What on earth is Dr Kwasniewski up to?

Not for the first time, Peter Kwasniewski has placed us all in his debt. I am refering to his recent John Henry Newman on Worship, Reverence and Ritual (Os Justi Press, 513 pages, ISBN 9 781692 121020). In it, he gathers together a very large number of splendid texts by S John Henry which relate to continuity in liturgical praxis. But I would like to suggest that the erudite compiler has raised a deeper question.

The pieces Peter collects are arranged in chronological order of composition. This encouraged me, on drawing this substantial volume out of its packing, instantly to detect that some three quarters of its pages  are taken from S JHN's 'Anglican period'. Turning then to the 'Editor's Note', I found this acknowledgement: "While the majority of writings contained herein are from Newman's Anglican period (particularly from the eight volumes of the incomparable Parochial and Plain Sermons), there is very little in their content that would even need to be rewritten, let alone retracted, by a Roman Catholic." I was instantly reminded of the Saint's own protestation of the continuities in his life and thought, expressed in his Biglietto speech: " ... to one great mischief I have from the first opposed myself. For thirty, forty, fifty years I have resisted to the best of my powers the spirit of liberalism in religion."

The deeper question which arises from the recent canonisation is this. Saint John Henry Newman is a very unusual, very atypical, Teacher to be given by God to the Universal Church. I am sure there are saints a-many whose views changed when they left haeresis for the light of the Gospel. And it is true that the overall corpus of S John Henry's teaching does need to be focussed, perhaps aligned, perhaps corrected, by the fulness of his views after his entry into full communion (as a a young man ... for example ... he had opined that the Roman Pontiff was Antichrist).

But has there ever been a Saint a significant part of whose authentic teaching was delivered outside the visible unity of the One Fold of the Redeemer?

You see, this Saint offers the Universal Church a body of teaching which, taken as a whole, is conspicuous, from his earliest Anglican teaching onwards, for its power to edify. And, not least, to edify the Catholic Church in the crisis in which she finds herself during this particular  kairos. Newman is God's messenger for this, the seventh year of the pontificate of Pope Francis. Whether PF himself realises that or not.

We have the authority of Joseph Ratzinger for drawing upon the teaching of the Anglican Newman. In defence of his view that what has been sacred cannot simply be discarded, the doctrinal essence of Summorum Pontificum, the future Pope Benedict cited Parochial and Plain Sermons volume 2 (1835), Sermon 7, included in Dr Kwasniewski's selection from Newman.

The continuous direction and consistency in S JHN's teaching is a remarkable testimony to the working of grace within the separated Anglican community in which he grew up. And it is surely no surprise that he was beatified by the same Roman Pontiff who invited 'Anglican groups' to bring into full communion with the See of Peter the wise and gracious things which they had enjoyed in the centuries of separation, those days in terra aliena.

We, particularly (but by no means only) members of the Ordinariates, have an awesome duty.

Tertullian, poor fellow, slithered from Catholicism into haeresis. Yet he is sometimes cited Magisterially. A fortiori, how important it will be to cite both the Anglican and the Catholic S JHN and to do so with deferential respect and admiration.

Let me be clear about this: it is our duty to know and to quote and to promote those teachings which Newman gave when he was still an Anglican as well as the things he did and wrote after that rainy evening at Littlemore just outside Oxford on October 9 in the Year of Salvation 1845.

Peter: Thank You very much for this superb compilation of S John Henry's Magisterial writings upon Tradition and Worship. In your pages, the reader will find not only sound doctrine, and sensitive teaching, but the exquisite cadences of the greatest stylist of modern Catholic England.

In every sense of the word, you have given us a Treasure!! 

How and how speedily does the Teaching of the Church "develop"?

PF is reported to have declared a day or so ago that his abandonment of the Church's previous teaching on the death penalty "doesn't imply any contradiction with the teaching of the past." He combines this with an insouciant statement that previous popes "ignored the primacy of Mercy over Justice". Dear dear dear. Pretty nasty, that. What silly fellows they must all have been to make such an elementary error. But Don't Worry. All, apparently, can be explained by 'development'.

We've had this cheap trick before. I don't know if you can still find it on the Vatican TV player ... the News Conference at which the Graf von Schoenborn 'introduced' Amoris laetitia. Right at the end, Diane Montagna, with an air of puzzlement, asked whether the new papal teaching contradicted that of Familiaris consortio.

With a sweet smile which has undoubtedly served him well in the Graf's rise within the hierarchy, he answered that No it did not; but it developed it. And he advised his questioner to go away ...

... and read Newman.

                                                        TIMELINE

(1) Familiaris consortio was published in 1981; it repeated the Biblical precepts which for centuries had underpinned the Church's conviction that the Holy Euchatist ought not to be administered to "remarried" divorcees.
(2) Sacramentum caritatis, 2005, repeated this teaching.
(3) Amoris laetitia is dated 19 March 2016, and was released 8 April 2016.
(4) On 5 September 2016 'Guidelines' published by a group of Argentine bishops reached PF. These guidelines are commonly interpreted as allowing some 'remarried' divorcees to approach the Sacraments.
(5) On the same day, PF replied to this group of bishops praising their 'Guidelines' and saying "There is no other interpretation".
(6) On 5 June 2017, PF formally instructed Cardinal Parolin in audientia to have these texts published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis as being "Authentic Magisterium".
(7) They duly appeared in AAS together with the Rescriptum ex audientia Sanctissimi.
(8) Cardinal Kasper, a Great Theologian, subsequently explained that the question was now authoritatively closed. Roma locuta est ...


                                      JOHN HENRY NEWMAN ...

... gave a rather different, and more painstaking, historical perspective. I expect he was a Silly Fellow, too.

" ... the Church of Rome has originated nothing ... 

" ... all through Church history from the first, how slow is authority in intervening! Perhaps a local teacher, or a doctor in some local school, hazards a proposition, and a controversy ensues. It smoulders or burns in one place, no one interposing; Rome simply lets it alone. Then it comes before a bishop; or some priest, or some professor in some other seat of learning takes it up; and there is a second stage of it. Then it comes before a university, and it may be condemned by the theological faculty. So the controversy proceeds year after year, and Rome is still silent. An appeal perhaps is next made to a seat of authority inferior to Rome; and then at last after a long while it comes before the supreme power. Meanwhile, the question has been ventilated and turned over and over again, and viewed on every side of it, and authority is called upon to pronounce a decision, which has already been arrived at by reason. But even then, perhaps the supreme authotrity hesitates to do so, and nothing is determined on the point for years; or so generally and vaguely, that the whole controversy has to be gone through again, before it is ultimately determined."

Signum magnum ...

Tuesday's celebration of the Miraculous Medal ... and the very tasty Mass formula, with its allusions to the Johannine theology of the semeia ['Signs'] of the Lord ... inspired me to ask our Supplex Omnipotentia, our blessed Lady of Cana, for a Sign to strengthen the afflicted Church of which she is herself such a beautiful and powerful Sign.

I must confess that when I opened my computer on Wednesday morning I felt that my prayer had been answered. Lifesitenews provided the reactions of orthodox prelates to the current homosexualist furore. I have to single out the magnificent disdain of the magnificent Cardinal Mueller ("... effusions of an academic nobody..."); in the next pontificate, whatever role that man has, he must surely be involved in cleaning out the Augean Stables which PF has chosen ... such a strange predilection ... to inhabit.

And my eye was particularly caught by the piece from Bishop Athanasius Schneider. Two points.

(1) He situates the homosexualist onslaught in terms of  heresy. I think this is massively important. We should not let the machinations of a very nasty lobby obscure the fact that many people with a same-sex orientation live lives of heroic sanctity. By grace they triumph over temptation and are an example to ... to take just one example ... those heterosexuals who unchastely corrupt the marital act.

The current movement among some sick members of the Church to validate homosexual genital activity is far more evil in its conceptual roots than it is in particular disordered physical actions which, after all, are after repentance mercifully absolved. It is heretical because it overthrows the Natural Order and thus attempts to set individual autonomy above the Sovereign Rights of our Creator and Redeemer. Obvious stuff. Forgive me for labouring what readers will already know very well. Some of you will recall Archbishop Lefebvre's great cry They have uncrowned Him.

(2) Bishop Schneider writes "We have to notice an eclipse in the Papal exercise of this very task of strengthening the truth regarding homosexuality". Observe the words eclipse in the papal exercise ... . This is highly reminiscent of the phrase of Blessed John Henry Newman suspense of the function of the Ecclesia Docens. He used it in his analysis of the Arian Controversy, when most of the episcopate, including Pope Liberius, ceased to exercise their function of using their Teaching Authority. When complaints were made to Rome about his words, our great English Blessed made clear that he was not suggesting popes or bishops had lost their Magisterial authority, but observing, as a matter of historical fact, that for forty or more years they had chosen not to exercise it. Rome, wisely, did not intervene against him!

This is very close to where we are now. As Bishop Schneider is pointing out. No wonder they want to stop him travelling. Long live his airmiles!

And I liked Fr Fessio's suggestion that PhD means Philosophische Dumheit. These people need to be laughed at.


Exhilarating, Yes? A battle worth joining in, Yes? Nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus, Yes?

To muddy the Waters ... or to uphold the Anglican Patrimony?

                                DODGY DOCTRINE, versus ...

 Monday's great and glorious feast of the Annunciation ... when, as our exquisite Anglican Patrimony puts it, Immensity was cloistered in Mary's dear womb ... had its lustre marred for me some fivish years ago, when we were being cleansed from our supposed Anglican errors by a series of lectures at Allen Hall (a bit like, I suppose, the Denazification processes in Germany after 1945 or the Cultural Revolution under Mao tse Tung.). One of the speakers informed us that we should tear up all the sermons we had ever written and delivered as Anglicans about how the entire Divine work of Incarnation and Atonement had, at one moment in History, hung upon a Jewish Girl giving her free assent to the call of the Angel.

Mary, he carefully explained to us, was not Free.

I think he was the same gentleman whom I have several times mentioned to you before, who told us that the teaching of the Latin Fathers, the Tridentine Breviary, and the Anglican Patrimony that the Lord is equal to the Father as touching his Godhead and less than the Father as touching his manhood, was a heresy, and that we should write to (the now late) Mother Angelica, whose website, so he told us, promoted this heresy, and explain to her that she was a heretic. (I'm pretty sure none of us did that, thank God.)

This sort of nastiness can be difficult to clear out of one's mind. I felt it again as the (English) text of PF's latest 'Exhortation' flickered down (up?) my computer screen. Is it easy to take seriously the teaching of someone who has in a brief pontificate given so much irrefragable evidence of his unreliability? I am pretty sure that a lot of what he has just published about Sanctity was perfectly splendid and would have been for my own much-needed edification. But it is so uncomfortable to read when one feels that one is obliged to check each statement carefully to be sure that there is not some error wrapped up or implied in what one is reading. And indeed, the preoccupations of this pontificate, encapsulated in such characteristic abuse as the Rigidity stuff, do duly make their appearances. No, I shall not print it off and take it with me on retreat. I suggest that you, too, might have better things to spend your time reading ...

                             ... AUTHENTIC DOCTRINE

 ... such as a limpid lecture delivered last Saturday in Rome by Cardinal Brandmueller. Although his Eminence is not, I think, a member of the Ordinariate (indeed, the poor chap may not even have had any 'Anglican Previous' at all, so he would not qualify for admission), he gave a fine exposition of the teaching of Mr Patrimony Himself, aka Blessed John Henry Newman, about 'consulting the Faithful in matters of doctrine'. Newman is, indeed, the antidote to most of the ills of this pontificate.

You can find Brandmueller's paper, in an elegant translation by Diane Montagna, at Lifesitenews.

                                  NEWMAN AND OUR TIMES?

And, while I am talking about Newman and still reeling from the idea floated by the Graf von Schoenborn, about the need, in his view, for an Ecumenical Council to agree the Ordination of Women, I commend to you Dr Ker's fine biography of Newman (I have before me the 1990 paperback reprint), especially the Chapter on Papal Infallibility; and, if your time is terribly short, at least pages 653-659. It contains phrases which any wild firebrands there may be among my readers might deem uncannily up-to-the-moment: the ultrahyperpapalists are "an aggressive insolent faction" ... " the present Pope cannot live long - he has lived too long [Pio Nono was then 78]" ... "we have come to a climax of tyranny ...". He deplores the fact that the Archbishop of Westminster, aka Mr Archdeacon emeritus Manning, has made statements vastly and improperly exaggerating papal authority. At a time when converts were reverting to the Church of England and foreign intellectuals were toying with the "Old Catholic" option, he explains carefully and most lucidly why Catholics should on no account allow themselves to be driven out of the Church. At a time when many bishops were afraid to get their heads above the parapet, he assures his close friend and ally, Bishop David Moriarty of Kerry, that he is one of a "special band of confessors". (Moriarty was one of the Four Bishops who put a stop to hyperultrapapalist excesses by threatening to walk out of the Council and blow the gaffe on the intimidation being perpetrated.)

                                 SCHISM?

But most importantly and most gravely, Newman discusses (page 655 in Ker) how one should discern whether a particular Conciliar Decree is in fact valid ... ... ... ... ... or alternatively (yes, you've guessed) not valid. Quantus et qualis Doctor; quam huic nostro tempori aptus! Intercede Beate pro nobis.

Let us pray we never come to having to make such judgements, with all that this could mean for the Unity of the Church Militant. 'Avignon' is already one Great Western Schism too many. And that did not even have a doctrinal basis.

Does your kitchen have Newman on the spice rack?

(1) Bergoglians urge upon us Amoris laetitia under the pretext that, with a culinary dash of Newman's Development stirred into the pot and with a large dollop of subjective guilt reduced from Mortal to Venial ('Here's some I did earlier'), we can cook Communion for Adulterers?NO! until it is nicely tenderised into Communion for Adulterers?YES!. And, of course, this lays the way open for homosexuals, polygamists, paedophiles, polyamorists, therogamists, batrachophiles, and all the other categories that the Graf von Schoenborn and Fr Rosica may or may not have on their lists. ... I've got a little list ... OK, Ko-ko (is there a Cardinal Ko-ko? In today's Gilbert-and-Sullivan Vatican, there jolly well should be). Splendid. And all the basic work, all the heavy lifting, has already been done by Tucho in between 'supermystic' kisses (is there a Tucho in Gilbert and Sullivan?). What more could ...

But this particular sleight of hand will not avail (as far a I can see) when these same Magisterial Minds turn their attention to the next nut that needs to be cracked: the priestly Ordination of Women. Can anybody suggest how (again with appropriate assistance from Development and with their usual claims about the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit) they will chart their journey from Womenpriests?NO! to Womenpriests?YES!? In other words, what conjuring tricks, accompanied by the Graf's sad but winning smile and Rosica's air of patient condescension, will enable the Bergoglians to argue that the Ordination of Women is merely a natural and inevitable development springing fully-formed from the head of Ordinatio sacerdotalis?

(2) When Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman was faced by the protoBergoglian campaign at Vatican I to formulate the Petrine Primacy in a superhyperueberpapalist way, he characterised his contemporary Ultras as "An aggressive and insolent Faction". Perhaps we should resurrect this beautifully expressive phrase to describe our own dear and much-loved Ultras. And, 'for short', we could refer to them simply as "the Faction".

One should never stray too far from Dr Newman.