News Item: : To a Blessed Country
(Category: Torch of The Faith News)
Posted by admin
Monday 14 May 2018 - 09:06:54

A revealing cultural history all in one picture: Lincoln Cathedral, the Magna Carta pub and a street-scanning CCTV camera.

A Question of Support

Later this morning, just a few miles from where this article is being typed, the funeral cortege of little Alfie Evans will pass between two officially undisclosed locations along Walton Lane outside Goodison Park. At the behest of Alfie's family, and communicated via an official Merseyside Police statement, supporters have been invited to line the pavement at that location, near the famous grounds of Everton Football Club, in order to pay their respects and offer their condolences.

A few days ago, Daniel Evans posted up the following information at the public site of Alfie's Army: ''The funeral will be private due to the family's wishes, we ask that no one turns up unless you have been personally invited by Thomas and Kate as there's a limited number of people who are allowed to attend, invitations are currently being sorted out for family and close friends. Thank you for all your support.''

This request by the family is certainly fair enough and it should be respected, especially at such a time of mourning. When my own father was dying, he left explicit instructions that, although his funeral was to be public, the burial itself was to be restricted just to the immediate family. Although this perhaps caused some folks to feel hurt at the time, Dad did this to particularly protect Mum's privacy in her grief.

The provision by Alfie's family and the local police of this opportunity for a public expression of support, at another location, is therefore certainly appreciated here on Merseyside.

At the same time, and given all the painful memories of this particular case, it is also true that the choice of the words ''allowed to attend'' in Daniel's statement has certainly raised the question: ''Allowed by whom?''

Daniel's reminder of the family's request is then followed by an insertion of the local police force's public statement on the funeral and the above-described opportunity for public condolences at Walton Lane.

This official statement asserts that ''a small number of officers will be in attendance of the funeral.'' It also adds: ''Both the funeral and wake will not be open to the public or media, with our attendance purely being to offer support for those attending the funeral. Those who have not been invited to the funeral are asked to avoid the area to allow Alfie's family to grieve privately.''

Again, whilst this request to allow the family to grieve privately is perfectly reasonable, and given the very public nature of the case this would appear to need the help of some kind of official support to uphold that family privacy, eyebrows have certainly been raised by the concept in light of the oppressive feelings experienced in relation to the heavy police presence in and around Alder Hey during little Alfie's final days in this world. It will be remembered that - as expressed for example in Thomas Evans' desperate plea for Pope Francis to come and see how his son was ''being treated like a hostage'' - the family at that time did not at all view the police presence as one of support. 

The Truth Always Remains

Being metaphysical realities, the moral and cultural truths relating to Alfie Evans' case will not simply disappear.

Laurence England has written a heartfelt critique at his That the Bones You Have Crushed site. Again, the courageous sermon of the FSSP's Fr. Armand de Malleray on the ramifications of the case has also become very public; being viewed over 40,000 times on Vimeo and providing the basis for the key themes in the editorial of the latest widely dispersed edition of the FSSP's Dowry magazine in England.

Still, in light of Torch of The Faith's experience this weekend, I imagine that American commentators will find themselves at greater liberty to express observations on some of these themes. Closer to home, there are those of us whose liberties are observed for the things we have already said.

The photographs in this article were taken during a pilgrimage that we made several years ago to pray, at the remains of the shrine of St. Hugh of Lincoln, for the reconversion of England. During World War II, those famous towers of the medieval cathedral were often a melancholy source of comfort to aircrews flying out at sunset from Lincolnshire on bomber missions over Germany; conversely they assured surviving crews returning at sunrise, sometimes smoking a sly cigarette, that they had made it safely home.

Emerging through clouds at twilight and in sunlight, the ancient cathedral appeared as a tangible reminder of deeper realities. It was something both sacred and permanent in the midst of a short-lived and destructive epoch.

Hard Won Freedom

In our own tumultous times, I sometimes find myself thinking of my own late-Uncle Jack, spending night after dangerous night freezing away in the tail-turret of a Lancaster Bomber; the most dangerous seat in the house, because Me-109s would often sit just out of range of the tail-gunner's weaponry, take the gunner out with superior fire-power, and then be free to systematically destroy the rest of the aeroplane. My Uncle Jack made it through and lived on until the first years of this century. Not so fortunate were my nan's two brothers who perished on the same vessel, after it was hit by a German U-boat in the First World War.

The reason I think here of these men and their sacrifices, is because the society in which we live would be unrecognizable to them; both in terms of what they believed in and what they would have understood themselves to be fighting for. Indeed, things have changed so fast, and so much, that even in that fabled year of 1984, when I was but a youngster in high-school, none of us would ever have imagined that things would turn out like this.

Weighed in the Balance - Chattels of the State?

I was thinking over the weekend how I had first noticed that our nation seemed to have passed a religio-cultural ''tipping point'' when I returned here in 2006, after 2 years away in America. By that, I mean that the secularizing forces of the previous decades, actually centuries, had come together in a manner which would now require nothing short of divine intervention to put right.

Several years later, I was describing this sense of such a tipping point having occured sometime around 2005 to a renowned, intellectual priest of the rank of Monsignor. This priest affirmed my thesis; although he differed as to the timing of the tipping-point by a mere two years.

One of the things I distinctly remember about my first days back in the UK - aside from the fact that all jobs now seemed to require Sunday working and all application forms suddenly now referred to one's ''partner'' instead of one's ''spouse'' - was seeing a prominent notice on local trains, bearing an Orwellian-sounding legend to the effect that, ''All carriages are being filmed for your safety and convenience.'' I remember thinking that I felt it far more safe and convenient when I had not been observed by the unseen, but all-seeing, eye...

A few years later, and though few cared to notice it, the requirements of the national census made explicitly clear just how the state now viewed its citizens.

At the time, there was some resistance to the census in Britain because of the more-than-typically-intrusive nature of some of the official questions, and because of the choice of Lockheed-Martin to process the collection of data.

Those who contemplated resistance to the census were warned that draconian fines for non-completion of the forms would be levied; and that non-payment of such fines would allow officials to enter private premises and take property to the value of the fines. For those with eyes to see, this suggested that both persons and their goods were deemed to be the property of the state.

Such perceptions have been deepened by the case of Alfie Evans and the official notion, backed remember by Cardinal Nichols and Archbishop McMahon, that prolongation of life was ''not being in his best interests''.

The ramifications of all this are clear. As Fr. de Malleray bravely points out regarding parental rights in his editorial in the latest Dowry magazine: ''Against immense pressure from all over the world, the legal and medical establishment ruled otherwise, sending this chilling message to ordinary citizens: 'We own you.'''

Past, Present and Future

I think that our above photograph, from our pilgrimage to St. Hugh's shrine at Lincoln, provides an interesting potted history of our nation.

Its inclusion of the cathedral tower, the Magna Carta pub and the street-scanning CCTV camera depict for us the disparate symbols of a sophisticated Catholic Christendom, which was capable of bearing fruit in rich expressions of human liberty, such as those so clearly encapuslated in Magna Carta, (an original copy of which was - and still is - kept at Lincoln Cathedral since 1215 AD); the subsequent descent into a post-Catholic, Anglican society, which sought to dominate those deemed to be lesser beings in terms of religion and, when later coupled to vast Imperial ambition and gun-boat diplomacy, even those deemed to be lesser in terms of race and culture; and the present-day emergence of a post-Christian state, in which once-powerful churches find themselves, like the pub next door, as little more than tourist attractions, whilst untold levels of state control and surveillance hold sway over those deemed to be so low as to be merely the property of the state.

As I have had to think during the weekend, it is all just too reminiscent of George Orwell's famous line: ''In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.''

Nevertheless, as Catholics we maintain with God's grace the practice of the Theological Virtue of Christian Hope.

When Joseph Ratzinger was a young boy at the collapse of the Third Reich, he found himself made a prisoner-of-war on meagre rations by the liberating American forces, camping with many other prisoners on farmland near Ulm.

In his Memoirs - 1927-1977, he writes: ''In front of us, at the very horizon, rose the majestic contours of the Ulm cathedral. Day after day the sight of it was for me like a consoling proclamation of the indestructible humaneness of faith.''

And so it is with England.

The Church may seem to have disappeared, or worse colluded with the state in this whole business; but the real driving force behind the True Church, the mysterious grace of Christ, has not. And neither will it ever. No matter how obscured by heretical, immoral or compromised leadership.

The church buildings may have been converted to Anglican use, and then again made over to suit tourist visitation, but the idea behind them cannot be. And that idea is no mere ideology, but the very truth of Christ that sets us free. The truth will out. Silence us, and another ten supportive writers would rise up. As Edward Bulwer-Lytton pronounced, the pen really is mightier than the sword.

Do not grieve as do the Pagans

Today is the funeral of little Alfie Evans. Make no mistake, it is a sad day for his family and for our country. We must pray much for his family and for our society. And yet, as Catholics living and often experiencing oppression in a once-Christian nation, we can also rejoice. Truly, Alfie Evans has now gone to a blessed country!

The fortress-like Lincoln Cathedral, which stands across an open courtyard from Lincoln Castle; both vast structures symbolised and were built at a time in our nation's history when Church and State were rooted in the life-giving foundations of the divine and natural law.

Our Lady of Walsingham - Pray for us!

St. Hugh of Lincoln - Pray for us!

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This news item is from Torch of The Faith
( http://www.torchofthefaith.com/news.php?extend.1678 )