Now Maybe More Lutherans Will Come Home to Rome

[Jerry_Parker]

Ferde Rombola,

**You wrote: ** *Too many ‘Catholics’ think they can pick and choose which doctrines of the Church they will follow and which they can reject. That’s a pretty fair definition of Protestantism. The Pope has said it may be the Church will end up much smaller than it is today, but populated with people who are true, faithful Catholics. Can’t happen soon enough for me. *​

What refreshing, vigourous candour! You remind me a lot of Hillaire Belloc, who was so belligerently orthodox! When I was younger I found such “triumphalistic” Roman Catholicism repugnant, but look what the opposite, slithery-slimy Vatican Two-gooery, has given us! Clown liturgies, no Latin, and no real English, either! No real doctrine, either! No sexual restraint, either, including among the clergy! I say, up with Ferde Rombola, down with ELCA or Catholic compromise! A slimmer, tougher Church better can fight God’s battles.

Jerry Parker

 

[Steve12045]

As a long time convert, 22 yrs ago, I came from the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and knowing what I know I’ve got to say I just can’t imagine a consevative branch of the Lutheran church allowing gays. Of course I don’t know to much about the Evangelical church. It sounds like a division similar to the Episcapal church. Of course if they remain celibate, Oh I don’t know, let’s let God sort it out.

 

[Alix1912]

Ah, I found this article on the tornado fiasco with a picture:
http://www.bedeviant.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Central_MPLS_081809_02.jpg

It completely bent the cross over as the ELCA Churchwide Assembly was making it’s decision, which was 2/3 or 66.6%. Hmmm…:bigyikes:

In Christ,
Andrew

Seriously…so every picture of a church damaged by a natural disaster is a pronouncement from God on that denomination and church’s practices. Are you Catholic or Puritan? A quick google search showed several churches of all denominations that had been damaged by natural disasters in the last several years including many Catholic Churches. I live in Denver and about a year or two ago the Statue of Christ at the Mother Cabrini Shrine was struck by lightening and badly damaged…by your logic was that God judging the Catholic Church as a Whole, the American Council of Bishops, the Sisters of the Shrine, their entire order, or maybe just the Archdiocese or Denver? Get real.

As to the 66.6% thing, 2 divided by 3 or 2/3 is actually 66.66666666(to the infinite)%. It is not a triple 6 thing. But again by your reasoning any 2/3 vote must be assigned a more evil and sinister intent. I should probably let me sister know that her school clubs 2/3 vote to order blue shirts instead of red ones is inspired by the devil, and they should reconsider. Again…GET REAL.

While I am LCMS, and distrubed by the recent actions of the ELCA, I do not believe that a damages steeple or a 2/3 vote is a judgement or sign from God. I’m sure those responsible for leading this unfortunate change will be judged, as we all will be when our time comes, but not by a failure in building materials.

 

[Ferde_Rombola]

What refreshing, vigourous candour! You remind me a lot of Hillaire Belloc, who was so belligerently orthodox!

Thank you, Jerry, for that high praise. I wish I could write like him.

Where is Rouyn-Noranda, QC?

 

[Ferde_Rombola]

Seriously…so every picture of a church damaged by a natural disaster is a pronouncement from God on that denomination and church’s practices… I live in Denver and about a year or two ago the Statue of Christ at the Mother Cabrini Shrine was struck by lightening and badly damaged…by your logic was that God judging the Catholic Church as a Whole, the American Council of Bishops, the Sisters of the Shrine, their entire order, or maybe just the Archdiocese or Denver? Get real.

Was the Church in Denver making any anti-Christian, straight-from-hell decisions at the time? If ‘yes’ you have a valid point. If ‘no’ your comparison is inapposite.

Of course not all natural disasters are statements from God, but that doesn’t mean none of them are.

 

[GKC]

Thank you, Jerry, for that high praise. I wish I could write like him.

Where is Rouyn-Noranda, QC?

Hilaire Belloc.

One of my favorite people.

GKC

 

[Jerry_Parker]

Ferde Rombola,

**We wrote: ** ** Jerry: What refreshing, vigourous candour! You remind me a lot of Hillaire Belloc, who was so belligerently orthodox!

**Ferde: **Thank you, Jerry, for that high praise. I wish I could write like him. Where is Rouyn-Noranda, QC? **​

I am pleased that you saw the meaning (affectionate praise) in my words that I had intended. I feared that you might have thought that I was joshing. No, I really do think that there is a place of permanent importance in the Catholic and Roman Church for obstinately fervent and rigourous loyalists like Cdl. John Henry Newman, Hillaire Belloc, Ronald Knox, and you. There also is ever a place for serenely unpolemic but firmly Catholic spirits like G.K. Chesterton, one of the Catholic writers dearest to me. Yeah, would that either of us could write with Belloc’s or Chesterton’s marvellous style! Would that anybody today could write like that, and do so for God and His Holy Church! Our times, since Vat-II (which, despite its occasional excellences, I wish from the bottom of my heart never had happened!), are time of soppy sentimentality and foppishly faddish and sappy retreading of tired gnosticism and stale speculation, semi-literately expressed and engaged in to wallow in self-indulgence. At least someone like Garry Wills expresses his heterodoxy with rare flair, and elegant stylishness, even if too much (but, thankfully, not entirely) in Lucifer’s service!

Rouyn-Noranda is in the remote, thinly populated Northwestern region of Québec called the Abitibi. It is the largest city of the region at ca. 40,000 souls. It is highly forested, reminding me of my childhood San Gabriel Mountains (of Southern California), but with other sorts of trees mingling with the considerable amount of pine. The area, like most of Québec, is overwhelmingly Catholic, in the high 90s%, but, alas, mostly lapsed. Anyway, it is a delectable place to live, among delightful people. I love to write zany, whimsical stories about this region, its people (and animals!), and characteristics, for the pleasure of myself and friends. The winter here is surprisingly mild for being so northerly.

Keep the faith, man! (As if I needed to urge someone of your obvious fidelity and ardour!)

Jerry Parker

 

[Jerry_Parker]

GKC, so honourably named (well, rather, initialed or monogrammed)!

**You wrote: ** Hilaire Belloc. One of my favorite people.

GKC​

Sigh! I was not sure when I wrote the earlier message which of the two spellings (with single or double “l” in the forename) was correct, and found both on decent-quality WWW sites. I should have gotten off my posterior and looked in a good reference book (of which I have many)! A lesson not to rely on the WWW for such things! Yea, G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, Ronald Knox, and the whole marvellous “Catholic Renaissance” pre-Vat. II gang!

Jerry Parker

 

[GKC]

GKC, so honourably named (well, rather, initialed or monogrammed)!

**You wrote: ** Hilaire Belloc. One of my favorite people.

GKC​

Sigh! I was not sure when I wrote the earlier message which of the two spellings (with single or double “l” in the forename) was correct, and found both on decent-quality WWW sites. I should have gotten off my posterior and looked in a good reference book (of which I have many)! A lesson not to rely on the WWW for such things! Yea, G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, Ronald Knox, and the whole marvellous “Catholic Renaissance” pre-Vat. II gang!

Jerry Parker

I’ve collected Old Thunder for around 45 years. As also Chesterton, Tolkien, Knox, Lewis, Williams, Sayers, Lunn, Dawson and similar folk.

GKC

 

[Jerry_Parker]

Hi, G.K.C.,

**You wrote: *** I’ve collected Old Thunder for around 45 years. As also Chesterton, Tolkien, Knox, Lewis, Williams, Sayers, Lunn, Dawson and similar folk. – GKC *​

Wow, man, do you ever have good taste! Those Anglo-Catholic and “Catholic renaissance” writers are all quite marvellous stuff (although I know zip-all, I have to admit, about Lunn), so much so, in fact, that I think it must have taken the full summoning of the forces of Hell to have let Vatican-II puffery displace this kind of thing in the affections of Catholics! (Of course, Vatican II was not intended to produce the Rotten Sillies that have beset us, but all that vulgarity and decline still do have their point of origin in the lamented council.)

I have extensive holdings of these writers, having begun to collect and to read them zealously in my late teens and twenties in the early 1960s and after, but only the “basic stuff” plus a bit more than that of Tolkien, but I think that I can assume that you have much more. I do have a fair number of rarities (because so little republished in later years) by Cardinals Newman and Manning (plus good modern editions, of course, of Newman’s primary writings), their immediate precursors, and many volumes by the best Anglo-Catholic and Lutheran writers (less widely known outside of Lutheran circles) of both periods, i.e. the 1840s to 1950s (and past that for the likes of Sayers).

Now is too late in the day for me to fill in the gaps, living on pension; alas, this sparsely populated area has nearly nothing in institutional library collections or bookshops of these authors, since the libraries here collect for a French-reading students and other public. However, French has its own great tradition of Neo-Scholastics, as I am sure you are aware, and I very much like their writings, too, whether in French or in English translation.

Pax, Jerry

 

[jesuspsr]

I’ve always been trying to choose between Lutheranism and Catholicism. Well, God chose for me!

This is the final straw, I’M COMIN’ HOME TO ROME!

Wlecome home

God bless you

 

[Aramis]

Speak for yourself, Old Convert. ‘Hate’ is a strong word, but I assure you, this is one Catholic who has nothing, and I mean nothing nice to say about Martin Luther. If he was an intelligent man, it was on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The rest of the time he was a profane, boorish, arrogant heretic whose hatred for the Catholic Church survives to this day in millions of his progeny.

Not to mention he abandoned his vows and his ordination.

 

[adelore]

**The Rev. Katrina Foster, a pastor in the Metropolitan New York Synod, pointed out that the church has ordained woman and divorced people in violation of a literal interpretation of scripture.
**

Unless I read this persons name wrong, isn’t this a women? Yet she points out that “The Church” is in violation of a literal interpertation of scripture.

The Bible shows that Women, (unless I’ve missed it somewhere) are not Priest or Pastors. The Catholic Church has stood the test of time, it seems the other Religions (that claim they go by the Bible) seem to be allowing “Changes” against "God’s Word. Satan is slowing “Creeping” into these churchs and “Blinding” them to the Word of God.

Now don’t get me wrong there are Many Good Christians in several of these churchs. Yet the “Powers to Be” in these Chruchs are making choices for the “flock”. So now these Good Christians need to take a step back and say to themselves, “Is this what God really wants?”

Remember the story about the “wolf” in a “sheeps clothing”. This is what is happening and many people don’t see it.

 

[GKC]

And I’m likely the only person you’ll speak to today who owns a record of Belloc singing.

Lunn is all too little known, I find. A terrific apologist, in the classic mode (with one weak spot), who was involved in some debates with Knox, and converted to the RCC afterwards.

My history with the group might resemble yours. I started in my late teens, in the mid 60s, and didn’t stop. I lucked on to a rare book dealer, early on, who specialized in pre-Vat II authors, and got a book a month, for around 23 years. My focus was always Chesterton, and I own roughly everything (except a couple of current Ignatius reprints of his ILN columns) that was published in book form under his name, plus a large amount of critical material. Belloc, similar, but slightly less thoroughly, the others likewise, Lewis especially. Nothing on Manning, the usual on Newman. These authors represent a significant, but not overwhelming, portion of my total book collecting mania.

We seem to have similar tastes, in some areas.

GKC

Hi, G.K.C.,

**You wrote: *** I’ve collected Old Thunder for around 45 years. As also Chesterton, Tolkien, Knox, Lewis, Williams, Sayers, Lunn, Dawson and similar folk. – GKC *​

Wow, man, do you ever have good taste! Those Anglo-Catholic and “Catholic renaissance” writers are all quite marvellous stuff (although I know zip-all, I have to admit, about Lunn), so much so, in fact, that I think it must have taken the full summoning of the forces of Hell to have let Vatican-II puffery displace this kind of thing in the affections of Catholics! (Of course, Vatican II was not intended to produce the Rotten Sillies that have beset us, but all that vulgarity and decline still do have their point of origin in the lamented council.)

I have extensive holdings of these writers, having begun to collect and to read them zealously in my late teens and twenties in the early 1960s and after, but only the “basic stuff” plus a bit more than that of Tolkien, but I think that I can assume that you have much more. I do have a fair number of rarities (because so little republished in later years) by Cardinals Newman and Manning (plus good modern editions, of course, of Newman’s primary writings), their immediate precursors, and many volumes by the best Anglo-Catholic and Lutheran writers (less widely known outside of Lutheran circles) of both periods, i.e. the 1840s to 1950s (and past that for the likes of Sayers).

Now is too late in the day for me to fill in the gaps, living on pension; alas, this sparsely populated area has nearly nothing in institutional library collections or bookshops of these authors, since the libraries here collect for a French-reading students and other public. However, French has its own great tradition of Neo-Scholastics, as I am sure you are aware, and I very much like their writings, too, whether in French or in English translation.

Pax, Jerry

 

[Bluegoat]

Was the Church in Denver making any anti-Christian, straight-from-hell decisions at the time? If ‘yes’ you have a valid point. If ‘no’ your comparison is inapposite.

Of course not all natural disasters are statements from God, but that doesn’t mean none of them are.

This reminds rather of the things Job’s comforters said.

 

[Alix1912]

Was the Church in Denver making any anti-Christian, straight-from-hell decisions at the time? If ‘yes’ you have a valid point. If ‘no’ your comparison is inapposite.

Of course not all natural disasters are statements from God, but that doesn’t mean none of them are.

This reminds rather of the things Job’s comforters said.

If you want to try and link Disasters to moral issues, was Hurricane Katrina a judgement on the lifestyle people were leading in New Orleans? Some pretty immoral stuff was known to happen down there. Of course a lot of good people lived there too, kinda sucks that they got punished along with the couple bad ones. What about the Tsunami in Indonesia a couple years back? Why did God do that? And if he uses natural diasters to punish people or send signs, why hasn’t Osama bin Laden been killed by a freak sand storm or something. By your logic God should have dropped an upside down cross on Luther’s head. Again don’t assign greater meaning to something than there is.

 

[Jerry_Parker]

G.K.C.

**You wrote: ** *I’m likely the only person you’ll speak to today who owns a record of Belloc singing.

Lunn is all too little known, I find. A terrific apologist, in the classic mode (with one weak spot), who was involved in some debates with Knox, and converted to the RCC afterwards.

My history with the group might resemble yours. I started in my late teens, in the mid 60s, and didn’t stop. I lucked on to a rare book dealer, early on, who specialized in pre-Vat II authors, and got a book a month, for around 23 years. My focus was always Chesterton, and I own roughly everything (except a couple of current Ignatius reprints of his ILN columns) that was published in book form under his name, plus a large amount of critical material. Belloc, similar, but slightly less thoroughly, the others likewise, Lewis especially. Nothing on Manning, the usual on Newman. These authors represent a significant, but not overwhelming, portion of my total book collecting mania.

We seem to have similar tastes, in some areas.*​

Belloc singing! That’s an interesting twist, especially for someone as I who spent years reviewing operatic and other classical vocal records (along with some other music of all kinds, to a lesser extent, and books) for many well-known magasines! I am curious what Belloc sang on those recordings (at least the sort of thing)!

I tried before writing this to locate the biography of Mgr. R. Knox that I read in the last year or two, but I don’t find it readily. I thought that perhaps I could find something about Lunn’s encounter with Knox which you mention, also, I have to admit, to verify Lunn’s first name! I really know nothing about him. Could you confirm a little more about Lunn? With a fuller name I can take flight and find out more for myself (being, after all, a retired librarian!).

I read a lot of the authors whom we both revere, chiefly earlier in my life (twenties, mostly), with some stray returns in later decades to reading them further in sporadic gulps. The ones whom I read most consistently often over the years were Newman and Lewis. I read quite voraciously when younger, though, so I did “take in” quite a lot. You were lucky to have that specialist book dealer to find things more systematically than I came across books of these authors that I bought for myself. There is much of their writing that, at this point of life, I would like to re-read. I would clue in more on what they had to say about Lutheran matters and on the other “magisterial Reformers”, rather than being so fixated on what the Catholic authors among them said about Anglicanism and British Protestantism.

My computer was “on the fritz” for most of two days, which is why it has taken time to read and reply to your message. Let me know, too, what your reading is among Lutheran authors and how you react to their writings! You must know at least the still active John Warwick Montgomery, a Lutheran apologist and genuine polyglot whose best writings, to my way of thinking, are in essay form.

Pax, Jerry Parker

 

[GKC]

G.K.C.

**You wrote: ** *I’m likely the only person you’ll speak to today who owns a record of Belloc singing.

Lunn is all too little known, I find. A terrific apologist, in the classic mode (with one weak spot), who was involved in some debates with Knox, and converted to the RCC afterwards.

My history with the group might resemble yours. I started in my late teens, in the mid 60s, and didn’t stop. I lucked on to a rare book dealer, early on, who specialized in pre-Vat II authors, and got a book a month, for around 23 years. My focus was always Chesterton, and I own roughly everything (except a couple of current Ignatius reprints of his ILN columns) that was published in book form under his name, plus a large amount of critical material. Belloc, similar, but slightly less thoroughly, the others likewise, Lewis especially. Nothing on Manning, the usual on Newman. These authors represent a significant, but not overwhelming, portion of my total book collecting mania.

We seem to have similar tastes, in some areas.*​

Belloc singing! That’s an interesting twist, especially for someone as I who spent years reviewing operatic and other classical vocal records (along with some other music of all kinds, to a lesser extent, and books) for many well-known magasines! I am curious what Belloc sang on those recordings (at least the sort of thing)!

I tried before writing this to locate the biography of Mgr. R. Knox that I read in the last year or two, but I don’t find it readily. I thought that perhaps I could find something about Lunn’s encounter with Knox which you mention, also, I have to admit, to verify Lunn’s first name! I really know nothing about him. Could you confirm a little more about Lunn? With a fuller name I can take flight and find out more for myself (being, after all, a retired librarian!).

I read a lot of the authors whom we both revere, chiefly earlier in my life (twenties, mostly), with some stray returns in later decades to reading them further in sporadic gulps. The ones whom I read most consistently often over the years were Newman and Lewis. I read quite voraciously when younger, though, so I did “take in” quite a lot. You were lucky to have that specialist book dealer to find things more systematically than I came across books of these authors that I bought for myself. There is much of their writing that, at this point of life, I would like to re-read. I would clue in more on what they had to say about Lutheran matters and on the other “magisterial Reformers”, rather than being so fixated on what the Catholic authors among them said about Anglicanism and British Protestantism.

My computer was “on the fritz” for most of two days, which is why it has taken time to read and reply to your message. Let me know, too, what your reading is among Lutheran authors and how you react to their writings! You must know at least the still active John Warwick Montgomery, a Lutheran apologist and genuine polyglot whose best writings, to my way of thinking, are in essay form.

Pax, Jerry Parker

Belloc sang and recited some of his own poetry, “Ha’nacker Mill”, “The Islands”, “Tarentella”, “The Winged Horse” (which is my favorite of these). There are also 4 other songs, from his poetry, and others, sung by someone else to Belloc’s tunes.

Knox’s standard bio, and the one you might mean, is Evelyn Waugh’s. It includes a good deal about Arnold Lunn, one of my favorite people. He wrote a few works basically hostile to the RCC (see his ROMAN CONVERTS), but is was obvious he was a man looking to be converted. Knox and he did a book of debating letters, DIFFICULTIES, pro and con Roman Catholicism. Knox always says he felt Lunn got the best of it. Lunn, OTOH, converted. He did 3 other books of epistolary debates, with J. B. S. Haldane, C.E. M. Joad, and (my favorite) G.G. Coulton. DIFFICULTIES is hard to find, the others are easier, as is some of his other best work. Unfortunately, he wrote too much, too late into a long life; the quality drooped.

I fear I have no particular knowledge of Lutheran writers, though I enjoy Montgomery, and own perhaps 5-6 of his books. But I do not account him one of my authors, for collecting purposes.

I myself was not a librarian, though I worked for 5 years in a library. I did spend 4 years in the out of print book business, and about 7 in the retail book trade. All of which supplemented my bibliomania. Which continues full speed. Always glad to talk books.

Pax tecum

GKC

 

[holy_moly]

I just copied the following article from Comcast.net

Lutherans to allow sexually active gays as clergy
By PATRICK CONDON, AP

MINNEAPOLIS — Leaders of the nation’s largest Lutheran church voted Friday to allow sexually active gays and lesbians in committed relationships to serve as clergy.

Gays and lesbians are currently allowed to serve as ministers in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America only if they remain celibate. The proposal to change that passed with 68 percent approval.

At 4.7 million members and about 10,000 congregations in the United States, the ELCA is one of the largest U.S. Christian denominations yet to take a more gay-friendly stance on clergy.

The final decision on whether to hire gay clergy in committed relationships will lie with individual congregations.

Some critics of the proposal have predicted its passage could cause individual congregations to split off from the ELCA, as has been the case with other Christian denominations, including the Episcopal Church.

The debate over the so-called “ministry recommendations” got under way first thing Friday, and delegate Al Quie, a former Republican governor of Minnesota, proposed an alternative: “Practicing homosexual persons are excluded from rostered leadership in this church.”

The proposal, which would have left the church’s policy more or less unchanged, failed. Conservatives had lost an important vote Wednesday night when the convention’s 1,045 delegates approved by a two-thirds supermajority a “social statement on human sexuality” that said the ELCA could accommodate diverging views on homosexuality.

The Rev. Katrina Foster, a pastor in the Metropolitan New York Synod, pointed out that the church has ordained woman and divorced people in violation of a literal interpretation of scripture.

“We can learn not to define ourselves by negation,” Foster said. “By not only saying what we are against, which always seems to be the same — against gay people. We should be against poverty. I wish we were as zealous about that.”

If you are a Lutheran of the ELCA and this is the “last straw” for you, come home to the Catholic Church! We welcome you with open arms full of love! Just as we have welcomed many Anglicans and Episcopalians.

God bless you all . . . and let us “keep THE faith together!”

 

[Jerry_Parker]

G.K.C.,

**You wrote: ** *Belloc sang and recited some of his own poetry, “Ha’nacker Mill”, “The Islands”, “Tarentella”, “The Winged Horse” (which is my favorite of these). There are also 4 other songs, from his poetry, and others, sung by someone else to Belloc’s tunes.

Knox’s standard bio, and the one you might mean, is Evelyn Waugh’s. It includes a good deal about Arnold Lunn, one of my favorite people. He wrote a few works basically hostile to the RCC (see his ROMAN CONVERTS), but is was obvious he was a man looking to be converted. Knox and he did a book of debating letters, DIFFICULTIES, pro and con Roman Catholicism. Knox always says he felt Lunn got the best of it. Lunn, OTOH, converted. He did 3 other books of epistolary debates, with J. B. S. Haldane, C.E. M. Joad, and (my favorite) G.G. Coulton. DIFFICULTIES is hard to find, the others are easier, as is some of his other best work. Unfortunately, he wrote too much, too late into a long life; the quality drooped.

I fear I have no particular knowledge of Lutheran writers, though I enjoy Montgomery, and own perhaps 5-6 of his books. But I do not account him one of my authors, for collecting purposes.

I myself was not a librarian, though I worked for 5 years in a library. I did spend 4 years in the out of print book business, and about 7 in the retail book trade. All of which supplemented my bibliomania. Which continues full speed. Always glad to talk books.*​

Yes, you are quite a bookman! The book trade is a very demanding one, and the antiquarian domain (or even just plain used book books selling) requires a lot more skill, intelligence, and good memory than many librarians have, especially younger ones in these computer-obsessed times that put in danger the genuine nature of the profession of librarianship. I worked during my career with librarians (by then very, very elderly) whose careers began near the end of the 19th century and at the end with librarians whose careers were just beginning in the 21st century.

Lutheranism’s doctrinal-literary lore is little known. Theologically orthodox figures like John Warwick Montgomery are widely known because of their broad appeal, rather for their excellence as specifically Lutheran figures. (Of course, Montgomery is a essayist whose output falls well after that of the Roman Catholic and Anglo-Catholic remaissance that our earlier messages discussed.) There is a scholarly, but somewhat crabbed and narrow “Protestant scholastic” tinge to these writers that limits their appeal to non-Lutherans.

The European Lutheran writers of the 19th and early 20th centuries, those who resisted the apostasy that was envelopping Lutheranism in Europe earlier than in North America, could be of greater interest to non-Lutheran readers if their works were promoted by major book publishing houses that include religious literature in their catalogues. For example, N.F.S. Gruntvig, the Danish bishop, hymnist, and writer, has potential for a wider revival of interest in his work, I would think, if it were republished in English translation. Or, perhaps Gruntvig’s concerns simply are too dated now to matter to many readers; Gruntvig was an outstanding and very lovable Lutheran and Danish national figure. Soren Kierkegaard is very well known, indeed, but he was more of a philosopher than a theologian. The North American Lutherans were too steeped in their inter-Lutheran rivalries and disputes to hold much appeal outside Lutheranism.

It is the biography of Mgr. Ronald Knox by Evelyn Waugh that I had in mind, a fascinating study and one that radiates Waugh’s beautiful writing style, which I so cherish. I’ll have to look into Belloc’s endeavours as a songwriter and singer! Thanks for the lead regarding him, and also about Arnold Lunn. I surely had encountered him while reading Waugh’s book, but forgot what Waugh said about him. I’m going to try to track down some of Lunn’s books that you commend.

Pax, Jerry Parker