons out there, and the Goodthinkful Millionaires Club, but you won't be getting my vodka-pickled kidneys or liver.

But I'd accept yours, and make better use of them than you ever did.

You can trust me on that.

Happiness

As a very happy footnote to my last post, my regretful and regrettable bid for retirement has failed, and I shall be working - jak Pan Bóg da - God willing - another year at the Liceum.


Dzięki Bogu! Thank God!

Fantazja Ułańska! Dziękuję!

Poles eat a lot of cabbage. They pickle it, salt, it, and, best of all, ferment it - into bigos. Every housewife here has her own recipe and method for making bigos, and it never fails to be magnificent.


An old joke runs, "Why are the Poles such good people? Because Satan doesn't like cabbage."

But I digress.

Yesterday was a very sad day for me because it ended my six year tenure of the English teaching post at my local liceum, the happiest job I have ever had. And how did I come to be working there? A story full of coincidences.

When I was eight, my parents had two Polish lodgers, Tony Topolski and Joe Elsner, both typical Poles. Tony, an aristocrat from his name, tall, dark, gloomy, with a long moustache, and Joe, small, fat, and with a Słowanic spherical head. Refugees from communism, they worked in a local factory and were learning English, with a little help from me by way of conversation.

And they told me stories of ułans charging German tanks on horseback, armed with Molotov cocktails and sabres, of patriots executed by the communists for fighting independently of the U.S.S.R. I vowed one day to go to Poland an see for myself the fantazja ułańska..

More than fifty years later, sitting in a Moroccan cafe in Bow, I asked the waitress where she was from.

"Warsaw, Poland. Have you ever been there?"

"No."

"Why not?"

So I went for ten days, loved Warsaw, stopped off in Paris on the way back, got talking to a young woman in Paris whose father, a Pole, was teaching in Poland, and wanted to retire. She gave him my email address, I stayed with him and his wife for a week, taught a few lessons in his school, got the job, and have been here ever since.

Thanks be to God, some of the happiest six years of my life.

Hah! And all my pupils passed Matura this year!

B.C. and A.D.

Please note that:


the following terms b.c.e. and c.e. will never appear in these pages, unless ironically, sneeringly, or with obvious disapproval;


only B.C. and A.D. will be used;


we may protest against something, but we will never protest anything;


newspeak is never spoken or written here, unless ironically, sneeringly, or with obvious disapproval.


I am feeling particularly nasty today.

Mundabor - How Feminism Kills its daughters

Excellent, well-argued post from Mundabor.

Duke Ellington, Adelaide Hall, Creole Love call

Beautiful, delicate, exquisite. You can listen to it here

Nice Post by Redneck Reflections

Read it here. It's about Catholic Education.

Fats Waller, who props, in these sad days, my mind

Who prop, thou ask'st, in these sad days, my mind? (Matthew Arnold)


Among others, Fats Waller, here on YouTube - Your Feet's Too Big and Ain't Misbehavin' and My Very Good Friend the Milkman Says


Happy, funny, clever, innocent, and a great pianist. If he doesn't bring a smile to your face, and perhaps tears to your eyes, I shall be surprised.


Banish Wagner to the jakes where he belongs, and listen to Fats Waller, a little piece of Heaven.


A genius. God rest his soul.

Richard Collins on Saint Monica

Linen on the Hedgerow has a fine post on Saint Monica, Patron Saint of alcoholics, together with her prayer. 

Policing by Consent

I do not intend to discuss the reasons for the recent riots in the U.K. Only an intellectually and morally castrated liberal could fail to explain their cause.

What interests me is the idea of policing "by consent": the proposition that the police should apply the law only when people accept it, the people in question being, supposedly the local criminals. Public safety is here, clearly, a secondary consideration.

By extension, I suppose there should also be fines and imprisonment "by consent":

Judge: Mr Brown, I am sentencing you to three years imprisonment. Are you cool with that?

Mr Brown: You gotta be joking, geezer. No I ****ing ain't. [exit, waving two fingers and chortling]

Spartan Humour

Life in fifth century Sparta was tough. For example, the only tool allowed in constructing furniture was an axe.

A Spartan visitor to Athens, seeing a beautifully carved wooden chair, is said to have asked, "Where do you find trees which grow like that?" 

King Leonodas, at the Battle of Thermopylae, ordered by the ambassador of the Persian king Xerxes to lay down his arms, replied, " "Come and get them."

From Terry Nelson - a Powerful Prayer

Please read Terry Nelson's blog, Abbey Roads, for his latest post, which has a powerful prayer by Saint Claude de la Colombiere.

A Matter of Heroism and Honour: Some Rambling Thoughts

Last week, I stood awe-struck before the magnificent and beautiful monument to the heroes who fell at the battle of Thermopylae, and saved Greece, and ultimately Europe, from the horrors of Persian despotist and barbarity. Their epitaph, written by Simonides and recorded on the monument and in the Greek Anthology:

Ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε
κείμεθα, τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.

My translation, humbly submitted as accurate and prodosically correct, but without pretension to being poetry:

Go tell the Lacedaimonians, passer-by
Obedient to their orders, here we lie.

Like the Spartans themselves, it is pithy, lapidary, terse, and has a certain dry humour.

And what did they die for? Not for the Greek gods, who were, morally, grossly inferior to their worshippers. The answer is simple: they fought and died for their honour, a pagan concept, perhaps, but none the worse for that. The duty of a Spartan was to win or die, and in the performance of this duty lay his honour. I cannot, will not, believe that to those who knew not God, or His Son, His mercy does not extend, for I cannot believe that God is less merciful and generous than His creatures. Those who fought for Country, Home, Family, and Hearth were following a prompting of nature as natural as hunger and thirst, and I hope to be worthy to meet them in Heaven.

If Honour is a mere figment of paganism, then so are Love, Friendship, Patriotism, Good Manners, Art, Music, Literature, and all that strives to make life more beautiful and harmonious in this vale of tears.

Charity and Some Difficulties with Not Hating One's Enemies

Redneck Reflections has an excellent but tough post today on the necessity for positive good and for charity, a virtue I find difficult to cultivate.

Loving my enemies if they are weaker than me is easy - mere routine. As to those I perceive as stronger, there is nothing I would not (at least theoretically) inflict on them. As Virgil wrote, of the destiny and duty of Rome:

Parcere subiectos et debellare suberbos

("Spare the humble [or defeated] and war down the proud", and boy! would I not war the arrogant swine down!).

And this leads me to another matter - Honour, which a correspondent attacked as a merely pagan idea, but one to which I am greatly attached. A future post, perhaps. 

Well Worth Reading

An interesting post on Gregg Beaman's Blog, A Brief Encounter about the failure of modern British education. It is well worth reading.

The End of Europe

It seems like yesterday, but when I was at University nearly fifty years ago, people happily talked about the relationship between the rising U.S.A. and declining Great Britain as comparable with that of the Roman empire with Ancient Greece. I thought it shallow then; time has proved it to be utterly hollow.

Americans, it was risibly and arrogantly suggested, were educated barbarians, the English an ancient, highly cultured civilisation, with a glorious artistic history and, as late as 1961, no shortage of living, if aging, good writers. Aldous Huxley, Evelyn Waugh, A.P. Herbert, L.P. Hartley, Tolkien, John Masefield, Siegfried Sasson were all still alive. Chesterton, Belloc, Kipling were a recent memory. Educated people still spoke, not merely in sentences, but in paragraphs. Undergraduates studying 'dead' languages could write, in examinations, verse in those languages.

Britain never really was Ancient Greece. At the time of Shakespeare and Bloody Betsy, Sir Philip Sidney, returning from a stay in Italy, where he had met the literary giants of his day, joined a royal progress, where the queen was entertained by a man who could shout so "loud that he could be heard in three counties". The Elizabethan aristocrats, as described by John Buxton in his probably now forgotten book, Elizabethan Taste, were, in truth, a bunch of upstart racketeers, enriched by the spoils of the so-called Reformation.

All this is prompted my my recent trip to the historical sites of Ancient Greece, of which more later. But clearly the European disease which has destroyed England is rife in Greece too. A Statue of Bouboulina, a heroine of the Greek War of Independence, is now daubed with swastikas, anarchist symbols, and obscene graffiti. The cheap but very decent hotel I stayed in in Athens is opposite a crack house with peole smoking drugs and raving all night on their balconies.

It seems there is no cultural reservoir left from which powerful nations can draw some enlightenment, as the Roman Empire did from Greek philosophers and poets. Perhaps there is still a gleam of hope in Russia, Lithuania, and Poland, soon (I hope I am wrong)  to be extinguished by the canting despots of the European Union, heirs of Marcuse and his foul ilk.

Matthew Arnold wrote of Homer and Sophocles as the writers "who prop in these sad days my mind". John Reith said that he read Chesterton's Lepanto to his appreciative men in the first World war Trenches. Countless young soldiers sustained themselves with books of poetry and bibles.

What would they read now?

The lights went out all over Europe in 1914. Some still flicker, guttering. Most have never been relit.

Some Good News

A triumph for faithful Catholic nurses and doctors: please read about it here - Neil Addison on Religion Law Blog

A Gallows on the Shore: A Civilised Country

John Sparrow, former Warden of All Souls College Oxford, told a story on the radio about twenty years ago. I cannot remember its provenance.

Two eighteenth century shipwrecked sailors in an open boat are approaching an unknown shore. The sharper-eyed, spotting a gallows with a body hanging from it, exclaims:

"Thank God! A civilised country!"

The Battle of Maldon

On Richard Collins's excellent blog today is a translation of the Battle of Maldon, which occured 1020 years go. Please read it. It is a fine example of Old English poetry.

I fell in love with this poem when I was 20. 10 years ago, I finally got myself sufficiently organised to get to Maldon, in Essex, on a cold bright December morning.

It was quite hard to find the site of the battlefield (next to the town rubbish tip), but I eventually met an oldish man, purple-faced from the cold, walking his dog, who pointed out the way.

Without prompting, he remarked, "That Byrhtnoth was a silly bugger, letting the Danes cross the causeway like that. Should have waited for reinforcements. Bloody fair play!"

Below are two photographs I took at the time, the first showing the road to the submerged causeway.

Mortal Sin and Mental Capacity

I remember reading in C.T.S. pamphlets when I was 18, and first considering becoming a Catholic, that the age when one becomes capable of mortal sin is about 7 years. Was this ever official Church teaching, or just a little idea of someone's own?

If it was official teaching, is it still?

If it never was official, is there a generally accepted age for people of average mental capacity?

The question is not loaded. Just asking.

Child Protection

I see that Dr Pestillenz, a leading child psychologist, has taken a rather different line from mine in my previous post - http://bishopsmirk.blogspot.com/2011/08/dr-serebral-pestillenz-on-evil-of-so.html

H/T The Hermeneutic of Coo...

U.K. Child Protection: A Running Sore

Thanks to Lawrence England at - http://thatthebonesyouhavecrushedmaythrill.blogspot.com/2011/08/christopher-brooker-on-child-protection.html - for his first-rate and ever-readable blog, for the link to this disgraceful story - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8672670/Child-protection-wreaks-havoc-on-a-loving-family-once-again.html

I ask you to read both.

Apparently, in the opinion of the great minds who run social services in the U.K., you are not fit to bring up your own child or grandchild if you lack carpets.

I intend to write more on this when my boiling rage and the smell of blood at the back of my nose have subsided.

On a more Positive Note - Friends of God

The weekend before last, I went to a very beautiful party, in a village near Elbląg. I was organised by an artist, her husband, (a sculptor), and their son (a blacksmith). It started in the garden of their house where there was a painting and clay modelling class, and a demonstration of wrought-iron blacksmithery. After a couple of hours, we moved to the local children's playground, which being in rural Poland, merges imperceptibly into the adjacent farmyard.

There were about twenty helpers, a guitarist, jugglers, stilt-walkers, a disco, a barbecue, a tug of war, races, and more food than anyone could eat. Polish food takes some saying no to. The farmer from next door brought his horse and cart and gave rides, showed the guests round the farm, and gave a demonstration of cow-milking, with free milk for the guests. There was even a goat.

The thirty or so guests were niepelnosprawny, which means "not completely capable", in English "handicapped", in nu-speak "otherwise abled". They were wonderful, beautiful, happy, exuberant, talkative, and a blessing to be with. Friends of God.

The evening ended with a hefty sing-song around the fire. The last song, perhaps a remnant of communism, was "All Poles are one family", beautiful and true. It was hard to hold back the tears.

Another helper quietly remarked, "Isn't it remarkable how little it takes to make people happy!"

Amen, if they are good people.

My stepfather, who worked as a teacher in a mental hospital, said of his patients, "They're no more mad than you or I. They're just differently mad."

A Cardinal for Our Times

Flatulently wondering at his own eminence,

Painfully straddling the doctrinal fence,

Smirking, he blurts weak platitudes and lies.

Choked by his gas, the faith of millions dies.

A Remedy for Bloggers' Block

I offer this in all seriousness. When I am suffering from the condition, the following remedy never fails:

For costive bloggers with THE BLOCK
Faced with a sullen, empty page,
The laxative that will unlock
Your literary bowels is RAGE.


To specify, Vin Rouge's* blather,
Dawkins**, or Beattie*** will suffice
To get your brain-cells in a lather
- You'll be raging and blogging in a trice.



* I am greatly indebted to Richard Collins (Linen on the Hedgerow) for this gem, which is not mine.

** As in Richard Dawkins, a deluded scientific hack.

*** Tina Beattie, from whom the Pope seems strangely unwilling to learn. Perhaps he simply has not heard of her.

Self-comment

The previous two posts are similar. I could have combined them, but epitaphs should be lapidary.

I'm not sure which one I least like.

Epitaph on a Would-Be Catholic Controversialist

The person I had in mind is not yet dead. There are no prizes for guessing who it is.

He never engaged the foe. An easier thrill
Was to dismiss them with a pitying sneer.
Unable to prove them wrong, he called them “shrill”.
Why? Who knows – I'd guess laziness and fear..

A Circular Magician's Epitaph

Epitaph on a would-be Catholic Controversialist



The person I had in mind is not yet dead. There are no prizes for guessing who it is.

He never engaged the foe. An easier thrill -

Dismissal with a weary sneering phrase.

He never proved them wrong, just called them “shrill”

Or “Taliban”. So passed his wasted days.

Favourite Hymns - er - NO!

"Let us break bread together on our knees"

We forgot to pack the bread-knife.

Shocking! A Hero, a Vow, Chastity, and Courtesy

There is a popular film in Poland , made some years ago, whose title I forget, dealing with the struggle in southern Poland between Pole, Cossack, Tatar, and Turk.

There is much bloodshed, heroism, humour. Vast quantities of alcohol are consumed. People pray a lot.

The Polish and Ukrainian heroes are of the aristocratic, boozing, brawling kind.

In one scene, a group of Poles arrives at the home of another aristocrat (at that time about 10% of Poles were oficially aristocrats, or Szlacht). The lady of the house courteously offers the chief the hospitality of her bed and herself.

He equally courteously declines, explaining, "I have made a promise to the Mother of God that I will decapitate three Turks with one stroke of my sabre, and that until I do so, I will abstain from love.. Unfortunately I have so far failed to perform this. Perhaps later, when I have fulfilled my vow."

She fully understands.

Not a saint, but what a hero!

Self-Censorship

I have removed my verses about Raphael, Adam, and John Milton.

My apologies to anyone (apart from the un-named target and the usual heretical suspects) who was offended by it. My intentions were good.

Honi soit qui mal y pense.

Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition

Hmm. Pity.

Mazurek Dąbrowskiego

Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła,
Kiedy my żyjemy.
Co nam obca przemoc wzięła,
Szablą odbierzemy.

Marsz, marsz Dąbrowski,
Z ziemi włoskiej do Polski.
Za twoim przewodem
Złączym się z narodem.

Przejdziem Wisłę, przejdziem Wartę,
Będziem Polakami.
Dał nam przykład Bonaparte,
Jak zwyciężać mamy.

Marsz, marsz...

Jak Czarniecki do Poznania
Po szwedzkim zaborze,
Dla ojczyzny ratowania
Wrócim się przez morze.

Marsz, marsz...

Już tam ojciec do swej Basi
Mówi zapłakany -
Słuchaj jeno, pono nasi
Biją w tarabany.

Marsz, marsz...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnSSdf57Ei0

Hymn polski - JESZCZE POLSKA NIE ZGINEŁA

Hymn polski - JESZCZE POLSKA NIE ZGINEŁA - Polish Hymn - Poland has not perished yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnSSdf57Ei0

Poland has not yet succumbed. As long as we remain, What the foe by force has seized, Sword in hand we'll gain. March! March, Dabrowski! March from Italy to Poland! Under your command We shall reach our land. Cross the Vistula and Warta And Poles we shall be; We've been shown by Bonaparte Ways to victory. March! March, Dabrowski! As Czarniecki Poznan town regains, Fighting with the Swede, To free our fatherland from chains. We shall return by sea. March! March, Dabrowski!

Projekt Rafal B. @ Polish-Flag.com E-mail: polish-flag@polish-flag.com

Remember the Warsaw Uprising 1944

At about 5 p.m. today, all over Poland, air raid or fire sirens sounded to mark the 67th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising against the occupying Germans.

It is good to remember both the heroism of the Poles, and the evil they fought.

God bless Poland!

Milton Revisited & some not too irreverent Thoughts on Celestial Plumbing, with 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 weak me they have nothing to fear.)
But I'd seek out the liberal Catholics
And bury with dung ???? ?????
 * * *

* * * Readers are invited to guess who this might be. Beware of U.K. libel law.