I’ve just replied to an e-mail from a good and holy priest in England. I’m not publishing his e-mail in order to maintain his privacy but I thought my own reply, especially the comments about the history of the Church and the gates of hell, might interest visitors to the Ink Desk:
Please forgive the brevity of my response, which will not do justice to your many thoughts and insights. My excuse is that I am about to leave for ten days of travelling, giving talks in California, Tennessee and then back to California again. I only have one day at home in the midst of these wanderings and have so much to do. Forgive me …
I agree with what you say about D’s inability to settle into the Faith with the hope, love and trust that She should inspire. If he understood history, he would know that the Church is always in a state of “crisis” in its relations with the World, which is Her ancient and perennial Enemy. As you know, most bishops were Arians at one time, during the so-called “golden age” of the early Church, which is why God sent us St Augustine. A little later, Pelagianism seemed to rule the roost, threatening the survival of the Church, at least in the eyes of those who had forgotten Our Lord’s promise about the gates of hell not prevailing. Corruption was rife in the Church during the so-called “high” Middle Ages, which is why God sent us St Francis and St Dominic – and Aquinas. And then there was the Protestant Rupture, which called itself in euphemistic Orwellian doublethink, a “reformation”, which is why God sent us the great saints of the real Reformation. Then we had the superciliously self-named “Enlightenment” or so-called “Age of Reason” with its wholesale abandonment of all philosophy except its own. Thence the French Revolution, Imperialism, slavery, communism, Nazism, genocide, atom bombs, abortion, euthanasia, et cetera, ad nauseam. And still the Church survives, careering through the ages reeling but erect, as Chesterton says.
Regarding your question about a good history of the Church, I find Hughes a little limp-wristed. Carroll is more muscular but too sketchy.
We are doing well. Susannah, Leo and Evangeline are all in good health and spirits. We have begun keeping chickens, which is fun and provides us with both eggs and entertainment!
I share your hope that we might be able to meet during my visit to England in late May.
Every blessing on your labours. Please remember mine in your prayers.
Dear Joseph,
Good job you’re not here at the moment. The floods are of biblical proportions. A real sense of Nature’s power and our helplessness before it. The southeast coastline is being relentlessly battered.
At the start of this a very sane gentlemanly member of UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) caused a ‘storm’ by saying this was all caused by the passage of the Gay Marriage bill. For ‘going against the teachings of the Gospel’ is all what he said. Howls of protest and ridicule.
A very gentle, soft-spoken person he was. A traditional English gentleman you would say. He didn’t labour the point, he just said it plainly, honestly, then (which was obviously coming) resigned after it was held to be ‘offensive’.
A typical ‘swivel-eyed loon’.
But who are the ‘swivel-eyed loons’?
It’s the media, politicians that are swivelling round; looking round for the camera to explain themseves, looking at their iPad, looking this way, that, watching their back, swivelling round.
And all the time the crashing waves bespeak God’s wrath.
Your point about the threat of corruption at all stages in the life of the Church is prudent and could be amplified in a very worthwhile unwritten history; “Ten Moments When the Bark of Peter Almost Capsized”, or something along those lines. People who romanticize the Apostolic Era (as if every Christian then living were a St. Stephen) would do well to ponder the spiritual career of Ananias and Saphira and the most remarkable results of that couple’s liquidation of their real assets.
As for your opinion of Philip Hughes, it raises in me a feeling of regret that the Council of Trent condemned dueling. But God bless you nonetheless.