A Few Men Talked of Freedom, While England Talked of Ale
In reading Archbishop Robert Herman’s, the Administrator of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, recent column published in the St. Louis Review, I was reminded of G. K. Chesterton’s famous poem written in 1907, “The Secret People.”
In his article, Bishop Herman put things in the right perspective, showing that anger at BO and his administration is misplaced (do read the entire column linked to above). Rather, our anger, or rather our focus, ought to be on the enabling of Catholics (or half of us) and of Catholic politicians who have allowed us to arrive at where we now stand. BO did not hide what he had planned even if the MSM did its best to keep it out of public view.
It is a failure of Catholics to understand and live their faith that has allowed the country to drift into a post-Christian, post-God malaise. Chesterton’s poem is written about events in English history that he sees as significant. Chesterton asserts that the average Englishman was/is more endowed with common sense than those leaders whose goal it was to labor for freedom from the Crown. However, in each of these events he writes of he admonishes, it seems to me, the average Englishman for his silence being more interested in mundane niceties than fighting for what justice:
Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget;
For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.
There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully,
There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we.
There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise.
There is hunger in our bellies, there is laughter in our eyes;
You laugh at us and love us, both mugs and eyes are wet:
Only you do not know us. For we have not spoken yet.
Chesterton writes of the suppression of Catholic monasteries in England while the common Englishman says nothing:
They burnt the homes of the shaven men, that had been quaint and kind,
Till there was no bed in a monk’s house, nor food that man could find.
The inns of God where no man paid, that were the wall of the weak.
The King’s Servants ate them all. And still we did not speak.
He writes about reign of Charles I in an indictment of the blindness, in fact, the tyranny of the democratic forces that opposed Charles. Recall that Charles I was the last King of England who professed the divine right of kings and who was eventually executed for his various attempts to secure this right:
And the face of the King’s Servants grew greater than the King:
He tricked them, and they trapped him, and stood round him in a ring.
The new grave lords closed round him, that had eaten the abbey’s fruits,
And the men of the new religion, with their bibles in their boots,
We saw their shoulders moving, to menace or discuss,
And some were pure and some were vile; but none took heed of us.
We saw the King as they killed him, and his face was proud and pale;
And a few men talked of freedom, while England talked of ale.
He goes on to speak of Napoleon and others but ends with what he seems to find to be the sad state of political affairs of his time and the fact that the common Englishman has not spoken yet:
They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger or honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs.
We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,
Our wrath come after Russia’s wrath and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest
God’s scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.
What is common to both Bishop Herman’s column and Chesterton’s poem is that we all know, or should know, what is right and what is wrong. We have the responsibility for standing up for what is right.
In our present circumstances, we must stand for the right of the unborn to be born and for the right of society to be free from the tyranny of disordered social structures mascarading as protected alternative lifestyles. We have to put truth and justice ahead of convenience and social acceptance. We have to put down our ale and stand to protest against erroneous claims of promoting freedom that in fact, deprive us of authentic freedom.
Both, perhaps could be summarized by the dictum attributed to that 18th century Irishman, Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.” Let us not talk of ale while our blind politicians talk of freedom.
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