HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 Anglican bishops are such funny old poppets and poppetesses: not so many decades ago, those of them who did celebrate Chrism Masses did so rather secretly ... the news got around on a grape-vine! 

Years later, things changed: those events became very popular; and it ended up with clergy being told that if they were not going to be present, they should humbly seek permission to be absent!

Needless to say, that was in the period after the admission of women to sacerdotal ministries in the Church of England. That process was what made all the difference: bishops who had previously regarded consecrating oils as iffy and high church, suddenly cottoned on to the new possibilities. Getting clergy to turn up now became a way of trying to bully into submission those who did not wish to enact their full communio with bishops who were ordaining women.

I wonder if some officers of the Catholic Church will behave similarly, forcing traddy clergy to make the Chrism Mass the occasion for making a massive symbolic act of conformity with Traditionis custodes. 

If this happens, I do hope that 'traditional' priests will not play into the hands of their enemies by giving them pretexts for persecution. 

Rumours abound of Visitations and of other jolly ways of persecuting those who adhere to the Authentic Use of the Roman Rite. 2022 may turn out to be a richly nuanced year!

The basic fact, is of course, that 'legislation' including, and issuing from, Tc, can in no way bind in conscience. For a long time, liberals and modernists have been quoting that thing of S John Henry's, about the drinking of toasts ...

Again, I recall how matters turned out in the Church of England.

The word was spread that congregations leaving the C of E to join the Ordinariate could in no way take their churches with them. Perhaps this was inevitable.  But it was also made clear that any sort of shared use of property was out of the question.

One prominent bishop was reported to have said that he would rather any church of his should be bulldozed to the ground than used by Ordinariate Groups! And such attitudes came from men who had mis-spent most of their silly lives declaring that no considerations whatsoever should stand in the way of Christian Unity! When Pope Benedict actually parked Unity right in front of their episcopal noses, they did not recognise it! It didn't look exactly how they had always imagined it! Its pullover was the wrong colour! Outrageous!

There is (not identity but) an interesting set of similarities between the Anglican and the Catholic situations. In each case, we seem to have a highly orgulous elite, culturally heavily infected by the Zeitgeist (lots of 'viral load' around, as we say nowadays), setting itself to subjugate a subclass ... including both intellectuals and non-intellectuals ... which has maintained a sturdy, God-mandated independence from the Zeitgeist. 

So what is going on? 

Is it that the Bergoglian elite sees accommodation with the Zeitgeist as a necessary way of maintaining its own privilege at a time when it might otherwise come under threat? Is PF's Declaration of his Liturgy War based upon his fear even more than upon his evident hatreds? What might future cultural historians make of all this?

My hope and prayer is that Traditionalists will, in these dangerous next few months, be as wise as serpents.

This may be a time to be cunning and devious. And to remember that, according to many moralists, there are circumstances in which Suppressio veri and Suggestio falsi can be morally justified. S John Henry has some interesting things to say about all this in his Apologia.