Oh dear! A terrible day! Pope Francis, of all people, has let down Fr Basil Loftus, a former Catholic Times columnist, and let him down megabigway!
Today, Whit Monday, is now, in the Novus Ordo, the feast of our Lady Mother of the Church. And this feast was recently instituted by the present pope. "Mother of the Church" is the very same title which S Paul VI proclaimed in what Father Loftus once called a "private document", but was really the Conciliar Allocution addressed to the Conciliar Fathers of Vatican II by the Roman Pontiff at the solemn end of their Third Session. And now even PF has joined in, has become complicit in, the perpetration of that "cheat"!
But there is a solution at hand. Whit Monday, in the Extraordinary Form and in the Ordinariate Rite, is still Whit Monday and the status of that day excludes the Feast of our Lady Mother of the Church.
I hope the following doesn't sound negative or 'uninclusive' ... but I think it would require a special Vatican dispensation for Father Basil lawfully to use the Ordinariate Rite. Narrow and negative, I agree. Indeed, I think what the Church really needs is the availability of the Ordinariate Rite, Divine Worship, to all clergy whose English is just about good enough (idonei is the technical term we use).
Passing thought: What 'Anglican tradition' really favours is not so much English as the Vernacular. I wonder if our Dean for Scotland could provide a Scots Gaelic version of the Rite? And how about Welsh and Cornish? Latin, for the Colleges of Oxford, Cambridge, Winchester, and Eton?
I've just remembered: Old Norman French for the Channel Islands, part of the Diocese of Portsmouth.
Manx ...
Urdu ...
However, there is another and much easier answer. According to Summorum Pontificum of Good Pope Benedict XVI, nobody can prevent Fr Basil (I assume he is idoneus) from using the 1962 Extraordinary Form Latin Missal. This would enable him to avoid today's 'Cheat' Feast.
Welcome on board, Father! And sincere good wishes!
_________________________________________________________________________________ "Pope Paul VI cheated and referred to Mary as Mother of the Church during one of his private documents during the Council". Those are the precise words which Fr Loftus actually wrote, as published. For the facts of what the Holy Pontiff actually did and said when he solemnly proclaimed this title of the Mother of God, see Acta Synodalia III/8 909-918 et praesertim 916.
You ask us to pray for Mgr Basil Loftus. My problem is that I do not believe he exists other than in some cartoon.
ReplyDeleteI’m sure this will be explained as a slip of the tongue by Pope Francis, who is known to be a bit ‘off the cuff’ with terminology. One Italian paper recently listed some Italian neologisms introduced by our Holy Father…
ReplyDeleteBack in the dim past I was once leading (or ‘giving out’ as we said back then…) the Rosary during Novitiate and referred to Our Lady as ‘Our Mother’. The Provincial Superior, who happened to be in the chapel at the time, later took me to task for not saying Our Lady instead of Our Mother…
Being a lowly novice, with admirable humility (or self preservation, more like…), I didn’t argue the point with the great man. The arguments would come later…
Perhaps St Ambrose of Milan, Popes Benedict XIV, Leo XIII, St John XXIII, St John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI were also cheating when they applied the title of 'Mater Ecclesiae' to our Blessed Lady, Queen and Mother.
ReplyDeleteOh, I see it's also enshrined in the Catholic Catechism (963). How embarrassing for poor Mgr Loftus: he seems to be the only one marching in step.
One piece of disrespectful idiocy that has apparently now permanently embedded itself in the NO Sunday Mass in England is the introduction to the mid-Mass Hail Mary at the end of the bidding prayers.
ReplyDelete'Mary is the Mother of God, and our Mother too [all fine and orthodox so far] and so we pray with her now as we say 'Hail Mary...'
Firstly, to anyone who cares about language and meaning, "pray *with*" is a complete non sequitur. Even the dullards must have spotted that the Ave Maria is actually a prayer addressed *to* the Virgin Mother of God.
Why on earth would the Mother of God want to pray to herself? To keep us company? To jolly us along?
Perhaps others have forgotten that this final bit of the intro originally started out its Cardinal Heenan-inspired life as 'and so we pray *to* her now, as we say, 'Hail Mary...'
Once Cardinal Heenan was dead (1975, RIP) the iconoclasts altered the prayer.
In my view it is crypto-heretical. And non too crypto, either. We should revert to the original wording. (As the more orthodox churches such as the Oratory have continued to do.)
And anyone who finds that an impossible prayer - well, as Schiller puts it:
"der stehle / weinend sich aus diesem Bund."