On this day I’m thinking more of England than of her patron himself.  I suppose this is because I’m still a rookie Catholic.  It’s not a question of overcoming some previously-held Protestant scruples, since orthodox Anglicanism does not consider veneration of the saints to be idolatry, it’s just that such practice is not natural to me and is something I have to be concentrating on in order to remember it.

At any rate, I am thinking of England.  Poor, poor England.  She’s had the stuffing kicked out of her by two world wars and 60-odd years of socialism.  She’s being demographically inundated by immigrants.  She’s culturally exhausted, socially and morally adrift and sinking into geopolitical irrelevancy.  I very much fear that as a pillar of Western Civilisation, she is doomed.

But she was once THE pillar of Western Civilisation, at her best reaching a height that has never been surpassed or reproduced, and for that, she must always be honored.