To fuss about with the 'user interface' here, and while I am inclined to be grumpy about such nonsense in general, it doesn't appear that anything too terribly confusing has happened overnight.
After the Office diei et defunctorum, during the daily winnowing of the email accounts, I noticed a Portuguese Jesuit, Pater Andreas Lind, writing about Sir James MacMillan's latest album (Symphony no 5 Le grand inconnu and The Sun Danced); while I didn't translate much of it, the names of MacMillan, Roger Scruton, and George Weigel in a single sentence caught my eye.
Pater Lind seems surprised that MacMillan (who is a man of the Left, according to the good Jesuit) can be friendly with and admire Messrs Scruton, requiescat in pace, and Weigel, who are, in the Portuguese Jesuit mind, evidently, creatures of the incorrigible deplorable Right. I don't want to make too much of this, particularly since 80% of the translation work here was via the machinae, but this perspective illustrates... am not quite sure what. Certainly, that there is a significant divide between the Euro and the US and British approach to political questions. Are there not any Portuguese Jesuits, cultivators of 'culture', who plant their feet at least occasionally in both the Right and the Left worlds? Perhaps not.
Dr Joseph Shaw is a lecturer in philosophy (at Oxford? I don't recall at the moment) who is also chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales. He's an intelligent fellow, obviously, and holds most of the right opinions; his post today (which refers to a 'stirred up Twitter': I witnessed some of that agitation, ha) is about the infallibility of canonisations: he (following Dr John Lamont, whose essays at Rorate Caeli I haven't read) is sure that they are not. I have always presumed that they are i.e. that when a sovereign pontiff inscribes a name in the canon of the saints it is sure and certain confirmation that the person enjoys the glories of Heaven and may rightly be called upon-- in the first place, at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass-- for prayer and assistance here below.
The reason, or one of the reasons, that this question is of real interest is that many people find themselves, ahem, unhappy with a number of the canonisations performed by Popes St John Paul, Benedict XVI, and Francis. People who call themselves 'progressive' were offput by the canonisation of St Josemaria, e.g., and people who call themselves adherents of Tradition were offput by the canonisation of St Paul VI.
I must read Dr Lamont's posts later on, or at least add them to the list. This isn't a question about which my own feathers ruffle: he whom Holy Mother Church declares a saint, I will accept as a saint; it's an entirely different question whether I myself become a devoté and pray to him everyday. Time for Terce.
***
Comments
Post a Comment