Uneasy Lies the Head

The President did not invite any Catholic clergy to pray at his inauguration.

It is his prerogative to invite whomever he chooses. Nonetheless, I can promise you this much: It would have been shorter.

Compare the customary lengthy Protestant table prayers with “Bless us, O Lord, and these they gifts…”

We Catholics are eating in a whipstitch. Meanwhile, the poor Protestants are still praying for various relatives and hungry people in Africa and Madagascar, and the food is getting cold.

If R.C. clergy were on the Capitol steps yesterday, there would not have been any lengthy speeches to God.

Anyway…

1) If you have any opinion whatsoever, please vote in the Art Lovers’ poll. Right now, the race is too close to call.

2) If you are looking for profound meditations on sovereignty, look no further than “Richard II” by William Shakespeare.

In the play, King Richard is not a good king. But he is a philosopher and a poet.

Richard is deposed by Henry Bolingbroke, who then becomes King Henry IV.

Here is King Richard’s speech when he realizes that he does not have the power to overcome Bolingbroke’s rebellion. Incredibly beautiful.

And here is the subsequent scene. Definitely worth watching all ten minutes of it…

P.S. Here is Sir John Gielgud giving the Scepter’d Isle speech to which I referred last week (Also a long scene worth watching. The speech in question comes two minutes into it.)