ragon
THE
P RTAL
November 2017
Page 5
Lines written below
Fountains Abbey
Some death notices and a plea for justice (or not)
from Snapdragon
A
s one of the more senior members of the church militant here on earth, I find myself
more frequently than not in a state of shock when reading the death notices in the slew
of papers that I take to inform and disgust myself in equal measure each day.
It is not just that, with good reason,
one has never heard of most of the
contents of the particular funeral
parlour in question but somehow one knows that
one’s own dear mother would not
have approved of so many of
them.
Milliners, dress makers and
garage proprietors are often
perfectly nice people with whom
one does business but it seems
unnecessary somehow to waste
precious resources, which could
otherwise be used to help teach whales
to express themselves more fully,
telling us all about their astonishingly
dull lives. However, be that as it may,
this month has produced a very fine
crop of those who are now dead and it seemed only
right to draw the faithful readers’ attention to the lives
of Colonel Jasper Browell, Miss Norma Sykes and Mgr
Augustine Hoey. All in their own way were examples
of what it is to be part of the church militant today.
triumph over adversity, we can only thank God for the
glories of creation.
The Colonel, on the other hand,
embraced worlds that the other
two would never have known. Not
for him the maudlin concerns of
the emotionally incontinent but
a sure and certain faith that God
would see him home without the
necessity of a large crowd of the
tired, bored and insincere at the,
by now, obligatory memorial
service. It was the Colonel’s
wish that no one should miss
a day’s hunting or shooting to
attend that lamentable event.
Quite right too.
What a splendid example those three are to us all.
May they rest in peace.
Fr Augustine was a very holy man who loathed
pomposity, embraced failure in himself and others
and appreciated the better French pudding wines in
equal measure. Much of his last few years were spent
in the former station waiting room at Walsingham
where there are no trains and no internet connection
and thus a much better chance of making it on time to
heaven than from anywhere else in England. News reaches me from Rome of a quite wicked
miscarriage of justice which we must all hope will
be swiftly righted by the Holy Father. A functionary
of a perfectly otiose hospital for idle children in
the Eternal City has been perfectly understandably
shifting resources toward the redecoration of a
cardinal’s bedding quarters with the commissioning of
tasteful murals featuring young Greek boys in various
stages of undress. It cannot be right that such liberally
sensitive artistic endeavour can merit an, admittedly
light, sentence of imprisonment.
Miss Sykes, whom I doubt very much if Fr Hoey ever
met, responded heroically to childhood disease by
embracing exercises which enabled her to grow quite
startlingly impressive breasts: which one can only
wonderingly report measured a full 41 inches at their
extremities. Under the benign guidance of the well
known dwarf and light entertainer Mr Arthur Askey,
she became famous br iefly as Sabrina. In her life and No wonder the Pope has made Cardinal Burke a
judge of the Vatican’s highest court. It must be to
ensure that this blameless man can be freed to carry on
his good work redecorating the whole of the Vatican.
On the other hand, perhaps not. When will holy
mother church start to embrace the consequences of
our Lord’s few but well chosen words on the subject of
millstones and necks?