Christians have sometimes based a belief in our Lady's Assumption upon her perpetual virginity; or her freedom from actual sin; or her freedom from original sin; or the inseparable physical bond between her and the Son who shared her flesh and blood, her DNA; or the unbreakable bond of love that must exist between Mother and Son. All this I agree with. But as I observed yesterday, the reason most consonant with the liturgical traditions of East and West is that she was assumed so that she could be our Intercessor. Sometimes it is considered that the concept of our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces is somehow "extreme" and is a horribly divisive extravagance that any sensible ecumenist (oxymoron?) dreads being defined ex cathedra by some maximalising pope. I disagree. I will make the point by giving a translation of a Secret which was often used in many parts of Europe during this season - including England.
O Lord, may the prayer of the Mother of God commend our offerings before thy merciful kindness; for thou didst translate her from this present Age for this purpose, that (idcirco ... ut) she might confidently (fiducialiter) intercede before thee for our sins.
A considerable Russian theologian, Vladimir Lossky, explained that "freed from the limitations of time, Mary can be the cause of that which is before her; can preside over that which comes after her. She obtains eternal benefits. It is through her that men and angels receive grace. No gift is received in the Church without the assistance of the Mother of God, who is herself the first-fruits of the glorified Church. Thus, having attained to the limits of becoming, she necessarily watches over the destinies of the Church and of the universe".
Our Lady was assumed that she might be the treasury of God's grace, the Mediatrix of All Graces, the mother whose hands stretch out to bestow. In Newman's majestic words, written while he was still an Anglican: There was a wonder in heaven; a throne was seen, far above all created powers, mediatorial, intercessory; a title archetypical; a crown bright as the morning star; a glory issuing from the Eternal Throne; robes as pure as the heavens; and a sceptre over all ... The vision is found in the Apocalypse, a Woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.
A well-known Roman Catholic (traditionalist) scholar once said to me that he felt Newman wrote better when he was an Anglican than when he was a Roman Catholic. This passage could stand as evidence. When Newman was beatified, the author of his Anglican writings was beatified too. Nobody is more Patrimonial than Newman.
17 August 2016
16 August 2016
Assumptive collects
Forgive, O Lord the offenses of thy servants, that we who by our own deeds are not able to be pleasing unto thee, may by the intercession of the Mother of thy Son our Lord [God] be saved.
Thus a literal translation of the collect which, until Pius XII, was said on Assumption day; after the 1950 proclamation of the dogma of our Lady's Corporal Assumtion, it was replaced by a collect more explicitly asserting the corporality of her Assumption. Incidentally, the word [God] appears in earlier texts and I think it ought to be restored because in this age of weakened faith we ought to lose no opportunity of hammering home the Godness, which is not a misprint for goodness, complete and unambiguous, of the rabbi from Nazareth. This old collect, by the way, survives as one among the options in the new rites for the Common of our Lady, and for use on Saturdays, and for August 5, now seen as the commemoration of the Ephesine definition of Theotokos.
Another reason why this collect might give pause for thought is its apparent assertion that we are 'saved' by the intercession of our Lady. A trifle (as some Anglicans might put it) 'extreme'? I do think this needs unpacking. And so I would make two points. (1) Earlier tradition asks the question "why was she assumed?", and gives an answer quite different from that offered by some modern theologians (i.e. that being immaculate she was not subject to death). She was assumed that she might intercede for us. You will find this in a sermon of the great hesychast Father S Gregory Palamas. This Eastern idea appears also in Western texts such as the Gregorian Sacramentary: "Great, O Lord, in the sight of thy loving kindness is the prayer of the Mother of God, whom thou didst translate from this present age for this reason, that (idcirco ut) she might effectually intercede for our sins before thee". "Let the help, O Lord, of the prayer of the Mother of God come to the aid of thy people; although we know that after the condition of the flesh she left this world, may we know that she prays for us before thee in heavenly glory".
And, (2), I feel we should give a broad sense to the word intercession. Yes, it means that she prays for us. But it also means that Mary came between (cessit inter) God and Man when by her fiat she gave birth to the Divine Redeemer. And, in Mary, function and ontology merge; she is eternally what she was in the mystery of the Incarnation.What she did at Nazareth and Bethlehem is what in the Father's eternal creative utterance she is. And so these two senses of 'intercession' are really one.
That is, surely, the root of the dogma of our Lady as Mediatrix of All Graces.
Thus a literal translation of the collect which, until Pius XII, was said on Assumption day; after the 1950 proclamation of the dogma of our Lady's Corporal Assumtion, it was replaced by a collect more explicitly asserting the corporality of her Assumption. Incidentally, the word [God] appears in earlier texts and I think it ought to be restored because in this age of weakened faith we ought to lose no opportunity of hammering home the Godness, which is not a misprint for goodness, complete and unambiguous, of the rabbi from Nazareth. This old collect, by the way, survives as one among the options in the new rites for the Common of our Lady, and for use on Saturdays, and for August 5, now seen as the commemoration of the Ephesine definition of Theotokos.
Another reason why this collect might give pause for thought is its apparent assertion that we are 'saved' by the intercession of our Lady. A trifle (as some Anglicans might put it) 'extreme'? I do think this needs unpacking. And so I would make two points. (1) Earlier tradition asks the question "why was she assumed?", and gives an answer quite different from that offered by some modern theologians (i.e. that being immaculate she was not subject to death). She was assumed that she might intercede for us. You will find this in a sermon of the great hesychast Father S Gregory Palamas. This Eastern idea appears also in Western texts such as the Gregorian Sacramentary: "Great, O Lord, in the sight of thy loving kindness is the prayer of the Mother of God, whom thou didst translate from this present age for this reason, that (idcirco ut) she might effectually intercede for our sins before thee". "Let the help, O Lord, of the prayer of the Mother of God come to the aid of thy people; although we know that after the condition of the flesh she left this world, may we know that she prays for us before thee in heavenly glory".
And, (2), I feel we should give a broad sense to the word intercession. Yes, it means that she prays for us. But it also means that Mary came between (cessit inter) God and Man when by her fiat she gave birth to the Divine Redeemer. And, in Mary, function and ontology merge; she is eternally what she was in the mystery of the Incarnation.What she did at Nazareth and Bethlehem is what in the Father's eternal creative utterance she is. And so these two senses of 'intercession' are really one.
That is, surely, the root of the dogma of our Lady as Mediatrix of All Graces.
15 August 2016
Pius XII and the Assumption.
The simplistic notion that the Definition of 1950 regarding the Assumption of our Lady somehow constituted the 'imposition' of a 'new' dogma is quite the opposite of the truth. Put crudely, rather than being Doctrinal Augmentationism, that Definition constituted Doctrinal Reductionism.
The first millennium texts common to Rome and Canterbury expressed a belief common also to the East: that Mary 'underwent temporal death'; that nevertheless she 'could not be held down by the bonds of death' and that the precise reason why God 'translated her from this age' was that 'she might faithfully intercede for our sins'. This is the Ancient Common Tradition of East and West. It is, in fact, expressed clearly in much of the liturgical and patristic evidence which Pius XII cited as evidence for the dogma in Munificentissimus Deus; one suspects that this is because the Pope would have been much shorter of evidence if he had omitted this material. But it is left out of the definition. Which means that it has de facto disappeared from the consciousness of Latin Christendom.
And in the subsequent liturgical changes, our Lady's death and resurrection were censored out of the Divine Office. Yet the old beliefs were good enough for the pages of the Altar Missal of the Anglo-Saxon Archbishops of Canterbury (the 'Leofric Missal'), the faith of S Odo, S Dunstan, S Aelfheah, S Aethelnoth, S Eadsige and very probably of so many other archbishops of Canterbury stretching beyond Plegmund to S Augustine. They were good enough for the Breviary lections during the Octave. Blessed John Henry Newman's justly celebrated sermon on the Assumption makes the same point. She died and was resurrected. Authoritative, surely?
Yet this is not what Pius XII defined. His 1950 definition, as the ARCIC document on Mary accurately reminds us, does not 'use about her the language of death and resurrection, but celebrates the action of God in her.' [A very strange 'but'!] In other words, Pius XII took a machete and slashed ruthlessly at the Common Ancient Tradition about our Lady's end, not simply by ignoring the apocryphal stories about how the Apostles gathered and what they found in the tomb and how S Thomas arrived late and all the rest of it; but also by pruning away even the bare structural bones of what Christians Eastern and Western had harmoniously thought they knew: that she died and was resurrected.
The 1950 decree was not the imposition of some new dogma but the elimination of 99% of what the Common Ancient Tradition had for centuries comfortably shared. Those whose instinctive disposition is to avoid speculation about our Lady's End ought to applaud Pius XII and the radical austerity, the innovative agnosticism, of his definition. He went almost all the way to meet them.
The first millennium texts common to Rome and Canterbury expressed a belief common also to the East: that Mary 'underwent temporal death'; that nevertheless she 'could not be held down by the bonds of death' and that the precise reason why God 'translated her from this age' was that 'she might faithfully intercede for our sins'. This is the Ancient Common Tradition of East and West. It is, in fact, expressed clearly in much of the liturgical and patristic evidence which Pius XII cited as evidence for the dogma in Munificentissimus Deus; one suspects that this is because the Pope would have been much shorter of evidence if he had omitted this material. But it is left out of the definition. Which means that it has de facto disappeared from the consciousness of Latin Christendom.
And in the subsequent liturgical changes, our Lady's death and resurrection were censored out of the Divine Office. Yet the old beliefs were good enough for the pages of the Altar Missal of the Anglo-Saxon Archbishops of Canterbury (the 'Leofric Missal'), the faith of S Odo, S Dunstan, S Aelfheah, S Aethelnoth, S Eadsige and very probably of so many other archbishops of Canterbury stretching beyond Plegmund to S Augustine. They were good enough for the Breviary lections during the Octave. Blessed John Henry Newman's justly celebrated sermon on the Assumption makes the same point. She died and was resurrected. Authoritative, surely?
Yet this is not what Pius XII defined. His 1950 definition, as the ARCIC document on Mary accurately reminds us, does not 'use about her the language of death and resurrection, but celebrates the action of God in her.' [A very strange 'but'!] In other words, Pius XII took a machete and slashed ruthlessly at the Common Ancient Tradition about our Lady's end, not simply by ignoring the apocryphal stories about how the Apostles gathered and what they found in the tomb and how S Thomas arrived late and all the rest of it; but also by pruning away even the bare structural bones of what Christians Eastern and Western had harmoniously thought they knew: that she died and was resurrected.
The 1950 decree was not the imposition of some new dogma but the elimination of 99% of what the Common Ancient Tradition had for centuries comfortably shared. Those whose instinctive disposition is to avoid speculation about our Lady's End ought to applaud Pius XII and the radical austerity, the innovative agnosticism, of his definition. He went almost all the way to meet them.
14 August 2016
Evening Prayer today
August 14 is a day to say Vespers from any form of the Roman Rite which precedes the post-Conciliar 'reforms'. So as to have the magical experience of actually beginning the Office with that great shout of triumph and joy suddenly going forth: Assumpta est Maria in caelum gaudent Angeli laudantes benedicunt Dominum. Imagine the day of Mary's Transitus and that cry re-echoing ever outwards among the innumerable circles of the oyeresu to the uttermost extremes of the Universe! Compare that with the pedantic Marian minimalism of the Liturgy of the Hours. You can just imagine those grim committee-men sitting round their table ... "We really had better begin the Assumption by setting it in the theological context of the Ascension of Christ". I gather, incidentally, that the Antiphonale offers as the first antiphon at first Vespers Quae est ista, which at least shows a decent liturgical sense still surviving somewhere!
Even the Pius XII forms still have Ave Maris Stella at II Vespers, despite Fr Genovesi's dominance of the rest of the Hymnody. In Pius XII's time they at least kept Ave Maris Stella for II Vespers on most Marian Festivals. The 'reformers' knew better and they knew wrong.
The real loss in 1951 was of the Collect for the Assmption. We beseech thee O Lord forgive the offences of thy servants: that we who are not able to please thee by our own deserts; may by the intercession of the Mother of thy Son our Lord be saved. (Happily, it survives as an optional collect for our Lady in the Liturgia Horarum.) It was replaced by a modern composition which I must confess to finding inferior to the older one. The older collect emphasises the ancient conviction of East and West that the purpose of the Assumption is that our Lady might intercede for us; it reminds us that only through the Mediatrix of All Graces, reigning body and soul in heavenly glory, can we attain Salvation; it always reminds me of the homilies of the Greek Fathers, culminating in S Gregory Palamas, about the Mediation of our Lady. And of the plea one hears in the Byzantine Rite Most Holy Mother of God, save us.
Indeed ... soson hemas ...
Even the Pius XII forms still have Ave Maris Stella at II Vespers, despite Fr Genovesi's dominance of the rest of the Hymnody. In Pius XII's time they at least kept Ave Maris Stella for II Vespers on most Marian Festivals. The 'reformers' knew better and they knew wrong.
The real loss in 1951 was of the Collect for the Assmption. We beseech thee O Lord forgive the offences of thy servants: that we who are not able to please thee by our own deserts; may by the intercession of the Mother of thy Son our Lord be saved. (Happily, it survives as an optional collect for our Lady in the Liturgia Horarum.) It was replaced by a modern composition which I must confess to finding inferior to the older one. The older collect emphasises the ancient conviction of East and West that the purpose of the Assumption is that our Lady might intercede for us; it reminds us that only through the Mediatrix of All Graces, reigning body and soul in heavenly glory, can we attain Salvation; it always reminds me of the homilies of the Greek Fathers, culminating in S Gregory Palamas, about the Mediation of our Lady. And of the plea one hears in the Byzantine Rite Most Holy Mother of God, save us.
Indeed ... soson hemas ...
13 August 2016
Meet on Monday??
Deo volente, I shall be celebrating a High Mass of the Assumption on Monday at 7.00 p.m., in the Central Ordinariate Church of the Assumption and S Gregory, Warwick Street in London. The Mass will be in the Latin Tridentine Rite; it would be jolly to meet any reader who happens to be in London on Monday for the Assumption (in England, the actual Obligation is transferred this year to Sunday August 14).
Since it will be the Solemnity of the Titular of a Parish Church, our Blessed Lady Assumed into Heaven, you could also kill two birds with one stone by collecting the available Plenary Indulgence suetis condicionibus!!
Many will know that this historic church was once the Bavarian Embassy Chapel, and has therefore hosted down the years many celebrations related to our de jure Royal House. It had the great distinction of being sacked during the Gordon Riots.
If the Sanctuary looks a bit familiar, that is because the architect of Westminster Cathedral, J F Bentley (1839-1902), rebuilt that end in what looks like a trial run for the Cathedral. If you like that sort of thing, you may very well like it. The rest of the church (as well as its unassuming frontage to the road) looks, with its galleries, reassuringly like a Methodist Chapel.
However, what I particularly enjoy is a relief of our Lady's Assumption, which is a relic of the Georgian or Regency fittings before Bentley started striking blows for Revived Byzantine. This relief was originally over the High Altar but now lives over the door to the left of the Altar, which leads to the sacristies. It is pure nineteenth century neo-Classicism, carved by John Edward Carew (1785-1868). Yes ... I know you've heard of Flaxman and Chantrey and Westmacott, but ... Carew ... ?
However, if you've been to the majestic stately home at Petworth, in Sussex, you will certainly have met Carew there. He was an extremely talented but irascible Irishman whom the third Earl of Egremont (1751-1837) employed from 1822. There, just North of the South Downs, Belloc's beloved Eternal Hills, you will find naked nymphs, as smooth and icy as anything by Canova or Thorvaldsen, with Regency ringlets and names like Arethusa or Hebe; as well as Vulcan and Venus and Cupid; Prometheus and Pandora; Adonis and his boar ...
I don't know whether Carew did many other Catholic ecclesiastical commissions, or how he came by the Warwick Street job. But I think it's worth making the effort to come and look at it.
And, of course, on Sundays you could combine a visit with an experience of the splendid Ordinariate Rite.
Since it will be the Solemnity of the Titular of a Parish Church, our Blessed Lady Assumed into Heaven, you could also kill two birds with one stone by collecting the available Plenary Indulgence suetis condicionibus!!
Many will know that this historic church was once the Bavarian Embassy Chapel, and has therefore hosted down the years many celebrations related to our de jure Royal House. It had the great distinction of being sacked during the Gordon Riots.
If the Sanctuary looks a bit familiar, that is because the architect of Westminster Cathedral, J F Bentley (1839-1902), rebuilt that end in what looks like a trial run for the Cathedral. If you like that sort of thing, you may very well like it. The rest of the church (as well as its unassuming frontage to the road) looks, with its galleries, reassuringly like a Methodist Chapel.
However, what I particularly enjoy is a relief of our Lady's Assumption, which is a relic of the Georgian or Regency fittings before Bentley started striking blows for Revived Byzantine. This relief was originally over the High Altar but now lives over the door to the left of the Altar, which leads to the sacristies. It is pure nineteenth century neo-Classicism, carved by John Edward Carew (1785-1868). Yes ... I know you've heard of Flaxman and Chantrey and Westmacott, but ... Carew ... ?
However, if you've been to the majestic stately home at Petworth, in Sussex, you will certainly have met Carew there. He was an extremely talented but irascible Irishman whom the third Earl of Egremont (1751-1837) employed from 1822. There, just North of the South Downs, Belloc's beloved Eternal Hills, you will find naked nymphs, as smooth and icy as anything by Canova or Thorvaldsen, with Regency ringlets and names like Arethusa or Hebe; as well as Vulcan and Venus and Cupid; Prometheus and Pandora; Adonis and his boar ...
I don't know whether Carew did many other Catholic ecclesiastical commissions, or how he came by the Warwick Street job. But I think it's worth making the effort to come and look at it.
And, of course, on Sundays you could combine a visit with an experience of the splendid Ordinariate Rite.
12 August 2016
Assumptive discontinuities
We are all a little more aware nowadays of the need for liturgical change to to be gradual and, as Vatican II put it, 'organic'. As we approach the majestic climax of High Summer (apologies to Oz), the celebration of the glorious Eschaton of the Theotokos, I do just occasionally have an uneasy moment wondering how the principle of organic change applies to August 15 (similarly, December 8). A dogmatic proclamation led to the complete rewriting of liturgical texts. A new collect gave voice to the new doctrinal precision, and new hymns enhanced the whooppee, triumphalist, quality of the day. It could be argued that they reduced the Roman 'sobriety' of the liturgy as Edmund Bishop so memorably described it. I particularly have in mind the hymns which Fr Genovesi composed in the Sapphic metre for Assumption day. The post-conciliar revisers, indeed, decided to reduce these to only one and to introduce two hymns by S Peter Damian. (In doing so, incidentally, they ejected Ave Maris Stella, which even under Pius XII had survived as the II Vespers hymn. And they followed Pius XII in eliminating the more ancient perception of the Assumption: the idea that Mary was Assumed so that she could become Mediatrix of all Graces.)
Frankly, I am in two minds about what to make of this incessant juggling with what is traditum. I do ... a shamefaced confession now ... rather like the Pius XII office. It has a lovely gung-ho cheerfulness about it, redolent of the Marian confidence of that Pontificate. We can do with more of that confident spirit nowadays. (Particularly as we prepare to celebrate, next year, the centenary of the Fatima Apparitions. Her Immaculate Heart will prevail!)
But should I like it?
Frankly, I am in two minds about what to make of this incessant juggling with what is traditum. I do ... a shamefaced confession now ... rather like the Pius XII office. It has a lovely gung-ho cheerfulness about it, redolent of the Marian confidence of that Pontificate. We can do with more of that confident spirit nowadays. (Particularly as we prepare to celebrate, next year, the centenary of the Fatima Apparitions. Her Immaculate Heart will prevail!)
But should I like it?
11 August 2016
Nostra aetate; its authority; Judaism; good news
In December 2015, the Vatican's Commission for Religious Relations with Jews released a document The Gifts and Calling of God are Irrevocable (which described itself as "not a Magisterial document or doctrinal teaching"). It combines some sadly unbiblical and unpatristic sillinesses of its own with an honest and accurate account of the actual contents of Nostra aetate:
"The Conciliar text is not infrequently over-interpreted, and things read into it which it does not in fact contain. An important example of over-interpretation would be the following: that the covenant which God made with his people Israel perdures and is never invalidated. Although this statement is true, it cannot be explicitly read into Nostra aetate".
The objectionable and absurd clause "Although this statement is true", when you think about it, makes the frank admission which follows it all the more significant. This Commision thus concedes, against its own (mistaken) opinion, the mendacious character of many claims often made about the contents of the Conciliar document. One thinks not least about the implied 'over-interpretation' of Nostra aetate by the CBCEW in its thoroughly disgraceful attack last year upon Pope Benedict's Prayer for the Jews (and, by implication, upon the entire trajectory of the last pontificate, and upon that splendid, incomparable, confessor pontiff himself, kindly Father of the Ordinariates ... eis polla ete Despota).
But now Archbishop Pozzo, an official within the CDF, is reported to have made an even more interesting statement about Nostra aetate.
"The Secretary for the Unity of Christians said on 18 November 1964 in the Council Hall about Nostra aetate 'As to the character of the declaration, the Secretariate does not want to write a dogmatic declaration on non-Christian religions, but, rather, practical and pastoral norms'. Nostra aetate does not have any dogmatic authority and thus one cannot demand from anyone to recognise this declaration as dogmatic. This declaration can only be understood in the light of tradition and of the continuous Magisterium. For example, there exists today, unfortunately, the view - contrary to the Catholic Faith - that there is a salvific path independent of Christ and His Church. That [he apparently means "The unfortunate existence today of such an unCatholic view"] has also been officially confirmed last of all by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith itself in its declaration Dominus Iesus. Therefore any interpretation of Nostra aetate which goes into this direction is fully unfounded and has to be rejected".
Things get better and better! Why do some people just continuously panic during this (admittedly occasionally weird) pontificate? Why do we hear so little about the good news?
"The Conciliar text is not infrequently over-interpreted, and things read into it which it does not in fact contain. An important example of over-interpretation would be the following: that the covenant which God made with his people Israel perdures and is never invalidated. Although this statement is true, it cannot be explicitly read into Nostra aetate".
The objectionable and absurd clause "Although this statement is true", when you think about it, makes the frank admission which follows it all the more significant. This Commision thus concedes, against its own (mistaken) opinion, the mendacious character of many claims often made about the contents of the Conciliar document. One thinks not least about the implied 'over-interpretation' of Nostra aetate by the CBCEW in its thoroughly disgraceful attack last year upon Pope Benedict's Prayer for the Jews (and, by implication, upon the entire trajectory of the last pontificate, and upon that splendid, incomparable, confessor pontiff himself, kindly Father of the Ordinariates ... eis polla ete Despota).
But now Archbishop Pozzo, an official within the CDF, is reported to have made an even more interesting statement about Nostra aetate.
"The Secretary for the Unity of Christians said on 18 November 1964 in the Council Hall about Nostra aetate 'As to the character of the declaration, the Secretariate does not want to write a dogmatic declaration on non-Christian religions, but, rather, practical and pastoral norms'. Nostra aetate does not have any dogmatic authority and thus one cannot demand from anyone to recognise this declaration as dogmatic. This declaration can only be understood in the light of tradition and of the continuous Magisterium. For example, there exists today, unfortunately, the view - contrary to the Catholic Faith - that there is a salvific path independent of Christ and His Church. That [he apparently means "The unfortunate existence today of such an unCatholic view"] has also been officially confirmed last of all by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith itself in its declaration Dominus Iesus. Therefore any interpretation of Nostra aetate which goes into this direction is fully unfounded and has to be rejected".
Things get better and better! Why do some people just continuously panic during this (admittedly occasionally weird) pontificate? Why do we hear so little about the good news?
10 August 2016
PARRHESIA
More idleness! Here is another old post, which has already appeared more than once! But I think it is more relevant than ever!! I have added one or two phrases. The earlier dates could be reconstructed from the thread.
PARRHESIA is a Greek noun used with great frequency by our Holy Father Pope Francis; it means speaking openly, boldly, fearlessly, standing like a free man rather than cowering like a slave, epecially in contexts where it might be apprehended that some powerful person could turn beastily nasty. A good, authoritative, example of its use, and a (fairly) authoritative gloss about its meaning, were provided when the Holy Father in 2014 told the Synod Fathers to speak with parrhesia, and his close friend "Archbishop" Fernandez [somebody should write a Gilbert-and-Sullivan chorus about this individual] was overheard interpreting this for the edification of common ordinary not-in-the-know not-one-of-us bishops as meaning "Mueller [Cardinal Prefect of the CDF] won't come after us". Assuming that this concept is meant to apply symmetrically, clearly Fernandez also meant that he, Fernandez, and his chum Bergoglio, wouldn't "come after" anybody, either. Good News for both Bishops and Bloggers worldwide.
The term is quite common in the New Testament: S Mark 8:32; S John 7:4,13,26; 10:24; 11:14,54; 16:25,29; 18:20; Acts 2:29; 4:13,29,31; 28:31; etc. etc.. For the verb parrhesiazomai, mainly in Acts, see 9:27,28; 13:46; 14:3; 18:26; 19:8; 26:26 ...
[Anybody got a Concordance for the Septuagint? The Vulgate rendering is often palam ... loqui. For a link to a good (Oz) talk about Parrhesia in the Classical period of Attic Greek, see a comment of my own on the old thread infra.]
[In Italian and Spanish, it is written without the h, and, sadly, the rather limited chappies who do the English versions of Vatican statements sometimes don't realise that the English, transliterated of course directly from the Greek, is parrhesia. Don't let them confuse or worry you. Not now, not ever.]
PARRHESIA is a Greek noun used with great frequency by our Holy Father Pope Francis; it means speaking openly, boldly, fearlessly, standing like a free man rather than cowering like a slave, epecially in contexts where it might be apprehended that some powerful person could turn beastily nasty. A good, authoritative, example of its use, and a (fairly) authoritative gloss about its meaning, were provided when the Holy Father in 2014 told the Synod Fathers to speak with parrhesia, and his close friend "Archbishop" Fernandez [somebody should write a Gilbert-and-Sullivan chorus about this individual] was overheard interpreting this for the edification of common ordinary not-in-the-know not-one-of-us bishops as meaning "Mueller [Cardinal Prefect of the CDF] won't come after us". Assuming that this concept is meant to apply symmetrically, clearly Fernandez also meant that he, Fernandez, and his chum Bergoglio, wouldn't "come after" anybody, either. Good News for both Bishops and Bloggers worldwide.
The term is quite common in the New Testament: S Mark 8:32; S John 7:4,13,26; 10:24; 11:14,54; 16:25,29; 18:20; Acts 2:29; 4:13,29,31; 28:31; etc. etc.. For the verb parrhesiazomai, mainly in Acts, see 9:27,28; 13:46; 14:3; 18:26; 19:8; 26:26 ...
[Anybody got a Concordance for the Septuagint? The Vulgate rendering is often palam ... loqui. For a link to a good (Oz) talk about Parrhesia in the Classical period of Attic Greek, see a comment of my own on the old thread infra.]
[In Italian and Spanish, it is written without the h, and, sadly, the rather limited chappies who do the English versions of Vatican statements sometimes don't realise that the English, transliterated of course directly from the Greek, is parrhesia. Don't let them confuse or worry you. Not now, not ever.]
9 August 2016
rhododaktylos kai bathykolpos?
On June 7, a new artistic exhibit was unveiled ... if that is the right word ... in Westminster Hall, the only truly pre-Victorian portion of the ancient Palace of Westminster. It was a new window, designed to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the movement for Women's Suffrage. (Notice the plural here: "Woman's Suffrage" would of course have to refer to the Intercession of our blessed Lady, Omnipotentia supplex and Mediatrix of all Graces.)
The title of this highly meaningful window is "New Dawn". I expect you can find it on the Internet, if you're interested in either Art or Women or Suffrage or any combination of these three. If in none of them, give it a miss.
A woman for whose judgement I have considerable respect took one look at the image on the television screen and instantly commented that it "looked like a window full of nipples".
Immediately, that jolly Callimachean witticism in Catullus LXIV came to my mind, 'nutricum tenus'.
Beyond that, I couldn't possibly comment.
Or, for the Hyperpapalists Ultrabergoglians and rabid Pintoists among you, "Who am I to judge?"
The title of this highly meaningful window is "New Dawn". I expect you can find it on the Internet, if you're interested in either Art or Women or Suffrage or any combination of these three. If in none of them, give it a miss.
A woman for whose judgement I have considerable respect took one look at the image on the television screen and instantly commented that it "looked like a window full of nipples".
Immediately, that jolly Callimachean witticism in Catullus LXIV came to my mind, 'nutricum tenus'.
Beyond that, I couldn't possibly comment.
Or, for the Hyperpapalists Ultrabergoglians and rabid Pintoists among you, "Who am I to judge?"
8 August 2016
Reunifying the Calendar
When should the Cure of Ars be celebrated?
Many traditionalists are uneasy about any rapprochement between the EF and the OF. Their suspicions are understandable. There has been a surfeit of ill-advised tinkering. People feel wounded. But a semi-unified Calendar would be of inestimable benefit from the point of view of the celebration of Patronal Festivals and Name Days et cetera. I say semi-unified, because there are some things, such as Christ the King, where the teaching given in the EF is so different from that in the OF that the distinction should be maintained. Vivat Christus Rex. And no sane person wishes to give up Stir Up Sunday!
But why should traditionalists be at all prepared to give up the immemorially ancient days on which saints are celebrated? To the barricades! Marchons!! But ... calm down, dear.The point here is that some of the dates in the 1962 Calendar are not ancient at all; they are extremely recent; they date from the late 1950s and early 1960s. Can it really be set in stone by 'Tradition' that a Saint must be observed on a particular day because it says so in 1962, when both 1950 and 1970 might agree in having him/her on the same day as each other, a day which differs from the 1962 date? And, if we love reading Quo primum and feel uneasy about any changes to what S Pius V put in place 'for ever', how can we possibly, logically, have rooted objections to going back to a date which the Missal of S Pius V prescribes?
Many of us use the St Lawrence Press Ordo [giving things as they were at the start of the pontificate of Pius XII], at least to the extent of keeping an eye on the rather more ancient dispositions which held sway before the start of the Bugnini era. This is an important thing to do if one is interested in the present state of the Roman Rite and how we have got to where we are. Get one, if you haven't already done so!
Causes of instability have in the past included: a fashion for moving feasts off Vigils and Octave days, so that they are not cluttered; a silly OF fetich for never observing two saints on the same day by means of the ancient system known as 'commemoration'; and a (laudable) bias for observing a Saint on his/her natale, 'heavenly birthday' (i.e. anniversary of earthly death).
Anybody who wants to do their own research on this could, for starters, have a look at the travels of S Hilary and S Irenaeus.
But back to the Cure of Ars. He first entered the Calendar on August 9. But early in the Bugnini era, he was shifted back to August 8 so that he would not be in collision with the Vigil of S Laurence. Then the OF Calendar put him back to his natale, August 4. But there he would have been in conflict with S Dominic. So S Dominic was shifted to his natale on August 6 ... er ... oops ... no he wasn't, because that would have left him arguing things out with the Transfiguration. So S Dominic went to the day after August 6, where he lived happily for ever after. Except that he didn't, because after a year or two, August 7 itself came under pressure. You see, S Xystus (the Pope whom S Laurence served and who was martyred a few days before him) needed a home which would not leave him hanging around on Transfiguration day ... and there was also the question of S Cajetan ... so S Xystus was budged forward to August 7, meaning that S Dominic went on his travels yet again, to August 8.
In my view, this sort of thing, with Saints endlessly peripatetic, is plain wrong.
A modest reconsideration of the Calendar, in my view, should be undertaken. One of its principles should be that where (1) S Pius V, (2) 1950 (pre-Bugnini), and (3) 1969 (Novus Ordo), or two of these three, are in agreement against 1962, this concord should stand. There's nothing magical about the books of 1962, which, in the view of many of us, have serious flaws.
Another consideration might be that, other things being equal, a date which also had the support of a Byzantine date would be preferred.
The revision should not be rigid. There might remain many days when OF and EF were out of sync.. But it would be better than the present situation where both OF and EF are in a mess.
I sha'n't enable comments which give me the impression of blustering without the author actually having read what I have written.
Many traditionalists are uneasy about any rapprochement between the EF and the OF. Their suspicions are understandable. There has been a surfeit of ill-advised tinkering. People feel wounded. But a semi-unified Calendar would be of inestimable benefit from the point of view of the celebration of Patronal Festivals and Name Days et cetera. I say semi-unified, because there are some things, such as Christ the King, where the teaching given in the EF is so different from that in the OF that the distinction should be maintained. Vivat Christus Rex. And no sane person wishes to give up Stir Up Sunday!
But why should traditionalists be at all prepared to give up the immemorially ancient days on which saints are celebrated? To the barricades! Marchons!! But ... calm down, dear.The point here is that some of the dates in the 1962 Calendar are not ancient at all; they are extremely recent; they date from the late 1950s and early 1960s. Can it really be set in stone by 'Tradition' that a Saint must be observed on a particular day because it says so in 1962, when both 1950 and 1970 might agree in having him/her on the same day as each other, a day which differs from the 1962 date? And, if we love reading Quo primum and feel uneasy about any changes to what S Pius V put in place 'for ever', how can we possibly, logically, have rooted objections to going back to a date which the Missal of S Pius V prescribes?
Many of us use the St Lawrence Press Ordo [giving things as they were at the start of the pontificate of Pius XII], at least to the extent of keeping an eye on the rather more ancient dispositions which held sway before the start of the Bugnini era. This is an important thing to do if one is interested in the present state of the Roman Rite and how we have got to where we are. Get one, if you haven't already done so!
Causes of instability have in the past included: a fashion for moving feasts off Vigils and Octave days, so that they are not cluttered; a silly OF fetich for never observing two saints on the same day by means of the ancient system known as 'commemoration'; and a (laudable) bias for observing a Saint on his/her natale, 'heavenly birthday' (i.e. anniversary of earthly death).
Anybody who wants to do their own research on this could, for starters, have a look at the travels of S Hilary and S Irenaeus.
But back to the Cure of Ars. He first entered the Calendar on August 9. But early in the Bugnini era, he was shifted back to August 8 so that he would not be in collision with the Vigil of S Laurence. Then the OF Calendar put him back to his natale, August 4. But there he would have been in conflict with S Dominic. So S Dominic was shifted to his natale on August 6 ... er ... oops ... no he wasn't, because that would have left him arguing things out with the Transfiguration. So S Dominic went to the day after August 6, where he lived happily for ever after. Except that he didn't, because after a year or two, August 7 itself came under pressure. You see, S Xystus (the Pope whom S Laurence served and who was martyred a few days before him) needed a home which would not leave him hanging around on Transfiguration day ... and there was also the question of S Cajetan ... so S Xystus was budged forward to August 7, meaning that S Dominic went on his travels yet again, to August 8.
In my view, this sort of thing, with Saints endlessly peripatetic, is plain wrong.
A modest reconsideration of the Calendar, in my view, should be undertaken. One of its principles should be that where (1) S Pius V, (2) 1950 (pre-Bugnini), and (3) 1969 (Novus Ordo), or two of these three, are in agreement against 1962, this concord should stand. There's nothing magical about the books of 1962, which, in the view of many of us, have serious flaws.
Another consideration might be that, other things being equal, a date which also had the support of a Byzantine date would be preferred.
The revision should not be rigid. There might remain many days when OF and EF were out of sync.. But it would be better than the present situation where both OF and EF are in a mess.
I sha'n't enable comments which give me the impression of blustering without the author actually having read what I have written.
7 August 2016
Ad Orientam
Some time ago, Fr Zed published a letter by some unfriendly American bishop doing a bully-boy job on his unfortunate clergy in the hope of making them afraid to celebrate versus Orientam (sic).
When I am made head of the Apostolic Penitentiary (I await the letter daily) my first official action will be to make a new addition to the list of Corporal Acts of Mercy: videlicet
Giving a copy of Kennedy's Latin Primer to an unlatinate Latin Rite bishop.
I will attach to this a Plenary Indulgence suetis condicionibus.
So you want to know my second action? I thought you would ... A Plenary Indulgence cuilibet sacerdoti Ritus Romani qui sacrosanctum Missae sacrificium obtulerit versus Orientem vel ad apsidem, dummodo Ordinarius loci id fieri vetuerit vel saltem minaciter contraria suaserit.
videtis omnes non uno tantum modo pelle posse spoliari felem! ut quondam avia mea essexiensis rustica qua utebatur lingua dicere solebat; ... ... quid? ridetis? nesciebatis me virum esse essexiensem?! rem confiteor ... sed hoc prorsus nego, coniugem meam eiusdem esse comitatus. colonia claudia victricensis me genuit, sed nihil unquam mihi fuit vel est vel erit cum mulierculis illius regionis.
num in america septentrionali essexia quaedam inveniri potest? nonne vir clarissimus donaldus trump ex antiqua familia saxonum orientalium ortus habendus est?
Has anybody heard a rumour about clergy whose diocesan bishops are unsympathetic to liturgical renewal feverishly learning Latin so that they will be able to converse freely in the presence of their bishops without the pontiff understanding?
When I am made head of the Apostolic Penitentiary (I await the letter daily) my first official action will be to make a new addition to the list of Corporal Acts of Mercy: videlicet
Giving a copy of Kennedy's Latin Primer to an unlatinate Latin Rite bishop.
I will attach to this a Plenary Indulgence suetis condicionibus.
So you want to know my second action? I thought you would ... A Plenary Indulgence cuilibet sacerdoti Ritus Romani qui sacrosanctum Missae sacrificium obtulerit versus Orientem vel ad apsidem, dummodo Ordinarius loci id fieri vetuerit vel saltem minaciter contraria suaserit.
videtis omnes non uno tantum modo pelle posse spoliari felem! ut quondam avia mea essexiensis rustica qua utebatur lingua dicere solebat; ... ... quid? ridetis? nesciebatis me virum esse essexiensem?! rem confiteor ... sed hoc prorsus nego, coniugem meam eiusdem esse comitatus. colonia claudia victricensis me genuit, sed nihil unquam mihi fuit vel est vel erit cum mulierculis illius regionis.
num in america septentrionali essexia quaedam inveniri potest? nonne vir clarissimus donaldus trump ex antiqua familia saxonum orientalium ortus habendus est?
Has anybody heard a rumour about clergy whose diocesan bishops are unsympathetic to liturgical renewal feverishly learning Latin so that they will be able to converse freely in the presence of their bishops without the pontiff understanding?
6 August 2016
Memories?
Today is the Festival of the Titular of the Cathedral, Christ Church, of the Catholic Diocese of Oxford ... erected as such by Cardinal Pole by virtue of the Legatine Decree Cum supremum of December 24 1554 ... except that there isn't such a diocese ... well, I don't think there is ... wasn't it implicitly extinguished by the Restoration of the Hierarchy in 1850? ... or do those old dioceses still exist in some sort of canonical limbo presided over by Plato?
I do wonder what to make of those former dioceses and their cathedral churches; as Blessed John Henry put it, "It was sore to part with them. We clung to the vision of past greatness, and would not believe it could come to naught ..." His maturer judgement was more robust: " ... That old Church in its day became a corpse (a marvellous, an awful change!); and then it did but corrupt the air which once it refreshed, and cumber the ground which once it beautified." Could anyone but JHN have got away with calling the C of E a rotting and stinking corpse, even in those pre-ecumenical days? But he says it so beautifully.
When all is said and done, I sometimes feel that there is a shadow left in the air of Catholic England; a footprint left in the ground. I suppose the tourists won't think along those lines today, as they tramp unknowingly past the grave in Christ Church of the first and last Catholic Bishop of Oxford, Dr King. Yet, when all is said and done, it would be a comfortable sentimental acknowledgement of what once was, if in the Old Rite or the Ordinariate we kept those old Feasts of the Titulars of the pre-1559 Cathedrals as Doubles of the First Class!
I do wonder what to make of those former dioceses and their cathedral churches; as Blessed John Henry put it, "It was sore to part with them. We clung to the vision of past greatness, and would not believe it could come to naught ..." His maturer judgement was more robust: " ... That old Church in its day became a corpse (a marvellous, an awful change!); and then it did but corrupt the air which once it refreshed, and cumber the ground which once it beautified." Could anyone but JHN have got away with calling the C of E a rotting and stinking corpse, even in those pre-ecumenical days? But he says it so beautifully.
When all is said and done, I sometimes feel that there is a shadow left in the air of Catholic England; a footprint left in the ground. I suppose the tourists won't think along those lines today, as they tramp unknowingly past the grave in Christ Church of the first and last Catholic Bishop of Oxford, Dr King. Yet, when all is said and done, it would be a comfortable sentimental acknowledgement of what once was, if in the Old Rite or the Ordinariate we kept those old Feasts of the Titulars of the pre-1559 Cathedrals as Doubles of the First Class!
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