Didn't we once fight a war at least ostensibly to defend this, historically our principal ally and trading partner on the Continent, an entity not unlike our own United Kingdom, even headed by a monarch of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and with a social democracy based on Christian principles?
And didn't it, at least ostensibly, have something to do with defending Serbia, too? Didn't the Serbs fight with us both in that war and in the one after it?
Thank goodness that we have not now sided instead with the SS nostalgists (complete with the uniforms and everything) who want to set up their own state in Flanders, or Bosnia, or Kosovo...
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I agree. Why do we have troops in Afghanistan when they could be invading Flanders?
ReplyDeleteThe Dutch don't want the Flemish, and the French don't want the Walloons (more like monarchists than republicans, since not in France in 1789 - like the Quebecois in that regard).
ReplyDeleteSo we are looking at the prospect of two tiny, unviable statelets that both want to be in somewhere else but can't be. Which was where the whole thing started.
There was a solution to that, though. It was called Belgium.
The Belgian monarchy was not overtly Christian in its colonisation policy in Congo, Rwanda & Burundi.
ReplyDeleteBelgium is a totally artificial state, cobble together after 1815 to stop France and Germany fighting...it manifestly failed to do so.
The so called European Union was set up for the same purpose and will fail.
Now that the EU has effectively replaced Belgiums "raison d'etre" (to appear neutral I should state I dont know the Flemish for "raison d etre").
Belgium is as a Flemish leader put it last year "the monarchy, a brewery and a football team".
There is nothing else.
What more do you need?
ReplyDeleteBreaking up Belgium is a classic piece of European federalism, like breaking up Yugoslavia, or breaking up the United Kingdom.
All European monarchies are expressions of Christendom by definition, entirely regardless of how individual monarchs behave, although of course their bad behaviour as such is particularly reprehensible in view of that fact.
Well of course on a personal level, I welcome the break up of "Yugoslavia".
ReplyDeleteI never quite get the Christendom argument......although strangely Catholics in the old colonial powers "get" it.
As a person much interested in Jacobite history (indeed I am somewhat obsessed by it) I meet many modern (sic) Jacobites who are revolted by my republicanism as a .......strange perversion.
Seemingly (in their eccentric world view) satan was the first Republican as his expulsion from heaven was a failed republican rebellion.
Of course in Ireland (and Brazil, Argentina etc) this is regarded as nonsense by the Church authorities and every priest of my acquaintance.
Illustrating, I’m afraid, the fact that much of “Irish Catholicism” has at best nothing to do with the Teaching of the Church, and that its characteristic political manifestation is positively hostile to that Teaching, although I expect unwittingly so in most cases.
ReplyDeleteWhile the succession to the Throne can be altered by Parliament (and thus effectively by the elected House of Commons), nevertheless the ordinary operation of the monarchical system gives a direct constitutional role to God Who is active in His world, and that system is otherwise indefensible. Thus is embodied both a check on any excessively high view of the capabilities of Originally Sinful human nature, and a check on any excessively low view of the capabilities of human nature redeemed in Christ, the God-Man.
During the 1798 Rebellion, the staff and students of Maynooth sent a Declaration of Loyalty to the King. The tiny number of priests who adhered to that Rebellion were excommunicated, the bishops calling them “the very faeces of the Church”.
Into the nineteenth century, Catholic priests participated in the annual prayer service at the Walls of Derry, an ecumenical gesture with few or no parallels at the time. Prominent Belfast Catholic laymen chaired rallies against Home Rule, with prominent Catholic priests on the platforms.
There were numerous Catholic pulpit denunciations of Fenianism, which is unlike any of the three principal British political traditions in being a product of the French Revolution. Hence its tricolour flag. And hence its very strong anti-clerical streak, always identifying Catholicism as one of Ireland’s two biggest problems.
The United Kingdom has always been significantly more Catholic-friendly than any of the Three Kingdoms that I suppose any serious Jacobite would have to say still existed.
And yes, that certainly does include the Kingdom of Ireland as constituted on the eve of the Union. That was why those running that Kingdom signed up to the Union. Yet within thirty years, a consequence of that signing up had been Catholic Emancipation throughout the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
We have not yet seen it fully in England, although we will soon enough, but it has long, perhaps always, been the case in Scotland and Wales that Catholics are at least as Unionist in relation to their own parts of the Kingdom as Ulster Protestants are in relation to theirs. And for the same reason: Catholics have no more desire to go down the road of who is or is not “really” English, Scots or Welsh than Ulster Protestants have to go down the road of who is or is not “really” Irish.
And who on the Falls Road is ever really going to risk casting the vote that brings about their own transfer out of the United Kingdom and into a country where you have to pay to visit the doctor? No one.
A (not very likely) independent Scotland would probably become a Jacobin republic pretty quickly, while such an arrangement from the outset is Plaid Cymru’s stated policy for a (really most unlikely) independent Wales. The Irish Republic, of course, already is one, even complete with a tricolour.
There is actually quite a high probability that an independent England would follow suit, certainly if the other Commonwealth Realms had done so, as New Zealand very well might, and Canada certainly would, if Scotland did. The only thing that could save the monarchy in an independent Scotland would be its continuation in Canada.
And these would not be, just as the Irish Republic is not, expressions of the pre-Revolutionary Catholic republicanism of, say, Venice, or, insofar as it is still operative anywhere, the Catholic half of Switzerland. These would not even be republics capable, with a lot of work, of becoming such expressions, as the American Republic is in principle, since 1776 came before 1789. No, these would be pure products of the Revolution, in all its Terror.
God Save The Queen.
In 1798 Maynooth was just a few years old and of course it was set up by the Government. In its early days it was only possible to study there by taking an oath of allegiance.
ReplyDeleteI would therefore not take too seriously the protestations of loyalty. The oath of allegiance was gradually phased out as risible.
I dont think I am any less a Catholic than you are.
Incidently Cardinal Hume tried a similar peculiar argument on Cardinal O'Fiach and was ...well.....well no way to put it diplomatically.
Sometimes I am really glad that I studied Theology (albeit for a short time) in Ireland.
Why not take them seriously? Irish Republicanism, like almost every form of Republicanism in the world today, is a product of the French Revolution, and Irish Catholicism is gravely compromised by association with it.
ReplyDeleteThe assumption that Irish culture, including political culture, simply IS Catholicism will not do, any more than the other way round.
Oh Irish culture is very diverse.....pre Christian to the modern day with many foreign (Norse, English, Scottish) influences.
ReplyDeleteJust like English culture pre-dates Christianity. And has been exposed to many beneficial "foreign influences". including of course Jewish, West Indian, West African, Indian sub continent and Islamist.
At heart we are both multiculturalist.
And of course the French Revolution was a seminal and welcome influence.
Strangely Irish catholicism does not feel itself compromised by it.
Although I think you underestimate the great 19th century revolutions in Europe to which Fenianism is more closely allied than the French Revolution.
The second wave which united Italy was much more important and welcome.
While my national flag does have the three colours signifying Equality, Liberty and Fraternity, you forget that it does actually embrace Catholic and Protestant traditions in its colours.
"And of course the French Revolution was a seminal and welcome influence"
ReplyDeleteWell, that says it all as to how Catholic your position is.
"Strangely Irish catholicism does not feel itself compromised by it"
Well, it wouldn't from the inside, would it?
"Although I think you underestimate the great 19th century revolutions in Europe to which Fenianism is more closely allied than the French Revolution"
They all sprang out of it.
"The second wave which united Italy was much more important and welcome"
Again, nothing could have been more anti-Catholic.
"While my national flag does have the three colours signifying Equality, Liberty and Fraternity, you forget that it does actually embrace Catholic and Protestant traditions in its colours"
Not something unnoticed in the wider Catholic world...
Please dont assume your "English" and imperial Catholicism is somehow superior to mine.
ReplyDeleteThe underpinning feature of colonialism and imperialism is that some races are superior to others.
Catholicism is not founded on racism.
Indeed genuine Catholicism is the opposite of racism.
I don't see what that has to do with anything. You are the one who believes in an avowedly secular and ethnically exclusive state born of Modernity.
ReplyDeleteThink of my views as post-Jacobite, with no thought of restoring the Stuarts, but much of (among a very great many other things) preserving the ties among the Three Kingdoms.
Which is more Catholic? That? Or Jacobinism with a heavy dose of Marxism?
A Marxist? No
ReplyDeleteJacobin.......hmmmm......I certainly have Jacobin traits.
Fenian? Definitely.
Republican? Absolutely.
Catholic? From cradle to grave.
"Please dont assume your "English" and imperial Catholicism is somehow superior to mine.
ReplyDeleteThe underpinning feature of colonialism and imperialism is that some races are superior to others."
Here, here!
What happens to Belgium (as long as it is done peacefully) is up to the Belgians themselves.
Strangely a few months ago the Economist called for the dissolution of Belgium.
For the record Belgium's origins go back to the Dutch Revolt when the southern Netherlands generally stayed loyal to Spanish Hapsburgs after William the Silent led the rebellion that created the Dutch Republic.
After the War of Spanish Sucession the "Spanish Netherlands" passed to the Austrians and became the "Austrian Netherlands". Upon the French Revolution, since Austria was an enemy of the revolution, the French invaded it.
In 1815, the Dutch Republic (for a period the Kingdom of Holland with a Boneparte relative running it for Napolean) was united with the Austrian Netherlands to create the Kingdom of the Netherlands with two capitals, Brusssels and Amsterdam.
Fired by the 1830 revolution in France, Belgians rebelled against the Hague and Amsterdam over religious differences and the use of French in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This (for David vile sepratist) revolt would have been crushed by the legitimate government but the sepratists were backed up by ourselves and the French. Maybe David would have preferred the Dutch army had shot all the rebels down and added more to the toll of people entombed in the square Place des Martyrs (now site of wreath laying on Belgian national day in Brussels).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22325431@N05/2197788467/
Do you think the Belgian rebellion was brought about by the plottings of an Ottoman-inspired neo-con free trade conspiracy?
Yes, Leopold of Sax-Coburg and Gotha was elected king and founded the present dynasty. But that hardly makes it special. The Saxe-Coburg crowd are not special.
Lets take the Bulgarian wing of the family. They backed Germany in both world wars and Prince Kyril was executed for supporting the Nazis in 1945.
But John, you simply cannot be an orthodox Catholic and have "Jacobin traits".
ReplyDeleteThe Saxe-Coburg-Gothas are now back running Bulgaria (really running it - one of them is PM), an under-exploited link to Britain.
Anything like modern Flemish separatism began under the patronage of the Kaiser, and the current form is overtly a successor the SS.
My Jacobin traits merely extend to wanting to see a few tumbrils roll. I keep it in check.
ReplyDelete