You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Fish Eaters' category.
“A satirist is a man profoundly revolted by the society in which he lives. His rage takes the form of wit, ridicule, mockery. Aldous Huxley puts satire somewhat far down the scale of literary esthetics, making the good point that “the pure comic genius must be a great inventor” on the order, say, of Aristophanes, who created worlds, as opposed to the “mere satirist,” who necessarily is rooted in this world. Almost by definition, the satirist does not create; he reacts to what exists with caricature and burlesque, two skills Max Beerbohm described: “Burlesque consists in the application of incongruity. Caricature consists merely in exaggeration. To burlesque a statue of Hermes, you need but put a top hat on his head. To caricature it you must exaggerate its every limb and feature.” A satirist may do anything he likes to that Hermes except carve it originally from the stone. Someone must do that for him. In the nicest sense, he is critic.
Our time’s first satirist is Evelyn Waugh. For thirty years his savagery and wit have given pleasure and alarm. His mixed dish is celebrated: the Bright Young People of the Twenties, the popular press, Africa’s political pretensions, death in Hollywood. . .all set down in a prose so chaste that at times one longs for a violation of syntax to suggest that its creator is fallible, or at least part American…”
“…Orthodox Catholics deserve to feel satisfaction at today’s development. Yet it’s easy to exaggerate the advantages. On one hand, the Anglicans coming home to full communion will be active in practice, theologically aware, and proportionately resistant to gay and feminist faddishness. On the other hand we have to admit that a sizable minority of (nominally) Catholic clergy envy the Church of England for precisely the reasons its orthodox are bolting. Who knows how many of our own ecclesiastics, even unindicted ones, are gazing wistfully at the lighted windows of Gene Robinson’s honeymoon suite while Rembert Weakland’s autobiography slumbers in their lap?…”
Of course, we will leave aside the fact that the Pope should be burning Anglicans at the stake (ah, the good old days) and not inviting them to join his church with special provisions to make the Catholic Church more Protestant than it already is…The point is that the orthodox Anglo-Catholics will be jumping from a sunken ship to one going down for the last time. These orthodox folk will be met at the door of their ghastly suburban Bunny Funkhowser designed “churches” by liturgical dancers, alter girls, bull dyke Religious to be able to hold hands and sing “Kum-By-Ah” on” Can’t We All Just Be One With Gaia Day” with the denim shorts, flip-flops and halter top clad, tattoo covered parishioners to listen to the predominately liberal, mostly effeminate and largely gay clergy extol the virtues of pro-abortion politicians and publicly attack their local Bishops for banning the Vagina Monologues at the local Parish pre-school.
If it will make them feel better, by all means, come on along. But if they think they have discovered a safe haven they had best think again. The last thing in the world the majority of Catholic clergy wants is more orthodox Catholics. Most orthodox have been driven out to Latin Mass Communities and they don’t want to have to do all that work over again. The Pope’s church and the church as practiced in the American Wasteland are two completely different things. Welcome Brothers and Sisters, Welcome…
Siegfried Sassoon was born in 1886 in Kent, and began writing verses as a boy. While a brave young officer, he confronted the terrible realities of the First World War on the battlefield, in verse, and, finally, by announcing his opposition to the war in 1917, showing that physical courage could exist alongside humanity and sensibility.
In 1918, Sassoon found himself one of the most famous young writers of the time, a mentor to Wilfred Owen, and admired by Winston Churchill and T.E. Lawrence. He joined the Labour Party, became literary editor of the socialist Daily Herald, and began close friendships with Thomas Hardy and E.M. Forster, while trying to adapt his poetry to peacetime. Then Sassoon fell in love with the artistocratic aesthete Stephen Tennant, who led him into his group of Bright Young Things who inspired the early novels of Evelyn Waugh. At the demise of his passionate and fraught relationship with Tennant, Sassoon suddenly married the beautiful Hester Gatty in 1933 and retreated to a quiet country life until their eventual estrangement and Sassoon’s subsequent conversion to Catholicism.
From his famous war poems to the gentler vision of his prose, Sassoon wrote masterfully of war and lost idylls, and this work and its complex author are brilliantly illuminated in Max Egremont’s definitive biography.
David Niven appeared in films for over 50 years of his life, from swashbucklers such as The Prisoner of Zenda to playing the part of the ‘bogus gentleman’ (which, he claimed, was his only acting talent) in Paper Tiger. Despite his on-screen persona, Niven would later admit that he wasn’t always the perfect gentleman. He was insecure both privately and professionally. He used people for his own ends, which was something he learned in Hollywood, but he did, he said, ‘at least try to be a decent man.’ He knew he often failed, although it isn’t easy to find people who ever had a bad word to say about him. In this fascinating biography of the star, Munn looks at the funny stories and the sad underlying truth, from his outrageous days with Errol Flynn and their irrevocable split -’You always know where you are with Flynn. He always lets you down’ – and affairs with stars such as Ava Gardner, to admissions of infidelity, an attempted suicide and the breakdown and blame of his second marriage. Funny, poignant and told with the compassion of one who knew him, this is a fascinating portrayal of a legend that really gets behind the screen and autobiographical persona. Writer, actor, director and former journalist and Hollywood publicist, Michael Munn, has written twenty-one books, including the best selling John Wayne: the Man behind the Myth and the acclaimed Richard Burton: Prince of Players.
Very nice boat…
Now here is a photo of a friend of Sir Basil modeling some very fetching and modest swimwear. As you know, I have always been an advocate of public modesty in regards ladies and gentlemen. Although I think some tend to take the modesty thing too far. Modesty is one thing and prudery another. Hidden is preferable to flouted if you ask me. I mean, one can’t exactly be alluring in a string bikini. Hot yes, alluring no. And this type of suit does fit the bill, I think. Alluring does come to mind. I find it quite preferable to the Catholic Amish practice of diving in with your peasant skirt and hand knitted sweater still hanging about your body. As if the sight your very large naked thighs and varicose veins would tempt us poor chaps beyond reason. Really, after your sixth or seventh child, our attention tends to wander a bit. Please, most of these women have to sneak up on bath water.
But this suit style is just right. Although the Countess always wears the little skirt thing with hers. I asked her one time why she always did this and she said that the design of the suit, in her opinion, with long tail and small triangle of cloth showing below tends to focus the eyes of lecherous men (read all) on the black cat. As if they needed any help in the matter. Of course, I didn’t see the problem with this particular design flaw, but that’s just me. And all cat’s are gray in the dark anyway…
Fathers Eugene (aged 48) and Martin O’Hagan (aged 45), who are brothers, and David Delargy (aged 44) has each achieved the ambitions nurtured when they were at school together of having their own parishes in the Northern Ireland diocese of Down and Connor where they tend to the spiritual needs of thousands of devout parishioners. Today they formally begin their work as The Priests, their music will be religious and spiritually inspired classics including Ave Maria and Panis Angelicus. The Priests have recorded all the tracks from the album with the Philharmonic Academy of Rome Choir from St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. The album will be stickered to higlight the Philharmonic Academy of Rome’s involvement as well.
Juan Uriarte, a handsome and outspoken Spanish ex-priest, seems to be the model of nonviolence and compassion for the poor and downtrodden. So why is he on trial, accused of terrorist activities? His worldwide Catholic charitable outreach program is suspected of being a front for radicals. The trial is covered by Kate Ramsay, a young British reporter, who sets out to uncover the truth about Uriarte and his work. She travels with him to Africa to see his work first hand but soon finds herself attracted to him.
Meanwhile an international conspiracy is growing, one that reaches into the Vatican itself. When the death of Pope John Paul II brings about the conclave that will elect Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI, a terrorist plot involving blackmail, subterfuge, and mass murder begins to fall into place… a plot that could spell disaster for the Catholic Church and the world.
Piers Paul Read’s powerful tale combines vivid characters, high drama, love, betrayal, faith, and redemption in a story of intrigue, church espionage, and an attempt to destroy the longest continuous government in the world the Papacy. The Death of a Pope races toward an unexpected and unforgettable conclusion.
Novelist and playwright Piers Paul Read was born in Beaconsfield, England on March 7, 1941. He was educated by Benedictine Monks at Ampleforth College, York and also at St. John’s College, Cambridge. His non-fiction includes Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, an account of the aftermath of a plane crash in the Andes which has sold five million copies worldwide and was later adapted as the film Alive; The Templars, a history of the Crusades; and Alec Guinness: The Authorised Biography, a profile of the acclaimed late actor.
His first novel was published in 1966. More recent novels include On the Third Day, A Patriot in Berlin, and Alice in Exile.
Piers Paul Read is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a member of the Council of the Society of Authors. He has also written a number of television plays, and several of his novels have been adapted for film and television. He lives in London.
In my study, just abaft and slightly to port of my desk, I have a bookcase. It is a nice bookcase, solid mahogany with two solid glass doors on the front. In this very nice piece of furniture I keep my “Catholic Library”. It is where I keep those books, both sacred and mundane, into which I delve when the need arises. Which, being mortal, is often. Of course, being of the “old and cold” school of Catholicism, I have a rather stringent set of criteria by which I judge what goes in and what stays out. Although this criteria is based on 2000 years of prayer, study, blood, sweat and tears, there are some, of course, who know better and beg to differ. Well, I’m not studying them, and it is my bookcase after all. Let me share a bit of it with you. Maybe, just maybe you might find something of interest:
This then is the Catholic English version of the Bible. In use for over 400 years, it is still the best ever produced.
Commentary on the Four Gospels
The Great Scripture commentary of Father Cornelius A. LePide, S. J.
Breviarim Romanum
Collegeville Breviary in Latin & English, originally published in 1963.
The Holy Mass by Dom Prosper Guéranger
The Imitation of Christ by Thomas À Kempis needs no introduction.
The True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin by Saint Louis-Marie De Montfort
Daily Missal 1962
The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary
by Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, O.C.D.
This official collection (raccolta) of the Church’s prayers and devotions was published in English in 1957.
This is all you’ll need.
More from the bookshelf latter, if you’re interested.
“Why did the most radical pro-abortion candidate win the presidential election yesterday? He won because Catholics failed.
The Pope exhorted Catholics not to vote for pro-choice candidates. American cardinals and bishops did the same. Did American Catholics listen? Well, not all of them. And so the pro-life movement (or at least as it stands in politics) failed to slow down the Left’s grab at the Supreme Court.
There are an estimated 60 million Catholics in America. Yet functionally they don’t hold sway. The Catholic voting block could literally rule this nation. However, instead of acting as leaven in the culture, we are swayed to and fro.
It’s truly sad. I’m grateful to be a Catholic, but I am saddened by the example of my Catholic brothers and sisters.
To all those non-Catholic pro-lifers out there, on behalf of the Catholics, I’m truly sorry.”
