VIVAT REX (1)

Today, a little more on Professor Peter Geach, Balliol College, distinguished Catholic philosopher and husband of the equally distinguished Elizabeth Anscombe (see post of December 21). Readers will recall that 1937 was a time when the Abdication crisis had put the institution of the Monarchy under considerable pressure, and a charismatic and popular 'modern' (i.e. e.g. pro-Nazi) king had been replaced by a younger brother whose startling lack of glamour was exceeded only by the courage and resolution he was to display in the unwanted role of kingship during a difficult war ... a damn' close run thing. But, in 1937, the virtues of 'Stuttering Bertie' still awaited future demonstration.

"Fifty Oxford undergraduates championed a lost cause when, on January 31, they proclaimed Rupprecht, ex-Crown Prince of Bavaria, legitimate heir to the throne of Britain' as descendant of the Stuarts."

The proclamation was read at the Martyr's Memorial. The undergraduates did not even Anglicise the new 'king's' name to the Stuart 'Rupert' - who was a member of St John's College and who led the German forces against Britain on the Western Front. ... The proclamation sneered at the House of Windsor for failing to defend "the dignity of the crown and the liberties of the people". The ceremony lasted but a few minutes. "The undergraduates, wearing in their button-holes the white rose of the 'Legitimist' clique, raised a cheer. Mr Peter Geach, 21-year-old scholar of Balliol College, who made the proclamation ... stressed the 'loyalty' of Balliol. 'There are many in Oxford', he said, 'who would be willing to fight for the Stuarts'. ... He said the Jacobites would take no part in the Coronation celebrations ...".

Another newspaper added the information that "should former Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria become king of England, the only reward Peter Geach plans to ask is 'the right to lead a quiet academic life' ... Geach, who wore his scholar's gown when he made the proclamation, continues to peer through his horn-rimmed spectacles at the Latin and Greek tomes on which he must stand examination [Honour Moderations in Litterae Humaniores, aka 'Mods'] this spring. ... slender for his six foot height, Geach comes from Cardiff, Wales, and is of Cornish descent ..." This account is headed by a photograph of Geach waving his academic cap.
To be continued and concluded tomorrow.

Thank you ...

... to everyone who sdent me Christmas Greetings!

Most of the American cards arrived a few days after Christmas; I blame the Royal Mail! And today, a card to celebrate the Julian Christmas.

God bless all of you; and everybody who reads this blog.

Rowan Williams on "the Celtic Church"

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, who was previously [Anglican] Archbishop of Wales, wrote (2012) about the Celtic Myth in these words:
"A great deal of nonsense has been written about Celtic Christianity, as if this were an intelligible designation for some selfcontained variant of Catholic orthodoxy in the early Middle Ages, a variant more attuned to the sacredness of nature and less obsessed with institutional discipline. Historically, the churches of those regions where Celtic languages were spoken never thought of themselves as part of a network other than that of the Western Catholic Church. They wrote and spoke Latin. They looked to Rome as the focus of their ecclesial life (Welsh kings as well as English spent their final years in Rome) and they accepted the creeds and canons of the Catholic Church. The irony is that Bede's concern to show them as mysteriously and suspiciously 'other' to the Roman norm is one of the the roots of modern mythologies about a Celtic Christianity that is somehow deeper and more spritually comprehensive than the orthodox mainstream.  ... what modern fantasy has turned into a contrast between institutional 'Roman' Christianity and native Wordsworthian innocence and mystical insight ... if Bede finds a genuine nineteenth-century Catholic echo, it is perhaps more obviously in the mature Newman, who both understood the need for universal communion and valued the spiritual legacy of those who, for a variety of good and bad reasons, had stood on or beyond the edges of that communion."

It occurs to me: there is surely a parallel between the invention soon after the year 1700 of the idea of 'Celtic' nations, 'Celtic' religion, 'Celtic' culture, 'Celtic' identity, 'Celtic' solidarity; and the invention of Africa. Just as the Irish and the Cornish in the year 1500 had no inkling ... not the remotest idea!! ... that they were 'Celts', let alone 'fellow Celts', I would wager that the Zulus, the Hottentots, and the Swahili had no awareness that they were 'Africans', sharing a combined mystical destiny. Nkosi Sikelei Afrika is a text set to a stirring and moving melody: but 'Afrika' can in its origins rest only upon a Western imperialist cultural construct. Based, of course, on a Roman imperialist cultural concept!

I wonder if we invented India and China too. And what about Russia? Where would the world without us?

Sunday Mass

For a century and more, life in our society has become more atomised and individualistic. We no longer live in integrated communities in which different people fulfil different and complementary roles for the common good. Millions live in dormitory suburbs, have no common interests with their neighbours, and few common activities. I do.

This has inevitably had an effect upon the liturgical community. Particularly in Northern Europe and particularly among Catholics, the Church has operated an efficient system based upon optimum use of plant and personel. One priest with one Church and a decently sized carpark and faculties to trinate can serve a large area, and do so economically. Rural Anglicanism, on the other hand, often functions with one priest serving six or more congregations the size of which may vary; in Devon I had congregations of ten to twenty five, with just one Church among the six gathering about forty. Anglican and ex-Anglican clergy will recall the the difficulty of persuading people to unite, even just once a month, in a 'United Benefice Service'. In my experience, about 50% of those nominally on the roll never went to Church on those Sundays when 'the Service' was not at 'their' Church.

The Catholic model has a resilience which the Anglican lacks; I have little doubt that, in a generation, Rural Anglicanism will be as dead as Inner City Anglicanism (leaving just Prosperous Suburb Anglicanism). But the Catholic model has weaknesses too. It means that you might well not know the worshippers with whom you so cheerfully 'exchange the peace'. You are an aggregation of individuals (laudably) fulfilling your obligation, but with an enervated sense of coinherence. How alive can the phrase 'The Body of Christ' be in such a context?

The old culture of the community church, the Church of a community which worshipped regularly together, had a beauty as well as a theological strength to it. And one of the things which has weakened it is the Vigil Mass.

Only God knows the tally; how many people the Vigil Mass culture has retained in the practice of the Faith; how many it has lost because of the weakening of communal links. No sane person would want to step back from it, however much we may sense a certain dreariness in the sight of all those people 'getting it out of the way' so that they can be 'free' on Sunday. And, however much we explain to ourselves and to others that the Liturgical Day begins with the Eve, we all sense that Saturday Evening is not ... really ... instinctively ... Sunday. And let us admit it: the Vigil Mass constitutes a surrender to the life-style of the zeitgeist. What father could face explaining to his sons that they cannot take part in the local footie culture which invariably situates its practice sessions ... on Sunday morning?

The experience of a whole community, wearing 'Sunday Best', strolling down in families to their Parish Church as the bells ring on a Sunday morning in which secular pursuits have been set aside has, I am convinced, much more value to it than mere romanticism, or (as you are probably intending to explain to me) nostalgia for an irrecoverable social order.

Is there really no way in which we can move back in the direction of a Sunday Community Mass? Does it still survive anywhere other than in rural Greece?

Cardinal Mueller on Exclusive ideologists

"Some ideological groups present themselves as the exclusive guardians of the only true interpretation of Amoris laetitia. They feel they have the right to condemn all people of another standpoint as stupid, rigid, old-fashioned, Medieval, etc.. ..."

I have a problem with this ... not that I often quarel with his Eminence ... I have always prided myself on being stupid, old-fashioned, and Medieval. Then, this last year, following PF's insistent encouragement, I added to my temperament the additional characteristic of Rigidity.

I'm very happy with this combination of the virtues. Couldn't I hang on to them just until the end of this pontificate?

The Ordinariates, and How To Save The English Church

"Given the kinds of statistics I've outlined - that is, too many churches for the numbers of priests and worshippers we actually have - it's no wonder that many bishops have readily borrowed ordinariate priests for their dioceses. 

"Anglicanorum coetibus was, in this sense, an unexpected windfall of additional clergy. There are, I believe, currently 60 ordinariate priests on loan to the English and Welsh dioceses, with most of these assigned to parishes. I recognise, of course, the benefits and expediency of such arrangements. As it happens, I have been glad of 'borrowed' ordinariate priests in two dioceses I've lived in. Bishops need priests, and priests - and their families - need stipends. Nevertheless, I don't think the current model of plugging gaps in ordinary diocesan provision is, in the long run, a sensible one for either party.

"From my outsider's view - I'm neither a member, nor eligible to become one - the ordinariate offers the Church in England and Wales (Scotland too!) a significant pastoral opportunity: the possibility of a permanent structure, fully part of the wider Catholic community, but with its own distinctive liturgy, spirituality, musical traditions, parish culture and atmosphere. Rather than being simply a one-off fix to bring a wave of former Anglicans into full communion with Rome, it is genuinely sustainable. It is continuing to attract former Anglicans and others (not excluding other Catholics) on its own terms, while at the same time being a community in which children are brought up, who in turn bring up their own children in it.

"Christ's Church has plenty of room in it for such a body, as is again amply proved by the Eastern Catholic churches ... with the ordinariate offering a niche way of 'being Church' that complements, rather than competes with, the default normal parish offering. 

"I've even seen it work - in Texas, of all places. Last year I stood at the back of a packed vigil Mass at Houston's ordinariate Cathedral of our Lady of Walsingham. The next day there would be four further Masses, all using the Divine Worship missal and all similarly well attended. Around a third of those present, I was told, were former Episcopalians and their families, a third were cradle Catholics of various types, and a third were converts from otherChristian denominations, other religions, or no religion at all.  ...

"From where I'm kneeling, we seem to have a God-given cure to many a diocesan bishop's headache. So why are our dioceses not queuing up for the ordinariate to take otherwise under-threat churches  off their hands, and on extremely advantageous terms? This is a genuine question, for I am genuinely puzzled."

This is the end of an article by Professor Stephen Bullivant in the Catholic Herald. (Father Zed reprinted most of the aricle, but only briefly alluded to this final section.)

I have no other status in the Ordinariate than that of an incardinated retired priest. But, entirely as an individual, I agree with every word of this. I would only add something which has come to me as a widely heard rumour, with a number of sources, but for which I cannot vouch. It is that, somewhere in the Church's system, there is blockage point, a spirit of negativity, with regard to the rapid and smooth 'reordination' of former Anglican clergy ... what our jargon calls 'respraying'.

I have no idea why this should be, if indeed it is so. Might it possibly be that some bishops hope their staffing problems will soon be solved by the mass ordinations of married deacons? Or do stretched diocesan finances dictate the closure of churches and the commercial development of their sites? I dunno!

But I am kneeling somewhere very close to Professor Bullivant. If the English Bishops wanted an influx of what he describes elsewhere in his article as "dozens of young and energetic clergy, thoroughly immersed in British culture, and with years (if not decades) of pastoral experience as well", they could have them for the asking.

Mutual Enrichment

Some time ago, following the 1962 rubrics, I discovered that I had three consecutive days saying the Mass of the previous Sunday. I must say that I found this most refreshing. The simple luxury of putting on green vestments and using the marvellous ancient collects and psalmody which come to us from the fifth century and breath the genius of the old Roman Rite; its terse elegance; its austerity; its capacity for patterning an economic number of words with as much expressive skill as a Horace ...

Moreover, with a less cluttered calendar, one got the Sunday Collect over and over again in the Office ... one lived with it ... and I remembered the admirable old Anglican Patrimonial tradition of learning (Cranmer's elegant translations of) these dear early Roman collects week by week; of thus making them part of ones being. Instead of enduring an endless succession of Confessor Bishops who, bully for them, founded religious orders, and whose labours were rewarded with flat, predictable, formulaic collects.

I have no doubt that the EF Calendar is overloaded. Historically, Calendars do get overloaded and the poor things need, every now and again, to be pruned. S Pius V certainly operated on that principle! Even S Anne was mercilessly deleted! But his successors recommenced the overloading of his calendar, and I get tired of reading the (truncated form of) the Parable of the talents at Mass; in the Divine Office, there is the endless saying of the hymn Iste confessor, bringing with it the daily anguish of remembering whether mutatur tertius versus.

In the Novus Ordo, lots of memoriae are optional. We could do with that principle in the Old Rite.

And in the Liturgy of the Hours, on most ordinary memoriae, one has the liberty of saying (for example) the ferial hymns. So one has the advantage, among other things, of using that wonderful old cycle of the Days of Creation at Vespers. That rubrical adjustment would be an enrichment of the old Breviary. (Yes, I know, 99% of clergy who say the LH don't get those hymns anyway because the English translations of LH don't include many translations of Latin hymns. How crafty the Enemy is.)

In theory, I would not object to using some Weekday Eucharistic Lectionary (medieval dialects of the Roman Rite sometimes offered variant Epistles and Gospels midweek). In practice, I would most strongly object, because the most comfortable thing about the Old Rite, especially for the aged, is that we don't have to keep juggling with a multiplicity of complicated and confusing books! Vera simplicitas et simplex Veritas!

The King of Love

"The Son - Jesus, the King of Love - receiving us from the Father, makes us His own by the outpouring of His Blood. He unites us to Himself as His own Bride upon the marriage bed of the Cross, and so leads us back to the Father, as members joined to their Head, and as the Bride who forms one flesh with Him. The royal prerogatives of the Son become the royal prerogatives of His Bride, the Church, and of every soul united to the King of Love in the mystic nuptial graces of Baptism and Holy Communion.

"United in this way to Christ the King, the Church - the Queen who stands at His right side arrayed in garments finely wrought of gold - addresses the Father with a majestic reverence, with a holy boldness, with words and gestures inspired by the Holy Ghost."


Dom Mark Kirby, Prior of Silverstream, is one of those rare guides who has the gift of making what is immeasurably old sound new and fresh.

Query UPDATE

The Breviary readings on December 4 recounted that S Peter Chrysologos preached a very fierce sermon against chaps in masks (personati) who took part in ludi with variis saltationibus on the Kalends of January.

His view was that people who wanted to fool around (iocari) with the Devil were not fit to rejoice with Christ. It reminded me rather of S Damasus' campaign aainst the Lupercalia.

Can anybody supply background to this?

UPDATE: following hints from kind correspondents, whom I thank, I was waiting outside Bodley yesterday morning as the portcullis went up after the midwinter absit doctrina break. 

For any who have any interest, I commend the Ninth Oration of the late pagan Greek rhetorician Libanius, a supporter of Julian the Apostate (332-363). Naturally, he defends the existence of this old pagan celebration ... though how old it can really be in the Greek world (it is commonly remarked that postponing something until the Greek Calends is a bit like PF setting up a Committee, since Greek Calends do not exist)? [I read it in the Teubner Edition, Vol 1 Fasc 2 pp 393-398. I don't know whither the Greekless could turn to find a crib. The Loeb volumes of Libanius do not include this Oration.]

More entertaining is a sermon by S Asterius, bishop of Amaseia, circa 350 to circa 410. [Migne Patrologia Graeca XL 216-226. Migne is on the Internet and includes a Latin crib of every text printed. Although in many cases, including this one, the 'translation' is more of a paraphrase.] S Asterius describes the Kalends of January as the relentless Argyrolatria of the 'Christmas Shopping period' in post-Christian Western 'civilisation'; as the often extortionate and menacing 'trick or treat' period around 'Hallow e'en'; and as a more-than-usually unwholesome 'Gay Pride' celebration: all arranged neatly together in harmonious disorder on the same day.

Perhaps that's why Chrysologus had his doubts about it. 

Enemies ...

Again, a kind friend alerts me to the fact that, apparently, I am being censored from Facebook. Can it really be true that those opposed to the publication of views which they dislike can get away with this sort of thing?

See the comment on "Circumcision".

LAW

Reports indicate that, at the end of last October, an antipodean Cardinal Archbishop [ACA in what follows] ordered his Novus Ordo parishes to omit, on a certain Sunday, the Old Testament Reading and the Epistle and the associated psalmody from the Sunday Mass; to replace the normal proclamation of the Gospel with a reading in the style of the Lectio Divina; and to have that Gospel delivered by a lay person: all of which is contra legem. The ACA justified his order in these words:
"The lectio divina initiative is a way the Archdiocese is responding to the plea of Pope Francis to make the Sacred Scriptures better known and more widely diffused. He has reminded us that we can take creative initiatives in our parishes so that we can become 'living vessels for the transmission of God's Word'".

I am not aware that PF has legislated for what the ACA ordered. I therefore suspect that the ACA is claiming that his own 'initiative' is not precisely what PF has formally mandated, but, as we learned to say in the last century, "in the spirit of" PF. So having lived for half a century under the grim and mendacious "Spirit of the Council", we now, apparently, have got to live with the added encumbrance of the Spirit of PF.

It appears that "creative initiatives" trump Law. I'm rather uncertain how this is a true expression of the words of Sacrosanctum Concilium paragraph 22.

In one contemporary sense, of course, the ACA has a good argument. 'Law' has had a very bad press in this pontificate. It is forced to parade down the lexical catwalk in company with terms like 'rigid' and 'pharisaical' and 'quibbles' and 'clericalism' and 'closed hearts'. All good clean fun and I'm sure PF feels a lot better after getting all that nonsense off his chest. But the truth is that Law functions as a protection against tyranny; a shield against arbitrary rule. Of course bullies know better than the Law; of course tyrants are acting solely in the better interests of their subjects when they themselves break the Law or order that it be disobeyed within their bailiwicks. But if the Law guarantees to Christifideles laici that they are entitled to hear an Old Testament Reading and an Epistle at Novus Ordo Sunday Mass, then the Law is giving the humble occupants of the pews a protection against all and every one of those who know infinitely better than the pewfodder what is good for them, and who are happy to deprive them of their rights and protections.

I doubt whether PF and the ACA and most other prelates are consistent in their antinomianism. I have little doubt that, when it suits them, they are fervent in their enthusiasm for the Law. PF, for example, has not, to my knowledge, suggested to bishops that they need not be rigid or pharisaical about submitting their resignations when they reach the statutory age. There have been examples of bishops, not in the pontifical favour, who have had their resignations accepted with somewhat discourteous rapidity within days of submission. The system currently in place in our poor suffering Latin Church appears to be "I need not obey the Law because I am grand and I know best; but those below me need to submit to it. Indeed, if I tell them to do something contra legem, they even need to submit to that as well".

'Law', in this sense, is simply lawless tyranny, vis sine lege.

Nor do I find attractive the view sometimes put forward that the Roman Pontiff, being the Supreme Lawgiver, is therefore himself above the obligation to obey the Law. Most legal systems do not encourage the idea that legislators are ipso facto themselves exempt from the Law. If one of our Members of Parliament were charged with embezzlement, I doubt if our courts would accept his plea that his status qua legislator exempted him from prosecution. Yet PF invites the cameras of the oikoumene in to film him breaking the Law on Maundy Thursday by washing the feet of those whom the rubrics exclude.

My dear Father, God rest his soul, would have called such conduct 'brazen'. But he did not live to understand the 'Catholic System' as this pontificate presents it. There are times when I wonder if I do. Indeed, whether I even want to understand it.

Circumcision

People sometimes talk about how January 1 has been"changed".

The facts are very simple.

Originally, in the Roman rite, this was the Octave of Christmas. An old Roman (and Byzantine) custom is to surround major festivals with associated celebrations. So the Divine Maternity of our Lady occupied the Octave Day. Look at the Collect and Postcommunion in the ancient rite.

Because the dies octava  of the Nativity is the Day upon which the Incarnate Word was circumcised, that event, as narrated by S Luke, became the the Gospel for the Day, and, as is normal, this Gospel was explained in the readings of the Third Nocturn at Mattins.

Then it became fashionable for the Day to be renamed as "the Circumcision". But when this happened, the texts, for the most part, and in most places, were not changed. Simply the head-title of the Day.

In the twentieth century, the Day was given back its more ancient title. This did not result in any changes in the formulae of the Vetus Ordo, because the texts were already mainly about the Divine Maternity ... as they had been for very many centuries.

(In the late Medieval Church, exemplified by the Anglican tradition, there were a few places where changes were made, to turn this Day thematically into a meditation upon Circumcision.)

So there is no need for traddies to get excited by the thought that the twentieth century "abolished" the "Feast of the Circumcision". Nobody has had anything taken away from them!

But perhaps there might be floating in the air just a weeny hint of embarrassment about the genital particularity of the historical event of the Lord's Circumcision. How to explain it to the Children? Will it bring a blush to the cheeks of Maiden Aunts, assuming that there are any of those left?

I was on the point of calling such prudery "Victorian". Then I remembered that, in Anglicanism, the Day and its prayers and readings fixated on Circumcision right down to the second half of the twentieth century. And I wondered how fair it was to saddle the Victorians (or Maiden Aunts) with accusations of a prudery they showed no signs of having!