What St Stephen of Hungary can teach us about manners

 Excellent post…..

Refusing to enter/engage the discussion/problem/battle because of feigned slights is the last refuge of the coward.

I firmly believe that the Catholic Church (and by extension the world because only the CC can truly heal the world) is on the brink of total collapse/apostasy, not because of what the our Catholic establishment do, but what they FAIL to do.

Fr Alexander, you consistently and persistently want to trip through the fields picking daisies even amid a full scale battle in the same field. You step over the carcasses and wounded, dodging all engagement so you can pick a pretty little flower.
It’s not that your articles say anything wrong or evil, it is that your behaviour is totally inappropriate given the gravity of the situation the Church currently finds itself in.  

How you can write a gushing piece on the Gates foundation for example, without even a word of criticism about its main objectives, which is to wipe as many people off the face as the earth as possible. You refuse to acknowledge the INTRINSIC evil this organisation engages in and promotes every single day, activities that are diametrically opposed the the Church you are supposed to represent.

I write this not to judge and condemn you but to appeal to you to re-engage in the battle for souls and bodies. You have a grave responsibility as not just a priest, but as a very public writer on the Catholic Newspaper to inform the faithful who our greatest enemies really are……any person or organisation that engages in the promotion or aplication of industrial scale abortion, contraception and sterilisation should NEVER get a free pass. It is a grave sin of OMISSION….

I see. How predictable. A recommendation from a saint that we should be merciful, patient, strong, humble, moderate, gentle, honourable, and chaste, and an observation that humility and politeness are to be cherished invokes the usual rage, rather proving the author’s point.

Manners aren’t a simple matter of language. Of course loving language can be rather robust, whereas hateful language can be devoid of expletives. Nastiness, venom, scorn, and condescension can all be expressed — and are often best expressed — without resorting to those proverbial Anglo-Saxon words. This is all obvious. 

Manners are simply basic decency — however a given society understands that — in action. In that sense, manners are indeed morals in microcosm.

That’s why Chesterton — a man of impeccable manners, by all accounts, and an odd person to summon as an advocate for bad manners — linked the two when he said “Little children ought to learn nothing but legends; they are the beginnings of all sound morals and manners.”

Has the internet caused a decline in manners? I think that it probably has, and I think Chesterton had forseen and lamented this very phenomenon, when he wrote in 1926 that:
“Evil communications corrupt good manners, according to the Apostle; who was on that occasion perhaps not only an Apostle but a Prophet. For his remark was a pretty precise prediction of the problem of the modern world. I mean by evil communications what are commonly called good communications. I mean rapid communications, efficient communications, elaborately organised communications, communications by petrol and electricity and machinery which go to every corner of the earth. And in every corner of the earth today, we can see them corrupting good manners”

We read and respond too quickly nowadays, and some of us scarcely pause for thought before condemning others for disagreeing with us, refusing to listen as we’re too keen to speak. When we do so, we think the worst of others in the most uncharitable of ways, and in our arrogant impatience to correct others we mercilessly launch ourselves at what we imagine to be weeds, heedless of the wheat we damage in the process.

Is it really the mark of a scoundrel to refuse to engage with somebody? It depends. It can be, but life is short and time is precious, and sometimes time spent engaging is time wasted, when it might actually be better spent elsewhere. 

I’ve found, for instance, both from experience and observation, that arguing with you is almost invariably an utterly futile endeavour, given your propensity to read things in the most blinkered of fashions. 

I would point also to how I emailed you on June 5 and July 4, explaining and offering evidence for certain things that utterly refuted falsehoods you’d spread about the internet. Did you engage with me? Did you accept my offer of evidence? Or did you simply delete said emails, continue in your claims, and claim that you’d never been offered any right of reply to my refutations?

By your own argument, it would seem that you’re a scoundrel. I’d not say that, though. I’d be willing to allow for the possibility that you’re a busy man, who thinks there are more important things in this life than disagreeing with people on the internet.

Wow!  Bravo!!
After that you deserve a drink, oh stone and ugly one.

“When we do so, we think the worst of others in the most uncharitable of ways, and in our arrogant impatience to correct others we mercilessly launch ourselves at what we imagine to be weeds, heedless of the wheat we damage in the process.” – Thirsty Gargoyle 
An interesting comment, but not quite sure of what to make of Gargoyle’s comment, especially the ‘we’ aspect. As impatience is not a vice that he demonstrates, considering he spent over  256 hours working on 80 page ‘draft’ document mercilessly launching himself at his own imagined weeds, heedless to the wheat he damaged in the process.  
  
Perhaps St Stephen’s advice is particular poignant.  
  
“Be honourable so that you may never voluntarily bring disgrace upon anyone. Be chaste so that you may avoid all the foulness of lust like the pangs of death.” 
 
 

On occasions one may face a moral dilemma where Charity goes beyond all demands for justice.

When someone is made aware of terrible things which have happened to others or of terrible actions perpetrated by another – one can only speak out or attempt to make some form of reparation or restitution if the engagement ensures the protection of the innocent and no grave harm occurring to anyone – including even the unjust parties.

So when confronted with a situation where in order to defend oneself and vindicate one’s position it would mean compromising or jeopardising the lives, relationships and future of others?
One must remain silent.
Even if this means that so-called refutations of one’s position remain uncountered, even if it means that one’s reputation goes through the floor and one is denounced as a liar, a bully, a scoundrel and someone guilty of terrible calumnies…
God will know otherwise.

One must remain silent…in any alternate recourse the price is too high.

Now I maintain that ‘good manners’ have very little to do with being well-mannered; sincerity, authenticity and integrity can often appear heavily disguised: Evil can be the most gravely polite of phenomena: Collaboration with evil can seem to be the most sensitive, charitable and common-sense approach.

Yet sometimes ’tis the highest treason to do the right thing for the wrong reason.

Love & Truth can sometimes wear the most hideous of masks, can be found in the foullest of words, can be cloaked within actions which to the unaware outsider might seem despicable and leave them incredulous….

God will know otherwise.

I take it that the reason the CC is against rubbers is because you should not lust after a woman and use her like a rubber dolly, on the other hand I think they might be a gift from Jesus our creator because he knows how stiff necked people are,what we got today are populations starving or being put to the sword while the world looks the other way,apart from the Blessed reporters of the media who will let the world know whether it want’s to or not,People are dying for the lack of rubbers,think about that now.

*Yawn*. Did you read all of it? Obviously you have plenty of time on your hands, unlike me who is a busy mother.  Personally I don’t engage with Billy BS, especially written from a personal and emotional involved bias.Peacemaking it certainly did not do, however, malice making, lies, deception, imputing motives and calumnities were aplenty.    

Interesting that you do not post under your own name….Are you sooty or sweep?  

When you have some or any facts Niall, come back and we will chat some more.  :) 

Beautiful piece Father, I sat up yesterday
morning when I read his opening words  “I urge you above all things to maintain the Catholic and apostolic faith
with such diligence and care that you may be an example for all those placed
under you by God and that all the clergy may rightly call you a man of true
Christian profession” and how they’re still pertinent today.

This is reminds me how so much of De la Salle’s teachings are as ad rem
in the third millennium as they were in the late 1600s.

Again, it is a most beautiful piece, and most fitting for the day.  Thank you.

You seriously think this post was about good manners?

Rather than a thinly-veiled attack against online rudeness, dropping hints at the nature of such recent rudeness and its perpetrators?

Thank you for your kind comment.

I am British, but Hungary is my home. Yesterday we visited the “Holy Right” (Hand) of Saint Stephen in his basilica in Budapest. The relic had been removed from the beautiful reliquary where it is normally kept and was exposed in a small glass case on an altar. Tomorrow in Hungary (20th August) is the day on which the national patron saint’s feast is celebrated with great pomp by the church and the secular state alike.
Tried to upload some .png files but didn’t work. Try Google with “szent jobb”.