Music is Audible Mathematics

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Professor John Bayley, Obit 12.01.2015

I met John Bayley first in December 1959 when he and a panel of dons interviewed me for a place at New College. I remember his beatific smile, his courtesy, and his stammer, of which I had been warned by my English master D. M. Thomas, later of White Hotel fame, who had read English at New College. He used the stammer brilliantly as an after-dinner speaker. I failed to get in, but tried again the following year and was accepted. 

John Bayley was my academic and Moral Tutor for the next three years. He was a brilliant scholar and teacher. I owe him much, including my love of M. R. James's ghost stories and the novels of Raymond Chandler.

He had an amazing epigrammatic and lapidary wit. Once, during a tutorial, he looked out of the window, remarking, "There goes the Domestic Manager. He always looks as though he has just murdered his wife." The official in question always wore a black suit, I think a moustache, and a 1930s, serial murderer smile. Perfect.

Of an aged don, always late for dinner so that no one could eat until he arrived in Hall, he said, "He makes me feel like Lear's daughters".

When I got a Third in Finals, he wrote me a delightful note saying that it was the most respectable class of degree "see the Sunday papers, passim". He even wrote a reply to my mother's thank you letter. She, of course kept his letter, and I still have it.

He was, like many of those whom I have good reason to thank, completely agnostic, one of the reasons my hope is in Universalism.

John Bayley, gentleman and scholar. May he rest in peace.

Non, je ne suis pas Charlie

The usual suicidal bleeding hearts are spraying their synthetic gore all over the internet and press. Only a few months ago, they were making themselves little badges with the Arab letter 'nun', for Nazarene,  which is the Muslims' soubriquet for a Christian.

Now the slogan is Je suis Charlie, referring to the late Charlie Hebdo.

Before Europe became a congeries of eunuchs, things were different. 

The reputation for brutality of Heynau, the Austrian butcher, had spread throughout western Europe. In Brussels, Haynau narrowly escaped mob violence. In London, he was attacked and beaten by two draymen during a visit to what was then the Barclay Perkins Brewery. When the Italian revolutionary, Garibaldi, visited England in 1864, he insisted on visiting the brewery to thank "the men who flogged Haynau". (Wikipedia)

As Chesterton wrote, "When an Austrian general who had flogged women in the conquered provinces appeared in the London streets, some common draymen off a cart behaved with the direct quixotry of Sir Lancelot or Sir Galahad. He had beaten women and they beat him. They regarded themselves simply as avengers of ladies in distress, breaking the bloody whip of a German bully."

Recently, in London, a soldier was beheaded, or nearly beheaded, and no one was lynched. Christians are murdered, and our wally of a Pope tells us to be ready for martyrdom. 

I am one with Charles Martel, Don John of Austria, and John Sobieski the Third. I have no wish to be a martyr. I would much rather kill than be killed, particularly by non-Catholics.

The employees of an intermittently blasphemous magazine have been shot dead, and everyone becomes a charley in the name of the golden calf of free speech. They died for the far from noble 'right' to freely insult anyone, including Catholics and the Catholic Church. They were beyond my pale. They made the tactical error of attacking people who still have left some honour and manliness. however regrettably it may manifest itself. Those people killed them, and I have no tears to shed.

I read, about 50 years ago, of two young German women sightseeing while immodestly dressed in an Italian village. The young male members of the local Catholic league of decency (or whatever) tarred and feathered them.

Unfeminised Catholics with b*lls! Bravo!

Papież z twarzą jak płyta z gotowanej wołowiny

Mowił Papież:

Trzecie słowo wskazane przez papieża podczas homilii była "Radość", a tu papież zwrócił się ponownie do słów Jezusa w dniu Ewangelii: "Te rzeczy, które powiedziałem do was, aby radość moja w was była i aby radość wasza była pełna ".Papież podkreślił, że "radość jest znakiem chrześcijanina". Powiedział: "Chrześcijanin bez radości albo nie jest chrześcijaninem, albo jest chory", jego chrześcijańska zdrowia nie jest dobry ... Kiedyś powiedziałem, że są chrześcijanami z twarzami jak marynowane papryki chili: zawsze z czerwonymi twarzami, z dusz do mecz. I to jest nieprzyzwoite! ". Te "nie są chrześcijanami", dla "Christian bez radości nie jest chrześcijaninem".

A ja mówię, że to papież z twarzą jak płyta z gotowanej wołowiny, z dołowi ustach i dołowi duszy, aby dopasować. Nie wiem, co jest jego religia.

A Target for the Aborters

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, or a deformed left hand?

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

Just a Grave

She was born, and died, on the 4th of March 1999. Had she lived, she would now be 15 years old. I know nothing of her history, whether she lived and died in hospital, whether she was Christened, who were her family, even if she had a family.

This is in Elbląg, in Poland, where even an unknown baby girl, fifteen years dead, has a decent grave, with a Crucifix, two Angels, and fresh flowers.

And prayers.

How do I explain?

With the present canaillerie in charge at the Vatican, with Catholic doctrine seemingly in tatters, with a Pope I find utterly loathsome, and a two-faced German Bishop henchman sneering at African Catholics because they don't approve of sodomy, the problem to face is:

How do I explain to non-Catholics my curious choice of religion?

DUH!

“The question of language has been a biggie,” Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York told journalists at an Oct. 8 event in Rome.

Hah!

If only Aquinas had been so eloquent, all would now be well.

Sticking with the Church

How to stay Catholic, and yet publicly dissociate oneself from the current set of idiots running the madhouse?

Has this woman read the book?

From Theresa May:

The terrorists who murdered David Haines like to call themselves the Islamic State. But I will tell you the truth: They are not Islamic. And they are not a state. Their actions have absolutely no basis in anything written in the Quran. What they believe has no resemblance whatsoever to the beliefs of more than a billion Muslims all over the world. And, like all the other Islamist terrorist organisations, they have caused the deaths of many thousands of innocent Muslim civilians. They occupy large parts of Syria and Iraq, and not only are they bringing death and destruction to the people of those countries, they have made absolutely clear their desire to attack Britain, America and the West.

Has this person read the book?