Thin Red Line

The COVID pandemic is officially over, but as it happens, I now have COVID. That is, I have tested positive for COVID since Friday, and it's a real pain in the tuckus.

This fine word, by the way, is an anglicisation of the Yiddish "tuchus," which I probably heard in a 1980s Hollywood film rather than (as a Torontonian might expect) my parents' neighbourhood, where one is more likely to hear Russian or Hebrew, at least on the bus. 

Or so I think. I have not actually been in my parents' neighbourhood since New Year's Day 2020.

The exact order if the set of circumstances that have led to my exile is a bit hazy now. A disease travelled out of China, and the Canadian government was very worried for the bad treatment of the Chinese by Canadians, but then a variation of the disease came out of the United Kingdom, so the Canadian government banned British flights between December 23 and January 7. Joyeux Noel!

Before that was a period where there weren't many flights from Britain anywhere--and while hiding in our homes and washing our groceries we hoped the atmosphere would profit from the break. The news out of Italy was terribly bad---although, when there were flights again, Benedict Ambrose and I had no trouble going there. It was before the vaccine, so all we had to do was not have a temperature. Going to Canada, once it lifted the anti-British ban, would have meant an expensive and possibly dangerous hotel quarantine. I seem to remember stories of forced van rides to undisclosed locations, bags of refuse, disgusting food, sexual assaults. 

But life, especially expat life, got more difficult when there was a vaccine because Canadian families began to break up over the question of whether the vax was the best thing since sliced bread or the best thing since BEFORE sliced bread. It also meant, of course, that governments could decide to restrict travel (work, unemployment benefits, child visitation rights, etc.) only to people who had had the vaccine.

But some scientists and medical professionals were highly reluctant to take the vaccine. Some of them told my employer why, and occasionally I fixed their sentence structure and reduced the numbers of their exclamation points before we published their explanations. I also kept track of British COVID jab side effects reports, which made for gruesome reading. 

It was almost, but not quite, illegal to tell people why other people were reluctant to take the vaccines, and my employer's readership skyrocketed because it was otherwise hard to find balanced reading. By balanced, I mean that most news websites told people to take the vaccines and our news website told them to not take the vaccines. If you read the government advice, and you read advice against the government advice, you read both sides of the story. That's what balanced means these days. 

Naturally, working where I work, I did not take the vaccines.

(In Canada, a French-Canadian child told a talk show host that people like me should be reported to police. Another thought we should be deprived of this and that until we submitted.)  

And I did not get sick. Oh, I had a bad tummy ache in August 2020, probably from an ice-cream sundae in rural Silesia, and I got the "super-cold" in April 2022, I think it was. That was pretty miserable, but I took a COVID test and COVID it was not.   

So for most of the last 34 months I was healthy, happy, energetic, a danger to nobody, and I missed my family and friends back in Canada a lot. 

(In case anyone has forgotten this already, until Saturday, October 1, 2022, unvaccinated Canadians could return to Canada from overseas--but would have to be in quarantine for 14 days and could not leave again.)

I missed my family and friends so much that when the Canadian truckers decided to protest Canadian COVID restrictions, I burst into tears. This will sound crazy if you read the Guardian instead of, you know, the Western Standard or the New York Times instead of the New York Post. However, I distinctly remember feeling that ordinary Canadian hockey dads, blue-collar, salt-of-the-earth, Tim-Horton's-coffee-drinking dads were going to set the country free so I could go home without being treated like a war criminal by airport staff and then--crucially--be permitted to leave the country again to rejoin my cancer-survivor husband. 

This is not what happened, though. Instead the (government-subsidised) media turned on the Canadian hockey dads, and  .... I don't want to live through that again, even in memory. However, even if the truckers failed, one Canadian dad did see an opportunity in the Freedom Convoy. Say hello, Canadian history, to Pierre Poilievre, the man whose total domination of the Conservative leadership elections led (can anyone doubt it?) to the end of the very probably illegal Canadian travel restrictions. 

I waited for the pro-jab members of my family to come and see me, and eventually my elderly parents booked a tour of the Highlands and informed me that they would be along on October 1 to stay for six nights. I was terribly happy; Benedict Ambrose painted the master bedroom; we saved bottles of elderflower champagne for their delectation.

A week before, however, Benedict Ambrose felt like he had the flu and spent two days in bed. He was out of it again on Monday, but then I began to feel like I had the flu. I went to bed myself and stayed there until Thursday, when I felt well enough to do an honest day's work. However, B.A. and I decided that--just in case--we had better take COVID tests before Mum and Dad turned up to stay with us for a week. So appalled was I by the possibility that I might not be able to see my parents, I burst into frightened tears even before taking the test. 

After taking the test, I was disconsolate. 

So to wrap up this tale of terrible timing, we found Mum and Dad an AirBnB within walking distance of our home, and we bought a pile of £2 Tesco COVID tests so we can test ourselves every day. We meet my parents outside, keeping six feet apart, usually wearing masks. I feel utterly wretched leaving the house because, for the first time in 34 months, I am actually COVID-positive and, therefore, presumably dangerous to others. Naturally, B.A. and I stayed home from Mass. 

I am not, however, particularly sick. Currently I cough from time to time, and I tire easily. Let's hope I'm over the worst. I chug Vitamin C, Vitamin D3, and zinc; I do not happen to have the exotic anti-malarial on hand.

And I feel happy because I have actually seen my Mum and Dad in person for two days in a row and because, no matter how much family members disagreed on the subject of COVID, the vaccines, and the truckers, we never broke up. 

Cider Day 2022

New record! Today we gathered 200 apples and made 11 litres of apple juice. Our production this year was made much, much simpler and more pleasant with our new toy, the apple crusher. The apple crusher was a bit of a splurge, but this is our fifth cider season and I thought we deserved it. Making apple cider is hard physical work, and grinding up quarter apples in our temperamental blender and tiny food processor was the worst part. 

This year our operations were almost entirely outdoors, and although it was initially chilly, the sun shone throughout. I gathered up what good windfalls there were and then got to work picking apples from the tree. Benedict Ambrose assisted in this from a ladder; I enjoyed my annual climb among the branches. As we worked, we spotted a new neighbour on the other side of the tree--a hipster-looking young man with a big beard and a baby in a pram. The young man and then his wife ambled over after we hallooed at them; we encouraged them to make the most of the apples on their side. (They were, in fact, already doing this.) For some reason, our neighbours to our left and right seemed to think they need our permission to take the apples hanging over their gardens.) 

Apples got, we washed and counted them in the bathroom, and then  B.A. lugged them back outdoors in a large blue IKEA bag. I followed to cut the big ones in halves--and cut the badly bruised bits out--and B.A. took great delight in turning the wheel of the apple crusher. At one point we decided to let me cut all the apples before we crushed any more, and I got B.A. to sing me "The Apple Tree Carol." We both got a bit choked up. Point to 17th century Protestant hymnists. 

Apples crushed, B.A. assembled the press, and we made guesses on how much of the thick red-brown apple juice we would get. We thought nine and hoped for ten, and so we were delighted when we got just over eleven. We drank the "just over" bit and it was utterly delicious--sweet and flavoursome, tasting uniquely of our own apples. Meanwhile, I drank a bottle of last year's cider--which B.A. thought was too sweet--as B.A. pressed away. The elimination of the food processor chore had really filled him with energy.

After that we began the labour of washing, disassembling and storing everything. I had two cups of coffee and then set about turning 3 pounds of particularly battered windfalls into apple pie filling. Now there is apple crumble in the oven, and eleven litres of juice in the sitting room awaiting de-yeasting and re-yeasting. 

UPDATE (October 16): We bottled it late (yesterday, October 15), adding 50 g sugar to each of the 2 demijohns a few hours beforehand so that the second fermentation will happen in the bottles. We filled 20 bottles (a record) and a glass from the bottom of each demijohn. Somehow B.A. was able to separate the cider in the glasses from the lees (dead yeast), and it was quite delicious. 

The Curtsy

Last night Benedict Ambrose and I dressed in tweed and wool and went out after 8 PM to join the queue to see Her Majesty's coffin in St. Giles's Cathedral. B.A. wore a black tie, and I had on a warm purple shawl. We got on a bus near our home, and I periodically checked social media on my phone for updates.

I had had the presence of mind to text a patriotic friend, and he said that he and his wife had waited for 2.5 hours from Summerhall, were now in George Square, and expected to wait another 90 minutes. B.A. and I decided that we were up to waiting for four hours--five, in a pinch. We were amused rather than  discouraged when, as I had been warned, we saw the slowly moving queue inching around every path in the 58+ acre Meadows towards the wristband station. 

It was dark now--getting on for 9 PM--and at a far corner of the Meadows, acrobats were juggling with fire. There was no rain, and it wasn't very cold. The atmosphere was patient and expectant, determined and almost cheerful. We followed the crowd--which included all ages and races but seemed predominantly adult and Scottish-- backward almost to its beginning, when something happened.

The something was a short, retired academic who made a bee-line for my husband, presumably because birds of a feather flock together and B.A. was wearing not only a tweed suit but a watch chain. The  man informed us that he was off, for the security women had told him that the wait would be 12 hours, and that this was too long for him. 

"But what a slap in the eye for the SNP, eh?" he demanded jovially, and we agreed that the 12-hour queue of patriots was a glorious sight and that the separatists, republicans, and other enemies of the Realm must be entirely downcast. Our interlocutor then gave us his opinion of the First Minister of Scotland, the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and His Majesty the King, and we felt a bit embarrassed. His "partner," still in Greece, to which he has retired and where he normally lives, had told him that--given this trio--Britain is doomed, etc. 

As he continued on, I excused myself to ask the security women how long the wait would be, and they told me, too, that the wait would be 12 hours. After five years in news journalism, I don't trust anyone, so I asked another security guard farther along, who said 13. And the police officer I quizzed at the beginning (that is, where we would have taken our places) of the queue said 13 or 13 and a half. 

By this time, Benedict Ambrose had escaped our imperfectly monarchist new pal, and we agreed with relief and sorrow that we would have a drink and go home, as B.A. had to start work in 12 hours. And, bizarrely, I felt furious because I didn't really believe the wait would be 12 hours and I hate quitting.

I really hate quitting. Quitting is my pet peeve. I get annoyed when other people quit. I even get annoyed when B.A. says, in a cheerful and completely inoffensive tone, that he doesn't understand the point to space exploration. When he says things like that, my American ancestry comes to the fore and says things like "The problem with you British these days is that you don't hustle," like a cartoon Yank in an Agatha Christie novel. And I hate quitting so much because  I quit my Ph.D, and although I was literally mentally ill at the time, I still think that I shouldn't have quit. 

That said, I thought when I was on the bus this morning, instead of entirely quitting, I retreated from the horrors of contemporary academic theology until I started working for LSN, and now I give comfort and support to traditional theologians like Peter Kwasniewski and edit reportage on the machinations of the German Synodal Way. Being a believing John Paul II Catholic (with strong traditional tendencies that flowered later), there is no way I could have flourished in the Americanist Catholic theological establishment. However, I lived to fight another day. 

I got on the bus at about 7:30 AM, bound once again for George Square. To my infinite relief, there was no queue at all in the Meadows. I went straight to George Square and followed the queue there backwards to the edge of the Meadows, where there were security guards handing out wristbands. I got a blue wristband (green wristbands were fast tracked, interesting) and hurried with the scattered crowd down Potter Row past the Edinburgh University Chaplaincy building and then down West College Street where the queue firmed up. Before long, I was on Chambers Street, silently praying my Rosary outside the National Museum of Scotland.

It was (and is) very sunny, and it was certainly cold enough then for me to be glad of all the tweed and wool I was wearing, not to mention my purple shawl. Two young police officers, cheerful and going off shift, joked that the wait from there was 12 hours. One of them asked the queue how we were feeling, and a woman said "Jolly!"

"Oh, the poor wee sweetheart," said the young police officer, presumably meaning the late Queen. But it is true that the queue, though relatively quiet, was not particularly sad. I wondered to what extent social media and FOMO (fear of missing out) had brought the crowds out, especially when I heard American accents on George IV Bridge. 

I also heard Italian and beheld a very tanned young man with a video camera. There were a number of journalists and camera people on George IV Bridge, and I studiously ignored them. My hair was (and is) a total mess, and I arguably have a tourist accent myself. At any rate, I escaped journalistic notice and placed the contents of my pockets (rosary, wallet, passport, paperback, phone) into a plastic box. A burly security guard waved a wand over me, I collected my things and turned a corner, and St. Giles's appeared before me. It came as a complete surprise. Despite living here for 13 years, I had forgotten it was so close to George IV Bridge. 

So the moment came. I pulled my shawl over my sadly messy bun, about which I can do nothing until I have two free hours, bid good morning to a uniformed man on duty at the door, and went in. The old Cathedral, which began Catholic (of course) and has ended up Church of Scotland, looked better than usual. Indeed, with flowers and the standard-covered coffin, it looked majestic. I slowed my pace so I didn't just trot past the Queen like an automaton, took in the ambo--at which my own Archbishop read the Epistle at yesterday's Service--and the Crown of Scotland, and curtsied before the coffin.

Benedict Ambrose saw me. Amazingly, he had the live-feed on and looked up just as my face appeared on the television screen. He saw me bob up and down and then walk on with a sorrowful face, purse-lipped.  Somehow, he stopped the transmission (I haven't worked this out) and rewound. 

Thus, when I telephoned to say I had been successful, he explained why he knew. I looked at the time: it was 10 AM. 

So I must conclude that our anti-SNP interlocutor, the security guards, and the police all did B.A. and I a favour by telling us the wait would be 12 or 13 hours. My wait today was probably no more than an hour and half. Having never met the Queen or seen her in person, I was at least able to pay my respects to her coffin, and thanks to the miracle of technology--and Providence--Benedict Ambrose was there with me, too.

Just like ten years ago

Polish Pretend Son has been in Edinburgh with his wife and child, my god-daughter. or córka czestna. as I described her to my summer school teachers. Yesterday was their last day in Scotland, so I made the ultimate trad sacrifice by going to my local parish Saturday Vigil Mass, and spent the morning making Sunday lunch. And hoovering. I hate hoovering. 

Two members of the Men's Schola (besides Benedict Ambrose), which took its talents to the Anglican Ordinariate some time ago, were present as well, so it was a party of seven, including my 2-year-old Godling. She was rightly indignant when she did not (at first) get a starter. 

PPS and family are the opposite of vegans: they eat almost nothing except animal products and fermented foods teeming with lactic acid bacteria. Apparently the infant amuses people with her hungry demands for meat, and I did note her excitement in our local butcher shop. (The senior butcher was charmed; he noted with professional pride that she looked a lot older than two--and indeed, she is usually tall, slim and graceful.) When the carnivores first arrived, B.A and I ate rather more meat than we usually do, and the morning after a blow-out featuring black pudding, lamb chops, hamburger patties, and steak, I was horribly ill. Therefore, for this dinner party we took it easy and served guacamole before the   gammon and a chocolate meringue tart (aka "Poison," to use PPS's expression) afterwards. 

Mrs PPS seemed impressed by my ability to turn out a variety of [poisonous] sugar-laden cakes and bakes,  and rather swiftly, too. When B.A. and I were staying with her last month, she set me to making low-sugar shortbread, which after 13 years in Britain, I could do like winking. Not for nothing did Emma Thompson call the UK "cake-filled." If called upon to describe traditional British culture as still lived today, I would say "Cake, biscuits, scones, trifle, chocolate meringue tart." If called upon to utter a traditional Scottish joke, I would repeat the sally I heard across the table and ask:

"Is that a chocolate tart or a meringue?"

The answer to this is "No, you're right. It's a tart," and the joke only works if you ask the question in a Scottish--indeed, a Morningside--accent.   

We do not go for party games at my house, but there was a higher level of rambunctiousness than usual because of the Godling. This entailed much use of our Lion and Unicorn masks (bought for a Jubilee Party) and there was a tragic-comic moment when a member of the Schola inadvertently pulled the horn off the Unicorn, and the horrified infant burst into tears. 

Reading ghost stories is a more traditional entertainment, and I went digging in boxes and computer files to find a popular favourite. I have an entire manuscript of unpublished, and often rejected, ghost stories. They were written to amuse a very select and old-fashioned audience, so I don't have much hope that they will ever appear in a magazine. However, our guests were that audience, so I found "The Sanctuary Spider of Milan" and one of the guests read it aloud.  

Apparently as I was in the closet with the boxes and Mrs PPS was in the main bedroom putting the infant to sleep , PPS--standing by an open window living-room smoking--said happily that the scene before him was "just like ten years ago." Considering that ten years ago B.A and I were living in the long, many-roomed Georgian attic of the Historical House and we were last night crammed into the sitting-room of a small two-bedroom flat built in 1929, this was a somewhat far-fetched statement. However, I know what he meant. 

***

It was in tribute to The Old Days that we kept our Sunday Lunch plans despite the death of our Sovereign Lady last week. We covered the table with our Lenten purple cloth, and the guests departed at 11 PM--very early by The Old Days standards. The crown I made to for the Jubilee Lion was already reposing under my black mantilla. 

Like most people in Britain, we were shocked by the Queen's swift death, and I read with interest an article about journalists scrambling to get the news ready without publishing too early. This was exactly my experience. At about noon, the news came out that the Queen was sick and her family was travelling to Balmoral to see her. That sounded rather serious, so I informed work and volunteered to write a short paragraph in case she died. Then I was in an online meeting when a Tweet informed me the the BBC was interrupting its usual programming until 6 PM. At that I excused myself from the meeting and started writing an obituary. It did not mention the 1967 Abortion Act: someone else added that the next day. Instead it focused on her marriage, children, life of service, role as Sovereign and role as the head of the Anglican communion. At the time, I wasn't sure how to mention the AA without looking like were were dancing on Her Majesty's grave. (Edward Pentin hit absolutely the right note, I believe.)

Ten years ago, I could not have imagined I'd be writing the Queen's obituary for LifeSiteNews, and it was certainly a surreal experience. It was all done and ready to be published (in my opinion) when 6 PM came and went  and I popped into the sitting room where B.A. was watching the BBC. Suddenly, the newscaster Huw Edwards appeared on the screen, and B.A. said "Why is he already wearing a black tie?" The answer was that the Queen was dead, and I rushed back to my office to hit "Publish."

I felt very sad--and then very reassured by the ancient formula, which this time is rendered "The Queen is dead. Long live the King." It's totally unlike the death of a pope: there's no uncertainty, no speculation, no worry, no voting, no delay. The history of Britain flows on throw the present into the future.  And the King's face is also very familiar; I have seen it age over the course of my entire life.  

Polish lessons

I'm back in Scotland, and I have time left this morning for one thing I want to do and not for everything I want to do. I have chosen to blog. 

Apart from improvements in my spoken Polish, which were obvious after 3 weeks of classes, but are not as obvious now, 2 weeks after they ended, I have learned some important Life Lessons. I began to learn the most important one, I think, as soon as I arrived at the student dorm in southeastern Poland and discovered that my name was not on the list of residents. 

I had travelled all day, navigating a bus from Modlin to Warsaw, a train from Warsaw to the city, and a taxi from the railway station. It was evening, and my entrance exam was the next day. My communications with the school had been rather fraught, as the organiser would answer my enquiries only after a Polish friend telephoned him from Krakow. Therefore, it was disappointing, but not a shock, to discover that nobody at the dorm expected me.

I asked the concierge to call the organiser, and I went over to a chair to the side and waited. The concierge made a number of phone calls, told me I had a room, went up to see if the accommodation was clean, sent me up to the room, and then returned with me to investigate when I thought the key didn't work. 

The lesson learned here--and it was reinforced by much repetition--is that when things don't work, reach out to the person most likely to fix them, sit down, be patient, and it will all work out.

Obviously there are exceptions. If your loved one is in hospital in Britain, you must visit him or her everyday, watch over them, and demand help when nobody wants to help. Patience is not a virtue when your loved one is in danger of death. However, it is essential when dealing with the chaos caused by people who don't do their jobs properly, not being fluent in the language of the country you are in, and other difficulties in daily life. 

Another lesson I learned is that the rock-solid torture racks considered good enough for Polish students and monastery lay guests to sleep on are just not adequate for people over 45 or people who have bad backs, or both. Yet another is that workmen in that particular Polish city pick up the recycling outside the student dorm at 5:30 AM.  Therefore---this is not as applicable to life universal but definitely to my future Polish studies---it is a better idea to stay in Airbnb than in a Polish university student dormitory, no matter how much cheaper the student dormitory might be. Sleep is really very important, especially when you spend your days doing or learning something difficult. 

My next lessons were that there was no welcome pack at the dorm, and so no maps, and that the morning concierge didn't know where the classroom building was and therefore couldn't help me get to the entrance exam.... Well, in the end it all worked out. I never found out how I did on the entrance exam--which was entirely grammar-based--but I really liked the grammar teacher it landed me with, so it was all to the good.

It's hard to believe that was a month ago now. More recently I was in a tiny village in southwestern Poland, and there I learned the difference between instant coffee and Turkish coffee, and the importance of not stirring up the sludge at the bottom of a cup of the latter.  

In between I learned that making mistakes in Polish is not only inevitable in a foreigner, it is okay, and as long as the linguistic task--like getting the AirBnB landlady in southwestern Poland to find out why there is no water--is successful, nobody really cares.  In fact, this time not even I cared 99% of the time, which is a fantastic improvement.  

"We're here from the archdiocese and..."

Yesterday Cardinal Gregory of the Archdiocese of Washington outraged Catholics who love the Traditional Latin Mass by sharply curtailing the number of churches where it might be offered in his See, banning the celebration of the sacraments according to their traditional form and celebrations according to the traditional form of the Triduum and other solemnities. 

One pastoral solution for integrating the "Trads" into ordinary parish life is to educate them about the wishes of the Second Vatican Council for the liturgy and the beauties of the Ordinary Form. Another is to make "pastoral visits" to the Trads. I think these are both fantastic opportunities for Catholics who love the Traditional Latin Mass. First, any serious research into Sacrosanctum Concilium and the construction of the Ordinary Form will lead any intellectually honest pastor to understand why a number of Catholics prefer what Benedict XVI calls the Extraordinary Form. Second, the pastoral visits will give Catholics who love the TLM a chance to say, "Sit down, Father/Sister/Susan! I'll bring you a drink, and we can watch Mass of Ages together." 

My greatest fear for Americans who love the Traditional Latin Mass--apart from despair and apostasy, of course--is that they will become angry and weird. Or, if they are already angry and weird, angrier and weirder. 

I have long held that one of the great gifts of Summorum Pontificum is that it led to the arrival of wave after wave of curious young people, as well as middle-aged refugees whose patience with their parishes' liturgical experiments or sacrilege had snapped. The curious young people came without baggage and with the confidence born of a marriage between pre-1962 Catholic books and the post-1962 pastoral obsession with the Youth. Cheerful, excited, wearing new-to-them jackets or mantillas, they eventually outnumbered (or outlived) the battle-scarred ranks of the  old and cranky Trads. It cannot be underscored enough, however, that the young must be kind to and patient with the Old Guard, partly because they are their mothers and fathers in faith, and partly because without them there would have been no TLM communities for them to flock to. 

It is my practice to pray for those among my TLM community Old Guard whom I met and have gone on to their reward. Only one of them was angry and weird, but goodness knows what suffering made her choose to be that way. Meanwhile, my TLM community is flourishing and happy, and it is so not-weird that a visiting American Protestant couple made it a habit to accompany their university friends to our Mass. I chatted with them over tea.

That reminds me to make another plug for after-TLM tea. Please, my fellow lovers of the TLM, have coffee and tea hour after Mass and go to it. Critics of the TLM keep saying and writing about how terribly formal and unfriendly it is, everyone so intent on the incomprehensible stuff up front, so give newcomers the attention and smiles they think normal at church when they turn up in the tea/coffee room. Look around for those sitting there with no-one but their spouses and/or minor children to talk to, and talk to them. 

It is true that bishops can do a ton of damage, but the choice to become angry and weird lies with us alone. Remember the Whos of Whoville and how their joy converted the Grinch. I can't see Wilton Gregory racing down a hill on a sled full of vestments and missals, but let me not place limits on the abilities of the Holy Spirit. 

Meanwhile, I am disappearing from the world of online English letters for some weeks, for I am going to Poland. When I was feeling particularly ground down in March, I basically put my head down on my desk and asked myself what I wanted. What I wanted was for it to be the last day of school and to have a glorious summer spread out before me, as if I were in Grade 5. 

So what I did was ask for some unpaid leave to take an intensive Polish course in Poland, given that I have been working for my employer for 5 years, which is about the length of a school year in grown-up years. It was granted, and thus my glorious summer began today. 

In case you are wondering, I will presumably go to a Polish-language Novus Ordo during the week and travel to the TLM across town for Sundays. Meanwhile, I am giving up social media cold turkey, and thus I will be even less angry and weird when I return. 

Faith of Our Fathers

Very real, living, breathing people

UPPER UPDATE (July 18: Someone went on record. 

UPDATE: The ICKSP did not, in fact, make the announcement today. However, a named source told one of my colleagues he has seen Cupich's letter. Stay tuned.

It has been a year since Traditionis Custodes, which sought to discourage adherents to the traditional Roman Rite, blew up in our midst. Such Catholic liturgical experts as Gregory Di Pippo have already made very learned comments to mark the sad anniversary. 

It will also be officially announced today that the current Archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Blase Cupich, has instructed the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, an order of priests that celebrates only the traditional Roman Rite, to stop ministering to the faithful in that archdiocese.  (No, it wasn't. My source was sure this would be announced today, but it wasn't. My bad. Should have have "It is rumoured that..." However, Father Z has this to say all the same.)

I wonder if Chicago is so well supplied with vocations that.... No, of course I don't. This is an own goal (as we say in hockey-mad Canada), or it would be if the player weren't actually playing for the other side. (More on this below.)

The pain caused by Traditionis Custodes and Cardinal Cupich is very real, inflicted on very real, living, breathing people: bishops, priests, religious, and laity, adults, teenagers, and children. Last year there was some talk of my own community being moved, and after I was shown the proposed room for After-Mass coffee and tea, I burst into tears. 

It wasn't just that the shabby, abandoned room was accessible only by several staircases, the last being particularly perilous. It was that the person asked to show it to us seemed (I stress seemed) indifferent to my objections that the room was completely inaccessible to the members of our community in wheelchairs and provided difficulties to parents of small children. It was the first time I can remember meeting a "professional Catholic," who shrugged at the idea of accommodating the disabled. 

This, however, may just have been embarrassment and nervousness on the Professional Catholic's part, as I am not very good at hiding righteous indignation. One of our people is in a wheelchair because she was struck down by a bus one evening after daily Mass. It's a miracle she wasn't killed, and it's another miracle that she didn't die after her legs were amputated. A few years later, she is back at our Mass. She used to help serve tea; I told my community that I wouldn't serve tea if I couldn't serve it to this lady. My voice shook. 

As a matter of fact, this stalwart doesn't come to tea anymore---although another lady in a wheelchair does. Meanwhile, our Ordinary has been extraordinarily kind to us. It was decided in the end that our little wooden home is no longer a parish church and we could stay. The TLM even got a thumbs-up in the official diocesan report for the Synod on the Synod. May our Ordinary have a hundred 74th birthdays.

These details may seem trivial, and I can well imagine Twitter sneers about weeping middle-aged tea ladies. (Yes, we joke about "Susan of the Parish Council", but the problem with Susan is that she doesn't weep. Susan is at the apex of her self-absorbed powers. My community was once chased out of the tea room by a parish council Susan, who completely lost her head and screamed "Get out!")

My growing feeling is that the problem with the Traditional Latin Mass for a growing number of cardinals is that it confirms and strengthens in a growing number of priests and laity the Catholic faith of our fathers. Here is a splendid little survey illustrating this. The problem for these cardinals, I hypothesise, is that they do not believe the Catholic faith of their fathers and dislike those Catholics who do. Apparently it is not only Susan of the Parish Council who wants to sing a New Church into being because she resents the "Old" Church. 

For decades I have heard bewildered, irritated, orthodox Catholics ask why various dissenters (as they were called before dissension became a great career move) didn't just join the Anglicans or some other Protestant sect. They don't because they don't want to.  They want to eradicate the Catholic faith--or the parts of it they don't believe--stem and branch. It quite obviously can't be done by those outside--the French Revolution failed, Napoleon failed, European Communism spectacularly failed in Poland--but perhaps it can be done by those inside.  

I suspect that Cardinal Cupich and our local screaming Susan are sisters under the skin, but that Cupich is much more dangerous, for he doesn't lose his head. He doesn't scream "Get out!" He just locks doors and writes letters.

This morning I was reading the Coverdale Psalms, my usual morning practice, for I wish to know the Psalms in the same way (and as well as) my convert husband knows them, and my eye fell upon this: 

Oh God, the proud are risen against me: and the congregations of naughty men have sought after my soul, and have not set thee before their eyes. 

But thou, O Lord God, art full of compassion and mercy: long-suffering, plenteous in goodness and truth.

O turn thee then unto me, and have mercy upon me: give thy strength unto thy servant and help the son of thine handmaid.

Shew some token upon me for good, that they who hate me may see it and be ashamed: because thou, Lord, hast holpen me and comforted me.  (Psalm 86, 14-17.)

Amen!