Jacob Phillips

The discourse about Ayaan Hirsi Ali and civilisational Christianity made me think back to that devastatingly unwelcome moment when I realised not only that I believed in God, but I was even going to have to seek baptism, for @TheCriticMag. thecritic.co.uk/against-christ…

Retvrn to randomly and unexpectedly occasionally ending paragraphs with terse and apodeictic statements of immense significance before swiftly moving on to the next point: "all errors of the intellect are excusable save those that arise from a failure of generosity".

@Celtic_First Let's see what happens in the final. Argentina have a statue of Our Lady of Lujàn, patroness of the nation, in the dressing room. 🫡

@Counteredlogos Spain’s very prayerful manager, the amazing Luis de la Fuente, says he prays all the time and for lots of different things, but not for his team to win.

One of the worst consequences of the Enlightenment upon England is the loss of that very real, very important, very singular, and yes - quite happily irrational - folk-religion instinct to demand of God, with all the force of Moses, that your team wins at the football.

@chipping_mr Exactly. I wonder if God punished us because you added this subclause.

@Counteredlogos Yes, I failed by adding "according to Your will" last night. It just needed some direct standing on a hill and yelling!

Abstract, Deist errors so permeate people's thinking, that they let principles like omnibenevolence and omnipotence and universality detract from the vital and concrete realities of an irrational and embodied desire for victory.

@sitsio Too soon.

You have to give it to Argentina, they are a different gravy

If you believe those saying they've gone to Bluesky to leave all the hate behind, I suggest you search the words "Ann Widdecombe" and "bigot" and then scroll through a few of the 10000s of pages of raging fury toward an elderly woman murdered at home.

"Even the best liturgy in the world will still have some annoying parishioners present, or some others behaving during Mass in a way that is less than fitting, and so on. Yet Pope Leo suggests that even these realities are harmoniously integrated with God’s grace – and if we try too hard to escape them rather than find God in them, the sacramental reality of the Church can be undermined. In other words, an ideal church is no longer really the Church." In our latest Substack article, @counteredlogos reflects on how we encounter God in the Church, and only in the midst of human weaknesses. Read it now: livingcatholictruth.substack.com/p/an-ideal-chu…

In fact, (i) and (ii) depend and feed on each other, which is one of the many reasons why (ii) is such a spectacularly unwise approach.

It's perfectly possible to maintain two things as being true: (i) lots of tedious grifters take an unethical delight in always assuming the worst for their own gain, and (ii) there's a highly curated and often dishonest approach to public messaging in these fractious times.

@HeatherTomli That's more like it!

@Counteredlogos Did you see Jacob Rees Mogg's tribute? Contained some catechesis on purgatory, a discussion of the TLM and a request to pray for her soul

When someone devoutly Catholic dies, it seems weird to say "my thoughts are with them" or whatever. Thoughts are useless, and devoid of any metaphysical potency. A thought is like a microscopic drop of watery vapour compared to the Pacific-sized Ocean of one intercessory prayer.

@sigourneybeaver Hope you're ok 🙏

Mum died peacefully in the early hours. All a bit surreal atm. Thanks picked pals for listening to me wittering on while I was hanging round her bedside and distracting me with silliness.

@TonklinDiary So am I.

@Counteredlogos i am glad your thoughts are bigger than the heathen's

It's so weird in post-Southport Britain now that every high profile crime involves days of culture wars cluedo trying to interpret a stream of contradictory statements and actions from very uncomfortable looking police officers reading verbatim from a script.

Part 2 of An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Dissent just dropped, a technical walk-through the four levels of magisterial teaching before I bring it all together in Part 3 next week.

@counteredlogos/note/c-293012090?r=b780" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">substack.com/@counteredlogo…

@NommeDeTwit I salute you.

@Counteredlogos "Women of this type", will we endure? Nothing to do with "Englishness". Don't talk about us as though we're some extinct species, we're very much alive and kicking and relevant.

This is important because many of us grew up with women of this type in our towns, at primary school or church fêtes, charging fearsomely around the place, giving you a bollocking occasionally, but always teaching you to shut up, grow up, and show up. Will such a type endure?

@Counteredlogos When people ponder how we held out alone against the Nazis for years and then prevailed, they highlight the RAF; the Turings; the Churchills. What they never mention are the Widdecombe-types. They held the fabric of society together, kept up morale, provided moral certainty.