Stephen Roney's Blog, page 271

Immigrants Dislike PC Culture

Speaking last night with a first-generation immigrant from Iran. She has nothing good to say about Canada or the West or Canadian culture. But she also strongly dislikes political correctness. She laments the pervasive climate of censorship.

Her view is that it is due to Canadians having too few real problems.

An interesting thought.'Od's Blog: Catholic and Clear Grit comments on the passing parade.

At All Times in the Mind's Eye

Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depths of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

--W.B. Yeats

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For My Brother Gerry

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The Return of Optimism?

One never knows; but it seems to me that Boris Johnson has the seed of greatness in him.

It puts me in mind of the nineteen-eighties. Since the retirements of the last great leaders from the Second War—Churchill, DeGaulle, Tito—we seemed to be dealing only with mediocrities, and there was a general sense of decline in the West. Then Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Pope John Paul II arose at about the same time. Each was transformational. They ended the Keynesian economic ideology, they ended the Cold War, they ended the constant disruptive strikes. More importantly, they changed the public tone: from one of “malaise,” as Jimmy Carter termed it, and the assumption of inevitable decline, to one of strength and optimism.

It looks as if we now again have two such leaders, in Trump and Johnson. Even if you hate Trump, he looks transformational. He has re-introduced a relentless optimism about America.

Johnson seems able to do the same in Britain. He has the right tone, and the right manner. His electoral win already looks transformational in electoral terms; and Brexit will be transformational again. The sense is of entering a new age.'Od's Blog: Catholic and Clear Grit comments on the passing parade.

Little Tree

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid

look the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing
"Noel Noel"

-- e.e. cummings

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Happy Happy Joy Joy

Grinning Mary
My parish priest said something shocking in his sermon today: “If you do not have joy, you do not have Jesus in you.”

There is of course cause for joy in the Christian life. Things turn out well in the end. But this statement is directly against the gospel. Jesus says, instead, “blessed are those who mourn.”

The priest cited Mary as our model here: how she greeted joyfully the news of her pregnancy.

There is no trace of this in the actual gospel; only submission: “behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done unto me according to thy word.”

The obvious likelihood is that the news was shocking and terrifying. Being pregnant without a husband was punishable by being stoned to death. This is important for understanding Mary as a moral model. Being moral is not supposed to be the easy, carefree option.

Yeats captured the enormity of it:

The terror of all terrors that I bore
The Heavens in my womb.

Mary is revered as Mater Dolorosa—Our Lady of Sorrows.

Then the priest cited St. Paul as his authority. But Saint Paul was not so big on joy either. He said we must all, like him, “work out our salvation in fear and trembling.”

It was striking to me, on a trip to Bulgaria and Greece, to walk through museums and compare the pagan Greek art to the early Christian icons. The pagan figures generally grinned with vacant eyes; familiar to art historians as “the archaic smile.” the Christian saints always looked deeply sorrowful.

The archaic smile, shown on a sphinx
The archaic smile, shown on a dying soldier.
The core message is the need for repentance.

I fear this priest has been infected by the same “I’m OK, you’re OK” theology as the Christmas song “At This Table.”




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Clapton on White Christmas

For Advent'Od's Blog: Catholic and Clear Grit comments on the passing parade.

How Can I Still Be Catholic?

The corpse of Pope Formosus, exhumed to face charges of corruption.
My left coast comrade Darius, brought up Catholic, has recently fled to the Unitarians.

The reason is clerical abuse.

“What do you think?” he asks. “Do you think it is all made up?”

No, it is certainly not all made up.

Another friend, raised Catholic, became Muslim for the same reason. He too wondered how I could stay Catholic.

All of this scandal is deeply disturbing, but it says nothing about the faith. It is not an argument to leave the church. It is pure ad hominem.

There must be some special punishment for such clerics in the next world. Dante puts them in the eighth circle of Hell.

But note that: Dante knew very well of corrupt clerics, corrupt bishops, corrupt cardinals, corrupt popes, in his day.

And the New Testament knew well. That’s who the Pharisees were. They are the gospel’s chief villains.

So this is no new thing.

Some of the worst human beings I have encountered have been Catholic priests.

Nor is it a peculiarly Catholic thing. I was educated, undergrad and grad, mostly by Protestant ministers: United Church and Baptist. I doubt that many of them believed in the existence of God.

I once explained to my friend Xerxes, prominent in the United Church, that the reason I had not become a priest was that when I was choosing a career I was not yet sure enough of my faith.

“Why would that matter?” he asked.

It is simply human nature, inevitable, that bad people will masquerade as good people. How could it not be so? If they are very bad people, they have no moral restraints compelling them to tell the truth. And pretending to be devout is an example of the general principle, that convicted liars lie 180 degrees off True North.

If my friends really imagine the situation is going to be better among the Unitarian clergy, or among Muslim imams, they are terribly naïve. And bound for a cruel awakening.

All that said, where then does one find good people? Where can one find the truly spiritual?

Jesus tells us plainly enough, and in detail:

Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…


'Od's Blog: Catholic and Clear Grit comments on the passing parade.

Christmas in the Trenches

For Advent:






It may be wrong to politicize this, but I will. Notice that it is religion that draws them together. This puts the lie to the common slander that religion causes wars. 
No, this war and the next was caused by "heathen heart that puts her trust/In reeking tube and iron shard." And it is their common Christian faith reminds the soldiers of how wrong it all is.
Another comment: it is no surprise that the finest rendition of this song is by a Canadian artist.
The First World War is in a special sense Canada's, Australia's, and New Zealand's war. 
Every little town in Canada has its cenotaph, recording the names of the dead.  It is almost the town's centrepiece. 
It was for the first war that these were erected. 
Every cenotaph, it is true, was later adapted to add the names of those who dies in the Second War, and in Korea, and now in Afghanistan.
But the number of names for the First World War is always far larger. For a much smaller population. The First World War was Canada's biggest war. 
For the UK the Second looms larger because of the Blitz. It was brought home to every family in this literal way. Not so for Canada, or Australia, or New Zealand: it was WWI that was brought home, by the loss of sons, husbands, and fathers.
For the US, of course, the First War was a minor affair compared to the Second: they showed up only in the last year, when the Central Powers were weakened. They actually lost more men in Korea.
So World War One is remembered more vividly in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand than in the two largest English-speaking countries.
Canadians commonly feel we came of age on Vimy Ridge; the Anzacs came of age at Gallipoli. It is we who bear the torch, who hold it high.




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The London Riots

Yesterday there were “rowdy demonstrations” in London, protesting the Conservative election victory.

I, for one, find this deeply sinister.

Public protests are not a good thing, and should be done only with serious justification. They inevitably harm innocent parties: shopkeepers, taxpayers, passersby trying to get somewhere. They easily spiral into violence and destruction of property. They are inherently an offense against public order.

They can at times be justified. The justification is to present an important or urgent issue not otherwise acknowledged.

Given a functioning democracy, a free press, and freedom of speech, such situations should be rare.

It is possible even with a free press for all parties to hold the same position on some issue, and all major media outlets, preventing a full debate. In Canada, a current example that immediately comes to mind is abortion. Another was the Charlottetown Accord, which promised to radically change the constitution without public debate.

Immediately protesting the results of a free election obviously does not meet these criteria. It is the perfect counter-example. It seeks to shut down debate.

And it was an election in which the views protested for seemed fully represented: those opposed to Brexit had a clear choice with the Liberal Democrats. Those who wanted to move to nationalization and to the left had Labour, with an unusually radical platform. Yet, obviously from the signage, it was those who backed Labour and opposed Brexit who were protesting.

They were protesting, then, against democracy. They were agitating for dictatorship. This is where the left has gotten to.

Which raises an eternal problem: how much accommodation must a liberal democracy give to movements that seek to subvert liberal democracy and human rights?

'Od's Blog: Catholic and Clear Grit comments on the passing parade.