From time to time I get enquiries (or, worse, rude letters claiming to be from individuals with impressive names like Catholic Mission or Catholic State) about the validity of the Orders of the post-Conciliar Church. I've tended to ignore such questions, because "the post-Vatican II Church" is the One, Holy Catholic Apostolic Church of God, just as much as "the Post-Tridentine Church" was, in full continuity with the Church of all ages. I have no intention of even seeming to accept the possibility of a 'sedevacantist' analysis being worth taking seriously. All such arguments are pure 25-carat nonsense. But, well, if there are real people who are worried by this question and who really want help ... rather than merely to spout some angry certainties which somebody has bamboozled them into believing ... you did ask ...
The preliminary logical question to be put to those who find themselves tempted by Sedevacantism is: "You claim to hold the basic Catholic dogmas that the Church is indefectible; and that the Bishop of Rome holds a unique and God-given place within the life of that Church. How many more decades does the Roman See have to be vacant before these combined doctrines become impossible for sedevacantists to hold?"
And if the post-Vatican II Church is the Catholic Church, and is indefectible, you can't argue that the overwhelming majority of its bishops and priests are not bishops and priests in the sight of God. Or, if you can argue it, you'll have to write a very long and very very clever book to do so.
However, prescinding from those rather obvious ... and, indeed, totally conclusive ... points ... I come now to the substance of the arguments that Ordinations according to the post-Conciliar Pontifical are not valid.
It is suggested that the 'form' used in the post-Vatican II rites for the consecration of a Bishop (which is what I am going to concentrate upon) is insufficiently precise. But any language, and any specialised subform of any language, has its own internal logic. If the Church, in the new rites, in effect says "We decree that the words spiritus principalis or pneuma hegemonikon hereafter and herein are to have the meaning of episkope", then that is the meaning those words do have, even if they didn't have it beforehand. Just as legislatures enacting legislation, or solicitors composing legal agreements, commonly begin by defining terms ("within this Act/Agreement, the term The Society shall be deemed to mean the United Society of Water Diviners and Weak Beer Drinkers of the Parish of Little Snottingham in the Parliamentary Constituency of West Barsetshire").
Such assignment of precision to a potentially vague term is effective for the described purpose.
To be continued for two more sections. I sha'n't enable comments till I've finished.
31 December 2018
Prognostications for 2019
I am sure that my admirable friend and brother priest Fr Zed will have some intelligent forecasts to make. I offer only the following humble and baseless guess:
That the abuse crisis will move even closer to PF himself.
That the abuse crisis will move even closer to PF himself.
30 December 2018
The Priority of Dogma
Ever since I became old enough to understand such things, I have been impressed by the annual Gospel of the main Mass of Christmass Day: the Prologue of S John's Gospel.
The world has largely eliminated the Dogma of the Birth of God as a human being ... I gather that, for some commercial interests, the Octave of Christmass is now renamed 'Boxing Week'.
But even where the Christ has not been entirely removed from the Christmass, the celebration is often reduced to the schmalzy. Mary and Joseph; shepherds and (undoubtedly hygenic) animals ... Don't get me wrong: I'm all for the iconography of the Infancy Narratives. But I like it best when it is expressed on a traditional Byzantine icon, with two words bracketing the head of the Mother: METER and THEOU. My only suggestion would be the wild idea that, in Anglophone countries, icons should be vernacular: MOTHER OF GOD.
And let's flog for all it's worth the beautiful Byzantine theme of the Mother PLATYTERA TOU KOSMOU: Mary's womb is broader, wider than the entire created order (a concept nicely taken up in C S Lewis's The Last Battle and applied to the Stable). The Johannine Prologue expresses the Dogma of the Incarnation, the Fleshing of God. Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb. I am left cold by the assurance that 'Mother and Baby' imagery expresses a more universal, a more than narrowly Christian, object of appeal.
And I rather like the ancient Roman Mass for this Sunday within the Octave of Christmass. Unlike the appeal made today in the Novus Ordo to the Holy Family, with the risks of sentimentality, we have for our Introit that superb passage from the Book of Wisdom While all things were in quiet silence, and night was in the midst of her swift course, thine almighty Word, O Lord, leaped down from heaven out of thy royal throne.
Indeed, I commend the Book of Wisdom to readers. Like modern New York, ancient Alexandria was the largest Jewish city in the world, and the Jewish community there was powerful, wealthy, and powerfully intellectual. This is the city of Philo as well as of Callimachus; it is where the Book of Wisdom was almost certainly written, and in sophisticated Greek. It prepared the way for understanding the Incarnation by exploring complexities hidden within the plainer monotheism of other Judaisms. The rabbinic 'Massoretic Canon', of course, does not contain Wisdom, but we are privileged to be part of a broader expression of our Jewish identity.
On a related subject: enjoy those first three verses of chapter 4 of S Paul's Letter to the Galatians in today's Mass, because they are neatly expurgated from the Novus Ordo. Indeed, the NO efficiently protects its victims from the entire brilliant sweep of S Paul's teaching in Chapter 3 of Galatians, as well as from its continuation in 4:21 ff., which is the Epistle of Laetare Sunday.
So traddy Catholics will be happily returning to the glorious concept of the Heavenly Jerusalem in the middle of Lent. But Bergoglian Catholics, poor nervous and gloomy poppets, will be protected from it, preserved in their safe fluffy twilight of threatened innocence. What a dangerous fellow S Paul was/is!
The world has largely eliminated the Dogma of the Birth of God as a human being ... I gather that, for some commercial interests, the Octave of Christmass is now renamed 'Boxing Week'.
But even where the Christ has not been entirely removed from the Christmass, the celebration is often reduced to the schmalzy. Mary and Joseph; shepherds and (undoubtedly hygenic) animals ... Don't get me wrong: I'm all for the iconography of the Infancy Narratives. But I like it best when it is expressed on a traditional Byzantine icon, with two words bracketing the head of the Mother: METER and THEOU. My only suggestion would be the wild idea that, in Anglophone countries, icons should be vernacular: MOTHER OF GOD.
And let's flog for all it's worth the beautiful Byzantine theme of the Mother PLATYTERA TOU KOSMOU: Mary's womb is broader, wider than the entire created order (a concept nicely taken up in C S Lewis's The Last Battle and applied to the Stable). The Johannine Prologue expresses the Dogma of the Incarnation, the Fleshing of God. Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb. I am left cold by the assurance that 'Mother and Baby' imagery expresses a more universal, a more than narrowly Christian, object of appeal.
And I rather like the ancient Roman Mass for this Sunday within the Octave of Christmass. Unlike the appeal made today in the Novus Ordo to the Holy Family, with the risks of sentimentality, we have for our Introit that superb passage from the Book of Wisdom While all things were in quiet silence, and night was in the midst of her swift course, thine almighty Word, O Lord, leaped down from heaven out of thy royal throne.
Indeed, I commend the Book of Wisdom to readers. Like modern New York, ancient Alexandria was the largest Jewish city in the world, and the Jewish community there was powerful, wealthy, and powerfully intellectual. This is the city of Philo as well as of Callimachus; it is where the Book of Wisdom was almost certainly written, and in sophisticated Greek. It prepared the way for understanding the Incarnation by exploring complexities hidden within the plainer monotheism of other Judaisms. The rabbinic 'Massoretic Canon', of course, does not contain Wisdom, but we are privileged to be part of a broader expression of our Jewish identity.
On a related subject: enjoy those first three verses of chapter 4 of S Paul's Letter to the Galatians in today's Mass, because they are neatly expurgated from the Novus Ordo. Indeed, the NO efficiently protects its victims from the entire brilliant sweep of S Paul's teaching in Chapter 3 of Galatians, as well as from its continuation in 4:21 ff., which is the Epistle of Laetare Sunday.
So traddy Catholics will be happily returning to the glorious concept of the Heavenly Jerusalem in the middle of Lent. But Bergoglian Catholics, poor nervous and gloomy poppets, will be protected from it, preserved in their safe fluffy twilight of threatened innocence. What a dangerous fellow S Paul was/is!
29 December 2018
E Breviario Sarisburiensi lectoribus doctioribus antiphona proponitur
Salve, Thoma, virga iustitiae, mundi iubar, robur Ecclesiae, plebis amor, cleri deliciae. Salve, gregis tutor egregie, salva tuae gaudentes gloriae.
I thought docti lectores would appreciate the very elegant jingles of alliteration and assonance ... not heavy and plodding like Ennius, but quite Neoteric or Virgilian. The word-play 'gregis ... egregie' seems to me to span the chronological and cultural divides between Ovid and the author of the Akathist Hymn.
I thought docti lectores would appreciate the very elegant jingles of alliteration and assonance ... not heavy and plodding like Ennius, but quite Neoteric or Virgilian. The word-play 'gregis ... egregie' seems to me to span the chronological and cultural divides between Ovid and the author of the Akathist Hymn.
28 December 2018
Holocausts and the Holy Innocents
Among the things I noticed when I holidayed annually in Ireland was the sight of people with Down's Syndrome. It is no more remarkable there to see such jumans in the streets than to see, say, a West Indian or someone in a wheel-chair, in Britain. When you get back to Blighty, the streets seem suddenly strange because there aren't any.
Then it dawns on you why there aren't any. Rather as, just after the cattle trucks had rumbled off to the East, it must have been strange ... and then disconcerting and very frightening ... to wander round a German town and miss the Jewish faces. Ugly, isn't it, that the role performed in Nazi Germany by Gestapo or SS is performed in Britain by members of Caring Professions whom we each of us have to visit, especially as we get older, for our aches and infirmities. If anything, ours is a spookier ... well, let's be frank ... an even more evil society ... than Hitler's; one in which the Evil has dug its roots even deeper than it had in his Germany, because it is internalised among more people and more groups and more classes and more structures; and has been so manipulated that, far from being concealed, it is publicly appauded by our Media; and because the killing is, by a Diabolical masterstroke, disguised as Caring and performed by men and women whom we take for granted to be gentle. And yet, throughout my ministry, I've felt that I ought to discipline myself not to mention abortion too often in sermons lest people decide I am fixated on only one thing; or lest, in my own comfortable male and clerical self-righteousness, I traumatise women who've had abortions.
How evil does infect us all.
Even back in the 1970s, not long after the legislation allowing Abortion in Britain, it was, to my certain knowledge, common even for intelligent and articulate middle-class women to be pressurised by their GPs to 'terminate' a fourth or fifth pregnancy.
And now, in a few days, this whole, sick, evil process is about to begin in Ireland. I wonder where in Hell Dante's imagination would situate the Varadkars of our own time.
Spare a prayer for brave young women, in Britain or Ireland or anywhere, who embark upon a willed pregnancy and have to face some 'medical' bully. Spare more prayers for those put under enormous pressure to have 'tests' to see whether their 'foetus' is 'abnormal'. Find some more prayers for those who are assured, by kind and sympathetic people who only want to help them, that it would be wholly irresponsible to encumber the world with a Down's Syndrome human being.
And don't forget, in your prayers, those other victims; the women who have already been deceived and seduced into complicity in the killing of their own children.
27 December 2018
Friday Abstinence
On 16 October 2014, a Spokesperson for the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales announced that the Friday within the Octave of Christmas is never [in England and Wales] a day of Abstinence. (Different rules, of course, exist in different countries.)
That applies to tomorrow.
That applies to tomorrow.
25 December 2018
Appreciation
I have been moved by the number of people who have sent me cards or prezzies and indications of appreciation. It is nice to be told that quite a lot of people find something of use in some of the things I write.
I wish you all every grace and joy in the coming year.
I wish you all every grace and joy in the coming year.
22 December 2018
Bibliophiles' delight
I doubt whether the Omnia opera of PF will be a sell-out for generations to come, but his Christmas addresses to the Curia do deserve immortality. They don't all come up quite to the classical perfection of the address in which he explained to the Curia the 19 sins of which they were collectively guilty ... but this year's masterpiece in which his critics are likened to the late Judas Iscariot comes pretty close.
Deserves to be savoured in full. Don't miss it. A collector's item.
Deserves to be savoured in full. Don't miss it. A collector's item.
"Faithful in all generations"
"A History of Saint Clement Parish, Ottawa, 1968-2018"
This is the (sumptuous) history ... not of a parish church, but of the living group of Catholic human beings which formed in Ottawa after the liturgical deformations of the 1960s, and, despite having moved buildings more than once, is still flourishing more than ever.
SAs you read it, you masy get some surprises. Often, the baddies in accounts of the troubled 1960s and 1970s are gentlemen heavy with the Apostolic Ministry of episkope. I remember, back in the 1990s, talking to some elderly ladies outside the puginesque Catholic Cathedral in Killarney. I received from them graphic descriptions of the days when skip after skip of smashed marble awaited removal outside the Cathedral. Knowing the answer to my question before I asked it, I enquired "Which bishop ...?" Lips were pursed as only elderly Irish women know how to purse them. "Eamon Casey?" I enquired. Heads nodded. I mused on the close (and logical) relationships between sexual incontinence and liturgical vandalism.
So I relished the story in this History of how the members of S Clement Parish rescued, one Easter Monday, the altars of the Convent Chapel where they had previously worshipped, by getting there only hours before Conciliar pickaxes were due to arrive on the Tuesday of the Paschal Octave to "reorder the Chapel".
But in Ottawa, the Archbishops, far from being baddies, were generally supportive of those of their people who desired to retain the older and better ways.
Eventually, however, that enlightened policy was made impossible for the Archbishop by a letter countersigned by none other than the great Bugnini himself. (Has anybody ever written a Gilbert-and-Sullivanesque chorus about that mighty worshipper of the Great Architect of the Universe? I think ... apron and all ... he would rather lend himself to that genre.)
So, for ten years from 1974 to 1984, priests and people at Clement had to manage with the Conciliar Rite, in Latin. "Father Guy Martin did all he could to tailor the Mass as close in appearance to the traditional order as he deemed possible. The high altar was retained, with priest and congregation facing the tabernacle, ad orientem. Father Martin kept the traditional prayers at the foot of the altar to serve as the priestly greeting of the congregation that was required in the Novus Ordo. He also retained the traditional offertory prayers, followed by the Roman Canon. On the other hand, he followed the recent directives calling for three scriptural readings and the dropping of the Last Gospel."
Some interesting discussion-points there. If such an agenda had been followed more widely, is it just possible that the Latin Church might have survuived the 1970s in a less broken state?
Some of the S Clement congregation left, but the greater part of the congregation did stay.
A return to the Mass of Ages was able to happen in 1984 after Quattuor abhinc annos, although with a local directive that the congregation should of course abstain from evangelisation (yes; that was a Gilbert-and-Sullivanesque era!!). In 1994, the parish was fortunate enough to secure the ministry of the FSSP. I was glad to read accounts of the activities of my friend Fr Matthew Goddard, FSSP. His father, Fr David, I knew well when we were neighbours in the Diocese of Chichester. I have recently heard that Fr David has died: cuius animae propitietur Deus.
A recurring and chilling motif in this History is the endless closure of more and more Catholic Churches in Ottawa. I imagine this phenomenon was not confined to Ottawa ... indeed, it is still alive and well today. Remarkably, few people noticed or notice the oddity that the great aggiornamento of the Council was so directly followed by so much utter desolation. Of course, readers will - rightly - remind me that post hoc does not imply propter hoc, but, well, it seems to me that ... er ...
Many readers, both those who were then Roman Catholics and those of us who were still gorging ourselves on the richer grass that seemed to grow the other side of the Tiber, will find old memories awakened by this book. It was a time when so many Churches and Religious Houses were being closed down ... and so many of those that survived were dumping their possessions (often literally) on bonfires ... that the discriminating person with the right antennae could pick up bargains (I acquired for the College Chapel a superb gothic monstrance from a faintly shady character who had half a dozen such vessels up his sleeve). That was true at S Clement, and the History records this in some detail, illustrating it with photographs.
It was, too, an era when clergy whose souls were profoundly marked with the Catholic and Priestly spirit gradually realised that they could not go along with the policy (later revealed by Benedict XVI to have been illegal) of suppressing the Old Mass. But many of them were elderly, and problems arose for laypeople with the awareness that this generation of fine and principled priests would not live for ever; and new clergy were not yet emerging from Econe and elsewhere. I suppose it must have been rather like the period in between the de facto suppression of the Sarum Rite in 1559 by Elizabeth Tudor, 'Bloody Bess', and the time a couple of decades later when the Seminary Priests began to arrive in England.
I commend this account: an elegant and insightful snapshot of the corruptions and discontinuities of the post-Conciliar Period, as they appeared (and were gallantly resisted) in just one place.
https://fraternitypublications.com/product/faithful-in-all-generations/
The list price converts into sterling as £25.
This is the (sumptuous) history ... not of a parish church, but of the living group of Catholic human beings which formed in Ottawa after the liturgical deformations of the 1960s, and, despite having moved buildings more than once, is still flourishing more than ever.
SAs you read it, you masy get some surprises. Often, the baddies in accounts of the troubled 1960s and 1970s are gentlemen heavy with the Apostolic Ministry of episkope. I remember, back in the 1990s, talking to some elderly ladies outside the puginesque Catholic Cathedral in Killarney. I received from them graphic descriptions of the days when skip after skip of smashed marble awaited removal outside the Cathedral. Knowing the answer to my question before I asked it, I enquired "Which bishop ...?" Lips were pursed as only elderly Irish women know how to purse them. "Eamon Casey?" I enquired. Heads nodded. I mused on the close (and logical) relationships between sexual incontinence and liturgical vandalism.
So I relished the story in this History of how the members of S Clement Parish rescued, one Easter Monday, the altars of the Convent Chapel where they had previously worshipped, by getting there only hours before Conciliar pickaxes were due to arrive on the Tuesday of the Paschal Octave to "reorder the Chapel".
But in Ottawa, the Archbishops, far from being baddies, were generally supportive of those of their people who desired to retain the older and better ways.
Eventually, however, that enlightened policy was made impossible for the Archbishop by a letter countersigned by none other than the great Bugnini himself. (Has anybody ever written a Gilbert-and-Sullivanesque chorus about that mighty worshipper of the Great Architect of the Universe? I think ... apron and all ... he would rather lend himself to that genre.)
So, for ten years from 1974 to 1984, priests and people at Clement had to manage with the Conciliar Rite, in Latin. "Father Guy Martin did all he could to tailor the Mass as close in appearance to the traditional order as he deemed possible. The high altar was retained, with priest and congregation facing the tabernacle, ad orientem. Father Martin kept the traditional prayers at the foot of the altar to serve as the priestly greeting of the congregation that was required in the Novus Ordo. He also retained the traditional offertory prayers, followed by the Roman Canon. On the other hand, he followed the recent directives calling for three scriptural readings and the dropping of the Last Gospel."
Some interesting discussion-points there. If such an agenda had been followed more widely, is it just possible that the Latin Church might have survuived the 1970s in a less broken state?
Some of the S Clement congregation left, but the greater part of the congregation did stay.
A return to the Mass of Ages was able to happen in 1984 after Quattuor abhinc annos, although with a local directive that the congregation should of course abstain from evangelisation (yes; that was a Gilbert-and-Sullivanesque era!!). In 1994, the parish was fortunate enough to secure the ministry of the FSSP. I was glad to read accounts of the activities of my friend Fr Matthew Goddard, FSSP. His father, Fr David, I knew well when we were neighbours in the Diocese of Chichester. I have recently heard that Fr David has died: cuius animae propitietur Deus.
A recurring and chilling motif in this History is the endless closure of more and more Catholic Churches in Ottawa. I imagine this phenomenon was not confined to Ottawa ... indeed, it is still alive and well today. Remarkably, few people noticed or notice the oddity that the great aggiornamento of the Council was so directly followed by so much utter desolation. Of course, readers will - rightly - remind me that post hoc does not imply propter hoc, but, well, it seems to me that ... er ...
Many readers, both those who were then Roman Catholics and those of us who were still gorging ourselves on the richer grass that seemed to grow the other side of the Tiber, will find old memories awakened by this book. It was a time when so many Churches and Religious Houses were being closed down ... and so many of those that survived were dumping their possessions (often literally) on bonfires ... that the discriminating person with the right antennae could pick up bargains (I acquired for the College Chapel a superb gothic monstrance from a faintly shady character who had half a dozen such vessels up his sleeve). That was true at S Clement, and the History records this in some detail, illustrating it with photographs.
It was, too, an era when clergy whose souls were profoundly marked with the Catholic and Priestly spirit gradually realised that they could not go along with the policy (later revealed by Benedict XVI to have been illegal) of suppressing the Old Mass. But many of them were elderly, and problems arose for laypeople with the awareness that this generation of fine and principled priests would not live for ever; and new clergy were not yet emerging from Econe and elsewhere. I suppose it must have been rather like the period in between the de facto suppression of the Sarum Rite in 1559 by Elizabeth Tudor, 'Bloody Bess', and the time a couple of decades later when the Seminary Priests began to arrive in England.
I commend this account: an elegant and insightful snapshot of the corruptions and discontinuities of the post-Conciliar Period, as they appeared (and were gallantly resisted) in just one place.
https://fraternitypublications.com/product/faithful-in-all-generations/
The list price converts into sterling as £25.
21 December 2018
The Oxford Olive Harvest
According to Dr G G Willis, of the Anglican Patrimony, the December Ember Days (Wednesday, Friday and Saturday this week) replace the old pagan Roman agricultural festival upon which the olives were harvested.
The oldest texts for these days, in the Verona Sacramentary, probably dating from before Christmass fully established its liturgical dominance, still retain agricultural references; but these were gradually eliminated to make way for Advent themes.
Last spring, I bought a tiny but perfectly formed Olive tree in order further to mediterraneanise my garden. It is flourishing (as indeed is my myrtle, which started life as a seedling in the myrtle groves of Parcnasilla in the Kingdom of the West, aka County Kerry).
So, on Wednesday, Pam and I harvested our two olives. It's the sort of thing Traditionalists do.
I expect someone will tell me from personal experience (I don't trust Wikipedia) how I should process them for consumption. Will they fit in with the venison we've ordered for Christmass?
The oldest texts for these days, in the Verona Sacramentary, probably dating from before Christmass fully established its liturgical dominance, still retain agricultural references; but these were gradually eliminated to make way for Advent themes.
Last spring, I bought a tiny but perfectly formed Olive tree in order further to mediterraneanise my garden. It is flourishing (as indeed is my myrtle, which started life as a seedling in the myrtle groves of Parcnasilla in the Kingdom of the West, aka County Kerry).
So, on Wednesday, Pam and I harvested our two olives. It's the sort of thing Traditionalists do.
I expect someone will tell me from personal experience (I don't trust Wikipedia) how I should process them for consumption. Will they fit in with the venison we've ordered for Christmass?
20 December 2018
China and the SSPX
In view of the apparent agreement between the Vatican and the Chinese government, the way would seem wide open for an arrangement whereby the SSPX would choose its own bishops, Rome retaining only a nominal veto which, out of tact and sensitivity, it would never use ...
... or, alternatively, for the SSPX to choose and consecrate its bishops sine mandato Apostolico, with the Vatican automatically 'reconciling' them immediately afterwards.
Naturally, given the Chinese precedents, Rome would make no objection if some of this new generation of SSPX bishops had wives and children.
I almost feel like offering myself for this ministry, but, at 78, am I too old?
... or, alternatively, for the SSPX to choose and consecrate its bishops sine mandato Apostolico, with the Vatican automatically 'reconciling' them immediately afterwards.
Naturally, given the Chinese precedents, Rome would make no objection if some of this new generation of SSPX bishops had wives and children.
I almost feel like offering myself for this ministry, but, at 78, am I too old?
19 December 2018
Disobedience UPDATED
Gerhard Cardinal Mueller has rightly raised the question of the duties of disobedience in a Church in which orthodoxy is subverted from above.*
The longer the Church is run by PF and/or by Bergoglians, the more acute this problem will become.
In the Church of England, the oath of Canonical Obedience sworn by clergy at their ordination included the limiting phrase " ... in all things lawful and honest ... ".
I presume that such limitation must be implicit in all such oaths.
Perhaps traddy-sympathetic scholars competent in Canon Law should be excavating from canonical sources, and from the judgements of the authentic and classical writers on Moral Theology, a broadly and deeply based praxis concerning this question.
Who knows how long we may be needing it!
*A statement printed on Lifesitenews on Thursday December 11, concluding
"[a priest] is not bound by Divine Law to administer Holy Communion to a non-Catholic, and, in any case, he certainly cannot be bound by any episcopal order - purely according to Church Law - to commit an act which violates the sacramentality of the Church. A bishop who imposes penalties against priests who rightly disobey him in this case thereby abuses his apostolic authority in a grave manner ..."
The longer the Church is run by PF and/or by Bergoglians, the more acute this problem will become.
In the Church of England, the oath of Canonical Obedience sworn by clergy at their ordination included the limiting phrase " ... in all things lawful and honest ... ".
I presume that such limitation must be implicit in all such oaths.
Perhaps traddy-sympathetic scholars competent in Canon Law should be excavating from canonical sources, and from the judgements of the authentic and classical writers on Moral Theology, a broadly and deeply based praxis concerning this question.
Who knows how long we may be needing it!
*A statement printed on Lifesitenews on Thursday December 11, concluding
"[a priest] is not bound by Divine Law to administer Holy Communion to a non-Catholic, and, in any case, he certainly cannot be bound by any episcopal order - purely according to Church Law - to commit an act which violates the sacramentality of the Church. A bishop who imposes penalties against priests who rightly disobey him in this case thereby abuses his apostolic authority in a grave manner ..."
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