I wonder if anyone knows exactly when the Byzantine preLent season was invented? It occurs to me that, if it was in place when S Gregory was apocrisiarius in Constantinople, he could have picked up the idea for the Gesimas there. You will remember that on his return to Rome and his election as Pope, he was much criticised because he made changes in the Liturgy which the admirably conservative plebs sancta Dei of Rome deemed to be Byzantinisations. But let us look at the Propers for tomorrow, Sexagesima.
That great liturgist G G Willis (funny, isn't it, how so much of the best work on the early history of the Roman Rite was done by Anglican Catholics) pointed out that the propers for Sexagesima in the Missal of S Pius V and the Book of Common Prayer manifestly relate to S Paul; his own account of his tribulations in the Epistle being matched by the Parable of the Sower, so appropriate to the work of the Apostle to the Gentiles. (You will remember that the Pope's Mass, on these three Sundays before Lent, took place in turn at the three basilicas of Rome's great saints, Ss Lawrence, Paul, and Peter, which stand like protecting spiritual fortresses outside the City walls; and today, Sexagesima, Pope and people were at S Paul's.)
I don't like to tangle with as great a scholar as Willis; but with diffidence and respect I point out that this is not quite what the Begetter of the Gesimas, S Gregory the Great, himself actually says. Again I recommend those with access and a little Latin (Gregory's Latin is very easy) to read not only the extract which the Old Breviary gave in the third nocturn for Sexagesima, but the whole text of Homilia 15 in Evangelia (Migne, 76, columns 1131 and following). The emphasis here again is on the need for a sense of sinfulness as Christians approach the penitential season of Lent. The Holy Father picks up the Lord's explanation of the parable (the second section of the pericope, which the crass 'scholarship' of the twentieth century confidently and ludicrously assured us could not possibly be from the Lord's lips): i.e. the work of the Devil in frustrating the Gospel Word sown in our hearts, and the dangers of riches. It is this that becomes the basis of his attempt to stir up within his congregation an awareness of its sinful need to do penance.
[My incurable propensity to ramble inclines me to recommend the whole of the homily, not just the extract in the Breviary, if only for the sake of the (very 'modern') way S Gregory engages the congregation with his vivid account of the recent holy death of a devout cripple whom we all knew, who used to beg outside the Church of S Clement. Again, this is a classical, hands-on, mission sermon by a preacher who fears that his flock has lost its sense of sin. Plus ca change ...]
And, in the Divine Office, S Gregory's message is reinforced by the story of Noah. I hope you recall, from my post on Septuagesima, how S Gregory interpreted the parable of the husbandman hiring labourers for his vineyard. 'Morning' meant the period of Sacred History from Adam onwards [Septuagesima]; the 'Third Hour' was the period from Noah. So in the first nocturn of Mattins for Sexagesima Sunday we get the account of God's decision to punish human iniquity by a flood. Undoubtedly, that Flood evoked, for S Gregory's generation, vivid memories of the Great Tiber Flood of 589, followed by the epidemic which ended the life of many Romans, including Pope Pelagius II, S Gregory's own immediate predecessor.
But ... had all those who suffered in the Flood (either Noah's or Rome's) truly deserved, each individually, such punishment? I wonder if seminary courses dealing with 'Theodicy' take their starting points from Biblical and Patristic material. S Gregory, with the sort of realism from which our generation can shy away, meets head on the fact that a lot of people do their best to do good, but find themselves clobbered by tribulations. They flee earthly desires, and all they seem to get in return is worse wallops (flagella duriora). The solution is humiliter purgationis flagella tolerare: humbly to submit to the blows which cleanse us.
When did you last hear a sermon on Submission to God's Will ... whatever it be?
31 January 2016
30 January 2016
Jan: 30: Beati Caroli Regis et Martyris???
What case could one make for regarding King Charles Stuart as a Beatus? Just suppose one wanted to, and just suppose an enthusiastic advocate really tried to do his best? (If the very thought of this makes you go hot under the collar, please do not read any further.)
We must start with basics.
When was Beatification invented? In a funny sort of way, Beatification came before Canonisation. This is true philologically: any who indulge in Latin liturgy will be aware that by far the commonest word in liturgical Latin for a saint is beatus, whether in the Canon or the Collects. It is also true juridically; because the essence of Beatification is: the raising of a particular person to the Altars of a particular, local Church ... not of the Universal Church. And, except for certain 'Biblical' Saints, every 'saint' began with a local cultus. Only later did he or she, perhaps, become a popular saint throughout the whole Christian world; a process which might grow naturally out of pilgrimage or the distribution of relics. It is the notion of a Universal Saint which was secondary and which gradually developed. And the declaration that someone fell into that Universal category was a natural function of a Universal Primate. You would not expect the Bishop of Lesbos to have the right to dictate to the Bishop of Lincoln who was to be honoured on the calendar of his Church. So whenever a local Church wished to enhance supranationally the status of one of its own great sons or daughters, it obtained a Bull of Canonisation from the Holy See. The first known example seems to be from 993; and the system was in full flood a couple of centuries later when, for example, Ss Edward the Confessor, Richard, and Thomas Becket were so honoured by Roman Pontiffs. These instincts contributed to a process of Roman centralisation.
But local initiative did survive the Middle Ages. According to that great and erudite Pontiff, Benedict XIV, the last known local act of locally raising a man to the Altars of his local Church was a Beatification of Boniface of Lausanne by the Archbishop of Malines in 1603 (the privileges and prestige of the great local Western Primacies took a long time to fall into abeyance). And one of the first actions of Benedict XVI was to send beatifications back to the local Churches. The preliminary processes, of course, do continue to take place under the authority of the Vatican, but the significance of the act as inherently local has been reinstated. ('Benedict' seems a papal name linked with erudition and a broad understanding that 'Tradition' means something wider than 'What we've done for the last last ninety years'!)
And what actually happened at beatification was nothing like the razzamatazz (etymology??) of the modern event. What occurred was simply that Mass and Office were authorised for use, with a clear indication of limitations. Thus S Philip Neri was beatified in 1615 simply by the granting of permission for Mass and Office to be celebrated in the Oratorian Chiesa Nuova in Rome. Pope Paul V made it clear that the privilege exended to nowhere else at all, and reminded the Roman Oratorians to celebrate Philip in a comparatively low-key way.
Charles Stuart was executed in 1649. In 1662, in the Anglican Provinces of Canterbury and York, Mass and Office were promulgated by both Church and State, and were universally used within the jurisdiction of the King of England and Ireland. So ... ... could it be argued that a cultus of Blessed Charles Stuart King and Martyr is lawful, as being completely in accordance with precedent?
(Incidentally and in passing: nobody in England claimed any authority to insist that Charles Stuart be given a cultus in Poland, Peru, or the Peloponnese. And indeed, in the forms of service which were brought into use, Charles is not, as far as I have noticed, ever called 'Saint'; while the B-word is used quite generously. Referring to him as "St" seems therefore to me to lack justification. We can only be discussing the possibility of his equipollent Beatification.)
Of course, I know the objection which will be made: that Stuart was a schismatic or worse; that the ecclesial community in which his cultus flourished was schismatic or worse; hence it possessed no canonical authority or ecclesial authenticity; and so none of all this stuff 'counts'. Waste of my time.
Believe me, I can see the force of this.
Still ... one problem which this objection will have to counter is that beatifications and canonisations done by antipopes have sometimes 'stuck'. "Paschal III" canonised someone called Charlemagne, and his cultus has still not disappeared. And those canonised have included holy people who, in the Great Schism of the West, adhered to a prelate now regarded as an antipope. Yes; I know they wanted to adhere to the true pope ... perhaps wanted to do so quite desperately ... but, de facto, canonically, historically, they just didn't.
But the biggest problem which such potential critics will have to face is this.
FACT: Some of the Byzantine Churches ('Uniates') now in full peace and communion with the See of S Peter use Calendars containing Byzantine worthies who died while Rome and Byzantium were disunited; and, moreover, whose canonisations were enacted by "schismatic Greek Orthodox" synods. I have in mind the Melkite Patriarchate of Antioch (His Beatitude is a Successor of S Peter! Surely, the most senior prelate in the Catholic Church after the Pope?). (The same, I have been told, is true of the Ukrainian Church: accurate information?).
So: people who died in schism and who were then canonised by people in schism can have the cultus of a Saint within the Catholic Church.
To help to focus the minds of readers, I say now that I will decline to enable comments which criticise the thesis I have deployed WITHOUT taking seriously the sections above in red.
I add that I can myself think of a detail in Benedict XIV's historical exposition of Beatification which might undercut one part of this thesis; and of elements in the ecclesiology of Benedict XVI which could be used to subvert another. Readers may well be able to detect other flies in my ointment. Fair enough. I am privileged to have some extremely able and acute readers. But I am not going to give space to mere angry rants.
We must start with basics.
When was Beatification invented? In a funny sort of way, Beatification came before Canonisation. This is true philologically: any who indulge in Latin liturgy will be aware that by far the commonest word in liturgical Latin for a saint is beatus, whether in the Canon or the Collects. It is also true juridically; because the essence of Beatification is: the raising of a particular person to the Altars of a particular, local Church ... not of the Universal Church. And, except for certain 'Biblical' Saints, every 'saint' began with a local cultus. Only later did he or she, perhaps, become a popular saint throughout the whole Christian world; a process which might grow naturally out of pilgrimage or the distribution of relics. It is the notion of a Universal Saint which was secondary and which gradually developed. And the declaration that someone fell into that Universal category was a natural function of a Universal Primate. You would not expect the Bishop of Lesbos to have the right to dictate to the Bishop of Lincoln who was to be honoured on the calendar of his Church. So whenever a local Church wished to enhance supranationally the status of one of its own great sons or daughters, it obtained a Bull of Canonisation from the Holy See. The first known example seems to be from 993; and the system was in full flood a couple of centuries later when, for example, Ss Edward the Confessor, Richard, and Thomas Becket were so honoured by Roman Pontiffs. These instincts contributed to a process of Roman centralisation.
But local initiative did survive the Middle Ages. According to that great and erudite Pontiff, Benedict XIV, the last known local act of locally raising a man to the Altars of his local Church was a Beatification of Boniface of Lausanne by the Archbishop of Malines in 1603 (the privileges and prestige of the great local Western Primacies took a long time to fall into abeyance). And one of the first actions of Benedict XVI was to send beatifications back to the local Churches. The preliminary processes, of course, do continue to take place under the authority of the Vatican, but the significance of the act as inherently local has been reinstated. ('Benedict' seems a papal name linked with erudition and a broad understanding that 'Tradition' means something wider than 'What we've done for the last last ninety years'!)
And what actually happened at beatification was nothing like the razzamatazz (etymology??) of the modern event. What occurred was simply that Mass and Office were authorised for use, with a clear indication of limitations. Thus S Philip Neri was beatified in 1615 simply by the granting of permission for Mass and Office to be celebrated in the Oratorian Chiesa Nuova in Rome. Pope Paul V made it clear that the privilege exended to nowhere else at all, and reminded the Roman Oratorians to celebrate Philip in a comparatively low-key way.
Charles Stuart was executed in 1649. In 1662, in the Anglican Provinces of Canterbury and York, Mass and Office were promulgated by both Church and State, and were universally used within the jurisdiction of the King of England and Ireland. So ... ... could it be argued that a cultus of Blessed Charles Stuart King and Martyr is lawful, as being completely in accordance with precedent?
(Incidentally and in passing: nobody in England claimed any authority to insist that Charles Stuart be given a cultus in Poland, Peru, or the Peloponnese. And indeed, in the forms of service which were brought into use, Charles is not, as far as I have noticed, ever called 'Saint'; while the B-word is used quite generously. Referring to him as "St" seems therefore to me to lack justification. We can only be discussing the possibility of his equipollent Beatification.)
Of course, I know the objection which will be made: that Stuart was a schismatic or worse; that the ecclesial community in which his cultus flourished was schismatic or worse; hence it possessed no canonical authority or ecclesial authenticity; and so none of all this stuff 'counts'. Waste of my time.
Believe me, I can see the force of this.
Still ... one problem which this objection will have to counter is that beatifications and canonisations done by antipopes have sometimes 'stuck'. "Paschal III" canonised someone called Charlemagne, and his cultus has still not disappeared. And those canonised have included holy people who, in the Great Schism of the West, adhered to a prelate now regarded as an antipope. Yes; I know they wanted to adhere to the true pope ... perhaps wanted to do so quite desperately ... but, de facto, canonically, historically, they just didn't.
But the biggest problem which such potential critics will have to face is this.
FACT: Some of the Byzantine Churches ('Uniates') now in full peace and communion with the See of S Peter use Calendars containing Byzantine worthies who died while Rome and Byzantium were disunited; and, moreover, whose canonisations were enacted by "schismatic Greek Orthodox" synods. I have in mind the Melkite Patriarchate of Antioch (His Beatitude is a Successor of S Peter! Surely, the most senior prelate in the Catholic Church after the Pope?). (The same, I have been told, is true of the Ukrainian Church: accurate information?).
So: people who died in schism and who were then canonised by people in schism can have the cultus of a Saint within the Catholic Church.
To help to focus the minds of readers, I say now that I will decline to enable comments which criticise the thesis I have deployed WITHOUT taking seriously the sections above in red.
I add that I can myself think of a detail in Benedict XIV's historical exposition of Beatification which might undercut one part of this thesis; and of elements in the ecclesiology of Benedict XVI which could be used to subvert another. Readers may well be able to detect other flies in my ointment. Fair enough. I am privileged to have some extremely able and acute readers. But I am not going to give space to mere angry rants.
29 January 2016
From the Lone Star State ... UPDATE UPDATE
... a dear Texan friend informs me that EWTN will be showing, live, the Consecration of Stephen Lopes as Ordinary of the Chair of S Peter. In Britain, apparently, this is a matter of 2 a.m. on February 3. UPDATE or is it an hour earlier? ... SEE THREAD
Sounds worth the effort to me!!
Sounds worth the effort to me!!
Magisterial??
I thank a reader who has appended a comment on my recent post ... the "Have a good summer" post ... quoting an American canonist. The gentleman is cited as opining that the dodgy "Vatican Document" on Christianity and Judaism must be, even if only in some small degree, magisterial.
This is actually ... I think ... extremely funny.
You see, the document itself is careful to say, in its own first paragraph, "The text is not a magisterial document or doctrinal teaching of the Catholic Church".
So, if the document is magisterial, then it teaches, magisterially ... that it is not magisterial! We are back with something very much like the dear old whiskery joke: "X is a Cretan and X says that all Cretans are liars ... is X telling the truth?".
To put it differently: the extent to which this document is magisterial is precisely the same as the extent to which (by its own assertion) it is not magisterial!
Or, mathematically, +1-1=0.
One of the problems about such a very 'maximalising' papacy as the present one is that its promoters and defenders ... the people who hope to piggy-back their own agenda onto the back of it ... actually reduce the whole idea of a Papacy, and of a Magisterium, to a laughing stock. In their passion to inflate the Teaching Authority of Holy Mother Church, and of the Sovereign Pontiff himself, for their own private political ends, they end up having defaced that Authority so that it looks like a derisory piece of rubbish which nobody could possibly take seriously. (I do not find it easy to believe that this is what the Holy Father himself desires.)
These people are in fact depriving us of the Magisterium we have a right to possess by emptying it of all plausibility; by blunting its edges. They are trying to steal from us the Papacy which Vatican I so succinctly and so accurately defined for us. I can only think of one Power in whose interest it is to do this.
And there is another dangerous aspect to their unfortunate and sinister game. Magisterial teachings in the Catholic Church gradually acquire, and grow in, substance and precision on the basis of precedent and of claimed support in the acta of previous authorities. Is there a risk that some pope in the future might issue, with claimed authority, an edict in which his argument is propped up by a footnote .... a footnote which gives chapter-and-verse drawing upon an earlier document which had unobtrusively started its own life as a discussion paper explicitly disclaiming magisterial authority? Or drawing upon some phrase Bergoglio had used (without giving it any particularly deep thought) in one of his Santa Marta homilies?
The present Roman Pontiff is the fount of endless words, all day and every day. No human being could possibly talk as much on the record as this one does without accidentally saying a certain amount of nonsense as well as, one tremulously hopes, a large amount of very good sense. Attempts among those who plot to be his controllers to dress up in garments of awesome authority his lightest obiter dictum, or to do the same to the questionable meanderings of some committee set up by some dicastery, come very close to sacrilege and strike me as being most probably a device of the Enemy.
This is actually ... I think ... extremely funny.
You see, the document itself is careful to say, in its own first paragraph, "The text is not a magisterial document or doctrinal teaching of the Catholic Church".
So, if the document is magisterial, then it teaches, magisterially ... that it is not magisterial! We are back with something very much like the dear old whiskery joke: "X is a Cretan and X says that all Cretans are liars ... is X telling the truth?".
To put it differently: the extent to which this document is magisterial is precisely the same as the extent to which (by its own assertion) it is not magisterial!
Or, mathematically, +1-1=0.
One of the problems about such a very 'maximalising' papacy as the present one is that its promoters and defenders ... the people who hope to piggy-back their own agenda onto the back of it ... actually reduce the whole idea of a Papacy, and of a Magisterium, to a laughing stock. In their passion to inflate the Teaching Authority of Holy Mother Church, and of the Sovereign Pontiff himself, for their own private political ends, they end up having defaced that Authority so that it looks like a derisory piece of rubbish which nobody could possibly take seriously. (I do not find it easy to believe that this is what the Holy Father himself desires.)
These people are in fact depriving us of the Magisterium we have a right to possess by emptying it of all plausibility; by blunting its edges. They are trying to steal from us the Papacy which Vatican I so succinctly and so accurately defined for us. I can only think of one Power in whose interest it is to do this.
And there is another dangerous aspect to their unfortunate and sinister game. Magisterial teachings in the Catholic Church gradually acquire, and grow in, substance and precision on the basis of precedent and of claimed support in the acta of previous authorities. Is there a risk that some pope in the future might issue, with claimed authority, an edict in which his argument is propped up by a footnote .... a footnote which gives chapter-and-verse drawing upon an earlier document which had unobtrusively started its own life as a discussion paper explicitly disclaiming magisterial authority? Or drawing upon some phrase Bergoglio had used (without giving it any particularly deep thought) in one of his Santa Marta homilies?
The present Roman Pontiff is the fount of endless words, all day and every day. No human being could possibly talk as much on the record as this one does without accidentally saying a certain amount of nonsense as well as, one tremulously hopes, a large amount of very good sense. Attempts among those who plot to be his controllers to dress up in garments of awesome authority his lightest obiter dictum, or to do the same to the questionable meanderings of some committee set up by some dicastery, come very close to sacrilege and strike me as being most probably a device of the Enemy.
28 January 2016
Have a good summer
I expect readers will have noticed, on Rorate and NLM, notices of the Conference in Norcia. The website is http:www.albertusmagnuscss.org/p/summer-program-2016.html
You will be able to hear, among others, the charismatic and erudite Dom Cassian Folsom, and the learned and lucid Fr Thomas Crean. As well as much else, you will be taught what S Thomas Aquinas taught about the Letter to the Hebrews. And you need to know about that. It is a Letter substantially ignored by the recent very iffy Vatican document (NOT Magisterial) on Church and Jews. It is an Epistle disliked by Cardinal Kasper. Do you need any further recommendation? July 10-24. I do urge you to take this seriously.
But there's somewhere else you should have been just before that. The Roman Forum annual Conference will have been 'on' Lake Garda June 27-July 8. This year we shall be be concentrating on the 500th Anniversary of Luther's so-called Reformation. There's going to be endless nonsense about Luther and his -ism over the next couple of years. You need to know the facts. I don't know who's on this year's list, but last year you could have nattered with Henry Sire (Phoenix from the ashes), Chris Ferrara (The Great Facade), have listened to the greatest living Church Historian, Professor de Mattei. And Professor John Rao and many others from all over the world. This is for 'unacademic' and 'academic' people. We are a wonderful mix!
Finally, in the beautiful hills of North Wales, the LMS Latin Summer School. With Fr Richard Bailey of the Manchester Oratory and myself. For both clergy and laity; for beginners and advanced students. July 24-31. Latin gives you an entry-ticket to the great theological and liturgical tradition of the Western Catholic Church. This course enables you to examine your own roots. Or is that what hairdressers do?
You will be able to hear, among others, the charismatic and erudite Dom Cassian Folsom, and the learned and lucid Fr Thomas Crean. As well as much else, you will be taught what S Thomas Aquinas taught about the Letter to the Hebrews. And you need to know about that. It is a Letter substantially ignored by the recent very iffy Vatican document (NOT Magisterial) on Church and Jews. It is an Epistle disliked by Cardinal Kasper. Do you need any further recommendation? July 10-24. I do urge you to take this seriously.
But there's somewhere else you should have been just before that. The Roman Forum annual Conference will have been 'on' Lake Garda June 27-July 8. This year we shall be be concentrating on the 500th Anniversary of Luther's so-called Reformation. There's going to be endless nonsense about Luther and his -ism over the next couple of years. You need to know the facts. I don't know who's on this year's list, but last year you could have nattered with Henry Sire (Phoenix from the ashes), Chris Ferrara (The Great Facade), have listened to the greatest living Church Historian, Professor de Mattei. And Professor John Rao and many others from all over the world. This is for 'unacademic' and 'academic' people. We are a wonderful mix!
Finally, in the beautiful hills of North Wales, the LMS Latin Summer School. With Fr Richard Bailey of the Manchester Oratory and myself. For both clergy and laity; for beginners and advanced students. July 24-31. Latin gives you an entry-ticket to the great theological and liturgical tradition of the Western Catholic Church. This course enables you to examine your own roots. Or is that what hairdressers do?
27 January 2016
S Agatha, ora, ora pro nobis
Cardinal Burke's Titular Church in Rome is S Agatha's of the Goths: the only Catholic church in Rome built originally for non-Catholics (Arians). (As Sir Michael Caine says, "Not many people know that.") Those whose diaries won't accommodate a trip to Rome for its Patronal Festival will be looking forward to flocking instead to the great 'Venetian' Anglo-Catholic Basilica, now an Ordinariate church, of S Agatha in Landport, Portsmouth. S Agatha's Day is February 5; the External Solemnity at the weekend is the annual occasion for a Solemn High Mass (Ordinariate Rite) which could make you think you were back in the triumphalist Anglo-Papalism of the 1930s ... when "Faith was taught, and fanned to a golden blaze".
SATURDAY 6 February: High Mass 11.00 a.m., Mozart's Little Credo Mass; Preacher Fr A Lucie-Smith. Followed by a Reception.
The pp, the splendid Fr Maunder, continues the work of restoring the church. His latest plan is for an altar which will have for its reredos a picture (yet to be painted) in the baroque style (as of Murillo? Tiepolo?). Here is Father's ambitious description:
"The Blessed Virgin holding forth a scroll [Anglicanorum coetibus] whilst S Agatha beckons towards Benedict XVI, who, kneeling, is vested in a cloth-of-gold cope with the triple crown placed to one side. Below, separated by putti and appropriate clouds, the first four priests of S Agatha's: Fr Linklater, Fr Dolling, Fr Tremenheere, and Fr Coles; kneel, eyes heavenward, offering prayer for unity with the Holy See."
I hope that the design will have flexibility enabling a future generation to add a halo to the head of the Pontiff. And perhaps to put the Triregnum onto his head as well!
We're getting there!!
Patrimony!!! You know it makes sense!!!!
SATURDAY 6 February: High Mass 11.00 a.m., Mozart's Little Credo Mass; Preacher Fr A Lucie-Smith. Followed by a Reception.
The pp, the splendid Fr Maunder, continues the work of restoring the church. His latest plan is for an altar which will have for its reredos a picture (yet to be painted) in the baroque style (as of Murillo? Tiepolo?). Here is Father's ambitious description:
"The Blessed Virgin holding forth a scroll [Anglicanorum coetibus] whilst S Agatha beckons towards Benedict XVI, who, kneeling, is vested in a cloth-of-gold cope with the triple crown placed to one side. Below, separated by putti and appropriate clouds, the first four priests of S Agatha's: Fr Linklater, Fr Dolling, Fr Tremenheere, and Fr Coles; kneel, eyes heavenward, offering prayer for unity with the Holy See."
I hope that the design will have flexibility enabling a future generation to add a halo to the head of the Pontiff. And perhaps to put the Triregnum onto his head as well!
We're getting there!!
Patrimony!!! You know it makes sense!!!!
26 January 2016
Father James Bradley
Sorry: I forgot to give you the name of the author of the blog I've just said we should all be reading!
Do you read ...
... the blog Thine Own Service, written by a learned young priest of the British Ordinariate currently studying in North America?
I most warmly commend it.
And if you hit LITURGY on its sidebar, you will find well-researched and illuminating articles on the Ordinariate Missal.
tinyurl.com/DWMissal
I most warmly commend it.
And if you hit LITURGY on its sidebar, you will find well-researched and illuminating articles on the Ordinariate Missal.
tinyurl.com/DWMissal
Law, Custom, and the Ordinariate Liturgy
In our Missal, there are references to "where it is the custom". One, randomly chosen, such example is the use of black vestments on Good Friday.
"Custom" usually assumes usage over a considerable period. Although Canon 2 makes clear that the Code does not itself cover liturgical matters, it may be useful to consider what the 1983 Code does say about consuetudo, custom. [Furthermore, a useful discussion of the situation under the previous (1917) Code can be found in J O'Connell The Celebration of Mass (1940) Volume 1 pp 27ff..] Canon 26 states that a consuetudo vigenti iuri canonico contraria aut quae est praeter legem canonicam, vim legis obtinet tantum si legitime per annos triginta continuos et completos servata fuerit. Even if a canonical law explicitly prohibits future customs, praevalere potest consuetudo centenaria aut immemorabilis. But neither an Ordinariate considered as a whole, nor any particular Ordinariate Group, Mission, or Parish can, as such, be older than 2011. How, therefore, can "custom", in the legal sense, exist in an Ordinariate?
Only, surely, if one takes such corporate groups as being in corporate and lineal and juridical continuity with the groups which existed in the Anglican Communion before they entered into Full Communion with the See of S Peter.
It appears therefore that communities possessing such continuity are to be canonically considered as having been communitates legis saltem recipiendae capaces (Canon 25).
As far as concerns the whole Ordinariate of our Lady of Walsingham, it may be said that we came out from a community which had the following customary principle: "the minister who is to conduct the service may in his discretion make and use variations which are not of substantial importance" (C of E Canon B:5; but I am citing it not as law but as evidence of settled custom). This maxim was very generously applied, with collusion at every level.
I will add that this maxim constitutes an inherent part of the ethos and spirituality we have brought with us. Vide Dom Gregory Dix Shape of the Liturgy (1945) pp 716-718; 587-589. It has a more than centennial prescription since it goes back as far as the publication of the first edition of the English Missal in 1911; and, in a vaguer form, well beyond that. It can draw support from the writings of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, and ... Metropolitan Hilarion!
"Custom" usually assumes usage over a considerable period. Although Canon 2 makes clear that the Code does not itself cover liturgical matters, it may be useful to consider what the 1983 Code does say about consuetudo, custom. [Furthermore, a useful discussion of the situation under the previous (1917) Code can be found in J O'Connell The Celebration of Mass (1940) Volume 1 pp 27ff..] Canon 26 states that a consuetudo vigenti iuri canonico contraria aut quae est praeter legem canonicam, vim legis obtinet tantum si legitime per annos triginta continuos et completos servata fuerit. Even if a canonical law explicitly prohibits future customs, praevalere potest consuetudo centenaria aut immemorabilis. But neither an Ordinariate considered as a whole, nor any particular Ordinariate Group, Mission, or Parish can, as such, be older than 2011. How, therefore, can "custom", in the legal sense, exist in an Ordinariate?
Only, surely, if one takes such corporate groups as being in corporate and lineal and juridical continuity with the groups which existed in the Anglican Communion before they entered into Full Communion with the See of S Peter.
It appears therefore that communities possessing such continuity are to be canonically considered as having been communitates legis saltem recipiendae capaces (Canon 25).
As far as concerns the whole Ordinariate of our Lady of Walsingham, it may be said that we came out from a community which had the following customary principle: "the minister who is to conduct the service may in his discretion make and use variations which are not of substantial importance" (C of E Canon B:5; but I am citing it not as law but as evidence of settled custom). This maxim was very generously applied, with collusion at every level.
I will add that this maxim constitutes an inherent part of the ethos and spirituality we have brought with us. Vide Dom Gregory Dix Shape of the Liturgy (1945) pp 716-718; 587-589. It has a more than centennial prescription since it goes back as far as the publication of the first edition of the English Missal in 1911; and, in a vaguer form, well beyond that. It can draw support from the writings of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, and ... Metropolitan Hilarion!
25 January 2016
Idling fecklessly ...
... among some old off-prints from the Zeitschrift fuer Papyrologie und Epigraphik containing papers by the late and still lamented Martin West, I was struck by this phrase: "It is a delightful thing to read a neatly written papyrus containing real digammas".
Now ... doesn't that sentence embody the veritable Quinta Essentia of Oxford?
Now ... doesn't that sentence embody the veritable Quinta Essentia of Oxford?
Intolerance of minorities (3)
On this, the last day of the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity, I conclude my examination of what 'Unity' sometimes means for some Catholics, especially some in Management, and what it should mean. I renew my hope that all my readers will continue to pray for this important intention. It is not out of date!
My remarks in the previous section of this post about the troubles, fifteen years ago, of the FSSP, could easily have been followed by an account of the remarkable treatment received more recently by the Franciscans of the Immaculate. They, rather like the FSSP, had a Commissioner parachuted in. Here, again, we seem to behold an intolerance on the part of "the ecclesial reality of today" ... the Novus Ordo culture ... towards those who dare to be different.
But, instead of revisiting those unhappy events, I will share with you a few phrases in an address given quite a time ago now by someone who was, at the time he spoke, one of the world's English-speaking bishops. His identity will not be revealed on this blog because I do not wish this matter to get bogged down in 'personalities'.
The first rather obvious feature which you will notice is the insistent repetition of the same theme in very much the same words. The second is that, here again, Liturgy seems to be in the front of the speaker's mind (in as far as, although he mentions other things, Liturgy always comes first).
"What you do, if it is done in the spirit of your Patron, will not be done as matter of personal taste, of subjective likes and dislikes. Whether in matters of liturgy ... what matters is ... striving not to satisfy your own taste, your own personal preferences ...
"the fashioning of this Ordinariate contribution is not a matter of personal taste ... I also suggest a criterion by which that discernment between subjective taste and service of the truth may be made ... Does what you do, in pursuit of a proper distinctiveness, clearly lead to holiness?
" ... fashioning the patterns of the Ordinariate, be they liturgical ...
"We live in an age of deep individualism. The priority of personal satisfaction ...
"So I hope that as the Ordinariate develops, its parishes and groups will not be shaped by the individual personal preferences of its members, by personal likes and dislikes which are often so contentious.
" ... whatever we may be doing, whether in liturgy ...
" ... no other preoccupation, whether aesthetical ..."
I find the word contentious particularly interesting.
Contentious means 'Not my cup of tea'. Yes? For example: "I regard versus populum as contentious."
I think it is fair to surmise, from this evidence, that the speaker has in his mind what other prelates had in their minds when reacting to Summorum pontificum and the FSSP and the FFI. Here again, we have an example of the sometimes, frankly, awkward place within the Catholic Church of those whose charism differs from the ethos of the mainstrean Novus Ordo Western Church. And, in all three cases, there is a suggestion of uneasy hostility, of timorous insecurity, with regard to any who dare to be 'different'. One can only be reminded of the time, back in the early 1990s, when some of the then English bishops were ... surprise, surprise ... frantically engaged in the prevention by hook and by crook of an Anglican Group Solution; and Cardinal Ratzinger very simply and very calmly asked "What are the English bishops so afraid of?". (I bet he knew the answer. He wasn't born yesterday.)
Ecumenism starts at home. On the one hand, expensive negotiations between Catholics and Separated Anglicans (who have deliberately elected to steer a course of divergence from the Catholic Church) are forgiveable luxuries for those who like that sort of thing; and, anyway, who knows what marvellous results they may throw up in a few centuries' time. That admirable Cardinal Pell, resourceful fellow, will undoubtedly be able easily to find the necessary funds, tucked away down the back of some Vatican sofa, to pay for these amusing extravaganzas. Venice, people say, can be really quite lovely in the spring. I can vouch for Lake Garda. There are some fine restaurants on Rhodes. One of my daughters speaks well of Malta. And ... now, here's a thought ... why not send the delegates to some really toppingly first-class Red Sea resort?
But, delightful as it is to dialogue with Separated Brethren ... they are so congenial, such sweet people ... perhaps it is just a tiny bit more important for ecumenism, for Diversity in orthodoxy, to flourish, to be encouraged by all our Fathers in God, within our Catholic family. That this can be done without the entire world collapsing is suggested by the growing number of English bishops who have splendidly handed over great churches for the use of the Extraordinary Form; and by the availability to the British Ordinariate of our fine and historically significant church in Warwick Street (not to mention the Precious Blood in Southwark). It would be ungrateful if we ever forgot these acts of generosity. But neither example should be taken as indicating that such exotic flowers as "the Extrordinary Form" and the "Ordinariate Use" are only undangerous when they are functioning as exclusive ghettoes. Tradition should be situated also bang centre in the middle of the Mainstream ... and here a really important and very admirable example is the handing over by the Bishop of Portsmouth of an important parish to refugees fleeing from the blitzed FFI.
On the other hand, we in the Ordinariates should admit that we do ourselves have duties and important obligations. Perhaps we have been negligent. We owe it to the 'mainstream' Church, to be much more proactive in explaining what it is about our liturgical patrimony, and our Ordinariate Rite of Mass, which makes them (in Pope Benedict's view) such an important gift to the entire Church. Things like versus Orientem and Communion kneeling are not understood by many in the Novus Ordo ethos; and how can they understand if nobody ever explains these things to them? And perhaps we should be less reticent about explaining what is so contentious about the musical texts, the soggy heterodox drivel, often sung among 'diocesan' congregations; and why (coming as we do, like Blessed John Henry, from an 'Anglican literary and patristic' background) we prefer scriptural, patristic, and doctrinally orthodox chants and hymnody.
We should do more; we should be more frank. We have been too downbeat; too reticent; too shy; too inclined to keep our heads below some imaginary parapet.
My remarks in the previous section of this post about the troubles, fifteen years ago, of the FSSP, could easily have been followed by an account of the remarkable treatment received more recently by the Franciscans of the Immaculate. They, rather like the FSSP, had a Commissioner parachuted in. Here, again, we seem to behold an intolerance on the part of "the ecclesial reality of today" ... the Novus Ordo culture ... towards those who dare to be different.
But, instead of revisiting those unhappy events, I will share with you a few phrases in an address given quite a time ago now by someone who was, at the time he spoke, one of the world's English-speaking bishops. His identity will not be revealed on this blog because I do not wish this matter to get bogged down in 'personalities'.
The first rather obvious feature which you will notice is the insistent repetition of the same theme in very much the same words. The second is that, here again, Liturgy seems to be in the front of the speaker's mind (in as far as, although he mentions other things, Liturgy always comes first).
"What you do, if it is done in the spirit of your Patron, will not be done as matter of personal taste, of subjective likes and dislikes. Whether in matters of liturgy ... what matters is ... striving not to satisfy your own taste, your own personal preferences ...
"the fashioning of this Ordinariate contribution is not a matter of personal taste ... I also suggest a criterion by which that discernment between subjective taste and service of the truth may be made ... Does what you do, in pursuit of a proper distinctiveness, clearly lead to holiness?
" ... fashioning the patterns of the Ordinariate, be they liturgical ...
"We live in an age of deep individualism. The priority of personal satisfaction ...
"So I hope that as the Ordinariate develops, its parishes and groups will not be shaped by the individual personal preferences of its members, by personal likes and dislikes which are often so contentious.
" ... whatever we may be doing, whether in liturgy ...
" ... no other preoccupation, whether aesthetical ..."
I find the word contentious particularly interesting.
Contentious means 'Not my cup of tea'. Yes? For example: "I regard versus populum as contentious."
I think it is fair to surmise, from this evidence, that the speaker has in his mind what other prelates had in their minds when reacting to Summorum pontificum and the FSSP and the FFI. Here again, we have an example of the sometimes, frankly, awkward place within the Catholic Church of those whose charism differs from the ethos of the mainstrean Novus Ordo Western Church. And, in all three cases, there is a suggestion of uneasy hostility, of timorous insecurity, with regard to any who dare to be 'different'. One can only be reminded of the time, back in the early 1990s, when some of the then English bishops were ... surprise, surprise ... frantically engaged in the prevention by hook and by crook of an Anglican Group Solution; and Cardinal Ratzinger very simply and very calmly asked "What are the English bishops so afraid of?". (I bet he knew the answer. He wasn't born yesterday.)
Ecumenism starts at home. On the one hand, expensive negotiations between Catholics and Separated Anglicans (who have deliberately elected to steer a course of divergence from the Catholic Church) are forgiveable luxuries for those who like that sort of thing; and, anyway, who knows what marvellous results they may throw up in a few centuries' time. That admirable Cardinal Pell, resourceful fellow, will undoubtedly be able easily to find the necessary funds, tucked away down the back of some Vatican sofa, to pay for these amusing extravaganzas. Venice, people say, can be really quite lovely in the spring. I can vouch for Lake Garda. There are some fine restaurants on Rhodes. One of my daughters speaks well of Malta. And ... now, here's a thought ... why not send the delegates to some really toppingly first-class Red Sea resort?
But, delightful as it is to dialogue with Separated Brethren ... they are so congenial, such sweet people ... perhaps it is just a tiny bit more important for ecumenism, for Diversity in orthodoxy, to flourish, to be encouraged by all our Fathers in God, within our Catholic family. That this can be done without the entire world collapsing is suggested by the growing number of English bishops who have splendidly handed over great churches for the use of the Extraordinary Form; and by the availability to the British Ordinariate of our fine and historically significant church in Warwick Street (not to mention the Precious Blood in Southwark). It would be ungrateful if we ever forgot these acts of generosity. But neither example should be taken as indicating that such exotic flowers as "the Extrordinary Form" and the "Ordinariate Use" are only undangerous when they are functioning as exclusive ghettoes. Tradition should be situated also bang centre in the middle of the Mainstream ... and here a really important and very admirable example is the handing over by the Bishop of Portsmouth of an important parish to refugees fleeing from the blitzed FFI.
On the other hand, we in the Ordinariates should admit that we do ourselves have duties and important obligations. Perhaps we have been negligent. We owe it to the 'mainstream' Church, to be much more proactive in explaining what it is about our liturgical patrimony, and our Ordinariate Rite of Mass, which makes them (in Pope Benedict's view) such an important gift to the entire Church. Things like versus Orientem and Communion kneeling are not understood by many in the Novus Ordo ethos; and how can they understand if nobody ever explains these things to them? And perhaps we should be less reticent about explaining what is so contentious about the musical texts, the soggy heterodox drivel, often sung among 'diocesan' congregations; and why (coming as we do, like Blessed John Henry, from an 'Anglican literary and patristic' background) we prefer scriptural, patristic, and doctrinally orthodox chants and hymnody.
We should do more; we should be more frank. We have been too downbeat; too reticent; too shy; too inclined to keep our heads below some imaginary parapet.
24 January 2016
SEPTUAGESIMA
The ancient usage of the Western Church suggests you should be reading the book of Genesis in your Divine Office. And that you should have started reading Genesis today, Septuagesima.
During Lent, of which Septuagesima is the preamble, we repent of the Fall and the mark which it has left on each successive age of human history and on each one of us. Lent leads up to Easter Night, with the great, the outrageous impudence of the Deacon's shout: O felix Culpa: O blessed iniquity (that's Knox's Patrimonial translation ... now, gloriously, restored for use in the Ordinariates!!!); the marvel of Adam's Trangression which deserved such and so great a Redeemer. And then Eastertide invites us to live the Risen Life with and in our New Adam.
The S Pius V/Book of Common Prayer/Ordinariate Eucharistic psalmody for Septuagesima and its season express this spirituality. The Introit is about "The sorrows of Death", recalling the Genesis theme that the pains, labours, and mortality of Man (and not least of Woman) result from the Fall. Yes, I know that the Gesimas were probably introduced by S Gregory the Great at a time of great distress, strife, and chaos in Italy - which does lie behind the sense of agony and helplessness in this and other texts. My point is that it was the Pontiff who discerned a connection between a world ravaged and disordered by the Fall ... and the realities of late sixth century Italy. How can anyone who reads the newspapers doubt that this connection is just as possible now?
I incline to believe that S Gregory has left us his own explanation of his liturgical creation, Septuagesima, in the passage from his writings of which the old Breviary gives us a portion in the Third Nocturn (Hom 19 in Evang.; the full text of which is handily available in PL 76 coll 1153sqq.). Speaking, according to the manuscripts, in the basilica of S Lawrence one Septuagesima morning, he explains the different times of the day referred to in the Sunday's EF Gospel (the parable of the Husbandman hiring labourers for his vineyard): "The morning of the world was from Adam to Noah; the third hour, Noah to Abraham; Sixth, Abraham to Moses; Ninth, Moses to the Lord's Advent; eleventh, from the Lord's Advent to the end of the world". The EF Epistle reading ends with the disobedience of many in Jewry in the time of Moses ("in many of them God was not well-pleased"); the Gospel concludes "Many were called but few were chosen".
While there is no doubt that the Tradition has seen this applying to those Jews who rejected the Messiah's call, Bible and Fathers leave no room whatsoever for complacency on the part of Gentile Christians. The whole point of I Corinthians 10, from which the Septuagesima EF Epistle is taken, is that the fall from grace which happened to some who were "baptized into Moses" is just as much a fall awaiting some of those who have been baptised into Christ. And the passage from S Gregory selected for Mattins ends sharply "At the Eleventh hour the Gentiles are called; to whom it is said 'Why are you standing here lazy all day?' " S Gregory goes on to ask "Look what a lot of people we are gathered here, we're packing the walls of the church, but, y'know (tamen), who can know how few there are who're numbered in the flock of God's chosen?" ... a decade ago, the Principal of an Evangelical PPH in this University got into terrible trouble for asking a question rather like that.
Divine election; Human disobedience; its just punishment in the tribulations of the present age; followed by a call to Christians to recollect their own sinfulness before Lent begins: it looks like a very coherent Proper to my eye. Perhaps it is a trifle politically incorrect: the Journalist In The Street tends indignantly to demand of fashionable bishops whether Disasters are a Divine Punishment and why it is that a good God .... Well, y'know ... but Stay: my assumption is that this blog has a superior class of theologically literate readers who can do the theodicy stuff for themselves.
I urge those who can, to read S Gregory's entire homily; it ends with a lurid and lengthy account of an unrepentent sinner at the point of death; it is a real mission-sermon rant such as Fr Faber might have preached to his recalcitrant Irishmen before he moved on to (what Newman called) the 'second rate gentry' of Brompton. S Gregory wasn't half the Latin stylist that S Leo was; but, to be regretfully honest, I sometimes doubt whether the plebs sancta Dei understood much of S Leo's lapidary periods ... but I bet you could have heard a pin drop when S Gregory launched into one of his purple passages and the pontifical spittle was really flying.
During Lent, of which Septuagesima is the preamble, we repent of the Fall and the mark which it has left on each successive age of human history and on each one of us. Lent leads up to Easter Night, with the great, the outrageous impudence of the Deacon's shout: O felix Culpa: O blessed iniquity (that's Knox's Patrimonial translation ... now, gloriously, restored for use in the Ordinariates!!!); the marvel of Adam's Trangression which deserved such and so great a Redeemer. And then Eastertide invites us to live the Risen Life with and in our New Adam.
The S Pius V/Book of Common Prayer/Ordinariate Eucharistic psalmody for Septuagesima and its season express this spirituality. The Introit is about "The sorrows of Death", recalling the Genesis theme that the pains, labours, and mortality of Man (and not least of Woman) result from the Fall. Yes, I know that the Gesimas were probably introduced by S Gregory the Great at a time of great distress, strife, and chaos in Italy - which does lie behind the sense of agony and helplessness in this and other texts. My point is that it was the Pontiff who discerned a connection between a world ravaged and disordered by the Fall ... and the realities of late sixth century Italy. How can anyone who reads the newspapers doubt that this connection is just as possible now?
I incline to believe that S Gregory has left us his own explanation of his liturgical creation, Septuagesima, in the passage from his writings of which the old Breviary gives us a portion in the Third Nocturn (Hom 19 in Evang.; the full text of which is handily available in PL 76 coll 1153sqq.). Speaking, according to the manuscripts, in the basilica of S Lawrence one Septuagesima morning, he explains the different times of the day referred to in the Sunday's EF Gospel (the parable of the Husbandman hiring labourers for his vineyard): "The morning of the world was from Adam to Noah; the third hour, Noah to Abraham; Sixth, Abraham to Moses; Ninth, Moses to the Lord's Advent; eleventh, from the Lord's Advent to the end of the world". The EF Epistle reading ends with the disobedience of many in Jewry in the time of Moses ("in many of them God was not well-pleased"); the Gospel concludes "Many were called but few were chosen".
While there is no doubt that the Tradition has seen this applying to those Jews who rejected the Messiah's call, Bible and Fathers leave no room whatsoever for complacency on the part of Gentile Christians. The whole point of I Corinthians 10, from which the Septuagesima EF Epistle is taken, is that the fall from grace which happened to some who were "baptized into Moses" is just as much a fall awaiting some of those who have been baptised into Christ. And the passage from S Gregory selected for Mattins ends sharply "At the Eleventh hour the Gentiles are called; to whom it is said 'Why are you standing here lazy all day?' " S Gregory goes on to ask "Look what a lot of people we are gathered here, we're packing the walls of the church, but, y'know (tamen), who can know how few there are who're numbered in the flock of God's chosen?" ... a decade ago, the Principal of an Evangelical PPH in this University got into terrible trouble for asking a question rather like that.
Divine election; Human disobedience; its just punishment in the tribulations of the present age; followed by a call to Christians to recollect their own sinfulness before Lent begins: it looks like a very coherent Proper to my eye. Perhaps it is a trifle politically incorrect: the Journalist In The Street tends indignantly to demand of fashionable bishops whether Disasters are a Divine Punishment and why it is that a good God .... Well, y'know ... but Stay: my assumption is that this blog has a superior class of theologically literate readers who can do the theodicy stuff for themselves.
I urge those who can, to read S Gregory's entire homily; it ends with a lurid and lengthy account of an unrepentent sinner at the point of death; it is a real mission-sermon rant such as Fr Faber might have preached to his recalcitrant Irishmen before he moved on to (what Newman called) the 'second rate gentry' of Brompton. S Gregory wasn't half the Latin stylist that S Leo was; but, to be regretfully honest, I sometimes doubt whether the plebs sancta Dei understood much of S Leo's lapidary periods ... but I bet you could have heard a pin drop when S Gregory launched into one of his purple passages and the pontifical spittle was really flying.
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