The liturgical destroyers within the Church Militant ... at least, the Anglophone among them ... have maintained a relentless detestation of the current English translation of the Roman Rite. What they have campaigned for is the 1998 feminist draft translation; which was thrown out by Rome (unauthorised, unpublished) because ... it was feminist.
[It also, in accordance with the fashion of the day, added new brilliantly clever English euchological confections as 'alternatives' to the translated Latin texts.]
These grieving groups were given new hope recently by the motu proprio Magnum principium. They claimed that this document reopened the entire question of English Liturgy, and gave them grounds to hope that they could burn all the current English liturgical books, and spend large amounts of parochial money buying new ones. Back to 1998!! [They failed to mention that Magnum principium gives no permission to anybody to add their own clever compositions to the texts translated from the Third Edition of the Roman Missal.]
The recent meeting of the CBCEW revealed that the CDW had been asked whether this claim was right; and had replied that Magnum principium was not retroactive. No to 1998!!!! Sad days for Tablet readers! Disaster for ACTA!!
A secretary to the Conference announced this to the Press in these words: "There has been a significant amount of information and correspondence received about the 1998 translation of the Missal, unfortunately Magnum Principium does not allow us to go back to that [1998] translation of the Missal; we have the 2010 translation of the Missal which is our standard edition now and we are looking forward to the translation of the new liturgical books".*
Yes ... he said "unfortunately".
Well, we all misspeak. My wife tells me that I do it most of the time. What a shame the clergyman concerned isn't lucky enough to have a wife to keep him on the straight and narrow. He looks and sounds the sort of thoroughly pleasant and sensible bloke that any girl would be glad to have. I'm sure all the poor chap really meant was a kindly "I'm sorry to have to tell the Tablet and ACTA that the answer to their dearest hopes is No".
On the other hand, we are surely entitled occasionally to wonder whether such sweet little slips might possibly sometimes be revealing. One can never be totally sure that one isn't being given a peep into the subconscious assumptions of the bureaucrats who serve Episcopal Conferences throughout the world.
I remain convinced that Joseph Ratzinger, and more recently Gerhard Mueller, were right to emphasise the very strictly limited competences of Episcopal Conferences and the dangers lurking in their already overpowerful bureaucracies. In my humble opinion, those two Eminences are not often wrong about anything.
And if they are, my own settled preference is generally to accompany them in their edifying errors.
*UPDATE: Fr Thomas tells me that "The use of the word "unfortunately" was meant not in respect of the bishops not being able to go back to the 1998 translation, but in the fact that the desire of the correspondents with me would not be met. The context therefore of the "unfortunately" is that it is linked to the misinterpretation of the motu proprio and those who had wanted the return to the 1998 translation of the Missal." I am glad to present this clarification to readers, and to have added to my blog posting a fuller citation (supra) of Father's words.
29 November 2017
26 November 2017
"They have uncrowned Him" (5)
In practical terms, the difference between the new teaching of Dignitatis humanae, and the previous doctrine, is not great; it is so technical that those who can live without fine distinctions can certainly live without considering this fine distinction! Because, in practice, the settled principle of the Church was that states may legislate for religious liberty for everybody and are not obliged always to maintain laws oppressive to non-Catholic minorities. (I was interested to discover, at Avignon in the Papal States, a very fine synagogue built there when the French Kingdom, just across the Rhone, discouraged Jewish worship but the Papacy allowed it; and B Pius IX boasted to Mgr Dupanloup that Rome itself contained a Synagogue and a 'Protestant Temple'). The only disagreement concerns the theological principle upon which this freedom to pass laws guaranteeing religious liberty is based. We are not discussing whether a rigorously Catholic Parliament at Westminster would pass a law to prevent Methodists from expanding their over-packed chapels or whether a devoutly Catholic James XIV would feel obliged to Revoke whatever may be the British equivalent of the Edict of Nantes! S Bartholomew's Day need hold no terrors for our few surviving Presbyterians!
The 'fine distinction' is this. The Council declared that "the human person has a right to religious freedom". It went on to declare that "the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person". But the earlier Magisterium taught that the State - if it were a Catholic State - should "protect the citizens against the seductions of error, in order to keep the City in the unity of faith, which is the supreme good", and "may regulate and moderate the public manifestations of other cults and defend its citizens against the spreading of false doctrines which, in the judgement of the Church, put their eternal salvation at risk". This teaching (I am quoting, incidentally, from the curial draft which was put before Vatican II but discarded) went on, however, to say that, because of Christian charity and prudence, a desire to draw dissidents to the Church by kindness, to avoid scandals or civil wars, to obtain civil cooperation and peaceful coexistence, "a just tolerance, even sanctioned by laws, can, according to the circumstances, be imposed".
In other words, non-Catholics in a Catholic state may and perhaps should for good reasons be granted an immunity from coercion. It is not, as the Council asserts, a natural right founded in the dignity of the human person.
There are clever ways round this problem. Professor Thomas Pink argued that the earlier Magisterium did not in fact assign to the State the right to limit liberty; it took the view that the Church has her rights over those who through baptism are her subjects, so that, if the State did coerce, it was acting on behalf of the Church. In other words, within the assumptions of the Christendom State, which we considered in my first piece, the boundaries between Church and State are coterminous (except, habitually, for the Jews) and the problem of Religious Liberty arises only as this unity dissolves, gradually in the early modern period and catastrophically in the Age of Revolutions.
Another factor which should not be forgotten is that the Council admitted that Scripture provides no basis for novel teaching. Indeed it does not: the entire Old Testament is a consistent assertion of the corporate Judaism State, with nation and cult coterminous. This admission perhaps offers a way ahead. Here we have one of the many respects in which the life of the people of Israel before the Christian era, and belief in the Christendom State, are in close agreement. We have much to learn from our Hebrew inheritance. The integration of Scripture into this dialogue constitutes another piece of unfinished Conciliar business.
Furthermore, the curial draft (which Mgr Lefebvre helpfully provides at the end of his book) itself asserted that "the civil Authority is not permitted in any way to compel consciences to accept the faith revealed by God. Indeed the faith is essentially free and cannot be the object of any constraint." This is not quite the same as to say that the right to religious freedom has its foundations in the dignity of the human person, but are not the two positions within reach of each other?
What must be accepted is the Right of Christ to rule and the unlawfulness of secular legislation which contradicts his Law. Legislation against the will of God is legislation which the Christian is not simply not bound to obey; it is something which he is obliged to disobey. Christ is King and, as S Paul told the Philippians, our politeuma is from above. It will become all the more important to teach this and to preach it, as the social and legal framework of secular society becomes ever more, year by year, a grotesque and Diabolical inversion and parody of the Civitas Dei. Daily, they uncrown him. Thank God for every archbishop or bishop who has bravely made this point, for every priestly or lay society which has preached Christ as King.
CONCLUSIONS
(1) There can be no doubt that the newer elements in Dignitatis humanae are embodied in a Conciliar document ratified by the Roman Pontiff (and, according to his biographer, signed by Archbishop Lefebvre together with an overwhelming majority of the Fathers). But those who promote this teaching will be performing a suppressio veri deserving of grave censure if they fail to state, as the Council did, the abiding authority of the previously established teaching. Because:
(2) The same Council with the same authority reasserted the teaching of the previous Magisterium, without any qualification. Thus any suggestion that people, such as Mgr Lefebvre's followers, who continue to lay great emphasis upon the teaching of the previous Magisterium, are opposing the Magisterium of the Council and of the post-Conciliar Church, would itself be a clear denial of the Council's authority and would seem to me to merit a formal Magisterial correction.
This is the context within which I commend Mgr Lefebvre's book* (although, to be honest, not quite all its rhetorical hyperbole) as essential reading in pursuing tasks which the Council left incomplete.
___________________________________________________________________________
*Angelus Press and Carmel Books.
The 'fine distinction' is this. The Council declared that "the human person has a right to religious freedom". It went on to declare that "the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person". But the earlier Magisterium taught that the State - if it were a Catholic State - should "protect the citizens against the seductions of error, in order to keep the City in the unity of faith, which is the supreme good", and "may regulate and moderate the public manifestations of other cults and defend its citizens against the spreading of false doctrines which, in the judgement of the Church, put their eternal salvation at risk". This teaching (I am quoting, incidentally, from the curial draft which was put before Vatican II but discarded) went on, however, to say that, because of Christian charity and prudence, a desire to draw dissidents to the Church by kindness, to avoid scandals or civil wars, to obtain civil cooperation and peaceful coexistence, "a just tolerance, even sanctioned by laws, can, according to the circumstances, be imposed".
In other words, non-Catholics in a Catholic state may and perhaps should for good reasons be granted an immunity from coercion. It is not, as the Council asserts, a natural right founded in the dignity of the human person.
There are clever ways round this problem. Professor Thomas Pink argued that the earlier Magisterium did not in fact assign to the State the right to limit liberty; it took the view that the Church has her rights over those who through baptism are her subjects, so that, if the State did coerce, it was acting on behalf of the Church. In other words, within the assumptions of the Christendom State, which we considered in my first piece, the boundaries between Church and State are coterminous (except, habitually, for the Jews) and the problem of Religious Liberty arises only as this unity dissolves, gradually in the early modern period and catastrophically in the Age of Revolutions.
Another factor which should not be forgotten is that the Council admitted that Scripture provides no basis for novel teaching. Indeed it does not: the entire Old Testament is a consistent assertion of the corporate Judaism State, with nation and cult coterminous. This admission perhaps offers a way ahead. Here we have one of the many respects in which the life of the people of Israel before the Christian era, and belief in the Christendom State, are in close agreement. We have much to learn from our Hebrew inheritance. The integration of Scripture into this dialogue constitutes another piece of unfinished Conciliar business.
Furthermore, the curial draft (which Mgr Lefebvre helpfully provides at the end of his book) itself asserted that "the civil Authority is not permitted in any way to compel consciences to accept the faith revealed by God. Indeed the faith is essentially free and cannot be the object of any constraint." This is not quite the same as to say that the right to religious freedom has its foundations in the dignity of the human person, but are not the two positions within reach of each other?
What must be accepted is the Right of Christ to rule and the unlawfulness of secular legislation which contradicts his Law. Legislation against the will of God is legislation which the Christian is not simply not bound to obey; it is something which he is obliged to disobey. Christ is King and, as S Paul told the Philippians, our politeuma is from above. It will become all the more important to teach this and to preach it, as the social and legal framework of secular society becomes ever more, year by year, a grotesque and Diabolical inversion and parody of the Civitas Dei. Daily, they uncrown him. Thank God for every archbishop or bishop who has bravely made this point, for every priestly or lay society which has preached Christ as King.
CONCLUSIONS
(1) There can be no doubt that the newer elements in Dignitatis humanae are embodied in a Conciliar document ratified by the Roman Pontiff (and, according to his biographer, signed by Archbishop Lefebvre together with an overwhelming majority of the Fathers). But those who promote this teaching will be performing a suppressio veri deserving of grave censure if they fail to state, as the Council did, the abiding authority of the previously established teaching. Because:
(2) The same Council with the same authority reasserted the teaching of the previous Magisterium, without any qualification. Thus any suggestion that people, such as Mgr Lefebvre's followers, who continue to lay great emphasis upon the teaching of the previous Magisterium, are opposing the Magisterium of the Council and of the post-Conciliar Church, would itself be a clear denial of the Council's authority and would seem to me to merit a formal Magisterial correction.
This is the context within which I commend Mgr Lefebvre's book* (although, to be honest, not quite all its rhetorical hyperbole) as essential reading in pursuing tasks which the Council left incomplete.
___________________________________________________________________________
*Angelus Press and Carmel Books.
24 November 2017
"They have uncrowned Him" (4)
I return now to what I mentioned in the first of my series: Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre's views about Christian and non-Christian Societies ... and, in particular, to the question raised in Dignitatis humanae about the 'rights of Error'. It is with regard to this Decree that a very distinguished Catholic theologian wrote, not very long ago, that it "occasions a genuine difficulty for orthodox Catholics". And I begin with an anecdote of the Archbishop's which, I believe, goes to the heart of the problem. "Pope John Paul II made [this point] to me on the occasion of the audience that he granted to me on November 18, 1978: 'You know', he said to me, 'religious liberty has been very useful for us in Poland, against communism'".
It is easy to put simply what the ambiguities are. If one is coming from a culture which has been oppressed for a quarter of a century by atheistic Stalinist Communism (and before that, by National Socialism), an obvious truth will prescribe: Religious Liberty must be upheld, therefore the state must cease to prevent Catholic Truth from being upheld. But, against the background of a Christendom State, as we saw it in my first piece, in which the constitution has upheld either explicitly or implicitly the just privileges of the One True Faith taught by the the One True Church, the same truth will receive the expression: Catholic Truth must be upheld, therefore the state must discourage the growth and even the existence of errors against the Truth upheld by the Catholic Church. It is not surprising that S John Paul II, the doughty and effective warrior against a dominant Marxism, and the battle-hardened French Missionary bishop from a background of cultural opposition to the inheritance of the the French Revolution, failed to see eye to eye. Yet those two outworkings of the same principle, for two different contexts, have the same message: Catholic Truth must be upheld. And I could understand that some people might go further and say that, since there are few, if any, Christendom states left, and an increasing number of states in which Catholic Truth is opposed or even persecuted by a new illiberal Secularism or by Islam, we must forget about the second outworking and, out of prudence, make a great deal of the first.
Fr Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange OP, about whom Fr Aidan Nichols has written a fine book, made this point in a passage which Mgr Lefebvre quotes with approval: "We can ... make of liberty of worship an argument ad hominem against those who, while proclaiming the liberty of worship, persecute the Church (secular and socialising states) or impede its worship (communist states, Islamic ones, etc.). This argument ad hominem is fair, and the Church does not disdain it, using it to defend effectively the right of its own liberty". So far, fair enough. [Those who do not know the real meaning of the phrase Argumentum ad hominem can read my articles via the search engine attached to this Blog; it does not mean "personal attack".]
But Garrigou-Lagrange goes on "But it does not follow that the freedom of cults, considered in itself, is maintainable for Christians in principle, because it is in itself absurd and impious: indeed, truth and error cannot have the same rights". Bang on, surely. Error cannot have rights. But it is not pedantic to observe that the writer is not so much concerned to deny personal liberties to those who belong to such cults as to deny it 'in principle' to the errors asserted by the cults.
Here is the problem: Archbishop Lefebvre, and writers who agree with him, have no difficulty whatsoever in piling up quotations from Popes who wrote before the Council, to the effect that Error has no rights. And the Conciliar Declaration Dignitatis humanae begins with a section including the statement that "it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and of societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ"*. But ... as the Council goes on to "develop" its teaching, it does get quite difficult to see how the so-called 'development' is not in fact a change. This 'development' is said to be rooted in a natural right not to be coerced, which is inferred to exist because of the principle that "Man's response to God in Faith must be free."
To be concluded.
__________________________________________________________________________
*The Conciliar Acta make clear the enormous importance of this sentence for the process of achieving Conciliar consensus. On November 19 1965 as many as 249 Fathers had voted non placet on the draft before them. At the final vote, on December 6, the number sank to 70 as the result of pressure put on many of the Fathers. Those who reluctantly changed their vote felt enabled to do so in good conscience because of the addition of this sentence as the result of a personal intervention by Pope Paul VI. It will be remembered that Conciliar decrees are expected to have the authority of a 'moral unanimity'. Dignitatis humanae, considered without the sentence added by the Pope, would be a document that lacked ... by a fairly hefty margin ... that necessary consensus. There is therefore a sense in which it is the most important statement within this whole Declaration, its clavis aperiendi cetera. It is therefore reasonable to insist that whatever else the document may go on to say, must be understood fully in accordance with both the letter and the spirit of that earlier teaching of the Magisterium.
It is easy to put simply what the ambiguities are. If one is coming from a culture which has been oppressed for a quarter of a century by atheistic Stalinist Communism (and before that, by National Socialism), an obvious truth will prescribe: Religious Liberty must be upheld, therefore the state must cease to prevent Catholic Truth from being upheld. But, against the background of a Christendom State, as we saw it in my first piece, in which the constitution has upheld either explicitly or implicitly the just privileges of the One True Faith taught by the the One True Church, the same truth will receive the expression: Catholic Truth must be upheld, therefore the state must discourage the growth and even the existence of errors against the Truth upheld by the Catholic Church. It is not surprising that S John Paul II, the doughty and effective warrior against a dominant Marxism, and the battle-hardened French Missionary bishop from a background of cultural opposition to the inheritance of the the French Revolution, failed to see eye to eye. Yet those two outworkings of the same principle, for two different contexts, have the same message: Catholic Truth must be upheld. And I could understand that some people might go further and say that, since there are few, if any, Christendom states left, and an increasing number of states in which Catholic Truth is opposed or even persecuted by a new illiberal Secularism or by Islam, we must forget about the second outworking and, out of prudence, make a great deal of the first.
Fr Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange OP, about whom Fr Aidan Nichols has written a fine book, made this point in a passage which Mgr Lefebvre quotes with approval: "We can ... make of liberty of worship an argument ad hominem against those who, while proclaiming the liberty of worship, persecute the Church (secular and socialising states) or impede its worship (communist states, Islamic ones, etc.). This argument ad hominem is fair, and the Church does not disdain it, using it to defend effectively the right of its own liberty". So far, fair enough. [Those who do not know the real meaning of the phrase Argumentum ad hominem can read my articles via the search engine attached to this Blog; it does not mean "personal attack".]
But Garrigou-Lagrange goes on "But it does not follow that the freedom of cults, considered in itself, is maintainable for Christians in principle, because it is in itself absurd and impious: indeed, truth and error cannot have the same rights". Bang on, surely. Error cannot have rights. But it is not pedantic to observe that the writer is not so much concerned to deny personal liberties to those who belong to such cults as to deny it 'in principle' to the errors asserted by the cults.
Here is the problem: Archbishop Lefebvre, and writers who agree with him, have no difficulty whatsoever in piling up quotations from Popes who wrote before the Council, to the effect that Error has no rights. And the Conciliar Declaration Dignitatis humanae begins with a section including the statement that "it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and of societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ"*. But ... as the Council goes on to "develop" its teaching, it does get quite difficult to see how the so-called 'development' is not in fact a change. This 'development' is said to be rooted in a natural right not to be coerced, which is inferred to exist because of the principle that "Man's response to God in Faith must be free."
To be concluded.
__________________________________________________________________________
*The Conciliar Acta make clear the enormous importance of this sentence for the process of achieving Conciliar consensus. On November 19 1965 as many as 249 Fathers had voted non placet on the draft before them. At the final vote, on December 6, the number sank to 70 as the result of pressure put on many of the Fathers. Those who reluctantly changed their vote felt enabled to do so in good conscience because of the addition of this sentence as the result of a personal intervention by Pope Paul VI. It will be remembered that Conciliar decrees are expected to have the authority of a 'moral unanimity'. Dignitatis humanae, considered without the sentence added by the Pope, would be a document that lacked ... by a fairly hefty margin ... that necessary consensus. There is therefore a sense in which it is the most important statement within this whole Declaration, its clavis aperiendi cetera. It is therefore reasonable to insist that whatever else the document may go on to say, must be understood fully in accordance with both the letter and the spirit of that earlier teaching of the Magisterium.
22 November 2017
"They have uncrowned Him" (3)
When we turn from C S Lewis and Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre to the texts of Vatican II, I do not think we find a contradiction. In Nostra aetate the Council declared: "The Catholic Church rejects nothing which is true and holy in these religions". So far, it is in agreement with Lewis and Lefebvre; as it is when it goes on to say that the ethics and teachings of these religions "often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, [the Church] proclaims and must ever proclaim Christ, 'the way, the truth, and the life, in whom men find the fulness of religious life, and in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself'".
I propose now to speak frankly about the Second Holy Ecumenical Council of the Vatican.
(1) With regard even to infallible definitions of dogma by Ecumenical Councils and Roman Pontiffs, it is a commonplace that, while we are bound to accept them as of Divine Faith, we are not necessarily obliged to accept, on the same authority, the arguments which are offered to us in support of a dogma; or the prudential considerations which led to its definition. A fortiori, the same limitations apply to the documents of Vatican II. Because ...
(2) Vatican II, in any case, was not a Council which proposed infallibly any dogmas (except those which were already de fide by virtue of the previous Magisterium, such as the Immaculate Conception and Bodily Assumption of the Mother of God, the immorality of procured abortions, etc., etc., etc..). And ...
(3) Vatican II professed to be a pastoral Council. It is a statement of the obvious that pastoral needs (and implied audiences) can vary toto caelo between one generation and another, so that the pastoral observations of the Council will not be expected to speak as directly to successive generations as they might have done to the first half of the 1960s. Conciliar documents Of Vatican II, very helpfully, themselves made this clear by referring to mundus hodierni temporis or the like; and the very document we are now considering makes the same point by its programmatic opening words Nostra aetate.
In the context of these observations, I can only say that, as far as I can see, this Decree of the Council deals with a subject of some complexity with an almost scandalously cheerful brevity. And it is woefully over-optimistic. For example, it addresses an implied audience of non-Christians who are keenly and with goodwill open to a positive evaluation by us of their own religions. It does not - for example - address a world (such as our world) in which very many who profess thus to understand their own faith see themselves as engaged in a Holy War to exterminate, by death or by conversion, those who hold our One True Catholic Faith. Accordingly, I regard as distinctively time-conditioned ... well past their sell-by dates ... passages such as "She [the Church] looks with sincere respect upon those ways of conduct and of life, those rules and teachings which, though differing in many particulars from what she holds and sets forth ...". And it is not so much the actual words of the Council which embarrass me as, firstly, its failure to give us some well-chosen observations about the errors of false religions; secondly, its failure to give any guidance as to how we are to reconcile its new teaching with its own statement that the earlier Magisterium remains fully in force; and, thirdly, what I might venture to call its body-language - what it seems at first sight to be saying ... until one looks more carefully.
To be continued.
I propose now to speak frankly about the Second Holy Ecumenical Council of the Vatican.
(1) With regard even to infallible definitions of dogma by Ecumenical Councils and Roman Pontiffs, it is a commonplace that, while we are bound to accept them as of Divine Faith, we are not necessarily obliged to accept, on the same authority, the arguments which are offered to us in support of a dogma; or the prudential considerations which led to its definition. A fortiori, the same limitations apply to the documents of Vatican II. Because ...
(2) Vatican II, in any case, was not a Council which proposed infallibly any dogmas (except those which were already de fide by virtue of the previous Magisterium, such as the Immaculate Conception and Bodily Assumption of the Mother of God, the immorality of procured abortions, etc., etc., etc..). And ...
(3) Vatican II professed to be a pastoral Council. It is a statement of the obvious that pastoral needs (and implied audiences) can vary toto caelo between one generation and another, so that the pastoral observations of the Council will not be expected to speak as directly to successive generations as they might have done to the first half of the 1960s. Conciliar documents Of Vatican II, very helpfully, themselves made this clear by referring to mundus hodierni temporis or the like; and the very document we are now considering makes the same point by its programmatic opening words Nostra aetate.
In the context of these observations, I can only say that, as far as I can see, this Decree of the Council deals with a subject of some complexity with an almost scandalously cheerful brevity. And it is woefully over-optimistic. For example, it addresses an implied audience of non-Christians who are keenly and with goodwill open to a positive evaluation by us of their own religions. It does not - for example - address a world (such as our world) in which very many who profess thus to understand their own faith see themselves as engaged in a Holy War to exterminate, by death or by conversion, those who hold our One True Catholic Faith. Accordingly, I regard as distinctively time-conditioned ... well past their sell-by dates ... passages such as "She [the Church] looks with sincere respect upon those ways of conduct and of life, those rules and teachings which, though differing in many particulars from what she holds and sets forth ...". And it is not so much the actual words of the Council which embarrass me as, firstly, its failure to give us some well-chosen observations about the errors of false religions; secondly, its failure to give any guidance as to how we are to reconcile its new teaching with its own statement that the earlier Magisterium remains fully in force; and, thirdly, what I might venture to call its body-language - what it seems at first sight to be saying ... until one looks more carefully.
To be continued.
21 November 2017
More Martin ... further facts about the Fraterculus
I'm sorry: Luther is a bit passe now, isn't he ... PF has been to Lund, hugged an episcopussy, said ... er ... whatever he has said ...
But there is a very jolly book about Luther, The Making of Martin Luther, which has only just reached me, a gift of a generous friend, and which I can enthusiastically commend. Its narrative has a rather deliciously detached style of faintly amused superiority; it is always elegant, invariably informative, and quite often distinctly funny.
Richard Rex (a Tab) has endeavoured to excavate beneath the historical evidence and to bring us what was truly going on in the mind of Luther. In particular, he avoids the snares of writing with hindsight. He tries very hard to see how new ... or how old ... was every stance that Luther took at the moment he took it.
I really do think that most of you would enjoy most of it. The sort of Revisionism which begins by demonstrating that, pretty certainly, the fraterculus never nailed any theses to any door anywhere in that fateful October of 1517, always brings with it a certain pleasure. And the careful dissection of Luther's treatment of his opponents is fun ... Rex suggests that the unrelenting fury with which Luther treated Erasmus is the product of Luther's frustrated realisation that the great humanist had actually caught him out. I very much enjoyed the author's demonstration that Luther was a thorough-going medieval, not least in his late medieval emotional response to the Lord's Humanity. Revealingly, Luther considered S Bernard of Clairvaux to have "excelled all the ancient Fathers of the Church in his preaching, because he preached Christ so beautifully'". [Anglican readers will probably recall Gregory Dix's pointed proof (Shape pp 605 sqq.) that emotional fifteenth century devotional writings had very little in them which "the sternest protestant that ever came out of Ulster could conscientiously refuse to use".]
A tiny but thought-provoking example of Rex's ability to throw light on how something seemed at the time is his suggestion that "the mother's milk of the [recent invention of printing] in its infancy was meeting the massive demand for liturgical texts which was generated by the almost hyperventilated piety of late medieval Catholicism".
But ... er ... did it necessarily feel exactly like that in, say, Venice? Where Aldus Manutius Plancus insisted that only Greek be spoken in his Printing House ...
But there is a very jolly book about Luther, The Making of Martin Luther, which has only just reached me, a gift of a generous friend, and which I can enthusiastically commend. Its narrative has a rather deliciously detached style of faintly amused superiority; it is always elegant, invariably informative, and quite often distinctly funny.
Richard Rex (a Tab) has endeavoured to excavate beneath the historical evidence and to bring us what was truly going on in the mind of Luther. In particular, he avoids the snares of writing with hindsight. He tries very hard to see how new ... or how old ... was every stance that Luther took at the moment he took it.
I really do think that most of you would enjoy most of it. The sort of Revisionism which begins by demonstrating that, pretty certainly, the fraterculus never nailed any theses to any door anywhere in that fateful October of 1517, always brings with it a certain pleasure. And the careful dissection of Luther's treatment of his opponents is fun ... Rex suggests that the unrelenting fury with which Luther treated Erasmus is the product of Luther's frustrated realisation that the great humanist had actually caught him out. I very much enjoyed the author's demonstration that Luther was a thorough-going medieval, not least in his late medieval emotional response to the Lord's Humanity. Revealingly, Luther considered S Bernard of Clairvaux to have "excelled all the ancient Fathers of the Church in his preaching, because he preached Christ so beautifully'". [Anglican readers will probably recall Gregory Dix's pointed proof (Shape pp 605 sqq.) that emotional fifteenth century devotional writings had very little in them which "the sternest protestant that ever came out of Ulster could conscientiously refuse to use".]
A tiny but thought-provoking example of Rex's ability to throw light on how something seemed at the time is his suggestion that "the mother's milk of the [recent invention of printing] in its infancy was meeting the massive demand for liturgical texts which was generated by the almost hyperventilated piety of late medieval Catholicism".
But ... er ... did it necessarily feel exactly like that in, say, Venice? Where Aldus Manutius Plancus insisted that only Greek be spoken in his Printing House ...
20 November 2017
"They have uncrowned Him" (2) False Religions?
Continuing to consider Archbishop Lefebvre's book, from my own background in Catholic Anglicanism, I discern in it more than a whiff of that admirable Anglican Ulsterman, C S Lewis. Not that Archbishop Lefebvre, I am sure, will have read him; but because first-rate Christian thinkers so often, laudably, converge. Take a particular tricky theological problem: explaining how souls rooted in a false religion may find their way to God, without asserting - or leading others to think you mean - that all religions are more or less as good as each other: 'syncretism' or 'indifferentism'. Mgr Lefebvre writes " ... in the false religions, certain souls can be oriented towards God; but this is because they do not attach themselves to the errors of their religion! It is not through their religion that these souls turn towards God, but in spite of it! Therefore, the respect that is owed to these souls would not imply that respect is owed to their religion". And: " ... these religions [he has just mentioned Islam and Hinduism] can keep some sound elements, signs of natural religion, natural occasions for salvation; even preserve some remainders of the primitive revelation (God, the fall, a salvation), hidden supernatural values which the grace of God could use in order to kindle in some people the flame of a dawning faith. But none of these values belongs in its own right to these false religions ... The wholesome elements that can subsist still belong by right to the sole true religion, that of the Catholic Church; and it is this one alone that can act through them"*.
I think this is admirably expressed, and it reminds me strongly of the penultimate chapter in Lewis's The Last Battle. A young Calormene, brought up in the worship of the false god Tash, meets the Lion Aslan, the Christ-figure in Lewis's rich narrative. "Then I fell at his feet and thought, Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days, and not him. ... But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. Then by reason of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true ... that thou and Tash art one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. ... Dost thou understand, Child? I said, Lord, thou knowest how much I understand. But I also said (for the truth constrained me), Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days. Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek".
Whatever in the cult of Tash predisposed the young man to seek the Glorious One still belongs by right to the sole true religion, that of the Catholic Church; it does not belong of right to the cult of Tash. It is not through what is proper to the cult of Tash that he comes to Christ: that is to say, through its errors, but in spite of it. Because Tash and Aslan are opposites.
And it is worth being precise and reminding ourselves that Nostra aetate does not say that we respect the Islamic religion; but Moslems.
To be continued.
___________________________________________________________________________
*I think it is clear that Mgr Lefebvre has here in mind the wise teaching of Unitatis redintegratio para 4. " ... haec omnia, quae a Christo proveniunt et ad Ipsum conducunt, ad unicam Christi Ecclesiam iure pertinent" where iure was added to the text on the orders of Pope Paul VI.
16 November 2017
For Classicists ...
There is an interesting internet correspondence going on concerning Leitourgeia. Does it, as we are often told by a certain school of modern Catholic liturgical 'experts', mean "Work of the People"; or "Work for the People"?
Nobis in hoc exsilio, Sancte Pater Edmunde ...
R Caelestis patriae amorem, quaesumus, infunde.
Ad Magnificat et Benedictus Antiphona Dilexit justitiam et odivit iniquitatem, propterea moritur in exsilio.
[Holy Father Edmund, we beseech thee to pour upon us in this exile love of our heavenly homeland. He loved righteousness and hated iniquity, wherefore he dies in exile.]
These are 'proper' parts of the Divine Office (Breviarium Romanum, Appendix pro Dioecesibus Angliae) for today, feast of S Edmund of Abingdon (Abendonia, in the Breviary reading) Patron of this Diocese. It is a good day to pray for the Diocese of Portsmouth and its thoroughly admirable, orthodox, bishop, Philip Egan, a definitely extraordinary ordinary. Come to think of it, every day is a good day to do that.
S Edmund's education was divided between the great Abbey in Abingdon, and the 'schools' in Oxford (where he later taught ... er ... I think he may also have visited Paris ...). We live between these two towns; Oxford has quite good libraries, and I go to Abingdon to do bits of shopping in Waitrose and to pick up my free coffee and newspaper. There's not much to see of Abingdon Abbey; as far as Oxford is concerned, I think the only surviving buildings upon which S Edmund's eyes may have rested are the Castle and the Church of S Michael at the North Gate. (Incidentally; the Breviary naturally gives the locative of Oxonia as Oxoniae; the Oxford University Press has always used the form Oxonii. Well, there you go.)
S Edmund became Archbishop of Canterbury; he was involved in disputes, not only with the Chapter there, who were the usual lot of troublesome monks, but also with the King. He died at Pontigny, probably on his way to Rome to deal with the legal cases in which he was involved. He is still to be venerated in his shrine there.
The parts of the Divine Office at the head of this piece remind me of S Paul's rather pointed observation to his Philippian converts ... Philippi had the constitutional status of a Roman colonia , which meant that its citizens possessed citizenship of Rome. They were obsessively proud of this, so S Paul reminds them not to think about earthly things, epigeia, but to remember that their politeuma is situated in the heavens.
We are all in exile until we reach our patria; and the knowledge that our true Passport Office is at a heavenly address ought, I rather think, to discourage us from making too much of a fetich of the fairly modern concept of the Nation State.
Ad Magnificat et Benedictus Antiphona Dilexit justitiam et odivit iniquitatem, propterea moritur in exsilio.
[Holy Father Edmund, we beseech thee to pour upon us in this exile love of our heavenly homeland. He loved righteousness and hated iniquity, wherefore he dies in exile.]
These are 'proper' parts of the Divine Office (Breviarium Romanum, Appendix pro Dioecesibus Angliae) for today, feast of S Edmund of Abingdon (Abendonia, in the Breviary reading) Patron of this Diocese. It is a good day to pray for the Diocese of Portsmouth and its thoroughly admirable, orthodox, bishop, Philip Egan, a definitely extraordinary ordinary. Come to think of it, every day is a good day to do that.
S Edmund's education was divided between the great Abbey in Abingdon, and the 'schools' in Oxford (where he later taught ... er ... I think he may also have visited Paris ...). We live between these two towns; Oxford has quite good libraries, and I go to Abingdon to do bits of shopping in Waitrose and to pick up my free coffee and newspaper. There's not much to see of Abingdon Abbey; as far as Oxford is concerned, I think the only surviving buildings upon which S Edmund's eyes may have rested are the Castle and the Church of S Michael at the North Gate. (Incidentally; the Breviary naturally gives the locative of Oxonia as Oxoniae; the Oxford University Press has always used the form Oxonii. Well, there you go.)
S Edmund became Archbishop of Canterbury; he was involved in disputes, not only with the Chapter there, who were the usual lot of troublesome monks, but also with the King. He died at Pontigny, probably on his way to Rome to deal with the legal cases in which he was involved. He is still to be venerated in his shrine there.
The parts of the Divine Office at the head of this piece remind me of S Paul's rather pointed observation to his Philippian converts ... Philippi had the constitutional status of a Roman colonia , which meant that its citizens possessed citizenship of Rome. They were obsessively proud of this, so S Paul reminds them not to think about earthly things, epigeia, but to remember that their politeuma is situated in the heavens.
We are all in exile until we reach our patria; and the knowledge that our true Passport Office is at a heavenly address ought, I rather think, to discourage us from making too much of a fetich of the fairly modern concept of the Nation State.
14 November 2017
Double standards (2), (3), and (4)
It is difficult always to be certain what PF has said, because throughout his pontificate there has been a persistent risk that he has been misreported or misunderstood. I prefix that very important caveat as I continue to list amusing examples of Double Standards.
(2) PF told Cardinal Mueller that he had decided not to reappoint curial officials after the expiry of their five-year term. Mueller was to consider himself to be but the first victim of the new convention.
There seem to be uncertainties about whether PF has been applying this norm uniformly ... or, indeed, at all.
(3) PF talked loudly about Parrhesia in the distant days when he hoped it would encourage Synodal Fathers to say what he wanted to hear them saying. It is rumoured that he has more recently been much more reticent about uttering the pi word.
(4) PF is described as favouring Subsidiarity especially in the new exciting sense of allowing Germanophone hierarchs do do whatever they like. But ...
(a) a few months ago, a Roman Instruction stripped diocesan bishops of the right to authorise new religious communities within their jurisdictions without the prior inspection and sanction of the Congregation for Religious.
(b) a draft document did the rounds in Rome, according to which young clergy in the Roman Colleges, whoever are the ordinaries of the home dioceses that pay for their education, would be required to concelebrate rather than being allowed to get into the disgusting habit of saying a daily private EF Mass. [Does anyone know what became of this proposal?]
4 a & b are very understandable. The great renaissance of Catholicism which began in the last decades of the 25-year Wojtyla-Ratzinger dyarchy disproportionately influenced the young of both sexes. Hence, the demise of old communities now reduced to impotent senility was accompanied by a mushrooming of young religious orders which either prefer the Old Mass or, with a broader menu, elevate the Old Mass to optable equality with the New. Hence also the growth of vocations to the Sacred Priesthood in the Ecclesia Dei communities but, much more strikingly still, also in the Church at large. This has led to a new phenomenon: young priests who for pastoral reasons do willingly say the New Mass (although not necessarily always with the ritual options most fashionable in the 1970s), but who derive their ars celebrandi from the Old Mass which is their personal gold Standard; and who will, if pastoral needs do not demand otherwise, instinctively say their daily private Masses according to the Old Missal.
It is not surprising that there are those for whom these new cultural manifestations are less than unambiguously welcome. Now an older generation, but still luxuriating on the emotional highs of the late 'sixties, they peer from under their dear drooping eyelids into the faces of the young. Is it remarkable that they discern in those faces the sure prognostics of their own transience?
(2) PF told Cardinal Mueller that he had decided not to reappoint curial officials after the expiry of their five-year term. Mueller was to consider himself to be but the first victim of the new convention.
There seem to be uncertainties about whether PF has been applying this norm uniformly ... or, indeed, at all.
(3) PF talked loudly about Parrhesia in the distant days when he hoped it would encourage Synodal Fathers to say what he wanted to hear them saying. It is rumoured that he has more recently been much more reticent about uttering the pi word.
(4) PF is described as favouring Subsidiarity especially in the new exciting sense of allowing Germanophone hierarchs do do whatever they like. But ...
(a) a few months ago, a Roman Instruction stripped diocesan bishops of the right to authorise new religious communities within their jurisdictions without the prior inspection and sanction of the Congregation for Religious.
(b) a draft document did the rounds in Rome, according to which young clergy in the Roman Colleges, whoever are the ordinaries of the home dioceses that pay for their education, would be required to concelebrate rather than being allowed to get into the disgusting habit of saying a daily private EF Mass. [Does anyone know what became of this proposal?]
4 a & b are very understandable. The great renaissance of Catholicism which began in the last decades of the 25-year Wojtyla-Ratzinger dyarchy disproportionately influenced the young of both sexes. Hence, the demise of old communities now reduced to impotent senility was accompanied by a mushrooming of young religious orders which either prefer the Old Mass or, with a broader menu, elevate the Old Mass to optable equality with the New. Hence also the growth of vocations to the Sacred Priesthood in the Ecclesia Dei communities but, much more strikingly still, also in the Church at large. This has led to a new phenomenon: young priests who for pastoral reasons do willingly say the New Mass (although not necessarily always with the ritual options most fashionable in the 1970s), but who derive their ars celebrandi from the Old Mass which is their personal gold Standard; and who will, if pastoral needs do not demand otherwise, instinctively say their daily private Masses according to the Old Missal.
It is not surprising that there are those for whom these new cultural manifestations are less than unambiguously welcome. Now an older generation, but still luxuriating on the emotional highs of the late 'sixties, they peer from under their dear drooping eyelids into the faces of the young. Is it remarkable that they discern in those faces the sure prognostics of their own transience?
13 November 2017
"Little boys should be allowed to wear tiaras!"
Thus, the Church of England's Education Department, nobly defending the rights of Anglican transtoddlers.
Now we know why all those "I'll pope as soon as I qualify for my pension" clerics are still hanging on in what Blessed John Henry so felicitously referred to as the House of Bondage.
Ahhhhh ... the simple pleasure of seeing Fr A, Fr B, and Fr C, not to mention the Right Reverend episcopopters, entering Church to the sound of Tu es Petrus, each wearing his triregnum! I simply can't wait!
Just for once, the beneficent and omnicompetent Mr Luzar may be incapable of supplying instantly all their needs!!!!
Now we know why all those "I'll pope as soon as I qualify for my pension" clerics are still hanging on in what Blessed John Henry so felicitously referred to as the House of Bondage.
Ahhhhh ... the simple pleasure of seeing Fr A, Fr B, and Fr C, not to mention the Right Reverend episcopopters, entering Church to the sound of Tu es Petrus, each wearing his triregnum! I simply can't wait!
Just for once, the beneficent and omnicompetent Mr Luzar may be incapable of supplying instantly all their needs!!!!
12 November 2017
S Willibrord's Little Rome
The Saints of England, God bless them, do seem rather to tug at our maniples these days as we struggle up to the Altar. There was November 8, preserving a shadow of the old Octave Day as we celebrated in the Ordinariate the very agreeable Feast of All the Saints of England. Last month, the cardinale volante Raymond Burke went to Puginopolis, aka Ramsgate, to seal the Shrine Relic of S Augustine into a splendid new reliquary. Recently we kept the feast of S Willibrord ...
At a time (597) when the Roman Rite was, fairly simpliciter, the Rite of Rome, the Augustinian Roman Mission planted Little Romes in England; places where the dedications of churches mirrored those of Rome; where the Liturgy was Roman; where the education was Roman. A second wave of missions took this Anglo-Saxon Romanita across to Northern Europe. Which is why S Willibrord, via Northumberland and Ireland, ended up being consecrated Archbishop of the Frisians by Pope S Sergius I, and setting up his cathedra at Utrecht.
Those Anglo-Saxon Churches were comfortably, even aggressively, papalist; which makes it all the more preposterous that (for example) an Anglican 'Society', designed to shelter those who disdained Pope Benedict's gracious ecumenical offer, should award itself the patronage of S Wilfrid! S Willibrord was similarly kidnapped much earlier by a group advocating close links between the schismatic Dutch 'Old Catholic Church' (now depressingly ultra-liberal, but possessed of orders regarded by Rome as valid), and the Church of England.
This link produced an initiative in the 1930s designed to circumvent the condemnation of Anglican Orders by the Bull Apostolicae curae of Leo XIII. By mutual interconsecrations, the 'Old Catholic' and English Anglican episcopates were ... this was the explicit intention ... woven together into one "so that even the strictest romanist will not be able to doubt Anglican Orders". The C of E, half a century later, gave up this ingeniously intricate attempt to render its priestly orders equivalent to those of the Catholic Church; it formally declared that its own orders were, after all that trouble, despite all the ink spilt rebutting Leo XIII, worth no more than those of Methodists and Lutherans! Yes; it is a strange body!
But the point of this rather rambling blogpost is to disentangle our own dear S Willibrord, the real Willibrord, from all those weird goings-on and to draw your attention to the wonderful pictures on the Internet of the Church of S Willibrord in Utrecht, which is being blessed and brought back to use this very day by His Excellency Bishop Fellay (a man who has risen in my esteem since he so wisely signed our Filial Correction). That superb, soaring church (not unworthy of Pugin) will be an inspiring restoration of Anglo-Saxon Romanita North of the Alps; a Little Rome up there among the foggy boggy mists of the Low Countries to console the Faithful as a pledge of the Faith's return in full and glorious expression to the queenly city upon the Seven Hills where an immigrant from the Middle East once made an act of Martyrium.
We must all make the most of our Little Romes!
At a time (597) when the Roman Rite was, fairly simpliciter, the Rite of Rome, the Augustinian Roman Mission planted Little Romes in England; places where the dedications of churches mirrored those of Rome; where the Liturgy was Roman; where the education was Roman. A second wave of missions took this Anglo-Saxon Romanita across to Northern Europe. Which is why S Willibrord, via Northumberland and Ireland, ended up being consecrated Archbishop of the Frisians by Pope S Sergius I, and setting up his cathedra at Utrecht.
Those Anglo-Saxon Churches were comfortably, even aggressively, papalist; which makes it all the more preposterous that (for example) an Anglican 'Society', designed to shelter those who disdained Pope Benedict's gracious ecumenical offer, should award itself the patronage of S Wilfrid! S Willibrord was similarly kidnapped much earlier by a group advocating close links between the schismatic Dutch 'Old Catholic Church' (now depressingly ultra-liberal, but possessed of orders regarded by Rome as valid), and the Church of England.
This link produced an initiative in the 1930s designed to circumvent the condemnation of Anglican Orders by the Bull Apostolicae curae of Leo XIII. By mutual interconsecrations, the 'Old Catholic' and English Anglican episcopates were ... this was the explicit intention ... woven together into one "so that even the strictest romanist will not be able to doubt Anglican Orders". The C of E, half a century later, gave up this ingeniously intricate attempt to render its priestly orders equivalent to those of the Catholic Church; it formally declared that its own orders were, after all that trouble, despite all the ink spilt rebutting Leo XIII, worth no more than those of Methodists and Lutherans! Yes; it is a strange body!
But the point of this rather rambling blogpost is to disentangle our own dear S Willibrord, the real Willibrord, from all those weird goings-on and to draw your attention to the wonderful pictures on the Internet of the Church of S Willibrord in Utrecht, which is being blessed and brought back to use this very day by His Excellency Bishop Fellay (a man who has risen in my esteem since he so wisely signed our Filial Correction). That superb, soaring church (not unworthy of Pugin) will be an inspiring restoration of Anglo-Saxon Romanita North of the Alps; a Little Rome up there among the foggy boggy mists of the Low Countries to console the Faithful as a pledge of the Faith's return in full and glorious expression to the queenly city upon the Seven Hills where an immigrant from the Middle East once made an act of Martyrium.
We must all make the most of our Little Romes!
11 November 2017
Bishops: a "courage deficit"?
Those who use the Liturgia horarum found themselves today saying the very jolly hymn by S Odo, abbot of Cluny (d 943), 'Martine par apostolis', which notoriously moved Peter Abelard to call its opening hyperbole a 'praesumptio'.
S Odo's fourth stanza originally concluded:
monastico nunc ordini
iam paene lapso subveni.
The 1968 revising coetus, aka Dom Anselmo Lentini & Co. Ltd., commented that the first of these lines needed to be broadened and, as far as the second is concerned, 'evidenter mutandum' (Oh yeah?). So they came up with:
pontificum nunc ordini
pio favore subveni.
Isn't all this fun? I began by feeling that, given the collapse of the Religious life in the First World, perhaps the original would again now be apposite. Then I recalled all the Good News regarding the current vibrant revival of the Religious Life. So I started toying instead with the idea of adopting just one of Lentini's proposed changes, so that the text would read:
pontificum nunc ordini
iam paene lapso subveni.
But, given the unwillingness of ... shall we say, just a few? ... the Successors of the Apostles to speak clearly and frankly about the disfunctions in the current flow of the River Tiber, perhaps the following would, if you will forgive an uncharacteristic lapse into modish jargon, tick all the boxes:
pontificum nunc ordini
En! paene merso subveni.
S Odo's fourth stanza originally concluded:
monastico nunc ordini
iam paene lapso subveni.
The 1968 revising coetus, aka Dom Anselmo Lentini & Co. Ltd., commented that the first of these lines needed to be broadened and, as far as the second is concerned, 'evidenter mutandum' (Oh yeah?). So they came up with:
pontificum nunc ordini
pio favore subveni.
Isn't all this fun? I began by feeling that, given the collapse of the Religious life in the First World, perhaps the original would again now be apposite. Then I recalled all the Good News regarding the current vibrant revival of the Religious Life. So I started toying instead with the idea of adopting just one of Lentini's proposed changes, so that the text would read:
pontificum nunc ordini
iam paene lapso subveni.
But, given the unwillingness of ... shall we say, just a few? ... the Successors of the Apostles to speak clearly and frankly about the disfunctions in the current flow of the River Tiber, perhaps the following would, if you will forgive an uncharacteristic lapse into modish jargon, tick all the boxes:
pontificum nunc ordini
En! paene merso subveni.
10 November 2017
Splendid News!
Apparently, John Paul I is going to be made a Saint! About time, too! After all, he was a pope!
I believe one account of the dying words of our late Sovereign Lord Vespasian offers us
"Vae! Puto, deus fio!"
After all, he was an emperor!
I believe one account of the dying words of our late Sovereign Lord Vespasian offers us
"Vae! Puto, deus fio!"
After all, he was an emperor!
Jonathan Sachs
A brilliant Thought for the Day on the BBC Home Service Today Programme by Rabbi Lord Sachs, about Freedom of Speech. Sparkling, vivid, scintillating.
It comes just after a good bit on the aulos, by Armand D'angour, Fellow and Mods tutor at Jesus College in this University, at around 1hour 40 minutes into the programme.
It comes just after a good bit on the aulos, by Armand D'angour, Fellow and Mods tutor at Jesus College in this University, at around 1hour 40 minutes into the programme.
9 November 2017
NCREPORTER
The Winter article to which I referred a few days ago, not only attacks Fr Weinanandy, but also berates Cardinal DiNardo and the USA Episcopal Conference. Winter thinks that their response to Weinandy was weak.
Actually, on reflection, I can't help feeling there is a little something in this. DiNardo does talk about dialogue and does refrain from angry personal remarks about Weinandy. Moreover, being 'sacked' as a Consultor of the Doctrine Commission may be rather a sweet martyrdom. Father will be spared boring chores arising from an episcopal tendency to kick troublesome balls into long grass by referring them to the Commission. He will have more time now to get on with his own stuff! Like Cardinal Mueller, he may even feel less inhibited!
As Father wrote, the Bishops of the world have mostly been extremely quiet. Some of those who have said the bolder things are among the younger bishops; men whose age and current position means that, when the natural time comes for their next move, we are likely to have entered into a new pontificate. I have, throughout my own career, several times noticed with amused interest how little auctoritas a principal seems to retain when he is known to be in his last year or so!
When the Cardinal Secretary of State can go public with the opinion that PF's critics do deserve an answer, the evidence suggests that the tide is not flowing strongly in PF's direction, and that even 'top people' are starting to hedge their bets or to distance themselves.
I urge readers to keep their heads and to do anything they can to ensure that the momentum ... rolls. We are getting somewhere; the pressure on PF is mounting. There are signs of real panic in partibus adversis. As PF's defenders become fewer and more nuanced, perhaps we should detect a growing apprehension among some of them that it might not do their own careers much good in the next pontificate to have been too loudly explicit in this one. And PF's determination to follow up Amorislaetitiagate so quickly with Luthergate and deathpenaltygate and liturgygate may suggest that he is himself panicking at the thought of not having time to fulfill his ambitions and those of his cronies.
Believe me, they're on the back foot. Control of the agenda seems to be slipping from their grasp. Fewer and fewer thoughtful observers are confident that PF is a safe pair of hands.
Courage!
Actually, on reflection, I can't help feeling there is a little something in this. DiNardo does talk about dialogue and does refrain from angry personal remarks about Weinandy. Moreover, being 'sacked' as a Consultor of the Doctrine Commission may be rather a sweet martyrdom. Father will be spared boring chores arising from an episcopal tendency to kick troublesome balls into long grass by referring them to the Commission. He will have more time now to get on with his own stuff! Like Cardinal Mueller, he may even feel less inhibited!
As Father wrote, the Bishops of the world have mostly been extremely quiet. Some of those who have said the bolder things are among the younger bishops; men whose age and current position means that, when the natural time comes for their next move, we are likely to have entered into a new pontificate. I have, throughout my own career, several times noticed with amused interest how little auctoritas a principal seems to retain when he is known to be in his last year or so!
When the Cardinal Secretary of State can go public with the opinion that PF's critics do deserve an answer, the evidence suggests that the tide is not flowing strongly in PF's direction, and that even 'top people' are starting to hedge their bets or to distance themselves.
I urge readers to keep their heads and to do anything they can to ensure that the momentum ... rolls. We are getting somewhere; the pressure on PF is mounting. There are signs of real panic in partibus adversis. As PF's defenders become fewer and more nuanced, perhaps we should detect a growing apprehension among some of them that it might not do their own careers much good in the next pontificate to have been too loudly explicit in this one. And PF's determination to follow up Amorislaetitiagate so quickly with Luthergate and deathpenaltygate and liturgygate may suggest that he is himself panicking at the thought of not having time to fulfill his ambitions and those of his cronies.
Believe me, they're on the back foot. Control of the agenda seems to be slipping from their grasp. Fewer and fewer thoughtful observers are confident that PF is a safe pair of hands.
Courage!
8 November 2017
DIRTY, DIRTY, DIRTY
A good piece over there on onepeterfive about Pastoral Fear.
Some attacks on the Filial Correction have jeered at us on the ground that "not many people signed". When I consider the BULLYING that goes on in the Catholic Church, my reaction to these nasty jibes is DIRTY DIRTY DIRTY.
Some attacks on the Filial Correction have jeered at us on the ground that "not many people signed". When I consider the BULLYING that goes on in the Catholic Church, my reaction to these nasty jibes is DIRTY DIRTY DIRTY.
7 November 2017
Double Standards (1): Pope Francis answers Dubium!!!
Pope Francis has replied to a plea for an answer to a question, and has done so within SIX WEEKS!!
A well-known theologian has commented with immense joy, pointing out how wonderful it is
"that Francis answered at all and did not let my appeal fall on deaf ears";
"that he replied himself and not via his private secretary or the secretary of state";
"that he clearly read the appeal most attentively";
"that he is highly appreciative".
Who is the theologian? Hans Kueng. What was his appeal? That PF would allow free discussion concerning the doctrine of papal infallibility, which Kueng has spent a lot of his life attacking.
Kueng wrote to PF on March 9 2016; his ecstatic press statement describing PF's reply was released to The Tablet on April 27 2016.
Papal Infallibility is a dogma solemnly defined by an Ecumenical Council, Vatican I, in 1870. Its teaching included anathemas against those who denied the doctrine.
Kueng says that PF "set no restrictions. He has thus responded to my request to give room to a free discussion on the dogma of infallibility. I think it is now imperative to use this new freedom ..." etc. etc..
This gripping news broke some weeks before the recent spate of Internet papers by court theologians arguing that documents like Amoris laetitia require a more obsequious acceptance from the theological community than they have in some quarters received.
So ... assuming that Kueng has not been telling naughty porkies ... on the one hand, obsequious submission is required; on the other, the whole fundamental substructure of the Petrine Ministry is up for grabs!!
You couldn't make it up, could you?
Double standards (2), (3), and (4) are due to follow.
A well-known theologian has commented with immense joy, pointing out how wonderful it is
"that Francis answered at all and did not let my appeal fall on deaf ears";
"that he replied himself and not via his private secretary or the secretary of state";
"that he clearly read the appeal most attentively";
"that he is highly appreciative".
Who is the theologian? Hans Kueng. What was his appeal? That PF would allow free discussion concerning the doctrine of papal infallibility, which Kueng has spent a lot of his life attacking.
Kueng wrote to PF on March 9 2016; his ecstatic press statement describing PF's reply was released to The Tablet on April 27 2016.
Papal Infallibility is a dogma solemnly defined by an Ecumenical Council, Vatican I, in 1870. Its teaching included anathemas against those who denied the doctrine.
Kueng says that PF "set no restrictions. He has thus responded to my request to give room to a free discussion on the dogma of infallibility. I think it is now imperative to use this new freedom ..." etc. etc..
This gripping news broke some weeks before the recent spate of Internet papers by court theologians arguing that documents like Amoris laetitia require a more obsequious acceptance from the theological community than they have in some quarters received.
So ... assuming that Kueng has not been telling naughty porkies ... on the one hand, obsequious submission is required; on the other, the whole fundamental substructure of the Petrine Ministry is up for grabs!!
You couldn't make it up, could you?
Double standards (2), (3), and (4) are due to follow.
6 November 2017
A Pope and the Liturgy: Non Potest
Following on from my post about possible dangers to sound Liturgy arising from PF's own personal liturgical fads and his dirigiste instincts, I want to draw to the attention of readers two loci of Magisterial status. (I presume that readers are already familiar with what the then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in The Spirit of the Liturgy, when he criticised the hyperpapalism which, after Vatican II, played on an erroneous assumption that the pope can do anything. This, of course, could be argued to be non-Magisterial.)
The two places that I wish, very briefly, to draw to your attention are full exercises of a Papal Magisterium.
(1) In the Letter to the Bishops which accompanied Summorum Pontificum, pope Benedict XVI wrote "What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden forbidden". Notice the expression cannot. The learned pontiff says, not "should not be"; he says "cannot be".
(2) I suspect Ratzinger of being responsible for drafting paragraph 1125 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, although, of course, it was promulgated with the force of an Apostolic Constitution in 1992 by Pope S John Paul II.
The second sentence of this paragraph begins with the phrase "Ipsa auctoritas Ecclesiae suprema [Even the supreme authority of the Church itself]". This is a phrase commonly used, especially at Vatican II, of the Pope himself (although surely it would also apply to an Ecumenical Council). Next comes "non potest [is not able]". I ask you to notice that we do not have "non licet" ["he is not permitted"], nor do we have a jussive subjunctive ["he shouldn't do it"]. What is being excluded is being excluded as an impossibility. Just as S John Paul II excluded the sacerdotal ordination of women as an impossibility (nullam facultatem habere).
The sentence in the Catechism continues: "liturgiam ad placitum commutare suum [change the Liturgy in accordance with his own fads] sed solummodo in oboedientia fidei et in religiosa mysterii liturgiae observantia [but only in the obedience of the Faith and in the religious observance of the mystery of the Liturgy]."
In other words, if a pope were to attempt to change the Liturgy in accordance with his personal fads, he would be acting ultra vires. And so his attempt would be null.
I suspect we would have to go back to the principled and glorious teaching of Vatican I (Pastor aeternus) to find as clear and forthright a Magisterial statement of what a pope is not competent to do!
My apologies to readers who recognise this as the theme of a paper I have read in a number of places during the last five years, sometimes under the title "Can the pope abolish the Vetus Ordo?". I am willing to dig it out and update it and come and read it again if anyone else wants to hear it!!! Anywhere in Europe! Just my expenses!
The two places that I wish, very briefly, to draw to your attention are full exercises of a Papal Magisterium.
(1) In the Letter to the Bishops which accompanied Summorum Pontificum, pope Benedict XVI wrote "What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden forbidden". Notice the expression cannot. The learned pontiff says, not "should not be"; he says "cannot be".
(2) I suspect Ratzinger of being responsible for drafting paragraph 1125 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, although, of course, it was promulgated with the force of an Apostolic Constitution in 1992 by Pope S John Paul II.
The second sentence of this paragraph begins with the phrase "Ipsa auctoritas Ecclesiae suprema [Even the supreme authority of the Church itself]". This is a phrase commonly used, especially at Vatican II, of the Pope himself (although surely it would also apply to an Ecumenical Council). Next comes "non potest [is not able]". I ask you to notice that we do not have "non licet" ["he is not permitted"], nor do we have a jussive subjunctive ["he shouldn't do it"]. What is being excluded is being excluded as an impossibility. Just as S John Paul II excluded the sacerdotal ordination of women as an impossibility (nullam facultatem habere).
The sentence in the Catechism continues: "liturgiam ad placitum commutare suum [change the Liturgy in accordance with his own fads] sed solummodo in oboedientia fidei et in religiosa mysterii liturgiae observantia [but only in the obedience of the Faith and in the religious observance of the mystery of the Liturgy]."
In other words, if a pope were to attempt to change the Liturgy in accordance with his personal fads, he would be acting ultra vires. And so his attempt would be null.
I suspect we would have to go back to the principled and glorious teaching of Vatican I (Pastor aeternus) to find as clear and forthright a Magisterial statement of what a pope is not competent to do!
My apologies to readers who recognise this as the theme of a paper I have read in a number of places during the last five years, sometimes under the title "Can the pope abolish the Vetus Ordo?". I am willing to dig it out and update it and come and read it again if anyone else wants to hear it!!! Anywhere in Europe! Just my expenses!
4 November 2017
Argumentum ad hominem UPDATED
UPDATE: The Bibliography attached to the Wikipaedia entry suggests that the "modern" usage is not found earlier than 1986; and that the Lockean meaning still held force in Fowler, 1926. Whoever wrote that entry appears not to have heard of Locke or to have read much literature from before the 1990s. This exemplifies another cultural problem: the erecting of barriers between the ages. C S Lewis attributes this to the activity of devils. It probably also exemplifies a decline in the study of the Classics. Another C S Lewis point ...
I seem to keep seeing, day after day, the phrase Argumentum ad hominem misused. A recent example occurred in Fr Tom Weinandy's otherwise splendid Letter to PF.
People use it now, apparently, to mean "a personal attack". That is, when you attack somebody in a violent and deeply personal way, rather than arguing politely and rationally about a question in hand. That is how Fr Tom uses it; his point is that PF and the Bergoglians refuse polite dialogue and simply hurl nasty hate-filled personal abuse around. And, of course, he's dead right. That is exactly what they do. But this is not what Argumentum ad hominem means.
Well, language changes. If enough people use Argumentum ad hominem in this incorrect sense, then I suppose one will, regretfully, have to stop calling it wrong. Usage validates. Every philologist knows that.
But I think it is a great shame that an elegant and well-observed description of a certain sort of precise argument is being taken over and forced to mean something crude which is totally different. Something useful is being lost in the field of human discourse, with no apparent compensating advantage that I am capable of discerning.
And ... I am sorry to be personal!! ... I greatly mistrust the motives of some who misuse the phrase. I think the poor things sometimes do it because they think it sounds fine and dandy to say something in Latin. I think saying something in Latin, when you think it means something quite the opposite to what it really means, is embarrassingly pretentious and, to be frank, a display of ignorance. Why not just say "You are making this attack rather personal"? What harm is there, for heaven's sake, in speaking English? It's a very respectable language ... the language of Jane Austen and Ronald Knox and C S Lewis and etc.etc..
So what really is an Argumentum ad hominem? A proper one, in its true native habitat?
Here is Locke's very neat definition: "To press a man with consequences drawn from his own Principles and Concessions".
I've written about this before, giving examples from Socrates to Newman. You could find my earlier blogposts via the search Engine attached to this blog, sub voce Argumentum ad hominem ... if you were interested.
I seem to keep seeing, day after day, the phrase Argumentum ad hominem misused. A recent example occurred in Fr Tom Weinandy's otherwise splendid Letter to PF.
People use it now, apparently, to mean "a personal attack". That is, when you attack somebody in a violent and deeply personal way, rather than arguing politely and rationally about a question in hand. That is how Fr Tom uses it; his point is that PF and the Bergoglians refuse polite dialogue and simply hurl nasty hate-filled personal abuse around. And, of course, he's dead right. That is exactly what they do. But this is not what Argumentum ad hominem means.
Well, language changes. If enough people use Argumentum ad hominem in this incorrect sense, then I suppose one will, regretfully, have to stop calling it wrong. Usage validates. Every philologist knows that.
But I think it is a great shame that an elegant and well-observed description of a certain sort of precise argument is being taken over and forced to mean something crude which is totally different. Something useful is being lost in the field of human discourse, with no apparent compensating advantage that I am capable of discerning.
And ... I am sorry to be personal!! ... I greatly mistrust the motives of some who misuse the phrase. I think the poor things sometimes do it because they think it sounds fine and dandy to say something in Latin. I think saying something in Latin, when you think it means something quite the opposite to what it really means, is embarrassingly pretentious and, to be frank, a display of ignorance. Why not just say "You are making this attack rather personal"? What harm is there, for heaven's sake, in speaking English? It's a very respectable language ... the language of Jane Austen and Ronald Knox and C S Lewis and etc.etc..
So what really is an Argumentum ad hominem? A proper one, in its true native habitat?
Here is Locke's very neat definition: "To press a man with consequences drawn from his own Principles and Concessions".
I've written about this before, giving examples from Socrates to Newman. You could find my earlier blogposts via the search Engine attached to this blog, sub voce Argumentum ad hominem ... if you were interested.
3 November 2017
Gimme money!
Don't miss this ... a wonderfully, miraculously funny piece of hysteria in The National Catholic Reporter by an individual called Michael Sean Winters, screaming his abuse at Fr Weinandy. It is a classic, a real winner!
One little factual query. Winters says that the opponents of PF (opponents whom, incidentally, he appears to invite to leave the Church or at least her Ministry) are "well-funded and very noisy". If he would count me in this category, I would have no problem about being deemed "very noisy".
But "well-funded"? My wife and I live off our Church of England pension, with one or two modest additions.
"Well-funded"! How do I get my hands on all this limitless loot which is apparently swilling around? Who dispenses it? To whom should I make application? Why has nobody told me about this before? How is a poor convert supposed to know about this eldorado if nobody tells him?
I want money! And I want it now! Just tell me whom to ask!
One little factual query. Winters says that the opponents of PF (opponents whom, incidentally, he appears to invite to leave the Church or at least her Ministry) are "well-funded and very noisy". If he would count me in this category, I would have no problem about being deemed "very noisy".
But "well-funded"? My wife and I live off our Church of England pension, with one or two modest additions.
"Well-funded"! How do I get my hands on all this limitless loot which is apparently swilling around? Who dispenses it? To whom should I make application? Why has nobody told me about this before? How is a poor convert supposed to know about this eldorado if nobody tells him?
I want money! And I want it now! Just tell me whom to ask!
2 November 2017
Liturgical Arts Journal
Older readers will remember with affection the name of Shawn Tribe who, back in the days when Liturgical Restoration was just beginning, founded the blog New Liturgical Movement.
Mr Tribe is at it again! The Liturgical Arts Journal is now up and running, with website, facebook, and twitter presences. It cannot but be good!
Mr Tribe is at it again! The Liturgical Arts Journal is now up and running, with website, facebook, and twitter presences. It cannot but be good!
Fr Weinandy
I very much regret that I have never met Fr Thomas Weinandy, whose letter to PF has just been published. He is a distinguished American theologian; he was in Oxford for a decade or two and his reputation was high when I came back here later than his return to America. He was Warden of Greyfriars, a Permanent Private Hall of the University, and for a time Chairman of the Theology Faculty.
The fact that the American Episcopal Conference, within minutes, sacked him from being a Consultor of their Doctrine Committee must indicate that America is awash with brilliant theologians. If that Conference really can so easily do without someone of his standing ...
It must also indicate that the USA Episcopal Conference is dominated by very little men. God bless the dear little fellows.
This cheap and vulgar ritual humiliation exemplifies the extent to which PF is presiding over a bully-boy Church in which midget bishops and minicardinals compete to defeat each other in the sycophancy stakes. Just as Tom Weinandy has, in effect, just said.
The young Weinandy was taught at Kings, London, by the great Anglican Thomist Canon Professor Eric Mascall, which gives him a link with our great Anglican Patrimony. I like to think that his action redeems the honour of the American Church, just as the courageous lecture given in August by Fr Aidan Nichols redeemed that of the English Church. Nichols is an Oxford man (Cardinal College) and Weinandy is Oxonian by adoption, so I feel that dear S Frideswide Universitatis specialis adiutrix must be quietly satisfied that, despite the demonic spirit of secularisation at work in modern Oxford, some of her lads have turned out good during this unparalleled crisis in the Church Militant. Floreat Oxonia.
The fact that the American Episcopal Conference, within minutes, sacked him from being a Consultor of their Doctrine Committee must indicate that America is awash with brilliant theologians. If that Conference really can so easily do without someone of his standing ...
It must also indicate that the USA Episcopal Conference is dominated by very little men. God bless the dear little fellows.
This cheap and vulgar ritual humiliation exemplifies the extent to which PF is presiding over a bully-boy Church in which midget bishops and minicardinals compete to defeat each other in the sycophancy stakes. Just as Tom Weinandy has, in effect, just said.
The young Weinandy was taught at Kings, London, by the great Anglican Thomist Canon Professor Eric Mascall, which gives him a link with our great Anglican Patrimony. I like to think that his action redeems the honour of the American Church, just as the courageous lecture given in August by Fr Aidan Nichols redeemed that of the English Church. Nichols is an Oxford man (Cardinal College) and Weinandy is Oxonian by adoption, so I feel that dear S Frideswide Universitatis specialis adiutrix must be quietly satisfied that, despite the demonic spirit of secularisation at work in modern Oxford, some of her lads have turned out good during this unparalleled crisis in the Church Militant. Floreat Oxonia.
1 November 2017
Joseph Ratzinger
Happy All Hallows! May the Saints pray for the whole stae of Christ's Church Militant here in Earth. We need you!
This is a slightly unusual post which some people ... probably rightly ... may consider in bad taste.
Archbishop Gaenswein has described the life of emeritus pope Benedict as flickering away like a candle flame. Please God, he may yet live to give service to the Church. Back in 2013, some unwholesome individuals were already gleefully anticipating his funeral ... one of whom has actually just cheerfully suggested that Ratzinger should now campaign in support of PF! "Brazen", did you say? But nobody lives for ever. If his death is within sight, it seems to me that there are some practical points which it might be useful to make.
It will be an occasion for grief but also for retrospectives. The Media love retrospecting! It will also be a time in which even some of the nastier specimens in the bilge water of the Barque of S Peter will by convention put their gut hatred temporarily on hold. Joseph Ratzinger may, for a week, become in death more audible!
It seems to me that this should be an occasion for emphasising and showcasing what we think is important about his distinguished pontificate; not simply out of nostalgia and affection but with an eye on what needs to be emphasised for the good of the Church's ongoing life. It is my view that any of us who have any sort of entree into the Media world should have given some sort of forethought to this question.
Secondly, I have a suspicion that PF, out of a thoroughly commendable sense of decency, has not liked to savage elements of Papa Ratzinger's legacy too obviously while his predecessor is still alive. And I doubt if he would wish to do so on the very morrow of his death. But there is some evidence that PF is aware of his own mortality, and might not wait as long as he would wish before doing some spoiling. We must also not forget his unfortunate tendency to be easily influenced by some immensely dodgy people.
'Liturgy' springs to mind; and not least the position of Cardinal Sarah, around whom the Wolves ... and probably the Vultures as well ... have been circling for some time. It is rumoured that he was appointed by PF on a recommendation of Papa emeritus Ratzinger. Repeated and rather nasty public humiliations by PF have happily failed to persuade His gutsy Eminence to behave like an Anglo-Saxon and fall on his own sword. I wonder how long his heroic service to the Church in his present lonely role will survive Joseph Ratzinger's death.
Sarah, Liturgiam authenticam, and Summorum Pontificum are treasures which the Church can ill afford to lose. And they are what the Wolves particularly have their eye upon.
This is a slightly unusual post which some people ... probably rightly ... may consider in bad taste.
Archbishop Gaenswein has described the life of emeritus pope Benedict as flickering away like a candle flame. Please God, he may yet live to give service to the Church. Back in 2013, some unwholesome individuals were already gleefully anticipating his funeral ... one of whom has actually just cheerfully suggested that Ratzinger should now campaign in support of PF! "Brazen", did you say? But nobody lives for ever. If his death is within sight, it seems to me that there are some practical points which it might be useful to make.
It will be an occasion for grief but also for retrospectives. The Media love retrospecting! It will also be a time in which even some of the nastier specimens in the bilge water of the Barque of S Peter will by convention put their gut hatred temporarily on hold. Joseph Ratzinger may, for a week, become in death more audible!
It seems to me that this should be an occasion for emphasising and showcasing what we think is important about his distinguished pontificate; not simply out of nostalgia and affection but with an eye on what needs to be emphasised for the good of the Church's ongoing life. It is my view that any of us who have any sort of entree into the Media world should have given some sort of forethought to this question.
Secondly, I have a suspicion that PF, out of a thoroughly commendable sense of decency, has not liked to savage elements of Papa Ratzinger's legacy too obviously while his predecessor is still alive. And I doubt if he would wish to do so on the very morrow of his death. But there is some evidence that PF is aware of his own mortality, and might not wait as long as he would wish before doing some spoiling. We must also not forget his unfortunate tendency to be easily influenced by some immensely dodgy people.
'Liturgy' springs to mind; and not least the position of Cardinal Sarah, around whom the Wolves ... and probably the Vultures as well ... have been circling for some time. It is rumoured that he was appointed by PF on a recommendation of Papa emeritus Ratzinger. Repeated and rather nasty public humiliations by PF have happily failed to persuade His gutsy Eminence to behave like an Anglo-Saxon and fall on his own sword. I wonder how long his heroic service to the Church in his present lonely role will survive Joseph Ratzinger's death.
Sarah, Liturgiam authenticam, and Summorum Pontificum are treasures which the Church can ill afford to lose. And they are what the Wolves particularly have their eye upon.
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