Pax Romana

Oh well, thanks to the insolent Bishops' Conference and having to work today (so that I could not get to the Old Rite), no Corpus Christi Mass for me. But during the course of exam invigilation, it occurred to me what a very good thing it would be if there were always at least one regular attendee at the traditional Latin Mass (currently making, for example, one its regular returns to popularity among the Russian intelligentsia), and at least one member of Opus Dei or Communion and Liberation, among those holding Ministerial office in every country of the world, with at least one of these two per country enjoying Cabinet rank at any given time. (At the moment, contrary to much hysteria, there is precisely one Opus Dei Cabinet Minister on earth.)

This would be a tremendous force for peace and international co-operation. Since orthodox Catholicism is so very critical of capitalism, the obvious way up is through the given country's mainstream, anti-Marxist party of the Left, as always in Britain and the Old Commonwealth, and as increasingly (if ever so quietly) in Italy, for example. This is in no sense entryism: it is simply one among several means of returning the movement in question to its original purpose, even if, as in Britain, that will involve the wholesale replacement of the existing party-political organisation.

Britain is one of those countries where the world doesn't really expect there to be Catholics at all, never mind high-ranking traditionalist or Opus Dei/CL politicians. This can be very useful, and attention should be paid to such countries, some admittedly rather harder nuts to crack than others from this point of view: Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa; Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland; Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia; Russia; Japan and South Korea; India and Sri Lanka; the historically Christian lands of Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, the Levant, and North Africa; and so forth.

And by all means let, as it were, mass movements be created: among the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes of India, and those same castes and tribes present among her neighbours; among the intellectuals of the Russian Federation and of the Russian ethnic group elswhere; among the other ethnic groups in Russia; among the heavily secularised, rather rootless Scandinavian, Baltic, Japanese and Korean intellectuals; and among so many others besides. United to each other in and by the Faith, and thus by the very institution of the Papacy, what wonderful forces for peace these could be!