Błogosławieni, którzy cierpią prześladowanie dla sprawiedliwości

Hiszpański sędzia pozbawiony prawa piastowania urzędów publicznych, w tym sądzenia, za opóźnianie przyznania adopcji dziecka przez „współmałżonkę” matki biologicznej.

„Błogosławieni, którzy cierpią prześladowanie dla sprawiedliwości,
albowiem do nich należy królestwo niebieskie” (Mt 5, 10)

Ojciec sześciorga dzieci, sędzia Wydziału Rodzinnego IX Sądu Pierwszej Instancji w mieście Murcja położonego w południowo-wschodniej Hiszpanii, Fernando Ferrin Calamita, tuż przed Bożym Narodzeniem, w dniu 23 grudnia 2008 r., został skazany w postępowaniu karnym przez Wyższy Sąd Sprawiedliwości w Murcji na karę pozbawienia prawa piastowania urzędów publicznych, w tym sądzenia, na okres 2 lat, 3 miesięcy i jeden dzień. Ponadto, skazany będzie zobowiązany zapłacić tytułem odszkodowania kwotę 6000 euro oraz zwrócić koszty procesowe oskarżycielowi prywatnemu. Kary te zostały nałożone za rzekome przestępstwo opóźnienia w sprawowaniu sądownictwa przez sędziego Ferrina. Dla skazującego Sądu, okolicznością obciążającą popełnienia przestępstwa jest działanie motywowane homofobią, tj. za dyskryminowanie za orientację seksualną strony wnioskującej w procesie o adopcję.

Po niedawnych zmianach ustrojowych (a za takowe można uznać bieżące zmiany legislacyjne i polityczne w Królestwie Hiszpanii po objęciu władzy przez rządzącą partię socjalistyczną w 2004 r.), pojawiło się prawo do adopcji dla małżeństw tej samej płci. W związku z tym, w trakcie postępowania sądowego o przyznanie małej Candeli - urodzonej po sztucznym zapłodnieniu matki w dniu 11 lutego 2006 - w adopcję towarzyszce matki biologicznej dziewczynki (jej małżonce według hiszpańskiego ustawodawstwa). Matka dziewczynki i jej towarzyska, lesbijki, sformalizowały związek małżeński jeszcze w listopadzie 2005 r., a po urodzeniu dziecka w lutym 2006 r., w dniu 16 maja 2006 r., towarzyszka złożyła wniosek o przyznanie jej praw rodzicielskich nad dzieckiem za zgodą matki biologicznej. Dla wyjaśnienia, warto dodać iż w Hiszpanii od 2007 r. wystarczy aby przy sporządzaniu aktu urodzenia w urzędzie stanu cywilnego, matka biologiczna stwierdziła jako drugiego „rodzica” jej partnerkę. W niniejszym przypadku, mimo że od połowy 2005 r. ustawa zezwalała ogólnie na adopcję przez „małżeństwa” tej samej płci, aby dziecko formalnie miało obu rodziców istniała tymczasowa konieczność przeprowadzenia postępowania sądowego o adopcję. Stąd nadzwyczajność całej tej sprawy. Po złożeniu wniosku, sędzia zlecił ekspertyzę zespołowi psychospołecznemu Sądu. Po kilku tygodniach, zespół ten zaopiniował, że przyznanie adopcji współmałżonce nie będzie miało żadnego (ujemnego) wpływu na rozwój dziecka, ponieważ i tak dziewczynka będzie żyć w jej aktualnym otoczeniu „rodzinnym”, a jedynie może wpłynąć pozytywnie na rozwój dziecka, z uwagi na możliwość zachowania w przyszłości kontaktu z „matką adopcyjną” w przypadku ewentualnego zerwania związku partnerek. Z kolej, w dniu 21 września 2006 r., prokurator w swoim piśmie nie wyraził żadnych zastrzeżeń wobec przyznania adopcji. Według Wyższego Sądu Sprawiedliwości w Murcji, to zaraz po tej dacie Sędzia powinien orzec o przyznaniu czy odmówieniu adopcji, gdyż istniały wszystkie do tego przesłanki, a postawienie dodatkowych wymogów jedynie mogło być znakiem jego uprzedzeń i oporu wobec przyznania adopcji starającej się o to osobie. Równa się to dla Wyższego Sądu Sprawiedliwości z karalnym opóźnieniem w sprawowaniu sprawiedliwości przez sędziego z powodu „orientacji seksualnej” strony wnioskującej. Tym bardziej, że dopiero 4 kwietnia 2007 r. sędzia Ferrin wydał postanowienie o wyznaczenie dziecku obrońcy procesowego w postaci Urzędu Dyrekcji Generalnej Rodziny Regionu Murcji, uznając, iż interesy małej Candeli mogą być sprzeczne z interesami matki biologicznej oraz wnioskującej współmałżonki. Następnie sędzia Ferrin zlecił Służbie Socjalnej Ochrony Niepełnoletnich w/w Dyrekcji Generalnej zaopiniowanie sytuacji życiowej wnioskującej pary z związku z jej możliwym wpływem na przyszły rozwój dziecka. W odpowiedzi 14 czerwca 2007 r. Służba Socjalna stwierdziła, iż nie ma przeciwwskazań na udzielenie adopcji z uwagi na stabilną sytuację małżonek co potwierdzono podczas wywiadu środowiskowego, kiedy stwierdzono, że dziecko „jest szczęśliwe i radosne, biega, gaworzy i śmieje się”. Sędzia Ferrin, oceniając ekspertyzę jako powierzchowną i niekompletną, zarządził jej rozszerzenie o poruszenie następnych punktów:
1) Wpływ braku postaci ojca dla rozwoju dziecka, przy jednoczesnym istnieniu dwóch matek.
2) Czy nie ma wpływu dla pierwszeństwa interesu dziecka fakt przebywania na co dzień z rodzicami jednakowej czy różnej płci?
3) Czy nie istnieje duże prawdopodobieństwo, że dziecko będzie homoseksualne?
4) Czy nie jest prawem dziecka wychowanie się w rodzinie „normalnej”, złożonej z dwóch osób różnej płci, uzupełniających się?

Pytania te „zbulwersowały” Urząd, po czym Sędzia zdecydował uchylić wydane zarządzenie i wnieść zapytanie do Trybunału Konstytucyjnego o konstytucyjność przepisów, które miały mieć zastosowane w tym przypadku, czego ostatecznie nie zdążył zrobić. Dla Wyższego Sądu Sprawiedliwości w Murcji pytania te miałyby być wyrazem homofobicznego nastawienia oskarżonego sędziego. W międzyczasie sprawa skomplikowała się o incydenty w celu wyłączenia sędziego Ferrina z postępowania, a nawet sędzia ten był poddany naciskom opuszczenia Wydziału Rodzinnego przez wyższe instancje sądownicze regionu Murcja. W dniu 6 listopada 2007 r., wnioskująca o adopcję złożyła karne doniesienie przeciwko sędziemu Ferrin za czyny, które miałaby stanowić złośliwe opóźnienie sprawowania sądownictwa w trakcie postępowania o adopcję. Po fazie śledczo-przygotowawczej, początkiem jesieni 2008 r. otwarto postępowanie karne, które cieszyło się dużym zainteresowaniem hiszpańskich mediów. Ostatecznie, w powołanym wyroku z dnia 23 grudnia 2008 r., Wyższy Sąd Sprawiedliwości w Murcji przyjął całkowicie tezy z oskarżenia prywatnego i prokuratury, pozbawiając tym samym pana Ferrina możliwości piastowania urzędów publicznych. Adwokat skazanego sędziego już zapowiedział odwołanie się od tego wyroku.

Proces ten, niezależnie od okoliczności i jego zawiłości prawno-procesowych, stanowi przykład konfliktu pomiędzy sumieniem skazanego sędziego a przepisami Ustawodawczy, w tym przypadku wdrożonych przez „demokratyczny” i samoistny parlament. Według Przewodniczącego Wyższego Sądu Sprawiedliwości w Murcji, podobno znanego ze swojej praktyki religijnej a także ze swoich poprzednich badań nad historią prawa, sędzia Ferrin powinien nie poddawać się własnym przekonaniom w trakcie pełnienia swojej funkcji publicznej, tym bardziej że są one „homofobiczne”, bo w przeciwnym razie „jeśli wszyscy sędziowie naśladowaliby jego paradygmat działania, utożsamiwszy go jako normę uniwersalną, szybko popadlibyśmy w system „arbitralności” który właśnie chciał uchylić Król Mądry” (kastylijski król Alfons X, przyp. autora). O dziwo, tego samego dnia Hiszpańska Rada Sądownictwa wydała decyzję w innej polemicznej sprawie, przeciwko sędziemu Tirado, który nie zapewnił uwięzienia zabójcy recydywisty, przez co ten zdołał jeszcze zgwałcić i zabić kolejną małą dziewczynkę, Mari Luz, w andaluzyjskim mieście Huelva na początku 2008 r. Na podstawie tej decyzji, pozostawiano sędziego Tirado przy prawie do wykonywania zawodu, jedynie nałożywszy na niego karę 1500 euro.

Problem w tym że dla obecnych iuspozytywistów u władzy, sędzia powinien jedynie ograniczać się do mechanicznego „stosowania ustaw”, a nie jak etymologia słowa iudex (z ius dicere) wskazuję, do orzekania „prawa”, czyli roztropne oddawania tego co każdemu się należy zgodnie z rozumem i porządkiem naturalnym we wspólnocie, do którego określenia, czemu nie, racjonalne ustawy zmierzające do dobra wspólnego są bardzo potrzebne. Nie ma mocniejszego wytłumaczenia na niezawisłość sędziowską. Niestety, skoro żyjemy w systemach „imperium ustaw”, chodzi o to aby nie dopuścić niewygodnych sędziów z pewnych jurysdykcji, np. wydziałów sądów do spraw rodzinnych. Tak się działo w Polskiej Rzeczypospolitej Ludowej. Obecnie, nadal konflikt ten jest aktualny: który z polskich sędziów rodzinnych, np., odmawia udzielenia rozwodów z uwagi na swoje sumienie?

Wobec obecnego zawirowania ideologicznego Hiszpanii i zdominowaniu jej instytucji publicznych przez wojującą gender ideology (np. jak się okazało w tym przypadku przy „postępowym” nastawieniu zaangażowanych pracowników społecznych i psychologów hiszpańskich urzędów – małodusznych absolwentów materialistycznych teorii wykładanych na hiszpańskich wydziałach psychologii, prawa, medycyny lub pedagogiki), sytuacja nie tylko sędziów, ale i różnych osób piastujących zarówno stanowiska publiczne jak i prywatne, takich jak nauczyciele i profesorowie, pracownicy urzędów cywilnych, lekarze, którzy będą chcieli postępować zgodnie ze swoim sumieniem (a przede wszystkim, jeśli chcą kierować się prawem naturalnym, Nauczaniem Społecznym i Katechizmem Kościoła katolickiego). Wielce prawdopodobne, że w przyszłości zostanie także wprowadzone przestępstwo „homofobii” oprócz zapowiadanych rozszerzenia aborcji oraz umożliwienia legalnej eutanazji. Tak więc każdy kto będzie śmiał twierdzić, iż homoseksualizm jest patologią albo czymś „poza normalnością”, będzie mógł zostać posądzony o homofobię. Jednocześnie, Ministerstwo Edukacji wprowadza do programu szkolnego swoisty przedmiot pod tytułem „wychowanie obywatelskie”, obowiązkowe dla całego szkolnictwa publicznego i prywatnego, które wpaja już pierwszoklasistom, m.in., że istnieją różne „formy” rodzinne obok tradycyjnej heteroseksualnej, a wszystkie są godne wsparcia, szacunku i uznania.

Niniejszy przypadek jest również obrazem podziałów i zagubienia aktualnej Hiszpanii: sędzia Ferrin jest tylko o rok starszy od Premiera Hiszpanii Jose Luisa Zapatero, wykonawczy radykalnych zmian legislacyjnych w Hiszpanii, znają się ze studiów ponieważ obaj ukończyli ten sam Wydział Prawa na uniwersytecie w Leon (północ Hiszpanii)

Na koniec, chciałbym aby czytelnicy niniejszego artykułu potraktowali go jako przestrogę dla Polski, ponieważ wszystko wskazuje na to, że zmiany z ostatniego trzydziestolecia w Hiszpanii (w 2008 r. obchodziliśmy 30-lecie obowiązującej hiszpańskiej Konstytucji z 6 grudnia 1978 r.), a w szczególności postępująca laicyzacja życia codziennego i politycznego, wynikające z liberalnego nastawienia społecznego i indywidualnego, nie tylko w gospodarce, również – albo przede wszystkim - hiszpańskich katolików, a są to dążenia już niestety zarodkowo obecne również w Polsce. Np. głośno jest ostatnio o pracach legislacyjnych nad regulacją technik zapładniania in vitro oraz innych form sztucznej reprodukcji w polskim parlamencie. Przy jednoznacznym głosie Episkopatu Polski w tej sprawie, przytacza się zbyt często przez wpływowe media przeciwko czy wobec niemu różne inne stanowiska, rzekomo „katolickie”, nawołujące do konieczności „nieuniknionego” kompromisu. W tym przypadku, należy brać pod uwagę, iż mała Candela, pierwsza ofiara wyżej omawianego przykrego kazusu, jest owocem sztucznego zapłodnienia jej matki (czyli czynu moralnie nie wskazanego gdyż brakuje podstawowe środowisko i akt miłości rodziców, ojca i matki, zgodnie z naturą). Tak więc, dziecko jest „prawem” a nie „darem”. Czyli dziecko nie jest celem samym w sobie, lecz środkiem spełnienia czy samo-stanowienia innej osoby, w tym przypadku matki biologicznej oraz jej towarzyszki.

Aby nie popadać w łatwy pesymizm, warto przypomnieć że dla katolików kluczem przeciwko liberalizacji jest życie nadprzyrodzone, ufne otwarcie się na Boże Miłosierdzie, życie łaską która jest nam dana w sakramentach w każdej sferze życia, nie tylko indywidualnej lub prywatnej, zgodnie z wiernością prawdzie i wierze Kościoła i jego Stolicy Apostolskiej. Dlatego obecne Świąteczne Dni przypominają nam że sam Bóg chciał przyjść na Świat w ubogiej rodzinie, jako syn Maryi i Józefa. Oprócz tego, konieczna jest stała formacja duchowa i intelektualna, nie tylko dla kleru, we świetle nauczania Kościoła i jego Tradycji, abyśmy byli „zawsze gotowi do obrony wobec każdego, kto domaga się od was uzasadnienia tej nadziei, która w was jest” (1 Piotr 3, 15). Dlatego też bardzo prosiłbym czytelników o stałą modlitwę do Świętej Rodziny z Nazaretu za Candelę, za rodzinę sędziego Ferrina, która pozostała bez żadnych źródeł dochodów, za Hiszpanię, kraju niegdyś tak promieniującego wiarą, a także za Polskę, aby Bóg ochronił ją przed już w niej obecnym rozkładem społecznym.

Brideshead Revisited Once Again

It was some years ago when Emilio, a very dear friend and quite a “mentor” for us, told us about an English novel which reflected in a very surprising way how God does not cease calling his children until the ultimate end, regardless how far or lost they are. In other words, it was about a modern adaptation of the classical Saint Augustine maxim: “quia fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te”.

However, as that was a prohibited fruit, our friend omitted the book’s title. Perhaps we were not yet prepared to digest it as it deserved. Therefore, curiosity fell into oblivion. Until a couple of years ago, when for my twenty-fourth birthday my friends gave me as a birthday gift the Spanish translation of Brideshead Revisited. I devoured it immediately and voraciously, almost in one night, while travelling to Valencia by bus to attend the World Meeting of Families with Benedict XVI.

One year later, during a self-devoted weekend, I had a pleasure of revisiting Brideshead when watching a TV serial made in 1981. Furthermore, I got afterwards an English abridged audio book. Meanwhile, my increasing liking of the writer, the great Evelyn Waugh, led me to some of his other writings, like Decline and Fall and Sword of Honour.

Finally, some weeks ago, a friend, Javi lent me his Penguin Book with the whole English text. Therefore, lately I have been very happy visiting Brideshead once again.

xxx

What has captivated me most in Waugh’s chef d’oeuvre? His audacious apology of Catholicism for the times that lacked God? His decadent and so British glamour? His love or falling stories?

Yes and not, but these are not the main topics. The characters, all together and each one of them, there are those who fascinates me most. Even being mere literary depictions, each of them may question me. Because, in a certain way, I tend to identify with their ways, reactions and approaches, with their misery and unaware constant God-seeking, with their selfishness and running away from themselves against their desperate need of “the Other”. Indeed, I will always share Charles poorness and disorientation; his father stubbornness; Alexander’s Flyte rebellion; Lady Marchmain’s apparent safety seeking; Bridey’s impersonality and indecision; Julia’s vanity or the pious naivety of Cordelia; Anthony’s Blanche sophistication and rootlessness; Boy’s Mulcaster roughness; the superficiality of Rex Mottram; Mr. Samgrass’ servility and above all, Lord Sebastian’s weakness. A story of sins and lost freedom. A story of mercy. A story of a little Christendom. Personal stories of those that have been and still are very loved by God, even when they keep falling into the abyss.

Aren’t all we somehow bridesheadians?

For those of you who have not read yet Brideshead Revisited, I enclose next some “hooks”: shorter or longer text’s quotes and extracts from the very recommendable novel.

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(In this post, I have to acknowledge Ula’s help with my English: Ula, thank you!!)

QUOTES AND JUST SOME RELEVANT EXTRACTS

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Brideshead revisited, the Sacred and Profane Memories of Capt. Charles Ryder
Evelyn Waugh, Penguin Books, London 2003.

PREFACE

Its theme - the operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters - was perhaps presumptuously large, but I make no apology for it. (p.7).

PROLOGUE

Here love had died between me and the army (p.9).

Here at the age of thirty-nine I began to be old (p.11).

I had been there before; I knew all about it (p.22).

ET IN ARCADIA EGO

I do not know that I ever, consciously, followed any of this advice (p.29).

'To understand all is to forgive all' (p.31).

'But I was in search of love in those days' (p.32).

'I expected you to make mistakes your first year. We all do' (p.42).

So through a world of piety I made my way to Sebastian (p.59).

'I've never been ‘short’ as you so painfully call it. And yet what else could you say? Hard up? Penurious? Distressed? Embarrassed? Stony-broke? (...) On the rocks? In Queer Street? ' (p.63).

The dinner table was our battlefield (p.65).

'Myster Ryder? Myster Ryder? Charles drinks champagne at all hours' (p.75).

This was my conversion to the Baroque (p.79).

'Ought we to be drunk every night?' (p.82).

Sebastian's faith was an enigma to me at that time, but not one which I felt particularly concerned to solve. I had no religion (...). Later, too, I have come to accept claims which then, in 1923, I never troubled to examine, and to accept the supernatural as the real (...). 'Oh dear, it's very difficult being a Catholic'(...) 'I'm very, very much wickeder' (p.83-84).

'Queer fellow, my brother,' said Sebastian.
'He looks normal enough.'
'Oh, but he's not. If you only knew, he's much the craziest of us, only it doesn't come out at all. He's all twisted inside. He wanted to be a priest, you know.'
'I didn't.'
'I think he still does. He nearly became a Jesuit, straight from Stonyhurst. It was awful for mummy. She couldn't exactly try and stop him, but of course it was the last thing she wanted. Think what people would have said - the eldest son; it's not as if it had been me. And poor papa. The Church has been enough trouble to him without that happening. There was a frightful to do - monks and monsignori running round the house like mice, and Brideshead just sitting glum and talking about the will of God. He was the most upset, you see, when papa went abroad - much more than mummy really. Finally they persuaded him to go to Oxford and think it over for three years. Now he's trying to make up his mind. He talks of going into the Guards and into the House of Commons and of marrying. He doesn't know what he wants. I wonder if I should have been like that, if I'd gone to Stonyhurst. I should have gone, only papa went abroad before I was old enough, and the first thing he insisted on was my going to Eton.' (p.85-86).

'I wish I liked Catholics more.'
'They seem just like other people.'
'My dear Charles, that's exactly what they're not particularly in this country, where they're so few. It's not just that they're a clique - as a matter of fact, they're at least four cliques all blackguarding each other half the time - but they've got an entirely different outlook on life; everything they think important is different from other people. They try and hide it as much as they can, but it comes out all the time. It's quite natural, really, that they should. But you see it's dffficult for semi-heathens like Julia and me.' (p. 87).

'Charles'? Said Sebastian. Charles'? 'Mr.Ryder' to you, child (p. 90).

That night I began to realize how little I really knew of Sebastian, and to understand why he had always sought to keep me apart from the rest of his life. He was like a friend made on board ship, on the high seas; now we had come to his home port (p. 91).

'They are full of hate - hate of themselves. Alex and his family' (p. 99).

'How does one mend one's way?(...) Oh, Charles, what has happened since last term? I feel so old' (p.101).

(SEBASTIAN CONTRA MUNDUM)

It was thus that Lady Marchmain found us (...). She found Sebastian subdued, with all his host of friends reduced to one, myself. She accepted me as Sebastian's friend and sought to make me hers also, and in doing so, unwittingly struck at the roots of our friendship. That is the single reproach I have to set against her abundant kindness to me (p. 105).

But I was as untouched by her faith as I was by her charm: or, rather, I was touched by both alike. I had no mind then for anything except Sebastian, and I saw him already as being threatened, though I did not yet know how black was the threat. His constant, despairing prayer was to be let alone. By the blue waters and rustling palms of his own mind he was happy and harmless as a Polynesian; only when the big ship dropped anchor beyond the coral reef, and the cutter beached in the lagoon, and, up the slope that had never known the print of a boot, there trod the grim invasion of trader, administrator, missionary, and tourist - only then was it time to disinter the archaic weapons of the tribe and -sound the drums in the hills; or, more easily, to turn from the sunlit door and lie alone in the darkness, , where the impotent, painted deities paraded the walls in vain and cough his heart out among the rum bottles.
And, since Sebastian counted among the intruders his own conscience and all claims of human affection, his days in Arcadia were numbered. For in this, to me, tranquil time Sebastian took fright. I knew him well in that mood of alertness and suspicion, like a deer suddenly lifting his head at the far notes of the hunt; I had seen him grow wary at the thought of his family or his religion, now I found I, too, was suspect. He did not fail in love, but he lost his joy of it, for I was no longer part of his solitude. As my intimacy with his family grew, I became part of the world which he sought to escape; I became one of the bonds which held him. That was the part for which his mother, in all our little talks, was seeking to fit me. Everything was left unsaid. It was only dimly and at rare moments that I suspected what was afoot.
Outwardly Mr Samgrass was the only enemy. For a fortnight Sebastian and I remained at Brideshead, leading our own life. His brother was engaged in sport and estate management; Mr Samgrass was at work in the library on Lady Marchmain's book; Sir Adrian Porson demanded most of Lady Marchmain's time. We saw little of them except in the evenings; there was room under that wide roof for a wide variety of independent lives.
After a fortnight Sebastian said: 'I can't stand Mr Samgrass any more. Let's go to London,' so he came to stay with me and now began to use my home in preference to 'Marchers'. My father liked him. 'I think your friend very amusing,' he said. 'Ask him often.'
Then, back at Oxford, we took up again the life that seemed to be shrinking in the cold air. The sadness that had been strong in Sebastian the term before gave place to kind of sullenness, even towards me. He was sick at heart somewhere, I did not know how, and I grieved for him, unable to help.
When he was gay now it was usually because he was drunk, and when drunk he developed an obsession of 'mocking Mr Samgrass'. He composed a ditty of which the refrain was, 'Green arse, Samgrass - Samgrass green arse', sung to the tune of St Mary's chime, and he would thus serenade him, perhaps once a week, under his windows. Mr Samgrass was distinguished as being the first don to have a private telephone installed in his rooms. Sebastian in his cups used to ring him up and sing him this simple song. And all this Mr Samgrass took in good part, as it is called, smiling obsequiously when we met, but with growing confidence, as though each outrage in some way strengthened his hold on Sebastian.
It was during this term that I began to realize that Sebastian was a drunkard in quite a different sense to myself I got drunk often, but through an excess of high spirits, in the love of the moment, and the wish to prolong and enhance it; Sebastian drank to escape. As we together grew older and more serious I drank less, he more. I found that sometimes after I had gone back to my college, he sat up late and alone, soaking. A succession of disasters came on him so swiftly and with such unexpected violence that it is hard to say when exactly I recognized that my friend was in deep trouble. I knew it well enough in the Easter vacation.
Julia used to say, 'Poor Sebastian. It's something chemical in him.'
That was the cant phrase of the time, derived from heaven knows what misconception of popular science. 'There's something chemical between them' was used to explain the over-mastering hate or love of any two people. It was the old concept in a new form. I do not believe there was anything chemical in my friend.
The Easter party at Brideshead was a bitter time, culminating in a small but unforgettably painful incident. Sebastian got very drunk before dinner in his mother's house, and thus marked the beginning of a new epoch in his melancholy record, another stride in the flight from his family which brought him to ruin.
It was at the end of the day when the large Easter party left Brideshead. It was called the Easter party, though in fact it began on the Tuesday of Easter Week, for the Flytes all went into retreat at the guest-house of a monastery from Maundy Thursday until Easter. This year Sebastian had said he would not go, but at the last moment had yielded, and came home in a state of acute depression from which I totally failed to raise him.
He had been drinking very hard for a week - only I knew how hard - and drinking in a nervous, surreptitious way, totally unlike his old habit. During the party there was always a grog tray in the library, and Sebastian took to slipping in there at odd moments during the day without saying anything even to me. The house was largely deserted during the day. I was at work painting another panel in the little garden-room in the colonnade. Sebastian complained of a cold, stayed in, and during all that time was never quite sober; he escaped attention by being silent. Now and then I noticed him attract curious glances, but most of the party knew him too slightly to see the change in him, while his own family were occupied, each with their particular guests.
When I remonstrated he said, 'I can't stand all these people about," but it was when they finally left and he had to face his family at close quarters that he broke down.
The normal practice was for a cocktail tray to be brought into the drawing-room at six; we mixed our own drinks and the bottles were removed when we went to dress; later, just before dinner, cocktails appeared again, this time handed round by the footmen.
Sebastian disappeared after tea; the light had gone and I spent the next hour playing mah-jongg with Cordelia. At six I was alone in the drawing-room, when he returned; he was frowning in a way I knew all too well, and when he spoke I recognized the drunken thickening in his voice.
'Haven't they brought the cocktails yet?' He pulled clumsily on the bell-rope.
I said, 'Where have you been?'
'Up with nanny.'
'I don't believe it. You've been drinking somewhere.'
'I've been reading in my room. My cold's worse today.' When the tray arrived he slopped gin and vermouth into a tumbler and carried it out of the room with him. I followed him upstairs, where he shut his bedroom door in my face and turned the key.
I returned to the drawing-room full of dismay and foreboding.
The family assembled. Lady Marchmain said: 'What's become of Sebastian?'
'He's gone to lie down. His cold is worse.'
'Oh dear, I hope he isn't getting flu. I thought he had a feverish look once or twice lately. Is there anything he wants?'
'No, he particularly asked not to be disturbed.'
I wondered whether I ought to speak to Brideshead, but that grim, rock-crystal mask forbade all confidence. Instead, on the way upstairs to dress, I told Julia.
'Sebastian's drunk.'
'He can't be. He didn't even come for a cocktail.'
'He's been drinking in his room all the afternoon.'
'How very peculiar! What a bore he is! Will he be all right for dinner?'
'No.'
'Well, you must deal with him. It's no business of mine. Does he often do this?'
'He has lately.'
'How very boring.'
I tried Sebastian's door, found it locked, and hoped he was sleeping, but, when I came back from my bath, I found him sitting in the chair before my fire; he was dressed for dinner, all but his shoes, but his tie was awry and his hair on end; he was very red in the face and squinting slightly. He spoke indistinctly.
'Charles, what you said was quite true. Not with nanny. Been drinking whisky up here. None in the library now party's gone. Now party's gone and only mummy. Feeling rather drunk. Think I'd better have something-on-a-tray up here. Not dinner with mummy.'
'Go to bed,' I told him. 'I'll say your cold's worse.'
'Much worse.'
I took him to his room which was next to mine and tried to get him to bed, but he sat in front of his dressing table squinnying at himself in the glass, trying to remake his bow-tie. On the writing table by the fire was a half-empty decanter of whisky. I took it up, thinking he would not see, but he spun round from the mirror and said: 'You put that down.'
'Don't be an ass, Sebastian. You've had enough.'
'What the devil's it got to do with you? You're only a guest here - my guest. I drink what I want to in my own house.' He would have fought me for it at that moment.
'Very well,' I said, putting the decanter back, 'Only for God's sake keep out of sight.'
'Oh, mind your own business. You came here as my friend; now you're spying on me for my mother, I know. Well, you can get out and tell her from me that I'll choose my friends and she her spies in future.'
So I left him and went down to dinner.
'I've been in to Sebastian,' I said. 'His cold has come on rather badly. He's gone to bed and says he doesn't want anything.'
'Poor Sebastian,' said Lady Marchmain. 'He'd better have a glass of hot whisky. I'll go and have a look at him.'
'Don't mummy, I'll go,' said Julia rising.
'I'll go,' said Cordelia, who was dining down that night, for a treat to celebrate the departure of the guests. She was at the door and through it before anyone could stop her. Julia caught my eye and gave a tiny, sad shrug.
In a few minutes Cordelia was back, looking grave. 'No, he doesn't seem to want anything,' she said.
'How was he?'
'Well, I don't know, but I think he's very drunk' she said.
'Cordelia.'
Suddenly the child began to giggle. '"Marquis's Son Unused to Wine",' she quoted. "'Model Student's Career Threatened".'
'Charles, is this true?' asked Lady Marchmain.
'Yes.'
Then dinner was announced, and we went to the dining-room where the subject was not mentioned.
When, Brideshead and I were left alone he said: 'Did you say Sebastian was drunk?'
'Yes.'
'Extraordinary time to choose. Couldn't you stop him?'
'No.'
'No,' said Brideshead, 'I don't suppose you could. I once saw my father drunk, in this room. I wasn't more than about ten at the time. You can't stop people if they want to get drunk. My mother couldn't stop my father, you know.'
He spoke in his odd, impersonal way. The more I saw of this family, I reflected, the more singular I found them. 'I shall ask my mother to read to us tonight.'
It was the custom, I learned later, always to ask Lady Marchmain to read aloud on evenings of family tension. She had a beautiful voice and great humour of expression. That night she read part of The Wisdom of Father Brown. Julia sat with a stool covered with manicure things and carefully revarnished her nails; Cordelia nursed Julia's Pekinese; Brideshead played patience; I sat unoccupied studying the pretty group they made, and mourning my friend upstairs.
But the horrors of that evening were not yet over.
It was sometimes Lady Marchmain's practice, when the family were alone, to visit the chapel before going to bed. She had just closed her book and proposed going there when the door opened and Sebastian appeared. He was dressed as I had last seen him, but now instead of being flushed he was deathly pale.
'Come to apologize,' he said.
'Sebastian, dear, do go back to your room,' said Lady Marchmain. 'We can talk about it in the morning.'
'Not to you. Come to apologize to Charles. I was bloody to him and he's my guest. He's my guest and my only friend and I was bloody to him.'
A chill spread over us. I led him back to his room; his family went to their prayers. I noticed when we got upstairs that the decanter was now empty. 'It's time you were in bed,' I said.
Sebastian began to weep. 'Why do you take their side against me? I knew you would if I let you meet them. Why do you spy on me?'
He said more than I can bear to remember, even at twenty years' distance. At last I got him to sleep and very sadly went to bed myself (p. 123-129).

BRIDESHEAD DESERTED

When he had finished he said, 'Now you had better make your confession.'
'No, thank you,' she said, as though refusing the offer of something in a shop. 'I don't think I want to today,' and walked angrily home.
From that moment she shut her mind against her religion.
And Lady Marchmain saw this and added it to her new grief for Sebastian and her old grief for her husband and to the deadly sickness in her body, and took all these sorrows with her daily to church; it seemed her heart was transfixed with the swords of her dolours, a living heart to match the plaster and paint; what comfort she took home with her, God knows (p. 182).

'You know, Charles,' he said, 'it's rather a pleasant change when all your life you've had people looking after you, to have someone to look after yourself. Only of course it has to be someone pretty hopeless to need looking after by me.' (p. 207).

'They've closed the chapel at Brideshead, Bridey and the Bishop; mummy's Requiem was the last mass said there. After she was buried the priest came in - I was there alone. I don't think he saw me - and took out the altar stone and put it in his bag; then he burned the wads of wool with the holy oil on them and threw the ash outside; he emptied the holy-water stoop and blew out the lamp in the sanctuary, and left the tabernacle open, and empty, as though from now on it was always to be Good Friday. I suppose none of this makes any sense to you, Charles, poor agnostic. I stayed there till he was gone, and then, suddenly, there wasn't any chapel there any more, just an oddly decorated room. I can't tell you what it felt like. You've.never been to Tenebrae, I suppose?'
'Never.'
'Well, if you had you'd know what the Jews felt about their temple. Quomodo sedet sola civitas...it's a beautiful chant. You ought to go once, just to hear it.'
'Still trying to convert me, Cordelia?'
'Oh, no. That's all over, too. D'you know what papa said when he became a Catholic? Mummy told me once. He said to her: "You have brought back my family to the faith of their ancestors." Pompous, you know. It takes people different ways. Anyhow, the family haven't been very constant, have they? There's him gone and Sebastian gone and Julia gone. But God won't let them go for long, you know. I wonder if you remember the story mummy read us the evening Sebastian first got drunk I mean the bad evening. "Father Brown" said something like "I caught him" (the thief) "with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread."'
We scarcely mentioned her mother. All the time we talked, she ate voraciously. Once she said:
'Did you see Sir Adrian Porson's poem in The Times? It's funny: he knew her best of anyone - he loved her all his life, you know - and yet it doesn't seem to have anything to do with her at all.
'I got on best with her of any of us, but I don't believe I ever really loved her. Not as she wanted or deserved. It's odd I didn't, because I'm full of natural affections.'
'I never really knew your Mother,' I said.
'You didn't like her. I sometimes think when people wanted to hate God they hated mummy.'
'What do you mean by that, Cordelia?'
'Well, you see, she was saintly but she wasn't a saint. No one could really hate a saint, could they? They can't really hate God either. When they want to hate him and his saints, they have to find something like themselves and pretend it's God and hate that. I suppose you think that's all bosh.'
'I heard almost the same thing once before - from someone very different.'
'Oh, I'm quite serious. I've thought about it a lot. It seems to explain poor mummy.'
Then this odd child tucked into her dinner with renewed relish. 'First time I've ever been taken out to dinner alone at a restaurant,' she said.
Later: 'When Julia heard they were selling Marchers she said: "Poor Cordelia. She won't have her coming-out ball there after all." It's a thing we used to talk about - like my being her bridesmaid. That didn't come off either. When Julia had her ball I was allowed down for an hour, to sit in the corner with Aunt Fanny, and she said, "In six years' time you'll have all this."...I hope I've got a vocation.'
'I don't know what that means.'
'It means you can be a nun. If you haven't a vocation it's no good however much you want to be; and if you have a vocation, you can't get away from it, however much you hate it. Bridey thinks he has a vocation and hasn't. I used to think Sebastian had and hated it - but I don't know now. Everything has changed so much suddenly.'
But I had no patience with this convent chatter. I had felt the brush take life in my hand that afternoon; I had had my finger in the great, succulent pie of creation. I was a man of the Renaissance that evening - of Browning's renaissance. I, who had walked the streets of Rome in Genoa velvet and had seen the stars through Galileo's tube, spurned the friars, with their dusty tomes and their sunken, jealous eyes and their crabbed hairsplitting speech.
'You'll fall in love,' I said.
'Oh, pray not. I say, do you think I could have another of those scrumptious meringues?' (p. 211-214).

A TWITCH UPON THE THREAD

'Oh dear,' said Julia, 'where can we hide in fair weather, we orphans of the storm?' (p. 249)

'Oh, my darling, why is it that love makes me hate the world? It's supposed to have quite the opposite effect. I feel as though all mankind, and God, too, were in a conspiracy against us.'
'They are, they are.'
'But we've got our happiness in spite of them; here and now, we've taken possession of it. They can't hurt us, can they?'
'Not tonight; not now.'
'Not for how many nights?' (p. 263).

' I want a day or two with you of real peace.'
'Isn't this peace?' (p. 265)

She was not in the library; I mounted to her room, but she was not there. I paused by her laden dressing table wondering if she would come. Then through the open window, as the light streamed out across the terrace into the dusk, to the fountain which in that house seemed always to draw us to itself for comfort and refreshment I caught the glimpse of a white skirt against the stones. It was nearly night. I found her in the darkest refuge, on a wooden seat, in a bay of the clipped box which encircled the basin. I took her in my arms and she pressed her face to my heart.
'Aren't you cold out here?'
She did not answer, only clung closer to me, and shook with sobs.
'My darling, what is it? Why do you mind? What does it matter what that old booby says?'
'I don't; it doesn't. It's just the shock. Don't laugh at me.' In the two years of our love, which seemed a lifetime, I had not seen her so moved or felt so powerless to help.
'How dare he speak to you like that?' I said. 'The cold-blooded old humbug...' But I was failing her in sympathy.
'No,' she said 'it's not that. He's quite right. They know all about it, Bridey and his widow; they've got it in black and white; they bought it for a penny at the church door. You can get anything there for a penny, in black and white, and nobody to see that you pay; only an old woman with a broom at the other end, rattling round the confessionals, and a young woman lighting a candle at the Seven Dolours. Put a penny in the box, or not, just as you like; take your tract. There you've got it, in black and white.
'All in one word, too, one little, flat, deadly word that covers a lifetime.
'Living in sin'; not just doing wrong, as I did when I went to America; doing wrong, knowing it is wrong, stopping doing it, forgetting. That's not what they mean. That's not Bridey's pennyworth. He means just what it says in black and white.
'Living in sin, with sin, always the same, like an idiot child carefully nursed, guarded from the world. "Poor Julia," they say, "she can't go out. She's got to take care of her sin. A pity it ever lived, they say, but it's so strong. Children like that always are. Julia's so good to her little, mad sin.'
'An hour ago,' I thought, 'under the sunset, she sat turning her ring in the water and counting the days of happiness; now under the first stars and the last grey whisper of day, all this mysterious tumult of sorrow! What had happened to us in the Painted Parlour? What shadow had fallen in the candlelight? Two rough sentences and a trite phrase.' She was beside herself; her voice, now muffled in my breast, now clear and anguished, came to me in single words and broken sentences.
'Past and future; the years when I was trying to be a good wife, in the cigar smoke, while the counters clicked on the backgammon board, and the man who was "dummy" at the men's table filled the glasses; when I was trying to bear his child, torn in pieces by something already dead; putting him away, forgetting him, finding you, the past two years with you, all the future with you, all the future with or without you, war coming, world ending - sin.
'A word from so long ago, from Nanny Hawkins stitching by the hearth and the nightlight burning before the Sacred Heart. Cordelia and me with the catechism, in mummy's room, before luncheon on Sundays. Mummy carrying my sin with her to church, bowed under it and the black lace veil, in the chapel; slipping out with it in London before the fires were lit; taking it with her through the empty streets, where the milkman's ponies stood with their forefeet on the pavement; mummy dying with my sin eating at her, more cruelly than her own deadly illness.
'Mummy dying with it; Christ dying with it, nailed hand and foot; hanging over the bed in the night-nursery; hanging year after year in the dark little study at Farm Street with the shining oilcloth hanging in the dark church where only the old char-woman raises the dust and one candle burns; hanging at noon high among the crowds and the soldiers; no comfort except a sponge of vinegar and the kind words of a thief; hanging for ever; never the cool sepulchre and the grave clothes spread on the stone slab, never the oil and spices in the dark cave; always the midday sun and the dice clicking for the seamless coat.
'No way back; the gates barred; all the saints and angels posted along the walls. Thrown away, scrapped, rotting down; the old man with lupus and the forked stick who limps out at nightfall to turn the rubbish, hoping for something to put in his sack, something marketable, turns away with disgust.
'Nameless and dead, like the baby they wrapped up and took away before I had seen her.'
Between her tears she talked herself into silence. I could do nothing; I was adrift in a strange sea; my hands on the metal-spun threads of her tunic were cold and stiff, my eyes dry; I was as far from her in spirit, as she clung to me in the darkness, as when years ago I had lit her cigarette on the way from the station; as far as when she was out of mind, in the dry, empty years at the Old Rectory, and in the jungle.
Tears spring from speech; presently in her silence her weeping stopped. She sat up, away from me, took my handkerchief, shivered, rose to her feet (p. 272-275).

'But, darling, I won't believe that great spout of tears came just from a few words.of Bridey's. You must have been thinking about it before.'
'Hardly at all; now and then; more, lately, with the Last Trump so near.'
'Of course it's a thing psychologists could explain; a preconditioning from childhood; feelings of guilt from the nonsense you were taught in the nursery. You do know at heart that it's all bosh, don't you?'
'How I wish it was!'
'Sebastian once said almost the same thing to me.'
'He's gone back to the Church, you know. Of course, he never left it as definitely as I did. I've gone too far; there's no turning back now; I know that, if that's what you mean by thinking it all bosh. All I can hope to do is to put my life in some sort of order in a human way, before all human order comes to an end. That's why I want to marry you. I should like to have a child. That's one thing I can do... (p. 276-277).

'An odd girl. She's grown up quite plain, you know.'
'Does she know about us?'
'Yes, she wrote me a sweet letter.'
It hurt to think of Cordelia growing up 'quite plain'; to think of all that burning love spending itself on serum-injections and delousing powder. When she arrived, tired from her journey, rather shabby, moving in the manner of one who has no interest in pleasing, I thought her an ugly woman. It was odd, I thought, how the same ingredients, differently dispensed, could produce Brideshead, Sebastian, Julia, and her. She was unmistakably their sister, without any of Julia's or Sebastian's grace, without Brideshead's gravity. She seemed brisk and matter-of-fact, steeped in the atmosphere of camp and dressing-station, so accustomed to gross suffering as to lose the finer shades of pleasure. She looked more than her twenty-six years; hard living had roughened her; constant intercourse in a foreign tongue had worn away the nuances of speech; she straddled a little as she sat by the fire, and when she said, 'It's wonderful to be home,' it sounded to my ears like the grunt of an animal returning to its basket (p.286).

'There are usually a few odd hangers-on in a religious house, you know; people who can't quite fit in either to the world or the monastic rule. I suppose I'm something of the sort myself But as I don't happen to drink, I'm more employable.' (p. 293).

'Poor Sebastian!' I said. 'It's too pitiful. How will it end?'
'I think I can tell you exactly, Charles. I've seen others like him, and I believe they are very near and dear to God. He'll live on, half in, half out of, the community, a familiar figure pottering round with his broom and his bunch of keys. He'll be a great favourite with the old fathers, something of a joke to the novices. Everyone will know about his drinking; he'll disappear for two or three days every month or so, and they'll all nod and smile and say in their various accents, "Old Sebastian's on the spree again," and then he'll come back dishevelled and shamefaced and be more devout for a day or two in the chapel. He'll probably have little hiding places about the garden where he keeps a bottle and takes a swig now and then on the sly. They'll bring him forward to act as guide, whenever they have an English speaking visitor, and he will be completely charming so that before they go, they'll ask about him and perhaps be given a hint that he has high connections at home. If he lives long enough, generations of missionaries in all kinds of remote places will think of him as a queer old character who was somehow part of the Home of their student days, and remember him in their masses. He'll develop little eccentricities of devotion, intense personal cults of his own; he'll be found in the chapel at odd times and missed when he's expected. Then one morning, after one of his drinking bouts, he'll be picked up at the gate dying, and show by a mere flicker of the eyelid that he is conscious when they give him the last sacraments. It's not such a bad way of getting through one's life.' (p. 294).

(LORD ALEXANDER FLYTE DYING)

'Charles, I see great Church troubles ahead.'
'Can't they even let him die in peace?'
'They mean something so different by "peace".'
'It would be an outrage. No one could have made it clearer, all his life, what he thought of religion. They'll come now, when his mind's wandering and he hasn't the strength to resist, and claim him as a death-bed penitent. I've had a certain, respect for their Church up till now. If they do a thing like that I shall know that everything stupid people say about them is quite true - that it's all superstition and trickery.' (p. 309).

'I've brought Father Mackay to see you'; papa said, 'Father Mackay, I am afraid you have been brought here under a misapprehension. I am not in extremis, and I have not been a practising member of your Church for twenty-five years. Brideshead, show Father Mackay the way out. ' (p. 312).

'Let's get this clear,' I said; 'he has to make an act of will; he has to be contrite and wish to be reconciled; is that right? But only God knows whether he has really made an act of will; the priest can't tell; and if there isn't a priest there, and he makes the act of will alone, that's as good as if there were a priest. And it's quite possible that the will may still be working when a man is too weak to make any outward sign of it; is that right? He may be lying, as though for dead, and willing all the time, and being reconciled, and God understands that; is that right?'
'More or less, ' said Brideshead.
'Well, for heaven's sake.' I said, 'what is the priest for?' There was a pause in which Julia sighed and Brideshead drew breath as though to start further subdividing the propositions. In the silence Cara said, 'All I know is that I shall take very good care to have a priest.'
'Bless you,' said Cordelia, 'I believe that's the best answer.' (p. 314).

'Father Mackay,' I said. 'You know how Lord Marchmain greeted you last time you came; do you think it possible he can have changed now?'
'Thank God, by his grace it is possible.'
Perhaps,' said Cara, 'you could slip in while he is sleeping, say the words of absolution over him; he would never know.'
'I have seen so many men and women die,' said the priest; 'I never knew them sorry to have me there at the end.'
'But they were Catholics; Lord Marchmain has never been one except in name - at any rate, not for years. He was a scoffer, Cara said so.'
'Christ came to call, not the righteous, but sinners to repentance.'
The doctor returned. 'There's no change,' he said.
'Now doctor,' said the priest, 'how would I be a shock to anyone?' He turned his bland, innocent, matter-of-fact face first on the doctor, then upon the rest of us. 'Do you know what I want to do? It is something so small, no show about it. I don't wear special clothes, you know. I go just as I am. He knows the look of me now. There's nothing alarming. I just want to ask him if he is sorry for his sins. I want him to make some little sign of assent; I want him, anyway, not to refuse me; then I want to give him God's pardon. Then, though that's not essential, I want to anoint him. It is nothing, a touch of the fingers, just some oil from this little box, look it is nothing to hurt him.' (p. 320-321).

'Now,' said the priest, 'I know you are sorry for all the sins of your life, aren't you? Make a sign, if you can. You're sorry, aren't you?' But there was no sign. 'Try and remember your sins; tell God you are sorry. I am going to give you absolution. While I am giving it, tell God you are sorry you have offended him.' He began to speak in Latin. I recognized the words 'ego te absolvo in nomine Patris...' and saw the priest make the sign of the cross. Then I knelt, too, and prayed: 'O God,.if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such thing as sin,' and the man on the bed opened his eyes and gave a sigh, the sort of sigh I had imagined people made at the moment of death, but his eyes moved so that we knew there was still life in him.
I suddenly felt the longing for a sign, if only of courtesy, if only for the sake of the woman I loved, who knelt in front of me, praying, I knew, for a sign. It seemed so small a thing that was asked, the bare acknowledgement of a present, a nod in the crowd. I prayed more simply; 'God forgive him his sins' and 'Please God, make him accept your forgiveness.'
So small a thing to ask.
The priest took the little silver box from his pocket and spoke again in Latin, touching the dying man with an oil wad; he finished what he had to do, put away the box and gave the final blessing. Suddenly Lord Marchmain moved his hand to his forehead; I thought he had felt the touch of the chrism and was wiping it away. 'O God,' I prayed, 'don't let him do that.' But there was no need for fear; the hand moved slowly down his breast, then to his shoulder, and Lord Marchmain made the sign of the cross. Then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not a little thing, not a passing nod of recognition, and a phrase came back to me from my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom.
It was over; we stood up; the nurse went back to the oxygen cylinder; the doctor bent over his patient. Julia whispered to me: 'Will you see Father Mackay out? I'm staying here for a little.'
Outside the door Father Mackay became the simple, genial man I had known before. 'Well, now, and that was a beautiful thing to me. I've known it happen that way again and again. The devil resists to the last moment and then the Grace of God is too much for him. You're not a Catholic I think, Mr Ryder, but at least you'll be glad for the ladies to have the comfort of it.'
As we were waiting for the chauffeur, it occurred to me that Father Mackay should be paid for his services. I asked him awkwardly. 'Why, don't think about it, Mr Ryder. It was a pleasure,' he said, 'but anything you care to give is useful in a parish like mine.'.I found I had three pounds in my note-case and gave them to him. 'Why, indeed, that's more than generous. God bless you, Mr Ryder. I'll call again, but I don't think the poor soul has long for this world.'
Julia remained in the Chinese drawing-room until, at five o'clock that evening, her father died proving both, sides right in the dispute, priest and doctor. (p. 322-323).

'What will you do?'
'Just go on - alone. How can I tell what I shall do? You know the whole of me. You know I'm not one for a life of mourning. I've always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from his mercy. That is what it would mean; starting a life with you, without him. One can only hope to see one step ahead. But I saw today there was one thing unforgivable - like things in the school-room, so bad they were unpunishable, that only mummy could deal with - the bad thing I was on the point of doing, that I'm not quite bad enough to do; to set up a rival good to God's. Why should I be allowed to understand that, and not you, Charles? It may be because of mummy, nanny, Cordelia, Sebastian - perhaps Bridey and Mrs Muspratt - keeping my name in their prayers; or it may be a private bargain between me and God, that if I give up this one thing I want so much, however bad I am, he won't quite despair of me in the end (p. 324).

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED

I said a prayer, an ancient, newly-learned form of words, and left, turning towards the camp; and as I walked back, and the cook-house bugle sounded ahead of me, I thought:
'The builders did not know the uses to which their work would descend; they made a new house with the stones of the old castle; year by year, generation after generation, they enriched and extended it; year by year the great harvest of timber in the park grew to ripeness; until, in sudden frost, came the age of Hooper; the place was desolate and the work all brought to nothing; Quomodo sedet sola civitas. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.
'And yet,' I thought, stepping out more briskly towards the camp, where the bugles after a pause had taken up the second call and were sounding 'Pick-em-up, pick-em-up, hot potatoes', 'and yet that is not the last word; it is not even an apt word; it is a dead word from ten years back.
'Something quite remote from anything the builders intended, has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time; a small red flame - a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones.'
I quickened my pace and reached the hut which served us for our ante-room.
'You're looking unusually cheerful today,' said the second-in-command (p. 330-331).

Aussies sounds (last summer)

www.myspace.com/adamcousens
www.myspace.com/xavierrudd1234

Barcelona és bona...

+

“Si la bossa sona” afegirien els malèvols. En dies com els d’aquest cap de setmana passat, tanmateix els podríem replicar: “tant si sona, com si no, Barcelona sempre és bona...”.

No sóc barceloní de naixença ni de residència, encara que hi estigui molt lligat familiarment. Des de l’exterior, resulta fàcil concloure que hi han moltes barcelones, segons els esperits i tarannàs dels barris respectius, o en funció de les èpoques, dels temps. Hi han diversos plans o nivells que mostren a Barcelona, no només geogràfics. Totes aquestes barcelones han format i conformat Barcelona.

Enguany, però, ja és més difícil trobar "la" Barcelona. Posem, pel cas, la Barna de l’època pre-nadalenca: la Barcelona de l’Advent. Formalment, molts carrers han quedat il·luminats i guardonats especialment per a l’ocasió. Les botigues segueixen instal·lant pessebres bucòlics en els aparadors. L’Ajuntament el segueix posant, encara que hi hagi qui s’emporta l’Infant Jesús a casa. La gent, malgrat la crisi, segueix aprovisionant-se per a les festes que s’apropen. Les empreses, algunes i de manera més limitada que l’any passat certament, ja tenen reservada taula pel dinar de Nadal. Els centres parroquials conviden a les representacions dels Pastorets d’aficionats locals. Els nens, al seu torn, ja han redactat la carta a SS.MM els Reis. Ningú no crida “muira Baltasar”...

I és que semblaria que hom anhela per aprehendre l’aura nadalenca, amb el seu caliu familiar i per la màgia idíl·lica d’una bondat a l’abast de la mà. Tothom es repeteix “Bon Nadal”, desitjant-se pau i prosperitat. Naturalment!

Aquest tercer diumenge d’Advent, passejant pel Born, o pel Barri Gòtic, contemplant el sorgir del sol des del Maremàgnum, encomanant-me al Sant Josep dels 4 Gats, fugint del FNAC, jugant amb la Sara, gaudint del Barça amb el meu fillol, aspirant la humitat del Parc Güell, pujant pel Putxet, resseguint carrers netejats per la pluja nocturna, creuant Vallcarca, o esguardant la mar resplendent que brilla a l’horitzó, sota un cel blavós que esclareix el dia, prescindeixo dels anàlisis.

Passo el rosari Balmes avall. M’aturo davant el 79 d’Alfons XII i recordo “l’Oda”. Em quedo una estona amb el Crist a les Esclaves d’Aribau, en sortint, li compro una ponsètia a l’àvia, tot esperant-la al Parc de Morgadas en companyia d’una mainada juganera.

Oh, lloros barcelonins exasperats, calleu per un moment! Deixeu-me contemplar la innocència transitòria de les criatures barcelonines sota el sol d’una desembre pausat!

Finalment, m’acomiado de la ciutat assolellada comprant xocolata desfeta a Sants abans de prendre l’Ave de retorn a l'altra capital.

Així és l’Advent, una nostàlgia per quelcom més, una esperança d’un temps que vindrà, d’un cel i una terra nova, també a i per a Barcelona.

Els oasis s’escamparan per tot arreu i la veu que clama en el desert hi ressonarà!

***

Sense conformar-nos-hi, mentrestant reposem i recobrem l’alè, en matins gloriosos com els del dissabte. La nostra amiga professava solemnement al Carmel del carrer de la Immaculada, llançant-se a l’amor de Crist per sempre més; o matins com els del diumenge catorze de desembre de dos mil vuit. Recobrem l’alè per a repetir: Jesús, Senyor, veniu!

PD1. Com qui no vol la cosa, us informo que segons el meu registre d’entrades del bloc, la present suma la centèsima. Gràcies en siguin donades a Déu.

PD2. La pintura és d'en Manel Bosch.

I.V.E: Lo pianto stesso lì pianger non lascia

Ahi Pisa, vituperio de le genti
del bel paese là dove 'l sì suona,

poi che i vicini a te punir son lenti,

muovasi la Capraia e la Gorgona,

e faccian siepe ad Arno in su la foce,

sì ch'elli annieghi in te ogne persona!

Che se 'l conte Ugolino aveva voce

d'aver tradita te de le castella,

non dovei tu i figliuoi porre a tal croce.

Innocenti facea l'età novella

novella Tebe, Uguiccione e 'l Brigatae

li altri due che 'l canto suso appella.

Noi passammo oltre, là 've la gelata

ruvidamente un'altra gente fascia,

non volta in giù, ma tutta riversata.

Lo pianto stesso lì pianger non lascia,

e 'l duol che truova in su li occhi rintoppo,

si volge in entro a far crescer l'ambascia

(Inferno, XXXIII, 79-96)

Ministeri d'Insanitat d'Espanya:

2007

més de 112.000 "I.V.Es" oficials (avortaments), 21.871 dels quals a Catalunya. Sumeu-li els no declarats...

2008

quants més...?

***

Una veu clama per les ciutats:

qui venjarà la innocència?

qui retornarà els nonats?

on retrobarem llur presència?

qui et demanarà perdó

a tu, fetus, incert embrió?

En efecte, la misericòrdia de Déu és infinita, però la seva justícia terrible. I el silenci dels innocents clama al Cel. Sapigueu-ho, responsables polítics, advocats incitadors i còmplices promotors d’aquest genocidi - holocaust dels nostres temps - escorxadors vestits de metges, sàtirs, titelles i col·laboradors d'Herodes, que el vostre destí etern és l'Infern si no us penediu sincerament abans no moriu vosaltres també, vosaltres assassins de la vida més tendra. De què us servirà aleshores la sang dels més petits amb la que us heu lucrat? En quant a les voluntàries "interruptores", altres víctimes del Sistema mantes vegades, espero que les judicarà la misericòrdia del Cor de Crist que brollà de la Creu Redemptora, segons el grau del seu penediment i de la seva particular ignorància i/o responsabilitat personal. M'agradaria confiar, també, que les criatures avortades advocaran en favor seu.

I els justos que no ens creiem responsables d’aquest crim detestable, dic, què fem per eradicar-lo? què fem per a promoure la vida en tot moment i en qualsevol circumstància? Homes, respectem i estimem, de veritat i amb honestitat, a les dones en la seva naturalesa que inclou una potencial maternitat? Què fem tots per a ajudar a les mares novelles en una societat-de-mocadors-de-paper? Què fem, al capdavall, per a convertir-nos al Pare, creador i donador del ésser i de la vida?

Miserere...

Santa Maria, sigues la bona mare per a totes les embaraçades del món!

Entre Vigo y Oporto

Gracias a mis hermanas (una de ellas está de Erasmus en Vigo, sic), este fin de semana he tenido la oportunidad de hacer una brevísima escapada a Vigo y a Oporto.

Como la visita ha sido fugaz, breves y parciales han de ser mis observaciones sobre las dos ciudades:

Vigo es triste y gris, aunque tenga delante al mar; o precisamente porque el mar es gris en aquellas latitudes, Vigo se refleja gris. Bien es verdad que el “finde” ha sido pasado por agua, pero hay ciudades que con la lluvia reviven y es en la humedad de las calles donde radica su encanto. Quizá Vigo bañado por el sol es otro. Si lo veo, cambiaré de opinión.

Además, Vigo es una ciudad portuaria, pero de puerto oscuro, de mercaderías; de gente transeúnte con intereses opacos. De marino recalificado, melancólico por naturaleza, pero que ahora sólo bebe para olvidar aguas más profundas. O que hace beber hasta ahogarse. Sí, no sé qué prestigio pudo tener la “Movida de Vigo” a parte de haber castrado la vida a millares de jóvenes. De hecho, tuvimos un pequeño accidente con el coche de alquiler en un semáforo, de ahí mi mala impresión... Por ello, y antes de que Vigo resucite algún día, recquiescat in pacem!

Oporto, en cambio, a pesar de su dejadez, tiene vida. Mucha vida, como la de unos gatos centinelas que recorren los tejados medio hundidos de las casas más pobres. La vida que cruza por los puentes sobre el Duero. Vidas de santos que relucen en los azulejos albicelestes de las fachadas de sus iglesias. O la vida más animal de unas gaviotas hambrientas que se pelean con las palomas por unas migajas de pan. La vida de unas sardinas asadas o un bacalao bien servido. Vida porteña que se exporta desde las bodegas de Vilanova de Gaia a todo el mundo, incluso hasta Brideshead:

“and it was during those tranquil evenings with Sebastian that I first made a serious acquaintance with wine and sowed the seed of that rich harvest which was to be my stay in many barren years...”.

La gente vive en Oporto. Hay tunas y estudiantes que le cantan a la vida que se casa en Se Catedral, con independencia de la tarde lluviosa y fría de finales de noviembre.

¿Por qué esta diferencia entre ciudades hermanas situadas a menos de 200 quilómetros de distancia?

El sábado por la mañana fui a misa a la parroquia de Santiago el Mayor de Vigo, una iglesia neogótica muy oscura del centro de Oporto. Era prácticamente el único joven que asistía a la celebración. El resto de la feligresía pasaba de los 65 y sobretodo era gente anciana de espíritu, amargada, faltada de alegría, decaída. Esta fue mi sensación, claro, no puedo juzgarles, a lo mejor se hallan en medio de la noche oscura, antepuertas de la séptima morada. Por el contrario, la eucaristía dominical en la iglesia de Santa Caterina de Oporto, aunque también se echaban de menos a los jóvenes, tenía mucha más alegría y esperanza, tan propias del Adviento que comenzamos. Así lo demostraban las potentes y melodiosas voces de las señoras mayores, que no fijan su esperanza en cálculos humanos sino en el Redentor:

“Senhor, eu amo Te
Senhor, eu creio Te
Tu é nosso Senhor!”