Fr. Rutler preaches, illuminated by the midday winter sun, at the Church of Our Saviour on the Feast of St. Sylvester. And a fine sermon it was, too.

Available here at YouTube.

The Original Church of England Overtakes the New One?

Catholics have overtaken Anglicans as the country’s dominant religious group, according to the Sunday Telegraph, as more people attend Mass every Sunday than worship with the (Anglican) Church of England. “This means that the established Church has lost its place as the nation’s most popular Christian denomination,” Jonathan Wynne-Jones reports, “after more than four centuries of unrivalled influence following the Reformation”. Sunday attendance at Anglican services has dropped a whopping 20% since the year 2000. Catholic Mass attendance in the past six years, however, has also dropped a dramatic 13%, a decline assuaged by the arrival of thousands of Polish immigrants since Poland joined the European Union.

(more…)

Obaysch was the first hippopotamus in Britain since prehistoric times. The Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt agreed with the British Consul General to exchange Obaysch for some greyhounds and deerhounds, and the hippo arrived at London Zoo in May of 1850.

The above photograph was taken in 1852 by Juan, Count of Montizón, later the Legitimist Bourbon claimant to the thrones of France and Spain.

Scotland’s Voice of Reason Silenced

I WAS MUCH disheartened when I was told that Gerald Warner’s weekly column in Scotland on Sunday has been axed. Gerald’s writing is a refreshing Caledonian tonic in contrast to the usual second-rate rants from second-rate minds the exemplifies most newspaper columns today. Gerald Warner refuses to allow the heresiarchs of our age to lay waste to our civilization unchallenged. He is (err… was) the only substantial reason for paying for a copy of Scotland on Sunday. Of course, S-o-S is not available here in New York, so every Saturday night I would wait until after midnight GMT (7:00pm New York time) to read Gerald’s column online. Often enough, I would dutifully tell all the folks on the sidewalk after Mass on Sunday that they had to read Gerald’s column this week. Sometimes I’d even print the damn thing out and read it aloud for the enjoyment of all. But alas! No more…

Some Gerald Warner highlights on this site:

FROM 1887, the Café Central (or Centrál Kávéház, in Magyar) has been a meeting place for artists, intellectuals, professionals, and others located on Budapest’s Károlyi Mihály street. One of its most famous patrons was the novelist and dramatist Ferenc Molnár (born Ferenc Neumann and often anglicized as Franz Molnar), whose 1906 book The Paul Street Boys is perhaps the most widely-read Hungarian novel. His 1909 play “Liliom” was later adapted by Rodgers and Hammerstein into the musical “Carousel”. Both his plays “The Guardsman” and “The Swan” were later made into films (the latter being Grace Kelly’s final appearance on the silver screen), while “The Play at the Castle” was adapted by P.G. Wodehouse into “The Play’s the Thing” and by Tom Stoppard into “Rough Crossing”. (more…)

Český Krumlov Revisited

THE CASTLE OF Krummau in Bohemia stands majestically on its crag in a bend of the Moldau river, presiding confidently over the town below. Český Krumlov, as the town is known in the currently-reigning Czech language, began in the thirteenth century under the Rosenberg family and was purchased by the Emperor Rudolf II in 1602. Yet it was under the princely house of Schwarzenberg (proprietors of Krumau from 1719 to 1945) that the castle flourished. The name Český Krumlov means Bohemian Krummau, to differentiate it from a Moravian town of the same name. (It is also often rendered as Krumau or Krumau-an-der-Moldau).

While the advent of Communism deprived the Schwarzenbergs of this great castle and numerous other vast properties of theirs behind the Iron Curtain, the Schwarzenbergs have since regained their natural prominence in Bohemia. His Serene Highness Prince Karl VII of Schwarzenberg, Duke of Krummau, Count of Sulz, Princely Landgrave of Kelttgau currently serves his country as Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, as well as being a member of the Czech Senate which convenes in the Wallenstein Palace in Prague. For the sake of convenience, however, His Serene Highness goes by ‘Karel Schwarzenberg’. (more…)

A LITTLE SOMETHING for our good friends from university who’ve just moved to London from the countryside. I hope that when they are in the Cathedral they will pop into our patron’s chapel, glance at the mosaic of our dear old Royal Burgh of St Andrews, remember good times, and say a prayer for us all.

THE PALERMO RACETRACK is the main center for equestrian events in Buenos Aires. It was first built in 1876. In 1908 the current main stand was built to the beaux-arts design of a French architect, Louis Faure Dujarric. The Argentine Grand National, a race of 2,500 meters, has been run here annually since 1885. (more…)

Link: Catholics for Ron Paul

I THOUGHT THAT since we widened our window of opportunity, I ought to give you a wider view of this capture from the 1954 film ‘It Should Happen to You!’, previously displayed in our exposition on Columbus Circle and the Human Scale. The more recent rehabilitation of this grand public place was discussed in one of my diary entries. (more…)

Beulah R. Bettersworth, Christopher Street, Greenwich Village
Oil on canvas, 30 1/8″ x 24 ¼”
1934, Smithsonian American Art Museum

Hartford, Connecticut

THE GREAT Russell Kirk once called the main chambers of the Old Connecticut State House “perhaps the most finely-proportioned rooms in all America”. The Senate of Connecticut met in the stately Senate Chamber (above) around a long table, as was the general fashion of the legislative councils which formed the upper house of most colonial legislatures. It was in the House of Representatives Chamber (below) that the famed Hartford Convention of December 1814 and January 1815 met and discussed New England’s possible secession from the Union. The State House was built in 1796 to the designs of Charles Bulfinch, on land which had been granted to Connecticut by King Charles II in 1662. (more…)

Charles Frederick William Mielatz, Grand Central Station at Night
Etching on paper, 7″ x 10″
1890, Smithsonian American Art Museum

This, of course, is not the Grand Central we know today, but its immediate predecessor.

(more…)

IT WAS TERENCE who wrote Modo liceat vivere, est spes, meaning “While there’s life, there’s hope”. This coming Wednesday is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and it would be particularly appropriate to remember in our prayers to the Virgin the President of Cuba, Fidel Castro. Castro’s health has been deteriorating greatly of late, so we must earnestly pray to Our Lady that the Cuban president will accept the gracious mercy of Our Lord as he nears the end of his earthly life. (The recent and shocking defeat of the referendum to enshrine socialism in Venezuela has been attributed to the intervention of the Virgin of Coromoto, but rest assured that Our Lady is never too busy to hear our prayers). It would be very foolish and neglectful to think that Mr. Castro, who has been baptized after all, is somehow beyond the grace of God, so please remember him in your prayers: these Brigittine nuns certainly are!

NO DOUBT YOU have been wondering what we have been up to. In truth, I had been beset with a grievous illness of the gravest nature. Bedridden, I scratched and scrawled and made calculations for the expansion of this little corner of the web, which I then had Hogarth (seen above, bringing me some hot toddy in my poor condition) send on to the architect. I have now recovered and my scratchings and calculations have born fruit. The result, you see before you: a new, improved, rather wider andrewcusack.com. Many elements have been made a bit cleaner than previously, while one or two things here and there became a bit clumsier in the construction process. I am sure you will pardon the niggling infelicitous remnants when you chance upon them. At any rate, the general result is an expanded central column, in which we can exhibit to you even broader and bigger images to enlighten you, brighten your day, or raise your ire, whichever the case may be.

(P.S.: I very rarely give advance notice of things to come, but you can of course expect a proper appreciation of the late Rt. Hon. Ian Douglas Smith in the coming days, now that the scaffolding is down and our new edifice complete, as well as at least one more entry in my ‘Maces of America‘ series, and so on and so forth…)

Instagram: @andcusack

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