Yesterday, it being my Birthday, we went for a spring stroll in the most fantastic eighteenth century garden in England ... promisingly distinguished at its entrance by a blessed Notice forbidding Dogs (and push-chairs and children).
I have occasionally infuriated dog-lovers by referring to the species canis lupus familiaris as
Man's oldest and filthiest friend.
Canine coprolites have been found, have indeed been lovingly and scientifically excavated, at Bronze Age sites such as Amesbury.
Perhaps Dr Linnaeus should have named these animals canis lupus cacatorius.
Warden Sparrow, late of All Souls' College in this University, famously and O-so-accurately spoke of the Dog as
That indefatigable and unsavoury engine of pollution.
When out walking in unfamiliar countryside, one always knows when one has got within an easy radius of a carpark because of the care one is obliged to exercise. Dogs, obedient ubiquitously to the Bergoglian injunction hagan lio, have been active. However, is it fair to condemn dogs? Certainly not. Dog-owners, yes. I know a slipway in Cornwall where fish is brought in; the National Trust, who own it, were driven a few years ago to ban dogs from the slipway and to provide for the dogs and their walkers a simple pleasant alternative footpath away from the fishy area. And I know beaches galore with clear notices banning dogs between March and September. Quite possibly, dogs can't read. Can the Dogwalking Tendency read? What would be your guess? Exactly. But they and their animals are, of course, individually, each and every one, lofty and aetherial exceptions to any terrestrial regulations which bind merely common humanity and its all-too-terrestrial common caninity.
But stay: all my speciesist prejudices were in abeyance yesterday. You see, we must not forget Ringwood, the last echoes of whose deep full voice can still by the very sensitive ear be heard, baying Et in Arcadia ego in the Kentissimi horti at Rousham in Oxfordshire. His "Master and Friend", Sir Clement Cottrell-Dormer, had this "otterhound of extraordinary sagacity" buried in the Vale of Venus (a possibly dubious expression) right in front of the very statue of the Goddess herself reflected in the waters of her pool, nuda sed pudica* even if dangerously overlooked by Faunus and Pan, only feet from the river Cherwell where Ringwood worked such righteous havoc upon the otter population. There, since those last enchanted years of the reign of His Most Eminent Majesty King Henry IX, this doggy wraith has surely mingled at dusk in the dances of the dryads and naiads. Is Ringwood Canine Nature's Solitary Boast?
Today, as we walked along his banks, we inferred that the great God Cherwell (sometimes mispronounced by common folk so that his first syllable rhymes with the chur of church) must be enraged, since intumuit ... pariterque animis immanis et undis** ... etc..
Ever an Enlightenment Rationalist, I blamed Monday's rain.
*naked but modest ** he is swollen mightily both in rage and in waters ...
14 March 2018
12 March 2018
What a Sunday!! UPDATE
Yesterday, Pam and I went into London to share in the Baptism of the second son of dear friends from our S Thomas's days. The first time I have done the Ordinariate Baptism Rite.
The Assumption and S Gregory, Warwick Street, must be one of our most interesting and beautiful Catholic Churches in England; the Ordinariate was very lucky to be given the use of it, in accordance with the directions of Benedict XVI's Anglicanorum coetibus, by the gracious decision of the Diocese of Westminster. Many readers will know that it was at first the Portuguese Embassy Chapel, then the Bavarian. (During the years of persecution, the only Catholic churches open for worship were the Embassy Chapels of the Catholic powers.) Directly above the font where I baptised a very suave and properly-conducted young man, hung the flag of the Head of the House of Wittelsbach. Not long ago I was there to preach to the Knights of Malta. 'Warwick Street' is undoubtedly a connoisseurs' Church!
The Church was decently full. But there was room for more. I can't understand why it isn't absolutely packed out to the rafters ... chokka ... a historic Church (it has the immense distinction of having been sacked during the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots) with Alpha Traditional Liturgy. Pontifical Sung Mass on many Sundays; a reputation for good-quality preaching; a fine professional choir; highly competent servers; the Ordinariate Rite, which readers will know as an elegant combination of the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite in Tudor English versus Orientem with orthodox features from the Prayer Book tradition of the Church of England. And in the historic heart of London's vibrant West End, just a step from Piccadilly Circus and Theatreland and Chinatown.
Like other Catholic churches built in the days of persecution, it has some of the features of a Georgian Methodist Chapel: an unobtrusive facade and internal galleries. Above the door to the Sacristy is a fine marble bas-relief of the Assumption by J E Carew (a very popular Irish neo-classical sculptor ... his main patron was the Earl of Egremont, who employed him and Turner and 'Capability' Brown at Petworth). This Assumption was originally above the High Altar until Bentley removed it to make way for a bigger sanctuary in the style of Westminster Cathedral (which he had just built).
In other words, the best of pretty well everything!
Especially yesterday's civilised and amiable baptismal neophyte, his brother and his parents and grandparents and families and godparents (and their young families!).
What's not to like?
I was made very welcome by Mgr Newton and Gill, and by the invariably cheerful pp Fr Mark Elliott Smith. Real warmth! And I remet Fr Anthony Edwards after a lapse of decades: a dear Staggers friend and a fine Oz wit, who lent us his Dolphin Square flat for part of our honeymoon, all of 51 years ago. Not many of the English Catholic clergy can boast of being incardinated into the diocese of Lugano!
A warning: UNTIL EASTER, not all the weekday Masses are in the Ordinariate Rite. AFTER EASTER, nearly all of them will be Ordinariate, except for a Vigil Mass which will be in the Novus Ordo, and a couple of Masses in the Extraordinary Form: Wednesday 7 p.m.; Saturday 12..
The Assumption and S Gregory, Warwick Street, must be one of our most interesting and beautiful Catholic Churches in England; the Ordinariate was very lucky to be given the use of it, in accordance with the directions of Benedict XVI's Anglicanorum coetibus, by the gracious decision of the Diocese of Westminster. Many readers will know that it was at first the Portuguese Embassy Chapel, then the Bavarian. (During the years of persecution, the only Catholic churches open for worship were the Embassy Chapels of the Catholic powers.) Directly above the font where I baptised a very suave and properly-conducted young man, hung the flag of the Head of the House of Wittelsbach. Not long ago I was there to preach to the Knights of Malta. 'Warwick Street' is undoubtedly a connoisseurs' Church!
The Church was decently full. But there was room for more. I can't understand why it isn't absolutely packed out to the rafters ... chokka ... a historic Church (it has the immense distinction of having been sacked during the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots) with Alpha Traditional Liturgy. Pontifical Sung Mass on many Sundays; a reputation for good-quality preaching; a fine professional choir; highly competent servers; the Ordinariate Rite, which readers will know as an elegant combination of the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite in Tudor English versus Orientem with orthodox features from the Prayer Book tradition of the Church of England. And in the historic heart of London's vibrant West End, just a step from Piccadilly Circus and Theatreland and Chinatown.
Like other Catholic churches built in the days of persecution, it has some of the features of a Georgian Methodist Chapel: an unobtrusive facade and internal galleries. Above the door to the Sacristy is a fine marble bas-relief of the Assumption by J E Carew (a very popular Irish neo-classical sculptor ... his main patron was the Earl of Egremont, who employed him and Turner and 'Capability' Brown at Petworth). This Assumption was originally above the High Altar until Bentley removed it to make way for a bigger sanctuary in the style of Westminster Cathedral (which he had just built).
In other words, the best of pretty well everything!
Especially yesterday's civilised and amiable baptismal neophyte, his brother and his parents and grandparents and families and godparents (and their young families!).
What's not to like?
I was made very welcome by Mgr Newton and Gill, and by the invariably cheerful pp Fr Mark Elliott Smith. Real warmth! And I remet Fr Anthony Edwards after a lapse of decades: a dear Staggers friend and a fine Oz wit, who lent us his Dolphin Square flat for part of our honeymoon, all of 51 years ago. Not many of the English Catholic clergy can boast of being incardinated into the diocese of Lugano!
A warning: UNTIL EASTER, not all the weekday Masses are in the Ordinariate Rite. AFTER EASTER, nearly all of them will be Ordinariate, except for a Vigil Mass which will be in the Novus Ordo, and a couple of Masses in the Extraordinary Form: Wednesday 7 p.m.; Saturday 12..
10 March 2018
Mary Mother of the Church (3): Magnum principium and the Office Hymns
A final aspect of the promulgation of this new memoria, now to be universal in the Novus Ordo, is the provision, as part of the newly authorised liturgical texts, of 'proper' Latin Office Hymns for this particular celebration*. These will be needed for clergy using the Liturgia Horarum.
Readers will remember the widespread popular joy, which led to dancing in the streets and a great bonfire in the piazza in front of Westminster Cathedral, when, by a motu proprio called Magnum principium, PF gave to episcopal Conferences the happy duty of preparing vernacular translations of liturgical texts. (That jubilation was scarcely less exuberant than when, last August, PF assured us "with certainty and magisterial authority that the liturgical reform is irreversible".)
Of course, the overwhelming majority of Latin Rite clergy do not need a vernacular Office Book because they say their Office in Latin. They do this out of a very proper obedience, rigorously enforced by the bishops, to the irreversible Decree of the much-respected Second Vatican Super-duper-Council (Sacrosanctum Concilium Para 101: 1 "Iuxta saecularem traditionem ritus latini, in Officio divino lingua latina clericis servanda est, facta tamen Ordinario potestate usum versionis vernaculae ... concedendi, singulis pro casibus, iis clericis quibus usus linguae latinae grave impedimentum est quominus Officium debite persolvant").
But that irreversible Decree, you are about to remind me, did allow bishops, as a special concession in individual cases considered one by one, to permit linguistically challenged priests to say their Office in a vernacular. Quite so. I am indeed both glad and relieved, whenever I go into the bookshop next to Westminster Cathedral (now almost rebuilt after the damage caused by the fire), to see that the needs of this (albeit very tiny) minority of Catholic clergy are still fully provided for by the copious abundance of English-language Office Books on sale. It is good to be sensitive and generous towards that particular cultural periphery, however small and eccentric it may be. My fear had been that the irreversible Apostolic Constitution Veterum sapientia (1962; in which that good and great pope S John XXIII with certainty and Magisterial authority ordered the wholesale dismissal of all seminary teachers incapable of teaching in Latin) might have impacted the numbers of clerical aspirants with irreversibly weak Latin.
All the world's Episcopal Conferences, therefore, with the fresh new wind of Magnum principium billowing in their joyful sails, will be enthusiastically translating Latin hymnody into their respective crude, modern vernaculars. (Imagine how the mighty Christine must be rotating in her grave.) Just think of them vying with each other as they seek the most euphonious vernacular renderings for the tiniest nuances in the Latin! How the poor things find the time to spend on such civilised literary pursuits when they have been charged by a Higher Authority to be busy in coming to a common mind on Amoris laetitia, I cannot possibly imagine. They are far bigger men (and much more irreversible) than I could ever be.
A warning, however.
Their lordships would not be well advised to try to get away with some cheeky schoolboy trick like offering Marian hymns already composed in vernacular languages instead of real translations of the newly authorised Latin hymns, because the CDW, who still have to approve vernacular translations sent in by the Conferences, would of course instantly spot the dodge and send such drafts back to the Conferences irreversibly marked in angry schoolmaster's red ink "Not good enough. This simply WILL NOT DO". I am sure Cardinal Sarah will be an absolute martinet in enforcing Magnum principium down to the very last Yod, and the newly emancipated episcopates, bursting with and uplifted by grateful loyalty to PF, would themselves wish for nothing less.
(No, I would not be prepared to give them a helping hand. I am quite hopeless at writing English or Cornish verse. At my incredibly advanced age, I am far too old a dog to learn new tricks. Besides, I am confident that I would never be given a nulla osta to do such sensitive work. As my blog demonstrates, I am an irreversibly unsuitable and very loosecanon cannon.)
I am now willing to consider Comments on these three posts. They should be composed in a suitably sombre and sober and responsible register.
*Footnote: Two of the three hymns are in fact from the Liturgia Horarum, where Dom Anselmo Lentini's Coetus offered them as alternatives to the ancient Marian hymns for our Lady on Saturday. They are (very) free translations into Latin of a passage in Dante's Paradiso. B Paul VI liked them: it would be nice to think that this is the reason for their inclusion in the new memoria. The third hymn is medieval, and indexed in the Thesaurus. I'm not sure how good it is ... but you are allowed to use the Ave Maris Stella instead.
I know what you're thinking: the glorious days have sadly passed when Leo XIII himself (died 1903) spared the time to compose new Office Hymns; also the days when Pius XII could turn to Fr Genovesi (died 1967); indeed, Dom Anselmo himself, no mean liturgical poet, has irreversibly passed from us (in 1989). I wonder when last the Vatican maintained officials styled "Sacrae Rituum Congregationis Hymnographi". I wonder if there was ever a post denominated "Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Archihymnographus". Wow!
Readers will remember the widespread popular joy, which led to dancing in the streets and a great bonfire in the piazza in front of Westminster Cathedral, when, by a motu proprio called Magnum principium, PF gave to episcopal Conferences the happy duty of preparing vernacular translations of liturgical texts. (That jubilation was scarcely less exuberant than when, last August, PF assured us "with certainty and magisterial authority that the liturgical reform is irreversible".)
Of course, the overwhelming majority of Latin Rite clergy do not need a vernacular Office Book because they say their Office in Latin. They do this out of a very proper obedience, rigorously enforced by the bishops, to the irreversible Decree of the much-respected Second Vatican Super-duper-Council (Sacrosanctum Concilium Para 101: 1 "Iuxta saecularem traditionem ritus latini, in Officio divino lingua latina clericis servanda est, facta tamen Ordinario potestate usum versionis vernaculae ... concedendi, singulis pro casibus, iis clericis quibus usus linguae latinae grave impedimentum est quominus Officium debite persolvant").
But that irreversible Decree, you are about to remind me, did allow bishops, as a special concession in individual cases considered one by one, to permit linguistically challenged priests to say their Office in a vernacular. Quite so. I am indeed both glad and relieved, whenever I go into the bookshop next to Westminster Cathedral (now almost rebuilt after the damage caused by the fire), to see that the needs of this (albeit very tiny) minority of Catholic clergy are still fully provided for by the copious abundance of English-language Office Books on sale. It is good to be sensitive and generous towards that particular cultural periphery, however small and eccentric it may be. My fear had been that the irreversible Apostolic Constitution Veterum sapientia (1962; in which that good and great pope S John XXIII with certainty and Magisterial authority ordered the wholesale dismissal of all seminary teachers incapable of teaching in Latin) might have impacted the numbers of clerical aspirants with irreversibly weak Latin.
All the world's Episcopal Conferences, therefore, with the fresh new wind of Magnum principium billowing in their joyful sails, will be enthusiastically translating Latin hymnody into their respective crude, modern vernaculars. (Imagine how the mighty Christine must be rotating in her grave.) Just think of them vying with each other as they seek the most euphonious vernacular renderings for the tiniest nuances in the Latin! How the poor things find the time to spend on such civilised literary pursuits when they have been charged by a Higher Authority to be busy in coming to a common mind on Amoris laetitia, I cannot possibly imagine. They are far bigger men (and much more irreversible) than I could ever be.
A warning, however.
Their lordships would not be well advised to try to get away with some cheeky schoolboy trick like offering Marian hymns already composed in vernacular languages instead of real translations of the newly authorised Latin hymns, because the CDW, who still have to approve vernacular translations sent in by the Conferences, would of course instantly spot the dodge and send such drafts back to the Conferences irreversibly marked in angry schoolmaster's red ink "Not good enough. This simply WILL NOT DO". I am sure Cardinal Sarah will be an absolute martinet in enforcing Magnum principium down to the very last Yod, and the newly emancipated episcopates, bursting with and uplifted by grateful loyalty to PF, would themselves wish for nothing less.
(No, I would not be prepared to give them a helping hand. I am quite hopeless at writing English or Cornish verse. At my incredibly advanced age, I am far too old a dog to learn new tricks. Besides, I am confident that I would never be given a nulla osta to do such sensitive work. As my blog demonstrates, I am an irreversibly unsuitable and very loose
I am now willing to consider Comments on these three posts. They should be composed in a suitably sombre and sober and responsible register.
*Footnote: Two of the three hymns are in fact from the Liturgia Horarum, where Dom Anselmo Lentini's Coetus offered them as alternatives to the ancient Marian hymns for our Lady on Saturday. They are (very) free translations into Latin of a passage in Dante's Paradiso. B Paul VI liked them: it would be nice to think that this is the reason for their inclusion in the new memoria. The third hymn is medieval, and indexed in the Thesaurus. I'm not sure how good it is ... but you are allowed to use the Ave Maris Stella instead.
I know what you're thinking: the glorious days have sadly passed when Leo XIII himself (died 1903) spared the time to compose new Office Hymns; also the days when Pius XII could turn to Fr Genovesi (died 1967); indeed, Dom Anselmo himself, no mean liturgical poet, has irreversibly passed from us (in 1989). I wonder when last the Vatican maintained officials styled "Sacrae Rituum Congregationis Hymnographi". I wonder if there was ever a post denominated "Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Archihymnographus". Wow!
9 March 2018
Cardinal Sarah rebuked in last week's Tablet by a Trained Liturgist
Well, I am most certainly not a Trained Liturgist, although my priesthood was formed at the most 'liturgical' of the Church of England's seminaries, Staggers, and after the General Ordination Examination I was given the Liturgy Prize for that year. But I know my limitations; I am only too keenly aware that I have never kept up with the interrelated mutually-validating groups of 'experts' and contributed to their self-referencing and interlocking Journals, Conferences, and what-nots. My mental picture, however, of Trained Liturgists had always been of nice sweet-tempered rosy-faced white-haired old gentlemen dozily clinging to their two-generation-outdated shibboleths and exploded myths and frequently raising in a slightly tremulous hand a glass of whiskey to the memory of Saint Pseudo-Hippolytus; breaking off from the bottle only rarely when called upon for a Tablet article or to give "advice" to a Cardinal Archbishop.
Until, that is, three or four years ago. Then I realised how completely wrong I was and always had been. In an Oxford seminar I found myself listening to a man who, from his long list of degrees and academic appointments and publications, just had to be a Trained Liturgist. And he was not nice at all!! (Nor rosy-faced nor white-haired nor tremulous of hand.) He tried to keep his hearers entertained by a rambling and, it seemed to me, spiteful account of the culture of Private Masses, described as if its practical details rendered it inherently and self-evidently contemptible and risible ("the junior curate had to get up early to say the first Mass ... ho ho ho ... the Rector only got up just before breakfast ... ho ..."). You may well imagine that this rather tried my own very undeveloped sense of humour; but I did derive some amusement from the false quantities in his Latinity. One, in particular ... as small things do ... still sticks in my mind, because it took me some seconds to work out what the poor stumbling fellow was trying to say. The late Latin word nullatenus has its emphasis on the a, because the e is short so that the accent recedes to the antepenultimate (nullAHtenus). But the Trained Chappie pronounced it, with great decision, as if the e were long (NULLaTEYnus). Ha Ha. Pathetic of me? Undoubtedly. Thoroughly petty? Well, give me a break. I needed something to laugh at. You would have needed it too. Alcohol was not immediately on, er, tap.
I think that speaker may have been the very same [?Reverend Father?] Tom O'Loughlin who has given Cardinal Sarah such a very stern telling-off in ... YES!!! The Tablet!!! ... for what his Eminence had the temerity to say about how to receive Holy Communion. Naughty, naughty, Sarah! We know so much better, because we are the Trained Liturgists! Bow, bow, to his Daughter-in-law elect!!
Mired still in the enthusiasms of the post-Conciliar decade, these people have invested a lifetime of effort in the pitiful assumptions of their youthful years. Their own status depends on all that old stuff still being taken seriously by new generations of the gullible. So they just cannot bear to let it all go.
You might have thought that those who most applaud the ruptures accomplished with so much violence in the 1970s would realise that they are the people least well-placed to defend the inviolability of a status quo.
Until, that is, three or four years ago. Then I realised how completely wrong I was and always had been. In an Oxford seminar I found myself listening to a man who, from his long list of degrees and academic appointments and publications, just had to be a Trained Liturgist. And he was not nice at all!! (Nor rosy-faced nor white-haired nor tremulous of hand.) He tried to keep his hearers entertained by a rambling and, it seemed to me, spiteful account of the culture of Private Masses, described as if its practical details rendered it inherently and self-evidently contemptible and risible ("the junior curate had to get up early to say the first Mass ... ho ho ho ... the Rector only got up just before breakfast ... ho ..."). You may well imagine that this rather tried my own very undeveloped sense of humour; but I did derive some amusement from the false quantities in his Latinity. One, in particular ... as small things do ... still sticks in my mind, because it took me some seconds to work out what the poor stumbling fellow was trying to say. The late Latin word nullatenus has its emphasis on the a, because the e is short so that the accent recedes to the antepenultimate (nullAHtenus). But the Trained Chappie pronounced it, with great decision, as if the e were long (NULLaTEYnus). Ha Ha. Pathetic of me? Undoubtedly. Thoroughly petty? Well, give me a break. I needed something to laugh at. You would have needed it too. Alcohol was not immediately on, er, tap.
I think that speaker may have been the very same [?Reverend Father?] Tom O'Loughlin who has given Cardinal Sarah such a very stern telling-off in ... YES!!! The Tablet!!! ... for what his Eminence had the temerity to say about how to receive Holy Communion. Naughty, naughty, Sarah! We know so much better, because we are the Trained Liturgists! Bow, bow, to his Daughter-in-law elect!!
Mired still in the enthusiasms of the post-Conciliar decade, these people have invested a lifetime of effort in the pitiful assumptions of their youthful years. Their own status depends on all that old stuff still being taken seriously by new generations of the gullible. So they just cannot bear to let it all go.
You might have thought that those who most applaud the ruptures accomplished with so much violence in the 1970s would realise that they are the people least well-placed to defend the inviolability of a status quo.
8 March 2018
Mary Mother of the church (2)
Apparently Pope Francis asked for this addition to the Calendar of the Ordinary Form because this Memoria was familiar to him, having been granted by indult to Argentina. In Magisterial terms, it goes back to the Allocution to the Council Fathers which Blessed Pope Paul VI made at the conclusion of the Third Session of Vatican II, when he formally proclaimed Mother of the Church as a title of our Blessed Lady (he did this after Conciliar liberals had shown recalcitrance towards this title*). The new propers now promulgated for this Memoria have, in the Office of Readings, part of Blessed Pope Paul's Allocution. Legem credendi lex statuat orandi. It's now Big Magisterium!
PF apparently likes this particular title of our Lady because he has used it several times since his election. But on 2 June 2013, when this pontificate had hardly started, a clerical columnist in one of our English Catholic Newspapers got in pre-emptively with his criticism and wrote "Pope Paul VI cheated and referred to Mary as Mother of the Church during one of his private documents during the Council" ... an engagingly cheerful and dashing dismissal of an act of Papal Primacy in the midst of an Ecumenical Council! But perhaps we should indeed follow this relaxed lead in our treatment of papal utterances. Is there anything wrong with light-heartedly calling a Pope a cheat? Surely not. This is just the sort of happy, friendly banter we need in a Church which has learned to avoid Rigidity. Lighten up, folks! And why on earth should we not dismiss a papal Allocution to an Ecumenical Council as a "private document"? I'm sure the time will soon come when "private documents" such as Laudato si and Amoris laetitia will have disappeared completely from Catholic consciousness.
Probably Vatican II itself will then be as highly regarded as, say, the Council of Vienne is now. Sub specie aeternitatis ...
Happily, Pope Benedict XVI (unknowingly) provided ways ahead for clergy who, like that columnist, intransigently dislike this title of our Lady or the important place PF has now given it in the Novus Ordo Calendar. On the Monday after Pentecost, blow the dust off your old pre-conciliar Altar Book and just celebrate the Extraordinary Form! Or ... if you have Ordinariate chums who, in the absence of an Ordinariate priest, ask you for an Ordinariate Mass on that day ... Bob's your Uncle!
I will publish the final part of this in a couple of days' time, and only then consider Comments.
*Over at NLM, the admirable Matthew Hazell has given illuminating extracts from the reactions of contemporary conciliar observers. Goodness me, HOW the poor sweet things did fume!
PF apparently likes this particular title of our Lady because he has used it several times since his election. But on 2 June 2013, when this pontificate had hardly started, a clerical columnist in one of our English Catholic Newspapers got in pre-emptively with his criticism and wrote "Pope Paul VI cheated and referred to Mary as Mother of the Church during one of his private documents during the Council" ... an engagingly cheerful and dashing dismissal of an act of Papal Primacy in the midst of an Ecumenical Council! But perhaps we should indeed follow this relaxed lead in our treatment of papal utterances. Is there anything wrong with light-heartedly calling a Pope a cheat? Surely not. This is just the sort of happy, friendly banter we need in a Church which has learned to avoid Rigidity. Lighten up, folks! And why on earth should we not dismiss a papal Allocution to an Ecumenical Council as a "private document"? I'm sure the time will soon come when "private documents" such as Laudato si and Amoris laetitia will have disappeared completely from Catholic consciousness.
Probably Vatican II itself will then be as highly regarded as, say, the Council of Vienne is now. Sub specie aeternitatis ...
Happily, Pope Benedict XVI (unknowingly) provided ways ahead for clergy who, like that columnist, intransigently dislike this title of our Lady or the important place PF has now given it in the Novus Ordo Calendar. On the Monday after Pentecost, blow the dust off your old pre-conciliar Altar Book and just celebrate the Extraordinary Form! Or ... if you have Ordinariate chums who, in the absence of an Ordinariate priest, ask you for an Ordinariate Mass on that day ... Bob's your Uncle!
I will publish the final part of this in a couple of days' time, and only then consider Comments.
*Over at NLM, the admirable Matthew Hazell has given illuminating extracts from the reactions of contemporary conciliar observers. Goodness me, HOW the poor sweet things did fume!
7 March 2018
Mary Mother of the Church (1) (SLIGHTLY AUGMENTED)
This new compulsory memoria is to be observed on the Monday after Whit Sunday. The fact that the Decree establishing it has emerged from the CDW and not from Ecclesia Dei makes clear that it applies to the Ordinary and not at all to the Extraordinary Form. This is confirmed beyond any doubt by the phraseology of the Decree and the details of the Propers issued. Incidentally, the Decree should have provided (as the law does with regard to the - also movable - memoria of the Immaculate Heart) what happens in years when this movable memoria coincides with an immovable compulsory memoria.
The intelligent thing about this innovation is, of course, that it associates our Lady's Motherhood of the Church with the Day of Pentecost, when she sat in the midst of the Apostles as they received the empowering Spirit. But I hope it will not be misused to draw our blessed Lady into the promotion of Bergoglian ecclesiological errors regarding the alleged role of the Holy Ghost in daily inspiring the Roman Pontiff to espouse or disseminate new doctrine.
More broadly ...
Whit Monday, Monday in the Octave of Pentecost when we celebrate with Paschal joy the Gift of the Spirit, is one of the great days in the Traditional Christian Year. Indeed, it is only comparatively recently that it ceased to be a Public Holiday in my own Country. According to my diary, May 21 is still in this year 2018 a Public Holiday in Austria, Belgium, Canada ('Victoria Day'), Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, and Holland; and, in Byzantine Rite countries, Cyprus, Greece, and Romania.
Gradually, followers of the Roman Rite have been edging back to a proper observance of the Octave of Pentecost. I regret any initiative which contradicts this tendency. I regretted, a few years ago, the creation of a Feast of Christ the High Priest on the Thursday of Whit Week (happily, this Feast is not universally obligatory). I regret all initiatives which go directly against the hope of Pope Benedict XVI that the two forms of the Roman Rite would gradually (painlessly and organically) converge.
In the Ordinariates, the Days in the (restored) Pentecost Octave rank higher than Obligatory Memorials in the General Calendar, so, most fortunately, the new memoria will be permanently occluded. I very much hope there will be no tinkering with this laudable provision!!
Pentecost Monday is also treated with respect in the Byzantine Rite.
And in the Extraordinary Form we already have two feasts of our Lady's Maternity. I would set no diriment impediment to the festival on October 11 having 'and Mother of the Church' added to its title!
I sha'n't consider Comments until I've published the three parts of this. Tomorrow, I shall offer a little background about B Paul VI and Vatican II; and, on Saturday, some words about problems offered by the Hymns.
The intelligent thing about this innovation is, of course, that it associates our Lady's Motherhood of the Church with the Day of Pentecost, when she sat in the midst of the Apostles as they received the empowering Spirit. But I hope it will not be misused to draw our blessed Lady into the promotion of Bergoglian ecclesiological errors regarding the alleged role of the Holy Ghost in daily inspiring the Roman Pontiff to espouse or disseminate new doctrine.
More broadly ...
Whit Monday, Monday in the Octave of Pentecost when we celebrate with Paschal joy the Gift of the Spirit, is one of the great days in the Traditional Christian Year. Indeed, it is only comparatively recently that it ceased to be a Public Holiday in my own Country. According to my diary, May 21 is still in this year 2018 a Public Holiday in Austria, Belgium, Canada ('Victoria Day'), Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, and Holland; and, in Byzantine Rite countries, Cyprus, Greece, and Romania.
Gradually, followers of the Roman Rite have been edging back to a proper observance of the Octave of Pentecost. I regret any initiative which contradicts this tendency. I regretted, a few years ago, the creation of a Feast of Christ the High Priest on the Thursday of Whit Week (happily, this Feast is not universally obligatory). I regret all initiatives which go directly against the hope of Pope Benedict XVI that the two forms of the Roman Rite would gradually (painlessly and organically) converge.
In the Ordinariates, the Days in the (restored) Pentecost Octave rank higher than Obligatory Memorials in the General Calendar, so, most fortunately, the new memoria will be permanently occluded. I very much hope there will be no tinkering with this laudable provision!!
Pentecost Monday is also treated with respect in the Byzantine Rite.
And in the Extraordinary Form we already have two feasts of our Lady's Maternity. I would set no diriment impediment to the festival on October 11 having 'and Mother of the Church' added to its title!
I sha'n't consider Comments until I've published the three parts of this. Tomorrow, I shall offer a little background about B Paul VI and Vatican II; and, on Saturday, some words about problems offered by the Hymns.
6 March 2018
The Precious Blood
I published this on Sunday March 6 2011, Quinquagesima Sunday, our last Sunday in the Church of England at S Thomas the Martyr. I repeat it here out of nostalgia.
Glory be to Jesus, Who in bitter pains, Poured for us the life-blood From his sacred veins.
I really felt unusually affected at Mass this morning. Three hymns: Praise to the Holiest ..., which Pam and I had at our Wedding: suitable also because in 1828 Mr Newman contributed to raising the floor-level of S Thomas's above the flood-level of the Thames - and his scout John Hayworth was a life-long worshipper at S Thomas's. And Sweet Sacrament Divine. And, at the end, Glory be to Jesus (Viva! Viva! Gesu!), a hymn I particularly love. I had it at my Licensing to S Thomas's, unaware as I made the choice that it is painted on the roof-beams of the church ... probably during the incumbency of Fr Roger Wodehouse, who very much loved it (he was also the priest who put in place the baroque High Altar). Lift ye then your voices; Swell the mighty flood: Louder still and louder Praise the precious Blood.
After the Angelus, we polished off, as Canon Law required, a quick Vestry Meeting before the Churchwardens, staves of office in their hands, led us to the Shrine of S Thomas; for the last time we did the devotions traditional here on festivals of S Thomas, this time in thanks to our Patron for his gifts of grace in bringing us to where we now are. These devotions end with the Antiphon ad Magnificat in the Sarum Breviary: Salve, Thoma, virga justitiae, mundi jubar, robur Ecclesiae, plebis amor, cleri deliciae: Salve, gregis tutor egregie; salva tuae gaudentes gloriae. Then, in what I found a most moving gesture, the Churchwardens laid down their staves and left them at the feet of S Thomas. Vale, beate Thoma.
In my view, Churchwardens are a crucial element in the Anglican Patrimony, inherited from a medieval Church in which each of the innumerable guilds had its own Wardens, all under the ultimate control of the "High Wardens". As an indication of lay dignity and of the intricate corporate communal life of a medieval parish, they should be one of our most important contributions to the Wider Church.
Grace and life eternal In that Blood I find; Blest be His compassion, Infinitely kind. Deo gratias.
Glory be to Jesus, Who in bitter pains, Poured for us the life-blood From his sacred veins.
I really felt unusually affected at Mass this morning. Three hymns: Praise to the Holiest ..., which Pam and I had at our Wedding: suitable also because in 1828 Mr Newman contributed to raising the floor-level of S Thomas's above the flood-level of the Thames - and his scout John Hayworth was a life-long worshipper at S Thomas's. And Sweet Sacrament Divine. And, at the end, Glory be to Jesus (Viva! Viva! Gesu!), a hymn I particularly love. I had it at my Licensing to S Thomas's, unaware as I made the choice that it is painted on the roof-beams of the church ... probably during the incumbency of Fr Roger Wodehouse, who very much loved it (he was also the priest who put in place the baroque High Altar). Lift ye then your voices; Swell the mighty flood: Louder still and louder Praise the precious Blood.
After the Angelus, we polished off, as Canon Law required, a quick Vestry Meeting before the Churchwardens, staves of office in their hands, led us to the Shrine of S Thomas; for the last time we did the devotions traditional here on festivals of S Thomas, this time in thanks to our Patron for his gifts of grace in bringing us to where we now are. These devotions end with the Antiphon ad Magnificat in the Sarum Breviary: Salve, Thoma, virga justitiae, mundi jubar, robur Ecclesiae, plebis amor, cleri deliciae: Salve, gregis tutor egregie; salva tuae gaudentes gloriae. Then, in what I found a most moving gesture, the Churchwardens laid down their staves and left them at the feet of S Thomas. Vale, beate Thoma.
In my view, Churchwardens are a crucial element in the Anglican Patrimony, inherited from a medieval Church in which each of the innumerable guilds had its own Wardens, all under the ultimate control of the "High Wardens". As an indication of lay dignity and of the intricate corporate communal life of a medieval parish, they should be one of our most important contributions to the Wider Church.
Grace and life eternal In that Blood I find; Blest be His compassion, Infinitely kind. Deo gratias.
5 March 2018
Placuit Deo?
The CDF has, interestingly, clarified, what PF has been meaning over these last long five years when he has repeatedly condemned Neo-Pelagians and Gnostics. I am not a dogmatic theologian, but it seems to me that its recent document is full of good stuff. Not least in the opening section, teaching that Salvation is only through Christ in His Church, with its confirmatory reference to the document Dominus Iesus. That was the admirable piece of work which stimulated such over-wrought hysteria when Joseph Ratzinger's CDF issued it in the pontificate of S John Paul II. Do you think the Nasties will be consumed by the same hyperventilating paroxysms of rage today as they were when Cardinal Ratzinger issued Dominus Iesus? No? You don't? You naughty cynics! ... er ... somehow, neither do I ... tempora mutant ... ur ...
I am not sure that I have actually met any of the now-condemned heretics, but perhaps critical readers will respond to that admission by advising me that I should try to get out more and meet more people. When I do meet the neo-heretics, I promise that I will remonstrate angrily with them and report their names to Archbishop Ladaria so that he can reactivate the thumbscrews in his sound-proofed cellars. Apparently, at the News Conference, the Archbishop avoided like a hot whatsit an invitation to name names ... I bet he did ...
Also praiseworthy: Archbishop Ladaria's merry men do not include in their explanation of 'neo-Pelagian' the offensive and hurtful paranoid nonsense we have heard from some quarters, linking this term with 'rigid' faithfulness to Scripture and Tradition.
But ...
Just one weeny detail made me pause in my encomia of delight. "According to [the Neo-Pelagian] way of thinking, salvation depends on the strength of the individual or on purely human structures which are incapable of welcoming the newness of the Spirit of God." [My emphases.]
Fair enough. I'm not complaining. My fleeting nanno-second of anxiety simply arose from an apprehension that what I regard as the fundamental error of Bergoglian ecclesiology might be getting just the tiniest of toes in the door here: the idea, fittingly condemned at Vatican I, that the Holy Spirit so inspires the Roman Pontiff as to reveal to him new teaching.
The Holy Spirit does constantly renew us all by calling strongly to our minds what the Lord has said to us and what, in our Christian initiation, he has worked within us. Since the days of the Apostles, He does not guide either the whole Church or any member or members of it into new teaching, except in as far as the whole body of teaching and living already embodied in Sacred Scripture and Holy Tradition is itself, and always has been, and always will be, God's Great New Thing, His Glorious Surprise, His powerful gift of mighty renewal to all at every level in the Church who will open their stubborn hearts to Him.
(I wonder if this new document arises from a desire of PF to ... as it were ... to ... put his doctrinal house in order before ... )
I am not sure that I have actually met any of the now-condemned heretics, but perhaps critical readers will respond to that admission by advising me that I should try to get out more and meet more people. When I do meet the neo-heretics, I promise that I will remonstrate angrily with them and report their names to Archbishop Ladaria so that he can reactivate the thumbscrews in his sound-proofed cellars. Apparently, at the News Conference, the Archbishop avoided like a hot whatsit an invitation to name names ... I bet he did ...
Also praiseworthy: Archbishop Ladaria's merry men do not include in their explanation of 'neo-Pelagian' the offensive and hurtful paranoid nonsense we have heard from some quarters, linking this term with 'rigid' faithfulness to Scripture and Tradition.
But ...
Just one weeny detail made me pause in my encomia of delight. "According to [the Neo-Pelagian] way of thinking, salvation depends on the strength of the individual or on purely human structures which are incapable of welcoming the newness of the Spirit of God." [My emphases.]
Fair enough. I'm not complaining. My fleeting nanno-second of anxiety simply arose from an apprehension that what I regard as the fundamental error of Bergoglian ecclesiology might be getting just the tiniest of toes in the door here: the idea, fittingly condemned at Vatican I, that the Holy Spirit so inspires the Roman Pontiff as to reveal to him new teaching.
The Holy Spirit does constantly renew us all by calling strongly to our minds what the Lord has said to us and what, in our Christian initiation, he has worked within us. Since the days of the Apostles, He does not guide either the whole Church or any member or members of it into new teaching, except in as far as the whole body of teaching and living already embodied in Sacred Scripture and Holy Tradition is itself, and always has been, and always will be, God's Great New Thing, His Glorious Surprise, His powerful gift of mighty renewal to all at every level in the Church who will open their stubborn hearts to Him.
(I wonder if this new document arises from a desire of PF to ... as it were ... to ... put his doctrinal house in order before ... )
4 March 2018
Episcopal Conferences
The motu proprio Apostolos suos of S John Paul II regulates Episcopal Conferences and rightly restricts their dogmatic role.
This is on the doctrinal ground that the Universal Church, gathered round the Bishop pf Rome; and the local, diocesan Church gathered round the Bishop; are the only ecclesial realities which exist iure divino. As Cardinal Mueller has explained more than once, Conferences exist only at a human and utilitarian level.
Bound up with this matter is the theological controversy between Cardinals Ratzinger and Kasper about whether the Universal Church, or the Particular Church, has ontological priority. The papal Magisterium of Benedict XVI made clear that it is the Universal Church that has the ontological priority.
Hitherto, PF has refrained from too overtly dismantling the legacy of his predecessor. He has shown a certain Christian tact, even delicacy. This policy is now manifestly being phased out. Is PF in a hurry? It certainly looks like it.
The recent bulletin from the Vatican Press office, summarising the deliberations of the Council of Cardinals, speaks about an intention to "reread" Apostolos suos.
"REREAD"! One thinks of the controlled abuse of language described in George Orwell's 1984, and exemplified in totalitarian societies. The fact that we can turn to an honest Trotskyite reacting against Stalinism for an analysis of how language is now manipulated within the Catholic Church just about, as the phrase has it, says it all.
And the purpose of the current careful demolition of the edifice bequeathed by the last two popes, men of intelligence and distinction, looks to me very much like a desire to transform the Catholic Church into a skilfully crafted copy of the Anglican Communion.
Some of us have been there and seen that. We can tell you all about it. It is a very unwholesome place to be. In Blessed John Henry Newman's words, "The vivifying principle of Truth, the shadow of St Peter, the grace of the Redeemer, left it". No wonder Cardinal Burke, at Buckfast last year, spoke so powerfully about Apostasy.
References: I quoted Mueller at length in my piece of 7 December 2017. On 1 December 2017 I dealt with a very dangerous address by Cardinal Parolin. I suspect that the rationale he offered for Episcopal Conferences having a doctrinal status was a first draft of what will be inflicted upon us in the name of PF. Parolin is not, I feel, a man to be trusted with the Catholic Faith.
This is on the doctrinal ground that the Universal Church, gathered round the Bishop pf Rome; and the local, diocesan Church gathered round the Bishop; are the only ecclesial realities which exist iure divino. As Cardinal Mueller has explained more than once, Conferences exist only at a human and utilitarian level.
Bound up with this matter is the theological controversy between Cardinals Ratzinger and Kasper about whether the Universal Church, or the Particular Church, has ontological priority. The papal Magisterium of Benedict XVI made clear that it is the Universal Church that has the ontological priority.
Hitherto, PF has refrained from too overtly dismantling the legacy of his predecessor. He has shown a certain Christian tact, even delicacy. This policy is now manifestly being phased out. Is PF in a hurry? It certainly looks like it.
The recent bulletin from the Vatican Press office, summarising the deliberations of the Council of Cardinals, speaks about an intention to "reread" Apostolos suos.
"REREAD"! One thinks of the controlled abuse of language described in George Orwell's 1984, and exemplified in totalitarian societies. The fact that we can turn to an honest Trotskyite reacting against Stalinism for an analysis of how language is now manipulated within the Catholic Church just about, as the phrase has it, says it all.
And the purpose of the current careful demolition of the edifice bequeathed by the last two popes, men of intelligence and distinction, looks to me very much like a desire to transform the Catholic Church into a skilfully crafted copy of the Anglican Communion.
Some of us have been there and seen that. We can tell you all about it. It is a very unwholesome place to be. In Blessed John Henry Newman's words, "The vivifying principle of Truth, the shadow of St Peter, the grace of the Redeemer, left it". No wonder Cardinal Burke, at Buckfast last year, spoke so powerfully about Apostasy.
References: I quoted Mueller at length in my piece of 7 December 2017. On 1 December 2017 I dealt with a very dangerous address by Cardinal Parolin. I suspect that the rationale he offered for Episcopal Conferences having a doctrinal status was a first draft of what will be inflicted upon us in the name of PF. Parolin is not, I feel, a man to be trusted with the Catholic Faith.
3 March 2018
PURIM UPDATED: ONLY FOR CALENDAR NERDS
Last Wednesday, I wished a joyous, even riotous, Purim to Hebrew readers. "Open another bottle!", I cried.
The Extraordinary Form Reading at Mass that morning was the Prayer of Mordecai from the Book of Esther ... who is the great theme of Purim; for Christians, of course, Lent is a penitential season, so Alcohol and festivity are not encouraged. (Similarly, the old Roman agricultural festivals became the penitential Christian Ember Days.)
For Synagogue Jews, Purim is a triumphalistic day. Whom better to burn in effigy than Haman! For us, the Lenten liturgical texts offer us the sobering thought that the afflictions to which we are subject are justly deserved; so we fast and we beg for mercy.
For Christian writers, Esther is the Type of which Mary the Mother of God, who stands before the King as the Mediatrix begging for Mercy, is the the Antitype. On Wednesday, the old Papal statio was at Sancta Caecilia trans Tiberim; on Thursday, this year the second day of Purim, the statio for the Papal Mass would once have been in Sancta Maria trans Tiberim. And the Roman Ghetto was, of course, in the Trastevere ... only a couple of years ago, another Jewish cemetery was excavated there.
May the potent Daughter of Sion pray for the coming of the Day when all Israel shall be brought in. Joys, then, indeed!!
UPDATE: I can't get these liturgical coincidences out of my head! Perhaps they aren't coincidences. Looking back over the last few years, I think that
2017: Purim was on the Saturday and the Sunday which is Lent II.
2014: ditto
2013: ditto
2011: ditto
2010: ditto
2018: Purim was on the Wednesday and Thursday after Lent II.
2015: ditto
2012: ditto
2016: Purim was on the Wednesday and Thursday of Holy Week.
Something is going on here! And in my ignorance ...
Do leap years come into the question?
Does the dissonance between the Gregorian and Julian Calendars get its oar in?
Surely, somebody has noticed all this and explained it ... before me? Does anybody have a reference?
As a working hypothesis, I assume that it was Gregory II (715-731), who introduced the Thursday Roman Stations, who arranged to go to the Trastevere on the Thursday; but the Trastevere visit on the Wednesday must have been fixed earlier. Those possessing a Breviarium Romanum could look at the comments made in his homily by S Gregory I the Great, on the Gospel of the Thursday after Lent II.
[Lent II, of course, was a dominica vacat when the Pontiff would have been ordaining in S Peter's at the Saturday/Sunday Vigil Mass.}
The Extraordinary Form Reading at Mass that morning was the Prayer of Mordecai from the Book of Esther ... who is the great theme of Purim; for Christians, of course, Lent is a penitential season, so Alcohol and festivity are not encouraged. (Similarly, the old Roman agricultural festivals became the penitential Christian Ember Days.)
For Synagogue Jews, Purim is a triumphalistic day. Whom better to burn in effigy than Haman! For us, the Lenten liturgical texts offer us the sobering thought that the afflictions to which we are subject are justly deserved; so we fast and we beg for mercy.
For Christian writers, Esther is the Type of which Mary the Mother of God, who stands before the King as the Mediatrix begging for Mercy, is the the Antitype. On Wednesday, the old Papal statio was at Sancta Caecilia trans Tiberim; on Thursday, this year the second day of Purim, the statio for the Papal Mass would once have been in Sancta Maria trans Tiberim. And the Roman Ghetto was, of course, in the Trastevere ... only a couple of years ago, another Jewish cemetery was excavated there.
May the potent Daughter of Sion pray for the coming of the Day when all Israel shall be brought in. Joys, then, indeed!!
UPDATE: I can't get these liturgical coincidences out of my head! Perhaps they aren't coincidences. Looking back over the last few years, I think that
2017: Purim was on the Saturday and the Sunday which is Lent II.
2014: ditto
2013: ditto
2011: ditto
2010: ditto
2018: Purim was on the Wednesday and Thursday after Lent II.
2015: ditto
2012: ditto
2016: Purim was on the Wednesday and Thursday of Holy Week.
Something is going on here! And in my ignorance ...
Do leap years come into the question?
Does the dissonance between the Gregorian and Julian Calendars get its oar in?
Surely, somebody has noticed all this and explained it ... before me? Does anybody have a reference?
As a working hypothesis, I assume that it was Gregory II (715-731), who introduced the Thursday Roman Stations, who arranged to go to the Trastevere on the Thursday; but the Trastevere visit on the Wednesday must have been fixed earlier. Those possessing a Breviarium Romanum could look at the comments made in his homily by S Gregory I the Great, on the Gospel of the Thursday after Lent II.
[Lent II, of course, was a dominica vacat when the Pontiff would have been ordaining in S Peter's at the Saturday/Sunday Vigil Mass.}
2 March 2018
The Liturgy of the Hours, friday week 2; eviscerated!
Liturgia Horarum, Friday in Week II: Ad Horam mediam. Psalm 58(vg) = 59(MT) is traditionally regarded as referring to David, when Saul had his house watched so that he could kill him.
This psalm is printed with (Neovulgate) verses 6-9 and 12-16 (= RSV 5-8 and 11-15) removed.
That deceived and mis-guided pontiff Paul VI, or whoever wrote the words he signed, explains why: "A few harsher verses are missed out, taking account especially of the difficulties which would be going to arise when the Office was done in the vernacular". The relevant coetus itself is rather shame-faced (and not a little naive) about this. "This omission is done because of a certain psychological difficulty, even though imprecatory psalms themselves occur in the piety of the New Testament, e.g. Revelation 6:10, and do not intend in any way to induce people to cursing." And "In general both the Fathers and the Liturgy fittingly hear, in the psalms, Christ crying to the Father, or the Father speaking with the Son, and even recognise the voice of the Church, the Apostles or Martyrs".
So, as the LH tells us, quoting words of Eusebius of Caesarea referring to this psalm, "these words should teach everybody the devotion of the Saviour towards his Father". Exactly. The Lord was surrounded by the temptations of Satan himself; he was beseiged by the Powers of Evil. The Church, and the Christian, also find that their warfare is against the Powerrs of Evil in High Places. It is in this sense that we beg the Father that we may be delivered from those who come back each evening, howling like dogs, the half-wild dogs which infest most Eastern cities and which especially prowl round the town-ditch in search of carrion (I plagiarise John Mason 'Ordinariate Patrimony' Neale). Ss Augustine, Hilary, and Gregory of Nyssa regard the story of David, for whom his enemies lay in wait by night, as a Type of the story of what befel the Son of David, in that Night in which he was betrayed.
The reason why it is so questionabe to expurgate a psalm in the way that LH does is: expurgation still leaves words like "There is no crime or sin in me, O Lord", and leaves them decontextualised . If such things are said simplistically, they can only foster a very dangerous sense of of complacency and self-righteousness. We are only entitled to say such words in persona Christi, or en Christoi, or as speaking with the voice of the Church which in her essential nature is without spot or wrinkle. How can we say them as if they were true of the imperfect lives of each one of us?
I am not one who believes that every psalm needs to be read in the Divine Office. History gives imperfect support for such an integralist approach to the Book of Psalms and their use in Christian worship. I am concerned with dangerous imbalances which can result from the use of psalms over which someone has been allowed to roam with a care-free pair of scissors. (I also rather dislike the implication that the 'problems' of such psalms are only apparent when they are said in the vernacular. There is every reason to feel disquiet about the cheerful assumption that nobody notices what they are saying when they use Latin. Is Latin, or is it not, supposed to be still the clerical vernacular of Western clergy?)
Lastly, I draw your attention to the root of the problem: the loss in the Western Church of the Typological Method which was the heart of scriptural exegesis in both the Patristic and Medieval periods and in both East and West. When people discuss the authority and inerrancy of Scripture, dicussion often seems nowadays to be mired in reductionist considerations about "What is the bare minimum we are required to believe about Biblical inerrancy?" rather than about the hermeneutical, exegetical and eisegetical modalities by which we are all to embrace and be fed by the whole of Scripture ... every sentence, every word of it. Of course vast swathes of Scripture provide enormous difficulties ... are in fact not so much unusable as potentially positively poisonous ... IF we do not trace out the richly complex patterns of intertextuality which formed the basis of their apprehension by Christians before the dark shadow of the 'Enlightenment' fell upon the study of Scripture. The Bible is, indeed, highly dangerous if we do not use it in the Tradition. Reducing Scriptural semiotics to the naked Historicism of the 'Enlightenment' is to hand the Bible over to the Devil. I think I very probably mean that literally.
We members of the Anglican Patrimony entered into Full Communion with the works of John Mason Neale and Lionel Thornton and Austin Farrer under our arms; perhaps there is something we can do to help the ailing Western Church to understand the Patristic, Typological, way of appropriating Scripture.
This psalm is printed with (Neovulgate) verses 6-9 and 12-16 (= RSV 5-8 and 11-15) removed.
That deceived and mis-guided pontiff Paul VI, or whoever wrote the words he signed, explains why: "A few harsher verses are missed out, taking account especially of the difficulties which would be going to arise when the Office was done in the vernacular". The relevant coetus itself is rather shame-faced (and not a little naive) about this. "This omission is done because of a certain psychological difficulty, even though imprecatory psalms themselves occur in the piety of the New Testament, e.g. Revelation 6:10, and do not intend in any way to induce people to cursing." And "In general both the Fathers and the Liturgy fittingly hear, in the psalms, Christ crying to the Father, or the Father speaking with the Son, and even recognise the voice of the Church, the Apostles or Martyrs".
So, as the LH tells us, quoting words of Eusebius of Caesarea referring to this psalm, "these words should teach everybody the devotion of the Saviour towards his Father". Exactly. The Lord was surrounded by the temptations of Satan himself; he was beseiged by the Powers of Evil. The Church, and the Christian, also find that their warfare is against the Powerrs of Evil in High Places. It is in this sense that we beg the Father that we may be delivered from those who come back each evening, howling like dogs, the half-wild dogs which infest most Eastern cities and which especially prowl round the town-ditch in search of carrion (I plagiarise John Mason 'Ordinariate Patrimony' Neale). Ss Augustine, Hilary, and Gregory of Nyssa regard the story of David, for whom his enemies lay in wait by night, as a Type of the story of what befel the Son of David, in that Night in which he was betrayed.
The reason why it is so questionabe to expurgate a psalm in the way that LH does is: expurgation still leaves words like "There is no crime or sin in me, O Lord", and leaves them decontextualised . If such things are said simplistically, they can only foster a very dangerous sense of of complacency and self-righteousness. We are only entitled to say such words in persona Christi, or en Christoi, or as speaking with the voice of the Church which in her essential nature is without spot or wrinkle. How can we say them as if they were true of the imperfect lives of each one of us?
I am not one who believes that every psalm needs to be read in the Divine Office. History gives imperfect support for such an integralist approach to the Book of Psalms and their use in Christian worship. I am concerned with dangerous imbalances which can result from the use of psalms over which someone has been allowed to roam with a care-free pair of scissors. (I also rather dislike the implication that the 'problems' of such psalms are only apparent when they are said in the vernacular. There is every reason to feel disquiet about the cheerful assumption that nobody notices what they are saying when they use Latin. Is Latin, or is it not, supposed to be still the clerical vernacular of Western clergy?)
Lastly, I draw your attention to the root of the problem: the loss in the Western Church of the Typological Method which was the heart of scriptural exegesis in both the Patristic and Medieval periods and in both East and West. When people discuss the authority and inerrancy of Scripture, dicussion often seems nowadays to be mired in reductionist considerations about "What is the bare minimum we are required to believe about Biblical inerrancy?" rather than about the hermeneutical, exegetical and eisegetical modalities by which we are all to embrace and be fed by the whole of Scripture ... every sentence, every word of it. Of course vast swathes of Scripture provide enormous difficulties ... are in fact not so much unusable as potentially positively poisonous ... IF we do not trace out the richly complex patterns of intertextuality which formed the basis of their apprehension by Christians before the dark shadow of the 'Enlightenment' fell upon the study of Scripture. The Bible is, indeed, highly dangerous if we do not use it in the Tradition. Reducing Scriptural semiotics to the naked Historicism of the 'Enlightenment' is to hand the Bible over to the Devil. I think I very probably mean that literally.
We members of the Anglican Patrimony entered into Full Communion with the works of John Mason Neale and Lionel Thornton and Austin Farrer under our arms; perhaps there is something we can do to help the ailing Western Church to understand the Patristic, Typological, way of appropriating Scripture.
1 March 2018
Collects
I have been unable to find any conciliar mandate for the post conciliar treatment of the body of Collects; treatment, in one significant respect (Sundays), decidedly more ruthless than what a Zwinglian Reformer, Thomas Cranmer, did at the height of the English Reformation.
Sunday collects. The collects for the Sundays of Advent, Lent, and Eastertide were, almost to a man, replaced. What this means is that the whole body of such old prayers was deemed inadequately to express the indoles of the respective seasons ... a breath-taking condemnation!. I can think of at least three academic studies, beginning with that of Fr Cekada, which have revealed the hidden ideological basis of this revolution (often a sort of practical Pelagianism). There is a considerable danger in such radicalism. The true mystagogue - such as Gueranger - derives his mystagogy from his studies in the euchology which eighteen centuries have handed down. He does not form his views on a priori grounds, and then take a pair of scissors to the Tradition.
As far as concerns the collects for the 'green' Sundays, 17 of the 34 are new importations.
Festival collects. The new books reveal a massive campaign to rewrite the collects for festivals of the Lord and of his Saints. This has had a particularly vicious effect as far as the survival of the older collects in the previous books is concerned. Those older collects, many of them in continual use since the days of the early sacramentaries, were commonly terse formulae whose main purpose was a desire to secure a share in the intercessions and fellowship of the glorified servants of God, especially the martyrs. In the Middle Ages, a different style of collect became dominant; one can analyse it as providing God with a biographical summary of the saint concerned, followed by a request that the worshippers might receive congruent graces. (The collects written by Cranmer for those saints who retained propers were all to this medieval formula.) The post conciliar reformers were also wholly committed to the same procrustean methodology. I do not wish to be understood as arguing for the exclusion of such collects: my point is that we should not be limited to them.
You see, my own feeling is that the body of collects, on the eve of Vatican II, found its main and exhilarating strength in its variety. As the days moved on, one went from a Leonine or Gregorian form to a Carolingian and then to a Franciscan composition, and then to a product of the Baroque counter reformation. I see this pluriformity as healthy; it prevents the Church from being imprisoned in the culture of one euchological register. Which is what the post-conciliar books give us; so that, now, all our eggs are in the basket of one particular style. Even where a 'new' collect was in fact resurrected from an ancient source, the bar it had to reach was acceptability to the 1960s ... otherwise, its only hope of being chosen was if it could be bowdlerised into such acceptability. I feel certain that the style and preoccupations of the 1960s have already proved to have dated considerably. Perhaps there was a case for replacing a few of the more plodding of the nineteenth century collects which indeed did tend to say rather obvious and pedestrian things ... I am not a fundamentalist ...
... but Vatican II gave nobody any mandate even to do that much.
Sunday collects. The collects for the Sundays of Advent, Lent, and Eastertide were, almost to a man, replaced. What this means is that the whole body of such old prayers was deemed inadequately to express the indoles of the respective seasons ... a breath-taking condemnation!. I can think of at least three academic studies, beginning with that of Fr Cekada, which have revealed the hidden ideological basis of this revolution (often a sort of practical Pelagianism). There is a considerable danger in such radicalism. The true mystagogue - such as Gueranger - derives his mystagogy from his studies in the euchology which eighteen centuries have handed down. He does not form his views on a priori grounds, and then take a pair of scissors to the Tradition.
As far as concerns the collects for the 'green' Sundays, 17 of the 34 are new importations.
Festival collects. The new books reveal a massive campaign to rewrite the collects for festivals of the Lord and of his Saints. This has had a particularly vicious effect as far as the survival of the older collects in the previous books is concerned. Those older collects, many of them in continual use since the days of the early sacramentaries, were commonly terse formulae whose main purpose was a desire to secure a share in the intercessions and fellowship of the glorified servants of God, especially the martyrs. In the Middle Ages, a different style of collect became dominant; one can analyse it as providing God with a biographical summary of the saint concerned, followed by a request that the worshippers might receive congruent graces. (The collects written by Cranmer for those saints who retained propers were all to this medieval formula.) The post conciliar reformers were also wholly committed to the same procrustean methodology. I do not wish to be understood as arguing for the exclusion of such collects: my point is that we should not be limited to them.
You see, my own feeling is that the body of collects, on the eve of Vatican II, found its main and exhilarating strength in its variety. As the days moved on, one went from a Leonine or Gregorian form to a Carolingian and then to a Franciscan composition, and then to a product of the Baroque counter reformation. I see this pluriformity as healthy; it prevents the Church from being imprisoned in the culture of one euchological register. Which is what the post-conciliar books give us; so that, now, all our eggs are in the basket of one particular style. Even where a 'new' collect was in fact resurrected from an ancient source, the bar it had to reach was acceptability to the 1960s ... otherwise, its only hope of being chosen was if it could be bowdlerised into such acceptability. I feel certain that the style and preoccupations of the 1960s have already proved to have dated considerably. Perhaps there was a case for replacing a few of the more plodding of the nineteenth century collects which indeed did tend to say rather obvious and pedestrian things ... I am not a fundamentalist ...
... but Vatican II gave nobody any mandate even to do that much.
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