Undignified Modern Hoodooism

Chesterton, I think, wrote something about pride in antiquated creeds, hoary superstition, and something like that. While I cannot at this moment find the quote, and mean not to try further, I acknowledge the debt.

It has come to my ears that a certain one dear to me has said that there is, among popular Catholic devotions, Mediaeval Superstition.

Without conceding the point, I ask, what of it? What sort of superstition are we to prefer?
At least Mediaeval Superstition is dignified.

Newfangled People will say they are not superstitious. They are. They will say they are rational. They are not.
Having abandoned dignified mediaeval superstition, they prefer instead silly and undignified Hoodooism, only provided it is up-to-the-minute.

They happily ascribe coincident events to Karma or to Fate but if you should say it was Providence they will look at you as if you had an unapproved apparition for a head.

The Newfangled People don't like irony. Not without buying a Carbon Offset to make up for it. The honey bees are depopulating. This is no time for irony.

If the Newfangled Person says to you "Feng Shui", you should say, with your face scrunched up as if confused, "Do you mean Fang Shoo-ee?". "No, no" he will say "It's Fung Sh-way".

This can go on.

Unaware that how you pronounce a non-thing is really not important, if he is a benevolent Newfangled Person, he will try to help you. The more you Shoo-ee, the more he will Sh-way. If you can get him to say something like "okay, watch my mouth" before he slowly and carefully Sh-ways at you, you will have won.
If he becomes agitated with your pretended ignorance, say "Easy Buster! I have tender Chakra".
Of course, none of this is activity becoming a gentleman.

These Shwaying Newfanglers will even position their coffee tables in such a way as to render the reaching of one's tumbler of brown liquor entirely impractical, and in a final act of uncaring stupidity will tell you this has to do with the free flowing of Chi.

Chi, despite it's reputation as the life-force of the whole big universe, apparently cannot make it's way around conveniently placed furniture.

This makes no sense, so Newfangled People accept it.

Clowns to the Left of me, Jokers to the Right

Steve at Catholic Restorationists has written a piece on Harry Potter. Responses to this question are almost always weird and ridiculous.

On the one side, like Shea, we get dismissal as hysteria any criticism of these books. Comparisons to C.S. Lewis and Tolkien usually follow, ignoring the important difference that they knew what they were talking about.
On the other we have stories of children who read these books, poked their mothers in the eye and ran off to eat kittens.

But here, Dear Reader, is where you come for balance. This is where the sense is made. True answers are simple answers.

I left this comment.

Isn't it enough to say that a person with only the usual modern sense of good and evil has no ability to write useably - especially for children - on these themes?

Like a manual for a rocket-launcher written by a cheesemaker, a thing has not got to be intentionally misleading or intrinsically evil to be a really bad idea to read.

Lipstick, Birthrates, Firearms

This topic was discussed on the Catholic Restorationists site some weeks ago. Some bloggers follow the convention of inserting links to relevant articles. I do not, except when I do. This encourages laziness in readers and if I am to encourage laziness it will be in myself. I'll not drag you down with me. Besides, it is high time you learned to google.

One of the ladies at church this Sunday asked me what it is I do to make a living. I work in the beauty industry.

The lady in question proceeded to challenge me to reconcile my occupation with my Catholic faith. Apparently aware that there exists today in many women a superlative vanity and lack of modesty, she looked quite smug. She does that.

I answered that she might as well ask me to reconcile gin with tonic.

I hoped she would understand when I pointed out that tobacco, alcohol, and even firearms are open to the possibility of abuse, but that these are all good and generous gifts from the Almighty.

Likewise, I said, beauty comes from God and women are supposed to look good. Thus, to seek or give aid in it is no sin, even though some find ways to abuse it.

Anyway I got to thinking and if I had to choose, I would rather argue that a married woman has a positive duty to wear make-up, rather than the opposite view. Of course, neither is exactly right, but I just don't understand the frumpiness that seems to grip so many of the young orthodox Catholic women of today.

I only thank heaven I found a cute protestant girl before I became an Evil Traditionalist. And traditionalists are the worst of the lot; this circa 1982 drab turtle-necked nun-chic with a single dab of ill-chosen colour in the middle of her squinty, tight-lipped pucker.

This cannot help the birthrate.

The next thing you know, there will be calls for teetotalism. It is a kind of puritanical Calvinist insanity to reject physical beauty. I don't see why it has caught on among Catholics while even the weird sober evangelicals are still teasing their hair and painting themselves up like Miss Texas.

On Farts and Christian Marriage

Christian Marriage being now nearly eclipsed, it seems useful to answer some prevailing errors of the Chichi Neoterics.

If you have sat through the reception after a wedding, you will likely have heard the popular bit of advice: Don't Go To Bed Angry.

Piffle.

This undercuts the singular attribute of Christian Marriage, namely, that she will still be there in the morning. I say, leave settling fights at three o'clock in the morning to the blighted pagans and corrupted heretics with their modern, transient mock-marriages. Get your rest.

Another bit of newfangled poppycock has it that spouses ought to keep alight the flame of romance, or some such rubbish talk.

Do not suppose for a moment that I take issue with chocolates or flowers or frilly underthings. On the contrary, but were it set upon flirtation and infatuation marriage could only be a flimsy thing. Though nothing would please the moderns more, a man might so marry a half-dozen women before noon, starting with the comely coffee girl at a little before eight.

And it is a faithless wretch who supposes God had not the matter in hand when He decreed that the ravages of age should not begin in earnest before the foolish fancies of youth had been forgotten.

Imagine if you will the terrifying predicament of an octogenarian afraid to fart in the presence of his trembling bride.

The august dignity of age will not bear these things and yet the modern-marriageists will not leave us to rock, side-by-side on the front porches of our venerable years. They prefer a future of hoary elders gripping blue pills and lining up, sweaty palmed, to hit on the coffee girl.

Good people must not participate. Strike a blow for Christian Marriage: fart loudly before going to bed angry.

Traffic, Ham, Diversity

Ever since I posted the Index of Forbidden T.V. Shows, my stat counter shows a steady stream visitors from the Middle East. They come by googling Forbidden T.V.

It is a little disconcerting that yesterday a reader in Britain came here by the same route.
In related news, my neighbourhood Masonic Lodge, lately sold, has been turned into a mosque.

To me, this very funny.

But if I was lacking a really indisputable demonstration of the Great Success that is the Canadian Experiment, it came to me yesterday at less than a mile per hour, snarled in the traffic for Caribbana: Toronto's Caribbean fest.

It may have been the sequins or it may have been the feathers, or it could have been the ample female revellers trussed into their back-lacing summer tops like unalluring tied hams. Whatever the cause, I was downright flushed with Official Multiculturalism.

I turned up my radio - Billy Joel Greatest Hits Volume I - and kept time by blowing a whistle. Then, when at intervals I called out "Jump! Jump! Jump!", truly, I felt I was in the Islands, mon.

It was all very poignant. When the fellow in the car with spinning chrome rims turned down his music in order to inquire after my mental wellness, I just knew we were celebrating diversity.