... ... and, to my previous post, I could have added the Aegean islands with their mixed congregations, where, in those happy days of amity in the eighteenth century, on Corpus Christi Day the Greek bishops and clergy used to emerge from their churches and offer incense to their Redeemer as He passed on His way.
In my youff, I used to read our then newspaper, the Dome, which usually had an appropriate picture in the number after Corpus Christi. I seem to remember that, on one Corpus Christi, two Anglican Catholic parish processions in North London accidentally met on the same stretch of road. I wonder how O'Connell would have sorted that out.
At Lancing, we had a very fine neo-Gothic monstrance ... of tabernacling design rather than sunburst ... bronze and massive. The woman from the V & A said it was of Belgian origin. I had purchased it for the Chapel from one of those jolly chaps who used to move around in the 1970s, picking up odds and ends from papist churches and monasteries which no longer had any use for them, and then selling them on to us Anglicans; you could get some superb stuff dirt cheap. One Corpus Christi, we had Bishop Colin Docker (Wycliffe Hall!!!) coming and had organised the procession to be inside our (Cathedral-dimensioned) chapel. I drew the bishop's attention to the considerable weight of the monstrance; with lordly episcopal dismissiveness, he indicated that such mundane considerations were no problem to him.
But, when we got to the back of the chapel, he murmurred "Would you mind suporting my elbows ..."
I think we, family and students, may have enjoyed, most of all, Arundel on Corpus Christi Thursday ... Procession from the (RC) Cathedral to the Castle ... Benediction at a temporary altar in the Castle quadrangle ... then, perhaps, off for drinks on the river banks at the Black Rabbit ... hurling missiles at passing perches and roaches ...
I wonder if the CBCEW has abolished the Black Rabbit in the spirit of the Traditionis custodes agenda of outlawing rigid fun.
"They" will not find it so easy to row back to that culture ... to those times when, in my (garbled, you say?) recollections, the sun always seemed to be shining ...
Viximus.
I have heard of various people buying up beautiful items which had been thrown out of Catholic churches after VATII. I had not heard of entrepreneurs seizing this glorious new business opportunity to sell them on to eager new owners.
ReplyDeleteI recall the legendary Brian Brindley of Holy Trinity in Reading who bought some splendid vestments in the Paris flea markets at bargain prices. They had been discarded by the French clergy. He turned up at local Ecumenical services dressed fit for a Papal Coronation.
I remember from my Orthodox days in a parish with Ruthenian-Russian roots, the utterly beautiful Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified, and how the clergy processed out from the sanctuary with the presanctified gifts, a cleric walking backwards and censing and other clergy carrying candles, as we the faithful made a full prostration in the presence of our Eucharistic Lord. If that is not a Corpus Christi procession by another name, I don't know what is. How I yearn for the glorious day of full ecclesial unity!
ReplyDeleteHappy days! But I wonder how many of those teenagers who enjoyed the hospitality of the Black Rabbit in the 89s and 90s could say now, in their middle years, what Corpus Christi is about.
ReplyDeleteHurling missiles at ro(a)ches may cause them to fall from their perches. What a terrible thing if, um...
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