Cupich the Super Slippery (1)

Lecturing yesterday at the other university, Cardinal Cupich gave a superb example of cunning slipperiness. In its skill, it is positively beautiful. In its scope, breathtaking.

"Their [married couples' and families'] decisions of conscience represent God's personal guidance for the particularities of their lives. In other words, the voice of conscience ... the voice of God ... or if I may be permitted to quote an Oxford man here at Cambridge, what Newman called 'the aboriginal vicar of Christ' ... could very well affirm the necessity of living at some distance from the Church's understanding of the ideal, while nevertheless calling a person 'to new stages of growth and to new decisions which can enable the ideal to be more fully realised' (AL 303)"

(1) Again, we have the very corruption I tried to nail down in a recent post, the idea that the Law of God (neatly here packaged and neutered as 'the Church's understanding of the ideal') can be trumped, set aside, by some other factor: here, 'Conscience'. Observe also how cleverly 'Sin', in this case Adultery, is replaced by the exquisite circumlocution 'living at some distance from the Church's understanding of the ideal'. [So, in the Confessional, I suppose we shall be hearing "And, Father, I have lived at some distance from the Church's understanding of the ideal seventy three times." It will make those pre-Easter sessions in the box even more lengthy.]

(2) But also, yet more brilliantly, notice the masterly way in which Newman is parenthetically invoked to sanctify a proposition which Super Slippery could (if taken to task) deny he actually attributes to Newman. He does not actually say that his formulation is what Newman wrote, said, or thought. But by waving the name of Newman over his words and citing a single phrase ...

Wow!! What a man! 

More on CSS when I have time. The piece I drafted on Latin pronunciation will have to be deferred.

Before Lent, muscadines all round? UPDATED

A kind and doctus friend has sent me this reference. http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/muscone/musconeh./htm 


 Festum Ovorum, the Feast Of Eggs, is how they describe tomorrow, the Saturday before Lent, year by year in the Oxford University Diary, despite the fact that for some centuries nobody in Oxford has even thought of celebrating this entertainingly named day.

The origin and purpose of Festum Ovorum is pretty certainly exactly what each one of you will have guessed from first principles: as on Mardi Gras, to have a binge before Lent. It has stayed on the University Calendar since the Middle Ages ... just as, in this University, All Soul's Day and Corpus Christi and the Assumption survived the 'Reformation' (I bet they didn't in the Fens). We know that this was not just a custom in alma academia, but flourished throughout the neighbouring country areas, where, in their endearingly unlatinate way, the rude but worthy yokels just called it Egge Satterday. (There must be some poignantly corny witticism about Yolks and Yokels.) However, purely by coincidence, it became, in this University, linked with an academic deadline: the last day on which bachelors were allowed to 'determine'; that is, to complete the exercises for the degree of M.A.. And academics had a 'Determination Feast' to celebrate this, which goes back at least to the time of Lord Richard Holland (nephew of Richard II) who had his Determination Feast on the 21st and 22nd of February, 1395 (yes, I have checked that date in Cheney). As late as 1603, "all the bachelors that were presented to determine did after their presentation go to every college where they were determining and there make a feast for the senior bachelors, videlicet, of muscadine and eggs; figs; raisons; almonds; sack; and such like".

I suppose all this was quite an exotic spread in those days. Now we could buy most of it in Waitrose. Except for the muscadines, which are sweetmeats made from a pod near the fundament of an asiatic deer (its secretion may have been a sexual attractant) and regarded as an aphrodisiac since the days when the trade routes brought both it, and its Sanskrit name, from India to Byzantium. It is now vastly expensive since the poor things have been hunted almost into bio-undiversity ... ah, the compulsions of homo insipiens, the so-called animal rationale ... fortasse potius animal dicendum venereale. But I gather that chemists now produce a synthetic version of musk. 

I will here reveal that I have published this post in previous years at the corresponding time of year; and the only interest it has secured has been among North Americans who, in their very welcome billions, regularly offer me Comments in which they explain that, in all their dictionaries, muscadine refers only to grapes. The old and full Oxford English Dictionary gives entries of three separate words with this same spelling: grapes; animal musk; and, thirdly, "a Parisian woman of fashion". This year, just for variety, I am going to enable none of those grape-preoccupied comments, but I would admit relevant academic comments on Parisian Women of Fashion (whom I had always thought were known technically as les grandes horizontales or obalisques [h/t to Evelyn Waugh The Loved One for that last crack]).

The English sweetmeats made from musk were called 'kissing cakes' or 'rising cakes'. Odd names, don't you think? Now ... no offence ... many of my best friends are chemists ... but I bet muscadines made with synthetic musk would have much less potent characteristics than the Real Thing. As for Fashionable Parisiennes, I have no experience whatsoever of their potential characteristics or physiological effects, synthetic or otherwise. My wife comes from Leicestershire.

A series of controlled experiments, perhaps, in somebody's laboratory?

News from Kent

Sources not a million miles from Broadstairs suggest that the SSPX elections this year will provide the Society with a new non-episcopal Superior. And that the admirable Bishop Fellay could end up in Rome, heading a revamped Ecclesia Dei. What a very intriguing prospect!

Surely, it would be jolly to have, under the roof of the Palazzo of the Holy Office, a prelate who has unambiguously demonstrated his orthodoxy by signing our completely unambiguous Filial Correction of PF. Remember, too, that the CDF is Line Manager for the Ordinariates. It would also, surely, be pleasantly cosy that within those wallowed halls there should be an additional prelate whose instincts were sympathetic to the Ordinariates. The icing on the cake would be for the poor still-persecuted Franciscans of the Immaculate to be transferred to his care. Fellay for Cardinal! The Unity Candidate!

How splendid it is, bonum et iucundum, when brethren dwell together in unity. Perhaps His Excellency should grow a beard as long as Aaron's so that the oil could pour down it! I bet he would love to revisit his and my wonderful friends on Papa Stronsay. When I was there, they told me that I was 'sleeping in Bishop Fellay's bed'; perhaps they will tell him next time that he is sleeping in Fr Hunwicke's bed, before taking him to pick cherries in the greenhouse and to chat with the black guillemots on the quay. He could repay the cherries by granting the Community faculties to resume celebrating the Byzantine Rite in their lovely little Ukrainian chapel.

As the Redemptorist Brethren politely opened a large farm gate for me to walk through, one of them, with the bewitching insouciance of the young, casually remarked: 'Bishop Fellay just jumped over that'.

I hope and pray that His Excellency is still no less lithe.

Also, that the finances and properties of the Society are legally tied up so tightly that Roman fingers can never get anywhere near them. Those fingers made a determined attempt to raid the Trustees of the FI. Greedy! Naughty!

Chrism Mass

According to Bishop Egan (ad multos annos Domine plurimosque annos), we are to be using a new translation of the Chrism Mass this year. Can somebody tell me whether this is a welcome new translation of the older texts (done under the reliable and erudite hands of the great Mgr Andrew Wadsworth) or whether the original Latin has been messed around with ... as, of course, has lamentably been done in the rites of Ordination.

An Eminent Ecclesiastic ...

... is reported to have spoken in a very relaxed and civilised way about the blessing of sexually irregular relationships.

Splendid stuff. This is the way ahead. Before genocides, for example, or murders in general, one should always baptise or absolve (perhaps conditionally) those about to be terminated. Thereby, one would be giving them the supreme good of immediate everlasting life. How could such an admirable End fail to justify the Means? And, before the sexual abuse of the young or vulnerable, one should always sprinkle them with Holy Water.

Every paedophile should always carry some with him. It is a very important Sacramental.

All of that was what is called technically 'irony'. I think I was inspired by a particular 'modest' writing of my hero the late Dean Swift. Since he got into trouble because the po-faced took his Proposal seriously, I had better make clear that I am not really offering such advice ... far from it. Such conduct would be abhorrent.

I would add two points. We all of us, in our respective avocations, have our own professional dirty little tricks. Bishops are no exception. And, according to the accounts, the Ecclesiastic concerned has just played the very nastiest such Dirty Little Trick. He has left the decision about blessing such relationships to the parish clergy. He will now be the Mr Nice who has been generous and 'inclusive'. Poor Fr X who adheres to the teaching of the Catholic Church will now be Mr Nasty, attacked on the grounds that he is so much 'less inclusive' than the Nice Ecclesiastic and Fr Alsoverynice in the next parish.

It sounds so reasonable, doesn't it; mumble mumble case by case mumble mumble local pastoral decision mumble mumble. In fact, as well as being an abdication of episcopal responsibilities, it is a viciously nasty method of creating problems and then unloading them onto other people whose position you have already fatally undermined. From the Ecclesiastic's own standpoint, what's not to like?

We experienced that sort of management-style when we were back in the Church of England. The map ahead is already published and it is very clear. The next stage, 'pastorally', is: "My dear boy, I am so very sorry about all this. I wish so much that I could help. But, y'know, this major pastoral breakdown in your parish leaves me with no choice ... I am thinking about your happiness every bit as much as that of your parish ... ".

And, by stealth, step by step, the corruptions of the Evil One are multiplying and spreading. They grow with generous rapidity from being a tiny seed of the exceptional and the unusual and the 'pastoral' to being the norm and the iron rule. Time, as the Evil One is aware, is so very much more important than Space.

Secondly: who does the Ecclesiastic think he is to speak, apparently, on behalf of his national episcopate? I think I may be right ... I'm not sure ... in saying that he is Chairman of his Conference, but, all the same, have they discussed the matter and come to a unanimous conclusion? Apostolos suos, I think, laid down that in doctrinal matters, a unanimous vote was necessary. Surely there must be just one orthodox bishop in that country? Otherwise, this is an uncanonical piece of dictatorial arrogance.

Cardinal Mueller spoke very well about the problem of what, with justifiable sarcasm, he called these 'vice-popes'. He had an extremely sound instinct for what was going on. Perhaps that is why ... er ...

Next time you meet a Great Ecclesiastic who is probably Chairman of his Conference, make sure you keep your wits about you. Keep a sharp eye open for vis sine lege.

C Cupich

I would be very glad to receive from eye-witnesses accounts of any sharp questions this gentleman has to answer in his impending lecture at Cambridge. And whether he defines paradign shift by giving examples from the past.

INTRINSECE MALUM (2)

This year is the 25th anniversary of Veritatis Splendor, of S John Paul II; and the 50th anniversary of Humanae vitae, of Bl Paul VI. There is abundant evidence that the corrupted teachers who believe that they have been given a fair wind by PF are already employing this double aniversary for an onslaught upon both of those fine Magisterial assertions by Roman Pontiffs of what the Church has taught semper et ubique et ab omnibus. They are using Amoris laetitia, a document drafted in the very deepest levels of the Lowerarchy, almost certainly under the personal direction of Mr Under-Secretary Screwtape himself*, to "reinterpret" Humanae vitae. One such piece of 'work' is significantly headed "From Montini to Francis: development in fidelity". What this means, stripped of weaselly word games, is "Wow! We can use Section 8 of Amoris laetitia to subvert the meaning and authority of Humanae vitae; we can claim that our subversion is development rather than apostasy, and say that it still leaves the teaching of Papa Montini totally undamaged, nay rather, it affirms it". [This was essentially the argument used at the News Conference chaired by the Graf von Schoenborn to ... er ... 'launch' Amoris laetitia, when he was asked by Diane Montagna whether it contradicted Familiaris consortio.]

What these men, who have put their reason at the disposal of the Bent Eldil*, have in their sights is to destroy the notion that some human actions are intrinsically evil in such a way that no circumstances can render them otherwise.

We all need to be fortified against this already-happening attack of the Evil One. One could amass quite a reading list here; but I will suggest two things, one brief and at a 'lower' Magisterial level; and the second longer and at a 'higher' ... a very high ... Magisterial level.

(1) S John Paul II, on June 5 1987, delivered a fine address still on the Vatican website in Italian and Spanish, but rediscovered and elegantly translated into English by [the same] Miss Montagna: Lifesitenews Wednesday January 31 2018.  It vigorouly and unambiguously upholds the plain and irreformable teaching of Humanae vitae.

(2) The majestic encyclical of S John Paul, Veritatis splendor was, I think I am right in saying, entirely ignored by Mgr Screwtape during the drafting of Amoris laetitia. In it, pope Wojtyla took head-on, and demolished, the relativistic, 'situational' ethical theories which were still being circulated. It deserves reading in toto. The particular section most concerned is in paragraphs 71-83 (pages 108-127 in the CTS edition). If you feel that one paragraph is all you can manage at this moment of time, just go for paragraph 80 (pages 122sqq.). It subsumes an important passage from (Vatican II's) Gaudium et Spes into its argumentation.

Our Enemy and our enemies are all going hell-for-leather on this subject. We need to be fortified.

**Apologies to those unfamiliar with the writings of our Patrimonial C. S. Lewis; 'Screwtape' and 'the Bent Eldil' refer to his Daimonologia.

I'm sorry, but I shall not enable Comments which take this opportunity to attack Popes Paul VI and John Paul II.

Gaudeamus omnes in Domino ...

... because it's S Agatha's Day! So congratulations to the people of S Agatha's Ordinariate Church in Portsmouth, with their admirable Parish Priest Fr John Maunder and Mgr Robert Mercer, the great missionary Bishop of Matabeleland, now in Ordinariate 'retirement'.

S Agata dei Goti is a unique church in Rome: it was once an Arian church. Perhaps S Agatha should be the patroness of those who rescue churches from schism for Catholic use! Most readers will not need me to tell them that this is the Titular Church of Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, who is very unlikely to give it back to the Goths, whether or not they are still Arian.

S Agatha's in Portsmouth, of which the Ordinariate has the use, was sold off by the C of E as redundant. It, also unique, is the only place in England ... I think ... where you can see a church built by the Anglo-Catholics in the days of their high glory, full of the most exquisite artwork and shrines, now in Full Communion with the See of S Peter and offering worship in the finest tradition of Anglican Catholicism. Fr Maunder has added to the glories of his church by commissioning a baroque over-altar of our Lady and S Agatha, granting Anglicanorum coetibus to Pope Benedict, as the early Anglican parish priests look on ... men who had prayed daily for the unity of Christendom with the Successor of S Peter. Could someone provide a link to the picture?

The good news is that if you live within range of Portsmouth, you haven't missed the boat with regard to this year's festival. S Agatha will be celebrated this coming Saturday at 11.00. The Solemn Mass will be Haydn's great Nelson Mass. That's a good idea, isn't it, in a great Naval Base such as Portsmouth. The Mass was composed in 1798, the year of the Battle of the Nile, when His Grace Admiral the Duke of Bronte in the Kingdom of Sicily held up for a few more decades the spread of the Enlightenment. I seem to recall that at Greenwich they have a painting of the napoleonic flagship L'Oreole exploding. It would be jolly to have a link to that picture, too. Viva Horatio! Viva Nelson!

WHY GO TO ROME ... OR SICILY ... WHEN YOU CAN GET THE REAL S AGATHA SO MUCH CLOSER HOME?

The current crisis about orthodoxy: what does it all amount to? (1)

During the Arian Crisis, one word was the flag, the symbol, of Orthodoxy: HOMOOUSIOS. The Son is Consubstantial, or of one Substance, with the Father. Now ... imagine somebody during that crisis putting forward a Creed or Profession of Faith which sounded perfectly OK ... indeed, if it had been put forward fifty years previously, everybody would have received it joyfully. But, after the Church had defined the Dogma of the Co-equal Divinity of the Son by the word Homoousios, if somebody then put forward a new Creed which deliberately omitted this one word, he was seen to be a heretic. All the more so, if he put out a version of the 'Nicene' Creed with Homoousios eliminated from the text, he condemned himself as a heretic.

In our present crisis, the gravest since the Reformation if not since the Arian Crisis, the phrase, the Battle Standard around which the conflict is raging, is INTRINSECE MALUM*, "intrinsically evil". This means that there are acts, so described, which are of themselves evil. Always; in all circumstances. Under no circumstances can they be right. Not even if ...

This doctrine has been under fire since the 1960s or earlier, when various dodges were dreamed up to get round it. The implication of all these dodges was that the rules of Catholic morality were generally good guides, but there were unusual circumstances in which it might be OK to break them. I remember a popular book of Moral Theology which actually, laughably, but with a straight face, gave the following example.
Fornication is wrong. But suppose one is a spy working for the West, and one knows that a certain spy working for SMERSH, i.e. the Evil (Russian) Empire, possesses a crucial secret ... the Plan, let us say, for a new ICBM warhead or an ultrasuperhypermarvellous submarine or spacecraft ... then (if fornication would extract the all-important Plan from the enemy agent who, in those carefee days, was always of the opposite sex) the greater Good of the Survival of Civilisation As We Know It, would justify the fornication.

Yes; a 'serious' theologian could be so influenced by the light-hearted 1960s adolescent sexual fantasies concerning Commander James Bond, R.N., M.A. Cantab., that he did propound such risible codswallop.
To be continued.

*In-TRIN-se-chey MUL-um is how the phrase is pronounced, with the U as in tub. Not MAH-lum, because that would mean 'an Apple' ... but I suppose one might be going for prelapsarian typology ...

Weinsteins and things

A colleague once informed me "You are so contrab****ydictory?" Perhaps I am. But I am getting ... well, restless about the hunt going on for men who have 'assaulted' women. In this country, we have reached the stage where "He fleetingly touched my knee" may be enought to do for a politician's career. Apart from anything else, this is surely an insult to women and girls who actually have been horribly abused.

And if some bimbo does get a job in showbiz or whatever by accommodating the sexual incontinence of some impresario or whatever, which of the two is 'the victim'? Especially if she morally initiated the commercium by her behaviour, words, or immodest dress? But the feminist fascists have got it all set up so that a woman is 'entitled' to dress and behave as provocatively as she wishes and woe betide any male who draws any conclusion. These are narrow times for those who dare to make any semiological inferences based upon non-verbal data; narrower, I suspect, than any other periods in human civilisation. Not least because in earlier times relations between the sexes were at least notionally under the control of conventions either formal or informal.

Any suggestion that a woman should conduct herself with normal human prudence and plain common sense is now deeply, profoundly, Politically Incorrect.

Perhaps we need a statute outlawing both the buying and selling of sex, and including a definition of constructive prostitution, whereby the securing or bestowing of non-financial advantages by a sexual exchange is also criminalised.

Perhaps that would enable us to lock up all the Dirty Old Men and all the Dirty Young Women. Perhaps they could all be incarcerated together, each DOM in the same cell as his DYW, and left to get on with their rabid symbiotic impurities until they all fell down dead from exhaustion.

Dom Lentini; Heloise; and multiple castrations

When Hannibal Bugnini was busily making the worship of the Western Church more agreeable to the Almighty, the Breviary hymns were handed over to a learned Benedictine, Dom Anselmo Lentini. Lentini was himself no snitch at writing Latin verse: not a few of the better new compositions in the Liturgia Horaum are from his pen. And an occasional new composition, added to the existing treasury, would be in accordance with the principle of Organic Development. Moreover, since the Council mandated that older hymns be rescued from the earlier treasury of Latin hymnody and brought back into use to supplement what had come through the bottleneck of the late medieval Roman Rite, it is proper that a judicious number of such hymns should have appeared in the post-conciliar volumes. Whether that revision should have been quite as radical as it turned out to be is, of course, a matter of judgement.

For example, one might wonder if the elimination of the ancient 'common' Office Hymns for our Lady went a bit too far. Pius XII began the game by equipping his new Marian feasts with 'proper' hymns, so that they would not need to use the 'commons' - although even he made a principle of leaving Ave Maris Stella as the Vespers hymn. But Lentini adopted the practice of searching out and reintroducing (or newly composing) hymns for every Marian festival.

But that idea was not a new one in the mid twentieth century. Centuries before, that erudite if lubricious bluestocking, Abelard's Heloise (well, are you in any real doubt which of them it was that did the seducing ... and which of them it was that paid for it?) had indulged herself one of her tantrums in the Monastery of the Paraclete, complaining about the quality of the hymnody in the Divine Office. Texts, she pointed out, were dodgy, missing syllables messed up the chant, questions of authorship, texts not suiting the times of day they were sung ... you name it. And she wanted Abelard to write a completely new set. (Was this her revenge after the poor chap - we blokes are a tactless lot - had just explained to her that he had never really loved her but had merely been Impelled By Lust? We May Never Know.)

Abelard did write some new hymns for her, from which Dom Lentini borrowed some verses. But, to conclude today's post: a little about Legis sacratae.

This was the hymn Lentini rescued for the Feast of the Purification when the decree had gone out that it was to be re-entitulated "the Lord's Presentation". It is a cento of a Carolingian hymn dubiously attributed to Paulinus, Patriarch of Aquileia (d 882); but doctored (the word people use when they have cruelly sent a new cat - or a niece's lover - to the Vet). You see, (Pseudo-) Paulinus was clearly a chap who had read and enjoyed some of the naughtier verses of Catullus. You can detect this from the language he uses. But Lentini was made of sterner stuff. And, a fine scholar, he easily spotted where 'Paulinus'' mind had been straying. So out came all the author's dear little Neoteric diminutives; out came the line which employed a word that Catullus had used about a tart (lacteola). And the vulgar word "basia" just had to be replaced by "oscula". [Basia is pretty well never used in Bible or Liturgy and it tastes - 'sapit' - of Profanity: that is how Dom Anselmo primly puts it. I bet this learned but rather proper Benedictine versifier had never meditated in front of a Byzantine icon of the Theotokos Glykyphilousa.]

So the pretty assonances of "basia sub labiis" disappear.

I wonder what Abelard, complete or incomplete, would have made of these proceedings.

Whatever happened to Genesis?

In 1549, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer placed, in the Preface to his English Book of Common Prayer, the following complaint (borrowed from Cardinal Quinones) about the pre-Reformation Liturgy: "... commonly, when any book of the Bible was begun, after three or four chapters were read out, all the rest were unread. And in this sort the book of Isaiah was begun in Advent, and the book of Genesis in Septuagesima; but they were only begun, and never read through ..."

And it remained the aim of the Church of England through four centuries to provide its clergy and laity with what the Second Vatican Council was later to call a "ditior  mensa verbi Dei" so that "praestantior pars Scripturarum Sanctarum populo legatur". These words echo those of Cranmer: "all the whole Bible or the greatest part thereof". More Scripture; most of the Bible. That is the good news. The bad news is that Cranmer went about providing for the greatly enlarged diet of Scripture which the Church of England was to have by distributing the books of the Bible according to the Civil Calendar. Thus Genesis started at the beginning of January, and Scripture marched relentlessly on, almost entirely ignoring Lent and Easter (even Good Friday and Easter Day did not have a complete provision proper to the Day). Every year, on March 31, you got the same readings, whether it was Sunday or weekday, fast or festival, Holy Week or Easter Week.

The Catholic Revival in the Church of England led to a recovery, first among the Tractarians and then, eventually, in the church at large, of the old sense of the distinctiveness of the Christian seasons. And so, once again, Genesis began to be read on Septuagesima Sunday, as first ordered by S Gregory the Great on the eve of the Conversion of England a millennium and a half before. This process of restoration started in 1871, when Genesis was restored to the Gesima Sundays. And in 1922 a new lectionary completed that process by rolling out Genesis also onto the weekdays from Septuagesima; and that lectionary remains still legally available for use in the Church of England. It appeared in the Prayer Book which the synodical organs of the Church of England approved in 1928; and in 1961 an improved revision of it was authorised (although that particular authorisation has now lapsed). Various provinces adopted its main lines, even reputedly 'Evangelical' provinces like Ireland and Canada. The Scottish Prayer Book of 1929 did not adopt the English lectionary, but made its own ... with Genesis locked onto Septuagesima. This had become the consensus of informed Anglicanism. With one oddity*, this arrangement survived into the Alternative Service Book, which took the Church of England through to the end of the millennium.

I wonder what has happened to Genesis in the lectionaries which, I presume, are authorised for use in the American and Australian Ordinariates. Does either of them authorise the fine old English Lectionary of 1961?
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*The oddity in the ASB was that Sunday Office readings started Genesis on the Ninth Sunday Before Christmas, because of the whimsical invention of a Creation Etcetera Season. This Brilliant Idea never endeared itself to anybody. But ... curiously ... as far as weekdays were concerned, Genesis still began in the ASB on (the Monday after) Septuagesima (renamed the Ninth Sunday Before Easter).
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