The League of Bearded Catholics

Reasons to Bury the TV

Okay, this isn't especially egregious, but it struck me as so ludicrous that I laughed myself into a coughing jag (having recently recovered from a bad sinus bug);

Once in a while I sit down and attempt to soothe my aching synapses with a round of channel surfing. Last night I came across Dancing With the Stars just in time to hear the hostess say (with a straight face) something very like, "We'll get back to our competition after the break, but first the Macy's Stars Dancers and their special tribute to Haitian Earthquake Victims..."

This reminds me of why I don't watch much television.

Then there was the Fox News segment called Around the World in 80 Seconds, wherein we were privileged to witness (among other items) a Chinese army training accident with a hand grenade and a cute Japanese girl at a Tokyo subway station dancing to "Hey, Mickey". Slow world news day, I plum reckon. Where did they get the Chinese training snafu? Does the People's Republic release military blooper reels? (laughing)... Here is where Wen Zhang's parachute malfunctions and he wets himself. Priceless!

You can imagine the guys in the production meeting... "Okay, we have 80 seconds to sum up the news of the whole planet, what have you got?".

Then again, if there is intelligent life out there, and they haven't already given up monitoring our signals in disgust, the two segments in question might at least convince them that we are indeed "mostly harmless"... we can't handle even the most rudimentary hand-lobbed explosives. We just wanna dance!

Mel-Adjusted

 
 

From our "Six Degress of Trepidation" file, Joseph Pearce - writing at the St. Austin Review - tells of Mel Gibson's recent recommendation that politicians "read Hilaire Belloc".

A capital idea, but with a whole laundry list of caveats. For starters, one hopes that Mr. Gibson's endorsement will frighten fewer people away from Belloc than they will attract... but Pearce reckons that some British pols may actually be giving Belloc's ideas an ear, which is a little scary in itself. He uses a term I had (thankfully) not heard before - "neo-Distributism" - to describe some of the results of this new found interest. One can imagine all sorts of ghastly ideas being wrapped in a term like "neo-Distributism", just as the word "conservative" has lately been hammered into the most bizarre and fanciful shapes;

By jove, gentlemen, the economic ideas of this Belloc fellow might be something we can make into the Next Big Thing... provided we can polish him up a bit... bring his concepts up to date and make them, shall we say, friendlier to big business and to more modern and advanced forms of statecraft...

*shudder*

I don't know that I care very much whether or not politicians read Belloc. I'd rather see him being read by more, you know... people. That might make the politicians nervous, which is how I like my politicians. Nervous and maybe even a little jumpy.

Incidentally, I once had the pleasure of spending a few minutes with Mr. Pearce at the 2008 Chesterton Conference. His enthusiasm for, well... everything, is just infectious.

Attention, Please...

Your 'umble blog master is one of those simple-minded (or absent minded) types who loses track of things, and who, when he realizes they are lost, immediately begins patting his pockets and looking under stacks of neglected mail in hopes of finding them.

Organizers, both the paper kind and the electronic, are a tremendous idea... but then one has to remember to use them, and then remember where one left them.

The upshot of all this is just a simple request; if you have aksed for a League Chapter Certificate and have not yet received it, please e-mail me (contact link in right-hand column). I will set our staff to work and will have the coveted certificates in the post, ummm... post haste.

I have mailed a few, but others are waiting, I know. Also, I have a fresh, warm batch of membership packets on the way.

By the way, our own local group is very near to our first, informal meeting of the unofficial Special Task Force of the Fact-Finding Team of the ad-hoc Membership Committee of the Northwest Arkansas Chapter of The League of Bearded Catholics. More info soon, here and on the Facebook page.

Many thanks, and May Your Beards Grow Ever Longer!

Canine Constitutional

 

I've been re-reading C.S. Lewis' Surprised by Joy, and found a couple of passages that resonated as I walked the neighborhood with my faithful mini-schnauzer, Prince. A cold rain had just stopped, and the wind roared in the tops of the bare oaks.

I have realized for some time that Sloth is probably the cardinal sin that rests closest to my heart... that I have been for most of my life far too fond of comfort and too prone to inertia. Lent gives one a chance to meet these things head on, and I found some inspiration in a character that Lewis describes from his college days, his friend A.K. Hamilton Jenkin;

...Jenkin seemed to be able to enjoy everything; even ugliness.I learned from him that we should attempt a total surrender to whatever atmosphere was offering itself at the moment; in a squalid town, to seek out those very places where its squalor rose to grimness and almost grandeur, on a dismal day to find the most dismal and dripping wood, on a windy day to seek the windiest ridge. There was no Betjemannic irony about it; only a serious, yet gleeful, determination to rub one's nose in the very quiddity of each thing, to rejoice in its being (so magnificently) what it was.

This came back to me as I ventured out on this very blustery, damp and cold afternoon to walk old Prince, a dog who seems to fit almost exactly Lewis' description of his own homely hound, an Irish terrier named Tim;

Tim's society did not amount to much. It had long since been agreed between him and me that he should not be expected to accompany me on walks. I went a good deal further than he liked, for his shape was already that of a bolster, or even a barrel, on four legs... By now he and I were less like master and dog than like two friendly visitors in the same hotel. We met constantly, passed the time of day, and parted with much esteem to follow our own paths. I think he had one friend of his own species, a neighboring red setter; a very respectable, middle-aged dog. Perhaps a good influence; for poor Tim, though I loved him, was the most undisciplined, unaccomplished, and dissipated-looking creature that ever went on four legs. He never exactly obeyed you; he sometimes agreed with you.

Prince (now about 13 years old) genuinely enjoys our walks, but only to a point. He refuses to go further than a mile, and even toward the end of that, he slows to a very leisurely stroll. Fortunately, a mile constitutes exactly one turn around our loop and back to our front door. After that, I can push on alone.

Our neighborhood is laid out on the Hobbiton plan, the road rolling and meandering through large, openly-spaced lots (built mostly about thirty to forty years ago), with houses nestled well back among the tall oaks. Happily, the topography makes it very unlikely that further development will encroach on our little enclave. It is a wonderful place in which to walk. Like many spots in the Ozarks, though, the scenery consists of woods rather than wide vistas. I'm grateful for the old oaks that ring our place, but they have made our telescope practically useless.

I'm determined to walk more often, but I'll need to make some prudent preparations to pull that off; my favorite hat is too heavy and hot for the summer months, and I have no decent rain gear. I don't mind some discomfort - hope, in fact, to go in search of some discomfort - but I'm not out for a soaking, or a roasting, either.

A good walk also happens to bring a person to just precisely that state of mild fatigue that is perfectly cured by a frosty pint of something.

The Paradoxes of American Freedom

British anthropologist Tristram Riley-Smith looks at the state of American society through the prism of individual liberty in his new book The Cracked Bell: America and the Afflictions of Liberty.

The diagnosis, tentatively put forward, is that this thread of positivistic energetic passionate advocacy for liberty, which can at times become like a hyper-individualism, is what appears to be causing so many of the paradoxes.

I haven't read the book, and I'm not familiar with the author, so I can't say to what extent he gets things right or wrong. I would like to give it a read, though.

It seems to me that Liberty in the American sense initially meant something more like respect for the individual conscience, but has turned into the practical worship of the individual will ("conscience" having been tossed on the rubbish heap of history with outmoded concepts like "honor" and "self-sacrifice"). The conscience was implicitly informed by some common religious sensibility, but no longer.

Not that the American system was ever very close to the ideal, but at least the ideal was there in a foggy sort of way.

Then again, the sphere of liberty seems to have shrunk considerably in material terms. We have excessive moral license, but (thanks to heavy taxation) less and less real ownership of things like land and other productive property. It's as if a license for immorality is offered as a kind of sop to take our minds off the loss of self determination in material terms.

The definition of the Servile State is as follows: -

" That arrangement of society in which so consider-
able a number of the families and individuals are con-
strained by positive law to labour for the advantage of
other families and individuals as to stamp the whole
community with the mark of such labour we call THE
SERVILE STATE."

Hilaire Belloc, The Servile State

Somehow...

... I think G.K. Chesterton would appreciate the inside-out logic of this story of a man in Florida who was recently sentenced to 15 years after he was caught trying to break into prison.

The main character in Chesterton's Manalive! is known to break into his own home, but prison is another thing.

That is just so much like people. We are created free, and become slaves to sin and our passions, and then Christ sets us free again... and we waste so much of our lives trying to break back into the prison of our selves.

"These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized.". - "Red",  in The Shawshank Redemption,

Things to Love About the Internet, Episode 1

Here is a video of American bluegrass music, joyfully played by Chinese musicians, which I found on a German website (one of our International Leaguers!).

Soon We're All Government Workers

Only a brief post today, as I am meeting J. Harold Bootstrap downtown for emergency haircuts and beer, and then an urgent stop at the tobacconist.

The two of us figure that barbers and hairdressers may soon be rolled into the National Health plan, and then who knows how long one will be forced to wait for an open chair? Months? It may be that I can persuade my current barber to open a kind of speakeasy or black market shop... I have the prefect spot in my basement, but the big challenge would be security, of course.

Then again, perhaps a travelling operation would be best. Maybe a rogue barber van... sort of a Pirate Snip. By gum, there is something appealing about the idea...

Distributism From The People

A good discussion on Distributism over at What's Wrong With The World, though I think the author, Steve Burton, makes a mistake. He assumes that the only way to achieve a wider distribution of productive property is for some entity - probably a government - to force it to happen.

I've chewed on this question for years; just how does Distributism come about? I decided long ago that it could never be established by force, could never work at all if imposed from the outside. It would have to be the result of a long social movement, wherein individuals embrace Distributist philosophy and take action based on their beliefs... by living on productive land, or running a shop (and living over it), growing more food and making more goods. Also, by buying more locally made and locally grown goods.

Can that really happen? Who knows? But it's a cinch that a Distributism that is forced on people will not be Distributism. It's down to that whole "hearts and minds" thing.

"Did you ever know an Irishman who didn't puff and blow?"

The above quote, according to the 1999 book The Backward Glance (Dr. Ronald Bresland),  was C.S. Lewis' response to some complaints about his loud breathing as he was working in a radio recording studio. At times we may forget for a moment that C.S. Lewis was an Irish lad. I do hope he and St. Patrick can find time for a pint together, before the day is out.

A day late and half-a-Punt short, but Happy Feast of St. Patrick, y'all!

St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer

I bind unto myself today
The strong Name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same
The Three in One and One in Three.

I bind this today to me forever
By power of faith, Christ’s incarnation;
His baptism in Jordan river,
His death on Cross for my salvation;
His bursting from the spicèd tomb,
His riding up the heavenly way,
His coming at the day of doom
I bind unto myself today.

I bind unto myself the power
Of the great love of cherubim;
The sweet ‘Well done’ in judgment hour,
The service of the seraphim,
Confessors’ faith, Apostles’ word,
The Patriarchs’ prayers, the prophets’ scrolls,
All good deeds done unto the Lord
And purity of virgin souls.

I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the star lit heaven,
The glorious sun’s life giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea
Around the old eternal rocks.

I bind unto myself today
The power of God to hold and lead,
His eye to watch, His might to stay,
His ear to hearken to my need.
The wisdom of my God to teach,
His hand to guide, His shield to ward;
The word of God to give me speech,
His heavenly host to be my guard.

Against the demon snares of sin,
The vice that gives temptation force,
The natural lusts that war within,
The hostile men that mar my course;
Or few or many, far or nigh,
In every place and in all hours,
Against their fierce hostility
I bind to me these holy powers.

Against all Satan’s spells and wiles,
Against false words of heresy,
Against the knowledge that defiles,
Against the heart’s idolatry,
Against the wizard’s evil craft,
Against the death wound and the burning,
The choking wave, the poisoned shaft,
Protect me, Christ, till Thy returning.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the Name,
The strong Name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One and One in Three.
By Whom all nature hath creation,
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
Salvation is of Christ the Lord.