1. Made it through my second week of teaching. I’m still finding it extremely draining, and it’s a struggle to get the kids to start discussing stuff in most of the classes (my one 12th grade class is the best in that regard, but alas is the shortest one). But it’s something, and I’ve at least got a good week ahead of me to prepare and straighten things out.

2. Going to be getting into the American Revolution soon in both my US history and US government classes, which will mean reading a lot of nonsense and restraining myself from pointing out that it is nonsense (something I’ve never been that good at). You know, I really don’t want that to be my pet ‘issue’, but it just keeps coming up.

(I also really don’t like that my text-book for the class spends about three paragraphs on the Seven Years / French and Indian War and gives a similarly austere summary of the lead up to the Revolution).

3. Incidentally, read a little about Charles Carroll and the Carroll Clan recently. Not enough to get a grasp on what I think of them as men, but enough to get a better idea of their role in the Revolution. I find a lot of American Catholics (understandably) tend to vastly overstate the importance of Charles Carroll to the events, such as calling him a ‘Leading Patriot’, which is a massive stretch (as an illustration: on that ‘Founders Online‘ website, Phillip Schuyler has 284 documents. Charles Carroll has 17, most of which are from after everything was settled). Carroll advocated for Revolution in Maryland, then was appointed as part of the diplomatic mission to Quebec to be the token Catholic (after having made the act granting the Quebecois their religion and laws one of their chief grievances, being nakedly duplicitous in the lead up to the war, and then failing to conquer them militarily, Congress still thought they could make allies of them) along with his cousin, Fr. John Carroll in early 1776.

(side note: Fr. John – later Archbishop Carroll – got locally excommunicated by Bishop Briand, who had no faith in the Americans whatsoever and didn’t like him stirring up trouble among the clergy. The excommunication wasn’t lifted until, if I remember right, 2008. So, if Bishop Carroll comes back from the dead and wants to say Mass in Quebec, he’s all set).

Triple-C didn’t get to Philadelphia until August, and so played no role in forming the Declaration, though he did sign it when he got there.

Carroll’s main contribution to the war (and it was an important one) was financial: he was one of, if not the wealthiest man in the colonies and was a key funder of the war effort. He also was instrumental in setting up Maryland’s new government, and much to his credit voted against confiscating Loyalist property at the end of the war (he was defeated) and later served as US Senator. Meanwhile, brother Daniel served in the Constitutional Convention (one of two Catholics: the other being the similarly-wealthy Thomas Fitzsimmons of Philadelphia), which he does seem to have seriously contributed to (so, Catholics can take some credit for the Constitution, but not the Declaration. There’s a distinction to be proud of!).

(Incidentally, he was ‘Charles Carroll of Carrollton’ because his still-living father was ‘Charles Carroll of Annapolis’).

4. Maryland was (as far as I know) the one colony whose legal position towards Catholics was changed by the Revolution, and funnily enough it was in large part because the Carrolls were too rich to be rejected. And I don’t actually mean that as a sneer; making yourself indispensable is a perfectly legitimate, indeed praiseworthy method of opposing oppression. The Catholic peers of Ireland had a similar idea when they offered to raise troops for King George (alas, that offer got shot down, though at least the Irish Volunteers of New York were able to serve with distinction…and to hold one of the first St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in the city). I actually think modern Catholics might take a leaf out of the Carroll book in those terms: not in the ‘committing treason’ sense, but in the sense of seeking to make ourselves indispensable. I sometimes think we today set our sights too low, and that perhaps if we made more of an effort to seize material success while maintaining strict observance of the faith, that could be a powerful engine for evangelization. Though I may just be building castles in the clouds.

5. Switching gears, here’s a cool clip from the Polish film The Deluge (1974), about the mid-17th-century war that saw Poland-Lithuania fighting off Russia, Sweden, the Ottoman Empire, and Germany over the course of some twenty years. It’s possibly the best movie sword-fight I’ve seen:

6. Note the difference in sword play: the one guy is precise and focused, the other is more bombastic and broad. I also like how the latter guy’s expression changes, from cocky at the start of the duel to a dawning realization that he’s completely outmatched.

This is an excellent scene to study if you want to write a sword-fight (and I appreciate that it’s mostly done in extended takes; no rapid-fire, three-a-second cuts here: the actors obviously know what they’re doing. It’s a little exaggerated, but not much).

7. Note also the knightly honor being shown, where the one duelist first binds his men by oath under the Holy Cross to honor the terms of the duel, letting the one duellist pick up his fallen sword, and then the mercy shown in the end. It’s both merciful and elegant and incredibly masculine: you hold up your sword and swear by Almighty God. Can you even imagine someone doing something like that in modern day?

Something lost, but which we ought to remember.