The Tablet and Cardinal Sarah and Trained Liturgists

No; I don't read the Tablet, considering it dubiously moral to push one penny in that direction, but I noticed that its front cover is currently advertising an attack (inevitably) on Cardinal Sarah, by some "liturgist" called Mark Francis. This set bells ringing in my mind. I think he may be the same person as the writer who welcomed Summorum Pontificum with the condescending comment that Papa Ratzinger, poor chap, meant well but was "not a Trained Liturgist". On that occasion, so I recall, he described the Tridentine Rite as "Medieval", and complained at the same time that the Roman Canon was "pneumatologically anaemic" ... which (for those of you who prefer to speak English) means that, except at the end, it doesn't mention the Holy Ghost.

That, of course, is because the Roman Canon is still marked by its origins before the fourth century explosion of interest in the Holy Spirit which led, in the East, to the idea that the Transformation of the Eucharistic Elements is caused by the celebrant calling down upon them ("Epiclesis") the Holy Spirit. The Roman Canon, being of earlier origins, operates on the assumption that the Elements are transformed simply through their gracious acceptance by the Father. MF breezily informed us that everybody agrees on the importance of the Epiclesis, so that the classical Roman Rite is gravely defective because it lacks one.

MF, astute bloke, thus contrived to criticise the classical Roman Rite both for being too late ("medieval") and for being too early ("pneumatologically anaemic"), and to do so pretty well in the same breath. (Given this instinct for enthusiastic self-contradiction, it would not be surprising if he feels rather more happily at home in this pontificate than he did in the last.)

What a terrific shame it is that Time Travel is only a literary fiction. Otherwise, we could have shipped MF back to that hillside on which the Man from Nazareth was advising His disciples on how to pray. After hearing the text of the Our Father, MF could have put Him straight on a whole raft of highly important things. "Of course, my dear Fellow, you chaps from Nazareth don't have the advantage of being trained liturgists. If you did, you would have realised that the prayer you have just suggested (of course, it does have one or two good bits in it; not bad; not at all bad for a first attempt) is gravely flawed by its pneumatological anaemia. My fellow Experts and I will draft for you three Alternative Lord's Prayers which will include an essential clause about the Holy Spirit. We will make one of them very brief indeed, so that your followers over the millennia will be saved an awful lot of time ... ".

And the Lord's Prayer to His Father at the Last Supper (John 17) stands very badly in need of the revising pen of Trained Liturgists. How we all wince every time we hear that disgracefully Binitarian formula ("Thou, Father, art [one] in me and I in thee ...")! How much less defective it would have been if it had been revised or, indeed ... far, far better still ... created from scratch by the sanctis et venerabilibus manibus of Archbishop Bugnini himself.

(My Byzantine friends will understand that I am nothing if not deeply respectful of their own beautiful and venerable rite in its own full integrity. I deplore the Byzantinisation of the Roman Rite not one ounce more than I would condemn the Latinisation of the Byzantine Rite.)