Ferdi McDermott's Miscellany

The man from Cambridge says yes ...

2012-01-11T13:19:00.000Z

Our enthusiastic 15-year-old Mathematician, Paul de Guibert, got two pieces of good news this week: a Distinction in the BMO1 (British Mathematical Olympiad) and an offer to read Mathematics at Cambridge, but he has to wait until he is 16. So he should be starting at Churchill College (whose arms are shown left), home to 20 Nobel scientific prizewinners, in October 2013. Well done, Paul.

He is the only boy in the A-level class this year, so that makes a 100% Oxbridge admissions success rate. That must be some kind of record ...

Chavagnes boys will sing at Santa Maria Maggiore to celebrate new cardinal

2012-01-09T21:18:00.000Z

Pope Benedict has announced his intention to give the cardinals' hat to 22 new cardinals, including Archbishop Santos Abril y Castello, Archpriest of the Pontifical Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, on 19th February 2012.

The next day, Monday 20th February 2012, the Choir of Chavagnes International College will, God willing, be singing for Mass in the Basilica at 6pm.

The Choir plans to sing the Kyrie, Sanctus and Agnus Dei as well as the Introit, Offertory, Communion and Marian Antophon. All works will be from the repertoire of English renaissance polyphony, including works by by William Byrd, Robert Parsons and Christopher Tye.

The Mass features in a special Lenten pilgrimage organised for members of the Choir.

This year the Choir will be working on the theme of the English Renaissance and intends to record a CD of religious and secular works from this era to celebrate the College's 10th birthday in summer 2012.

Hoorah for the Yanks! US children tell the Vendee story

2012-01-06T15:30:00.000Z

Queen Elizabeth defends Faith, family, marriage, morality ...

2012-01-05T22:10:00.002Z

Did anyone else notice what a splendid Christmas message Her Majesty the Queen gave this year? I think that the advancing years are giving her the courage to speak from her heart.

She told us that wonderful things often happen in the midst of tragedy and suffering; that we discover another loving side of human nature - compassion - evinced by sad events. She referred to her visit to Australia in which she witnessed this first hand.

She then told us how, 2,000 years ago, in the midst of all our human suffering, God revealed his love for us by sending his Son; and that this was the message of the Angels to the Shepherds. She prayed that all her listeners throughout the Commonwealth would open their hearts to the Angels' message. Here are her exact words:

Finding hope in adversity is one of the themes of Christmas. Jesus was born into a world full of fear. The angels came to frightened shepherds with hope in their voices: 'Fear not', they urged, 'we bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

'For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Saviour who is Christ the Lord.'

Although we are capable of great acts of kindness, history teaches us that we sometimes need saving from ourselves - from our recklessness or our greed.

God sent into the world a unique person - neither a philosopher nor a general, important though they are, but a Saviour, with the power to forgive.

Forgiveness lies at the heart of the Christian faith. It can heal broken families, it can restore friendships and it can reconcile divided communities. It is in forgiveness that we feel the power of God's love.

In the last verse of this beautiful carol, O Little Town Of Bethlehem, there's a prayer:

O Holy Child of Bethlehem,

Descend to us we pray.

Cast out our sin

And enter in.

Be born in us today.

It is my prayer that on this Christmas day we might all find room in our lives for the message of the angels and for the love of God through Christ our Lord.

I wish you all a very happy Christmas. (Source BBC website).

So, a Christmas message about the Christmas message. How wonderfully appropriate.

In the context of the vitriol being poured out on the Hungarian people this week for their new constitution (defending marriage, the unborn child, etc ...) how about listening to the clarion call of the young Princess Elizabeth in 1949, calling for the re-establishment of traditional Christian morality? Here is what she said then:

From The Sydney Morning Herald, 19th October 1949:
Even if we make allowances for the rosey hue in which the passage of the years sometimes colours the past, we can hardly help admitting that we live in an age of growing self-indulgence, of hardening materialism and of falling moral standards.

[She exhorted her hearers to] 'uphold the sanctity of marriage.' "There will, of course, always be unhappy marriages, especially when, as in time of war, and of housing shortages, it is so difficult for people to live normal married lives."
"However, when we see around us the havoc which has been wrought, above all among the children, by the break-up of homes we can have no doubt that divorce and separation are responsible for some of the darkest evils in our society to-day."
Princess Elizabeth said that she did not think any finer service could be performed than helping to maintain the Christian doctrine that the relationship of a husband and wife was a permanent one, not lightly to be broken because of difficulties or quarrels.

The Princess concluded: "I believe there is a great fear in our generation of being labelled priggish. In consequence, people are afraid to show disapproval of what they know to be wrong, and thus they end by seeming to condone what in their hearts they dislike.

"I am sure that it is just as wrong to err on that side as it is to be intolerant and over-critical. I hope, therefore, that you will give a lead to our contemporaries in the re-establishment of a wise and balanced code of right and wrong."

(Address to 3,600 young wives at the Westminster Central Hall.)

God save the Queen ...

Keep cheerful!

2011-12-30T23:08:00.000Z

Found this, in French (original was in Italian, I suppose) :

" A nous, il n'est pas permis de vivoter ; vivre est notre devoir ! Trêve donc à toute mélancolie ! (…) Un catholique ne saurait manquer de gaîté ; la tristesse doit être bannie des cœurs catholiques".

Bienheureux Pier Giorgio Frassati

Frassati was a Catholic man of action, a fine inspiration for young Catholic men seeking to do interesting, challenging and even impossible things for the sake of Almighty God.

His life and witness are an inspiration to many schools. One of them, in the far East of France has a website at www.collegefrassati.com/

We played them recently at Rugby (and thrashed them twice, the poor souls).

Knock, knock ... it is the Lord!

2011-12-07T19:43:00.000Z

Here is a clip which shows in beautiful sequence:

-the Recitative (quoting Apocalypse 3. v. 20), "Behold I stand at the door and knock" underlayed with wonderful pizzicato, where all the violins knock, knock, knock ...
- the joyous and serene soprano aria telling the soul to "open up" ...
- the final Amen, assenting to Jesus' coming in our hearts, seen as the crowning of our lives

all from Bach's "Nun komm der Heiden Heiland" (Now come Saviour of the Gentiles).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9vwn-UdEnE&feature=endscreen&NR=1

Open thyself, my whole heart!

2011-12-07T17:33:00.000Z

More Advent joy from Bach.
Ephata! Open thee, all my heart ...

Öffne dich, mein ganzes Herze,
Jesus kömmt und ziehet ein.
Bin ich gleich nur Staub und Erde,
Will er mich doch nicht verschmähn,
Seine Lust an mit zu sehn,
Daß ich seine Wohnung werde.
O wie selig werd ich sein!

Open thyself, my whole heart,
May Jesus come and enter into thee!
Though I be but dust and earth,
Yet he will not disdain me.
His joy in me would be
That I be his dwelling.
O, how happy I shall be.

JS Bach, Aria from Nun Komm der Heiden Heiland.

Come, then, saviour of the Gentiles!

2011-12-06T22:01:00.000Z

Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland
Der Jungfrauen Kind erkannt,
Des sich wundert alle Welt;
Gott solch Geburt ihm bestellt.

Come now Saviour of the Heathen,
true son of the Virgin
that all the world may wonder
at this birth that God has prepared for it.

More Bach for Advent

2011-12-06T11:14:00.000Z

Komm, Jesu, komm zu deiner Kirche
Und gib ein selig neues Jahr!
Befördre deines Namens Ehre,
Erhalte die gesunde Lehre
Und segne Kanzel und Altar!
Come, Jesus, come into Thy Church
And give us a happy new year!
Foster the honour of Thy Name,
Defend sound doctrine
and bless the pulpit and Altar!

Nothing is impossible: honouring Otto von Guericke

2011-12-06T08:20:00.001Z

Otto von Guericke

I remember when I was about 12 years old, my old science master Mr Hills introduced our class of 25 boys (at King Edward VI School, Southampton) to von Guericke's hemispheres. That experiment engraved the name of von Guericke forever in my mind.

Von Guericke was an amazing chap, as I have recently learnt from my colleague Dr Conlon, who has just written a book about him. I helped him publish it because I remembered fondly Mr Hills' lesson, all those years ago ... Hills invited us all to try to separate the two cast iron hemispheres, held together by nothing but a vacuum! Everyone else (or a good number, any way) had a go and failed. Then I tried, and managed to put asunder what the vacuum had so cleverly joined. "Everything is apparently possible for McDermott", Mr Hills observed with characteristic dryness.

An interesting chap, Mr WJF Hills. I suppose he may well be dead by now. If so, God rest him.

If you would like to know more about von Guericke, whose critics said "nothing is impossible" because they thought the vacuum a nonsense, then buy Dr Conlon's fascintating book (Thinking about Nothing: Otto von Guericke and the Magdeburg Experiments on the vacuum) on the life and work of this true renaissance man.

First Sunday of Advent

2011-11-29T20:35:00.001Z

Amen, amen
Komm, du schöne Freudenkrone,
bleib nicht lange!
Deiner wart ich mit Verlangen

Amen, amen
Come, O fair crown of joy
No longer tarry!
I fervently await Thee.

Text Philipp Nicolai
Music: JS Bach

A Difficult Choice for St Nicholas' Day ...

2011-11-28T11:15:00.001Z

Chavagnes Boy Bishop. (Photo © Anthony Talbot)

At today's staff meeting we'll be electing the annual boy bishop of Chavagnes ... an ancient medieval tradition which we revived here nearly ten years ago.

To qualify, one must be a boy treble, and well-behaved ... but the lucky student gets to celebrate Pontifical Vespers and then govern the College until bedtime. Just like real bishops, it can be a risky business if one picks the wrong sort ...

It is meant to teach the pupils about the nature of authority, and it teaches the Masters (usually condemned to an evening of cleaning and washing up) something too.

Learning lessons from the monks

2011-11-15T19:42:00.001Z

St Benedict: "Prefer nothing to the work
of God, ie singing his praise in church".

The recent disastrous revelations about child abuse in England's Benedictine schools (most recently at St Benedict's Abbey, Ealing) raise an important question about the nature of a religious vocation as well as being a very painful embarassment for Catholics in the UK. The Carlile report, which has recommended that the monks at Ealing should be relieved of the governance of the school altogether, drew attention to what Carlile saw as the monastic community's commitment to forgiveness and trust on the one hand and the welfare of the children on the other.

There are many issues here about governance, about procedures and about priorities. (Children, in a school, always come first). I think however, that in the long term this is going to be good news for the monks because it will probably force a return to old priorities. For the vocation of a monk is to pray, not essentially to run schools. The kind of person who can keep his head in a modern school is not necessarily the same kind who could devote his life completely to prayer. In combining schoolmastering (at a a time when that profession is rapidly evolving) and monasticism, the monks have perhaps been making a poor job of both.
There are communities in the Catholic Church which exist to run schools and hospitals or some other kind of active mission. And of course there is a whole army of faithful Catholic lay teachers, many with families. Praying is for them an important part of their day, but it does not completely define their vocation in the way it does for a monk. They need to have their feet firmly on professional ground, to be eminently practical, to be experts in their field.

The Second Vatican Council called explicitly for religious congregations to return to their traditional charisms. For the monk that means a life devoted to prayer. There ought to be consecrated religious men and women in education, but their life, spirituality and formation ought to be adapted to their professional as well as religious calling.

Communities such as Quarr and Pluscarden which have never had schools must think themselves especially blessed at this difficult time for monasticism in the UK.

This place is holy ... and a great mystery. Chavagnes Consecration.

2011-10-27T21:21:00.000+01:00

We just celebrated the 145th anniversary of the consecration of our College Chapel (on 24th October 1866). In our altar there are enclosed the relics of Saints Gaudentius and Columbinus. Gaudentius was Bishop of Brescia, Italy from 387 to around 410 AD. He was a good friend of St John Chrysostom, was consecrated by St Ambrose, and was known as a vigorous opponent of heresy. Columbinus (not Columbanus, though perhaps they are related!) was a little known Irish monk and bishop of the seventh century who was active in this part of France.

Here are our boys singing Locus iste sanctus est by Bruckner. One or two mistakes (some swooping, and yours truly a bit too loud in the basses), but quite hauntingly beautiful, I hope you'll agree.

The Return of the Young Fogey?

2011-10-27T13:24:00.000+01:00

I remember when I was a teenager my sister gave me a delightful Christmas present, The Young Fogey Handbook. It came out at the same time as the even more successful Sloane Handbook, about 25 years ago. The essence of the Young Fogey was that he was satorially and culturally reactionary, seeking a kind of donnish gentility frozen in the period 1930-1950. He sought to relive Brideshead Revisted, Miss Marple, and Jeeves and Wooster all at once. The Handbook made a lot of Betjeman, AN Wilson, Charles Moore etc. It was an entertaining read, but I remember feeling at the time that I would never quite cut the mustard sartorially. I owned a pair of jeans.

But it seems to me that the Fogey that began all fogies was JRR Tolkien. His disapproval of anything modern, his love of tweed and pipes, and his fondness for medieval religion make him an obvious member of the group. When shown a tape-recorder by one of his undergraduates he consented to use it, but first exorcised it by reciting a Pater Noster in old High German into it. Nearly knocked off his feet by a motorcycle on one occasion, he cursed: 'the blasted orcs'.

There was a circle of such types at Oxford in the 1950s, all living in Tolkien's shadow. One of them was CS Lewis, whom Tolkien brought back to Christianity.

In an article written in 2003 Harry Mount suggested that the Fogey was a spent force. The Young Fogey, he posited, was a kind of counter-cultural protester. Society had begun to accept as respectable many of the opinions that the YF was fighting for: feminism was beginning to run out of steam, Latin Masses became all the rage, Prince Charles won universal support against hideous modern architecture, gentlemen's clubs became popular again ... What was left for the YF to stand up against?

It's an interesting analysis. In France the same has happened to the 'Tradi', who had a strong identity in the 1980s and 90s. The young men tried to look like soliders of the foreign legion and, when not in army surplus khaki, would usually wear navy blue, making them look like 1950s boy scouts; and most of them were scouts, in fact. They liked especially to wear the chèche, a long desert scarf adopted by the Foreign Legion. The young women were like British Sloanes, favouring cashmere sweaters and strings of pearls.

Now the tradis have become assimilated into the 'Génération Benôit XVI', wearing more or less the same clothes as everyone else, with the same hairstyles. The girls are even wearing trousers again. The political unity of the tradis (in, or on the fringes of, the Front National) has evaporated. The religious aspirations of the same group have become absorbed into the mainstream of Catholicism.

Recently Harry Mount wrote another article suggesting that YFs were back in vogue again, due to the wave of reaction engulfing us after the election of a new government (run by public schoolboys), the Royal Wedding (between, we are led to believe, two YFs of a sort) and the moral outcry engendered by the recent riots.

Certainly the UK has had an interesting year: the Pope's visit, the Royal Wedding and then the Queen in Ireland. Lots of media attention focussing on the power of tradition as a force for healing and unity; even if before each of them happened we were told they would be disastrous in some way.

I think I would date the turn of the tide to the time when fox hunting was high on the political agenda. It was banned in the end, but somehow continues all the same, with more participants than ever. But I remember going along, with over half a million others, to tell the government where to get off in the 'Countryside March'. It was in 2002.

London was awash with a sea of hearty tweed and green wellies, and a mix of public school and thick country accents. As we surged down down Pall Mall, tooting hunting horns, most on foot, some on horseback, some leading their cows (!), the cheers arose from the windows of many of the offices where people had come in on a Saturday to get a good view of the march and have a party. The balconies of the Naval and Military Club were full of champagne-coiffing supporters laughing and waving. There was a counter demonstration, near St James' Palace, of less than 20 people. They looked completely destraught and I could not help feeling sorry for them. They were, as far as I could see, treated with politeness by the marchers. There was very little on the news about it all, but at the end of that day, the streets of London were full of heartiness.

I thought at the time that it was a pity that these folks had only mobilised for something as trivial as fox-hunting. Would they be prepared to do the same in defence of traditional values in general? Perhaps. Certainly, since that time it has become increasingly respectable to seek answers to modern problems in the 'old ways' ... the government's current efforts to bring back grammar schools by the back door are a case in point; even Labour seems to be giving in on that one.

Is the YF gone for good? Yes, I think he is. But a more grown-up cross between the Sloane and the YF is emerging. There are many young people now who are resolutely conservative in their ideas, intelligent, hard-working and favourable towards Christianity (despite all the bad press the Church and the churches get). The weak leadership from Christian leaders in the UK means that this general conservative feeling could go in a number of different directions. In continental Europe many politicans, and then church leaders, have more or less decided to join the conservative backlash, which has had the effect of toning it down but also making it a force to be reckoned with. In Britain this seems to be happening too, even if the Church leaders are lagging far behind. Interesting times ...

Ferdi: what's in a name?

2011-10-26T20:14:00.000+01:00

Well, in an idle moment (it's half term) I thought I'd check out some other namesakes around the globe.

First off, there's Ferdi Tayfur, a celebrated arabesque singer from Turkey (see above). Very entertaining.

Then in 2009 Ferdi Berisa (left), a young chef from Montenegro, won 300,000 Euros in the Italian version of Big Brother.

Ferdi Serim is a prominent American educationalist.

And Chez Ferdi (32 rue Mont Thabor, 75001 Paris, near the Louvre) is also the best place to get in a burger in Paris, apparently. Looks tasty, doesn't it?

Hmm; enough silliness.

Dan Brown: Angel or Demon?

2011-10-26T16:57:00.001+01:00

Saw the film of Angels and Demons yesterday, in a moment of weakness. Trashy, perhaps, but well-made. The scenes inside the virtual Sistine Chapel and St Peter's were very convincing, even if there were some annoying minor mistakes relating to Catholic practices at various points (there always are in this kind of film).

Whilst in the Da Vinci Code Dan Brown rehashed some awful untruths about St Mary Magadelene (which are still confusing the young, one discovers in catechism classes ...) and had fun misrepresenting Opus Dei, Angels and Demons is really quite kind to the Church, does not misrepresent any Catholic doctrines, and very definitely suggests that God protects it from harm, in the most surprising ways. It also suggests that the Church is, in fact, in step with the modern world and has a key role to play in helping man understand how to proceed ethically in the progress of scientific research.

Tom Hanks plays a university professor: an apologetic agnostic perhaps based on the person of the author, eventually dressed in clerical dress, minus the plastic collar. He acts as God's Angel, sent to deliver the Church.

One disarming, but quite meaningful element in the film (I have not read the book, though I have a confiscated one in my office) is that all the scary traditionalists with harsh foreign accents, in clerical dress, or in the Swiss guard, are actually the good guys.

Now I've almost spoiled the story, so I'll say no more.

French universities at bottom of the heap ...

2011-10-24T15:57:00.000+01:00

Mitterand receives a French honorary degree.

A French parent told me today about an article she had been reading about universities. The gist was this: American universities are rated at the top, UK ones at number 2 and French universities come in 51st in the international ranking.

Now, I wonder whether that has something to do with the stranglehold of state control on the management of Higher Education in France, even down to the political and ideological control of the content of degree programmes.

It is significant that the university that has come top in the Times annual survey of student satisfaction every year for at least the last six or seven years is the University of Buckingham, the institution with the lowest level of government interference in Britain.

Here come the French ...

Edinburgh is free of charge for French
students, but not for Englishmen!

We are pushing our older French boys here to apply to the better UK universities and the US Ivy League. Of particular interest for our continental European boys here are the Scottish universities which, because of a quirk of European legislation, are completely free of charge for continental Europeans and Scots, but up to £9,000 a year for the English! One of our French boys has applied to Cambridge this year, but might well opt for Edinburgh instead even if gets an offer from Cambridge, simply because of the potential saving due to the tuition fees issue.

Hello, my heart!

2011-10-20T08:31:00.000+01:00

Here is a something to raise your spirits: a rendition of de Lassus' Bonjour, mon coeur, by staff, friends and alumni of Chavagnes, during a performance of Molière's Les Femmes Savantes, June 2011, at the College. Enjoy.

Bonjour, mon coeur, Bonjour, ma douce vie,

Bonjour, mon oeil, Bonjour, ma chère amie!

Hé! Bonjour, ma toute belle, Ma mignardise.

Bonjour, mes délices, mon amour,

Mon doux printemps, ma douce fleur nouvelle.

Mon doux plaisir, ma douce colombelle,

Mon passereau, ma gentille tourterelle!

Bonjour, ma douce rebelle.

Cardinal Vaughan High School and the freedom of the Church

2011-10-18T15:56:00.000+01:00

Apparently, according to the press, Archbishop Vincent Nichols has given into parental pressure over the appointment of a new Head for the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial High School. Some are hailing it as a victory for orthodox Catholicism and parent power.

This time the parents were probably right and the Bishop was probably wrong. And the parents won. But what happens when the Bishop is right? It looks like he will have to give in to the parents every time; which rather defeats the object of having bishops as guardians of the faith. It seems to be a case of hard cases not making good law.

Reliance on the state to protect religious faith and values is a big mistake in the long run. Perhaps this time they have got it right, but in general i would say, with the good book: "Put not your trust in princes".

Last year an orthodox Jewish school, funded by the state, was found to be acting illegally by barring a child from a Reform Jewish background from attending the school. The court accepted that only Jewish children should be allowed in the school, but saw fit to rule on the particular level of Jewishness of the boy concerned, over-ruling the theological expertise of the orthodox rabbis. One wonders who gave the English courts the power to run heresy trials. Henry VIII, I suppose.

In English Catholic schools, it seems, the level of Catholic practice or 'Catholicity' of parents is measured (by the schools) to give the families a score that determines if their children will get free places in state-funded Catholic education. Middle class parents, it is alleged, are more likely to go to Church regularly, and thereby pass the Catholicity tests. So Catholic state schools fill up with the children of such people, and become almost as posh as private schools (and therefore even more attractive to middle class families). The Oratory School in London (the choice of Mr and Mrs Tony Blair) is one such school.

Catholic dioceses and central government over the last few years have taken turns in trying to break this cycle and make Catholic schools open to all comers, especially to those whose absence from church schools so troubles the consciences of the Catholic education establishment and of certain politicians.

Wouldn't it be much simpler for the bishops to preach the Gospel more effectively to the poor families they want to get into the schools? Isn't that their job, after all? That way these folks would go to Mass more often and pass all the bureaucratic tests, thereby qualifying for Catholic school places. While they are at it, the bishops could conduct a root and branch reform of their education offices, and remove from post anyone found to be undermining the Church’s objectives. That is certainly within their theological and legal remit. The schools then could be left alone to do their jobs properly and - if that really happened - everyone would be congratulating the bishops too.

Former boy bishop makes the deadline

2011-10-17T22:01:00.000+01:00

Frayed nerves on Saturday night, trying to make sure we met the deadline for Oxbridge UCAS applications. It creeps up every October before you know it. Only one candidate this year, a Mathematician called Paul. He has applied to Trinity College, Cambridge and some other strong Maths locations: Warwick, Imperial, Bristol and Edinburgh. He is only 15 (just had his bithday), but is applying for deferred entry for 2013, so he will be just a couple of weeks off 17 when he finally goes to university. He already has his Maths A-level with an A* and is cracking on with Further Maths this year. Clever lad ... I am very keen to see what the universities will make of him.

Here he is (above) as our boy bishop (one of our odd medieval traditions) in December 2009. We shall miss him, when he moves on: he's the best private tutor of Maths we have!

Father Rowe's blog

2011-09-08T09:39:00.002+01:00

Don't forget to visit Father Rowe's blog. He is our new chaplain, and so far doing a splendid job at Chavagnes, even if his hats take some getting used to. Thank-you, Father. His blog is at : http://frbederowe.blogspot.com/

Old and new

2011-09-08T09:06:00.000+01:00

Someone showed me a depressing page of correspondence in the Tablet the other day; all about the new English translation of the Missal. Hardly anything has changed, but the changes will certainly take a few months to get used to.
It is difficult to adapt; this was a challenge for many Catholics in the 1960s and 1970s and those who expressed their pain at that time, when the changes were much greater, were not listened to. One priest suggested that the overhaul of the English text was going to drive him to breaking point. We need to listen to him, and people like him. But with changes so small, I can't see the need for any concession about the change. There is a God and a Church beyond all these texts, and obedience and love gets us through all difficulties including having to change our old habits sometimes.

Those most upset by the Benedict XVI changes are probably those who showed the least love and understanding for those still reeling from the Vatican II changes. Now they understand ... But let's avoid the temptation to smugness ... Let's instead pray for both camps of the disgruntled, and just get on with Christian living, and praying, in obedience to the Church. What did Newman say? To live is to change ... that used to be one of the Tablet's favourite quotes.

Last minutes as a thirty-something ...

2011-09-01T22:59:00.000+01:00

I remember that when I started Chavagnes in 2002 a newspaper described me as a young thirty-something ... In 2 minutes I'll be 40, when they say life really begins. I'll let you know.

Leadership

2011-08-29T22:34:00.003+01:00

When we elect leaders in government, too often they fear actual leadership, prefering to consult opinion polls and marketing advisors to see what they should do; how best to follow those they ought to be leading.

In schools and in religious communities leaders are sometimes, I would suggest, influenced by this model of leadership too. And it does noone any good.

Finding myself in the the role of leader in an academic, spiritual and business context, I encounter the same temptation, and the same awful dilemma as the politicians. And the odd thing is that when one does actually exercise leadership and tell people what to do, how to run their lives, how to do their job ... the result is that they are - as often as not - reassured, and that one feels oneself thrown back on the great power, authority and comfort of Almighty God.
Don't get me wrong. I am not saying that leaders need to flaunt their power or authority. But when leadership is called for, one needs to answer that call. A couple of weeks ago I met some interested parents who came to speak to me about their son. It was clear that he wasn't going to be a candidate for our school, but I simply felt that someone had to tell these good parents what to do, and that this was precisely why they had come to see me. So I gave them the difficult advice that I felt they needed to hear, even if that advice was hard for them to listen to.

This morning the mother rang to say that the son was not going to apply for our school, but that she thanked me from the bottom of her heart for the advice that I had given her, and which she and her husband had put into practice, with visible positive fruits in respect of their relationship with their son. She said to me that she was going to pray for me every day ... Wow.

It's not always like that. But, in fact, most of the time it is. Even mediochre leadership, it seems, is better than no leadership at all. Moral: if you are a leader, lead.

London calling ...

2011-08-18T23:56:00.000+01:00

Just spent a week in London, enjoying National Gallery (Italian altarpieces - Devotion by Design exhibition) , V&A, walks in Kensington Park and Hyde Park. I went along to Vespers in the Greek Cathedral (with about 5 or 6 other people ... quite a select congregation) and heard their very meditative chanting for the first time. Didn't see Prince Philip though. Found time to read a thriller (The Collaborator) about the Naples mafia, the Comorra. That was fun, if rather bloody. Not suitable for children ... And a rather odd book by someone whose name I have seen everywhere but had never before read: Paulo Coelho. His book, The Valkyries, tells of his self-obsessed search for weird, ritual experiences and quasi-mystical thrills.

Coelho is a poet and musician who began his adult life in a mental hospital; then sold his soul to Satan and ended up being tortured in a Brazilian prison ... the plot of his book is that, justa few years ago, someone called J, a mentor in some secret magic cult to which he belongs, sends him on a quest to meet his guardian angel.

He is helped to do this by a tribe of lustily promiscuous female bikers, whose leader was instructed to quit her husband and young children by the Archangel Michael, in order to take up an interesting mix of preaching and prostitution. All of this is treated with taste and discretion as might befit a spiritual work (!) and the weirdest of all is it professes to be all true. Sad thing is, it probably is true. Left me feeling exasperated, although all sorts of luvvies found it inspiring and energizing, according to the the blurbs on the back.

The book is, apparently, his most personal and autobiographical so far (he has written lots of novels). The most impressive mystical happening in the book is his memory of being freed from demonic posession by reciting the Our Father, Hail Mary and the Creed and asking Jesus to forgive him. He promises to give up his life for God in order to save his soul. From feeling he is about to die, in fits and spasms of terror, he, and his girlfriend, recover their calm and feel the grace of God flow through them again. This is recounted as a memory of his distant past. Now, it seems, that kind of heartfelt prayer (which seemed to work!) has been mostly left behind, in favour or magical rites and half an hour of 'channelling' every evening.

The enduring impression it left me with was of a narcissistic lost soul, incapable of much love but loved deeply by his long-suffering wife. And the prose style was spare, not especially beautiful. I cannot see why people think he is such a guru; but it has made him very rich, apparently, so well done Coelho. I can promse you I shan't be reading his next book.

Londons burning ...

2011-08-08T21:35:00.001+01:00

Why the Humanities?

2011-08-06T19:58:00.000+01:00

“We call those studies liberal, then, which are worthy of a free man: they are those through which virtue and wisdom are either practised or sought and by which the body and mind is disposed to the best things. “ Pier Paolo Vergerio,
The Character and Studies Befitting a Free-Born Youth (c. 1402.)

At Chavagnes the study of the humanities is in the great tradition of liberal education. This kind of education is not simply a dry theory, nor is it restricted to those subjects now named humanities, although its principles are mostly clearly seen in our teaching of these disciplines.

Liberal education is the transmission of our great western cultural patrimony to our young. But it is more than that: its aim is to make every student his own man: free and capable of using his reason, fit to take part in the “great conversation” begun in fifth-century Athens and continuing to this day.

More at www.cursus.chavagnes.org

Dumbing down of Year 12 French in French schools

2011-08-06T19:53:00.000+01:00

National programmes for Year 12 French (la Première, as it is called in France) are currently undergoing revision. The government has asked for the course to be “centrée sur des études littéraires en phase avec le monde moderne.” We are troubled by this development, because whilst we believe that modern literature should be represented at this level, it should not form the central thrust of the course. A particular concern is that educationalists have stated that this reform is intended to make the study of French literature more attractive and relevant to modern youth. Our concern, as with other literatures, would be to transmit a love for a cultural canon worthy of study for its own sake.

We will be doing our own thing, of course. But our boys, if they are French, or good enough at French, will still be able to sit the French bac alongside their A-levels if they wish.

Good old Dr Arnold ... and the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ

2011-07-30T14:16:00.002+01:00

The person of Jesus and the truth of his resurrection are two giant megaliths that stand in the path of every atheist; megaliths so big that, though he walk around them, our atheist has only to look up from contemplating his own affairs and he will see them shining in the distance, every step of his way. Here is what Dr Arnold, the famous Head Master of Rugby, wrote on the subject:

“I have been used for many years to study the histories of other times, and to examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair inquirer, than the great sign which God has given us that Christ died and rose again from the dead.”

Dr Anold, shown here on the exterior of the old buildings of the College of Preceptors (of which I'm a Fellow, incidentally). Dr Arnold was Head Master of Rugby from 1828 to 1842, then Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford.

Buckingham University and Chavagnes

2011-07-27T19:37:00.000+01:00

Mr McDermott writes:

I was recently asked a question about the University of Buckingham and the College's relationship with the School of Education of that university. For general information, here is a brief summary of our links with them:

Every year, for the last five years or so, we have been sending staff to Buckingham for teacher training. So far, five Chavagnes Masters have obtained a PGCE from Buckingham, including myself. I am currently in the final stages of a M.Ed. degree (Masters in Educational Leadership) from the same department. The structure of these courses involves periods of residence at Buckingham (with lectures and workshops), visits of university mentors to Chavagnes and finally the production of various pieces of written work which deal with theoretical and practical themes of direct relevance to our work as teachers (essays and theses from 3,000 to 15,000 words).

From the outset, I struck up a personal admiration and friendship for Professor Anthony O'Hear and Professor Chris Woodhead. Both men have been outspoken in their defence of standards in education (the latter as Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools, inter alia) and also in the defence of education as transmitting a definite canon of worthwhile culture to our young people. Our continuing support for Buckingham is in part a tribute to the academic work of the Department at Buckingham.

The leadership of the M. Ed. programme, and now of the Department of Education, is in the hands of Peter Ireland, a formidable former headmaster from Lancashire with a similar back-to-basics, 'no-nonsense' style to Chris Woodhead.

The Education programmes at Buckingham were developed by the University in response to demand from the Headmasters' Conference (HMC www.hmc.org.uk) and also from COGNITA (www.cognitaschools.co.uk/), Chris Woodhead's own group of private schools.

Buckingham has an excellent academic standing, and we are proud to have started sending pupils there. Amongst other things, Buckingham is a champion of the idea that apart from ensuring high standards, education is really none of the government's business, except in a totalitarian state ....

Here is what wikipedia has about Buckingham's academic ranking:

General Overall Ranking
The University is ranked 21st out of the 115 universities in the UK in The Times Good University Guide 2012.^[23]

In 2010 it was ranked 27th in Times Higher Education's "Table of Tables" 2010.^[24] In 2010, The Independent, in association with its Complete University Guide 2010-11, ranked Buckingham as the 20th best university out of 115 institutions in the UK.^[25] The Sunday Times University guide for 2010 included Buckingham in its league tables in 48th position out of 122 UK higher education institutes^[26] stating that: "we rank the private University of Buckingham for the first time in our main league table this year. Top for student satisfaction, with the lowest level of graduate unemployment, the best student/staff ratio and the lowest drop-out rate compared to benchmark. Buckingham makes quite an entrance ..."^[27] Confusingly, at that point the same publisher did not include Buckingham in its Good University Guide because Buckingham receives no state funding and therefore does not participate in the government's Research Assessment Exercise, which forms part of the Times ranking criteria (but not the Sunday Times).^[28] This changed in 2012, when Buckingham was ranked 21st.
Times Higher Education reported that the University's 2008 graduates had the highest employment rate after six months.^[29]

In recent years the University has consistently ranked highly in student satisfaction surveys. For example, Times Higher Education reported that Buckingham was ranked first in 2006,^[30] 2007^[31] and 2008^[32] in the NSS or National Student Survey of student satisfaction. This is a census, albeit controversial, of final-year undergraduates conducted by IposMori, the polling organisation, to determine satisfaction levels at UK universities.^[33] The survey relates to the whole student experience, from the experience of classes, and lecturer feedback, to the quality of pastoral care. In 2009, the University of Buckingham dropped to second place and in 2010 returned to first place.^[34]^[35]

Department rankings

The most recent league tables of individual university departments in The Guardian University Guide 2012, produced by The Guardian newspaper, ranked the Business department as 15th (out of 116) in the country, English as 7th (out of 106), and Law as 27th (out of 95).^[36]

Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian mass-killer

2011-07-23T22:20:00.003+01:00

Ja, vi elsker dette landet. "Yes, we love this land!", so goes the Nowegian national anthem. But nationalism can turn sour. Anders Behring Breivik, the young man who has just killed nearly a hundred of his countrymen, was a disturbing example of something we have associated recently with young Asian males from Bradford; but not so much with young white males from Oslo. They all have the same problem: the feeling of alienation and a desperate need to belong to something, to fight for a cause. Of course, it seems obvious that Breivik must have serious psycholgical problems, but it is still interesting to think about what a man like this says to justify himself.

Today on Facebook a 1500 page manifesto was published giving a day by day account of Breivik's preparations for his killing spree. And on youtube, there was a film (now removed) where Breivik poses as a Knight Templar, in some kind of got-up dress uniform. I have been reading the Oslo evening papers today. It seems that Breivik was into just about everything exclusive: freemasonry, born-again evangelicalism, far-right politics, bogus knights templar ...

His 12-minute youtube film is divided into 4 sections: "The rise of Marxist multiculturalism", "Islamic colonisation", "Hope" and then "A new beginning".

We get the picture ... half-baked, deranged, murderous, no doubt. But do we have the answers the questions he was asking any more than we have answers for the deracinated Islamic youths of Europe?

There are no easy answers. This week France is tearing itself apart over whether or not it is a good idea to have public military parades on the French national day, whether soldiers who die in combat should be given public honours. Public displays of religious belief have become controversial in the USA and England as well as in anti-clerical France. Children are given easy access to abortion and contraception at school, and now (in France, in Year 12) are taught that our gender has nothing to do with our biological make-up .. It would seem that Anders Breivik and the Islamic extremists he considered his enemies have a point about something. Western culture is in free-fall and needs a miracle to save it.

But that miracle is not coming by the sword. It is interesting that Breivik looks to the middle ages for inspiration. What the west needs is not medieval-style war, but medieval-style conversion. We need saints. And we need to start asking God to send them quickly; there is the rather unsettling, but quite possible issue that we might be the first candidates He has in mind ... Now there's a passionate cause for young men in search of meaning. And it's harder than making bombs out of fertiliser.

We could make a start by acting on Benedict XV's message to the Norwegians today: pray for the dead, comfort the dying and stand united against hatred and violence.

I am reminded of a little song that inspired me when I was at primary school; it inspires me still:

When a knight won his spurs, in the stories of old,
He was gentle and brave, he was gallant and bold;
With a shield on his arm and a lance in his hand,
For God and for valour he rode through the land.

No charger have I, and no sword by my side,
Yet still to adventure and battle I ride,
Though back into storyland giants have fled,
And the knights are no more and the dragons are dead.

Let faith be my shield and let joy be my steed
'Gainst the dragons of anger, the ogres of greed;
And let me set free with the sword of my youth,
From the castle of darkness, the power of the truth.

Jan Struther

An afterthought: what are the Norwegians doing in Oslo now? Praying outside their medieval Cathedral. That's a way forward.

Getting to know our new chaplain

2011-07-17T21:30:00.001+01:00

Father Rowe (pictured left, chatting with Mr Colin) is taking over as chaplain at Chavagnes in September. He has started up a blog which chronicles his news and views: http://frbederowe.blogspot.com/

Ministry meddling?

2011-07-16T19:07:00.000+01:00

I received a letter yesterday from the local office of the French education ministry. It announced to me that from now on all new teachers at Chavagnes would need to apply for an authorisation to teach. OK, fair enough. But it went on to specify that they would not get it unless they had a Master's degree. For Sports teachers they had to have a bachelor's degree in Physical Education Science and a Master's degree.

I was worried. We have recruited a few new teachers, with UK qualified teacher status, and bachelor's degrees, but no Master's degrees. And we often have, in the past, recruited teachers straight from university and put them through their PGCE part-time. This new requirement seemed to rule this out; I rang the man from the ministry and he confirmed it.

Subsequent researches have confirmed, however, that the man from the ministry is wrong. The only qualification required of teachers in independent schools is the baccalaureat (A-levels). It appears that the over-zealous civil servants were applying to us the rules intended for private schools aided with government funding. He who pays the piper (or the teacher) calls the tune, which seems fair enough.

So, then there came a sense of relief that I would not have to spend hours of my time making the legal case for my new teachers (who are all experienced professionals) and for young recruits in the future, bringing their energy and idealism with them fresh from university. But now a sinking feeling is beginning to take hold. Once I have convinced our local men from the ministry of their mistake, they are bound to want their revenge ... I have a feeling that this is not the last we will hear from them.

Vive l'enseignement libre ...

God rest one of the last great Europeans, and let's thank God for men like him

2011-07-15T22:50:00.001+01:00

I met Archduke Otto von Habsburg when I was 18 and he made a deep impression on me. His death should serve as wake-up call to young Europeans: we must rally to the defence of all Otto held dear.

At Chavagnes we will be asking Blessed Charles, Otto's father, to intercede for us all as we strive to play our part in reclaiming our culture for Christ.

Being philosophical

2011-05-30T13:23:00.001+01:00

Have decided to sign up for a degree in Philosophy from the University of London. I suppose my progress from September to December will be slow, because I have to complete my M.Ed. thesis for the University of Buckingham. The theme for that is meant to be "managing change in education" ... interesting, because that is exactly what I am doing at the moment at our school.

So, I am keeping my brain busy.

We're having a ball again

2011-05-26T10:42:00.000+01:00

Find out more about the Chavagnes Summer Ball, Friday 1st July, 2011.

Father Bede Rowe arriving in September

2011-05-24T07:20:00.000+01:00

I am happy to announce that Chavagnes has found a new chaplain for next school year, thanks to the kindness of Bishop Declan Lang. Bishop Lang of Clifton has agreed to release Father Bede Rowe for a year to serve as chaplain at our school.
Our current chaplain, Father Anthony Talbot, has been unwell. Pleasr remember him in your prayers.

Ferdi McDermott sings God Save the Queen, with pupils ...

2011-04-29T20:59:00.003+01:00

http://www.tvvendee.fr/video-TVV_le_journal_20110429_07.aspx

Here we are on the local television today, on the occasion of the Royal Wedding.

Back on my feet

2011-04-01T10:26:00.000+01:00

After falling off the roof on 4th January, and suffering a broken hip and wrist, I am now back on my feet at last. Thank God and all the saints it was not worse. But it was bad enough ...

We have some teaching vacancies for suitably experienced and qualified teachers for September 2011. Check out http://www.chavagnes.org/news/Vacancies.shtml for more details

Age and decay ...

2010-12-16T13:47:00.000Z

The winter brings thoughts of mortality. Someone was asking me the the other day about a 20 year plan for the school, and the thought of what the world and I might be like in 20 years' time kept me awake much of the following night.

Now in my 40th year, I thought I would dig out a photo of me at 20, for everyone's amusement. I think I was better-looking then, but rather too dreamy ...

Deep in school reports today, but looking forward to a trip to Nantes on Saturday: Christmas shopping, Advent confession, a change of scenery.

Seasonal song
This year's Carol Service was quite a success. We have about ten trebles at the moment, so the choir is improving. Our CD from 2004, Les Choristes de Chavagnes, has been re-issued, and is available from me for 15 euros including post and packing. (Send orders to cdorders@chavagnes.org)

New photo book from Chavagnes

2010-12-15T13:02:00.000Z

Father Talbot and I have produced a photographic record of life at Chavagnes, available now from Amazon. (see link, left).

The book contains portraits of the College's office-holders (including our house captains), plus images from the sciences, arts, sports (boxing, fencing, rugby, rowing, rising ...), music, worship ... every aspect of school life is represented. And Father Talbot's photos are also beautiful works of art in their own right.

An ideal gift, this book should also help to promote the College to a wider audience.

How boys become men: advice for quiet dads and over-protective mothers ...

2010-11-27T16:17:00.001Z

I have just read a fascinating book by a New Zealander lady who worked for fifteen years as a prison officer in prisons for young men. (He'll Be OK: Growing Gorgeous Boys into Good Men, by Celia Lashlie.) She was commissioned by a group of private boys' boarding schools in New Zealand to carry out a large research project, 'The Good Man Project', interviewing pupils, parents and teachers in about 25 large schools across the country.

Her aim was find out what is going wrong, and right, with the raising of boys.

This book presents the conclusions of 18 month of intensive 'action research'. In action research, the focus is on collecting testimonies and opinions from large numbers of people, and then coming to general conclusions. The result is chatty and easy to read. There are no tables or graphs.

There are some interesting conclusions, especially about the role of men in guiding adolescent boys through the most difficult time in growing up (around age 14, the author says) and the way in which men are not in general fufilling their role, often because mothers won't let them ...

My experience as a Headmaster certainly tallies with what Celia Lashlie found: contact between school and home is usually managed by the mother and the mother is - in most cases - the main decider in all matters relating to her son. It is also my experience that most mothers are not prepared to step back as boys approach the key period of 13-15, and and that most fathers are not making enough time to be with their sons, go fishing, play football, and the rest. (Lashlie hints that while women talk with their sons, men spend time with them, and that this is the male way: non-verbal communication sometimes works best. Women, suggests Lashlie, have trouble understanding this.)

There are some useful reminders about what is and what is not normal for a teenage boy. For example, we need not worry when they suddenly go quiet and uncommunicative. Lashlie explains why, as well as offering suggestions about how to support them through their trials, whilst still giving them clear guidelines and rules.

She suggests that once they have reached 16 or 17, if we have got it right, then one can ease off with the rules and sanctions (this is my experience also as a Headmaster.) But around 13-15 she says you need 'an electric fence' to keep them under control! (I agree there too.) One amusing passage about punishment suggests that one should isolate the one thing they love the most, and then take it away from them. I suppose she is talking about MP3 players, IPhones and the like ...

Celia Lashlie sent her own son to Catholic boarding school for a while. But this is not a book that takes an especially Christian view. It does take a fair and humane view, however, and tries not to fall into the trap of political correctness. Catholic families (especially mothers) could benefit from reading it, especially if they are worried about their sons.

Interesting and challenging reading, especially for father and mothers of teenage boys.

Well done, Monsieur le President

2010-11-20T10:01:00.003Z

I saw President Sarkozy on the television the other day, being savaged by three interviewers at once. I had never seen anything like it. Three against one didn't seem fair. But Sarkozy equalled his performance in the interview just before he was elected, in which he showed up Segolene Royale for the sanctimonious old volcano of hatred that she is.

Sarkozy is a bit of a chancer, but he is a survivor also. And his public speaking gifts, born of his time as a lawyer no doubt, are impressive.

One issue he tackled was the high taxation and social security in France that made the country uncompetitive in the European market. He cited Spain as an example of a country in which even a socialist government was realising it had to keep tax and social security low in order to let the economy compete. All of this was of course completely rejected by Royale and Co. afterwards.

Sarkozy actually promised not to increase taxes, but instead to replace only one in two civil servants leaving for retirement from now on. Hurray! Perhaps that means the end of the stranglehold of the French communist bureaucracy (which survives, and runs most aspects of the country, whoever is in power.)

Today in my email inbox I received the following junk email, sent out to thousands of French business managers. Judge for yourself if Sarkozy is right to fear an exodus of French business to countries with a smaller state and lower taxes/social security.

"... Vous souhaitez vous installer à l’étranger ? Développer vos affaires vers l'Europe ? Rejoignez les chefs d'entreprises qui se sont implantés soit :

En Espagne, où les charge sociales n'excèdent pas 260 euros quelque soit le montant du salaire pour un dirigeant,

Ou en Tunisie où les sociétés totalement exportatrices de biens ou de services sont exonérées de toute imposition.

Pour toutes informations merci de contacter ..."

I think that hundreds, if not thousands, of French companies are already looking at the arguments for relocation, so Sarkozy had better 'carry on regardless' and get on with his reforms in the 18 months he has left. Even if the socialists get into power again they will not bother to reverse his changes. Bonne chance, Mr le President.

Incidentally, Sarkozy, a Hungarian imigrant's son, also had something to say about the need to limit immigration if cultural and social integration is not working fast enough. Those who noted the President's remarks that he doesn't want 'an Islam in France' but rather a 'French Islam' (ie. integrated and accepting values and traditions of the country), might like to know that Mr Sarkozy's full name is Nicholas Sarkozy de Nagy-Bocsa. His Hungarian ancestor was enobled by Ferdinand II Habsburg for his courageous service against the Turkish agressor in 1628.

Poland's whodunnit: paranoia or are they on to something?

2010-11-06T23:06:00.003Z

A number of years ago I visited Poland and stayed in a special hotel attached to the parliament, as a guest of one of the deputies. It was an interesting experience: there was a gas mask under the bed - only one, even though we were two friends sharing a room, so thankfully I never had to face that dilemma, and in any case the instructions were in Polish and Russian neither of which are my strongest languages ... The only MPs around at the time (it was a recess for the parliament) were draped in gold bling, and looked decidedly unparliamentary. The old coldness and reserve of communist times was still tangible, especially among the staff ... and when I took my Polish friends out for a couple of bottles of Russian champagne (for the price of a London cup of tea) it felt like a revolution for them.

The country was in the throes of an identity crisis. Catholic or progressive; nationalistic or mulitcultural ... it was a long list of dilemmas. And on the country's western borders the Germans were busy buying back all the land conceded after World War Two. The whole of this new 'lebensraum' land was filled with garden centres, advertised mainly in German, selling garden gnomes which, apparently, Germans smash up each New Year in order to make way for new ones.

There was not much talk then of threat from Russia. Russia was humiliated then by all the prestige she had lost after the fall of communism. Even as we looked down from Lenin's gift to the people of Warsaw, the towering, Cathedral-like, Palace of Culture, we did not guess that ten years later, the eyes of worried Poles would be glancing furtively towards the east again.

A friend of mine, a young law professor, not known for his devotion to conspiracy theories or rashness, sent me these links to an English-dubbed version of a recent Dutch documentary, which explores the theory that Poland's loss of 95 of its leaders in a tragic plane crash may have been something more than an accident. Perhaps you had better watch these before the successors of the old KGB get youtube to take them down. Or am I being over-dramatic?

Links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNtP3dvFiCw (part 1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wukSdTUpfI (part 2)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN0E7VH25j0 (part 3)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZqVEoXYVlc (part 4)

Was Shakespeare Irish?

2010-11-05T10:53:00.004Z

On this blog I have discussed before the vexed question of whether Shakespeare was a Catholic. Listening to the following rendition in 'Original Pronunciation', the Bard certainly sounds very Irish, which is almost as good ... enjoy:

Mel Gibson needs our prayers

2010-10-20T19:20:00.007+01:00

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Of course we all admit to being sinners, and draw comfort from Our Lady's prayers.

But does your average Catholic sinner spare a prayer for those people whom in gossipy conversation we simply write off as hopelessly beyond the Pale? Perhaps we need to develop the reflex of praying earnestly for every soul we publicly denegrate, as well as remembering to repent of our general lack of charity, good manners and discernment.

One man who has been battered by life recently is Mel Gibson, and it's no consolation for him to hear that it's all his own fault. About a year ago, when his wife of many years (and mother of his children) filed for divorce, he begged the Bishops of the Eastern Catholic Church in the US to pray for him, flying in for their conference especially to enlist their intercessory help. Since that time, a great many difficult and embarassing things have happened to Mel, and I own up to being uncharitable about him in my conversations with friends. Sorry, Mel.

A few years ago I met the man, when he was making 'The Passion of the Christ' and found him to be a humble and deeply religious person. There was, I would say, something of the wounded animal about him, something of the boy still trying to grow up, trying to prove something. I suppose most men are like this (I know I am, for a start), but Mel wore it on his sleeve, I think. He was also rather tired the day we met (see the photo!), so that might account for some of it.

He came across as loveable, passionate, unpredictable, creative .... like so many great artists. I asked some of the people working with him what they thought about his religious convictions. They agreed that these were something of a mystery, but that they were deep, and that 'Mel has a big Catholic heart'.

Mel now needs our prayers more than ever. So I invite my friends to remember him especially in the time approaching Christmas, a time when families feel the pain of separation even more keenly.

Philippe de Villiers and the Vendee

2010-10-01T21:23:00.006+01:00

The Vendee was yesterday shaken by the news that Philippe de Villiers, who has been President of the Department's Conseil Général for 22 years, has resigned.

It all follows a vote of no confidence last week, precipitated by the disillusionment of Senator Bruno Retailleau, a spiritual son of de Villiers, and Vice-President of the Vendee, who has resigned from the party (de Viliers' Mouvement pour la France). Shades of Julius Caesar and Brutus ... I know how de Villiers feels, because I have been stabbed in the back a few times in my life. Unlike Caesar, I have somehow managed to get up and keep going. And I suspect that de Villiers will do the same.

Perhaps at 61, he feels that if he is going to make his mark in another kind of public life, he needs to make a start now. He has also just got over a rare form of eye cancer; and there are other problems the family.

The national papers are speculating that perhaps he will join the government. My gut feeling is that he will move into a more spiritual/cultural role as the Father of the Vendee, immune from the nastiness of political life.

He is one of the few great men alive today in France, and he has been good to us at Chavagnes. Here is what he has said about us in print too.

We will be praying for him and for the Vendee he loves so much.

My first laptop

2010-09-09T19:17:00.002+01:00

Yesterday, as a belated birthday present, I bought myself my first ever portable computer. I am even looking forward to my next journey on a French train now: all the commuting gentlemen are well-ensconced with them, thought I suspect that most of them are just watching films. The man in the shop tried to sell me a more expensive one because the "entry-level" model I settled for "would only store 300 films" ....

It was only when I returned home from the shop that I realised it had a French keyboard. I am getting used to its vagaries now and will have to start thinking about all those accents I had become accustomed to leave out.

I have been listening to BBC Radio 3, with wonderful sound quality. It's almost as if I had never left Blighty.

On ‘Empathetic Capacity’ in the perspective of Eternity

2010-08-31T21:33:00.004+01:00

I recently read about some 17th century Dominican dialogues with Zen Buddhist monks and the many interesting and moving consequences that such cultural openness brought to the men of that age. I am also currently engaged in some research into the work of Matteo Ricci, the Jesuit missionary in China. These men were Christian humanists, engaged in bold cultural outreach in faithfulness to the Gospel injunction to preach to all nations.

Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Arts (of which I am a Fellow) recently gave an illustrated talk, now available online, which calls for a ‘21st century enlightement’, or a new humanism for the new century. This is going to be the RSA’s new ‘strap’ or byword. You can watch his fascinating, entertaining (and short) lecture, complete with cartoons at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC7ANGMy0yo&feature=player_embedded

Taylor speaks of progress in the development of ‘empathetic capacity’ and notes what he sees as the decrease in person to person violence down through the centuries. It seems to me that such an observation is inevitably anecdotal and subjective, rather than empirical. Try telling that to the child-slaves, or urban beggars in India and China, or the child prostitutes in Thailand; people whose ancestors perhaps serenely tilled the fields; or indeed to the millions of aborted babies who bloody our hands without – it would seem – making much of a dent in our consciences. ‘Man’s inhumanity to man’ is always with us. The 21st century – is seems to me – is no time to get complacent. And yet, one knows what Taylor means.

And Taylor is right that popular culture is encouraging us to think about other people. He is, here, in the same optimistic line as men such as Pius XII and Paul VI who saw in the new means of social communication the way to achieve not just a shrinking planet, but a more mutually aware and loving one, as long as we can avoid the very modern curse of ‘compassion fatigue’.

He is right to draw attention to the truth that education has no value if it does not, above all other things, foster ‘empathetic capacity’, or - in simpler terms – love. “For I can have all things, but if I have not charity …” as St Paul observed.

Taylor, remembering the inhumanity of various episodes of 20th century history, and the intolerance of some moderns to those different from themselves, invites us - in true humanist spirit, to “have a relationship with your (emotional) reactions, but not to be a slave to them”. And yet he counsels a suspicion towards too much abstraction, for that has tended to ignore human suffering and practical human needs: such abstraction was what permitted the extremes of Nazism and Communism, where the ends (perhaps never fully understood, let alone ever realised) justified the diabolical means. So a relationship with our visceral, emotional reactions is as important to our humanity as is the relationship with our critical faculties. It all seems very incarnational, doesn’t it?

There is a even a distributist note, I feel, in his avowal that technical progress does not necessarily bring happiness, and his despair at the idea that that just because something can be discovered, developed or sold, then it must be. Here there is room for the still, small voice of a reflective conscience, for the voice of the wisdom of the ages.

It has been said ‘In my end is in my beginning’ and this is what Taylor suggests too. How great that we are keen to get man from A to Z with maximum efficiency. But where is Z and what is Z? We need to reflect on our ultimate destination in order to live well and justly now. The sacredness of every human life, the value of every human life (with all the necessary conclusions one ought to draw about abortion – even if Taylor perhaps cannot see or admit that) is a kind of light that might well illuminate the metaphysical darkness.

Taylor rightly deplores the desire to “cram education into the first quarter of our lives” (although it might be worse to respond by placing less emphasis on education in that first quarter, and less still thereafter, which is the modern tendency.) Childhood should be the solid start of lifelong learning. Education, not just in terms of technical skills, but also in terms of the formation of right feelings and taste, can be the key to a life fully lived. Now, who said that first? “Veni ut vitam habeant …” - I came that they might have life and life in all its fullness. Yes, that’s right. It was Jesus Christ who first noticed that we were all half-asleep, or half-dead.

Taylor says that we must stop chasing myths of justice and progress (might this be a veiled reference to political correctness?). Instead we must become more practical and more spiritual.

Margaret Mead, quoted by Taylor, said a lot of odd things. But one observation, that “a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world” is undoubtedly true. All we need, according to our Lord, is two or three gathered together. The Royal Society of Arts, founded as Britain’s more ‘hands-on’ response to the Académie Française, has, despite its establishment image, a rebel side. Marx was one of our Fellows, and Nelson Mandela too. The RSA today is a mixture of university professors, literary figures, industry chiefs and the rising stars of the new left. The latter group tends to dominate.

Faithful readers will know that I am very pleased to be described as a conservative, and that have no illusions about Marx, and yet it seems to me that men such as Matthew Taylor do care about people’s lives. Their empathetic capacity, despite its awful name, is a challenge to men like me. Perhaps it is now time for the Christian humanists to join debates like these and to bring to them the light of the Gospel, just like – for example - the great Jesuits and Dominicans of the post-Reformation era. 21st Century Christian humanism’s time has come. Because man is indeed the measure of all things. But it was God who made him so. And, in the man Jesus Christ, He has given us some powerful answers about the Z of A-Z: answers about our final destination. Modern man needs these answers more than ever now, as the world grows ever smaller and history moves ever faster, towards its ultimate consummation.

If you are wondering who popularised that thought about beginnings and endings, even before TS Eliot in his Quartets, it was Mary, Queen of Scots, who embroidered it in French, while in prison awaiting her execution for the Faith: “En ma Fin gît mon Commencement.” And she would know.

Father's photos

2010-08-30T19:55:00.002+01:00

Father Anthony Talbot, our chaplain at Chavagnes, has launched a website featuring his photography. Please do pay him a visit at http://www.anthonytalbot.com/

Today in the Old Roman Martyrology ...

2010-08-13T15:02:00.001+01:00

From the third lesson at Matins:

"On the same day, at Imola, the martyr Cassian was put to a most cruel death. He was a schoolmaster, and was given up to his scholars, with his hands bound behind his back, to be stabbed and torn to death with steel pens. Owing to the weakness of the means, the suffering of his martyrdom was very grievous and long, and his palm all the more glorious."

Scouts de Chavagnes

2010-08-01T00:02:00.004+01:00

My colleague, Mr Crawford, has been putting some of his scouting reflections online on the new Scouts de Chavagnes website. Stirring stuff ...

Praying for Patrick

2010-07-22T08:43:00.003+01:00

Any of you who have been praying for our former pupil, Patrick de la M., will be pleased to hear that after news that his chimotherapy had not worked, there is now some more encouraging news.

Things are looking up for Patrick, as some more digging has removed all the cancerous material; tests of the leg and lungs are showing all clear. He has 3 days of chimo then 2 weeks holiday with his family and then a month of super-chimo in a sterile room to try and make sure everything is ''nuked'. So keep praying.

Lithuanian monks

2010-07-13T14:57:00.004+01:00

It seems that there are French (and Lithuanian) monks just a few miles away from where I am going in Lithuania. The Priory of Palendrai is presiding over a new liturgical movement in the country, with promotion of liturgical catchesis and Gregorian chant workshops ...

It is a daughter house of Solesmes. So it looks like I am going to have to include this splendid site (beautiful stone buildings, only built a few years ago) in my itinerary.

Lithuania, here we come ...

2010-07-13T10:06:00.003+01:00

I have recently booked myself a ticket to Lithuania in early August, to give me a little break from Chavagnes. I have always been a fan of Scandinavia and the Baltic, and Lithuania is the one country (other than Iceland) that has so far escaped me ...

From a Catholic point of view, I am interested in discovering a Nordic/Baltic culture that is still in touch with its medieval roots. However, it seems that there are some unpleasant surprises in store. I had been aware of the Lithuanians' terrible suffering under communism, and in particular of the suffering of the Lithuanian Church. And yet I had no idea of how the functioned under Nazism. My first little researches seem to suggest to me that the attitude that Lithuanians demonstrated to the Germans in 1941 was essentially enthusiastic. They felt that the Nazis were coming to liberate them from Russian communist domination: they were liberators who would restore the relatively new idea of a Lithuanian state (like all the Baltic states, the notion of a nation state to accompany the ethnic group and its language was an early twentieth century one.)

What is more troubling is that many Lithuanians would seem, from 1941 to 1942, to have considered it worth carrying out their own enthusiastic purges of Jews, just to impress the Germans. But it all back-fired, and although apparently the Nazis were impressed at Lithuanian anti-semitic zeal (the documentary evidence makes rather sickening reading), this was not enough for them to give independence to them. It seems that at this point the Lithuanian nationalist intellegetsia, and the peasantry, began to realise that Nazism posed a much greater threat to Christian tradition and Lithuanian honour than had Bolshevism or 'international Jewry'.

From late 1942, then, the Lithuanians started to help the few remaining beleaguered Jews, while compromised religious and nationalist leaders worked on their alibis, seeing how the Nazi approach was going ultimately to be radically discredited. The Israeli authorities have, it is important to note, recognised 723 'just gentiles' who risked their lives to help Jews during this period.

In 1940 it is estimated that there were about 280,000 Jews in Lithuania. From June to December 1941 they were almost completely wiped out. The Jewish population today is around 4,000.

The wikipedia article on the subject (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust_in_Lithuania) reveals that there have been, from 1995 onwards, some public apologies from Lithuanian politicans, but that the issue remains something of a hot potato.

In this context, it is surprising to see that Lithuanian nationalism has survived undinted. The knocks it took from Communism (and there were severe and bloody) seem sufficient to have ensured there would not be the kind of embarassment one found in post-War Germany about national identity.

I am to visit Kaunas, whose Technological university boasts a few interesting student fraternities that aspire to keep intact the 1930s nationalist ideals (having learnt a few lessons from the War, one hopes):

One of these, "Plienas" (Steel) was first founded in 1931 and, "despite the disruptions of history, still continues to preserve the interwar University "Plienas" corporation traditions of manhood."

The aim of the corporation is to develop a noble sense of public spirit. The activities of "Plienas" members are based on the principles of moral, concord and tolerance. "Plienas" slogan is – "Lithuanianism, brotherhood, endurance and work!" ...

"In order to become strong as steel, the members of Plienas do a lot of exercising, says the blurb, including (a schoolboy favourite, this one) "arm bending", which one presumes means arm wrestling.

Another fraternity, this one open also to ladies, promotes 'faith and perfection' and also fosters the same kind of nineteenth century student flummery, including special peaked caps, sashes, shoulder stripes and flags.

It is a long way away from the total lack of any kind of idealism which is now the default culture of British universities. The only real display of any kind of youthful idealism one witnessed regularly when I was at Edinburgh in the early nineties was three or four angst-ridden young men in red jeans who used to sell Living Marxism on the library steps and who sometimes heckled student union meetings to make their obscure and unpopular points.

So Lithuania, viewed from Chavagnes, seems like a different world entirely, and no doubt a very interesting place to visit, before it becomes just the same as everywhere else.

I have emailed the Archbishop and also a lady in the university who is in charge of the second of the two fraternities I mentioned; I hope that they might give me some local contacts so that I can get beyond the tourism and encounter the real Lithuania.

Watch out for a couple of posts from Kaunas soon. Apparently there is Wifi everywhere ...

Pray for the Pope - special Novena

2010-04-12T21:32:00.002+01:00

It's not too late to join in this special novena for Benedict.
http://www.kofc.org/un/eb/en/papalnovena/index.html

Pray with me and millions of others for the Pope to be given strength, courage and discernment at this difficult time.

Hallowing the Flesh

2010-04-07T21:33:00.009+01:00

Strict Protestants, Manicheans and over-Augustinian Catholics take the view that the flesh is just bad news. And they have a number of Scripture quotes to throw at us: ‘All flesh is grass’, “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” … OK, more than a few in fact. There are hundreds.

But St Thomas favoured Aristotle over Plato, and so did, on the whole, the mainstream of the western Catholic tradition. The same St Paul who opposes flesh and spirit (Gal 5:13-18, echoing Mark 14:38 ) also resists a dichotomy of body and soul whose separation at death is a mere temporary aberration, awaiting the correction of the general resurrection of the dead. Indeed, the human body, for the same St Paul, can be an instrument for God’s glory here and now (1 Corinthians 6:20).

The flesh is good news, because the human body is a precious reliquary for the human soul and an icon of it. In fact, they are just aspects of the same reality.

Human bodies are, or can be, very beautiful. That’s no surprise if they somehow bear testimony to God’s desire to mould us in his own image. The human body then, all things being equal, ought to be a source of divine inspiration to us. Ay, there’s the rub …

Original sin gave a new (presumably temporary) dimension to human physical beauty. It made it a kind of snare. Like many other beautiful things it can lead us to evil as well as to good. When Adam and Eve, a man and a woman, discovered original sin, they also discovered that a man and a woman standing naked together in a beautiful garden had a new and troubling connotation. They were ashamed of their nakedness not just before God, but before each other, as man and woman. Ever since, while segregated nakedness has in some contexts survived without any sexual connotation, nakedness of the two sexes together quickly retreated from the public sphere and became either something holy or scandalous.

One theologian (Father Paul Quay, SJ, in The Christian Meaning of Human Sexuality, Ignatius Press) has suggested that the problem of masculine and feminine nakedness is that men’s nakedness seems to imply strength and readiness for violent attack while female bodies suggest vulnerability to that attack. Man towers while woman cowers. One can see how in most cultures, precisely because of this vulnerability of the female body, it is women who have historically been expected to make all the effort of modesty. It is sometimes presented as a question of men being protected from women’s charms, but it has historically been just as much about women protecting themselves from men.

This primeval wound, as well as the primeval attraction, between man and woman, has done more than merely give a different significance to their bodies when they are together. It has had an impact on the way in which the body is viewed in all contexts, and this tendency, many thousands of years after the Fall, seems to be accelerating today. The body is becoming increasingly instrumentalised. My body, and your body, are now objects for consumption, rather than the beautiful expression of individual beings, body and soul, created in the likeness of God.

What an exhilarating experience it was then for me to attend two exhibitions in the National Gallery, London, this Christmas, both exploring ways in which the human body can communicate profound meaning. I have been meaning to set down my thoughts about them for some time, and it has been the thoughts and emotions of the recent Holy Week that have brought these images back to me.

The first of these two exhibitions was Ed and Nancy Kienholz’s The Hoerengracht, a walk through Amsterdam’s red light district. In the characteristic low light, one walks around streets of minature houses, with various plastercasts of real prostitutes, painted in glossy polychrome, waiting for their customers in their depressing little bedrooms, each equipped with wash basin, make-up and a few empty cigarette packets. None of them is with a customer. They are all in a permanent pose of silent waiting (though there is a discreet soundtrack playing, with street noises) which provides a sort of eery atmosphere of religious contemplation.

Each woman wears a kind of window over her face – fixed into the base of a biscuit tin, so that each of those heavily made-up faces is like a television set, providing a barrier between the prostitute and her client. In this particularly disturbing context of sexual power and vulnerability, one is not sure who that psychological protection is for: for the woman, or for the man? Perhaps, when sex is reduced to this, both parties experience the need interiorly to retreat from the act and totally instrumentalise their bodies.

Feeling somewhat sullied, I moved into the next exhibition at the National Gallery, the one I had in fact made to effort to come and see. Whereas the Kienholzs’ exhibit was free, The Sacred made Real cost me about the same price as my lunch that day. But it was worth every penny. Situated in the basement of the Salisbury Wing, the low lighting of this exhbition was deliberately calculated to recreate the atmosphere of candles in an ancient church. The gallery had brought together in one collection an amazing collection of Spanish polychrome religious sculpture of the 16th and 17th centuries, coupled with paintings from the same era. Each art form, we learned, informed the other …

It seems that the regulations of the different guilds of artisans meant that the men who carved the statues were not allowed to paint them, although some daring artists broke the rules. In an obsessive search for autheniticity real hair, real bones and real teeth sometimes adorned these statues, incredibly lifelike, their glass eyes filled with simulated emotion.

In the artificial crypt of the National Gallery I gazed on the polychrome statues of Spain, ridiculed by many art critics over the centuries, and hopelessly out of fashion in the rest of seventeenth century Europe. And as I did so, drinking in the anatomical detail of the coagulated blood cloying around St John the Baptist’s severed head, the glistening, salty tears dripping from a delicate madonna, the blue and purple veins and arteries bearing witness to the last traces of oxygen in the macerated body of a newly dead Christ, I felt my own flesh purged of its grosser connations, like a penitent coming out of confession.

My favourite statue of them all was one of St Mary Magdalene. All the flesh on show was her face, shoulders, arms and feet. But what a face! And then the wonder at discovering that her sackcloth dress was painstakingly carved out of wood, to the last, delicate thread: the same care and love had been lavished on the drab and penitential shroud that covered her body as might have been given to the body itself, had modesty permitted its display. And so the body was honoured, even when totally hidden. So, not only was there a beautiful theology of nakedness, but even a theology of clothèdness.

The other thing I have known, closest to the experience of passing through the Kienholz Hoerengracht to the work of Zubarán and his contemporaries, was a time, last year, when my friend Professor Anthony O’Hear helped me and a few friends through Dante’s Divine Comedy, taking us out of Hell, out of Purgatory and then into the dazzling light of Paradise, up into the pure Empyrean, the fire wherein the Most High dwells in unapproachable light. In fact, the statues stopped just short of that, but that is where they were leading us: onwards and upwards.

Although I am remembering it all in Eastertide, it was a fine mediation for Christmas too, which is when I saw it, and when, two thousand years ago, Almighty God made a new creation that recapitulated all the original beauty of our father Adam: “And the Word became flesh and dwelled among us, and we beheld His glory.”

“Lord, by the mysteries of your incarnation, passion, resurrection and ascension, bless my body and soul and make me a worthy temple for your Holy Spirit. Amen.”

More on the New York Times smear campaign against the Pope

2010-04-01T13:48:00.001+01:00

The Pope, the judge, the paedophile priest and The New York Times
From Damian Thompson's blog ...

Fr Thomas Brundage, the former Archdiocese of Milwaukee Judicial Vicar who presided over the canonical criminal case of the Wisconsin child abuser Fr Lawrence Murphy, has broken his silence to give a devastating account of the scandal – and of the behaviour of The New York Times, which resurrected the story.

It looks as if the media were in such a hurry to to blame the Pope for this wretched business that not one news organisation contacted Fr Brundage. As a result, crucial details were unreported.

Moreover, Fr Brundage – who seems to have shown admirable tenacity in pursuing the loathsome Fr Murphy – claims that a document of questionable provenance was quoted authoritatively by the media as a source for his own opinions. At the very least, The New York Times and many other organisations have some explaining to do. They must be held to account for the way they pursued this story, which led to hysterical attacks on Benedict XVI.

I am reproducing Fr Brundage’s article in full, with thanks to the Archdiocese of Anchorage, where Fr Brundage now works. I implore you to read all of it. My emphases are in bold type. (Hat-tip: Simon Caldwell.)

Setting the record straight in the case of abusive Milwaukee priest Father Lawrence Murphy

Then-presiding judge for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee gives first-person account of church trial

By Fr. THOMAS BRUNDAGE, JLC

For CatholicAnchor.org

To provide context to this article, I was the Judicial Vicar for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee from 1995-2003. During those years, I presided over four canonical criminal cases, one of which involved Father Lawrence Murphy. Two of the four men died during the process. God alone will judge these men.

To put some parameters on the following remarks, I am writing this article with the express knowledge and consent of Archbishop Roger Schwietz, OMI, the Archbishop of Anchorage, where I currently serve. Archbishop Schwietz is also the publisher of the Catholic Anchor newspaper.

I will limit my comments, because of judicial oaths I have taken as a canon lawyer and as an ecclesiastical judge. However, since my name and comments in the matter of the Father Murphy case have been liberally and often inaccurately quoted in the New York Times and in more than 100 other newspapers and on-line periodicals, I feel a freedom to tell part of the story of Father Murphy’s trial from ground zero.

As I have found that the reporting on this issue has been inaccurate and poor in terms of the facts, I am also writing out of a sense of duty to the truth.

The fact that I presided over this trial and have never once been contacted by any news organization for comment speaks for itself.

My intent in the following paragraphs is to accomplish the following:

To tell the back-story of what actually happened in the Father Murphy case on the local level;

To outline the sloppy and inaccurate reporting on the Father Murphy case by the New York Times and other media outlets;

To assert that Pope Benedict XVI has done more than any other pope or bishop in history to rid the Catholic Church of the scourge of child sexual abuse and provide for those who have been injured;

To set the record straight with regards to the efforts made by the church to heal the wounds caused by clergy sexual misconduct. The Catholic Church is probably the safest place for children at this point in history.

Before proceeding, it is important to point out the scourge that child sexual abuse has been — not only for the church but for society as well. Few actions can distort a child’s life more than sexual abuse. It is a form of emotional and spiritual homicide and it starts a trajectory toward a skewed sense of sexuality. When committed by a person in authority, it creates a distrust of almost anyone, anywhere.

As a volunteer prison chaplain in Alaska, I have found a corollary between those who have been incarcerated for child sexual abuse and the priests who have committed such grievous actions. They tend to be very smart and manipulative. They tend to be well liked and charming. They tend to have one aim in life — to satisfy their hunger. Most are highly narcissistic and do not see the harm that they have caused. They view the children they have abused not as people but as objects. They rarely show remorse and moreover, sometimes portray themselves as the victims. They are, in short, dangerous people and should never be trusted again. Most will recommit their crimes if given a chance.

As for the numerous reports about the case of Father Murphy, the back-story has not been reported as of yet.

In 1996, I was introduced to the story of Father Murphy, formerly the principal of St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee. It had been common knowledge for decades that during Father Murphy’s tenure at the school (1950-1974) there had been a scandal at St. John’s involving him and some deaf children. The details, however, were sketchy at best.

Courageous advocacy on behalf of the victims (and often their wives), led the Archdiocese of Milwaukee to revisit the matter in 1996. In internal discussions of the curia for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, it became obvious that we needed to take strong and swift action with regard to the wrongs of several decades ago. With the consent of then-Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland, we began an investigation into the allegations of child sexual abuse as well as the violation of the crime of solicitation within the confessional by Father Murphy.

We proceeded to start a trial against Father Murphy. I was the presiding judge in this matter and informed Father Murphy that criminal charges were going to be levied against him with regard to child sexual abuse and solicitation in the confessional.

In my interactions with Father Murphy, I got the impression I was dealing with a man who simply did not get it. He was defensive and threatening.

Between 1996 and August, 1998, I interviewed, with the help of a qualified interpreter, about a dozen victims of Father Murphy. These were gut-wrenching interviews. In one instance the victim had become a perpetrator himself and had served time in prison for his crimes. I realized that this disease is virulent and was easily transmitted to others. I heard stories of distorted lives, sexualities diminished or expunged. These were the darkest days of my own priesthood, having been ordained less than 10 years at the time. Grace-filled spiritual direction has been a Godsend.

I also met with a community board of deaf Catholics. They insisted that Father Murphy should be removed from the priesthood and highly important to them was their request that he be buried not as a priest but as a layperson. I indicated that a judge, I could not guarantee the first request and could only make a recommendation to the latter request.

In the summer of 1998, I ordered Father Murphy to be present at a deposition at the chancery in Milwaukee. I received, soon after, a letter from his doctor that he was in frail health and could travel not more than 20 miles (Boulder Junction to Milwaukee would be about 276 miles). A week later, Father Murphy died of natural causes in a location about 100 miles from his home

With regard to the inaccurate reporting on behalf of the New York Times, the Associated Press, and those that utilized these resources, first of all, I was never contacted by any of these news agencies but they felt free to quote me. Almost all of my quotes are from a document that can be found online with the correspondence between the Holy See and the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. In an October 31, 1997 handwritten document, I am quoted as saying ‘odds are that this situation may very well be the most horrendous, number wise, and especially because these are physically challenged , vulnerable people”. Also quoted is this: “Children were approached within the confessional where the question of circumcision began the solicitation.”

The problem with these statements attributed to me is that they were handwritten. The documents were not written by me and do not resemble my handwriting. The syntax is similar to what I might have said but I have no idea who wrote these statements, yet I am credited as stating them. As a college freshman at the Marquette University School of Journalism, we were told to check, recheck, and triple check our quotes if necessary. I was never contacted by anyone on this document, written by an unknown source to me. Discerning truth takes time and it is apparent that the New York Times, the Associated Press and others did not take the time to get the facts correct.

Additionally, in the documentation in a letter from Archbishop Weakland to then-secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone on August 19, 1998, Archbishop Weakland stated that he had instructed me to abate the proceedings against Father Murphy. Father Murphy, however, died two days later and the fact is that on the day that Father Murphy died, he was still the defendant in a church criminal trial. No one seems to be aware of this. Had I been asked to abate this trial, I most certainly would have insisted that an appeal be made to the supreme court of the church, or Pope John Paul II if necessary. That process would have taken months if not longer.

Second, with regard to the role of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), in this matter, I have no reason to believe that he was involved at all. Placing this matter at his doorstep is a huge leap of logic and information.

Third, the competency to hear cases of sexual abuse of minors shifted from the Roman Rota to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith headed by Cardinal Ratzinger in 2001. Until that time, most appeal cases went to the Rota and it was our experience that cases could languish for years in this court. When the competency was changed to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in my observation as well as many of my canonical colleagues, sexual abuse cases were handled expeditiously, fairly, and with due regard to the rights of all the parties involved. I have no doubt that this was the work of then Cardinal Ratzinger.

Fourth, Pope Benedict has repeatedly apologized for the shame of the sexual abuse of children in various venues and to a worldwide audience. This has never happened before. He has met with victims. He has reigned in entire conferences of bishops on this matter, the Catholic Bishops of Ireland being the most recent. He has been most reactive and proactive of any international church official in history with regard to the scourge of clergy sexual abuse of minors. Instead of blaming him for inaction on these matters, he has truly been a strong and effective leader on these issues.

Finally, over the last 25 years, vigorous action has taken place within the church to avoid harm to children. Potential seminarians receive extensive sexual-psychological evaluation prior to admission. Virtually all seminaries concentrate their efforts on the safe environment for children. There have been very few cases of recent sexual abuse of children by clergy during the last decade or more.

Catholic dioceses all across the country have taken extraordinary steps to ensure the safety of children and vulnerable adults. As one example, which is by no means unique, is in the Archdiocese of Anchorage, where I currently work. Here, virtually every public bathroom in parishes has a sign asking if a person has been abuse by anyone in the church. A phone number is given to report the abuse and almost all church workers in the archdiocese are required to take yearly formation sessions in safe environment classes. I am not sure what more the church can do.

To conclude, the events during the 1960’s and 1970’s of the sexual abuse of minors and solicitation in the confessional by Father Lawrence Murphy are unmitigated and gruesome crimes. On behalf of the church, I am deeply sorry and ashamed for the wrongs that have been done by my brother priests but realize my sorrow is probably of little importance 40 years after the fact. The only thing that we can do at this time is to learn the truth, beg for forgiveness, and do whatever is humanly possible to heal the wounds. The rest, I am grateful, is in God’s hands.

Father Thomas T. Brundage, JCL

The Pope and the Press ...

2010-03-31T15:53:00.005+01:00

Thanks to Jack Valero (forwarded to me by email) for the information I am going to post here, explaining how the attack on Benedict XVI re two cases of child-abusing priests is - though sad and shameful in itself - just a stick with which to beat the Pope.

Valero writes: "The idea of some in the media was then to find a story that involved Cardinal Ratzinger directly, before becoming Pope. First there was a story based in Munich, where Cardinal Ratzinger had been archbishop and he had authorised for a priest from another German diocese to come to Munich for treatment. He was an abuser. Without Cardinal Ratzinger’s knowledge, he was placed in a parish situation where he abused again. By the time this was found out Cardinal Ratzinger had been in Rome for a few years. So he was not involved.

The second story broke in the New York Times on 25 March and was about a Fr Murphy who had abused deaf children in the 70’s. He had been reported to the civil authorities who investigated him but dropped the case. In the early 90s his archbishop decided he was guilty and withdrew him from public ministry. He then wrote to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) because some of the offences included solicitation in the confessional, which always had to be reported to the Holy See. A process of laicisation started but in 1998, Fr Murphy himself wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger saying he was dying, he had lived in isolation for some years, had not abused for many years – could the process be stopped? Cardinal Ratzinger agreed and thee priest was not defrocked. Fr Murphy died 4 months later. Now one can argue whether the decision was right or wrong, but one cannot say Cardinal Ratzinger was either complicit in the abuse or helped to cover it up in any way."

Details of the case can be found in two pieces in Zenit, which explain it well:

http://www.zenit.org/article-28750?l=english

http://www.zenit.org/article-28746?l=english

Valero was called by Sky News and actually appeared in their afternoon service explaining the above. You can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKWu2B-Vnbs

He says: "I wanted to say so many more things! But at least I was happy to be given the opportunity to put the record straight in some way."

Valero continues:
"Actually the truth is the opposite to what the media are trying to portray. Since 2001, when Cardinal Ratzinger was asked by Pope John Paul II to take over these types of cases, he speeded up the procedures and made everything much more transparent than had been up to then. In other words, it is thanks to Pope Benedict that the Catholic Church has such good procedures in place. This is well explained by John Allen here:

http://ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/keeping-record-straight-benedict-and-crisis

An excellent piece well worth reading is Archbishop Nichols writing in the Times:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7076344.ece

- End of Valero's comments -

God bless our Holy Father and protect him from all attacks upon him.

On us thy dear children ... St Patick's Day 2010

2010-03-20T14:53:00.004Z

Singing 'Hail, glorious St Patrick' always brings a tear to my eyes, especially the verse about the exiles keeping alive the fire lit by the man at Tara, now spread throughout the world. In our own school we have the relics of a 7th century Irish missionary saint in our altar, one of the early spiritual sons of St Patrick.

This year my Irish sentimentalism was tinged with a dose of collective shame about the whole saga unfolding in Ireland regarding child abuse. It is just all so horrible.

But, let's get one thing straight: to pretend that priestly celibacy is the problem is a very myopic idea. How many women do you know who would have liked to marry one of these men? It is blindingly obvious that in the case of sexual abuse, we are concerned with men who enter the priesthood for false motives. In the famous case of Father Sean Fortune, and in almost all the others, the abuse starts as soon as the priest has the chance, shortly after ordination. The issue for ths Church is that such men should never have been allowed through to ordination in the first place, not that the priestly life has corrupted them. Suspension, imprisonment, even excommunication is what should happen here.

On occasion, and I guess this is in the minority of cases, a good priest (or doctor, or teacher, or parent, or whatever) can be uncharacteristically weak and silly with someone in his care. In such cases, usually, things do not go too far, but are a great source of embarassment and shame. For men in this situation, it could well be the loneliness of celibacy which is the proximate cause, or at least the trigger. In that kind of situation, perhaps the advice of Jose Maria Escriva is pertinent: act like Noah's good sons confronted with their father's drunkeness and be forgiving and compassionate. And yet, even for them, the Church needs to learn the lesson that 'no-one is above the law.' Still, if Catholics made sure to love their priests, and pray for them, it would help ...

To be a Leader: lessons from Richard Branson and Jesus Christ

2010-02-27T15:43:00.009Z

Every human community has a leader, starting with the smallest of human communities, the family. And the quality of life of those within a community depends to a significant extent on the quality of leadership exercised within it. At a national level, this is why leadership change is hailed each election time as a time of new opportunities, or new frustrations, depending on one’s point of view. One of Britain’s recent leaders was prepared to go to war, in Iraq, to achieve ‘régime change’ for that country, which effectively amounted to the removal of a strong (and admittedly rather unpredictable) leader to be replaced by a weaker (and much more controllable) one.

Even in our scientific age the mysterious and risky business of leadership is what determines, on all sorts of levels, the content and quality of our lives at home, at work, at church, in the world at large, in fact; but perhaps especially in those unique, self-contained worlds to which we consign our children for somewhere between eleven and sixteen years of their lives: schools.

In this essay, I will begin by briefly introducing some of the problems leaders in schools face and the expectations that we have of them. Since school leaders should be ready to learn lessons in leadership from outside the school gate, I shall discuss some of the techniques and characteristics of two famous leaders who have impressed me in the light of some well-known leadership theories.

Finally, reflecting on my experience and challenges I will propose a synthetic view of what might be considered the essentials of good leadership for a head teacher in a school.

Heads are busy people. They are - depending on the school - responsible for marketing, finance, training of new teachers, strategic planning, curriculum changes, quality control, discipline of pupils (and staff!) and, somewhere low down the list, teaching. In some schools the Head Teacher does not even teach at all.

In years gone by a Head Master might have been able to content himself with simply teaching a full timetable in an exemplary manner and counting on his colleagues to do the same. Matters of discipline might be brought to him if prefects and other teachers could not cope with them, but in the days before the explosion of ‘admin’ the Head was what his title implied: the Head Master, and yet a Master just like his colleagues. He certainly would have embodied stability and authority but he probably did not spend a great deal of time finding the right strategy for leading his school, although an obvious exception might have been Heads who were taking over schools in need of reform.

Since then, people have changed, schools have changed and their business has also changed. A different type of leader seems to be required, one who is prepared to reflect on his leadership style and to learn from other successful leaders. Part of the reason for this is that the ordinary man in the street no longer has a hierarchical instinct, but an egalitarian one. Perhaps since the French Revolution, Joe Public has become increasingly uneasy with authority in all its forms, so a leader in any community of today needs to earn respect and cooperation, rather than simply taking it for granted.

Leadership advice, for want of a better term, seems to fall into four main (admittedly overlapping) areas: attitudes, strategies, qualities and behaviours.

Attitudes: these are the ways you really feel (about your job and about your colleagues) and that you cannot help showing to your people. If the attitudes are problematic, one can work on them, but they are hard work.

Strategies: these would be such things as setting up clear models for followers to imitate, the art of delegation, turning one’s followers somehow into stakeholders, remembering people’s birthdays or remembering to say something encouraging to each person each time you meet. They are all techniques that could be employed in a calculated manner by any kind of person in a leadership role.

Qualities: These are the core values that are part of the personal potential of the leader and which give rise to everything else. An example of this kind of classification would be Stephen M. R. Covey’s ‘Four Cores’ of Integrity, Intent, Capabilities and Results.[1] As with attitudes, qualities are reformable. We can all turn our vices into virtues, because both are closely tied into our habits of behaviour. We just need to force ourselves to do what we know we need to do. All we need is the willpower (and, perhaps, if you believe in it, some grace.)

Behaviours: Things one does and the way one does them, often out of habit. Not so much a question of strategy as a way of being. They are the sort of thing that people will generalize about when talking about their leader: Mr X always respects us, Mr X always listens, etc. 7 Habits of Highly Effective People[2] promoted this label, but really mixed up attitudes, qualities and behaviours, but it has been made more intelligible by the son of that author in his list of ‘Thirteen Behaviours’.[3]

Two successful leaders and their attitudes, strategies, qualities and behaviours

About 25 years ago, when I was 13, a man with a mane of untamed red hair and a fuzzy, ginger beard landed on our school field in what looked like a red car seat attached to a parachute. He was wearing a red bomber jacket and a motorcycle helmet, both emblazoned with the already famous logo of ‘Virgin.’

We schoolboys rushed to get his autograph and I still have mine a quarter of a century later. It is a little drawing of an air balloon with the initials RB inside it. As for the man himself, he came along to the school assembly, in front of 900 boys, a few minutes after so dramatically falling out of the sky on to our cricket square. The Head Master introduced him as Robin Bachelor, the right-hand man (and stunt double, we all thought) of the famous entrepreneur Richard Branson. He had been taking part in a balloon race in a new mode of transport called the G-seat; an invention I never heard of again, although I have noticed that its patron has hardly been out of the headlines ever since.

Richard Branson started his entrepreneurial career very young. One of his first business successes involved a student magazine and then a sales tax fraud involving the pretence of exporting records to the continent when in fact they were only driven around the docks at Dover and then brought back to London to be sold for cash. This escapade cost him a night in prison and his parents an expensive remortgage (for £60,000) to bail him out and save him from a criminal record.[4]

Branson has had his share of success and stress (though not, since that night in jail, abject failure). He seems to lead a charmed life as a genial, boyish 60-year-old millionaire who loves his work and family. He was close to Princess Diana, and got her (famously) to wear a Virgin T-shirt in public. Now he has somehow contrived – seemingly effortlessly – to set up his two children, Holly and Sam, together with a nephew and a young protégé, as the leaders in the social circle of the young royals.[5]

Yet how does a man who appears so often as naïve and rash achieve such success in business, and why do so many follow him? He claims that his aim is to turn Virgin “into the most respected brand in the world”.[6] Part of his strategy for doing this is to court publicity, (something I have often done myself): "Generally speaking, I think being a high-profile person has its advantages … Advertising costs enormous amounts of money these days. I just announced in India that I was setting up a domestic airline, and we ended up getting on the front pages of the newspaper. The costs of that in advertising terms would have been considerable." High visibility is a good thing, maintains Branson, "as long as you're not in the headlines for the wrong reasons."[7]

Branson believes that even if leaders are not exactly born leaders, their upbringing does mean a great deal. Because habits and attitudes are so important the formative years can make or break a leader: in this respect Branson had an especially good start, with parents who were extremely ambitious for him, but not in the least smothering: “At age six, his mother would shove him out of the car and tell him to try to find his own way home. At age 10, she put her son on a bike to ride 300 miles.”[8]

Apart from his mother’s early attempts at leadership training, what mark Branson out in business? He attracts incredible loyalty, because he genuinely seems to like people. He claims that his other main hallmarks are an ability to listen and offer feedback to suggestions from his employees and also being an expert at delegation: "I have to be good at helping people run the individual businesses, and I have to be willing to step back. The company must be set up so it can continue without me." In fact, when he starts or takes over a new business, he spends about three months getting immersed in the nitty-gritty, developing the concept, building up the culture, then he gives his senior managers a stake in the business and lets them get on and manage it as if it were their own.

Part of his delegation strategy has to do with the fact that there are some areas where Branson himself is incredibly weak. For example, he is dyslexic and rather poor at arithmetic. He jokes that he can never remember the difference between gross and net profit. Various leadership theorists[9] have suggested that showing your vulnerability in this way can be a good strategy, especially if within your management structures you have made allowance for it. Branson himself underlines the importance of employees’ seeing the boss’s human side. He advises leaders “not be embarrassed about the staff seeing the weaker side of you. They don’t lose respect for you because they see your human side. They actually gain more respect for you”.[10]

Branson has a certain gentleness about him too. He feels that employees should not live in a relationship of fear with their managers: "If a flower is watered, it flourishes. If not, it shrivels up and dies. It’s much more fun looking for the best in people. People don’t need to be told where they’ve slipped up or made a mess of something. They’ll sort it out themselves."[11] And when an employee is not doing well in one area of the company, he is given an opportunity to excel in a different Virgin Group job. Despite the enormous size of his empire (350 companies and counting), Branson still realizes the value of at least creating the impression of the personal touch. Apparently, “For the companies in which he serves as both chief executive and chairman, Branson writes his staff "chitty-chatty" letters to tell them everything that is going on and to encourage them to write him with any ideas or suggestions. He gives them his home address and phone number. He responds with a letter personally, even if he doesn't follow up and deal with the details. Sometimes people come to him with personal problems, while others have suggestions for improvements in their companies”[12] People feel close to Branson. His light touch (through delegation) coupled with his air of personal accessibility and affability make him a figure of unusual adulation in the business world, sometimes with (even for him) unnerving results: while visiting New Zealand, Branson was once approached by a male admirer who told him, "Richard, I love you. I wish you were gay - and that I were gay too!"[13]

But, more importantly, the whole Virgin philosophy is about selling people an idea as well as a job or a product. Branson believes in making working for his companies an enjoyable life choice: “I don’t see Virgin as a company but as a way of life and I fully enjoy it”[14] he says, and he evidently endeavours to communicate this vision to his employees and especially to the senior managers.

Based on Kurt Lewin’s 1939 study[15] identifying what he saw as the three main leadership styles (authoritarian, democratic/participative and laissez-faire), Branson is clearly a democratic/participative leader with extraordinary personal qualities, originality and courage.

Another leader who has inspired me, in a much deeper way, is Jesus Christ.[16] As a Christian I believe that he was (and remains) the incarnate son of God[17]. But another aspect of that belief is that he was a man like us in all things but sin[18]. Because of this, it is entirely appropriate to examine the leadership that gained him a group of dedicated apostles who were prepared not merely to live for him, but also to die for him. He also left an organization behind him which has had an unparalleled impact on the course of human history, and indeed on the whole intellectual, cultural and spiritual outlook of modern man.

Of Kurt Lewin’s three broad types, my first instinct was to identify Jesus as the ultimate authority figure and therefore an authoritarian, who was, quite literally, always right! As an admittedly rather unempirical exercise I took a personality test online[19] in persona Christi, as it were, to determine which leadership would best describe Christ. In doing so I tried my level best to think of situations described in the four Gospels and relate them to the generalities put forward in the survey questions. The result was that Christ was labeled as a participative leader. In the wake of that reflection I searched further in the Gospels and found a clear pattern in their account of Jesus’ ministry, which shows a clear bias in favour of the participative style.

This example of participative leadership is one that he not only practices himself, but also sets as normative for the Church in the future. Regarding prayer he says that ‘whenever two or three of you are gathered together in my name’ to pray, then those prayers will be answered[20]. For governance and teaching, he vests in Peter a special authority of loosing and binding[21], called by Catholics ‘the power of the keys’, but he seems to make a point of giving this power to Peter individually and also the same, or similar power to all the apostles collectively.[22] From an ecclesiastical perspective, the bishops share in the same authority given to Peter, the first Pope. Peter is a leader who will have to act in a participative way for his authority to make sense.

Part of good leadership must include looking ahead to the day when one cannot be around to make all the decisions oneself. A good leader does not delegate simply because other people can do things better than he can. He delegates as a way of empowering his people, giving them the chance to develop their own leadership qualities and contribute to the expansion and success of the enterprise. At the height of his public ministry, and during what can be seen as a period of leadership training for the apostles, Jesus sent them out to do the kind of thing he himself had been getting a name for:

“These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: "Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, 'The kingdom of heaven has come near.' Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” [23]

When they have tried this for a few weeks they come back for more instructions and to witness the culmination of Christ’s public ministry, leading to his Passion and death. The apostles who return from these exciting missions in the outlying towns are real leaders now, capable of stewarding and managing in an impressive way the large crowds that now gather to hear Jesus, surrounded by his leadership team. [24]

This seems an appropriate moment to mention the role played by trust in the leader/follower relationship. Christ, and Branson both have the same attitude to taking this unique kind of risk. Jim Burke, former Chairman and CEO of Johnson and Johnson claimed: “I have found that by trusting people until they prove themselves unworthy of that trust, a lot more happens.”[25] This is precisely what Christ did with Judas. Judas was sent out on those mini-missions of preaching, healing and casting out demons and yet ultimately betrayed Christ’s trust. But Christ will go even further than Burke: he will forgive a betrayal if he is sure that there is a real willingness to make a new start. Hence Peter’s three betrayals of trust are sorted out when Christ asks him three times if he loves him. The ability to trust – and to delegate (not because one can’t do a job oneself, but because one wants to empower others and the organization) is a mark of the ability of a true leader to see the larger picture: “Even an overdose of trust that, at times, involves the risk of being deceived or disappointed is wiser, in the long run, than taking for granted that most people are incompetent or insincere.”[26] Many great business leaders have found that high-trust interaction, when a clear vision has been imparted, inspires creativity, creates new possibilities and energises a team. In the simple maxim of Lao Tzu, the great Chinese theorist on leadership: “No trust given, no trust received.”[27]

Clear instructions for the mission are essential, of course. There needs to be a model which followers, or in the case of a school, teachers, can imitate. The best person to model good practice is the leader himself, and this brings us on to one of the most challenging features of what has been called “Level 5 Leadership”[28], the kind that can make the difference between good companies and schools and great ones.

Here the real character of the leader comes into play. It is not just about a clever game of risk-taking on trust with your followers. You want to make them trust you too. You might have a default position of trusting them, as a kind of winning leadership strategy, but the kind of trust they give you as a leader will depend on a few important personal qualities that relate to, dare I suggest, a man’s soul. That is to say, they are aspects of our personality that are very interior and private, yet which manifest themselves often enough through our actions. They are the deepest things one cay say about our outlook and values. Covey (Junior)[29] identifies four core values : Integrity, Intent, Capabilities and Results. It is the first of these that is the most intimate, but the others are very personal too: What is my real vision? Have I got what it takes? Can I come up with the goods?

The key one, it seems to me, is the first, and here the ancient leadership theorists would agree.[30] A leader, to be great, needs to be a virtuous man. For Covey (Junior) the attributes needed for integrity are: congruence (“walking the talk”), humility and courage. The truth, as if we did not already feel it in our bones, is that the really great leaders are “self-effacing … even shy … a personal blend of humility and professional will. They are more like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton or Caesar.”[31]

So on a personal level, Jesus is a perfect fit. He speaks with an assurance and solidity that come from integrity of life, a perfect coming together of what I say and what I do. (A tall order for any Head Master to follow, to be sure, but a worthy point of reference nonetheless.)

In terms of Jesus’ strategies, like Branson, he develops winning approaches and paradigms that can be repeated time and time again (‘a system’.) He provides real structure and continuity within the organization, through the apostolic succession. Through the Christian doctrine of the mystical body, enunciated by his follower St Paul, Christ also makes the members of his organization real stakeholders. This is pre-eminently true perhaps for the priests and bishops, but it holds for every Christian.

Christ too, is a man who recognizes the importance of the personal relationship with each follower. He is prepared to go the extra mile for his men … the good shepherd. I remember that in a staff meeting at the beginning of term a couple of years ago, I told the teachers in my school what I expected from them, and invited them to say what they expected from me. One of them said, much to my surprise, “to be loved”. It is a deep need, and one that Christ surely satisfied better than anyone. (His answer to our other key needs is strangely attractive even if it would not please the teachers’ unions.)[32]

As for vulnerability, well, Christ has no faults per se, but the vulnerability (literally ‘ability to be wounded’) shown in his Passion not only makes him more loveable, but is precisely a sign of his love: “greater love hath no man than this, than a man lay down his life for his friends”.[33] Now that kind of love and that kind of vulnerability would command undying respect and devotion to any leader. There is also, despite his awesome divinity (or perhaps because of it) the man who makes a barbecue on the seashore[34], the man who is reputed to be a ‘glutton and a drunkard’[35] because he likes to have a few drinks with his friends. Like Branson, Christ is not afraid to show his humanity to those he leads. He even shows, so some scripture scholars tell us, a sense of humour.[36]

Also, he did sometimes reveal that, in his humanity, he was finding it difficult to bear the burdens he had been given by his Father. And yet he bore them. That kind of example of heroic strength, drawn from God, in moments of weakness, must have been incredibly compelling.

There are many other home-truths of leadership that must surely come down to us from Christ’s example, or from that of the few really great men who have resembled him: give your followers a clearly repeated and articulated message; don’t be afraid to ask 100% because that’s what people want to give; choose different people for your team, not just clones of yourself (the apostles really were a mixed bag); give clear productivity targets and modes of assessment (“by their fruits shall ye know them”.[37])

Christ was also capable of reasonable pragmatism: he was able to slip away from dangerous crowds[38]; his disciples, although preaching non-violence, at least took one sword between two on journeys, for minimum protection[39]. (And at least one sword was carried to the Last Supper). The Messiah also knew his own limits (yes, as a human being, he had limits), so that for example he was able to make time for himself to rest, and to get away from the crowds[40], even if they still managed to catch up with him.

Lewin’s democratic/participative label is particularly to be seen in Christ’s teaching style: he almost always gets his questioners to answer their own questions in order to give them ownership of the profound answers (“whose head is on the coin?”[41] or “what did Moses command?”[42]and so on.) Even for something as crucial as his own divine identity, he goes through various people’s views, asking in turn, “who do they say I am?”[43]until Peter gives the earth-shattering answer.

Finally, from a chronological perspective, the whole story of Christ’s public ministry on earth is framed by his participative leadership style: the ministry is launched at a wedding feast, where he allows himself to be persuaded (by his mother) to perform his first miracle. As he dies on the Cross he says “Woman, behold thy son … son, behold thy mother”, thus mystically uniting by yet another bond his followers with himself and with his mother.

From a corporate point of view, and indeed from any point of view, there is little denying that (so far) the Virgin Mary and her son have had a larger impact on the history and flourishing of the human family than Branson and his Virgin have had. And yet both men embody the kind of leadership traits that a Head Master, or any leader, would certainly want to emulate, even if his corporate ambitions were more modest than those of the Church or of the Virgin Group.

One message that both of our examples would seem to underline is that an organisation’s ethos is the key to its success, and that the organisation’s leader should both create, and be an example of, that ethos.

The Church and the Virgin Group, bizarrely enough, are both places where leadership is constantly being taught and learnt as part of the vision of the organization. Good schools produce good leaders, because they too are places of participative leadership (with house captains, prefects, team sports and all manner of similar structures and activities). A good leader in a school ought to be a leader in a school of leadership, because training the young in such qualities is part of our vocation as teachers, because leadership is the essence, the living teaching, the self-perpetuating tradition, the genius loci, of a good school.

As Newman writes of an ideal place of learning " [it] will give birth to a living teaching, which in course of time will take the shape of a self-perpetuating tradition, or a genius loci, as it is sometimes called; which haunts the home where it has been born, and which imbues and forms, more or less, and one by one, every individual who is successively brought under its shadow."[44] And Newman's ideal education, a liberal education, was oriented to developing the qualities needed for leadership.

The vocation of a school leader, then, within the universe that is his school, is to create loyalty to something greater than himself, but which he somehow embodies. Like a ‘home-maker’ – a woman who creates a total environment by the mode of her being as well as by her actions (ie. attitudes, strategies, qualities and behaviours) – a leader in a school should be a creator of that genius of place, the ethos. He should embody it, preach it, and teach it as well as engineering it into existence by careful planning and daily hard work.

And in part because the good leader gives of himself in continually engendering the ethos of his school, the spirit and values of good leadership will be part and parcel of what his school is all about.

Footnotes
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Stephen M. R. Covey, The Speed of Trust, Free Press, New York, 2006, p. 34 ff.
[2] Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Free Press; 1st edition (September 15, 1990). (The father of the author of The Speed of Trust.)
[3] Stephen M. R. Covey, op. cit., p. 136. ff.
[4] Mary Vinnedge, ‘Richard Branson: Virgin Entrepreneur’ in Success Magazine, June 2009.
[5] Nicole Lampert and Rebecca English, ‘Virgin on royalty: Richard Branson's children have forged an intriguing social alliance with the young Royals. But is Daddy pulling all the strings?’ in The Daily Mail, 6th February 2010.
[6] ‘The Importance of Being Richard Branson’, knowledge@wharton (University of Pennsylvania).
[7] ibid
[8] ibid
[9] For example, Carol Kinsey Gorman in "This Isn't the Company I Joined": How to Lead in a Business Turned Upside Down, Kcs Pub; 2 Revised ed. (February 27, 2004). She even lists vulnerability among six core values for leaders. (The full list: vision, integrity, trust, values, vulnerability, motivation.)
[10] knowledge@wharton, op. cit.
[11] ibid.
[12] ibid
[13] November 30th 2004, during a TV phone-in interview by satellite on WHYY TV channel, Philadelphia, quoted in knowledge@wharton, op. cit.
[14] knowledge@wharton, op. cit.
[15] Lewin, K., LIippit, R. and White, R.K. (1939). ‘Patterns of aggressive behavior in experimentally created social climates’ in Journal of Social Psychology, 10, pp. 271-301
[16] A personal comment: In the realms of metaphysics, sexual ethics and philanthropy (inter alia) I am personally more on the side of Christ than Branson, but still admire Branson’s business style.
[17] Colossians 1:15
[18] Hebrews, 4:15.
[19] http://psychology.about.com/library/quiz/bl-leadershipquizb.htm
[20] Matt. 18: 19.
[21] Matt 16:19 “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven …” etc.
[22] Matt 18.18.
[23] Matt. 10. 5-8.
[24] Feeding and generally looking after the large crowd of over four thousand described in Matthew 15 is an impressive logistical miracle as well as a culinary one.
[25] Stephen M. R. Covey, The Speed of Trust, Free Press, New York, 2006, p. 316.
[26] Warren Bennis, author of On Becoming a Leader, quoted in Covey, op cit, p. 318.
[27] Quoted in Stephen M. R. Covey, op cit, p. 320.
[28] Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't, Random House Business, 2001.
[29] Stephen M. R. Covey, op. cit.
[30] Lao Tzu, Plato, et al.
[31] Collins, op. cit. p. 22.
[32] Abraham Maslow’s 5 needs (in Motivation and Personality, 1954) and Matthew 6:28, “Consider the lilies of the field …”
[33] John 15:13.
[34] John 21: 12.
[35] Luke 7:31-35
[36] eg. Donald Wayne Viney, “The Humor of Jesus of Nazareth” in Midwest Quarterly (Winter 1997)
[37] Matt. 7: 16.
[38] Luke 4:29-30
[39] Luke 22:36
[40] John 5: 13.
[41] Luke 20: 24.
[42] Matt. 19: 7.
[43] Mark 8:27-38; Matt 16: 16.
[44] John Henry Newman, The Idea of A University, Discourse 6. Knowledge Viewed in Relation to Learning.

Chavagnes - On TV again ...

2010-02-24T11:11:00.001Z

This time for the French documentary series '90 minutes'. In a progamme called : Boarding school - the return to strict values.

Chavagnes comes off quite well, out of a selection of several boarding schools across France.

Watch online: http://www.tmc.tv/programmes-tv-tmc/magazines-tele/90-enquetes/videos/pensionnat-le-retour-des-methodes-strictes/3687521.html

Just for kids ...

2010-01-06T14:15:00.006Z

My good friend Denis Boyles is this year continuing to host the Brouzils Seminars, courses for aspiring writers.

This year I am especially happy to be associated with the Turner-Tripp Workshops, which will focus on empowering aspiring creators to launch books, screenplays, teleplays, or other projects intended for children and their parents.

In an age when wholesome entertainment for children is sometimes hard to find, this initiative will help new writers with good ideas to bring their projects to completion.

The course is being hosted by two world experts in the field:

Jenny Tripp was recently nominated for the Sequoyah Book Award for Children's Literature. She’s the author of Pete and Fremont and Pete's Disappearing Act (Harcourt), and Fais Do-Do, a children's picture book, forthcoming from Harper-Collins. She is a Lifetime Member of the Writer's Guild of America and has written for most of the major studios in a variety of genres, from feature animation, to live action, to movies for television, including Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Swan Lake, The Prince and the Pauper, The Trouble with Angels and others. She’s a contributor to the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times Travel Magazine, Family Fun Magazine, DIG Magazine, Family Life Magazine, Mothers Today Magazine and others. Her “Santa’s Homepage” (1995-1997) on AOL was one of the platform’s most popular features. She also wrote the spin-off television special, produced by Brandon Tartikoff and based on the AOL site.

Her friend and colleague is veteran Brouzils faculty member Priscilla Turner, a former executive story editor at Columbia Pictures and the author of television scripts for Miami Vice, the Cosby Mysteries and other network programs. In addition to her film and television work, she is the author of several children’s books, including The War Between the Vowels and the Consonants and Among the Odds and Evens: A Tale of Adventure (both Farrar, Straus and Giroux), and the co-author (with her sister, Susan Pohlman) of The Girl’s Guide to Life (Scholastic).

Our College will be hosting a three-day family film festival as part of the course.

The Brouzils Seminars take place just down the road from Chavagnes International College, and this year, the Turner-Tripp workshops will be finishing just before our own summer course on the Great Books, this time focussing on 'Renaissance to Revolution: French Literature in an age of change." Of which more very soon ...

Public Law and Private Morality in Uganda

2009-12-20T07:29:00.004Z

Following my last post about The kiss of the Moon, I notice that in Uganda over the last week or two, debate has been reaching fever pitch on the new Anti-homosexuality law which has received universal support from Ugandan religious leaders and most politicans. The country's president has been pressurised (by the US) into promising to veto the bill, but this move would likely lose him his job, so this seems unlikely.

It seems that the bill is largely in response to encroaching 'alternative lifesyle' propaganda from UNICEF and other international organisations (this has been getting into their schools for years) plus recent revelations about child abuse, similar to the recent Report in Ireland. There is also, in the popular imagination, some link with HIV, although this disease is now very much a heterosexual phenomenon in Africa.

The finer points of the argumentation, and the sanctions, which go as far as the death penalty (for active 'recruiters' among the young) are all reasonably up for argument, it seems to me. One wonders if perhaps they aren't going a bit too far ... But the key point is that there must surely come a time when certain choices of private morality become a public issue, with the potential to damage a whole society. This is the position that Ugandans have arrived at. I think that they are right and ought to be loudly congratulated.

Although the bill is supported by Muslims too, I don't think that this is a question of Shariah law. Shariah law starts from the principle that everything immoral ought to be illegal. That has never been the Christian position. But this legislation is not so much about private choices as about the common good, just like Mrs Thatcher's much-maligned Section 28 of the Local Government Act.

It seems to me that in the coming years Europe and America will have to start listening to Africa, which is something they have never done before.

Gay goldfish for French nine-year-olds

2009-12-19T19:28:00.004Z

France's children are now going to be treated to the ridiculous spectacle of a batty old right-wing cat, abandoned and trapped in a fairy-tale castle tower, which is all that is left of the old ways. This old pussy-cat, predictably named Agathe (Agatha is a really old-fashioned name in France as in England), is ripe for conversion to the beautiful, modern lifestyles emerging beyond the confines of her castle, (in which the only love imaginable is that dry and dusty old kind that exists between handsome princes and beautiful princesses ... )

Enter Felix, a lively young green boy-fish who feels drawn to the equally lively and somewhat slimmer Leon, another boy-fish, this time coloured a lovely shade of blue. All the old nastiness of Agatha-melts away when she sees the free and happy way these two boyish fishes frolic around in the flooded ruins of the old heterosexual society, presumably wiped out by global warming. Now she herself begins to wonder whether she should leave her old castle behind and look for frienship, or sex, herself ...

Of course, the film is all wonderfully poetic and artistic. It is beautifully done, from what we can see of the trailer (available at http://www.le-baiser-de-la-lune.fr/)

But the subtext is clear enough. The film-makers would say they are against 'homophobia', but the film portrays heterosexuality itself, and not just the attitudes of hardened heterosexuals, as something out-dated and out-of-touch. Homosexual love is portrayed as liberating and almost as a kind of renassaince of love for the loveless old world.

The film-makers are preparing a kit which will enable children of 9 and 10 to watch the film at school, then play role-play games that explore new and different ways of loving (!), then discuss the wider issues and find out the specifics of how boys can have sex amongst themselves, and girls too, instead of with each other, like those old-fashioned princes and princesses.

Of course the project is sponsored by a rogues' gallery of gay organisations plus the French youth and sport ministry ...

The film is called The kiss of the moon, although the word for kiss can also be translated to mean something more physical. This would no doubt come out in the discussions with the kids afterwards.

One thing about the film is spot-on: the idea that our age-old culture is drowning, and not just because of global warming.

I prefer the family tale of Mary and Joseph, and their mysterious new-born babe who also brought a new message of love to a weary world. Now that is a tale worth telling our children ...

Saint Austin Press US Store

2009-12-17T10:49:00.004Z

I've been setting up a Catholic storefront on Amazon, including some new titles from Saint Austin Press plus a selection of other great books and films for Catholics.

The weak dollar and amazon.com's reasonable delivery costs means that this is usually cheaper than shopping for these in bookstores in the UK and Europe.

Please visit the new Saint Austin Press US online store, whether you are ordering from USA or from Europe. One thing to watch out for, however, is that US-format dvds might not work on old dvd players. (Most machines now accept all formats.)

The proceeds from this store will help Chavagnes.

Ruth Asch's poems are now available from Amazon

2009-12-15T17:00:00.000Z

Mindblown by Macbeth

2009-12-14T08:56:00.004Z

Wonderful evening (even if a bit chilly) watching our pupil's production of Macbeth for its first night yesterday.

Mr Haydon was terrific as Macbeth, and Maggie Boyles sparkled as Lady Macbeth. There was a real tenderness between them, which is the only way one can understand how Macbeth follows her counsels so readily and then, even when he sees that all is lost, does not blame her for a minute. Mr Haydon's 'stiff upper lip' suited Macbeth very well, I thought.

Duncan (Dominic O'Leary) was majestic. Macduff (Patrick Adams) was extremely powerful and mysterious. His rage seemed genuine. The lead assassin (Edmond de Poulpiquet) was impressive and looked the part (he and fellow killer Baudouin de Rambures had recently had their heads shaved for that extra menacing look !)

The 'toil and trouble' cauldron scene always struck me as being pseudo-comical, although many directors try to make it very serious. Our witches went for the light relief element, whilst somehow also keeping up the sense of supernatural tension. They had real soap bubbles coming out of the cauldron ,and a rather comic frog (a cuddly toy) was also added to the stew ... all three witches were excellent and delivered their lines beautifully and with a real sense of drama and rhythm.

Nathan Hopkin was great as the porter. But he had been told to leave out the vulgar gestures that most directors allow these days. The result was that the humour of this bawdy secene was lost on our 50% Francophone audience. Still, Nathan was impressive and well cast.

A theatrical secret: tomato puree is better than ketchup for the bloody scenes ...

I'll comment some more when I've seen the second night.

Popularity contest for world leaders from France 24

2009-12-07T09:28:00.004Z

The French international channel France 24 has carried out a 'popularity and influence' survey in various countries across the world.

The upshot is that Obama and the Dalai Lama are the most popular leaders in the world, with Angela Merkel coming in at number three.

The Pope, interestingly, comes in a number five, ahead of Nicholas Sarkozy. In the UK, Benedict the XVI is considered as more popular and more influential than both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, which should give the British press something to meditate upon.

I am not sure what this information really means. Commentators have suggested that the high score for the Dalai Lama is something to do with 'boboisme' ... He is certainly very much in fashion in France. But the high score for Benedict XVI suggests to me that there are many people out there (at least a third of the population) who think he has something important to teaching the modern world.

The full report is online (as a pdf) at: http://media.rtl.fr/online/binary/2009/1203/5930975692_Sondage-World-leaders.pdf

Minarets again ...

2009-12-04T14:54:00.004Z

On the issue of minarets again ... I now remember something I heard from Phillippe de Villiers, the leader of our local government in the La Vendee. It was at the time of negotiations on the EU constitution (from which a 'Judeo-Christian' preamble was dropped to appease the Turks). The pro-Islamicisation prime-minister of Turkey, Erdogan is supposed to have said: “The minarets are our bayonets, the domes our helmets, the mosques our barracks and the faithful our army.”

In this context, this poster of the Swiss People's Party (above) was not so much of an exaggeration as many people supposed. Moderate islamic statesmen are allowed to speak of minarets as a symbol and tool of a programme for the islamicisation of Europe, but when the Swiss say the same thing, they are accused of over-reacting.

Politicans in other countries (Holland and Italy will probably be the first) are talking of introducing similar referenda. What is one to think? Minarets are not the main point, I think. But the question of cultural identity is.

One can be in favour of religious freedom and tolerant of immigration, but one may also stand up for the rights of an indigenous people. In north America and Australia there is a new culture of breast-beating over the treatment of the indigenous populations by white settlers, and over the way in which native cultures were destroyed. We are right to apologise, because the white settlers, then their governments, and indeed their churches, were involved in indefensibly inhumane policies aimed at the domination and oppression of these peoples.

And yet, having learnt these lessons, it would be unwise of us not to apply the same lessons in Europe in the current cultural context. The traditional European peoples have a right to live and defend their culture. They have a right for their values and traditions to be the dominant ones in their home.

We bewail the destruction of the Celtic languages by the incoming English-speaking settlers in Wales or the Hebrides; we bewail the destruction of picturesque African and Indian tribes by contact with 'westernisation' of the worst kind. Is it not also time now to look at what is happening to English culture, to French culture, to Dutch culture? Not as a result of choices made by the indigenous people, but as a result of immigration without assimilation.

A number of years ago another Vatican document, and a letter from the Italian bishops' conference, drew attention to the rights of indigenous peoples in the whole area of immigration.

This is an issue that the large and unwieldy united states of Europe, with its new President and Foreign Minister, will now have to address, before it tears us all apart.

Closing our eyes to demographic and cultural change, and the tensions they create, is not an answer. In a few years (20, 30 or 40, depending on the country) many European nations are going to discover that most of their young people are completely alien (or even hostile) to the traditional values and culture of their country. That is not a recipe for justice and peace.

The long-overdue debate about European cultural identity has now begun.

Freedom of religion or freedom from religion?

2009-12-02T20:41:00.003Z

That's the question many of my friends have been asking over the course of the last couple of weeks, in the wake of the European Court of Human Rights decree that the Italian law mandating a crucifix in every state school classroom is an infringement of human rights.

Italy's response has been to put up new crucifixes in public buildings all over the country, at state expense, and the issue has mobilised even Italian atheists in favour of this symbol of Italian national identity.

The judgement states that religious neutrality must reign in all state schools; which could spell the end of compulsory acts of worship in UK and Irish state schools and the abandonment of nativity plays. Most state schools in the Republic of Ireland have also historically displayed Catholic religious symbols: these will have to come down unless the ruling is overturned.

In the same month that the ECHR made this decree, the Swiss voted to change their constitution to ban the building of Islamic minarets in the country. Lucky for them they are not in the European Union so they can do more or less what they like on the question without fear of sanction, although they probably are signatories to the ECHR, so they may have to put up with the stigma of a negative judgement at some time in the future.

A spokesman from the Vatican has condemned this democratic vote in Europe's oldest and most peaceful democracy ... interesting times indeed.

Q: Aren't religious boarding schools all about taking away choices?

2009-12-01T15:50:00.003Z

A: Well, at Chavagnes we are Catholic boarding school, and a strong Catholic community. Families choose us for that reason. The mutual support offered by fellow young believers in a school setting can be a very powerful influence in a young person’s life.

Also, children who come from a strong faith background at home would be disoriented in an environment that did not give them the same kind of support.

So, far from being about limiting choices, strong religious schools actually provide choice for believing families. They provide a school environment which is still what schools always used to be: the traditional extension of the family values of the home.

At out Catholic boarding school for boys, our pupils are happy to live, work, study, play and pray together, just as they would with their brothers and sisters at home. And the role of the teachers at the school is to provide solid religious role models for the boys as well as sound academic training.

Mise Eire

2009-11-29T19:26:00.005Z

Musing on the sorrows befalling the Irish church at the moment (the Ryan Report etc.), I cannot but think of Pearse's words "I am Ireland ... Great my glory ... great my shame".

It seems to me that the complicity of senior churchmen in the covering-up of the clerical abuse of children is going to make modern Ireland something akin to Germany in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. It took Germany at least 40 years to escape from the shame of the Nazi atrocities and recover a sense of national pride and confidence.

Noone is pretending that what happened in Ireland was on the same scale. We are talking of thousands of vicims, not millions. And it is also true that the Irish church has done great and wonderful things for Ireland, and continues to do so. It is just that Irish Catholicism had so far to fall, and in a palpable and tragic sense it has now fallen.

Saying, and thinking, "I am an Irish Catholic and proud of it" is now as difficult as it used to be to say "I am a German patriot and proud of it" in the aftermath of World War II.

Let us hope and pray that poor Ireland does not need as long to come to terms with her shame.

I have no personal part in all that guilt, and yet I feel the shame of it, especially after reading some of Colm O'Gorman's book Beyond Belief. As a 14-year-old boy he was hurt by a priest - over a period of several years - and the priest then took the coward's way out during his eventual criminal trial. Although he seems to have found some peace, the poor man, there is no doubt that objectively and subjectively, the betrayal by this man of God has wrecked his whole life.

O'Gorman finds it tragic that the priest never faced up to what he had done. I find it tragic also that when that priest - an icon of Christ - shattered the image of Christ for that boy, he destroyed the lad's faith as well as his chances for a normal life. And Colm was not alone. There were many others, and our bishops, God forgive them, were very slow to, in St Ignatius' words, agere contra. But there is still grace, and healing is still possible. Let's keep especially in our prayers not just this man, but all the others like him, and the men who have betrayed them so horribly.

And yet, there is more to Ireland than her sins. And I thank God for all the great priests that Ireland gave the world for generations. They were the priests of my youth, growing up in the south of England. It must all be a tremendous cross for the many thousands of good and holy priests, not to mention the young men in seminaries. These men need our prayers too.

I, for one, am an Irish Catholic and proud of it. Being an English Catholic too perhaps makes it, for once, a little easier.

Special handshakes

2009-11-23T09:35:00.004Z

I gave someone a left-handed hand-shake and scout salute yesterday for the first time after taking the plunge and making my scout promise along with 9 of our boys on Saturday morning at dawn. Being a scout is going to be fun, I have decided.

Of course, I am something of an honorary member, especially as the scout universe at Chavagnes seems to be all about covering incredible distances on foot across wild countryside, which is a bit tough for me.

The boys who took their promise all camped out around our little St Joseph Chapel in the woods on Friday night, and maintained a constant vigil before the Blessed Sacrament until dawn, when they each made their promise to serve God, their country and Europe, and to follow the Scout Law. I popped out to visit them once or twice during the night and was very impressed by their seriousness with regard to the religious aspects of what theyt were doing, their camaraderie and their responsible behaviour. Mr Crawford had given them a very stirring talk about the Scout Law at assembly that day, and I hope I will be able to persuade him to put it online. The essential point is that Europe needs a new generation of kinghts in shining armour, and it would seem that the scouting model is a modern answer to this need.

The Scout Law : Chavagnes version ...

2009-10-10T08:30:00.003+01:00

Chavagnes scouts after a 10km orienteering challenge ...

Here is the text of the Scout Law, as adapted by the Servant of God Father Paul Sevin, father of Catholic scouting. The text is based on Baden-Powell's original and Fr Sevin's version was approved by him. It makes it clear that the Scout Law is essentially a call to the evangelical counsels, adapted to our individual states in life, in a special relationship of love and respect for God's creation. Many of our boys will be making a promise to follow this law, in mid November. Please keep them in your prayers.

The Scout Law
1. A Scout’s honour is to be trusted.

2. A Scout is loyal.

3. A Scout’s duty is to serve and save his neighbour.

4. A Scout is a friend to all and a brother to every other Scout.

5. A Scout is courteous and chivalrous.

6. A Scout sees in nature the work of God; he loves plants and animals.

7. A Scout obeys without question and does nothing by halves.

8. A Scout is self-disciplined: he smiles and whistles under all difficulties.

9. A Scout is thrifty and takes care of other people’s possessions.

10. A Scout is clean in thought, word and deed.

(Based on the version of the Scout Law adapted by the Servant of God Father Jacques Sevin SJ, father of Catholic scouting, and approved by Lord Baden Powell.)

PC French ...

2009-09-17T17:30:00.004+01:00

Going through last summer's AQA French GCSE (Higher Tier) I discovered with my French class some depressing political correctness. Of course our boys take it on the chin and recognise it quickly. Here is what we found in the Reading and Writing Paper:

- An extended screed about global warming (OK in isolation, but wait for the rest, and remember it is a French exam not a science or sociology one ...)

- A first person account by a young man who describes his close and very positive friendships with two men and explains that he doesn't like women as they frighten him. In fact he only knows one, who says hello to him each day as he climbs up the stairs to his high-rise council flat ('HLM'), 'mais on me dit qu'elle se drogue' (they say she takes drugs), so he wants nothing to do with her ...

- From that charming cameo of confused masculine identity in the banlieue of Paris, we move on to a little holiday postcard from a girl to one of her friends. She recounts how through the thin walls of her hotel room she heard her parents having a terrible row. Perhaps they are going to get divorced now, she muses ...

It does remind me a little of what ILEA used to do in the days of Mrs Thatcher (before she closed down ILEA and the GLC). ILEA had a project to create educational resources across the curriculum which would reflect 'diversity' and dysfunction in a policy called 'positive imaging'. The object was to carry out a kind of social engineering ... and, according to a teacher I had at school in the 1980s, it worked. This particular teacher, who is now an Anglican clergyman, left the maintained sector because he was horrified by it all. Concretely: teenage boys dancing and kissing at the school disco, encouraged by their teachers, after years of brainwashing from the 'loony' left.

Growing up is hard enough already without children having constantly to act as the football in the games of politicans and other loveless ideologues.

Stephanus vocabitur ...

2009-08-28T20:43:00.005+01:00

What lovely news to hear that on the vigil of the Feast of Saint Augustine, Alexander Morrison, our old boy, took the cloth as a Norbertine novice. He now has the name Brother Stephen. Brother Stephen was a founder pupil at Chavagnes from 2002 to 2005 and then went on to read French at Oriel College, Oxford, where he graduated this summer.

Please keep Brother in your prayers!

http://norbertinevocations.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/clothing-of-brother-stephen/

Single and faithful ... a role for lay apostles?

2009-08-14T20:05:00.004+01:00

Is it possible for a layman to be called to serve God in the single state, in the midst of the world?

The Church is divided into Laity, Deacons, Priests and Bishops. This is its hierarchical structure, ordained by Christ himself. (cf Lumen Gentium)

The evangelical counsels (or counsels of perfection) are an invitation made by Christ to clergy and laity alike. Hence this invitation comes directly from Christ, and we are all urged to accept it in some way or another.

Since the beginning of the Church, some people accepted the counsels of perfection in a more external way than others (not marrying, not owning property, submitting themselves to obedience. Forms of life sprang up, after the apostolic period, that promoted the public profession (often, especially later, under life-long vows).

There is no ontological difference between a professed religious and a layman. There is an ontological difference between an ordained man and a layman. Hence the nature of a vocation to the priesthood and a vocation to the religious life is completely different. Secular priests, for example, do not live the evangelical counsels in a special way (although they are usually celibate and obedient to a bishop), but they are certainly called to the priesthood. They also tend to respond to the invitation to the evangelical counsels in a generous way, according to circumstances and custom.

Marriage is also a state which is – it seems to me – profoundly ontological: the two people become one flesh, and this can never be undone, except by death. Although they are free to marry again if one partner dies, it is likely that marriage has some kind of effect on the soul, which is, after all, inextricably bound up with the flesh. This question has always been a mysterious one.

Vocations to the ordained ministry and to marriage depend on sacraments instituted by Christ himself. Also, marriage – in some sense - is part of the original blueprint of creation. Priesthood is an accident of history (even if a happy one) which would not have come to pass but for Adam’s sin, for without Adam’s sin, no great sacrifice was called for.

What about the religious life? How does it differ from the fruitful virginity of someone who simply responds to the evangelical counsels as best he can in the circumstances of his lay apostolate (one thinks of Florence Nightingale, Joan of Arc, Edel Quinn, Frank Duff (Founder of the Legion of Mary), Bl. Frederic Ozanam (Founder of the Society of St Vincent de Paul), and many thousands of nurses, doctors and teachers over the centuries.) These people often choose the celibate state because it is bound up with the apostolate that they are devoted to. In the past, and well into the 20th century, for example, many university posts and teaching positions carried the obligation of celibacy.

Sometimes the choice of the celibate state is a dawning realisation which grows in intensity as an apostolic career progresses. It is also true that God can have a series of different states envisaged for a person’s life, as is the case with saints such as St Elizabeth of Hungary or Blessed Edmund Rice.

The only difference between the consecrated religious life and the fruitful virginity of someone who is not married, is that the Church has especially blessed the first of these two states. It would seem then that consecrated virginity, because more definitive and public, is a higher vocation. Both states however, respond to the same invitations of Christ and St Paul. Both are only meritorious in as much as they are fruitful, because the command ‘Go forth and mutliply’ was made to all men of every age.

This way of looking at the practice of the evangelical counsels, as something to which we are all called in some way, was common in the early church, the middle ages and the renaissance. All over Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries various layfolk, married or single, tramped around in habits, loosely associated with religious orders, carrying out their own lives in the world, but bearing witness to some extra degree of apostolic work or prayer. St Catherine of Siena was such a person. She never made any public vow of virginity, although she had made a private childhood promise to Jesus at the age of seven. She, like many single and married people of the day, moved by the example of the religious life, had become a tertiary of the Dominicans at age 16, but lived at home with her family. She later went on to care for the sick, and then – a most original apostolate for a woman - to enter into spiritual correspondence with many people from all walks of life. Her life in the world made her accessible to people in a way that religious life would have hindered.

Similarly the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller, celibate men, but not classed as religious, consecrated themselves to warfare, politics and trade, areas that would be scandalous for true religious. But they did this work for the sake of the liberty of the Church and the furtherance of Christendom.

It is only after Trent that a huge divide springs up between professional church people and the laity. St Alphonsus Liguori, a Doctor of the Church, and yet as much lawyer as theologian, may well have said that single lay people were neither one thing nor another; that was the legal tendency of the Church of his day. He also enjoined (in The Dignity and Duties of the Priest) all sorts of behaviour for priests which few of them would follow today. He lived in a clericalist age, and Christians reasoned in a clerical way. The eighteenth century was a time when the participation of the laity in the Church’s mission was at an all-time low.

After the French Revolution, the Church discovered that in order to respond to the ever-changing needs of the world, the way needed to be opened up to the laity to participate in the apostolate of the Church as they had done so freely in the middle ages and in the renaissance. New congregations sprang up with annually renewable vows (and they still exist); many heroic single lay people founded lasting lay movements. For example, Pauline Jaricot founded the Association for the Propagation of the Faith, and the Living Rosary, as well as working for the improvement of the conditions of working men. Her beatification is currently being sought.
This new era of spiritual fruitfulness of the laity has continued over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. One thinks particularly of the Legion of Mary and of the Society of St Vincent de Paul, both founded by celibate laymen.

At Vatican II these currents, apparent in the early Church and at various times throughout the Church’s history, are particularly evident. Religious life is to be renewed in order to be a greater sign, and the full diversity of different apostolates and vocations in the Church is to be revivified. Teaching, especially, is confirmed as a vocation of great importance, to which non-consecrated laity are also called. Vatican II also addresses single people as an important consitutent part of the Church (see the final address of the Fathers to the women of the world, where single women are told that the world needs them because of their ability to come to the aid of families.)

So, in the twentieth century the evangelical conception of the ministry of the Church is restored, with a variety of callings, but the same Spirit to animate them all. (cf. Corinthians 12)

Thus, while the single state may be a transitional one, it is not necessarily so. In the context of a real vocation to a kind of diakonia in the Church or the world (such as teaching or nursing, for example) it can be where God wants someone to be for a whole lifetime.

This is because the Church needs such people in the midst of the world: “the laity, by their very vocation, seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God.” It was this freedom, within the world, that enabled Pauline Jaricot, Joan of Arc and Catherine of Siena to immerse themselves in politics, for the good of all, as well as in a life of prayer.

It was this freedom, in our own age, that allowed Frank Duff, founder of the Legion of Mary, to minister to the prostitutes of Dublin, and to cut though the political red tape that stood in the way of helping them to improve their lot.

The choice, then, of this evangelical freedom, for the reasons which St Paul explained in his first letter to the Corinthians, is a radical option that is still valid today; one which remains open to single people seeking to do God’s will in the world. As such, it is a witness to perfect charity, inasmuch as it is ordered to the giving of self in the lay apostolate.

In the modern Church, as at different times in the past, various associations and secular institutes, approved by the Church, assist single lay people to persevere in their way of life. These organisations, such as the Third Orders, Opus Dei, and various other groups, are useful to such people and can make their apostolic efforts more fruitful.

Personally, I would recommend to single lay people who devote themselves to apostolic work, to adopt a kind of rule of life: it could be knighthood, membership of a third order, membership of the Legion of Mary, or similar. Or it could simply be a form of private consecration such as the Consecration to our Lady proposed by St Louis de Montfort.

The Fathers at Vatican II encouraged the laity to make the prayer of the Divine Office their own, so this could also form the basis of a rule of life for single lay apostles. In fact, there are many possibilities, all with the same aim: to ensure that the apostolic effort is ordered within the context of personal sanctification and ready to bear fruit in the light of the Holy Spirit.

In response to a letter accusing the Pope of heresy on the Four Last Things ...

2009-08-14T19:44:00.005+01:00

Dear Jennifer,

Thanks for the letter and enclosure you sent me a while back. In them you suggested a dialogue about the popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. You also implied that perhaps they were not popes at all.

Your main problem was that they emphasised universal salvation and thereby effectively denied all the Church’s doctrine about sin and the need for redemption from it.

You took issue with the idea that “hell is not God’s initiative”; that souls send themselves to Hell.
My response is not going to be sophisticated, I’m afraid. I think that if you want to find texts to hang the popes with, you can find them. I have plenty of texts that people have sent me that do this, if you ignore all the other evidence. Taken in context, and in a spirit of docility, they are not for me a source of impossible dilemmas.

The Second Vatican Council asks us to give an assent of our intellect and will the frequent and clearly expressed teaching of the Pope. You complain that texts you have seen are doctrinally unclear. Seek clarification from the official doctrinal pronouncements and teachings of these same popes, and especially the Catechism, which John Paul II intended as an authoritative text.
Another key point is that it is the CCC that is in the hands of all the faithful now. I had never before read the extracts you sent me, and I doubt many others have. But I have many times consulted and studied the CCC. It seems to me the most natural place for a Catholic to go to find out what the Church (or its errant leaders, if you prefer) is saying.
I do not find it unclear on these matters.

You say that John Paul II and Benedict XVI give us a religion where man is not free. I say the same of the religion you seem to propose in your letter. You suggest that man is not free because he is forced to go to Heaven whether he likes it or not.

Well, I typed in Hell in a search engine for the Catechism and this is what I got:

1035 The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, "eternal fire." The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.

Does God take the intiative on damnation? No, says the Catechism:

1037 God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of her faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want "any to perish, but all to come to repentance":
Father, accept this offeringfrom your whole family.Grant us your peace in this life,save us from final damnation,and count us among those you have chosen. (Roman Canon)

What is mortal sin, any way? What does the same book say?

Well, there are all the classic definitions of full knowledge and full consent etc, as well as gravity of matter, but then the Catechism also speaks of our freedom to chose everlasting hell, by our un-repented rejection of God through sin:

1861 Mortal sin is a radical possibility of human freedom, as is love itself. It results in the loss of charity and the privation of sanctifying grace, that is, of the state of grace. If it is not redeemed by repentance and God's forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ's kingdom and the eternal death of hell, for our freedom has the power to make choices for ever, with no turning back. However, although we can judge that an act is in itself a grave offense, we must entrust judgment of persons to the justice and mercy of God.

You speak of the drama of sin and repentance, of privation of grace and the return to it, a drama, which according to you, the new popes would take away from us. Yet the Catechism is rich with talk of this, and almost always mentions hell or the death of the soul every time it mentions mortal sin. It also reminds us of the importance of our final moments:

1014 The Church encourages us to prepare ourselves for the hour of our death. In the ancient litany of the saints, for instance, she has us pray: "From a sudden and unforeseen death, deliver us, O Lord"; to ask the Mother of God to intercede for us "at the hour of our death" in the Hail Mary; and to entrust ourselves to St. Joseph, the patron of a happy death.
Every action of yours, every thought, should be those of one who expects to die before the day is out. Death would have no great terrors for you if you had a quiet conscience. . . . Then why not keep clear of sin instead of running away from death? If you aren't fit to face death today, it's very unlikely you will be tomorrow. . . .
Praised are you, my Lord, for our sister bodily Death,from whom no living man can escape. Woe on those who will die in mortal sin! (My italics)Blessed are they who will be found in your most holy will,for the second death will not harm them.

Consider also that in canonising St Pio of Pietrelcina dn St Faustina, the Pope also refers us to their writings. Even a superficial knowledge of their writings confirms one in a holy fear of Hell and its torments. I don’t know why the SSPX has recently taken against Faustina, because she certainly clears up the confusion on Hell:

Sister Faustina's Vision of Hell
"I, Sister Faustina Kowalska, by the order of God, have visited the Abysses of Hell so that I might tell souls about it and testify to its existence...the devils were full of hatred for me, but they had to obey me at the command of God, What I have written is but a pale shadow of the things I saw. But I noticed one thing: That most of the souls there are those who disbelieved that there is a hell. ...
Let the sinner know that he will be tortured throughout all eternity, in those senses which he made use of to sin. I am writing this at the command of God, so that no soul may find an excuse by saying there is no hell, or that nobody has ever been there, and so no one can say what it is like...how terribly souls suffer there! Consequently, I pray even more fervently for the conversion of sinners. I incessantly plead God's mercy upon them. O My Jesus, I would rather be in agony until the end of the world, amidst the greatest sufferings, than offend you by the least sin." (Diary 741)

Padre Pio is said to have told a penitent who said “I don’t believe in Hell,” “You will when you get there.”

Eternal damnation is not an initiative of God. As the Catechism of Trent has it:

And yet most justly shall this very sentence be pronounced by our Lord and Saviour on those sinners who neglected all the works of true mercy, who gave neither food to the hungry, nor drink to the thirsty, who refused shelter to the stranger and clothing to the naked, and who would not visit the sick and the imprisoned.

Our Lord issues damnation as a response, not an initiative. The initiative to sin is man’s, not God’s. The result is the just punishment that awaits the unrepentant sinner.

Cardinal Journet speaks of our eternal destiny like an arrow being fired by God. He aims the arrow at eternal life (cf. La Marche de l’Humanité vers le Père.) The initiative is God’s calling us to eternal life. We can knock God’s arrow off-course if we wish.

The whole concern for true doctrine must be directed to the love that never ends. Whether something is proposed for belief, for hope or for action, the love of our Lord must always be made accessible, so that anyone can see that all the works of perfect Christian virtue spring from love and have no other objective than to arrive at love. This is the sense of Cardinal journet's arrow, and - to my mind - the heart of the teaching of Benedict XVI too.

I am praying for you.

God bless,
Yours ever,
Ferdi

Soft-boiled traditionalist ...

2009-07-20T21:15:00.004+01:00

There was once a time when I used to spend a lot of time discussing the liturgy and debating with 'integristes'. At the time, my friends tell me, I was spikier than I am now, but I always managed to stay within the 'una sancta' and keep my love for dear John Paul II and for his Catechism, a document that made a big impression on me when I was a university student.

I remember about 10 years ago an English priest friend called me a "soft-boiled traditionalist." And I hope that is the way I have remained.

I used to spend a lot of time online trying to convert Protestants to Catholicism and Lefebvrists to the Catholic mainstream in the early days of the internet; and then I decided to move on and concentrate on real life. It is great, however, to see that there are still people with the energy for this kind of thing. Here is a one-stop shop of arguments regarding positions of the Society of St Pius X: http://jloughnan.tripod.com/chetshet.htm . I came upon it today quite by accident, and learnt a thing or two.

There are so many battles to fight, aren't there? The hardest one, and the most important, is for one's own soul.

That's a lesson that the beleaguered Legionaries of Christ are facing up to, as they contemplate the truth that sometimes very good work can be done by people with - it would appear - bad faith.

It's also a lesson for Catholic teachers, like me, who live a life of constant activity. We get caught up in our good work and forget why we are doing it. And then when periods of rest come along, we don't know what to do and have forgotten how to pray. It always takes me a couple of weeks to adjust to the holidays, every time they come along. At least the summer holidays are long enough to get the adjusting done and spend some fruitful time in that contemplative mode. One discovers things in that quiet holiday mode: the saddest of them is one's own spiritual emptiness.
I shall be praying to the Holy Spirit that wonderful prayer of renewal, the Veni Sancte Spiritus, over the next few weeks. It always makes me cry when I hear it sung on the Chartres pilgrimage (something I missed for the first time in a decade this year.)

Let the Great Comforter give me the shake-up I need to keep my soul on the right track:

Come, Holy Spirit, and send down from heaven the ray of your light.
Come, father of the poor, come, giver of gifts, come, light of hearts.
Best consoler, sweet host of the soul, sweet refresher.
Rest in work, cooling in heat, comfort in crying.
O most blessed light, fill the innermost hearts of your faithful.
Without your power nothing is in man, nothing innocent.
Clean what is dirty, water what is dry, heal what is wounded.
Bend what is rigid, heat what is cold, lead what has gone astray.
Grant to your faithful who trust in you, your sevenfold holy gift.
Grant us the reward of virtue, grant us final salvation, grant us eternal joy.

A few good men ... real Conservatism in Parliament

2009-06-17T08:41:00.001+01:00

http://cornerstonegroup.wordpress.com/about/

Have recently come across this group of 40 Tory MPS who have the courage and sense to speak openly about the wisdom of conservatism and the need for a return to God and virtue in modern Britain.

Bravo!

Butcher Obama and the Reverend Father Colonel Norman Weslin, (US Army Retired)

2009-05-18T07:50:00.003+01:00

In the week Notre Dame University sold its soul to Obama and his radical abortion agenda, here is what the same Catholic university is doing to an 80-year-old priest.

http://www.catholic.org/video/?v=2311

One would have thought that for a Catholic institution, the courteous response to a peaceful protest like this from a good and holy priest would be to invite him in to the Vice Chancellor's office to make his case.

With the latest Guantanamo news, it seems now that Obama is failing to deliver on all his manifesto pledges. Thank God that even his abortion promises are having to be toned down too, although no doubt he can still do great damage in four years.

Photo from 'daylife': http://www.daylife.com/photo/0bjo2aPgI2dq8

Chavagnes: for a real Classical education!!!

2009-05-17T17:56:00.002+01:00

We just had a great Roman banquet for the young intellectuals in my Latin class. Check out the College website for details and photos.

Claus von Stauffenberg, Hitler and the Catholic Faith. Thoughts for VE Day 2009

2009-05-08T09:21:00.005+01:00

Tom Cruise's film 'Valkyrie' about the failed assasination attempt on Hitler by Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg was, according to critics, a film about Cruise trying to kill Hitler, rather than about Stauffenberg trying to kill Hitler. But it was a great movie, nonetheless, according to one of my pupils who really enjoyed it.

The media was fascinated by the Stauffenberg family's criticism of the casting of Cruise as Stauffenberg, lest this would be used as a platform for promoting Scientology. The Stauffenbergs are staunch Catholics. The German state also attempted to ban the film, because Scientology is (quite sensibly) considered a ridiculous financial scam in Germany. In the end the film was shown, and it reflected well on Germany and Germans as a whole, though it amost totally omitted mention of Stauffenberg's Catholicism, except for one quick prayer.

In the recent Figaro special edition « Opération Walkyrie. Ils ont voulu tuer Hitler », Jean-Louis Thiériot gives more detail: « In his youth Stauffenberg had been a Catholic by habit. Confronted with the horror of nazism, he returns to his religious upbringing. He consults good authors. His reflections on the idea of the just war are informed by a reading of St Thomas Aquinas.». Philippe Maxence, in L'Homme Nouveau, explains, in an article dedicated to the Catholic-inspired plot, that Stauffenberg had given a lot of thought to the morality of tyrannicide : killing a tryant.

The Gestapo also found in his papers the papal encylical Mit Brennender Sorge as well as the sermons of Bishop Clemens August von Galen, Bishop of Munster, indefatigable opponent of Nazism, and recent Beatus.

Another recent film, Katyn, directed by Andrzej Wajda tells the tale of the massacre of 21,857 civilian and military prisoners by the Russian Red Army. Interestingly, Article 9 of the French Law of 14 July 1990 (still in force) forbids me to tell you about this film, because it goes against the judgements of the Nuremberg trials. At Nuremberg the Germans were blamed for this massacre, but now the Russians have admitted it was them and apologised for it (on 13th October 1990).

WorldPay CARD transaction Confirmation

2009-05-08T08:14:00.002+01:00

If you get an email with the above header, don't open it. And, most especially, don't open the attachment. Apparently, it is a virus that interferes with (or steals) your email addressbook information and other similar data.

I got this today and was careful not to open the attachment, although I did open the email.

150 years of evolution

2009-05-07T15:11:00.006+01:00

We had a debate last night about Evolution. On the motion 'This house believes that men and chimpanzees have a common biological ancestor' the result was 10 against, 6 for and 4 abstentions. Of course, people were voting partly from conviction, partly on the quality of the arguments.

A thought struck me afterwards: the chance of one species mutating into another (presumably at the moment of conception) is pretty slim, even by the standards of a fully-fledged evolutionst. That's why it only happens every few million years. So, if Adam and Eve's parents were apes, and one day, perhaps after having several ape children, they had a child which turned out to belong to a brand new species (pre-historic man), how could they be sure that the same statistical miracle of chance would happen again so that the child could find a mate of the same species to mate with? After all, he/she would not be able to mate with the old species (ie of his parents), because whenever one species mates with another close species (like lions and tigers or donkeys and horses) the offspring are always sterile, or do not make it to birth.

The chances of several apes having human mutant children at the same time (in order to provide breeding stock for the original humans) seems highly unlikely; and there would be no guarantee that the mutations would be the same. They might - after all - evolve into completely different species with each new significant inter-species mutation.

Another problem is that gene mutations can be dominant or regressive. There would be the danger that the ape to human mutation might produce a human, but that a few generations later the mutation would regress, so that we would be back to apes again.

Then, there is the whole problem of intermediate forms and the fact that evidence for them is so scant or non-existent. If chimpanzees can have a happy life and thrive; if human being can do the same; if humans in the rainforest can survive untroubled by the outside world for milennia; then why on earth are they not various intermediate and variant forms of humanoid life, belonging to different species?

The human evolution story is this: Amazingly, several scientifically and statistically unlikely identical genetic mutations occur in one group of 'apes', at the same time, and in the same place, producing a brand new species, so as to provide a gene pool for the original human beings.

And, according to the theory, this only happens in one place. Or, at least, only one humanoid lifeform survives the evolutionary story. Any other similar beings are wiped out, leaving only men and chimps, which aren't close biologically close enough for any meaningful inter-species dialogue on the question.

If other species of humanoids really did exist before, in various places, why have they all so conveniently died out? Couldn't they have hung on in there, living up trees in distant rainforests?

Every time a forgotten tribe is discovered, it turns out to be human and capable of interbreeding. Is there, perhaps, a prehisoric tribe out there somewhere that does not belong to the race of homo sapiens? It would be exciting, wouldn't it, but probably rather unlikely.

I am not, as it happens, a fully paid-up member of the 'creationists', nor am I devotee of evolution. But it seems to me that modern genetics, and the whole DNA adventure (the human genome project is not completed, I understand) does raise questions for evolutionists to answer.

150 years after Darwin's watershed book, perhaps it is time to reexamine all the data again, without all the heavy baggage of the last century or so, and see whether all the new information we have leads to different, more nuanced conclusions, or even the admission that we don't actually know the answer to one of mankind's biggest ever questions: where do I come from?

The advocates of Intelligent Design, sum up their case as follows: Darwinian evolution, or the idea that highly complex systems developed by random chance and environmental pressure from simple, ancestral life-forms - remains highly speculative and statistically problematic. Therefore, they say, a design (non-chance)-based theory of origins is more consistent with the evidence.

http://www.cathwiki.org/ A new international Catholic wiki

2009-04-18T23:49:00.003+01:00

Help us to help inform the public about the Catholic faith and Catholic view of our culture and history. We are building an International Catholic Encyclopedia and Directory at http://www.cathwiki.org/

Anyone can help; it's easy to do, just like wikipedia. A team of editors will be making sure that we try our best to prevent any anti-Church statements creeping in, and also to help coordinate and plan the project.

We are using previously published materials, especially the old Catholic encyclopedia, but we are keen for this to be edited and brought up to date, and for new entries to be written.

come and join in the fun at http://www.cathwiki.org/

We're having a ball ...

2009-04-16T15:47:00.003+01:00

For more information on our forthcoming Summer Ball at Chavagnes, visit: http://www.chavagnes.org/news/Chavagnes_Summer_Ball_2009.shtml

All welcome. Especially old boys and their friends, families, existing pupils.

Dress: Exisiting pupils will be in uniform. Otherwise, black tie.

Computer Assisted Animation- the best

2009-04-06T15:27:00.001+01:00

This was made by a parent of one of our pupils. Great work, isn't it?

Prayers for Vincent Nichols

2009-04-04T22:11:00.005+01:00

We at Chavagnes are very grateful to Archbishop Vincent Nichols, because - as Archbishop of Birmingham - he was kind enough to send us a chaplain for our school, Fr Anthony Talbot! On a personal level I remember meeting Archbishop Vincent at a conference of Catholic and Orthodox believers a few years ago, and was impressed by his kindness and courtesy on that occasion.

Also, when I organised a conference on the liturgy in Oxford a while back, Archbishop Nichols was very encouraging and helpful.

And so now that he is moving to Wesminster I am happy to support him with my congratulations and prayers and will certainly be asking the boys to pray for him, when they come back from their Easter holidays. The Archbishop spoke the other day of his obedience to the Holy Father, a theme which will be further emphasised no doubt once he is made a Cardinal. Obedience to Pope Benedict is certainly to be encouraged and applauded ...

Eyes are now on Birmingham, of course. As Archbishop Nichols said in his press conference the other day, Birmingham was at the heart of the nineteenth century restoration of Catholicism in England. So it's an important appointment. We need to pray that the Holy Spirit will help Pope Benedict find the best man for the job. Perhaps Pope Benedict is saving the other Nichols (Fr Aidan Nichols OP) for that ... I hope so.

There are interesting times ahead for England now, especially as Pope Benedict might well be coming to visit the UK.

And a general election looming ...

The truth about Barack Obama

2009-04-04T21:50:00.008+01:00

It is painful, but it is true. Obama is an impressive figure. He is handsome, intelligent, competent and charismatic. He is a brilliant leader and much more impressive than the presidential candidate he defeated.

And yet ... his total commitment to tha cause of abortion on demand, and to forcing Catholic hospitals and doctors to perform abortions, is a sad proof that Christians are having to face hard choices in their assessment of political life and in the exercise of their democratic life. Archbishop Burke, the highest ranking judge in the ecclesiastical courts of the Catholic Church, gave an interview on this situation. He subsequently apologised for any offence he might have caused to his brother bishops in seeming to criticise their less forceful stance on these issues, but the interview is still a very valid take on the dilemmas faced by faithful Christians in the USA and worldwide. You can hear it online at: http://gloria.tv/?media=23853

The other tragedy is that Obama, in supporting the Freedom of Choice Act, has missed a chance to unite America and end the painful divide in American society. Far from ending the culture wars in the USA, Obama's current course is simply going to make that divide a more bitter one and the problem even more intractable. We need to support the American pro-life movement, and the American people in general, with our prayers.

London-Nantes back with a vengeance!!!!!

2009-03-26T18:33:00.001Z

Hallelujah! Just when Chavvers folks were starting to panic about Ryanair withdrawing their daily London-Nantes service, now for some great news. KLM is bringing in a twice daily service from 27th April. So we'll be even better connected - and what's more London City Airport is much more convenient for London. Thanks be to God!

Marx, Human Rights, Conservatism, English Renaissance literature ...

2009-03-25T20:35:00.004Z

Interesting mix, isn't it? Someone was telling me today that I ought to start a French language blog to discuss some of my preoccupations of the day. I will mull this over, but my first reaction is that this is a good idea, even if it means the French state's equivalent of MI6 will probably start tapping my phones (if they aren't already doing so ...)

I have just written something on Marx and Satanism to be published elsewhere (in English) in a month or two. So perhaps I'll start by translating that into French. But first, I'll need to think of a name for my 'frogblog'.

In the meantime - and just to prove that even if I think Marx was a Satanist, I am still a fully-fledged freedom-fighter - check out my French human rights moonlighting on http://justsolmond.wordpress.com/ (I have been recruited to the ranks of JSM, a French organisation that helps spread information about offences against conscience (usually the persecution of Christians) in various countries around the world.

Good night. God bless.
Ferdi McDermott.

A good source of Catholic news

2009-03-19T21:47:00.002Z

For those who don't know about it, here is a very good source of important Catholic news, seen from Rome by the journalist Sandro Magister: http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/?eng=y

The Midas touch, in reverse ...

2009-03-19T19:44:00.004Z

Imagine a king who could turn everything he touched into rubbish! That is exactly what the state does, when it takes total control of education, healthcare or social services. Don't believe me? Check out Professor Terence Kealey's introduction to this BIG IDEA in an article in Prospect: https://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=7833

Chavagnes on local French TV - Internat catholique pour garçons

2009-03-17T11:11:00.003Z

http://www.tvvendee.fr/video-TVV_le_journal_20090122_02.aspx

Classical education and how governments want to kill it ...

2009-03-16T13:17:00.004Z

Classical education and how modern politicians have killed it
In Ancient Greece, two strands of thinking in education were current in what we know as the Classical Age, from about 500BC: that of Sparta, where education was the business of the State and sought to breed a resilient warrior citizenry, and that of Athens where education depended on the free choices of parents and aimed at producing intellectual maturity. As we shall see, it was the spirit of Athens that then dominated our approach to education until relatively recent history.

A Christian classical education, such as later led to the creation of the late medieval and renaissance universities was first seen in Alexandria, at the heart of the meeting of East and West, in about 190AD. Here St Clement, very much of a disciple both of Jesus and of Socrates, established what could probably be called the first Christian academy, educating boys and men, mainly, but not exclusively, for the priesthood. They studied the Trivium of logic, grammar and rhetoric, followed by the Quadrivium of arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy, leading to studies in philosophy and theology. We also know that Clement attached great importance to sport and dance. These had been central in the Greek education of boys: gymnastics for the body, music for the soul. The imagery of the hymn which may have been sung by the boys at the school is strongly suggestive of a circle dance:

Holy shepherd of the flock divine,
king of unspoilt youth,
Lead the way!
The footsteps of Christ
Are the track to Heaven.
Word who always was and is and ever shall be,
Life immeasurable,
Unfailing light,
Compassion's very source!
Craftsman forging virtue
For the holy lives
Of all who sing to God.
Christ Jesus,
Heavenly milk pressed from your Bride's sweet breasts
To nourish tender mouths of sucklings with grace and wisdom:
the guileless take their fill with reason's milk,
the dew of your Spirit.
All together dance and sing
Our simple praise and heartfelt song
For the Christ the King.
So may we pay our holy fees
For schooling in the way of life.
Dancing in the ring of peace
We are the simple escort of the young Pantocrator.
Race sprung from Christ,Wisdom's own people
All praise together the God of our peace.
Creator of all things.

(Trans. Canon John Mooney. For Original Greek text see Le Pedagogue, Livre III, pp. 192ff.. in Source Chretiennes, Editions du Cerf, Paris, 1970.)

This text, to me, breathes a warm gust of Christian Hellenism across the centuries: many of the enduring educational themes of the ancients are there but with a new freshness and clarity of purpose.

This truly classical education within a Christian context was expounded in great depth in Clement's work The Pedagogue, a fascinating, if somewhat rambling synthesis and history of education from the viewpoint of Hellenic Christians, and the first real Christian handbook for teachers. It was not, however, a tremendous success; at least not in the intense and thorough form envisaged by Clement. The stress of the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, the rise of Islam in large parts of the Empire in the East, the destruction of libraries, the mistrust of classical civilisation by some Christian clerics, general political instability in the vacuum created by the collapse of imperial Rome; all of these things contributed to the classical tradition's being somewhat sidelined for a time. In outposts of the Roman empire, such as in much of Britain, people suddenly abandoned the cities as they had done when Mycenaean civilization collapsed in Greece towards the end of the second millennium BC.

And yet, before imperial Rome sank another great man arose to ensure that the ideals of a classical and Christian humanism would not be forgotten. Augustine, a Roman of the fourth century, was a professor of classical rhetoric who became a Christian and then Bishop of Hippo in North Africa. In Augustine's day, scholars speculated about whether Virgil had read Isaiah, and this itself is an interesting indicator of how many in the Graeco-Roman world were already looking to the Jews and to their sacred literature with an air of expectancy. We know, however, that Augustine had read Isaiah and Virgil, and in his Confessions, and in the City of God, the two worlds meet completely and a fruitful synthesis is attempted. St Paul, with his obvious familiarity with Greek philosophy and worship (seen as pointing to Christ) and even his positive references to athletics had shown long before the supposed Platonist hijack of the second century that a continuity was achievable, and that is why he converted so many Greeks.
Now Augustine, with all the weight of his spell-binding rhetoric and learning, as Homer had done at an earlier stage, now set a seal on the direction of "the great conversation" for at least the next thousand years.

The cultural achievements of the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation and the modern age are many, but none of them is as significant as that momentous and humble openness of the Early Church to the weight of human experience and learning that preceded what they saw as God's total self-revelation to man in Christ. It was an attitude quite remote from the prophetic traditions of the Old Testament. Perhaps it was precisely the belief in the Incarnation, and the optimistic view of human nature propounded by Paul that made it possible for Christians to hold fast to so much of 'the best that known and thought in the world' (Matthew Arnold’s phrase) and to add to that store. Perhaps more remarkable still was the openness of the whole area around the Mediterranean, subdued by the Roman Empire, to this new chapter of man's history. For despite the persecutions of Domitian, Nero and others, a new idea and culture - for the first time in human history - took control of man's destiny not with armies but with argument.

Later reforms within this Christian tradition can all be seen as efforts, more or less efficacious or reasonable in themselves, to restore the freshness and vigor of Christianity as it was at this time of triumph. The scholastics revived the classics and gave a new impetus to the study of Aristotle and Plato (under the aegis of a now long dead Muslim philosophical school), the excesses of Renaissance neo-paganism were corrected by the Reformers and their excesses, in turn, tempered by the Counter-Reformers.

At the beginning of the modern age, then, we see a western Christendom where Christian humanism is the norm of education on both sides of the Reformation divide, so that the Ignatian Paideia of continental Europe and the grammar schools and public schools of England, all train young men in roughly the same disciplines and essentially with the same view of man and his history. More importantly, both sides generally believed that education was for the betterment of the human spirit, not merely to prepare men for war, or trade. True enough, many received more training than they did education, but the distinction between the two was clear, and everywhere, for nearly two millennia, the State had been keeping out of education.

Sister Miriam Joseph CSC, a leading Catholic educationalist in 1940s America, explains: "The utilitarian or servile arts enable one to be a servant - of another person, of the state, of a corporation, or of a business - and to earn a living. The liberal arts [that is, the Trivium and the Quadrivium], in contrast, teach us how to live; they train a person to rise above his material environment to live an intellectual, a rational, and therefore a free life in gaining truth" (in The Trivium.) That is a description of education that no serious western writer or thinker would have disputed from the time of Constantine until the eighteenth century. But they speak in a very different language to that of most educationalists ever since.

The impact of Rousseau, writing in the eighteenth century is still felt today in pedagogical circles. He promoted (in Emile ou de l’Education) the hugely successful (however erroneous) idea that we have nothing of objective value to teach our children. They will, he suggested, teach themselves, given a little encouragement. His Confessions paint a picture of a young man motivated by a profound egotism and self-righteousness often attributed to religious people, and yet he was in fact someone who had left religion behind; the first in a long line of modern `victims' of the seminary system who proceed to make a living out of burning what they once adored. He consigned his own illegitimate children to an orphanage and took no interest in their education whatsoever.His influence, and that of the other philosophical thinkers of the siècle des lumières, had an important part to play in the thinking behind the French Revolution, followed by Communism and Nazism in the twentieth century. They all tended to a view of man that rejected completely the Christian chapter in man's story.

There had been previous attempts to short-circuit back to Antiquity, by-passing Christianity, but these modern attempts have been especially thorough. Such movements do not so much seek to put man back in touch with an older, purer truth, so much as to deracinate him completely, so as better to control and manipulate him. One educational thinker, Matthew Arnold, wrote that a man out of touch with what has been called “the great conversation” would be a “stranger to the human condition”, and it is this state of disorientation that any cunning dictator will want to foist on his followers. Hitler, Stalin and Mao are striking examples, but our modern politicians are still playing the same game.

In this climate of wholesale rejection of the continuum of the classical tradition as it had been mediated by the Church, it is no surprise that all the revolutionary movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries promoted the role of the state as educator. And with the benefit of hindsight, we can observe that they all have their similarities with ancient Sparta, described by Hitler as “the first National Socialist state.”

Ferdi McDermott, founder of StAR, is founder and Principal of Chavagnes International College, a British Catholic boarding school in western France. Together with Robert Asch, co-editor of StAR and Professor Anthony O’Hear of the University of Buckingham, he will be leading a course on The Great Books, this summer in France. For details: http://www.thegreatbooks.chavagnes.info/

Persecution of Public school types

2009-03-13T15:44:00.007Z

A recent interesting article in the Daily Mail raised the question of how the current breed of Labourites is able to get away with so many sideswipes against one of the UK's once distinguished and respected minorities, the Anglo-Saxon public schoolboy.

Certain ministers and civil servants are able to treat this important minority group with contempt and daily conspire to bring about its extinction as a social grouping.

And yet, until very recently 7 or 8 % of children in then UK were privately educated. That makes a very important minority. Bear in mind that according to the 2003 census the percentage of non-white UK citizens was 7.9%, and it becomes clear that in fact all the talk about misrepresentation of minorities is a lot of nonsense.

The main reason for showing concern about representation of different groupings is not to do with skin colour, but to do with the distinctive perspectives and contributions that different cultural traditions can bring to public life. Politics and the public service are certainly the poorer if they do not include those who can share something of Indian, African and Chinese culture and values with the rest of us. But they are also the poorer if they do not have a healthy contingent of those whose minds have been formed without the direct involvement or interference of the government, in a strong, native cultural tradition which has so much valued the pursuit of excellence, the defence of custom, the genius of place, the sense of duty, the value of truth. To push such people out of public life by stigmatising the 'public school white male' is to advance one step closer to a totalitarian state.

I would wager that statsticians could easily show that all of Labour's new quangoes and bogus ministries seriously under-represent the nation's historic administrative and ruling class. And those who make it in are expected, just like the acolytes of Mao and Lenin, to make a public show of disdain for their own cultural background and upbringing.

This, despite the fact that the private sector has, since its inception in the middle ages, often sought ways to be socially inclusive. The grammar schools shared in this tradition and further perpetuated it. (A recent LSE study showed that the abolition of grammar schools was the single greatest blow to social mobility in the 20th century).

So it's not about snobbery, but about handing on a culture that deserves to be treated with respect and may yet have much to give to Britain.

Great Books Programme for adults

2009-03-13T07:56:00.003Z

Just a reminder that from 26th July to 4th August, Chavagnes is organising a superb 10-day course for adults on 'the Great Books'. Great Books, great company, great value: a cultural holiday of a lifetime in rural France. Join in the Great Conversation: 10 days in the Vendee with Professor Anthony O’Hear, StAR (St Austin Review) coeditor Robert Asch, writer Denis Boyles and StAR’s founder, Ferdi McDermott … … plus Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, Socrates, Virgil, Ovid, St Augustine, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Milton, Pascal, Racine + Goethe! visit http://www.thegreatbooks.chavagnes.info/ for more details ...