‘Emmanuel’ Macron

I am appalled by the announcement of the Gaulish chieftain Macron that he intends in effect to subject his hapless people to a regime of compulsory anti-Wuhan-flu vaccination from the start of next month.  I say in effect because in theory one could get a Covid test every two days instead.  But these will no longer be free, and apparently the test is not pleasant to experience.  So in practice, everyone will need a vaccine to a get a ‘sanitary passport’ and everyone will need a sanitary passport to go into a restaurant or café or supermarket, or to get on a bus, train or plane.

Unless vigorously resisted, this is almost bound to spread to other countries very fast.  One will have to accept things tested on murdered babies as a condition for remaining a part of society.

 

I saw a beast coming up out of the sea

 

Frère Jacques Clément rides again

See also here.

 

St John Chrysostom on masks and social distancing

From his letters to Olympias:

“For those who love one another, it is not enough to be united in soul; in order to be consoled they require also each other’s bodily presence.  If that is not granted to them, then they are lacking no small part of their happiness.  Even if we turn to the noble nourisher of charity, we find that it is so.  Writing to the men of Macedonia, this is how he expresses himself:  “Being orphaned of your sight for a while, my brothers, in sight not in heart, we have hastened the more abundantly to see your face with great desire” (1 Thess. 2:17)  […]  But what is it that thou desirest, tell me, with such ardour?  The very sight of them.  For, he says, “we have hastened the more abundantly to see your face”.

“What art thou saying?  Thou who have been raised so high?  Thou for whom the world is crucified, and who art crucified unto the world?  Thou who hast forsaken all that is fleshly, who art almost bodiless – thou hast been thus brought into servitude by thy tenderness, to the point of being held toward this flesh made of clay, made from the earth, which the senses perceive?  ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I am not ashamed to acknowledge it, I glory in it, since carrying in myself an overflowing charity, mother of all good things, that is what I seek.’  And he does not seek only their physical presence, but desires especially to see their fact. “We have hastened the more abundantly to see your face.”

“You want to see them, then, and to look at their face?  ‘Yes: for all the organs of sense are found together in the face.  For a soul by itself, joined to another soul, cannot see or hear anything, but if I have your physical presence, I will speak, I will hear those whom I love.  That is why I desire to see your face; that is where the tongue is, which proffers the sounds making known to us your inmost thought; there is the ear which receives words; and the eyes which express the movements of the soul’” (VIII.12)

 

St Paul and Covid-19

What should we make of this Covid business?  I would not belittle the grief of those who have lost elderly parents or other friends or relations to an untimely death.  Yet from my vantage point it has seemed to me from the start like playing at the plague.  No doubt the fact that it came from China helped; people have a vague memory of having learned in school that the Black Death did the same.  If it had come from Brazil or Nigeria, I doubt it would have so impressed our minds. 

I have been living, by chance, rather off the beaten track since it all began, so perhaps my information is inadequate, but I know of no one personally of whom I can say with confidence that he died from it.  The only person whom I know who might have done so is an octogenarian who was also receiving chemotherapy.  And they tell us that life can never be the same again?  This is not a plague: that is when people wake up in the morning feeling fine and are dead by night-fall.

Some of St Paul’s words have been coming to mind recently: Because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved, therefore God shall send them the operation of error, to believe lying.  Widespread acceptance of lying words of men about what is needful for the salvation of the body would at any rate be a just punishment for widespread rejection of the truthful words of God about what is needful for the salvation of the soul.

 

“Like a broken king”

 

Voltaire brought up to date

twitter-image

 

United States defends the freedom of the Catholic Church

In view of my recent speculations about the identity of the Great Eagle, I was interested in as well as pleased by the recent proclamation by the President of the United States asking that St Thomas Becket be honoured by ceremonies in churches:

NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim December 29, 2020, as the 850th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket. I invite the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches and customary places of meeting with appropriate ceremonies in commemoration of the life and legacy of Thomas Becket.

 

That was quick

Whatever else you might say about the two hundred million horsemen, they don’t waste time. On Monday morning it was reported that Janet Daby, the shadow minister for ‘Women, Faith and Equalities’ (not quite sure what principle of division generated that office) had said that registrars who didn’t see how one man could marry another man should have their consciences respected. By Monday lunchtime, it was reported that she had apologised for her misjudged comments and resigned.

 

Aristotle and the hand of God

How right the Philosopher was to say in his Rhetoric that we are not angry with the dead, since we feel that the worst has already befallen them. I was speaking yesterday to my mother, although she lives in another land, when she asked me if I associated anything with the name ‘Maradona’. “I should think so”, I replied, feeling a generous wrath rise within me, “he was the footballer who defrauded us out of…”; “don’t be too hard on him”, she replied, “he has just died”. Immediately, I felt my g.w. subside, as if by the turning of a tap, and I was moved to murmur a prayer for his soul, gone on its last and most tremendous journey.