Sunday 29 June 2014

On This Rock

Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam Meam. 

Considering the claims that the See of Rome makes, then, while individual Popes might be or have been charlatans or lunatics, the institution itself is either telling the truth in making those claims, or else it is indeed the Antichrist, and any professing Christian who does not submit to Rome on Rome’s own terms must believe it to be so.

Who will call good evil by pointing to the Papacy’s defence and promotion of metaphysical realism, of Biblical historicity, of credal and Chalcedonian orthodoxy, of the sanctity of human life, of Biblical standards of sexual morality, of social justice, and of peace, and by then saying, “Behold, the Antichrist”? That is the question.

Ah, Faith of Our Fathers. Father Faber was the son of the Rector of Stanhope, and, like a striking number of Tractarian or Tractarian-influenced converts, his ancestry was largely Huguenot (as is part of mine, although another side is Highland Catholic).

So his “fathers chained in prisons dark” were not quite as his thoroughly rousing hymn would suggest.

9 comments:

  1. Brilliant! Damian Thompson must be rueing the day he started persecuting you. Don't let him into the Lanchester Review!

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    1. There is certainly no chance of that.

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    2. The Dame won't have understood a word of this, she is a theological illiterate currently tweeting on about how some Anglican acquaintance ought to become a Catholic because he wears a pink soutane. Obviously.

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  2. Compare and contrast, as they say! Thompson is begging for work at the Spectator. Mr Lindsay is publisher, editor in chief and proprietor of his own mag and runs his own think tank.

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    1. On topic, please.

      Even if, not for the first time, he has published a dumbed-down version of my material.

      The poor old soul has to eat.

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  3. This is on topic, Mr L. There is a voice for Catholciism in the British press - and it ain't Thompson!

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    1. Indeed, it is not. So let's not talk about him.

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  4. He has been sacked by the Catholic Herald and the Daily Telegraph. Mr Lindsay is editor in chief and publisher of the Lanchester Review. Speaks volumes.

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