Distractions and Ramblings

As I said Mass yesterday for All the Souls, a distraction struck me at the Offertory.

I was just about to bless the cruet labelled Aqua when Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury 1961-1974, distracted my mind. Here is a story which those of you who lack the advantages of Anglican Previous may not already have heard.

At Requiems, one does not bless, sign with the Cross, the cruet containing water.  But on one occasion, Ramsey momentarily forgot this, and began to make the sign of the Cross. But then he remembered, and, half way through the blessing, changed it into a kind of rubbing-out gesture, deleting, as were, the half-given blessing.

Ramsey would, Fr Aidan Nichols has pointed out, have been one of the great Archbishops of Canterbury, but for the fact that, during the Humanae Vitae controversies, he took the wrong side. Perhaps, you might say, he was 'around' at the wrong time ...

It is so important to be on-stream at the right time. Perhaps that is part of what is meant by the Et ne nos inducas eis peirasmon at the end of the Our Father. A shame PF was unaware of this when he blasphemously purported to change the Prayer.

Dear me, what a tragedy it is that PF has (apparently) never had at hand somebody to explain the Christian Faith to him!

Footnote: when bilingual service books for Papal rites are printed, the Italian column gives the Bergoglian corruption of the Our Father; but the Latin column gives a translation of the version as mistakenly delivered by the Man from Nazareth.