Mutatis mutandis

Unlike a lot of people I was not really shocked when I first heard that Gladstone sometimes scourged himself, especially after his late night encounters with prostitutes; nor do I take that revelation as strong evidence that those encounters involved something more physical than mere attempts to persuade the women into a better way of life. That he felt any kind of attraction or titillation, or even ‘committed adultery in his heart’ would have been reason enough for a deeply religious man of the nineteenth century to punish himself in this way; even in the middle of the twentieth century I knew an elderly priest, a man of deep compassion & goodness, who, by repute at least, indulged in regular self-flagellation.

The OED carries a quotation from 1983, from The Literary Review: It is easy to forget how common self-flagellation used to be among the devout.

That does not mean I do not feel horrified by such practice; on reflection it might be better to say I was neither startled nor surprised by the revelations about Gladstone.

I was however startled, shocked, surprised & horrified to read that, as late as 1949, in England, men as young as eighteen, recruits to the Jesuits, were expected to ‘beat ourselves with disciplines once a week’.

The OED confirms that discipline, as a noun, came to be applied to the instrument of chastisement - a whip or scourge; especially one used for religious penance.

The past, even one I was living in at the time, is truly another country.

Links
Fifty Years A Jesuit
Original Catholic Encyclopaedia

Habemus Papam

It has been officially confirmed that Cardinal Bergoglio chose to be known as Pope Francis in honour of St Francis of Assissi.

I wonder if he did not also, as the first Jesuit Pope, like the idea of carrying the same name as St Francis Xavier.

Perhaps interest in the new Pope will stimulate even more tourism to Goa.

Links
St. Francis Xavier, SJ (1506–1552)
Novena for the feast of St Francis Xavier
Feast Of St Francis Xavier
St. Francis Xavier, Patron Saint of Goa
Churches and Convents of Goa