Pearce - The Pub

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

Consequential Judgment

Just the news to brighten your day.
The Muslim population in Britain has grown by more than 500,000 to 2.4 million in just four years, according to official research collated for The Times.

The population multiplied 10 times faster than the rest of society, the research by the Office for National Statistics reveals. In the same period the number of Christians in the country fell by more than 2 million.

Significance of Hobbits

"TOLKIEN HAD NOT REALLY wanted to write any more stories like The Hobbit; he had wanted to get on with the serious business of his mythology. And that was what he could now do. The new story (LOTR) had attached itself firmly to The Silmarillion, and was to acquire the dignity of purpose and the high style of the earlier book ... In a sense the hobbits had only been acquired by accident from the earlier book. But now, for the first time, Tolkien realised the significance of hobbits in Middle-earth. The theme of his new story was large, but it was to have its centre in the courage of these small people; and the heart of the book was to be found in the inns and gardens of The Shire, Tolkien's representation of all that he loved best about England.

- H. Carpenter, J. R. R. Tolkien - A Biography [192]

Royal Tournament - Teamwork

If you like watching teamwork, this is extraordinary. For more see: Royal Tournament.org.

Chivalry, the Grail, & the Round Table

A MYSTICAL MATERIALISM marked Christianity from its birth; the very soul of it was a body. Among the stoical philosophies and oriental negations that were its first foes it fought fiercely and particularly for a supernatural freedom to cure concrete maladies by concrete substances. Hence the scattering of relics was everywhere like the scattering of seed. All who took their mission from the divine tragedy bore tangible fragments which became the germs of churches and cities.

St. Joseph carried the cup which held the wine of the Last Supper and the blood of the Crucifixion to that shrine in Avalon which we now call Glastonbury; and it became the heart of a whole universe of legends and romances, not only for Britain but for Europe. Throughout this tremendous and branching tradition it is called the Holy Grail. The vision of it was especially the reward of that ring of powerful paladins whom King Arthur feasted at a Round Table, a symbol of heroic comradeship such as was afterwards imitated or invented by medieval knighthood. Both the cup and the table are of vast importance emblematically in the psychology of the chivalric experiment.

The idea of a round table is not merely universality but equality. It has in it, modified of course, by other tendencies to differentiation, the same idea that exists in the very word "peers," as given to the knights of Charlemagne. In this Round Table is as Roman as the round arch, which might also serve as a type; for instead of being one barbaric rock merely rolled on the others, the king was rather the keystone of an arch.

But to this tradition of a level of dignity was added something unearthly that was from Rome, but not of it; the privilege that inverted all privileges; the glimpse of heaven which seemed almost as capricious as fairyland; the flying chalice which was veiled from the highest of all the heroes, and which appeared to one knight who was hardly more than a child.

Rightly or wrongly, this romance established Britain for after centuries as a country with a chivalrous past. Britain had been a mirror of universal knighthood. This fact, is of colossal import in all ensuing affairs, especially the affairs of barbarians.

- G. K. Chesterton, Short History of England

Hobbit Hole for Non-Hobbits

Zoe Romanowsky has the scoop at insidecatholic.com.
I’m ready to move in!
But I must hang Sting over the door. [h/t:Mark Shea]

Sudden Jihad Syndrome in Peanut Country

And one nut was on the train. Fortunately, this time he was lying when he threatened to blow up things and people. And remember: nearly any behavior can be justified in service to the deity of the Scimitar ...

Canon Attacked by "Youths"

Western Resistance has the scoop on the recent attack on Anglican priest, Canon Michael Ainsworth, in East London. The MSM, of course, referred to his attackers as "Asian youth." Um-hum, the euphemism for guess what? From the article:

According to an Asian member of the church community, the church has been attacked before by Asian youths who hate Christians. He said: "I've been physically threatened and verbally abused on the steps of the church. On one occasion, youths shouted: 'This should not be a church, this should be a mosque, you should not be here'. just walked away from it - you are too frightened to challenge them. We have church windows smashed two to three times a month. The youths are anti-Christian. It's terrible what they have done to Canon Ainsworth. We've never had violence like that before. I know his face was very smashed up and bruised because I saw him just minutes after the attack when I called round to deliver some papers."

If I'm not mistaken, this incident is an unfortunate if predictable microcosm of what happens when the multicultural gospel-lite meets rather ordinary exemplars of the primitive Sacred called Islam.

Scouring of the Shires

Cat at Brits at their Best relates the following:

For a thousand years the shires were the basis of local government and were answerable to local people. Sanitation and roads and lighting were handled locally; schools were locally organized. Everything was handled by local county people responsible to each other. If something went wrong, it was easy to see why, decide accountability and fix it. Sports clubs, businesses, societies, regiments, and farmers' unions were all based on the shires. They were and they are part of Britain's cultural inheritance.

No surprise, then, that the government has tried to destroy them, and take decision-making out of local hands and into its own centralizing talons. Tolkien was afraid of this. In a terrifying vision in the Lord of the Rings he called it the 'Scouring of the Shire'.

Efficiency and reasonable taxes, democracy and and freedom flourish when local government is run locally according to the principles of justice and equity. That is why we support the mission of the shires and their human scale. That is why we ask, are we going to be forever at the mercy of a national government that does not remember or respect the fundamental principles of freedom, local rule and competence?

Read all …

Shire Strategy

In light of The Atlantic Monthly's And the Winner Is …, I am reposting this entry in praise of James Pinkerton's "Shire Strategy."

James Pinkerton has produced in his essay, The Once & Future Christendom, to my mind the only feasible paradigm for rescuing the Christian West; namely a "Shire Strategy." Pinkerton utilizes Tolkien's Lord of the Rings for terminology and even policy in a way that honors the beliefs of a prime adversary of the West qua "the Shire" without a desire to quash, destroy, or subsume that adversary.

For another analysis of Pinkerton's notion, see A Conversation with James Pinkerton in "View From the Right."

Bringing Back Marriage & Family

What children need most are mothers and fathers. Not caregivers. Not parent-like adults. Not even ‘parents.' What a child wants and needs more than anything else are the mother and the father who together made the child, who love the child, and who love each other.

Conversion of England - Update

An update on Fr Aiden Nichols' project to convert England. Fr Richard Neuhaus writes in FIRST THINGS the following:

Father John Christopher Aidan Nichols, O.P., is a figure to be reckoned with. Aidan Nichols, as he signs himself, has written extensively and authoritatively on the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar and has also authored the very useful volume The Theology of Joseph Ratzinger. He has collaborated on several projects with Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and is currently the first John Paul II Memorial Lecturer at Oxford University, the first lectureship in Catholic theology at Oxford since the sixteenth century.

In view of Nichols’ theological and ecumenical stature, it is rightly thought to be newsworthy when he brings out a little book titled Realm: An Unfashionable Essay on the Conversion of England. His proposal will, as you might expect, be receiving careful attention in the pages of First Things. The conversion of England is, of course, a topic with a long and troubled history. Some prefer to speak of the reconversion of England. As Eamon Duffy demonstrated in his marvelous study The Stripping of the Altars, the English were once a very Catholic people.

From a Catholic perspective, the Church of England is a schismatic form of the Church in England that should be restored to full communion with the bishop of Rome and those in communion with the bishop of Rome. In this ecumenical age, to be sure, this is not usually stated so bluntly. Father Nichols’ candid reopening of these questions is, as he says, unfashionable.

To say that the history of these questions is troubled is an understatement. Remember the Spanish Armada, the English martyrs of the sixteenth century (Thomas More, Edmund Campion, John Fisher, et al.), Bloody Mary, the Gunpowder Plot, and on and on. The identity and, at times, the very survival of England has been viewed as inseparable from the established church with the monarch as its supreme head. When in the nineteenth century Rome reinstated the Catholic hierarchy, first under the leadership of Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman and then under the former Anglican, Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, many Englishmen saw it as a direct assault upon the religious, cultural, and political definition of the nation.

Read all …

Convert England to Catholicism, Says Papal Ally

Father John Zuhlsdorf of What Does The Prayer Really Say posts on Father Aiden Nichols' new book, The Realm: An Unfashionable Essay on the Conversion of England. It is so new, in fact, that it does not yet appear in the United States on Amazon or Barnes and Noble (though a pre-order from the UK Amazon is offered).

Father Z quotes extensively from this article in The Catholic Herald, which is quite lauding of Fr Nichols. I am too; his Shape of Catholic Theology (1991) was the text for my first serious graduate level course in the Catholic realm. I'm ashamed I have not yet cracked Nichols' Christendom Awake! (1999) that I bought some time ago. Have a go with this excerpt from the Herald:

Fr Aidan Nichols, the English theologian most closely associated with the thinking of Benedict XVI, has appealed for England to be “re-made” as a Catholic country.

He set out his radical and comprehensive programme for Catholic renewal in a new book entitled The Realm: An Unfashionable Essay on the Conversion of England, published by Family Publications.

In his preface he says that Catholic Christianity should be put forward “not as an occupation for individuals in their solitude but as a form for the public life of society in its overall integrity”.

He admits that the conversion of England is “an absolutely colossal agenda”, adding: “It can only be brought into being, so far as it depends on us to do so, by a coordinated strategy for recreating a full-blooded catholicity with the power to... transform a culture in all its principal dimensions.

“That is what ‘the mission to convert’ and ‘the conversion of England’ mean to me.”
His comments will be seen as an implicit criticism of the direction of the Church in England and Wales. He points to “flagship” Catholic institutions which have “suffered shipwreck through secularisation”.

Not Dhimmis Yet

The forces who want to build a mega-mosque a stone's throw from the London Olympic stadium are finding that, even in England, they cannot silence their critics. (More on the proposed Abbey Mills Mosque -- sounds kind of quaint, doesn't it? "Abbey Mills Mosque?" Yeah, right.)

Local authority watchdog, the Standards Board for England, has rejected an official complaint by Olympics mega-mosque promoters Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) against Cllr Alan Craig, leader of the Christian Peoples Alliance group on Newham Council.

Board officers decided that TJ's allegations against Cllr Craig did not even warrant investigation. They ruled that Cllr Craig's statements about TJ and the proposed Olympics mega-mosque were most likely to be lawful and protected by the freedom of expression articles of the Human Rights Act.

"Referring a councillor to the Standards Board is a very serious matter; I'm sorry Tablighi Jamaat have gone down this road to intimidate and close down democratic discussion," said Cllr Craig, who has been leading local opposition to the mega-mosque.

"They are an ambitious and powerful global Islamic sect but this small-minded action has backfired on them," he continued. "I'm glad the Standard Board has recognised my opposition to this enormous landmark mosque is legitimate."

[...]

"They should instead enter into public debate so that we can discuss both their organisation and their project with them.

"What have they got to hide?" Aye, there’s the rub.

Deconstructing the Hearth & Heart

A marvel-filled delight of an essay at New Oxford Review by Mitchell Kalpakgian, "The Ideology of Diverse Families" --

How does ideology differ from poetry? Like education, poetry educes or leads out, bringing forth what is there and lending shape, form, and adornment to that which is praiseworthy or admirable. The poet sees the wonder and glory that dwell in natural and human things, as Gerard Manley Hopkins does in his famous "Pied Beauty":

Glory be to God for dappled things --
For skies of couple-color as a brindled cow;
For rose moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced -- fold, fallow, and plough
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

Poetry captures the splendor of the form (splendor formae) that dwells in matter and lets it speak for itself as Hopkins does in marveling at the many examples of pied beauty that appear throughout creation in the variegated tones of the sky, in the mixed colors of brindled cows, in the rainbow streaks of trout, in the motley patchwork of the landscape, and in the multiplicity of human talents and gifts that constitute "all trades, their gear and tackle and trim." Poetry sees the truth shouting from the housetops everywhere: the glory of God shines in the sky above, in the water below, and on the landscape surrounding the Earth, and it manifests itself in the vast heavens and in the small bird, in the animal kingdom and in human nature.

Ideology, in contrast, twists, tortures, and truncates. Like Procrustes, who either stretched or chopped off the legs of his victims to fit his notorious bed, ideology does violence to reality and distorts truth to accommodate its arbitrary theories. Ideology does not see the splendor of the form in matter or acknowledge a natural purpose or God-given design in creation. It resists recognizing the inherent structure of reality -- the givenness of things -- presuming always to improve nature, to redefine established universal meanings, and to substitute human theory for divine wisdom. Hence, all the attacks on the poetry of the home involve a denial of the universal truths which the poets sing: "All is well" or "Glory be to God for dappled things" or "Home is the definition of God" (Emily Dickinson). Instead, ideology resorts to sophistic legal reasoning, verbal gymnastics, and social engineering to demythologize the romance of the family. United Nations propaganda questions the universal meaning of "family" and "gender" by claiming that families come in a "plurality of forms" rather than by way of marriage, and by assuming that there are five genders, not two. Liberal rhetoric has revised the traditional, normative meaning of marriage to include the "marriage" or civil union of two men or two women. Feminist ideology persistently denies the existential reality of maleness and femaleness and regards these universal norms as mere social "constructs." Thus, how can one write of The Privilege of Being a Woman as Alice von Hildebrand does, or of The Greatness of Marriage as Dietrich von Hildebrand does, or of the beauty of families that Louisa May Alcott praises in Little Women ("I think families are the most beautiful things in all the world!")? Without the poetry of the home, life degenerates to the survival of the fittest and the most barbaric. Read all …

No-Go Zones My *ss

Pardon the low level of discourse, but I truly wonder what Lord Acton, Winston Churchill, Lord Nelson -- let alone Hilaire Belloc, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Chesterton -- would say if they heard of "No-Go Zones" set aside for Mohammadens in ENGLAND.

If they tried this in the United States, I can guarantee it would be like catnip to any yahoos as well as men who love freedom within shouting range who, as Americans, will not put up with such affronts and restrictions: Islamic extremists have created "no-go" areas across Britain.

If those made blind by multiculturalist balderdash and naïveté do not awaken soon to what is taking place, the likes of James Pinkerton's Shire Strategy will no longer be a possible solution, given the rabbitine proliferation of West-hating Mohammadens in our midst.

UPDATE: Robert Spencer reports "Muslims call for 'no-go' CoE bishop to resign," by Caroline Gammell in the Telegraph

A Watchful 12 Days of Christmas

Robert Spencer gives a tidy state-of-the-Shire-in-danger essay in Merry Christmas, Infidel:

Jihadists might desire to sow this terror during one of the holiest seasons of the Christian year to emphasize that their conflict with the non-Muslim West is, as they see it, a holy struggle. Also notable in this connection may be the warnings we see from Islamic clerics every year: do not participate in the infidels’ festivities, do not wish them holiday greetings, do not endorse in any way what Muslim hardliners see as celebrations of infidelity and the rejection of God. An article posted recently on the website of the Khalid Bin Al-Walid Mosque in Toronto asks pointedly: “How can we bring ourselves to congratulate or wish people well for their disobedience to Allah? Thus expressions such as: Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Birthday, Happy New Year, etc, are completely out.”

Not unimportant in Christmas threats also is the fact that Osama bin Laden and other jihad terrorists not only see the War On Terror as a war against Islam; they also see it as a war being waged on behalf of Christianity. Jihadists routinely refer to the American armies in Iraq and Afghanistan as “Crusaders.” Al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman Al-Zawahiri, who most frequently issues the organization’s communiqués, uses this term frequently; in an October 2006 message he issued a rather typical exhortation: “I urge you, in [the name of] the duty of jihad, which is incumbent upon every Muslim, to hurry and pursue martyrdom in order to kill the Crusaders and the Zionists.” Adam Gadahn, aka “Azzam the American,” the first American indicted for treason since World War II and a prominent Al-Qaeda operative, in a September 2006 videotape introduced by Al-Zawahiri himself, spent a considerable amount of time criticizing Christian theology.

All this puts the heirs of Judeo-Christian civilization in a peculiar position. Western leaders have been anxious to avoid the appearance that this is a religious conflict, while the other side seems avid above all to portray it as such. Westerners have been in the process of discarding Christianity, only to find it identified by Islamic jihadists as the most objectionable aspect of their way of life. For non-Christians as well as Christians in the West, this highlights the fact that the war on terror is a struggle over values -- and it is Judeo-Christian values such as the freedom of conscience and the equality of dignity of all people that are most objectionable to the jihadists.

In order to win, we cannot simply fight against the jihadists. We must be contending for something, and in the Judeo-Christian tradition there is a great deal to be proud of and defend. This Christmas, as the threats continue, that’s something to ponder.

Christmas - From An American Jew

Jack Englehard offers a splendid reflection on Christmas in America from a Jewish perspective at Family Security Matters:

Up and down the street where I live, half the homes are lit up with Christmas trees, the other half with menorahs. The days are good and the nights are silent. Most of the time we can’t tell the difference between Christians and Jews. We’re too busy being just plain old Americans.

You have Christmas. We have Chanukah. You have Easter. We have Passover. Does this separate us? No, this unites us, for together, this land is our land.

If this sounds corny, well it is.

However, I am offended. Across this nation, in cities, towns, villages and school districts, Christians are being told that they cannot celebrate Christmas openly. Here, there and everywhere, Christians are being sent into hiding if they want to sing carols, display nativity scenes, herald the Ten Commandments, or praise Jesus. Even Santa is not kosher.

I am Jewish, and Jesus is not my God…so why am I so offended at what I take to be an agenda of persecution against Christians?

This is not a scholarly approach, so let me simply say that American Christianity is a marvel, a near miracle of tolerance and, better yet, loving-kindness. American Christians do love their neighbors as themselves. I know this from the pavements I walk, the streets I drive, the sandlots where I root for the home team. I am free to visit your church, and you would be most welcome in my synagogue. Read all …

Cassandra - B. Gabriel

Lebanese Maronite Christian Brigitte Gabriel puts forth her message. Her website is here. [HT: IBA]

Democracy and the Shire

Mark Gordon at "Suicide of the West" sums up what is loved and yearned for, as well as what is hated and loathed, about the United States of America, offering a fine quote by presidential hopeful and former POW, John McCain.

Lee Smith, on the other hand, in The Weekly Standard (6/26/06) reminds us that the "Arab habit of blaming everything on the United States, or Israel, or the West in general, strikes many observers as evidence of faulty logical processes, or an abdication of basic political responsibility. But it is also part of an unspoken ceasefire pact--a reminder among Arabs that they have agreed not to attack each other and will focus their energies on external enemies in order to keep the peace at home." [HT: Daniel Pipes] This is the truest indicator of the nature of Islam in realpolitik -- recourse to the "lowest common denominator" of scapegoating as social cohesion.

May the day never come when America relinquishes and extinguishes the "moral power of American ideals" that rest squarely on the faith and morals of the Christian faith. For if it does, then our greatest foe will truly have conquered, and all that is best about the Shire will be lost.