The Daily Telegraph reports the highest number of Britons leaving the UK for a century.
We’re among the number. What did we have in the UK?
I could write reams about our horror stories of local petty crime, drunkenness in the streets, appalling behavior in schools, sky rocketing prices for all things, astronomical taxes, total moral anarchy and widespread vandalism, boorishness, decadence and decay.
And what of the Church? Don’t get me started on the idiocy of the Catholic hierarchy, stupidity and lack of initiative amongst fellow Catholics, corruption, ignorance and complacency amongst ordinary Catholics. There were a few hot spots in the English Catholic Church–but the emphasis is on the ‘few’, and the ones that were alive were consistently ignored, marginalized and excluded by the Catholic powers that be.
Combine that with the class system–boorish snobs on the top and boorish yobs on the bottom–and it doesn’t make a pretty picture.
Underneath it all is the nihilism, despair and pessimism that comes with practical atheism.
There is much that I love in Britain, and I have chronicled it elsewhere. There is much I dislike about USA, but on the whole, I’m glad I lived for 25 years in England. It is a wonderful country, but I’m even more glad to be out.
Fr. Dwight –I find this short essay so interesting. I think I am about your age (I am 44) and I grew up reading English novels. “The Little Princess” and “Ballet Shoes,” “The Hobbit” and “The Wouldbegoods,” “The Wind in the Willows” and the Narnia books… eventually graduating to Dickens, Jane Austen, “The Lord of the Rings,” and so many others. As a teen I loved (yes, I confess it) Barbara Cartland and of course Dame Agatha. Most recently and wonderfully GKC.Contemporary English authors, though, are a shock. Iris Murdoch (I guess she’s not contemporary anymore)? A.S. Byatt? P.D. James? They are from another planet. Excellent writers, yes, but — !!! Where did these despairing, nihilist, people COME from? What happened to England?
I left in 1980 and its been going down ever since,I am under no illusions of grandure though as I think it had little to do with my absence!! I do miss how it was when I lived there, but not what it is when I go back for a visit. Thank goodness for globalization as I can now get Marmite , Jaffa cakes and Guinness here in Canada.
Out of the ashes comes new life. No can live in darkness for long.
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If you want to avoid a vision of Britain full of nihilism despair and pessimism I’d advise you to stop reading the national press with its frequent bias and sensationalism and instead look at the local papers which have more room for balance and report the good stories from the community as well as the bad.
My oldest is off to America on Sat to try and get into Uni there. I pray he gets a place and he stays there! I love him and would miss him hugely but this country is a shambles. I wish we could all escape. However bad it is your side of the pond it is nothing like here.
Well, now our good ole government have approved cloning human/animal embryos, there’s another good reason to leave – how much longer can God’s hand be stayed?
That`s an accurate picture alright. Even more reasons now for people in the UK to put their trust in God. St Paul, whom the Pope has chosen to dedicate the next year to, starting next month, on his feast day, said that where there is sin, grace abounds and that where there is super-sin, su-er grace abounds.Well, now would be a good time for that out-pouring of grace. And, despite the gloomy picture, we are called to have hope that God has not forsaken us and that He will triumph. Even in the UK. (Maggie is right-the country that offered abortion on demand to the world has now gone and voted for the right to create diabolic animal and human embryos. Makes you wonder how much longer God can sit and watch.)
Fr L,Are you hearing a calling to return to the UK to witness to these drunk nihilists and muslim imports? Or is your calling to reach out to southern evangelicals. Which population needs you more?
I wonder when my college students will be disabused of the notion that Europe is more advanced than we are, more sophisticated, and worthy of emulating. France isn’t in any better shape, from what I’ve heard.
Marcus, for ten years after my conversion to the Catholic Church I remained in England and offered myself for ordination as a Catholic priest. For ten years that offer was rejected by various Catholic bishops, either through incompetence, complacency, poor manners or that they were driven by a liberal ideology which considered former Anglicans to be ‘dangerous conservatives.’You’ll forgive me if I shake the dust off my feet as I go.
It was a great loss to the UK, Fr Dwight. It should never happened and they should have bitten off your hand. They were wrong.But you could see it like this: you are still ministering to the UK, via the wonders of technology. When you share some of your homilies or little stories from school, it still feeds the sheep. Probably more than you can realize.We know you have a heart for the UK and that you intercede for us all the time, and we are grateful for that. Just don`t stop blogging.
At St Mary’s we have an image of OL Walsingham in the side chapel. I rarely say Mass there without stopping to say a decade interceding for Albion.
Thankyou.
We Anglican converts are in fact very scary to cradle Romans. Too conservative for the liberals and too liberal for the conservatives. Often not Marian enough, or not into mandatory celibacy with enough gusto. It is a strange thing to be a Roman of anglo heritage.I am quite certain that South Carolina and Greenville need you. But one still wonders if Albion is calling you back, someday.They were pissy with Churchill until they really needed him. Heck they weren’t exactly chummy with us unwashed colonials until they really needed us either.
Quite. The Arch conservatives didn’t like me because I was proposing to be a married priest. The liberals–who wanted married priests–didn’t want my kind of married priest.There is also another agenda going on within the English liberal Catholic Church. They don’t actually want more priests at all. I don’t know how many times I heard them explain that what the church really needs is fewer priests.That way parishes could be run by laypeople. That was code for, “We want the parishes to be run by women, and because Rome won’t allow us to have women priests we won’t have any priests, and that will force them to put laywomen in charge of parishes.”Madness.
I see… I never saw a priest blockade as a tacitic in the dissenter arsenal before. Anglo Roman Catholics are like the Ron Paul misfits of Christendom, aren’t they?
Yep. We had a homily on Sunday about “The Priesthood of the Laity” and how we need to discover it. Also, how the Holy Spirit is not a person, but a “projection” of Jesus in certain situations. Even my children knew it was not true. At Holy Communion, the priest asked me to take the chalice with “the wine” and distribute it. I refused, standing first in the queue. I am not and never will be a minister of The Eucharist. That role is the priest’s. (there were 5 of us at Mass. Did we really need an extra person to give the Precious Blood ?) OH yes. It`s meltdown, alright. Wilful meltdown and a betraying of the fort so that it`s finally finished off. We ended Mass with some “Good News” as well: Stanbrook Abbey is about to close the deal any day to be sold to a multi-faith arts community who, hurrah, will keep the chapel area as a performance space and not demolish it. Well thanks be to God. Isn`t that great news. God Bless Gaia. There’ll be an auction as well very soon of all the “religous artefacts” from that great historical era when the faith was once practised in England. One of our fine Benedictine Abbeys sold down the river, a bit like the faith. The drive home from “Mass” (at least I think that’s what it was) was surreal.NO, you`re better off out of it, Fr Dwight. But do keep praying to our Lady of Walsingham. I wouldn`t be surprised if sends Jesus back to the UK first when he returns. In fact, could you pray that she sends Him to my neck of the woods first. ta. I`ve got a SatNav if he needs directions.
Oh, Bernadette, your post is heartbreaking. I know only a little firsthand of England’s sorrows. I have four friends there, and two are emigrating to NZ soon; I’m due to visit the remaining two sometime this year, and I dread it, frankly. One young man a few years ago told me that his whole family was emigrating. They’d been in that village for 800years, but they were leaving. I said to one of my friends who’s going to NZ that I couldn’t imagine leaving my country permanently that way; she replied that she had not felt that love of country since she was a small child, and she regarded my sentiment as “childish.” The English now feel no love for England, but I can’t help feeling that it really began 500 years ago, when they put country before God. Anything–no matter what it is–that is put before God will fail. And, if that choice remains unchanged, unrepented, it will not only fail, it will die. It does seem that England is in a death agony. But–as one comment said–where sin is, there grace abounds. Those courageious Anglican converts who have come home to the Church are small lights in a country full of darkness. God bless them all.
Things are not so rosy on this side of the pond either (I’m in Massachusetts). I hardly think the Church in England is in any worse state than it is in the States. The same goes for society. At some point we Catholics in the West need to realize that Christendom is gone. We need to stop lamenting that loss and get busy rebuilding like our Fathers did long ago.
Fr L,James Card has a point. Your sour grapes regarding England may have an awful lot to do with population density and urbanization. I realize that Greenville is no backwater with the BMW plant and the rest of the manufacturing base that has moved in in recent decades. Be that as it may, the long history of ardent protestantism has left its mark on western south carolina, and much of that has been for the better.
Take it from me: England is tough. Please say the Prayer for England for us:O Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and our most gentle Queen and Mother, look down in mercy upon England thy Dowry, and upon us all who greatly hope and trust in thee. By thee it was that Jesus, our Saviour and our hope, was given unto the world; and he has given thee to us that we might hope still more. Plead for us thy children, whom thou didst receive and accept at the foot of the Cross, O sorrowful Mother. Intercede for our separated brethren, that with us in the one true fold they may be united to the Chief Shepherd, the Vicar of thy Son. Pray for us all, dear Mother, that by faith fruitful in good works we may all deserve to see and praise God, together with thee in our heavenly home. Amen.
You saw this right?http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/ukcorrespondents/holysmoke/may2008/anglicanshesitateonpathtorome.htm
Jane Austen’s novels reveal a lot–about the popular contempt for C of E priests who were just the younger sons of prominent families who lost out on the primogeniture game and were arranged a church post to provide for them. They didn’t have any apparent faith whatsoever but were more concerned with social position and respectability. So quickly after Henry’s and Elizabeth’s protestantization of England and the mass seizure of church lands as wealth for king and nobility, and cathedrals seized for the new government church, only a couple centuries later you end up with this brittle hollow “church” as shown in Austen’s novels. This cynicism has been growing for a long time!Inevitable result of government churches.