Happy Feast of St George – Patron of England!
One of the foremost colleges at the University of Oxford cancelled its annual St George’s Day celebration for 2023 – and will celebrate the end of Eid instead.
Magdalen College, which was founded almost one hundred years before the English Reformation and was named after St Mary Magdalen, has a long tradition of celebrating the April 23 feast of England’s patron saint.
The event customarily featured a banquet in which all academics, staff, dons, and students were invited to dine together from a “special English menu”.
College members in the past were invited to “a formal hall and high table at 7.30pm” in order to “celebrate St George’s Day”.
But this year the event has been scrapped and replaced with a celebration of the end of the Islamic season of Eid, which closes on April 21.
On April 23, the college’s first day of “Trinity” term, students will be offered a meal which will “follow Muslim customs”. They have been told that “the meat dish will be halal and no alcohol will be served”.
The decision has caused contention. Dons at Magdalen College and staff at Oxford University denounced the move.
One academic at the college told the Daily Telegraph: “The cancelling of St George’s Day is yet another example of the deep antipathy that the leaders of so many of Britain’s academic institutions seem to feel towards the country that built and maintains them.” Click here to continue reading…
Editor writes…
Some – perhaps a majority of English Catholics – would agree with that “one academic” who is appalled at the cancelling of St George’s Day at Magdalen College, Oxford University.
As is the custom with Feast Day threads, share your favourite hymns, prayers, stories and even jokes of the good clean fun variety, as well as your thoughts on the cancelling of St George’s Day at Oxford University.
Wishing all our readers – especially those south of the border – a very Happy Feast of St George!
Comments (16)
Yet another small bite in the collective West’s eating away at itself, but hardly surprising coming from this quarter. Was it not, after all, a certain department in this once great University which, a few years ago, mandated that, in bibliographical lists given to students, at least one third of the entries had to consist a priori of women authors? (And I am not talking about gender studies, but of a subject far more universal.) Is this not the place from which which the supposedly brilliant David Cameron obtained a first class degree in politics, philosophy and economics without knowing what ‘magna carta’ means? I am reminded of CS Lewis’ famous remark that there is no contradiction between a man being at the same time a fool and an MA. I have the feeling that ‘brilliant’ now means utterly obsequious of the party line.
Much ink could be spilt on this topic, but the decline of the West is, in my view, essentially the decline of Christianity, not vice-versa. From a great muscular religion, convinced of its own truth, it has degenerated into the stuff of milksops. And if you are going to act like a doormat, then don’t be surprised if others treat you as such. It must be said that in this deadly race to the bottom, the Catholic Church resisted, at least officially, until Pius XII. What came afterwards may have been in the minds of the popes from John XXIII to Benedict XVI, an attempt to better explain the Church to the contemporary world, but what it was in the minds of darker actors deeply invested of the capacity of knowing how to bide their time as they slowly but surely spread their tentacles far and wide, and what it continues to reveal itself to be, is an attempt to dissolve the Church into the world to the point where the two become indistinguishable. (In this the Jesuits have functioned as a veritable battering-ram.) How else to explain the sheer unmitigated and unabashed violence of Bergoglio in suppressing the Mass of the Ages, quite consciously and openly making his predecessors look like fools as the mask slips and thinking Catholics — such that are left — realize in horror what the last six or seven decades have really been about? How else to explain the conversion of great swathes of the German hierarchy to the sins of Sodom as they too unabashedly seek to turn two thousand years of Christianity on its head and hang on to their purse in the process?
Such are our times: great institutions built by giants being destroyed by, at best, over-indulged dwarves, more or less unconscious minions of the evil, while those who know what is really going and what, unchecked, it will lead to, watch from afar.
Let us pray that God in his mercy will not permit that one day we awake and groan to find ourselves conscripted followers of Muhammad, even if it would be what we richly deserve.
Leitourgos,
Thank you for that eloquent post, it says everything that needs to be said about this disgraceful surrender.
Happy feast of St George! I had an english grandmother and spent a lot of time in England as a child. It’s a very special place for me and I’ve always found the vast majority of english people to be very friendly.
It doesn’t surprise me that the college has cancelled the celebration of St George. Anything that is seen as overtly Christian is frowned upon.
A happy feast day to all!
I am also an anglophile and always enjoy visiting England.
What a crazy decision by Magdalen College – I can understand them wishin to hold an event for muslims staff/ students, but it was not necessary for this to displace a long-standing Chistian tradition conencted with the college’s core identity!
It is very noticable how Islam is often celebrated and feted in the public square, while Christianity attracts only bitter attacks and efforts to banish it to the private realm.
What would St George make of it all?
Gabriel Syme
“What would St George make of it all?”
He’d slay the dragon behind it! That would be the “great red dragon” described in Apocalypse as dragging down a third of the stars of heaven.
Athanasius,
I agree. All the saints in heaven must be astounded at what they are seeing going on in the world. I do sometimes wonder how much they know about what is going on in the world. Does anyone know?
President Donald Trump raised the alarm in the U.S. a few years back when he spoke of America’s institutions of learning having been deeply infiltrated by Communists over many decades. He was absolutely right, but these enemies of humanity have enjoyed a far greater success than even Trump realised. There is hardly a learning establishment, political office or media outlet left in the once-Christian world that is outwith the control of these cultural Marxists. It is just as Our Lady of Quito and Fatima foretold for our times. Indeed, they are even in high places in the Vatican. It’s the punishment of heaven on a Christian world turned hostile to it’s God and Saviour. Don’t think that events such as that at Magdalen College are planned to encourage friendship with Musims. No, the objective is first to eradicate Christianity and then, once achieved, to rid the planet of all religion. That’s the main plan of Communists, which is why they were the first to promote dialogue between different religions.
Athanasius,
The Left’s long march through our institutions (family [abortion, contraception, divorce], education [from the highly damaging human carparks that are kindergartens through to schools and universities], the law, the media, the arts, and, of course, the Church) is now so obvious that I can only doubt the sanity of those who cannot see it.
The Right? The Right just rolled over and let the Left get away with it.
Happy Feast of St George of England!
It’s disgraceful that the University of Oxford has cancelled this Feast in favour of Eid – there’ll be no grace for them, having done that.
A very happy and holy Feast of Saint George, everyone!
If anyone is interested, there’s a three part documentary on BBC iPlayer about 6 “celebrities” (I’d only heard of 2) who take a walking pilgrimage to Fatima. It’s quite entertaining, although it’s very, very “Fatima-Lite”. Nothing about the true message. It’s called, “Pilgrimage”.
Thank you Petrus, for that alert. I watched the Fatima episode [in the series “Pilgrimage”] and it was, as you say, “Fatima-Lite”. Nothing of the gravity of the Fatima apparitions came through. All very superficial. It was interesting, though to hear the comments from the group, especially the Muslim, Jew and Irish Evangelical Protestant. In case others want to view, I won’t say more about him but be sure to watch to the very end to get the real measure of that particular “pilgrim”.
Editor,
In case you missed it, all three episodes are about the walk to Fatima.
Dear Madame Editor,
A belated Happy Feast of St George:
https://lit.royaldoors.net/?event_id1=5660
Hugs,
Margaret 🇺🇲
And a Happy Feast of St. Mark!
https://lit.royaldoors.net/?event_id1=5663
Fun fact: On the Gregorian calendar, April 25 – the Feast of St Mark – is the last day on which Pascha/Easter can fall.
Margaret 🇺🇲
On a recent thread, someone asked (I think it was Editor’s nephew), in response to the heinous treachery of the German bishops, “What is it with Germany?”
I think the same question should be asked of England, which went from Churchill and WWII to the Beatles and Rolling Stones in a mere half a generation….and has gone swiftly downhill since.