Among points which we might expect an Encyclical to expound, there are a number which relate to the causes for which Matrimony was ordained.
(1) It was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name;
(2) It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication, that such persons as have not the the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body.
(3) It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.
(4) It was ordained to join together a man and a woman.
(5) It was ordained to last as long as they both shall live.
These causes are incapable of being varied by Popes, Ecumenical Councils, Synods, Cardinals, Germans, Bishops, priests, Judges, Presidents, or Legislatures, because they are inscribed within the very nature of Man. This needs to be made explicit.
The teachings de Usu Matrimonii of Pius XI and B Paul VI should be repeated, together with appropriate sections from Veritatis Splendor para 80 (which usefully includes Gaudium et Spes para 27).
In order to clarify the finality of the judgements given, it would be edifying if the Encyclical cited the Decree of Vatican I Pastor aeternus (particularly the words Faith and Morals); and included sentences with the verb definimus; and summarised its teaching in pithy little sentences beginning Si quis dixerit or Si quis negaverit, and concluding Anathema sit.
To comfort those to whom there seemed here to be new burdens, it could conclude by defining that the Mother of God is Mediatrix of All Graces (perhaps, in order to mark the ecumenical significance of the proceedings, this last could be done in Greek using the words of the great Hesychast Doctor S Gregory Palamas).
There. I've done all the work myself, really, haven't I? The whole thing could be solemnly promulgated next Easter Sunday, with the entire world-wide episcopate present to affirm (Placetne vobis, Fratres Venerabiles? PLACET! PLACET!! PLACET!!!), sphragizein, and subscribe it. Our beloved Holy Father would go down in the annals of Papal History as one of a very small handful of the most doctrinally significant Roman Pontiffs.
16 November 2014
15 November 2014
An Encyclical? (1)
I have several times recently expressed my view that an essential role of the Roman Pontiff is to guard the truth handed down from the Apostles and to act as a breakwater against innovatory error. Benedict XVI expressed this brilliantly and so did B John Henry Newman. It is the teaching of Vatican I Pastor aeternus.
At a time when some doctrinal errors about matters of Family Morality seem to be spiking the decibels, I presume that our Holy Father must be planning, as a matter of urgency, a major Encyclical in order to correct them. He has certainly not been mute in reaffirming the timeless teaching of the Church, but this is not the sort of thing the Media easily hear and relay ... not least because it does not slot into the rather constraining narrative which they have constructed with regard to this Pope. What is necessary is Magisterium laid on with a sufficiently generous trowel so as actually to get heard. What gardeners and builders among us might think of as an encyclical trowel.
I know Encyclicals take a lot of time because they have to go through the relevant dicasteries. And then get translated into Latin, which not many people in Rome understand nowadays. But I do hope it can be done as soon as possible, and preferably before the next Synod. At the moment, it almost looks as if there is some sort of vacatio legis with regard to important parts of the moral Law. This has all happened before. In April 1967, The Tablet, Le Monde, and The National Catholic Reporter published simultaneously the full texts of documents which were very plausibly taken to indicate the strong likelihood that 'the Pill' would be declared morally unobjectionable, thus bringing Rome more or less into line with the 1930 Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops. In the year before Humanae vitae emerged, this expectation had hardened into rigid assumption. We don't want something like that to happen again, do we? It would be thoroughly scandalous and a most grave abuse of Christ's faithful people.
The persona so skilfully constructed around the present Pope has the potential to be very useful. People are more prepared to listen to him than they have been to any pope for a long time. But that persona can hardly be an end in itself. It can only be coin to be spent rather than hoarded. Francis himself talked about a "two or three year" papacy. Surely the time has just about come, in this next twelve months, to utilise, to call in, the credit accrued by the Bergoglio persona. When Pope Francis finally dishes it out straight and heavy, the journalists ... and the gullible multitudes who swallow what they're told ... won't be able just to say "Well, he would say that, would'n 'e?" This is not a pontiff of whom it will be so easy for crooked journalists to explain that he graduated from the Hitler Youth via the Panzers to the Inquisition. They will doubtless dream up a substitute narrative lie, probably about how a 'good and loving' Pope Francis has been 'bullied' by 'hardliners' in the Vatican (a sort of new "Prisoner of the Vatican" story); but at least the Gospel message will have forced its way out into the open.
When Cardinal Kasper was going around claiming that Pope Francis shared his own rather eccentric views, Cardinal Burke informed the world that "The Pope doesn't have laryngitis; the Pope is not mute". Good!
Plura d.v. sequentur.
At a time when some doctrinal errors about matters of Family Morality seem to be spiking the decibels, I presume that our Holy Father must be planning, as a matter of urgency, a major Encyclical in order to correct them. He has certainly not been mute in reaffirming the timeless teaching of the Church, but this is not the sort of thing the Media easily hear and relay ... not least because it does not slot into the rather constraining narrative which they have constructed with regard to this Pope. What is necessary is Magisterium laid on with a sufficiently generous trowel so as actually to get heard. What gardeners and builders among us might think of as an encyclical trowel.
I know Encyclicals take a lot of time because they have to go through the relevant dicasteries. And then get translated into Latin, which not many people in Rome understand nowadays. But I do hope it can be done as soon as possible, and preferably before the next Synod. At the moment, it almost looks as if there is some sort of vacatio legis with regard to important parts of the moral Law. This has all happened before. In April 1967, The Tablet, Le Monde, and The National Catholic Reporter published simultaneously the full texts of documents which were very plausibly taken to indicate the strong likelihood that 'the Pill' would be declared morally unobjectionable, thus bringing Rome more or less into line with the 1930 Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops. In the year before Humanae vitae emerged, this expectation had hardened into rigid assumption. We don't want something like that to happen again, do we? It would be thoroughly scandalous and a most grave abuse of Christ's faithful people.
The persona so skilfully constructed around the present Pope has the potential to be very useful. People are more prepared to listen to him than they have been to any pope for a long time. But that persona can hardly be an end in itself. It can only be coin to be spent rather than hoarded. Francis himself talked about a "two or three year" papacy. Surely the time has just about come, in this next twelve months, to utilise, to call in, the credit accrued by the Bergoglio persona. When Pope Francis finally dishes it out straight and heavy, the journalists ... and the gullible multitudes who swallow what they're told ... won't be able just to say "Well, he would say that, would'n 'e?" This is not a pontiff of whom it will be so easy for crooked journalists to explain that he graduated from the Hitler Youth via the Panzers to the Inquisition. They will doubtless dream up a substitute narrative lie, probably about how a 'good and loving' Pope Francis has been 'bullied' by 'hardliners' in the Vatican (a sort of new "Prisoner of the Vatican" story); but at least the Gospel message will have forced its way out into the open.
When Cardinal Kasper was going around claiming that Pope Francis shared his own rather eccentric views, Cardinal Burke informed the world that "The Pope doesn't have laryngitis; the Pope is not mute". Good!
Plura d.v. sequentur.
10 November 2014
Papa Lambertini on the Synod (1)
After a visit to my doctor in Beaumont Street ... routine check-up ... and not feeling much like going straight home to where a mountain of proof-reading awaited me, I decided infaustum postponere diem and to visit a couple of friends. Into Ashmole, and to the left: to commune with Menander. His face is exactly at the level of my own, so the communing is quite easy. Then upstairs, and again to the left: to encounter one of the four greatest popes ever: no, not S Leo; not S Pius V; not Benedict XVI, but ... YES! ... you're right: Benedict XIV Lambertini. Rather sensual lips; penetrating blue eyes; a great sense of a dominating intellect. A contemporary bust, almost twitching with the humour for which he was so well liked.
I began: "Sanctissime Pater ... quid tu de Synodo?"
"Numquam ego sic egissem!"
"Of course not, Holy Father ... for yours was a different age!"
"Aetatem dicis! No; that's not the point. There's something you young people have forgotten. Although your Patron S John Henry Newman would have understood ... quid anhelas? .. Ah! Mea culpa! Patefeci fore ut canonizaretur ..."
This excited me. "Domine! When will he be canonized? Please, please, tell me".
"By no means. You would reveal it all on that blog of yours".
His twinkle intensified. I felt that, just for the fun of it, he would tell me, so I persisted. Having extracted from me a perfervid vow of secrecy, he quietly murmured the date into my ear. I shall not, of course, mention it to a living soul. Nor shall I let on that he is to be declared a Doctor of the Church. There are some things one just does not do.
"But what, Holy Father, have I forgotten? And what has Bsaint John Henry got to do with it?"
The sort of impatient look passed over his face that my Mods tutor sometimes displayed when I had forgotten the obvious.
"You seem to have forgotten S John Henry's teaching about Sin. Remember his Certain Difficulties, Lecture 8. ' The Church ... holds that it were better for sun and moon to drop from the heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction goes ...' do you perhaps, miselle, remember ..."
I hastened to complete Newman's ample clauses: "' than that one soul, I will not say should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, though it harmed no one, or steal one poor farthing without excuse' ... but ... quid ibi de Synodo?"
He watched as I stood puzzling; it was indeed far from obvious to me, however much I thought, what this did have to do with the Synod of Bishops. After a few moments, he took pity on me.
"SCANDALUM! Nil unquam, puto, tu tuique de Scandalo didicistis!"
Scandal! "No; I don't think we had a course on that at Allen Hall. But ... ah! we did do it at Staggers! Scandal ... it means providing someone else with an incitement to sin ... yes?"
"Bene! S Stephen's House was indeed ... quondam ... one of the better seminaries. And I recall, carissime, that you do have on your own shelves a treatise on Moral Theology, by a contemporary of my own, a great writer, a great Saint whose Redemptorist Order I myself sanctioned, by whose prayers your splendid friends on Papa Stronsay eventually secured their canonical regularisation ... go and look at S Alphonsi Theologiae Moralis librum secundum in capite 43 et sequentibus capitibus ... and we will talk further about Scandal when you have done so."
So, deftly dodging the Cereals Merchants, I hurried down the Cornmarket ... where one of the buskers was playing the melody from Dad's Army ... and hopped onto a number 35 just by Wren's preposterous ogees above the entrance to Cardinal College.
Plura d.v. sequentur.
I began: "Sanctissime Pater ... quid tu de Synodo?"
"Numquam ego sic egissem!"
"Of course not, Holy Father ... for yours was a different age!"
"Aetatem dicis! No; that's not the point. There's something you young people have forgotten. Although your Patron S John Henry Newman would have understood ... quid anhelas? .. Ah! Mea culpa! Patefeci fore ut canonizaretur ..."
This excited me. "Domine! When will he be canonized? Please, please, tell me".
"By no means. You would reveal it all on that blog of yours".
His twinkle intensified. I felt that, just for the fun of it, he would tell me, so I persisted. Having extracted from me a perfervid vow of secrecy, he quietly murmured the date into my ear. I shall not, of course, mention it to a living soul. Nor shall I let on that he is to be declared a Doctor of the Church. There are some things one just does not do.
"But what, Holy Father, have I forgotten? And what has Bsaint John Henry got to do with it?"
The sort of impatient look passed over his face that my Mods tutor sometimes displayed when I had forgotten the obvious.
"You seem to have forgotten S John Henry's teaching about Sin. Remember his Certain Difficulties, Lecture 8. ' The Church ... holds that it were better for sun and moon to drop from the heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction goes ...' do you perhaps, miselle, remember ..."
I hastened to complete Newman's ample clauses: "' than that one soul, I will not say should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, though it harmed no one, or steal one poor farthing without excuse' ... but ... quid ibi de Synodo?"
He watched as I stood puzzling; it was indeed far from obvious to me, however much I thought, what this did have to do with the Synod of Bishops. After a few moments, he took pity on me.
"SCANDALUM! Nil unquam, puto, tu tuique de Scandalo didicistis!"
Scandal! "No; I don't think we had a course on that at Allen Hall. But ... ah! we did do it at Staggers! Scandal ... it means providing someone else with an incitement to sin ... yes?"
"Bene! S Stephen's House was indeed ... quondam ... one of the better seminaries. And I recall, carissime, that you do have on your own shelves a treatise on Moral Theology, by a contemporary of my own, a great writer, a great Saint whose Redemptorist Order I myself sanctioned, by whose prayers your splendid friends on Papa Stronsay eventually secured their canonical regularisation ... go and look at S Alphonsi Theologiae Moralis librum secundum in capite 43 et sequentibus capitibus ... and we will talk further about Scandal when you have done so."
So, deftly dodging the Cereals Merchants, I hurried down the Cornmarket ... where one of the buskers was playing the melody from Dad's Army ... and hopped onto a number 35 just by Wren's preposterous ogees above the entrance to Cardinal College.
Plura d.v. sequentur.
9 November 2014
More Cardinal Burke
After singing the Remembrance Sunday Requiem last Saturday night at the Ordinariate, the next day, somehow, seemed to me like a day for celebrations! I said Mass for Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, and for his intentions. What is the correct form for drinking his toast? "Il Cardinale Patrono"?
And congratulations to the Knights. I suppose we might now, when speaking of admirably orthodox Fr A, murmur things like "Very, very, Malta". Or, about a distinctly questionable clergyman "You'd never catch him anywhere near Rhodes". Or, about Fr C, who is basically sound but keeps his head below the parapet, " Gozo, my dear chap, definitely Gozo".
Ad multos annos, Eminentissime!
And congratulations to the Knights. I suppose we might now, when speaking of admirably orthodox Fr A, murmur things like "Very, very, Malta". Or, about a distinctly questionable clergyman "You'd never catch him anywhere near Rhodes". Or, about Fr C, who is basically sound but keeps his head below the parapet, " Gozo, my dear chap, definitely Gozo".
Ad multos annos, Eminentissime!
Nova Roma: sunt lacrimae rerum
When S Augustine came to Canterbury, he built a cathedral church In honorem Sancti Salvatoris. In other words, he gave it the same dedication as that of the papal cathedral church in Rome, the Lateran basilica, the Mother Church of the world, the festival of whose dedication we keep today. Later, just as Rome had the basilicas of Ss Peter and Paul, outside the walls because they were built on the sites of the cemeteries where the Apostles were buried (Roman burials were always outside city walls), so Canterbury was to have the great monastery of Ss Peter and Paul (vulgo S Augustine's), outside the city walls, where burials took place. And, to represent Great S Mary's in Rome, to the East of Ss Peter and Paul was the church of our Lady.
Nostalgia, nostalgia. Today's commemoration of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica is marked surely with tears for those of us whose religious formation was as Anglicans. We lament the ruin of the great Ecclesia Anglicana which, from her beginning, was a beacon and monument of Romanitas in these damp and misty islands of the North, at a time when distinctively Roman Christianity had not yet spread much further that Rome herself. As Blessed John Henry put it, Canterbury has gone its way, and York is gone, and Durham is gone, and Winchester is gone. It was sore to part with them. We clung to the vision of past greatness, and would not believe it could come to nought ... but the vivifying principle of truth, the shadow of S Peter, the grace of the Redeemer has left it. That old Church in its day became a corpse (a marvellous change!) and then it did but corrupt the air it once refreshed and cumber the ground which once it beautified.
Romanitas is, of course, still with us today. The Ordinariate is directly under the Bishop of Rome himself; the Ordinary is a Vicar of the Sovereign Pontiff. It is easy to interpret this as an echo, a sign of the Romanitas of Augustinian Canterbury in the centuries of its greatness and of its now departed glory, when the Primate was Legatus natus Sanctae Sedis. Another sentence of Newman's springs to mind: "A pledge to us from Rome of Rome's unwearied love".
Nostalgia, nostalgia. Today's commemoration of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica is marked surely with tears for those of us whose religious formation was as Anglicans. We lament the ruin of the great Ecclesia Anglicana which, from her beginning, was a beacon and monument of Romanitas in these damp and misty islands of the North, at a time when distinctively Roman Christianity had not yet spread much further that Rome herself. As Blessed John Henry put it, Canterbury has gone its way, and York is gone, and Durham is gone, and Winchester is gone. It was sore to part with them. We clung to the vision of past greatness, and would not believe it could come to nought ... but the vivifying principle of truth, the shadow of S Peter, the grace of the Redeemer has left it. That old Church in its day became a corpse (a marvellous change!) and then it did but corrupt the air it once refreshed and cumber the ground which once it beautified.
Romanitas is, of course, still with us today. The Ordinariate is directly under the Bishop of Rome himself; the Ordinary is a Vicar of the Sovereign Pontiff. It is easy to interpret this as an echo, a sign of the Romanitas of Augustinian Canterbury in the centuries of its greatness and of its now departed glory, when the Primate was Legatus natus Sanctae Sedis. Another sentence of Newman's springs to mind: "A pledge to us from Rome of Rome's unwearied love".
8 November 2014
Cardinal Burke
Cardinal Burke's promotion is officially gazetted! Viva!! Viva!! Viva!! Let us hope that we see much more of him; hear him much more! Let there be an end to reticence!
A month ago I published this; which I repeat with its original thread.
Being Patron of the Knights will not be a full-time job. So it will leave Cardinal Burke free to follow a world-wide role in the 'Traditionalist' movement. He will be able to go anywhere in the world by virtue of privileges he enjoys as a Cardinal; local Ordinaries will not be able to sneer at or exclude a pater purpuratus. He will be available, to an even greater extent than at present, to lend grandeur to liturgical events, and erudition to conferences. As he did after the publication of Evangelii gaudium, he will be able to give the Universal Church nuanced judgements upon the magisterial status of papal utterances ... a much needed ministry in this Pontificate, and one for which Raymond Burke is well qualified. With his curial knowledge, he will be on hand to offer guidance and protection to groups, communities, and orders which were experiencing difficulties. Given his expertise in Canon Law, and being no longer silenced by judicial office, he will be there to give legal assistance to groups and individuals being unlawfully persecuted. Might he even become Cardinal Protector of the Ordinariates? Having the court status of a Prince of the Blood Royal, he can never be excluded from being admitted to the presence of the Sovereign Pontiff, either this one or the next one or two or three. To borrow two phrases popularly used of the globe-trotting Cardinal Pacelli in the 1930s, Cardinal Burke will be, for traditional, Wojtilan, Ratzingerian, hermeneutic-of-continuity Catholics, the vice-papa, the Cardinale volante.
It must be that the Holy Father has in mind for the Cardinal just such a role, for which he is so eminently well suited. We should welcome with much enthusiasm this guarantee that the World of Tradition is an important, growing, permanent and influential part of the ecclesial life of the entire Latin Church.
Viva il Papa! Viva il Cardinale!
A month ago I published this; which I repeat with its original thread.
Being Patron of the Knights will not be a full-time job. So it will leave Cardinal Burke free to follow a world-wide role in the 'Traditionalist' movement. He will be able to go anywhere in the world by virtue of privileges he enjoys as a Cardinal; local Ordinaries will not be able to sneer at or exclude a pater purpuratus. He will be available, to an even greater extent than at present, to lend grandeur to liturgical events, and erudition to conferences. As he did after the publication of Evangelii gaudium, he will be able to give the Universal Church nuanced judgements upon the magisterial status of papal utterances ... a much needed ministry in this Pontificate, and one for which Raymond Burke is well qualified. With his curial knowledge, he will be on hand to offer guidance and protection to groups, communities, and orders which were experiencing difficulties. Given his expertise in Canon Law, and being no longer silenced by judicial office, he will be there to give legal assistance to groups and individuals being unlawfully persecuted. Might he even become Cardinal Protector of the Ordinariates? Having the court status of a Prince of the Blood Royal, he can never be excluded from being admitted to the presence of the Sovereign Pontiff, either this one or the next one or two or three. To borrow two phrases popularly used of the globe-trotting Cardinal Pacelli in the 1930s, Cardinal Burke will be, for traditional, Wojtilan, Ratzingerian, hermeneutic-of-continuity Catholics, the vice-papa, the Cardinale volante.
It must be that the Holy Father has in mind for the Cardinal just such a role, for which he is so eminently well suited. We should welcome with much enthusiasm this guarantee that the World of Tradition is an important, growing, permanent and influential part of the ecclesial life of the entire Latin Church.
Viva il Papa! Viva il Cardinale!
Remembrance Sunday
The Requiem Mass for the War dead prays for men and women who, like all of us, stand in need of merciful forgiveness. We plead the sacrifice of Christ, offering His Body and Blood, for them, not as heroes but as sinners. On the other hand, the customary rituals of Cenotaph observance have - surely, even now - a nationalism built into them, while the Mass subverts every nationalism. It was, after all, offered on both sides in the European wars. The great Fr Bernard Walke, who made St Hilary in Cornwall into an Anglo-Catholic village, instituted the service of Benediction during WW1 "as an act of reparation to the Sacred Heart for the wrongs of war, and as a means of uniting ourselves with our enemies in that Sacrament which knows no frontiers". Walke, a papalist, wholeheartedly supported the attitude of Benedict XV to the War and was beaten up in the street for refusing to accept the rhetoric of war-time hysteria. (I wonder if it was a conscious echo of his words about reparation to the Sacred Heart which led the congregation at my old church of S Thomas's to put up a German-carved statue of the Sacred Heart as their War Memorial, beside tablets with the names of the departed inscribed upon them.)
As far as WW2 is concerned, I often think about the contrast between two great fictional products of that war, both written by combatants; both overtly semi-autobiographical. Monsarrat's The Cruel Sea is written by an ideologically and morally rudderless lapsed Marxist; as a memorial to the men who fought the war of the Atlantic convoys. I find it full of venom; venom against adulterous wives back home; against tall blond German submarine captains; against bullying Australians; against the Irish who denied Cork Harbour and Bantry Bay to the Royal Navy. Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy is quite different. At its beginning, Waugh, a traditionalist Catholic burdened with ethical Rights and Wrongs, saw the conflict as a chivalrous crusade on behalf of Christian civilisation against Nazi barbarism and its atheist allies in Moskow. When the war was ending, with Uncle Jo a genial ally and sitting on half of Europe, Waugh had come to perceive it as a sweaty tug of war between two teams of scarcely distinguishable louts. Waugh discerns the ironies and hypocrisies as embodied in the Sword of Stalingrad - a gift from the Christian King of England; a symbol of chivalry to congratulate Marshal Stalin; a triumph of craftsmanship ... and with the symbols on its scabbard upside down. Waugh's hero sees, as Waugh himself had seen, the post-War savaging of Christian Europe in Tito's Jugoslavia.
The Mass is just as subversive of our modern tyrannies as it was of the horrible nationalisms of the twentieth century. It subverts now-fashionable assumptions of roles and genders. As a communal and hierarchical act with a formal and inherited structure, it subverts the cultures of choice, of spontaneity, of individual autonomy, of each man constructing her own identity, everybody manufacturing their own god. As a ritual which looks beyond itself, it subverts the assumptions of human self-sufficiency. And it speaks of Judgement; Judgement passed by a Court of No Appeal far beyond any Court of Human Rights.
Indeed, the rights which the Mass enthrones are the rights of a Creator and the vested interests of a Redeemer.
As far as WW2 is concerned, I often think about the contrast between two great fictional products of that war, both written by combatants; both overtly semi-autobiographical. Monsarrat's The Cruel Sea is written by an ideologically and morally rudderless lapsed Marxist; as a memorial to the men who fought the war of the Atlantic convoys. I find it full of venom; venom against adulterous wives back home; against tall blond German submarine captains; against bullying Australians; against the Irish who denied Cork Harbour and Bantry Bay to the Royal Navy. Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy is quite different. At its beginning, Waugh, a traditionalist Catholic burdened with ethical Rights and Wrongs, saw the conflict as a chivalrous crusade on behalf of Christian civilisation against Nazi barbarism and its atheist allies in Moskow. When the war was ending, with Uncle Jo a genial ally and sitting on half of Europe, Waugh had come to perceive it as a sweaty tug of war between two teams of scarcely distinguishable louts. Waugh discerns the ironies and hypocrisies as embodied in the Sword of Stalingrad - a gift from the Christian King of England; a symbol of chivalry to congratulate Marshal Stalin; a triumph of craftsmanship ... and with the symbols on its scabbard upside down. Waugh's hero sees, as Waugh himself had seen, the post-War savaging of Christian Europe in Tito's Jugoslavia.
The Mass is just as subversive of our modern tyrannies as it was of the horrible nationalisms of the twentieth century. It subverts now-fashionable assumptions of roles and genders. As a communal and hierarchical act with a formal and inherited structure, it subverts the cultures of choice, of spontaneity, of individual autonomy, of each man constructing her own identity, everybody manufacturing their own god. As a ritual which looks beyond itself, it subverts the assumptions of human self-sufficiency. And it speaks of Judgement; Judgement passed by a Court of No Appeal far beyond any Court of Human Rights.
Indeed, the rights which the Mass enthrones are the rights of a Creator and the vested interests of a Redeemer.
Mgr Anthony Ward
I think it is a shame that Anthony Ward has been sacked from the CDW; and it is particularly bad news for those whose liturgical bias is to make the best they can of the Novus Ordo, and who hope to see it evolving on sound lines. He has done a vast amount of scholarly work on the texts of the B Paul VI Missal, and knows which bits are ancient and from the traditio, which bits are novelties, and which bits have been tinkered with, and why. Such men are a lot rarer than they used to be.
Depending on how long this pontificate lasts, I cannot help wondering if Reform of the Reformers might increasingly find themselves in the position of having to acknowledge that the Vetus Ordo is not only the Gold Standard, but is also the only practical way ahead.
The LMS does provide training courses ... one is never too old ...
Depending on how long this pontificate lasts, I cannot help wondering if Reform of the Reformers might increasingly find themselves in the position of having to acknowledge that the Vetus Ordo is not only the Gold Standard, but is also the only practical way ahead.
The LMS does provide training courses ... one is never too old ...
Long time ago
I believe today is the anniversary of the occasion in 1745 when HRH the Prince of Wales, bearing a Commission of Regency, entered the Kingdom of England at the head of his Father's troops.
7 November 2014
Too late!
Damn! I have been reading around the question of the sin of Scandal, and composed a post, which I have on the stocks for polishing. And now that pesky Raymond Burke has snook in ahead of me with the same subject. Why doesn't someone shut him up? It's not the first time he's done this sort of thing to me.
But I will publish my draft anyway, when I'm happy with it.
Another thing in that Burke interview: His Eminence repeatedly and emphatically makes clear what a pope cannot do. Now there I do think that I may have been ahead of him. But, of course, Joseph Ratzinger was ahead of me. And Vatican I was ahead of him.
But I will publish my draft anyway, when I'm happy with it.
Another thing in that Burke interview: His Eminence repeatedly and emphatically makes clear what a pope cannot do. Now there I do think that I may have been ahead of him. But, of course, Joseph Ratzinger was ahead of me. And Vatican I was ahead of him.
ARCIC: two brilliant ideas
I often have brilliant ideas, but, like London buses, two have now come along together.
(1) It is, I think, agreed that the ARCIC Ecumenical process between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, initiated in the 1960s with the intention that it should lead to visible organic unity, has totally, utterly, completely, failed. Cardinal Kasper, not the most extreme and unbending hard-liner in the Vatican, went to see the English Anglican bishops and explained very frankly that, if they went down the path of consecrating Women Bishops, that style of ecumenical relationship would come to an end, because Anglicans would have revealed themselves as intent upon following a Protestant rather than a Catholic model.
WHAT I SAY IS: close down ARCIC and transfer all the Catholic money that will thereby be saved to the Ordinariates, charging US with the task of maintaining good relations with our Anglican friends. We understand them! We know what makes them tick!
Yeah!! You know it makes sense!!
Why waste time and money on more ARCIC? Why deprive Catholic bishops and theologians of the opportunity to spend more time in their dioceses and colleges, which they so long to do? Like Pope Francis, what most Catholics want is fewer 'airport bishops'; fewer 'airport theologians'. We want bishops, religious, and clergy given the opportunity to smell more of their own flocks/communities/students!! We want fewer piles of paper which nobody ever reads from a process that is going nowhere! Save the Rain Forests!
When the Ordinariates take over the Anglican/Catholic relationship, you will see a real sea-change! More incense, less hot air!! Leave the job to us! Give us the tools and we'll finish the job!!!
(2) Alternatively: Anglican /Catholic dialogue has now changed radically; Ecumenism will go on, but, at least in the short and medium terms, it will be about, not the matters that in the 1960s seemed to need to be resolved in order to secure full visible communion, but about the sort of things, relating to the Christian life in a post-Christian society, which could usefully include all Christian bodies in this land. Moreover, the Anglican Communion itself has so radically changed and become more diverse that it now appears to be impossible even to get the world-wide Anglican Episcopate to meet together at Lambeth!! A model of dialogue which implied a certain intra-Anglican homogeneity is no longer sensible.
We should face both these facts.
So: abolish ARCIC and upgrade Churches Together In Britain. Much cheaper and (joking aside ... I concede that my Idea (1) was a trifle droll) more realistic and more of a service to the People of God.
But the Ordinariate should still be given the money saved!
(1) It is, I think, agreed that the ARCIC Ecumenical process between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, initiated in the 1960s with the intention that it should lead to visible organic unity, has totally, utterly, completely, failed. Cardinal Kasper, not the most extreme and unbending hard-liner in the Vatican, went to see the English Anglican bishops and explained very frankly that, if they went down the path of consecrating Women Bishops, that style of ecumenical relationship would come to an end, because Anglicans would have revealed themselves as intent upon following a Protestant rather than a Catholic model.
WHAT I SAY IS: close down ARCIC and transfer all the Catholic money that will thereby be saved to the Ordinariates, charging US with the task of maintaining good relations with our Anglican friends. We understand them! We know what makes them tick!
Yeah!! You know it makes sense!!
Why waste time and money on more ARCIC? Why deprive Catholic bishops and theologians of the opportunity to spend more time in their dioceses and colleges, which they so long to do? Like Pope Francis, what most Catholics want is fewer 'airport bishops'; fewer 'airport theologians'. We want bishops, religious, and clergy given the opportunity to smell more of their own flocks/communities/students!! We want fewer piles of paper which nobody ever reads from a process that is going nowhere! Save the Rain Forests!
When the Ordinariates take over the Anglican/Catholic relationship, you will see a real sea-change! More incense, less hot air!! Leave the job to us! Give us the tools and we'll finish the job!!!
(2) Alternatively: Anglican /Catholic dialogue has now changed radically; Ecumenism will go on, but, at least in the short and medium terms, it will be about, not the matters that in the 1960s seemed to need to be resolved in order to secure full visible communion, but about the sort of things, relating to the Christian life in a post-Christian society, which could usefully include all Christian bodies in this land. Moreover, the Anglican Communion itself has so radically changed and become more diverse that it now appears to be impossible even to get the world-wide Anglican Episcopate to meet together at Lambeth!! A model of dialogue which implied a certain intra-Anglican homogeneity is no longer sensible.
We should face both these facts.
So: abolish ARCIC and upgrade Churches Together In Britain. Much cheaper and (joking aside ... I concede that my Idea (1) was a trifle droll) more realistic and more of a service to the People of God.
But the Ordinariate should still be given the money saved!
6 November 2014
Excommunications all round! Bells, Books, and Candles galore!!!
In the Daily Telegraph of November 4 this year appeared a very jolly story about an Austrian woman who had incurred excommunication for purporting to have been ordained to the Priesthood (God bless her, she has retaliated by now claiming the Episcopate!!). The journalist began his story thus: "Excommunication is traditionally reserved by Catholicism for the very worst of sinners and is a sanction rarely invoked today".
Well, the dear old Torygraph has failed to keep herself up-to-date on that subject. Excommunication is, for some bishops, the Fashionable Fad in today's caring, compassionate Catholic Church of Pope Francis! Excommunication, even, just for going to Church!!! But enough of my vulgar slapstick. Let me get serious and simply remind you that only a few days ago an Italian bishop seemed to suggest, uncanonically, that lay people, even minors, attending SSPX chapels were excommunicated latae sententiae. Now an Argentine bishop, perhaps with a tadge more respect for the CIC, has threatened such "very worst of sinners" with penalties ferendae sententiae.
As a recent 'convert' without much experience of the Catholic Church and with very little theological training or understanding, I have to say that her current practical* ecumenical policy seems to me to be ... er ... magnificently inexplicable. Unity, we all agree, is a Good Thing, but SSPXers (even children!!) are to be threatened with bell, book, and candle. Popes and Bishops are elaborately kind to schismatics who are doctrinally distant from the Church, but they are distantly pedantic (at best) towards the SSPX, which accepts every single dogmatic definition and anathema ever published by a lawful Ecumenical Council or by a Roman Pontiff. The SSPX is required to make the most precise submission to Conciliar and Papal Magisteria, while 'our ecumenical partners in dialogue' are invited to sit down at a table and work out together verbal doctrinal fudges which are then declared to be acceptable by Roman dicasteries (e.g. ARCIC). Have Roman ecumenists ever explained frankly to Orthodox and Anglicans that they also will, ultimately, have to accept every syllable of 'the Conciliar and post-Conciliar Magisterium' before Unity is consummated? If not, why not? I do not mean those as rhetorical questions.
IF Catholic ecumenists cannot even manage a settlement with a group as close to them as is the SSPX, THEN it will be obvious that 'Ecumenism' with communities separated from Rome for centuries by serious formal dogmatic disagreements as well as by deep-rooted cultural rancour, is nothing more than the pursuit of a pie-in-the-sky; a fine-sounding but meaningless Game. Remember the
PARABLE OF THE FINANCIER AND THE TWO BEGGARS.
The Ecumenical Policy* of the Catholic Church is like unto a Financier, who went down the street one morning with his pen, his cheque book, and a 50 pence coin. At the first corner, he met a Beggar who humbly knelt and called out to him "For the love God, guv'ner, give us 50p for a cup of tea". But the Financier passed by on the other side, offering him only some wise advice about how much more profound his self-abasement would need to become. At the next corner he met a Second Beggar, who did not kneel, but greeted the Financier with the easy familiarity of an equal. This man the Financier warmly embraced and kissed, and then gave him a post-dated dud cheque for £2,500,000; which the Beggar received with exclamations of great delight. And the Financier praised the Second Beggar, because he understood the Game.
________________________________________________________________________________
*This article does not question any Magisterial pronouncement, and its author ex animo accepts the teaching of Unitatis Redintegratio, Ut unum sint, Communionis notio, and Dominus Iesus.
Well, the dear old Torygraph has failed to keep herself up-to-date on that subject. Excommunication is, for some bishops, the Fashionable Fad in today's caring, compassionate Catholic Church of Pope Francis! Excommunication, even, just for going to Church!!! But enough of my vulgar slapstick. Let me get serious and simply remind you that only a few days ago an Italian bishop seemed to suggest, uncanonically, that lay people, even minors, attending SSPX chapels were excommunicated latae sententiae. Now an Argentine bishop, perhaps with a tadge more respect for the CIC, has threatened such "very worst of sinners" with penalties ferendae sententiae.
As a recent 'convert' without much experience of the Catholic Church and with very little theological training or understanding, I have to say that her current practical* ecumenical policy seems to me to be ... er ... magnificently inexplicable. Unity, we all agree, is a Good Thing, but SSPXers (even children!!) are to be threatened with bell, book, and candle. Popes and Bishops are elaborately kind to schismatics who are doctrinally distant from the Church, but they are distantly pedantic (at best) towards the SSPX, which accepts every single dogmatic definition and anathema ever published by a lawful Ecumenical Council or by a Roman Pontiff. The SSPX is required to make the most precise submission to Conciliar and Papal Magisteria, while 'our ecumenical partners in dialogue' are invited to sit down at a table and work out together verbal doctrinal fudges which are then declared to be acceptable by Roman dicasteries (e.g. ARCIC). Have Roman ecumenists ever explained frankly to Orthodox and Anglicans that they also will, ultimately, have to accept every syllable of 'the Conciliar and post-Conciliar Magisterium' before Unity is consummated? If not, why not? I do not mean those as rhetorical questions.
IF Catholic ecumenists cannot even manage a settlement with a group as close to them as is the SSPX, THEN it will be obvious that 'Ecumenism' with communities separated from Rome for centuries by serious formal dogmatic disagreements as well as by deep-rooted cultural rancour, is nothing more than the pursuit of a pie-in-the-sky; a fine-sounding but meaningless Game. Remember the
PARABLE OF THE FINANCIER AND THE TWO BEGGARS.
The Ecumenical Policy* of the Catholic Church is like unto a Financier, who went down the street one morning with his pen, his cheque book, and a 50 pence coin. At the first corner, he met a Beggar who humbly knelt and called out to him "For the love God, guv'ner, give us 50p for a cup of tea". But the Financier passed by on the other side, offering him only some wise advice about how much more profound his self-abasement would need to become. At the next corner he met a Second Beggar, who did not kneel, but greeted the Financier with the easy familiarity of an equal. This man the Financier warmly embraced and kissed, and then gave him a post-dated dud cheque for £2,500,000; which the Beggar received with exclamations of great delight. And the Financier praised the Second Beggar, because he understood the Game.
________________________________________________________________________________
*This article does not question any Magisterial pronouncement, and its author ex animo accepts the teaching of Unitatis Redintegratio, Ut unum sint, Communionis notio, and Dominus Iesus.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
