Vacation this week, and blogging hasn’t been as fun as the alternatives.
The Holy Wells of Ireland
Father Charles O’Connor, who interrogated Owen Hester, clearly disapproved of the well rounds, the rag trees and the attempts to buy the co-operation of the fairies, but he seemed, too, to acknowledge that he was powerless to do much about it:
So thoroughly persauded were they of the sanctity of those pagan practices that they would travel bareheaded and barefooted from ten to twenty miles for the purpose of crawling on their knees round these wells, and upright stones and oak trees westward as the sun travels, some three times, some six, some nine, and so on, in uneven numbers until their voluntary penances were completely fulfilled.
This kind of thing is the reason that the Roman Catholic authorities frowned on the existence of the holy wells for a long time. Protestants, meanwhile, were frequently driven to near apoplexy by the very existence of such ‘Popish superstition’ and ‘idolatry’. But what looked like ‘paganism’ to some church authorities was more like a form of Folk Christianity, a phenomenon that finds different expressions across the Christian world. In Orthodox and Catholic countries it can still be seen, especially in the countryside, while in Protestant lands it is rare. In my own homeland, England, a once-Catholic country scoured out by fanatics during the misnamed ‘Reformation’, we live amongst remnants of what once was. A few wells and shrines remain, but most were destroyed, Taliban-style, centuries ago. The holy landscape of England has been replaced by a wholly profane one. Whitewash is our inheritance.
…
A story from County Cork tells of a protestant minister who regarded well devotion as pagan nonsense, demanding to be brought water from the local holy well to make his tea. When the locals refused to bring it to him – nobody wanted to offend the well by engaging in such domestic profanity – the minister took action himself:
In a rage he snatched a can and brought a supply of water which he placed in a pot and hung over the fire to boil. Although under the influence of much heat the water remained quite cold while the minister waited his long overdue meal. Finally, his patience being exhausted he poured the water into another vessel and declared he would wash his feet in it. Witness his consternation and suffering when he touched the water his feet were immediately scalded and blistered as from a boiling heat
The punishment for a shamanic drum circle and ayahuasca ceremony doesn’t bear thinking about.
Orthodoxy theology defines only what is necessary and always leaves unspoken that which cannot be explained. This approach was part of the Christian faith from the beginning. But the Western phronema often suppresses, dismisses, minimizes, or ignores this stance. The Western mind is compelled to define and explain everything, since without a rational explanation a concept or fact cannot be considered true, or, conversely, all truth can be proven rationally.
Dr. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, Thinking Orthodox
Not Conservative
First Things and the Claremont Review of Books largely backed Donald Trump, seeing him as an important disruptor with the potential to form a new, larger coalition with the capacity to resist secular liberalism.
Hunter Baker, When Pragmatic Politics Goes Bad: An Apology to the Never-Trumpers – Public Discourse, January 15, 2021.
“Let’s have a revolution and see if something good comes of it” is not now and never has been a conservative attitude.
The bleeding edge of dechristianization
The legal status of abortion is at the center of the contemporary culture war because it represents the bleeding edge of dechristianization. When pro-life and pro-choice advocates fight about the nitty-gritty of abortion policy, what they are really fighting about is whether our society ought to remain Christian. Most people who describe themselves as pro-choice have not really thought about what truly abandoning Christianity would mean—that is, truly abandoning Christians’ historically bizarre insistence that “God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” But there are a few heralds of repaganization who are willing to be confidently and frighteningly consistent.
It is not necessary that one be Christian to oppose abortion, but I’ve got to admit that, in the aggregate, opposition is a Christian cause.
I’ve even come to realize that Christianity came into a world where the paterfamilias exposed infants (and doubtless would have aborted unwanted pregnancies had the risk been lower and the stigma on infanticide higher), and it revolutionized that world on that front and on the rights of women.
A fundamental reality of human existence is that vice often leaves virtue with few good options. Evil men can attach catastrophic risks to virtually any course of action, however admirable.
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Tipsy Teetotaler ن 