Thoughts on Faith

In 2009 at the age of 30, after years of agnosticism, having become increasingly sympathetic to Christianity, I decided that despite not being a naturally religious person, I loved the music, art, and architecture it had inspired too much not to believe it is true. I know that being an Episcopalian and a member of Church of the Incarnation has blessed my life in many ways. But sometimes I still can't help wondering if I ever truly understood any of it. I suspect that's what some of my Christian friends and acquaintances must silently think about me sometimes. My Anglicanism is all so inextricably bound up with both the British Monarchy and classical sacred choral music, I honestly don't know what I would do if anything ever happened to either of those things, even though I know God never promised that either would last forever. I'm not always sure what my Christianity means at a time when most Christians are, to put it mildly, focused on other matters.

 

Even though my longstanding habit of listening to Saint Thomas Church webcasts and BBC Choral Evensong prepared me to an extent for the current norm of online services, the longer we go without being able to have church as we did (and I'm not enthusiastic about resuming but without full choral or congregational singing), the more distant I feel from it all, despite the 1662 Book of Common Prayer sitting right here on my desk. And I've never really overcome a misanthropic tendency, arguably antithetical to the Gospel, to value traditions, institutions, aesthetics, and buildings over Humanity. I suppose I'm not a very good Christian by either progressive or conservative standards. Yet I am still convinced it's better to be some sort of Christian, even a bad one, than nothing at all. And somehow we have to persevere.

Westminster Abbey

Louis XVI statue vandalized in Louisville

I am furious that the statue in Louisville of its martyred namesake King Louis XVI (1754-1793), who had nothing to do with American police brutality and in fact attempted to reform the French criminal justice system and tended to err on the side of leniency, has been vandalized. ⚜️

From Charles Coulombe: The attack on the Louis XVI statue in Louisville is ironic on several levels: Louis XVI wanted to buy out the slaveowners and liberate their slaves as early as 1777 - he thought he would be able to do so in ten years at the rate his reforms were working, but the next year made the biggest error of his reign: intervening in the American rebellion. Although that intervention made rebel victory possible (hence the statue and the town being named after him), it turned George III (who felt betrayed by Louis) against Catholic emancipation, and bankrupted France. Not only was there no money to free the slaves, there was none to feed the French peasantry when an Icelandic volcano spoiled the 1788 harvest - and so began the French Revolution. Moreover, the 1792 slave revolt in Haiti began as a rebellion in favour of the King against the newly installed republican government on the island. Toussaint l'Ouverture died in one of Napoleon's prisons both a devout Catholic and loyal to the Bourbons. Truly, life is a comedy for those who think, and a tragedy for those who feel.

In Memoriam Wilson Gavin (1998-2020)

I am in shock. It seems that one of my closest Facebook friends, Australian monarchist Wilson Gavin, was found dead this morning in Brisbane at the age of 21. It is in the news but I would prefer not to link to any article. He was an amazing person and Queen Elizabeth never had a more loyal subject. We had been friends since 2014 but had never met, but I felt that I knew him. We chatted frequently, most recently on Wednesday. Let no one ever tell you that online friendships aren't real. This one was. I am utterly devastated. I don't know his family but can only try to imagine how they must be feeling. This was his most recent Facebook profile picture. Rest in peace, beloved friend.

There is so much grief now, and yet I would not for a second be without the past 5+ years of friendship with him. I wish, bitterly, that I had made it to Australia once during that time. I couldn't go to New York during his one visit to the USA. We talked about perhaps coordinating a European trip one day. For all his love of the Queen and the Monarchy, which he firmly believed was every bit as Australian as it was British, I don't think he ever made it to the United Kingdom, though he'd been to continental Europe. ("I couldn't possibly stay so long in a republic," he replied when I asked if he was still in Greece.) But of course when one's friend is only 21 one thinks there is all the time in the world. With many of the friends I've met online via common interests, our points of view overlap, but we also argue. Wilson and I never really disagreed about anything. He was Australia's finest. I think the best way to honour him is to make sure everyone knows how remarkable he was and continue the fight to preserve Australia's constitutional monarchy forever. And if you ever find Twitter toxic, get off it. I did in April and have never missed it. While social media has undeniably had benefits, including this very friendship, it also has its deadly poisonous side. I hope one day the plague of cyber-bullying will end. I will miss you so much Wilson. You were so brave, brilliant, and fun. God Save the Queen.

Brazilian monarchism in the news

Like most of my Brazilian monarchist friends, I think the association with Bolsonaro--who will inevitably fall from power eventually--is a mistake. Nevertheless, the Brazilian monarchist movement is among the most vibrant and visible in any former monarchy in the world.

Dissent

I've always thought of myself as nonconformist and counter-cultural, but occasionally I'm reminded that there are people who have never read or seen Harry Potter and people who have never watched Game of Thrones, which I have, not because they were popular, but because stories about castles, wizards, dragons, and kings are the sort of thing I like and have always liked. But I think refusing to worship Democracy, venerate the American founding, or accept the legitimacy of republican governments of formerly monarchical countries demonstrates rather more contrarianism than refusing to experience a particular book or television series.

Modernity and Loyalty

One reason I have trouble understanding "normal" contempoary people is that I don't believe in unconditional geographical patriotism. I believe in loyalty to Monarchs, not loyalty to "Countries." While fond of some specific places that happen to be located within the USA, I feel nothing for the USA as a whole as a political entity, and while I love England and the United Kingdom, if God forbid Britain ever abolished the Monarchy, I would regard the new republic(s) as my enemy. Had I (or a version of me) been Brazilian in 1889, Portuguese in 1910, Russian in 1917, German or Austrian in 1918, Italian in 1946, Greek in 1974, or Iranian in 1979, I would have then felt that I had no country and no obligations of any kind to the new regime, preferring death (with which I'm sure the Bolsheviks or the Mullahs in particular would have been happy to oblige) or exile to obedience. So the mentality of Iranians who, the New York Times tells us, don't much like the Islamic Republic regime but are nevertheless rallying to it in patriotic anger is incomprehensible to me. I don't accept that countries have the right to abolish their monarchies, or come into existence by revolting against their monarch, and still expect the kind of automatic loyalty that would have been natural when the world was relatively sane and properly ordered.

On a related note, I find the mentality of Catholics who know that the Latin Mass is superior but nevertheless willingly attend Novus Ordo "masses" they find repulsive similarly incomprehensible. (I'm not worried that this will actually happen, but if traditional music & liturgy disappeared from my Episcopal parish, so would I.) I guess I'm not very good at Obedience.

Tactics

On the internet I sometimes see monarchists, perhaps especially religiously conservative American monarchists, make arguments that rely on blaming the U.S. republican form of government for various contemporary phenomena that they (and presumably their audience) dislike. While my lack of enthusiasm for Americanism is well known, I honestly think this is a mistake, because it can easily be pointed out that the same phenomena exist in contemporary European and Commonwealth constitutional monarchies. If you wish to criticize modern laws and social developments that are not unique to the USA or republics, you're really arguing against Democracy, Secularism, and Modernity, not republicanism per se. Now traditionalists and reactionaries who are also monarchists have every right to make those arguments. But I think discussion of Monarchy versus Republic has to be kept somewhat distinct from them.  Let's make sure that we're defending Monarchy on its own merits and for its own sake, as an institution compatible with the modern world, even if there are other aspects of that modern world that we dislike and hope to change.