Blessed Queen Maria Christina

Here, purged of a couple of misprints, is the Collect authorised for this Stuart Beata, who is placed in the Roman Martyrology for January 31, in Naples.

Deus, qui in figura huius mundi beatam Mariam Christinam prudenti ardentique caritate decorasti et artificem in augmento regni tui effecisti: praesta nobis eius exemplo et intercessione; ut de vero amoris tui thesauro benefacientes accipere valeamus. Per.

I feel that the lack of an explicit accusative object with accipere valeamus sounds a little odd.

Here is an English rendering:
God, who in the passing fashion of this present world hast adorned blessed Maria Christina with a prudent and ardent love and hast made her a worker in the advancement of thy kingdom: grant by her example and intercession; that we, active in good works, may receive from the true treasury of thy love. Through.

I was unsure how to render in figura huius mundi. In the end, I have over-translated it in the light of its Pauline original. I Corinthians 7:31 finds S Paul arguing that those who use the World (kosmos) should do so as if they are not using it; because the skhema of this World is passing (or will pass) away. The Vulgate and the neo-Vulgate render skhema as figura; and English translations in descent from the AV have 'fashion'.

I presume the phrase in the context of this Collect relates to how the Beata left behind the adequacy and pomp of the Royal Court of the Two Sicilies in order to perform works of charity among the lowliest.

May she pray for us and for our Ordinariate.

Publishers of the abortive Book of Common Prayer of 1928 used to print in the front this sentence: "The publication of this Book does not directly or indirectly imply that it can be regarded as authorized for use in churches". In the same generous spirit, I point out that there is no authority whatsoever for celebrating Blessed Maria Christina with the Mass Cognovi in the Extraordinary Form and using this Collect. Indeed, she is not entitled to any liturgical commemoration whatsoever outside the limited areas named in the Decree of Beatification, let alone throughout the entire territories of the European Community as constituted at this precise moment.

Datum sed non concessum (2)

 So here are the words of King Charles after he was 'condemned':

"And, admitting, but not granting, that the people of England's Commission could grant you [this pretended power to judge and condemn a monarch] I see nothing to show that; for certainly you have never asked the question of the tenth man of this Kingdom ..."

Shipwrecked on the rocks of Bergoglianity?

 Normally, when commenting on a day's liturgy, the Prudent Blogger will have got his line sussed well beforehand. But it was only as I actually read yesterday's propers, for Epiphany IV, that I started wondering. Let me share with you my work-in-progress.

In the Gospel, we had the Disciples, poor poppets, panicking about the storm as they baled out the boat. Earlier, we had those words in the Collect " ... nos in in tantis periculis constitutos ...".

You see, those dangers facing the Boat ... they reminded me of Boats in Danger in Classical Greek literature ... Homer ... OK ... but, more in particular, Alcaeus, a symposiast/political poet on the island of Lesbos. For him, the endangered ship may symbolise the imperilled political community (see Page on Z 2). Commentators here sometimes reach for the cliche 'Ship of State'. (There is an imitatio of this motif in Horace; Odes I xiv and see NH.) 

Are we supposed to make a connection between Epiphany IV's "so great dangers" and this literary tradition? And what about those paintings of ships in the catacombs?

Two points.

(1) It is rarely obvious that the mind which selected a Gospel was the same mind that provided the same day's Collect. But it is one of the characteritics of the Gesima Sundays ... what we now rather poshly seem to have been renamed the Pre-Lent Season ... that the two are related ... just as they are here on Epiphany IV. (2) And the theme of this Collect is strikingly similar to that of Gesima propers: that all these calamities are punishment for our sin; and we throw ourselves upon Divine Mercy. Compare, particularly, Epiphany IV Collect with that for Septuagesima.

I have found Sr Dr Haessly's pages suggestive here, especially 38-40 and 130sqq.

So, as far as Collect and Gospel are concerned, Epiphany IV has for me the curious appearance of a Gesima-outlier. As the 1970s blunderers and blusterers got to work, naturally it had to disappear so as to make the liturgy 'enriched' enough for Arthur Roche.

Anybody got a line on any of this, preferably rooted in the liturgical tradition? 

Anyway, a most appropriate proper for the Church in temporibus his Bergoglianissimis.

DATUM SED NON CONCESSUM

Recently, I explained ... not for the first time ... the phrase Argumentum ad hominem. I was concerned to refute the idea that it means using personal abuse to attack an idea that someone has put forward.

It doesn't ... or, it it does, it does so only by being a mistake which has now confusingly deceived so many poor souls that we are expected to accept it on the ground that usage is prescriptive. (If enough people are firmly convinced that the word water means "coloured orange", we shall eventually, regretfully, have to accept the judgement of Usage.)

I think it might also be useful to deal with the phrase datum sed non concessum. 

Literally, this means "Given but not conceded".

As commonly used in discourse among the educated classes, it was employed very usefully to mean something like this:

"Proposition X has been advanced to support idea Y which you trying to persuade me to accept. I don't think that proposition X is true; but, in order to enable our argument to continue, I am prepared to treat X as if it were true. This is, frankly, because even if X were true, Y would still be complete nonsense."

DEVASTATION

 Lawks a-mussy! In May, so it is being ordered by the current Head of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha-Battenberg, his Coronation will be 'celebrated' by People going round Doing Good, not least to the elderly.

I am elderly. I dislike People. I can't stand Good.

What on earth is one to do? Buy a dog? But I don't like dogs either. Go on retreat to somewhere with a decent cellar? Put up a notice reading DO-GOODERS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT? 

Or MIND THE ANTHRAX?

I turn to readers in my hour of need for some ingenious advice.

Those Blessed Kings

Today, January 28, in many places the Emperor Charles the Great is commemorated liturgically. His canonisation was performed by an antipope (Paschal III, a creature of Barbarossa), and he is not in the Roman Martyrology, so he is nowadays tactfully celebrated as a Beatus. (I hope those with a devotion to him will forgive my cynicism when I remark that the article on him in Gueranger is rather amusing to read, as it attempts with angry indignation to rebut accusations that Charlemagne's matrimonial life was less than, er, canonical.)

And, in two days time, there will be those who commemorate blessed (note my cunningly lower-case b) Charles Stuart, who has had the word blessed attached to him liturgically by Anglicans since 1662 (the authorised texts, to the best of my knowledge, have never called him Saint).

That was during an age when Kings had mistresses as a natural adjunct of Royal Majesty. (I believe there was even one German king, a laudably uxorious chappy, who maintained a number of titular 'Mistresses', although he never laid a finger, or anything else, on any of them.)

But blessed (note my cunningly lower-case b) Charles was notorious for marital chastity. The Court Masques of his reign exalted the theme of chaste marital love. There are worse themes than this to incorporate into royal ...or any ... ideologies.

I think this blessed (note my cunningly lower-case b) is quite a good candidate for imitation in this age of ritual and government-encouraged promiscuity.

May blessed Charles the Royal Martyr pray for us all.

And, of course, may the unmartyred and matrimonially debated Blessed Charlemagne do the same.

The Liturgical Revolution that wasn't (2)

 Time was, when, out of reverence, it was forbidden to print, in books of devotion intended for lay Catholics, a translation into profane, vernacular, languages, of the Canon of the Mass. Those days had manifestly passed when on 10 September 1948, the Vicar General of Westminster, E Morrogh Bernard, issued an Imprimatur to Messrs Burns Oates and Washbourne Ltd, Publishers to the Holy See, for The Missal in Latin and English Being the text of the Missale Romanum with English rubrics and a new translation. (Further editions were to follow in 1957; 1958; 1960; and 1962.)

This was a lavish edition, for lay hands, of the Roman Missal. I write 'lavish'; for example it printed in full the orders for Low and for High Mass; it contained all the proper masses for the dioceses of England, Wales, and Scotland. And the Appendix pro aliquibus locis. But more: "The translation of the ... scriptural passages throughout the volume is by the Right Reverend Mgr R. A. Knox."

Of course, those vernacular passages were not intended for public use in public worship. This massive show-case for 'the Knox Bible' was to foster private devotion among those literate in their mother tongue, but not up to the Latin of the Missal. It was to assist in enabling an educated public to appropriate and appreciate the riches of the (traditional) Roman Rite. A very 'forties' and very laudable project! But, in an age when 'the Liturgical Movement' had put the 'Vernacular question' onto the agenda, this was surely also a strong pointer in a certain direction.

Incidentally, the prayers were translated by the Reverend J. O'Connell, M.A., and H. P. R. Finberg, M.A., F.R.Hist.S. (1900-1974). The involvement of Fr O'Connell, Editor (of edition after edition) of The Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described, suggested the semi-establishment appearance of the venture. But neither man was to be a fundamentalist traditionalist; Finberg, a lay Catholic greatsman with wide academic interests, was to work for ICEL. His influence there was conservative: he felt that "if the liturgy uses expressions that run or seem to run counter to the spirit of the age, we should let it teach us to modify our sometimes callow notions, rather than remodel it, under the pretext of translation, to suit the fashion of the day ... the truth is that, consciously or unconsciously, the translators have bowed to the influence of critics who find much of the Roman Canon repugnant to the contemporary mind."

Anglia non est totus orbis. In 1952, a volume entitled The Little Breviary was published in Dutch. It consisted of an abbreviated form of the Breviary Office, in the vernacular. It came with fruity Vatican encouragement: "I hasten to inform you that the Sovereign Pontiff considers the book entitled 'The Little Breviary' which you have brought out in dutch deserving of the highest praise. A long-cherished hope has now been realised in a most excellent fashion ... outstanding ... His Holiness is delighted and congratulates you on having contributed by a work of this kind to the wider spread of devotion to the liturgy ... His Holiness is heartily in favour of the use of 'The Little Breviary' both by religious communities whose established way of life allows of it and by the laity ..."

This encomium is signed Jo Bapt. Montini Subst.  Who he? you all cry.

In 1957, this work appeared in English (Burns and Oates) with a Birmingham Imprimatur. Cardinal Griffin contributed a Foreward which frankly reveals the cultural back-ground: "The growing interest in the Sacred Liturgy ... warm approval of the Holy See .... high praise from the Holy Father, Pope Pius XII.  This Breviary meets a great need  ... knowledge of Latin will be scanty or lacking altogether ... "

A preface by a Redemptorist superior adds that the Office as abbreviated is "Yet no longer than the Little Office of our Lady." I gloss this as meaning that those lay communities which are not canonically bound to the full Breviary Office, and have hitherto used the Officium Parvum BMV, would do very well to adopt The Little Breviary instead.

The Foreword to the English Edition makes clear that this office-book follows the The Roman Missal in using Mgr Knox's translation of the Bible; and the translations of prayer-texts by O'Connell and Finberg.

Thus: the English Catholic Church was well equipped for a liturgical evolution in which Tradition would have been respected and treated gently; and home-grown scholarship from the pen and in the style of Mgr Knox would have been dominant.

I regard this as an opportunity most sadly missed. The policies which were, instead, folowed have left us in our current disastrous situation. The 1940s were a better decade than the 1960s! Was the eventual Vatican preference for doing business with world-wide language-groups really in accord with the principle of Subsidiarity?

The Liturgical Revolution which wasn't (1)

In 1948, the Old Testament, in a translation created by Mgr R A Knox, Master of Arts and (later) Protonotary Apostolic, received a Westminster Imprimatur "for private use"; in 1945 the New Testament, from the same hand, had been published. These events might have proved the starting-gun for a considerable liturgical, and cultural, revolution.

Congregations at that time ... Anglican, (most) Protestant, and Catholic ... were in the grip of assumptions concerning the necessity for Tudor English within Church or Chapel walls. The King James Bible was still the Bible in the minds of Anglicans and Protestants; for Catholics, the Douay Rheims translation, purged of its most diverting incomprehensibilities by Bishop Challoner, served the devout. Any 'revision' even if only to bring King James (or Douay-Rheims) into line with the textcrit certainties of Westcott'nHort (textus brevior potior) needed powerful justification before it could break through the prejudices of three, cultural, centuries. King James ... aided by Thomas Cranmer ... still ruled. Even if not quite OK.

The problem for Catholics was less acute, because the kindly Latin (or happy inaudibility) of Tradition protected the laity from the irritating mutabilities and aggressions of clericalism (and The Garden of the Soul reinforced lay preference for archaic language). S John Henry Newman mocked  Protestant sneers about the linguistic attaments of the Recusant community: when Charles Reding is being dissuaded by his future brother-in-law from seceding to Rome, he has to face the argument that Catholic Clergy are "men of rude minds and vulgar manners"; "look at their books of devotion ... they can't write English." Reding smiled at Carlton, and slowly shook his head to and fro, while he said, "they write English, I suppose, as classically as St John writes Greek." Here, so the canonised author informs us, the conversation halted, and nothing was heard for a while but the simmering of the kettle. 

Do you think we are given here a snatch of the repartee of the Oriel Common Room? Would Whately have expectorated into the fire in explosive response to such a Jesuitical attack on Johannine parataxis?

I am unsurprised that not all the English Catholic bishops were equally enthusiastic about Knox's Bible. Given the radically revolutionary quality of its English style, it is surprising that it received from them such acceptance, or tolerance, as it did. It is not hard to understand how the bishops felt. How, indeed, should one respond to this clever convert?

To be continued.

Fr Aidan Nichols, and the Ecumenical Future

 Fr Aidan Nichols, is without doubt the most considerable living theologian of the English-speaking Catholic World. For members of the Ordinariate, he is the great friend who, when we were still Anglicans and he was still a Dominican, helped and guided us during the years when we were planning, and then setting up, the Ordinariates. And he is as prolific a theological writer as Joseph Ratzinger (on whose theology he wrote a still normative guide, long before the election of Benedict XVI).

Fr Aidan once delivered a characteristic lecture on the crisis which had been precipitated by Amoris laetitia. The Catholic Herald gave a report on 18 August 2017, which is still there, only a google away.  I urge everybody to read it; and to take it very seriously.

I would like to make two comment on my own behalf.

(1) Fr Aidan delivered his lecture at a meeting of the English Fellowship of Ss Alban and Sergius - largely an Anglican/Orthodox Society. Was this a good idea? Washing our dirty Catholic laundry in front of non-Catholics??  

Detur Responsum.

It was a thoroughly brilliant idea. You see, there are people who think that Pope Bergoglio's style of papacy may be somehow more "ecumenical" than that of some other popes. Bergoglio goes around kissing Patriarchs and begging their blessings; he insults his fellow-Catholics with such easy and iterated fluency yet can speak only well of non-Catholics. He is reported to have reopened the "Question of Anglican Orders"; he spoke ambiguously about "intercommunion" with Lutherans; made a fool of himself at Lund.

But as we conclude this 2023 Octave of Prayer for the Unity of Christians, you will forgive me for reminding you that thoughtful Orthodox and Anglicans will not be attracted by a model of Papacy which can make any Roman bishop a self-obsessed tyrant propped up by an unhealthy personality cult; somebody whose least word or whimsy has to be accepted; who can, at will, change doctrine, morality, liturgy, and law. 

Such a papacy is not a papacy which the more open-minded Anglicans and Orthodox have ever been prepared to receive from earlier popes. There is no reason to think that they will be any more prepared to accept it when it comes with an Argentine accent and emphasis. 

BUT the best reason whey should not accept it, is because it is not what the Catholic Church teaches.

Fr Aidan reminded his hearers that Vatican I in fact limited the papacy; and surmised "it may be that the present crisis of the Roman magisterium is providentially intended to call attention to the limits of the papacy [in regard to teaching]"

(2) Very naturally, there have been people, during this Pontificate, who have kept their heads below parapets; who have been cowed into acquiescence by fear of the bully-boys, delatores, and sycophants who surround the current Roman bishop. 

The courage, and unambiguous words, of Fr Aidan Nichols might inspire them to demonstrate that parrhesia for which ... at an earlier stage in his pontificate ... pope Francis himself so often loudly called.

UNITATIS CAUSA!

Anglican Patrimony, S John Henry Newman, and the Argumentum ad hominem

Saint John Henry Newman, Patron of our English Ordinariate, made an observation which seems to me germane to the purpose of our Ordinariate. He was praising B Pius IX for the restoration of the Hierarchy in 1850; but I think it has an application particularly to ourselves: "... by giving us a church of our own, he has prepared the way for our own habits of mind, our own manner of reasoning, our own tastes, and our own virtues, finding a place and thereby a sanctification, in the Catholic Church".

In his review of Ian Ker's Biography of Newman, the maestro assoluto of modern Anglican writers, Henry Chadwick, called Newman "as supreme a master of irony and satire as any in our literature". It is the great gift of Irony and satire, which Newman developed first as an Anglican and then brought to its full flowering in the Catholic Church, which I wish to think about today. The capacity for Doing Divinity within the forms of Irony and Satire was not an invention of Newman's ... one only has to think of the admirable Dean Swift ... but I believe that Newman both formalised it and cast it in a form which has done good service since. It is pre-eminent among the habits of mind, manner of reasoning, tastes which, following him, we in the Ordinariate have brought into Full Communion with S Peter. It is part of us; we are not (just?) an eccentric group to whom, of its goodness, the Holy See has granted an unusual form of the Roman Rite. We have a culture, which no-one shall take from us. Reducing us to a community which simply has a distinctive Liturgy without its associated culture, is that "Uniatism" which is rightly so disliked by Orientals and is disowned by Catholic ecumenists who know what they are talking about. 

S John Henry wrote about his own controversial habits as a young don: "I was not unwilling to draw an opponent on step by step to the brink of some intellectual absurdity, and to leave him to get back as he could. ... Also I used irony in conversation, when matter-of-fact men would not see what I meant". He is here describing the argumentum ad hominem mode of controversy, defined by Locke as "pressing a man with consequences of his own assumptions or concessions". It was a method used by Origen (according to S Gregory Thaumaturgus).

It was brought to perfection by another great Anglican Ironist and Satirist, the Anglo-Papalist Benedictine Dom Gregory Dix, in the 1930s. Have you just proved ... Hooray! ... that the early popes did not exercise jurisdiction, in its modern sense? Dix will not contradict you ... nothing as crude as that. He will agree with you; and then spring his trap: neither, in those times did bishops have, in the modern sense, any jurisdiction. If you wish to assert episcopal jurisdiction, you won't be able to avoid the papal. If you deny the latter, you have cut the episcopal branch from underneath you. Do you assert, with tuttuttery and disapproval, that Vatican I defined papal primacy in terms of a modern Canon Law which did not exist in the New Testament period? Dom Gregory will pat you on the head ... warmly agree with you ... and then enquire how you cope with the fact that Nicea defined the Nature of Christ in terms of Greek metaphysics ... which also had no place in the minds of the New Testament writers.

Then, of course, there was Ronald Knox ... who explored the argument that in the Divine Plan Satire is the reason why humour was given to us: so that the pompous can be deflated.

Has there ever been a time when Satire was more needed in Christ's Church Militant?

Ecumenism

A far greater example of Unity Solved and Delivered than any I have so far mentioned is found in the teaching of S Paul in his Letter to the Ephesians. Part of that teaching is found in the Epistle of the Votive Mass for the Ending of Schism aka for the Unity of Christians. My own hope is that this Mass, beautiful in its profundity, will be widely available during this Chair of Unity Octave. But I would urge that readers reappropriate the entirety of that great Epistle (there is a very fine major Commentary of gigantic size by Thomas Winger).

S Paul deals with the the most profound division imaginable: between being within God's chosen People or outside it. He alludes to the soreg, the wall that separated Gentiles from Jews in the Temple at Jerusalem, marked by its rather chilling inscriptions threatening death to Gentiles who disregarded it.

That wall, S Paul points out, is abolished and, instead of Jew and Gentile, we have the new One Creation which is Christ.

In this Chair of Unity Octave, we must renew our commitment to oppose anything which strives to build that wall up again. The Faithful Remnant of Israel, so major a theme among the Prophets, is the one Body of Christ, together with those saved from among the Gentiles, snatched out of Gentile impurity and anomia by that fontal Act of Faith which Abraham made.

I think one of the weaknesses in the Church of today is that so few of her members are of Jewish descent. What we lose from this is a firm sense of our essential rootedness in the discipline of narratives handed down from the past, and an awareness that identity needs to be expressed by visible markers which distinguish us from the unclean pagan world around us.

And just suppose there were a strong Jewish presence in the Church, of intelligent and focussed Jews who understood that the Fall of the Temple and the cessation of its Daily Sacrifices is a coin which has, on its other side, the Daily Sacrifice of the tamid Lamb who is the Incarnate Torah. Perhaps we would not have such a dearth of sacrificial awareness among the mainstream congregations within our poor impoverished Latin Church.

What did he say? (Corrected)

 I do not credit the reports that PF recently said to seminarians from Barcelona ... in effect ... that there are "f*cking careerists f*cking up the lives of others".

I know PF has a history of foul-mouthed bad language. You don't need to explain to me that he is not a terribly nice individual. But justice requires us to apply the same standards of proof to a Roman Pontiff as charity requires us to apply to any other human. 

PF spoke either in Italian or Spanish or ... just conceivably ... in Catalan. (His English appears to be negligible ... and why, in any case, would he use English when speaking to such an audience?)

The English phrase (cited supra) is a neat and sinewy piece of indecent English prose cleverly combining different idiomatic uses of the verb f*ck. Could Italian or Spanish equivalents combine the same indecency with the same lexicon and idioms? I am not a Hispanist; but my instinct is to question it.

I shall not believe that PF said these words until somebody competent in Romance philology can tell me what his Italian/Spanish words actually were; and supply a scholarly account of the idiomatic linguistic usages at play in his Italian/Spanish.

Then we can start to examine more straightforward considerations of historical fact.

Until then, I consider it unjust to assume things that need to be demonstrated.

Jalland

The 1942 Bampton Lectures of my distinguished Anglican predecessor at S Thomas's, Dr Trevor Jalland, are a tour de force demonstrating his sure-footed competence in discussing the relationship of Papacy to Church in every succeeding Christian era, from "a decidedly favourable verdict ought to be given regarding not only the Petrine texts, but also the tradition of the Apostle's residence and death in Rome" down to "That the Roman episcopi, whether in plurality or as successive holders of a single office, were held to be and were in fact the heirs of the authority of St Peter and of his co-Apostle St Paul in the Roman See seems to be suggested, if not guaranteed, even by such limited evidence as we still possess, though it is equally clear that reflexion on the real implications of the original data was needed before their full significance was generally appreciated. The value of the papal office as the primary centre of unity, as the highest court of appeal, as a custodian of order and a corrector of aberrations from the original depositum fidei - all this and much more emerges ... only when the Church becomes aware of itself in a fuller sense as a world-wide organisatiom, and when a local and 'parochial' consciousness gives place to an oecumenical outlook. This papal ideal, in spite of the occasional distortion and falsification which it has undergone in the course of its long history, is to be viewed in its perfection not as an instrument for the suppression of liberty, but as a means under providence for the safeguarding of the ordered freedom of the 'sons of God' ... it is a strange form of historical blindness which is unable to perceive in its long and remarkable history a supernatural grandeur which no merely secular institution has ever attained in equal measure. Its strange, almost mystical, faithfulness to type, its marked degree of changelessness, its steadfast clinging to tradition and precedent, above all its burning zeal for order and Justitia, compel us to acknowledge that the Papacy must always defy a categorisation which is purely of this world."

Time was when I used to quote Jalland to try to persuade Anglicans of the divine reality of the Petrine Ministry. Now, by a strange conversio, I find myself commending Jalland's insights to fellow Catholics who need to be instructed about why Bergoglianity is such a falling-away from the real papacy ... such a theft from God's people of the Papacy which they have a right to have at their service. I have, of course, particularly in mind passages such as those I have ventured to emphasise above in red!

SUMMUS PONTIFEX?

Rumour has it that Cardinal Mueller is about to publish a theological work on the Papacy. This just has to be very good news. The constructive destruction of the real Papacy under the present pontificate surely calls for reconstruction work at least ... and at last ... to begin.

In my view, the terminology of both the pre-Conciliar and post-Conciliar Missals is not above criticism.

As Sister Doctor Ellebracht gently hints.

She comments on the word Pontifex that "This native Latin word, taken from [pre-Christian] Roman cultic language, is used in the ORATIONS to mean bishop"; and, delightfully tartly, adds "The expression summus pontifex ... as a designation for the Pope is of later origin and does not fall within the scope of this work".

Exactly so, Sister. The phrase made a ham-fisted way into the euchology of the Roman Rite when, in 1943, a new Commune (Si diligis) was inserted into the Roman Missal for summis pontificibus. On the Festivals of a canonised pope, if he had previously possessed his own Mass formulae, he was allowed to keep them. But if, before 1943, he had instead been observed by the use of one of the Communia for bishops, he was now, so it was decreed, to be commemorated instead by the use of this new Pacellian Commune. 

Its Prayers described popes as Summi Pontifices, supreme or sovereign pontiffs.

I possess an altar Missal in which some conscientious person has inked in the dozens of changes needed in order to give effect to this new and innovatory ordinance. And the new commune is neatly pasted in at the back. (During the war, papal tinkerings with liturgy could not be imported from the great continental liturgical publishing houses; so this page has the imprimatur of Bishop Edward Myers, with the title Vicarius Generalis deleted and replaced by Vicarius Capitularis.)

This new commune also provided that, in Masses of summi pontifices, the praefatio of the Apostles should be used ... as if a Pope is another Apostle!!! How very Irvingite!!!!

This was the high sun-baked tidemark of Pacellian aggrandisement of the papal office. Soon (when??) this use of the Preface of the Apostles was withdrawn because of learned protests. And when the post-Conciliar Missal of 1970 was published, the phrase summus pontifex had disappeared from its communia.

However, the post-Conciliar Missal unfortunately makes a point of repeatedly emphasising that the Pope is the Great Big Boss of the Entire Church. 

This habitual insistence is no part of the liturgical inheritance of the traditional Roman Rite before 1943.

The impression given by both the Pacellian and post-Conciliar dispensations was that a Pope is an additional tier of the Sacramental Ministries ... so that we would have Deacons, Presbyters, Bishops, and Popes; quattuor munera. 

Not so! Never ever!! 

So ... what about "Summus Pontifex"? 

The phrase is, surely, best regardeded as a canonical commonplace, a decent and pleasant curial courtesy, a gracious classicism. 

S Prosper of Aquitaine enjoined us to allow the lex supplicandi to articulate the lex credendi (and not the other way round). For doctrine, we surely look first and foremost to the centuries-old liturgies of the Church ... which means, for most of us, of the Latin, Roman, Church, our dearest Mother.

For sound guidance, I do not think that our priorities lie with a Pacellian innovation which survived not much more than a quarter of a century.

Part of this reworks an earlier post with which I do not now totally agree.

Can readers help?

There are reports that the Roman Pontiff recently used an impromptu speech to criticise "f***ing careerists who f*** up the lives of others", and "those who climb to show their a***"

Can anybody supply me with facts about to whom he was spaking, and, in particular, what  exactly he said in which language.

(Incidentally, the present Anglican Bishop of Worcester once began a sermon with the word "F*ck!")

Again ... PLEASE!!

Dear Readers

In July, God Willing, there will take place the 2023 Roman Forum Conference in Gardone, in North Italy. The subject this year is to be "Christianity and Paganism ... old and new".

I regard this as highly important. On the one hand, the Vatican sponsored the idolatrous Pachamama business, and is involved with Middle Eastern interests in a scheme which seems to rest on Relativism and Indifferentism: projects which Joseph Ratinger opposed. More significantly, they were opposed, throughout his life, by Saint John Henry Newman.

In addition to this, there is the persistent determination of our enemies to drive Christ to the margins; to forbid Him entrance to public fora. They hope that hearing will only be given to their own  wokery, gender-bending, and all the rest of Satan's agenda.

I very much hope I can again bring my modest voice to the Gardone project. But financial imperatives do not remain the same. Last year, kind friends were prepared to sponsor me financially to lecture at Gardone. 

This year, I'm afraid, the need for such help is even greater.

I beg all who think well of my teaching, and have means to do so, to help me in this matter. You can do this by assuring Dr John Rao of your willingness financially to support my participation in Gardone 2023.

Please help! To whom can I turn if not to you?

John Hunwicke

Dr Rao is at: drjcrao@aol.com

Change

 Well, I felt like change. So a year or two ago, I gave up those plain modern Priests' Hosts which have only a plain indented cross upon them, but are 'guaranteed to be crumb-free', and I began to use old-style Hosts from the Farnborough Abbey shop. 

They are quite as crumb-free as those post-Conciliar Hosts, but have a multiplicity of traditional designs ... I think I have counted eight. They are also marked on the back so as to break correctly at the Fraction.

I hope I never have to revert ...

A lot of these Hosts show the Crucified. Some have a straight-forward Latin-style crucifixus; others the same but with an alpha and an omega flanking the Cross. This, I think we all know, is a very early Christian design in both East and West, reproduced upon the High Altar of Westminster Cathedral. On my study wall, I have a rubbing of a first-millennium incised example from the slopes above Waterville Bay in County Kerry, looking out to the Skellig Islands and across to the State of Maine.

I think my favourite design is a baroque JHS, encouraging me to reverence the Most Holy Name of Jesus, YHWH Saves, and to spare a thought for dear S Bernardine. There is a Nativity scene with, I think, the star shining above as the Infant Deity raises a hand in blessing. There is a large FISH, ICHTHUS, bearing ... is it a basket? of fish? or of loaves? 

A Pelican in his piety suggests that I include in my Thanksgiving later this morning the Prayer of S Thomas Adoro te devote with its stanza Pie Pellicane, Jesu Domine, Me immundum munda tuo sanguine ...

Another of my favourites is the Lamb standing upon the Sealed Book ... do we soak ourselves sufficiently in the Book of Revelation/Apocalypse? How mindful am I each morning as I climb up to the Altar, that I go to immolate the Tamid /Lamb of Sacrifice, the one Oblation of Himself Once Offered, upon the LORD's Holy Mountain? (I think I do indeed hear an echo of S John Henry Newman's question to his sumpresbuteroi, "You, who day by day offer up the Immaculate Lamb of God, you who hold in your hands the Incarnate Word under the visible tokens which He has ordained, you who again and again drain the chalice of the Great Victim; who is to make you fear? what is to startle you ...")

And there is the Dove of the Holy Ghost, surrounded by Pentecostal flames, Breath and Fire of God.

I think I gathered that these Hosts are manufactured by Slovakian nuns.

God bless them!

Cana and the Immaculate Heart of Mary

Today wraps up - or it does in 'Traditional' lectionary terms - the Scriptural offerings of Epiphany. Hitherto, the Lucan picture of Mary has concentrated our attention upon how attuned her Immaculate Heart is the will of God: "Let it be unto me"; "He has done great things for me"; "Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her Heart"; "And his Mother kept all these things in her Heart". But in this the traditional Gospel reading of the Second Sunday after Epiphany, S John steps up to the podium to show her as also attuned to the needs of others ("They have no wine"). Even though the Hour of her Son's Glory has not yet come, the intercession of her Heart mediates through shared obedience ("Do whatever he tells you") the first great Sign which manifests his Glory.

Scripture** tells us that, because her Heart is Immaculate, Mary Sees God, and the intercession of the one who Saw led to the Johannine Theophany. However, although the divine doxa was manifested to his own, his own received him not. But to all who did receive him - to all who beheld and behold his glory, glory as of God-only-begotten - he gives power to become (like himself*, indeed, in himself) the Son of the Virgin, born not of the will of the flesh nor of the will of the male, but as the Only-begotten of the Father and the one Seed of Abraham who is the one Child of Mary aeiparthenos kai polupais.

Her Immaculate Heart will prevail!

_____________________________________________________________

*Whatever the origin of the 'Western' variant reading hos ... ouk egennethe, I feel sure that it accurately pinpoints the allusion intended by S John to the Lord's Virginal Conception and Birth.

**This paragraph draws on Luke 1:38,49; 2:19,51, John (and the apparatus criticus of) 1:13, Matthew 5:8, and Galatians 3:16.

CORONATIONS

 Because some people might consider coronations a topical topic, I am publishing occasional pieces on this subject, considered liturgically. Here is Leopold George Wickham Legg (son of ...).

 " ... was framed by no less a person than St Dunstan for the great coronation of King Edgar at Bath, when in 973 there was celebrated the final union under one sceptre of the Saxons, the Mercians, and the Northumbrians. ... long after it had been abandoned in its native land, it continued to be used for the coronation of the Kings of France, and it was last used at the coronation of the unhappy Charles X. Like his predecessors on the throne of the lilies, he was consecrated  with a prayer that he would not abandon the sceptre of the Saxons, Mercians, and Northumbrians, while it is clear that at one time the order spread to Italy, for a Milanese pontifical contains a Coronation Service of this selfsame recension, with the prayer that the King of Italy likewise may rule over the Saxons, Mercians and Northumbrians ..."

The second printing of this piece is dated 1936 ... how very ben trovato ...

THAT HORRID ROMAN BOOK

 It is a little known fact (yes; this one of my even-more-than-usually pompous pieces) that in the 1940s and 1950s, there was a vigorous episcopal attempt to kill off the Tridentine Rite, and especially the Canon Romanus, in the (many) Anglo-Catholic churches of the Diocese of London. Here is an account (1956) of that period from a priest (Hugh Ross Williamson) who witnessed it.

"The Vicar of All Saints, Margaret Streety, was the Rev. Cyril Tomkinson, whom I had known very well since 1926 when he was a curate of Little St. Mary's at Cambridge. Cyril ranked with the present Bishop of London and Gregory Dix as one of the three wits of the Church of England; but he was a 'Protestant -in-chasuble' par excellence and refused to allow me to say even a private Mass at All Saints--'because, my dear, you'll use that horrid Roman book and the rule here is music by Mozart, choreography by Fortescue, decor by Comper, but'--his long forefinger wagged roguishly and his voice became solemnly emphatic--'libretto by Cranmer.'"

 

Clericalism

A few days ago, there was ... what seemed to me ... a perfectly horrible little clip on Faher Zed's Blog.

It showed a priest, I think at the Benedict Requiem, publicly forcing a kneeling woman to stand up; and then separating her joined hands, before 'allowing' her a Host.

If this isn't rampant Clericalism, I don't know what is. 

During the last pontificate, the custom was for a a representative group of communicants to form a queue to be communicated by the Pontiff himself. There was a prie-Dieu; they knelt; they received in os. I thought there were dictinct problems about this, and I am not going to sponsor a discussion about it now. But it made clear that such a mode of receinng the Most Holy was licit, and even commendable.

So this clericalist chappie was not only choosing to humiliate publicly a member of the plebs sancta Dei; he was offering an anti-Benedict gesture at Benedict's own funeral.

Nastier and nastier.

But stay!! What do I hear? The sound of hooves. Yes! It is he! Riding up sword in hand on a purple stallion is 

ARTHUR ROCHE!!! 

He will undoubtedly have the arrogant clericalist cleric identified and then catechised on 

(1) what the Church's rules actually are; and 

(2) respecting the rights of the laity; and

(3) pastoral sensitivity. 

Mr Packenham and the Space Industry

 Britain's entry into the Space Industry has (just like the dear Tower of Babel) suffered a set-back. The attempt to send up a rocket, with lots of sweet little satellites, came to naught. And the attempt was made from Newquay Airport, just up the hill from the ancient Carmelite tranquillity of Lanhearne!

When I was about eleven, I was being taught English by a Mr Packenham (nickname Pacco). I used, in one of my essays, the verb "commence". He instructed me always, if possible, to use an English word, such as "begin", rather than to reach for important-sounding French words. 

When the important-sounding people in Newquay (they are something, I think, to do with Virgins ... or should I write Maidens?) had to reveal that their rocket hadn't worked, they announced that it had suffered an anomaly. Poor Poppets.

I could never have worked in the Space Industry.

Thank you, Mr Packenham, ubicumque sis, for all that you taught me. I haven't forgotten it or you.

"The Interim Rite"

The other day, I described the rite ... High Church but not Anglo-Catholic ... which some London Anglican clergy put together in the 1940s/1950s; and which the then episcopal regime encouraged in order to destroy the widespread use of the Tridentine Rite. It was called "The Interim Rite", to imply that a properly official revised Anglican rite would eventually take its place.

The Interim Rite consisted of replacing the Roman Canon with a Prayer based on (1) Cranmer's "Prayer of Consecration" (as the Laudian enthusiasts of 1662 had renamed it); the word "Therefore"; and (2), a prayer widely known as the Prayer of Oblation, which hitherto had done duty as one of two alternative prayers designed to follow Holy Communion.

This prayer replaced the ancient Catholic offering of the Lord's Body and Blood with the offering, instead, of "our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving", together with "ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto thee."

But this idea, if expressed before Holy Communion, was arguably dubious. For the redeemed community to offer itself, united with Christ in Holy Communion, as a Sacrifice to the Father, was one thing. But for the worshippers to offer themselves in sacrifice before Holy Communion, was wide open to an accusation of Pelagianism.

Gregory Dix pointed this out.

And Pelagianism was a heresy which Calvinist Evangelicals loathed almost as much as Catholics do.

Moi, I doubt whether Evangelicals had ever noticed this little detail before. Nor, I rather suspect, had anybody else in the previous four centuries. But ...

Dix simply loved hanging people on a gallows of their own making (the Argumentum ad hominem). So he made much hay with this detail. So it became politically impossible for the large Evangelical constituency in the C of E to defend "the Interim Rite". Calvin would have ... er ...

Consequently, when, later in the twentieth century, English Anglican worship was revised officially and legally, the arrangement known as the Interim Rite failed to find even the most optional of places. 

So the Rite which had been favoured by the bishops as an admirably big stick with which to bash the Romanisers has now been banned by the broadly-smiling wit of the late Dom Gregory Dix.

A FINAL DETAIL

The Interim Rite also placed the Gloria in Excelsis Deo near the end of Mass (this had been done in 1552). So anti-Tridentine enthusiasts now did the same. Having the Gloria near the end would now be a sign that the Interim Rite was used in a particular church.

Terminal Gloria = No Roman Canon.

So the introduction of the Interim Rite had to be synchronised to happen everywhere on the same Sunday ... otherwise the laypeople of London would have voted with their feet. 

Feet are a thing Clergy have always feared.

 

A Dotty and Hypotollic Mysterium

On the Internet I came across the following strange communication, concerning the Eucharistic Prayer (III) used at the Funeral of Papa Ratzinger.

Simon Reynolds@Wintonfellow   Replying to @liturgicalben

I am tempted to say that it's been the EP used at the majority of Catholic funerals (I've personally been at three for priests and one for a bishop where it's been used). Modelled on Hypollytus's anaphora, it has a pedigree of historic usage in Rome pre (what's become) the Roman Canon.

(1) The Greek name is Hippolytus. "Only a typo", you cry? Well, this one word ingeniously manages to weld together three typos. Surely that must be indicative of something. The name is not little-known. Euripides wrote two plays with this title. Some time ago, a film adaptation was made of it called Phaedra and featuring Melina Mercouri. It uses a Greek grammatical constuction which subverts the claim that Pauline Rome knew about 'Female Apostles'.

 If some callow youff or youffess referred in her essay to a play by Shakespeare about "Cliopettra", ma'am's correcting pencil would probably shatter at the dismal profundity of the illiteracy thus demonstrated.

(2) There is a liturgical formula which once rejoiced in the title The Egyptian Church Order (Reynolds would probably have spelt it Ejjiption). It was then discovered, so we all thought, that it was really the long-lost Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus; Hooray! Frabjous Day!! And so it was a very influential text around 1930-1970. Dom Gregory Dix produced an edition, arguing for the importance of this text in establishing how the Roman Church worshipped around 210-ish. Dom Botte was dotty about it and established his academic reputation by working on it. 

After Vatican II, Botty used this dodgy document to replace the historic Roman formula for the Consecration of a Bishop, thus handing the sedevacantists a powerful weapon.

Opps-a-daisy. The identity of the Egyptian Church Order with Hippolytus, or any idea of its having any connection with Rome, is now discarded academically. Wotta Bigga Mistaka to maka! (If anybody wants to go into this, they will probably find themselves reading the Anglican liturgical historian Paul Bradshaw.)

(3) During its period of popularity, a Eucharistic Prayer based upon this so-called ""Hippolytus"" text was authorised  for the post-Conciliar "Roman" Rite. It is sometimes called EPII, although it has now become common to call it the Trastevere or Trattoria EP, since Louis Bouyer revealed in his memoires that he helped to draft it overnight in the Trastevere.

It is this EP II which for long was commonly but erroneously associated with the name of Hippolytus. 

The EP III which was used at Papa Ratzinger's Funeral has never been commonly linked with 'Hippolytus' or 'Hypollytus'.

(4) But I have discovered a Tradition which, although far from Apostolic, might help to account for a fraction of poor Rennald's confusions. 

In a book (2007) called A Challenging Reform, Archbishop Piero Marini, an admirer of Archbishop Hannibal Bugnini, wrote (concering the events of 1968) that "The fact that four Eucharistic Prayers were approved was consistent with the early Roman liturgy, which actually had used several anaphoras."

How liberally these jolly hypotolly chappies do invent their fantasy untruths!! How attached they are to spreading gibberish!!!

VIVAT HISPANIA!

On January 7, 1536, Queen Catherine of Aragon, Spouse of Henry Tudor but repudiated by him, died. She was buried in the mighty Abbey of Peterborough, which was to be erected by Reginald Cardinal Pole (24 December 1554), by his legatine powers, into a Cathedral Church.

A few months later, Anne Bullen, AKA Boleyn, by Parliamentary enactment Spouse of Henry Tudor but repudiated by him, died in her own very unique way.

Henry Tudor ("Tudor mi", as I tend to think of him) was a generous man to his repudiated 'wives'. It was his (unexecuted) intention to erect for Catherine "one of the goodliest monuments in Christendom". For the (executed) execution of Bullen, he secured the services of a world-class swordsman from Calais. 

I have a personal theory that Bullen had quite a pretty neck, and that Tudor minor couldn't bear the thought of spoiling it too much. Those Renaissance Men were aesthetes, y'know.

G H COOK records that the day before Bullen died, "the tapers that stood about Queen Katherine's sepulchre kindled of themselve, and after matins were done the said tapers quenched of themselves".

Cynics may conjecture that covert human agency was responsible. I have no doubt whatsoever that this was a matter of enthusiastic divine intervention.

Despite all of Tudor's machinations, he was eventually succeeded by a woman and, to boot, a woman born of ... Catherine of Aragon!

Among so many historical possibilities, I like to fantasise about an England in which Tudor was followed by a happy string of Spanish or half-Spanish successors, binding this Sceptred Isle ever more closely into the glorious world-wide Spanish Empire ... perhaps an England in which we would all have Spanish as our first language ... and the Drakes and the Raleighs would have secured fame by their doughty naval deeds preventing dirty proddy  pirates from attacking the Spanish treasure-galleys ... 

Peterborough Abbey/Cathedral might not have survived. It might have been rebuilt in the finest Spanish baroque style.

Bloody Bess? I suspect she was a bit of a plotter. She might have needed to be beheaded. There are so many figures in History of whom this is true.

VIVAT HISPANIA!!

 

Gold ...

On the Feast of the Epiphany, by ancient English Tradition the Sovereign's representative offers in the Chapel Royal (Catharine of Aragon's Tudor Chapel right inside the Palace of S James, where the Chapel Royal functions in the Winter months; not in Henrietta Maria's Inigo Jones masterpiece whither the Capella Regia migrates at Easter) gifts of GOLD, Incense, and Myrrh 

In 2018, Cardinal Mueller said in an Interview: 
"The biggest danger to the Pope these days are those opportunists, careerists, and false friends who are concerned not for the good of the Church, but for their own financial interests and self-advancement."

Nod nod ... ... hint hint ... ...

Then there were the episodes which took place when Cardinal Pell was tasked with having a look at the Vatican finances. I remember being told by a friendly curial insider that there had been dicasteries which had not been on talking terms for decades, but were brought together in amity by their shared detestation of Pell.

Money! There's money, Cardinal Mueller revealed to us, in being a Bergoglian! I had thought the naughty fellows were disinterestedly clustered in the Bergogliosphere simply out of mere pravitas innata haeretica. What an ex-Anglican simpleton I was!! They were after Money!!

Gold! How does one secure a share in it? Does one get in touch with the Papal Almoner? Would he provide me with a nice golden chalice and paten ... baroque ... putti crawling all over it ... you know the sort of thing ... 

What a magnificent pontificate this has been in terms of skilful PR! Remember the story (too ben trovato to be true?) of Cardinal Hoummous, after the successful ballot, saying to Bergoglio "Don't forget the poor". And PF deftly assumed the name of the Poverello ... to show that he still ... had not forgotten the poor.

The Peripheries!! That must be where they keep the money!

He was not an ordinary man.

 Archbishop Gaenswein has spoken about the grief felt by Pope Emeritus Benedict at the decision of his successor to attack those who make use of the ancient rites of the Roman Church.

As I watched just now the Funeral transmitted from Rome, I was reminded of an event in the history of S Thomas's Church in Oxford, my last Anglican priestly responsibility.

It had occurred, years before my arrival, when my predecessor Dr Trevor Jalland, Oxford's Bampton lecturer, expert on S Leo the Great, and on the history of the Papacy, had died. The funeral Mass was offered by another great Anglican scholar, Fr Michael Moreton, Prebendary of the Cathedral Church of S Peter in Exeter.

Years later, Michael explained to me his decision (despite the possibility of complaints from the Great and the Good who seem always so ready to put the boot in) to use the Canon Romanus at Fr Trevor's Funeral.

"He was a Patristic Scholar and I decided to give him a Patristic Eucharistic Prayer".

We must never forget Pope Benedict's insistence on Continuity.

C S Lewis on PF and Roche

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busibodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some time be satisfied; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own consciences."

From Gueranger

 "Joy at Christmas is a Christian instinct, which originated those many carols, which, like so many other beautiful traditions of the ages of Faith, are unfortunately dying out amongst us; but which Rome still encourages, gladly welcoming each year those rude musicians, the Pifferari. who come down from the Apennines, and make the streets of the Eternal City re-echo with their shrill melodies."

SHORTAGES OF PRIESTS

Apparently, the Diocese (Catholic) of Dublin has just a single seminarian in training. 

Well, that's not our business. And the terrible collapse of Irish Catholicism undoubtedly has multiple factors. But things are not exactly booming in this country. In 1996/1997 our numbers peaked at around 110 annual ordinations; the projected number for 2023 is 18.

Within the Church, there can be little doubt that the onslaught upon Catholicism worldwide by the promoters of Bergoglianism has a lot to do with it. As young people view the ecclesiastical landscape, who can blame them if they discern massive heterodoxy and liturgical heteropraxy. There are disincentives in Anglicanism, and they are not small; but who, some clergy wonder, can guarantee that disincentives will not multiply in the Catholic Church ... indeed, including disincentives already at work in the C of E, such as the purported ordination of women to major orders.

If anybody doubted these problems, Traditionis Custodes should dispel those doubts. The cruel malevolence of that text says it all. Its vicious hostility, targetted particularly on the young, says it all. The incessant attacks by the pontiff himself on 'rigidity' say it all. 

Another sub-factor here, in the Anglosphere, is the decline in the numbers of Anglican priests seeking to continue their priestly ministry in the Catholic Church. Ever since the 1990s, there has been a visible policy of keeping Anglican clergy out. "You need to be accompanied by a Group. You need to submit to a lengthy 'formation'. You need to dislike the 'old' Mass."

There have been so many fellow-Anglican priests, and some bishops, who have explained that they would 'join' us when a certain point was reached. 

Yes; one can identify imperfections in this attitude. I do  identify ...

But the niggling, nasty negativity in the treatment of experienced and very orthodox Catholic Anglican clergy is undoubtedly responsible for the loss to the Church of many potential clergy. If, in some places, Catholic bishops lament the paucity of clergy, they need to ask themselves whether the guilty men may not be their own predecessors in their Sees.

The ideal moment for gathering in large numbers of well-trained and experienced Anglican clergy passed some time ago. But it is not too late to ...

S Thomas of Canterbury, Patron of the Diocesan Clergy, pray for us all.

 

Cardinal Mueller

 Many Happy Returns of yesterday, Eminence!

31 December, obit of Benedict XVI, was also the Birth Day of Gerhard Cardinal Mueller. 

He deserves love and respect.

There does, however, seem to me a theological problem here.

We live at a time when there is some very fine teaching emerging from the Cardinal Bishops, Priests, and Deacons of the Holy Roman Church. But it is not coming from its Bishop, Jorge Bergoglio. On the contrary: it seems that PF continues to do as much as he can to subvert the Catholic Faith. 

Matters would be less serious if PF contented himself with expressions of personal prejudices. So much more disturbing is the situation when the venom stored up through decades of personal nastiness spills over into personal detestations.

Are there considerations, arising from the authentic Paradosis, Traditio of the Roman Church, which would enable us to give a useful and watertight account of the situation in which to distinguish between the fine teaching of the Burkes and the Sarahs and the Muellers, and the corrupting expressions of the Pontiff's own embarrassing dicta?

But, meanwhile, eis polla ete Despota!

Edward Stephens

Founded a "Religious Society of Single Women"

the defects of 1662 had "made the the morning service to him but a mourning service"

"to meet daily, at five inthe morning, at a daily Communion"

BCP "was not concluded by any unanimous Agreementof any certain lnown discreet bishops or other learned men of this church or realm; but corrupted and disordered by the councels and asistance of foreigners and by the practice and cntrivance of cramer promoted in parliament, and by parliament authority schismatically imposed upon the church and nation , without the consentof the clergy of this ntion  ..."

setting up of the royal arms in churches "was an insolent, prophane and Impious thing"

he asks "Whether the clegy in general , and every particular person of them ought not to use in the celebration of these holy mysteries a more compleat and perfect form, notwithstanding any temporal laws to the contrary, as they will answer it to God upon the Salvation of their Souls in the las day?"

"in the expunging of the Commemoration of the Saints, there was a Special Gratification of their [the devils'] Spite and Malice against Them [the Saints] ..."

"a most Solemn Act of of Communion of Saints, answered by them in their prayers for the Church upon Earth; to have all this abolished was undoubtedly a matter of much Joy and Tryumph in the whole kingdom of darkness."

"In the due Consecration of the Eucharist it hath always been believed in the Catholic Church that there is a Special Sanctification of the Elements of Bread and Wine by the Descent of the Holy Spirit at the Prayers of the Church: in the putting out therefore of that Prayer there is a double Gratification of that Malicious Spirit ... by depriving the Church of the Benefit of that Prayer and making the Consecration at least doubtfull, but none at all according to the Sentiments of the greatest part of Christians at this day ..."

Ante-Communion without the Eucharist s "A very pleasant spectacle undoubtedly to Troops of Apostate Spirits ..."

"this One Unbloody Sacrifice, ot Holy Rite of the Blessed Eucharist doth succeed as an Antitype and Memorial in the Christian Church, in the place of all those Bloody Typical Sacrifices of the Jews; as is taught  both by Ancient Christians, and by Learned Men of our own Church and Times."

" ...the taking away of the Daily Sacrifice is as notorious a Mark of the Spirit of Antichrist ... as any ..." 

"The Prayer at the Offering of Incense 

To thee, O Lord, do I offer this Incense, according to thine own Word and the Usage of thy Holy Catholic Church ... "