Octaves ...

Our British Post Office has an absolutely fantastic idea for keeping the Christmass Spirit alive.

Simple: they delay delivering a a fair bit of Christmass mail until the week after Christmass ... what we Catholics call the Octave!!!

So it was several days after the Big Day that we finally got our card from the lads on Papa Stronsay (although they posted it in good time): twenty one signatures!! No wonder ... er ...

And the superb card from Stuart and Jill Chessman, who entertained me a few years ago in Connecticut.

Their card set me thinking ... in their Levantine travels, they had visited Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, and their card made use of the mosaic representation there of the Theotokos and her Child. 

And this is what I wondered.

That mosaic has the long-customary monograms for our Lady on each side of her: METER and THEOY. 

Now ... surely, the identitity of the Figure would be obvious to any worshipper. So ... why the need for a written designation?

Then the thought occurred to me: could this convention have originally had any connection with the didactic steps taken by Orthodox iconodouls after the restoration of Orthodoxy?

Our Lady of Oxford (1)

What a splendid Magazine the "Friends of the Ordinariate" produce! Accessible and literate articles appear about Ordinariate matters, and often about what I think of as "the prehistory of the Ordinariate". The latter might contain fascinating information about Anglicans of earlier generations who became Catholics; and the current Winter 2023 number has a fine piece by Nicolas [note the correct spelling of this name] Ollivant about Hartwell de la Garde Grissell ... who founded this University's Newman Society and became a personal friend of Pius IX. He lived at number 60 in the High ... now, I gather, a forgotten victim of Road Widening.

Grissell amassed a magnificent collection of relics for his private Oratory in the High; and arranged for their preservation after his own death. His collection also included a painted picture of our Lady of Mercy.

On January 3, 1869, Pope Pius IX had blessed and indulgenced this picture of Our Lady of Mercy, to be the focus in a shrine of Our Lady of Oxford. On June 10, in the same year, the pontiff granted another indulgence ... were  Grissell and Pio Nono both Jacobites? Most of Grissell's relics were burned or otherwise destroyed during the ruthless Gestapo occupation of the Catholic Chaplaincy, but happily the picture remains ... in a smart new Relics Chapel in Saint Alyogger's church ... but I will write no more about this because it would be best for you to acquire a copy of Friends of the Ordinariate. It contains a photograph of a painting of Grissell. (Indeed, why not become a member of that admirable organisation?)

Pio Nono marked his appreciation of his own friendship with Grissell by making him, in 1869, a Chaplain of Honour to the Roman Pontiff. The image of our Lady of Oxford survived the Jesuits. Sadly, S Paul VI suppressed all those dear old ''partial indulgences" with periods of time attached to them, and this affected S Aloysius' Church as much as it did the rest of the suffering world. But the old Oxford indulgences have now been regranted, albeit in the misarithmic modern style: Salve Regina, (in the old days, this had merited 100 days); the Litany of Loreto (got you 300 days).  

The Saturday before the 4th Sunday in July is the liturgical commemoration of Our Lady of Oxford, piggybacking on Our Lady of Mercy. The Mass is the Common of the BVM with a proper collect; it is in some editions of the Appendix pro aliquibus locis but I can find no example of it on any of the old British diocesan calendars. Here is the Collect:

Deus, cuius misericordiae non est numerus: concede nobis, sanctissima unigeniti tui Matre intercedente; ut hanc misericordiam largiter in terris, et gloriam consequi mereamur in caelis. Per.

A bit odd, fixing the celebration for a time when the University is mostly Down? 

S Thomas of England

So, today is the Festival of a martyred Archbishop of Canterbury, Titular of my last pastoral charge in the C of E. A little while ago, we had a jolly period in which within a few days we celebrated S Edmund of Canterbury and S Hugh of Lincoln and S Edmund the Martyr King. For the Divine Office on such occasions, I sometimes dip into a nice old 1874 Breviarium Romanum which has at the back of it Officia propria Sanctorum Angliae. (This supplement clearly goes back to before the decree authorising a distinct Calendar and propers for each of the Flaminian Gate dioceses.)

In my old Breviary, before each of the collects we are told where it comes from: again and again, Ex Missali Sarisburiensi. The Roman liturgical authorities had no desire to sit down at a lordly table and compose new collects for our English Saints. The dear old Sarum Rite was good enough a source to satisfy this need. And those collects continued in use until the period after the Council.

I haven't done a precise survey of this, but I have a distinct impression that the Diocesan Propers for the Novus Ordo largely dispense with those silly old medieval collects. Bright new Woolworths ... or do I mean Poundland ... collects take their places. Commonly, they have that verbose floridity and crude appetite to be clever which are such marks of modern English middle-class drafting. Moreover, I have been told that there still do not exist official Latin versions of the new collects. In other words, the English Hierarchy and the Roman liturgical authorities apparently expect the English clergy regularly to disobey Sacrosanctum Concilium paragraph 101 (1), which directs that the clergy are to recite their Office in Latin unless they have permission from their bishop to do otherwise ... and that permission can only be given "singulis pro casibus" ... on a one by one basis ... not as a general permission.

(To be fair, I should add that the Welsh dioceses do make full provision for observing the Welsh Saints in the Novus Ordo Divine Office in Latin ... we should congratulate the Welsh on being trilingual!)

Incidentally ... 'Jacobites' might be interested to note that in my 1874 Breviary, S George is referred to as "Patronus Regni". S George is patently the Patron of England ... Yes ... but not of Scotland, and so he is in no way the Patron of "the United Kingdom", that ghastly abomination the "Yewkay". Thus, describing him as "Patronus Regni" implies the position which was maintained by James III, Charles III, and Henry IX, that the "Acts of Union" of 1707 and 1801, passed as they were by an intruded and merely de facto regime without the authority of the de jure Sovereign, did not, in the view of the Holy See, truly extinguish the three Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

VIVAT ANGLIA! VIVAT SCOTIA! VIVAT HIBERNIA!

New Year's Day?

 January 1 ... should it be the Circumcision or the Theotokos? I'm not going to 'explain' this again; the traditional propers for our Lady are the propers we used to call the Circumcision, so this is a question simply of labeling, not of realities.

Much more excitingly, I'm going to offer you a Third Alternative: Saint Scetha.

If you approached a significant Irish church on a Sunday morning during parts of the First Christian Millennium, the likelihood is that you would, as you grew near, hear ... singing. Singing which you would recognise as the Litany. And as it drew to its end, among the last three invocations, you would hear Sancta Scetha Ora Pro Nobis. And if, being a naturally inquisitive person, you sought further information about this lady, you might be told that her Feast Day is January 1. And you might remember that this Blog once gave you the information that in the Early Christian Irish World, inserting somebody into the Litany counts as what we would call canonisation. The Abbot might even ... during the chanting of the Litany ... send a message across to the singers instructing them to ad NN or MM to the list of those to be Invoked!

There would be likely to be members of the Congregation or the Christian Community who remembered the day when the holy religious lady Scetha was Put On The List ... i.e. canon-ised.

Scetha has another festival, you might discover, on September 6 ... G F Warner will inform you that this second Memorial commemorates the arrival of her Relics at Tallaght. Dr MacCarthy tells us that Scetha was a Virgin; and that she was enshrined at Fert Sceithe in the County Cork, circa 622. If I've got this wrong, I hope somebody will instruct me: I think Fert(a) in early Irish means something like Place of Graves. 

Back in the eighties, Charles Doherty gave information on the Cult of Relics during this period, which I plagiarise. 

It was in the seventh century in Britain and Ireland that the cult of relics really began to develop. There was a great plague in 664 and diseases and famines in the closing years of the century; at the start of the eighth an increase in stress and disorder in society. We find this reflected in the amount of archival activity that took place ... and relics assumed an added importance against this background. The circuits of many different saints became common, especially after bad weather, diseases in men and cattle. Contemporary sources attribute 'the translation of relics' as a rsult of the increase  in the evils in society.

One collector of relics was so avid that he would not remain in a church which refused to give him some of her relics (remember that a corpse could be divided); Indeed, someone with a reputation for sanctity might be in danger of losing a limb while still alive. Armagh made elaborate arrangement to collect relics; the church of Ard Patrick in Limerick was a great ccollecting point for the tribute of Munster. The insignia of a saint ... his bells, books, and crosiers ... were used th demand tribute. The virtues of each relic were extolled and the power of eaxch was described by appeal to one extravagant miracle after another.

A well-known account of the basilica (relic-endowed church) at Kildare describes the enshrined bodies of bishop Conlaeth and of huius virginis florentissimae Brigidae ... on each side of the Altar ... vario cultu et argenti et gemmarum et pretiosi lapidis atque coronis aureis et argenteis desuper pendentibus ...

I wonder how sumptuously those lads at Tallaght provided for S Scetha, once they had secured, 'translated', her relics from North Cork to Tallaght.

In hoc anno novo dignare Scetha sancta orare pro nobis.

A New Year's Resolution

I commend the old Anglican custom of bowing the head at the Name of Jesus.

Indeed, Catholic prescriptions include this, and also require a bowing of the head at the name of Mary.

Even Traddies commonly ignore the rules requiring these reverences.

These observances do mean that one has to stay alert ...

The Sound of Mucus

 I expect there are readers who could enumerate exactly the matters upon which H E Bishop Richard Williamson, a Wykehamist, agrees with me. Two, in particular, occur to my mind:

(1) Despite, er, everything, Bergoglio is lawfully and canonically, Bishop of Rome; and

(2) The Sound of Music is corrupting mush.

This film is a most fascinating combination of genres. As I watched it on Christmas Eve, the opening minutes reminded me of nothing so much as Leni Riefenstahl's work in the '30s ... that long sequence of landscapes, as the late-comers to the cinema stumble their way to their seats. But Mills and Boon soon take over. Or rather, SOM turns out to be the grandest conceivable apotheosis of Mills and Boon. M&B offers us Humble Nurse Winning the Heart of Consultant ('Carbolic Soap Opera'). In SOM the last expiring sighs of Whiggery's Pamela, are metamorphosed into magnificence almost beyond belief by being transposed into the key of Novice Nun gaining the affections of Naval Hero Owner of Vast Swathes of Unmarred Mountain Scenery and Rococo Architecture. But, whereas Richardson's Pamela bore the message that the girl who makes deft use of her chastity wins through, SOM appears to teach that witlessness... ('femininity to the point of imbecillity', as Lord Feverstone described it) ... will always and rightfully displace the 'artificial' sophistication of a Viennese baronin. 

And, of course, Spontaneity is all. Children can spend their days shouting in trees and then turn out a perfectly produced musical performanance. Falling out of trees will never damage them; capsising their boat in the lake can never be more than a jape.

And, above all, Discipline and Duty must lack all and any emphasis. 

And as for Vocation ... we mustn't mention that.

The film of SOM emerged in 1965 (stage Musical in 1959). What a decade! The smooth elegance of The Great Escape (1963) had come two years earlier; by the end of the decade, the deification of revolutionary violence in If ... (1968) and the acid anti-war malevolence of Oh What a Lovely War (1969) had swept all  before them. Perhaps most significantly, Doctor No, introducing decades of strongly preached amorality, had in 1962 come from the pen of an Ian Fleming who, we are told, loved whipping a wife who (of course) loved being whipped. And that was the very same year as Lawrence of Arabia, which raised its own questions about homophobia and Masochism.

So Mills and Boon, the Thirties 'Tuppenny Library' of escapist fiction for women, and the military 1950s moral simplicities of The Dam Busters and Ice Cold in Alex and The Cruel Sea, both gave way to a culture which had not the faintest idea what it wanted, but wanted it good and stong.

As early as 1946, Waugh had described "the war" as "a sweaty tug-of-war between teams of indistinguishable louts". I suspect, indeed, that most years seen as the beginnings or ends of eras, must involve major oversimplifications, from 410 and 1066 onwards.

But I feel that 1965, Year of The Sound of Music, can stake a valid claim to have been quite pivotal.

Query

 This is addressed only to those who use or read the fine ORDO published by the English Latin Mass Society.

Last Sunday, Christmas Eve, the instructions given for Mass puzzle me. Has something gone wrong?

Marian Iconography

"... the beautiful alabaster carving of the Assumption in the church of Sandford-on-Thames suggests that this may once have been the dedication there. The present title of the church is St. Andrew; but at the time of the Norman Conquest Sandford was in the possession of the Abbey of St. Mary at Abingdon, and it is noteworthy that the Abbey seal, like the alabaster, carries the relatively rare device of our Lady both crowned and in an aureole. A review of the monastic seals in Birch's Catalogue of Seals in the British Museum shows that whilst our Lady either crowned or in a nimbus or aureole is a very common device, the combination of crown and nimbus is uncommon. The angels supporting the aureole in the Sandford alabaster make it quite clear that the Assumption is the the subject of the carving. It should be added that the Sandford alabaster may have originally adorned not the parish church but one or other of the the two monastic chapels which formerly existed in the parish. Each of these was dedicated to our Lady ..."

Sic Bishop Kirk, 1946. The Bishop is mistaken in describing the statue as alabaster; Pevsner made exactly the same mistake ... I wonder ... does the error have a common source ...

Given that Sandford Church is within feet of the ancient flood-plain of the Thames, in my view the statue could have been transported aquatically for miles.

What I am wondering is: "Crown+nimbus/aureole=Assumption." Is this correct as an account of the symbolism of representations of the Mother of God in the later medieval period? Especially when the nimbus-encircled Figure is represented as being physically lifted aloft by angels?

Renouncing Heresy

 Recent Vatican statements have, I suspect, unsettled many people. 

If anyone wished to renounce any involvement in false teaching from foreign parts, I suggest the use of the following liturgical formulae, taken from the old Profession of Faith, which used to be made publicly by converts.

(1) Veni Creator, followed by the Collect for Pentecost Sunday.

(2) "I, NN, holding in my hand God's holy Gospels and enlightened by divine grace, [publicly] declare that I accept the Faith which is taught by the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church. I believe that Church to be the one true Church which Jesus Christ set up here on earth; to which I make my submission with all my heart."

(3) The 'Apostles' Creed' used to follow; while, surely, the 'Nicene' or 'Athanasian Creed' might suitably now be used.

(4) Then EITHER ... "I believe that seven sacraments were instituted by Jesus Christ for the salvation of mankind: Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Eucharist, Penance, Extreme Unction, Holy Order, and Matrimony.

"I believe that the Bishop of Rome is the Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth, that he is the supreme visible Head of the whole Church, and that he teaches infallibly what we must believe and do for salvation.

"I also believe everything which the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church defines and declares that we must believe. To her I give my whole allegiance and I reject every error and schism which she condemns.

"So help me God, and these His holy Gospels which I touch with my hand."

OR ... "I profess that I believe: One only God in three divine persons, distinct from and equal to each other--that is to say, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

"The Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation, Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ; and the personal union of the two Natures, the divine and the human; the Divine Maternity of the most holy Mary, together with her most spotless virginity; and also her Immaculate Conception; and her bodily Assumption into heaven.

"The true, real and substantial presence of the Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ, together with His Soul and Divinity, in the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. 

"I also believe in Purgatory, the resurrection of the dead, and everlasting life. 

"The primacy, not only of honour, but also of jurisdiction, of the Roman Pontiff, successor of St Peter, prince of the apostles, Vicar of Jesus Christ;

"The veneration of the Saints and of their images;

"The authority of apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions, and of the Holy Scriptures, which we must interpret and understand only in the sense which our holy Mother the Catholic Church has held, and does hold, to whom alone it belongs to judge of their meaning and interpretation; 

"And everything else that has been defined and declared by the sacred Canons and by the General Councils, especially by the holy Council of Trent, and by the Council of the Vatican."

(5) "With a sincere heart, therefore, and with unfeigned faith, I detest and abjure every error heresy and sect opposed to the said Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church. So help me God, and these His holy Gospels which I touch with my hand."

(6) Finally, the Te Deum and the Collect for Trinity Sunday.  

Although these formulae are traditional, and in the 1956 English edition of the Rituale Romanum, it is in a personal capacity that I suggest this use of them.

 

CELTIC

As Christmas approaches and you look for last-minute presents along the shelves of 'Church' bookshops: a word of advice. Don't buy anything from the shelves in the section labelled 'Celtic'.

Historians have decisively abandoned the concept of the 'Celtic' and especially of a supposed distinctive 'Celtic Church'. In a recent major scholarly work on this subject, Professor Charles-Edwards' Early Christian Ireland (Cambridge, 2000), the distinguished author writes dismissively of 'that entity - beloved of modern sectarians and romantics, but unknown to the early Middle Ages - ''the Celtic Church'' ', and surveys in a footnote the scholarly work of the last thirty years which has established this.

'Celtic' is the sexy religious thinggy because the 'Celtic' saints are distant figures in the past who , when they were alive, were rather combative old people but pose no particular threats to us now because they're dead except in in books and so they can easily be moulded to our own fads by suppressions and misrepresentations. And because 'Celtic' Christianity is in the past, people with hangups about the actual real Christianities available in the present day can invent their own 'Celtic Christianity'. Commonly such DIY constructions are all about being rather Mystical in pieces of remote and beautiful countryside, and about being 'close to nature'. If you are tempted to buy their books, check carefully whether the contents actually are sourced somewhere ancient or are merely the author's own compositions 'in the Celtic Spirit'.

If the 'Celtic' industry really had any serious interest in the Christianity of the 'Celtic fringe' during its first millennium, they would be rather keener to revive use of the earliest surviving Missal from these islands, the Stowe Missal, which dates from the 790s but was copied from an original which must have dated from before the changes made in the Mass by Pope S Gregory the Great in the late 500s. It is of southern Irish origin. I published a little academic something on it a few years ago. Its Eucharistic Prayer is almost entirely identical with the current Roman 'First Eucharistic Prayer', except that it contains rather more saints and describes the Pope as 'thy most blessed servant N our Pope, Bishop of the Apostolic See'. It has a lovely Prayer of Humble Access, so much more mystical and uplifting than Cranmer's, which includes beautiful (if possibly politically incorrect) phrases like 'I am unworthy because I filthily adhere to the mire of dung and all my good deeds are like a rag used by a menstrual woman'.

See if you can find it on those bookshelves!

Message

I am grateful to all who have sent me cards, gifts, and messages; and promises of Prayers and Masses.

I will say Masses for all my benefactors.

My medical advisers have given me less 'negative' news than they managed in August! I get the impression that they are surprised I am still here to receive any 'news'! If a merciful God is moved by Prayer, Glory to Him! Glory, anyway!

Thank You all; and may God bless you all.

Iudica me Deus

A Puritan narrator (writing about Canterbury Cathedral) recalls "An ordinary Cathedral-turne-Preacher, who in his morning service (as is directed in the Masse Booke) used to sing, Psal. 43. And when they sung Then will I to thine Altar goe, he presently went out of his seat, and did goe up, ducking, to the Altar, to read the Service there."

The Puritan had some familiarity with the Missale Romanum, and apparently suspected that the prebendary did as well. 

Also from the 1640s, we read that "there being a crucifix in the window over the altar, he useth to bow towards it , and would not suffer it to be taken down, notwithstanding the order of Parliament for it . ... John Mountford, D.D., rector of Anstey, Hertfordshire, hath introduced into his said church and other churches, a turning of the Communion-table altarwise; and having a great crucifix and picture of the Virgin Mary in the east window over the said Table, used bowings and cringings before the said Table and crucifix set altarwise, and caused the said Table to be railed in, and the Jesuit's badge [IHS] to be set upon the carpet there ... and, in his going up to the Table to read second service, usually caused that part of the 43rd Psalm to be sung, viz. 'Then shall I to the altar go, of God, &c.".

It was claimed of a Bedfordshire parson that he did a lot of bowing and falling down on his knees before the altar, with his eyes on a crucifix, "being in the next window over it".

When the glass was being eliminated at Canterbury, it was at the point when the vandals started smashing the crucifix in the glass that the devout wife, good woman, of one of the Cathedral clergy began to "shriek ... viraginously".