13 December, 2024
Dear Reader,
ROYAL DAVID’S CITY
Most people are familiar with the Christmas Eve carol service known as Nine Lessons and Carols. It began its life as an Anglican rite in Truro Cathedral in 1880, but was taken up and popularised over a hundred years ago by King’s College Cambridge and has since become a kind of Christmas musical institution. It begins with a procession into the Church to the accompaniment of Once in Royal David’s City, surely one of the noblest of carols, loved by Catholics and Protestants alike. The words were written by Cecil Frances Alexander (hymn books often list her simply as ‘Mrs Alexander’), the wife of a Church of Ireland priest who ended his career as protestant Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. Mrs Alexander wrote several other well-known children’s hymns, including All Things Bright and Beautiful and There is a Green Hill Far Away. Less well known is her fine translation of ‘St Patrick’s Breastplate’, I Bind Unto Myself This Day.
The Alexanders, man and wife, worked hard for the poor and needy, without distinguishing Catholic from Protestant, and gave such good service during the Potato Famine (1845-52) that their memories are honoured to this day in the village where they worked. Their lives remind us that while the demands of the Christian life are simple, our response to them can be so easily marred by selfishness and meanness. No doubt most of the Irish landlords and their managers who heartlessly evicted their tenants were nominally Christian, but like those passers-by in the Parable of the Good Samaritan they invented excuses for doing nothing to help. Remember, too, the virtuous young man who asked Jesus what he should do to be saved. He was already fully committed to the observance of his faith, or so he thought, but being told to sell and give away all his possessions was a bridge too far for him at the time, as it was for the Irish landlords, and still is for most of us.
But are the demands of Christianity really all that simple? Mrs Alexander evidently thought so: ‘Christian children all must be mild, obedient, good as He’! She loved children and often wrote for them. In that she reflected the fondness of the Lord himself who said ‘suffer the little children to come unto me’, and spoke of the need to be simply childlike in our faith. This verse perfectly sums up the quiet and trusting confidence that so moved Mrs Alexander’s life and work:
For he is our childhood’s pattern;
Day by day like us he grew,
He was little, weak, and helpless,
Tears and smiles like us he knew:
And he feeleth for our sadness,
And he shareth in our gladness.
What makes that stanza particularly wonderful, in my view, is that it leaves absolutely no room for belief in a kind of merely impersonal deity that has no concern for the detail of our lives. Christianity emphatically insists, as St Augustine says, that God loves each one of us as if we were the only one. That’s an impossible truth, as the world sees truth, but with God nothing is impossible.
CLOSING A CHAPTER
This is the last time I shall write a newsletter as Director of the Dawson Centre. I would like to thank a large number of generous people:
- Archbishop Julian Porteous who conceived the idea of a study centre that would promote the good name of the Catholic intellectual tradition – and thought to name it after the great Christopher Dawson!
- The generous donors who have supported us financially.
- The members of our International Advisory Board whose distinguished names and writings so encouraged us.
- The many members of our Committee throughout the years whose energy and good ideas informed and directed us.
- My colleagues and assistants, especially in recent years Naomi O’Donovan.
- The editors of such publications as Quadrant, The Spectator and our own diocesan Standard for giving us space to exercise our blessed right to free speech.
- Those many, many dozens who have come (sometimes from far afield) to speak at our Colloquia or our dinner meetings, or to write for our newsletters.
- All those who have attended our meetings, summer schools and colloquia from time to time, or read our newsletters.
Under the direction of Alex Sidhu the Dawson Centre is now expected to broaden its scope. No longer will we be based in what we fondly and semi-seriously call ‘the Athens of the South’. It’s true that in an electronic age physical location is far less important than it once was, but proximity to actual live audiences is a boon. We have important work still to do ‘before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green’ and must seize every opportunity to maximise its impact.
Christian civilisation is a precious but fragile thing. It can be brought to its knees in a trice by war, social upheaval, greed or just plain old-fashioned heresy. And the damage can take years or even centuries to repair: think of the debris left downstream by the French and Russian revolutions. But God in his eternity is bound by no human time scale: in the words of another old hymn, ‘a thousand ages in thy sight are but an evening gone!’ Patience is a big ask, but it’s a kind of duty we owe to God, as well as a consolation for ourselves.
With best wishes to all, as ever, but especially for the coming feast of Christmas.
David Daintree
FOR FURTHER INTEREST
COLONIALISM: A MORAL RECKONING
The Revd Dr NIGEL BIGGAR, Chairman of the Free Speech Union (UK), Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford, spoke in Hobart on Saturday 19 October. Prof Biggar’s talk was videoed and is now online here.
‘THE WEST HAS ITS PROBLEMS…
but it has unique strengths. Its origins in the dialogue between Judaism, Christianity, Classical Greece and Rome, and the indigenous cultures of Europe – and, ultimately, the whole world – give it a broader and richer vision of human nature and human purpose than any single viewpoint.’ (Luke McCormack, NCC National President).
LIBERAL EDUCATION IN THE 21st CENTURY
This is as fine an address as you will ever hear – from Andrew Kern of the US Circe Institute. Not as long as it looks: the address begins at 6.45 and lasts 50 minutes. Worth every minute.
COMING EVENTS
DEMOCRATIC CONFERENCE 2025
The next Democratic Conference, which will be taking place in Sydney from 7th to 9th February 2025. This year’s theme is Alternative Futures for Australia. Not just be about big ideas or political activism but about that fundamental thing our democracy so desperately needs – engaged citizens capable of principled and evidence-based thought who can work with one another.
You can find out more about the Conference on the DC website: https://democraticconference2025.com.au/. Or contact Augustine – augustine.italiano@ncc.org.au.
LATE AND ECCLESIASTICAL LATIN SUMMER SCHOOL
Monday 6 to Friday 10 January 2025
Notre Dame Priory, Colebrook, Tasmania
The Latin school assumes some prior knowledge of the language and leads participants through a selection of important readings in poetry and prose, sacred and secular, from authors such as Augustine, Jerome, Bede, Peter Abelard, Aquinas, the Carmina Burana, and even Dante. In date our selections range from the poet Virgil to the abdication speech of Pope Benedict! There will also be a segment on palaeography when participants can handle real medieval manuscripts. Accommodation may be available on request to the Priory.