First Things RSS Feed - Joseph Pearce

Correspondence: Was Shakespeare Catholic?

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0400

I shall ignore the shrill personal attacks upon me in Robert Miola’s spleen-venting review of my book , The Quest for Shakespeare , in your August/September issue. I would, however, like to respond to the factual errors and seriously misleading rhetoric with which his review is peppered.

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Pearce: British MuslimsÃ¢â‚¬â€?Muslims First?

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 00:00:00 -0400

In spite of the general malaise that looms over England like a malignant cloud, there are still a handful of beacon-like intellects shining forth in the darkness. One of these is Niall Ferguson, who recently wrote an article in the UK’s Daily Telegraph in which he asked his readers to imagine what would have happened if the Heathrow bomb plot had not been foiled. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson, writing in the same newspaper, has an article entitled " Alas, Civilization Is Built on Physics Not on Business Studies ." Of the two articles, Ferguson’s prophecy of doom hits the target with unerring precision, whereas Johnson’s misses the target by a mile. Furthermore, and although they are on very different subjects, the two articles, taken together, shed light on the fundamental problems facing England (and Europe) today.

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English law and lesbianism

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0400

The trouble with thinking of home is that it’s not always very pleasant. At least if one is an English exile thinking of his homeland. There is an odor of decay surrounding the British body politic and a sense that the memory of a living European culture is in an advanced stage of decomposition. It is, therefore, comforting to look beyond the decomposing present to the healthy vitality of England’s living past. That’s why I spend so much of my time in the presence of Shakespeare, Hopkins, Newman, and Chesterton. How alive these men are compared with the living death of sin and cynicism in the ascendant today. It is, therefore, a small but nourishing crumb of comfort to learn that a senior judge in today’s England has upheld the morality that Shakespeare, Chesterton et al would have taken for granted.

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English history and eccentricity

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0400

The English have an amiable, if bizarre, fondness for eccentricity, especially if the eccentricity is peculiarly English. The English landscape is dotted with architectural follies, and English history is dotted with the sort of eccentric who would build them. Edith Sitwell , who was something of an ornamental oddity herself, wrote a book in the 1930s documenting these lovable and laughable eccentrics, such as the amphibious Lord Rokeby, whose beard reached his knees and who seldom left his bath.

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England and foxhunting bans

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0400

I’m sure that many Americans were, and remain, somewhat bemused at the passions aroused in England over the subject of foxhunting . Those passions raged in the months and years leading to the ban, culminating in an enormous pro-hunt demonstration in London . The passions remain, embedded in bitterness, in the ban’s wake. I trust, therefore, that my bemused American friends will indulge me while I comment on the subject, and I hope that, after I have done so, they might even understand that the passions are more than mere English eccentricity and that, on the contrary, they go to the heart of the modern malaise affecting my homeland.

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“The Incredibles,” “The Lord of the Rings”

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Incredible as it might seem, the Disney studios are to be congratulated for their moral rectitude. Allow me to explain. Having finally succumbed to renting the DVD of the animated feature film The Incredibles , I was stunned at how good it was. I don’t mean good in the technical or artistic sense, though it is certainly good in both senses. I mean it was good in the good old-fashioned sense of being morally healthy and unabashedly critical of bad or evil behavior.

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Anglicanism, marriage and cohabitation

Mon, 14 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Further to my post about marriage and cohabitation , it is interesting that the subject was debated at length at a recent meeting of the Church of England’s General Synod. The bishop of Winchester, the Rt. Rev. Michael Scott-Joynt , complained that marriage was being "airbrushed" out for reasons of political correctness, and that even his own church was not immune from the practice of doing so. He noted that neither Labour nor the Conservatives had mentioned the "M" word in their respective manifestos at the last general election.

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Islam as a Religion of Peace

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0400

A friend has just sent me some photographs of a "peace" demonstration on the streets of London. It is, however, a "peace" demonstration with a difference and is most definitely not the sort of "peace" demonstration that my mind’s eye sees when it thinks of such events. This "peace" demonstration has no latter-day wannabe hippies informing us that all we need is "luv" (without responsibility). Rather, it’s a "Religion of Peace" demonstration, and the "peaceful" religion it demonstrates is Islam.

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Cohabiting couples and marriage

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0400

Isn’t it funny how "experts" eventually discover what those with a modicum of common sense have known all along? The latest example of experts stating the obvious, having expended much time and money "proving" it, emerged from research published in the journal Demography last month. Apparently, cohabitation is only an "intense form of dating," and the view that it is a stepping stone to marriage needs to be "seriously questioned."

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Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Spain

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0400

The recent visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Spain exposed the schizophrenic psyche of the Spanish nation. While more than a million faithful Spaniards, including King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia, attended the pope’s valedictory Mass in Valencia, the country’s prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, publicly snubbed the pope and the Church by ostentatiously staying away. Since being elected, Zapatero’s socialist government has declared war on the traditional family, giving "marriage" and adoption rights to homosexuals and relaxing divorce laws. The pope, in a clear attack on such policies, gave a homily praising the traditional family, condemning the "excessive exaltation of the freedom of the individual," and calling upon Spain’s Catholics to unite in the "promotion of the authentic good of the family in contemporary society."

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