Most readers will know that the author of the 'Neo-Gallican' Preface authorised a couple of years ago by the CDF for use today (All Saints' Day; and also on a number of other days) was Laurant-Francois Boursier (1679-1749) , who died ... YES!! ... in the fair and bonnie parish of S Nicolas de Chardonnet.
He was a celebrated and condemned Jansenist.
Here follows a request for enlightenment. My enlightenment, that is.
Dom Gueranger, a vigorous compaigner for the unjansenised Roman Rite in the 1800s, wrote critically of Boursier (and about other fashionable Jansenists). Criticising the Preface now in favour in Rome, Gueranger remarked upon the rather Augustinian phrase eorum coronando merita, coronas dona tua. (See also S Prosper of Aquitaine) Rather sharply, or so it seems to me, Gueranger commented that, while this phrase had a sense Catholique, it also had a Jansenist sense.
Can anybody explain to me what the (snarl snarl) Jansenist sense was?
8 comments:
Thank you Father for the Question,Since the Quote is based on merit the Catholic sense is based on,Obedience to faith,Free will and Justification.For the Angels one act of charity,merits the beatuit vision(free will of the angels).For man he needs an act of faith in order to act in faith.He needs an act of the will in order to act.He needs Justification by Grace alone because it is faith in sanctifing grace an the methods which God revealed it would be recieved that make our works his works.Nothing else is meritious.We are only paying our debt.
The jansenists sense is For in crowing there (own) merits (without free will)you are crowning you own gifts.?? thats how i understand the jansenist side, that is if i understand the question.You are in my prayers.
Dear father,also concerning justification,Council of Trent;DS-1528
Justification [which an act of perfect love would give].is not only the remission of sins, but also sanctification... so that he is heir to the hope of eternal life [citing titus] 3:7.
St. Nicholas du Chardonnet: "Fair and bonnie" indeed! I would go further and call it "a luminous haven" in the midst of Modernist gloominess. I have been fortunate to attend some of the most beautiful, reverent, lofty masses I have ever experienced at this historic church of the SSPX (I know, I know: in France the government "owns" the churches, thanks to the anti-clerical laws---but a situation which in this case has happily worked for the benefit of the Ancient Faith). I was doubly fortunate to hear on one occasion the renowned poet and philosopher and fierce defender of Catholic Tradition preach from its pulpit: the great, and picturesque, Monsignor Ducaud-Bourget (spelling?). I hear as well that in revolutionary France a rector of this great Parisian parish was martyred, but his name totally escapes me.
Perhaps this crowning of merits is maybe over emphasising that the elect are surely a very small number, which can act to make the Catholic sacramental life a bit pointless, even if those identified as over strict Augustinians, including the supposedly proud nuns of Port Royal, were utterly traditional in the practice of their faith.
Pascal highlight the great laxity of the court Jesuits with Bl Innocent XI condemned some of the methods they used. Yet Jansenism really it meant any Catholic who displeased Louis XIV and his Jesuit advisors. Intellectuals like Pascal, the Arnaud family were one group, the demotic Convulsionaries of St-Médard were another. Dom Gueranger did polemically emphasise some weaknesses with French diocesan Uses, contributing to their almost complete disappearance by the early 20th century, the French Revolution having destroyed so much with V1 and politics isolating the Gallican cause almost completely. It was never clear that Jansenists espouses any of sub-calvinist ideas attributed to them and condemned. It brings us to a present where Bergoglian mood swings result in fairly rapid attack on properly done Catholic worship.
Perhaps if more of the Uses of the Roman Rite from Sarum, Rouen, Baltic, Bohemian, Lyons (one FSSP priest) and others had survived, along with the local rights of Cathedral canons which Trent vindicated, it might have insulated Catholics a bit. Now canons are usually honorands who might suggest a candidate to Pope Francis with elections just ceremonial. Some traditionalists like sedevacantists espouse a perverse belief that that ultra-montane, ultra centralising Perfect Pope will descend from Heaven to fix all, contrary to evidence.
Bl Pius XII put the liturgical deformation into high gear with the Sainted Popes of V2 responsible for steering Catholics into that wall called 'Spirit of V2.' Clearly that tendency is dying with its adherents. Pope Francis in his fading health (prayers for him) almost personifies the death of that tendency.
It is probably an allusion to the Jansenist thesis of the irresistibility of divine grace.
One very prosaic but great thing about St. Nicholas du Chardonnet are its excellent microphones and amplification which makes its daily YouTube Masses easy to follow. Clearly enunciated Latin and French probably helps too. Some priests, great though they are, talk into their shoes. If only some of the old great preaching priests able to project their voice and use careful gesture have been recorded, it might be of help.
An XVIIIth century French Jansenist Bishop - fled to Holland - agreed to consecrate Bishops for the schismatical Dutch Catholic canons of the Cathedral of Utrecht, who insisted ( rightly or wrongly) upon their right to elect their own bishop: they did not like being under the jurisdiction of Rome's Propaganda Fidei after the Reformation. The French Jansenist , who had taken refuge with the Dutch, agreed to consecrate Bishops for them but only if they agreed to accept certain jansenist propositions. And thus arose the small Dutch Old Catholic Church, with sees at Utecht and Haarlem, that of Deventer now suppressed. The Council of Pistoia, condemned by the Holy See, was - at least liturgically - jansenistic in spirit. Jansenism has been styled - rather justly in mine humble opinion - "a kind of Catholic calvinism". The Jansenism once imposed by that French Bishop upon the beginning Dutch Old Catholic Church has led to its becoming a liberal protestant denomination with catholic veneer. Jansenism's scrupulosity regarding Holy Communion infected large parts of Catholic Europe, even up till my own youth. Thus, It seems to me that Jansenism did truly exist, and , judging from its historical effects, I can see the likeness to some aspects of the hated Calvinism.
A certain amount of scrupulousness concerning Holy Communion may be needed to counter the free for all of 'let them all come' seen today. I have always remembered the description of Chesterton approaching the altar rail trembling with the realisation of the transcending importance of the gift of the Holy Sacrament.
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