Right. So, just suppose that PF, faced with increasing calls for his resignation, resigns. What sort of successor do you think a divided College of Cardinals might elect? My guess is that they might elect someone whom the majority thought would at least not increase the divisions in the Church. A Pope whose aim would be, not to reverse the acts of PF, but somehow to draw a divided and sorely wounded Church together again. This would be a timorous but not ignoble aspiration.
But suppose the next Conclave were to elect a vigously orthodox and unambiguously Catholic pope ... let's call him Leo XIV. Suppose, as some commenters on this blog have liked to imagine, this pope were in some way to cancel certain elements of the 'Magisterium' of PF ... or even its entirety. Good. A new start. Yes?
But ... where would that leave us?
It would leave us with a fatally compromised and weakened Magisterium.
Because if Leo XIV can scrub out the Magisterium of Francis I, it is not easy to see upon what grounds the subsequent pope Francis II can be told that he is acting ultra vires if he tries to scrub out the Magisterium of Leo XIV.
It seems to me that by trying to scrub out the Magisterium of S John Paul and of Benedict XVI, PF has created a logical conundrum to which it is not easy to see the answer. He has damaged the ability of any pope, 'liberal' or 'traditional', ever again to use effectively the Petrine Ministry.
The only 'Magisterium' which could 'trump' that of any Roman Pontiff would be that of a Pope sitting in and with an Ecumenical Council. But who wants to go down that path? The conventional assumption that doctrinal definitions of such a Council must rest upon moral unanimity would probably mean that, even in merely prectical terms, such a Council might not deliver its expectations.
Through his wilful behavour, PF has created the inevitability of an eventual (however long it may take) schism, which will be so much the more disastrous than the last great schism of the Latin Church because it will not merely be jurisdictional, but will involve large and fundamental doctrinal elements of discord.
It is likely to take generations before the full effects of the present pontificate are finally visible.
31 August 2018
30 August 2018
Celibacy
Inevitably, the idea is being spread around that the Latin Church's rule of Celibacy might have something to do with the horror of the sexual abuse of children by clerics in Major Orders.
I think it is extremely important that Catholics approach this matter with a clear, logical, and informed mind.
By informed, I mean, in plain terms, Look at the Church of England before you leap to 'obvious' but erroneous conclusions.
The dirty washing of that ecclesial body has, only recently, been in full view before the Independant Enquiry currently going on in this country. It is a story every bit as unsavoury as anything the Catholic Church has to offer.
In the Church of England married men are ordained and the clergy are allowed to marry. This has done nothing to prevent extensive abuse, and cover-ups, at the highest levels. The most notorious abuser is a former diocesan bishop, charismatic founder of a religious order, who was once, when he was riding high, described on Wikipedia as the holiest and wisest man in the Church of England. He was the darling of the British Establishment. He has recently emerged from prison. Two metropolitan archbishops, Primates of England, were removed from public ministry by their successors for doing cover-ups. (Yes, Canterbury and York make up 100% of the Metropolitan Primates of the C of E.. Carey covered up for Ball, and Hope protected a former Dean of Manchester).
You may argue that the clerics concerned were unmarried and belonged to the Anglo-Catholic 'wing' of the C of E, so that they were pretty well as unwholesome as real papists. But you would be wholly wrong on both counts. Archbishop Carey comes from an extremely Evangelical stable, and a convicted Rural Dean (=Vicar Forane) is another evangelical. And, as for marriage as a guarantee of sexual probity, well, yet another of the convicted clergy (I know him) is a married man with children. In any case, would anybody argue that only married men should be ordained?
Don't be naive.
I am not making an attack on Anglicanism. I happen to think that the Anglican tradition of a largely married parochial clergy is a gift of God which we should all cherish.
But the simplistic bilge floating across the oceans from Australia and America, linking celibacy with abuse, is unevidenced nonsense.
Worse, it is simply another ebullition of the sick centuries-old prejudice in WASP culture against the Catholic Church and, especially, against her clergy.
I think it is extremely important that Catholics approach this matter with a clear, logical, and informed mind.
By informed, I mean, in plain terms, Look at the Church of England before you leap to 'obvious' but erroneous conclusions.
The dirty washing of that ecclesial body has, only recently, been in full view before the Independant Enquiry currently going on in this country. It is a story every bit as unsavoury as anything the Catholic Church has to offer.
In the Church of England married men are ordained and the clergy are allowed to marry. This has done nothing to prevent extensive abuse, and cover-ups, at the highest levels. The most notorious abuser is a former diocesan bishop, charismatic founder of a religious order, who was once, when he was riding high, described on Wikipedia as the holiest and wisest man in the Church of England. He was the darling of the British Establishment. He has recently emerged from prison. Two metropolitan archbishops, Primates of England, were removed from public ministry by their successors for doing cover-ups. (Yes, Canterbury and York make up 100% of the Metropolitan Primates of the C of E.. Carey covered up for Ball, and Hope protected a former Dean of Manchester).
You may argue that the clerics concerned were unmarried and belonged to the Anglo-Catholic 'wing' of the C of E, so that they were pretty well as unwholesome as real papists. But you would be wholly wrong on both counts. Archbishop Carey comes from an extremely Evangelical stable, and a convicted Rural Dean (=Vicar Forane) is another evangelical. And, as for marriage as a guarantee of sexual probity, well, yet another of the convicted clergy (I know him) is a married man with children. In any case, would anybody argue that only married men should be ordained?
Don't be naive.
I am not making an attack on Anglicanism. I happen to think that the Anglican tradition of a largely married parochial clergy is a gift of God which we should all cherish.
But the simplistic bilge floating across the oceans from Australia and America, linking celibacy with abuse, is unevidenced nonsense.
Worse, it is simply another ebullition of the sick centuries-old prejudice in WASP culture against the Catholic Church and, especially, against her clergy.
29 August 2018
Query
Does anybody know whether SS John XXIII and John Paul II have been placed, by the competent authorities of the sui iuris Oriental Churches, onto the Calendars of those Churches?
(Juridical information, please, not loud but unsupported opinions.)
(Juridical information, please, not loud but unsupported opinions.)
EPISCOPAL CONSECRATION: a Tale of Two Meddlers
Towards the end of the Middle Ages, the rite of Episcopal Consecration in the Western Church had reached a fair degree of complexity. At its heart lay the ancient Consecratory Prayer of the Roman Church. Into this had been interpolated a paragraph from the Missale Francorum. Where in all this was the 'form' of the Sacrament, essential according to the scholastic analysis of sacramental efficacy, to accompany the 'matter', the Imposition of Hands?
In a later century Pope Pius XII was to lay down that one particular sentence within the original Roman Prayer was the the irreducible minimum of a 'form'. The sentence he chose was itself by no means problem-free. It does not actually mention episcopacy, and at its heart is a couple of textual cruces. It does not point with any clarity to what is essential in Episcopacy, as is shown by the fact that in the old Spanish Mozarabic Rite this same sentence appears at the centre of the rite of ordination to the presbyterate.
But in any case, rubricists of the Medieval and Counter-Reformation periods did not look to sentences in nice old prayers for Sacramental 'form'. They liked an 'imperative' form ('Receive ...') or a 'declarative' ('I baptise/absolve ...'); forms which were uttered simultaneously with the 'matter' and which had entered liturgy rather late. (If you don't know the form by which, in the early Roman Sacramentaries, Baptism was conferred, find out. You will get quite a surprise.) So the sentence Accipe Spiritum Sanctum [Receive the Holy Spirit], said as the Consecrators imposed hands on the candidate, became a very popular candidate; indeed, although by the end of the Middle Ages it had not even secured admission to all Pontificals [in England, Exeter had it but the Sarum rubrics do not mention it, although it had probably become customary] by the nineteenth century the consensus of theologians identified the same words in the then current Pontificale Romanum as the 'form' of Episcopal Consecration.
I know what you're wondering. Faced with this complexity and these questions, what deft, sensitive, 'organic' simplifications did Bugnini (the committee was actually chaired by Dom Bernard Botte) perform? Here is the answer: he dumped into his trash-can all three of the formulae I have mentioned; the authentic Old Roman Prayer (which contained the words Pius XII had declared to be the 'form'), the possibly French interpolation, and the medieval Imperative formula (which had previously been regarded as the 'form'). Into the place of all three he shipped a prayer of dubious ('Hippolytan'? No!!!) origin which had been used in the distant Christian East by groups out of communion with Rome whose Chalcedonian orthodoxy was questionable.
Yes, I thought that would make you jump out of your seat.
In a later century Pope Pius XII was to lay down that one particular sentence within the original Roman Prayer was the the irreducible minimum of a 'form'. The sentence he chose was itself by no means problem-free. It does not actually mention episcopacy, and at its heart is a couple of textual cruces. It does not point with any clarity to what is essential in Episcopacy, as is shown by the fact that in the old Spanish Mozarabic Rite this same sentence appears at the centre of the rite of ordination to the presbyterate.
But in any case, rubricists of the Medieval and Counter-Reformation periods did not look to sentences in nice old prayers for Sacramental 'form'. They liked an 'imperative' form ('Receive ...') or a 'declarative' ('I baptise/absolve ...'); forms which were uttered simultaneously with the 'matter' and which had entered liturgy rather late. (If you don't know the form by which, in the early Roman Sacramentaries, Baptism was conferred, find out. You will get quite a surprise.) So the sentence Accipe Spiritum Sanctum [Receive the Holy Spirit], said as the Consecrators imposed hands on the candidate, became a very popular candidate; indeed, although by the end of the Middle Ages it had not even secured admission to all Pontificals [in England, Exeter had it but the Sarum rubrics do not mention it, although it had probably become customary] by the nineteenth century the consensus of theologians identified the same words in the then current Pontificale Romanum as the 'form' of Episcopal Consecration.
I know what you're wondering. Faced with this complexity and these questions, what deft, sensitive, 'organic' simplifications did Bugnini (the committee was actually chaired by Dom Bernard Botte) perform? Here is the answer: he dumped into his trash-can all three of the formulae I have mentioned; the authentic Old Roman Prayer (which contained the words Pius XII had declared to be the 'form'), the possibly French interpolation, and the medieval Imperative formula (which had previously been regarded as the 'form'). Into the place of all three he shipped a prayer of dubious ('Hippolytan'? No!!!) origin which had been used in the distant Christian East by groups out of communion with Rome whose Chalcedonian orthodoxy was questionable.
Yes, I thought that would make you jump out of your seat.
28 August 2018
The usual gangs of suspects?
The current unease in the worldwide Church Militant is not confined to any single tendenz. The Australian Archbishop Coleridge spoke for many when he said that, while PF's letter on clerical child abuse was good, action was needed. So-called liberals (Tina Beattie) and so-called conservatives (Bishop Egan) have expressed a desire for lay involvement in the solution of a problem which has, disastrously, impinged horribly upon the laity. Clergy invited to perticipate in any contemplated initiatives could profitably be married clergy drawn from the sui iuris Oriental Churches and the Ordinariates.
The Holy See has a dismal record in this area. One thinks of the support given to a multiple abuser during the Legionaries of Christ fiasco under S John Paul II; and the multiple mistakes made under PF's watch. The Curia is under a cloud, suspected of itself having a strong, perhaps dominant, homosexual element. The Episcopate's record has been lamentable or worse ... Successors of the Apostles, indeed.
Bishop Egan's suggestion of a Lay Congress followed by an Extraordinary Synpod is a good one. At the moment, we are anticipating an Ordinary Synod which, according to rumour and expectation, is being fixed up so that a married presbyterate can be brought into being in Latin America ... a move which seems to receive rather more support from Germans than it does from Latin Americans. Whispers abound that a 'gentler' elaboration of the Church's teaching about homosexuality may be promoted. We shall doubtless behold all the usual phenomena which accompany a PF synod, including bullying and ruthless manipulation, in order to secure the results which PF and his cronies desire. Perhaps the pages of the Catechism will be further amended so as to include more of what PF picturesquely calls caca.
Meanwhile, somebody is fiddling while Rome ... quinimmo much of the Catholic World ... is burning. Do I need to discuss with you the re-arrangement of the deckchairs on the Titanic?
Everybody outside a charmed Inner Circle can see that the clerical sexual abuse scandal is what actually demands decisive and immediate action. The worms in the bowels of the dogs in the street know it. Vatican II, like Lateran V, dealt with insignificant questions while totally unaware of the real problems which were beginning to show themselves. Is it really essential for us to make the same mistakes all over again?
In a sane Church, the planned synod would be put on hold, and the pressing crisis would be faced. There might be surprising practical agreements between liberals and traditionalists.
However, one new problem is arising, or, at least, moving into prominence. The PF faction in the Church hopes to detach the question of abuse from the matter of homosexuality, to define the problem as 'clericalism', and to use this presupposition to belabour traditional concepts of priesthood. The Traditional faction believes that most of the problem is one of ephebophile clergy who are homosexual.
We have heard little from Africa. How much experience do the Churches of that continent have of paedophilia, ephebophilia, or homosexuality? If the fundamental answer to that question were to be anything like "Not nearly as much as the First World does", might it not be a good thing if the next Pope, after the removal of the current blustering but ineffective occupant of the Roman See, were to charge a high-powered Commission of African experts in appropriate fields to survey the failed Churches of the Enlightenment countries, so as to produce an analysis which could form the basis of renewal?
That's what I would do! The Commission could be idiomatically called 'the Revenge', short for 'Africa's Revenge upon Walter Kasper'.
The Holy See has a dismal record in this area. One thinks of the support given to a multiple abuser during the Legionaries of Christ fiasco under S John Paul II; and the multiple mistakes made under PF's watch. The Curia is under a cloud, suspected of itself having a strong, perhaps dominant, homosexual element. The Episcopate's record has been lamentable or worse ... Successors of the Apostles, indeed.
Bishop Egan's suggestion of a Lay Congress followed by an Extraordinary Synpod is a good one. At the moment, we are anticipating an Ordinary Synod which, according to rumour and expectation, is being fixed up so that a married presbyterate can be brought into being in Latin America ... a move which seems to receive rather more support from Germans than it does from Latin Americans. Whispers abound that a 'gentler' elaboration of the Church's teaching about homosexuality may be promoted. We shall doubtless behold all the usual phenomena which accompany a PF synod, including bullying and ruthless manipulation, in order to secure the results which PF and his cronies desire. Perhaps the pages of the Catechism will be further amended so as to include more of what PF picturesquely calls caca.
Meanwhile, somebody is fiddling while Rome ... quinimmo much of the Catholic World ... is burning. Do I need to discuss with you the re-arrangement of the deckchairs on the Titanic?
Everybody outside a charmed Inner Circle can see that the clerical sexual abuse scandal is what actually demands decisive and immediate action. The worms in the bowels of the dogs in the street know it. Vatican II, like Lateran V, dealt with insignificant questions while totally unaware of the real problems which were beginning to show themselves. Is it really essential for us to make the same mistakes all over again?
In a sane Church, the planned synod would be put on hold, and the pressing crisis would be faced. There might be surprising practical agreements between liberals and traditionalists.
However, one new problem is arising, or, at least, moving into prominence. The PF faction in the Church hopes to detach the question of abuse from the matter of homosexuality, to define the problem as 'clericalism', and to use this presupposition to belabour traditional concepts of priesthood. The Traditional faction believes that most of the problem is one of ephebophile clergy who are homosexual.
We have heard little from Africa. How much experience do the Churches of that continent have of paedophilia, ephebophilia, or homosexuality? If the fundamental answer to that question were to be anything like "Not nearly as much as the First World does", might it not be a good thing if the next Pope, after the removal of the current blustering but ineffective occupant of the Roman See, were to charge a high-powered Commission of African experts in appropriate fields to survey the failed Churches of the Enlightenment countries, so as to produce an analysis which could form the basis of renewal?
That's what I would do! The Commission could be idiomatically called 'the Revenge', short for 'Africa's Revenge upon Walter Kasper'.
27 August 2018
Archbishop Vigano ... whose narratives are fictive?
UPDATE
I first published this piece on 30 July this year. I am reprinting it now because it seems to me that one of the strongest arguments favouring acceptance of Archbishop Vigano's disclosures is that the picture he gives us of PF's character fits so closely the conclusions which some of us have come to about PF's evasive attitude to Truth.
One of my motives for writing this piece in July had been the following. PF had recently accused the Four Cardinals of lying: they claimed that the Dubia had been delivered to PF's desk; he claimed that he first heard about the Dubia after they were made public: "I heard about it from the Press".
Given this conflict of testimony, it was not easy to understand why four cardinals should put themselves so very much in the wrong by behaving like that and by lying in such a way. So I wrote:
It is a now familiar picture: the Pope who shifts the blame on to others ("I was poorly informed"); the Pope who contradicts himself; who says different things to different people. The recent account of PF's dealings with the Argentine military dictatorship is unsubstantiated but terrifyingly circumstantial and unnervingly fits in with many compelling reconstructions of his character.
We have a Pope who, in any sort of Mess, rapidly takes easy and facile refuge in Fictive Narratives.
Many of us have felt driven to differ from PF's views on basically important matters of Faith and Morals. Nevertheless, he and we are fellow-Christians with all that this implies about our common life together in Christ's Body the Church.
But how easy is it to do any sort of meaningful business with a Roman Pontiff the integrity of whose word looks increasingly implausible? (Or, indeed, with his public apologists?)
Any sort of meaningful business, that is, other than waiting for these terrible days to pass.
NEW PERSONAL FOOTNOTES:
(1) The words of Pope Benedict XIV which I reported as recently as Saturday morning ("the Mug"), have been spectacularly fulfilled by Mgr Vigano: the Scum certainly now is right on the Surface of the Cooking Pot, for everyone to see! I think I had better visit Ashmole more often!
(2) PF's neat way of dodging questions in the airliner does immense credit to whichever of his aides dreamed it up. Talent there!
(3) A bishop Strickland finds the Vigano Testimony 'credible'. Now his website is down, just as Bishop Egan's was so recently.
(4) Both the Testimony of Archbishop Vigano; and the admirable letter of Bishop Philip Egan calling for a Lay Congress and an Extraordinary Synod to consider the crisis, are dated to the Octave Day of the Assumption, the Queenship of Mary aka Her Immaculate Heart.
Perhaps 22 August will go down in History as the Marian intervention which precipitated the ending of this calamitous and divisive pontificate.
I first published this piece on 30 July this year. I am reprinting it now because it seems to me that one of the strongest arguments favouring acceptance of Archbishop Vigano's disclosures is that the picture he gives us of PF's character fits so closely the conclusions which some of us have come to about PF's evasive attitude to Truth.
One of my motives for writing this piece in July had been the following. PF had recently accused the Four Cardinals of lying: they claimed that the Dubia had been delivered to PF's desk; he claimed that he first heard about the Dubia after they were made public: "I heard about it from the Press".
Given this conflict of testimony, it was not easy to understand why four cardinals should put themselves so very much in the wrong by behaving like that and by lying in such a way. So I wrote:
It is a now familiar picture: the Pope who shifts the blame on to others ("I was poorly informed"); the Pope who contradicts himself; who says different things to different people. The recent account of PF's dealings with the Argentine military dictatorship is unsubstantiated but terrifyingly circumstantial and unnervingly fits in with many compelling reconstructions of his character.
We have a Pope who, in any sort of Mess, rapidly takes easy and facile refuge in Fictive Narratives.
Many of us have felt driven to differ from PF's views on basically important matters of Faith and Morals. Nevertheless, he and we are fellow-Christians with all that this implies about our common life together in Christ's Body the Church.
But how easy is it to do any sort of meaningful business with a Roman Pontiff the integrity of whose word looks increasingly implausible? (Or, indeed, with his public apologists?)
Any sort of meaningful business, that is, other than waiting for these terrible days to pass.
NEW PERSONAL FOOTNOTES:
(1) The words of Pope Benedict XIV which I reported as recently as Saturday morning ("the Mug"), have been spectacularly fulfilled by Mgr Vigano: the Scum certainly now is right on the Surface of the Cooking Pot, for everyone to see! I think I had better visit Ashmole more often!
(2) PF's neat way of dodging questions in the airliner does immense credit to whichever of his aides dreamed it up. Talent there!
(3) A bishop Strickland finds the Vigano Testimony 'credible'. Now his website is down, just as Bishop Egan's was so recently.
(4) Both the Testimony of Archbishop Vigano; and the admirable letter of Bishop Philip Egan calling for a Lay Congress and an Extraordinary Synod to consider the crisis, are dated to the Octave Day of the Assumption, the Queenship of Mary aka Her Immaculate Heart.
Perhaps 22 August will go down in History as the Marian intervention which precipitated the ending of this calamitous and divisive pontificate.
26 August 2018
Fr Zed ...
... has very courageously published the news which has just broken about the background to the McCarrick case. It does him great credit.
Even more credit is due to Archbishop Vigano for speaking out, with such clarity and detail.
I think we should all think very carefully about the implications of this.
Even more credit is due to Archbishop Vigano for speaking out, with such clarity and detail.
I think we should all think very carefully about the implications of this.
25 August 2018
The Mug
It's arrived!! the splendid Zuhlsdorf mug with its portrait (and armorial bearings) of the Holy Father Pope Benedict XIV, otherwise known as Prospero Lambertini. If you haven't already got one, I advise you to remedy the oversight. This Zed production is a real winner. WDTPRS tells you how to order it.
An opportunity not to be missed by all right-thinking Catholics.
Long-time readers will be aware that, for some years, I have taken refuge with Papa Lambertini in the Ashmolean Museum ... one of the World's great museums, where you go up the main staircase, turn left at the top, and keep walking until you reach the Westernmost room. There you will find a set of papal busts by a little known but very competent sculptor; the first one on your right just inside the door is the great canonist, theologian, and legislator, Benedict XIV.
(You too could interview His Holiness without even visiting Oxford, using the painting of him reproduced upon the superb-value Zuhlsdorf mug.)
He sensed, when I visited him the other morning, that I was a littled frayed at my edges. Well, it was a hot day, and at this time of the year the pavements in Oxford are almost exclusively occupied by Visitors who are invariably walking in the opposite direction to mine. They are Doing the dreaming spires before their coaches take them on to some town in the Cotwolds to Do the Swan of Avon (or to Bicester Village for the Shopping). I imagine that Cambridge is similarly inundated with tourists stocking up on instant Culture before spending the important part of their day among the bookies at Newmarket. I suppose we must reconcile ourselves to being Post-Imperial.
Quid molestum? he courteously enquired. Sancte Pater, I replied, quale et quantum rogas! Ipsa Sancta Mater Ecclesia molestam se monstrat, Sponsa quae vocatur Redemptoris nostri, in qua presbyteri episcopi cardinales necnon et ipse domnus apostolicus ... He raised his mighty eyebrows to stop me in my tracks. Pusille, tace! Sponsa Christi immaculata est ... tu id bene nosti ... etiamsi peccatores ita denegent gratiam Omnipotentis ut facies eius foedetur. Sis memor ...
Rudely, disgracefully, impetuously, I interrupted the Sovereign Pontiff. Successor, Domne, vester, eiusdem nominis XVI, multa et iratus locutus est de 'spurcitia', sed nunc nemo non videt archiepiscopos et cardinales spurcitiam istam celasse et, quod deterius est, papam Franciscum se adiutorem et fautorem praebuisse talium virorum. Haeresis quoque ingravescit; parasiti nonulli ... Rosicas dico et alios ... docent (tacente pontifice) Ecclesiam, Scripturis semotis Traditione repudiata, nonnisi a tyranno regi et ab uno. Tot inter falsos pastores ...
I could not ignore the growing frown upon his brow. I fell silent. Gently, chidingly, he asked me Tu nunquam culinam intrasti?
Puzzled, I replied Et saepe, Domne.
Ibine cortinam vidisti?
Et vidi, Domne.
Et oculis id quoque tuis sensisti, in cortina dum in igne calescit spumam ab ima cortina ita in summam se tollere et evehere, ut in superficie spurcitia omnis plane et aperte oculis omnium videatur?
Et sensi, Domne.
An opportunity not to be missed by all right-thinking Catholics.
Long-time readers will be aware that, for some years, I have taken refuge with Papa Lambertini in the Ashmolean Museum ... one of the World's great museums, where you go up the main staircase, turn left at the top, and keep walking until you reach the Westernmost room. There you will find a set of papal busts by a little known but very competent sculptor; the first one on your right just inside the door is the great canonist, theologian, and legislator, Benedict XIV.
(You too could interview His Holiness without even visiting Oxford, using the painting of him reproduced upon the superb-value Zuhlsdorf mug.)
He sensed, when I visited him the other morning, that I was a littled frayed at my edges. Well, it was a hot day, and at this time of the year the pavements in Oxford are almost exclusively occupied by Visitors who are invariably walking in the opposite direction to mine. They are Doing the dreaming spires before their coaches take them on to some town in the Cotwolds to Do the Swan of Avon (or to Bicester Village for the Shopping). I imagine that Cambridge is similarly inundated with tourists stocking up on instant Culture before spending the important part of their day among the bookies at Newmarket. I suppose we must reconcile ourselves to being Post-Imperial.
Quid molestum? he courteously enquired. Sancte Pater, I replied, quale et quantum rogas! Ipsa Sancta Mater Ecclesia molestam se monstrat, Sponsa quae vocatur Redemptoris nostri, in qua presbyteri episcopi cardinales necnon et ipse domnus apostolicus ... He raised his mighty eyebrows to stop me in my tracks. Pusille, tace! Sponsa Christi immaculata est ... tu id bene nosti ... etiamsi peccatores ita denegent gratiam Omnipotentis ut facies eius foedetur. Sis memor ...
Rudely, disgracefully, impetuously, I interrupted the Sovereign Pontiff. Successor, Domne, vester, eiusdem nominis XVI, multa et iratus locutus est de 'spurcitia', sed nunc nemo non videt archiepiscopos et cardinales spurcitiam istam celasse et, quod deterius est, papam Franciscum se adiutorem et fautorem praebuisse talium virorum. Haeresis quoque ingravescit; parasiti nonulli ... Rosicas dico et alios ... docent (tacente pontifice) Ecclesiam, Scripturis semotis Traditione repudiata, nonnisi a tyranno regi et ab uno. Tot inter falsos pastores ...
I could not ignore the growing frown upon his brow. I fell silent. Gently, chidingly, he asked me Tu nunquam culinam intrasti?
Puzzled, I replied Et saepe, Domne.
Ibine cortinam vidisti?
Et vidi, Domne.
Et oculis id quoque tuis sensisti, in cortina dum in igne calescit spumam ab ima cortina ita in summam se tollere et evehere, ut in superficie spurcitia omnis plane et aperte oculis omnium videatur?
Et sensi, Domne.
23 August 2018
Extraordinary UPDATE
UPDATE Twelve hours later, the Diocese of Portsmouth is now back on the Internet, and the letter which Dr Egan sent to PF last Wednesday is available there. It is very good; I suggest you go there and read it.
I particularly applaud Bishop Philip's suggestion of lay involvement. For too long, this terrible malady has been left to popes, the Curia, and episcopal conferences to sort out. They have failed the Church and especially those vulnerable members of the Body of Christ who have been victims of abuse. This pontificate seems to me to have reverted to the worst (Maciel) days of the JP2 pontificate.
I wonder what did happen to the Portsmouth website ...
As I write this, at 21:46 on Thursday evening British Summer Time, an extraordinary situation prevails.
Try to get to the website of the Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth, and you will be told that "this site has been suspended".
Why might anybody want to access that site? Because Bishop Philip Egan has just published the text of his letter to PF suggesting an Extraordinary meeting of the Synod of Bishops to discuss the paedophile crisis. He suggests that it be preceded by a Congress affording an opportunity for laypeople to express their views.
The letter is, of course, easily to be found on the internet; and the substance of its suggestions are reported in the Catholic Herald and even the Tablet. So if this is an attempt at censorship, it is remarkably ill-judged.
I hope that when I open my computer in the morning, not only will this situation have been resolved, but that there will be an explanation of what has happened.
It would be unfair to PF, the Congregation for Bishops, the Papal Nuncio, and to Bishop Philip's Metropolitan Archbishop Peter Smith (I can't think of anybody else who is in the chain of Dr Egan's 'Line Managers') for suspicions of skulduggery to remain in the air.
I particularly applaud Bishop Philip's suggestion of lay involvement. For too long, this terrible malady has been left to popes, the Curia, and episcopal conferences to sort out. They have failed the Church and especially those vulnerable members of the Body of Christ who have been victims of abuse. This pontificate seems to me to have reverted to the worst (Maciel) days of the JP2 pontificate.
I wonder what did happen to the Portsmouth website ...
As I write this, at 21:46 on Thursday evening British Summer Time, an extraordinary situation prevails.
Try to get to the website of the Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth, and you will be told that "this site has been suspended".
Why might anybody want to access that site? Because Bishop Philip Egan has just published the text of his letter to PF suggesting an Extraordinary meeting of the Synod of Bishops to discuss the paedophile crisis. He suggests that it be preceded by a Congress affording an opportunity for laypeople to express their views.
The letter is, of course, easily to be found on the internet; and the substance of its suggestions are reported in the Catholic Herald and even the Tablet. So if this is an attempt at censorship, it is remarkably ill-judged.
I hope that when I open my computer in the morning, not only will this situation have been resolved, but that there will be an explanation of what has happened.
It would be unfair to PF, the Congregation for Bishops, the Papal Nuncio, and to Bishop Philip's Metropolitan Archbishop Peter Smith (I can't think of anybody else who is in the chain of Dr Egan's 'Line Managers') for suspicions of skulduggery to remain in the air.
Clericalism, the root of all evils ... or ... not? UPDATED
UPDATE Dr Philip Egan, Bishop of Portsmouth, has called for an Extraordinary Synod to discuss the current crisis.
My first reaction is a feeling that this is a very interesting idea, which we could agree to support.
PF has written a letter to us all in which he blames the Clerical Sexual Abuse crisis on "Clericalism".
This is quite a different analysis from that of Benedict XVI, a rather more acute judge: he believed it was the 1960s atmosphere of ethical Relativism and of freedom from moral constraints and rules, that led to a collapse of sexual morality in clerical (and other) circles.
You pays your money and you picks your pontiff. Personally, I buy Benedict.
There is a paradox in PF's words. The most obvious segment of the Christian community in which Clericalism, in my quite considerable experience, is totally absent, is in Traddy circles.
Traddidom, nationally and internationally, is organised, run, and managed by laity. The clergy who serve it, among whom I am proud to include myself, run nothing, dominate nobody, and follow lay initiatives. We are asked to do things, and we ... er ... assent; I nearly said, we obey.
This is fundamentally like the structures of Medieval Catholicism, in which the powerful elements in local communities were the lay guilds. Their cultic activities did, of course, involve clergy, and they hired and paid their clergy to do what they needed done. Just as they hired and paid their robemakers to make their robes and their kitchen boys to roast their beef.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But it is more important for us to face today's disgusting realities than to discuss the Middle Ages.
Someone called Wuerl has denied that the McCarrick business is a crisis. That crass observation just about says it all. (OK, now that he's become a liability, Wuerl's resignation will probably be accepted; but how many more decades will Cupich be around promoting Bergoglianism? For how many years was Daneels riding high, papally nominated to Synods on the Family?)
PF's cronies appear to be defensively circling their wagons round his latest and most absurd mantra: his expressed view that Clerical Sexual Abuse is the result of Clericalism! But the main Clericalism I detect in this whole sorry affair is the Clericalism of Establishment cover-ups. Who knew what McCarrick was up to, and did nothing? Who, in England, knew of Kieran Conry's womanising, and just kept their fingers crossed? And perhaps we should look over the fence into the Church of England and contemplate the abusive life of sanctified sadism led for decades by Bishop Peter Ball. For this blasphemous libertine, "being strong for Jesus" meant "letting me flog you". But, even more disgraceful than the abuse itself were the strenuous attempts made by many within the Establishment, from Prince Charles downwards, to manoeuvre Ball back into public ministry (especially in schools!!) even after his cover was comprehensively blown in 1992, and one of his victims had committed suicide.
Deference towards the mighty, the Great and the Good, not "Clericalism" among the lower clergy, is the root problem.
You know what they're going to do now, don't you? Under the skilled and careful guidance of the Enemy himself, they're going to use this scandal, this crisis, as an excuse to try to root out of the presbyterate any surviving relics of a sense of true Priesthood (aka 'Clericalism'). Those corrupt structures of deference towards prelates which have landed us all where we are today will be viciously reinforced, and those who suffer, as well as abused victims, will be Catholic laity and Catholic clergy.
I expect to see a new onslaught* on the training of seminarians and junior clergy, in which anybody possessing a Breviarium Romanum or a cassock will risk getting the boot. And, as soon as Joseph Ratzinger is dead, the Gestapo will be let loose on Summorum pontificum.
These people are running scared and that means they will be very dangerous.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Actually, what I foretell started last year. Between 17 July and 2 August 2017, I published a number of blogposts about a leaked draft Instruction ordering that priest students in the Roman colleges be forced to concelebrate with their teachers rather than saying a private Mass (which might, of course, be a Traditional Mass). I have no idea whether that iniquitous draft, contradicting the canonical rights given by Vatican II and Summorum pontificum to every Latin presbyter, was put into effect.
My first reaction is a feeling that this is a very interesting idea, which we could agree to support.
PF has written a letter to us all in which he blames the Clerical Sexual Abuse crisis on "Clericalism".
This is quite a different analysis from that of Benedict XVI, a rather more acute judge: he believed it was the 1960s atmosphere of ethical Relativism and of freedom from moral constraints and rules, that led to a collapse of sexual morality in clerical (and other) circles.
You pays your money and you picks your pontiff. Personally, I buy Benedict.
There is a paradox in PF's words. The most obvious segment of the Christian community in which Clericalism, in my quite considerable experience, is totally absent, is in Traddy circles.
Traddidom, nationally and internationally, is organised, run, and managed by laity. The clergy who serve it, among whom I am proud to include myself, run nothing, dominate nobody, and follow lay initiatives. We are asked to do things, and we ... er ... assent; I nearly said, we obey.
This is fundamentally like the structures of Medieval Catholicism, in which the powerful elements in local communities were the lay guilds. Their cultic activities did, of course, involve clergy, and they hired and paid their clergy to do what they needed done. Just as they hired and paid their robemakers to make their robes and their kitchen boys to roast their beef.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But it is more important for us to face today's disgusting realities than to discuss the Middle Ages.
Someone called Wuerl has denied that the McCarrick business is a crisis. That crass observation just about says it all. (OK, now that he's become a liability, Wuerl's resignation will probably be accepted; but how many more decades will Cupich be around promoting Bergoglianism? For how many years was Daneels riding high, papally nominated to Synods on the Family?)
PF's cronies appear to be defensively circling their wagons round his latest and most absurd mantra: his expressed view that Clerical Sexual Abuse is the result of Clericalism! But the main Clericalism I detect in this whole sorry affair is the Clericalism of Establishment cover-ups. Who knew what McCarrick was up to, and did nothing? Who, in England, knew of Kieran Conry's womanising, and just kept their fingers crossed? And perhaps we should look over the fence into the Church of England and contemplate the abusive life of sanctified sadism led for decades by Bishop Peter Ball. For this blasphemous libertine, "being strong for Jesus" meant "letting me flog you". But, even more disgraceful than the abuse itself were the strenuous attempts made by many within the Establishment, from Prince Charles downwards, to manoeuvre Ball back into public ministry (especially in schools!!) even after his cover was comprehensively blown in 1992, and one of his victims had committed suicide.
Deference towards the mighty, the Great and the Good, not "Clericalism" among the lower clergy, is the root problem.
You know what they're going to do now, don't you? Under the skilled and careful guidance of the Enemy himself, they're going to use this scandal, this crisis, as an excuse to try to root out of the presbyterate any surviving relics of a sense of true Priesthood (aka 'Clericalism'). Those corrupt structures of deference towards prelates which have landed us all where we are today will be viciously reinforced, and those who suffer, as well as abused victims, will be Catholic laity and Catholic clergy.
I expect to see a new onslaught* on the training of seminarians and junior clergy, in which anybody possessing a Breviarium Romanum or a cassock will risk getting the boot. And, as soon as Joseph Ratzinger is dead, the Gestapo will be let loose on Summorum pontificum.
These people are running scared and that means they will be very dangerous.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Actually, what I foretell started last year. Between 17 July and 2 August 2017, I published a number of blogposts about a leaked draft Instruction ordering that priest students in the Roman colleges be forced to concelebrate with their teachers rather than saying a private Mass (which might, of course, be a Traditional Mass). I have no idea whether that iniquitous draft, contradicting the canonical rights given by Vatican II and Summorum pontificum to every Latin presbyter, was put into effect.
22 August 2018
The Octave of the Assumption
Personally, I rather like the Novus Ordo idea of making the Octave Day of the Assumption the feast of Maria Regina. Especially if we remember especially the association of the Assumption with our Lady's role as Mediatrix of all Graces. This idea rather disappeared from the texts provided for the Assumption after the Definition of the Dogma by Pius XII.
But whatever aspect of Marian dogma one has in mind on this day, I commend a perception of Blessed John Henry Newman, when he was still an Anglican.
Newman intriguingly argued that the Arians, who were prepared to use the most extravagant language about our Lord while firmly denying that he is coequal in his divinity to the Father, accustomed Christians to believe in an exalted yet created mediator. They were condemned by the Church, on the grounds that Christ is God and thus, like the Father, Uncreated. So the question arose : who is the merely created being that really does occupy, in God's will, the lofty place which was still considered infinitely too lowly for the Divine Word? Now read on.
[The Arians] left Him a creature and were found wanting. Thus there was a 'wonder in heaven': a throne was seen, far above all created powers, mediatorial, intercessory; a title archetypal; a crown bright as the morning star; a glory issuing from the Eternal throne; robes pure as the heavens; and a sceptre over all; and who was the predestined heir of that Majesty? Since it was not high enough for the Highest, who was that Wisdom, and what was her name, 'the Mother of fair love, and fear, and holy hope', 'exalted like a palm-tree in Engaddi, and a rose-plant in Jericho', 'created from the beginning before the world' in God's counsels, and 'in Jerusalem was her power'? The vision is found in the Apocalypse, a Woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. The votaries of Mary do not exceed the true faith, unless the blasphemers of her Son came up to it. The Church of Rome is not idolatrous, unless Arianism is orthodoxy.
Newman goes on to argue that it was thus, during the period of the Arian controversy, that it was 'determined, that to exalt a creature was no recognition of its divinity'; and to speak of those in his own day who condemned devotion to Mary as (unconsciously) heretics. 'It is not wonderful ... if those who never rise higher in their notions of our Lord's Divinity, than to consider Him a man singularly inhabited by a Divine Presence, that is, a Catholic Saint, - if such men should mistake the honour paid by the Church to the human Mother for that very honour which, and which alone, is worthy of her Eternal Son.
But whatever aspect of Marian dogma one has in mind on this day, I commend a perception of Blessed John Henry Newman, when he was still an Anglican.
Newman intriguingly argued that the Arians, who were prepared to use the most extravagant language about our Lord while firmly denying that he is coequal in his divinity to the Father, accustomed Christians to believe in an exalted yet created mediator. They were condemned by the Church, on the grounds that Christ is God and thus, like the Father, Uncreated. So the question arose : who is the merely created being that really does occupy, in God's will, the lofty place which was still considered infinitely too lowly for the Divine Word? Now read on.
[The Arians] left Him a creature and were found wanting. Thus there was a 'wonder in heaven': a throne was seen, far above all created powers, mediatorial, intercessory; a title archetypal; a crown bright as the morning star; a glory issuing from the Eternal throne; robes pure as the heavens; and a sceptre over all; and who was the predestined heir of that Majesty? Since it was not high enough for the Highest, who was that Wisdom, and what was her name, 'the Mother of fair love, and fear, and holy hope', 'exalted like a palm-tree in Engaddi, and a rose-plant in Jericho', 'created from the beginning before the world' in God's counsels, and 'in Jerusalem was her power'? The vision is found in the Apocalypse, a Woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. The votaries of Mary do not exceed the true faith, unless the blasphemers of her Son came up to it. The Church of Rome is not idolatrous, unless Arianism is orthodoxy.
Newman goes on to argue that it was thus, during the period of the Arian controversy, that it was 'determined, that to exalt a creature was no recognition of its divinity'; and to speak of those in his own day who condemned devotion to Mary as (unconsciously) heretics. 'It is not wonderful ... if those who never rise higher in their notions of our Lord's Divinity, than to consider Him a man singularly inhabited by a Divine Presence, that is, a Catholic Saint, - if such men should mistake the honour paid by the Church to the human Mother for that very honour which, and which alone, is worthy of her Eternal Son.
21 August 2018
Cassocks
PF has welcomed the fact that trainee Jesuits no longer wear a cassock when visiting their General or the Pope.
Presumably PF was actually wearing a cassock himself when he made these remarks!?!
I find it hard to understand how any human being can be pompous and so full of himself that he is unable to recognise such a comical paradox!
I am reminded of a Principal who liked to wear his MA gown when addressing the students, but disliked seeing his colleagues in gowns. He wanted the gown to be the signifier of his own unique uniqueness.
The papal white cassock, although it dates from before the twentieth century, became in that century much more of a central visible feature in the papal personality cult which, particularly since the election of Pius XII, grew so greatly and so unhealthily. S John Paul, when hiking through mountains, was always photographed doing so while wearing his cassock! As clergy of all ranks tended during this period to wear their cassock less and less, the papal cassock, naturally, stuck out more and more as a statement, an assertion of status, than it had done in the happy but far off days when even the simplest cleric wore one daily.
Don't get me the wrong way round. It's not the cassock, but the cult, that I see as so damaging to the Church. It is not the fact that PF dresses (at least partially) as befits his office that I object to, but that he discourages others from doing the same.
Presumably PF was actually wearing a cassock himself when he made these remarks!?!
I find it hard to understand how any human being can be pompous and so full of himself that he is unable to recognise such a comical paradox!
I am reminded of a Principal who liked to wear his MA gown when addressing the students, but disliked seeing his colleagues in gowns. He wanted the gown to be the signifier of his own unique uniqueness.
The papal white cassock, although it dates from before the twentieth century, became in that century much more of a central visible feature in the papal personality cult which, particularly since the election of Pius XII, grew so greatly and so unhealthily. S John Paul, when hiking through mountains, was always photographed doing so while wearing his cassock! As clergy of all ranks tended during this period to wear their cassock less and less, the papal cassock, naturally, stuck out more and more as a statement, an assertion of status, than it had done in the happy but far off days when even the simplest cleric wore one daily.
Don't get me the wrong way round. It's not the cassock, but the cult, that I see as so damaging to the Church. It is not the fact that PF dresses (at least partially) as befits his office that I object to, but that he discourages others from doing the same.
20 August 2018
Commnunion from the Chalice
I recently had occasion to visit the question of administering the Chalice (within the Extraordnary Form) to a communicant with gluten intolerance. I gather that low-gluten hosts are available and are valid matter, but that hosts without any gluten are regarded as not valid matter. If anyone has (not guesses and fluent woffle but) precise information better than mine, I would be glad to have it.
In any case, the pastoral situation did not afford the leisure to go into this question. I tried the Anglican practice of giving communion from the chalice after communicating myself from the chalice, and holding the Chalice tightly as I did so; the problem here was that the level of the Precious Blood in the Chalice was so low that I was unable to judge visually whether the Lord's Blood had reached the lips of the communicant. The second day, the lady wore gloves and I committed the Chalice entirely into her hands.
I recall seeing a video of a FSSP High Mass at Hanceville in which a small ancillary Chalice was consecrated and, I hypothesise, administered to one of the sisters at the grille.
Of course, for a communicant whose gluten intolerance is total it would be dangerous to communicate them from a chalice in which a fragment of the Host had rested, or over which the celebrant had rubbed his fingers so as to dislodge fragments adhering to them.
I am interested in (1) any relevant dicasterial instructions which may have been issued; and (2) any guidance with regard to practicalities which another presbyter who has faced this situation might be able to provide.
In any case, the pastoral situation did not afford the leisure to go into this question. I tried the Anglican practice of giving communion from the chalice after communicating myself from the chalice, and holding the Chalice tightly as I did so; the problem here was that the level of the Precious Blood in the Chalice was so low that I was unable to judge visually whether the Lord's Blood had reached the lips of the communicant. The second day, the lady wore gloves and I committed the Chalice entirely into her hands.
I recall seeing a video of a FSSP High Mass at Hanceville in which a small ancillary Chalice was consecrated and, I hypothesise, administered to one of the sisters at the grille.
Of course, for a communicant whose gluten intolerance is total it would be dangerous to communicate them from a chalice in which a fragment of the Host had rested, or over which the celebrant had rubbed his fingers so as to dislodge fragments adhering to them.
I am interested in (1) any relevant dicasterial instructions which may have been issued; and (2) any guidance with regard to practicalities which another presbyter who has faced this situation might be able to provide.
19 August 2018
Development and Newman
Every time the current regime has yet another doctrinal accident, 'developmemt' is invoked. The Graf von Schoenborn did it at the News Conference after Amoris laetitia when Diane Montagna asked whether that document contradicted Familiaris consortio. Leering down at her, he even had the condescending impertinence to mention Blessed John Henry Newman. During the Deathgate scandal, the same naughty little word has again been bobbing around in the troubled waters.
What few commentators appear to have pointed out is that Newman, when wrote his celebrated essay, had no intention of providing a blue-print to be cunningly used by future jesuitical pontiffs to disguise the reality of doctrinal change. He was describing what had happened in the past. And he was doing it as an Anglican to satisfy himself that the Catholic Church which he was on the point of joining had never changed its doctrine.
I do not recollect that during the Arian Controversy, or the Reformation disorders, either side ever justified the positions they tenaciously held by invoking Development. My impression is that each side simply bandied Scripture and Tradition cheerfully around so as to show that what they held was the truth "clearly" shown forth in Scripture and Tradition.
Bergoglianism has been encapsulated in an even more extreme form than this by the cynically blasphemous observation of the jesuit "General" that the Lord's Words were not captured on camera, and by Fr Rosica's boastfully candid admission that the Church is now entirely at the mercy of a pope to whom neither Scripture nor Tradition are prescriptive. Such exponents appear to offer a model of Christian teaching ministry unknown even to the heretics of earlier ages. Here we have not a heresy, but the supraheresy. Earlier heresiarchs may have monkeyed around with, and perverted the sense of, both Scripture and Tradition, but, I think, never before have we had the diabolical claim that a major heretical teacher is quite simply free from any control whatsoever within the Word of God whether written or orally transmitted. When I use the term 'diabolical', I mean it in the fullest possible sense. The fingerprints all over these preposterous claims are unmistakeable.
Some celebrated words in Pastor aeternus of Vatican I admirably taught that the Successor of S Peter was not promised the inspiration of the Spirit so that he could teach new doctrine, but so that by His help he could guard and faithfully set forth the Deposit of Faith handed down through the Apostles.
There is not, I think, any suggestion in this that he should energetically engage in "developing" it; still less, that he is totally free from its constraints.
What few commentators appear to have pointed out is that Newman, when wrote his celebrated essay, had no intention of providing a blue-print to be cunningly used by future jesuitical pontiffs to disguise the reality of doctrinal change. He was describing what had happened in the past. And he was doing it as an Anglican to satisfy himself that the Catholic Church which he was on the point of joining had never changed its doctrine.
I do not recollect that during the Arian Controversy, or the Reformation disorders, either side ever justified the positions they tenaciously held by invoking Development. My impression is that each side simply bandied Scripture and Tradition cheerfully around so as to show that what they held was the truth "clearly" shown forth in Scripture and Tradition.
Bergoglianism has been encapsulated in an even more extreme form than this by the cynically blasphemous observation of the jesuit "General" that the Lord's Words were not captured on camera, and by Fr Rosica's boastfully candid admission that the Church is now entirely at the mercy of a pope to whom neither Scripture nor Tradition are prescriptive. Such exponents appear to offer a model of Christian teaching ministry unknown even to the heretics of earlier ages. Here we have not a heresy, but the supraheresy. Earlier heresiarchs may have monkeyed around with, and perverted the sense of, both Scripture and Tradition, but, I think, never before have we had the diabolical claim that a major heretical teacher is quite simply free from any control whatsoever within the Word of God whether written or orally transmitted. When I use the term 'diabolical', I mean it in the fullest possible sense. The fingerprints all over these preposterous claims are unmistakeable.
Some celebrated words in Pastor aeternus of Vatican I admirably taught that the Successor of S Peter was not promised the inspiration of the Spirit so that he could teach new doctrine, but so that by His help he could guard and faithfully set forth the Deposit of Faith handed down through the Apostles.
There is not, I think, any suggestion in this that he should energetically engage in "developing" it; still less, that he is totally free from its constraints.
18 August 2018
Benedict XIV UPDATE
UPDATE I am very grateful to kind readers who responded to my plea. A mug is, I think, already on its way to me!
I have printed off the names of those who offered to help, and will offer Mass for them this week. And not least for the benefactor himself. Thank you, Father!
The Archiblogopoios, Fr Zed, is marketing mugs with Prospero Lambertini's portrait and stemma.
If anyone would like to gift me one of these, perhaps s/he could write a comment to this blogpost, giving their email address. I would then reply to them with my postal address, and delete their comment unpublished. I would also delete unpublished the comments of others subsequently who commented with the same intent.
By these means, I would achieve my humble aim of getting just one such mug!
He was a truly great pontiff.
I have printed off the names of those who offered to help, and will offer Mass for them this week. And not least for the benefactor himself. Thank you, Father!
The Archiblogopoios, Fr Zed, is marketing mugs with Prospero Lambertini's portrait and stemma.
If anyone would like to gift me one of these, perhaps s/he could write a comment to this blogpost, giving their email address. I would then reply to them with my postal address, and delete their comment unpublished. I would also delete unpublished the comments of others subsequently who commented with the same intent.
By these means, I would achieve my humble aim of getting just one such mug!
He was a truly great pontiff.
Racially aggravated offences ...
In this country, we have a system whereby certain crimes, usually involving violence or disorder, are held to be more serious offences if there is a manifest element of religious or racial bigotry involved in their commission.
I am uneasy about this. If someone were to injure or kill me simply because he didn't like pompous old gits, I really don't see why this should be regarded as vastly less serious than a similar offence perpetrated out of racial or religious hatred.
When I worked in London, I had the privilege of taking part, vested, in Orthodox Liturgies at the Cypriot Orthodox Church along the Camberwell New Road (Proprietor: the Bishop of Telmissos), and I became very fond of the Church and its congregation. One Monday, the Church was broken into and the resident monk was kicked to death because he wouldn't tell the thugs where the money was. I'm obviously missing something, because that still seems to me every bit as horrific as kicking somebody to death because you don't like their race or religion.
Similarly -- when (to give an example) someone drives a van into pedestrians on a pavement and kills them, the only thing the Meejah seem to want to know is: was this "terrorist-related"? When it becomes clear that a particular example cannot be assigned to this category, you can hear the relief in the news-reader's voice as he/she says "It is not thought that the incident was terrorist-related". Oh good. Thank goodness for that. So that's OK, then. Well, not actually OK, of course, but nothing like as serious and newsworthy as if it were done by somebody with a dark skin who shouted Allahu Akbar.
I think I dislike the dragging of ideological preoccupations into criminal law.
terrorism
I am uneasy about this. If someone were to injure or kill me simply because he didn't like pompous old gits, I really don't see why this should be regarded as vastly less serious than a similar offence perpetrated out of racial or religious hatred.
When I worked in London, I had the privilege of taking part, vested, in Orthodox Liturgies at the Cypriot Orthodox Church along the Camberwell New Road (Proprietor: the Bishop of Telmissos), and I became very fond of the Church and its congregation. One Monday, the Church was broken into and the resident monk was kicked to death because he wouldn't tell the thugs where the money was. I'm obviously missing something, because that still seems to me every bit as horrific as kicking somebody to death because you don't like their race or religion.
Similarly -- when (to give an example) someone drives a van into pedestrians on a pavement and kills them, the only thing the Meejah seem to want to know is: was this "terrorist-related"? When it becomes clear that a particular example cannot be assigned to this category, you can hear the relief in the news-reader's voice as he/she says "It is not thought that the incident was terrorist-related". Oh good. Thank goodness for that. So that's OK, then. Well, not actually OK, of course, but nothing like as serious and newsworthy as if it were done by somebody with a dark skin who shouted Allahu Akbar.
I think I dislike the dragging of ideological preoccupations into criminal law.
terrorism
17 August 2018
Lay Communion in the Middle Ages
How/where did the laity receive communion before the revolution in frequent communion initiated by S Pius X?
As far as Medieval England is concerned, I have never come across any examples of pre-Reformation Communion rails: the earliest all seem to be Laudian.
Did the pp simply come out of the Rood Screen and administer Communion to his kneeling laity?
Is there any definite prescription that the Laity receive kneeling in current (EF) legislation? In the Ordo Communionis, I see only the prescription that Clerics receive kneeling on an Altar Step.
Jungman says that kneeling Communon in Parish Churches came in comparatively late: in 1602, in Paderborn, the custom was ordered to be introduced only "where it will be convenient for it to be done".
And he appears to suggest that the use of the Communion Paten dates from 1929 (although there are earlier examples); was this also one of the consequences of the S Pius X revolution?
Houselling cloths still survive from the Middle Ages in some Anglican Churches; in others, I suspect they were Ritualist restorations from the 1860s. Were they common on the Continent?
The 1549 rebels complained that Dr Cranmer's first Communion Service was like a Christmas Game. This suggests that medieval worshippers did not come in a great crowd within the Chancel ... doesn't it?
As far as Medieval England is concerned, I have never come across any examples of pre-Reformation Communion rails: the earliest all seem to be Laudian.
Did the pp simply come out of the Rood Screen and administer Communion to his kneeling laity?
Is there any definite prescription that the Laity receive kneeling in current (EF) legislation? In the Ordo Communionis, I see only the prescription that Clerics receive kneeling on an Altar Step.
Jungman says that kneeling Communon in Parish Churches came in comparatively late: in 1602, in Paderborn, the custom was ordered to be introduced only "where it will be convenient for it to be done".
And he appears to suggest that the use of the Communion Paten dates from 1929 (although there are earlier examples); was this also one of the consequences of the S Pius X revolution?
Houselling cloths still survive from the Middle Ages in some Anglican Churches; in others, I suspect they were Ritualist restorations from the 1860s. Were they common on the Continent?
The 1549 rebels complained that Dr Cranmer's first Communion Service was like a Christmas Game. This suggests that medieval worshippers did not come in a great crowd within the Chancel ... doesn't it?
16 August 2018
Dodi al Fayed and Diana Spencer
If you were to tear yourself away from Bicester Village and visit a shop in Knightsbridge called Harrods, at the top of an escalator you would until recently have found a statue showing a dancing couple: Dodi al Fayed, son of the once proprietor of the store, and Diana Spencer, the estranged wife of the heir to the throne of Canada.
The dancers both died in a Paris underpass as their car attempted to evade the Media. The assumption was that they had been what my students used to call "an item".
But you are probably now too late.
Because now the statue has been removed by the current shopkeeper and sent back to Mr Al Fayed.
I understand this. But it seems to me that this statue, its style, its purpose, its historical context, is a unique expression of one bizarre moment in the cultural history of our times; when the throne of the House of Windsor seemed to be at risk; when the people of this country seemed consumed by an irrational inexplicable frenzy located somewhere at the strange, fearful, fascinating interface between Sex and Death.
Mr Al Fayed naturally wanted to write his beloved son into the narrative, and so commissioned the group. The governing house and the current regime equally naturally now wish to write Dodi out of the narrative, and a statue of the former Miss Spencer ... all on her own ... is to be erected in a London park.
I believe that this statue group of Dodi and Diana should enter the archival collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Whether, when, how it is eventually displayed would in the hands of the curatorial staff. But if this is not done, I am convinced that a future generation will blame our negligence.
Is Dodi Arabic for Beloved? I seem to recall a Hebrew phrase from the Song of Solomon ... Qol Dodi Dode, the Voice of my beloved at the door ...
The dancers both died in a Paris underpass as their car attempted to evade the Media. The assumption was that they had been what my students used to call "an item".
But you are probably now too late.
Because now the statue has been removed by the current shopkeeper and sent back to Mr Al Fayed.
I understand this. But it seems to me that this statue, its style, its purpose, its historical context, is a unique expression of one bizarre moment in the cultural history of our times; when the throne of the House of Windsor seemed to be at risk; when the people of this country seemed consumed by an irrational inexplicable frenzy located somewhere at the strange, fearful, fascinating interface between Sex and Death.
Mr Al Fayed naturally wanted to write his beloved son into the narrative, and so commissioned the group. The governing house and the current regime equally naturally now wish to write Dodi out of the narrative, and a statue of the former Miss Spencer ... all on her own ... is to be erected in a London park.
I believe that this statue group of Dodi and Diana should enter the archival collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Whether, when, how it is eventually displayed would in the hands of the curatorial staff. But if this is not done, I am convinced that a future generation will blame our negligence.
Is Dodi Arabic for Beloved? I seem to recall a Hebrew phrase from the Song of Solomon ... Qol Dodi Dode, the Voice of my beloved at the door ...
14 August 2018
450 years
On Michaelmas Day this autumn, it will be 450 years since William Cardinal Allen founded a College at Douai in the Flanders, staffed by refugee scholars from Oxford and dedicated to the training of priests for the English Mission. I imagine there will be celebrations to commemorate this signifant occasion; we who were the "First Wave" of former Anglican clergy destined to the Ordinariate met for fellowship, fine food, and lectures in the London seminary called Allen Hall, and remember our meetings there with immense pleasure. I hope this means that we count in some little way as part of the Family of Cardinal Allen, because the professors and students of the College he established at Douai were compelled, at the time of the French Revolution, to flee the Continent and, after vicissitudes, some of them ended up on the site of S Thomas More's Chelsea house ... fittingly now called Allen Hall. And I, for one, deemed and deem it an enormous privilege to be grafted into Cardinal Allen's heritage and to honour the Martyrs who are proudly named on the walls of the refectory.
However, some of the students from the Douai foundation, whose families were Northerners, ended up not near London but near Durham and founded a great seminary there called Ushaw. I expect many readers will have watched the black-and-white video of High Mass in the Chapel there in 1960. There were only 400 students in the congregation for that Mass, a couple of years before the Council. 400 is not much to write home about, is it? Just 400! What a mercy the great renewal promised by the Council was only just around the corner ...
Sixty or so years after that High Mass was filmed, Ushaw finally closed down, needless to say, for lack of vocations. And, within a decade of 1960, that Extraordinary Form of worship was forbidden (not legally but de facto; we had to wait for the pontificate of Benedict XVI to be told that, legally, the Rite had not been and, theologically, could not be abolished and that the violent discontinuities of the post-Conciliar period were illegal; 'Establishment' violence; vis sine lege; ambitious episcopal bully-boys roaming the world pillaging and destroying).
1960: by 1970 many of those 400 students had, probably, lost their sense of vocation; those who remained were seduced or cajoled or forced to celebrate a deformed form of the Rite. How many of them, I wonder, abandoned the Sacred Priesthood in the decades that followed. The Smoke of Satan entered into Ushaw to such powerful effect that it smoked the seminarians out of the place.
However, some of the students from the Douai foundation, whose families were Northerners, ended up not near London but near Durham and founded a great seminary there called Ushaw. I expect many readers will have watched the black-and-white video of High Mass in the Chapel there in 1960. There were only 400 students in the congregation for that Mass, a couple of years before the Council. 400 is not much to write home about, is it? Just 400! What a mercy the great renewal promised by the Council was only just around the corner ...
Sixty or so years after that High Mass was filmed, Ushaw finally closed down, needless to say, for lack of vocations. And, within a decade of 1960, that Extraordinary Form of worship was forbidden (not legally but de facto; we had to wait for the pontificate of Benedict XVI to be told that, legally, the Rite had not been and, theologically, could not be abolished and that the violent discontinuities of the post-Conciliar period were illegal; 'Establishment' violence; vis sine lege; ambitious episcopal bully-boys roaming the world pillaging and destroying).
1960: by 1970 many of those 400 students had, probably, lost their sense of vocation; those who remained were seduced or cajoled or forced to celebrate a deformed form of the Rite. How many of them, I wonder, abandoned the Sacred Priesthood in the decades that followed. The Smoke of Satan entered into Ushaw to such powerful effect that it smoked the seminarians out of the place.
12 August 2018
"The Genius of Woman"
That is a phrase from PF's Gaudete et Exsultate. I expect we shall be hearing quite a lot about it in the next few years, unless Providence brings this pontificate to a cruelly premature end. And I had better be careful what I say ...
... because, you see, I have one Wife, three Daughters, and two Grand-daughters. I wouldn't like them to hear that I had written slightingly about such an important subject. So ... Mum's the word ... er ....
I will simply, therefore, observe that it goes without saying that there most definitely is a Genius of Woman, and that it is completely different from the equally real Genius of Man. My consequent question is:
As we quite properly, if belatedly, celebrate the Genius of Woman, what plans are PF and his associates making to follow it up with a special, balancing, celebration of the Genius of Man? Will there be a special new Roman dicastery (jobs for the girls?) to raise awareness of the Genius of Man? A 'Year of the Man', perhaps? A 'Synod on Men'? Vatican Postage Stamps exclusively celebrating Men? Special Vatican Press Presentations of Men, hosted by a winsomely smiling Graf? Supplements on Men in Osservatore Romano? An Apostolic Exhortation on Men (Dignitas virilis)? The admission of Men to exclusive, secretive and powerful organisations like the American Leadership Conference of Women Religious? Special mechanisms to fast-track more Men into Parish Flower Guilds? A quota system to ensure that men are more proportionately represented in teams of Extraordinary Eucharistic Ministers? Successions of seminars so that everyone can listen sensitively to the Voice of Men: their needs, fears, and hopes; after all, men simply want to be heard ... to have their narratives, their own particular Truth, respected; why should they not be allowed to be as visible and audible in the public forum as normal humans are? Possibly even a special Men's Column in the Tablet?
Perhaps we need a major enquiry into why, since 1973, Men have been totally denied ordination to the Subdiaconate in the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite?
There's a lot of catching-up to do.
... because, you see, I have one Wife, three Daughters, and two Grand-daughters. I wouldn't like them to hear that I had written slightingly about such an important subject. So ... Mum's the word ... er ....
I will simply, therefore, observe that it goes without saying that there most definitely is a Genius of Woman, and that it is completely different from the equally real Genius of Man. My consequent question is:
As we quite properly, if belatedly, celebrate the Genius of Woman, what plans are PF and his associates making to follow it up with a special, balancing, celebration of the Genius of Man? Will there be a special new Roman dicastery (jobs for the girls?) to raise awareness of the Genius of Man? A 'Year of the Man', perhaps? A 'Synod on Men'? Vatican Postage Stamps exclusively celebrating Men? Special Vatican Press Presentations of Men, hosted by a winsomely smiling Graf? Supplements on Men in Osservatore Romano? An Apostolic Exhortation on Men (Dignitas virilis)? The admission of Men to exclusive, secretive and powerful organisations like the American Leadership Conference of Women Religious? Special mechanisms to fast-track more Men into Parish Flower Guilds? A quota system to ensure that men are more proportionately represented in teams of Extraordinary Eucharistic Ministers? Successions of seminars so that everyone can listen sensitively to the Voice of Men: their needs, fears, and hopes; after all, men simply want to be heard ... to have their narratives, their own particular Truth, respected; why should they not be allowed to be as visible and audible in the public forum as normal humans are? Possibly even a special Men's Column in the Tablet?
Perhaps we need a major enquiry into why, since 1973, Men have been totally denied ordination to the Subdiaconate in the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite?
There's a lot of catching-up to do.
10 August 2018
Archidiaconissa de Silverbridge in comitatu Barnensi
I invite a brief Trollopean account of what Mr Archdeacon Grantley said when he heard that Dr Proudie had preferred Miss Slope to the Archdeaconry of Silverbridge.
9 August 2018
Fay ce que voudras
... and call your House Thelema. I can't for the life of me recall who said and did this, but I was reminded of him some time ago now, when I saw in the window of a Quakers' Meeting House: "THOU SHALT" in big gothic capitals followed by "decide for yourself" in smaller modern cursive.
I was fairly horrified. Time was when the Quakers were thought of as a gentle folk, egalitarian and pacifist by inclination, who were regarded with affection even by those who disagreed with their distinctive dogmas. When their sect originally began, their sweet simplistic biblicism led them to talk to each other in a comic dialect, that of the Authorised Version of the Bible viewed through eyes innocent of syntax (they used thee as both Nominative and Oblique). Now, apparently, they not only treat quasi-biblical English with contempt, but have descended into the extremest form of anomia.
Even the likes of Richard Dawkins are not amoral antinomians. As far as I can understand them, 'Humanists' do adhere to the rather flabby form of the "Utilitarianism" which we were taught to discuss in General Studies essays when we were bright little Sixth Formers working for our Oxford Scholarships. But Humanist Utilitarianism is something. The Quakers, however, apparently now believe that not only are codes such as the Decalogue to be viewed with contempt; but that anybody can do whatever he decides. Murder, apparently; genocide; pedophilia; snuff movies; suicide bombing; sex slavery; the grossest forms of economic exploitation - if you decide to do them, you'll have Brother Quaker patting you on the head with kindly approval. "At least you didn't just blindly follow some rules invented by someone else", he will gently murmur.
I wonder if some sort of enquiry should be launched into what is in principle clearly a very dangerous little cult. At least Islamic and other terrorists have some sort of notion that there is right and that there is wrong, however corrupted their moral perceptions may be. Quakers, so they assure us, don't ... except for their one mighty dogma ignore rule-books and make your own decisions.
Don't get me wrong; I'm sure many Quakers live to as high a moral standard as many Catholics or Humanists or Marxists or Moslems. I condemn nobody. It's their publicly proclaimed dogmas that terrify me.
I was fairly horrified. Time was when the Quakers were thought of as a gentle folk, egalitarian and pacifist by inclination, who were regarded with affection even by those who disagreed with their distinctive dogmas. When their sect originally began, their sweet simplistic biblicism led them to talk to each other in a comic dialect, that of the Authorised Version of the Bible viewed through eyes innocent of syntax (they used thee as both Nominative and Oblique). Now, apparently, they not only treat quasi-biblical English with contempt, but have descended into the extremest form of anomia.
Even the likes of Richard Dawkins are not amoral antinomians. As far as I can understand them, 'Humanists' do adhere to the rather flabby form of the "Utilitarianism" which we were taught to discuss in General Studies essays when we were bright little Sixth Formers working for our Oxford Scholarships. But Humanist Utilitarianism is something. The Quakers, however, apparently now believe that not only are codes such as the Decalogue to be viewed with contempt; but that anybody can do whatever he decides. Murder, apparently; genocide; pedophilia; snuff movies; suicide bombing; sex slavery; the grossest forms of economic exploitation - if you decide to do them, you'll have Brother Quaker patting you on the head with kindly approval. "At least you didn't just blindly follow some rules invented by someone else", he will gently murmur.
I wonder if some sort of enquiry should be launched into what is in principle clearly a very dangerous little cult. At least Islamic and other terrorists have some sort of notion that there is right and that there is wrong, however corrupted their moral perceptions may be. Quakers, so they assure us, don't ... except for their one mighty dogma ignore rule-books and make your own decisions.
Don't get me wrong; I'm sure many Quakers live to as high a moral standard as many Catholics or Humanists or Marxists or Moslems. I condemn nobody. It's their publicly proclaimed dogmas that terrify me.
8 August 2018
Ad Litus Neronianum
I am off for a few days, leaving other members of my family in our Oxford house, to a daughter's house near the Sussex Coast. As usual, I hope to post every day but will not deal with incoming traffic until my return to the apices somniantes.
I think of Sussex as the Costa Neroniana because, at Fishbourne Palace, there is what has been identified as a statue of the infant Nero, smashed after his damnatio; at Bosham a detached head from a large monumental statue has been suspected of being Nero's, dislodged post-damnatio; and, by chance, a statue in the Egremont Collection at Petworth is thought to be, again, the infant emperor.
Sussex, as a client kingdom, was 'Romanised' very early. The Palace at Fishbourne was not just another of England's numerous rather standard-issue second-century 'Roman Villas', but a lavish first-century sea-side palace "of a great King", in the style which the Roman aristocracy (and King Herod) borrowed from the culture of Royal Macedonia.
I suppose it could be contrasted with Prinny's preposterous erection at Brighton.
I think of Sussex as the Costa Neroniana because, at Fishbourne Palace, there is what has been identified as a statue of the infant Nero, smashed after his damnatio; at Bosham a detached head from a large monumental statue has been suspected of being Nero's, dislodged post-damnatio; and, by chance, a statue in the Egremont Collection at Petworth is thought to be, again, the infant emperor.
Sussex, as a client kingdom, was 'Romanised' very early. The Palace at Fishbourne was not just another of England's numerous rather standard-issue second-century 'Roman Villas', but a lavish first-century sea-side palace "of a great King", in the style which the Roman aristocracy (and King Herod) borrowed from the culture of Royal Macedonia.
I suppose it could be contrasted with Prinny's preposterous erection at Brighton.
5 August 2018
More on Deathgate
The Latin text has now been published; and there is indeed no suggestion that the death penalty is intrinsece malum. That would have been overt heresy.
On the contrary: the accompanying letter to bishops makes clear that the death penalty is not intrinsece malum. "The new formulation ... desire to give energy to a movement towards a decisive commitment to favour a mentality ... in respectful dialogue with civil authorities ... encourage the creation of conditions ..."
Suppose this were a matter of abortion or trafficking women for sex or paedophilia or genocide. The Magisterium would demand that the practice at once stop, not rabbit on about Favouring Mentalities and Encouraging Conditions. This is not how the Catholic Church talks about grave moral offences.
In the prudential sphere, I think, as I explained yesterday, that aspects of this move are profoundly unfortunate. Not least, the impression given through manipulation of the media that doctrine has been changed. This morning, the BBC account explicitly situated the item in these terms. As in the case of Amoris laetitia, heresy is being promulgated but carefully packaged so that it is not formally expressed. It is this mind-set and methodology which led some of us, last year, to issue the Filial Correction. I fear that PF remains every bit as badly in need of being filially corrected!
And I am as uneasy as I was yesterday about the confection of a new, undefined moral category of "inadmissible". The fact that the French version expresses things quite differently ("inhumaine") suggests that the authors were simply groping helplessly around for terms which sound incredibly stern but have no discernible meaning. People such as head masters, poor poppets, do that sort of thing when they are losing their grip, as they so often are. But have a heart. Don't be too sententious. It can't be all fun working for someone like PF, can it?
If you're feeling anxious, remember that, if doctrine' could be "developed" so easily and so soon as the result of changes in anthropological fads, it could be as easily "developed" again, or even "developed" back again.
If that were to happen ... in a few decades, under Pope Francis IV, we might once again (of course, with papal encouragement) be back to hanging difficult members of our underclass on multiple gallows for stealing thruppence. Or perhaps we shall be employing the picturesque Argentine practice of hurling them into the sea out of aeroplanes. Must move with the times.
Come on, chaps, don't get too het-up. Life's too short.
Just think: the Holy Father's initiative will mean that it will now be dear Cardinal Parolin's happy duty to explain to Mr Netanyahu that he and his political associates have got to drop their naughty campaign to reintroduce the infliction of the death pealty in Israel for terrorist-related murders. Just wait for the accusations of 'Anti-semitism' to start flying around the Eminent head. And next on his list there will be the Chinamen ... It couldn't all happen to a nicer chap.
Instead of panicking, toddle off and have a drink and a laugh. You know you deserve it. And there would be no harm in saying a decade or two ...
On the contrary: the accompanying letter to bishops makes clear that the death penalty is not intrinsece malum. "The new formulation ... desire to give energy to a movement towards a decisive commitment to favour a mentality ... in respectful dialogue with civil authorities ... encourage the creation of conditions ..."
Suppose this were a matter of abortion or trafficking women for sex or paedophilia or genocide. The Magisterium would demand that the practice at once stop, not rabbit on about Favouring Mentalities and Encouraging Conditions. This is not how the Catholic Church talks about grave moral offences.
In the prudential sphere, I think, as I explained yesterday, that aspects of this move are profoundly unfortunate. Not least, the impression given through manipulation of the media that doctrine has been changed. This morning, the BBC account explicitly situated the item in these terms. As in the case of Amoris laetitia, heresy is being promulgated but carefully packaged so that it is not formally expressed. It is this mind-set and methodology which led some of us, last year, to issue the Filial Correction. I fear that PF remains every bit as badly in need of being filially corrected!
And I am as uneasy as I was yesterday about the confection of a new, undefined moral category of "inadmissible". The fact that the French version expresses things quite differently ("inhumaine") suggests that the authors were simply groping helplessly around for terms which sound incredibly stern but have no discernible meaning. People such as head masters, poor poppets, do that sort of thing when they are losing their grip, as they so often are. But have a heart. Don't be too sententious. It can't be all fun working for someone like PF, can it?
If you're feeling anxious, remember that, if doctrine' could be "developed" so easily and so soon as the result of changes in anthropological fads, it could be as easily "developed" again, or even "developed" back again.
If that were to happen ... in a few decades, under Pope Francis IV, we might once again (of course, with papal encouragement) be back to hanging difficult members of our underclass on multiple gallows for stealing thruppence. Or perhaps we shall be employing the picturesque Argentine practice of hurling them into the sea out of aeroplanes. Must move with the times.
Come on, chaps, don't get too het-up. Life's too short.
Just think: the Holy Father's initiative will mean that it will now be dear Cardinal Parolin's happy duty to explain to Mr Netanyahu that he and his political associates have got to drop their naughty campaign to reintroduce the infliction of the death pealty in Israel for terrorist-related murders. Just wait for the accusations of 'Anti-semitism' to start flying around the Eminent head. And next on his list there will be the Chinamen ... It couldn't all happen to a nicer chap.
Instead of panicking, toddle off and have a drink and a laugh. You know you deserve it. And there would be no harm in saying a decade or two ...
4 August 2018
Deathgate
I can't see much point in making substantive comments on the "changes made to the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) on the death penalty" until the new text is published. All I can so far find on the Internet are some vernacular versions. .
This, in itself, I object to. The world has been given the impression that the Catholic Church has changed its teaching when nobody has the wherewithal to judge whether or not this is true. I can only call this sort of behaviour in matters of faith and morals disgracefully frivolous. Can it be that PF wants to make an immediate impression on world opinion without giving theological professionals the prior opportunity to weaken by their analyses that impact?
More importantly: the English version says that the death penalty is "inadmissible". I have not the faintest idea what this curious term means theologically or canonically. If the actual text, when published, turns out to contain the phrase "intrinsece malum" then, frankly, we do have quite a problem on our hands. But Cardinal Ladaria is no fool. I shall be very surprised if those words are used. I'd put money on this!
Personally, like PF, I view the death penalty with considerable personal abhorrence ... anywhere, for any reason, at any time. I applaud attempts to discourage its use. I am less certain that the pages of a theological compendium such as the CCC are the right place to wage such a (very worthy) political campaign.
Furthermore, this move appears to take no account of 'advances' in Moral theology since and consequent upon Amoris laetitia. That document appeared to leave it to local hierarchies to make decisions for their own countries. But in the case of Deathgate, it appears that PF's wishes are of peremptory universal application. Perhaps the genial Graf von Schoenborn, or the sinister and brooding Fr Rosica, could explain to us, carefully and precisely, what the difference is. At the same time, it would be good to have an answer to the following: Adultery, while (yes?) generally wrong, may apparently, according to Amoris Laetitia, be Fair Enough in some circumstances. But PF's initiative concerning the death penalty apparently admits no exceptions. Why? And if it does tacitly admit exceptions, are we not left in the same poition as we were in with the earlier formula S John Paul had put into the CCC?
Then there is the problem of the Marx which did not bark during the night. Two or three years ago, with regard to Communion for divorcees, Cardinal Marx asserted the autonomy of the 'German Church' with the fearless and ringing words "We are not subsidiaries of Rome". I have not yet seen a similarly brave assertion that, also in this matter of the death penalty, Germany is Not a Subsidiary of Rome.
.............................................................................................
May I also be personal?
The CCC was made the doctrinal standard of the Ordinariates. I know I will be reminded that any Catholic, in an Ordinariate or anywhere else, is bound to what the Magisterium will authentically teach as well as to what it has taught and is teaching. I agree, absolutely. But, nevertheless, such an arbitrary change in a documentary henotikon, in which X has metamorphosed into not-X in a very few years, and without (as far as we know) a detailed collegial consultation with the whole College of Bishops (such as Pius XII conducted before defining the Assumption), leaves a very nasty taste in my mouth. It is because I have been driven to the unhappy conclusion that the present pontificate is manipulative and dishonest, that I wonder if this change in the CCC may be preparing the way for some of Senor Bergoglio's other private opinions and personal convictions to be given spurious Magisterial colouring.
Such apprehensions are, regrettably, difficult not to entertain at a time when the ultrapapalist perversion of the Petrine Ministry which Cardinal Ratzinger once so vigorously refuted, and which was condemned in advance by the lapidary phraseology in Pastor aeternus of Vatican I (and see Denziger paras 3114-3117), appears to be the currently dominant ideology within the Domus Sanctae Marthae.
This, in itself, I object to. The world has been given the impression that the Catholic Church has changed its teaching when nobody has the wherewithal to judge whether or not this is true. I can only call this sort of behaviour in matters of faith and morals disgracefully frivolous. Can it be that PF wants to make an immediate impression on world opinion without giving theological professionals the prior opportunity to weaken by their analyses that impact?
More importantly: the English version says that the death penalty is "inadmissible". I have not the faintest idea what this curious term means theologically or canonically. If the actual text, when published, turns out to contain the phrase "intrinsece malum" then, frankly, we do have quite a problem on our hands. But Cardinal Ladaria is no fool. I shall be very surprised if those words are used. I'd put money on this!
Personally, like PF, I view the death penalty with considerable personal abhorrence ... anywhere, for any reason, at any time. I applaud attempts to discourage its use. I am less certain that the pages of a theological compendium such as the CCC are the right place to wage such a (very worthy) political campaign.
Furthermore, this move appears to take no account of 'advances' in Moral theology since and consequent upon Amoris laetitia. That document appeared to leave it to local hierarchies to make decisions for their own countries. But in the case of Deathgate, it appears that PF's wishes are of peremptory universal application. Perhaps the genial Graf von Schoenborn, or the sinister and brooding Fr Rosica, could explain to us, carefully and precisely, what the difference is. At the same time, it would be good to have an answer to the following: Adultery, while (yes?) generally wrong, may apparently, according to Amoris Laetitia, be Fair Enough in some circumstances. But PF's initiative concerning the death penalty apparently admits no exceptions. Why? And if it does tacitly admit exceptions, are we not left in the same poition as we were in with the earlier formula S John Paul had put into the CCC?
Then there is the problem of the Marx which did not bark during the night. Two or three years ago, with regard to Communion for divorcees, Cardinal Marx asserted the autonomy of the 'German Church' with the fearless and ringing words "We are not subsidiaries of Rome". I have not yet seen a similarly brave assertion that, also in this matter of the death penalty, Germany is Not a Subsidiary of Rome.
.............................................................................................
May I also be personal?
The CCC was made the doctrinal standard of the Ordinariates. I know I will be reminded that any Catholic, in an Ordinariate or anywhere else, is bound to what the Magisterium will authentically teach as well as to what it has taught and is teaching. I agree, absolutely. But, nevertheless, such an arbitrary change in a documentary henotikon, in which X has metamorphosed into not-X in a very few years, and without (as far as we know) a detailed collegial consultation with the whole College of Bishops (such as Pius XII conducted before defining the Assumption), leaves a very nasty taste in my mouth. It is because I have been driven to the unhappy conclusion that the present pontificate is manipulative and dishonest, that I wonder if this change in the CCC may be preparing the way for some of Senor Bergoglio's other private opinions and personal convictions to be given spurious Magisterial colouring.
Such apprehensions are, regrettably, difficult not to entertain at a time when the ultrapapalist perversion of the Petrine Ministry which Cardinal Ratzinger once so vigorously refuted, and which was condemned in advance by the lapidary phraseology in Pastor aeternus of Vatican I (and see Denziger paras 3114-3117), appears to be the currently dominant ideology within the Domus Sanctae Marthae.
3 August 2018
The Roman Canon as the Rule
OK, there are risks in Liturgical Restoration. Introduce a prime-time Vetus Ordo on Sunday morning, and it's always possible that a misguided group will get in touch with the Tablet and, before you know where you are, the local auxiliary bishop will be knocking on your door. Or even celebrate the Mysteries facing in the same direction as the People of God, as commended by the considerable authority of Cardinal Sarah, and some people may react as if the End of the world is imminent.
But there is one thing that a priest can do with relative impunity. Use the Roman Canon. Use it invariably. Say Good Bye to all the other, phony, 'Eucharistic Prayers' and stick to the only authentic Roman EP, EP1.
The IGRM says that this is the only EP which 'may always be used'.
If anybody does want to know why you have adopted this practice, the explanation is simple.
(1) This is the only ancient Roman Eucharistic Prayer.
(2) It is much more ancient in its theology than any other EP.
(3) For example: it displays the ancient idea that the Bread and Wine are transubstantiated into the Lord's Body and Blood simply by being accepted by the Father (see the prayer Quam oblationem). All the later prayers appear to operate on the unRoman assumption that the Father, in response to the prayer of the Priest, sends the Holy Spirit down from heaven onto the bread and wine so as to change them. Thus, even if they appear in a volume labelled ROMAN MISSAL, they are not 'Roman' prayers.
But there is one thing that a priest can do with relative impunity. Use the Roman Canon. Use it invariably. Say Good Bye to all the other, phony, 'Eucharistic Prayers' and stick to the only authentic Roman EP, EP1.
The IGRM says that this is the only EP which 'may always be used'.
If anybody does want to know why you have adopted this practice, the explanation is simple.
(1) This is the only ancient Roman Eucharistic Prayer.
(2) It is much more ancient in its theology than any other EP.
(3) For example: it displays the ancient idea that the Bread and Wine are transubstantiated into the Lord's Body and Blood simply by being accepted by the Father (see the prayer Quam oblationem). All the later prayers appear to operate on the unRoman assumption that the Father, in response to the prayer of the Priest, sends the Holy Spirit down from heaven onto the bread and wine so as to change them. Thus, even if they appear in a volume labelled ROMAN MISSAL, they are not 'Roman' prayers.
2 August 2018
YHWH God of hosts
The current English translation of the Sanctus is a fine example of why the new English Mass was necessary; and of how translation should be done.
The original Sanctus Sanctus Sanctus Domine Deus Sabaoth comes from Isaiah 6. Readers will not need to be reminded that Domine translates YHWH, the unutterable Name of the Jewish God ... that is to say, our God, for we ought never to forget that (as Pius XI said in the era of Hitler) we are all spiritually Semites. Before the Preface, the priest has invited us to Make Eucharist (give thanks) to YHWH our God; now we join the angels in shouting his holiness.
He is YHWH God SBAOTH; an ancient cult title which the Vulgate properly translates as 'God of armies'; he is the God who went to war before David and the people of Israel, his chosen, throughout their ... oops, I think I should have written 'our' ... history. But how to translate SBAOTH?
Old Bad ICEL rendered 'Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might'. Characteristically nasty, because it makes LORD a final monosyllable that in saying and singing gets psychologically and physically (we are just coming to the end of our puff) lost. It puts a heavy break before the phrase 'God of power and might' and thereby breaks up the integrity of the Hebrew original.
But there would be something awkward in a literal rendering 'God of Armies'. If that had been proposed, the furore would have been understandable. New ICEL has done a very wise thing. It has gone back to the archaic English phrase 'God of hosts'. where 'hosts' is old English for 'armies' (cf Wycliff and the Authorised Version and Cranmer's Prayer Book). 'Sabaoth' is an archaism; what more fitting than an archaism to render it; an archaism which reminds us of our Hebrew roots and of the long history of Biblical and liturgical English. This is precisely how translation should be done.
The admirable document Liturgiam authenticam advised the evolution of Sacred Vernaculars; Christine Mohrmann foresaw their possibility.
The alternative, of course, would have been to retain in the English the old Hebraic Sabaoth. As inflammable Dr Cranmer did in his fine rendering of the Te Deum, now to be found in the Ordinariate Missal (Appendix at the back). I wonder whether he translated Mattins first; or 'the Masse'. I think one can detect an evolution is his instincts for translation: One day he might use 'immarcescible'; the next would find him convinced that a Wreath was 'unfading'.
The original Sanctus Sanctus Sanctus Domine Deus Sabaoth comes from Isaiah 6. Readers will not need to be reminded that Domine translates YHWH, the unutterable Name of the Jewish God ... that is to say, our God, for we ought never to forget that (as Pius XI said in the era of Hitler) we are all spiritually Semites. Before the Preface, the priest has invited us to Make Eucharist (give thanks) to YHWH our God; now we join the angels in shouting his holiness.
He is YHWH God SBAOTH; an ancient cult title which the Vulgate properly translates as 'God of armies'; he is the God who went to war before David and the people of Israel, his chosen, throughout their ... oops, I think I should have written 'our' ... history. But how to translate SBAOTH?
Old Bad ICEL rendered 'Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might'. Characteristically nasty, because it makes LORD a final monosyllable that in saying and singing gets psychologically and physically (we are just coming to the end of our puff) lost. It puts a heavy break before the phrase 'God of power and might' and thereby breaks up the integrity of the Hebrew original.
But there would be something awkward in a literal rendering 'God of Armies'. If that had been proposed, the furore would have been understandable. New ICEL has done a very wise thing. It has gone back to the archaic English phrase 'God of hosts'. where 'hosts' is old English for 'armies' (cf Wycliff and the Authorised Version and Cranmer's Prayer Book). 'Sabaoth' is an archaism; what more fitting than an archaism to render it; an archaism which reminds us of our Hebrew roots and of the long history of Biblical and liturgical English. This is precisely how translation should be done.
The admirable document Liturgiam authenticam advised the evolution of Sacred Vernaculars; Christine Mohrmann foresaw their possibility.
The alternative, of course, would have been to retain in the English the old Hebraic Sabaoth. As inflammable Dr Cranmer did in his fine rendering of the Te Deum, now to be found in the Ordinariate Missal (Appendix at the back). I wonder whether he translated Mattins first; or 'the Masse'. I think one can detect an evolution is his instincts for translation: One day he might use 'immarcescible'; the next would find him convinced that a Wreath was 'unfading'.
1 August 2018
Teaching Sin
Governments throughout the Unfree World continue to urge the corruption of the young by the inculcation of anti-Judaeo-Christian ethical assumptions. A few weeks ago I heard on the wireless the suggestion that our own admirably resolute Haredi community should be prevented from educating their own children because of an apprehension, I'm sure, correct, that they might not be teaching them the evil, unethical claptrap urged nowadays by evil people. More recently, there has been governmental and Media 'concern' about 'ultra-Orthodox' Jewish and Islamic 'schools'.
But who (I hear you say) bothers about an eccentric Jewish group like the Haredi? To which I reply: They came for the Haredi, but I did nothing because I am not Haredi ... etc.. You know, I am sure, the rest of the incantation.
I shall be surprised if there is not a focussed onslaught, even during my lifetime, on Home Education in this already cruelly illiberal country.
When I was teaching the young, there was already a de facto expectation that one must bow to the zeitgeist in the cases of abortion and gender and suchlike shibboleths. I came to feel that there were advantages in it. I used to tell the pupils: "Some people think ...", and then give them as passionate an advocacy as I could manage of the 'liberal' line - cliches, false logic, spurious rhetoric, factual misrepresntation, you name it, I threw myself into it all with relish. Then I said: "But other people think ...", and gave them the Christian view. When they said "But what do you think, Father?", I allowed them to pester me into revealing to them why the 'liberal' view I had so convincingly put forward was, in my own view, such rubbish. This, I hoped, might have the advantage that when they later heard (as they were undoubtedly destined to) the 'liberal' orthodoxies, they might already, even if only to a tiny degree, be inoculated against them.
I also obeyed to the letter the fashion for teaching ethics in a "balanced and non-judgemental" way by giving the arguments both for and against Racial Discrimination, Gender Prejudice, Bullying, etc.. Liberal colleagues used to find it strikingly difficult to explain to me why I was wrong to do this ... without conceding that they themselves were up to their totalitarian ears in brainwashing the young; giving them unbalanced and judgmental teaching in moral and social matters. "But Racial Discrimination [or Bullying or whatever] is just wrong" they would naively bleat. I found the fun of it all really rather exhilarating.
I don't suppose I'd get away with it now.
But who (I hear you say) bothers about an eccentric Jewish group like the Haredi? To which I reply: They came for the Haredi, but I did nothing because I am not Haredi ... etc.. You know, I am sure, the rest of the incantation.
I shall be surprised if there is not a focussed onslaught, even during my lifetime, on Home Education in this already cruelly illiberal country.
When I was teaching the young, there was already a de facto expectation that one must bow to the zeitgeist in the cases of abortion and gender and suchlike shibboleths. I came to feel that there were advantages in it. I used to tell the pupils: "Some people think ...", and then give them as passionate an advocacy as I could manage of the 'liberal' line - cliches, false logic, spurious rhetoric, factual misrepresntation, you name it, I threw myself into it all with relish. Then I said: "But other people think ...", and gave them the Christian view. When they said "But what do you think, Father?", I allowed them to pester me into revealing to them why the 'liberal' view I had so convincingly put forward was, in my own view, such rubbish. This, I hoped, might have the advantage that when they later heard (as they were undoubtedly destined to) the 'liberal' orthodoxies, they might already, even if only to a tiny degree, be inoculated against them.
I also obeyed to the letter the fashion for teaching ethics in a "balanced and non-judgemental" way by giving the arguments both for and against Racial Discrimination, Gender Prejudice, Bullying, etc.. Liberal colleagues used to find it strikingly difficult to explain to me why I was wrong to do this ... without conceding that they themselves were up to their totalitarian ears in brainwashing the young; giving them unbalanced and judgmental teaching in moral and social matters. "But Racial Discrimination [or Bullying or whatever] is just wrong" they would naively bleat. I found the fun of it all really rather exhilarating.
I don't suppose I'd get away with it now.
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