Revisiting Ancient History

Who was it that said that anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice? Fr H revisits the bigotry attendant on the establishment of the Ordinariates.

From Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment

What follows was first published on 2 January 2011. At that time, we were just moving up to the establishment of the Ordinariates. My theme ... the bigoted intolerance of the British cultural Establishment towards Catholicism ... is as thoroughly topical today as ever it was. I reprint my earlier post, slightly abbreviated, because of its historical interest!

I listened to the "Sunday" programme at 7.10 a.m. on the Home Service to hear what it had to say about 'Ordinariate' news. It was presented by one Ed Stourton, who, I gather, is descended from an old recusant family but at some point decided that his own sexual mores needed to be more "nuanced" than those of Christ (he followed his nuances by abandoning his wedding vows and shacking up with a BBC cutie). He should have been caned more often at Ampleforth. This morning he used a word "cacaphony", which I can only imagine is a combination of the Latin cacare and the Greek phone and presumably means "the sound one makes while defecating". His programme exemplified his own neologism to perfection.

Among the gurus on his programme, he had one Paul Vallely, who 'advises' the RC bishops of England and Wales and, a few years ago, wrote some 'Report' or other for them. This Vallely writes also for the Indescribably Boring and for Jezebel's Trumpet. You see the sort of individual he is. Needless to say, he calls himself a "cradle Catholic". Asked about the Ordinariate, he referred to the three men and five women who were received into full communion last Saturday as "rather dodgy characters" and said he would "rather they stayed where they were".

This clear message was hammered home by a limerick composed, we were told, by an official, card-carrying, member of the Great and the Good: Terry Waite - a bloke who caused a lot of hassle decades ago by getting himself kidnapped by 'Islamic extremists'. Here is his deathless verse, read over the radio to the sound of approving murmurs from Stourton:

A cleric whose fondness for Rome
Made him leave both his Church and his home.
As he said his farewells
His church rang the bells
But the Romans let out a loud groan.

Somebody should explain to this opinionated bore that 'groan' rhymes neither with 'Rome' nor with 'home'. And someone should point out to this tedious semiliterate that his sentence which begins "A cleric" and then launches into a relative clause ("whose ... home") never gets to be completed but is replaced by the new sentence beginning "As he ...". The exquisite simplicity and stylishness of the limerick form is sabotaged if both rhyme and syntax are treated with such contemptuous disrespect. Waite, like a lot of silly people, seems to think that the limerick is just an adolescent opportunity for being offensive or obscene. It isn't.

Stourton's programme was full of the usual guff about Tolerance. Apparently, we are not allowed to kick anybody nowadays. Except ... of course ... Anglicans who want to accept Pope Benedict's invitation.

It's always Open Season for the sniggering classes to heap cheap and malevolent abuse upon them.