May I use this post to thank Dr Riccardo Turrini Vita, sometime President of Una Voce Italia, for the most wonderful present of a volume containing a full set of reproductions of the beautiful maps of Rome (La Nova Topografia di Roma) published in 1748 by Giambattista Nolli. The volume was dedicated alla Santita di Nostro Signore Papa Benedetto XIV. Prospero Lambertini, no less!
It has put into my mind something which, in these depressing days, I rather think might be an entirely new idea among all the endless repetitions of what has been said twenty times before. Really new!!! Let me explain.
Many people, including not a few who do me the honour of writing to me, are profoundly depressed, even disorientated, by this sad and dysfunctional pontificate. Many are angry; many feel themselves driven almost to the point of losing their Faith. And the signs are that things may get even worse.
One gigantic casualty has been the great respect which decent orthodox Catholics instinctively have for the person (not just the position) of the Roman Pontiff. This is a disastrous loss to the Church. And the tragedy is made all the worse by the probability that, however orthodox and ortholalic and orthopractic the next pope is, recovery of that almost automatic respect and love will be a lengthy business.
My NEW IDEA? ADOPT A POPE!! Choose a pope of some past time, and really get to know him. Wikipedia is not always either accurate or balanced, but, in its rough and ready way, it does provide masses of material to millions who cannot access an academic library. And links can be found to the fine old Catholic Encyclopaedia. Read about your chosen, adopted pope! Follow up the blue links! Find out what his birthplace, the places he lived in, and Rome itself, were like in his time. Read about the doctrinal, political, cultural controversies he was involved in.
I hope you get the idea. The process will remind you of a happier, saner, Rome in times when the Roman Pontiff was a sound and reliable breakwater, remora, against error. And, perhaps, put up the odd fine building or two! What was Christian iconography (sculpture, paintings ...) like in his time? And, I pray, you will discover afresh the reasons why Christian people, ever since the Martyrdom of S Peter, have loved to go to Rome and cry Viva il Papa! God bless our Pope, the Great, the Good! Essentially, it is the immense joy of knowing that 'Peter is speaking through Leo', as the Fathers put it. It is a sense of the Soliditas Petri, a Leonine phrase of which non-Latinists will have no trouble guessing the meaning.
Yes; I know many of you are busy people. But, if you are unbusy, otiosi, enough to devote time to grumbling and to worrying and to disliking, you have time you can reallocate to ADOPTING A POPE!
[Er ... it has just occurred to me ... perhaps better not choose Liberius and Vigilius and Honorius, or not for starters! Nor Alexander VI and the Marosia popes of the first millennium! But ... for example ... John XXII was a very fine pope, even if he did espouse an opinion subsequently found to be heretical.]
ADOPT A POPE! ADOPT A POPE! ADOPT A POPE! ADOPT A POPE! ADOPT A POPE!
Showing posts sorted by date for query breakwater. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query breakwater. Sort by relevance Show all posts
7 February 2017
16 June 2016
ORGANIC DEVELOPMENT (3)
This won't mean anything at all to you unless you've read the first two parts.
In 1570, S Pius V promulgated the Missal with which his name is associated. In it, as we have seen, he continued the use of the Versio Romana for the snippets of psalm which occur (Introit, Gradual, etc.) in the Mass propers. Despite the fact that they were a text which differed from the standard Vulgate text of the Bible which was used in the Breviary, S Pius, as a good conservative Pontiff, perpetuated the use of the 'obsolete' psalter. With collaudate in that psalm.
But 1570 was followed by a period in which the Church was consolidating against heresy, and part of this process was the establishment of the Vulgate Latin Bible as the standard version of reference for Catholic theologians (Popes Sixtus V and Clement VIII through the 1590s). Printers are clever and energetic men. So, without encouragement from the Holy See, they began to print editions of the Missal in which they replaced the Versio Romana texts by the equivalent translation in the recently affirmed official Vulgate. With laudate in that psalm.
In 1604, Pope Clement VIII reacted to this. He issued his own edition of the Missal of S Pius V. In it he wrote:
"... errors have crept in, by which that most ancient translation of the Holy Bible, which even before S Jerome's times was held to be well-known (celebris) within the Church, and from which almost all the introits of Masses, and what are called graduals and offertories, have been taken, was totally taken away ... we, having noticed this, by virtue of our pastoral solicitude, by which in all matters, and especially in the sacred rites of the Church, we are anxious to keep and preserve the best and ancient norm ...
and he went on to prohibit absolutely these Improved and Modernised Missals with which the printers were filling the bookshops. Back to collaudate!
Here we see two Roman Pontiffs performing their age-old duty of being a breakwater, a defence (remora was Newman's term) against unnecessary innovation and trendy Improvements.
We see Clement VIII doing this even though those printers had only been guilty of prioritising that very text of Scripture which he himself had just published and had ordered to be deemed authentic.
That is what Roman Pontiffs are for.
To sum up this three-part dissertation:
S PIUS V = GOOD
CLEMENT VIII = GOOD
PIUS XII ... ... er ...
S JOHN PAUL II = GOOD
Isn't that a lovely phrase ..."the best and ancient norm ..."?
In 1570, S Pius V promulgated the Missal with which his name is associated. In it, as we have seen, he continued the use of the Versio Romana for the snippets of psalm which occur (Introit, Gradual, etc.) in the Mass propers. Despite the fact that they were a text which differed from the standard Vulgate text of the Bible which was used in the Breviary, S Pius, as a good conservative Pontiff, perpetuated the use of the 'obsolete' psalter. With collaudate in that psalm.
But 1570 was followed by a period in which the Church was consolidating against heresy, and part of this process was the establishment of the Vulgate Latin Bible as the standard version of reference for Catholic theologians (Popes Sixtus V and Clement VIII through the 1590s). Printers are clever and energetic men. So, without encouragement from the Holy See, they began to print editions of the Missal in which they replaced the Versio Romana texts by the equivalent translation in the recently affirmed official Vulgate. With laudate in that psalm.
In 1604, Pope Clement VIII reacted to this. He issued his own edition of the Missal of S Pius V. In it he wrote:
"... errors have crept in, by which that most ancient translation of the Holy Bible, which even before S Jerome's times was held to be well-known (celebris) within the Church, and from which almost all the introits of Masses, and what are called graduals and offertories, have been taken, was totally taken away ... we, having noticed this, by virtue of our pastoral solicitude, by which in all matters, and especially in the sacred rites of the Church, we are anxious to keep and preserve the best and ancient norm ...
and he went on to prohibit absolutely these Improved and Modernised Missals with which the printers were filling the bookshops. Back to collaudate!
Here we see two Roman Pontiffs performing their age-old duty of being a breakwater, a defence (remora was Newman's term) against unnecessary innovation and trendy Improvements.
We see Clement VIII doing this even though those printers had only been guilty of prioritising that very text of Scripture which he himself had just published and had ordered to be deemed authentic.
That is what Roman Pontiffs are for.
To sum up this three-part dissertation:
S PIUS V = GOOD
CLEMENT VIII = GOOD
PIUS XII ... ... er ...
S JOHN PAUL II = GOOD
Isn't that a lovely phrase ..."the best and ancient norm ..."?
5 January 2015
Pope or Tradition?
There is an apocryphal tale that B Pius IX once said Io sono la Tradizzione. I thought of that the other day when I read a report that Cardinal Marx had said that, for him, "it is incomprehensible how the Synod Fathers are more bound to Tradition than to the Pope".
Really? Talk about letting Cats out of Bags!
I would like to be quite clear about this. I belong to Christ's Church Catholic as defined by Pastor aeternus of Vatican I (Joseph Ratzinger summarised it so lucidly) in which the Pope is not an absolute monarch but is the Guardian of the Sacred Tradition received from the Apostles. I have no desire to belong to somebody else's "Catholic Church" in which Tradition and Pope are seen as competing alternatives, and in which safe and wise Corporation Men who know what's good for their health prioritise Pope above Tradition. Not even if that "Church" is led by such luminaries as Marx and Kasper.
Later this month, we shall observe the Church Unity Octave, sometimes known nowadays as the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. I do not know how seriously the Marxes and the Kaspers nowadays take Christian Unity. If Cardinal Marx's enthusiasm for the 500th Anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation is a good basis for guesswork, 'Ecumenism' is, for many such, going to mean cosying up to liberal Protestantism with its multiple apostasies. But, in my own experience of Orthodox Christians, the message that full communion with the See of Rome actually means Sacred Tradition being replaced by the Absolute Power of whoever happens currently to be the Roman Pontiff ... or, even worse, by sectional interests able to get their hands on the levers of power and to manipulate the Papacy so as to promote their own innovatory agendas ... is precisely the sort of message that would confirm their very worst suspicions about the errors of "Papalism".
Four years ago, I and others, not without some sacrifice, joyfully accepted the gracious invitation of Benedict XVI to enter into full communion. I, for one, did not do so in order to stand idly by with a polite smile upon my silly face while some unscrupulous Northern European ecclesiastics plot to demolish the Church's teaching and discipline about Marriage and Sexuality, and to do so by means of a confected hyperpapalism which as far as I can see contradicts the defined doctrine of Vatican I, and thus seems to me clearly a heresy.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote: "After the Second Vatican Council, the impression arose that the pope really could do anything ... especially if he were acting on the mandate of an ecumenical council ... In fact, the First Vatican Council had in no way defined the pope as an absolute monarch. On the contrary, it presented him as the guarantor of obedience to the revealed Word. The pope's authority is bound to the Tradition of faith ... The authority of the pope is not unlimited; it is at the service of Sacred Tradition."
And this is what Vatican I had defined: "The Holy Spirit was not promised to Peter's successors so that by its revelation they might disclose new doctrine, but, so that, by its assistance, they might devoutly guard and faithfully set forth the revelation handed down through the Apostles, i.e. the deposit of Faith".
B John Henry Newman, Patron of our Ordinariate, brilliantly characterised the charisma, the genius, of the Roman Church as its capacity to act as a remora, a breakwater, a hindrance, a stopper against innovation. That's what the Pope's job is.
Really? Talk about letting Cats out of Bags!
I would like to be quite clear about this. I belong to Christ's Church Catholic as defined by Pastor aeternus of Vatican I (Joseph Ratzinger summarised it so lucidly) in which the Pope is not an absolute monarch but is the Guardian of the Sacred Tradition received from the Apostles. I have no desire to belong to somebody else's "Catholic Church" in which Tradition and Pope are seen as competing alternatives, and in which safe and wise Corporation Men who know what's good for their health prioritise Pope above Tradition. Not even if that "Church" is led by such luminaries as Marx and Kasper.
Later this month, we shall observe the Church Unity Octave, sometimes known nowadays as the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. I do not know how seriously the Marxes and the Kaspers nowadays take Christian Unity. If Cardinal Marx's enthusiasm for the 500th Anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation is a good basis for guesswork, 'Ecumenism' is, for many such, going to mean cosying up to liberal Protestantism with its multiple apostasies. But, in my own experience of Orthodox Christians, the message that full communion with the See of Rome actually means Sacred Tradition being replaced by the Absolute Power of whoever happens currently to be the Roman Pontiff ... or, even worse, by sectional interests able to get their hands on the levers of power and to manipulate the Papacy so as to promote their own innovatory agendas ... is precisely the sort of message that would confirm their very worst suspicions about the errors of "Papalism".
Four years ago, I and others, not without some sacrifice, joyfully accepted the gracious invitation of Benedict XVI to enter into full communion. I, for one, did not do so in order to stand idly by with a polite smile upon my silly face while some unscrupulous Northern European ecclesiastics plot to demolish the Church's teaching and discipline about Marriage and Sexuality, and to do so by means of a confected hyperpapalism which as far as I can see contradicts the defined doctrine of Vatican I, and thus seems to me clearly a heresy.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote: "After the Second Vatican Council, the impression arose that the pope really could do anything ... especially if he were acting on the mandate of an ecumenical council ... In fact, the First Vatican Council had in no way defined the pope as an absolute monarch. On the contrary, it presented him as the guarantor of obedience to the revealed Word. The pope's authority is bound to the Tradition of faith ... The authority of the pope is not unlimited; it is at the service of Sacred Tradition."
And this is what Vatican I had defined: "The Holy Spirit was not promised to Peter's successors so that by its revelation they might disclose new doctrine, but, so that, by its assistance, they might devoutly guard and faithfully set forth the revelation handed down through the Apostles, i.e. the deposit of Faith".
B John Henry Newman, Patron of our Ordinariate, brilliantly characterised the charisma, the genius, of the Roman Church as its capacity to act as a remora, a breakwater, a hindrance, a stopper against innovation. That's what the Pope's job is.
15 November 2014
An Encyclical? (1)
I have several times recently expressed my view that an essential role of the Roman Pontiff is to guard the truth handed down from the Apostles and to act as a breakwater against innovatory error. Benedict XVI expressed this brilliantly and so did B John Henry Newman. It is the teaching of Vatican I Pastor aeternus.
At a time when some doctrinal errors about matters of Family Morality seem to be spiking the decibels, I presume that our Holy Father must be planning, as a matter of urgency, a major Encyclical in order to correct them. He has certainly not been mute in reaffirming the timeless teaching of the Church, but this is not the sort of thing the Media easily hear and relay ... not least because it does not slot into the rather constraining narrative which they have constructed with regard to this Pope. What is necessary is Magisterium laid on with a sufficiently generous trowel so as actually to get heard. What gardeners and builders among us might think of as an encyclical trowel.
I know Encyclicals take a lot of time because they have to go through the relevant dicasteries. And then get translated into Latin, which not many people in Rome understand nowadays. But I do hope it can be done as soon as possible, and preferably before the next Synod. At the moment, it almost looks as if there is some sort of vacatio legis with regard to important parts of the moral Law. This has all happened before. In April 1967, The Tablet, Le Monde, and The National Catholic Reporter published simultaneously the full texts of documents which were very plausibly taken to indicate the strong likelihood that 'the Pill' would be declared morally unobjectionable, thus bringing Rome more or less into line with the 1930 Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops. In the year before Humanae vitae emerged, this expectation had hardened into rigid assumption. We don't want something like that to happen again, do we? It would be thoroughly scandalous and a most grave abuse of Christ's faithful people.
The persona so skilfully constructed around the present Pope has the potential to be very useful. People are more prepared to listen to him than they have been to any pope for a long time. But that persona can hardly be an end in itself. It can only be coin to be spent rather than hoarded. Francis himself talked about a "two or three year" papacy. Surely the time has just about come, in this next twelve months, to utilise, to call in, the credit accrued by the Bergoglio persona. When Pope Francis finally dishes it out straight and heavy, the journalists ... and the gullible multitudes who swallow what they're told ... won't be able just to say "Well, he would say that, would'n 'e?" This is not a pontiff of whom it will be so easy for crooked journalists to explain that he graduated from the Hitler Youth via the Panzers to the Inquisition. They will doubtless dream up a substitute narrative lie, probably about how a 'good and loving' Pope Francis has been 'bullied' by 'hardliners' in the Vatican (a sort of new "Prisoner of the Vatican" story); but at least the Gospel message will have forced its way out into the open.
When Cardinal Kasper was going around claiming that Pope Francis shared his own rather eccentric views, Cardinal Burke informed the world that "The Pope doesn't have laryngitis; the Pope is not mute". Good!
Plura d.v. sequentur.
At a time when some doctrinal errors about matters of Family Morality seem to be spiking the decibels, I presume that our Holy Father must be planning, as a matter of urgency, a major Encyclical in order to correct them. He has certainly not been mute in reaffirming the timeless teaching of the Church, but this is not the sort of thing the Media easily hear and relay ... not least because it does not slot into the rather constraining narrative which they have constructed with regard to this Pope. What is necessary is Magisterium laid on with a sufficiently generous trowel so as actually to get heard. What gardeners and builders among us might think of as an encyclical trowel.
I know Encyclicals take a lot of time because they have to go through the relevant dicasteries. And then get translated into Latin, which not many people in Rome understand nowadays. But I do hope it can be done as soon as possible, and preferably before the next Synod. At the moment, it almost looks as if there is some sort of vacatio legis with regard to important parts of the moral Law. This has all happened before. In April 1967, The Tablet, Le Monde, and The National Catholic Reporter published simultaneously the full texts of documents which were very plausibly taken to indicate the strong likelihood that 'the Pill' would be declared morally unobjectionable, thus bringing Rome more or less into line with the 1930 Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops. In the year before Humanae vitae emerged, this expectation had hardened into rigid assumption. We don't want something like that to happen again, do we? It would be thoroughly scandalous and a most grave abuse of Christ's faithful people.
The persona so skilfully constructed around the present Pope has the potential to be very useful. People are more prepared to listen to him than they have been to any pope for a long time. But that persona can hardly be an end in itself. It can only be coin to be spent rather than hoarded. Francis himself talked about a "two or three year" papacy. Surely the time has just about come, in this next twelve months, to utilise, to call in, the credit accrued by the Bergoglio persona. When Pope Francis finally dishes it out straight and heavy, the journalists ... and the gullible multitudes who swallow what they're told ... won't be able just to say "Well, he would say that, would'n 'e?" This is not a pontiff of whom it will be so easy for crooked journalists to explain that he graduated from the Hitler Youth via the Panzers to the Inquisition. They will doubtless dream up a substitute narrative lie, probably about how a 'good and loving' Pope Francis has been 'bullied' by 'hardliners' in the Vatican (a sort of new "Prisoner of the Vatican" story); but at least the Gospel message will have forced its way out into the open.
When Cardinal Kasper was going around claiming that Pope Francis shared his own rather eccentric views, Cardinal Burke informed the world that "The Pope doesn't have laryngitis; the Pope is not mute". Good!
Plura d.v. sequentur.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
