August 31 -- St Aidan of Lindisfarne

"Augustine was the Apostle of Kent, but Aidan was the Apostle of the English." - Bishop Lightfoot



We mentioned St Aidan a few years ago,  including three or four paragraphs from  Mrs D'Arcy's Saints of Ireland, because St Aidan, apostle of the English though he be, was an Irish bishop on the Iona mission when he went to convert the English and the border Scots.  You can find that post here.  And wonder of wonders, the links in that post are still live.

A collect for St Aidan:

O loving God, Who dist call Thy servant Aidan from the peace of a cloister to re-establish the Christian  mission in northern England, and didst endow him with gentleness, simplicity and strength:  Grant, we beseech Thee, that we, following his example, may use what Thou hast given us for the relief of human need, and may persevere in commending the saving Gospel of Our Redeemer Jesus Christ; Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Another collect formerly used in the Diocese of Agylle and the Isles:

O God, Who didst raise blessed Aidan Thy Confessor and Bishop to the glory of everlasting felicity; grant, we beseech Thee; that we Thy servants may through Thy mercy obtain in heaven those good things which he valiantly maintained and defended on earth. Through Christ our Lord.  Amen. 

{{{{{Sigh}}}}}

No, my name is not actually John Wellington Welles.  He's a character in Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Sorcerer".

I thought "The Sorcerer" was sufficiently well-known.

Apparently not.

So for your edification and, where necessary, education: the patter song from The Sorcerer.

(And, yes, it would seem my memory of the chorus was not word perfect.)

Some Piping for the Weekend

Northumbrian small pipes this week. Here Kathryn Tickell plays Rothbury Hills.

My Name is John Wellington Welles. . .

. . .a dealer in magic and spells,
in blessing and curses,
in ever-filled purses,
in prophecies, witches and knells.
If you've anyone anything lacks,
you'll find it all ready in stacks,
if you'll only look in
on the resident Djinn
Number 70 St Mary Axe.

And you will, indeed,  have to look in on him now because you won't get any more of that gear on Ebay as of today.  It says so right here in this morning's WSJ. It seems Ebay didn't quite know how to deal with the complaints:

The San Jose, Calif., company says handling complaints was a problem when, for example, customers didn't win the lottery after buying a spell that promised them they would, or didn't turn into werewolves after imbibing a potion that guaranteed a transformation.

Well, sure.  You can see where someone would be upset if he paid good money to be transformed into a werewolf and all he got was a five o'clock shadow.   (But you do have to wonder if some of these whiners actually waited for a full moon.)

Papa Stronsay: Signed and Sealed

You've probably seen it posted elsewhere but the religious community on the Scottish isle of Papa Stronsay who follow in the footsteps of St Alphonsus Liguouri have at long last been fully regularized and erected as a community of diocesan right:

I, Hugh Gilbert, O.S.B, by the grace of God Bishop of Aberdeen, decree that the community known as the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, be erected as a Religious Institute of Diocesan right in accordance with c 579 of the Code of Canon Law 1983. The Institute will be subject to all other applicable norms of the said code and governed by the statutes of the said community previously approved by the Holy See.

So says the official documentation.

You can read more about it

here

here

and here.

The Rev Canon Sydney Smith

One of my favourite people is the late Reverend Sydney Smith. I have used a quote from him as an e-mail signature piece on and off for several years. But I didn't expect to see an article about him in the American press; his popularity faded long ago.

Yet there was one last month. You can find it here.

You know, you could use a quotation from Canon Smith in each e-mail for a year and never repeat yourself. Here's one:

“I must believe in Apostolic Succession, there being no other way of accounting for the descent of the Bishop of Exeter from Judas Iscariot.”

Ahem. Not, of course, referring to the current Bishop of Exeter.

Lost in Piping

Auntie did eventually put up the videos of both the qualifiers and the final medley competition performances for this year's Worlds. You can find them all here with a little clicking and poking about. The one above is St Laurence O'Toole's medley and what a wonderful piece of musicianship it is. You can listen to this dozens of times (I may have) and still find something new. It's beautifully constructed and builds seamlessly to an exciting climax. Alas, they didn't win; that honour went to Field Marshal Montgomery, who did indeed put in an excellent performance.

And that's what we've been doing the last week: listening to the Worlds performances over and over. In front of the computer, anyway. And there hasn't been that much of that, either. As has been pointed out over the years, the office in the corner room where the PC is located and The Inn goes forth to meet the world is not air conditioned. The temperature of late has been in the 90s and the humidity has been in the 90s so we have been abandoning the office as the temperature rises and retreating to the one room that is air conditioned.

Which limits posting considerably.

The results are in. . . .

. . . and FMM did indeed capture the G-1 championship. St Laurence O'Toole placed 5th. The full results aren't posted yet and my memory is a bit too porous to hold all that was announced but here is the top of the Grade 1 field:

1- Field Marshal Montgomery Memorial Pipe Band
2- Scottish Power Pipe Band
3- Simon Fraser University Pipe Band
4- Boghall & Bathgate Pipe Band
5- St Laurence O'Toole Pipe Band
6 - Strathclyde Police Pipe Band

Oh, and New Ross Pipe Band from Wexford in the Republic took 1st place in Grade 3A.

Videos of the Grade 1 competition sets should be up in a few hours. The BBC has been pretty quick about that lately.

Some Piping for the Weekend

A great piping weekend this week. The World Pipe Band Championship is on Saturday morning on Glasgow Green. The BBC is broadcasting live. You can find it here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/events/edvg9r

You'll need to be up at oh dark thirty to catch it all. That's about 3:00 a.m. in this time zone. But if you were in, oh, say. . . .Italy. . . . you could even sleep in and have a leisurely breakfast.

The consensus seems to be that FMM is the favourite for a win this year. I can't imagine Shotts even showing up after last week. And St Laurence O'Toole is my sentimental favourite and will surely be in the top six, God willing.

It Pays to Decrease Your Vocabulary

Otherwise, you will find yourself using words like underbanked.

A New Carmel

Did I mention here the new Carmel in Oakland? It doesn't look like it.

You can read something about it here. Note that it is a daughter house of the traditional Carmel of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in Valparaiso, Nebraska. This is their second daughter house in the last few years.

Apparently lack of vocations is not a problem for all communities.

"These attacks are real. They're happening now. And they'll get worse as America's religious character weakens," -Abp Chaput

Nothing really new here. It's been obvious for a few years, but only the cranky old parties on the traditional side of the spectrum cared to mention it. And now even the U.S.C.C.B. (the Bishops' Conference, if you please) thinks it's real.

Not quite what we were told back when we were being all renewed and aggiornamentoed and having our windows opened to let in the fresh air of the good old secular world.

My snarky sarcasm aside, Archbishop Chaput's essay is well-worth your time. It's here.