24 December 2012

All ye faithful

David Lindsay writes:
This Latin original of Oh Come, All Ye Faithful was written to celebrate the birth of the future Bonnie Prince Charlie, and contains many coded addresses to the Jacobite “faithful” in England (“Bethlehem”, with Pope Saint Gregory the Great’s Angles/Angels pun repeated and so forth), so that its singing neatly balances that at Easter of Thine Be The Glory, the tune to which is See The Conquering Hero Comes, from Judas Maccabaeus, Handel’s oratorio in celebration of the Hanoverian victory at Culloden.

Who are the fideles today?

They are all those who identify with the tradition of those Catholics, High Churchmen (subsequently including first Methodists and then also Anglo-Catholics), Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers and others who, never having been convinced of the full legitimacy of Hanoverian Britain, of her Empire, and that of Empire’s capitalist ideology, created the American Republic, fought against slavery both there and in the British Empire, transformed the United Kingdom into a parliamentary democracy, founded the Labour Movement, and opposed the Boer and First World Wars.

And they are those who identify with largely subterranean ties binding these Islands, and thus also the Commonwealth to which all of these Islands properly belong, through the vast Jacobite diaspora, to the all those touched by the financial centres of the Continent, by the trading ports circling Europe, by the Russian Navy, by the Swedish East India and Madagascar Companies, and by so many other things besides.

Adeste, indeed.
To which it seems fitting to add only:


A blessed Christmas to all, and in the name of the child who is to come again, keep fighting the good fight!

3 comments:

  1. Hello.

    Hopefully not to flatter you or something, but if there's any contribution you might have given to Tory thought, it's connecting Western toryism(particularly classic Anglo-American Toryism)to Eastern (particularly classic Chinese) thought. Do you know of other Tory thinkers who did the same thing?

    Also, about the use of the Second Amendment as an excuse for gun ownership rights, would the problem be solved if the standing army is abolished in favor of a national militia?

    Idrian

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  2. Hi Idrian!

    Not sure about that, actually. There've been more than just a few 'near hits', I think. Korean economist Thomas Hong-Soon Han has identified some of the commonalities between Confucianism and Catholic social teaching, and has also spoken critically of the neoliberal capitalist paradigm vis a vis the Gospel. Unfortunately, the poor fellow got involved with the Acton Institute...

    Also, Kang Xiaoguang has been approaching the insights of Anglo-American Toryism (or something approximating it) from the other direction, that of New Confucianism, following in the footsteps of Kang Youwei.

    As to the question of the Second Amendment, I fear that we may be fighting a cultural Hydra there which has far too many heads for merely one point of public policy to solve. Daniel Nichols at Caelum et Terra did a piece on the myth of redemptive violence and the Lone Man With a Gun which was fairly enlightening, though quite pessimistic. Deprofessionalising the military might help to ameliorate a whole host of other problems, though - first among which being the tragic proclivity of our nation's leaders, in both parties, to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

    All the best,
    Matt

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  3. Matt:

    Thanks for the reply. Will look up the Caelum et Terra article as soon as possible.

    Merry Christmas.

    Idrian

    ReplyDelete