Programming note: Tomorrow, Wednesday, I'll be presenting a post-inaugural Clubland Q&A taking questions from Steyn Club members live around the planet at our regular hour: 3pm North American Eastern - that's 8pm Greenwich Mean Time/9pm Central European.
Meanwhile, welcome to Part Five of our brand new Tale for Our Time: Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson, set in the early twenty-first century as seen from 1907.
There are two ways to enjoy our Tales - either as a slug of nightly audio Ovaltine twenty minutes before you lower your lamp. Which means cliffhangers-a-go-go. Or you can save them up for a binge-listen on a long weekend car journey - in which case you're hanging on a cliff only for the few seconds it takes to click the next episode. Better a binger than a whinger, as the old Australian proverb has it.
Thank you for your many comments about what is undoubtedly one of our most prescient and ambitious audio adventures. Yesterday we were musing on Mr Benson's prediction a century ago of a total withering away of mainline Protestantism. Today the "bishop" of the entirely post-Christian Episcopal Church lectured the President of the United States as follows:
Whoever chose this 'Bishop' needs to find new employment. Despicable. https://t.co/R9OMYoWjNT
— Ann McElhinney (@annmcelhinney) January 21, 2025
Sandra, an American Steyn Clubber, writes:
On February 8, 1992, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger criticized U. S. President George H. W. Bush's recent speech calling for "a New World Order" in a speech of his own at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. In his discourse, the future Pope explained that Monsignor Benson's novel The Lord of the World described "a similar unified civilization and its power to destroy the spirit. The anti-Christ is represented as the great carrier of peace in a similar new world order."
Sandra also noted that the future Pope Benedict was not the first pontiff to be wary of globalising government - which is something worth pondering the day after America's withdrawal from the execrable World Health Organisation and the Paris climate accord. In his encyclical of 1920, Bonum sane, Pope Benedict XV wrote:
The coming of a world state is longed for, by all the worst and most distorted elements. This state, based on the principles of absolute equality of men and a community of possessions, would banish all national loyalties. In it no acknowledgement would be made of the authority of a father over his children, or of God over human society. If these ideas are put into practice, there will inevitably follow a reign of unheard-of terror.
And here we are.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Five of our adventure simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes of Lord of the World can be found here, and previous Tales for Our Time here.
If you'd like to join us in The Mark Steyn Club, we'd love to have you: please see here. And, if you've a chum who enjoys classic fiction, we've introduced a special Steyn Gift Membership: you'll find more details here.
Please join me tomorrow evening after our Q&A for Part Six of Lord of the World.