Supper for St Clare

Our nascent schola had sung through most of the music for Sunday Compline (according to the modern Office) in Gregorian chant at our practice this evening, when our leader Fr Allan very unexpectedly and graciously invited us to join him at the friary for a little eat and drink in honour of St Clare, whose feast day falls to-day in the Ordinary Form, on the anniversary of her death (it is kept to-morrow in the Extraordinary Form). He was most hospitable: a decent few glasses of merlot from the Clare Valley in South Australia, some cheeses with crackers, some cake and lamingtons, and a drop of port to finish off - a good time was had by all. How appropriate that it was in the Clare Valley (not the Lutheran Barossa) that Catholics settled, and good German Jesuits among them: Seven Hills, still owned by the Society of Jesus, still makes Australia's altar wine.

We were reminded that St Clare is patroness of television (one hopes she can redouble her prayers!) and, together with St Lucy, of the blind: St Clare having once been vouchsafed a vision of Mass when she was laid up in bed by illness, and having a name meaning clearness and clarity, just as Lucy means light. At the end of the soiree, Fr kindly shewed us a large landscape photograph of Assisi, pointing out the sites - I hope to visit there come September.

According to the modern Martyrology, to-day is also the feast of the martyr St Rufinus, first bishop of Assisi, and of a famous Irish abbess, St Attracta, who received the virgin's veil from St Patrick himself. Martyrs died this day under the Romans (such as SS Tiburtius and Susanna), under Elizabeth I, during the French Revolution, and in the midst of the Spanish Civil War. Most recently, in 1949, Bl Maurice Tornay was martyred on the borders of Tibet (to which land he had brought the Gospel) out of hatred for the name of Christ. May all the saints intercede for us!

The Salt Water Fallacy

During and after the Second World War, the British were often annoyed that the U.S.A. seemed all too much to favour dismantling the British Empire, even though Great Britain was their ally.  The British did not see in this merely an altruistic desire to spread the blessings of liberty - and after all, these blessings in Africa and elsewhere have proved rather elusive ever since decolonization was brought in ahead of time - but a desire to profit from such a break-up, while committing all the time the "salt water fallacy": that territories separated by sea from the metropolis are somehow less legitimately part of a nation's dominions than contiguous lands, such as the then "republics" that made up the Soviet Union...

We see the same fallacy in play to-day in the Chinese Empire (and yes, that should be its proper name), as regards two of its "autonomous regions", or should that be contiguous colonies: Tibet and East Turkestan - known by their Han Chinese names of Xizang and Xinjiang, which significantly enough mean "Western Treasure House" (how exploitative!) and "New Territory".  (Note also that the modern province of Xizang only includes about half of historic Tibet.)  

How surprising, not, is it that in recent years the natives of both regions (Tibetans and Uyghurs) have rioted against the demographic deluge of Han immigrants that threatens to make them dispossessed minorities, rather than majorities in their own lands...  It would seem to me only just that these nations have their independence, and China be composed of China proper (plus the former Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, since both those formerly non-Chinese regions are now overwhelmingly ethnically Chinese).  And of course, I pray for a China happy and free, delivered from one-party rule, corruption, militarism and repression, where the blessings of true liberty are available - above all, that the Church militant be delivered from persecution, so that the Gospel may bring blessings to souls - but part of freedom is recognizing injustices inflicted on others, that they too may be set free.

Of course, as an Australian of Anglo-Celtic descent I cannot shamelessly criticize the establishment of settler colonies across the globe: Australia, New Zealand, Canada (once unblushingly called "the White Dominions") plus the United States (Britannia's revolting offspring!) all owe their main origins to settlement from the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales...); for these, together with Ireland (a nation with a fraught relationship to the larger island next door), form the centre of the Anglosphere, the modern nations whose common tongue is English, whose main ethnic origins stem from two small outliers of Europe (joined then and now with many others), whose system of common law stems from the jurisprudence of England, and which for better or worse have had and continue to have a great deal of influence on the history of the world.

Nonetheless, "imperialism" and "colonization" are no longer in vogue: except, it appears, in the Middle Kingdom.  Does this bode well?  It is excellent that the material prosperity of China is daily increasing for the benefit of her people, but a nationalistic and expansionist State will not contribute to the peace of the world, whereas history has shewn that first the Pax Britannica and now the Pax Americana has, overall, been for the greater good (whatever enormities have been unjustly committed all unworthily), not least in defeating other, evil, Empires - the Nazi in World War II, the Communist in the Cold War...