The illumination of Buckingham Palace in shamrock green on Saint Patrick's Day is a capital idea.
Not only because the Irish Army is now being reintegrated into the British one that set it up in order to kill proponents of a 32-County Republic, something that it did hugely effectively.
Buckingham Palace ought also to be illuminated in rose red on Saint George's Day, in thistle purple on Saint Andrew's Day, and in daffodil yellow on Saint David's Day. All four ought to be public holidays throughout the United Kingdom.
God Save The Queen.
Just imagine the full expression that the Catholic Church could have had within a 32 county republic.
ReplyDeleteThere you were David, a convert from Anglicanism, always a little out of place on the Parish club night for St Paddy's, painfully aware that you were an outsider looking in.
There haven't been events like that since the 1970s. I dare you to go along and suggest one, and see the reaction: incredulity or incomprehension from anyone under 40, sheer rage from anyone over 40. You have been watching too much Coronation Street or Shameless.
ReplyDeleteThe Church had precious little "expression" in the 26-County Republic (and almost none now), when you sit down and analyse it. Never mind what things would have been like with a large and angry Protestant minority.
A small enough one dominated the Free State's and the Republic's economic and cultural lives until the 1980s, when they were replaced with the embittered ex-Catholics and their fantastical misery memoirs.
Oh, and as for being an outsider looking in, probably half of all ordinations in England now are of converts, usually ex-Anglicans. The figure could very well be higher than that.
ReplyDeleteAt least one English diocese would have been closed down in fairly recent years if it had not been for an influx of former Anglican clergy.
Whereas the distantly Irish in this country mostly stopped going to Mass on any regular basis 20 or 30 years ago, and they produce almost no priests at all anymore. Like Ireland, in fact.
You yourself are obviously getting your idea of the Church from television programmes made by long-lapsed Catholics.
Some of what I've been hearing about the modern church has been quite eye-opening. I know that one of your correspondents has raised the subject of homosexuality and the Tridentine Rite before, but I was intrigued to learn of a more widespread "homo"heresy from this Traditionalist Catholic blog.
ReplyDeletehttp://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2013/02/fr-dariusz-okos-major-article-with-pope.html
Perhaps you ought to create a dedicated post to address the subject. Do please create one about Parish life in Lanchester as well. With so many younger political types reading your blog it will be a chance for them to be learn about your life as a practising Catholic aged under 40. You may be the only Gospel these people read this week.
There are far better sources for that, several of them on my blog roll.
ReplyDeleteJust to add that, of course, the request to turn Buckingham Palace green has come from Tourism Ireland, an agency of the Irish Government.
The same Government that is plastering the Irish Midlands with windfarms specifically in order to meet the electricity needs of Britain. Leaving aside the question of windfarms themselves, the Republican remnant is furious, but who is listening to them?
And now, again leaving aside the intervention in Mali as an issue in itself, a few months after the very open secret of the British Army's role in setting up the Irish Army finally became open and not secret, the latter is effectively being reintegrated into the former.
Turn Buckingham Palace green on Saint Patrick's Night, indeed.
Magdalene Laundries?
ReplyDeleteNow acknowledged even by the State as entirely institutions of the State.
ReplyDeleteStaffed by nuns, although not always. But in no sense institutional arms of the Church, even then.
That was what the Church became in independent Ireland: in no position to say No to being allocated a role such as that.