Fr H's Review of 2016

Annus valde mirablilis, miraculis potentioribus abundans ... annus in quo Romanus Pontifex, vir inter garrulos loquacissimus, vir qui dum vigilat loqui desinere nunquam potest, a quattuor tantum cardinalibus quinque tantum dubia proponentibus in silentium profundum actus est.

Haec addenda mihi videntur: Raimundus Burke, vir pius mitis generosus doctus, Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Diaconus Cardinalis, inter tot Ecclesiae Catholicae negotia calamitates incommoda aerumnas pastorem se et gregis custodem et LEONEM monstravit et HUIUS ANNI SALUTIS MMXVI VIRUM EGREGIUM.

Ecumenical voices

Here is another quotation from a friendly non-RC theologian:

"Benedict exudes holiness, whereas Bergoglio has felt like an empty fake from the beginning ... where will this all end? Most likely there is no going back for either side at this point. The great drama impacts the whole of Christendom, and I have a deep-down sense that the ultimate outcome will aid the course of Christian Unity."

I am sure that there are non-Catholics who are gleeful about Bergoglio because they see him, rightly or wrongly, as leading the Catholic Church into the same grim antinomian apostasies which began to afflict Protestantism in the 1930s. But there clearly are other non-Catholics who do not have this sick agenda, and who perceive that the "Absolute Monarchy" Papacy preached to us by Bergoglian Hypersuperueberpapalists is as dangerous as it is unattractive. Perhaps when we emerge from this horribly dark tunnel our relationship with those Protestants who sympathised and prayed for us in our bad days will be transformed. Why should it not be?

"Brother-and-Sister"?? UPDATED

"An adulterous couple may repent of their adultery and live together, in a state of probably great temptation and occasion of sin, as long as they undertake to do their best to resist that temptation; and for as long as they are able to claim that the good of children requires it."

UPDATE How far back does this concession go? I have traced it back to the closing homily of the VIth Synod, published in AAS 72 (1980) paragraph 7 page 1082 (whence it entered Familiaris consortio). Is anybody aware of an earlier Magisterial articulation?

This idea, as is clear from the thread to yesterday's post, is fraught with problems and can be a source of real, lifelong agony to faithful but deserted spouses. I will add another problem which has occurred to me: is it understood and made clear to such adulterous couples by the 'pastor' who is 'accompanying' them that, once the good of children no longer requires their cohabitation, they will (as any deeply and truly repentant couple of former adulterers would surely wish to do) finally and definitively separate, securing a civil divorce and dividing their assets?


But my main problem is as follows. Clearly the "Brother-and-Sister" solution to the 'problem' was elaborated as just about the very furthest that the Church could possibly go in assenting to an arrangement which is manifestly full of problems. One step further, and the Church would be completely abandoning the Verba Domini concerning Indissolubility. It is a solution which clings by no more than its fingertips ... or do I mean the skin of its teeth ... to the Word of the Incarnate Torah, Divine Mercy Incarnate, our Lord Jesus Christ.

"OK ... the couple will probably fall victims to temptation from time to time ... who wouldn't ... but it's easy enough to absolve them. OK ... Marriage is not only about sex but about a totius vitae consortium, and this pair are being allowed everything else that appertains to Marriage (mensa if not torum) even if they do abstain from sex ... but that can't be helped. OK ... they are likely to constitute a public scandalum, but they can be urged to avoid this by furtively receiving the Sacraments in places where they are not known."

The contorted and extraordinary nature of this procedure makes abundantly clear that it is conceded as an extreme and just-about-defensible possibility, a piece of Pastoral Mercy which teeters on the very edge of the precipice of disobedience to the Revealed Word.

Yet it is now being attacked by the heretics, with apparent countenance from Bergoglio, as some sort of difficult, draconian, and really rather unfair and unreasonable (not to say cruel) piece of legalistic rigidity! It is treated as a nasty piece of rigid 'Pharisaeism' which is being imposed on suffering people by unfeeling and rigid clerics whom the same Bergoglio insults and foul-mouths as often as he can think of a pretext for doing so.

If I have got this wrong and am being unfair to Bergoglio, perhaps it would be pastorally helpful for him to clarify my dubia.

Are we not in a bit of a mess?

Cardinal Burke's latest (3)

My third question to his Eminence, followed by his reply, was as follows.
Is there any pastoral or legislative authority within the Church Militant by which dispensations can be granted in these matters, or do they involve a ius Divinum which sets them beyond dispensation and legislative modification?
There is no pastoral authority of any kind within the Church who can grant a dispensation to a party, so that he may live in a marital way with someone who is not his spouse. This is a question of Ius Divinum and is articulated in can. 1141 of the Code of Canon Law: "A marriage which is ratified and consummated cannot be dissolved by any human power or by any cause other than death".

His Eminence concluded his letter thus:
I hope that these answers are of some help to you and to the clergy who have raised them to you. The clear answer to these questions is imperative for the correction of the widespread confusion in the Church which is redounding to the grave harm of souls.

Asking God to bless you and all your priestly labors, and confiding your intentions to the intercession of Our Lady of Walsingham, Saint Michael the Archangel, Saint Joseph, Saint John the Baptist, Saint John Apostle and Evangelist, and Saint John Fisher, I remain

Yours in the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary

Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke.

Concluded.

Cardinal Burke's latest (2)

My second query, followed by Cardinal Burke's reply:
Is it acceptable for a couple not validly married and with offspring for whom they are responsible to argue that, for the good of that offspring, they may lawfully continue to live as husband and wife because it may prudently be foreseen that their relationship, if not sustained by adulterous intimacies, would fail to survive?
A couple who are living in an irregular matrimonial union may argue that they must continue to live under the same roof for the sake of their offspring, but they must live without recourse to adulterous acts, that is, they must live as brother and sister. In other words, the need to live under the same roof for the sake of children or elderly grandparents is not an argument which justifies acts of adultery. Both reason and faith tell us that adulterous acts can never be justified, can never serve the good of either the parties or of their children.

To continue.

Cardinal Burke's latest (1)

As we await the text of the Fraternal Correction of the Roman Pontiff which Cardinal Burke has promised, I can share with you a briefer text from his Eminence's pen. A few weeks ago, some younger clergy asked me to put some queries to the Cardinal. I think the reason for this was that I, being old, am perhaps not quite as vulnerable to intimidatory threats and petty episcopal malice as they are. These queries were sent before it was made public that the Four Cardinals had submitted their five Dubia. I received his Eminence's most gracious answers dated 3 December. He responded, he said, "to certain serious questions of the clergy in the present situation of widespread confusion and error in the Church".

My first query, which was followed by the reply, follows below.
Is it licit for a priest to give Absolution or the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist to a person who is living as husband or wife with another to whom they are not, in the eyes of the Church, validly married; when that person makes clear that he or she has no intention of metanoia and of doing their best, with the help of Divine Grace, to avoid committing such adultery in the future?
A priest may not give Absolution to a party who is living in an irregular matrimonial union and has no firm purpose of amendment. If the party has the firm purpose of amendment, pledging, with the help of Divine Grace, to avoid any sin of adultery in the future, then the priest may give Absolution, counseling the party that he should only approach to receive Holy Communion in a place in which there is no reasonable chance of scandal. 

To continue.

Private

Josee ... if you had included your email in the Comment you sent me, I would have been able to reply to you!!

Baroque

I feel that the Baroque gets a raw deal. English culture is deeply antipathetic to it; why? Because it is (for the most part) foreign and we are a nasty insular xenophobic people given to defining ourselves only in terms of not being foreign? Perhaps you can tell me. But there are writers of intelligence - Pickstock and Hemming spring to mind - who don't give the Baroque a fair run. And in liturgical circles, you only have to characterise something as 'Baroque' to have spoken its condemnation.

On a trip to Prague, Pope Benedict XVI said something which strikes me as perhaps the start of a Spirituality of the Baroque; if Prague, he asked, is the heart of Europe, in what does that 'heart' consist?
"Surely a clue is found in the architectural jewels that adorn this city ... Their beauty expresses faith; they are epiphanies of God that rightly leave us pondering the glorious marvels to which we creatures can apire when we give expression to the aesthetic and cognitive aspects of our inmost being ... The creative encounter of the classical tradition and the Gospel gave birth to a vision of man and society attentive to God's presence among us."

It looks to me as though Benedict's theology of the aesthetic may prove one of many significant intellectual gifts of that wonderful and unforgettable pontificate.

We of the Ordinariate Patrimony may have someting to contribute here. Sir Ninian Comper ... of whom Sir Nikolaus 'Bauhaus' Pevsner used the adjective 'limp' ... believed in 'Unity by Inclusion' . He discovered this in between the work he did at my 'title' church of S Mary's, Beaconsfield, and his contribution of such splendour in Pusey House Chapel, here in Oxford. What on earth is wrong with putting a baroque altar into a gothic church? Henry VII did it to splendid effect in the magnificent perpendicular Lady Chapel in Westminster Abbey! Just imagine that vault with its polychromatic paint, enshrining the baldachino and Altar.

I hope you are Unhelpful UPDATE

SOME JOLLY GOOD MATERIALS ON THE THREAD
From time to time, I address you on the sophisms and manipulations of Management-talk ... the way our Masters talk. Today, I invite you join me in analysis of a particular word: "unhelpful". I have recently read a few words by an English-speaking prelate referring to the Letter of the 45, which I, all unworthy, was privileged to sign. He found it "unhelpful".

Where I've got to so far is something like this.

'Unhelpful' corrupts judgement because it avoids questions of right and wrong. If it does elicit a dialogue, the dialogue has been required to be about whether the words concerned are helpful ... whatever that may mean ... rather than about their possible truth.

'Unhelpful' in fact implies, generally mendaciously, that there is an aim shared by all reasonable people, which some 'unhelpful' people have blundered into obstructing.

Use of adjectives like 'Unhelpful' enables the speaker (this is a common feature of much modern Management-talk) to maintain a lofty, Olympian posture of imperturbable and superior composure. Another example: Management-talkers will say "Concern has been expressed about your XYZ" because that is calm and distanced ... so very unlike speaking the the truth (which would be "Your XYZ has made me hopping mad"). Management-talkers [this is the verbal game which is being set up] are calm and dispassionate people, simply because they are such enormously great men. 'Unhelpful' means "I am very angry with you, nasty little nuisance that you are, for saying ABC because it cuts across the policies advocated by me and my almost-equally-important cronies ... indeed, it (unhelpfully!) gives away the radical fact that this is a matter about which there is disagreement ... whereas there isn't ... because there shouldn't be".

There is an amusing additional nuance about 'Unhelpful'. Often I detect a hint in this word suggesting that if you had expressed yourself more quietly and more deferentially, Authority would have been more sympathetic because it could have grandly  treated you as a poor sad thing needing TLC and help. We had all this in the C of E when they were bringing in their Women Bishops. They wouldn't have minded if we had played the role they had assigned to us: of being dim and pathetic losers. If we had snivelled quietly in a corner, they would have been all over us, arms round our shoulders and "Believe me, we do feel your pain". But we were bold and confident and we won all the arguments and we expressed ourselves in public and private fora where we were heard, and we got a great many wonderful laughs out of exposing the absurdities, hypocrisies, and dishonesties of our opponents. Archdeacon Armitage Shanks and all the rest of them, how they hated it! How truly 'unhelpful' they found it! They then imported their blessed term 'tone' into the argument. We were (of course) entitled to express our 'views', but our 'tone' was disgraceful. Believe me, when Grand People, when the Great and the Good, start telling you that it is your tone that they do not like, Rejoice and Be Glad and go home and have a nice big Drink, celebrating quia merces vestra magna est in caelo.

(In the end, by the way, we did clamber up onto the podium to collect the Gold Medal, because there was a Somebody in Rome with whom we had been in touch since the 1990s and who had listened to us and taken us seriously and understood us and who gave us that Corporate Unity with the See of S Peter for which generations of our forbears had longed.) 

Over to you!! Two generations ago, English philologists demonstrated and analysed (seminally, Professor Alan Ross in 1954) the distinction between U talk and Non-U talk ['U' means 'Upper-class']. How about M and Non-M? You must all have experienced Management-talk? You might even (now, here's a thought) be Management-talkers! 

 Examples ... analysis ...

Private messages

Dear Josee  ... Dear Protasius ... if you will make your email addresses available to me, I will explain to you why your (very different!) comments have not been enabled, and what changes in them would make me feel able to do so. I beg you to forgive me in the circumstances in which "Enable" and "Delete" are the only options I have.

Dear Mike: everyone is welcome in an Ordinariate congregation. If you are a Catholic ... of Latin or Byzantine or Maronite or whatever rite ... you are welcome to take the very fullest part in the sacramental life of an Ordinariate community. We would simply love to have you. If you can serve or sing, your ministry would be invaluable!! If you are a cradle Catholic, we can't actually put you on the books as a canonical member of the Ordinariate ... unless a member of your family has Anglican Previous, in which case you can squeeze in with them!

But not being on the canonical books would make no difference to your daily life as member of an Ordinariate community. It would only impinge if things like Marriage or Ordination were in mind.

When I say everyone, of course I mean also those who are still Anglicans. In normal circumstances, you would not be allowed to receive the Sacraments (although the rules of the Catholic Church in this respect are not actually as strict as some people think, as long as you share fully the whole Catholic belief about the Eucharist). But if you are attracted by Catholic worship in the Anglican tradition, you could be very happy with us.

Summorum Pontificum

Bishop Schneider has called for the SSPX to be given the justice they were denied in the 1970s. I do wonder, with great respect to his Lordship, whether things are now any longer quite as simple as that.

For a decade or two, we have been told that regularisation must wait upon the acceptance by the Society of the teaching of Vatican II and of the post-Conciliar Magisterium. But given the way things are now, might it not be fair and equitable for the Society now to insist that Papa Bergoglio manifest a proper and unambiguous submission to the post-Conciliar Magisterium of S John Paul II and of Benedict XVI? And, in particular, that he enact (perhaps as part of a deal with the Society) a solemn reconfirmation in his own name of Veritatis splendor, Familiaris consortio, and Summorum Pontificum?

The Roman Pontiff, suspiciously, has already declined to to give the very simple answers requested of him to the effect that Veritatis splendor and Familiaris consortio still, as it were, apply. And on November 20, I expressed a fear that a regularisation of the SSPX might be accompanied by a cancellation, or evisceration, of Summorum Pontificum. Indeed, on 21 September 2016 Sandro Magister had reported somebody called Andrew Grillo (Alcuin Reid's sparring partner??) as opining that the next Synod would discuss "the collegial exercise of the episcopate and the restitution to the bishop of full authority over diocesan liturgy". It was pretty obvious to me what the nasty little phrase I italicise was code for, as I wrote a few days later on my blog. In the event, we were reprieved; a different topic was to be selected for the next Synod (Youff, I think), possibly because Bergoglio is decent enough still to have some reticence about too overt a public humiliation of Joseph Ratzinger while he is still alive. But Grillo's expectations are unlikely to have been entertained by him alone.

There has always been a practical certainty that a certain sort of bishop, for whom 'subsidiarity' means I Must Be Free To Ban Everything That Isn't To My Personal Taste, would not easily abandon his hopes of (at least) limiting and controlling worship according to the Old Rite. In one of the Ordinariates (not the British one!) a local bishop put pressure some years ago on the Ordinary to prevent the use of the Extraordinary Form within that Ordinariate. Readers will not need to be reminded of the savage humiliations inflicted, and by a Roman Dicastery, upon the Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Immaculate; humiliations which are still, as far as I know, in place. There was an American bishop who required clergy to pass a test in Latin to prove that they were idonei to celebrate the Old Mass ... typical piece of Liberal nastiness, isn't it ... you arrange for your clergy, contra canonem, to be ordained without having been taught Latin, then you jeer and sneer at them for not knowing it. At a jollier level, English clergy may remember how Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor acquired, for a year or two, the nickname of "The Envisager" because he attempted to circumscribe Summorum Pontificum by issuing a whole lot of comically panic-ridden rubbish making use of the phrase "It is envisaged that ..." [NB good example of Management-talk using the impersonal passive construction].

Bigotry still abounds.

Archbishop Lefebvre's Society always insisted that they were not begging to be allowed to exist as a tolerated ghetto. They insisted that they would only do a deal if every Latin Rite priest were allowed, without needing special faculties or permissions, to offer the authentic Roman Rite. Accordingly, the entire point of Summorum Pontificum was to call their bluff by giving precisely what they had demanded, and returning the Usus Antiquior to the whole Latin Church. This represented an authoritative removal of the old 'Indult' culture, in which it was only allowed within personal parishes served by organisations such as FSSP and ICKSP, or where it was permitted by an indulgent Diocesan.

Were some deal to be put before the SSPX, accompanied by suspicions that there might be a diminution in the right of every Latin Rite priest to offer the Old Mass, I very much hope that His Excellency Bishop Fellay would refuse it. Or would indicate that, in such a possible future eventuality, he would unilaterally suspend certain of the articles in his agreement with the Vatican. A firm hand on the tiller would be a very great service to the entire Latin Church.

I write this as someone who have, for years, said the prayer Domine Iesu Christe, qui dixisti in all my Masses with an intention for the canonical regularisation of the SSPX. Regularisation would afford great benefits both to the entire Latin Church, and to the Society; not least by providing a refuge of incardination for clergy being intimidated elsewhere (any provision excluding the Society from exercising the right to incardinate would be ... very dodgy .... very fishy ..... ). I hope the terms agreed would include a provision for the Agenda of each Episcopal Conference to be sent in good time to the Superior of the Society, so that he or one of the other bishops could attend a meeting and explain why some particular proposal would have a divisive effect. After all, the whole point of enhancing the authority of Episcopal Conferences is to encourage divisiveness. Isn't it?

Capitulation is not the way ahead.

An appeal to Ecclesia Dei on behalf of our Lady of Fatima

Pope Francis has said that he does not agree with "The Reform of the Reform". Some of my correspondents find this odd ... after all, those who engineered the imposition of the Novus Ordo back in the 1960s did not seem terribly devoted to a principle of Liturgical Immutability. But the Holy Father's words do raise the question: are we supposed to say Good Bye to the whole Ratzinger policy whereby the OF and EF would converge so that, in a generation or three, they would together constitute just one Form?

My own view is we should not abandon the idea of Enriching each Form from the other one. And I think Ecclesia Dei should take the lead, in this coming Fatima Year.

The EF ought to be brought up to date, not least as far as concerns its Calendar; and Benedict XVI explicitly envisaged this. (In the old days, Rome did this frequently by adding things to aliquibus locis, from which they sometimes subsequently slipped across into the Calendare Universale.) Sadly, the treatment which Traditionalists experienced for decades, during the period before Benedict XVI made it clear that the Old Mass never had lawfully been abrogated, has made them ... us ... fearful of any tinkerings. But in fact a Calendar which has not been added to in fifty years is itself something unknown in Tradition. So ... a consensual way of putting this process into effect, delicately, sensitively, gently, would be to start with May 13. Would anybody, especially any devoted client of our blessed Lady, violently object to May 13 being made the EF festival of our Lady of Fatima, with an appropriate Mass and Office being authorised? This would necessitate the removal of S Robert Bellarmine (possibly to his OF date of September 17).

Surely, it is within the competence of Ecclesia Dei to do this? Having perhaps sought the opinion and good will first of SSPX, FSSP, the Ordinariates, ICKSP, and other major interests?
 

Seminary training (2)

Continues ...
 (2) General Norms 1 and 4 clearly subordinate the Diocesan Bishop, in this matter of training ordinandi, to the Episcopal Conference. There have been other evidences of this most deplorable tendency in recent legislation. I deplore it on the doctrinal grounds that the Lord has set his Church up as Universal and Particular ... and the Particular Church is not a National Episcopal Conference but the Church in communion with its bishop. This desired subordination of Bishop to Conference represents an attack upon the status of both the Universal Church and the Particular Church. And I object to it on the practical grounds that it, unhappily, it is linked to current attempts within the Church, by (what Blessed John Henry Newman so neatly called) "an arrogant and insolent faction", to gain control and to exercise a dictatorial power which is unmindful of Tradition, doing this by means of powerful conferences and bully boy bureaucracies. Long live Apostolos suos. Long live Gerhard Mueller.

(3) Para 4 cheerfully informs us (without explanation) that presbyters are ordained "by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit". Such epicletic enthusiasms do not conform to the spirit and genius (or the texts) of the Roman Church and her liturgy, in which the Episcopate is typologically aggregated to the Aaronic High Priest; the Presbyters to the Temple Priests; and the Deacons to the Levites. This was the clear teaching of the Roman Church from I Clement down to the aftermath of Vatican II, when Dom Botte got his hands on the Pontifical.

(4) Paragraph 166, on the teaching of Scripture, fails to mention the importance of teaching the Typological way of understanding the Scriptures. It seems to think that the Old Testament is studied, not because it is central to our Religion (which it is), but mainly in order to enable Catholics to be chummy with present-day post-Biblical Jamnian Synagogue-centred Judaism ... a radically different religion from the Altar-centred cult of the Old Testament of which we are the continuators. I doubt if one would catch those who train rabbis explaining that the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings should be studied so that their students will understand Christians better! Of course not! The reason for that, G*d bless them, is that they have not lost their nerve, their self-confidence.

(5) In Paragraph 183, it does not seem to occur to those who drafted it to think that knowledge of Latin might have anything to do with Liturgy. Sacrosanctum Concilium is now remembered only as an archaic incantation, mumbo jumbo to be uttered in appropriate circumstances, not for what its actual text actually said ... Heaven forbid! That way would lie Rigidity!

What the Latin Church needs is a closer and more faithful conformity to the totality of her traditions, not only to documents dated later than 1961, or, even worse, after 2012. If the elements I have cited from this new Vatican document are anything to go by, the gulf between the Traditum and the everyday life of the modern Church is still being prised ever wider, and the wells of community Memory are still being rendered ever more polluted.

Clericalism? Are the Traddies guilty?

The medieval historian John Bossy used to point out how dominant the laity were in the Church life of the High Middle Ages. Parishes were corporately structured, and dominated by powerful lay Guilds led by pairs of Wardens; for their religious needs they hired and paid clergy, just as, doubtless, for their footwear they employed and remunerated cobblers. Sometimes you can still see the guildswomen or guildsmen pictorially immortalised at the bottoms of the windows they put into their Parish Churches, as at S Neots in Cornwall. There were sacramental things that only the clergy, of course, could do; but it was not the clergy who called the tune. ('Clericalism', Dix loved to suggest, is a post-Reformation Presbyterian and Calvinist phenomenon.)

I hope no-one will be offended if I point out that things are rather like the High Middle Ages in Traddiland. In my experience, the Traditionalist enterprise is forcefully energised and led by well-qualified and determined lay men and women, often if not usually young. For their liturgical needs, they call upon clergy whom they know to be idonei. They are very polite and courteous and grateful and generous; but it always seems clear to me who is in charge. To avoid all misunderstanding, I must make clear that I think this de facto system works extremely well and I am very happy indeed when I am allowed to be part of it. I am not being snide ... quite the opposite ... and if anybody suggests I am 'complaining' I shall strangle them with a printed copy of the Novus Ordo.

It is an amusing paradox that the disorders in the post-Conciliar Church should have led to such a (please forgive my use of this word) empowerment of the traddy Laity. By empowerment I do not refer to anything like the activities of the infantilised laity of the 'Mainstream Church'. You all know the sort of "lay involvement" that happens there ... just before Holy Communion, the celebrant breaks into the sugary mood-music to call out "We're short of a Eucharistic Minister ... can somebody else please come up?" And there is some gruesome little committee which meets weekly with the pp to "arrange the liturgy". No; I am talking about laity empowered in the sense of possessing adult competence and grown-up self-confidence.

I think this is one of the many admirable fruits of the movement towards Catholic authenticity which so blessed the last part of the pontificate of Papa Wojtila, and then the Ratzinger Years. Indeed, it was encouraged by (for example) the provisions in Summorum Pontificum establishing the rights of lay coetus with its unparalleled (and admirable) emphasis on subsidiarity. It is what makes the Traddy movement so strong and resilient ... and so well armoured against unsympathetic prelates. No paseran!

Catholic Traditionalist laity, above all, do not seem to be nearly as scared of bishops as so many Catholic clergy are, the poor trembly things.

Failure to tremble at the knees at the very thought of "The Bishop" or "The Archbishop" or "The Cardinal" is, of course, a healthy feature also of the Anglican Patrimony and so it flourishes also in the Ordinariates. It needs to spread. Down with Clericalism! As the Holy Father would (and probably does) say, Down with Rigid Narcissistic Pelagian Prelaticism!

Seminary training (1)

I have had a quick look through the new Vatican document. I may have missed things; or I may be offering unbalanced accounts. Those who have read the text carefully are invited (with references to specific paragraphs) to correct me.

Three points.
(1) it seems to me that very little of this document goes back behind and beyond the Second Vatican Council. Thus the document Veterum Sapientia of Pope S John XXIII has left few marks. For example; its very sensible and moderate requirement that Seminary Professors be sacked if they are not fluent in Latin does not appear in the recent document (unless it's in a footnote?).

But ... the good news ... Para 183 says "As well as Biblical Hebrew and Greek, seminarians should be introduced to the the study of Latin from the start of the course of formation." But  ... I have some dubia (which I will not submit to the Sovereign Pontiff himself):
(a) What does "introduced to ... from" mean? Does it imply the same practical end result as the canonical term calleant?
(b) How does the phrase "As well as Biblical Hebrew and Greek" fit syntactically into the sentence as a whole? Does it just mean "As well as the Hebrew and Greek we've mentioned in Para 166 ..."
(c) Para 166 says that seminarians should be "given the opportunity to learn some elements of Biblical Hebrew and Greek". I feel uneasy about the three words opportunity and some and elements.

Various additions are made to syllabuses, including Ecology. I spent most of my working life in Education, where I learned to have a deep and respectful admiration for the genius of those who make or advocate  additions to syllabuses. Where my admiration sometimes fell short was when it came to the question of how space was to be found for such additions without increasing the lengths of days and of years (although there has been a recent media story to the effect than in a few hundred million years the day will indeed have twenty five hours).

To be continued.

"Madmen and sycophants in the Vatican": A FOOTNOTE

I wrote yesterday in criticism of the hypersuperueberpapalist nutters who, in their respective generations, have seemed to wish to assimilate the Roman Pontiff to one of the Persons of the Glorious and Undivided Trinity. Today, I wish very briefly to point out that this tendency, as well as being arguably blasphemous and idolatrous or at least heretical, is contrary to the Tradition of the Universal Church, and to that of the great and glorious Roman Church herself.

At Chalcedon, the Fathers greeted the Tome of S Leo, not with cries of "Christ himself has spoken" or "This is the utterance of the Holy Spirit", but (after carefully examining its text) Peter has spoken through Leo. This is profoundly in accordance with an Irenaean ecclesiology, whereby orthodoxy is witnessed by the identity of the teaching handed down from generation to generation in the particular churches, more especially in those of Apostolic foundation, and most normatively in the Roman Church. And this, of course, is why S Peter ... and very commonly S Paul ... are central to any account we give of the Ministry of the Roman Church within the Oikoumene. They are fontal to that Church's Tradition.

But Olivier Clement of the Institute of S Sergius in Paris has pointed out that Martyrdom adds a further element: "As martyrs - seized, that is to say, by the Resurrection - they are for ever present in Rome". Rome is the place "where the apostles (Peter and Paul) preside daily and where their blood renders constant testimony to the glory of God". And so the tropaia ton Apostolon, the presence of the enshrined bodies of Ss Peter and Paul, guarantee for Theodoret of Cyrrhus that "Rome is the metropolis of Religion".

When, in more recent times, Roman Pontiffs have defined dogma ex cathedra, they have prayed for the guidance of the Holy Spirit before doing so; but they have not boldly claimed to be mouthpieces of the Holy Spirit or to speak upon His inspiration. Even today, when a Pope canonises, he does so auctoritate Domini nostri Iesu Christi, beatorum Apostolorum Petri et Pauli ac Nostra; when at Easter the Indulgence is proclaimed, it is the authority of the Apostles Peter and Paul that is mentioned.

Does this matter? After all, a Pope could proclaim nonsense and try to cloak it with talk about being Peter's Successor. Wouldn't that be as bad as all Bergoglio's talk about the Holy Spirit?

I think it does matter, and does make a great deal of difference. Faithfulness to the Didache Petrou, to the freedom guaranteed by the Petrine Ministry, keeps Peter's Successor, and us, safe in the historical and objective realities of Scripture and Tradition, and (let's dare to be down to earth about this) the unavoidable Textuality of each. On the other hand, claims to the inspiration of "the Holy Spirit", unverifiable by objective constraints and controls, can lure us into the servitude of a religion manufactured by man, a cult of Let's Make It Up For Ourselves. This cult is ultimately fashioned upon the model of the old religion of the Gnostics, who created their own fake alternatives to the Tradition received from the Apostles because they felt they knew with such certainty that the Church's Tradition was wrong.

To employ the terminology currently being encouraged by the Enemy himself, it is better to be 'Rigid' in the Faith once for all delivered, than to be led up the infinitely flexible garden path.

Believe me, we do not need some new and horrible dogma that the voice of Bergoglio is the voice of the Holy Spirit. For two millennia, Roman Pontiffs, in harmony with Churches of the East and of the West, have been content with the notion that Ss Peter and Paul are sub Christo the basis of their authority. And the First Vatican Council put this beyond denial when it infallibly defined that the Holy Spirit does not inspire the Pope to teach new doctrine; the claim made by the church's authentic Magisterium is that He helps the Successors of S Peter to guard the Apostolic Tradition, the Depositum Fidei.

What Roman Pontiffs, in communion with the whole Body of Christ, have through so many centuries taught, I know or I can ascertain. Who, or what, Bergoglio's "God of surprises", the "Spirit" his sycophants so enthusiastically endorse, is, I fearfully confess that I do not know.

Madmen and sycophants in the Vatican: nothing new under the sun.

Everybody knows that Blessed John Henry Newman wrote critically about the "aggressive insolent faction" which attempted, unsuccessfully, to foist doctrinal aburdities upon the Church at the First Vatican Council. Let's zoom the camera in on that fascinating period.

In the feverish Roman atmosphere of 1870, as the hypersuperueberpapalists at the Council ran around propagating extreme and barmy notions of the papal office, this little bit of nonsense did the rounds: "The three incarnations of the Son of God are: in the womb of our Lady; in the Eucharist; and in the Pope". We appear now in 2016 to have moved on from that, because instead we have Pintos and Farrells and other hypers telling us that whatever Bergoglio utters is the utterance of the Holy Spirit. What has stayed the same is that the hypers in each age appear to have the same disordered passion to see the Roman Pontiff as some sort of incarnation of one of the Persons of the Blessed and Undivided Trinity. Seems to me close to blasphemy and idolatry. Did I say 'close'?

Feverish indeed it was, that time of Vatican I, just like our own age. In their enthusiam to push their program through megafast, the hypers had a brilliant thought: "Definition by Acclamation" (hypers not unusually have an eye for the Short-Cut). Four brave Fathers opposed this, and announced that if it happened, they would walk out of the Council and tell the world why. They were the admirably principled Archbishop Kenrick and his two fellow Americans, Archbishop Purcell and Bishop Fitzgerald of Little Rock; and an Irishman, David Moriarty. I think Four is a good number.

More recent visitors to this blog may be unfamiliar with that last name. Dr Moriarty was Bishop of Kerry (the ancient see once known as Ardfert and Aghadoe); and he was a very close friend and correspondent of Blessed John Henry Newman, our Patron in the Ordinariate (Kenrick, also, was influenced by Newman's thought). If we ever have a posthumous category of goodies labelled "Historical Honorary Chums of the Ordinariate", I shall nominate David Moriarty, Scourge of the hypers.

Long live the 'Kingdom of the West'! Long live the Ordinariate! Down with aggressive insolent factions!

Response to query

Fr Aidan Nichols OP wrote Catholics of the Anglican Patrimony: the Personal Ordinariate of our lady of Walsingham, Gracewing, 96pp, pbk, £7.99. Before the Ordinariates were erected, the same author wrote The Panther and the Hind, a more historical and theological exploration of the ground.

Is Fr Z important?

I would not wish to imply that Fr Z is ever anything other than tremendously important! I wish I had half his erudition and energy! But I do wish to suggest to you that his post yesterday was very, very important indeed. ... I wish the Thesaurus offered more synonyms for "important" ...

Father gave links to a highly important paper by Professors John Finnis and Germain Grisez. Some readers might be unaware of what enormously significant scholars these are. For decades, they have been expounding the moral teaching of the Catholic Church, and doing so in complete fidelity to the Deposit of Faith, the Tradition that comes to us from the Apostles. But doing so with a profundity and a freshness of touch which constitutes a valid and illuminating "development" of that Tradition. Finnis, of this University, is a jurist and a philosopher of Law with an international standing (an important constitutional case which has this week been argued before a full eleven judge bench of our Supreme Court involved discussion of a paper which he he had written). I mean no disrespect to the Four Courageous Cardinals when I say that the entry by Finnis and Grisez into the Amoris laetitia controversy is probably the most disabling intellectual blow yet delivered to the shadowy and heterodox circle which surrounds our Holy Father.

Fr Z also provided a link to a sermon preached by Papa Bergoglio in the Domus Sanctae Marthae. Coming as it does so soon after publication of the Sovereign Pontiff's words about shit-eating, this puerile and unbalanced attack upon those the pope appears to enjoy hating seems to me ... I feel compelled by Canon 212 paragraph 3 and the Holy Father's own often-expressed desire for Parrhesia to say this ... to raise disturbing questions about Pope Francis' mind.

I shall not enable any comments upon that last paragraph.   And, by the way, I have recently declined to enable a number of comments because of the violence of their language or their espousal of heresies such as Sedevacantism. And, if you desire me to get in touch with you personally and privately, you need to send me your email address.

Blue vestments

If Spain is entitled to blue vestments on December 8 because of its role in promoting the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, I would have thought that a fortiori England would be even more entitled.

The use of blue among Anglicans for Advent is part of the old (Percy 'dishonest plagiariser' Dearmer) idea that you show you are are a loyal Anglican and not a beastly Romaniser by discovering details in medieval English usage which diverge from modern Roman custom, and then proudly parading them. An example of such Dearmerism, so I have been told, survives at Exeter Cathedral, where they use blue in Advent. If true, this is all the more daft because, whatever they did elsewhere in England, at Exeter Bishop Grandisson's Ordinale (14th century) clearly required violet (the dear Burgundian old boy very naturally preferred to operate iuxta morem curie Romane). Incidentally, in case any of you were wondering, its Latinity does carefully distinguish between violet and blue.

It allows, however, although optionally (non inconvenienter indui possent), the use of blue on double feasts in Advent and Lent. Since the Conception was a festum duplex, we have here "English" precedent for using blue on December 8.

Rumour has it that the use of light blue for feasts of the Theotokos is common in the Russian and other 'Slavic' Churches. Is this by Western influence? I find it a little unexpected in as far as in Byzantine iconography our Lady is normatively clad in red.

Initiating processes

I've been thinking about the phrase "initiating processes rather than occupying spaces", which I heard somewhere.

I'm not a historian, but I think I read that Hitler never formally decreed the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem and certainly not verbally on paper; he just made sure that his intimates understood his feelings.

Is that the sort of thing the phrase means?

Patriarch Bartholomaios and Amoris Laetitia

So Patriarch Bartholomaios has put his money on Amoris laetitia. I think he may prove to be a ruinously poor gambler. But perhaps, as so often with regard to these Byzantines who are not yet in Full Communion with the See of S Peter, we should apply to their words a hermeneutic of asking what, in this exchange, are Constantinople and Moskow really saying to each other?

I rather doubt whether Bartholomaios, in his heart of hearts, really feels a lot of enthusiasm for a model of Universal Primacy which functions as the Bergoglian parody of the Petrine Ministry does. But Francis and Cyril met in Cuba ... Bartholomew's Great and Holy Pan-Orthodox Council failed (after so many years in preparation) to match up to the exacting standards of a damp squib ... the atmosphere in Istanbul seems to be getting dodgier and dodgier ... so I am not surprised that his All-Holiness currently feels badly in need of a Friend among the Big Boys in the School Playground.

I print here something I saw, words of one of our Separated Brethren, on the internet the other day:

"Speaking as one with a formal ecumenical dimension to his ministry, I can confidently say that the 'we' for whom I speak are prepared to sit down and discuss Benedict XVI's modest articulation of the papal office, whereas there is no way we could reasonably converse with Bergoglio, a dictator inventing dogma off the cuff who loves to dialogue with those who fully agree with him."

Roland Freisler and the Volksgerichthof

It is commonly held that the Nazi jurist Roland Freisler, while president of the Volksgerichthof, knew that he would find his 'defendants' guilty before he tried them, and had determined upon the death sentence well before he sentenced them. According to the narratives and the Youtube clips, he did quite a lot of dramatic shouting during trials, emphasising fortissimo e prestissimo the self-evident guilt of those who stood as yet unconvicted before him.

I was reminded of dear Freisler ... such a straightforward sort of bloke ... when reading about the recent rantings of the Dean of the Rota, Pio Vito Pinto. Of course, Pinto was not sitting in court and trying the Four Cardinals. And Pinto, since he is a Judge in Marriage processes, would be unlikely himself to be involved judicially in any possible procedings against the Four. But, in our tame and gutless legal system this side of the water, it is, I think, generally held to be indecorous, and probably prejudicial, for any member of the judiciary to express with great decision views about the certain guilt of, and extreme penalties appropriate for, named individuals who have not yet even been formally accused and certainly not yet found guilty.

Clearly, these foreign chappies are not much like our own boringly phlegmatic, pedestrian, and unimaginative English judges. Could this be because our judges are not guided by such well-honed certainties about the Holy Spirit?

A MUST BUY ... UPDATED

Those whose Altar Missal or Breviary dates from before 1962 will be familiar with the curious experience of realising, by seeing it in their books, that (e.g.) yesterday's S Andrew had, until very recently, a Vigil and a First Vespers. Whatever happened to them? Why are they nowhere to be seen in the 1962 books?

The tremendously Good News about Summorum Pontificum is that it has given seminarians and priests an enormous impulse to learn how to offer Mass according to the immemorially ancient Ordo Missae of the Roman Church.. If you, dear clerical reader, have learned how to do that, you don't need me to tell you that you have acquired a pearl of great price. But what is often not realised is that, as far as the Calendar is concerned, '1962' constituted a a very considerable break in continuity. You see, the process which led to the imposition in 1970 of the Novus Ordo did not start after 'the Council'; it had begun a couple of decades earlier when Pius XII and his youthful protege Annibale Bugnini set out on a two-decade journey to the Novus Ordo. During that period, Vigils and Octaves galore bit the dust; but perhaps the most questionable 'reform' of all was the abolition of First Vespers for all but the highest rank of festivals. This abolished the ancient Christian practice, inherited from the Synagogue, of starting a day on the previous evening.

What I am urging you to purchase, if you are not already familiar with it, is the Saint Lawrence Press ORDO for 2017. OK, you may very well not wish to follow it liturgically, but simply contemplating, day by day, what the old Roman Rite did before itching and twitching fingers got to work on it, is, believe me, a considerable education.

UPDATE: THE COMPILER HAS KINDLY PROVIDED A LINK FOR PURCHASERS. SEE THE THREAD. This ORDO can be sought from ordorecitandi@gmail.com; or from 59 Sandscroft Avenue, Broadway, Worcestershire, WR12 7EJ, United Kingdom.

The Compiler of that ORDO also runs a blog explaining the pre-Pius XII Roman Rite the st lawrence press blog.

If 'Tridentine' is to refer to the actual liturgical books of S Pius V, as I think it probably should, then you can find out about the Tridentine Rite by looking at another blog by the same erudite author, called The Tridentine Rite. There you will discover that the Common Preface is (I mean, in the Missal actually issued by S Pius V) used on these green Sundays! You will also, I suspect, be surprised by some of the rather Puritanical prunings of the Calendar: for example, the elimination of 'non-biblical' feasts such as S Anne and the Presentation of our Lady. They soon returned, by popular demand; but they had sunk without trace under Pius V.

And the Office Hymns of S Pius V, of course, will not be those with which users of the 1962 Breviary are familiar. Those texts were produced in the 1620s by Urban VIII, aka Papa Barberini. The breviary of S Pius V had the ancient texts, sometimes totally different from the Barberini versions, which one will also find in the Sarum and Benedictine Breviaries.

Technical assistance, anywhere?

There is a rumour ... what a lot of rumours do float around in our Modern Church! ... that a member of the CBCEW recently endorsed the intemperate and disrespectful language used by a Latin-rite Greek prelate about the Four Cardinals. And that the same English bishop then went on to argue that those justified by grace might yet be incapable of living according to the moral law.

Gracious! I had rather thought that proposition attracted an Anathema at Trent. Perhaps readers who know their dogmatic theology a great deal better than I do could put me right on this.

And then I started to wonder: if a bishop does ... per impossibile, as it were ... walk into the position of being anathematised by an Ecumenical Council, does he fall victim to any Canonical penalty or sanction latae or ferendae sententiae? Excommunication, for example, to name but one. Or Interdict or Irregularity or Suspension or Deposition? Perhaps readers who know their Canon Law a great deal better than I do could put me right on this. We mere Ordinariate presbyters need a lot of help in understanding all this complicated technical stuff. We're just plain simple chaps.

Just think ... if only I were a proper Catholic priest, properly trained, I would know the answers to these tricky questions! And to so many more like them!!

Sancta Bibiana

I felt moved by today's Breviary lectiones, perhaps all the more so because they lack those miraculous details which we find in some Acta Martyrum.

It is, I suspect, probable that most of the Martyr Virgins were barely, if at all, into their teens when they bore their Witness. Like S Maria Goretti.

What wonderfully resolute girls they must have been. What rebukes to our weak faith and cool ardour. And to the compromises we make with the Zeitgeist.

From the ORDINARIATE

There may be readers here who have not yet made the acquaintance of the blog written by Dr Geoffrey Kirk, formerly Vicar of Lewisham and now in the Ordinariate. It is called Ignatius his conclave and I access it by googling gkirkuk.

Dr K used to write beautiful satire about the liberals and their entire project when we were still in the C of E. They used to complain about the 'tone' of the magazine we published. In the words of an old and much loved British Soap, they didn't like it up 'em.

Dr Kirk's views and his targets have hardly changed. All that has changed is that the baddies are now riding high within the Catholic Church herself.

Pio Vito Pinto

Name of the Dean of the Rota. I have warned you about him several times. He's one of those who believe that whatever Bergoglio says is the voice of the Holy Spirit - the hypersuperueberpapalists. He's been doing it again, in Spain, and talking about the Four Cardinals being stripped of their dignity. (I thank Professor Tighe for this information.)

Go and look at him. You can see him at EWTN News (English). Captured in the act of doing it.

I looked at the picture and asked myself:
~ is this the face of someone through whom the Holy Spirit is speaking?
~ is this the Face of Mercy?

Dead scary.

I hope that all our Partners in Ecumenical Dialogue are carefully reading about what being in Communion with a Bergoglian Papacy would really be like.

29 November, 2015, was the memorable ...

... day upon which the full Ordinariate Missal entered into lawful use. The day which confirmed the status, for example, of We do not presume as an official liturgical prayer within the English Catholic Church ... the day which formally established the possibility of celebrating something very much like the good old English Missal High Mass ... the day when our immensely distinctive ... the more distinctive the better ... liturgical Patrimony became dono papae Benedicti a family member of English Catholicism. Not, surely, a day which either poor, confused Archbishop Cranmer, as they tied him to the stake in the City Ditch outside the Master's Lodgings of Balliol College, could possibly have imagined; nor could that admirable Cardinal Allen, at the dark moment when they brought him news of the failure of the Armada. But a day on whose anniversary, doubtless, addicts of Lesbian poetry all over the Ordinariates will be singing Nun khre methusthen kai tina per bian ponen ... interspersed with vinous cries of Vivat Benedictus! Eis polla ete, Despota! Quantus et qualis Pontifex! Nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus! Redeant dies fausti, annique Benedicti! Deprome, depromite!!

The song, indeed, of them that triumph, the shout of them that feast!

At this depressing moment in the history of the Church, how good to have something which is 101% worth celebrating!!

The Prayer I mentioned ... We do not presume ... is sometimes known among Anglicans as the Prayer of Humble Access or demotically as the Humble Crumble; a pre-Tractarian title was "The Address". Our greatest modern Anglican Thomist, Professor Canon Dr Eric Mascall, used to substitute it, in his daily private celebration of the Tridentine Rite in Mags, for the Priest's two private prayers immediately before Communion ... which is exactly the place it has been assigned in the Ordinariate Order of Mass. I append (look two lines lower) an older piece of my own about its unusual and distinctive theology.

Suspense of the Magisterium: a footnote

Professor Tighe draws attention to two articles about the teaching of John of S Thomas (1589-1644), in which that writer treats, with discussions of the great writers of earlier centuries, the question of the Deposition of Popes.

These pieces are to be found on the website of the Dominicans of Avrille, under November last year. In commending them ... in this febrile atmosphere I had better make this clear ... I imply neither that I look for the deposition of this pontiff, nor that I subscribe to the ecclesiological analysis of these Dominicans.

But there are people whose temptation to the absurdities of sedevacantism seems impervious to my own repeated words of reason. Hence my commendation of other explorations of relevant theological resources.

Advent Sunday ... versus Orientem

I do beg Reverend Fathers to remember, as Advent Sunday gets closer, that there are people who have been made to suffer for the principle of Mass celebrated ad Orientem. Not only our Anglo-Catholic Fathers; Cardinal Sarah has been much mauled by the Nasties. Now they are turning on a worthy African Archbishop who is encouraging his clergy to return to this ancient practice ... the unwholesome Robert Mickens (the former Tablet chappie who just simply can't wait for the pleasure of attending "the Rat's" funeral) has been writing about it on the internet in his inimitable style.

There are those who seem to be terribly prejudiced against sub-Saharan Africans. In Anglicanism, we got quite accustomed to that because a number of Anglican liberal bishops are homosexualist ideological fundamentalists, while Africans tend to be more nuanced. The word GAFCON still makes some American and English eyes pop. It may also be relevant that one particular component of the groups that viscerally detest Joseph Ratzinger is the 'gay' lobby.

Time was when white lefties were very soft on Blacks and Ruskies. It soesn't seem like that nowadays. Whether the subject is Sex or Liturgy, these Anglowhities seem as unwilling to accept enlightenment from the South or from Moskow (I am alluding of course to the splendid recent interview given by Patriarch Cyril) as they are to look to the East for the coming of the Messiah. So your modern Black, in the view of these arrogant Caucasians, has got to be made to know his place, as Walter Kasper made clear when he (silly chap!) didn't know the journalist was wired up.

I applaud the courage of those who, in this very unpleasant cultural conflict, are prepared to stand up alongside Cardinal Sarah and be counted.

To stand up, in fact, facing East.

Quick-fix anxious Absolution Oz-style ... a cry (two cries) for help

Some Oz prelate, referring ... without, I feel, demonstrating the sort of respect traditionally shown to their Eminences ... which is why I don't feel that he merits much more respect from me ... to the Letter of the Four Cardinals, has said "Pastoral care moves within ambiguity. We now need pastoral patience not the quick-fix anxiety voiced here".

I thought I would write this valuable perception into the margin of my New Testament at Mark 10:12; but I am having a lot of trouble converting it into Koine Greek. Can somebody help?

Perhaps, too, we should incorporate these apercues into the Form of Absolution. "And I absolve you ambiguously from your sins without any quick-fix, in the Name ...". In Latin, ambigue would do perfectly well, but I can't think of an economical unperiphrastic way of saying "without quick-fix". Any ideas?

Ad Orientem! Vivat Connecticut!

Two or three weeks ago, I had the privilege of staying with Fr (Dr) Cipolla at his splendid church in Norwalk in Connecticut (you've read a lot of his sermons on Rorate). What congregations! What liturgy! What music! What an MC and what a Director of Music! What hospitality! What a priest (and a cook)! And, as well as Father, I was privileged to get to know the celebrated Mgr Ignacio Barreiro ... what a long-standing champion of Life and of Tradition.

And what a Sacristy! And, just above the Vesting Board, what a notice! It gave instructions to priests celebrating in that church; and the two most important rules (this may not be verbatim) were:

In this Church, the First Eucharistic Prayer, the Roman Canon, is always used.

In this Church, Mass is always celebrated ad Orientem.

What an example to us all! 

 VIVANT CONNECTICUTIENSES!! 

EXEMPLO CONNECTICUTIENSI OMNES VIVAMUS!!!

SSPX Faculties

Fr Zed acutely reminds us* of the strange statement by the Holy Father at the start of the Year of Mercy that the Faithful could go to Confession to priests of the SSPX. Father pointed out that this, apparently, was not a formal and juridical granting of faculties. Indeed, it appears that it was not.

However, such a statement by a Roman Pontiff must inevitably create a common opinion that those clergy must have faculties to absolve, otherwise the Vicar of Christ would not have urged the laity to visit their confessionals. And Canon 144 makes clear that in cases of common error, the Church supplies the necessary jurisdiction. Hence there can be no doubt about the validity of such absolutions, however peculiarly roundabout the canonical means adopted by the Pope to achieve this end.

It would, surely, be simplest, in this age when so few are accustomed to make use of this sacrament, if every priest had jurisdiction to absolve vi ordinationis unless he had been explicitly denied that jurisdiction by a competent tribunal or superior, and except where the law itself witholds jurisdiction in the case of particular offences. I am surprised that 'liberals' do not agitate for this. Is it because they don't care about Confession?  

If the Holy Father wishes to leave a real Monument of his Year Of Mercy, I think this modest canonical adjustment would demonstrate serious intent. 

A broad solution of the status of the Society would be even more significant.

UPDATE I wrote this piece after reading Fr Zed's piece on Tuesday 15 of this month. There are more exotic rumours afloat now!

I know one should not look a Guest Horse in the Mouth ... but I would scratch my head a bit, and meditate upon Vergil's alliterative warning about Danai and their dona, if a 'regularisation' were to be accompanied by either (1) "We've let these chaps off believing loads of Vatican II so it's only fair to let the other lot off believing most of the Catholic Faith; or (2) "Now that I've been Merciful to these liturgical eccentrics in their irrelevant ghetto, we don't want any more of that ad Orientem et cetera stuff in the mainstream Church."

A medlee of bloodsports metaphors

Surely, there are few pleasures more acute, more delightful to savour, or with more superb an after-taste, than that of watching another human impaled, wriggling, writhing, on the horns of a dilemma.

In a post some time ago, I relished the fact that the Anglo-Saxon Council of Hatfield, which promulgated filioque, was presided over by a Syrian monk of Byzantine culture, S Theodore. I had wondered how those rather pushy 'Orthodox' for whom it really matters to prove that the Saxon Church was "Orthodox" would get around that amusing little quirk of history.

Happily, my fishing line did not lie upon the water long without enjoying a catch. The suggestion duly appeared that the filioque in Hatfield must represent a deliberate Filioquist perversion of the authentic text of Hatfield. Oh frabjous day! Exactly like the claim that some Latin pervert must have added the filioque to the Quicumque vult.

To make that hare run, it would have needed the attachment of at least four bionic legs. Our account of Hatfield rests upon a text of Bede which is commonly constituted on the basis of four manuscripts all of which are eighth century. And there is, at this point, no variant reading in their texts. One could only get round that by positing a hypothetically "corrupted" archetype. But that would not have been able to be much later than the time of Bede himself. Whether the alleged filioquist perverter of the text of Hatfield is ipsissimus Baeda or someone very soon after Bede wrote his Historia Ecclesiastica, we would still be left with a very embarrassing piece of evidence for the filioquist enthusiasm of the Anglo-Saxon Church (is S 'Filioquist' Bede, incidentally, regarded as a Saint by "Saxon Orthodoxy"?).

But more. I had craftily perpetrated a slight simplification by saying that Hatfield sanctioned filioque. The text actually reads "et filio". In other words, the Council, using a minutely different lexic for saying precisely the same thing, sanctioned the substance of filioque before the advocates of that formula had even decided to promote it in exactly that verbal form.

Tally Ho! The bloodlust of the hunt!

S Edmunde Abendoniae, ora pro nobis

How clever of the Moon to go into overdrive so as to illuminate and emphasise the Festival today of S Edmund, Patron of the diocese in which I am domiciled (Portsmouth; I am of course incardinated into the Ordinariate). This suddenly occurred to me as I was halfway through the Reading at Mass: "quasi luna plena in diebus suis lucet".

At Lauds and both Vespers, we have the V Nobis in hoc exsilio, sancte Pater Edmunde. R Caelestis patriae amorem, quaesumus, infunde. Antiphona Dilexit iustitiam et odivit iniquitatem, propterea moritur in exsilio.

A good day to be mindful of all the exiles in the world, all the millions of them.

Immaculata

News that the refugee Franciscans of the Immaculate, to whom Bishop Egan gave a parish in Gosport, are to start up an internet radio station called Immaculata. On December 8.

I've not heard of a diocese that goes with more of a fizz than Portsmouth. Although there is good news of Plymouth under Mark O'Toole, who was so friendly to the Ordinariate clergy when we were paying our visits to Allen Hall during his rectorship there ...

Fear

Readers will have read the news, at Fr Z and Rorate and Sandro Magister, about the Letter of the Four Cardinals to the Holy Father, seeking clarity on certain aspects of Amoris laetitia.

It must be a matter of sadness to all Catholics, whatever their 'political' complexion, that the Roman Pontiff apparently decided not to reply to their Letter. If this pontificate was not already in crisis, it most certainly is now.


It must be a matter of grief that other Cardinals and locorum Ordinarii have felt unable to join this initiative because they still have diocesan or curial responsibilities. I have heard from several sources about the atmosphere of fear that exists in Rome and elsewhere. It reminds me of the cruel attempts at intimidation which followed the publication of the Letter of the 45, of which I felt honoured to have been invited to be a signatory.

Apparently, it is now to be the particular ministry and calling of the elderly or the retired or the already sacked (because they have nothing to fear being sacked from) to speak with Parrhesia.  

Reliance upon fear is not Christ's way to govern His Church.

Apologies

Last night a couple of pieces I had in storage for the future escaped and elicited some admirable comments. Sorry. They're both back in storage.

New Papal Condemnation!!

Pope Francis breaks his silence!

A "In authorising regular use of the older Mass, now referred to as the 'extraordinary form', now retired Pope Benedict XVI was 'magnanimous' toward those attached to the old liturgy, he [Pope Francis] said. 'But it is an exception'.

B "Pope Francis told Father Spadaro he wonders why some young people, who were not raised with the old Latin Mass, nevertheless prefer it. 'And I ask myself: why so much rigidity? Dig dig, this rigidity always hides something, insecurity or even something else. Rigidity is defensive. True love is not rigid'".

Marvellously magnificent stuff from the Roman Pontiff!!! I'll try to get in with my comments on it before Fr Z does with his!! Here goes:

A This is splendid: an authoritative declaration that the word "extraordinary" means "exceptional". Let us hope that an appropriate Authority very soon makes it clear that the employment of "Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion" must only ever be a tremendously rare "exception". Perhaps a simple rule such as this would suffice: "Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion may only be used in parishes in which there is at least one Sunday Mass in the Extraordinary Form." Could anything be more equitable than that? Anything more ad mentem Summi Pontificis?

B This is even better!!! Liturgical "rigidity ... always hides something"!! After Cardinal Sarah made his splendid and exemplary call for a return to versus Orientem, various hierarchs whom out of respect I am most certainly not going to name got very excited about his words, and even mistranslated some Latin in their Rigid anxiety to discourage clergy from taking His Eminence's laudable advice. So, if we are to assume consistency on his part, Pope Francis thinks that hierarchs with a "rigidity" about liturgical Orientation, are "insecure"!!!

Now: here's a diverting question for readers to mull over. Our beloved Holy Father, having asserted that the "Liturgically Rigid" may be "insecure", gives as an alternative: "or even something else". What is this "even something else", which is clearly "even" worse than "insecurity"? Is he suggesting that the "Liturgically Rigid" may be guilty of a tendency towards Homicide? Or Pride? Or Racism? Or Idolatry? Or Theft? Or Paedophilia? Or Genocide? Or Dishonesty? Or Grinding the Faces of the Poor? Or merely the preferred sin of this pontificate, Adultery?

I think we should be told! I am certainly very keen to know of what, without even knowing it, I am probably, in the Holy Father's view, guilty!! So, surely, are those hierarchs who are with such "rigidity" opposed to versus Orientem!!! 

Dig! Dig! 

11 November

The 1700th Anniversary of the Earthly Birthday of the Patriarch of the Western Monks, S Martin.

Perhaps an occasion to give hearty thanks for the solid revival of traditional Monasticism in recent decades ... Papa Stronsay ... Silverstream ... Norcia ... Lanherne ... and to pray for the still-persecuted brothers and sisters of the Franciscans of the Immaculate as well as for the dispossessed brothers of Norcia.

And we should not forget that recent legislation from Rome appears designed to inhibit the flourishing of traditionalist religious, and to do so by restricting the previous freedoms enjoyed by bishops in their own dioceses to erect communities.

How peculiar that Cardinal Marx and his lookalikes have not protested against this piece of bureaucratic Roman centralisation. I thought they were against that sort of thing.

No I didn't ... I have just been a little untruthful. Does the fact that I was writing ironically make it all right?

Ah well, at least we can be glad that the oppressive burden of being supervised by the CDF has been lifted from the back of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in America.

Oh dear. I've just done it again. Why is it so difficult to write about any news during this unhappy pontificate without stumbling into irony?

Two Vestimental and Pontifical queries

Query Number One: A correspondent asked, a few weeks ago, how vestments of the mighty (fourteenth century) Bishop John Grandisson of Exeter ended up in the Azores.

In general terms, I am sure the answer to this is to be found in the despoliations by the regime of Edward Tudor. Exeter Cathedral had its goods inventoried in the first decade of the sixteenth century; and then again less than fifty years later, on the eve of the Great Confiscations. The latter list, in my unchecked recollection, was less than a tenth of the length of the former. Clearly, people knew what was just around the corner; there must have been a cut-price selling-off of plate and vestments to English and foreign merchants on an industrial scale (Duffy in Stripping reproduces a Protestant cartoon of precisely this). I have sometimes wondered if the escape of our Lady (de Gratia) of Ipswich to Nettuno, cast into a piously romantic account, might really have happened in some such rather more prosaically commercial sort of way. Perhaps, indeed, an under-hand commercial way, since the 'burning' of the statue is actually documented. One can imagine the royal officers charged with the burning discerning in subterfuge a mercenary opportunity.

Fast-forward now, please, to the twentieth century: the Bishop of Oxford from 1937 to 1955 was another mighty pontiff, Kenneth Kirk, who, together with Dom Gregory Dix, was one of the 'leaders of the Catholic movement in the C of E'. I think I have shared with you, before, the jolly ditty which circulated during those enchanted but distant years:

How happy are the Oxford flocks
How free from heretics
Their clergy all so orthodox
Their Bishop orthoDix.

In his will, the pontiff bequeathed his pontificalia to any son-in-law of his who might become a bishop (how exquisitely, delightfully, Anglican!). They were duly in time so inherited and used by Eric Kemp, Bishop of Chichester (1974-2001) during that seemingly endless bright and balmy Indian Summer of the Church of England in Sussex, when it was so tempting just to live for the moment and to enjoy sine cura the corn, the wine, and the oil, daily lifting up a rococo chalice or a Puginesque monstrance as the sun slanted through the Comper glass; those years when so many of us carefully kept our eyes away from the writing on the wall. Years before Benedict XVI came to our rescue and, by calling our bluff, made everything come right ... cui pius amor.

This morning's second query: does anybody know what happened to the Kirk/Kemp vestments after Bishop Eric's death?

American Cretics

It is not for me to comment on Foreign Politicks. But I may say how diverted I was by the neat rhetorical device ... or do I mean demagogic trick ... of priming an audience to respond to certain simple stimuli with trisyllabic chants in the form of what Classicist metricians term a 'Cretic' (long-short-long).

"Lock her up."

"Yew Ess Ay."

"Drain the Swamp."

Perhaps the President-elect is a Yale Classicist by training? This would make him a formidable player on the World Stage.

Family life in Limerick

A pity: I was unable to get to the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy last week because of a clashing invitation to talk in Limerick, which I had not visited since the mid-1990s. But the Conference there held under the auspices of Catholic Voice and the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest was ...

The Conference was everything ... informative, moving, and happy, and very efficiently organised. If, this year, you were in two minds, and ended up not going, I urge you not to make the same mistake next year! I was glad to meet friends ... from a fortnight ago when I visited Connecticut and New York; from my annual jaunts to Pantasaph in Wales for the LMS Latin Course (I hope people are signing up to that). And to make new friends.

The star speaker was Raymond Cardinal Burke, whom I had not met before. Naturally, I was intrigued by the thought of getting to know him; and I was impressed by what an unaffected, affable and kindly man he is. And by how well he knew how many people. He clearly has a profoundly important world-wide ministry among people and groups who are concerned to restore Catholic authenticity ... for example, after the very taxing Conference he drove off to visit my friends at Silverstream ... whose Prior, Dom Mark Kirby, will by then have got back from the Colloquium of the English Confraternity of Catholic Clergy, at which he was a speaker. And at which my Ordinary and Father in God was one of the Celebrants. A small world ... no! a big and growing world of prayer and sanctity and orthodox witness, but yet with an engagingly 'family' feel to it. How can one not be full of optimism about the future of the Church?

Cardinal Burke was, of course, the Eucharistic Celebrant on Sunday, Feast of All the Saints of Ireland, at the Institute Church of the Sacred Heart. It was originally Limerick's Jesuit Church, back in the generous days before Vatican II when the religious orders all had their city-centre churches and so the lucky Faithful had a rich and generous choice of varying charisms. The Church is beautifully restored, although the Clergy House must still be an immensely spartan environment in which to live. They are at the top of a rather grand street of nineteenth century houses, largely unspoilt, and the Church possesses a fine renaissance facade in rose-coloured stone. Unusually for today, it is kept open for visits and prayer (as all Catholic churches were when I was a boy and learned so much by browsing through the CTS pamphlets at the back). I wonder what O'Connell Street was called before it was called O'Connell Street ... his statue outside the Church reminded me of happy days visiting the Liberator's family home nestling beside Kenmare Water at Derrynane in Co Kerry.

I was grateful to Canon Lebocq, and his brethren, for their Eucharistic hospitality, and for the genuine warmth of their welcome. Having watched video clips of some very accurate marksmanship, I now understand why it is a bad idea to tangle with the Institute! And what a memorable meal! This was my first experience of the Institute, and it was an impressive one. It must be a missionary experience in itself for the people of Limerick to see young clergy in their streets wearing cassocks!

Dicasterial bigotry

I wonder if any of my fellow Ratzingerians would ever have said, during the last pontificate, "If you find Pope Benedict confusing, you have not read or do not understand the Gospel of Jesus Christ". I very much hope not. I think not.

There is some American, however, called Kevin Farrell, who is on record as writing "If you find Pope Francis confusing, you have not read or do not understand the Gospel of Jesus Christ".

Well, when the list of new cardinals came out, I imagine we all murmured quietly into our cups apekhei ton misthon autou. Additionally, this dottily misguided individual has already been made head of a Roman dicastery! His little old grandmother back in the Emerald Isle must be dead thrilled. I remembered that witty line in A Man for All Seasons "But for Wales, Richard?" But for a Dicastery, Kev?

This sort of thing really does bring home what an unwholesome little gang of nasty narrow-minded bigots we do seem now to be at the mercy of. I would think better of the Holy Father if he didn't seem so comfortable about surrounding himself with these dementedly ultrahyperueberpapalist ... is the noun I am here groping for 'careerists'? Benedict was a big enough man to appoint people whom he knew did not agree with him (Tagle, for one) because he thought he discerned quality. It would be good to see Francis oftener making the same disarmingly generous mistake.

POST SCRIPTUM: I gather this particular narrow-minded bigot has also recently categorically informed us that the deliberations of the two synods, and the composition of Amoris laetitia, were the Work of the Holy Spirit. I wonder if we have on record Bishop Farrell explaining to the world that the Holy Spirit was the pen which wrote Summorum Pontificum and Veritatis splendor.

And if you want to call me an unreconstructed Anglican, as Manning in effect called Blessed John Henry, you can. As often as you like. Sticks and stones ...  But I would rather Kev had said that the Scriptures, Migne, and the pages of Denzinger, not Amoris laetitia, would be the foundation of his dicastery for years to come; and that he always found such amazing new depths in Scripture and in the Fathers rather than in some recent slipshod papal Exhortation that he has "read seven or eight times" [is he a slow reader?].

But her Immaculate Heart will prevail. Never doubt that.

emails

I'm having trouble receiving/sending emails. Friends, contacts, who fail to achieve contact ... this is why.

Sedevacantism yet again

I venture to draw the attention of those readers who write to me about one or other of the many, indeed, Protean, forms 'Sedevacantism' takes, to the fact that Bishop Richard Williamson, on his blog, has written a two-part series on Sedevacantism. It is the second time in recent months that he has done this.

I often don't agree with what his Excellency does, says, or writes; and I wouldn't always express myself as he does. But I warmly second his apprehension that this pernicious error can be a real danger to souls.

My often-expressed view (and I think the Bishop's view is along the same lines) is that the Ultrahyperueberpapalism of some who surround Papa Bergoglio, and Sedevacantism, are two sides of the same dangerously erroneous coin. Or, if you prefer, a pair of inseparably joined Siamese Twins. They both massively exaggerate the personal inerrancy of the man who is the Roman Pontiff. Accepting an absurdly inflated notion of personal papal inerrancy, Bergoglian ultras (correctly believing him to be Pope) conclude that therefore his every word and even hint must be the ipsissimum verbum Spiritus; sedevacantists (deeming him to be guilty of repeated blunders) conclude that he "obviously" cannot really be pope.

Both views are equally absurd. And both involve the same erroneous premise: personal papal inerrancy. I have called it an error; I think I could justify calling it a heresy in view of the defined dogma of Vatican I that the Successors of S Peter have not been given the Holy Spirit so that by His inspiration they can propagate new doctrine.


And both are equally dangerous to souls.

Bergoglio is Pope. He's not my own favourite pope, but he's Pope. Vicar of Christ. Successor of the Prince of the Apostles. Capable of being the mouthpiece of the Catholic Church's own infallibility and of binding all our consciences were he manifestly to fulfill the immensely careful conditions laid down by the admirable decree Pastor aeternus of Vatican I.

To deny that is a most grave danger to Catholic Faith and to Communio.

There have been less than good Popes before now, as Cardinal Pell very wisely pointed out a couple of years ago in his Iuventutem sermon. Sensible Catholics take the long view. And sensible Catholics also know that the College of Cardinals is not guaranteed the peremptory guidance of the Holy Spirit when it meets in electoral conclave. Some real 101% shockers have, in the past, emerged from the pope-making process! If that were, sadly, to happen in our own time, there would be nothing new about it!

I remind readers that I do not enable comments which seem to me Sedevacantist or Sedeprivationist or which claim that the elected candidate is in some way not quite fully pope, or that Benedict XVI is still pope or that the real pope is Mr Smith two doors down the road who was elected by a conclave of five and a half laypeople and his Auntie Mildred's cat. Also unwelcome: abusive rhetoric about the man who is also Pope. This is, after all, my blog. Just don't waste your time. Spend it praying for our Holy Father Pope Francis.

IDENTITY

Evelyn Waugh was once described as a man who thought of himself as being, in the sight of God, an English Country Gentleman of ancient and recusant ancestry. In fact, he was the son of a parvenu Anglican publisher quite well down in the Middle Class. I suspect that it is one of the characteristics of this last century and a half ... say, since the time of Disraeli ... I wonder why is it he that comes to my mind ... that we construct our sense of self-identity, not from our actual and family backgrounds, but from what we have discovered for ourselves; and not infrequently in reaction against our real and fearfully prosaic individual inheritances. Is it all to do with the cultural disintegration of this period?

I plead guilty to being myself a prime example of this embarrassing phenomenon of radical inauthenticity. I have always regarded myself as a Latin Catholic, deeply rooted in Classical Antiquity, but at home in ancient Rome while only a sympathetic visitor in ancient Athens ... where my wife, so much more of a Hellenist, is at home. Classicism Baptised makes me feel profoundly the product of the latinate culture and Liturgy which has shaped Western Europe for centuries. I am not, subjectively, in the least English; in fact ... well, Waugh once described me rather acutely in his account of Scott-King, another equally dim classics master: " ... he was filled, suddenly, with deep homesickness for the South. He had not often nor for long visited those enchanted lands; a dozen times, perhaps, for a few weeks ... but his treasure and his heart lay buried there. Hot oil and garlic and spilled wine; luminous pinnacles above a dusky wall; fireworks at night, fountains at noonday; the shepherd's pipe on the scented hillside ... he had left his coin in the waters of Trevi; he had wedded the Adriatic; he was a Mediterranean man." Hot oil and garlic and spilled wine ... ah, how that tugs at me even now while I sit here tapping at my computer in the chilly English autumn. My carnal temptations are to reach for Ovid's Metamorphoses when I should be saying my Office and to dream about Tiepolo ceilings while I should be making my meditation.  I rarely pass through London without going to gaze upon the statue of S Pius V, the Victor of Lepanto and the Author of Regnans in excelsis. He stands on the right hand side of the Lady Altar at Brompton; originally, with its spectacular North Italian pietra dura, from Brescia. It is where, through the generosity of the Provost, I said my first Mass in Full Communion with the See of Rome, before going across the road with two immensely dear friends from Papa Stronsay, and the brilliant, the convivial, Father Ray, to eat a French lunch and to drink a lot of French wine.

My father, on the other hand, was a British naval officer who was otherly romantic and squandered his affections on crooks like Drake and Raleigh; who loathed Irish, frogs, papists, waps, and dagoes; who entertained suspicions about people who mispronounced Trafalgar; and who had an enormous picture of Nelson upon his wall.

Lund

Well, I do not feel a need to be embarrassed by my Prophecy that at Lund nothing horrendous would actually be done with regard to 'Intercommunion'. I am always happiest when I have been proved right. This is why I am so happy most of the time.

The assertion that both Catholics and Lutherans have wounded the visible unity of the Church seems to me radically similar to the language about 'wounds' in Cardinal Ratzinger's Communionis notio. 

I would want to qualify the Holy Father's suggestion that 'more unites us than divides us' by entering a distinguo: I would deem this to be true with regard to many very worthy orthodox Lutherans, but I believe there is evidence that some Lutherans, not least in Sweden, are way out in some quasi-gnostic stratosphere where very little of the Christian God survives. I suspect that there might be Lutherans who would themselves agree with this analysis, and who would be uneasy about 'Intercommunion' with such "fellow Lutherans".

I disliked most a sly little suggestion that Catholics and Lutherans should be 'creative' in their relationships. It seemed to me an example of a dodgy and very typically Bergoglian trick: the use of words which in themselves cannot reasonably be deemed heterodox, but do represent the tiniest of toes gingerly inserted into doors so that those doors can gradually in the future be prised further and unacceptably open.

However, I have my own, immensely creative, suggestion. The erection of a Lutheran Ordinariate, in which Lutherans who are still Christians would retain their own Patrimony in the full Communion and Magisterium of the Catholic Church. I am not convinced that this is as ludicrous a proposal as most of my readers probably will. I bet Papa Ratzinger would have been open to it.

"Intercommunion" in Lund?

Cardinal Burke has recently uttered some very (of course!) wise remarks relating to the sharing of the Sacraments between Catholics and Non-Catholics. See Rorate. But there can be a risk that his words will be misunderstood.

What his Eminence actually talks about is not, formally, the admission of 'Non-Catholics', as such, to the Sacraments. This is because he is well aware that Sacramental Sharing is not merely allowed by the Church's current canonical legislation, but even in some circumstances encouraged. This is most true with regard to those ('Eastern') communities in which the Church recognises the valid existence of her own Sacraments, such as Holy Order and the Eucharist, although outside her own strict canonical unity. Lest, however, there be some who might be tempted to use this fact as a rod with which to beat the 1983 Codex Iuris Canonici, I will again draw the attention of such readers to my pieces on the Church's praxis before 1983 ... in the eighteenth century Aegean and, with the permission of Pope S Pius X himself, in twentieth century Ukraine and Russia.

For obvious reasons, things are much less positive with regard to the ecclesial communities which emerged from the 'reformation'. But, even here, the canonical negative is not absolute.

What Cardinal Burke, with pinpoint accuracy, is concerned to make clear is that, for their own sake, the Eucharist ought not to be offered to those who do not truly believe that the Elements are the Body and Blood of Christ. This is because S Paul made clear that those who so eat and drink, "not discerning the Lord's Body", eat and drink ... nothing less than their own damnation. The current law is very insistent on this point, and properly so.

I will stick my neck out and say that I regard it as very highly improbable that, in Lund, tomorrow, as he visits Swedish Lutherans, the Holy Father will issue any general invitation to Lutherans and Catholics to receive at each other's altars. The most I would regard as within the realms of the remotely possible is some sort of minor move within the limits of what is already permitted by the current law. But even this I strongly doubt. Thirty six hours will show whether I am right! But I do think that some people allow themselves to be upset by unreal fears begotten by simplistic and irresponsible headlines.

Further arguments against any major change include these:
(1) the arrangement could not be made reciprocal, because of the unlikelihood that any Lutheran Orders, even in Sweden, are valid; and
(2) it would understandably profoundly upset those Anglicans who accept the fulness of Catholic Eucharistic teaching if favours were granted to Scandinavian Lutherans (not a few of whom Luther himself would probably not now find it easy to recognise as even Christian) which had not been granted to Catholic Anglicans.

Any slight movement in this area would need to be approached very carefully; it is not the sort of thing that is suitable material for gesturpolitik. Anything that even looked like this would be the height of imprudence.

Oh dear

The personel changes at the Congregation for Divine Worship look like very bad news for the heroic figure of its Prefect, Cardinal Sarah. It looks as though some crude revenge is taking place ...

Bishop Alan Hopes, a former Anglican, is the only piece of good news I can see on the new list. But, as a bishop with a large diocese, he will not be able to be often in Rome.

But Bad Marini lives in Rome and has a minuscule job ... Eucharistic Congresses ... quid dicamus ...

Father Tim ...

If anybody hasn't noticed that Father Tim of Margate has resumed blogging regularly, then I'm telling you! Congratulations to Father for his return to health and good Liturgy and elegant, erudite blogposts!

THE HERMENEUTIC OF CONTINUITY is as active as ever!!

Fatima (6): the Conversion of Russia

I think we should see the Conversion of Russia from the ecclesiological perspective outlined in my Fatima (5) piece. And, for those unfamiliar with this, I allude also to the willingness of that great Pope S Pius X to envisage communicatio in Sacris between Catholics and Orthodox in Russia (facts in my piece of 22 November 2014).

When our Lady at Fatima contingently foretold the Conversion of Russia, I do not think that she meant that every single Russian would automatically become a a faithful and sacramentally regular worshipper (as I do not think that  her promise about the preservation of the Faith in Portugal was falsified by the referendum vote of 2007 to admit abortion). That, this side of the Eschaton, is not the sort of place we are in. Nor, I think, did she mean that Patriarch Cyril and all Russians would immediately come into full juridical communion with the See of S Peter. What she did mean, surely, is something which can embrace (but is not exhausted in) the revival currently going on within the post-Soviet Russian Patriarchate, as well as in the other parts of the former Soviet bloc, such as the Ukraine.

[Incidentally, I have been told (was I misinformed?) that, during Patriarch Cyril's recent visit to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Russian Orthodoxy in this country, the Anglican incumbents of Canterbury and London (Chartres presumably proudly wearing his enkolpion) were present, and a Coptic bishop, but not the Archbishop of Westminster. I imagine an invitation did go to Westminster and that probably a representative was sent. This would suggest a more nuanced and tactful approach to Ukrainian sensitivities than Pope Francis was able to manage at that bungled meeting in Cuba! I wonder if Eparchial Bishop Hlib had a quiet word with Vin ... ]

Homosexualist ideologues

News has come through that the Ulster Appeal Court has published its judgement on the case of the Protestant Bakery fined for refusing to ice homosexualist propaganda onto a cake. The conviction stands. So does this mean that the homosexualists will be able to queue up outside the bakery daily to make the the same requests until the fines and damages bankrupt the business? The 'Gay Marriage' which the cake was intended to demand is in fact not legal in Northern Ireland; so will followers of other non-legal causes such as paederasts or murderers be able to employ the same logic and order cakes with the message "Free Inter-generation Love" or "Cacothanasia Now", and profitably take their cases through the courts?

Incidentally, has the Catholic hierarchy been speaking in sympathy for these Protestants who, at personal risk, espouse the teaching of the Church on some sexual matters? Is it not part of the Church's ecumenical policy, since Vatican II, to affirm with joy those "elements of the Church" which may be found among Separated Brethren?

At the same time, we have another trendy policy: the suppression of the convictions of subjects of the Crown who were convicted of homosexual acts back in the days when such acts were illegal. I rather wonder how far back these historical amnesties will go. Will they merely encompass those still alive? I could see a certain human kindliness in that. OK. But if the game goes back to embrace the now dead (as it did in the case of the pardon granted to Alan Turing), the additional question, surely, arises of How Far Back Do We Go? What logic could there be in having any particular cut-off point anywhere? Similar questions arise with regard to the granting of Free Pardons to those shot for cowardice during the First War.

And what about the women burned as witches? The Protestants burned under Henry VIII and his off-spring and the Catholics HDQed under Bloody Bess? Titus Oates' victims? Those executed after the '45? Casement and Lord Haw Haw?

But, of course, under our Constitution, Parliament can do anything. What a lot of problems this can solve. Changing the Past is a prime example of what the ancients called an adunaton, an impossible thing. If all the adunata are now potentially dunata, why stop at any fashionable or convenient fantasy? Why only reconstruct the Past by decree? Why this prejudice against also reconstructing by administrative fiat the Present and the Future? Why doesn't Parliament just enact that Global Warming has never happened and is not happening? Instead of erecting expensive flood defences, why don't we just have an Order in Council enacting that the Somerset Levels will not be flooded? We could all live happily for ever after, in Fairyland, especially the people of Somerset, who would be comforted by the sure and certain reassurance that the water swirling round their necks could not possibly be a flood.

Winston in 1984 spent his entire working life rewriting the past. I wonder if Orwell ever suspected how soon his sick prophecy would be made into a gruesome reality.

I don't for one moment think there is any real desire for 'justice' involved in daft attempts to rewrite the past.

It is simply a matter of the homosexualist ideologues making clear "We are the Masters now, and we want to watch you bastards squirm". In the idiolect of the Zeitgeist, this is called "Diversity".

What a very unpleasant spectacle it all is.