Festina lente

Actually, just lente. There doesn't seem to be much festina about it at all.

The house project, I mean. We're down to just finishing up the bathroom cabinets, the kitchen cabinets, painting the kitchen, and assorted other kitchen carpentry needed because of prior kitchen carpentry. So the kitchen should be completely hors de combat for a week. It's been partially unuseable for a while now. Lots of eating out; I've gained about 10 pounds. Should be nice when it's finished. So I'm told.

I don't know what I'm going to do for non-blogging excuses when this stuff is finished. I should start working on something plausible now, I suppose.

As for this morning, I have a funeral to do in about a half hour: A/Grace and Going Home at the church and 20 minutes or a half hour of something Irish at the reception.

Ideas Have Consequences Dept

[Hannah Arendt] also maintained, citing the American President John Adams, that hell was the doctrine with the most immediate political consequences. This latter comment means that, once we no longer have a doctrine about ultimate punishment, the burden on the state to punish wrongdoers becomes almost a divine power. It tries to be the place wherein all evils are righted. Thus, ironically, if we get rid of hell, the state almost by default becomes all-powerful; we deny doctrine at our peril.

"More Radical than the Radicals", James V. Schall, S.J., appearing in the May/June 2011 number of Gilbert Magazine

Open Season on Confession

As Hilary's left-hand-column has reminded us these last few weeks, the Irish episcopate has not been much interested in protesting Nosey Parker Kenny's intrusion into the confessional.

But at least one atheist recognizes a tyrannical intrusion when he sees one.

It becomes clearer every day that the leaders of the 1916 rising needn't have bothered. Their successors have already sold Ireland's independence to Brussels and now they wish to strangle the Church's sacraments. Did Lord Craigavon ever try that one?

Ecclesiam tuam pacificare et coadunare digneris, Domine

Andrea Tornielli says here that

Bishop Bernard Fellay, Superior General of the Society of St. Pius X, founded by Archbishop Lefebvre, has been summoned to the Vatican next 14 September. . . .

Now the Vatican should subject to Fellay some memoranda of understanding, clarifying doctrinal points, as for the Council, on the interpretation of the continuity in the reform suggested since December 2005 by Pope Benedict XVI as the more authentic interpretation of the texts of Vatican II.

A proposal for a canonical adjustment will be submitted to the Society only if doctrinal difficulties are overcome, and that will resolve the current situation, in which the Lefebvrist community finds itself now. . . .

The proposal which has been studied by the Vatican, would allow Lefebvrists the establishment of an ordinariate similar to that offered by the Pope has to Anglicans . . . .

I hope it comes to something. Full communion with the See of Peter is not an optional extra.

Our Lady of Knock - 21 August 1879

Mrs Vidal reminds us here that today is the anniversary (the 132d) of Our Lady's apparition at Knock in County Mayo.

The shrine's website.

A devotional page.

A modern song that became very popular in Ireland a few years ago. . .not Palestrina to be sure but a lovely sentimental melody in honour of Our Lady.

Some Piping for the Weekend

While I was away - or at least away from my pc - the 2011 World Pipe Band Championship was held in Glasgow. Once again the top prize went to Ireland, this time up the North to the Field Marshal Montgomery Pipe Band. This is their prize-winning medley.

The Gasman Cometh II

Now that's the actual office, with the brand new, ahem, window coverings, which look a lot like wooden blinds.

Speaking of window coverings the fella just put up the new ones with the elegant fabric covered valance, in the kitchen.

It did seem like a good idea at the time. And it does look nice. But now the cabinet door next to that window will only open about two inches unless we remove the valance each time we open the cabinet.

Cf.: The Gasman Cometh below.

I got my office back. . . .

Well, some of it anyway. The desk is back and the computer is hooked up again. With any luck, not to be unplugged again until the inevitable planned obsolescence kicks in. The little book case is still out back along with its contents, and assorted other odds and ends. But I have my desk, my desk chair, my PC, and the big comfy chair in the corner. A semblance of order is returning here in the northwest quadrant of the ancestral manse.

Meanwhile the sink and the countertops are gone in the kitchen until next week. At which time the painters will finish up with the kitchen and the bathroom and the cabinets will be installed.



That? Oh, that's not the office. That's the den, a.k.a., The Library. It's the only room looking moderately respectable, at least from one angle. The PC in the picture belongs to Herself, but the monitor has gone all wonky so the books are the only functioning sources of information.

The new window coverings* are being installed as we speak. The fellow installing them is standing on my desk drilling holes in the woodwork. I think it may be time to take a moment and retire to what remains of our kitchen for an iced tea or something.

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*Yes, "window coverings". They were blinds and shades and curtains when I was a boy. But now they're window coverings. We're terribly sophisticated here at The Inn.

Some Piping for the Weekend

Jarlath Henderson on uilleann pipes and Andy May playing Northumbrian pipes. The introduction is almost 3 minutes long but if you last you'll hear some breathtaking piping. I don't know the second tune but the first is Sí beag, sí mor. You've never heard it played like this.

ADDENDUM: My friend-via-email Maria tells me that the second hornpipe is called The Independent. Thanks, Maria. And apologies for the tardy acknowledgement.

And some of you may have noticed that I got the name of the first tune wrong the first time around. It's not the King of Laois at all. It is, in fact, Sí beag, sí mor. I knew that. Lapsus mentis.

The Gasman Cometh

Yes, we're still in mid-project. I still don't know where anything is. Not so that I can get at it, anyway. And everything we do means we need something else done.

The new kitchen floor is now higher than the floor in the adjoining room. So we need a carpenter to put in a sort of tapered threshold. But the swinging door in the kitchen is attached to the threshold piece that's already there. So the kitchen door needs to be removed and shaved down so that it will fit the new installation. Which means the lintel at the top no longer. . . .

Flanders and Swann expressed it well here:



The hammering, sawing, sanding, painting, etc. means I get to the computer only intermittently to check e-mails and The Inn remains largely neglected.