A. A. Milne's "King John"

I loved this poem as a child. It still brings tears to my eyes.

King John was not a good man –
He had his little ways.
And sometimes no one spoke to him
For days and days and days.
And men who came across him,
When walking in the town,
Gave him a supercilious stare,
Or passed with noses in the air –
And bad King John stood dumbly there,
Blushing beneath his crown.

King John was not a good man,
And no good friends had he.
He stayed in every afternoon…
But no one came to tea.
And, round about December,
The cards upon his shelf
Which wished him lots of Christmas cheer,
And fortune in the coming year,
Were never from his near and dear,
But only from himself.

King John was not a good man,
Yet had his hopes and fears.
They’d given him no present now
For years and years and years.
But every year at Christmas,
While minstrels stood about,
Collecting tribute from the young
For all the songs they might have sung,
He stole away upstairs and hung
A hopeful stocking out.

King John was not a good man,
He lived his live aloof;
Alone he thought a message out
While climbing up the roof.
He wrote it down and propped it
Against the chimney stack:
“TO ALL AND SUNDRY - NEAR AND FAR -
F. Christmas in particular.”
And signed it not “Johannes R.”
But very humbly, “Jack.”

“I want some crackers,
And I want some candy;
I think a box of chocolates
Would come in handy;
I don’t mind oranges,
I do like nuts!
And I SHOULD like a pocket-knife
That really cuts.
And, oh! Father Christmas, if you love me at all,
Bring me a big, red, india-rubber ball!”

King John was not a good man –
He wrote this message out,
And gat him to this room again,
Descending by the spout.
And all that night he lay there,
A prey to hopes and fears.
“I think that’s him a-coming now!”
(Anxiety bedewed his brow.)
“He’ll bring one present, anyhow –
The first I had for years.”

“Forget about the crackers,
And forget the candy;
I’m sure a box of chocolates
Would never come in handy;
I don’t like oranges,
I don’t want nuts,
And I HAVE got a pocket-knife
That almost cuts.
But, oh! Father Christmas, if you love me at all,
Bring me a big, red, india-rubber ball!”

King John was not a good man,
Next morning when the sun
Rose up to tell a waiting world
That Christmas had begun,
And people seized their stockings,
And opened them with glee,
And crackers, toys and games appeared,
And lips with sticky sweets were smeared,
King John said grimly: “As I feared,
Nothing again for me!”

“I did want crackers,
And I did want candy;
I know a box of chocolates
Would come in handy;
I do love oranges,
I did want nuts!
I haven’t got a pocket-knife —
Not one that cuts.
And, oh! if Father Christmas, had loved me at all,
He would have brought a big, red,
india-rubber ball!”

King John stood by the window,
And frowned to see below
The happy bands of boys and girls
All playing in the snow.
A while he stood there watching,
And envying them all …
When through the window big and red
There hurtled by his royal head,
And bounced and fell upon the bed,
An india-rubber ball!
And oh Father Christmas,
My blessings on you fall
For bringing him a big, red,
India-rubber ball!

(From Now We Are Six)

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A Strategic Assessment of the American Cultural Revolution and the National Security State

 From General Flynn:

The American people have just taken their first full breath after surviving an attempt to smother the Republic through a Marxist-inspired cultural campaign carried out largely through the administrative state, media, academia, and politicized elements of the national security bureaucracy. Most citizens did not fully perceive it while it was happening. Many in the intelligence community either passively accepted it or actively furthered it. The architects of this project are not finished, but their effort has been damaged and delayed. It is only by the grace of God that the country has endured to this point.

The American version of the cultural revolution is distinct from the Maoist model that ravaged China in the twentieth century. It did not coalesce around a single charismatic revolutionary figure. Instead, it spread along the arteries of bureaucracy, higher education, corporate structures, and activist networks. The long march through the institutions, as described by Antonio Gramsci, became the operational template. Rather than Red Guards filling the streets under the orders of an identifiable supreme leader, the United States experienced a coordinated convergence of agencies, NGOs, foundations, media outlets, and activist fronts, all advancing the same ideological project under different labels.

Because federal agencies differ widely in size, mission, culture, and internal resistance, this revolution unfolded unevenly. It never achieved total dominance in a single decisive stroke. Instead, it advanced by fragmentary gains and suffered fragmentary defeats. Wherever the ideological project captured an HR department, a training pipeline, a public school system, or a central media platform, it encountered resistance in state governments, independent media, individual courts, and networks of citizens who refused to comply. This piecemeal quality of implementation slowed the collapse and gave the American people time to see what was happening and respond. (Read more.)

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Advent: A Time of Asceticism

 From Ulrich L. Lehner at Church Life Journal:

Yes, Advent is a time of asceticism. The latter originally meant “training.” The liturgical color violet should remind us of that, but also the practice of our Orthodox brethren to fast during this time. When we practice asceticism we stop treating things as ends for us and begin to accept God’s order again. We retrain ourselves, so to say; fasting is just one aspect of that retraining. True asceticism is a tool to prepare ourselves, to be open to receive the Word Incarnate, and goes beyond a mere giving up of some objects (alcohol, chocolate, etc.) but aims to recalibrate our entire focus towards reality. It aims at changing our desire, to turn it away from selfishness and toward the attitude of acknowledging God’s order, receiving it in obedience.

Wisely, the mystics remind us that such phases of giving up things are to be interrupted by phases of fulfillment, of action, like our breathing is a harmony of inhaling and exhaling. When we inhale, we fill our lungs with the oxygen we need. For that purpose, however, we have to be open: If our airways are blocked, we cannot inhale. We cannot do so in a vacuum, either, and the world around us is just that: an empty place that cannot (ful)fill us. Inhaling, however, is rather passive; we are filled with something. Asceticism works a bit like this. It removes blockages and directs us to sources of fresh air. It prepares us to be (ful)filled. Only when we exhale do we become truly active. We use the air stored in us to speak, to sing, for bodily action—we express ourselves. We come to ourselves and to the mystery of our own being, God, and meet him in our soul. (Read more.)

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The Hidden History of Carols

It seems that in the Middle Ages caroling parties could be a bit wild. Most people do not realize that carols were not just for Christmas but every feast day had its carols, and some were more bawdy than religious. To quote:

 The story of Christmas caroling is full of unexpected surprises. The practice itself has gone through many changes over the centuries, and our perception of caroling today is based only on the very recent history. We think of Christmas caroling as a wholesome, and even religious, activity. Caroling seems to speak of the beauty, innocence, and magic of the Christmas season. However, in researching this practice, I have discovered that caroling was not as innocent as we might think. In fact, the act of caroling was actively combatted by the Church for hundreds of years.

Uncovering the origins of caroling has proven difficult. Some sources give the 14th or 15th centuries as the earliest date for caroling. I believe the reason for this is because this is the period when caroling began to be adopted by the church, and this is when carols first began to be written down. However, there is much evidence that caroling was around long before that. We don’t have written carols from the early periods, but what we do have are edicts from the Church and recorded sermons which make reference to caroling. (Read more.)

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The Invisible War Room Behind Every Democratic Talking Point

 From Amuse on X:

Begin with the phenomenon itself. A president warns of a border emergency, within hours Democrats declare it a “manufactured crisis.” A state tightens its voting rules, the same politicians and the same set of networks denounce “voter suppression” and “Jim Crow 2.0.” A Republican appointment or policy is announced, and suddenly everything is framed as a “threat to democracy”. These phrases are not inevitable descriptions of the facts. They are chosen, tested, and distributed. The oddity is not that parties use slogans, it is that the slogans appear everywhere at once, from Senate leadership to cable anchors to mid level influencers with uncanny speed and uniformity.

If we ask how this became possible, we are quickly led to the world of closed listservs that took shape in the mid 2000s. The basic technology was simple, a private email list, but the social innovation was new. A small group of progressive strategists and writers realized that they could turn what used to be informal chatter into a disciplined backroom. The early Townhouse list gathered liberal bloggers, activists, and media figures into a single confidential thread where stories could be pitched, spins tested, and responses coordinated before anything went public. That list set the pattern, a private room where partisans could plan the next day’s narrative while the public imagined they were watching independent minds at work.

The model reached its most famous, and infamous, form in JournoList, a private Google Group created by Ezra Klein in 2007 for roughly 400 left leaning journalists, academics, and policy professionals. Its stated purpose was to discuss politics and the media. Its practical function, as the leaked emails showed in 2010, was often to shape messaging in ways that helped Democrats and hurt Republicans. When Barack Obama’s relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright threatened his 2008 campaign, some participants did not simply analyze the story, they proposed a tactic, pick a conservative critic and call him a racist in order to change the subject and make the controversy about bigotry rather than about Obama’s judgment. Others brainstormed ways to discredit Sarah Palin before she had said much of anything. The point here is not that every member of JournoList agreed with every strategy, it is that a large group of ostensibly independent commentators explicitly discussed how to coordinate lines of attack and defense for one party’s benefit. (Read more.)

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Star of the Sea: Marian Devotion through the Prism of a Medieval English Hymn

 From Avellina Balestri at Fellowship and Fairydust:

Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary has played an integral role in Christian devotion since the early days of the Church, and continues to be a vital part of the daily devotions of Catholic, Orthodox, and even some denominations of Protestant Christians to this day. Once a year, during the season of Christmas, even those who typically do not engage in Marian devotion find reason to shed a spotlight on this Jewish maiden’s role in the salvation of mankind. But it is my firm belief that all Christians should have ample cause to honor her all year long, particularly during the Lenten and Easter seasons, as a vital thread in the fabric of our spiritual lives.

     I find particular inspiration in the soaring poetry of the Middle Ages in honor of the Virgin and believe it to be a wonderful method of sharing the Catholic understanding of Mary’s place in the Christian life and why we pay her homage. Harkening back to the Age of Chivalry, we can see how the culture telescoped (and indeed, colorfully kaleidoscoped) the various attributes of the Blessed Mother in light of their own understanding of the world around them, still grounded in a monarchical system. As such, she is seen as the highest of all Queens, and given royal adulation. 

     One hymn in particular, “Star of the Sea”, captures the freshness and vigor of the Marian devotion in the age of a united Christendom and explains quite poetically and movingly the feelings of the Catholic populace of medieval England. The lyrics are a mix between Latin, the language of the Church, and Middle English, the language of the people which had come into vogue in legal and liturgical works alike during the reign of King Henry V (1413-1422). For the purposes of this analysis, I will use the translation into modern English. 

      The hymn begins by hailing Mary as “Fairest and brightest of them all, even the star of the sea, brighter than the daylight.” This is a testament to the belief in the Immaculate Conception. This teaching, simply explained, means that for the special calling assigned to Mary to be mother of Jesus Christ, she was preserved from the stain of Original Sin, that inheritance of susceptibility to temptation that has plagued humanity since the first fall of Adam and Eve. Cooperating with this singular grace, applied to her ahead of time through the future death of her divine son, she lived a life free from sin and full of grace. (Read more.)

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The Bells of St. Mary's (1945)

The Bells of St. Mary's is often referred to as the film which most exemplifies the mythological Church of pre-Vatican II days, the Church That Never Was, so to say. It is seen as idealizing priests and nuns and parish life when in reality, as we are continually being told, priests were abusive monsters and nuns were shrewish old hags. However, every time I see The Bells of St. Mary's I am struck by how many things about the film resonate with my own experience of Catholicism over six decades. The nun friends that I have had laughed together just like those in the film, especially in the scene when the cat got inside Fr. O'Malley's hat on the mantelpiece. And the striving of the parish to keep the school open is not unreal either.

It is always surprising how familiar some of the characters in the film are to me. Yes, when I went to parochial school there were some cranky old nuns. My former spouse has stories of his school days and encounters with grouchy teaching sisters that make one's hair stand on end. All the same, over the years I have known several nuns like Sr. Benedict, energetic, cheerful, and beautiful in every way. I have certainly encountered priests of the Fr. O'Malley variety, full of blarney at times, but able to connect with people from all walks of life. And what rectory does not have the occasional eccentric characters associated with it, such as the St. Mary's housekeeper Mrs. Breen, played to the hilt by the pixillated Una O'Connor. "You don't know what it's like to be up to your neck in nuns," she warns Fr. O'Malley, as he readies himself to embark on one of the most famous power struggles in filmdom.

Bing Crosby is not half so annoying as he was in Going My Way, the prequel of Bells. The fact that Ingrid Bergman was not a raised a Catholic and was not an especially devout person is testimony to her superb acting ability. Her composed deportment is right on target, restrained without being stiff. Sr. Benedict is able to gently impose a sense of discipline and order on the children while at the same time letting them know that they are loved unconditionally. I have known nuns just like her. She is based upon director Leo McCarey's aunt, a nun who helped to build Hollywood's Immaculate Heart Convent before dying of typhoid fever.

Sr. Benedict and Fr. O'Malley, like so many dedicated religious and clergy with whom I have been acquainted, interact with a variety of people with a plethora of problems, from the troubled young girl to the cranky old Bogardus. The story is fictional, meant to be entertaining and light-hearted but it touches upon very real quandaries. Sr. Benedict, who after overcoming many obstacles saves the school, has to lose it by going away. She is heartbroken and finds it hard to give up her own will, thinking that Fr. O'Malley has arranged her transfer on purpose. Discovering the truth at last helps her to accept everything that has happened in a spirit of faith. The look she gives Fr. O'Malley before walking away, eyes full of tears but radiant with peace, contains in it an ocean of sacrifice. In that sense, The Bells of St. Mary's is not only about the Church that was, it is about the Church that is, and that ever will be. Share

Whither the Mass of Vatican II?

 From Dom Alcuin Reid at The Catholic Herald:

Sixty years ago today Pope Paul VI offered Mass in St Peter’s Square before presiding over the ceremonies formally closing the Second Vatican Council. “The Mass was not the kind of solemn pre-conciliar ceremony once sung by the Pope and the Julian choir,” one observer remarked, “but a simple sung Mass to which the entire assembly responded.” “It was a reminder of another fruit of the Council, its Constitution on the liturgical renewal” (Council Daybook, III, p. 284).

For December 1965, such an assertion seems quite reasonable. The verbal participation in the Gregorian chant of the more than 2,400 Council Fathers (i.e. the world’s bishops) and of the numerous others present would have been quite an impressive change, and not necessarily a bad one, especially for a Mass outdoors. After all, widespread participation in the Church’s Latin chant was an early and sound goal of the liturgical movement from the beginning of the twentieth century. Experiencing this at a Papal Mass on such an historic occasion would certainly have conveyed a sense of progress and of true achievement according to the mind of the Council.

1965 had seen much progress in the liturgical reform. In January the Holy See officially published a new Order of Mass, instructing that it be included in all future editions of the Missal. The language of its promulgation, and its widespread reception at the time, suggested that this was the reform of the Mass called for by the Council. The changes it made were foreseen at the Council, and none of the world’s bishops would have been surprised by it. Herder & Herder even published a sturdy volume entitled The New Liturgy introducing it and documenting its genesis.

At the Council itself the Fathers, having been assured that “the current [i.e. 1962] Ordo Missæ, which has grown up in the course of the centuries, certainly is to be retained”, approved the simplification in the number of signs of the cross, the kissing of the altar, bows, etc; the shortening of the prayers at the foot of the altar; the reading of the readings facing the people towards whom they were to be announced; the introduction of an offertory procession as in the Ambrosian rite; the revision of the offertory prayers so as to be more sensitive to the offering of the gifts after the Consecration; the praying of the super oblata prayer aloud; an increase in the number of prefaces; the praying of the Doxology at the end of the Canon aloud with the people responding “Amen”; the abolition of the signs of the cross in the Doxology and reduced throughout the Canon itself; the reciting of the Embolism following the Pater Noster aloud, as also the Fraction prayer and its conclusion; the Fraction and the Pax were to be rearranged in a more logical manner; restrictions on which faithful may receive Holy Communion in which Masses were to be abolished; Holy Communion was to be distributed with the formula from the Ambrosian rite: “Corpus Christi. Amen”; and the end of Mass was to finish with the blessing followed by the “Ite missa est”. A simplification of the rubrics, including in pontifical rites, was also foreseen, as was the extension of the possibility of sung Mass with a deacon (without a subdeacon) beyond the Holy Week ceremonies for which this practice had been authorised in the 1950s. (Read more.)

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Europe’s Unending Tragedy

 From Chronicles:

There are times when Europe succumbs to an urge for self-destruction that defies rational explanation. The Thirty Years’ War provides a particularly tragic example. It went on long after its early instigators and key participants were all dead. Rational actors could have brought it to a close well before it entered its most destructive phase in the 1630s, yet the leaders’ ability to strike a balance between ends and means was lost to audacity, fear, greed, and fanaticism. 

That war became infamous for its violence even before the Peace of Westphalia. In subsequent decades, Europe experienced several armed conflicts, but they were limited wars for limited objectives, fought within the balance-of-power system by adversaries of similar temper and mindset. 

A new pancontinental carnage played out to the beat of “La Marseillaise” in 1792. Revolutionary levée en masse produced the first million-strong army—turning France into a veritable “nation at arms”—and the first modern-era genocide, in the Vendée. The mayhem took at least 7 million lives before it ended at Waterloo, 13 years later. 

The ensuing peace lasted, with some adjustments and five localized wars, until 1914. Thanks to the skill of the four key players at the Congress of Vienna, the long 19th century brought Europe 99 years of unprecedented flourishing across all fields of human endeavor. It was truly the golden age of European civilization, perhaps of all civilization in all times. It ended, abruptly, in a new nightmare. 

The “Second Thirty Years’ War” started with the lights going out all over Europe in 1914. It ended in 1945, with the continent in ruins, physically and spiritually. Its subsequent economic recovery was impressive, but the old intellectual and moral vigor was gone. This is especially evident in the low quality of the political class. No European leader of our time comes even close to the stature and vision of Charles De Gaulle or Konrad Adenauer, or even of their early successors. As a result, eight decades after the Red Army marched into Berlin, Europe’s politicians are displaying the same old mix of audacity, fear, greed, and fanaticism. It has the potential to result in a new, truly final, catastrophe. (Read more.)

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