When I think of the Spanish inquisition I think of Monty Python. Not the office of the defence of the faith. Perhaps it is because the founders of my church had a healthy suspicion of all Dominicans — mainly because the Dominicans would have burned them as heretics — or because the Pythons were the comedy of my childhood. But I approve of Mundabor’s policy when it comes to blog comments.

Then there is the problem of the comment censorship. I censor comments myself like it’s the Spanish Inquisition. Every whiff of Sedevacantism, true or simply suspected, will have your comment thrashed. Several episodes of the sort will have you banned. I simply insist on content I consider highly inconvenient to remain out, and on people subtly trying to smuggle such content on my site to spend their time in other ways. Therefore, I tend to give far more importance to the posts an external site publishes as its own content (posts which explicitly reveal their editorial line: see Voris) than to the comments a site does not publish, because I am sure the critical messages about Francis we do not get to read on many of the most reputed Catholic blogs are very numerous.

In addition, I do not follow closely all of my links. I read here and there, but follow regularly only a handful of them. It can, therefore, happen that something changes for the worse without my noticing.

Feel free to send your reflections about any link you do not like and why. I will not publish them, but will take note of them. In case, action might be taken.

At the same time, do not have too high expectations about the pages I link to. This blog is, if not one of a kind, certainly one of very few espousing a line of unmitigated frankness and uncommon linguistic bluntness. I advocate the use of words like “faggot”, “dyke”, “trannie” because I think that the all-pervasive politeness of modern Western culture has created the ideal humus for the spreading of homosexual “culture”, but I cannot demand that everyone thinks the way I do.

Have I banned people? Yes. The Banhammer is used, but you have to really annoy me first. I’d rather use you as an example and correct you. And fair warning: if you tweet stupidity and I find it I’ll probably use it. One does need illustrations of error so that one can flesh out what not to do.

I’m reformed: among the English that means that my spiritual forefathers were dissidents and puritans. Including Milton. who argued against censorship: that the correct response to offensive speech is more speech: let the good person find what is good (the evil man will not bother).

I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how Bookes demeane themselves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors: For Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous Dragons teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand, unlesse warinesse be us’d, as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image; but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the Earth; but a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm’d and treasur’d up on purpose to a life beyond life. ‘Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great losse; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the losse of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole Nations fare the worse. We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the living labours of publick men, how we spill that season’d life of man preserv’d and stor’d up in Books; since we see a kinde of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdome, and if it extend to the whole impression, a kinde of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elementall life, but strikes at that ethereall and fift essence, the breath of reason it selfe, slaies an immortality rather then a life.

Milton was writing in the English Civil War, when the forces of the Tories (and an Anglo-Catholic faith: bound more in ritual and tradition, but fervently believed) fought with the Parliamentarians (most of whom were fervent Puritans. In those days men believed, and fought for their beliefs, in word and at times in battles. Such times seem beyond the modern established churches in the Commonwealth. I cannot see modern preachers speaking like Milton.

But then, Milton was a layman.

So back across the Tiber. The mainline Prots are getting a bit effete, but there are still(praise God) some Papists with a spine.

A quick word to the priest readers, if I may. I hear CONSTANTLY as an excuse for “laying low” and “keeping one’s head down” the following: “If I rock the boat, I will get exiled and shipped off to Darkest Outer Nowhere.” Um, yeah. Has it ever occurred to you that there are HUMAN SOULS in Darkest Outer Nowhere who a.) Our Lord created the universe for so that those human souls, as individuals, might exist, be saved, and be happy with Him forever in heaven, and that He would suffer the entirety of His Passion repeatedly for those people, as individuals, who just happen to live in Darkest Outer Nowhere? Has it occurred to you that maybe one little old lady in Darkest Outer Nowhere has been begging Our Lord for the last 45 years to send a good and holy priest who will Offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in the Traditional Rite, and that maybe that priest, chosen to answer those prayers, is YOU? And b.) that the efficacy of your offering of the Holy Sacrifice is not tied to the worldly attractiveness of the culture you currently reside in and are so afraid to be exiled from? Or that the efficacy of the Holy Sacrifice is not a function of how many lay people are in attendance?

Take it from me, just because something feels unpleasant to YOU does not mean that it is, by definition, bad, or not God’s will. Sometimes it is precisely what feels awful to US that is what is best for EVERYONE ELSE. Has that ever occurred to you? Probably not. Let me say it again:

We have to do our duty. If that means confronting error and hurting feelings, well, yes. If it means being somewhere obscure, away from the intellectual milieu one would prefer: well, yes. (Consider Calvin: he would have prefered to continue to dispute theology in Paris, at the Sorbonne, but had to flee to live in Geneva, and deal with a City Council who opposed his preaching and his practical leniency[1] with other scholars).

In these times, I cherish the Catholic Blogoverse, I pray for the faithful there. For they have na apostate leadership, what has ruined the faith of many (including many religious) and they cling to the gospel, though they see it reflected in fractured theology. I would rather let them speak, and not be all censorious. And when I read there, I try to respect the rules they set.

For if the faithful do not stand together, divided we will be conquered.