1. A SNATCH OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY
When the first wave of Anglican priests was in preparation to be admitted to the presbyterate of the Ordinariate, we all had to go, one by one, to a Church-run centre in Manchester for 'psychometric' evaluation.
During one of my interviews, the clergyman interviewing me asked whether there was any part of the Church's teaching that I had difficulty with. Bishop (now Mgr) Newton had very strongly advised us all to be totally honest, so I said "Well, there is something. I have no trouble accepting it theoretically, but I do have problems internalising it, feeling it. To tell you the truth, I feel a little embarrassed mentioning this ... you know, it's not the sort of thing chaps of my age like talking about ..."
"Out with it", he invited, looking extremely interested, leaning slightly forward in his chair. So I explained.
"Particularly when I'm in a big, bustling crowd, I look at all those faces, all apparently with their own preoccupations, everybody pushing and kicking everybody else, and I get Big Doubts. I wonder if it really can be true that God has an individual and salvific and interlocking purpose for each and every one of them. I know, intellectually, that He does ... but .... well ..... particularly in the middle of the London rush hour ...... just after someone has kicked my shin ......."
"No no no", he replied, perhaps a trifle impatiently. Strangely, all the interest had now faded from his face. "I meant Sex".
2. PRIESTLY FORMATION
During the period when we were being "formed" (surely, a horrid word) at Allen Hall ... where the food was so very, very, good ... we were taught very little about the Bible and the Fathers, but were endlessly drilled on the Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Magisterium. I still have all the voluminous teaching aids which embodied this teaching. They must have cost somebody quite a lot of money. It was apparently highly important for us to accept all those documents. I had no trouble doing so; they expressed what I had believed and taught all my life.
3. ANGLICANORUM COETIBUS
The Apostolic Constitution erecting the Ordinariates made clear that our doctrinal standard was to be the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This was rational, since the CCC summarises the teaching of the Catholic Church. And it was promulgated as being, together with the Code of Canon Law, one of the major fruits of the Council.
4. POPE FRANCIS
But PF has already hinted that he would like to see the teaching in the Catechism regarding Capital Punishment changed. Members of his circle have also alluded to the 'unsatisfactory' teaching expressed concerning 'remarried divorcees' and active genital homosexuality.
5. THE PAST versus THE FUTURE
So, six or seven years ago, we were interrogated, indoctrinated, required to subscribe, the teaching Magisterially given in Conciliar and Papal documents, most particularly and insistently as regarding sexual matters. I entertained more than a mere suspicion at the time that the intention in interviews like one I have narrated above was to 'weed out' applicants who possessed a homosexual orientation. Apparently, there is now a real likelihood of those teachings being radically changed in a new edition of the Catechism. UPDATE: See ONEPETERFIVE January 24 What we were carefully 'formed' to believe and accept would be reversed.
Interestingly, this seems to me to constitute an understanding of "Magisterium" which brings that concept carefully into line with the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's 1984 ... . You will remember that Winston Smith's job is to sit at a desk onto which a machine intermittently disgorges copies of old stories from The Times newspaper which have now become inconvenient to the Party and which Winston is employed to "correct". When he has manufactured a 'correction' (which means, a falsification), he files it away so that henceforth that is what will be on record as the 'truth', while the earlier newspaper report is immediately burned so that no evidence of its 'error' will survive.
Not long ago, some individual called Scicluna told us that it is the present pope whom we should obey, "not the last pope, not the pope before that". 1984 redivivus! I wonder what that dear old principled Old Etonian 'Tory-anarchist' and Anglican atheist George Orwell aka Eric Blair would have said if he could have known that his dystopian fantasy would be so ruthlessly plagiarised (without acknowledgement) by a Catholic Archbishop of Malta.
Hot off the Press, on the Rorate site, we are given another superb example of Orwellianism: the Calendar of the Franciscans of the Immaculate writes out of history the Founders of that mercilessly persecuted Order, who are now Unpersons. Might Big Brother be involved?
If that is the sort of 'Magisterium' which PF's corrupt, and sycophantic entourage is determined to impose, there is little I can do to stop them, except praying ... and writing this sort of thing. Were these people to succeed in their evil endeavours, I would have to consider very carefully whether I should repudiate formally the mangled form in which the Catechism would be left.
FINALLY, a practical suggestion. PF is very enthusiastic about Oriental Patriarchs. He likes to hug them, be blessed by them, to meet them in Cuba ... I am sure he would like to turn any important change, such as alterations to the Church's teaching on genitally expressed homosexuality, into an ecumenical, a collegial affair.
There is a very articulate Russian Metropolitan called Hilarion. He is 'foreign minister' of the Moskow Patriarchate. He is an Oxford Man, having done his Doctorate in this University. He is very articulate.
He is just the person to be involved in such an enterprise. After all, it is a basic principle of Ecumenism that neither 'partner' should make changes which would widen already existing gaps between the Churches. His Excellency Metropolitan Hilarion could give the Holy See helpful and informed advice on all this lovely stuff. I think he should be closely involved in the backrooms conversations now, apparently, going on.
29 January 2018
Terminology
Bishop Peter Broadbent, who is keeping Richard Chartres' London cathedra warm until Mrs Wozname can settle herself down upon it, is getting some criticism; apparently he defined the term 'High Church' as meaning "Faffy ceremonial".
Broadbent is absolutely accurate in his description of how words were used when I was in the C of E. Unless there has been a big shift in terminology, he is 100% right, and his critics do not know what they are talking about.
'High Church' originally referred to the the 'high and dry' churchmen before the Oxford Movement, who believed in Anglican Privilege and in putting down all dissent, be it Protestant or Papist. But it lost that sense well before my time, and had come to refer to people who like some ceremonial. A bishop I was matey with at Lancing, Christopher Luxmoore, used to say that the difference between High Church and Catholics was that the latter went to Confession, the former didn't. That is perceptive. Basically, 'Catholic' points to doctrinal content; to a worked out system of belief and practice which invites assent.
It is true that some Anglican laity who weren't much into the finer distinctions used 'High Church' to mean any church where there was a whiff of incense; a server or two or three. I remember, as a tiny boy at Clacton in Essex, walking into S James's Church on Sunday morning with my parents and nearly being pushed aside by a couple of old ladies, apparently visitors, who were precipitously exiting. The smaller of them was wondering why the larger was dragging her out; the latter was explaining "It's High Church so it'll only be the Communion". This sort of lay person would have been unaware of any sort of distinction between an Anglo-papalist church where the Tridentine Rite was celebrated, and a Percy Dearmer Temple of Libreralism with 'English' ritual. I think it was the diverting Fr Hugh Ross Williamson who first defined 'High Church' as "Protestants in chasubles".
In one of the churches I served as a curate in the 1960s, I was deemed to be High Church because I wore 'preaching bands', which at that time were commonly more associated with Low Church (nowadays the Low Church fad is to eschew any sort of vesture). That is to say, the term sometimes means little more than "I'm not used to that".
Fair enough. It is not my purpose to sneer at good plain people. But some of those attacking Bishop Peter are clergy, indeed, bishops. And they are 100% wrong.
Broadbent is absolutely accurate in his description of how words were used when I was in the C of E. Unless there has been a big shift in terminology, he is 100% right, and his critics do not know what they are talking about.
'High Church' originally referred to the the 'high and dry' churchmen before the Oxford Movement, who believed in Anglican Privilege and in putting down all dissent, be it Protestant or Papist. But it lost that sense well before my time, and had come to refer to people who like some ceremonial. A bishop I was matey with at Lancing, Christopher Luxmoore, used to say that the difference between High Church and Catholics was that the latter went to Confession, the former didn't. That is perceptive. Basically, 'Catholic' points to doctrinal content; to a worked out system of belief and practice which invites assent.
It is true that some Anglican laity who weren't much into the finer distinctions used 'High Church' to mean any church where there was a whiff of incense; a server or two or three. I remember, as a tiny boy at Clacton in Essex, walking into S James's Church on Sunday morning with my parents and nearly being pushed aside by a couple of old ladies, apparently visitors, who were precipitously exiting. The smaller of them was wondering why the larger was dragging her out; the latter was explaining "It's High Church so it'll only be the Communion". This sort of lay person would have been unaware of any sort of distinction between an Anglo-papalist church where the Tridentine Rite was celebrated, and a Percy Dearmer Temple of Libreralism with 'English' ritual. I think it was the diverting Fr Hugh Ross Williamson who first defined 'High Church' as "Protestants in chasubles".
In one of the churches I served as a curate in the 1960s, I was deemed to be High Church because I wore 'preaching bands', which at that time were commonly more associated with Low Church (nowadays the Low Church fad is to eschew any sort of vesture). That is to say, the term sometimes means little more than "I'm not used to that".
Fair enough. It is not my purpose to sneer at good plain people. But some of those attacking Bishop Peter are clergy, indeed, bishops. And they are 100% wrong.
28 January 2018
C S Lewis and Amoris Laetitia and the smoke of Satan
Amoris laetitia: "A subject may ... be in a concrete situation which does not allow him or her to act differently and decide otherwise without further sin." The Filial Correction accordingly condemned the proposition that a person may, while he obeys a divine prohibition, sin against God by that very act of obedience.
In the second volume of his 'theological' Space Trilogy (Chapter 9), C S Lewis portrays one of the Enemy attempting to persuade the future Matriarch of another the planet, a prelapsarian Eve, to break the one commandment God has given her which is commanded solely in order to create a space in which obedience can be practised for the sake of obedience without having any utilitarian advantage. Other commandments, such as Not Killing, may need little justifying because they give us all security; so God has given that planet one commandment which has as its only purpose the making of an act of obedience.
'Satan', on Lewis's fictional planet, attempts to persuade 'Eve' by arguing that 'God' may give a commandment, while actually desiring that the created rational being will disobey it. "There might be a commanding which he wished you to break". "The wrong kind of obeying itself can be a disobeying". Thus, there may a commandment of God which He actually wishes a human to break. In other words, God may give a Law, but beyond that command God has a higher will which, without saying so, He really desires to be discerned and to be obeyed at the expense of the given and uttered and known Law.
God gave you a Law, but he really wants you to break it.
That is one of Satan's most Cunning Ploys, as cleverly detected and described by Lewis. And it is precisely the Infernal device by which the Enemy subsequently, in our own time and on this planet, has promoted Adultery through Amoris laetitia. It is the notion that, beyond and above "Thou shalt not commit Adultery", there is a higher Divine Will which, at least on occasions, trumps it. Thus AL tells 'remarried divorcees': "You should have adulterous intercourse with X, who is not your lawful spouse, because otherwise (s)he may be tempted to be unfaithful to you and walk out, which would be a tragedy for the children you have had together since your civil marriage." The wrong kind of obeying itself can be a disobeying, as Lewis's Devil puts it. (It is, of course, essentially the old Satanic temptation to do evil so that good may result; that the end justifies the means.)
Blessed Paul VI is not often admired by Traddies; I think he should be given more credit for his courage in issuing Humanae vitae than he sometimes receives. And I am convinced that his own frank honesty in admitting that, on his own watch, the Smoke of Satan had crept through some crack into the Temple of God, deserves credit. OK, he was a po' Amletico, as S John XXIII observed, but he was not blind to his principal duty, as Bishop of Rome, to uphold the integrity of Tradition; to resist novitates. Montini was not, indeed, a Leo or a Hildebrand; but I am not convinced that he was a Honorius.
Speaking only for myself, I feel that if PF were able to bring himself manfully to concede that the Smoke of Satan did indeed percolate through some fissure into the final section of his Exhortation Amoris laetitia, he would be shown to be a vastly bigger and more honourable man than, despite all his bluster, he seems. As things are, he appears to me to fall some fair distance short of the standards of courage, humility, and honesty, set by Papa Montini.
In the second volume of his 'theological' Space Trilogy (Chapter 9), C S Lewis portrays one of the Enemy attempting to persuade the future Matriarch of another the planet, a prelapsarian Eve, to break the one commandment God has given her which is commanded solely in order to create a space in which obedience can be practised for the sake of obedience without having any utilitarian advantage. Other commandments, such as Not Killing, may need little justifying because they give us all security; so God has given that planet one commandment which has as its only purpose the making of an act of obedience.
'Satan', on Lewis's fictional planet, attempts to persuade 'Eve' by arguing that 'God' may give a commandment, while actually desiring that the created rational being will disobey it. "There might be a commanding which he wished you to break". "The wrong kind of obeying itself can be a disobeying". Thus, there may a commandment of God which He actually wishes a human to break. In other words, God may give a Law, but beyond that command God has a higher will which, without saying so, He really desires to be discerned and to be obeyed at the expense of the given and uttered and known Law.
God gave you a Law, but he really wants you to break it.
That is one of Satan's most Cunning Ploys, as cleverly detected and described by Lewis. And it is precisely the Infernal device by which the Enemy subsequently, in our own time and on this planet, has promoted Adultery through Amoris laetitia. It is the notion that, beyond and above "Thou shalt not commit Adultery", there is a higher Divine Will which, at least on occasions, trumps it. Thus AL tells 'remarried divorcees': "You should have adulterous intercourse with X, who is not your lawful spouse, because otherwise (s)he may be tempted to be unfaithful to you and walk out, which would be a tragedy for the children you have had together since your civil marriage." The wrong kind of obeying itself can be a disobeying, as Lewis's Devil puts it. (It is, of course, essentially the old Satanic temptation to do evil so that good may result; that the end justifies the means.)
Blessed Paul VI is not often admired by Traddies; I think he should be given more credit for his courage in issuing Humanae vitae than he sometimes receives. And I am convinced that his own frank honesty in admitting that, on his own watch, the Smoke of Satan had crept through some crack into the Temple of God, deserves credit. OK, he was a po' Amletico, as S John XXIII observed, but he was not blind to his principal duty, as Bishop of Rome, to uphold the integrity of Tradition; to resist novitates. Montini was not, indeed, a Leo or a Hildebrand; but I am not convinced that he was a Honorius.
Speaking only for myself, I feel that if PF were able to bring himself manfully to concede that the Smoke of Satan did indeed percolate through some fissure into the final section of his Exhortation Amoris laetitia, he would be shown to be a vastly bigger and more honourable man than, despite all his bluster, he seems. As things are, he appears to me to fall some fair distance short of the standards of courage, humility, and honesty, set by Papa Montini.
27 January 2018
The Final Solution of the Baby Problem
So the politicians have duly said and done the things that custom requires to be said and done by such people on Holocaust Memorial Day.
The Holocaust was unbelievably, horribly, unimaginably evil.
We are right to be on our guard against the repetition of past evils.
But Evil rarely repeats itself in precisely the same shape and form.
The Enemy knows this. (I wonder how many unborn Jews are killed every year in the State of Israel.)
So the politicians and the Media gauleiters who are so Correct when speaking about the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem, are poor and blind and murderous fools when it comes to the Final Solution of the Baby Problem. Leo Varadkar, an Irishman, elegantly demonstrated this when he chose the eve of HMD to commit himself to the great god of abortion whose faithful promise is I am come that you may have Death, and have it more abundantly.
Easy, isn't it?
The Holocaust was unbelievably, horribly, unimaginably evil.
We are right to be on our guard against the repetition of past evils.
But Evil rarely repeats itself in precisely the same shape and form.
The Enemy knows this. (I wonder how many unborn Jews are killed every year in the State of Israel.)
So the politicians and the Media gauleiters who are so Correct when speaking about the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem, are poor and blind and murderous fools when it comes to the Final Solution of the Baby Problem. Leo Varadkar, an Irishman, elegantly demonstrated this when he chose the eve of HMD to commit himself to the great god of abortion whose faithful promise is I am come that you may have Death, and have it more abundantly.
Easy, isn't it?
LANHERNE
Today is the Anniversary of the execution, in 1550, of Sir Humphrey Arundell.
Lanherne is one of the ancient houses of the Arundell family, which, in the Middle Ages, was one of the great Cornish gentry families who dominated and administered the Duchy. It was Sir Humphrey Arundell who, in 1549, led the 'Prayer Book Rebellion', the great Catholic insurrection against Cranmer's Prayer Book, which marched beneath the banner of the Five Wounds. A throne nearly tottered; the government of Edward Tudor survived only by the use of a mercenary army and what historians have termed a genocidal series of massaces throughout Devon and Cornwall.
So it is interesting to find, in the Parish Church, as a fine pulpit bearing the 'Arms of Christ', the Instruments of his Passion and the shield of the Five Wounds. These motifs are found throughout the South West, especially in the large number of surviving medieval bench-ends. What is different about this pulpit is that it is distinctly Renaissance in style, and dated - I know not upon what evidence - to 1553. Such a dating would indeed fit that magical five years in which (see Duffy Fires of Faith) it appeared that Marian England would be in the forefront of the Counter-Reformation, leading Europe in Catholic Renewal, in sound Patristic teaching, in seminary formation, in the teaching of Hebrew and Greek; as well as being in the artistic mainstream. This glorious but frustrated spring was so brief that it is always fascinating but poignant to find surviving relics of it. [Those who live near Oxford will remember that the Marian foundation of S John's College puts its Marian vestments on display on the Saturday of Seventh Week ... usually ... this year, it would be March 3.]
And such relics are especially moving in a magical spot like Lanherne.
Lanherne is one of the ancient houses of the Arundell family, which, in the Middle Ages, was one of the great Cornish gentry families who dominated and administered the Duchy. It was Sir Humphrey Arundell who, in 1549, led the 'Prayer Book Rebellion', the great Catholic insurrection against Cranmer's Prayer Book, which marched beneath the banner of the Five Wounds. A throne nearly tottered; the government of Edward Tudor survived only by the use of a mercenary army and what historians have termed a genocidal series of massaces throughout Devon and Cornwall.
So it is interesting to find, in the Parish Church, as a fine pulpit bearing the 'Arms of Christ', the Instruments of his Passion and the shield of the Five Wounds. These motifs are found throughout the South West, especially in the large number of surviving medieval bench-ends. What is different about this pulpit is that it is distinctly Renaissance in style, and dated - I know not upon what evidence - to 1553. Such a dating would indeed fit that magical five years in which (see Duffy Fires of Faith) it appeared that Marian England would be in the forefront of the Counter-Reformation, leading Europe in Catholic Renewal, in sound Patristic teaching, in seminary formation, in the teaching of Hebrew and Greek; as well as being in the artistic mainstream. This glorious but frustrated spring was so brief that it is always fascinating but poignant to find surviving relics of it. [Those who live near Oxford will remember that the Marian foundation of S John's College puts its Marian vestments on display on the Saturday of Seventh Week ... usually ... this year, it would be March 3.]
And such relics are especially moving in a magical spot like Lanherne.
HMD
In what follows, I mean no disrespect to any of those murdered in the Nazi attempt to exterminate European Jewry. It represents one of the darkest stains on the history of our race since our First Parents were expelled from Eden. May they all, if it be God's will, come to rejoice in beholding His Face.
It is not always remembered that a number of those murdered were our fellow-Christians, 'baptised Jews' such as Edith Stein. Through the waters of Baptism they had become members of Christ's Body. Yet the shedding of their blood sealed their unity with their ancestral people.
When Stein, Sister Benedicta of the Cross, was canonised, people wondered whether she would be categorised as a 'Martyr'. She was; and it was in red vestments that S John Paul II celebrated the Mass.
She was killed, not explicitly for Christ, but out of hatred for the Jewish people.
And she is one of our martyrs.
I believe that there is some quiet and reverend and loving theologising to be done here which, to my knowledge, has not yet been done.
It is not always remembered that a number of those murdered were our fellow-Christians, 'baptised Jews' such as Edith Stein. Through the waters of Baptism they had become members of Christ's Body. Yet the shedding of their blood sealed their unity with their ancestral people.
When Stein, Sister Benedicta of the Cross, was canonised, people wondered whether she would be categorised as a 'Martyr'. She was; and it was in red vestments that S John Paul II celebrated the Mass.
She was killed, not explicitly for Christ, but out of hatred for the Jewish people.
And she is one of our martyrs.
I believe that there is some quiet and reverend and loving theologising to be done here which, to my knowledge, has not yet been done.
26 January 2018
Septuagesima
Next Sunday is Septuagesima Sunday.
Until the reformers of the 1960s abolished it, Septuagesima had, for a millennium and a half at least, pointed the Latin Church to the Pentateuch, and its structural centrality to Christian understanding and to the living of the Christian life. (I have written before about the history of the Gesima texts, and I presume my pieces are available to newer readers through the Search Engine attached to this blog). A proper respect for the Pentateuch is something that would come more easily to Catholics if we all had a deeper inculturation into our Jewish roots. Sadly, the the 'reformers' of the 1960s weakened this rather than enhancing it.
So: Septuagesima and its week give us Eve, and Adam, and their Creation; and their Fall. Members of the Anglican Patrimony do not need (but perhaps some others do) a recommendation to read an imaginative piece of theological fiction by the great Anglican apologist Professor C S Lewis: his novel Voyage to Venus, alternatively known as Perelandra. It constitutes an exended meditation on the Fall and on the strategies of the Enemy.
This morning, I would like to offer you a few sentences which seem to me to be highly useful solvents of "The Enlightenment" and of its demonic errors. And just the sort of thing which we need before opening the Word of God at the beginning of Genesis and submitting ourselves to what we find there. [I have made one or two tiny syntactical adjustments.]
" ... the triple distinction of truth from myth and of both from fact is purely terrestrial - part and parcel of that unhappy division betweeen soul and body which resulted from the Fall. Even on Earth the sacraments exist as a permanent reminder that the division is neither wholesome nor final. The Incarnation was the beginning of its disappearance ... The whole distinction between things accidental and things designed, like the distinction between fact and myth, is purely terrestrial. The pattern is so large that within the little frame of earthly experience there appear pieces of it between which we can see no connection, and other pieces between which we can. Hence we rightly, for our use, distinguish the accidental from the essential. But step outside that frame and the distinction drops down into the void, fluttering useless wings."
(S John Paul remarked that, in God's Providence, there are no such things as coincidences.)
Until the reformers of the 1960s abolished it, Septuagesima had, for a millennium and a half at least, pointed the Latin Church to the Pentateuch, and its structural centrality to Christian understanding and to the living of the Christian life. (I have written before about the history of the Gesima texts, and I presume my pieces are available to newer readers through the Search Engine attached to this blog). A proper respect for the Pentateuch is something that would come more easily to Catholics if we all had a deeper inculturation into our Jewish roots. Sadly, the the 'reformers' of the 1960s weakened this rather than enhancing it.
So: Septuagesima and its week give us Eve, and Adam, and their Creation; and their Fall. Members of the Anglican Patrimony do not need (but perhaps some others do) a recommendation to read an imaginative piece of theological fiction by the great Anglican apologist Professor C S Lewis: his novel Voyage to Venus, alternatively known as Perelandra. It constitutes an exended meditation on the Fall and on the strategies of the Enemy.
This morning, I would like to offer you a few sentences which seem to me to be highly useful solvents of "The Enlightenment" and of its demonic errors. And just the sort of thing which we need before opening the Word of God at the beginning of Genesis and submitting ourselves to what we find there. [I have made one or two tiny syntactical adjustments.]
" ... the triple distinction of truth from myth and of both from fact is purely terrestrial - part and parcel of that unhappy division betweeen soul and body which resulted from the Fall. Even on Earth the sacraments exist as a permanent reminder that the division is neither wholesome nor final. The Incarnation was the beginning of its disappearance ... The whole distinction between things accidental and things designed, like the distinction between fact and myth, is purely terrestrial. The pattern is so large that within the little frame of earthly experience there appear pieces of it between which we can see no connection, and other pieces between which we can. Hence we rightly, for our use, distinguish the accidental from the essential. But step outside that frame and the distinction drops down into the void, fluttering useless wings."
(S John Paul remarked that, in God's Providence, there are no such things as coincidences.)
25 January 2018
Laudate Dominum omnes gentes
There were times and places where Popes and Patriarchs declined to convey episkope to a candidate unable to recite the whole Psalter memoriter. It remains true that not very many of us could deliver very many of the psalms from memory. Perhaps some of us could repeat just one psalm perfectly; partly because it consists of but two verses; partly because it is the psalm which concludes Traditional Sunday Evening public worship, being by custom the concluding element in the service of Benediction as it commonly was done in this Atlantic Archipelago.
Byzantine Christians may be familiar with ps 116/117 as the last of the psalms in the Saturday Vespers with which Byzantines begin the celebration of the Lord's Day. Really elderly Latins might recall that right at the end of the Easter Vigil, as it was celebrated in those far off days before Bugnini got to work, this was the psalm of the vestigial First Vespers of Easter with which that service concluded. It is a not inept summary of the Paschal Mystery.
It opens with one of the commonest words in the psalter: HLLU. Most will recognise this as the command which is often combined with an abbreviated form of the Tetragrammaton to give us the form HLLU-YA (Hallelujah; Alleluia). And a browse through the three columns in Brown Driver and Briggs suggests that this is noisy word; with suggestions of shouting or crying aloud as you might at a wedding feast or a harvest thanksgiving. The context is commonly liturgical. But in this psalm the text proceeds rather unusually: HLLU ET-YHWH KL GOIM means "Praise YHWH all Gentiles". It is not common to find a term which is most at home with the chosen people as they worship God in the exclusivity of their Temple being applied to the unclean Gentiles beyond the Soreg. Not surprisingly, the Rabbi from Tarsus, whose festival we celebrate today, refers this to the eschatological glorifying of God for His mercy by the Gentiles; in which his teaching is in the rabbinic mainstream (cf R. Kimchi "This psalm ... belongs to the days of the Messiah ... the Gentiles shall worship YHWH") except for the fact that S Paul believes this part of the Eschaton to be even now fulfilled.
S Paul and other rabbis are confident that the psalm's next phrase refers to the peoples, or tribes, of 'the Circumcision'. But the verb here is a different one: ShBCh, which is very much less common (BDB call it a late Aramaism); some have felt that it lacks the exuberance of HLL. The various Greek and Latin manuscripts and editions are uncertain how to bring out the difference - they tend to use the same Greek (ain-) or Latin (laud-) roots, sometimes adding prefixes such as ep- and col- (although Pius XII's chum Cardinal Bea experimented with praedicate) which suggest 'in accompaniment'. It almost looks as though the Hebrew Nation is being given a supporting role in the Gentile liturgical praise of YHWH! But no.
Pauline theology enables us to tie things in together. It is in the Paschal Blood of Christ, in His Easter Flesh, that the Temple's middle wall of partition is broken down and the Both, Jew and Gentile, are reconciled in one Body to God through the Cross. As the Messiah dies upon the Cross, the Veil of the Temple is torn in two and the Enmity is itself killed. It is in this way that Christ became a servant of the Circumcision on behalf of the Truth of God to confirm the Promises of the Fathers. And He confirmed those promises by fulfilling them, He the Antitype to their types. As we sang earlier in Benediction, Et antiquum documentum novo cedat ritui.
So indeed, the truth of the LORD endureth for ever.
Byzantine Christians may be familiar with ps 116/117 as the last of the psalms in the Saturday Vespers with which Byzantines begin the celebration of the Lord's Day. Really elderly Latins might recall that right at the end of the Easter Vigil, as it was celebrated in those far off days before Bugnini got to work, this was the psalm of the vestigial First Vespers of Easter with which that service concluded. It is a not inept summary of the Paschal Mystery.
It opens with one of the commonest words in the psalter: HLLU. Most will recognise this as the command which is often combined with an abbreviated form of the Tetragrammaton to give us the form HLLU-YA (Hallelujah; Alleluia). And a browse through the three columns in Brown Driver and Briggs suggests that this is noisy word; with suggestions of shouting or crying aloud as you might at a wedding feast or a harvest thanksgiving. The context is commonly liturgical. But in this psalm the text proceeds rather unusually: HLLU ET-YHWH KL GOIM means "Praise YHWH all Gentiles". It is not common to find a term which is most at home with the chosen people as they worship God in the exclusivity of their Temple being applied to the unclean Gentiles beyond the Soreg. Not surprisingly, the Rabbi from Tarsus, whose festival we celebrate today, refers this to the eschatological glorifying of God for His mercy by the Gentiles; in which his teaching is in the rabbinic mainstream (cf R. Kimchi "This psalm ... belongs to the days of the Messiah ... the Gentiles shall worship YHWH") except for the fact that S Paul believes this part of the Eschaton to be even now fulfilled.
S Paul and other rabbis are confident that the psalm's next phrase refers to the peoples, or tribes, of 'the Circumcision'. But the verb here is a different one: ShBCh, which is very much less common (BDB call it a late Aramaism); some have felt that it lacks the exuberance of HLL. The various Greek and Latin manuscripts and editions are uncertain how to bring out the difference - they tend to use the same Greek (ain-) or Latin (laud-) roots, sometimes adding prefixes such as ep- and col- (although Pius XII's chum Cardinal Bea experimented with praedicate) which suggest 'in accompaniment'. It almost looks as though the Hebrew Nation is being given a supporting role in the Gentile liturgical praise of YHWH! But no.
Pauline theology enables us to tie things in together. It is in the Paschal Blood of Christ, in His Easter Flesh, that the Temple's middle wall of partition is broken down and the Both, Jew and Gentile, are reconciled in one Body to God through the Cross. As the Messiah dies upon the Cross, the Veil of the Temple is torn in two and the Enmity is itself killed. It is in this way that Christ became a servant of the Circumcision on behalf of the Truth of God to confirm the Promises of the Fathers. And He confirmed those promises by fulfilling them, He the Antitype to their types. As we sang earlier in Benediction, Et antiquum documentum novo cedat ritui.
So indeed, the truth of the LORD endureth for ever.
24 January 2018
APPEAL FOR HELP
For reasons with the details of which I will not trouble readers, I need to secure texts, or photocopies, of the pre-Conciliar Diocesan Officia Propria and Missae Propriae for the Diocese of Plymouth. I need, in other words, both the Breviary and the Missal supplements. They were customarily bound into Breviaries and Missals, at the back of each volume. The Title sheets at the beginning of the supplements would probably read
OFFICIA PROPRIA DIOECESIS PLYMUTENSIS (Breviaries)
MISSAE PROPRIAE DIOECESIS PLYMUTENSIS (Missals) (or PLYMUTHENSIS!)
I can assure readers that my reasons are very good! I know this is a Tall Order, but it is in a good cause!
PS: What I really need most urgently are the Mattins readings for
Beatus Ioannes Cornelius et socii eius (4 Iulii); and
Sanctus Cuthbertus Mayne (29 Novem.)
OFFICIA PROPRIA DIOECESIS PLYMUTENSIS (Breviaries)
MISSAE PROPRIAE DIOECESIS PLYMUTENSIS (Missals) (or PLYMUTHENSIS!)
I can assure readers that my reasons are very good! I know this is a Tall Order, but it is in a good cause!
PS: What I really need most urgently are the Mattins readings for
Beatus Ioannes Cornelius et socii eius (4 Iulii); and
Sanctus Cuthbertus Mayne (29 Novem.)
Twenty five long years (2)
In other words, they hadn't bothered much about doctrinal standards during the quarter of a century since Vatican II, but, with papalist Angicans knocking at the door, the very highest standards should now be demanded. High and fancy bars to jump over; small and delicate hoops to squeeze through, were the welcome they wanted to be offered to us.
What made this particularly wounding was that it fitted perfectly into the parody of our position which the secular media, and our enemies, were trying to fix upon us. According to this narrative, the only reason we had for leaving the Church of England was that we were all misogynists. Indeed, we were probably all homosexuals. (The paradox, the absurdity, of this was that it was precisely at this moment that some homosexuals within the Anglo-Catholic community had cottoned onto the idea that if "Theological Development" could provide an alibi for extending priestly ordination to women, then it could also give cover to the possibility of extending marriage to homosexuals. To a man, that lot stayed within the C of E. They may have been misogynists, but they had a canny eye for the main chance.)
So this was a painful moment to be given such a kicking by the CBCEW. It was, of course, around this time that the Prefect of the CDF, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, asked the memorable question "Whatever are the English bishops so afraid of?" We rather arrogantly and uncouthly thought we knew the answer (viz, that we were so much more Catholic than they were); but probably the reason was more prosaic. To quote Fr Aidan's 1993 paper again:
"During the Press Conference convoked to hear the statement, the somewhat ambiguous comment was authoritatively made that the bishops did not favour the idea of a 'parallel church'. 'Parallel', we may ask, to what? A Uniate church for Catholic Anglicans would not be a parallel church to the ordinary Latin church in this country any more than is the Byzantine church of the Catholic Ukrainians. These are not parallel churches: they are convergent churches, churches with differing spiritual patrimonies converging on the divinely given centre of peace and unity, the Petrine see at Rome."
Last year, when the South Indian Catholics in Great Britain were so splendidly given their own eparchy, there were (so unverifiable rumour has it) still voices among some English Catholics which asked whether this might not create 'confusion' in the area of jurisdiction. That is to say, there may still be people who don't understand the plurality of Catholicism; the coexistence within the One Great Tradition of many different traditions, the great richness of many Catholic cultures. This failure in cultural comprehension may also explain why, for so long, some authorities in the English Catholic Church were so uneasy about the Old Mass. I recall the baroque guidelines set out after Summorum pontificum by Cardinal Cormac, and the jokes that went around his diocese in which he was humorously referred to as "the Envisager" (because his guidelines made some play with the amusingly convenient impersonal-passive syntactical construction "It is envisaged that ... ").
(Perhaps, during this time of Prayer for Unity, there is a great deal to be said for praying for Unity, with mutual respect, among our fellow Catholics and within the One Church, eschewing imperialist attitudes between our richly diverse communities!)
Twenty or so wasted years before we Anglican Catholics received our Corporate Solution? But who can guess what might have happened. What we do know is what Ratzinger, God bless him, did do when he got the chance.
What made this particularly wounding was that it fitted perfectly into the parody of our position which the secular media, and our enemies, were trying to fix upon us. According to this narrative, the only reason we had for leaving the Church of England was that we were all misogynists. Indeed, we were probably all homosexuals. (The paradox, the absurdity, of this was that it was precisely at this moment that some homosexuals within the Anglo-Catholic community had cottoned onto the idea that if "Theological Development" could provide an alibi for extending priestly ordination to women, then it could also give cover to the possibility of extending marriage to homosexuals. To a man, that lot stayed within the C of E. They may have been misogynists, but they had a canny eye for the main chance.)
So this was a painful moment to be given such a kicking by the CBCEW. It was, of course, around this time that the Prefect of the CDF, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, asked the memorable question "Whatever are the English bishops so afraid of?" We rather arrogantly and uncouthly thought we knew the answer (viz, that we were so much more Catholic than they were); but probably the reason was more prosaic. To quote Fr Aidan's 1993 paper again:
"During the Press Conference convoked to hear the statement, the somewhat ambiguous comment was authoritatively made that the bishops did not favour the idea of a 'parallel church'. 'Parallel', we may ask, to what? A Uniate church for Catholic Anglicans would not be a parallel church to the ordinary Latin church in this country any more than is the Byzantine church of the Catholic Ukrainians. These are not parallel churches: they are convergent churches, churches with differing spiritual patrimonies converging on the divinely given centre of peace and unity, the Petrine see at Rome."
Last year, when the South Indian Catholics in Great Britain were so splendidly given their own eparchy, there were (so unverifiable rumour has it) still voices among some English Catholics which asked whether this might not create 'confusion' in the area of jurisdiction. That is to say, there may still be people who don't understand the plurality of Catholicism; the coexistence within the One Great Tradition of many different traditions, the great richness of many Catholic cultures. This failure in cultural comprehension may also explain why, for so long, some authorities in the English Catholic Church were so uneasy about the Old Mass. I recall the baroque guidelines set out after Summorum pontificum by Cardinal Cormac, and the jokes that went around his diocese in which he was humorously referred to as "the Envisager" (because his guidelines made some play with the amusingly convenient impersonal-passive syntactical construction "It is envisaged that ... ").
(Perhaps, during this time of Prayer for Unity, there is a great deal to be said for praying for Unity, with mutual respect, among our fellow Catholics and within the One Church, eschewing imperialist attitudes between our richly diverse communities!)
Twenty or so wasted years before we Anglican Catholics received our Corporate Solution? But who can guess what might have happened. What we do know is what Ratzinger, God bless him, did do when he got the chance.
23 January 2018
Twenty five long years (1)
It is twenty five years this year since the world's leading Anglophone Catholic theologian, Fr Aidan Nichols read, at Littlemore, a thoughtful paper on the situation within English Christianity in the aftermath of the decision of the Anglican English General Synod to permit the purported ordination of women to the Priesthood.
Fr Aidan had already published The Panther and the Hind, a theological history of Anglicanism which concluded with a strong recommendation that there should be created an Anglican 'Uniate' Church representing the Anglican Patrimony yet committed to the totality of doctrinal truths which the Church of Rome preserves and proclaims.
How well I remember that dreadful day when the Synod vote was taken. I remember even more the following morning, when I made the regular walk across the fields to Nathaniel Woodard's great Minster Church at Lancing, to offer the most august Sacrifice of the Mass. "Can I do this?" Well, I did do it. But for so many of us, we never had another day of unclouded happiness in the Church of England.
And so the question arose of a group movement into full communion with the See of S Peter. Cardinal Hume began by asking whether these events might represent that Conversion of England for which so many prayers had been offered. But something ... or somebody ... caused him to change his mind. The May statement of the English Catholic bishops went out of its way to be offensive. We were a group which had adhered vigorously to the entire doctrinal package of the Catholic and Roman Church. But the English bishops, who had never seemed to be particularly draconian in their enforcement of orthodoxy, decided to start lecturing us on the need for those entering into full communion to accept everything ... an everything we had been teaching for decades. Fr Nichols expressed our misery with his customary elegance ... and not without a felicitous dash of irony: "That statement of the Catholic bishops leaves little to be desired where it speaks of the necessity of whole-hearted adhesion to the complete teaching of the Catholic Church on faith and morals. If, since the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic episcopate in England has been, on the whole, a pastorally rather than doctrinally engaged episcopate, the statement represents a new quality of articulacy and firmness on what Cardinal Hume called the 'table d'hote' rather than 'a la carte' nature of the menu at the Cghurch's banquet".
To be continued.
Fr Aidan had already published The Panther and the Hind, a theological history of Anglicanism which concluded with a strong recommendation that there should be created an Anglican 'Uniate' Church representing the Anglican Patrimony yet committed to the totality of doctrinal truths which the Church of Rome preserves and proclaims.
How well I remember that dreadful day when the Synod vote was taken. I remember even more the following morning, when I made the regular walk across the fields to Nathaniel Woodard's great Minster Church at Lancing, to offer the most august Sacrifice of the Mass. "Can I do this?" Well, I did do it. But for so many of us, we never had another day of unclouded happiness in the Church of England.
And so the question arose of a group movement into full communion with the See of S Peter. Cardinal Hume began by asking whether these events might represent that Conversion of England for which so many prayers had been offered. But something ... or somebody ... caused him to change his mind. The May statement of the English Catholic bishops went out of its way to be offensive. We were a group which had adhered vigorously to the entire doctrinal package of the Catholic and Roman Church. But the English bishops, who had never seemed to be particularly draconian in their enforcement of orthodoxy, decided to start lecturing us on the need for those entering into full communion to accept everything ... an everything we had been teaching for decades. Fr Nichols expressed our misery with his customary elegance ... and not without a felicitous dash of irony: "That statement of the Catholic bishops leaves little to be desired where it speaks of the necessity of whole-hearted adhesion to the complete teaching of the Catholic Church on faith and morals. If, since the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic episcopate in England has been, on the whole, a pastorally rather than doctrinally engaged episcopate, the statement represents a new quality of articulacy and firmness on what Cardinal Hume called the 'table d'hote' rather than 'a la carte' nature of the menu at the Cghurch's banquet".
To be continued.
22 January 2018
Speed, flexibility
Sometimes some Traddies are less than enthusiastic about Anglican clergy who enter into Full Communion and are then fast-tracked at a great rate of knots into the presbyterate of the Catholic Church.
It was not always so unthinkable. After all, in the pontificate of Blessed Pius IX, Mr Archdeacon Manning was not kept hanging around more than a month or two. And Fr Mark Vickers, in his fascinating recent book Reunion Revisited: 1930s Ecumenism exposed recounts how some Dominican or other in 1932 responded to plans then afoot for a Ordinariate-like Group Solution for Catholic Anglicans:
"If a body of clergy like you should come over, those who are really stable and with sufficient preparation should be re-ordained the next day [original emphasis]. Authority might choose one or more of you to vouch for individuals; decide which were completely equipped; which need further brief preparation; then take action accordingly, at once, quietly."
"Ah, well", I hear you grumbling, "even in 1932 there were some dodgy and unreliable people around ... being a Dominican is no guarantee of anything and it never has been ..."
But the quotation above is not really from "some Dominican or other", but comes from the august figure of Michael Browne, future Master-General of his Order and Cardinal, who in the turmoil of Vatican II was a leading member of the Coetus Internationalis Patrum, the resolute group of orthodox Fathers of which H E Archbishop Lefebvre and Bishop de Castro Mayer were also members. You can find a jolly photograph of Browne and Lefebvre in cahoots together between the covers of Bishop Tissier de Mallerais' fine and judicious biography of Lefebvre.
In those happy days, perceptive and highly traditional Catholics often had no trouble detecting, in an 'Anglo-Papalist' priest, the authentic lineaments of well-formed Catholic priesthood.
But is such generosity still possible, since those who now think of themselves as 'Anglo-Papalist' have consciously declined the offer, made by Pope Benedict, of a Corporate Solution?
It was not always so unthinkable. After all, in the pontificate of Blessed Pius IX, Mr Archdeacon Manning was not kept hanging around more than a month or two. And Fr Mark Vickers, in his fascinating recent book Reunion Revisited: 1930s Ecumenism exposed recounts how some Dominican or other in 1932 responded to plans then afoot for a Ordinariate-like Group Solution for Catholic Anglicans:
"If a body of clergy like you should come over, those who are really stable and with sufficient preparation should be re-ordained the next day [original emphasis]. Authority might choose one or more of you to vouch for individuals; decide which were completely equipped; which need further brief preparation; then take action accordingly, at once, quietly."
"Ah, well", I hear you grumbling, "even in 1932 there were some dodgy and unreliable people around ... being a Dominican is no guarantee of anything and it never has been ..."
But the quotation above is not really from "some Dominican or other", but comes from the august figure of Michael Browne, future Master-General of his Order and Cardinal, who in the turmoil of Vatican II was a leading member of the Coetus Internationalis Patrum, the resolute group of orthodox Fathers of which H E Archbishop Lefebvre and Bishop de Castro Mayer were also members. You can find a jolly photograph of Browne and Lefebvre in cahoots together between the covers of Bishop Tissier de Mallerais' fine and judicious biography of Lefebvre.
In those happy days, perceptive and highly traditional Catholics often had no trouble detecting, in an 'Anglo-Papalist' priest, the authentic lineaments of well-formed Catholic priesthood.
But is such generosity still possible, since those who now think of themselves as 'Anglo-Papalist' have consciously declined the offer, made by Pope Benedict, of a Corporate Solution?
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