Howdy everyone. Last Friday, September 9th, was the commemoration for the Blessed Charles Fuge Lowder in the Anglican Church (see here for a write-up on Anglican view of Saints which is quite different than the Roman view). I read up on him for a brief presentation in my church’s continuing education class and thought that a brief synopsis of his interesting and inspiring story might be of interest to you all as well.
I will also cover my recent trip to the Libertarian Scholars Conference in Nashville, discuss the upcoming live streaming panel discussion of The Rings of Power that I will be hosting tomorrow, and have a brief update on my thoughts regarding the war in Ukraine.
Blessed Charles Fuge Lowder
Charles Lowder was born on June 22 1820 in England as the son of a banker. He later attended Oxford, where he fell under the sway of John Henry Newman and the Oxford Movement that sought to reconnect the Church of England to its Catholic (in the sense of the universal and historical church, not the Roman church) and ritualistic roots.
This interest led to his vocation in the priesthood and he was ordained in 1844. After serving in a few different parishes, he became assistant curate at St. Barnabas’ Church in Pimlico, which was basically a slum area, in 1851. St. Barnabas’ church was at the time considered to be one of the highest churches in England (meaning it engaged in a lot of traditional ritual that was not common at the time), but a church member disapproved and campaigned to be churchwarden to reduce the Catholic and ritualist influence. He hired a man to wear a sandwich board advertisement for him and parade in front of the church. Some of the choir boys, apparently filled with high church fervor were going to pelt the man with stones, but Lowder said they couldn’t do that and instead gave them some money to buy rotten eggs to pelt the board with instead.
This got him into a lot of trouble and he was fined 2 pounds and suspended by the local bishop for 6 weeks. However, this was rather providential as he took the time to visit France and stayed at a French seminary where he became familiar with the work of St. Vincent de Paul and the Vincentians and their work among the poor. This convinced him that a similar society was needed in England.
This led in 1855 to him and 5 others founding the Society of the Holy Cross,Societas Sanctae Crucis (SSC) which is a fraternal society for Anglo-Catholic priests which still exists today and was very motivated with concern for the poor.
Lowder stated:
“She (the Church) must assume a missionary character, and by religious association and a new adaptation of Catholic practice to the altered circumstances of the 19th century, and the peculiar wants of the English character, endeavor with fresh life and energy to stem the prevailing tide of sin and indifference”
In 1856 he became the head of a mission in the London Docks (which was the first domestic mission in England) which was one of the poorest slum areas of London. He did not have the greatest reception, as Irish Catholics broke beer mugs to throw at him and his high church practices inspired several riots among Protestants who at one point apparently sacked St. George’s Church. A dead cat was once thrown at him while he was preaching.
In his memoir he recounts how:
“On one occasion, having made the attempt in a very bad quarter, the attack became so violent that we were obliged to beat a retreat; and it required some generalship and knowledge of the alleys and passages to bring off our forces, consisting of the choirboys and others who had been singing the hymns.”
However, his dedication and work among the community began to pay off. He started a school, and some high church women formed the Sisters of the Community of the Holy Cross (the Oxford movement had given (re)birth to Anglican monastic orders) to aid in running the school and aiding the sick and rescuing prostitutes.
By 1866 Lowder had raised enough money to build a new church, which was called St. Peter’s London Docks, which still exists today. The day after it opened there was a cholera outbreak and Lowder and the church were very involved in aiding the sick. This endeared him to the community and apparently is how he became the first Anglican priest to be addressed by the title “Father” which the slum dwellers reportedly started to call him when they saw him carrying a sick child.
This was all quite fortunate because despite his high church ways, he was never prosecuted under the Public Worship Regulation Act (a law that was passed by Parliament in an attempt to quash Anglo-Catholicism) because the Archbishop at the time feared it would end up being a big public spectacle and all the high church work in the slums went a long way in blunting public opposition.
Lowder was a hard worker and suffered from ulcers and died from one in 1880 while on a vacation in Austria (apparently hiking the Alps is not a good way to recover) . On the day of his funeral, masses started at 3am and were said every 30 mins and thousands thronged his casket and had to be held back by the police. Several Anglo-Catholic writers note with some barely concealed smugness that the police wouldn’t protect him from the mobs that at times chased him during his early ministry in the slums, but thanks to Lowder’s tireless work among the community by the time he died the police were needed to restrain the mourners to whom he had become so beloved.
Notably, Lowder never crossed the Tiber (he apparently made sure to tell another English visitor at the Austrian hotel he was staying at that despite seeing a Roman priest shortly before his death he had not converted) and was quite upset at Anglo-Catholics doing so. There is a story that once he was left alone at the London Docks mission when all his curates left the same night to join the Roman church, which is amusing, though undoubtedly rather depressing for him at the time. Also of note, he took a vow of celibacy.
I was quite moved by Lowder’s story and especially the journey from having the locals throwing dead cats at him to being a such a beloved member of the community he had ministered to for so long. I look forward to reading his memoir in the near future.
Libertarian Scholars Conference
This past weekend I was at the Libertarian Scholars Conference hosted by the Mises Institute in Nashville. I had a great time listening to smart presentations and saw so many friends I haven’t seen in person in ages. I gave a presentation on the Monroe doctrine and the maintenance of American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere as the basis for a new American grand strategy, which was well recieved and I got some helpful feedback on. Ryan McMaken and I will be discussing the broad ideas on our upcoming episode of War, Economy, and State.
Upcoming Rings of Power Live-stream Panel Tomorrow at 6pm EST
I have organized a panel discussion with some nerd friends to discuss the new Amazon Rings of Power series. I have many thoughts and I am sure it will be a fun and nerdy time so be sure to tune in at this link, which you can also set to notify you.
War in Ukraine
I have not written much about the war in Ukraine lately because the situation is so fluid and it seems anytime someone writes about it events quickly prove them wrong. Another reason I have not written much about it is because I don’t regurgitate Ukrainian propaganda and think a lot of what Westerners are saying is so delusional that it is embarrassing and don’t want to deal with the drama of being attacked by highly emotional people who think Ukraine is some holy bastion of democracy and that only evil Putin shills would have objections to the increasing levels of American involvement. It would be awkward to tell social media friends and acquaintances that I think they are out to lunch. At the same time, it is also hard to have conversations about what is happening, even if both sides are engaged in good faith, because good information is so hard to come by. There is of course purposefully deceitful propaganda, but even more than that is can at times be difficult to sift through psychologically motivated copium and clear minded analysis.
All that is to say, that it is my impression that the Ukrainian recapture of most of Kharkiv Oblast is not close to the big deal it is made out to be, for the reason that the Oblast was lightly defended and even then the Russians managed to inflict heavy casualties on the Ukrainians. At the same time, it certainly wasn’t good for the Russians.
I am also highly skeptical of all the claims, even by people who I consider realist and restraint allies, that all this proves just how weak Russia is and what a paper tiger it is etc. etc. The fact of the matter is that Russia has been waging the war in a very restrained way, which is quite clear from the fact that it took over six months for Russia to go ahead and strike important Ukrainian systems, such as the power grid and water systems, that have been left more or less alone the entire war.
I still recall quite vividly Fox News Pentagon Neo-con propagandist “correspondent”, Jennifer Griffin stating right before the outbreak of hostilities back in February that Ukraine could basically expect shock and awe destruction, which did not in fact materialize. The fact the war has been waged in this restrained way has been a source of frustration for some Russians since the very beginning. Yet, this restraint is completely ignored by most of the Western chattering classes. I bring this up not to pat the Russians on the head for being good little boys, but to point out that Russia could be fighting the war in a very different way that would result in more death and destruction and more rapid advances in contrast to what is happening now. Analysis of their fighting capacity should keep this in mind.
At the same time, only two armies in the world have experience fighting a high intensity modern war, and neither one is the US. I think it should be a source of great concern that for decades the US has for the most part fought poorly equipped insurgents and has no experience in maintaining high intensity combat, or of dealing with an opponent with combined arms. When was the last time the US armed forces had to deal with an opponent who had massed artillery and sophisticated air defenses? And when was the last time the US utilized massed artillery?
Hopefully we won’t have to ever find out the true extent of the military leadership’s incompetence and lack of preparation, but it is something to think about when you see the media crowing about Russian collapse etc. etc.
I follow a variety of different sources on the Ukraine War and everyone must be taken with several grains of salt, given the chaotic nature of the situation. One source I always find informative is the Twitter account “Russians with Attitude” which is obviously pro-Russian, but it is quite useful for understanding what people on the Russian side are thinking and they are not full of blatant cope and propaganda. I recommend their sit-reps, especially the latest one:
All that is to say that Russia is hardly collapsing and everyone should steel themselves for a conflict that is going to continue to drag on for the foreseeable future, perhaps with increased Russian aggressiveness, as the strikes on the power grid demonstrate. We can only hope and pray that the blob doesn’t inadvertently get us into a shooting war with Russia.