Continues.
The elimination, the uncrowning, of Christ the King, against which the Lake Garda Statement is essentially a protest, can be discerned in the details of the liturgical history of the post-Conciliar years with quite as much lucidity as it is explained in any pamphlet by Archbishop Lefebvre. Let me take you through some of them.
In 1968, the Consilium ad exsequendam Constitutionem de Sacra Liturgia published the draft texts of hymns for a new, revised Breviary. For the Feast of Christ the King, it continued to provide the old hymns, composed for the Breviary Office by the talented Jesuit hymnographer Fr Vittorio Genovesi (1887-1967). These included such passages as Scelesta turba clamitat:/ "regnare Christum nolumus" ... [the depraved mob keeps yelling/ "We don't want Christ to be King"]; Te nationum praesides/ honore tollant publico,/ colant magistri, iudices,/ leges et artes exprimant. [May the leaders of the nations/ give you public honour,/ may teachers and judges worship you/ may the laws and arts proclaim you]; O ter beata civitas/ cui rite Christus imperat,/ quae iussa pergit exsequi/ edicta mundo caelitus. [Thrice blessed that state/ over which, as is fitting, Christ bears rule,/ which directly aims at fulfilling the commands/ which Heaven imposes upon the world.].
The Liturgy of the Hours was authorised in 1971. In the three years since the publication of the draft, some edict had clearly gone out from somebody that those words were unsuitable; that the certa utilitas of the Church required that they be censored out of the text. And censored they were. Rarely can a major feast in the Christian year have been papally established to celebrate a great dogmatic truth; then the Office Hymns composed to express that truth; and, finally, that truth liturgically trashed only four years after the death of the hymnographer, and less than half a century after the establishment of the feast.
With hindsight, we can see that those censored words express, with pinpoint accuracy, precisely what has needed to be said with increasing urgency since 1971; but the voice of the Ecclesia Hymniens was silenced. It seems that Fr Genovesi had insights not granted to so many of the Council Fathers, and which were certainly denied to those who subsequently got their corrupting hands on his hymns as well as on the rest of the Church's Liturgy.
Scelesta turba: this depraved mob has now grown in size. It includes the 'Justices' of the American Supreme Court; 'law' makers in Britain and elswhere; 'Human Rights' professionals; the perverted cacophony of those who strive to influence the policies of the 'United Nations' and of international agencies; all of them extremely nice and highly important and well-paid people with clean fingernails who know exactly how to deliver what their Master demands.
To be continued.
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6 comments:
I don't think it's fair to say the depraved mob includes 'the' justices of the Supreme Court, but rather merely a preponderance of them; four of them, after all, dissented.
And it would be funny if it weren't sad, that I can substitute in nearly any recent decision of that court which purports to upend the laws of God and Nature and which ignores the laws of Man and still accurately say "four of them dissented".
No, the entire (all 9) Supreme Court can be so categorized as the depraved mob; nowhere in the dissenting remarks was reference made to God or the Natural Law, but rather simply to an alternative interpretation of the same bedrock, liberal principles that reject the Social Kingship of Christ. Those who base their argument against legalized sodomy on "religious liberty" have already conceded defeat.
John is right. The Joint dissent is just stating that it is not the job of the Supreme Court to decide in this matter, it should be decided by the individual States instead, if they have for instance a "traditional" view of matrimony, marriage respectively human partnerships in general. This is not a dissent protecting the Natural Law, not at all.
Yes, the entire bench of the Supreme Court agrees that the institution of marriage can be destroyed at will. The only debate is over how the destruction is to be carried out: by 50 percent plus one of the Justices or 50 percent plus one of "We, the People."
John R.,
You have put your finger on what presents an acute (well-nigh insurmountable) problem for a Catholic jurist. Imagine an opinion holding for one side or another which is straightforwardly and unabashedly articulated by the judge as having been arrived at and underpinned by applying the Natural Law or the Social Kingship of Christ the King.
Such an ethically-driven justice would almost certainly have to recuse himself/herself in advance from hearing and adjudicating almost any issue.
Take my word for it.
It's a genuine conundrum, for if any substrata of Catholic ethic or morals was to be applied in reaching a decision, the Catholic judge must carefully construct the decision in such a way that the right result is arrived at without overtly citing Catholic ethics or Natural Law. Unless, of course, the judge does not mind being impeached or resigning his office as St. Thomas More did.
I should like to add one additional consideration for reflection.
A judge, upon assuming office, invariably takes an oath administered by the competent civil authority wherewith the judge swears to decide every matter before him/her based on the evidence and facts (including legal argument and citations of the respective parties) presented to him/her at trial and that body of particular law applicable to the issues at hand, i.e. without prejudice or passion.
Therefore, the judge’s adjudication must necessarily flow from the evidence, competence, vigour, and acumen of the presentations of the solicitors trying the particular case before him/her. In the best of all possible worlds, a judge ought be a tabula rasa as to the evidence though not so in respect of the law.
Now this may surprise some of you, but not all solicitors, barristers, law clerks, etc. are created equal. Hence some of the aforementioned appear at court to argue a case that has the support of the angels in heaven (and the Catholic jurist may believe just that); however said barrister makes such a hash of the presentation to the court that the Catholic judge, bound by oath to decide on the evidence before him/her is compelled either to follow his conscience and ignore the paucity of evidence adduced (thereby violating both his/her oath and every axiom of jurisprudence and calling his/her every future decision into a question) or grit his/her teeth a decide on the facts and law as presented at trial by the opposing barrister, etc.
There is good reason (viz. the recent en banc 5- 4 U.S. Supreme Court decision on ‘marriage equality’) that the public generally despises or discredits the opinions of judges who have a reputation for ‘judicial activism’, i.e. rewriting a law to suit their judicial philosophy.
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