Fame and Egalitarianism

Bishop Dolan was making a point that fame was earlier on appointed to few. It was not the lot of commoners, he reasons, in order to call "the craze for Facebook fame" (as he would probably consider it) an aberration.

Not quite, I have read Gilbert Keith Chesterton and actually also assimilated what he said. Earlier on every village and tavern had its famous persons. In a certain village it was - according to a novelist called Guareschi - one Mayor called Peppone and one Curate called Don Camillo.

Indeed, they were famous in the village, but I do not think fame in that village or countryside town was always reserved for only Mayor and Curate.

Dr Johnson may have been a drunkard late in life (he was an unconsolable widower) or not so, he was certainly talkative and ... famous for his talk. In the taverns. Of course you can argue that it put him in trouble: he had to rely on the friendship of Whigs while being himself a Tory indeed most of his life an outright Jacobite.

Being a Tory he certainly agreed there are virtues about the verticality of society. But I hardly think the kind of discretion that Whigs would value, the omertà broken by himself about the Slaves in the Colonies (by 1800 Canada had lots of free blacks as he had wanted it and Thirteen Colonies turned US had lots of slaves as Boswell had wanted it) or for that matter the omertà about the poor folks in the village of Wakefield broken by one Goldsmith, I hardly think that kind of omertà was what he valued about verticality in society.

Nor was verticality, more predominant though it was in fact, the only ideal of earlier and more Christian ages. The century of St Alexius Falconieri was in certain ways very egalitarian, and in his Florence more effectively so than in Robespierre's France which had recently seen a very antiegalitarian Voltaire.

But there is a point to this, and it is that Georgius Rex never tried to shut up Doctor Samuel Johnson about anything other than - the Stuart Legitimacy.

Corrupt politicians tend to shut up people criticising their misconduct - insofar as they are able to. That goes for certain other decision makers who also value omertà. Let us hope their point of view was not quite what Msgr Daniel Dolan had in mind.

It would be a sad day for the Church if on one day Bergoglio gives Commies to hear what they want to hear and the next day his ecclesiastical critic, Msgr Daniel Dolan gives Whigs to hear what they want to hear.

I have already stated my view on egalitarianism and verticality. Certain verticalities are inherent in the condition as creature and as not-first-created. Cain and Abel were not equal to Adam. Adam was not even in Paradise equal to God. After Cain started off the competition between crime and civitas humana citizens are not equal to magistrates. Soldiers are not equal to generals. People getting their case tried and heard are not equal to the judge - nor are such as are accused of crimes so. In Church also, it is not everyman's sake to hear confession and give absolution. If fifty men are on a saunday all absolved, only a priest can give them access to Holy Mass, while a layman could only read readings from it or lead the Rosary prayer. With special permission he might have the right to distribute Communion in hosts kept in the Tabernacle since the last time the priest was there. And a priest is not equal to the bishop ordaining him either. So inegality of family members are order of creation, like reason, inegality of magistrate and citizen is like clothes in the natural order of damage repair after the fall of Adam, inegality in Holy Mother Church is in the order of Redemption.

But inegality between rich and poor is in the order of damages inflicted by the fall. Note that communism is not the cure, note that there is no final cure until the angel sounds the trumpet (the one for Doomsday, some trumpets come before that too), but one man being rich and another man poor is in fact part of what needs some kind of partial remedy. One of them is of course the inequality between employer and employee, insofar as it is good, insofar as it serves a decent purpose on both parts. Another such is alms. And yet another such is a poor man using his talents to acquire riches. Even without an employer.

This last point seems to me to have been forgotten by certain someones. Not least among parishioners and sometimes others - i e even clergy - among Traditional Catholics.

I am personally allergic to employers. That does not mean I consider employers inherently bad and their employees inherently good. It means I have had very bad experience personally with employers. Some people are personally allergic to taking alms. They would feel ashamed if their knowhow was not valorised by an employer and most of the time it is such that they would either need an employer or a loan - those who start off as poor, that is. Neither of which would leave them as free equals. Those wanting to employ them because of their talents are to my mind decent employers. One who would want to give my talents in a field not in his business any kind of correction by employing me where I am not qualified before learning, well, I might consider his intentions offensive.

My knowhow is such that I can valorise it for the public good and start valorising it for my own economic good without an employer, as long as blogger and facebook are available to me. Certain someones have considered this a kind of disorder in me. I consider them as the equivalent of Whigs who rejoiced when Doctor Johnson became a widower, or who rejoiced when he was obliged to depend on a man whom he could not depend on while staying Jacobite.

I am not sure if Msgr Daniel Dolan values me as a parishioner. I am sure he should not value the salvation of my soul more than that of many others. But if he does, I am sure he should not try to please rich whigs or their servants who try to overdo the naturality of economic inequalities. I am not sure if you have read the autobiographies of one Christine Arnothy. If you have read the two first titles (often printed together)* you will know that she was employed as a domestic in a family which did not allow her to drink wine to dinner. Because it would not do to endanger the domestics with temptations to drunkenness. On the other hand the children were allowed wine - half a glass diluted with water no doubt - so that they learn to drink responsibly. I am very sure that family did not just do great damage to her ego, but also, though perhaps not irrepairably so, to her soul. And I am very sure the kind of men who have taken a similar course with regards to my personal dignities - some of whom are in St Nicolas du Chardonnet - have been damaging my soul. Christina Arnothy was brought up in a fine home in Budapest before the war. But even a domestic brought up in very little space in a flat facing the toilet on that floor of the staircase would have been able to feel annoyance at such an attitude. I have also been in better conditions before begging in the streets of Paris. But even if I had come from a workingclass family directly I might have felt annoyance at someone knowing less than I about how facebook can be used and knowing less than I about the subjects and questions I write about, condemning my ambition to be read and printed as out of place since I do not hail from Versailles. Or dealing with people who, because they are by contract and by nature of their position in the company superior to their employees think they are also therefore automatically superior to someone who is poorer than their employees.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
Two Hundred and Sixty
Holy Martyrs of Rome
1-III-2014

Obviously, if some Catholic Jurisdiction (inside or outside the Physical Vatican) considers my writings corrupt, they ought to condemn. Antworten nach Sorte has just been published, before I could make any publicity for it myself, it has already been seen once in US, the second page view there might be because of my publishing it in a link on FB. Other blogs of mine have been read very many times in very many countries. And this blog - a general one - is in its eighties of posts (including drafts, this is n. 75 as published), the previous general one had 400 posts, the first one on this profile, "created" as blogger says or simply made while I still had MSN Group Antimodernism, had over six hundred. Plus the total number of blogs is some thirty, including three in English with Apologetic essays and three in English, French, German dedicated to taking the debate on youtube and on forums and republishing them there. It is not as if I had spoken in whispers or greatest secrecy and it is not as if there were no material to examine./HGL

* These:

I am Fifteen and I do not Want to Die
http://www.arnothy.ch/english/quinze_ans_index_en.htm

It is Not so Easy to Live
http://www.arnothy.ch/english/pas_facile_1_en.htm