Random Notes

After a very unexpected and not very pleasant Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon improved considerably, even if the weather was hotter than the hinges of hell, for the latest number of Gilbert Magazine came the other day and, once my eyes decided to function again, was available for a good read. Therein we found:

"If you ask me to extend my sympathy to the poor fox, pursued by savage sportsmen, shall I not also extend it to the poor sportsman, pursued by savage humanitarians?" ["Clemens", Chesterton, As Seen by His Contemporaries, p. 55]

"A great deal of modern art claims to be created in the spirit of tomorrow because it is very carefully and laboriously copied from what was done only yesterday. A thing is called futurist merely because it is fashionable; curiously ignoring the fact that the fashion will be over when the future arrives." [GKC's Introduction to The New World of the Theatre]

And on page 4 a notice that the brilliant, if exceedingly odd, Bobby Fischer, who died last January 17, received a Catholic funeral in Iceland where he died. I had not seen that before or had any idea that he might be Catholic.


The news from Reno reminds me that the traditional Roman Rite had votive prayers for just this sort of thing:

Almighty, everlasting God, who dost look upon the earth and make it tremble, spare those who are afraid, and be merciful to those who pray to Thee: that we who fear Thine anger, which shaketh the the foundations of the earth, may always experience Thy mercy, which healeth its commotions. Through our Lord. Amen.

Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui respicis terram, et facis eam tremere: parce metuentibus, propitiare supplicibus: ut, cuius iram terræ fundamenta concutientem expavimus, clementiam contritiones eius sanantem iugiter sentiamus. Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum Filium ruum, qui tecum vivit. . . .Amen.

If the Pauline Rite has such a thing, it certainly isn't very widely available.