Quotations

"Life is amazing. And then it's awful. And then it's amazing again. And in between the amazing and awful it's ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful, and relax and exhale during the ordinary. That's just living heartbreaking, soul-healing, amazing, awful, ordinary life. And it's breathtakingly beautiful."
L.R. Knost

”If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, then it is not the gospels you believe but yourself.”

St. Augustine

"Communism has penetrated even Christian circles disguised as solidarity. It is our pastoral duty to expose it."

Pope Leo XIV, May 14, 2010 at Conference of Latin American bishops.

"A shift is underway. Politics is becoming less interesting. People are interested in the substance, the culture that builds who we are. Art, faith, relationships, literature, health... These topics are becoming dominant; they code for a particular politics, but not explicitly."

Hostage release is a clever move

The release of the American hostage is an extremely clever move by Hamas. Will Trump turn on Netanyahu who has tricked him? Miriam Anderson doesn't like Netanyahu. There is much more chance of peace with Trump than Biden. Biden was no Carter.

I saw this on X today. "Israeli arrogance, political meddling, endless demands, and total ingratitude for all the American support they've gotten may finally have annoyed Trump into accidental anti-zionism"

Trump is a very poor deal maker but thinks he is good. We now learn that the U.S. will waive the requirement for Hamas to disarm as a precondition for a ceasefire in Gaza. I pray he makes a peace - and even better if it has the side effect of bringing down Netanyahu.

The Houthis have won again

The Houthis seem to have defeated the USA again. Larry Johnson estimates that the Americans spent $1 billion on attacking the Houthis this time including the cost of 2 jet fighters that fell off an aircraft carrier into the sea and were worth around $80 million each. Another was lost in a crash dodging a Houthi drone.

The Houthi are trying to help their fellow Arabs in Gaza by threatening Israeli ships. according to long time Moscow correspondent John Helmer they attacked only ships with Israeli beneficial owners, with one possible exception, until the US and UK decided to hunt down the Houthi in order to protect international shipping on the Suez canal.

Then the Houthi targeted US and British ships, so the Anglo-American action had the result of blocking the Suez canal to shipping, exactly what the Americans and British claimed to want to prevent.

The Houthi are remarkable warriors - and their success over the world's Superpower and her British satellite show the future of war.

Habemus papa!

I felt such great joy this morning when the priest said the words "Preafericitul Parintele nostru Papa Leon". I realised then how very unhappy the name Francisc always made me every Sunday. 

A weight has now been lifted.

My father would be shocked at my speaking about a pope in this way, but I do not imagine I am alone.

I learnt we had an American pope from a Catholic friend who called me. I switched on the BBC when I got home but I am allergic to Austen Ivereigh, Francis's arch-sycophant, who was the BBC Catholic expert. 

He likes the new Pope a lot, but let's hope this means nothing.

Pope Leo XIV appeared on the balcony. He wore papal robes which suggests he is humble not faux humble. 

The Associated Press said today: 'Francis in many ways saw the Chicago-born Augustinian missionary Robert Prevost as something of an heir apparent: He moved him to take over a small Peruvian diocese in 2014, where Prevost later became bishop and head of the Peruvian bishops conference, and then called him to Rome to take over one of the most important Vatican offices vetting bishop nominations in 2023."

It added:

"Madagascar Cardinal Désiré Tsarahazana told reporters on Saturday that on the final ballot, Prevost had received “more” than 100 of the 133 votes. That suggests an extraordinary margin, well beyond the two-thirds, or 89 votes, necessary to be elected."

Not so extraordinary a margin but extraordinary news, since but the cardinals swore a solemn vow to keep the proceedings of the conclave secret.

A great cardinal like Cardinal Sarah could not have been elected pope by the sort of cardinals Francis appointed.

On the other hand in time the boomer cardinals will be replaced by younger conservatives.

Pope Leo XIV (of course) chose his name to signal his interest in the social policy of Pope Leo XIII, but in at least one American election Leo XIV was a registered Republican. So there is that. 

One of his brothers likes Donald Trump. So the Pope has heard the arguments against illegal immigration.

Ofri Ilany in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz today.

In February 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, IDF Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen took part in a panel discussion about the event on Israel's Kan Television. In contrast to the line then dominant in the media, Hacohen voiced a forcefully pro-Russian stance. Kyiv, he pointed out, was the cradle of Russian civilization, adding that international borders were not sacred and that President Vladimir Putin's rule was legitimate in the eyes of the Russian people .

No less provocative was the historical case on which he grounded his support for Russia. "Israel was built by Russian Jews, like my grandfather, who came from those regions," Hacohen said. "It's a toughness that brought us [David] Ben-Gurion, among others… The Mapai experience was not enlightened and not liberal," he said, referring to Ben-Gurion's ruling party, forerunner of Labor. Just like Putin, he said, "Ben-Gurion thought about constant expansion in the region, because the coastal strip of Tel Aviv is only a gateway into the Land of Israel."

Hacohen's take on the subject was swallowed up in the flow of chatter among television panelists. But it deserves a second look, because it reveals a truth. Hacohen's political analysis is roughshod and dark – but his historical argument is correct. Israel was indeed established by Russians, and the forceful, violent and anti-liberal political culture of the Russian Empire is part of its DNA.

And that is our disaster.

Historians, sociologists and journalists frequently discuss the question of where Israel's cult of force comes from. It's a brutish mentality that has currently brought us to an unprecedented moral nadir – cruel, indiscriminate mass slaughter of Palestinians.

The widespread view in the left and center tends to pin the blame for this on religious messianism, but the Zionist tendency toward expansion and settlement started when Israel was ruled by secular leaders, some of whom advocated scientific socialism. One view sees Zionism as a colonialist, racist movement from as early as the time of Theodor Herzl, even though in "Altneuland," the novel written by the founder of political Zionism, the Arabs have full equal rights.

In practice, the calamitous turning point of Israel's political culture occurred when the Zionist movement was taken over by the Russian political sect, particularly those from the Second Aliya (the 1904-1914 wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine). Russian culture possesses noble aspects and achieved intellectual and cultural summits. But at the end of the 19th century and start of the 20th, Russia underwent dramatic political upheavals that engendered a brutal political culture that scorned tolerance and enlightenment.

Inevitably populists will win in every country in the West - in Hungary, Italy and US first, UK and Germany last.

The Romanian presidential election was an enormous surprise for me and all the clever people. 

Plenty of waiters and taxi drivers foresaw it. 

I had assumed that the right-wing sovereignist candidate George Simion would win the first round of the election with 30% of the vote but lose in the second. 

He won 41% instead. 

It is now likely, not certain but likely, that he will win the presidency.

Many of the Social Democrat (ex-Communist) Party voters share Mr Simion's anti-American (pre-Trump), pro-peace, socially conservative views. 

Every party in Romania is conservative but the left-wing party is most so.

Former Social Democrat Prime Minister Victor Ponta, who won 13% of the votes, also claimed to be a sovereignist. His voters will mostly go to Simion.

People voted for George Simion because they are very angry that the court cancelled the first election in November in which a right-wing candidate won the first round and then banned him and another rightist from standing in the new elections six months later (why six months later not one month later?) 

For a long time the court did not even explain its action. That was very Romanian.

Had the court let the original Romanian election proceed the president would now probably be an inoffensive though stupid woman who loves the European Union. 

Assuming Romanians could tolerate a woman president, which they probably would, faute de mieux, and an idiot, again yes.

Among business people and the people employed by international companies the outlook is very gloomy and frightened this week. They know that a hard right president will be very bad for the Romanian economy because he will scare foreign investors.

But, as an international company employee said to me yesterday, the Romanian election is part of a universal trend. 

It's not about Romania. It's a backlash against endless wars, international organisations usurping the place of nation states, social liberalism, but more than any of this lack of democracy. It is happening everywhere.

Inevitably populists will win in every country - Hungary and US first, UK and Germany last.

A very senior businesswoman who knows people at the top in more than one party told me on the morning after the vote that they think a victory for George Simion is going to happen and therefore politicians will ally with him to be in the winning team. She says that Simion has highly educated and responsible people around him.

The president has relatively few powers but does control the secret services and so will have power over part of what most people here think is the deep state.

He can also, if he cannot find a Prime Minister to form a government, call an early parliamentary election. 

The resignation of the Prime Minister after the results of the first round of the election will give the new President the opportunity to put together a new government or call elections in which the right will do very well. 

George Simion has said he wants Calin Georgescu, the man who came first in the November election and was banned for standing in this one, to be Prime Minister.

Quotations

'Stripping away all the accretions of “defending liberalism” or “promoting democracy” with which American politicians are accustomed to shroud their defence of empire, Colby breaks down the raw facts of power to their essentials."
I like this sentence from a review by Aris Roussinos of a book about Taiwan from November 2021. It applies to Ukraine (and even Israel) too. For America extending or defending democracy means extending or defending their empire . This is not a polemical point. It is simply a fact. He's in town at the moment and I look forward to his analysis.

England has been watered with the blood of martyrs - it now seems that this will continue

May 4th is the Feast of the English Martyrs, commemorating the 324 English Catholics executed under Protestant rule and later beatified, and in many cases canonised. 

They include St John Payne. 

Just after I went down from the University I smelt incense in the priest hole in Ingatestone Hall where he was arrested. 

I am bitterly sorry that it took many wasted years and several mystical experiences before I became a Christian and Catholic.

On my second visit to Ingatestone Hall many years later the old Lord Petre, a bachelor, had died. I met the new one and told him the story. 'Oh you smelt it too, did you?' he said with the broad smile of a man who was at ease in Zion.

It is worth reading the saint's life and those of the other martyrs.

Evelyn Waugh wrote the life of St Edmund Campion, describing the saint being hanged, drawn and quartered and making the observation that the Church of England in those days had some way to go before it became the institution portrayed in Anthony Trollope's novels.

'REVEALED: How the People's Pope shielded sexual predators in the clergy – including one priest accused of violently raping nuns'

'Truth must prevail over false piety, especially when a conclave looms. And the cold, hard truth is that in governance no less than on matters of doctrine, Francis’s pontificate was, in Cardinal Pell’s words, “a disaster in many or most respects; a catastrophe”.' Edward Fese, an American Catholic philosopher.

This article puts in one place the four biggest stories about the late Pope that Damian Thompson has been writing about for years.

They are examples of how the late Pope protected sex offenders and crooks in the clergy including in the College of Cardinals - the Mail should have published it while Francis was alive.

Blasphemy

1989 was a turning point for many reasons and not just in Eastern Europe. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, condemned Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and demanded that the government expand the Blasphemy Act to cover other religions, including Islam. But was it blasphemous even from a Muslim point of view? Reza Aslan , the Iranian-born American Muslim writer, thinks the passages about the satanic verses 'are perfectly in line' with many traditional commentators on the Koran.

“I had an argument with Prince Charles at a small dinner party. He said—very typically, it seems to me—‘I’m sorry, but if someone insults someone else’s deepest convictions, well then,’ blah blah blah . . ." Martin Amis

Auberon Waugh, whom I thought a great bore in print (charming in real life), constantly repeated that the British Council in Rawalpindi was burnt down because in an article in which he had said that a sort of baggy khaki trousers worn by some Muslim men were known by British soldiers as 'Allah catchers'. Before 1989 that story didn't seem memorable but did seem slightly amusing. Waugh got fired by the Times for that.