This was an amazing sermon.
I found it hard to believe that I was listening to a Catholic archbishop. It just goes to show how much Catholicism has changed across the centuries as it has accommodated itself to liberalism. Even the post-liberal Trad Catholics of First Things argue that Christianity is for cucks and that it requires “defeat in this life so we might enjoy triumph in the next.”
In this sermon, Wulfstan II, the Archbishop of York, condemns the English for their sins and blames their lack of moral discipline for God’s righteous anger which in his time (1010-1016) had brought about the overthrow of King Æthelred the Unready and the conquest of England by the Danish King Sweyn Forkbeard. It was the culmination of over two centuries of Viking raids on England which had started with the sack of the Lindisfarne monastery.
Fortunately for the English, all was not lost. The Viking Age was approaching its end. Sweyn’s father Harald Bluetooth had been the first Danish king to convert to Christianity. Sweyn Forkbeard was buried in a church in Denmark and his son Cnut the Great ruled the North Sea Empire of Denmark, Norway and England as a Christian king. The Christian faith of the English in Wulfstan’s time ultimately not only survived this trial by fire, but was strong enough to convert the Danes and the Norse who would soon participate in the Crusades.
Would that had ever happened if the Danes and Norse who conquered so much of Northern Europe had been exposed to modern Catholicism?
“Nothing has prospered now for a long time either at home or abroad, but there has been military devastation and hunger, burning and bloodshed in nearly every district time and again. …
Now very often a kinsman does not spare his kinsman any more than the foreigner, nor the father his children, nor sometimes the child his own father, nor one brother the other. Neither has any of us ordered his life just as he should, neither the ecclesiastic according to the rule nor the layman according to the law. But we have transformed desire into laws for us entirely too often, and have kept neither precepts nor laws of God or men just as we should. …
Alas, many a great kinsman can easily call to mind much in addition which one man could not hastily investigate, how wretchedly things have fared now all the time now widely throughout this nation. And indeed let each one examine himself well, and not delay this all too long. But lo, in the name of God, let us do as is needful for us, protect ourselves as earnestly as we may, lest we all perish together.
There was a historian in the time of the Britons, called Gildas, who wrote about their misdeeds, how with their sins they infuriated God so excessively that He finally allowed the English army to conquer their land, and to destroy the host of the Britons entirely. And that came about, just as he said, through breach of rule by the clergy and through breach of laws by laymen, through robbery by the strong and through coveting of ill-gotten gains, violations of law by the people and through unjust judgments, through the sloth of the bishops and folly, and through the wicked cowardice of messengers of God, who swallowed the truths entirely too often and they mumbled through their jaws where they should have cried out; also through foul pride of the people and through gluttony and manifold sins they destroyed their land and they themselves perished.
But let us do as is necessary for us, take warning from such; and it is true what I say, we know of worse deeds among the English than we have heard of anywhere among the Britons; and therefore there is a great need for us to take thought for ourselves, and to intercede eagerly with God himself. …”
If Gildas and Wulfstan are to be believed, the corruption of our religion and the decay of our morality are the cause of these scourges of God.
Read R.L. Dabney’s The Attractions of Popery in this vein, if you haven’t already.
I have been of a habit of referring to the Novos Ordo church as the “visible Catholic church” for some several years now; until just a few years ago. I had little to no idea that there was, and is, a “Trad-Cat” Church uninfluenced by and utterly hostile to the Novos Ordo heresies (I’m more Catholic than Francis, for goodness sakes,! And so, most probably, are you.) until it finally dawned on me back around, I don’t know, 2008-2009 or so. A remnant, as it were. Cristina will have a better take on this than me since she is in fact a practicing Trad-Cat and I am not. But look at what Dabney says about it in any case; you’ll benefit from the reading regardless.
I somehow doubt that First Things (whoever they are) are traditional Catholic. I attend a traditional latin mass. We cover our hair as females because we are submissive. Our mantillas are pretty.
The girls I know do not have the teenage attitude. I have been punished corpally before. I expect and demand that men act like men. I think God is punishing humans because of how rotten we are. Men are supposed to rule us but most men are worse than eunuchs.
I can assure you that real Catholics are not soft. When I was recently Confirmed it meant that I was required to die for the Faith. When I get married my husband better be manly or else.
If that Catholic Bishop thought things were rotten in the 11th century imagine what he would think of the modern world of today.
Cristina: I can’t get into it right now due to time constraints and my inability therefore to go about and find all the relevant links, but rest assured that your “backwards” Catholic upbringing is perfectly right in rejecting (and ignoring) of the modernist invention of the term “teenager,” and all that that term portends.
T. Morris,
Thank you.
Cristina,
“When I get married my husband better be manly or else.” What do you intend to do to ensure that any potential spouse meets your requirements? Do you have sets of mental, physical, moral/ethical/religious obstacle courses planned for a perspective fiancé? Though you’re more rational that the average female, you’re still capable of allowing emotions such as infatuation and lust get the better of you. Latinas are driven by passion.
Eric Striker posted an intensely disturbing photograph from the Spanish Civil War. In the photo was the decayed and/or decaying corpses of Catholic nuns and other clergymen that were dug up out of their graves by the communists and anarchists and put on displayed in front of churches throughout the cities and countryside. I must admit my ignorance of this grotesque and disgusting chapter of that war. Now I understand why the nationalists nailed the communists to walls.
November,
That was funny suggesting a series of tests for a potential husband. That would be like a fairy tale where a knight had to earn his Lady.
I think manly characteristics include courage. Without courage nothing else matters. Moral courage is evidently more rare than physical courage. A husband needs to be strong and in control but kind as well. Not cave man strong but a leader. Looks are less important but he should not look like Peter Lorre or J. Carrol Naish in 1939 movie Beau Geste. I have watched many US movies.
As for the Civil War? Yes, I get very passionate against the Republicans and the Communists and the countries who were on their side like ——–The Americans and the British. I have seen pictures like that before. There are also examples of Jews being raped by Jews during the war telling the nuns they were being raped because they were controlled by Catholics for centuries. Jews hate forever. If I was Queen Cristina it would be time for number 110.
Yes, I do gain solace at them being nailed. You have to fight to the hilt.
Correction. ….examples of nuns being raped by Jews during the war…
Christina,
110 should be the last time for eternity.
Our people should know how heinous jews, communists, and anarchists can truly get. We must not feel a smidgen of empathy towards them. They don’t deserve it.
“…which in his time (1010-1016) “.
Clearly, Brad, you are either willfully ignorant or just damned stupid! If we are talking about THIS PERIOD in English history, ALL OF ENGLAND was ORTHODOX. It was only AFTER the Schism (1054) and the Norman Papal Submission to Roman Theology (1066) did the ENTIRETY of ENGLISH SPIRITUALITY, change.
As a former Roman Catholic, someone who studied Orthodoxy for over ten years, has a Doctorate, and now is a priest in said tradition, I can tell you, the entire tenor of RELIGION changed from 1050-1100.
About as massive as the Vatican Ewww heresy, which went even FURTHER than this sea change, in its distancing of itself from True Christianity..
At the risk of getting spleen vented upon me, are you saying that England of that time wasn’t Catholic, but Eastern Orthodox? Or are you saying that the English church was small-o orthodox, and not completely controlled by the Roman church?
Why do you say he is “willfully ignorant or just damn stupid”? What long term purpose does that serve? Are you trying to alienate him from the faith? I mean, I really just don’t get it (your approach).
The clarity of thought is staggering
Captain John,
Our minds and bodies become stronger and more fine tuned when we are under harsh Darwinian pressure. Think of it as Nietzsche’s famous quote of “Whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”
I suppose it’s refreshing to hear something from a Christian that is not abject cuckery, but otherwise I don’t see what’s so “amazing” about the primitive moral reasoning on display here – “bad things happening to us means ‘God’ is punishing us for our sins.” (Sadly, this rubbish still appeals to the religious brain to this day.)
Blaming military defeat on moral failing is like saying you don’t have to aim because allah will guide the bullets..