While in the outer world the British people have been electing as their representatives, by the degrading process of universal suffrage, several hundred paid professional politicians, few of them owners of landed property, many of them positively base-born, in the closed world of this column a very different ceremony has been taking place.

In the dark, time-worn Gothic Hall of Assembly, amid crumbling tombs and carved symbols whose inmost meaning few can now read, the Great Feudatories of the Realm have been swearing fealty to the Regent, settling on their broad shoulders once more, for another year, the dreaming loads of Church and State.

In a thousand manors too, throughout the column, the Lesser Feudatories have been receiving the allegiance of village headmen bearing baskets of eggs, indigenous stones and symbolic flowers, of representatives of the craft-guilds – wood-carvers, arquebus-designers and organ-builders prominent as ever – and tenant farmers and yeomen, red-cheeked, bucolic figures in their holiday coats of decent frieze.

After these day-long, solemn ceremonies, rituals so intricate that none but the columnar heralds can understand them, high and low, through all their exact, foreknown, immutable degrees from the Regent to the humblest labourer, feel themselves united, confirmed once more, as the mighty order of society is confirmed.

In the outer world all is ephemeral, unstable, eddying and whirling this way and that in ceaseless, unreasonable change. Within, all is unchanging and unchangeable. As it was, as it is, as it will be, till Judgment Day.

In Jerusalem I had the privilege of interviewing Fr Piotr Zelazko, the Polish priest who heads the Saint James Vicariate for Hebrew-Speaking Catholics.

The community he looks after is a fascinating one and adds even more complexity to the rich tapestry of Christianity in the Holy Land.

The article is now up in its full form at the Catholic Herald online — including comments from Cardinal Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem — and a slightly shorter version appears in July’s summer issue of the magazine.

(My contribution to their summer books list is also in the July issue.)

Instagram: @andcusack

Most Recent Posts

• Election Day July 4, 2024
• Israel’s Hebrew-speaking Catholics July 2, 2024
• Music, the Hospitallers, and the Tudors July 2, 2024
• Kaapstad in kleur June 4, 2024
• Articles of Note: 20 May 2024 May 20, 2024

Most Recent Comments

• Thomas Schrader on Liverpool’s Irvingite Church
• Ian on Six to One Offered Against Xandover
• Paul Thomas on Cambridge
• Norma Conner on No. 82, Eaton Square
• Gousset van Heel on Kaapstad in kleur
• Old Palo Altan on Articles of Note: 20 May 2024
• K. Dontoh on The last of its vintage
• A M J L Delarue on Telephone Kiosk No. 2
• Andrew Cusack on Telephone Kiosk No. 2
• L G Clark on Telephone Kiosk No. 2

Book Wishlist

Monthly Archives

Categories