I am back already, which seems far too soon, and yet I had an immensely splendid time. It felt like more than just a week and I am sure that is due to the extraordinary generosity of my numerous hosts and friends in Scotland and England. I present to you two photographs I took during my recent trip: alas they are both in England, and indeed both in Kent, which is not terribly representative as I covered territory as far up as the choppy white waves of the North Sea and as far down as the White Cliffs of Dover. Above is an action shot of Dover Castle taken from the car, and below is the gatehouse to the cathedral close in Canterbury.

Why no Caledonian pix, you ask? I was simply too busy enjoying the place. Besides, it is a not-widely-known fact that photography does not actually function north of the Tweed. In a mandatory practice originating in a nineteenth-century labour dispute, all photographs smuggled out of Scotland are actually clever reproductions created by a secret guild of gremlins. This ensures both full employment amongst the gremlin population, and their complete separation from the ordinary human world (though a quick glance at the Scottish Labour party might cause one to doubt this is still enforced).

The spirit of Churchill lives on

(more…)

I’m off to the bonnie shores of Scotland and the crowded streets of London for a week. Keep things nice and tidy while I’m gone!

April 26, 2008 (Saturday)
The Birthday of Rome: 753 B.C. – 2003 A.D.
The Roman Forum Spring Ball

7:00pm – midnight
Catholic Center at New York University
238 Thompson Street
(between Washington Square South & West 3rd Street)
A, B, C, D, E, F, V trains to West 4th St.; R to 8th St.; 6 to Bleecker St.

7-Piece Rich Siegel Ballroom Orchestra
Grand Imperial Buffet and Dessert

Well Done Roma! Festivities and Spontaneous Outburst of Joy, 10:00 pm.

According to tradition, Romulus took up his trusty plow and marked out a sulcus around “Shepherds’ Hill” on the twelfth day before the Kalends of May, i.e., a.d. XII Kal. Mai-a date which, give or take eleven or twelve days, roughly corresponds to what we call April 21st. Conveniently, the date was also the festival of the shepherd goddess Pales (the Parilia), in whose honor the hill, chosen by Romulus, had been named the Palatine.

When the festival was adopted by city dwellers, the date was set to coincide with the date of the traditional founding of Rome. Each area of Rome set up festivities, much like a block party. Bonfires were set onto which offerings were thrown. The event concluded with a bountiful feast set up out of doors. Catholics can also commemorate the day due to Rome’s Christian meaning.

Two songs will be sung at the 10:00 P.M. festivities: The papal hymn, Roma Immortale, and Rome’s Birthday Song, the latter to the tune of Oklahoma, with lyrics by Judy Hallet.

For further information please contact the Roman Forum (dvhinstitute@aol.com or call 212-645-2971).

COST
$50 per person
(Children 16 and under, free)
Reserve by April 21

ATTIRE
Suit and tie or dinner jacket for the men

Checks payable to:
The Roman Forum
11 Carmine Street, 2C
New York, NY, 10014

May 3, 2008 (Saturday)
The Glass of Absinthe and the Rules of the Game
Part two of the Roman Forum’s Modern Image & Catholic Truth series

9:00am – 5:00pm
Catholic Center at New York University
238 Thompson Street
(between Washington Square South & West 3rd Street)
A, B, C, D, E, F, V trains to West 4th St.; R to 8th St.; 6 to Bleecker St.

Modern man has a positive image of himself that has been shaped and very effectively propagandized since the time of the Renaissance. The Roman Forum’s Modern Image and Catholic Truth series explores the gap between this image and the true predicament in which both the individual and contemporary society as a whole now find themselves imprisoned.

Part Two: The Glass of Absinthe and the Rules of the Game

This year’s series began in November with a conference called The Sleep of Reason, designed to underline the fact that modern naturalism ends with the destruction of the rational in man, achieved in a variety of different ways depending upon the particular approaches of the thinkers and activists concerned.

The Glass of Absinthe and The Rules of the Game were originally intended to be two separate conferences—the first focusing on the destructive aspects of the naturalist separation of the individual from society and his own past; the second on the intellectual, artistic, psychological and socio-political obstacles placed in the path of identification of the disease that afflicts us. These have now been combined into one session— the last Roman Forum event in the United States in the 2007-2008 academic year.

9:00 – 10:00 am
Registration and coffee hour

10:00 – 11:00 am
The Glass of Absinthe and the Rules of the Game
Dr. John C. Rao
St. John’s University, Director of Roman Forum

11:15 am – 12:15 pm
The Empire of Nothingness
Christopher A. Ferrara, Esq.
President, American Catholic Lawyers Association

12:15 – 1:45 pm
Luncheon

1:45 – 2:45 pm
Citycraft and Soulcraft
Dino Marcantonio, AIA
Architect and Lecturer at the Yale School of Architecture

3:00 – 4:00 pm
Reason Gone Mad
James Kalb, Esq.
International Catholic lecturer and writer; author of The Tyranny of Liberalism: Understanding and Overcoming Administered Freedom, Inquisitorial Tolerance, and Equality by Command (Fall, 2008, ISI Books).

4:00 – 5:00 pm
General Discussion

For further information please contact the Roman Forum (dvhinstitute@aol.com or call 212-645-2971).

COST
$35: Reserve by April 28, entrance & luncheon
$10: Pay at the door, entrance alone

Checks payable to:
The Roman Forum
11 Carmine Street, 2C
New York, NY, 10014

Northumbrian, Art Expert, Veteran of the Grenadier Guards is Seventy-Ninth Prince & Grand Master of the Order of Malta

FRA’ MATTHEW FESTING, the Grand Prior of England, was today elected Prince and Grand Master of the Order of Malta. The new grand master was chosen in a secret ballot by the Complete Council of State. After receiving the approval of the Pope, His Most Eminent Highness swore the Oath before the council and the Cardinal Patronus of the Order, Cardinal Pio Laghi. Fifty-eight years old, Fra’ Matthew was, up to this point, an art expert for the auction house Sotheby’s. The Prince is the son of Field Marshal Sir Francis Festing who, as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, was the effective head of the British Army. Sir Francis converted to Catholicism and married a member of the Riddells of Swinburne Castle, a prominent recusant family. Through his mother, Fra’ Matthew is descended from the Blessed Sir Adrian Fortescue, an English Knight of Malta who was martyred for the Faith in 1539. The grand master’s brother Andrew Festing, RP is a noted portraitist.

As a child, Fra’ Matthew lived in Egypt and Singapore where his father held army postings, and was educated at Ampleforth Abbey in Yorkshire and St. John’s College, Cambridge. Passing out from Sandhurst, he was commissioned an officer in the Grenadier Guards, Britain’s most senior infantry regiment. (The Coldstream Guards are actually older, but their seniority was reduced for backing Cromwell in the Civil War). Currently holding the rank of Colonel in the Territorial Army, Fra’ Matthew served the Queen as Deputy Lieutenant for Northumberland for many years, and was appointed OBE.

“The new Grand Master affirms his resolve to continue the great work carried out by his predecessor,” an official statement from the Order of Malta said, noting Fra’ Matthew’s “wide range of experience in Order affairs”. Having joined the Order of Malta in 1977, Fra’ Matthew took solemn vows in 1991 and was appointed Grand Prior of England in 1993, when the Grand Priory was resurrected after 450 years in abeyance. In that post he led humanitarian missions to Kosovo, central Serbia, and Croatia, and has attended the annual British pilgrimage to Lourdes with the handicapped and the disabled. “As well as his passion for the decorative arts,” the official announcement continued, “and for history, for which his encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of the Order is legendary, as is his very British sense of humour, Fra’ Matthew spends any free time possible in his beloved Northumberland countryside.”

This election is a most welcome one, and I would go so far as to say the councillors have chosen very wisely. It is an immense honour for we English-speaking Catholics that yet another Grand Master has been chosen from our ranks. But of course Fra’ Matthew was not chosen for being an Anglophone but rather for being Matthew Festing. Like Pope Benedict, he is a friend of the old rite of the Mass, and he was among the many prominent British Catholics (whose number included James MacMillan, Michael Ancram, Damian Thompson, Jamie Bogle, and others) who signed the ‘Appeal from the British Isles’ to Pope Benedict imploring a liberalization of the restrictions on the Tridentine rite (duly granted by the Holy Father in his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum of July 2007).

While certainly an ardent respecter of tradition, Fra’ Matthew is by no means a stuffy man but rather, as the Order’s official statement noted, is known for his sense of humour. On the only occasion on which I met Fra’ Matthew, I introduced him to Mrs. Burke (then Fraulein Hesser). Upon discovering that Abby hailed from the great state of California, Fra’ Matthew regaled us with his memories of driving from Denver all the way to the Pacific coast of California. Upon reaching the great ocean (the Grand Prior very enthusiastically informed us), he took off his shoes, rolled up his trousers and went straight in!

The Order of Malta has been remarkable in that it has had no qualms about modernization while at the same time unabashedly keeping to its ancient traditions. In this, it is a shining beacon in a world which too often and too easily disregards the time-tested ways of our ancestors. The very prompt election of Fra’ Matthew shows that the Order is of a firm mind and on a sound footing. We have no doubt that Fra’ Matthew will continue the great centuries-long tradition of the Order of Malta: to defend the Faith, to serve the Poor.

Category: Order of Malta

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