Of course there are universal rules to which all goodness must conform. But that’s only the grammar of virtue. It’s not there that the sap is. He doesn’t make two blades of grass the same: how much less two saints, two nations, two angels. The whole work of healing Tellus depends on nursing that little spark, on incarnating that ghost, which is still alive in every real people, and different in each. When Logres really dominates Britain, when the goddess Reason, the divine clearness, is really enthroned in France, when the order of Heaven is really followed in China—why, then it will be spring.
—C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength But she looked harder and saw that it was not a cloud at all but a real land. And when she had fixed her eyes on one particular spot of it, she at once cried out, “Peter! Edmund! Come and look! Come quickly.” And they came and looked, for their eyes also had become like hers.

“Why!” exclaimed Peter. “It’s England. And that’s the house itself—Professor Kirk’s old home in the country where all our adventures began!”

“I thought that house had been destroyed,” said Edmund.

“So it was,” said the Faun. “But you are now looking at the England within England, the real England just as this is the real Narnia. And in that inner England no good thing is destroyed.”
—C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

These particular quotations have been running through my head a great deal—and not least because of the wars and rumors of wars in the Near East. The ridiculous leadership in Great Britain, Ireland, and the rest of Europe; the rising wave of Islamist crime and violence in those places, Canada, and Australia; the ongoing madness of certain Church authorities—well, it is easy to be depressed and/or angry at it all. Moreover, if one is old enough to remember a time when things were a bit different, it is easy to fall back into a kind of paralytic nostalgia.

But it is important to recall that bad headlines and golden memories are not all there is to life. Take Great Britain. Granted that Sir Keir Starmer is perhaps the worst Prime Minister in my lifetime and everything he says and does seems designed to ruin the U.K. even further—from two-tier policing, to attacking free speech, to saying the British countryside is “too white,” to appointing an Archbishopess of Canterbury and an “anti-Islamophobia Tsar” to…well, you get the picture. But putting all of that aside for a minute, even a tour of the belly of the beast—the Houses of Parliament—reveals a great deal to be happy about, despite the iniquity of His Majesty’s current First Lord of the Treasury.

Westminster Hall, despite Sir Keir’s recent hosting there of a Ramadan ceremony, is still the place where St. Thomas More and King Charles I faced their evil accusers, and where many a hero and king (including deathbed convert Edward VII) lay in state. The beautiful chapel of St. Mary Undercroft once again hosts Masses from time to time, as it did before Henry VIII. The rest of the complex, rebuilt by Catholic architect Augustus Pugin after a 19th-century fire, and again according to his plans after wartime bombing damage, is incredibly beautiful.

Both chambers of Lords and Commons are impressive—the latter somewhat more so, in deference to its former social superiority over what was once called “the people’s house.” There is the throne from which the king delivers his speech at the opening of each session in an extremely impressive ceremony. Posted on one wall of the Lords’ chamber is the prayer recited at the beginning of each day they are in session:

Almighty God, by whom alone Kings reign, and Princes decree justice; and from whom alone cometh all counsel, wisdom, and understanding; we thine unworthy servants, here gathered together in thy Name, do most humbly beseech thee to send down thy Heavenly Wisdom from above, to direct and guide us in all our consultations; and grant that, we having thy fear always before our eyes, and laying aside all private interests, prejudices, and partial affections, the result of all our counsels may be to the glory of thy blessed Name, the maintenance of true Religion and Justice, the safety, honour, and happiness of the King, the publick wealth, peace and tranquillity of the Realm, and the uniting and knitting together of the hearts of all persons and estates within the same, in true Christian Love and Charity one towards another, through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. Amen.

There, summed up in a paragraph, is the whole of Catholic governance.

Of course, despite all of the beauty, those lovely words—and indeed all the architectural glories of the complex—veil an ugly reality which was born with Henry VIII, amplified in 1688, and, in the past few years, has become positively grotesque. One might well think that the lovely costumes and stately prose of British governance are mere camouflage for a disgusting and inhuman regime. While one might not be entirely wrong in so thinking, neither would he be entirely right.

Despite all of the beauty, those lovely words veil an ugly reality which was born with Henry VIII, amplified in 1688, and, in the past few years, has become positively grotesque.Tweet This

There still remains in these things reminders of something better than what we have now. It is, of course, partly a historical issue, in the sense that they have been emptied of actual utility by the history we just looked at. But so long as they exist, they can also point the way to a better future, should a future king or population see fit to try to make it so.

Indeed, these seemingly empty rituals mirror the whole calendar year of customs throughout England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. That source of all truth and knowledge, Wikipedia, in its insightful article, “Merry England,” makes an important point:

The Reformation set in motion a debate about popular festivities that was to endure for at least a century-and-a-half—a culture war concerning the so-called politics of mirth. As part of the move away from Catholicism, Henry VIII had slashed the number of saint day holidays, attacking the “lycencyous vacacyon and lybertye of these holy days,” and Edward VI had reduced them further to 27. The annual festal round in parish society, consolidated between 1350 and 1520 and including such customs as church ales, May games, maypoles and local plays, came under severe pressure in Elizabethan England. Religious austerity, opposed to Catholic and pagan hangovers, and economic arguments against idleness, found common ground in attacking communal celebrations.

This so-called “politics of mirth” played a large role in the views of the Cavaliers and Jacobites in the civil wars from 1642 to 1746. Just as their adherents regarded themselves as the “real” English, Scots, Irish, Welsh, etc., so, too, with their spiritual descendants in the 19th century. From Sir Walter Scott to Chesterton, Belloc, and the Inklings, this vision of “Merry England” (or Scotland, or Ireland, or…) inspired a great deal of art, architecture, literature, and the protection or revival of innumerable folk customs and songs. From the Romantics to the Oxford Movement, the Catholic Revival, the Pre-Raphaelite Movement, Young England, Neo-Gothic architecture, the Arts and Crafts Movement, the various Celtic Nationalisms, Neo-Jacobitism, the Ricardians, and a good deal else, varying visions of restoration of past harmonies and pre-Industrial joys danced in a great many heads.

If these had only a sporadic effect upon actual politics, they did a great deal in various times and places to make actual life far more pleasant than it would have been by recalling the attention of a great many people to forgotten ideals. Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouting Movement, which altered countless lives across the planet for the better, had its origins in these notions. It was not just a question of trying to build a better country in the here and now; rather, it was a question of trying to get in touch with the “real country”—the “Deep England”—that really exists perennially, however much it may be obscured by the evil men do. It was not merely hearkening back to a mythic past but getting in touch with a powerful and present reality.

But in truth, this realization was not confined to the British Isles. The same forces throughout the 19th and 20th centuries reminded every Christian nation of its mythic past and abiding present. Just as King Arthur and the Fianna had reemerged in the minds of the island’s peoples, so, too, did El Cid, Charlemagne, and a great many other heroes on the Continent. These renewed Nationalisms often clashed with each other—sometimes with horrific results. But they also led to the same sort of artistic revivals and renaissances we have just looked at.

In, with, and under all of this was a vast expansion of Eucharistic and Marian devotion, veneration of the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts, and a great many Saints and Martyrs emerged—to say nothing of defenders of the Faith such as the Carlists, Miguelists, and Papal Zouaves. Old shrines reopened, new ones emerged, and despite the declining situation in so many ways, a great many good things emerged on old foundations. Even the World Wars, the Cold War, and the worldwide corrupt rulership the planet groans under today could not and cannot affect the “real country,” the province of the Empire of Christ the King, that haunts every country.

Even the World Wars, the Cold War, and the worldwide corrupt rulership the planet groans under today could not and cannot affect the “real country,” the province of the Empire of Christ the King, that haunts every country.Tweet This

All of this came to mind on a recent trip to D.C. Washington in many ways epitomizes some of the very worst our country has to offer. But a trip to the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception—that wild hodgepodge of styles as varied and unusual as the American Church herself—reminded me of this very real truth. Our country does not have a Catholic past in the sense that Canada or Mexico does—though we have fragments derived from Europe via both those countries. We also have the titanic wave of immigrants from every country that was primarily responsible for making the Church a force in America.

Nevertheless, within a few miles of that very Supreme Court from which the mandate had gone out permitting the murder of 63 million infant Americans and so creating many of the economic, cultural, and political problems we face, the National Shrine is a reminder of realities that no judge nor politician can efface. Just as their opposite numbers cannot remove England from the love of St. George, nor Scotland from that of St. Andrew, nor Ireland from that of St. Patrick, and on and on through every country, those persons cannot pry these United States from the loving arms of our patroness, Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception.

Have there been evil exploiters and purveyors of chemical and moral poisons? Indeed, there have been. But as the shrine’s many side chapels remind us, every nationality on the planet have sent hither a great many devotees of Our Lady, many of whom have continued to venerate her here. Just as even Westminster Palace is in some aspects an outpost of the “Real England,” so, too, is the National Shrine an outpost of the “Real America.”

I was reminded, then, of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, wherein cluster three other outposts. One is the National Mercy Shrine, a beautiful place staffed by Polish priests and dedicated to that particular devotion to Our Lord. In the center of the town is the Red Lion Inn, whose oldest section goes back to Colonial Days—a time which, in terms of our historical memory, is much like the Middle Ages in Europe. Generations of our countrymen have been well lodged there.

But the third is the Norman Rockwell Museum, shrine to an illustrator whose work summed up America’s self-image at an important time in her history. As with the music of Irving Berlin and George M. Cohan, Rockwell’s art set forth an ideal America. Rockwell saw in country what Orson Welles said of England:

I think there has always been an England, an older England, which was sweeter, purer, where the hay smelled better and the weather was always springtime and the daffodils blew in the gentle, warm breezes. You feel a nostalgia for it in Chaucer, and you feel it all through Shakespeare.

That better England, that better America, as with all the “better” countries, the “real” countries, are ghosts in the sense of the Lewis quote we opened with. More incarnate in some places and at some times (especially holidays or holy days) than others, the real country is, as we have said, not merely a memory or an exercise in nostalgia but a taste of what God has intended each nation to be. Even as we are closest to Heaven at Mass, Adoration, or Prayer, we are closest to that real country in those times or places.

When the illusion that covers each becomes more than we can bear, let us seek them out, and remind ourselves of reality. Thus may we persevere until reaching that Heavenly Realm of which our real county is a loyal province.