Arthur Cardinal Hinsley, Archbishop of Westminster, was such a strong voice against the Axis that when he died in 1943, King George VI expressed frustration that protocol prevented his attendance at the Requiem. When King George V and Queen Mary had attended the Requiem for the exiled Empress Eugenie at the Benedictine abbey in Farnborough in 1920, a … Read more
The birth of Prince George Alexander Louis stirred up much celebrating, save for a few curmudgeons like Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party, who rather excessively predicted that the little prince would “suck the blood” of the Russian people by the middle of this century. Choice of the name George was particularly gratifying … Read more
Of all God’s creatures, those most amiable must include koalas, pandas, dolphins and penguins, only the last two of which are aquatic. If one goes with most evolutionists, penguins used to fly and flying would have made it easier to escape their chief enemy the leopard seal, but their ability to swim made flying too … Read more
Shakespeare’s Henry V offers this advice: “This story shall the good man teach his son….” Such counsel is urgent today, when children will learn little reliably of their history in schools, and so are all the more dependent on good souls at home who will teach them. Children being children, will especially be fascinated by … Read more
Among the singularities of the French monarchy was the tradition of having Scottish bodyguards. Scottish history has not been riddled with pacifism, and the Scots along with the fiery Castilians, were used as mercenaries as early as Charlemagne. An “Auld Alliance” between Scotland and France was sealed in 1295, and in the dark war days … Read more
When our Lord says turn the other cheek, He speaks of a spiritual strategy to humble the self and then perhaps, to win other souls to Him. Not all the proud are shamed by humility and it seems pretty clear that those who smote the One who offered them salvation did not turn their hearts … Read more
Years ago, an Oxford don, not rare as an eccentric but singular in his way of being one, kept in his rooms a small menagerie including a mongoose to whom he fed mice for tea, and an eagle that flew one day into the cathedral and tried to mate with the brass eagle-shaped lectern which … Read more
What God knows is not necessarily what God wills. Each pope is guaranteed the protection of the Holy Spirit from fallible definitions of faith and morals, but to suppose that each pope is there because God wants him there, including the unworthy successors of Peter, comes close to the unforgivable blasphemy against the Third Person … Read more
Capital punishment does not inspire roaring humor in healthy minds, so wit on the subject tends to be sardonic. Two of the most famous examples, of course, are: “In this country it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others,” and “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows … Read more
Connecting with people you’d like to have known is a nice hobby, and I can claim to be just three handshakes from Abraham Lincoln and, remarkably, only five documented handshakes from George Washington, which is rare since as president he preferred to bow. Recently at the opera during an intermission of “Turandot,” I put several … Read more
Save for those who ski or take vacations in the south, January and February are not the most charming months and they did not exist at all on the oldest Roman calendar, which had only ten months. Winter was a temporal vacuum and the less said about it the better. Only in the eighth century before Christ were they … Read more
It is ironic that the scintillating Graeco-Syrian Saint Luke was martyred, according to tradition in Boeotia, a humid and swampy part of central Greece whose people were said to be not interested in philosophy or much of anything beyond their uneventful daily lives. That may have been the propaganda of the superior Athenians, who caricatured … Read more
The star that Jean-Paul Sartre once was, doyen of his day’s incompletely educated intellectuals, has not quietly faded the way splashy names often do in the generation after they die. His star has astonishingly imploded. Some echoes remain, for he was not devoid of a way with words, nor was he without rays of light … Read more
Of the 427 weddings in my present parish during the past eleven years (I have lost count of all the others), the band—for want of a better word—at the most recent reception was the loudest I can remember. Conversation was impossible, so some of a certain age complained loudly but not loudly enough and others … Read more
The janitors, doormen, and apartment superintendents in my parish and I have a particular fraternal bond, for we are situated to observe the private lives of many. They are called upon at inconvenient hours, to do tasks and handle emergencies, uncongenial to those in some other lines of work. The term “janitor” is related to … Read more
There are commentators on the sports channels whose numbing dialogues would never be confused with the Algonquin Round Table. These are the so-called Monday Morning Quarterbacks. Some historians quarterback that way. Pope Pius XII, hailed in his lifetime as a protector of persecuted people, has suffered in reputation from lax minds who never exercised themselves … Read more
Monsignor Ronald Knox, probably the most inspired preacher and apologist of the twentieth century, wrote an essay in 1928 satirizing some skeptical Biblical literary critics, in which he used their methods to “prove” that the real author of Tennyson’s In Memoriam was Queen Victoria. Many who doubt the plausibility of the Scriptures are gullible about hoaxes. I don’t just mean … Read more
In a frequently misquoted line from the Life of Reason, George Santayana said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Cultural amnesia, helpless or deliberate, does enable people to rewrite history without compunction, and it also makes it easy for others to believe the fiction as fact, or to suppose in … Read more
Like Proust’s “episode of the madeleine” which occasioned an involuntary flood of memory, I remembered a flush of things when I chanced upon a Coolidge-Dawes campaign button among items in one of my grandmother’s souvenir boxes. Charles G. Dawes was a fitting companion for the classically-trained Coolidge, whose eloquence has been ignored by jaded historians. … Read more
Each generation typically gets angry at the previous one out of impatience with the flaws that youth sees in the aged. This impatience is animated by a sense of superiority which, if unfounded in fact, is what C.S. Lewis called “chronological arrogance.” Within the many fine phrases that embroider the confidence of the Second Vatican … Read more
