Good Friday in Fatima.

Leiria

Fiona and I took a bus to Leiria on a chilly and blustery Good Friday morning; after coffee there we came to the cathedral just as they were beginning to sing Lauds, and after that little treat it was time for the bus on to Fatima. The day continued to fall into shape very well, with the commemoration of Christ’s death on the cross in the new basilica there in the afternoon

The Basílica da Santíssima Trindade was dedicated in 2007, and built since our previous visit to Fatima on the occasion of Pope St John-Paul II’s going there in May 2000; it was near the end of our first wintering in Portugal in the Anna M. A bit of internet browsing shows that to traditionalist Catholics it is a monstrosity, symbolising all that has gone wrong with the Church since Vatican II. I have to admit that I was taken aback by it myself, since it does have something of the atmosphere of a glorified aircraft hanger. It was not helped in that our first port of call was the Blessed Sacrament chapel, which is austere and functional like everything else there, with an odd altar that was hard to take to. Neither did we like the huge crucifix that confronts one above the altar in the Basilica; however, when we attended the Good Friday liturgy along with some few thousand other pilgrims, the church came alive as a good liturgical space.

It has 8633 seats according to Wikipedia, and they are comfortable ones where everyone should be able to see what’s going on. Maybe our traditionalists would rather one was in discomfort, but considering this service went on for 2 hours and 20 minutes, I was grateful for the bit of comfort. Perhaps they would have been impressed to witness about 6000 people going up to venerate the Crucified One,  in four orderly files and reverent silence, apart from the excellent singing. I was anyway!

Perhaps they would rather old style choir singing, but I love the way the Portuguese are inclined to sing in church - actually sing the liturgical prayers rather than somewhat jazzy hymns, with the choir leading and the people joining in. There was a priest/cantor helping them to do so, and they seemed to mostly know what to sing without the need for books. The whole proceedings have a humane and relaxed dignity, that is indeed somewhat lacking in reverence on occasion, but I fear that’s a price that has to be paid if one seeks authentic participation in a world that hardly knows what reverence is! But what on earth do the traditionalists imagine it would have been like in a medieval cathedral?

When I was a young lad, I well remember how there was a deal more reverence about, but we have since had to recognise there was a lot of rot lurking behind it. It makes me think of the Anna M as we sailed into Nazaré last June. She was sailing and indeed looking fine, but when we stripped out the furniture we found the bad stuff. The trouble is, you don’t see it from the outside,- but it’s those rotten and fractured ribs that have to hold the planks together on the inside, have to give them their shape and strength.

So much is like that these days, in the Church and in society too. It’s bound to take a lot of disruption to sort it all out, and we just have to be patient. ‘Behold the wood of the Cross, on which hung the salvation of the World.’ Instead

of giving off about the failings, along with all our miseries and weariness, it is better to leave them to the One who offered Himself to bear them, so that our sins may be forgiven and ‘all things made new’ - not of course that this absolves us from attending to that rot!

If there is indeed a 'message' that Our Lady of Fatima sends out to the world, surely it is one of encouragement along such lines, but yes, it is also something of a rebuke to our heady, superficial and irreverent culture; if only we could perceive those inner things, in the spirit of those shepherd children, Jacinta, Francisco and Lucia!

Happy Easter to you all!

photos by Fiona.

Whatever About an Old Boat, How to Fix Democracy?

The work on the Anna M  goes on slowly, for a variety of reasons, leaving me plenty

Menu do dia, 8eur.

of time to reflect on the difficulties of bringing the simplest of projects to completion, and the best way to structure the processes involved. It also leaves me time to read the news; leaving all the tragedies to God, because not to do so would make life insupportable, I generally focus on the issues in which I feel able to exercise some degree of agency, however small; and of course, this business of Facebook and the internet is right there whenever we try to do anything these days.

It rather seems to me that that outfit is confronting us with the nature of contemporary society and modern democracy in ways that make it a lot easier to blame the techies than to confront the real issues. After all, for all the shock and horror, it seems that they were mainly doing, at a new level of sophistication, what democrats are generally supposed to do: find out what ‘the people’ want and give it to them, or to put it more accurately, what buttons to press in order to get what one wants and press them!

Of course, as the process becomes more sophisticated, it also becomes more expensive. ‘One’ has to have deep pockets, but it doesn’t take such a big shift to get a result, and hey presto, ‘the people have spoken’. Thus democracy degenerates into plutocracy, or worse. But on what basis do we suppose that politicians seek power and influence? It happened that the Duckie got to use the newest techniques just in time to help him make the right quacks or tweets or whatever they were about ‘crooked Hillary’. Would the liberal establishment be equally outraged if it were the other way round?

So what can we do about it? Change is not going to happen by way of deleting Facebook, though that might be a little step in the right direction; neither by revolution or sweeping dramatic reform; there is no easy fix and no great leader will get us there; what is required is change in attitudes. For a start, we have to realise that what we ‘like’, certainly at the superficial level touted by Facebook, is not the point; the most important truths are just as likely to be disliked. On the whole, responsibility and having to pay for one’s needs are not that pleasant; but any real democracy begins and ends with the willingness to take responsibility and to meet those costs.

Only love can enable us to do this, and that is an interpersonal affair. It is the very absence of a real human context to their lives that makes people so vulnerable to the pseudo context offered by mass media and mass politics. If we want democracy to survive in any meaningful way, we have to take as much responsibility as we can at an immediate, human level. Let those who prove themselves in little ways go on to represent us at ‘higher’ levels. Once they do so, make sure they stay in touch with their base, but let them make the decisions appropriate to their responsibility.

Democracy does not thrive by way of the tyranny of a majority, nor that of you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. Let everyone's real voice, the fruit of their experience but not their vanity, be heard, and let decisions be reached by consensus. If one must make decisions by vote, insist on a two-third majority. It’s better again to choose who is going to take decisions and let them do it, like the skipper of a fishing boat!

Forget about left/right, and referenda especially where a simple majority ends up as ‘the Will of the People’. If everyone involved were to genuinely pray, to plug into the Divine energy, decisions would take themselves, as in a good marriage. Real polarity, with the energy flowing between the poles, is about the inverse of a binary ‘either/or’ where the flow between them is blocked. I do believe that if a critical mass of people refuse to settle for comfortable blocking mechanisms, forgetting about what they like and dislike but finding ways for their energy to flow even in the most unpromising little channels, the world will change amazingly.

Photos by Fiona.

St Patrick's Day: Time to Call Out Snakes.

From our window.

It's always a tough time of year, but St Patrick bids us celebrate the coming Spring in the midst of the hardships that are its essential precondition. In Portugal the heavy rains are not enjoyed, even as they fill the empty reservoirs. In such a way does truth come into the world, an unwelcome guest. But how the world needs it! Somehow we seem to be afflicted with leaders who have a particularly strong aversion to it at the moment. Not to be outdone by Moscow and Washington, in Ireland we have our own version!

“Pope Francis has said that the issue of women’s ordination isn’t up for discussion, that women are permanently excluded from priesthood…. I believe that women should be ordained, I believe the theology on which that is based is pure codology. I’m not even going to be bothered arguing it. Sooner or later it’ll fall apart,  fall asunder under its own dead weight.”  -Ms Mary McAleese, as reported in thejournal.ie here.

Such is the pitch of the lady who is looking for ‘radical, innovative, strategic ideas’ for the inclusion of women in the life of the Church. As she slides along on the slime of such buzzwords, I would rather she scrawled up No Popery! But why  doesn’t she just show us how it’s done in one of the Protestant churches? Asked why she stays in the Catholic Church, she replies: “I stay because I choose to stay part of an institution that has no equal on the planet in terms of its outreach. No NGO does what the Church does. They inspire me.”

That’s about as bizarre a statement of faith as they come; it also seems about as two-faced as Mr Nigel Farage drawing his salary from the European Parliament. The Vatican was quite right to exclude her from the ‘Why Women Matter’ Conference in Rome, when that is her attitude. But if she did bother to make an argument, she would find that even many protestants would not agree with her. Has she read the essay on the subject of women priests by her countryman, C.S.Lewis, for instance?

I am not denying that there is a lot of work to be done in the matter of the role of women. I just don’t think Ms McAleese has got it right. Meanwhile, there have always been many smart people saying of the Catholic Church words like:- ‘Sooner or later it’ll fall apart, fall asunder under its own dead weight.’ When she uses that trendy little word ‘codology’ to describe the Pope’s teaching, does it not give her any pause for thought that the Gospel has been referred to as ‘pure folly’ ever since St Paul’s day? And meanwhile, that this same Folly has done far, far more for the dignity of women than the feminists will ever do? Has the world ever heard a more truly radical statement than Our Lady’s great hymn, the Magnificat?

In fact, the ‘codology’ on which the male priesthood is based is too big a subject for me here; but  I will attempt to give a personal account of my own reasoning. Attending Mass here in Portugal always renews my conviction that the preponderantly female congregations would not like to have priestesses presiding at all, and as for myself, I would not participate if there were.  

It was D.H.Lawrence who said that the Pope knows more about sex than an army of sex therapists. What might he have been getting at? In the most delicate and dignified way possible, Catholic liturgy as well as theology is laced with sexual imagery. Lawrence probably would have argued that it was the sex that was at the root of it all. However this matter of polarity in dynamic power  is reflected all through reality, in electricity for instance. It is built into the very structure of life, which in the end constitutes one big harmony; both the ding and the dong are absolutely necessary to this, and the one cannot do without the other. Struggling with the limitations of language, we may call, in electricity for instance, one pole ‘positive’ and the other ‘negative’. Is the former better than the latter? If one isolates one pole or the other, the whole thing shuts down.

In this respect, I would agree with Ms McAleese. The problem is that in her ‘advanced nations’, in the LaLa Land of modernity, differences have to be suppressed in the interests of ‘equality’, even between ‘positive and negative’ in more usual meanings of the word. None of your subjecting poor little snowflakes to the fact that their work may be plain bad, or even that if they turn to the right, then they cannot turn left! But poles are essential, two parts of any single transaction, and they cannot exist except in tandem. Such is the admittedly ultimately mysterious structure of reality. Concept begets conception.

In the basic transaction of the sexes, men give and women receive. Even thus, the Word of God came as a divine seed from without our world. Fundamental to our Faith, and in opposition to much contemporary

Photo by Ger K.

culture, the assertion stands that we do not find the means of salvation within ourselves or within Nature and that the focus of our lives needs to be beyond their daily round, if that same daily round is to discover its meaning. It is in their very immersion in ‘drudgery’ that so many women realise such truth, and thus on the whole tend to be better and more spiritual human beings than men. It is the humble among us who are closest to God’s heart, and the Pope’s too! But if you find sufficient meaning in Nature alone, well then priestesses are for you.

In contrast to the Latins, the English set out to enormously reduce if not eliminate the role of gender in their language. It is surely not a coincidence that now Anglophone culture is obsessed with ‘equality’ between the sexes, by which it tends to mean ironing out the differences between them as much as possible. A true feminism would rather, to my mind, celebrate them. A glance at contemporary culture hardly gives one confidence that it is producing much in the line of happiness or fulfillment; ‘barren’ seems a pretty good word to describe it in these times. Rather, how sweet it is to light up our lives with the ding, dong of sexual feelings! To do so, however, they need to be properly wired, as in marriage between a man and a woman. Again, by no mere coincidence, Ms McAleese does not agree. The Catholic Church and Faith however is clear, simple and coherent; she hopes and intends to take the words of the Prophet Isaiah to herself-

‘as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,

So shall your God rejoice over you.’

The Sea, He/She/It?

How did it happen that somewhere along the line the French opted for ‘la mer’, feminine, while the Spaniards and Portuguese for ‘el mar’ or ‘o mar’, masculine? Very likely it simply sounded better like that, once they had settled on ‘mer’ and ‘mar’. But could it have anything to do with their respective attitudes to the sea, and does the fact of ascribing a gender to things impact on one's relationship with them, one's culture and way of life?

I think it is fair to say that the French are more inclined to ‘love’ the sea than the Iberian nations; anyway the latter mainly leave yachting to the rich people frolicking round marinas, while their serious sailors generally only go to sea for serious reasons like catching fish. On the other hand frugal long-term French yachtsmen are to be met with anywhere, while France is the only place in Europe where sailing is really a national sport. Whether all that has anything to do with the matter of the sea's gender is anyone’s guess, but at least ascribing gender to things implies dynamic relationship. Even the English ascribe gender to ships and boats!

It’s really hard to be indifferent to the sea. She/He/It invariably calls for some kind of response. If one thinks of it as ‘It’, is one not more inclined to discount one’s personal relationship with it, to treat it merely as a challenge or a thing to be dominated? But people who live close to it know that it has its own moods, personality and intrinsic discipline, which have to be respected, as of course does life itself. Any civilisation must have a system of red lines that express such discipline. That marriage is the union of a man and a woman for life, and that human life is sacred from conception until natural death, would be such red lines to my mind. If society abandons them, it signs its own death warrant; it becomes a mob that destroys itself. Suddenly one finds everything from great political projects to the local supermarket being torn down!

It becomes more and more difficult for conscientious people to invest their loyalty in such a society. Well, you may mess with laws, but you won’t get away with messing with the sea for long; hence the attraction of it to the disenchanted; and when the likes of me find ourselves thus alienated, we must see if we can shore up our bases. So it is that I increasingly invest my imaginative loyalty in the communities along the western seaboard of Europe, the Gannetsway. The sea provides a start for a new civilisation, a renewed Catholic faith may provide the foundations. Meanwhile what I would love to see growing up, before I set sail on that definitive voyage into eternity, is a network of associated communities, as self-sufficient as possible, from Scotland to the south of Spain. They will only do so if they put prayer at the centre of their communal life. Sunday Mass here in the Sanctuario is a great start!

Ger surreptitiously witnesses some ladies in the Nazaré Spar.

'Winning' wars.

Portugal is getting the rain it needs so badly, so the blue sky is gone and there have been heavy downpours and blasts of wind. Still it’s not so bad, giving everyone a chance to slow down and catch up with themselves. I took a spin down to the Algarve to see if I could track down copper nails there, and catch up with Ger Kavanagh, who took this week’s photos. His flight home was cancelled and he came up to Nazaré with me instead. I nearly lost my cap in Faro, and soon after we left, I see there was a mini tornado there that did a lot of damage round the dock. Sailors have to be very grateful if their boat is in a safe place this weather, and they can relax.

Still to do so is difficult, if for example one stops to read about explosives being rained down on Syrian civilians, and even hospitals targeted. One is grateful when one gets to sea, and all such stuff is driven from the mind by one’s immediate concerns. However the least we owe those unfortunate people is to be aware of them, not shutting them out of our minds. That such things go on happening on Europe’s doorstep brings shame on all of us. There may seem to be little we can do about it, but a start would be to get behind those politicians that look as if they might try to do something effective. That means, for a start, behind committed Europeans, for obviously, if anything effective is to be done, it will have to be on a European basis.

If Britain, instead of wasting all that energy on Brexit fantasies, were to be concentrating on working with France and Germany and the rest, something sensible could surely be done. For a start, it should be possible to put manners on that dodgy Russian bear, in nonviolent ways such as setting seriously to work to find

In Leroy Merlin, Loulé.

alternatives to Russian gas, which would be good also on the climate front. It's looking as if the Russians will be lucky if they don't end up with an Assad of their very own! Now that remark will wake up the bots in St Petersburg; it’s amazing how many hits suddenly come from there when I hit their spot!

Which goes to highlight, in cyber warfare, another way in which the Russians have to be stood up to, besides their military bullying, and of course the same thing goes for the Duckie with his ‘easily won trade war’ and ‘bigger nuclear button’; both of them delighted to have the EU in disarray, which is proof itself of its value. In spite of everything, the world still looks to Europe for leadership, mainly because they know, as every sailor knows, that to get a good position fix, you have to triangulate; the more bearings the better, and that is just what the unwieldy combination of different nations provides, especially considering that they were slaughtering each other not so long ago, and just might still remember how foolish it is to even think about winning wars of any kind!

Portuguese lesson with my landlord, Luis.