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Fr John Hunwicke
was for nearly three decades at Lancing College; where he taught Latin and Greek language and literature, was Head of Theology, and Assistant Chaplain. He has served three curacies, been a Parish Priest, and Senior Research Fellow at Pusey House in Oxford. Now incardinated into the Personal Ordinariate of our Lady of Walsingham, he has his base within the Oxford Ordinariate Group. This blog now replaces the Blog Father Hunwicke's Liturgical Notes. Its main purpose is to explore, ad mentem Summi Pontificis, the possibilitiesfor mutual enrichment between three forms of the Roman Rite: the Extraordinary Form, the Ordinary Form, and the Anglican Use. I have been told that my previous blog was disliked because of some the comments on the 'thread'. I take the point. In this blog, all comments will be moderated, and anything which is even implicitly critical of the English Hierarchy or of any member of it, will not be published.
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The purpose of this ORDO is to serve the needs of both Anglicans and Roman Catholics. For the former it provides for the recitation of Morning and Evening Prayer and the celebration of Holy Communion in accordance with modern forms authorised or encouraged in the Provinces of Canterbury and York. These forms are selected, arranged, and interpreted in the the spirit of what has become generally customary in Western Christendom since the Second Vatican Council; but notes draw attention to Orthodox insights. It also provides a full Calendar according to the modern Roman Rite, together with explanatory and catechetical notes. Anglicans who prefer forms of Liturgy based on the Book of Common Prayer will find a lectionary designed for use with the BCP.
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Raffaello's Madonna di Foligno
The original once graced the high altar of the church of Sancta Maria in Ara Coeli on the Capitoline Hill. A fine copy is at the centre of the great baroque reredos at S Thomas the Martyr, Oxford.
16 comments:
Dear Father
what is the correct number?
I believe you refer to having 39 buttons?
These allude, do they not, to the Forty Stripes Less One that are the atrocious Thirty-Nine Articles: "doctrines so horrible no one would want to believe them" as they are described in "The Towers of Trebizond", as I recall.
(Yes, I know they can be read in all manner of Jesuitical ways, but really! As a bishop told me, he's only perjured himself once - when he had to swear to the Articles.)
I once reduced two Catholic priests (both ex-Anglicans) to helpless hysterics, when I alluded to these 39, and how one should only have done up the buttons corresponding to which of the Articles one actually agreed with!
Most Catholic Priests known to me wear either the 'Jesuit' pattern with a covered front, or 33 buttons to remember the years of Our Lord's earthly life, with the usual 5 pleats for the Holy Wounds, although a friend of mine has the anglican 39 false buttons, over a concealed 12 large buttons, which he says are to reflect his view that whilst he is required outwardly to conform to the Articles, inwardly his faith is founded on the Apostles, being 12 in number, but knowing him well, I am quite certain that the convenience and look of the cassock was the deciding factor and the symbolism is a convenient, and later, addition!
33 Buttons I believe, for each of the 33 years of Our Lord's earthly life.
I wonder whether Our Bleesed Lord, or anyone else for that matter, is really bothered how many buttons anyone has on their cassock.
I hope not Malcolm, my faded old cassock has only 12 - one of which I added.
I am afraid to say that there is not rule as to how many buttons a Roman cassock must have. Indeed, there are no rules as to how it should be cut. The old Jesuit habit was merely standard 17th century Spanish clerical dress ossified. This is also the case with Redemptorists whose habit is also just 18th century Italian clerical dress ossified. The most obvious example is the double breasted Oratorian habit; 17th century Roman clerical dress ossified. Milan also has an unusual cut as a result of St Charles Borremeo's insistence that all clerics of his diocese should dress conservatively in the 16th century.
Do you know?— I have never counted how many buttons my cassock has. Is it important?
p.s. I am 'Popish', and I almost always wear the cassock when celebrating Mass.
Malcolm Kemp:
While I grant that our Lord never actually mentioned buttons on cassocks, may I refer you to the OT? The symbolism of Hezekiah 4: 17 is very clear.
Help me out - I didn't know there was a "Hezekiah 4: 17."
I would much rather have a person who actually believed the 39 Articles, as High Churchmen up to the time of the Tractarians did, than any modernist whether Catholic or Angican. There is at the heart of the Articles a solid core of belief in Our Blessed Lord, the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Blessed Trinity, which is often lacking among modern Catholics and Anglicans. I think of a catholic church where the preacher in simple terms had to stress that Our Lord was not just a good man and speculate that most of his congregation might benefit from reading some pf the articles'. Was it Fr Bouyer who wrote "The Catholicity of Protestantism"? No one reading his book could regard the 39 Articles as atrocious.
Pastor in Valle,
I too have never counted them, I have always left the number of my buttons to my tailor.
Button counting is a very below stairs activity.
I presume it is important to have enough to fill the buttonholes.
Well said, Father Ray. A friend of mine (now deceased) used to get his cassocks made at a shop opposite your house. At that time the shop was owned by a former chorister of mine but he then became an Anglican Priest. The shop still trades under his name but I know not whether he still owns it.
Perhaps it could appropriately be said that we now have this topic well and truly buttoned up?
Just checked my Gammarelli. Thirty. What's that supposed to signify? Judas' wages? Or perhaps - in an ironic Papist reference to the subservience of the CofE's religious authority to secular power - the age at which Joseph entered Pharaoh's service?
Or could it just be my height from neck to ankle divided by a convenient interbuttonic interval?
Who was it who preached at Pusey House on the Exodus 28.33?
"And beneath upon the hem of it thou shalt make pomegranates of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, round about the hem thereof; and bells of gold between them round about". We need his advice now.
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