I cannot leave for the weekend without telling you what a splendid and inspiring essay you have written on Honour. It is no surprise coming from your noble heart. I have always admired the work and works of Cardinal Manning. The encyclopedia says he did not know during his life that his father’s mother was a devout Catholic. I remember reading that when he (or was it Cardinal Wiseman?) returned to England after being created a cardinal his carriage was pelted with rocks. Wiseman ordained Manning to the priesthood only two months after his reception into the Church in April, 1851.
Such words of wisdom have you provided from him. “Honor never palters.”
Your essay reminds me of your most excellent talk and essay on “The Vows.”
It is no coincidence that today when our computers were down I read some things which you had sent to me sixteen years ago or less. One was Belloc’s The Missioner. So, I was delightted that you cited the best part of this work — the “stranger” who blesses himself, staying on with these Vikings for three years to instruct the worthy.
Interesting that the word “honor” has this deeper meaning in the English language, or, at least a more personal nuance. It is, says Manning, the “price [the priest or the knight] sets upon himself”, a “just consciousness of self.” True humility, knowing oneself, as one is truly to self, and most of all before God.
Nor does humility consist in “ignorance of truth.” I think of Our Lady’s Magnificat. Professing God’s regard for her humility has more to do with the virtue [truth] than her low estate. By estate I mean a modest abode, for she well knew she was of the blood royal as was Joseph. Our Lady, as I had read in a book sometime ago on the Magnificat, was praising God for the grace she had been given of interior humility, true self-knowledge.
Manning speaks of the duty and responsibility of one who has “gifts”, talents of nature, which fade away in old age. I feel this every day as things, mental and physical, get so much harder. I was happy to see the Cardinal list “habits” among the tools apropos to virtue. Virtues can only be part of our soul when they are performed and lived, within and without, habitually. Virtues, in this sense, are good habits, earned in grace, and as Manning says, they are “fittingly proportionate” to time and place and temperament. Grace builds on nature. A nobleman has different obligations, more pressing upon his freedom, than a poor man, who can be more carefree. I love that distinction.
A nobleman is more expected to “keep engagements” and that all the time. A poor man has not so many, different virtues for each station, no. A nobleman must also be on time, even early for an appointment. Brother Hugh, M.I.C.M. used to call punctuality “the courtesy of kings.” He always strove to be ten minutes early for an appointment.
All virtuous men keep their promises, that is honor, the cardinal says, and the honorable man even keeps a unwise promise. Let us not cite Herod. He kept his unwise (stupid) promise, made when drunk, only because he had given an oath before his court. He did it so not to “lose face”, as the Chinese say, with his obsequious sycophants.
A man of honor “keeps secrets” and does not open his ear to receive them unnecessarily. “Honor is wiser than the world” says Manning, and respects men of all stations especially taking care of the poor and those of low esteem. Remember St. Thomas More’s rejoinder to his Irish servant Matthew whom he had to let go with all his servants? More said to him, “I will miss you Matthew.” And Matthew tossed it off as just words with a joke. And St. Thomas just said, forcefully, and again, “I WILL MISS YOU MATTHEW”
Honor treats all man as “kings’ sons.” I am reminded of Father Feeney’s poem “On Courtesy”.
The honorable man is “impatient with equivocations, ambiguities” Is he not like Nathaniel “no guile”? “No false tone!” as Doctor Pieper would say.
Finally, when you write about what honour is and not only what it does, the cardinal is sublime, as you are too. I was so glad you ended with the cardinal virtues and wrote so well about fortitude and how all the other three cardinal virtues coincide with it and amplify it.
“It would seem, then”, Manning writes, “that honour is the perfection of the virtues of the natural order, as charity is the perfection of the virtues of the supernatural order” And so much more. I hope you send it to Tony Fraser’s family.
I have to run now. Thank you so much. Would that the cadets at West Point could savor such an essay like this. Duty, Honor, and Country. And Honor first.
