Invitation to Marian Chivalry

Do you want to go beyond pew-sitting membership in the Catholic Church? Hear a call of silver trumpets to give more of your life to serving Our Lord and Our Lady in chivalrous fealty? I recommend that you give attention to Corpus Christianum. From the website:

What do members do?

Relying on the intercession of Mary, Help of Christians, members pray daily for the renewal, unity, and spread of Christendom, for the protection of Christians, for the conversion of sinners and sanctification of all people, for Holy Mother Church, and for the reinstitution of family life. Members pray the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary as well as a short prayer to Mary, Help of Christians, the Corpus Christianum Preces, and a rosary. On Saturdays members also pray the Litany of Loreto. For members who want to expand their spiritual life even more, they can choose to follow the Acta Militum (see question further below)

Where are members located?

Currently there are men and women in nine countries (Australia, Canada, Germany, Nigeria, Philippines, Sweden, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States - with members in 28 different states in the U.S.).

What is the canonical status of the Association?

Corpus Christianum is an international Private Association of the Faithful.

The Association's Statutes have been reviewed and a nihil obstat has been granted by His Excellency, Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska [USA] on August 2, 2010. His Excellency's reaffirm of support was confirmed again in a letter on January 24, 2011. These letters can be accessed here and here.

The Statutes mention the Acta Militum? What is that?

The Acta Militum is a document that can be used as a "plan" to expand one's spiritual life beyond the general Corpus Christianum prayers. Those persons who follow the Acta may also find it very useful as a discussion tool with their spiritual directors.

Rumbling Toward the Caliphate

With such illuminating rhetoric as the following, imams in Afghanistan promulgate the goals of the Scimitar:

Under the weathered blue dome of Kabul's largest mosque, a distinguished preacher, Enayatullah Balegh, pledged support for "any plan that can defeat" foreign military forces in Afghanistan, denouncing what he called "the political power of these children of Jews."

Across town, a firebrand imam named Habibullah was even more blunt.

"Let these jackals leave this country," the preacher, who uses only one name, declared of foreign troops. "Let these brothers of monkeys, gorillas and pigs leave this country."

It should be manifestly clear that while the blinders of secularism make such organs of the MSM as the WaPo see the "unrest" in the nations of the Middle East solely in terms of politics, there is a vast sea of persons of the Scimitar who see it as the beginnings of the Caliphate.

It would be a messy, sloppy, chaotic thing to be sure; a Rube Goldberg-esque contraption of power-driven maniacs. But so long as the Scimitar clings to its scapegoats par excellence - the Jews and downstream cousins the Christians - it will find for a while a unifying factor.

But who will notice the outlines of such a unifying goal, I wonder?

UPDATES: Gee, what a surprise.

* Raymond Ibrahim's analysis here.

Into the Clearing

I OFTEN IMAGINE A BOY who, not unlike Prince Caspian of C. S. Lewis's book, had a love for lore, for stories and legends of romance and greatness and great sacrifice for great causes, who chanced upon a clearing and structures ruinous the origins he knew not. It is my favorite kind of story.

Imagine my immense surprise when in my advancing years I found myself the protagonist in that story. It followed years of struggle, of having that kind of Story excised right out of me in the relativist blather of a "liberal arts education" followed by a different kind of relativism - a left-leaning form of Christianity that I call New Age Zen Protestantism.

And yet, here I stood at the age of 47, newly confirmed into full communion with the Holy Catholic Church. The words of Evelyn Waugh - fellow convert - were one with my own heart and mind:

“Conversion is like stepping across the chimney piece out of a Looking-Glass world, where everything is an absurd caricature, into the real world God made; and then begins the delicious process of exploring it limitlessly.”

To this moment, I have found nothing to contradict either the words of Waugh or the wonder of coming into the clearing of the Catholic World from the dark and cruel forest of derelict, atrophy, parody, and sin. And lo - what I had taken for a structure ruinous was not so at all. Rather, it was deeply old and immensely ancient, yet as new and vibrant as a fresh day of Spring and heart's ease. And at its center a lamb as though slain ... and His Mother, our good Lady, His most faithful and first and best disciple.

With all my days - however many or few there are - the best life, the only life, is to serve our good Lord and His good Lady in fealty and service. There is nothing for it but this. For I did not find my way in the Clearing. I got pulled into this Romance, undeservedly. And for that I am grateful.

Pearce - The Pub

Joseph Pearce waxes poetic on the origins, joys, and necessity of the English pub here.