London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

2007 July

The Dahlgren Residence

No. 15 East Ninety-Sixth Street, New York

THE UPPER EAST SIDE is crossed by a number of wider cross-streets, of which 96th Street has long been agreed as the northern boundary of the neighborhood. (Overeager real estate agents have recently taken to advertising properties above that boundary as being located in the “Upper Upper East Side”). At number 15 on East 96th Street sits a splendid townhouse of superb design and execution often known as the Dahlgren residence. (Seen above, before and after complete restoration).

Lucy Wharton Drexel was of the Philadelphia Drexels, from which also came Saint Katharine Drexel, the founder of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, as well as the initiators of Drexel University in that Pennsylvanian city. Young Miss Drexel married Mr. Eric B. Dahlgren, son of Admiral John A. Dahlgren, inventor of the Dahlgren Gun used during the Civil War at a ceremony in the Philadelphia cathedral officiated by Archbishop Corrigan of that see, and the couple soon moved to Manhattan where Mr. Dahlgren had a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. The Dahlgrens themselves were a prominent Catholic family, with Eric and his brothers attending Georgetown University, where to this day the main chapel bears the Dahlgren name. (Well-to-do Catholics must have been in short supply at the time, because after Lucy and Eric’s marriage, Lucy’s sister Elizabeth was married to Eric’s brother John).

(more…)

July 24, 2007 8:34 pm | Link | 21 Comments »

The Army, the Navy, and the Air Force

Our Armed Forces Support Ron Paul With Their Checkbooks

THE RECENT REPORT from the Federal Election Commission on second-quarter donations to presidential candidates contained an interesting piece of information. Observers extrapolated those donors who listed the branches of the military as their employer to see who our fighting men (and women) were backing in the presidential election. Who came first in military donors? None other than our own Dr. Ron Paul, the Air Force veteran who is determined to end the empire and save the republic. This didn’t surprise me, but it was a welcome reassurance that good old-fashioned common sense still prevails amongst the brave souls in our armed forces. (more…)

July 23, 2007 10:10 pm | Link | 22 Comments »

CNN Comes to St Agnes

A month or so ago, Ms. Delia Gallagher of the Cable News Network (and cameraman) came to the Church of St. Agnes to take a few shots of the 11:00 Tridentine mass and to interview a few folks on the street afterwards. Those who spoke with her said she was genial, and the report she filed is available from the CNN website here (2:08, following a thirty-second advertisement).

Dino!

July 15, 2007 6:41 pm | Link | 10 Comments »
July 15, 2007 6:34 pm | Link | No Comments »

‘The Mass of All Time answers that need.’

In his superb column in this week’s Scotland on Sunday, Gerald Warner responds to the Holy Father’s motu proprio.

Not since 1850, when Nicholas Cardinal Wiseman hurled his pastoral letter ‘From Out the Flaminian Gate’ like a grenade into the heart of the British establishment, proclaiming the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales, has a Roman document provoked such consternation among the ungodly. […]

The bishops of England and Wales tried furiously to prevent the liberalisation of access to the Traditional Mass, lobbying the Vatican against it, although they had recently approved the regular celebration of a Mass for homosexuals. On the eve of the publication of the Papal document, Bishop Kieran Conry, of Arundel and Brighton, said: “Any liberalisation of the use of the rite may prove seriously divisive. It could encourage those who want to turn the clock back throughout the Church.” So, a liberal opposes liberalisation – why are we not surprised?

As for turning the clock back throughout the Church, it is the only possible remedy for the crisis that has afflicted it since the Second Vatican Catastrophe. The Novus Ordo (New Order of Mass) was invented by Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, assisted by six Protestant pastors, after the Vatican Council. When this appalling confection was presented to the 1967 Synod of Bishops it was indignantly rejected. Yet two years later it was universally imposed. Bugnini described it in 1974 as “a major conquest of the Catholic Church”.

Strange language from a Catholic bishop; but there were stranger things to come. In July, 1975 Bugnini was abruptly sacked after Pope Paul VI was shown evidence he was a Freemason. Bugnini denied the fact, but when the register of Italian Freemasonry came to light in 1976, it recorded Bugnini as having been initiated on April 23, 1963, with the esoteric code name ‘Buan’. So, even during the Vatican Council, Bugnini was already under automatic excommunication for Masonic membership. What possessed Paul VI to sack the author of the New Mass, but retain his liturgy for universal use? At least this episode throws light on the handshake at the ‘kiss of peace’ in the new rite. […]

For 40 years frenzied efforts have been made to stamp out the Traditional Mass and yet it has flourished. It is now past the point where there is the remotest prospect of extinguishing it. As Pope Benedict said in his explanatory letter accompanying the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum (“Of Supreme Pontiffs”), one of his reasons for freeing the Old Mass was the number of young people now flocking to it.

That is what the faded 1960s trendies who are now bishops and seminary rectors fear: the impossibility of maintaining a revolution that has burned itself out. The Second Vatican Council means as little to today’s youth as the Council of Chalcedon. Its elderly adherents are like dads dancing at the school disco. Many young people are seeking the mystical and the numinous. The Mass of All Time answers that need.

Within the past month the Vatican has issued two other documents: one restoring the requirement for a two-thirds majority at Papal conclaves, which rules out the future election of an extreme radical; and a reassertion of the doctrine that the Protestant sects cannot be recognised as ‘churches’. It will not damage ecumenism, because that died long ago. Its premise was that Rome must endlessly divest, while Canterbury ordained priestesses and moved ever further from Catholicism. [Ed.: bold mine.] When you see a Church of Scotland congregation praying the rosary you may believe ecumenism is a two-way process.

‘The Mass of All Time will outlive the Sixties revolutionaries‘, by Gerald Warner; Scotland on Sunday, 15 July 2007.

Previously: Martyrs of Spain, Pray for Us! | Warner on the Gotha

July 15, 2007 6:31 pm | Link | 3 Comments »

California Wedding

WHERE DOES ONE begin? Scotland, I suppose. I’ve known Abby since Day One in St Andrews. I was among the number of poor souls who were foolish enough to participate in the ‘overseas orientation’ for non-UK/RoI students. Through pure chance, a group of us who sat down to dinner in Andrew Melville Hall that night decided to venture into town that evening and see what was what. We went to the Central, which became my regular for a very long time, until replaced by the Russell for my tertian and magistrand years. Jon I met just over a year later, during his first few weeks at St Andrews (as I entered my second year). It was at the Catholic Society and he told me he came from Bristol. I was fairly ignorant of Bristol other than that it is home to the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum. I asked Jon about the museum and his answer was such as to confirm that he and I were on the same page of the book, so to speak. He didn’t come much to Canmore at the start and so we were not instant friends, though I do recall running into him in the corridor of New Hall at 2 or 3 in the morning one night and striking up a brief conversation (most likely telling him he ought to be coming to Canmore, since like-minded folk are a dime a dozen there).

Anyhow, by some time or another we were all best of friends, and both Jon and Abby have been the source of (and butt of) so many of the great amusements we enjoyed at St Andrews. Good God, how many laughs! In Canmore, the Cellar Bar, the Central, the Russell, in flats, in Edinburgh, in Rome, in Dublin, in New York, and most recently in California, whenever one is with Jon and Abby there is always a good time to be had, and an appropriately inappropriate comment to relish. I have picked up the habit of simply saying “ledge” (that is, short for “legend”) every time I utter the name of Jon Burke. Abby once desired that I verbally express precisely what it was that makes Jon such a legend, but all I could say was that it was of the same nature as the Sacraments in Eastern theology: appreciated, nourishing, and clung-to, but ultimately a mystery.

It was California then, which was host to our latest adventure, namely the joining in matrimony of Miss Abigail Hesser and Mr. Jonathan Burke. I flew in on Wednesday and upon checking in at the hotel, the desk clerk handed me a written message from Jon: “We’re in the bar, free cocktails!” The wonderful rehearsal dinner was the next evening, and I was privileged to have the best seat in the house, with Fr. E and Mrs. Hesser on my left and Abigail and Jon on my right. But Friday… Friday was the wedding! (more…)

July 4, 2007 7:57 am | Link | 7 Comments »

Remember!

Two hundred and thirty-one years ago today, the tragedy of our people commenced.

I’ll take the old George over the new one any day of the week.

Elsewhere: Charles Coulombe writes Still Rebels, Still Tories while Daniel Larison reflects on Law and Loyalism.

July 4, 2007 7:43 am | Link | 5 Comments »

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