Saint Louis Under Attack

The Apotheosis of Saint Louis (1906), St. Louis, Missouri

I'm going to have to be careful what I say about this, as it makes me very angry. I think it will suffice for now to say that while I am an Episcopalian, if I lived in St. Louis I would have been there in solidarity with the Catholic defenders of the statue yesterday. Monarchists in the USA don't exactly have a lot of public monuments we can relate to, and this one is probably the best, and closest to my heart since my 2015 visit. Saint Louis, pray for us!

Here is another article. I left the following comment on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Facebook page: "This diabolical campaign does not deserve any respect. King Saint Louis IX was a good man and a hero. I am an Episcopalian, but if I lived in St. Louis I would have been with the Catholics defending the statue. American monarchists like me have very few public monuments we can relate to and this one is the best and closest to my heart. This should not even be presented as a legitimate controversy. The statue's radical enemies seek only destruction and have nothing positive to contribute to society. How can anyone in St. Louis even contemplate the eradication of their city's French Catholic heritage and name? St. Louis had nothing to do with American racial problems and should not be associated with them. This movement displays gross historical ignorance and attempts to judge a 13th-century French king by modern politically correct standards. Virtually any medieval European Catholic would be considered "anti-Semitic" and "Islamophobic" by contemporary standards. That doesn't mean they can't or shouldn't be honored for the good things they did within the framework of the only society they knew. Shame on the St. Louis authorities for not making sure the statue was protected before yesterday."

Statement from the Archdiocese of St. Louis.

I just signed this petition and urge others to do the same. I've also ordered a miniature copy of the statue from the St. Louis Art Museum.

Facebook censorship

This morning on Facebook I was suspended (no posting, commenting, or Liking/Reacting) for 24 hours simply for commenting on this photo of Prince Constantine in a Greek Royal Family group, "Greeks are idiots for rejecting their Royal Family. I don't understand it." Honestly, compared to everything that gets said on Facebook, including by me, I think that's pretty mild. I suppose I might have been OK if I'd said, more precisely, "those Greeks who reject their Royal Family are idiots." Still, this seems pretty heavy-handed to me. Be careful out there!

[Sunday update: on a lighter note, here are Princes Constantine and Achileas on guitar and drums.]

Statues and Consistency

I am broadly opposed to the vandalism and removal of statues of most historical figures. However, those of us who are on the preservationist side have to do better than simply insisting that "you can't erase history." The obvious response to that is that Adolf Hitler is undeniably an important figure in German history, yet Germany properly does not have statues of Hitler. And one would have to have a cold tankie heart indeed to condemn the toppling of statues of Lenin and other Communists at the end of the Cold War. "No statue of anybody should ever be removed" is as absurd a position as "Any statue that offends anybody should be removed." 

Critics of existing statues are correct to point out that a statue of a historical figure in a public place inherently implies not only that this person existed and had an impact on history, but also that it was an impact admirable in some ways and worthy of being honoured. Therefore, we have to be able to make distinctions between individuals who, though flawed (as we all are) and holding some opinions widely frowned on today, nevertheless accomplished good things by the prevailing standards of the society in which they lived and had a positive impact on their own community and country, and individuals with few or no redeeming qualities whose evil actions clearly violated moral principles with which they were or reasonably should have been familiar.

with the eponymous statue of King St. Louis IX of France (1214-1270) in St. Louis, Missouri, March 2015

Masked Brahms

My June 13 performance of the Quintet in G Major Op. 111 by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) with Dallas Symphony colleagues is now available online. I wore my Union Jack mask in honour of HM The Queen's official birthday. The Brahms starts at about 45:30.


Summer Chamber Concert from Dallas Symphony Orchestra on Vimeo.

Reflections on recent disturbances

Not without trepidation, I'm going to try to write something about current events that will be true to myself without being too incendiary. I doubt that ideologues of either the Left or the Americanist Right will much like what I have to say, but perhaps someone will.

The United States of America was founded on a falsehood: the idea that a "Nation" could be fabricated from scratch out of Enlightenment ideology which was mistakenly believed to be universal. That many of the founders were hypocrites who whined about their own "Liberty" while denying it to others was a fatal flaw, perhaps _the_ fatal flaw, that is proving insurmountable. For a long time, buoyed by the inheritance of European Christian patrimony despite the founding ideology being essentially at odds with that patrimony, it seemed to work--for many. But it never worked for everyone, as we're hearing loud and clear recently. For many years the USA appeared to function as a de facto "nation," mostly for Christians (especially Protestants) of European descent who accepted (as I vocally do not) the Americanist republican civic religion. But at the same time, its promises rang hollow for others. 

While I deplore and condemn the violence and vandalism, and am troubled by the obvious inconsistency between the protests and the social distancing we've all been urged to observe, I cannot in conscience be unsympathetic to those in this country who feel estranged when for very different (and--this is important--far less physically threatening) reasons I have felt estranged from it for years. One of the many things I love about Monarchism is the natural, unforced, unaffected, genuine diversity we enjoy in our community. My circle of monarchist friends and allies includes a wide variety of races, religions, and all other kinds of identities and I wouldn't have it any other way. I think it's helpful at this time to focus on what we may have in common with those who appear to differ from us.

It's distressing now to see essentially American grievances and ideologies being imported to other countries, like the United Kingdom, but that was perhaps inevitable given the monumental (and in my view negative) influence the American idea has had on the world. What we're witnessing now may be the beginning of the end of something that never should have been created, but that doesn't mean it won't be painful to live through. I have lots of thoughts about the past, but no answers for the future.

Marian Column restored to Prague

A ray of hope in an otherwise dark time: Prague's Marian column, torn down by an angry mob in 1918 due to its association with the Habsburg monarchy, rises again.

In honour of the reconstruction of the column, originally erected in 1650 under Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III (1608-1657), here are pictures of two other Habsburg Ferdinands in Prague: the Coronation of Austrian Emperor Ferdinand I (1793-1875) as King of Bohemia in 1836, and his great-great-great-great-grandnephew Ferdinand Habsburg (b 1997) in the same St Vitus Cathedral in 2019.

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