8 August, 2021
Dear Reader,
Few today would remember the American actor and comedian George Burns. He died in 1996, at the age of exactly 100, a venerable doyen of the Vaudeville era. Never on stage without his signature cigar, his arched eyebrow, gravelly voice and pessimistic Jewish humour delighted generations.
My favourite memory of his onstage patter was a reflection on the state of current politics: ‘it’s too bad’, he complained, ‘that all the guys who know how to fix the world are either cutting hair or driving cabs.’
I don’t know if he was right, and that ordinary people such as taxi drivers and barbers do have all the answers, but if they don’t who has? Throughout the ages we have all seen instances of high-level incompetence and even downright stupidity among our leaders in church and state, in war and in peace, in good times and bad, but possibly never more than today.
As children we tended to view social structure as steep isosceles triangle: at the top, far above us, were the brilliant and gifted, the holy and the wise. We were all at the base, gazing up upon our betters with appropriate awe. As we grew older, we started to realise that the triangle was actually flatter than we thought, that our leaders weren’t all that much cleverer and more discerning than we were. We even suspected that even if they were better informed than ourselves, they were not necessarily more capable of making wise decisions. We eventually woke up to the fact that the President of the United States may have no more intelligence or innate talent than the Mayor of Broken Hill (I choose that example flippantly): fate has cast their lots very differently, but they’re both just human beings, doing the best they can to manage their jobs. The only real difference is that the former has more staff to do things well – or to make a mess of them!
So our leaders blunder from time to time, but the consequences of their blunders are usually much more serious than ours. The steeper you climb the further you can fall. George Burns wasn’t far from the truth: ordinary men and women often have a very good idea of how to mend the world, but their voices are usually drowned out by their leaders who fall over each other for the honour of being the people’s saviours. As often, the Bible offers good advice:
‘Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help … Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God’ (Ps. 146).
The word princes should of course be taken to include presidents, prime ministers and state governments, in which connection…
COVID
Recently the NSW Health Minister delivered a public message of sympathy to the families of the two people who died that day of Covid. What about the 148 other citizens of his state who also died that day (and on average every day) of some other cause? This is high-profile, de-contextualised sentimentality. It distorts and inhibits our capacity to process data and raises the level of anxiety in the community.
If effective out-of-patent medicines exist to fight Covid, how would we find out? Predictably, Wikipedia is dismissive: ‘during the Covid pandemic, misinformation was widely spread claiming that ivermectin is beneficial for treating and preventing Covid. Such claims are not backed by credible scientific evidence’. No surprises there.
J K ROWLING AND GERMAINE GREER
These two speakers deserve re-platforming. Famed novelist J K Rowling gives the Commencement Address at Harvard in 2008. And here is a more recent interview with Dr Greer. Both women have been mauled and banned in some circles for their uncompromising defence of women.
CORRECTION: EINSTEIN’S BELIEFS
A reader has pointed out that the Einstein quote in the last newsletter is almost certainly spurious. That is certainly disappointing, but it is nonetheless true that a good proportion of the world’s scientists see no conflict between their faith and their science. This list was compiled over a decade ago. And here (if we can trust Wikipedia in this instance!) is a list of Catholic clergy scientists.
With best wishes to all our readers,
David Daintree
SUMMER SCHOOLS 2022
We have had many requests to offer these schools online. Sadly I have felt it necessary to decline, at least for January 2022. We are a very small organisation without the resources to do the job properly: in my opinion the services of a producer/cameraman are a minimum requirement if the online participant is to be fully involved.
10-14 January – Medieval and Ecclesiastical Latin
Latin is arguably the mother tongue of Europe. Its literature is immensely rich. In a sense it never died; original work continued to be written in Latin up to modern times. This course will offer a general introduction to Latin with particular emphasis on medieval and ecclesiastical literature. We shall read original passages from Scripture, liturgy, history, theology and poetry, both secular and religious. There will also be an introduction to palaeography, including an opportunity to handle original medieval manuscripts. There will be a strong emphasis on the pronunciation of Latin in speech and music.
17-21 January – Western Civilisation – an Overview.
The Dawson Centre was founded to advance the notion that the Christian Faith and the Christian intellectual tradition that grew up with it are essential components of our civilisation: not optional add-ons, but core elements in the very fabric of the culture without which it cannot survive. Christopher Dawson maintained that a true human culture cannot exist at all without a religious component, and the Christian religion is inherent in and inseparable from our Western culture. We are offering this course for the first time as a sort of a ‘taster’, a broad and sweeping view of the terrain and some of its principal landmarks. It cannot claim to be any more than a sketch of the panorama, but we hope it will meet a need and inspire participants to delve further into our fascinating and rich heritage.
Write for further details about either of these short courses.