The accursed power which stands on privilege
(and goes with women, champagne and bridge)
Broke - and democracy resumed her reign
(which goes with bridge and women and champagne)
Belloc

The seeming contradictions between Jefferson’s slaveholding history, deeply racist personal views, his support of the institution in his political life, and his assertion of human rights in the Declaration, in many ways parallel Key's story.

In 1814, Key was a slaveholding lawyer from an old Maryland plantation family, who thanks to a system of human bondage had grown rich and powerful.

When he wrote the poem that would, in 1931, become the national anthem and proclaim our nation “the land of the free,” like Jefferson, Key not only profited from slaves, he harbored racist conceptions of American citizenship and human potential. Africans in America, he said, were: “a distinct and inferior race of people, which all experience proves to be the greatest evil that afflicts a community...Ironically, while Key was composing the line "O'er the land of the free," it is likely that black slaves were trying to reach British ships in Baltimore Harbor. They knew that they were far more likely to find freedom and liberty under the Union Jack than they were under the “Star-Spangled Banner.”

Additionally, Key used his office as the District Attorney for the City of Washington from 1833 to 1840 to defend slavery, attacking the abolitionist movement in several high-profile cases.”

Is the black lives matter rant over now?

"...it is only Christian men / Guard even heathen things,"

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Mohammedan] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

Patriotism, as exemplified by Dr. King, thinks evaluatively about one’s country in light of its best values, including the attempt to correct it when it’s in error and fix it when it is broken. Yet especially on our national patriotic holidays, too often our churches promote nationalism—the uncritical support of one’s nation regardless of its moral, truthful or political bearing.

Jpnz71, we are standing and saluting for the words and images invoked by such - not for the person who wrote them, nor even for whatever dirty thoughts may have ever entered his mind.

Down, down with the traitor that dares to defile

My mind drifts to a scene by Anthony Esolen in his book, Life Under Compulsion:

Imagine a new father looking into the eyes of his child. A wisp of blond hair curls about the baby’s scalp. The fingers, wrinkled like those of an old man, curl about his own finger. The child has blue eyes, but who knows whether they will stay that way? There’s the slightest indentation in the chin, reflecting that of his wife, who cradles the baby in her arms and hums gently to him.

“Here is one,” says the father, “who will be a productive member of the labor force, and who will assist in the increase of the Gross Domestic Product.”

“Here is one,” says the mother, “who will be adept at the processing of information, so to facilitate the attainment of a successful career.”

“Here is one,” says the father, “who will possess the capacity to embark upon independent research, who will present arguments that balance claim and counterclaim.”

“Here is one,” says the mother, “who will meet the Common Core Requirement anchor standards and high school grade-specific standards, which work in tandem to define college and career-readiness expectations” (pp. 54-55).

"And yet in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted on the ground that man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding one thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual be granted boundless freedom with no purpose, simply for the satisfaction of his whims. Subsequently, however all such limitations were eroded everywhere in the West; a total emancipation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming ever more materialistic. The West has finally achieved the rights of man, and even to excess, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society has grown dimmer and dimmer."

"To this day, for many of our contemporaries, and sometimes even for ourselves, living far from God, letting go of His commandments, means marching on and conquering a more actual and more comprehensive freedom, it means working at the progress of our human race… Yet, is that so certain? Willingly living far from God means renouncing the light of Christ that was to recreate man in the image of God. It also means renouncing to live fully in the light of the first word, the word of creation. Freedom, which consists in receiving as a gift the work of God, in stepping into the fair harmony of the divine plan, in making one’s own the fact of being a man or a woman, in unfolding this being amidst creation, and especially amidst the other men and women, this true freedom gives way to its caricature, a freedom that is brazen, rebellious, slumped over itself, shackled by the frantic desire to obtain what has never been obtained, to live what has never been lived. 

The state of the earth, of men, of societies, already bears witness to the consequences stemming from the refusal of the fair order given by the divine intelligence and love: chaos in nature, chaos in families, chaos in society, chaos in the heart of man. Man, the protagonist of progress, proclaims himself the master of all things. Boundaries yield, until they reach those of absurdity. For a long time now, the legislative machine has embarked on an inexorable runaway race. It is so easy to pass laws that go against common sense. Will it be as easy to subjugate creation and creatures, the victims, to our lack of common sense?"

Assumption of Our Lady
Sermon for the Mass

Sermon of the Right Reverend Dom Jean Pateau
Abbot of Our Lady of Fontgombault
Fontgombault, August 15, 2020