HRH Crown Prince Kardam of Bulgaria (1962-2015)

I am saddened to learn of the death of the Crown Prince of Bulgaria, Prince of Tirnovo, who never recovered from a 2008 car crash. May HRH rest in peace.

SKCM 2015

Yesterday I received my copy of the DVD of this year's Society of King Charles the Martyr mass at New York's Church of the Resurrection, which I unfortunately could not attend in person in January, and promptly watched it, all two hours. Setting: Haydn Lord Nelson Mass, with orchestra...in the chancel (which is not that big, yet somehow there's an orchestra there). This was not the sort of liturgy that Congregational Participationalists (though there were some wonderful robust hymns) or Humble Simplicityists (or, of course, Low Church Roundheads) would approve of. I loved it. You can read Fr. Swain's excellent sermon, which also discusses Louis XVI of France and Nicholas II of Russia, here; the DVD is available at the aforementioned American SKCM website. (Readers may also be interested in this 2000 address on the same subject by David Flint of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy.)

Economists endorse Monarchy...sort of.

A new paper by a professor at the London School of Economics and his colleague in Barcelona concludes that "hereditary monarchs with lots of legal power choose better policy than other systems do, including democracies, non-hereditary dictators, and weak hereditary monarchs, and this is reflected in higher growth." Despite this, they can't bring themselves to accept the implications of their own conclusions. Why? Well, because a lot of famous people since 1776 haven't liked hereditary monarchy and have said mean things about it, and we wouldn't want to go against them, would we?

"Of course, they're not saying they actually favour hereditary monarchy!"

Of course. Heaven forbid.

On Anglicanism

This was written by a Roman Catholic as a caricature of what Anglicans love about Anglicanism, but I sort of like it anyway:

"I can understand anyone wanting to belong to the Anglican Church with its Dickensian niceness of manners, its pleasing hymns, its dreaming spires, the village green, the rose cheeked boys framed in frills, the romance of the cemetery, the cheerful order of rank, the reliable connection to Queen and state. Who wouldn't want to share an ancestry with ladies in poke bonnets carrying posies with their dainty Book of Common Prayer? To be able to weep tears of pride at the thought of Jerusalem built on England's green and pleasant land?"

I met some of those "rose cheeked boys" on Thursday evening when the Choir of King's College Cambridge (founded by King Henry VI) performed (beautifully) at my Dallas parish, Church of the Incarnation:

The World of 1904

Inspired by my recent visit to St. Louis, here is a new chart of the monarchs of the world at the time of the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. Most if not all of these countries would have had exhibits in St. Louis that summer; the bronze doors of the Cathedral Basilica's Blessed Sacrament Chapel were donated by the Austrian imperial government from its exhibit. Despite the loss of France, republicanism was still largely confined to the Americas (sadly, Brazil had already fallen). This balance (of monarchies versus republics) should be considered a reasonable minimum for monarchists.

An American Monarchist in St. Louis

Recently I spent a delightful few days in St. Louis, Missouri, the leading American city named for a king (Louis IX of France). Here I am at the iconic statue (previously visited in 2015) of the city's royal namesake at the St. Louis Art Museum.

Frustrating

It's amazing how many modern global problems can be traced to the overthrows of monarchies. Don't like the Iran situation? Blame the fall of the Shah in 1979. Don't like the Taliban? Blame the coup against King Zahir Shah of Afghanistan in 1973. Don't like chaos in Libya? Blame the overthrow of King Idris in 1969.  Don't like ISIS? Blame the murder of King Faisal II of Iraq in 1958. Don't like Nazism? Blame the dismemberment of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires in 1918. Don't like Communism? Blame the fall of Nicholas II in 1917. And so on. Yet the world stupidly keeps refusing to listen to the only people who have been consistently right for the past 225 years: Monarchists.