In which the pond heads off to the bromancer and the Catholic Boys' Daily for an extended week end meditation ...

It being the silly season, the pond feels no need to conform to conventional verities about structure, meaning, truth or insight.

Some might yearn for three acts and maybe a coda, but the pond is going free form ...

Why not start with a papal blessing, so that others can be referred to more papal blessings here?

Why not filch a bit from the reptiles?

Henceforth whenever the pond farts, it will think of Malware. Well, he can't fart and explain copper at the same time (who knew Whirlpool readers read the pond?)

Is that not the mental linking of Malware, copper and farting a good thing?

Is that not handy during the silly season, especially if over Xmas the pond indulges in too many legumes? 

Why not throw in a thundering Oz editorial?

Why not?  Who knows if some Jesuit of the Francis Xavier school actually wrote those words asking for a seven year old boy in order to produce a religious zealot for a man (or a nun in place of a woman)...the reality is that the long and ceaseless march of the Catholic church to control institutions is never-ending ...

In short, why are the reptiles indulging in this shocking talk of politics in the classroom, when there should be just some decent, old-fashioned talk about dangerous religious indoctrination the classroom?

Well there's a reason, there's always a reason, and perhaps it has something to do with the lizard Oz being widely known as the Catholic Boys' Daily ...

And that's point where the pond must get serious, possibly a little solemn, and long and tedious, and that happens thanks to the bromancer ...

Sadly, he slipped down the page a little this weekend,  into the "more opinion" slot, leading the pond to fear that his delightful contribution to the Catholic Boys' daily might be overlooked ...

Now before we start, it's perhaps worth noting why the pond referred to the reptiles of Oz as the Catholic Boys' daily, and truth to tell it's a habit, it picked up from Gadfly ...

Here, in a random example, being gadflyish about that famous lurcher, DD ...

That found here, and it will be seen that the pond is inclined to a more possessory form of the term,  and it seems it has found favour elsewhere, even amongst Catholics ...

Well that's here,  and while the Devine actually dwells amongst the Terrorists, it's as good as any a way to introduce the bromancer piece ...

Now this is deeply moving stuff, all the more if we get on to discussing how  the likes of G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc represent the way forward ...

It should also be starting to become clear why Oz editorialist didn't embark on a splenetic  rage about religion in the classroom ...

How would the Catholic Boys' Daily recruit more boys for the Daily if the boys had no way of gaining a sound Catholic education?

Now "Liberal" is a much abused word, and the Campions are specialist abusers.

It goes without saying that in this context, it actually means conservative, in the Catholic Boys' Daily way, and naturally the bromancer was entranced ...

Charming. It must have been splendid fun for everyone to sit around listening to the work of a tortured Russian homosexual, incapable of acknowledging his sexuality because of the doings of the church ...

But wait, there's more, much, much more ... in which we can learn how the taxpayer can help the Catholic church diligently go about the business of indoctrinating students ... and lordy, lordy, how a surprising number of indoctrinated graduates end up in journalism ...

Catholic Boys' Daily anyone (oh alright and a few complimentary girls too, just for balance) ...

Now this mutual admiration society has gone on for a long time.

For example, here's Sheridan being reported in the college magazine, in 2010 (pdf here):

And so back to a further final gobbet of the current bromancer, charmingly sounding the siren song of the luddite and the technophobe... is this were the love of copper was born?

It is all of course, remarkably endearing and quaint ... and at last we did come to GK Chesterton, which gives the pond the opportunity to recommend one of Chesterton's epic works ...

It's only in the interests of establishing the mindset, the zeitgeist, the ambience of these "liberals" ...

The pond once walked amongst these "liberals" and felt the lash of their illiberal liberalism.

Of course you don't have to hunt around for a paperback to feel the vibe.

You - though apparently not the tree-killing Campion students or the bromancer - can find it on Project Gutenberg ... here ...

Here's a beguiling, riotously funny and satirical teaser ...

Oh you funny little wog, oh you silly bearded Persian ...

Now inter alia, there's much more comedy derived from funny furriners and Islamics and the like, but as the pond mentioned Belloc, perhaps we should here note Belloc's Survivals and New Arrivals: The Old and New Enemies of the Catholic Church.

You can find it - though not the bromancer and Campion luddites -  online, with the quote below in chapter IV here, and the main index here.

Belloc gives all forms of filthy vile paganism a hearty serve, but reserves some special venom for those funny inferior wogs and as a result his text remains required reading for British yobs...

This text, ripe with paranoia and an English empire mindset, it's worth recalling, is the sort of axis of weevils - Waugh, Chesterton and Belloc - who continue to exercise an unholy power over the mind of the bromancer, and possibly others still dreaming of a better British empire in the Catholic Boys' Daily ...

What's it all mean, all this endless self-satisfied blather about heretics and pagans and wicked secularists?

Well it's all just a reminder that this mob, the bromancers, the Catholic Boys' Daily, the Campion crowd, are saturated in this sort of endless, mindless gibberish ... of what might be called the old British school of upper class tykes of the Chesterton, Belloc, Waugh kind ...

Bigoted, prejudiced, fundamentalist boofhead tykes intending to keep the war of civilisations running, and if there isn't a Protestant/Catholic schism to conduct, why then, how about a Christian/Islam feud that can be conducted with the same ferocity as Shia and Sunni ...

Endless mindless fundamentalism, suffused with that peculiar British arrogance that sees the countries that produced two epic world wars and a first class holocaust as the font of western civilisation ...

Is it any wonder that the pond turned to secularism, if not as a solution, then at least for a moment's peace?

Is it any wonder that the Catholic Boys' Daily is routinely, daily, filled with nonsense? Filled with reptile editorials blathering on about Gramsci ...

Yet strangely, rarely touched by an actual Christian thought ...

... which helps explain this paradox noted by Tandberg ...(and more Tandberg here).