Frederick Rolfe

“ None of these things, nor indeed aught of like kind, ought to concern Christian men and women by one jot or tittle. For such matters are of the earth, very earthy in fact, inevitably tending to dull dirtiness. ”

“ It is not essential, either to temporal politeness or to spiritual progress, that Christians should know or note the gests of mummers, buffoons, misers, innkeeprs, gladiators, snobs, bounders, the criminal classes, or the Set fatuously dubbed Smart, all self-damned. ”

“ Our approbation for that they are diligent (according to their lights) in honourable business, and do not abuse their powerful position for the sake of personal advantage, but are content to toil late and early and arduously and very nobly at paltry pittances never exceeding three thousand pounds sterling a year. ”

“ But, now, this denounced baron, presumptuous cultivator of hysteria, diabolically engages in weakening and emasculating and harassing and embarrassing and distracting and impeding the moral fibre and the intellectual operation and the physical fortitude and the psychical equipoise of individual Anglicans old and young and male and female, in Anglia and in all Anglican dominions on this orb of earth beside elsewhere. ”

“ And We have done the said maledictions cordially because Our Sacred Congregation of Timeetephimeridoon, having studied certain files of the said journal Katheemerangareion and the denunciation of the same written by Our well-beloved and trusty son Nicholas Crabbe, has reported to Us these particulars:
i. The denounced journal is on sale everywhere (continent of Europe and overseas included) for the insignficant sum of one halfpenny, whereby a very vast (indeed in pride it is alleged the largest) circulation is secured: ii. ”