Will Africa Save UK Catholicism?

Impressive experience yesterday, at a Novus Ordo church I will not mention.

The start was very bad, as for the first time since attending in England I had to endure a guitar, which made the usually atrocious hymns even more atrocious.

I prepare myself for a horrible experience when the priest appears. Like more and more priests in these part, the man is African, though his strong accent does not make the understanding difficult. Father is young, big and tall, and his assertive, masculine tone immediately makes clear this is not your Father Pansy.

Where things really become surprising was by the homily. Never, outside of the Brompton Oratory, had I heard the like. Taking inspiration from the the gospel reading, Father invites with thundering voice to defy, and in case quarrel, even with our closest family members in defending Christianity's values.

He spoke with a very loud, thundering voice, and if he ever was a timid child, this was a long time ago. He spoke, if you allow me the arrogance, like one who reads this blog every day, albeit it would be more appropriate to say “like one who cares for Catholicism”. It was clear, though unsaid, that the impact with the British society must have been rather traumatic.

It was like a black Don Camillo thundering from the pulpit, and I kept wondering how this could be reconciled with the guitar, and the atrocious hymns. Perhaps he is new and must wait some time before he strikes, I thought; or perhaps he, being African, doesn't really understand our beautiful musical tradition and follows the “colourful” musical arrangements of that Continent. At the time of distributing communion a third hypothesis could be made, as a far older white priest came out to help with the distribution (in cassock! The man was wearing a cassock!) and I thought the older priest might be in charge, and be the more accommodating type.

I had been in that church before, and the two priests I temember were different ones: the one was rather good but still too V II, and the other very probably a homo. The new team was certainly different, but again it was the Black Don Camillo who was highly impressive.

“These are the people who inspire vocations”, I could not help thinking. His passion, energy and candor, but also the assured manliness of his behaviour, must send to every boy the message that priesthood is fitting for real men, and if you aren't one you have no business in even thinking of becoming a priest. Noticeably, there were no altar girls, either.

If it had not been for the damn guitar and the blasted hymns, I would have thought shameless Catholic reaction is here openly at work. Perhaps, though, the matter is much simpler: there is great need for priests, and these priests come largely from Africa; and boy, they do Catholicism.

My impression is that a young priest who has risked the stick in his own country is not really afraid of the bishop, or of the old petty women in the parish council, when he moves to England. His vocation has been already tested far more than most of our bishops will ever dream of. To him, “sensitivity” squabbles must seem as stupid as… they actually are.

This is not the first time I notice when the NO parish priest is a young African the chances he's good are very high, and when he is a sixty-something English smiling champion they are very low. Give this country another fifteen or twenty years, and priests like this Black Don Camillo will become very common. I'd love to see what the bishop can do, then, to keep them silent, and that might also be the time when vocations start to increase in earnest.

Salvation for this country, now tragically sinking in an ocean of stupidity, political correctness and compulsive niceness, may well come from Africa.

In time, they'll get it right with the music, too.

Mundabor

 

 

At The Stop Light

 

And it came to pass that yours truly was at a pedestrian crossing, waiting for the green light.

Two women stood near me. One with the habit of a nun, and a big wooden cross leaving no doubt – even in this country of many faiths and none – about her allegiance. The other of about the same age (Seventy, perhaps), and sporting the now rather usual “slob look”: trainers' trousers, t-shirt, and trainer shoes.

Being Italian, I am aesthetically minded, and could therefore not avoid noticing how the long habit of the nun gave her a so much better appearance than her friend's, whose several rolls of fat bobbed in slowly oscillating waves under the t-shirt at her every step as her rather massive backside transferred his considerable weight on either leg, and whose general appearance and demeanour was clearly, as already stated, the one of a slob.

“Look”, I thought, “how the traditional way of dressing gives the nun a graceful and gentle appearance her friend probably does not even see, or for which she does not care”. It was very clear, as I looked at them walking before me, that had the nun been dressed in the same way as her walking companion she would have had pretty much the same rolls of fat, and the same backside movements, on show, albeit probably slightly reduced. The wisdom of past times has seen to that, and has provided for a clothing style allowing an aged woman to appear graceful, and a rather gentle sight, even when time had worked on her female form.

Only later – I am rather slow at times – the thought occurred to me that the woman showing her bobbing rolls of fat and painfully oscillating buttocks for all London to see might, in fact, have been… a nun too. A nun without cross, without witness of her Christian faith – if any left -, and pretty much without a sense of propriety, visiting a friend of another (and more serious) order on a Sunday.

I will never know, of course, then even if the thought had occurred to me in time I am not yet so angered at the decay of Christianity that I would openly challenge an old woman on the street and ask her whether what she is carrying around in that fashion is the body of a nun, and whether she think this is the appropriate way of giving witness of the fact.

Still, allow me to express some sympathy for the old woman wearing her nun's habit and her big wooden cross; and going, I am confident, just as gracefully through life as she walked on the street of post-Christian London, on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

Mundabor

 

“Magisterium of Nuns” Explained

Mundabor's Blog

This was posted on my facebook page, and many thanks…. it really says it all…

Mundabor

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