"Epiclesis"

I began a six-part series on the Epiclesis and its admirable absence from the Roman Canon on 9 March 2015. I invite those interested to read that series. I don't feel vastly inclined to write replies to enquirers which would merely replicate hastily what I wrote with quite a lot of deliberation then.

The Tablet and Cardinal Sarah and Trained Liturgists

No; I don't read the Tablet, considering it dubiously moral to push one penny in that direction, but I noticed that its front cover is currently advertising an attack (inevitably) on Cardinal Sarah, by some "liturgist" called Mark Francis. This set bells ringing in my mind. I think he may be the same person as the writer who welcomed Summorum Pontificum with the condescending comment that Papa Ratzinger, poor chap, meant well but was "not a Trained Liturgist". On that occasion, so I recall, he described the Tridentine Rite as "Medieval", and complained at the same time that the Roman Canon was "pneumatologically anaemic" ... which (for those of you who prefer to speak English) means that, except at the end, it doesn't mention the Holy Ghost.

That, of course, is because the Roman Canon is still marked by its origins before the fourth century explosion of interest in the Holy Spirit which led, in the East, to the idea that the Transformation of the Eucharistic Elements is caused by the celebrant calling down upon them ("Epiclesis") the Holy Spirit. The Roman Canon, being of earlier origins, operates on the assumption that the Elements are transformed simply through their gracious acceptance by the Father. MF breezily informed us that everybody agrees on the importance of the Epiclesis, so that the classical Roman Rite is gravely defective because it lacks one.

MF, astute bloke, thus contrived to criticise the classical Roman Rite both for being too late ("medieval") and for being too early ("pneumatologically anaemic"), and to do so pretty well in the same breath. (Given this instinct for enthusiastic self-contradiction, it would not be surprising if he feels rather more happily at home in this pontificate than he did in the last.)

What a terrific shame it is that Time Travel is only a literary fiction. Otherwise, we could have shipped MF back to that hillside on which the Man from Nazareth was advising His disciples on how to pray. After hearing the text of the Our Father, MF could have put Him straight on a whole raft of highly important things. "Of course, my dear Fellow, you chaps from Nazareth don't have the advantage of being trained liturgists. If you did, you would have realised that the prayer you have just suggested (of course, it does have one or two good bits in it; not bad; not at all bad for a first attempt) is gravely flawed by its pneumatological anaemia. My fellow Experts and I will draft for you three Alternative Lord's Prayers which will include an essential clause about the Holy Spirit. We will make one of them very brief indeed, so that your followers over the millennia will be saved an awful lot of time ... ".

And the Lord's Prayer to His Father at the Last Supper (John 17) stands very badly in need of the revising pen of Trained Liturgists. How we all wince every time we hear that disgracefully Binitarian formula ("Thou, Father, art [one] in me and I in thee ...")! How much less defective it would have been if it had been revised or, indeed ... far, far better still ... created from scratch by the sanctis et venerabilibus manibus of Archbishop Bugnini himself.

(My Byzantine friends will understand that I am nothing if not deeply respectful of their own beautiful and venerable rite in its own full integrity. I deplore the Byzantinisation of the Roman Rite not one ounce more than I would condemn the Latinisation of the Byzantine Rite.)

That Latin sentence, and why it bores me

The High Altar should be constructed separated from the wall so that there is the possibility for it to be easily walked round and celebration towards the people to be done at it, a thing which is convenient wherever it is possible.

A thing which in the neuter cannot refer in Latin grammar just to celebration towards the people, because celebration is feminine. So it has to refer to whole clauses.


It must refer either to the whole previous bit of the sentence The High Altar ...... at it, or to the ut-clause so that there is the possibility ...... at it.

possibility, not rigid uniformity, is in the mind of the legislator. Otherwise, he is commanding  that the the Altar be walked around ... presumably, so as to be censed ... at every Mass; i.e. he is prohibiting the celebration of Mass without incense. He's not. He's just asking that, where possible, walking round the Altar to cense it should not be excluded. (I believe the 1962 Missal, of which I do not possess a copy, explicitly envisages that a priest celebrating versus apsidem should, where this is possible, walk around the Atar to cense it on all four sides.)

The intention clearly is to ensure that in the construction of new churches, liturgical flexibilty is not impeded by the plan of the sanctuary. This passage is misused if it is treated as legislation with regard to the orientation of the celebrant. Or to a prescriptive and invariable use of incense.

I shall not enable any more comments on this detail to my Auctoritas post.

Because, frankly, I regard all this as totally boring and unfruitful. The whole point of my Auctoritas post was to point out that there are vastly broader and more important questions in play here, and that how we worship is not dependant upon how we might be able to extract obiter implications from a legislative text intended for a quite different purpose. For Vincent Nichols or his advisers to drag this into the discussion demonstrates a very silly petty legalism ... and, incidentally, shows the flimsiness of the basis for the onslaught upon Robert Sarah. If Nichols has any concern for his own reputation, he should withdraw his email and apologise to Sarah and sack his advisers.

"Orientophobia: On Coming Out Of The Liturgical Closet

I commend a splendid article by a splendid young Byzantine Rite scholar, Professor Adam deVille, whom I have had the privilege and pleasure of talking with. It is in the NCR with the above title. (h/t to Professor Tighe.)

Tasters: " ... papal centralisation and personality cult" with regard to which D looks forward to "a necessary welcomed healthful decline back to earth"; "An undisciplined papacy that has done much damage with off-the-cuff comments and other utterances of dubious authority and tortuous prolixity"; "people huddling in the papal petticoats"; "shady operatives ..."

Professor deVille points out the enormously bad impression given to Orthodox and to Eastern Christians generally when badly advised Western prelates do disastrous and silly things like attacking the Ecumenical versus Orientem consensus.

I particularly like the phrase "people huddling in the papal petticoats". I only wish I had thought of it myself. Superb alliteration and assonance, worthy of Virgil and Ovid! Vividly striking imagery! Somebody commented to me only the other day how much broader the Holy Father's skirts had become since my birthday in 2013. The effect of the Santa Marta kitchens? Too much sitting in airliners? Too many cosy and sedentary chats with dodgy sycophants?

Nichols versus Sarah (1)

Versus Orientem or Versus Populum? An important point which I don't think anyone has emphasised, in all the wordage concerning the attack of Vincent Cardinal Nichols upon the Address of Cardinal Sarah, is this:

 Both of these Eminent gentlemen are totally agreed that this is a subject that really matters.

Cardinal Sarah makes this abundantly clear in his text. And he must have thought carefully before speaking in a way which he must have known would create a violent reaction. His act was not legislative. But it was a considered action on the part of the official appointed by the Roman Pontiff himself to have charge of the Roman Rite. It was an act of some considerable personal bravery. (For that reason, it seems to me that clergy should themselves have the courage not to let Robert Sarah down.) And the fact that he mentioned the First Sunday in Advent means that this is not some flaccid and timorous vague aspiration to which we might one day get round in the decade after next. He has called on us to do something concrete on a specific day quite soon.

And Cardinal Nichols is equally convinced that this really matters. He instantly emailed all his clergy. Cardinals do not go on to the public record as rubbishing what a brother cardinal has just said, unless they are feeling quite ... er ... excited. And the facts in the public domain strongly suggest that someone instantly got in touch with Papa Bergoglio, who in turn summoned Cardinal Sarah. And the usual machinery started to work in the Vatican Press Office in order ... as we say in Anglo-English ... to hang Sarah out to dry. Fr Lombardi and ... more especially ... the sinister Fr Rosica manifestly warmed to their unwholesome task. Nichols would not have set all that in motion over some little detail which no sensible person could possibly consider to matter. 


Sarah and Nichols are both 100% right: this does matter. It goes to the heart of the question of what the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass really is. It touches upon that whole raft of practical changes ("Reordering") which were not in any way whatsoever mandated by the Council but which were put into effect by those who subsequently got their hands on to the levers of power. It bears powerfully upon the crucial question of whether the mighty task of the redintegratio of Catholic worship, set in motion by Papa Ratzinger, will continue under Papa Bergoglio's successor.

Even further than that, it encapsulates the fundamental question raised by Benedict XVI, of whether we should see Vatican II in terms of reform within a hermeneutic of continuity, or whether the structural ruptures inflicted on the Church in the 1970s, with such catastrophic effects within the Church over the following four decades, are now to be set in dry, cold, inflexible stone.

We have reached a turning point at which every priest knows that if he heeds Cardinal Sarah's exhortation, he makes it easier for his brother priests also to do the same; and that that if he opts for a quiet life, it will be that bit easier for the Tablet and ACTA to pick off his bolder brother clergy by clamouring for their episcopal persecution. There is no reason why a start cannot be made, after catechesis, by introducing versus Orientem 'provisionally' on alternate Sundays, or even just on the first Sunday of each month. Advent, when priest and people go forward together to meet the Lord who Comes to us, is indeed a highly suitable occasion.

In the Veni Sancte Spiritus we ask God the Holy Spirit to water what is parched, to heal what is wounded, to bend what is rigid, to warm what is cold, to govern that which strays from the way.

But to do these things, the Holy Spirit needs willing human cooperators. The Body of Christ operates on Grace, not on Magic.

When the King shall have his own again ...

For a bit of summer fun, I reproduce this ancient (2009) piece with its original thread. I apologise to friends who dislike it; but my sympathies have been Jacobite for about sixty years now and I feel just that little bit too old to change. I beg them to tolerate it as a Period Piece and me as a poor old has-been.

Well, Oxford has just about reached the end of her academic year. The confident accents of the New England upper classes, so delightfully dominant in the streets of Oxford during Full Term, have given place to the no less inscrutable whimperings of Japanese tourists. In the Old Days, last Saturday was the end of the last of the four terms into which the academic year was divided: commonly called Act Term. The University "Act" was a scurrilous occasion upon which a speaker called Terrae Filius made a satirical attack on pretty well everything. Unfortunately, so edifying a custom could not survive the eighteenth century. It is not simply that such things fell foul of whiggish, Chesterfieldian, standards of propriety; in the aftermath of the Hannoverian Usurpation they were positively dangerous. Oxford had retained her loyalty to her King, and the young men liked nothing better than to drink toasts to the King over the water, duck Hannover Rats in the river, and give noisy manifestations of their political preferences. So, after the failed attempt by James III in 1715 to restore lawful authority, prudence ordained that the University Act had to be neutered. Not that anybody imagined that Oxford had changed her views; the Elector sent a detachment of troops to make their own point, while demonstrating his favour for the junior university, where Whiggery prevailed, by giving it a generous benefaction of books. Oxford wits observed that he had certainly noticed Oxford's lack of 'loyalty' and had equally accurately discerned Cambridge's lack of learning.

I don't suppose there are many around this July to drink loyal toasts or drown Whigs. Certainly not the New Englanders and probably not the Japanese. But today is the Birthday of the Prince who, by the laws of primogeniture would inherit the crowns of Henry IX, and last week was the Anniversary of his Accession de jure to the Thrones of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland; to the Dukedoms of Bavaria, Franconia, and Swabia; and to the County Palatine of the Rhine.

Vivat Rex.

Church and State.

Redeat.

You know it makes sense.

To be read!

(1) I urge readers to peruse the Lake Garda Statement (Rorate).

(2) Father Zed has a very good piece saying most of what needs to be pointed out with regard to Cardinal Nichols' attack on versus Orientem.

(3) Rorate reveals the urgent appeal being made to the College of Cardinals and the Patriarchs of the sui iuris Churches, asking them to beg the Sovereign Pontiff to clarify passages in Amoris laetitia which appear to give countenance to heterodoxies. I cannot suggest that you read it, because, as a necessarily proper courtesy, its text is not being made public before it has been sent to the Cardinals. But it bears the signatures of some very distinguished theologians, and I ask readers to pray, with great earnestness, that this initiative may bring forth rich fruit. I assure you that it is extremely precise and logical, in the best tradition of accurate theological discourse within the Catholic Church, and eschews woffle and rhetoric. (Is that how one spells waffle?)

PROPITIUS; for Latinists

In today's EF Collect, Largire, the term propitius is very oddly placed. It can be forcibly translated as being in its usual function of an adjective in grammatical concord with the Deus or Dominus who is being addressed, and which thus invites an English adverbial rendering; "Mercifully" is the Cranmerian rendering in, ex. gr., the collects for Epiphany and Epiphany III in the Ordinariate Missal. (Interestingly, Cranmer omitted propitius in his rendering of today's collect, which in our rite is attached to the Ninth Sunday after Trinity for reasons which I explained on July 4). But its placing is just plain weird.

Sr Dr Haessly (sub Dominica) remarks that propitius is in an "unusual position", and wonders whether it should be taken with largire spiritum cogitandi or with largire spiritum agendi or as "a common element" with both. Sr Dr Ellebracht, whose promotor ad doctoratum was the well-nigh divine Christine Mohrmann (why do we hear so little from modern liturgists about these great women students of the Classical Roman Rite?) lists (sub voce) the word patterns within which propitius commonly occurs. "This adjective reveals an exceptionally strong tendency to be used in fixed expressions ... Thus we see how rigidly stylised the use of this adjective is. There is remarkably little variety in its employment." Today's Collect does not exhibit any of the four patterns she documents.

When one turns to the Verona Sacramentary (quondam "Leonine"), one finds that the text gives, not propitius, but promptius. 

We instantly perceive the ease with which the m could be replaced with a tilde and thus become lost, leaving an incomprehensible proptius which would invite easy 'correction' to propitius.

The post-Conciliar revisers did not consider this elegant little collect good enough for Sunday use, but allowed it onto a feria.

And they gave the Verona text. In my view, rightly. 

NOTICE

On June 24 I put the following notice on my blog. If you failed to notice it, and sent comments which have not appeared, this is why.

For a fortnight from June 25 until July 9 I shall not be looking at a computer or moderating Comments. If you feel strongly about the posts which I plan to publish daily during this period, send Comments after July 9; but you might find it simplest just to regard this blog as a NO COMMENT BLOG during this fortnight.

The Pontificate of Pius XII (2)

Until 1942, whenever a Holy Pope had to be observed at Mass, the celebrant used one of the two Communia Masses for a Martyr Bishop, or one of the two for a Confessor Bishop; or that for a Doctor of the Church, as might be appropriate. The probability is that most of these texts had themselves evolved in the early centuries of the Roman Rite to be used for Bishops of Rome.

In 1942, Pope Pius XII, or his liturgists, were not so preoccuied with the War that they could find no time to rectify this situation. A new Commune, the Mass Si diligis, was composed to be used on the festivals of Sovereign Pontiffs. The same Mass was used for non-martyrs as for martyrs, except for the addition in the prayers of the words "(and Martyr)". It was, apparently, more significant that a man was a Pope than that he was a martyr. More interestingly still, there could be an implication that a Pope was sacramentally something more than a Bishop: which would contradict the ancient and ecumenical verity that there are but three orders of Sacramental Ministry in Christ's Church: Deacons; Presbyters; and Bishops. As Mascall wisely pointed out "whereas the episcopate is a sacramental function of the Church, which is imparted by the sacramental act of consecration, the Papacy is a juridical and administrative one, which is imparted by the administrative act of election". This unhappy mistake, that the Pope is something other than simply a Bishop (in this case, of the Petrine See of Rome), has raised its silly head during this last year in the idea that, somehow or other, something of the Papacy continued to be present in Benedict XVI after his abdication.

But most interesting of all, in the 1942 Mass Si diligis it was appointed that the Praefatio Apostolorum should be used.

Happily, the doctrinal impropriety of this last detail was understood even within the Pontificate of Pius XII, and the Praefatio Communis was soon substituted. But I find it a significant indication of the spirit of the times that such an indecent provision could have been made at all.

After Trinity, After Pentecost, per Annum: the Collects

There are 25 Sundays between Trinity Sunday and Advent in the ORDINARIATE MISSAL ( O ... reproducing the texts of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which in turn derived them from the Sarum and other North European Uses). In the Tridentine Missal, they are 24. But in T, the first Collect of the series is assigned to Trinity Sunday itself, where it is used as a commemoration at the Mass of the Trinity and then in ferial masses during the week. In O, it is moved to the First Sunday after Trinity, which means that in effect the Trinity itself has an Octave (this disposition continues in CW, Common Worship); presumably, ferial masses in the following week are in white vestments. This also means that T is a Sunday ahead of O. But T also omits one of this ancient series of collects, the formula represented by O Trinity III (here is the original Latin of that prayer: Deprecationem nostram, qs, Dne, benignus exaudi: et quibus supplicandi praestas affectum, tribue defensionis auxilium). Because of this omission, for the rest of the year T is two Sundays ahead of O. (In what follows I shall exclude from consideration the Excita collect of the last Sunday before Advent, which, because of the imposition of Christ the King on this day, has its own problems).

CW restored, after the aberrations of the Alternative Service Book, the enumeration of the Sundays after Trinity (except that it terminates them before Advent so as to have a pre-Advent season concentrating on themes of the Kingdom and, optionally, in red vestments). CW also restores some of the old collects, and even allows them to occupy the same Sundays as in O. These collects are Trinity 1,4,6,7,10,11,12,19,21.

B (Bugnini) used some of the old series of collects; but, because of the invention of a novel 34-week tempus per annum, these survivors are all mixed up and only by very occasional coincidences will they fall upon their old Sundays. The collects thus preserved in B are the collects which, in O, are attached to the following Sundays after Trinity: 1,2,4,5,6,7,8,11,12,13,14,17,20. This is four more than CW. What I find interesting is that the taste of the CW committee and that of the B group did not always coincide. In six cases it did; but CW rather liked three which B despised; B liked seven which did not make the CW cut. (B did also incorporate into its new set a couple of collects which had originally lived After Easter but which were not 'paschal' enough in theme for the B peculiar eccentricity of treating all of the fifty days as the Easter Octave.)

The evidence supports the suspicion that these modern committee, in each communion, although working at around the same time and having many of the same presuppositions, did their picking and choosing and suppressing for the most part on the basis of pure personal whimsy, probably connected with which sides of their beds they had got out of.

Journalists

A friend linked me to an item in the Grauniad ... at which point I should pause to instruct non-British readers that the Guardian, the paper of the English liberal and libertine and laiciste elite, has traditionally been so full of misprints and errors that it is commonly and contemptuously called the Grauniad.

The item in question informed us that in the Catholic Church Deacons can say Mass.

It isn't only the Grauniad which treats 'religious news' with such contempt that they use writers who lack the faintest idea what they are talking about. The practice is common. It makes me reflect "Presumably the people who write on Economics/Politics/Science/Music/Drama/History/Sport in this newspaper are also just as pathetically ignorant about the subjects they handle".

Probably, however, this is not always the case. The phenomenon may rather be the product of a contempt for 'religion' so profound that it seems natural to editors to ask ignorant half-wits to write about it.

It reminds me of an occasion while I was still teaching, when I had a row with some woman who ran the GCSE 'Religious Studies' examination about the content of the papers, the marking schemes, and the conceptual assumptions. She rendered me speechless by saying "I think you have to realise that in pretty well all schools 'Religious Studies' is taught by anybody who happens to have a light timetable".