Okay, I'm back (for now, at least)

Well, I signed off on my previous post with the words

Enjoy your weekend. I'll be back on Monday, God willing.

but I should have said 'Enjoy the next three weeks', because it turns out that God was not willing! As a result of technical difficulties, I've been off-line for three weeks now. Annoying though that was, it is interesting to consider it while bearing in mind the fact that nothing happens unless God at least wills to tolerate it, and God will not--and neither should we--tolerate any evil unless He foresees averting some greater evil, or procuring some greater good, thereby. And I must say, being deprived of the internet for those three weeks was not without its benefits--it is a good way to start Lent, it let me catch up on other reading, and it provided a small spiritual sacrifice to offer up, and, when it occurs to me what a small, verging on trifling, sacrifice it really is, renewed my sympathy for those undergoing genuine hardships and reminded me of how fortunate I am. And who knows from what greater evils I have been spared by being off-line over that time? In all the vicissitudes of life, such reflections can move us to gratitude for what we might otherwise have borne grudgingly.

So, my internet access is now restored, but by a new mode--and a whole new computer--so expect teething problems, which means that my posting (and commenting, at this and other websites) might still be sporadic at best. On the other hand, I've entered the twenty-first century, going from my slow and, recently, unreliable dial-up connection to a shiny new A.D.S.L. one now, so if all goes well I might be blogging and commenting more than I have been recently. Bear with me, and ... God willing! ... I'll be back on Monday. In the meantime, would someone be so kind as to update me on the major Traditional/S.S.P.X. news items and blog posts of the past few weeks? I've caught up on mainstream happenings by reading that period's CathNews and Vatican Information Service e-mail bulletins, but trawling through three weeks' worth of archives for What Does the Prayer Really Say? and the Angelqueen forum would be too time-consuming. (U.R.L.s for any such stories would be particularly appreciated.)

Reginaldvs Cantvar

26.II.2010

Response to comments at my previous post

For some reason I can't publish comments in the combox for Why we need (hereditary) Monarchy and (all-male) Hierarchy, so here's what I wanted to say:

Thanks for your comments, Louise and Matthias, and I apologise for my tardiness in getting back to you. Between posting that post and now I’ve only been on the internet once (and on that occasion I ran out of time to respond), and then after that last occasion I lost internet access until yesterday. Here's my response (which I drafted while off-line):

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"Cardinal go over to cooees to see what 'dIETRICH rUDD said in his mamby pamby obviously high church Anlgican liberal way ."

I read Mr. Rudd's comments elsewhere, and was unsurprised. As others have pointed out, he's happy to do photo opportunities outside his church but he won't back up the perfectly sound, unobjectionable advice--sound and unobjectionable, one might have hoped, to anyone who professes to be a Christian, or even just to respect the natural law--of his rival. To invert a popular saying, he walks the walk but won't talk the talk. But, as others have also noted, this strategy--and it is not paranoid to expect that the Rudd/Gillard reaction is indeed a planned and co-ordinated strategy by Labor strategists--is a miscalculation, because what father doesn't impart to his children the kind of advice--or even less likely, imparts the contradictory or contrary advice--(if not in precisely the same words) as Mr. Abbott says he imparted?

And you're right to remind us of Mr. Rudd's much-mentioned devotion to the memory and teaching of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (sp?), Matthias. No doubt the late Herr Bonhoeffer would have been in full agreement with Mr. Abbott here, so is one to infer that Mr. Rudd is selective in which elements of Bonhoeffer's morality he professes? Mr. Rudd has been outspoken against economic liberalism, but why does he shy away from confronting sexual libertinism?

"Wow, what a fascinating post, Pole. Lots of good thoughts there."

Thanks Louise; Mrs. Bond's comment really resonated with me, and I thought I'd throw out a few thoughts on the matter.

"Pole, does it injure your argument if I point out that some fathers and kings are dolts?"

Good question. If we think of a State which has not been evangelised, or a State which has been evangelised but has either once held and later rejected, or has never accepted, the Faith, then the fact that a given king is, as you put it, a dolt can be a huge problem. That's one reason why the union of Church and State is such a desirable thing, since it is unlikely that both the respective national Heads of Church and State will be dolts at any given time, and still less likely that both the temporal and spiritual Hierarchies will be composed mostly of dolts at the same time, and if either such unhappy coincidence should occur (e.g. Henrician England), then there is the possibility of recourse to the Universal Primate.* Just as a good parish priest can, to a significant extent, compensate for a doltish father, so can a good national Hierarchy make up for a doltish king.

To sum up, I suppose I would put it this way: An hereditary monarchy (and all-male Hierarchy) can at least sometimes offer the kind of father-figure(s) which human nature rightly craves, whereas other forms of government--legitimate though they can be--can never offer the benefit of a national father-figure (though this lack does not, as I indicated, make them entirely incapable of serving the common good; pure democracy, pure aristocracy, or some mixture of two or more of monarchy, democracy and aristocracy are all permitted by the natural law). (Though of course we know from Revelation that other forms of Church leadership, such as a mixed male-female hierarchy or having no spiritual leaders higher than the level of local pastor, can never be legitimate.)

*Therein is another reason for Catholics to oppose a World State (by whatever name its advocates call it)--a temporal sovereign at the same level (i.e. at the level of the whole human race) as our spiritual sovereign means that, humanly speaking, we could imagine at the universal level the kind of subjugation of Church to (World) State as we saw at the national level in the Protestant (and Greek-Schismatic) countries. (I say 'humanly speaking' because of course we know by Faith that the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Universal Church or the Church of Rome; nevertheless one can imagine great harm being done to the good of souls in such a situation.)

"'twonk" ah yes Twit without kids""

That's a new one to me!

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Enjoy your weekend. I'll be back on Monday, God willing.