Both deal with the decline in religious practice--namely Catholic religious practice--in England and the decline in culture and tradition.
(Picture of a marching band taken during a trip to London years ago with my late husband Mark.
We'd just visited Buckingham Palace!)
In "What the British Have Forgotten—and Can Teach Us" Charles Coulombe focuses on the vestiges of Catholicism in England's traditions and cultures, and how they are fading:
For the visitor from the Anglosphere abroad, these customs of the mother country are a thrill—even if one is tied only by language and culture, rather than DNA. They are pleasant if quaint reminders of the remote backgrounds of our own civil institutions, and they seem to embody the world that produced our countries. For the natives, of course, they are either proud reassertions of their age-old heritage or embarrassing anachronisms that need to be junked, either slowly or rapidly. But this writer would dissent from either view.
So far from being merely quaint or pleasant and restricted to Britain, they are desiccated reminders of a ceremonial spirit that once animated all of Christendom, from Portugal to Russia—and even the Spanish and Portuguese viceroyalties in Latin America and the East Indies. This is just as the pounds-shillings-pence system—which survived to my childhood—was seen as a purely British eccentricity but was actually designed by Charlemagne and used throughout Europe until the French Revolution.
So many of what we consider peculiarly British customs and practices are really survivals—shorn of Catholic meaning—that were universal among Catholic peoples prior to the Protestant revolt, and which—like the pounds, shillings, and pence—were banished from Catholic lands by revolution. So it is that the British hold on to the form without concern for the missing content, and Catholics are ignorant and often scornful of what that content was. . . .
One tradition easily identifiable as an example of this: The Royal Maundy. This year on Holy Thursday, King Charles III and Queen Camilla will hand out coins at Durham Cathedral:
Royal Maundy services go back to the Middle Ages when the Monarch used to wash the feet of the poor and disadvantaged, just as Jesus washed the feet of the disciples on the night of the Last Supper. Alms were also distributed at the ceremony.
The service always takes place on Maundy Thursday, just three days before Easter. King Charles will present two purses of specially minted coins to 76 men and 76 women who have given outstanding support to their local communities. The number of people who receive the coins always matches the age of the Monarch.
At the entrance of the hall there was a great number of the chief dames and noble ladies of the court, and they prepared themselves by putting on a long linen apron which reached the ground, and round their necks they placed a towel, the two ends of which remained pendant at full length on either side, each of them carrying a silver ewer, and they had flowers in their hands, the Queen also being arrayed in like manner. Her Majesty knelt down on both her knees before the first of the poor women, and taking in the left hand the woman’s right foot, she washed it with her own right hand, drying it very thoroughly with the towel which hung at her neck, and having signed it with the cross she kissed the foot so fervently that it seemed as if she were embracing something very previous. She did the like by all and each of the other poor women, one by one, each of the ladies her attendants giving her in turn their basin and ewer and towel, and I vow to you that in all her movements and gestures, and by her manner, she seemed to act thus not merely out of ceremony, but from great feeling, and devotion. Amongst these demonstrations there was this one remarkable, that in washing the feet she went the whole length of that long hall, from one end to the other, ever on her knees. . . .The tradition ended with William and Mary, and was transformed later into the honoring of people who performed charitable services with special coins. Queen Elizabeth II went to a different Anglican Cathedral or Abbey nearly every year of her reign to observe the Maundy. It is still a religious service, but the extraordinary demonstration of humility by the sovereign is no longer there. But, as Coulombe comments, "it became a big part of her [Elizabeth II's] personal devotion, as it has remained for her son [Charles III]". He also points out, however: "But just as 1688 eliminated the ability of the king to protect, defend, and govern his people, it also assured that Parliament would be master, rather than servant, of people and monarch alike. The dichotomy between form and substance has been less obvious in some reigns and some Parliaments than others. . . ."
Thus, the tradition remains in some form, but the basis of the symbolism, its reality, has been vitiated. Please read the rest there.
More on this theme tomorrow, from the National Catholic Register article by Edward Pentin and a follow-up interview with Professor John Rist.
