And I thought things were bad in Belgium!

The remarks about the Traditional Mass being widely celebrated in Buenos Aires are just false.

There may be many TLM celebrated on "Gran Buenos Aires", but not on Buenos Aires diocese.

On Buenos Aires diocese you can find TLM on the SSPX, on the military ordinariate (who is out of jurisdiction of the BA diocese), and a pseudo-TLM mandated by Bergoglio after SP was promulgated. The priest who was in charge was openly anti-TLM, and while it was the token for Bergoglio to say SP was in vigor in his diocese, it was really a TLM-NOM mix.

Some priests tried to do SP on their own and were harshly repressed.

I've found an article written in english that seems to be factually correct at http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-summorum-pontificum-was-blocked-and.html

"And I thought things were bad in Belgium!"

I've certainly done my share of complaining about the liturgy over the years (30+), but I have never experienced any of the truly grotesque things that are occasionally reported. I'm not sure whether that means they're very rare, or that I happen to have lived in two dioceses where they happened to be rare. Well, nonexistent really--I mean things on the scale of a Mass celebrated in some crazy costume.

With the obvious exception of Benedict, of course. They say John XXIII was expected to be a short-time not-too-consequential pope. I wonder what would happen if the spirit-of-Vatican-II crowd got their wish for a Vatican III under Francis. Not necessarily what they've been hoping for, I expect.

As you know I'm always a great believer in the possibility that things could be worse.

The sheer nastiness of Rorate Caeli never ceases to surprise me, and I attend the TLM!

"...may have done the best he could with regard to the liturgy."

That could be true, and it could also be true that he's no friend of the TLM. There's a tendency in traditionalist liturgical circles to talk as if it's either TLM or priests dressed as Batman. But I think there are a lot of bishops who are more or less hostile to the TLM, but who would not put up with serious abuses in the Novus Ordo.

Probably so, at this point. But as a post-Vatican-II convert I was puzzled from the beginning, 30 years ago, by the way most bishops and priests seemed to regard the Latin Mass, and the people who loved it, with contempt.

Yes, it's definitely a vicious circle. Whenever this topic comes up I always think of a woman I met in the mid-80s. She was pretty old then and is most likely dead by now. I think she had literally been driven a little crazy by the extirpation of the old Mass. You met her and thought "what a delightful person"--she had white hair and very bright blue eyes and was very engaging and gracious. But then when you talked to her a while you discovered all this paranoia and suspicion involving the Mass, what was *really* going on in the Vatican, etc.

So, you're a malcontent. :-)

I didn't read enough of the site to want to express a general opinion of it, but your observation is certainly accurate.

I hope she doesn't knock him down when she's climbing over the pew to get out before the closing hymn.

AMDG

Re-reading my comment above, I see it isn't clear what I meant by "your observation"--I was referring to what you said about a level of nastiness that's not compatible with a Christian spiritual life. I always wonder about Evelyn Waugh in that respect, especially as he was toward the end of his life. I know about the famous remark about how much worse he would be without the Holy Spirit, but still...one reads of incidents that seem so deliberately malicious. I don't have one to hand at the moment.

His name is Nate.

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure I've seen reports from sympathizers that made him sound genuinely unpleasant much of the time.

Maclin, I thought that was what observation you meant.

*completely* off topic: I watched 'The Pledge' with Jack Nicolson the other night. It's a terrifying thriller. A police man (Nicolson) pledges on a cross to solve a gruesome child murder.

We can suppose, just for the sake of argument, that Waugh didn't really mean a lot of that stuff, and that his friends knew that, and didn't take it seriously. That wouldn't relieve him of responsibility for effects like the one you describe. I've read of some pretty rough stuff he did and said to his own children.

Not the banana story? My parents would have done that and they were not bad parents. Ferdinand Mount, who must be the same generation as Auberon Waugh was records being sent onto the roof of a cow shed to collect plums for his father - his father lifted him on to the roof. He was sent because the roof was rotten and wouldn't take the weight of anyone over the age of five. It didn't take his weight either, as it turns out, and he found himself inside the shed, standing alongside a bull. As recorded in his very amusing memoirs, which I must admit reminded me of my childhood.

I'm always amazed at what cultural realities make it over the pond and what don't. Not having heard of Roger Ebert in the U.S. is a bit like not having heard of , I don't know, Miller Lite.

I've been hearing his name for years, but also didn't know anything much about him until he died and I read some of the tributes. I thought he was just another guy who reviewed movies on tv. Apparently he was quite well respected as a critic, though.

I lost respect for Auberon Waugh over his retelling of the story in his Memoirs. For decades he had said things such as 'the whole point of going to public school is to learn that life is essentially unfair.' Then he writes a Memoir complaining about his father eating the bananas! The whole Memoir is a deliberate take down of his father and all of his father's Catholic friends. It was written after Auberon Waugh had publically renounced his Catholic faith - he said he could no longer tolerate the charismatic Masses. For me, who had enjoyed reading Auberon Waugh's writings for 25 years, and who still mourns the loss of this great comic journalist since his death, it was a very sad book. He says in the introduction that he might write a different book in ten years time. It seems like an admission that the book is a rationalisation of his current loss of faith in the church. He had lived under the shadow of his father all his life and cracked in mid life. Most weaker personalities would have cracked a lot earlier.

I don't know anything about him (A. Waugh) except a few anecdotes and excerpts. I'd had the impression from somewhere or other that he'd thrown over the Church pretty early, but obviously I was mistaken about that. Somehow that wouldn't seem quite as culpable to me--I mean, many young people throw over whatever they were taught, out of rebellion, immaturity, etc. An older person has less excuse.

Interesting interview here with Auberon's son, Alexander, who wrote a book (Father and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family) about five generations of male Waughs, one of whom was know as The Brute (!).

He says some things in his grandfather's defense. First, about those bananas:

One of the things his book tries to do is to redress the myth of Evelyn as a horrible father - a myth Bron did much to encourage in his autobiography, Will This Do?

Notoriously, Bron claimed that Evelyn, after the war, had made all his children sit round and watch while he scoffed their banana rations with cream and sugar.

"Amazing how that sunk into the public consciousness as a sheer grotesque example of Evelyn Waugh's evil as a father," says Alexander - but he points out that Bron's first memory of his father was of Evelyn coming home from the war, and his siblings rushing out from tea to greet him. Bron took advantage of the moment to clear the table of jam tarts and stuff as many as he could into his pockets.

Alexander believes that the banana story was true: "He was a very greedy little boy, and he definitely would have remembered the bananas and he definitely would have resented them. But my point in the book is that you cannot trust the testimony of a very greedy jam tart thief, who would rather have a jam tart than meet his father."

And then about what he was like as a father overall:

Evelyn complained to his private diaries that his children bored and irritated him, but Alexander interprets this as the end-of-the-day grumbling of a man who, not being a natural at playing with children, at least tried. "This is the point about Evelyn that nobody has ever pointed out. He tried and it exhausted him and he got cross and irritable, but he never just sat down with a glass of sherry.

"He said, right, I'm going to do children now, and he showed off and rolled around on the floor and hid in the cellar and roared like a lion. He cared about his children. All this thing about him being a s--- father... He had six children and they were all loyal to him. All. They always defended him."

"...you cannot trust the testimony of a very greedy jam tart thief..."

Ha! Fair point. Must go to sleep--more tomorrow.

yes, that's absolutely true about children sometimes latching on to something.

In general one's parents tend to remember one's childhood incorrectly, and one's children to remember theirs incorrectly.

Mac, I'm surprised that Ebert was relatively unknown to you. I guess he's been part of my cultural environment since the late 1970s. Maybe that had something to do with the fact that I went to ND, which has strong Chicago ties.

As for children and parents remembering childhood differently, I kind of hope my kids remember my parenting in a better light than I do!

I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that I've never gone out of my way to read/hear movie reviews. I scan whatever appears in the local paper (that probably should be in the past tense, as the paper is fading away), and sometimes run across a review somewhere else, but that's about it. If I'm particularly interested in a specific movie, I might seek out reviews, but that's pretty rare. Also, didn't Ebert really come to prominence on tv? That would assure I missed him.

To me, Ebert is just a name that crops up in Wikipedia articles about films. Miller Lite I had to Google (and I can't say I was particularly whelmed by the result). The only American journalist I could name off the top of my head is William Safire. Embarrassingly, I can't even remember the names of those two played by Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford. I don't think that's too bad for somebody who has only ever spent a total of a fortnight in the country.

So the Recent Comments keeps showing new comments, but when I go to this post, mine is still the last one.

That's because the comments have gone over to a second page. Look below your last-on-the-page comment--there's a pale "next" button. But the easiest thing is to click on the name of the person on the comment you want to read in the recent comments list. That will take you straight to that comment.

I must have gone in the spam catcher.

Oh. Of course. I've had the problem before. I just forgot.

By the way, if I click on a comment, it doesn't go to that comment. don't know why. I'm using Chrome.

I look forward to having that experience someday.

"if I click on a comment" You mean on the post name beside the commenter's name? That goes to the post itself, not the comment.

Re: Waugh.

By way of introduction, my great-grandfather was dearly loved by his grandchildren. They are, I think, now pretty upset, having recently learned that this great-grandfather was divorced by his second wife (his first wife, my great grandmother, had died young in childbirth, leaving 3 little boys). The reasons for the divorce were recorded as for "cruelty and misconduct" I think.

His grandchildren must be finding it very difficult to reconcile the loving grandfather they knew and loved in his later years with the man described by this record. For me it's obvious. He was suffering badly and undoubtedly taking it out badly on his second wife. But that is not what he was normally like and no doubt he mellowed with age. (Something very similar happen with a grandfather of mine and his second wife, on the other side of my family).

Those of you who like Downton Abbey will recall that Bates believed he had made Vera's life miserable after he returned from the African War. I have no trouble believing that at all and undoubtedly that is why he was willing to go to prison instead of her. (His mother's testimony of Vera is biased to say the least and almost worthless). But that is not the Bates we know and love. He was not always like that and did not stay that way.

Waugh served in the War? If so, he and all the others must have been traumatised. This on its own could account for any nasty episodes that have been recorded for posterity, but I have learned in recent years to take such reports with a grain of salt. Although if they're widely attested, we can't ignore them exactly.

I have seen what such things do to men who are ordinarily very good. At any rate, I do not hold them to be fully culpable. That's just me, of course. Once they are helped through their difficulty, or they just work through it, they go back to normal.

Did everyone see this? (Competing for the Completely and Utterly off Topic Prize!)

http://www.youtube.com/embed/BbhYABR5_tY

No, I didn't realize it was 13 years old. I did think he was singing a lot better than people give him credit for in recent years - often he seems just to talk his way through songs these days, whereas in that video he is almost singing. I did find that a little surprising, but I thought, maybe he can sing some of the time or for short periods!

I didn't notice a woman in a white dress. I thought all the women in the audience looked entranced.

That he was fearless was a point made more than once in a book of reminiscences by Waugh's friends that I read a while back. I remember one story that involved him taking pretty crazy risks in a boat to retrieve a hat--it was near a reef or something, I forget the details.

I can't wait to get a look at that, Grumpy.

Well, Waugh's risk-taking behaviours are interesting (and terrible for his men!)

I've seen Fargo and yes, she was very good in it. She doesn't look very much like that policewoman.

The spam catcher caught your comment, also one from Robert. I guess now it's settled on "over-zealous" as its mode of operation.