Essays in Idleness

A humble, indeed an obsequious, verily, a grovelling apology is owed to gentle reader for the reduced number of my Idleposts lately. This is an idea I have not formed alone: for I am in receipt of much mail expressing “concern,” and asking what is up (or down). One wishes to give a simple answer; for instance, I have died. But I can’t say this because, on my honour, it is not the truth.

Rather I have been at a loss for something to say, that I could think worth publishing. I am in the habit of rising fairly early each morning, and draughting an Idlepost is my first item of “work”; though not the first thing I do. I may return to this task as the day passes, or as evening descends, give up.

Among my self-destructive habits is glancing at the news. This was never a good idea, and with each passing year it becomes more wounding. News, as every journalist knows, was never meant to be good. That wouldn’t sell. Thanks to modern communications, we can now be demoralized by bad news from everywhere on Earth. In the past, there were villages where one might not hear that the Emperor had died, until the next one was on his deathbed. I daresay people were happier then. Whole months might pass in which not a single shooting or terrorist incident was noticed.

Which takes us to the Pope in Rome. A Catholic did not need to know what the Holy Father thought about anything, because he was pledged by his office to say nothing new. His job was to uphold the Faith; not to revise or adjust it. A Synod or Council or equivalent might be called, say, every century or two, when there was a mess truly worth sorting out, or an accumulation of heretics overdue for burning. The current arrangement is daily, and the object now is to create a bigger mess, or give the latest heretics our blessings. I can say with some confidence that every single instruction from the incumbent Easbaig Ròmais (excuse my Gaelic), since he took office in 2013, has been subversive of Catholic order. He makes pronouncements that are, at their best, inane; an acrid smoke of politics doth suffuse the incense of worship. There is a constant stream of insults to the “rigid,” i.e. the longsuffering faithful. He is on whose side?

The alert reader will notice that, when I was last “uploading” frequently, almost every Idlepost had become about the Church, and none were celebratory. Then I fell silent on that topic, and on others less than a million miles away. While I do not encourage psychologizing, I suspect there is a relation between that silence and my inability to find anything to say.

I discard one essay after another, thinking, “this can do no one any good.” Specifically, comment on the state of the Church has become “an expense of spirit in a waste of shame” — a kind of lust in which we perversely desire a greater outrage today than yesterday, and go hunting for ever more sordid details. Since we’re going to lose, why don’t we lose big?

Worse will come; we have only to be patient. Meanwhile we should get on with our lives. And I, for my part, must get over my funk, and find topics on which I can write, constructively.

Reactionary thought for today:

It is wrong to long for the recent past — to wish we could go back to the ’nineties, the ’seventies, the ’fifties. We are enduring today the consequences of just such rotten decades. We must go back to Christ; or forward to Him, which is the same thing. The only alternative is to go to Hell.