End of hiatus

As the reader will no doubt have foregathered, Melancholicus has returned from the western extremities of the United States and is once more ensconced in his wonted abode on the emerald isle. And for those of you who cannot read either Latin or Norwegian, he wishes to announce he is engaged to be married. Yes, he has met the woman of his dreams; although she is not a traditionalist (yet!), she is devout and has a great love for almighty God and His blessed mother. If she’s a Catholic, that means there’s a trad in there somewhere, and Melancholicus shall do his level best in the years ahead to draw said trad out.

Melancholicus’ life had been rather static, changeless and wholly unfulfilling since his departure from the seminary, and despite the fact that he makes a reasonable amount of money, life seemed to him to be going nowhere. And so he started this blog to give vent to his bitterness and frustration. A mere four days after first posting to Infelix Ego, very much by chance, he met the woman to whom he is now engaged, although he never dared imagine at the time that it would come to this!

Almighty God does indeed work, as they say, in mysterious ways, and he often gives their hearts desire to those who love Him when they least expect it.

Owing to the fact that Melancholicus is an Irishman resident in Ireland, and his fiancee an American resident in the U.S., someone must be prepared to uproot themselves and move permanently to the country of the other, if any attempt at married life is to be possible at all.

Accordingly, the wedding shall take place in Ireland (in this church, Deo volente), but our conjugal life shall be transacted in the bride’s home town in the state of Washington. And so Melancholicus shall move to Tacoma, attempt to adjust to permanent residency in the U.S. and try to find a reasonably well-paying job (easier said than done in these times of economic uncertainty) to support his wife and, ultimately, whatever children it may please God to grant us.

He will also have, for the first time in his life, to obtain a mortgage and buy a house, which prospect he finds perfectly terrifying, although he is looking forward finally to the challenge of being paterfamilias in his own domain.

Speaking of children, these will of course be brought up in the knowledge and reverence of Catholic Tradition, which shall include attendance at the Traditional Mass, and they shall be as strangers to the rite known commonly as Novus Ordo.

All this shall not take place for at least another year, since we are not due to tie the knot until July 2009. In the meantime, however, Melancholicus shall continue posting to Infelix Ego on matters of religious and political interest, and on whatever subjects succeed in claiming his passing interest, for as long as time and workload permit him.

For this, to quote Churchill, is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

And let us say once again with the psalmist, A Domino factum est istud, et mirabile in oculis nostris!

The Sacred Heart of Jesus

Today, Friday after the Second Sunday after Pentecost, is the feast of the Sacred Heart, and Melancholicus is abashed to admit that he forgot completely about it, until he was reminded of it on (of all places) an Anglican blog (although these good fellows look pretty Romish in their persuasions).

THE INTROIT

THE thoughts of His Heart are from generation to generation: To deliver their souls from death, and feed them in famine. Ps. Rejoice in the Lord, O ye just: praise becometh the upright.

THE COLLECT

O GOD, Who in the Heart of Thy Son, wounded by our sins, dost mercifully bestow on us infinite treasures of love: grant, we beseech Thee, that whilst we render It the devout homage of our affection, we may also fulfil our duty of worthy satisfaction. Through the same Our Lord.

Melancholicus has a strong devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and so is all the more abashed to have forgotten this holy feast. On this day it is customary for devout souls to make an act of reparation to the Sacred Heart in atonement for all their sins, negligences and offences, and for those of the whole world. It is praiseworthy that this act be accompanied by confession of sins, hearing of holy Mass, and reception of holy communion.

An Act of Reparation to the Sacred Heart (Iesu dulcissime)

Most sweet Jesus, whose overflowing charity for men is requited by so much forgetfulness, negligence and contempt, behold us prostrate before Thee, eager to repair by a special act of homage the cruel indifference and injuries to which Thy loving Heart is everywhere subject.

Mindful, alas! that we ourselves have had a share in such great indignities, which we now deplore from the depths of our hearts, we humbly ask Thy pardon and declare our readiness to atone by voluntary expiation, not only for our own personal offenses, but also for the sins of those, who, straying far from the path of salvation, refuse in their obstinate infidelity to follow Thee, their Shepherd and Leader, or, renouncing the promises of their baptism, have cast off the sweet yoke of Thy law.

We are now resolved to expiate each and every deplorable outrage committed against Thee; we are now determined to make amends for the manifold offenses against Christian modesty in unbecoming dress and behavior, for all the foul seductions laid to ensnare the feet of the innocent, for the frequent violations of Sundays and holydays, and the shocking blasphemies uttered against Thee and Thy Saints. We wish also to make amends for the insults to which Thy Vicar on earth and Thy priests are subjected, for the profanation, by conscious neglect or terrible acts of sacrilege, of the very Sacrament of Thy Divine Love; and lastly for the public crimes of nations who resist the rights and teaching authority of the Church which Thou hast founded.

Would that we were able to wash away such abominations with our blood. We now offer, in reparation for these violations of Thy divine honor, the satisfaction Thou once made to Thy Eternal Father on the Cross and which Thou continuest to renew daily on our Altars; we offer it in union with the acts of atonement of Thy Virgin Mother and all the Saints and of the pious faithful on earth; and we sincerely promise to make recompense, as far as we can with the help of Thy grace, for all neglect of Thy great love and for the sins we and others have committed in the past. Henceforth, we will live a life of unswerving faith, of purity of conduct, of perfect observance of the precepts of the Gospel and especially that of charity. We promise to the best of our power to prevent others from offending Thee and to bring as many as possible to follow Thee.

O loving Jesus, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mother, our model in reparation, deign to receive the voluntary offering we make of this act of expiation; and by the crowning gift of perseverance keep us faithful unto death in our duty and the allegiance we owe to Thee, so that we may all one day come to that happy home, where with the Father and the Holy Spirit Thou livest and reignest, God, forever and ever. Amen.

Amen indeed! They don’t come more Catholic than that now, do they? This act of reparation is also indulgenced, being listed in the new Enchiridion Indulgentiarum of Pope Paul VI. Publicly making this act on the feast of the Sacred Heart merits a plenary indulgence (subject to the usual conditions, of course). On other days, or in private recitation, the indulgence is partial.

Finally, before we close, it would be an impiety to discourse upon the Sacred Heart of Jesus without at least an honourable mention of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, the apostle of devotion thereto.

Forthcoming hiatus

From tomorrow, Thursday 15 May, it is likely that there will be no further blogging at Infelix Ego until at least the end of the month. Melancholicus regrets this necessity, but at least he is able to advise his readers thereof in advance.

The reason for this is another trip to Tacoma to visit his sweetheart, during which time it is hardly likely he will have regular access to computers and such ... Melancholicus is sure there is no need for him to elaborate further.

Blogging will commence again in late May or early June — depending on workload and how long it takes him to recover from his jetlag.

In the meantime, gentle reader, please say a prayer for your humble host, that he might have a safe and pleasant journey, and that he might not have to endure again the bizarre (and rather frightening) interrogation by U.S. immigration at Sea/Tac to which he was subjected in March.

With grateful thanks,

Infelix ego, Melancholicus, peccator.

Overheard on BBC Radio 4

Did Melancholicus hear this correctly?

Tony Blair, the ultimate cafeteria Catholic and former prime minister of the UK, is currently in Jerusalem, ’mediating’ between the Israelis and the Palestinians, or at least trying to.

While listening to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 this morning, Melancholicus was sure he heard the presenter say that Mr. Blair was trying to organise the Palestinians into “a viable nuclear state”.

Yes, yes, we know what he really meant, but what an unfortunate choice of words! With a vest like that, the Palestinians could give the world the mother of all suicide bombers.

Surely Melancholicus must have misheard.

No?

He should have looked before he leaped

I come to bury iTunes, not to praise it
— Mark Antony (William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Act III, scene 2)

Melancholicus occasionally relieves the tedium of his day job by listening to his music library on iTunes, that marvellous piece of software brought to us by those good people at Apple. One of the best features of iTunes is the iTunes store, where one can acquire one’s favourite releases with a simple click of the mouse; no more weary pilgrimages to HMV on Grafton street, with the concomitant headache of trying to find parking in Dublin city centre. There is of course a fee for this service; no such thing as a free lunch.

One of the best features of the iTunes store is that one can purchase audiobooks, and Melancholicus has over the past few months acquired a number of these — Aesop’s fables, Claire Tomalin’s biography of Samuel Pepys, Cyril Robinson’s History of Greece, Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Capote’s In Cold Blood, various Shakespeare plays, the New International Version of the Bible, and others too numerous to mention.

Browsing about yesterday for something new, he came across a book on the Reformation, listened to the free sample, thought “this sounds interesting!” and decided to buy it. And so he downloaded the work to his iPod.

Melancholicus wasn’t listening to his new audiobook for very long before he became aware of a definite and unmistakable bias in its author’s approach to his subject. The fellow’s name is G. L. Mosse; Melancholicus googled him and found — O dear! — that Mosse, who died in 1999, was a Jew. Not only that, but a left-winger. And a homosexual. All of which combine to render him no friend, to say the very least, of the Catholic Church.

So Melancholicus was bitten, having paid the princely sum of €14.95 for an erroneous book, a work which — if the Church were functioning normally with all her faculties intact — ought to be on the Index.

If Melancholicus had known what he was getting, he would never have bought the thing in the first place. It’s always a good idea to google the names of authors with whom one is unfamiliar before paying good money for their works. Paying first and googling later is like shutting the stable door ... anyway, you get the picture.

Mosse’s Reformation is interesting enough for readers who know their history, since it is a clear and succinct restatement of the protestant myth. Readers unfamiliar with the sixteenth century, however, should be on their guard. Mosse does not present his public with an accurate account of what precisely an indulgence is, whether through ignorance or malice — I suppose it would be a charitable conclusion to blame his ignorance, but as the doctrine of the Church on indulgences is not excessively complicated and it should not have been difficult for one with Mosse’s intellectual prowess to grasp correctly, I fear that malice may in fact have been the motivating factor. Hence he fails to distinguish between the right use of indulgences and the abuse thereof and, with the protestant revolutionaries, ends by throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Mosse’s Luther is likewise not an historical figure, but an exercise in hagiography. Instead of a well-rounded presentation of Luther the man, what we are given instead is a two-dimensional cardboard saint, a character that has stepped right out of pious protestant legend. Mosse’s Luther is a towering scholar, a fearless crusader for truth, a thoroughly admirable man of unimpeachable honesty and goodwill. The real Luther was much more complicated than Mosse would have us believe, and his more audacious acts and statements are glossed over, explained away, or altogether omitted as being piis auribus offensivum. He does not whitewash the corrupt venality of the Renaissance popes, so why should he whitewash Luther? He is supposed to be an historian after all — not a homilist.

This is as far as Melancholicus has penetrated into this work, for he can only tolerate it in small doses, but he would be surprised if it did not continue in much the same vein in which it began. One might wonder why Mosse should evince such enthusiasm for Luther and for the Reformation generally, since as a Jew he ought to have been disinterested and impartial, if not actually repulsed by Luther’s rabid anti-semitism. The reason, of course, is that Mosse was not a religious man at all, but a rationalist; and whatever one may think of Martin Luther, the movement he initiated or protestant Christianity generally, there is no denying that the sixteenth-century revolt against the Church ushered in a new age of unbelief, for if one can refuse to hear the teaching of the pope of Rome, preferring the Bible interpreted according to one’s own private authority, one can end by constructing for oneself a view of reality which owes nothing to Scripture, or Tradition, or authority, and everything — including even the existence of God — to one’s own tastes and fancies. In inaugurating the Reformation, and in letting the cat out of the bag with private Biblical interpretation, Luther is the father of rationalism, despite his insistence that faith must crush all reason and understanding. The Reformation makes the first step on the road to atheism. The so-called Enlightenment, with its scepticism and naturalism, makes the second. And modernism completes the journey, as a glance at the remains of the Catholic Church in our time is sufficient to show.

Will they or won’t they?

Melancholicus rather thinks they won’t. But who knows? After all, stranger things have happened. Allegedly.

From Catholic World News:

Saudis again weigh building Catholic church

Riyadh, May. 12, 2008 (CWNews.com) - The Vatican has renewed talks with Saudi Arabian leaders about the possible construction of a Catholic church in that country, Vatican Radio reports.

Vatican officials have confirmed that in November 2007, when King Abdullah became the first reigning Saudi monarch to visit the Vatican, he was pressed by Pope Benedict about the possibility of allowing a parish for the estimated 800,000 Catholics -- mostly foreign laborers -- who now live in Saudi Arabia. Although Saudi law does not allow public worship for followers of any faith other than Islam, King Abdullah reportedly signaled his willingness to consider building a Catholic parish church.

In March an influential Saudi leader -- the president of the Middle East Center for Strategic Studies, Anwatr al Oshqi -- announced that the government had decided against proceeding with plans for a Catholic church. That announcement was unofficial, but because it was broadcast by a television station controlled by the Saudi royal family, it was widely interpreted as an authoritative signal that the matter was closed. But Vatican Radio now reports that the conversations continue several weeks later.

How does one say “we’ll let you know” in Arabic?

There is no way that Saudi Arabia — the home of Wahhabi extremism — will ever permit the construction of a Catholic church within the borders of the same country which contains the centre of the universe. When all is said and done, no outward expression of any religion other than Mohammedanism is permitted in that country. There are no churches. Christians are forbidden to gather for common prayer, even in private homes. The importing of Bibles, missals, and prayer books of any description is outlawed. It is unlawful to use a rosary, or to have one in one’s possession. One may not wear a cross, crucifix, miraculous medal, scapular or anything of that nature in Saudi Arabia. The Islamist ethos of that country is all pervasive, and non-Muslims cannot help but know their place in such a society.

However, if God wills that a church to His honour and glory be constructed in that unbelieving land, so shall it be. It will probably be a humble edifice, devoid of steeple, cross, bells and the like — and probably devoid of windows also — and who knows how long it will last before being firebombed or blasted to smithereens by jihadi fanatics?

We await the outcome of this one. But Melancholicus will not be holding his breath.

The cafeteria has re-opened, and other animals

The internet is at present abuzz with the fall from grace of a well-known Catholic blogger.

The person in question recently published remarks on his blog which can be construed as running contrary to the teachings of the Church on the subject of same-sex attraction. His post generated a storm of controversy, as the number of comments (nearly 500 at the last count), and their heated content, will testify.

A subsequent post contained remarks on — I shit you not — the gender realignment of children which, if intended seriously, can only identify their author as a kook. But Melancholicus feels this latter post must surely have been written to bait the fellow’s already infuriated readership rather than advance shocking deviancies, so he will say no more about that.

It is always a sad and unfortunate affair whenever a previously sound and orthodox writer goes off the rails, and begins publishing opinions which cannot be reconciled with profession of the Catholic faith.

While Melancholicus was dismayed at the fall of the person in question, he was disturbed most of all by the uncharitable nature of the criticisms and the personal attacks this person received in his commbox. The spite and fury wherewith the fellow’s readers turned on him is truly lamentable; they would have done better to say an Ave for his erring soul rather than savage him after the manner of a rottweiler. Harsh criticism always has the effect of hardening a man in his position. Did not St. Francis de Sales remind us that we would catch more flies with a spoonful of honey than with a barrelful of vinegar?

To their credit, some of the commentators were likewise disturbed by the rage evident in their peers. One remarked sardonically, “These Christians, how they love one another!” One of the cheapest remarks was (on a different blog dealing with the same issue) “...when he started linking to Rod Dreher a few weeks later, I knew all I needed to know”.

So what if he links to Rod Dreher? Is it not his blog, to link to whomsoever he chooses? And poor Rod Dreher needs prayers, not derision.

Rod Dreher is now a pariah among Catholics since he left the Roman communion in favour of Eastern Orthodoxy in 2006. His departure was likewise accompanied by shrill cries of condemnation and horror. Having read Mr. Dreher’s account of his reasons for leaving the Church, Melancholicus is saddened and feels for the man. He would feel keenly for any man in a similar situation. Melancholicus has a peculiar empathy for those who leave the Church under such circumstances, since not so long ago, he was on the verge of leaving the Church himself, and for reasons not entirely dissimilar to those of Mr. Dreher (as well as a certain imbalance of mind owing to personal circumstances, which may have rendered any such departure, had it occurred, material rather than strictly formal).

Now our erstwhile popular Catholic blogger has not left the Church, as far as we know. But who knows, really, how life is treating him these days, or what his personal circumstances are?

Accordingly, Melancholicus would ask the readers of blogs to show some restraint whenever they come up against a post they don’t like. Melancholicus has read a great many blog posts that annoyed him, provoked him, infuriated him, and not a few peddling blatant untruths, but he has always resisted the temptation to shout back in anger at the author. We don’t know what goes on in people’s lives, and if we knew first-hand the excruciating personal difficulties our neighbour may be wrestling with, we might be abashed and inclined to be more circumspect in our response to his postings.

Men are possessed of a radical freedom, a freedom even to reject the sovereign good in eternity. A man may choose the true and the good — or he may choose otherwise. Thanks to the darkness of the intellect as a result of original sin, a man may have a hard time discerning the true and the good, and may often arrive at mistaken conclusions, often influenced in his thinking by other factors and external pressures. God Himself does not compel adherence to the truth, so why should the readers of a blog expect unfailing adherence to truth as a matter of course? No private person is infallible. Even popes have in their day uttered nonsense incompatible with the teachings of the Magisterium.

So Melancholicus will not condemn the unfortunate blogger, not because he is sympathy with the fellow’s views (he most certainly isn’t), but because he chooses to reserve condemnation for those who truly merit it — bishops, theologians, Jesuits, the unelected and unaccountable European Commission, idealistic socialist twits, and those mad Moslems.

If, gentle reader, you are a priest...

... and you have an interest in learning to celebrate the holy sacrifice of the Mass according to the traditional rite, you need to order this without delay!

The DVD provides a thorough explanation and demonstration of the traditional Latin Mass (the “extraordinary form”, as they now call it), with an introduction by the cardinal prefect of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei and a spiritual commentary on the Mass by Fr. Calvin Goodwin FSSP.

Here is a trailer for the DVD, which features Fr. Gregory Pendergraft FSSP as the celebrant and Fr. Joseph Lee FSSP as the server. The trailer is narrated by deacon Matthew Goddard, of whom Melancholicus is a former classmate.



Simply beautiful, and what a nostalgia trip for your humble host!

Request for prayers

Melancholicus is saddened.

In the aftermath of his departure from seminary in the summer of 2005, he moved back to his mother’s house in Wicklow for a bit, to relax and unwind and attempt to gather his scattered wits.

It was not the best choice for a quiet life, for not only did Melancholicus have to adjust to sharing the house with a boisterous, half-grown collie pup, but his mother was having a patio laid in the back garden, and the gentleman hired for this work was nothing short of a cowboy.

The two of us were at our wits’ end trying to cope with the unreliability of this person, and with the tremendous mess he left behind him in the back garden. In the end he was dismissed, and my mother found an able young man who was not only able to finish the job and clear up the mess, but who offered advice and suggestions as to what should be done next, and carried out some landscaping work also. Today there are twin flower beds, a garden seat between them, and a little wall along the border of the lawn, all of which are his handiwork.

This young man was a hard, conscientious worker, and an honest man, who charged no more than his due. His obvious good will and good character impressed us all.

Recently, my mother was thinking of having some further work done in the garden now that the good weather has returned. Naturally, her first thought was to turn to the same young man who had been so helpful three years previously.

Unable to find him at his old number, she called various tradesmen in an attempt to locate him, and in the process discovered that the young man was dead.

He had committed suicide in June 2007.

This news was a shock to us all. We did not know the young man well, but he was a man of obvious talent and virtue, and ought to have had his whole life ahead of him. He can hardly have been more than about 25 years of age.

We do not know the reason why, and it is useless to speculate. We cannot guess what really goes on in people’s lives. Since he did not know the young man’s family, Melancholicus does not feel that it is proper to divulge his name. Nevertheless, he wishes to ask his readers to say in their charity a Pater, Ave and Gloria for the repose of the young man’s soul.

Do not be troubled by his anonymity, for almighty God knows for whom you pray.

To lay violent hands upon oneself is, objectively speaking, a grievous sin, one that merits eternal separation from God. But for such a sin to be mortal, it must be done with full knowledge of its gravity and with full consent of the will. It is now generally recognised that suicidal acts proceed from grave anguish and such disturbance of mind that the possibility of full knowledge and consent is exceedingly remote. Of old, the Church refused an ecclesiastical funeral to suicides, who likewise could not be interred in consecrated ground. Happily, these restrictions have now been charitably rescinded, and we must never consider it a futile exercise to pray and have Masses said for the soul of one who has taken his own life.

There was a lady in nineteenth-century France whose husband had killed himself by leaping from a bridge. In despair over the prospects for his eternal destiny, she resolved to visit the holy Curé of Ars, St. Jean Vianney. Arriving in the village, she went to the parish church, where the Curé was hearing confessions. When she saw the vast crowds in the church and the lengthy queues of those waiting to go to confession, she despaired of ever being able to meet the Curé and tell him about her husband. So she knelt down to say a quick prayer, intending to depart again immediately. While she knelt in prayer, the door of the confessional opened, and the Curé emerged, coming straight towards her. To her amazement — for they had never previously met and he could not have known who she was — he came over to her and said, “Do not be afraid, my child. Between the bridge and the water there is room for the grace of God.”

Between the bridge and the water there is room for the grace of God.

What merciful graces God gives to His faithful through His holy saints! Melancholicus has always taken much comfort from this story. How merciful is God, how great His love. Melancholicus does not know whether the young man was a Catholic, a Protestant, or of no religion at all. But at this point, it doesn’t matter. In your kindness, gentle reader, please pray for his soul.

May God reward you.

A visit to Maynooth

Yesterday, Melancholicus took a trip out to Maynooth.

The purpose of this trip was work-related and of academic nature, hence his visit was to the pontifical university rather than to the seminary, although since both institutions share the same campus it was an easy thing to visit them together.

Arriving early in the morning and with time to spare before the conference he was attending began, Melancholicus decided to kill some time by browsing in the campus bookshop. As might be expected, he was drawn to the liturgy/theology/spirituality section particularly, which he found a more painful experience even than Cathedral Books.

This is the very bookshop that stocks the textbooks used in their studies by Ireland’s future priests. Melancholicus marvelled at all the modernist pap on display with a horrified yet fascinated mien, in much the same fashion as he might view a train wreck. There was little in the way of Catholic reading; he does not remember seeing St. Thomas, or even a commentary thereon. The liturgy section was full of those ubiquitous Sunday Missals (Novus Ordo, of course) and copies of The Divine Office (Pauline, of course), as well as the inevitable do-it-yourself liturgy manuals, but there was nary a whit to do with the ‘extraordinary’ form. As far as Maynooth campus bookshop is concerned, there might never have been a motu proprio. There was the usual heretical boilerplate by the likes of Hans Küng, Geoffrey Robinson, and even Richard Dawkins (!); there were loads of airy-fairy and dissenting Columba titles; there were at least some Church documents, but no solid encyclicals (Pascendi, as one might imagine, was not stocked). The spirituality in evidence was that of Anthony De Mello and Henri Nouwen rather than that of the saints. All in all a great disappointment, but no less than Melancholicus would have expected for an institution in such an advanced state of meltdown as the national seminary.

After the morning sessions of the conference had concluded, Melancholicus and his fellow delegates were treated to lunch in the historic surroundings of Pugin Hall, which formerly was the seminary refectory but now functions as a mere college eaterie; even members of the general public can walk in if they so wish. Any clerical students actually dining in Pugin Hall during your blogger’s visit would have been so carefully disguised in mufti as to be indistinguishable from the lay students—clerical dress being strictly proscribed by the college authorities for reasons of their own.

While walking through the cloister after leaving the refectory, Melancholicus paused to view the paintings and photographs hanging on the walls, paintings of prelates past and present (the most recent being that of his eminence Desmond Cardinal Connell, sometime archbishop of Dublin (quite a handsome portrait even if the blue background is a little too strong) and class photos of each year’s ordination class, in some instances going back decades. He noted that the number of faces in each class photo significantly decreased as one drew nearer to the present day, a testimony to the gravity of the damage inflicted by implementation of the conciliar revolution on priestly vocations in this as well as every other western country.

Melancholicus did not stay long at each photo, though occasionally he would see a face he knew, a priest now working in such and such a parish in the Dublin diocese, or a priest now fallen away from his vocation. He thought, in some bitterness, about how all these men had been betrayed and brainwashed by the revolutionaries that had been supposed to educate them in religion and prepare them for the Catholic priesthood, how they had been given serpents instead of fish and stones instead of bread, even to the extent that their heads are now filled with nonsense incompatible with the Christian faith and their apostolate weakened correspondingly.

In somewhat grim and pensive mood, Melancholicus was then arrested by a photo of another priest he recognised — Monsignor Míceál Ledwith, sometime president of St. Patrick’s college, and once tipped for appointment to an episcopal See. He was aghast that the college authorities have not seen fit to remove Ledwith’s photo, but have left it on public display in the cloister, as though Ledwith were a priest in good standing whose reputation is beyond reproach. Not many people know that Monsignor Ledwith (whose departure from office was accompanied by dark rumours of sexual impropriety with seminarians) is now living in Washington state, and teaches—wait for it!—at the New Age neo-pagan Ramtha School of Enlightenment run by JZ Knight. I’m not kidding — the reader who cares for such things will find Ledwith’s bio on the Ramtha website here, as well as links to his bizarre writings and broadcasts—things with such wondrous titles as The Great Questions in the Hamburger Universe and What The Bleep Do We Know!?. Kooky stuff, and no mistake. The recent history of the Church contains innumerable examples of clerics who went barmy, abandoned their priesthood and devoted themselves to left-wing politics or to some dotty ideology, but Ledwith has to be the weirdest of them all.

Before the afternoon session of the conference began, Melancholicus attempted to view the interior of the stunningly beautiful college chapel (Pugin, of course), but the doors were locked, so he was unable to do so. So he then headed away from the seminary, back to the north campus, passing by this curious-looking statute. It is a carving—in a very modern style, much at odds with the architecture of the seminary—of the late holy father, John Paul II, enfolding two children in his embrace and looking very unfortunately like a shell-toting insect in the process. Speaking of beetles—or should that be beatles?—some wag apparently christened the statue “John Paul, George and Ringo” when it was first unveiled, an amusing epithet which much outrages the John-Paul-The-Great piety of the humourless neo-orthodox, and the name has since stuck. Melancholicus was in the company of a northern protestant at the time, so he didn’t mind sharing a good laugh at it with his companion. And then it was back to the conference for the rest of the day’s deliberations.

And thus it was, this once proud seminary, which was once filled to its 800-man capacity, producing sufficient priests not only for all the dioceses of Ireland but for the foreign missions as well, now barely hanging on and laicised practically to the point of being closed altogether. Melancholicus was once considering going to Maynooth, back in the late 1990s when he was discerning a possible vocation to the priesthood in the Dublin archdiocese and before he had discovered the FSSP. But reading an alarming exposé of the wickedness, turpitude and heterodoxy of the seminary published in The Brandsma Review by a clerical student (who had to remain anonymous for obvious reasons), as well as viewing that jaw-droppingly astounding True Lives documentary on RTÉ about the lives of three seminarists, each of whom clearly had problems—and one of them was later ordained!—quickly convinced him of the wisdom of pursuing his vocation elsewhere. Talk about an advertisement for the clerical life!

Melancholicus has not heard any fresh news from inside Maynooth for many years, so he is unable to say whether the dire situation which obtained there at the turn of the century has been in any way ameliorated. Time will tell, but so far there is little sign of any improvement.

Neo-Catechumenal Way falls foul of the Japanese bishops

Why is Melancholicus not surprised by this news?

Because this kind of thing happens all the time. From Catholic World News:

Japanese bishops appeal to Vatican in clash with NeoCatechumenate

Vatican, Apr. 30, 2008 (CWNews.com) - A delegation of bishops from Japan visited the Vatican this week, hoping to resolve a conflict with the NeoCatechumenal Way, which operates a seminary in Japan, the UCA News service reports.

The visit by four Japanese bishops was the third such trip to Rome. "We hate to come so often but we had to give the serious nature of the problem that needs to be resolved", Archbishop Okada of Tokyo, president of the bishops' conference, told UCA News.

The archbishop said that the NeoCatechumenate had caused "sharp painful division and strife within the Church in Japan." He characterized the lay movement as a group engaged in "powerful sect-like activity" that was damaging the unity of the small Catholic community in Japan.

The Neo-Catechumenal Way is one of the so-called “new ecclesial movements” that, like fungus on damp and rotting vegetation, have mushroomed within the Church since the ’sixties and ’seventies.

These movements are generally hailed by both clergy and laity alike as evidence of “life” and “vitality” and “the movement of the spirit” in the post-conciliar Church. In the eyes of the apologists for aggiornamento, the new ecclesial movements are among the greatest fruits of the council, and a clear sign of the renewal of the Church that has proceeded from it. Pope John Paul II was a veritable embodiment of this view, as his frequent praise and endorsements of such groups as the Neo-catechumenate and Focolare testify. However, the support of the late pontiff for these movements was based on his own private view of them as a wonderful manifestation of renewal; this not being a doctrine of either faith or morals taught always and everywhere by the Church but instead a matter of individual opinion, no Catholic is bound to accept the late Holy Father’s views on the matter.

Melancholicus is at one with the conciliar apologists and with John Paul II in regarding these movements as indeed a fruit of the council. But rather than viewing them as the first flowers of the new springtime, Melancholicus considers them as symptoms of post-conciliar decline; they are weeds rather than vines in the vineyard of the Lord. Many of these movements are characterised by a spirit of independence from the rest of the Church. Some are bedevilled by scandal, corruption and rank disobedience. The mentality of a sect is in many instances observable in their adherents. Their fidelity to core Catholic doctrines is questionable. The leaders of such groups, far from being persons of undoubted sanctity, often display attitudes and behaviours that befit more the leaders of a cult. In such situations, loyalty to the group and to its leader becomes much more important than loyalty to the Church, or fidelity to the teachings of the Magisterium.

The Neo-Catechumenal Way displays all these warning signs, at least to those with eyes to see and ears to hear. That they have clashed with the Japanese bishops is not at all surprising, given their behaviour elsewhere and on past occasions. That the Japanese bishops have had to make four such trips to Rome in an attempt to rein in this out-of-control sect is more than a little disquieting. It is high time now for the Holy See to revoke the favour so ill-advisedly and precipitously granted by John Paul II to this rogue splinter group and demand that it fall into line with the teachings of the Church and be obedient to the local bishops.

Otherwise the time might be right for its suppression.

The Ascension of the Lord

THE INTROIT

O men of Galilee, why gaze ye in astonishment at the sky? Alleluia. Just as ye have seen him ascend into heaven, so, in like manner, shall he return, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Ps. All nations, clap your hands; shout unto God with a voice of joy.

THE COLLECT

Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that we, who believe Thine Only Begotten Son our Redeemer, to have ascended on this day into heaven, may ourselves also dwell in mind amongst heavenly things. Through the same Our Lord.

In the words of the Apostles’ Creed, He ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty.

Meditating on the mystery of our Lord’s Ascension reminds Melancholicus of a little paperback he once bought in a second-hand bookshop when he was in the first flush of his reversion to the Christian religion in 1997. This book was called A New Look at the Apostles’ Creed, and was edited by one Gerhard Rein. It was a translation of a work published originally in German, and featured contributions by such allegedly great theologians as Hans Conzelmann, Jurgen Moltmann, Gunther Bornkamm, Gerhard Ebeling and Karl Rahner. At the time, Melancholicus was young and very green, knew almost nothing of his catechism, was aware of this grave deficiency and was consequently reading everything that he could lay hands on pertaining to the Christian religion. He had as yet no idea of the controversies convulsing the Church as a result of modernism, rationalism and the fallout from Vatican II but, as the reader may have guessed, he was soon to find out.

This book first appeared in — yes, you’ve guessed it — the 1960s. Its very title is sufficient to alert the discerning reader to the kinds of heresies he may expect to find between its covers. Now while the youthful Melancholicus had no philosophical training and did not know anything about heresy, rationalism, naturalism etc., he at least had a brain and was able to spot principles and conclusions which were incompatible with the mysteries of faith. For in returning to the religion of his boyhood, Melancholicus was not looking for some pious myth or metaphor for mere intellectual consideration. No, he was seeking God, and he believed that God is transcendent and omnipotent, existing independently of the created order and, most importantly, existing independently of the mind of man. He also believed that the Lord Jesus is the Son of God, the second person of the Most Holy Trinity, and that consequently there is nothing inherently incredible about such things as the Lord’s Resurrection and Ascension, or His real presence in the eucharist.

Hence, in reading the discourse of these erudite theological giants on the doctrines enshrined in the Apostles’ Creed, he was first of all struck by how boring their writing was. He was also struck by the fact that these learned gentlemen seemed actually to be embarrassed by the supernatural content of religion, and that they sought to explain it away so as not to ‘offend’ the mentality of the great twentieth-century man who had at long last finally come of age, shaking off the shackles of obscurantism and superstition. Melancholicus was perplexed (and, if the truth be told, mildly outraged) by this attitude, but most of all he was amused at the spectacle of these purportedly great theologians fretting over the mysteries of faith and twisting themselves into knots in order not to have to affirm as supernatural any article of the Apostles’ Creed.

Was the earnest and simple faith of the young Melancholicus shaken in any way by this discovery? Not a bit of it. On the contrary, he quickly concluded that these theological giants were in reality theological pygmies, that their alleged scholarship and intellectual prowess was profoundly overrated, that their theories violated Christian doctrine and were not substantiated by anything more than their own prejudices and presuppositions, that as a consequence nothing they had to say was ever worth listening to, and not least that their writings were deeply, deeply boring — and so he laid the book aside and has never since returned to it except last year to consign it to a bag of paper and cardboard waste destined for recycling.

The problem with rationalising the mysteries of faith is, however, so glaring and so obvious that it doesn’t require specialised theological training or a turgid German brain to recognize it for what it is. It is so clear a child can spot it, much like the little boy who pointed out, correctly, that the Emperor had no clothes. Did these supposedly profound thinkers really believe — in their heart of hearts and brain of brains — that emptying the Christian religion of its credal content would make it either ‘relevant’ or ‘appealing’ to the thoroughly secularised modern mentality, instead of having precisely the opposite effect? Or does their approach not betray a certain obtusity, even stupidity, on their part? Were these learned gentlemen so intellectually advanced that they had no idea how the rest of us common folk think?

These great theologians are — or I should say were, since they’re nearly all dead; now they know whether there be a God or no — clearly upset that the Christian religion contains dogmas, for they would like it to teach only ethics. It is a fact, however, that the ethics of the Christian religion proceed from its dogmas as the consequence from the principle. These learned and scholarly heavyweights have failed to grasp this simple truth, but millions of ordinary people who were once Christians have understood it all too well. As a result, they are no longer Christians. Our erudite theological superiors are always banging on about the importance of “human experience”, whatever that means. Well, have they learned any lessons at all from the experience of the last forty years?

Take the dogmatic and credal content out of Christianity, and one is left with a hollow shell, a kind of pious agnosticism or Christian buddhism. But Christianity is not buddhism, nor was it ever meant to be, so the miserable leavings after the great theologians have done their work can satisfy no one, neither the Christian nor the buddhist, for the rationalised ‘religion’ invented by the scholars is neither one thing nor the other. As a result, no one is interested in this castle in the clouds at all, except maybe for the handful of towering intellectuals whose brainchild it is. But, like the seed in our Lord’s parable, having no roots it withers away.

The baffled incredulity of Anton Vogtle in his chapter on the Lord’s Ascension, in which he earnestly tries to convince his readers that the Ascension cannot be believed by ‘modern man’, deserves no more than our contempt, and its author deserves no more than to be utterly forgotten.

Gaudeamus carissimi

On this day, Thursday 1st of May 2008, the feast of the Ascension of the Lord, Melancholicus finally passed the Irish driving test. Not before time, this being his fifth attempt.

This means he can now exchage his provisional licence (the green one) for a full driving licence (the red one). He has already removed the learner plates from his car, informed his insurance company of the happy event, and once he obtains his full licence he will be able to drive freely on motorways without having to worry about being stopped by the police.

He is most grateful to those who prayed for a happy outcome in this matter, and not least to almighty God, who this year has showered His blessings so abundantly on this undeserving sinner that Melancholicus feels that some special work undertaken in gratitude to God is now in order.

Deo gratias, alleluia. Such a weight has been lifted from these groaning shoulders.

The Treaty of Lisbon

As has been mentioned before on this journal, the Irish electorate will vote in a referendum to be held in about six weeks’ time on whether Ireland shall ratify the Treaty of Lisbon.

Melancholicus will not here and now delve into the intricacies of European integration, or what ratification of this latest treaty will do for Ireland or for Europe generally. That is not the issue. For he has already made up his mind, when the time comes for him to exercise his suffrage, to reject the Treaty of Lisbon. He shall vote No, and he encourages any of his fellow countrymen that might be reading this to do the same.

Ireland is the ONLY European nation the government of which is holding a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Melancholicus thus feels he has a moral duty to vote No, not only for the sake of Ireland, but for the uncounted millions of other Europeans in this allegedly democratic age whose governments have denied them the opportunity to do so themselves.

Even if there were no urgent political reason to reject this treaty — and there are reasons aplenty — Melancholicus would still vote No, if only out of sheer bloody-mindedness, for he has found the arrogance and the high-handedness of the Yes campaign to be insufferable. This very morning en route to the university, he listened to an unsatisfactory radio debate between John McGuirk of Libertas and Dick Roche TD, Minister for European Affairs. This debate was unsatisfactory because it was not calm and reasoned, but a shouting match, and Melancholicus was shocked by the arrogant and dismissive bluster of Minister Roche. Even if every word spoken by the Minister were true, Melancholicus was repelled by the attitude of the man, who seemed to be personally affronted that a No campaign should even exist in Ireland.

So much for democracy.

This high-handed attitude is not unique to Minister Roche, for Melancholicus has observed it also in the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, and in Eamonn Gilmore, leader of the Labour Party, and in several other Dáil deputies from a broad spectrum of political backgrounds and beliefs. Yet — with the singular exception of Sinn Féin — all seem to be united in an unduly vehement (not to say desperate) insistence that Ireland MUST ratify the Treaty of Lisbon and that consequently the Irish electorate MUST vote Yes in the forthcoming referendum.

Who are these politicians to tell us what to do? We are not accountable to them, or to the EU commissars in Brussels. On the contrary, isn’t the whole principle of democracy founded on the notion that we elect these people to respresent us? Are not they, then, accountable to us? And should we decide to say No in June, whence comes the justification for their righteous indignation?

Moreover, the government of this Republic of Ireland has not provided its citizens with any information whatever on even the most important consequences of the Lisbon Treaty. The government is aware that most Irish people haven’t the foggiest idea what they are voting for, yet there has been no official attempt to assist members of the public in making an informed decision. The only attempts to do so have proceeded from the No campaign, from groups like Libertas that have been so stridently denounced by our political leaders on the airwaves. Can it be that the Irish government doesn’t want the people to know what is contained in the Lisbon Treaty? Can it be because if the Irish people knew what they were voting for, they might possibly vote No? The failure of the government to provide the electorate with any information on the Lisbon Treaty, as well as its treatment of us as mere children in the most condescending manner imaginable, is more than reason enough to defy our politicians and most resolutely vote No. Who votes Yes to ratify a treaty they know nothing about?

In any case, there is hardly any point voting at all. In the exercise of their democratic rights, the Irish electorate rejected the Treaty of Nice in a referendum held in June 2001. As this result was unacceptable to the EU, the Irish were required to repeat this referendum in October 2002. On this second occasion, the desired Yes vote was achieved, but even if it had not been, the referendum would have been held repeatedly until the Irish electorate finally agreed to ratification.

It is likely that ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon will be achieved in the same way. Even if the Irish electorate reject the Treaty this coming June, the referendum will be put to us again and again until we agree to ratify the thing, so the EU commissars need not be overly disturbed by an initial rejection.

And so the future of Europe shall, for the average citizen of countries such as Ireland, be characterised by steadily diminishing representation, steadily diminishing powers of suffrage and self-determination, and the steady increase of soft totalitarianism, as unaccountable and unelected commissions and appointees gradually replace parliaments and elected representatives, and as referenda are emptied of their democratic purpose by being repeatedly put to the electorate until the desired result be achieved.

Under such conditions, what need of a referendum at all?

Mecca, the true centre of the world

Thanks to LP, a commentator on the MCJ:

April 30, 2008
Riyadh, Saudia Arabia
Reuters

In a freak global shift which has scientists around the world baffled, the Earth’s magnetic field has moved dramatically, causing the northern magentic pole to line up exactly on the longitude of the Saudi Arabian city of Mecca.

“This is a sign from Allah!” exclaimed cleric al-Waqarawy, a proponent of the “Ijaz al-Koran” movement which strives to find modern science presaged in the Koran. “Even more so as it comes upon the heels of last week’s Mecca conference in Qatar!”

Cambridge geologist Dr. Cecil Wilberforce disagreed. “The earth’s magnetic north regularly migrates” he intoned. “While we are still uncertain what caused this unexpectedly radical shift this week, it’s doubtlessly a purely natural phenomenon that has nothing whatsoever to do with religion or pseudo-science.”

But Iousseph al-Riidyah, leader of the militant “academic jihad” movement based at King Fahd University in Dharahn, had a different explanation. “There is no mystery!” he exclaimed. “We sent a thousand glorious martyrs -- graduate students, of course -- in suicide vests into Canada to drive the magentic pole from its infidel and westernized false location. They forced it, by their noble sacrifices, to flee the ground of their martyrs’ blood and return to its proper place, in the pure waters north of Alaska! Allah is great!”

Whatever the cause, the sudden magnetic changes have vastly disrupted the paths of many migratory birds. Literally hundreds of thousands are now flying in confused circles around parts of the country, with bee-eaters and red-throated pipits predominating, and many species of shore-line birds have unaccountably moved inland.

“Truly this is a glorious sign!” exulted Fadir al-Saamhdi, a Meccan street vendor, wiping guano off his face as countless birds circled in raucous confusion overhead. Looking upward -- an ill-advised move, as he quickly discovered -- he added “Now the whole world shall see that Allah truly l.. ack! pfffpht! ugh! Blech!”

Imams from throughout the region have issued injunctions to the world’s Muslims to come to Mecca and help keep the sacred black meteorite, the Kaaba, and other holy places clean during this avian invasion, and it is rumored that several of the religions more extreme leaders are considering issuing a fatwah calling for the destruction of the birds, given their obviously infidel intention to desecrate the religion's most sacred sites.

But most geologists -- even though unsure of what has caused this dramatic change -- think the Muslim community need not worry too much, as computer models universally predict that the pole’s new position will eventually settle down about 5 degrees further west, lining itself up precisely around the globe from Jerusalem.

Is this a joke?

Alas, since the attitude of the BBC towards the Islamic ideology is invariably one of reverential deference, it is probably all too true. The BBC would never try to raise a laugh at Mahometan expense. Political correctness is a dour and irascible creed which knows nothing of humour.

Yes, yes, Melancholicus knows he has promised his readers to leave the saracens alone for a bit, but the attitude behind this story is so breathtakingly arrogant that he feels something ought to be said.

Muslim call to adopt Mecca time

By Magdi Abdelhadi
BBC Arab affairs analyst

Muslim scientists and clerics have called for the adoption of Mecca time to replace GMT, arguing that the Saudi city is the true centre of the Earth.

Mecca is the direction all Muslims face when they perform their daily prayers.

The call was issued at a conference held in the Gulf state of Qatar under the title: Mecca, the Centre of the Earth, Theory and Practice.

One geologist argued that unlike other longitudes, Mecca's was in perfect alignment to magnetic north.

He said the English had imposed GMT on the rest of the world by force when Britain was a big colonial power, and it was about time that changed.

Mecca watch

A prominent cleric, Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawy, said modern science had at last provided evidence that Mecca was the true centre of the Earth; proof, he said, of the greatness of the Muslim "qibla" - the Arabic word for the direction Muslims turn to when they pray.

The meeting also reviewed what has been described as a Mecca watch, the brainchild of a French Muslim.

The watch is said to rotate anti-clockwise and is supposed to help Muslims determine the direction of Mecca from any point on Earth.

The meeting in Qatar is part of a popular trend in some Muslim societies of seeking to find Koranic precedents for modern science.

It is called "Ijaz al-Koran", which roughly translates as the "miraculous nature of the holy text".

The underlying belief is that scientific truths were also revealed in the Muslim holy book, and it is the work of scholars to unearth and publicise the textual evidence.

But the movement is not without its critics, who say that the notion that modern science was revealed in the Koran confuses spiritual truth, which is constant, and empirical truth, which depends on the state of science at any given point in time.

So what if Mecca happens to be “in perfect alignment” with magnetic north—which claim need not necessarily be true anyway—at this point in time? The magnetic poles wander constantly, which means that sooner or later Mecca will be out of alignment altogether. Moreover, the lines of latitude and longitude are fixed with respect to the geographical north and south poles; they are nothing to do with magnetic north, so the reference to longitude makes absolutely no sense.

However, while we might be inclined to a good hearty laugh at the dotty theories of these fanatics with respect to longitude and the alignment of the poles, one thing at least is certain. Given the relentless extension of their power in Europe generally and in Britain in particular, with the dhimmified natives falling over one another to appease them in the name of multiculturalism and political correctness, there is one aspect of this pseudo-science that might actually become reality.

I refer to the proposed abolition of Greenwich Mean Time and its replacement with some other chronological standard, based on local Saudi time—with the line of zero degrees running precisely through the middle of the Ka’ba in Mecca.

Who will claim that such a thing could never happen?

Good thing it was only a Bible and not a Qur'an

From Catholic World News:

Polish rock musician faces charges for Bible-burning

Warsaw, Apr. 22, 2008 (CWNews.com) - The head of Polish death-metal band Behemoth, Adam Darski, will face criminal charges for burning a Bible during a concert in Gdynia, Poland last year.

Darski claims that he did not want to offend any one and that his actions were only those of an artist engaged in self-expression. He has apologized for his actions. The head of Behemoth could be imprisoned for up to 2 years if convicted.

I think that by “head”, they mean frontman. Rock bands do not have “heads” as such. They are not hierarchical organisations.

In spite of the sacrilege committed by consigning the holy scriptures to the flames, Melancholicus cannot but feel somewhat sorry for this unfortunate benighted soul. Two years’ imprisonment seems a bit stiff for such an action, and if such a sentence were passed, it might only have the effect of hardening Mr. Darski in his rebellion against God rather than showing him the error of his ways.

In any case, it was a lucky thing that Mr. Darski burned a Bible and not a Qur’an. Melancholicus is unfamiliar with the extent to which the cancer of politcally-correct multiculturalist nonsense has made inroads in Poland, so he is unable to say whether igniting a Qur’an would have provoked a more or less horrified reaction than that which greeted his burning of the Bible. But the saracens would certainly be waving their scimitars and baying for his blood, even to the extent of crazed fanatics making trips to Poland in an attempt to assassinate him.

If the concert which landed him in such trouble had taken place in the UK rather than in Poland, nobody would have batted an eyelid. But if he had burned the Qur’an on a British stage, there is no way he would have avoided a prison sentence — that is, if he were lucky enough not to be killed on the spot.

Orwellian society update: EU resolution in favour of abortion

Even though Oceania has until recently been at war with Eurasia, Ingsoc has decreed that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia and with no one else.

From Catholic World News:

European Council calls for end to abortion bans

Strasbourg, Apr. 18, 2008 (CWNews.com) - The parliament of the Council of Europe has approved a non-binding resolution calling for all European nations to legalize abortion.

By a vote of 102-69, the parliament passed a resolution affirming the "right to choose." Proponents of the measure argued that legal bans do not prevent abortion but merely drive the practice underground (an argument that American proponents of legal abortion have confessed they put forward without evidence). Gisela Wurm, the Austrian lawmaker who sponsored the resolution, said that laws against abortion are a form of violence against women.

Representatives of Ireland and Malta -- the European Union countries that maintain legal bars on abortion -- objected vigorously to the resolution.

Melancholicus supposes that the good news in this wretched matter is that the resolution is at least “non-binding”.

For the moment.

But who can say how long it will be before the Council of Europe shall have the power, granted it in law by the constituent nations of the EU, to overrule the laws of any and every member nation? The Treaty of Lisbon is set to go into effect by the end of this year, unless it be stopped (or at least stalled) by the Irish electorate and one of the effects of this impious treaty is to resurrect the Constitution of the European Union that was rejected in referenda by both the French and the Dutch in 2005.

This kind of interference by unelected and unaccountable EU councils and commissions in the internal affairs of sovereign nations is becoming more and more common. As the process of European integration continues to advance, how long shall it be before hitherto sovereign nations are reduced to little more than regional provinces within an over-arching European super-state, a state that shall have supreme legislative and executive power over its constituent “provinces”?

The reader may scoff at such a forecast, but it cannot be denied that this is the direction to which European integration is resolutely committed. How else can such a large, unwieldy institution as the EU, composed of such a multitude of incompatible and disparate parts, be in practical terms managable, except through increasing centralisation?

Is it not passing ironic that the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights declares (chap. 1, article 2.1) that “Everyone has the right to life”, which would appear (in the plain sense of the words at least) to be a disavowal of abortion? Yet the Council of Europe is determined that the killing of the unborn be legally permitted in every constituent state province of the EU — unless of course the “everyone” of the Charter does not include those who have not yet been born, in which case the Council need not ride roughshod over its pretended commitment to human rights.

How much more of our sovereignty shall we Europeans transfer to these sinister institutions? For personal reasons Melancholicus is currently investigating the possibility of permanently relocating to the United States. If this Republic of Ireland continues to fritter away its hard-won freedom by transferring its inalienable sovereignty to a foreign bureaucracy, he shall have a further impetus to flee his homeland. Melancholicus has no desire to live in an Ireland that voluntarily renounces its own statehood and submits to the pitiless encroachment of what is little else than the Roman Empire redivivus. Moreover, in acquiescing in this state of affairs and in abetting the silent conquest of this nation, the Irish government is surely guilty of treason.

Did our fathers really spend all those years, with all their mayhem and misery and cost in lives, fighting against British occupation for nothing?

If you are an Irish citizen, gentle reader, please consider voting No to Lisbon in the forthcoming June referendum. How much more will we let them get away with before we will finally tell them Thus far and no further? With each successive diminution of our liberties, it becomes more difficult to draw a final, uncrossable line.

Where shall we draw that line?

Shall we even draw it at all?

Where were you when ... ?

Last Saturday, 19th April 2008, was the third anniversary of the election of our Holy Father, Benedict XVI.

When Pope Benedict was elected, Melancholicus was in the United States, studying for the priesthood with this society of apostolic life of pontifical right (although at the time he was locked in a vocational crisis that ultimately resolved itself through his departure from the seminary). Melancholicus and his classmates were in Dr. John Thornburgh’s Modern Philosophy class, a little over a month away from the end of our philosophical studies. He cannot recall which philosopher we were then discussing (perhaps Heidegger?), but pre-occupied with his interior struggle, Melancholicus was probably not paying much attention anyway.

Suddenly, the loud pealing of a hand-rung bell sounded up and down the corridor adjacent to the classrooms and, without waiting for the news, the whole community immediately knew that the successor of John Paul II had been chosen.

The class rose up as one man, and immediately left the room, joining the occupants of the other classrooms in a swift but stately march to the chapel. Nobody spoke. Everyone was either preoccupied with the ramifications of this momentous occasion, or engaged in silent prayer. As the community filed downstairs to the chapel, the only sounds were the swishing of soutanes and the deep rumble of boots on the stairs.

We took up our accustomed places in choir, and chanted the Te Deum. Then, as the Rector was nowhere in sight, a few enterprising souls left the chapel and made their way upstairs to the pumpkin room to find the TV. Gradually, more and more of the brethren left the chapel and adjourned in the pumpkin room, until half the community was crowded around the TV.

During the unbearably tense interval between the appearance of the white smoke and the introduction of the new pope to the waiting world, Melancholicus fretted anxiously, twisting the buttons on his soutane, and certain that one of only two alternatives would issue from this election. The Cardinals’ choice of pope would result either in the salvation of the Catholic Church by Christ, or in its destruction. Of course the latter alternative is impossible, since the indefectibility of the Church is divinely guaranteed until the end of time, but surveying the appalling carnage left behind by the council and by the policies of the conciliar popes — a devastation of the ecclesial order analogous to Hiroshima after the bomb — one could be forgiven for fearing that the worst was about to happen, and that the unsinkable would in fact finally sink.

And then there would really be nothing for it, but to become an Anglican!

After what seemed like an age, his eminence Jorge Arturo Cardinal Medina Estevez finally appeared on the balcony of St. Peter's basilica to announce to the world that the new successor of St. Peter had been chosen. Melancholicus was impatient of the multilingual introductory greetings, desiring only to know the identity of the new pontiff and thus the fate of the barque of Peter. When his eminence reached the pause after eminentissimum ac reverendissimum dominum, the tension in the pumpkin room was unendurable. Then came the pope-elect’s Christian name: Iosephum, followed by another horrendously tense pause. Melancholicus immediately thought of Joseph Ratzinger, but for all he knew to the contrary there could be two dozen other Iosephums in the sacred college. His eminence then continued slowly with sanctae Romanae ecclesiae cardinalem, whereat Melancholicus thought he would die. And then finally, that single most important word Ratzinger, at which the world changed in an instant. Like the terrified disciples in the storm on the Sea of Galilee, when the Lord stilled the wind and the waves, all became calm.

It is His church after all.

Deo gratias, alleluia. The conclave might have chosen a notorious dissident like Martini or Danneels, a confused ecumaniac like Kasper, a wilting conciliar yes-man like Murphy-O’Connor, or a wolf in sheep’s clothing like Tettamanzi, but thanks be to almighty God these nightmare scenarios were avoided. Such things hardly even bear thinking about. But in the end, the Holy Ghost gave to Christ’s Church a pope. A Catholic pope.

Flooded with sweet relief, we cheered and applauded, rising to our feet after the fashion of football fans whose team has just scored the winning goal in a match of crucial importance.

There’s nothing like the drama of a conclave.



And there is also this charming clip filmed by one of the faithful on that mementous day in St. Peter’s square:



There are those who will tell us that the recent ‘renewal’ of the Church in the spirit of the council has been a tremendously successful endeavour which has been of inestimable benefit to all Catholics.

Here is Cardinal Ratzinger’s assessment, however, of the true state of the Church in 2005, shortly before he was elected pope:

Should we not also think of how much Christ suffers in his own Church? How often is the holy sacrament of his Presence abused, how often must he enter empty and evil hearts! How often do we celebrate only ourselves, without even realizing that he is there! How often is his Word twisted and misused! What little faith is present behind so many theories, so many empty words! How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him!

...

Lord, your Church often seems like a boat about to sink, a boat taking in water on every side. In your field we see more weeds than wheat. The soiled garments and face of your Church throw us into confusion. Yet it is we ourselves who have soiled them! It is we who betray you time and time again, after all our lofty words and grand gestures.

These words, a cry from the heart of one who can see the Church as she now is, give the lie direct to those who continue to insist, whether because of blindness or mendacity, and in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, that we are now living through the glorious new springtime of the greatest renewal the Church has ever seen. Pope Benedict is the man for the hour for he recognises the nature and extent of the crisis into which the Church has been plunged by her flirtation with the secular world and her concomitant forgetfulness of the divine mission entrusted to her.

Melancholicus occasionally finds himself glancing ahead to the next pontificate. This is not something he likes to do, and for the good of the whole Church he wishes Papa Ratzi many more years of life and continued good health. However, the Holy Father is now 81 years old. There is no point guessing how much time he may have left, for the imminent demise of his predecessor was forecast annually for at least a decade before it actually occurred. It is likewise useless to speculate who the next pope shall be, but Melancholicus hopes that man shall be a Benedict XVII, naming himself in honour of his predecessor, and determined to bring to completion the restoring policies of Papa Ratzi.

Ad multos annos.

A significant milestone

It looks as if the inroads made upon our holy liturgy by insurgents and liturgical terrorists are now beginning to be rolled back. Melancholicus is cheered and encouraged by this development, reported by Catholic World News. It is merely a beginning, but we must remember that a man who wishes to remove a mountain begins by carrying away small stones. Perhaps in the course of time, other bishops will follow Cardinal Cipriani’s lead.

Peruvian cardinal stops Communion in the hand

Lima, Apr. 17, 2008 (CWNews.com) - A Peruvian cardinal reports that he has banned the practice of receiving Communion in the hand.

Speaking to the Italian web site Petrus, Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne of Lima, Peru, said that in order to guard against abuses, "the best way to administer Communion is on the tongue."

Cardinal Cipriani told Petrus that he took the step to halt Communion in the hand in order to promote greater reverence for the Eucharist. In some cases, he said, the practice had led to gross abuses. More generally he cited the "relaxed attitude of many priests" as a cause for the decline in reverence.

Up until the decade in which both Church and society fell apart (that’s the 1960s for those of you who haven’t been paying attention), the universal practice of the Catholic Church in the Latin rite was to administer the host to all communicants on the tongue. The only ones who were permitted to handle the sacred species were those whose hands had been consecrated specifically for that purpose, namely priests and bishops. The faithful did not receive holy communion in their hands, nor at this time were there any such thing as “extraordinary ministers” of holy communion, which latter was a radical novelty without historical precedent. Needless to say, the practice of lay-led “communion services” (which do not satisfy the canonical obligation of hearing Mass, and at which no Catholic is ever obliged to assist) was also unknown.

The proponents of such things will appeal to the practice of the early Church in order to justify their position. It is true that in the first centuries, the faithful did receive holy communion in the hand. But it is also true that this practice had died out everywhere by the sixth century, owing to the same reasons for which Cardinal Cipriani has now banned it in his diocese. Thereafter, holy communion was administered to the faithful on the tongue, and this remained the norm until the Reformation when, animated with zeal for overthrowing the doctrine of transubstantiation, the reformers insisted that the laity should take the consecrated elements into their hands.

In the turbulent anything-goes atmosphere of the post-conciliar Church, the abuse of communion in the hand sprang up as an aping of protestant practice in countries such as Germany and the Netherlands. The abuse spread quickly internationally, necessitating an intervention on the part of the Holy See, as it flagrantly violated liturgical norms. Of course by the time the abuse was addressed, it was too widespread to offer much hope for its swift and easy suppression. Despite the fact that most of the bishops consulted on this question were against changing the discipline of the Church in this regard, Pope Paul VI in the instruction Memoriale Domini, while appealing for the traditional practice to be maintained, infamously granted permission for communion to be given to the faithful in the hand.

In this manner, a questionable practice that began as an act of disobedience was accommodated within the life of the Church by being made a legitimate option, whereafter it rapidly became the norm in a striking illustration of how what is optional today may become obligatory tomorrow. Communion in the hand came late to Ireland, and when he made his first holy communion in 1979, Melancholicus received on the tongue. But by the late 1980s, the traditional manner of receiving holy communion had died out almost entirely.

As a young man, Melancholicus used to receive holy communion in his hand, and he did so routinely until a certain day in February in the year 2000. He was attending a Mass celebrated in a parish not far from where he lived at the time, and that parish was given to the use of big, thick, crumbly hosts.

After receiving holy communion, he was startled to notice two small particles on the palm of his left hand. It is lucky that he noticed them when he did, as they would have been profanely lost otherwise and Melancholicus would have been guilty of sacrilege, at least materially if not quite formally.

For each particle of the sacred host, however small, is just as much the body, blood, soul and divinity of the Lord Jesus as is the host in its entirety; hence the extensive array of precautions traditionally resorted to by the Church to safeguard the Blessed Sacrament from the danger of sacrilege.

With the advent of communion in the hand, however, most of these precautions became redundant, and the Blessed Sacrament is now exposed to sacrileges on a daily basis that could never have occurred before Paul VI so ill-advisedly granted permission for unconsecrated fingers to touch the host. On how many occasions have hosts been found on the floors of churches, under pews, between the pages of missalettes, or even in garbage cans? The practice of communion in the hand also greatly facilitates the efforts of dubious persons to spirit away the sacred host for nefarious purposes.

In February 2000, Melancholicus had not yet discovered the traditional Latin liturgy, in which communion is (or at least should be) always given on the tongue. But that Mass in Bray was the last occasion on which he handled the sacred host, and since then has insisted on receiving on the tongue, and that only from the hands of a priest.

For this reason, attendance at the rite commonly called Novus Ordo is a double headache. Not only does the practice of standing communion make receiving on the tongue more difficult than it might otherwise be, but one must choose one’s pew with care in order to have ready access to the priest at communion time without having to wade through the inevitable morass of “extraordinary ministers”.

Melancholicus does not like to observe the faithful receiving holy communion at the Novus Ordo. Nine out of ten communicants in Ireland receive in the hand. In the church he attended during his visit to Tacoma (a conservative parish whose pastor has clearly been influenced liturgically by EWTN) almost nobody received on the tongue. Very little care seems to be taken with the host by the majority of communicants, and in Ireland very little reverence is shown; in Melancholicus’ local parish, nobody bows or genuflects before receiving save for one pious lady who is always the last person in the church to communicate.

But once again we must not fall into the error of blaming the laity for an abuse instigated and promoted by the clergy. Cardinal Cipriani cited the “relaxed attitude of many priests” as the cause of much irreverence among the laity, and Melancholicus would concur with his eminence’s diagnosis. So many clergy seem to go out of their way to celebrate the Novus Ordo in as casual, relaxed and informal a manner as possible. On frequent occasions, Melancholicus has witnessed such celebrations that were downright sloppy and careless. Yet the clergy wonder why their parishioners no longer go to church.

Jose Gonzalez: Heartbeats

It’s been a while since Melancholicus posted a music video on Infelix Ego, and while ferreting around on YouTube the other day, he came across this gem, namely a video of that Sony Bravia commercial that features thousands of bouncy balls of every shade and colour spilling in slow motion down the streets of San Francisco to the accompaniment of Jose Gonzalez’ song Heartbeats.

This commercial was aired regularly in Ireland around 2005 and 2006, when Melancholicus was in his first year of absence from the seminary, attempting to adjust once again to the lay state and quite at a loss for what to do with himself. Each time he saw it, he was transfixed, unable to speak or to act, and moved by a surge of strong emotion even to the point of tears. In fact, even thinking about it now is enough to cause a lump to rise in his throat. How very odd.

Melancholicus wonders what sort of dark necromancy is going on in his subconscious that he should be so moved by a commercial for a high-definition flat-screen TV. He has not had this peculiar response to other ads for the same product, so there must be something about the combination of the soundtrack and the slow-motion sight of the coloured balls spilling down the street that reaches into the depths of his soul. The song is heart-stirringly beautiful, but played on its own it does not have the same effect. Nor do the bouncy balls, in the absence of the song. But together they draw forth teary springs in an experience of almost religious intensity.

Psychology is a fascinating thing. Enjoy.



Best watched on a Sony Bravia, naturally.

In an ideal world...

Since the followers of the Islamic ideology are consistently animated by their religion with a murderous rage, many folks both east and west have argued that Islam needs a reformation in order to tame it and render it less of a threat to the rest of the world.

Melancholicus disagrees. Islam doesn’t need a reformation.

It needs a Vatican II.

Yes, the equivalent of a Vatican II in the Islamic world would transform all those hot-headed, murderous fanatics into geldings and wilting wallflowers, or cause them to lose so much interest in their religion that they would instead give themselves willingly to beer-drinking, football and chasing girls, or for the more politically inclined, to liberal causes like crusading (sorry!) against global warming.

Harmless pursuits for the most part to be sure, and much more salvific than anything Islam has to offer.

Schism

This is the title of a film by a Saudi blogger named Raed Al-Saeed made as a riposte to Geert Wilders’ Fitna, and now widely available on the internet.

Schism was removed from YouTube following “complaints”, although it was subsequently restored at Al-Saeed’s request.

It is not unnatural that there should have been complaints. But complaints are a different thing entirely to death threats. LiveLeak removed Fitna from its servers almost straight away owing to threats of death and violence from outraged fanatics directed against its staff (although the film has since been restored). Is Al-Saeed now in fear of his life because certain viewers have complained about Schism? One should think not. Geert Wilders, on the other hand, has every reason to look over his shoulder every day for the rest of his life (which, given what happened to Theo van Gogh, might not be that long).

Mahometan bloggers and commentators are of course delighted with Al-Saeed’s effort, but having watched it himself, Melancholicus is not impressed. One cannot compare Schism with Fitna without doing an injustice to the latter. Al-Saeed does not attempt to engage with the charges against Islam contained in Wilders’ film, probably because Wilders’ case is unanswerable. Instead, he takes the easy way out and resorts to attacking the Bible and Christianity in the same manner in which he perceives his enemy to have attacked Islam, with the result that the controversy has descended to the level of an ad hominem slagging match.

This approach is unfortunate not only because it causes further tempers to flare, but because Al-Saeed effectively treats Christianity and Islam as morally equivalent. Since he is a Saudi, Melancholicus assumes that Al-Saeed must be a believing Muslim (why would he have responded to Geert Wilders if he weren’t?). Why, though, would a believing Muslim regard Islam and Christianity as equivalent in their tone and tenor, and in what they teach? There would be no difference between the two religions otherwise, except that of party political identity. Similarly, it is not legitimate to compare the Qur’an and the Bible in the manner in which Al-Saeed has done; each is intended from the outset to be read in a different way. They are differently structured and contain different kinds of text. Both are held to be the word of God by the adherents of Islam and Christianity respectively, but even here there is a difference as to the precise mode of the revelation regarded as being contained in each. Melancholicus apologizes to the reader if he has by now made himself obscure, but this point (regarding the differences between the Qur’an and the Bible) will be made clearer below.

Schism opens with the following statement:

The following phrases are from the Bible, the Holy Book that teaches the most barbaric war criminals

Here, from the very beginning, Al-Saeed is on shaky ground. Who are these war criminals? Al-Saeed does not say. Whether he has in mind people like George W. Bush and Tony Blair, or those such as the butchers of Bosnia Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, or even the most extreme examples such as Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich, does he provide his viewers with any evidence that these men have been inspired by the Bible as he claims, or that any of them actually quoted the Bible in justification of his acts?

No, he doesn’t. Because he cannot. The perpetrators of Islamist atrocities, however, invariably cite the Qur’an as justification for their actions. Blot number one against Al-Saeed.

It is true that there are violent passages in the Old Testament, and Al-Saeed quotes some of them in support of his claims. But the violence of the Old Testament is confined to a particular time and place in history. No Jew or Christian today would attempt to use these verses as a justification for mayhem. But as the Qur’an is regarded by Muslims as valid for all times and places, its exhortations to bloodshed stand as strongly today as they did in the seventh century, and will always do so, as long as the Qur’an exists. Blot number two, as Al-Saeed has failed to distinguish between how Christians interpret the Old Testament, and how his own co-religionists interpret the Qur’an.

Furthermore, the violence of the Old Testament is mitigated, at least in Christianity, by the New Testament with its exhortations to love one’s enemies, to bless those who curse one, to pray for one’s persecutors and to do good to those who do one evil. Al-Saeed seems to be ignorant of this, or perhaps he doesn’t mention it because it would rather spoil his case. Blot number three.

The film then moves on to the notorious and highly-publicized 2006 footage of British troops beating up a group of Iraqi adolescents in Basra, filmed by one of the soldiers who is clearly enjoying the unpleasant spectacle and urging his comrades on. Having primed his viewers with quotes from the Old Testament, Al-Saeed clearly wishes us to associate the Biblical verses with the brutality of the troops, but in this instance there is no connection between the Bible and what the soldiers are doing. Nor does the one doing the filming - who speaks throughout the footage - ever mention the Bible, or any religious motivation whatsoever. Blot four.

The film then provides us with an image of a cross made from bullets standing on a table, on which there is also a copy of psalm 75. We then hear the voice of U.S. president George W. Bush describing his forthcoming invasion of Afghanistan by means of the word crusade. Al-Saeed clearly wishes us to take the “war on terror” for a war on Islam. What he fails to mention, however, is that the invasion of Afghanistan (and of Iraq after it) was prompted not by the Christian religion, or by the Bible, much less by psalm 75, but by a brutal and unprovoked terrorist attack on civilians in New York city which claimed almost 3,000 lives. An attack perpetrated by Muslims in the name of Islam.

If in 2001 the U.S. had gratuitously and out of the blue dropped a 150-kiloton bomb on Mecca, and afterwards cited verses from the Bible to justify the bombing, Al-Saeed might have had a just cause to complain. But as it is, the invasion of Afghanistan no more proves that Christianity is a martial religion than it proves the moon is made from green cheese. Blot five.

We then hear some pentecostalist/evangelical lady talking about Christianity, and inspiring the young. The scene then cuts to two children of, perhaps, ten or twelve years of age talking about their faith. This is what they say:

We're being trained to go out and train others to be God's army and to do God's will ... I feel like we're kind of being trained to be warriors, only in a much finer way ... I don't feel the sense of being afraid to die in battle or anything, like you would if you are actually going out to a war in the physical. There's a peace with it all, too. There's an excitement, yet peace at the same time ... you know, a lot of people die for God and they're not afraid.

There is no shortage of militaristic terminology here, and we can imagine the glee wherewith Al-Saeed must have latched on to this piece. Of course he must have thought of the militant youths of his own religion, who boast in front of their teachers and classmates of intending to strap on explosive vests and blow up the sons of pigs and monkeys (i.e. Jews) when they are old enough to do so. Does Al-Saeed really imagine that this is what the two kids he uses in Schism are talking about when they uttered the above quote? Instead, the children are speaking metaphorically, as their very words make clear. The girl talks of being a warrior “in a much finer way” than going to war “in the physical”. Quite obviously, a literal physical war is not at all in question here. While the boy in the video seems to refer to martyrdom at the end of the quote, he is of course referring to the Christian concept of martyrdom, in which one prefers to suffer death than renounce the faith, if such is unavoidable. Only in Islam, however, does martyrdom involve the performance of a deliberately suicidal act which invariably results in the taking of several other lives besides that of the alleged “martyr”. Blot six.

Then we are back to the pentecostal preacher, who says she wants to see young people as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as young Muslims are to the cause of Islam. What’s wrong with that? Well, actually, here Al-Saeed inflicts damage on his own religion, for his film creates the impression that the preacher wants the youths in her charge to be as fanatical — and hence violent — as he back-handedly acknowledges Muslim youths to be. But however “committed” such Christian young people may be, can he show us any instances in which they have flown planes into buildings, or blown themselves up in crowded malls or restaurants, or bombed subway trains, or beheaded kidnap victims, all in the name of Christ?

Thought not. Blot seven.

We are then shown shots of what can only be a pentecostalist childrens’ service, in which all and sundry are animated by surging emotions. We see the woman preacher again, microphone in hand, animating the children with zeal and declaiming boldly such statements as “This is war! Are you a part of it or not?” As Al-Saeed’s use of this footage lacks a context, we don’t know what the occasion is precisely, but as it is clearly some kind of church service, with no guns or other weapons in sight, the preacher’s language is doubtless metaphorical, the ‘war’ in question being the warfare of the Christian life, namely the constant struggle against sin, against self and against the devil. Al-Saeed surely understands this, since it corresponds exactly to what Muslims describe as the greater jihad. But there is in Islam also a lesser jihad, that form of jihad with which we in the west have become all too familiar in recent years, namely fighting against the unbelievers with the sword and, in our day, the AK-47, the suicide bomb and the hijacked airliner. There is no Christian equivalent of this kind of jihad. Consequently there is no comparison between the metaphorical military language used by this pentecostal lady on the one hand and the literally hate-filled and bloodthirsty discourse of jihadi clerics on the other. The connection exists only in Al-Saeed’s mind. Secondly, even if the exhortation to “make war” were intended to be taken literally, pentecostalism is merely a fringe movement far from representative of Christianity as a whole. Could this guy really not do any better than this? If Melancholicus were a Mahometan (which holy God forfend), he would be profoundly disappointed with Al-Saeed’s lame and toothless effort. Blot eight.

The scene then cuts to Baghdad under attack at the beginning of “Shock and Awe”. Clearly Al-Saeed wishes us to apply the pentecostalist preacher’s cry of “this means war!” to what we see happening in the news footage. But once again, there is no connection between the two. The Bush administration and its allies attacked Iraq not because of any Christian or Biblical injunctions, much less because of the influence of some unidentified pentecostalist, but for reasons stemming from an Islamic attack on New York city that killed nearly 3,000 people. Here we can contrast Al-Saeed’s lame attempts to lay the blame for the war on Christian doctrine rather than on the fanatical Islamists where it belongs. He wastes precious time showing extended footage of warfare and violence that have nothing to do with either the Bible or Christianity when he ought to have been seeking out evidence to make a credible case. Blot nine.

Finally, we reach the ending. Schism closes with this text, against a background soundtrack of gunfire and explosions:

It is easy to take parts of any Holy book that are out of content [sic] and make it sound like the most inhuman book ever written. This is what Geert Wilders did to gather more supporters to his hateful ideology. To create schism.

Melancholicus thinks Al-Saeed misunderstands the meaning of the word schism; it certainly isn’t as appropriate a title as that given to Fitna by his nemesis Geert Wilders.

Then there is an expanded “English version”, which looks like it may have been made by someone else independent of Al-Saeed; this “English version” is somewhat more tendentious, and more obnoxious on that account, but the maker of the English version likewise has little to fear as a result of his actions. Christians are accustomed to such insult and humiliation. We don’t like it, certainly, but at the same time we won’t let it come between us and our rest. But any criticism of the Qur’an, however justified, without even stooping to the level of insult, invariably transforms extraordinary numbers of allegedly “peaceful” Muslims into homicidal maniacs.

The “English version” includes the provocative Biblical verse I came not to bring peace, but a sword (Mt. 10:34). Yes, Jesus did say those words. But once again, he is not speaking literally. This speech was not followed in the Bible by any outbreak of violence, nor has it ever been used by Christians as a justification for war.

The “English version” does a far better job than Al-Saeed’s original in ferreting out examples of atrocities committed by Christians against Muslims. There is some footage which recalls the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995 of over 8,000 Muslim men and boys by the Bosnian Serbs. This was a horrifying crime, for which the perpetrators have still not been brought to justice. Nevertheless, it is irrelevant to the Fitna/Schism controversy, since this massacre was motivated by political considerations first of all, neither were the Bible nor any teaching of the Christian religion ever employed to defend it.

The “English version” also shows some World War II footage of Wehrmacht troops taking an oath, which cuts immediately to contemporary footage of American servicemen taking a similar oath. We are supposed to identify the U.S. with Nazi Germany. A bit contrived, to say the very least. A tad unfortunate also, given the Hitlerite sympathies and rabid anti-semitism of so many Muslims past and present. The picture (which is NOT photoshopped) says it all.

Then there several other irrelevancies in the “English version”, including a terrorist attack on a funeral during the troubles in Northern Ireland, and the infamous “Jonestown” in Guyana at which 900 members of a religious cult committed suicide at the behest of their leader. All of these are indiscriminately pressed into service in an attempt to portray Christianity as a violent religion, or else at least as violent as Islam. The reader may make up his own mind whether or not these attempts have been successful.

The ultimate point of separation between these two films is nothing to do with what may or may not be contained in the holy books of either Christianity or Islam. The point is that Raed Al-Saeed can continue to go about his daily business unmolested, basking in the kudos and approbation of the Islamic media for having dealt such a shrewd blow to the kuffar. It took no great courage for Al-Saeed to make and post Schism. He had nothing to lose in so doing, and everything to gain.

For Geert Wilders, however, the situation is very different. He is a marked man, and for daring to speak out in defence of his country and western civilisation, he will live in fear every day of his life, never knowing when some crazed fanatic will seize the opportunity to kill him. Wilders is also under fire from the politically-correct morons who dominate so much of Dutch society, as everywhere else in the west. For his part, Al-Saeed endures no such opposition. Wilders has presented his viewers with a compelling case, amply supported with incontestable evidence. In contrast, Raed Al-Saeed comes across as an unoriginal imitator, a man who cannot answer Wilders or even turn the tables on him since he has no evidence to make a case. Since he cannot make a case, he throws a hissy fit instead.

Because contrary to what critics like Al-Saeed would have us believe, Geert Wilders’ film has nothing to do with Christian misinterpretations of the violent passages in the Qur’an; Fitna is about what Muslims themselves have made of these violent passages. That these passages are found in the Qur’an is certain; but no one in the west would have paid any attention to them at all if Muslims did not continually use them as justification for heinous acts of murder and bloodshed. If Muslims interpreted the Qur’an as Christians interpret the Bible, it is likely that there would have been no film for Geert Wilders to make.

A final word, addressed especially to any Muslims that might be reading this. Geert Wilders has made out a case that Islam is a violent religion and that its violence is a direct consequence of injunctions contained in the Qur’an. Wilders wishes to have the Qur’an banned in the Netherlands in order to protect the Dutch people. If Muslims disagree with Wilders’ conclusions — and they clearly do — it is incumbent upon them to refute the charges that Wilders has made, bringing forth evidence to disprove his claims. However, if Muslims react to Fitna with fury and rage, even going so far as to threaten the life of the man who made it, does not that rather prove Wilders’ point? It is one thing to claim that Islam is a peaceful religion; it is another thing entirely to expect non-Muslims to believe that claim. When we westerners see Muslims reacting with homicidal hysteria to any slur or perceived slur against their religion, we are not inspired with confidence that Islam is a peaceful faith or that Muslims are a mature and mentally sound people. When we see the kind of atrocities carried out by Muslims in the name of Islam, we will be more inclined to believe Geert Wilders than Muslim apologists who insist that Wilders’ claims are all lies. You Muslims, if you want us to regard you as anything more than violent, unstable, fanatical, immature, misogynistic, murderous neanderthals, it is up to you — and you alone! — to suppress the extremism in your midst, and to do something about the way in which the Qur’an and its injunctions to violence are regarded in your communities. Until such time as you do, you cannot fault us for not taking you at your word.

Lastly, before we finish, Melancholicus wishes to provide his readers with the appropriate links so that his readers may view both Fitna and Schism for themselves and, having seen, may make up their own minds on the matter.

Fitna may be viewed on LiveLeak here [CAUTION: this film contains graphic footage which some viewers may find distressing]

Schism is available on YouTube here.

The so-called “English version” is also on YouTube here.

Melancholicus now finds himself wondering why he lavished so much time and effort on this post, since Fitna is so powerful and speaks for itself. In contrast the two Islamist ripostes are so weak and pathetic that there is really no comparison between them. I have no scruple about labelling the Muslim makers of these videos as islamists, and hence bracketing them with the terrorists. They condemn Fitna and they condemn Geert Wilders, but why do they not condemn the horrible things done by Muslims, upon which Wilders has merely shone a spotlight, horrible things done in the name of Islam? Why do they not hang their heads in shame? Why do they feel the need to go after Christianity, which is totally irrelevant to the question of whether or not the Qur’an is a violent book?

Now the inimitable Pat Condell also has a say which, as usual, is well worth hearing: