Pascha

I wish all the joy of Christ to those who read this blog; to the friends who have written comments since it began and to those who have arrived more recently; to those who have prayed for me and said Masses on my behalf.

Highlights of Holy Week so far?

Well, attending the Westminster Chrism Mass. Not so much the Mass itself - it was certainly well enough done but former Ebbsfleet clergy have been somewhat spoiled in this respect - as the scene beforehand outside: the Association of Catholic Women with posters and little cards to hand out saying We Love Our Priests. I would have liked to kiss them all. What a lovely lot. Catholic Women are obviously a very superior breed. Why has nobody ever told us this?

Another high point must be the recollection that, Deo volente, this will be the last Holy Week in which the faithful will have been fobbed off with the Comme le prevoit mistranslations by Bad Old ICEL. I thought of this at the Oratory today when we got to the bidding 'translated' as "that God may ... free those unjustly deprived of liberty", as if God were some sort of rather superior Parole Board. The original, you will recall, is the terse, forceful, brilliant, aperiat carceres, vincula solvat. I wonder how Good New ICEL renders this.

G G 'Patrimony' Willis demonstrated the extreme antiquity of those biddings - older even than the beautiful ancient collects which they introduce - by pointing out that they lack cursus.

National Unity again

I trust that no-one will have been deceived by the mannered frivolity of my last post into thinking that I am anything but horrifed at the sight of the Camerons of this world defining for all of us the markers of common 'British' national identity. The fact is that the dominant culture of this country is now not so much non-Christian as anti-Christian. Increasingly, definitions of the 'tolerant' 'inclusive' character of our 'British Culture' mask an ideological determination to eradicate Christian morality and Christian assumptions from our national way of life; and to exclude their assertion from public discourse. Much the same appears to be true of other Western European and North American cultures.

An interesting example is provided by recent French legislation to Ban the Burkah. Almost every degree of female immodesty is, apparently, treated as normative ... but modesty is put on trial. A newspaper cartoon, showing a beach full of topless female sun-bathers ... and a gendarme chasing one topless sunbather who happened also to be wearing a burkah over her face ... made this point rather neatly. Happily, the British political class is not, at the moment, much minded to go down this path.

But notice the way in which the secularist zeitgeist, with its libertine determination to promote sexual promiscuity, now occupies the central ground - that is, the cultural assumptions behind the arguments - in Western societies. I heard some Moslem women interviewed on the wireless; they justified their wearing the burkah on the grounds that this was what they freely themselves wished to do. Well, good for them, I have respect for their choice and their courage in expressing it. But the assumption underlying this dialogue was that a woman's 'choice' is paramount; so we are not surprised to find in the French legislation exemplifies, that the greater penalties are reserved for men who constrain their womenfolk to cover their faces in public.

Of course I am not a Moslem and of course I do not campaign to promote either Islam, Sharia law, or Islamic styles of feminine conduct, in our British society. But let me make clear: I do think it is entirely acceptable - and even laudable - for a man to be concerned for the modest dress and conduct of his wife and daughters without being at risk of prosecution. And it would be nice to be able to walk through the streets of this city on Friday and Saturday nights without being confronted by acres of bare thighs, as the bimbo classes hunt in packs for a Good Time; and not to have to make my way around drunken mobs of them and their followers while lethargic policemen whose overtime my taxes pay wait to intervene. And then to hear in the morning news bulletins that the 'Morning After Pill' is to be made more readily available, paid for out of my taxes.

When the insufferable Cameron pontificates upon the need for immigrant communities to accept 'British Values', I feel rather as German Jews must have felt in 1933 when they heard the mobs beginning to chant "Ein Volk ...". You think I'm overstating this? Well, a society formed by 'British Values' already slaughters hundreds of thousands of innocent lives each year - lives, one suspects, largely conceived as the result of the sexual incontinence it has fostered; while, in 1933, the extermination of European Jewry was still only a manic gleam in the Fuehrer's eye.

'British Values and Culture' as defined by our cultural elite, an elite class hell-bent on the promotion of sexual promiscuity of every kind, are a corrupt menace. When I hear of proposals to constrain 'immigrant communities' to accept and conform to these notions, I feel that the bell is tolling for me as well.

I am not prepared to subscribe to what I perceive to be the modern British way of life. In my humble way, I shall do everything in my power to subvert it. When some future SuperCameron ships the 'unassimilated' Pakistanis back to Pakistan, where will he send unassimilated me?

SUMMER VACATION

I give notice that, on May 3, this blog will enter upon a Summer Vacation. There are some academic pieces that I need the leisure to complete.

Launceston

Launceston is a small, pleasant, but not terribly remarkable town in Cornwall; well, just on the boundary of Cornwall. We lived nearby for six years. It was for long - anachronism coming up - the Capital of Cornwall, at a time when Capitals might not be in the middle of an area but on its edge, so that Crown officials could enter the territory upon their circuit. (Thus the President of the Council of Wales had his base at Ludlow in Shropshire.) For Catholics, however, the main glory of Launceston (by the way, it is pronounced Lahns'n) is that it is the place of the martyrdom of S Cuthbert Mayne, Protomartyr of the seminaries (whose skull is venerated not far away in Lanhearne).

But stay. A marvellous book has just plopped onto my doorstep full of the most marvellous, atmospheric, pictures of Launceston and district. People stand above the terrifying torrent of floodwaters in Launceston's Cataract Gorge; flowers stand in the City Park with their heads held high; the autumn leaves lie upon the ground in Brickfield's Reserve. The area is clearly very lush; rather as in Co Kerry, tree ferns and myrtles appear to germinate naturally (I believe that, in the old world, tree ferns made their way here from the Antipodes by accident, as ballast in ships, which was noticed to be sprouting!). Strangely, a Georgian house, with a Gothick church nearby, dominate the ridge above a vineyard in Coal Valley. Interesting, that; since I had not known that there were vineyards in Cornwall. There are quite a lot of fields there called Vineyard Field, but experts in Celtic philology suspect that this is an Anglophone misunderstanding of minnack (vinnack with lenition), or 'stoney', in the old Cornish language.

Thanks, Joshua, it is really lovely book, and I had no conception, despite the vivid description brought back from Tasmania by one of my daughters, that your native land was quite so beautiful. We did know that Tasmania had a Launceston - the result of generations of Cornish tin miners taking their unneeded skills to that and many other distant places.

A classicist cartographer seems to have wandered around Tasmania: Pelion Plains; Mount Geryon; Lake Oenone; Meander Valley (with awesome falls); Mount (yes!) Olympus; Styx Valley. The last of these, readers will not be surprised to learn, does not look in the least sulphurous!

Situating John Paul II

While I do not make a habit of questioning the judgement of Roman Pontiffs, I have never concealed my feeling that John Paul II's Assisi Event would not lose any of its value if it were given just a little clarification. Similarly his action in kissing a copy of the Koran. The ill-disposed could so easily misinterpret these events as giving some sort of cover for syncretism or religious relativism. I have recently twice suggested that the structuring of the Next Assisi might constitute just such clarification.

I found the newly published Collect* for Blessed John Paul II interesting in this respect. It hopes that we will be edocti by his instituta, but, lest any should deem those instituta to encourage syncretism, it concludes by describing Christ as the unus Redemptor hominis. Thus it takes up the theme of the admirable CDF document Dominus Iesus, which so lucidly explained that only in Christ can be found salvation. Thus by one word the nature of JP2's Magisterium is definitively and permanently clarified by having a Hermeneutic associated with it.

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*Personally, I feel that it would better have read ... praesta qs, nobis, eius institutis edoctis, ut corda nostra ... aperiantur. Primacy of Grace, and all that.

On the train to Allen Hall on Thursday, I took my schoolmaster's correcting pencil to the texts published by the Vatican. There is one patent typo; another place where I don't quite see what the meaning is unless there is a typo. And the Eulogium reads to my eye rather oddly. I invite periti - or do we nowadays say idonei? - to join in the hunt. As a start ... how would you account for 'reditus' in line 2?

Technology!

Since Fr Blake's tiscali machine refused to accept a comment I tried to put onto his (most admirable) blog, I repeat here the message which modern technology bounced back to me.

When disposing of old Altar Books, always keep the tabs and ribbons; they can be most useful when renovating and bringing back to use old EF Missals.

Some people might find it useful to remove from old ICEL volumes the Missale parvum which is incorporated towards the end, giving a basic minimum of what is necessary for saying the OF in Latin when one is travelling and has no access to a complete OF Missal and Lectionary in a language one knows. It can then become a light-weight addition to ones travelling Mass kit.

The Bishop of Bruges

Oh dear! I gather he was the most exciting, charismatic, of the Belgian bishops.

Peter Ball was undoubtedly the most exciting and charismatic of the English bishops. And, across the sea in Ireland, Eamonn Casey, aka Mr Annie Murphy, wowed the folk of Kerry and then of Galway. Kerry is still filled with the aging, embarrassing, Modern churches he built. He vandalised Killarney Cathedral in an incredibly exciting and charismatic way.

Being exciting and charismatic seems to provide dangers to the soul as well as sometimes to cathedrals.

Provinces

VIS seems to indicate that a lot of new Provinces are being created all over theplace. What might be the ecclesial or ecclesiological significance of this?

AD ORIENTEM, every morning

The common ancient tradition of the Universal Church was, until recently, to offer the Holy Eucharist facing towards the rising sun understood as as an an Ikon or Type of the rising Lord, the one who comes to us from the Beyond to give us his daily gift of newness. East and West have commonly interpreted psalm 19(MT)=18(Vg & LXX) verses 4-6, referring to the sun, as giving an image of our Lord as the Bridegroom leaving the chamber of his Mother's virginal womb like a strong man running his course with joy. And this insight is now tardily being reappropriated by Western Christendom.

I would like to suggest another application of these truths. Should not the normative time for celebrating the Holy Eucharist and receiving communion be at the beginning of the day, as the sun rises, as Christ, new every morning, comes to us from his Father's House and is given to us by that maternal womb which is the Mediatrix of all Graces? This has, of course, been historically the general custom in the Church (even if in fasting seasons vesperal masses sometimes concluded the day's fast). It coheres with the ancient Eucharistic Fast, from the night before. Everything here speaks of newness, of the Father's eternal gift of the Son; of the Bread of Life as the Fount of the graces and deeds of the day.


I am not suggesting a new burdensome rigidity. My own discipline is that whenever I celebrate Mass after Noon, and there can be few modern pastors who never do this, I avail myself of the newer discipline of the fast. And I applaud the modern provision of a Sunday Vigil Mass on Saturday evening. We cannot afford to miss any opportunity of giving people the means of fulfilling their Sunday obligation, or of daily Mass and Communion. But there is a certain breathlessness about the modern arrangements, however splendid it is when an office worker gives up part of her lunch-break to go to a midday Mass. And the gathering on Saturday evening of those Getting It Out Of The Way so that they can sleep in on Sunday morning seems to me to lack the wholesomeness of a regular congregation meeting in the newness of Sunday Morning to consecrate the week to God: perhaps the Anglican Patrimony (not to mention Orthodoxy) has something that is of value to the whole Latin Church.

I affirm all the modern arrangements whereby modern Western Christendom makes our Eucharistic Lord available to a world in a hurry. I am simply suggesting that Mass before breakfast, and on weekdays as well as Sundays, is worth considering as an ideal; after all, it is a norm which most Christian cultures and most Christian generations have found normal.

Pork

A very satisfactory session at Allen Hall yesterday; what, I gather, is known as Twenty-four Hour Pork. My goodness me, how tasty, how succulent.

As a brother priest murmured, what an excellent thing it is that modern Roman Catholics have a ... er ... nuanced view of Lent.

CONTRA ORIENTEM

For those who use the Liturgia Horarum: today's readings are important. I'm not going to expound them in detail because I think anybody can work the business out for themselves, and I hope they will do so. Just a pointer.

Home in on Leviticus 16: 13-14. Compare the translation of this in the Biblical Reading, as offered you in LH Second Edition (it comes from the Neo-Vulgate), with the translation of the same Hebrew verses in the text of the Patristic Reading, Origen's exegesis of the Leviticus passage. You will notice that the Neo-Vulgate offers you "contra frontem", while Origen read "contra orientem". Origen's text comes from the Septuagint, the Greek translation used by the first Christians (and, if I am right in my own conviction that our Lord normally spoke Greek, by him too). For your information: the traditional Vulgate had a reading similar to that of the Septuagint: "ad orientem". ["orientem" means the East.]

Now go on reading Origen's exposition, reflecting on its significance for the direction of Christian Eucharistic worship.

[A subsidiary point: this does also raise the question of the propriety of providing new translations, such as the Neo-Vulgate, which may be closer to what philologists and Rabbinic Judaism agree the Hebrew means, but which close off from us Patristic understandings of Scripture. I suspect that when the Neo-Vulgate was substituted for the Vulgate in LH, nobody quite noticed that this rendered Origen's exegesis rather mysterious.]

Clergy Appeal: Auxilium petitur ...

His hebdomadis in quibus prohibitione obstringimur quin sacrosanctum Missae Sacrificium offeramus, nonulla occasio oritur in qua pastorali cura motus desiderio haud parvo offerendi afficior pro salute vel pro bono statu alicuius viri seu mulieris, aegrotantis fortasse seu dolentis.

Rogo confratres caros compresbyteros meos ut sua benevolentia velint litare pro intentione et ad mentem Ioannis Hunwicke, idque mihi significent, ut missas eas (quot et quando?) ad bonum applicem eorum quibus opus est huius tam salutiferi beneficii.

Traditionalism

I gather that the eldest grandson of the Head of State is to be married in the Octave of Easter; and that he has favoured the public sheets with the intelligence that he will not be wearing a wedding ring. There was a little debate on the Home Service a day or two ago between two opposing 'celebrities' (of neither of whom I had heard); the one who deplored the young man's decision and who upheld the desireability of husbands wearing wedding rings was introduced as "holding the traditionalist view"!

When I got married in 1967, for a husband to wear a ring was the innovation of a small minority. I had one colleague at Lancing who wore one; my suspicion was that this was something to do with the fact that he was a Francophile.

I am not particularly interested in joining a debate about the goodness of each partner in a marriage wearing a wedding ring, or even about the evolution of different customs in different regions. What absolutely fascinated me was the apparent fact that what was in England a little known innovation in 1967 is now regarded as the 'Tradition' which holds sway! So brief a period, apparently, now suffices to establish a 'tradition'!

There is a yawn-making old joke that, however unfashionable one is, if one waits long enough one will be in forefront of fashion. I now know that the prescribed period of time for this process is 44 years.