I have just returned from a fortnight in loveliest Northumberland, and have whizzed through comments ... enabling most.
One detail. A couple of people have assured me that ... for example ... Benedict XVI referred to himself as "I" in Deus Caritas est. But, in the Latin text, he doesn't. He refers to himself as "We". The point of my "We" post was to point out that although popes continue to use the dignified "We"in the normative Latin texts of documents, the English translators of their documents have for some time now been mistranslating "we" as "I". I'm a little puzzled that people misunderstood my original post, because I've looked back at it and found it quite clear. Humbly, most humbly, I beg: please read what I write before commenting; it is rather dismissive for readers to glance quickly through and get a quick general misunderstanding! (The most recent papal documents published a week or two ago modifying Canon Law continue to represent Pope Francis as referring to himself as We.)
A plea for help from a brother priest. He needs the texts of an EF Mass for our Lady of Salette on September 19. If anyone can provide this, could they put it into the thread?
17 September 2015
Idolatry?
Whether to genuflect in an Anglican church where there is the customary white light burning before the Tabernacle? This is not a small problem; I wish to propose a solution, with the help of Mgr Ronald Knox and the Magisterium of the Church.
One is obliged to worship the Lord present in His most blessed Sacrament of the Altar. Not to do so is a grave irreverence. But, (Knox) there is "danger of idolatry. For, if Christ is not present in a particular host, then every gesture of of adoration which you address towards it is, materially, an act of idolatry. (I say materially, because of course it is not a formal sin of idolatry in one who mistakenly supposes Christ to be present)".
What is the current juridical situation for Catholics with regard to Anglican Orders? Addressing the circumstances of the 1890s, Leo XIII declared them absolutely null and void. But the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, reconsidered the question in the 1990s when the former Bishop of London, Graham Leonard, became a Catholic. After examining the considerable documentation regarding the participation of Dutch schismatics with valid Orders in Anglican episcopal Consecrations since the 1930s, the CDF declared that there was "a doubt about the invalidity" of his presbyteral ordination and recommended that Bishop Graham be ordained sub conditione. Which recommendation was ratified by S John Paul II, and is accordingly Magisterial. The same circumstances apply to many if not most male Anglican priests in England.
So there is a real doubt about whether the contents of that Tabernacle are the Lord's Body; and, equally, a doubt about whether they are bread. (In fact, Pope Benedict XIV pointed out that, logically, even in the Catholic Church, there is no total certainty that any particular host is validly consecrated. This is because it is theoretically possible that the celebrant was mad or bad and deliberately witheld his intention validly to consecrate; or that his ordaining bishop somehow failed validly to ordain him; or that the manufacturer accidentally used flour other than wheat flour; or that somebody for some reason has been tinkering ... there is a story from our own period of an officious but uninstructed Catholic Sacristan who thought that he was helping the clergy by keeping the ciboria inside the Tabernacle 'charged' by 'topping them up' regularly with ... unconsecrated hosts!)
Back to Knox. " ... the best you can do is a kind of conditional adoration; you can tell our Lord that you adore Him in all the consecrated Hosts of the world, and here in this host if indeed He is present here. This does not sound much better than the famous prayer 'O God, if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul', but, as I say, it is the best you can do. And that kind of conditional adoration cannot bring with it any danger of idolatry, any more than, e.g., the priest who conditionally administers Extreme Unction when it is uncertain whether life survives is in danger of profaning the Sacrament".
One is obliged to worship the Lord present in His most blessed Sacrament of the Altar. Not to do so is a grave irreverence. But, (Knox) there is "danger of idolatry. For, if Christ is not present in a particular host, then every gesture of of adoration which you address towards it is, materially, an act of idolatry. (I say materially, because of course it is not a formal sin of idolatry in one who mistakenly supposes Christ to be present)".
What is the current juridical situation for Catholics with regard to Anglican Orders? Addressing the circumstances of the 1890s, Leo XIII declared them absolutely null and void. But the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, reconsidered the question in the 1990s when the former Bishop of London, Graham Leonard, became a Catholic. After examining the considerable documentation regarding the participation of Dutch schismatics with valid Orders in Anglican episcopal Consecrations since the 1930s, the CDF declared that there was "a doubt about the invalidity" of his presbyteral ordination and recommended that Bishop Graham be ordained sub conditione. Which recommendation was ratified by S John Paul II, and is accordingly Magisterial. The same circumstances apply to many if not most male Anglican priests in England.
So there is a real doubt about whether the contents of that Tabernacle are the Lord's Body; and, equally, a doubt about whether they are bread. (In fact, Pope Benedict XIV pointed out that, logically, even in the Catholic Church, there is no total certainty that any particular host is validly consecrated. This is because it is theoretically possible that the celebrant was mad or bad and deliberately witheld his intention validly to consecrate; or that his ordaining bishop somehow failed validly to ordain him; or that the manufacturer accidentally used flour other than wheat flour; or that somebody for some reason has been tinkering ... there is a story from our own period of an officious but uninstructed Catholic Sacristan who thought that he was helping the clergy by keeping the ciboria inside the Tabernacle 'charged' by 'topping them up' regularly with ... unconsecrated hosts!)
Back to Knox. " ... the best you can do is a kind of conditional adoration; you can tell our Lord that you adore Him in all the consecrated Hosts of the world, and here in this host if indeed He is present here. This does not sound much better than the famous prayer 'O God, if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul', but, as I say, it is the best you can do. And that kind of conditional adoration cannot bring with it any danger of idolatry, any more than, e.g., the priest who conditionally administers Extreme Unction when it is uncertain whether life survives is in danger of profaning the Sacrament".
16 September 2015
The limits of Papal authority over the Sacraments (2)
Can a Roman Pontiff by an administrative act so override the sacramental structures of the Church as to delegate to a presbyter the right to ordain to Major Orders?
After that admirable Council, Vatican I, which so happily defined (set the limits of) the infallible teaching authority of the Bishop of Rome, the German Episcopate replied to Bismarck's attacks on the Council thus: "The pope cannot be called an absolute monarch, since he is subject to Divine Law and is bound to those things which Christ set in order (disposuit) for His Church. He cannot change the constitution (constitutionem) of the Church which was given to it by its Divine Founder ... the constitution of the Church in all essential matters is founded in the divine arrangement (ordinatione) and is therefore immune from every arbitrary human disposition."
Was this an early example of Liberalism from the German Bishops? Do we have here the meanderings of a ProtoKasper or of an UrMarx? Not so. Blessed Pius IX praised most fulsomely this Germanic declaration as containing "the genuine sense of the definitions of the Vatican Council". (Denzinger 3114 and 3117.) It is this exchange, of course, that Cardinal Ratzinger had in mind when he famously wrote "In fact, the First Vatican Council had in no way defined the pope as an absolute monarch. On the contrary, it presented him as the guarantor of obedience to the revealed Word. The pope's authority is bound to the Tradition of faith ..." Ratzinger was engaged in criticising the gross post-Vatican II notion that "the pope really could do anything".
It is, I think, important to maintain the principle, which theologians before the 1950s found comparatively unproblematic, that a Bishop of Rome can, except when teaching ex cathedra in accordance with the limitations defined in Pastor aeternus of Vatican I, be deemed to act ultra vires. The maxim quoted with approval by Journet from Lennerz, "the Pope has done it therefore the Pope can do it", completely subverts the defined doctrine of Vatican I because, quite simply, it renders the entire definition of infallibility ex cathedra completely unnecessary. If any papal enactment is exempt from the test "Is it ultra vires?", then, indeed (contrary to the teaching of B Pius IX) the Church does have an Absolute Monarch who can change the Divine Constitution of the Church. If a pope can set aside the sacramental ministerial structure of the Church as it emerged from the early days, then he could also remove certain texts from the Canon of Scripture (which was finalised rather later than the sacramental structures of ministerial ordination).
The Church would have an Absolute Monarch.
I am not surprised that the exaggerated notion of papal authority which we surveyed in the first part of this post erupted in the 1950s, during the papacy of Pius XII, the decade before the disorders of the 1960s well described by Joseph Ratzinger.
I share the views of the Pope Emeritus that Vatican I gives no basis for the maximalised idea of papal Magisterium which has now bedevilled the church for more than half a century.
I think that the decrees of Vatican I deserve to be heard, read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested, as our Anglican Patrimony so neatly puts things.
After that admirable Council, Vatican I, which so happily defined (set the limits of) the infallible teaching authority of the Bishop of Rome, the German Episcopate replied to Bismarck's attacks on the Council thus: "The pope cannot be called an absolute monarch, since he is subject to Divine Law and is bound to those things which Christ set in order (disposuit) for His Church. He cannot change the constitution (constitutionem) of the Church which was given to it by its Divine Founder ... the constitution of the Church in all essential matters is founded in the divine arrangement (ordinatione) and is therefore immune from every arbitrary human disposition."
Was this an early example of Liberalism from the German Bishops? Do we have here the meanderings of a ProtoKasper or of an UrMarx? Not so. Blessed Pius IX praised most fulsomely this Germanic declaration as containing "the genuine sense of the definitions of the Vatican Council". (Denzinger 3114 and 3117.) It is this exchange, of course, that Cardinal Ratzinger had in mind when he famously wrote "In fact, the First Vatican Council had in no way defined the pope as an absolute monarch. On the contrary, it presented him as the guarantor of obedience to the revealed Word. The pope's authority is bound to the Tradition of faith ..." Ratzinger was engaged in criticising the gross post-Vatican II notion that "the pope really could do anything".
It is, I think, important to maintain the principle, which theologians before the 1950s found comparatively unproblematic, that a Bishop of Rome can, except when teaching ex cathedra in accordance with the limitations defined in Pastor aeternus of Vatican I, be deemed to act ultra vires. The maxim quoted with approval by Journet from Lennerz, "the Pope has done it therefore the Pope can do it", completely subverts the defined doctrine of Vatican I because, quite simply, it renders the entire definition of infallibility ex cathedra completely unnecessary. If any papal enactment is exempt from the test "Is it ultra vires?", then, indeed (contrary to the teaching of B Pius IX) the Church does have an Absolute Monarch who can change the Divine Constitution of the Church. If a pope can set aside the sacramental ministerial structure of the Church as it emerged from the early days, then he could also remove certain texts from the Canon of Scripture (which was finalised rather later than the sacramental structures of ministerial ordination).
The Church would have an Absolute Monarch.
I am not surprised that the exaggerated notion of papal authority which we surveyed in the first part of this post erupted in the 1950s, during the papacy of Pius XII, the decade before the disorders of the 1960s well described by Joseph Ratzinger.
I share the views of the Pope Emeritus that Vatican I gives no basis for the maximalised idea of papal Magisterium which has now bedevilled the church for more than half a century.
I think that the decrees of Vatican I deserve to be heard, read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested, as our Anglican Patrimony so neatly puts things.
15 September 2015
The limits of Papal authority over the Sacraments (1)
As an ex-sailor, my late father never liked to be out of sight of the sea. So, after the War, he sold a country house and estate he had created in the 'thirties and bought a house with a sea view at Clacton in Essex. For all those human generations before the Victorians invented the concept of the Watering Place, the coastal periphery of Essex had counted as the marshy back of beyond. But the next hamlet along the coast to the South of us had the ruins of a medieval abbey, founded as a shrine of S Osyth, a martyred Saxon princess. In view of the remoteness of this place, the Abbot managed to secure from the Pope a delegation for him to ordain his subjects to the diaconate and the priesthood, although he, the Abbot, was only in presbyteral orders. The bishop of London protested, and the delegation was cancelled within a year or so.
At least four cases of such purported delegation have by now emerged. This in the past caused problems to mainline Catholic theologians. Adolphe Tanquerey (1854-1932) wrote in 1897 "Presbyters cannot, even by delegation from the Sovereign Pontiff, be extraordinary ministers of the episcopate or the presbyterate, as is admitted by all". That doughty opponent of the validity of Anglican Orders, Dr E C Messenger (1888-1951), writing in 1936, described the idea that the Roman Pontiff could delegate such power as "completely opposed to Catholic tradition" and "practically given up now". But by the 1950s the wind was changing. Fr Bernard Leeming in 1956 described this alleged papal power as "now admitted by many theologians", and Fr John Bligh, also in 1956, admitted that "Some theologians have held that in the four ... Papal Bulls the popes were acting ultra vires, so that the ordinations performed by priest-abbots in persuance of them were invalid"; but he himself shied away from this conclusion in view of the fact that Cistercian abbots had ordained their subjects to the Diaconate for centuries. Charles Journet in 1955 quoted with approval the words of Lennerz (1953): "Sovereign Pontiffs have conceded this privilege to simple priests. Thus they can so concede it".
The great Anglican Catholic dogmatic theologian, Fr E L Mascall, (from whom some of the above information is taken) wrote in 1958 that the theologians who upheld the right of popes to delegate ordination to presbyters were in effect maintaining "the power of the Pope to overrule by his administrative authority the sacramental structure of the Church: they are arguing not for presbyterianism but for popery".
To be continued. No comments before I have finished.
At least four cases of such purported delegation have by now emerged. This in the past caused problems to mainline Catholic theologians. Adolphe Tanquerey (1854-1932) wrote in 1897 "Presbyters cannot, even by delegation from the Sovereign Pontiff, be extraordinary ministers of the episcopate or the presbyterate, as is admitted by all". That doughty opponent of the validity of Anglican Orders, Dr E C Messenger (1888-1951), writing in 1936, described the idea that the Roman Pontiff could delegate such power as "completely opposed to Catholic tradition" and "practically given up now". But by the 1950s the wind was changing. Fr Bernard Leeming in 1956 described this alleged papal power as "now admitted by many theologians", and Fr John Bligh, also in 1956, admitted that "Some theologians have held that in the four ... Papal Bulls the popes were acting ultra vires, so that the ordinations performed by priest-abbots in persuance of them were invalid"; but he himself shied away from this conclusion in view of the fact that Cistercian abbots had ordained their subjects to the Diaconate for centuries. Charles Journet in 1955 quoted with approval the words of Lennerz (1953): "Sovereign Pontiffs have conceded this privilege to simple priests. Thus they can so concede it".
The great Anglican Catholic dogmatic theologian, Fr E L Mascall, (from whom some of the above information is taken) wrote in 1958 that the theologians who upheld the right of popes to delegate ordination to presbyters were in effect maintaining "the power of the Pope to overrule by his administrative authority the sacramental structure of the Church: they are arguing not for presbyterianism but for popery".
To be continued. No comments before I have finished.
13 September 2015
We
Time was when the dear old Catholic Truth Society did a nice, uniform series of English translations of Papal Encyclicals. Page 2 always gave the AAS reference and the name of the translator. Fr Winstone ... Canon Smith ... one almost got to know them. At some point, this stopped. Instead, we got the sinister little phrase Translation by the Vatican Polyglot Press.
After a few years of this, a particular and most objectionable mistranslation became standard. The convention by which the Sovereign Pontiff referred to himself as "We" was abandoned; instead, he became "I". I must make clear that this did not represent a change in the Latin originals. In them, the Pontiff remained "Nos".
Does this matter? After all, a chap or chappess nowadays does not commonly call himself or herself "We" unless they happen to be Lady Thatcher. "We" sounds old fashioned. A translation should be in modern English. Yes?
It matters a very great deal. "We" implies that the speaker or writer is not an individual expressing personal views. "We" means that the speaker is, if not a corporate being, then at least a formal being within a formal corporate structure. "We" means that the pope is acting as Pope, as the Bishop of Rome, as the Church's foremost Teacher; the text concerned has, in down-to-earth terms, been across the desks of the relevant Roman Dicasteries and been checked for error; put more formally, it expresses the settled and authentic Magisterium of the Church throughout the ages and of the world-wide Episcopate of the present. It does not come to us as the bright ideas of a clever chap; originality is profoundly less important than freedom from error.
The views of Jorge Bergoglio matter hardly at all. But when Pope Francis teaches formally and is clearly seen to be teaching formally, we all owe his words, at the very least, obsequium religiosum.
I suspect that "We" goes back very far indeed. It is certainly a convention found in the homilies of S Leo and S Gregory. But more: the Bishop of Rome is not the Church's only Teacher; every bishop has a Magisterial charism. And if you look back into the old Pontificals ... for example, at the Rites of Ordination ... you will find that the Pontiff is "We". The Anglican rites of Ordination continued this convention (except, strangely, in the Interrogatio of a consecrandus).
I have recently expressed the view that if a polyglot Roman document fails to make clear which version of it is authentic, it thereby gravely impairs its authority. I also believe that a Papal document in which the Pope is "I" rather than "We" has a considerable Magisterial deficit.
After a few years of this, a particular and most objectionable mistranslation became standard. The convention by which the Sovereign Pontiff referred to himself as "We" was abandoned; instead, he became "I". I must make clear that this did not represent a change in the Latin originals. In them, the Pontiff remained "Nos".
Does this matter? After all, a chap or chappess nowadays does not commonly call himself or herself "We" unless they happen to be Lady Thatcher. "We" sounds old fashioned. A translation should be in modern English. Yes?
It matters a very great deal. "We" implies that the speaker or writer is not an individual expressing personal views. "We" means that the speaker is, if not a corporate being, then at least a formal being within a formal corporate structure. "We" means that the pope is acting as Pope, as the Bishop of Rome, as the Church's foremost Teacher; the text concerned has, in down-to-earth terms, been across the desks of the relevant Roman Dicasteries and been checked for error; put more formally, it expresses the settled and authentic Magisterium of the Church throughout the ages and of the world-wide Episcopate of the present. It does not come to us as the bright ideas of a clever chap; originality is profoundly less important than freedom from error.
The views of Jorge Bergoglio matter hardly at all. But when Pope Francis teaches formally and is clearly seen to be teaching formally, we all owe his words, at the very least, obsequium religiosum.
I suspect that "We" goes back very far indeed. It is certainly a convention found in the homilies of S Leo and S Gregory. But more: the Bishop of Rome is not the Church's only Teacher; every bishop has a Magisterial charism. And if you look back into the old Pontificals ... for example, at the Rites of Ordination ... you will find that the Pontiff is "We". The Anglican rites of Ordination continued this convention (except, strangely, in the Interrogatio of a consecrandus).
I have recently expressed the view that if a polyglot Roman document fails to make clear which version of it is authentic, it thereby gravely impairs its authority. I also believe that a Papal document in which the Pope is "I" rather than "We" has a considerable Magisterial deficit.
11 September 2015
Laudato si in Latin?
The Holy Father's encyclical on the environment is still, apparently, not available in Latin. I think this raises questions.
Sometimes people say that Latin is the Church's 'Official Language'. I do not know of any strict basis for this. The decrees of the first seven Ecumenical Councils are in Greek. I cannot think of a reason why the Byzantine and Semitic churches sui iuris should have imposed on them the notion that their 'official language' is Latin. Canon Law does make quite a thing of the 'freedom' of the Holy Father; and I think it would be hard to deny that he enjoys full and entire freedom to teach authoritatively in any language in which he chooses to declare that he is doing so.
But it is important for it to be understood that a statement in any one language very rarely has the precisely same meaning as its 'translation' in another language. Traduttore traditore. Only at the most elementary level ... and often not even then ... does one word have an equivalent in another language in such a way that each word has precisely identical parameters of meaning and precisely the same culturally-generated shades of emotion, suggestion, and allusion. That is why there needs to be text declared 'authentic', so that it is always possible for a person to look at a translation and say "That does not convey exactly the sense of the original".
Ever since I started this blog, I have repeatedly written about the clear evidence that few people in Rome now have even an elementary competence in Latin. Accordingly, I would regret ... but would understand ... an argument that it is rather silly for a document to be drafted, composed, fine-tuned in a modern vernacular, and then laboriously to be turned into a Latin version, which few comprehend, but which is then declared to be the authentic text.
But there does need to be an authentic text in some language of any document which expects to be taken seriously.
Latin has advantages which are too obvious to be spelt out; or, rather, which have been spelt out by S John XXIII in Veterum Sapientia. But if we set all that aside, there are good grounds for selecting one of those languages which are very widely spoken throughout the world: Spanish or French or English. Italian, frankly, is a beautiful but numerically a second order language and I think it would be highly unfortunate if it became de facto the Church's language of commonest use just because it is the lingua franca in which business is done in Rome. Rome is not the whole Church. The bureaucracy of Rome is not the only audience which is expected to read and to respect Magisterial documents.
A Roman document which is meant to be taken seriously, to have a degree of authority, needs to make clear, authoritatively, which of the linguistic versions in which it is published is the authentic one. Back in the days when the CTS produced its own translations of what had been authoritatively published in Rome in Latin, it included a notification of who was responsible for the English translation. That practice showed a praiseworthy sense of responsibility and of accountability which is lacking under the present system
Failure to make clear what exactly is authoritative and what is not must derogate very profoundly from the authority of the teaching of the Magisterium.
If this matter is, in the great rush to get documents out as fast as possible in half-a-dozen languages, treated as unimportant, the chickens will eventually come home to roost.
Sometimes people say that Latin is the Church's 'Official Language'. I do not know of any strict basis for this. The decrees of the first seven Ecumenical Councils are in Greek. I cannot think of a reason why the Byzantine and Semitic churches sui iuris should have imposed on them the notion that their 'official language' is Latin. Canon Law does make quite a thing of the 'freedom' of the Holy Father; and I think it would be hard to deny that he enjoys full and entire freedom to teach authoritatively in any language in which he chooses to declare that he is doing so.
But it is important for it to be understood that a statement in any one language very rarely has the precisely same meaning as its 'translation' in another language. Traduttore traditore. Only at the most elementary level ... and often not even then ... does one word have an equivalent in another language in such a way that each word has precisely identical parameters of meaning and precisely the same culturally-generated shades of emotion, suggestion, and allusion. That is why there needs to be text declared 'authentic', so that it is always possible for a person to look at a translation and say "That does not convey exactly the sense of the original".
Ever since I started this blog, I have repeatedly written about the clear evidence that few people in Rome now have even an elementary competence in Latin. Accordingly, I would regret ... but would understand ... an argument that it is rather silly for a document to be drafted, composed, fine-tuned in a modern vernacular, and then laboriously to be turned into a Latin version, which few comprehend, but which is then declared to be the authentic text.
But there does need to be an authentic text in some language of any document which expects to be taken seriously.
Latin has advantages which are too obvious to be spelt out; or, rather, which have been spelt out by S John XXIII in Veterum Sapientia. But if we set all that aside, there are good grounds for selecting one of those languages which are very widely spoken throughout the world: Spanish or French or English. Italian, frankly, is a beautiful but numerically a second order language and I think it would be highly unfortunate if it became de facto the Church's language of commonest use just because it is the lingua franca in which business is done in Rome. Rome is not the whole Church. The bureaucracy of Rome is not the only audience which is expected to read and to respect Magisterial documents.
A Roman document which is meant to be taken seriously, to have a degree of authority, needs to make clear, authoritatively, which of the linguistic versions in which it is published is the authentic one. Back in the days when the CTS produced its own translations of what had been authoritatively published in Rome in Latin, it included a notification of who was responsible for the English translation. That practice showed a praiseworthy sense of responsibility and of accountability which is lacking under the present system
Failure to make clear what exactly is authoritative and what is not must derogate very profoundly from the authority of the teaching of the Magisterium.
If this matter is, in the great rush to get documents out as fast as possible in half-a-dozen languages, treated as unimportant, the chickens will eventually come home to roost.
10 September 2015
More Mohrmann (5)
Since I wrote my posts on the great Christine Mohrmann, I have noticed - purely by chance - in Bodley a translation of the Roman Breviary into English (Imprimatur by that strange character Francis Cardinal Spellman 1964) in which the Prayers are translated by Mohrmann. Samples, with Cranmer in italics Latin in bold.
Pentecost 13
Almighty eternal God, grant us an increase of faith hope and charity; and make us love what you command so that we may be made worthy to attain what you promise.
Trinity 14
Almighty and everlasting God, give unto us the increase of faith hope and charity; and that we may obtain that which thou dost promise, make us to love that which thou dost command.
Per annum 30
Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, da nobis fidei spei et caritatis augmentum, et, ut mereamur assequi quod promittis, fac nos amare quod praecipis.
Comments? It seems to me that Cranmer had read Liturgiam authenticam quite carefully.
Pentecost 13
Almighty eternal God, grant us an increase of faith hope and charity; and make us love what you command so that we may be made worthy to attain what you promise.
Trinity 14
Almighty and everlasting God, give unto us the increase of faith hope and charity; and that we may obtain that which thou dost promise, make us to love that which thou dost command.
Per annum 30
Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, da nobis fidei spei et caritatis augmentum, et, ut mereamur assequi quod promittis, fac nos amare quod praecipis.
Comments? It seems to me that Cranmer had read Liturgiam authenticam quite carefully.
9 September 2015
Eat the Fat and Drink the Sweet
The Ember Days of the old (Tridentine and Prayer Book) liturgies began life as pagan Roman Harvest Festivals, celebrating the gathering-in of the corn, the wine, and the oil. The Church of Rome christianised them; pointed out in her lections that the Torah refers to analogous agricultural festivals; and turned them into fasts so as to eliminate the excesses of pagan celebration.
The September Ember season is, in my view, the most fun, because the down-to-earth agricultural liturgical texts have not been overladen with themes of Advent, Lent, or Pentecost, as those of the other three Embertides have been. So let's wallow in the Harvest Festival joy of this week's liturgies, and let's enjoy it all the more by doing it with the Tudor English texts in your English Missal ... go and blow the dust off it! ... Sing we merrily unto God our Strength, make a cheerful noise unto the God of Jacob ... behold, the days come when the plowman shall overcome the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed: and the mountains shall drop sweet wine ... and they shall plant vineyards and drink the wine thereof ... eat the fat and drink the sweet [sounds like a gastronomic reworking of Fr Zed's motto, doesn't it?] ...
But these Ember Days were fast days! Look at the Collects: 'O Lord, who sufferest us to offer unto thee this solemn fast: we beseech thee, that thou wouldest likewise bestow upon us the succour of thy pardon'. And the Gospels are concerned with healings, because healing and exorcism were linked with fasting. The Church became supremely potent to heal and to cast out demons, through her sacred ministers, because she had humbled and purified herself before the Lord with fasting. And at these times the Church besought God to send down the Holy Spirit for the Office and Work of a Priest in the Church of God by the imposition of the Bishop's hands, having prepared herself by communal fasting (cf Acts 13:1-3). S John Paul II used to prepare himself to administer Holy Orders with fasting and discipline.
I wonder if the disappearance of Fasting is one of the reasons why the Devil has so much power over members of the modern Church. And ... by the way ... the disappearance of fasting in the Western Church is not an area in which we can heap all the blame on Paul VI. As so often, it was Pius XII who got there first.
The September Ember season is, in my view, the most fun, because the down-to-earth agricultural liturgical texts have not been overladen with themes of Advent, Lent, or Pentecost, as those of the other three Embertides have been. So let's wallow in the Harvest Festival joy of this week's liturgies, and let's enjoy it all the more by doing it with the Tudor English texts in your English Missal ... go and blow the dust off it! ... Sing we merrily unto God our Strength, make a cheerful noise unto the God of Jacob ... behold, the days come when the plowman shall overcome the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed: and the mountains shall drop sweet wine ... and they shall plant vineyards and drink the wine thereof ... eat the fat and drink the sweet [sounds like a gastronomic reworking of Fr Zed's motto, doesn't it?] ...
But these Ember Days were fast days! Look at the Collects: 'O Lord, who sufferest us to offer unto thee this solemn fast: we beseech thee, that thou wouldest likewise bestow upon us the succour of thy pardon'. And the Gospels are concerned with healings, because healing and exorcism were linked with fasting. The Church became supremely potent to heal and to cast out demons, through her sacred ministers, because she had humbled and purified herself before the Lord with fasting. And at these times the Church besought God to send down the Holy Spirit for the Office and Work of a Priest in the Church of God by the imposition of the Bishop's hands, having prepared herself by communal fasting (cf Acts 13:1-3). S John Paul II used to prepare himself to administer Holy Orders with fasting and discipline.
I wonder if the disappearance of Fasting is one of the reasons why the Devil has so much power over members of the modern Church. And ... by the way ... the disappearance of fasting in the Western Church is not an area in which we can heap all the blame on Paul VI. As so often, it was Pius XII who got there first.
But when are the Ember Days?
WHICH WEEK ARE THE EMBER DAYS?
According to the pre-modern versions of the Roman Rite, and the Book of Common Prayer, the September and December Ember Weeks come respectively after the festivals of the Holy Cross and S Lucy. What a nice easy rule. A child can apply it. So that is where you will find them in the ORDO which I compile, and in the admirable Saint Lawrence Press ORDO.
So why, in ORDOs printed according to the 1962 Roman books (LMS; SSPX), does the September Ember Week, this year, come a week later?
Technically, the reason why the Ember Weeks come where they do is that, in the Breviary, their readings are tied into those of the week after the Third Sunday of September. Before 1962, the "First" Sunday of September might actually be at the end of August. So, this year, August 31 is the official First Sunday of September. But the 1962 revisers changed this so as to be clear-cut and logical ... First Sunday of September for them has to mean literally First Sunday of September. Hence (if you're still interested) the Third Week of September starts September 14 according to the old reckoning, but not until September 21 according to 1962.
As so often happens when people try to tidy things up and to be neat and logical and clever, this decision of 1962 led to the potential dislocation of the Ember Week from its ancient mooring to Holy Cross Day.
IMPLICATIONS OF THIS
Since the 1962 rite lasted in widespread use less than a decade, I find it hard to take it seriously in those matters where it conflicts with what the Latin Church had kept easy and natural for centuries.
Summorum pontificum, I presume, took the 1962 books as normative for ecumenical and practical reasons: because this is what the SSPX had done since Archbishop Lefebvre changed his liturgical policy around 1974.
1962 should be regarded as an interim stop-gap.
Circa-1939ish should be the starting point for a measured, sensible reconstruction of the Vetus Ordo.
According to the pre-modern versions of the Roman Rite, and the Book of Common Prayer, the September and December Ember Weeks come respectively after the festivals of the Holy Cross and S Lucy. What a nice easy rule. A child can apply it. So that is where you will find them in the ORDO which I compile, and in the admirable Saint Lawrence Press ORDO.
So why, in ORDOs printed according to the 1962 Roman books (LMS; SSPX), does the September Ember Week, this year, come a week later?
Technically, the reason why the Ember Weeks come where they do is that, in the Breviary, their readings are tied into those of the week after the Third Sunday of September. Before 1962, the "First" Sunday of September might actually be at the end of August. So, this year, August 31 is the official First Sunday of September. But the 1962 revisers changed this so as to be clear-cut and logical ... First Sunday of September for them has to mean literally First Sunday of September. Hence (if you're still interested) the Third Week of September starts September 14 according to the old reckoning, but not until September 21 according to 1962.
As so often happens when people try to tidy things up and to be neat and logical and clever, this decision of 1962 led to the potential dislocation of the Ember Week from its ancient mooring to Holy Cross Day.
IMPLICATIONS OF THIS
Since the 1962 rite lasted in widespread use less than a decade, I find it hard to take it seriously in those matters where it conflicts with what the Latin Church had kept easy and natural for centuries.
Summorum pontificum, I presume, took the 1962 books as normative for ecumenical and practical reasons: because this is what the SSPX had done since Archbishop Lefebvre changed his liturgical policy around 1974.
1962 should be regarded as an interim stop-gap.
Circa-1939ish should be the starting point for a measured, sensible reconstruction of the Vetus Ordo.
7 September 2015
Was 1963 the last decent vintage?
A kind friend (thank you ... where would the modern English Church, or any of us, be without the blessed, the God-provided Oratorians?) sent me, the Mass Propers authorised in 1963 after the Beatification of Blessed Dominic Barberi.
The first point of interest is that Blessed Dominic was observed upon August 27, the day of his death. After the 'reforms', this observance was otched a day earlier. That happened for two reasons: (1) Somebody, presumably one of Louis Bouyer's "Trio of Maniacs", had had the bright idea of whizzing S Monica onto the day before the Memoria of her son; and (2) It had been decided by somebody, presumably one of Louis Bouyer's "Trio of Maniacs", without any Conciliar mandate, that the immemorial custom of remembering two people on the same day by means of the sensible, practical mechanism of 'commemoration', was to be rigorously forbidden on pain of a thousand deaths.
Of equally considerable interest is the absence of that Political Correctness which was subsequently to require such exaggerated Ecumenical Sensitivity. So, as late as 1963, a Collect could be composed for B Dominic referring to 'errantes' being brought back ino the unity of the Church; and the Postcommunion asked (quoting Blessed John Henry Newman) that the 'errantes' might 'in unum Christi conveniant ovile'. [In the subsequent English versions, the narrow sense of 'errantes' as meaning schismatics - see the Good Friday Prayers - is made broader and vaguer.]
I think the Secret is an alpha composition showing the sort of patterning of words and clauses that nobody would think of in Rome today: Fac, Domine, ut omnes in unitate fidei ea cum caritate pacificas tibi offerant hostias, qua beatus Dominicus Confessor tuus vehementer aestuavit.
Cursus, you ask? Collect: velox and planus; Secret: tardus and trispondaicus; Postcommunion: velox and trispondaicus.
Perhaps the work of the doomed Sacred Congregation of Rites during this brief, interesting period would repay examination.
The first point of interest is that Blessed Dominic was observed upon August 27, the day of his death. After the 'reforms', this observance was otched a day earlier. That happened for two reasons: (1) Somebody, presumably one of Louis Bouyer's "Trio of Maniacs", had had the bright idea of whizzing S Monica onto the day before the Memoria of her son; and (2) It had been decided by somebody, presumably one of Louis Bouyer's "Trio of Maniacs", without any Conciliar mandate, that the immemorial custom of remembering two people on the same day by means of the sensible, practical mechanism of 'commemoration', was to be rigorously forbidden on pain of a thousand deaths.
Of equally considerable interest is the absence of that Political Correctness which was subsequently to require such exaggerated Ecumenical Sensitivity. So, as late as 1963, a Collect could be composed for B Dominic referring to 'errantes' being brought back ino the unity of the Church; and the Postcommunion asked (quoting Blessed John Henry Newman) that the 'errantes' might 'in unum Christi conveniant ovile'. [In the subsequent English versions, the narrow sense of 'errantes' as meaning schismatics - see the Good Friday Prayers - is made broader and vaguer.]
I think the Secret is an alpha composition showing the sort of patterning of words and clauses that nobody would think of in Rome today: Fac, Domine, ut omnes in unitate fidei ea cum caritate pacificas tibi offerant hostias, qua beatus Dominicus Confessor tuus vehementer aestuavit.
Cursus, you ask? Collect: velox and planus; Secret: tardus and trispondaicus; Postcommunion: velox and trispondaicus.
Perhaps the work of the doomed Sacred Congregation of Rites during this brief, interesting period would repay examination.
5 September 2015
£6,000
What a joy it is to receive one of Mr Zealley's* catalogues! I have, in the past, equipped myself with Mgr Knox's Essays in Satire, Pilgrimage to Barsetshire, Signa severa and Let dons delight from this admirable and civilised source. But ... £6,000 ... no; it is not so much the price that is the problem. Rather more the difficulty, how and where would I house 221 gigantic volumes?
£6,000 is the price being asked for Migne, Jacques-Paul (ed) Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina. 221 vols ... yet what a tease this entry is; because it goes on: Ex-English Cathedral library! Which Cathedral library? Catholic or Anglican? And why is it being sold?? What conclusions could one draw from this about the decline in clerical scholarship? Worse: the entry continues: Hardly used!!! The picture this conjures up is so depressing ... if they aren't browsing through Migne ... or at least using him to verify their references ... how on earth do modern clergy spend their time? (I will not enable certain categories of comment claiming to answer this purely rhetorical question.)
Less bulky is another of Mr Zealley's offerings, Nouveau Petit Paroissien, signed twice by Louis Napoleon, Napoleon III. Full fresh maroon suede leather, original brass corners and front clasp. Original white watered silk endpapers, darkened. All edges gilt. VG+ £750. But no. Quid mihi cum Corsica? I might have been tempted to purchase it, however, since I am a man burdened by an incurable life-long heterosexual condition, if the book had been owned and signed by the Empress Eugenie. I wonder how much more the price would have been then?
*www.stphilipsbooks.co.uk
£6,000 is the price being asked for Migne, Jacques-Paul (ed) Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina. 221 vols ... yet what a tease this entry is; because it goes on: Ex-English Cathedral library! Which Cathedral library? Catholic or Anglican? And why is it being sold?? What conclusions could one draw from this about the decline in clerical scholarship? Worse: the entry continues: Hardly used!!! The picture this conjures up is so depressing ... if they aren't browsing through Migne ... or at least using him to verify their references ... how on earth do modern clergy spend their time? (I will not enable certain categories of comment claiming to answer this purely rhetorical question.)
Less bulky is another of Mr Zealley's offerings, Nouveau Petit Paroissien, signed twice by Louis Napoleon, Napoleon III. Full fresh maroon suede leather, original brass corners and front clasp. Original white watered silk endpapers, darkened. All edges gilt. VG+ £750. But no. Quid mihi cum Corsica? I might have been tempted to purchase it, however, since I am a man burdened by an incurable life-long heterosexual condition, if the book had been owned and signed by the Empress Eugenie. I wonder how much more the price would have been then?
*www.stphilipsbooks.co.uk
3 September 2015
Reconciliation
As we pray, especially today, for the bishops, priests, and seminarians of the Society of S Pius X and the laity whom they serve, I am minded to reiterate the point I have tried to emphasise in so many of my previous posts about the relationship between the Society and representatives of the Holy See (31 July was probably my most recent).
It seems to me that the thing on which both 'sides' appear to agree may in fact be the thing about which both 'sides' are most wrong: namely, the great and permanent importance of the Second Vatican Council, which (according to SSPX) needs to be noisily resisted or else (according to CDF) must be explicitly accepted in every detail. That Council clearly manifested itself as a pastoral Council concerned with hodiernum tempus; with Aggiornamento. But, as I have so tediously said so often, the hodiernum tempus of the Sixties is not that of our present decade; our giorno is not theirs. It is easy, with hindsight, to discern ... for example ... the flawed optimism of Gaudium et Spes; to understand that the mark which Stalinist persecution had left upon the Church is reflected in the ill-thought-out preoccupation with religious liberty in Dignitatis humanae. But we have moved on from the 1960s. The World no longer comes to meet us as a friendly potential partner in dialogue. And we have new and terrible problems and enemies of which the Sixties never dreamed.
It is unacceptable for anybody, including members of the Society, to deny, if they do, that Vatican II was an Ecumenical Council (every little bit as much as was the Council of Vienne). As Bishop Tissier's admirable biography demonstrated, Archbishop Lefebvre signed each one of its decrees.
And it is inappropriate for members of Roman dicasteries to demand, if they do, a degree of assent to the Concilar documents which fails to recognise their relativity: id est, that a number of passages are well past their sell-by date (just like the legislation of Lateran IV on repressing Judaism).
And de facto this is recognised on all sides.
Let me give you just one very simple example.
The Council decreed that all Latin Rite clerics must (unless, exceptionally, a priest has an individual dispensation from his Bishop) say their Office in Latin. Who, nowadays, condemns saying the Office in a vernacular (without individual dispensation) as failing to fulfill the Obligation, because it is in flagrant breach of the clearest possible words of an Ecumenical Council? Surely, what all sensible mainstream Bishops and Clergy instinctively feel is:
The Conciliar decree reflects the exact situation of the early 1960s, which was superseded and rendered irrelevant within a decade. A fundamentalist preoccupation with the words of an obsolete text would be an irrelevance (or worse) in the life of the Church of our own day.
It seems to me that the thing on which both 'sides' appear to agree may in fact be the thing about which both 'sides' are most wrong: namely, the great and permanent importance of the Second Vatican Council, which (according to SSPX) needs to be noisily resisted or else (according to CDF) must be explicitly accepted in every detail. That Council clearly manifested itself as a pastoral Council concerned with hodiernum tempus; with Aggiornamento. But, as I have so tediously said so often, the hodiernum tempus of the Sixties is not that of our present decade; our giorno is not theirs. It is easy, with hindsight, to discern ... for example ... the flawed optimism of Gaudium et Spes; to understand that the mark which Stalinist persecution had left upon the Church is reflected in the ill-thought-out preoccupation with religious liberty in Dignitatis humanae. But we have moved on from the 1960s. The World no longer comes to meet us as a friendly potential partner in dialogue. And we have new and terrible problems and enemies of which the Sixties never dreamed.
It is unacceptable for anybody, including members of the Society, to deny, if they do, that Vatican II was an Ecumenical Council (every little bit as much as was the Council of Vienne). As Bishop Tissier's admirable biography demonstrated, Archbishop Lefebvre signed each one of its decrees.
And it is inappropriate for members of Roman dicasteries to demand, if they do, a degree of assent to the Concilar documents which fails to recognise their relativity: id est, that a number of passages are well past their sell-by date (just like the legislation of Lateran IV on repressing Judaism).
And de facto this is recognised on all sides.
Let me give you just one very simple example.
The Council decreed that all Latin Rite clerics must (unless, exceptionally, a priest has an individual dispensation from his Bishop) say their Office in Latin. Who, nowadays, condemns saying the Office in a vernacular (without individual dispensation) as failing to fulfill the Obligation, because it is in flagrant breach of the clearest possible words of an Ecumenical Council? Surely, what all sensible mainstream Bishops and Clergy instinctively feel is:
The Conciliar decree reflects the exact situation of the early 1960s, which was superseded and rendered irrelevant within a decade. A fundamentalist preoccupation with the words of an obsolete text would be an irrelevance (or worse) in the life of the Church of our own day.
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