Lewis Carroll’s Apology for Irreverence, and Mine

“We put our man into a pulpit, and we virtually tell him ‘Now you may stand there and talk to us for half-an-hour.  We won’t interrupt you by as much as a word! And you shall have it all your own way!’  And what does he give us in return?  Shallow twaddle, that, if it were addressed to you over a dinner-table, you would think ‘Does the man take me for a fool?’”

Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno (1889)* 

My readers from time to time chide me for what they perceive as unseemly irreverence, although I must suppose they are my readers because they enjoy my irreverence towards holy cows other than their own.  I do not say this to chide these readers.  It is human nature to be amused until one’s own ox is gored.  I say it to preface some words on the uses and abuses of irreverence.

My epigraph is taken from the first volume of Lewis Carroll’s last novel, Sylvie and Bruno, which unlike his novels about Alice is today very largely forgotten.  The sentiment is expressed by Arthur, the protagonist in one of the novel’s plots, and it is one in a series of strictures on the state of the Anglican Church in Victorian England.

Readers must understand that Carroll was himself a very serious Christian, a fact that is almost always obscured or omitted in secular celebrations of the madcap surrealism of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871).  He was born into a family of High-Church Anglicans, and appears to have died very much in the faith.

A Modest Proposal

“The Church once allowed priests to marry, and it can do again . . . . Together with this, there needs to be a new monastic order to soak up the degenerates.  Which was a function of the Church in times past, as much as we don’t want to think about it.” 

Aidan Maclear, “A Few Minor Reforms,” SettingtheRecordStraight.com (Sep. 26, 2018)

While reading the archive of an old neoreaction blog, I was arrested by the very sensible suggestion above.  The first part may be controversial, but it is familiar and I am for it.  There may once have been good reasons for a celibate priesthood, but the discipline is not necessary and now does far more harm than good.  It greatly reduces the number of vocations, and with it the general quality of priests and higher churchmen.  There are exceptions, but the general intellectual quality of Catholic clergy is fairly, sometimes egregiously, low.

You know something is seriously wrong when your deacon is more knowledgeable and articulate than your priest!

Step Right Up! Come One and All!

“‘It sends this really strong message to everyone in America that they can come to this program, they can bring their authentic self, they can be who they are and they will be welcome here.”  (Jamie Stengle, “Boy Scouts of America Changing Name to More Inclusive Scouting America After Years of Woe,” Associated Press (May 7, 2024))

“‘Perhaps you’ll tell me then,’ Tommy went on, ‘why you wormed your way into this camp under false pretenses.  You’re not a Boy Scout at all!’”  (G. Harvey Ralphson, Boy Scouts on Old Superior (1913)”

The Three Powers

Blooms come, they say, from April showers,
All else comes of the three powers,
Which I can name in a short list:
The purse, the pen, the pounding fist.

The Secret Badges that we Wear

“She bound the scarlet line in the window.”

  Joshua 2:21

A shibboleth is a special kind of password, which is to say a key or badge that opens a social door and grants admission to a social group.  As everyone versed in scripture knowledge knows, shibboleth was at first a word that the lisping Ephramites could not pronounce, and that the Sons of Giliad therefore used to identify the survivors of a shattered Ephramite army.  When a bloodied and bedraggled warrior staggered down to the ford of the Jordan, he was challenged to pronounce the word “shibboleth,” and thereby show his secret badge. Those who pronounced it “sibboleth” were immediately slain.

Those 260 Chapters Make all the Difference

 “We need to be stronger.  We need to fight back. It’s in the Bible.  If someone hits you, you hit them back, twice as hard, 10 times as hard.” 

Jason Burke, “Israelis Voice Sadness and Defiance over Gaza Protests on U.S. Campuses,” The Guardian.com (May 3, 2024).

This titbit of scripture knowledge is from Joseph Avi Cohen, a retired bank manager in Israel, who was recently asked for his man-on-the-street opinion of the American student protests.  I don’t suppose The Guardian is regular reading among Christian Zionists, but if it were they might be puzzled by Mr. Cohen’s words.  I suspect most Christian Zionists believe the book they call the Bible instructs God’s children to forebear, forgive, and, when all else fails, to hit back with tears and not even half as hard.

Every Man Must Answer Pilate’s Question: Which Jesus do You Choose?

“Whom will ye, then, that I release to you?
Jesus Barabbas, called the Son of Shame,
Or Jesus, Son of Joseph, called the Christ?”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,  The Divine Tragedy (1871)*

Longfellow here draws on Origen’s remark, in his Commentary on Matthew, that “in many manuscripts it is not contained that Barabbas was also called Jesus, and perhaps rightly so that the name Jesus would not belong to any sinner.”  From this it is supposed that the circumcision name of the brigand known as Jesus Bar Abbas was suppressed in later copies of Matthew’s gospel, because pious Christians thought it sacrilegious for the Son of God to share his circumcision name with an infamous criminal.

Confession and Confusion as Instruments of Mind Control

“The extraordinary Red stress on confession betrays the extreme importance they attach to it . . . . Something intrinsic in communism makes this confession phenomenon indispensable to it; it can’t exist without it.” 

Edward Hunter, Brainwashing (1956)

We normally associate the word confession with an admission of guilt, as when a criminal confesses to his crime, or when a Catholic unburdens himself in the confessional.  We may however begin to suspect that there is more to confession that this when we consider that many Christian churches use the word confession as a synonym for creed.  Thus, we have the Westminster Confession, or the Augsburg Confession.

This second usage is much closer to the original meaning of the word, which was to admit some truth together. Con (together) + fateri (to admit) = confession.

Whether Radical Ontological Pluralism Works

My dear friend Bruce Charlton – an Orthospherean from before our first days and indeed the moderator at his own site of the discussion in which we decided to call this blog “the Orthosphere,” a pen friend of mine for years beforehand, and an honored contributor here still (so far as WordPress is concerned, he can post here anything he likes) – has it seems taken my recent post on the difficulties that bedevil radical ontological pluralism as a philosophical challenge. It was not intended as such, but so be it. It would be cheap of me to ignore his response, so, here goes: a fisking, alas.

Our Holy Land is a Place of Disgrace

“But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance.  And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.” 

Matthew 21: 38-39.

One event only has made the Holy Land holy.  It is an event that was in many ways odd.  It was certainly quite unlike conventional notions of a holy and sanctifying event.   Harps were absent; the air was most likely heavy and foul; diaphanous light was nowhere to be seen.  It was, to be frank, a shabby event, on a grubby day, in a squalid place.  And I am sorry to say that the conduct of every man who took part was disgraceful.

There may be other holy lands on other planets, reverenced by beings quite different than ourselves; but this is the Holy Land of men.  They say everyone gets the face he deserves.  I say all planets and beings get the holy land they deserve.

Ours, the holy land of mankind, is a shabby, squalid, grubby place of disgrace.