The Rack

But if I be asked what sign we may look for to show that the advance of the Faith is at hand, I would answer by a word the modern world has forgotten: Persecution. When that shall once more be at work it will be morning.

Hilaire Belloc

Considering the long-established and favoured treatment by the Crown of Her Majesty's loyal Catholic subjects, and with Mister Belloc's prophetic words firmly in mind, I read with delicious dread and horrified delight the headline in Scotland's Daily Record:

Kelly on the Rack Over Gay Adoption

Alas it was not as I had imagined. This rack was only a figurative rack and Secretary Kelly had not been dragged off to the Tower of London by a pair of sturdy Yeomen of the Guard in those frilly Beefeater suits.

Not this week anyway.

Thirteen Meddlesome Wretches

The traditional song The Twelve Days of Christmas is said to have been written to help teach the Faith to Catholic children in England when being Catholic was very seriously out of favour.

Perhaps it would be just as useful in our current situation of uncatechism and general collapse.

Feeling heady and perhaps a tiny bit Vatican Tooey after the extra day of Christmas just afforded us by the weird modern practice of moving feasts to more convenient Sundays, I propose a little aggiornamento of my own.

To remind us then of how we got into this mess and especially to fill the extra day, a new verse:

On the Thirteenth Day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me,
Thirteen meddlesome wretches,

Twelve drummers drumming,
Eleven pipers piping,
Ten lords a-leaping...