Regnum Hiberniae

1. I bind unto myself today
the strong name of the Trinity,
by invocation of the same
the Three in One and One in Three.

2. I bind this today to me forever
By power of faith, Christ’s incarnation;
His baptism in Jordan river,
His death on cross for my salvation;
His bursting from the spicèd tomb,
His riding up the heavenly way,
His coming at the day of doom
I bind unto myself today.

3. I bind unto myself the power
Of the great love of cherubim;
The sweet Well done in judgment hour,
The service of the seraphim,
Confessors’ faith, apostles’ word,
The patriarchs’ prayers, the prophets’ scrolls,
All good deeds done unto the Lord
And purity of virgin souls.

4. I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the star lit heaven,
the glorious sun’s life giving ray,
the whiteness of the moon at even,
the flashing of the lightning free,
the whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
the stable earth, the deep salt sea
around the old eternal rocks.

5. I bind unto myself today
the power of God to hold and lead,
his eye to watch, his might to stay,
his ear to hearken to my need.
the wisdom of my God to teach,
his hand to guide, his shield to ward;
the word of God to give me speech,
His heavenly host to be my guard.

6. Against the demon snares of sin,
The vice that gives temptation force,
The natural lusts that war within,
The hostile men that mar my course;
Or few or many, far or nigh,
In every place and in all hours,
Against their fierce hostility
I bind to me these holy powers.

7. Against all Satan’s spells and wiles,
Against false words of heresy,
Against the knowledge that defiles,
Against the heart’s idolatry,
Against the wizard’s evil craft,
Against the death wound and the burning,
The choking wave, the poisoned shaft,
Protect me, Christ, till Thy returning.

8. Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

9. I bind unto myself the name,
the strong name of the Trinity,
by invocation of the same,
the Three in One and One in Three.
By whom all nature hath creation,
eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
salvation is of Christ the Lord.

 

Are Scotland and England really different countries?

One of the assumptions which pervades the question of Scottish independence is the idea that Britain is a coalition of nations while England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales are individual nations. But is this really true? Ethnically the population of the British Isles homogenous. A single base population lies under the various waves of invasion and migration and remains the large majority of the genetic heritage across the British Isles about 75% in East Anglia and 95% in Galway. The original name for the islands is Britain (Πρεττανική) the largest island being called megale Brettania and the second largest mikra Brettania. The original language of the Britons is lost (it may have been Basque). While the population remained stable they adopted the language of successive waves of invaders down to the present universal English speech which is no more or less ‘foreign’ than the Celtic languages which are also the tongues of transient invading elites. The legendarium of Britain is also stable. Beowulf is a literary survival with no purchase on folk culture. Princess Scotia is a self conscious invention of the Wars of Independence. From the High King Mac Ercae to Lot of Orkney to Arthur’s Seat to Winchester to Tintagel the mythology of Britain is Arthurian. These are the tales passed down by real people across the generations. The dynasty is likewise pan-insular. The Scottish Kings (and later the English and then the British Kings) are descended from Fergus Mór and crowned upon the Lia Fáil from Tara. The Scottish Kings are also, since St Margaret, the heirs of the House of Wessex. The Union of 1603 thus returned the English Kings to their ancient throne. The name of Scotland in English means Ireland, the name of Scotland in Gaelic (Alba) means Great Britain. The Lion on the Scottish arms symbolises Huntingdon and the earliest Kings of Alba fought under the Red Dragon of the Britons. The liturgy praises St Mungo as the ‘glory of Cambria’. The obsession with the Wars of Independence is absurd. Scotland won these wars and in 1603 took over England not the other way around. On the other hand it seems the injustice of Edward I’s ambitions created the artificial sense of otherness between north and south among the one British people (rather as the Reformation did east-west for Ireland) which to this day feeds the illusion of four nations where in fact, on the deepest level, there is but one.

 

The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

 

Oh Camellia sinensis!

Each time the kettle starts to hiss,

Oh praise Him! Alleluia!

Dihydrogen monoxide too,

Infuse their leaves the whole way through!

Oh praise Him! Oh praise Him!

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

 

Lord Tebbit expresses his hope that Catholicism is true…

…in the course of expressing his sentiments on the death of Martin McGuinness.

I’m just pleased that the world is a sweeter and cleaner place now. He was not only a multi-murderer, he was a coward. He knew that the IRA were defeated because British intelligence had penetrated right the way up to the Army Council and that the end was coming. He then sought to save his own skin and he knew that it was likely he would be charged before long with several murders which he had personally committed and he decided that the only thing to do was to opt for peace. He claimed to be a Roman Catholic. I hope that his beliefs turn out to be true and he’ll be parked in a particularly hot and unpleasant corner of hell for the rest of eternity.

 

The hymn that should be the Irish National Anthem…

I bind unto myself today
the strong Name of the Trinity,
by invocation of the same,
the Three in One, and One in Three.

I bind this day to me for ever,
by power of faith, Christ’s Incarnation;
his baptism in Jordan river;
his death on cross for my salvation;
his bursting from the spicèd tomb;
his riding up the heavenly way;
his coming at the day of doom:
I bind unto myself today.

I bind unto myself the power
of the great love of cherubim;
the sweet “Well done” in judgment hour;
the service of the seraphim;
confessors’ faith, apostles’ word,
the patriarchs’ prayers, the prophets’ scrolls;
all good deeds done unto the Lord,
and purity of virgin souls.

I bind unto myself today
the virtues of the starlit heaven
the glorious sun’s life-giving ray,
the whiteness of the moon at even,
the flashing of the lightning free,
the whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
the stable earth, the deep salt sea,
around the old eternal rocks.

I bind unto myself today
the power of God to hold and lead,
his eye to watch, his might to stay,
his ear to hearken, to my need;
the wisdom of my God to teach,
his hand to guide, his shield to ward;
the word of God to give me speech,
his heavenly host to be my guard.

Against the demon snares of sin,
The vice that gives temptation force,
The natural lusts that war within,
The hostile men that mar my course;
Or few or many, far or nigh,
In every place and in all hours
Against their fierce hostility,
I bind to me these holy powers.

Against all Satan’s spells and wiles,
Against false words of heresy,
Against the knowledge that defiles,
Against the heart’s idolatry,
Against the wizard’s evil craft,
Against the death-wound and the burning
The choking wave and the poisoned shaft,
Protect me, Christ, till thy returning.
Christ be with me,
Christ within me,
Christ behind me,
Christ before me,
Christ beside me,
Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort
and restore me.
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ in quiet,
Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of
all that love me,
Christ in mouth of
friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself today
the strong Name of the Trinity,
by invocation of the same,
the Three in One, and One in Three.
Of whom all nature hath creation,
eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
praise to the Lord of my salvation,
salvation is of Christ the Lord.

 

 

Quis Separabit?

 

Three realms united, and on one bestow’d, An emblem of their mystic union show’d

– John Dryden

Four years after his acclamation as Emperor at York, at the crisis point in his fortunes, Constantine the Great beheld in the sky three crosses superimposed upon another and heard the words “in this sign conquer”. Under such a banner for a hundred years the united kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland were invincible and all conquering. Year upon year the Catholic faithful grew in fidelity and in numbers until one quarter of the entire globe was subject to the United Kingdom and the Church was on course to reconvert the British Isles, torn from her grasp by the lust of Henry VIII. What went wrong?

In the middle of the First World War a group among the Catholics of Ireland rebelled against the crown. The overreaction of the government created the opportunity to force the partition of Ireland and eventually to transform the larger portion into a republic. This permitted in theory the creation of a ideal Catholic polity in the south. Indeed, great strides were made towards this in 1937 but the authors drew back from formally professing the Catholic Faith as the religion of the Irish State.

The majority of Catholics in Northern Ireland (according to various opinion polls and as implied by the census) now favour remaining within the United Kingdom. I knew a Northern Irish Catholic woman when I was an undergraduate whose family always voted Unionist but never openly admitted it. Electoral returns have for a long time been inexplicable in Northern Ireland unless many Catholics are voting for Unionist parties. The DUP’s policies have also long been the closest of any party in the British Isles to Catholic Social Teaching. Unborn children retain (albeit constantly threatened) legal protection in the North while abortion is legalized in the Republic. I have met at least one vociferous practicing Catholic ‘West Brit’ from the Republic. I am told there are many more discrete ones. A republican Irish historian once admitted to me that he did not think there was a majority for an Irish Republic among the population of the island of Ireland as a whole when it was created.

Until the end of the eighteenth century Catholic Ireland was more royalist and Jacobite than the rest of Britain. Whether one agrees with them or not Adrian IV and Paul IV gave the lordship and then the crown of Ireland to Henry II and Mary I fair and square. When John surrendered “the whole kingdom of England and the whole kingdom Ireland, with all their rights and appurtenance” to Innocent III in 1213 he got them back again “now receiving and holding them, as it were a vassal, from God and the Roman church”. I can see how Ireland could legitimately seek to put the Duke of Bavaria on the throne on the grounds that the events of 1688 and therefore the subsequent parliamentary union were revolutionary. I can see the pragmatic case for seizing the opportunity to create the state described in the 1937 Bunreacht Na hÉireann. I can see the theoretical case for an isonomic mixed republic as the highest form of government. Yet the authority of rulers does not come from the governed and nationalism is a theological and philosophical error.

Was or is Irish independence defensible? Nationalists strenuously deny the authenticity of the St Patrick’s Cross as the Flag of Ireland (despite the evidence) but at least the St Patrick’s Cross signifies St Patrick. Protestants and Catholics might disagree about the truth of the faith and the faith of St Patrick, but this is an argument about an objective fact which implies the importance of the topic. The Tricolor expressly signifies religious indifferentism and under that banner religious indiferentism has triumphed. The mutilated text of the contemporary Irish constitution and the wholesale apostasy of the Irish Republic (only two counties opposing ‘gay’ ‘marriage’) seem to indicate that a very serious mistake has been made. What has been gained ultimately by Irish Independence? It would seem only the political weakening of Catholicism in the British Isles, the intellectual hobbling of anglophone Catholicism at Vatican II (where it could have made a real difference), the confusion of nationalism and faith (and the instrumentalisation of the latter), and now, finally, national apostasy. Quis separabit?

 

NI Alliance Party Leader suggests killing the disabled

NI is the last part of the British Isles where the unborn child enjoys the protection of the law. All the powers of hell are no doubt conjoined in the struggle to remove this protection. The latest stratagem is to point out the horrible fact that disabled untermenschen are permitted to draw breath in NI who might have been hygienically destroyed in mainland Britain. The leader of NI Alliance Party has called for a ‘consultation’ about the extending of eugenic cleansing to Ulster.

 

No Protestant Babies – Pope Benedict XIV to King Henry IX

Denzinger-Hünermannn 2566-2570

Brief Singulari nobis to Cardinal Henry, Duke of York, 9th February 1749

§12. … When a heretic baptizes someone, provided he uses the legitimate form and matter,… the latter is marked with the baptismal character….

§13. Next, it was also found that someone who has received valid baptism from a heretic is made a member of the Catholic Church by virtue of that [baptism]; for the personal error of the one baptizing cannot deprive him of his happiness, provided the baptizer provides the sacrament in the faith of the true Church and observes her provisions in what relates to the validity of baptism. Suarez affirms this admirably in his Fidei catholicae defensio contra errores sectae Anglicanae, book 1, chapter 24, where he proves that the person baptized becomes a member of the Catholic Church, also adding this, that if the heretic, as often happens, christens an infant unable to make an act of faith, this is no obstacle to his receiving the habit of faith at baptism.

§14. Lastly, we have established that, if they reach the age at which they can distinguish right from wrong for themselves and then adhere to the errors of the one who baptized them, persons who were baptized by heretics are rejected from the unity of the Church and are deprived of all those benefits that those remaining in the unity of the Church enjoy, but they are not freed from her authority and laws, as Gonzales wisely explains in the section ‘Sicut’, no. 12, concerning heretics.

§15. We see this in the case of fugitives and traitors whom the civil laws completely exclude from the privileges of faithful subjects. Similarly, the laws of the Church do not grant clerical privileges to those clerics who disobey the commandments of the sacred canons. But nobody thinks that traitors or clerics who violate the sacred canons are not subject to the authority of their princes or prelates.

§16. These example too, unless we are mistaken, are relevant to the question; for just like them, so too heretics are subject to the Church and are bound by the ecclesiastical laws.

 

Primary Educators

I have often quoted the wonderful statement of the 1937 Irish Constitution on the nature of the family:

“The State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.”

It goes on to say:

“The State acknowledges that the primary and natural educator of the child is the Family and guarantees to respect the inalienable right and duty of parents to provide, according to their means, for the religious and moral, intellectual, physical and social education of their children. Parents shall be free to provide this education in their homes or in private schools or in schools recognised or established by the State.”

The second passage is of course a logical consequence of the first. The original  Bunreacht na hÉireann though not a perfect document (not least in the absence of the word ‘one’ from article 44.1.2) had the good fortune to be written in the reign of Pope Pius XI who, among many other great acheivements, wrote the encyclical Divini Illius Magistri a brilliant exposition of the true nature of education and of the right to educate.

(As an aside it also contains the most hard-line statement of Papal authority in temporals since Unam Sanctam:

“[T]he Church as a perfect society has an independent right to the means conducive to its end, and because every form of instruction, no less than every human action, has a necessary connection with man’s last end, and therefore cannot be withdrawn from the dictates of the divine law, of which the Church is guardian, interpreter and infallible mistress.”)

The Spirit of the Age (aka the Prince of this World) does not like marriage it being the symbol of everything he seeks to destroy and of his greatest defeat. He has invented his own version ‘Gay marriage’ and his alternative to the family: the Leviathan State. The Leviathan State doesn’t like home schooling or the principles enunciated in sections 41-42 of the 1937 Irish Constitution. In fact, they are a declaration of war to the death between the family and the Leviathan.

Hobbes may have christened Leviathan (well presumably it was a humanist naming ceremony) but it has found its natural home in the lands blessed with tongue of Luther. Germany has quite recently been imprisoning parents for home schooling. Austria is now keen to catch up. The law code in Austria (Leviathan loves law codes and hates common law) seems to allow for home schooling but the children have to be tested every year in German (the persecuted parents are not Austrian) with the same exams based on the same curriculum as the state schools. The group of parents seeking to resist are facing tens of thousands of Euros in annual fines, possible imprisonment, and have been threatened with the confiscation of their children.

They have an excellent website……support them!

 

The most poignant clause in all British Law

Ireland Act 1949

§2 (1) It is hereby declared that, notwithstanding that the Republic of Ireland is not part of His Majesty’s dominions, the Republic of Ireland is not a foreign country for the purposes of any law in force in any part of the United Kingdom or in any colony, protectorate or United Kingdom trust territory, whether by virtue of a rule of law or of an Act of Parliament or any other enactment or instrument whatsoever, whether passed or made before or after the passing of this Act, and references in any Act of Parliament, other enactment or instrument whatsoever, whether passed or made before or after the passing of this Act, to foreigners, aliens, foreign countries, and foreign or foreign-built ships or aircraft shall be construed accordingly.