Pope preemptively Torpedoes Manchester

Just as we all get excited about the forthcoming publication of the report of the Manchester Group - which will make proposals about how the Church of England can have 'women bishops' while making a space for those who cannot accept them - the Sovereign Pontiff has scuppered the whole project below the waterline. Here is what he said to an ecumenical meeting in America on April 18.

''Too often those who are not Christians, as they observe the splintering of Christian communities, are understandably confused about the Gospel message itself. Fundamental Christian beliefs and practices are sometimes changed within communities by so-called 'prophetic actions' that are based on a hermeneutic not always consonant with the datum of Scripture and Tradition. Communities consequently give up the attemt to act as a unified body, choosing instead to function according to the idea of 'local options'. Somewhere in this process the need for diachronic Koinonia - communion with the Church in every age - is lost, just at a time when the world is losing its bearings and needs a persuasive common witness to the saving power of the Gospel.''

Doesn't this just about say it all? And succinctly?

ESBVM

Why in Oxford, of all places, should there be no active branch of the Ecumenical Society of the Blessed Virgin Mary? So Jill Pinnock and I are having a go at revival: on Thursday May 8, in Pusey House at 7.30, Stratford and Leonie Caldecott will talk on Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary in the poetry of G K Chesterton and G M Hopkins.
Can readers suggest what might be suitable topics for such a group to engage with?

FROM WALSINGHAM TO CANTERBURY

Sancta Maria ad nives: After Cornwall, off with the Parish Pilgrimage to Walsingham as the trees in S Thomas's churchyard look totally magical in their filligree of April snow. And in Walsigham, the biggest snowflakes I have ever seen. But how well the Shrine looks; what a privilege to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass at our Lady's feet in her Holy House. For our concluding Mass, I offered a votive of our parish patron, S Thomas of Canterbury, patron of the first Oxford parish in which the Catholic tradition of worship began to be restored. I pointed out that our Lady's image was crowned with the Oxford Crown, given to our Lady in the early days of the Shrine's restoration by Fr Roger Wodehouse, Curate of S Thomas's (he was responsible for our baroque altar and the picture within it of our Lady di Foligno) and then Vicar of S Paul's, one of S Thomas's daughter parishes in West Oxford. A century after Walsingham became a shrine, England's second great shrine grew out of the martyrdom of S Thomas and about this time our church was built. And so after Mass we made a pilgrimage to Canterbury: that is, to the chapel a few feet east of the Holy House where S Thomas is potrayed in the frescoes and a relic of him kept for veneration. We prayed here, remembering that as ours is a religion of God incarnate in a girl's womb, so also it was in the body that our Saviour won his Easter victory, just as in their bodies his martyrs by testimony came to glory and we ourselves hope at the last en somati to rise again. Then we each venerated the relic with a kiss.



My normal place of worship when in London being, of course, the Brompton Oratory, I have often taken part in the weekly veneration of the relic of S Philip Neri (who, curiously, shares the same chapel at Walsingham as S Thomas). After we have kissed the relic, the priest taps the heads of male but not female worshippers with the reliquary. On such excellent authority, I too did this.



But can anyone explain the reason for this custom? Is it because ... but no: I'll see what wiser heads can suggest.

More on Ebbsfleet

Perhaps I owe readers who have better thing to do than keeping an eye on the eccentricities of Anglicanism a word of explanation about the 'Ebbsfleet Apostolic District'. It is one the groupings in England of those who have been deserted by the movement of the official organs of the Church of England away from Catholic Faith and Order. It consists of some hundred parishes in the South Western segment of England ... which makes it a fair size bigger than some American and Irish dioceses and possibly than the entire Scottish Episcopal Church. It takes its name from the Ebbsfleet which was the landing place of S Augustine before he got to Canterbury and founded his See there. So it points to the time before there was such a thing as the Church of England, but when a great Roman Pontiff had sent a diffident group of Roman monsignori to bring the Faith to a provincia (Brittania) which had lost it. We accordingly venerate pope S Gregory the Great as our Patron Saint. The implications of all this will not be lost upon the thoughtful.

I appreciate the puzzlement Roman Catholics must feel that Christians who are so very orthodox (and believe me, we are) are in a canonically anomalous situation as far as the ancient Churches of East and West are concerned. But I would ask them to do two things: to give us the benefit of the doubt; and to read Aidan Nichols' book The Panther and the Hind. And possibly also to recollect that there are are parts of the Roman Catholic Church where the teaching emerging from local archbishops is a great deal less orthodox than that coming from the present occupant of the See of Canterbury. I seem to recall that not so very long ago one American RC archbishop was such a problem that Rome had to send a coadjutor to administer those parts of archdiocesan life that particularly related to orthodoy and orthopraxy; His Grace wasn't safe enough to do it.

What particularly upsets us sometimes is that there seem to be but two sorts of RCs. There are those whose heresies startle us and, imperceptive fools that they are, think they can endear themselves to us by whispering in our ears how the present Pope is wrong about nearly everything, but, not to worry, he will soon be followed by another one who will be as gloriously heretical as anybody could wish. The other sort of RC is the one who shares the faith which we hold, but because he has (rightly) come to see the problems of 'ecumenism' as it is often understood, seems to need to treat us with contempt instead of as brothers-in-arms.

May I add a personal and emotional point? We have been in existence for less than two decades, but already we have a history and an institutional life which is immensely dear to us. Newman, in his sermon on the Second Spring, foretold that the glories of the old English Church had passed away, but that Pio Nono's new sees would soon be 'names as musical to the ear, as stirring to the heart, as the glories we have lost, and saints shall rise out of them ...'. We feel a bit like that. There have been three bishops of Ebbsfleet, all of them men to suggest the words of the Latin anthem Ecce Sacerdos Magnus. I had the privilege of close friendship with the first; he and his successor died worn out by hard work for the Catholic Faith. Our present Pontiff is also a man who has not spared himself in witnessing to Catholic Truth; as far as he is concerned, the liturgical formula that springs to mind is a Byzantine one, eis polla ete, despota.

EBBSFLEET RULES OK

What a joy to be with our 59-year-young bishop for the Chrism Mass last night, and in the Chapel of Pusey House. The beauties of the Palestrina Mass seemed to be echoed in the particular sweetness of the incense rising above the Altar of Sacrifice: how well everything always is sung and done under Father Jonathan's beneficent rule. And that moving moment when the Pontiff leans over and breathes upon the Chrisma. Such things can easily be dismissed as rather embarrassing medievalisms. Far from it. The bishop, in S Ignatius' words the tupos tou Patros, the 'expressed likeness of the Father', breathes forth the Spirit just as the Eternal Father breathes forth the Eternal Spirit which proceeds from him in the economy of the Blessed Trinity (let us not digress into what this might imply about filioque). This detail is a potent sacrament (I use the term in a prescholastic sense) of the sole arche of the Father and the procession of the Spirit, and like all sacraments it visibly expresses what invisibly it contains.

And the Chrisma itself is also a just such a sacrament. S Cyril of Jerusalem writes 'Don't have an underlying thought that this is plain Ointment. For just as the loaf of thanksgiving (eucharistia) after the calling-down of the Holy Spirit is no longer ordinary bread, but the Body of Christ, so this holy Ointment is after the calling-down no longer simple (psilon) or as one might say common (koinon), but the gracious gift (charisma) of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, by the presence (parousia) of his godhead made operative within us' (or, as some scholars punctuate it: 'of Christ, and made operative within us of the Holy Spirit by the presence of his godhead').

This passage is set in the Office of Readings for Friday in Easter Week; how suitable to read in that season the catechesis of the neonati, the newly baptised, composed by so great a mystagogue. But, intriguingly, the Liturgia horarum omits the passage I have printed in bold. I have my suspicions why. The Eucharistic loaf becomes, is transsubstantiated, into the Body of Christ. The oil for the Chrism is not transsubstantiated into, for example, the Holy Spirit in the same simple one-for-one sort of exchange. Modern Western Christians thus make a clinical, black-and-white distinction between Sacraments and Sacramentals; we say that the contents of the Chalice are the Blood of the Redeemer; the contents of the Holy Water stoop are no more than water. This is a good rule-of-thumb but it can miss some of the subtilties and nuances which a broader reading of the Great Tradition can give us. The Chrisma is not just something like Holy Water or even the Oil for the Sick. That is why Bishop Andrew blessed the Oil for the Sick in a simple way just before the the sentence per quem haec omnia of the Canon Romanus, which is where all manner of ordinary goodies used once to be blessed. But the Chrisma was consecrated later and with a prayer chanted in the same way as the chanted parts of the Eucharistic Prayer, and even with the 'eucharistic' structure: God's Great Deeds are rehearsed, and then Te igitur leads into the request for consecration.

If I were a critical nit-picker, I would suggest that the omission in the 'new' breviary of those clauses from S Cyril constitutes an example of that introduction into the 'new' Liturgy of 'Enlightenment' oversimplifications which Aidan Nichols and Catherine Pickstock have taught us to deplore. It just shows that when saying the 'new' office it's important to have the Patrologia Graeca in one's back pocket as a crib to the Latin.

Bishop Richard Williamson

Yes, I obviously hadn't read enough of him when I wrote the first edition of that rash post. I had found myself in some sympathy with what he said about the risks of an attack on Iran precipitating a third world war; and it had occurred to me, before he wrote his piece on praying for the Jews, that excluding Jews from the preaching of the Gospel would itself be an act of antisemitism. I accept that my correspondents have been more careful than I was; that their accounts of his views are better researched than mine was; and that, to put it mildly, the gentleman has said some strange things. I should have been more specific in what I wrote. Although my words were not exactly an endorsement (I did use the terms iffy, dodgy, barmy) I do realise that the levity of my flippant tone was ill-advised. Sorry. I'll try to grow up.

ORDO UPDATE

It seems logical occasionally to use this blog for updates on the ORDO (Order for the Eucharist and for Morning and Evening Prayer) which I compile annually; which gives ample information for doing things in church - calendar, readings, exegesis - according to the modern Roman and Anglican rites, interpreted in a traditional way. (It is published by Tufton Press and the ISBN for the 2008 edition is 978-1-85311-796-1.)

The first ORDO UPDATE: yesterday I saw in Blackwells a volume (Anglican) called Common Worship: Festivals. Possible purchasers should be warned that it contains two types of material: (1) Stuff already authorised by the General Synod; so, if you've already got the basic Common Worship, you won't find any new authorised material. (2) Stuff composed by the Liturgical Commission and recommended by the bishops but not actually authorised for use. It is provided for the officiating minister to use in accordance with canonical his right to make, on his own authority, changes which are not of substantial importance. Thus, this stuff has no more legal authority than what a priest might draft himself or borrow from, for example, the Roman rite, the Syro Maklankara Rite, or whatever.

Frankly, I don't like the contents of this book. Modern Anglican Liturgical Commissions rarely provide material from such sources as the ancient Roman Sacramentaries; they have too much self-confidence to miss the chance of composing a lot of verbose and pretentious stuff themselves. For example: this volume provides a lot of Prayers At the Preparation of the Table. This could have been an opportunity to offer translations of Orationes super Oblata from the early centuries. But did they, hell? Even for Corpus Christi, they couldn't bring themselves to use or adapt that wonderful prayer by S Thomas A, in which we ask the Lord to grant his Church the gifts of unity and peace which are mystically designated under the eucharistic elements.

Best to wait for the new translation of the Roman Rite to be authorised.

CHARTA AND TENEBRAE

More about the Charta (see previous blog) in Fire and light in the Western Triduum: their use at Tenebrae and at the Paschal Vigil; by A J Macgregor; pub The Liturgical Press; ISBN 0-8146-2066-3.

END OF THE ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT

Hooray for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith! I used to say that quite often, but this is the first time I've said it since my favourite dicastery came under new management. Baptism 'conferred' with any other formula than Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is to be deemed, not doubtfully valid, but certainly invalid. CDF has said so.

The reasons for this decision are, of course, obvious to students of the New Testament. As the 'Name' of the First Person is Father (witness most of the New Testament and especially John 17), and his Son is his Son, non-gender-specific substitutions ('Creator, Redeemer ...' or whatever) clearly represent indicate initiation into something other than Christianity. But the ecumenical implications of this are enormously important and need to be taken account of immediately.

Not that the CDF was trespassing on the territory of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity. The decision was necessary because errant clergy within the RC Church have been messing around with this feminist bilge. But if Fr Naughty O'Sullivan cannot validly confer the sacrament by such a formula, neither, obviously, can non-RC ministers. And my suspicion is that such hanky panky has been going on for some time in some Anglican circles and, probably, all the more so among non-conformists. It is also obvious that although, predictably, some RC clergy have been doing it, it is likely that the disciplinary structures of the RC Church will be more able to restrain such abuses within the Roman Communion than outside it. A decade ago it was reported that the woman dean of an Anglican cathedral 'baptised' using some such formula; a couple of months ago, television appeared to show a (male) priest in Sussex baptising 'in the name of the Spirit'. And, while we're on the subject of baptismal validity, I supect that protestant ministers cannot be relied on to use adequate matter; I have seen on television a presbyterian minister 'baptising' by marking the forehead of a baby with her damp thumb.

Two implications. Firstly, I imagine it would now be prudent praxis when people enter the RC Church not to assume that non-Catholic baptism is valid. Either inquiries could be made into how baptism was conferred at a given time by a particular minister, or given the practical problems involved in that, Baptism could be conferred sub conditione, just as it used to be before the ecumenical movement. Perhaps this is even more necessary with regard to baptisms since, say, 1990 ( before when protestants were more inclined to operate on the endearing old protestant principle that if our Lord commanded something in the text of Scripture he should be obeyed). Secondly, and more broadly, we should remember that the Ecumenical Movement is based on the notion that all Christians share a common baptism. That assumption cannot now be made. Just as adherents of the New Religion insisted on Women Priests although this created doubt about the ordination of a great percentage of those in the Anglican ministry and accordingly ruptured communion within the Anglican family and soured relations with the ancient churches, so they are now introducing the same doubts into the practice of Baptism. Their attitude, in the latter as well as in the former case, is that their novel dogmas are so peremptorily important that they must be given immediate effect however grave the effect is on what used to be considered the imperative of Christan Unity.

Has an important moment of truth now arrived? I do hope so.

THE EVEN MORE EXTRAORDINARY FORM

It has been pointed out by several experts that our Holy Father pulled a neat dodge by making the Tridentine Rite an extraordinary form of the Roman Rite rather than a separate rite. Had he made it a separate rite, it would have been necessary for priests of the Latin Church to be given special permission to celebrate it; just as they need special permission to celebrate, say, the Syro Malankara Rite. By making it clear that there are two forms of the Roman Rite, he cut through all the red tape which would have impeded clergy from using it.

But there is a third form of the Roman Rite: the Anglican use of the Roman Rite, used in the US by former Anglican parishes. This was set up with massive encouragement by ... no less a figure than Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. It uses The Book of Divine Worship, which is in effect the Anglican Book of Common Prayer with Dr Cranmer's heterodox Eucharistic prayers replaced by, for example, a 'Tudor English' translation of the Roman Canon familiar from its use in Anglo-Catholic Altar missals of the pre-Concilar period (incidentally, it is not Coverdale's translation).

This form of the Roman Rite, of course, overlaps intriguingly with the Tridentine Rite. Most of its Mass Popers, being taken from the medieval English Sarum Rite, have the same Collects, Epistles, and Gospels as the Tridentine Rite - although in the period post Trinitatem there is some dislocation, inherited from Sarum. Earlier generations of Catholic Anglicans supplemented the Prayer Book by adding Introits, Secrets, etc., from the Roman Missal and the'English Missal, still in print, represents the final flowering of this tradition and offers a splendid means of saying the Tridentine Masss in superb English.

So, if my Devon friend Fr Peter Morgan, ordained in the SSPX and latterly offering a dual ministry, one to an Anglican Papalist congregation and the other to a Tridentinist group, invited me to preach at the latter celebration, a sermon written for my BCP congregation at Broadwood Widger 20 miles to the north, would fit. In this blog, I can kill two birds with one stone by commenting on the Tridentine propers: bird 1 being adherents of SSPX or FSSP; bird 2 being the Prayer Book Society. I used to explain to the probably bemused folks of Broadwood Widger that their closest allies were SSPX, and that Benedict XVI was the first pope ever to be a Prayer Book enthusiast.

I very much hope that both of the minority forms of of the Roman Rite will have a great future. As far as the Book of Divine Worship is concerned, it has one problem in its present form. It assumes as its base an American version of the Prayer Book. For the Anglican Use of the Roman Rite to spread, I would suggest the following methodology: a decree providing (1) that certain specified versions of the Prayer Book (and Common Worship and English Missal) authorised in particular Anglican provinces were hereby authorised but (2) with their Euchristic prayers replaced by the formulae herein provided and (3) with certain supplementary provisions (e.g. for December 8; August 15, etc. etc.).

Such a provision would not only be useful for Anglican groups entering into full communion with the Holy See, but would undoubtedly influence the worship of those whose unity with Rome was still impaired.

Oxfordblogging

The Oxford Newman Society's colloquium on blogging was great fun; indeed, what a splendid body that society is. How fortunate the Catholic Chaplaincy is to have such a strong, intelligent group with praiseworthy views on everything; one of two bright beacons (the Pusey House congregation is of course the other) in the University (or am I being unfair to leave out the Oratory and Blackfriars?). And how fortunate Oxford is to be so rich in Catholic blogs. I learn a lot from that highly literate and engaging blog, massinformation, run by three Catholic Anglican seminarians. And, of course, there is the New Liturgical Movement to keep us updated on everything truly progressive in liturgical matters; and that's not all. Those with an interest in Dominican liturgy and/or the Anglican Book of Common Prayer can this week hear the great chant Media Vita , sung during Lenten Compline in the Dominican and Sarum (medieval English) rites and incorporated by Dr Cranmer into the Anglican funeral service (it is to be sung by the clerks, or else said, while the body is made ready to be laid into the earth). It can be heard on another great blog, Godzdogz. I wonder if anybody has ever thought of using this Dominican version and melody at Anglican funerals? It would make a lovely change from that nonsense from Scott-Holland about how Death is Nothing, which so many of the bereaved have heard at other funerals that the officiating priest is repeatedly persuaded into allowing it again ... thereby compounding the problem.

It was good to hear Fr Zed; knowledgeable about the Inside liturgical history of the last couple of decades and with his fingers on many pulses internationally. He left us with a strong sense of the grip Pope Benedict has on the cultural life of the Church: in the last year we really have turned a corner. As an Anglican, I found myself thinking: in the late 1960s and thereafter, as the RC Church lurched in the wrong direction in so many areas but especially the liturgical, Anglicans, and not least Catholic Anglicans, deemed it the proper thing slavishly to adopt each newly minted absurdity. Now that things are getting back on the rails in Rome, will the Anglican faith-community follow healthy leadership as readily as then it did the unhealthy? Many of our younger Catholic Anglican clergy are already doing so; but what about the dominant gerontocracy?

A jolly good supper, too, cooked by Mr President Yaqoub himself.

Prayers for Jews: new and old

So, of course, the Holy Father has resisted the clamour to rewrite the Good Friday prayer for the Jews according to a racist agenda; those who believe that the Jews alone among all the races of the world should be excluded as a matter of principle from the saving grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ will find little comfort in the prayer he has composed. If omnes homines are called to recognise Christ as Saviour, it would be preposterous if that privilege were denied to His own race. And, happily, the Pontiff has introduced a reference to S Paul's teaching in Romans that, as the fulness of the Gentiles is gathered in, so that people also, to whom God promised that his Covenant would not fail, will turn back to Him.

From an Anglican perspective, perhaps two points can be made. The Anglican equivalent of the 'Tridentine' Rite is the the Prayer Book of 1662, which is still the normative rite of the Church of England, especially in the doctrinal sense. It has been amended since 1662 (one recent change is the removal of the ban on ordaining ordinands who don't know Latin), but its Good Friday prayer, summarising the last three of the old Orationes sollemnes, has been left unchanged. It runs: O merciful God, who hast made all men, and hatest nothing that thou hast made, and willest not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should be converted and live: have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Hereticks, and take away from them all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of thy word; and so fetch them home, blessed Lord, to thy flock, that they may be saved among the remnant of the true Israelites, and be made one fold under one shepherd ... I wonder why those who made such a kerfuffle about the 'antisemitic' nature of the Tridentine Rite have never turned their catterwauling attention to the Anglican Rite. What a shame it is that Anglicanism is now not even held in enough regard to be unfairly attacked.

My other point is a trifle more literary. The ancient Solemn Prayers were, as the great Anglican student of the classical Romamn Rite G G Willis pointed out, composed with careful attention to cursus: the system whereby the final words of clauses bore rhythms, derived from pagan Roman rhetoric, designed to make their public declamation sonorous and elegant (Willis used this discovery to date the prayers). In the 'Benedictine' prayer, the first clause-end has the rhythm veritatis veniant - which is not a recognised clausula. The final clause, salvus fiat, is also irregular; unless one 'scans' it Israel salvus fiat ... hurrying over the word salvus ... which would allow us a respectable velox.

I am unsure what dogmatic conclusion to draw from this.