This weekend I ran off the delightful old Terry Gilliam film Time Bandits for the gels. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it and I had forgotten how really rather orthodox it is on the subjects of omnipotence, good, evil and free will. The film provoked a surprisingly rewarding dinner conversation on the subject of God, the devil, creation and temptation, with the seven year old, of all people, suddenly piping up about Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness.
Meanwhile, the latest social crisis at the eldest gel’s school seems to revolve around the fact that it has suddenly become en vogue there for the kiddies to drop f-bombs all over the place and she won’t do it. She came to me in tears with the report that she was being mocked for her primness by her little friends and that when she told them that Dad didn’t let her speak that way, “they looked at [her] like she was from a different universe.”
Well, sorry, but like Sir Joseph Porter, KCB, I haven’t any sympathy for ill-bred taunts. I told her to stick to her guns and try to ignore the criticism. (On the other hand, I also headed her off from emailing her teacher to complain on the grounds that nobody likes a snitch.) Anyway, she may as well start getting used to it because there are any number of current social conventions of which I don’t approve that she’s going to have to face in the near future.
Speaking of such things, Mink Monica emailed me the link to Father Z’s reaction to The One’s speech at Notre Dame. A sample:
Controversy insured high reportage. Thousands of cheering young fans, products of the education they just received, blithely drank up their obviously deserved praise. Gray-haired veteran liberals whose skills were honed by a real education and decades of progressivist trench warfare provided the spear-carriers of a more authentic ecclesiastical establishment, a Church establishment as it truly ought to be if we lived in a more just world. A few pathetic court-jesters shouted incoherently during the President’s speech. They provided the students with some entertainment and gave the Doctoratus in Chief his chance to reveal his patient benevolence by means of a prepared one liner.
Who needs The Tudors? This was like watching Henry suborn the English Church away from the interference of Rome.
Read the rest, but remember to don your asbestos suit first.
I worry. Prior to the actual day, I thought Notre Dame had thoroughly put its foot in it and that here was a chance to score a victory for our side. Instead, between The One and the fawning MSM coverage, Orthodoxy came off looking shrill, silly and, well, like it was from a different universe. Father Z sounds the trumpet for a rally, and certainly Fathers McA and S at my own church have been doing the same, but the question arises: What exactly does one do? What exactly can one do? Is there really anything other than fighting local skirmishes like the ones I’m engaged in on behalf of the gels? That strikes me as nothing more than a rearguard action, a holding of the citadel while the barbarian hordes swarm around it.
What is the strategic offensive plan? Is there one? Personally, I’m not sure that this is a fight that can be won, not until popular culture becomes so appalled with its own decline and decay that it voluntarily abandons its current ways. Don’t think this can’t happen – the Victorian Era was a direct response to the excesses of the Regency prior to it. But this is still an awfully slim reed on which to lean.
The Port Stands At Your Elbow 
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May 25, 2009 at 9:51 pm
The Abbot
Like The Tudors, but without so much bodice-ripping. God knows it could have used some.
My plan, as an alumnus, is simple. Each request for money will be met with a letter back saying “I will be happy to contribute when Fr. Jenkins resigns and the new president proclaims his fidelity to the Church and to his bishop.”
Truly, this is the only thing ND’s administration understands. Money.
May 25, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Mrs. Peperium
” I thought Notre Dame had thoroughly put its foot in it and that here was a chance to score a victory for our side.”
We did.
Disregard the media coverage.
Faithful alumni got a good (but truly painful) lesson. Current Notre Dame students fought back, peacefully. Catholic writers wrote long and thoughtful pieces about this being evidence of the very real decline of Catholic education. Cardinals, Archbishops, bishops and priests made public statements condemning Notre Dame and President Obama’s pro-abort legislation. Mary Ann Glendon withdrew from being on the same stage with him.
This not a victory?
Boy are you hard to please.
Besides, you’re forgetting the own discussion you had with Mr. Howe over at FLG’s where you basically made his ACLU/freedom of speech arguments look completely reactionary. As well as asinine.
May 26, 2009 at 1:52 am
Robbo
My Dear Mrs. P –
You will, of course, forgive me. As I am sure you are aware, it’s very difficult to abandon the redoubt only to discover that the siege of the citadel also is being assisted by turncoats within.
Abbot –
In general, I am favor of bodice-ripping. However, I have never given a penny to the Glorious People’s Soviet of Middletown and have yet seen any bodice-ripping that would interest me in the least. (In fact, of the bodice-ripping I have seen, my reaction has generally been, “Pray, Madam, put it back. Put it BACK.”)
May 26, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Mrs. Peperium
Robbo,
1. As an ex-Episcopalian did you EVER in this whole ND brouhaha ever hear one Roman Catholic clergy member utter
“The Holy Spirit is doing something new here.”
(If your answer is no, head out to Father M’s tobacco shop, purchase a one 1lb sack of “University Flake” or what Mr. P is now ordering as it’s Father M’s blend, “Yachtsman” a nice pipe, some pipe cleaners and that little thingummy that cleans out the bowl, return to your office, close the door, put your feet up on your desk, light your pipe and thank God He had the Holy Spirit give you the grace to become Catholic.)
2. A turncoat in the Citadel? Please, if only Father Jenkins were that respectable. He’s not. Basically he’s Esau of the Old Testament. Esau sold his birthright to his brother for a pot of red lentils. What was Esau’s final fate? His descendants were obliterated. Now Father Jenkins is a Jesuit so we must not be foolish and rule out entirely that he could have a natural descendant or three, but for the sake of the future of Catholicism in America, let’s just stick to Father Jenkins’ spiritual heirs. They too shall be obliterated because basically,he’s not passing on to them Faith that shall help them withstand the trials and tribulations of our time here.
3. Faithful and more importantly, respectable Catholics have long criticized ND saying it wasn’t Catholic any longer. Well, here’s where you being a former heretic comes in handy. You’ve been on the other side – the side that is incapable of reform within -only more schisms. But you are now on the side that can bring about reform from within. Father Jenkins ripped off the mask and revealed himself. Be glad. This is clarity. We want clarity. Will he be fired? That’s ND’s decision. Does ND want to become Catholic again. That’s up to the governors of the school or whoever and the alumni. We have nothing to do with it. It’s their battle. Our job is to avoid the joint like the plague-ridden house it is. If the HAZMAT team does get called in and the place is thoroughly fumigated, then hey contemplate putting it on the list of prospective colleges for your gels.
If not, move on.
4. Our battle is not to save the Church but to allow the Church to save us.
May 26, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Mrs. Peperium
Totally forgot that as a Catholic you can do something Protestants can’t because they think it’s what? Heretical. Unbiblical? Something like that…
5. You can add an intercessory prayer to your prayer life on behalf of Notre Dame. Father Corby of the Irish Brigade went on to become the President of ND. Ask him to work his magic -little humor there for your Protestant readers.
Hey, the man was at Gettysburg. He’s more than up to the task.
May 26, 2009 at 2:22 pm
The Abbot
Mrs. P,
Fr. Jenkins is not a Jesuit; ND is run by the C.S.C. Order. But otherwise, I largely agree.
May 26, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Mrs. Peperium
Abbot, does this mean Jenkins could have 8 natural children?
May 27, 2009 at 2:05 am
The Abbot
Quite possibly. Wasn’t my turn to watch him. 🙂
May 27, 2009 at 8:01 am
stillers
Cheer up Robbo, for the worst is yet to come! 🙂
May 27, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Mrs. Peperium
Here you go Toots – another victory (from Damian Thompson):
Archbishop Vincent Nichols has attacked Tony Blair for his “extraordinary” attempt to lecture the Pope on the subject of homosexuality, adding that the former PM is “not a good guide to the teachings of the Catholic Church”.
His intervention is in sharp contrast to the warm, even cosy, relationship between Blair and Archbishop’s House during the period of Nichols’s predecessor, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor. It will make it very difficult for the Cardinal to join Blair’s Faith Foundation as an adviser, as has been mooted.
In an interview with Dominic Lawson, Archbishop Nichols also indicates that he has little interest in changing the law to allow Catholics to marry the heir to the throne. It is “not a grievance that Catholics carry heavily,” he says. The position of the Queen and the monarchy would have to be handled very sensitively because it was “one of the key components of the English identity”.
These words can be read as a sharp rebuff to Gordon Brown’s attempts to win the Catholic vote by promising to sweep away the Act of Settlement if he is re-elected.
Here is the key passage from Lawson’s interview, whose significance The Sunday Times seems to have missed:
In this context, it was notable that Tony Blair waited until after he had resigned as Her Majesty’s first minister before he converted to Catholicism, although for years he had attended Catholic mass. Last month Blair gave an interview in which he questioned the Pope’s line on homosexuality, and said that Catholic leaders should be “rethinking” the issue. What does Nichols think about Blair lecturing the church in this way, so soon after joining?
“I think it was extraordinary. I also think his political instincts, which are very strong, are not a good guide to the teachings of the Catholic Church, and a bit more reflection is needed as to the relationship between political instinct in general – and certainly his – and the nature of the truth that the church tries to put forward . . . Maybe he lacks a bit of experience in Catholic life.”
This is a much stronger put-down than Archbishop Nichols’s earlier criticism of Tony Blair. It is an indication that – at long last – the leadership of the Catholic Church in England and Wales is putting serious distance between itself and the former PM. Nichols, unlike the Cardinal, is highly unlikely to invite Blair to deliver a lecture on morality in Westminster Cathedral.
It’s a good thing for Blair that he became a Catholic under the last Archbishop of Westminster, not this one. Something tells me that Vincent Nichols would have demanded a few more assurances of good faith – such as public disavowal of his support for abortion – before admitting him into the Church.