... is a sort of world, every one going about his own business, but that business a religious one; groups of worshippers, and solitary ones - kneeling, standing - some at shrines, some at altars - hearing Mass and communicating - currents of worshippers intercepting and passing by each other - altar after altar lit up for worship, like stars in the firmament - or the bell giving notice of what is going on in parts you do not see - and all the while the canons in the choir going through matins and lauds, and at the end of it the incense rolling up from the high altar ...
Newman wrote this after experiencing the Duomo in Milan. I know it will remind readers, as it does me, of the great purple passage .... what a stylist the man is ... near the end of Loss and Gain ... where he describes the experience of Charles Reding in the unfinished Passionist church in London.
Please God, by Newman's prayers, such a Christian culture may be given back to us.
30 April 2018
29 April 2018
Euripides and the Canons of Glasney
One of the fascinating things about the plays of the great Athenian dramatists is found in the question of what the audience at the first production expected; and what would have surprised them. The Greek myths often had a (distinctly vague) given framework but were unfixed and fluid in detail; for example, Homer, whom some might think the author of a 'canonical' telling of the Greek myths, tells us that when Agamemnon returned from Troy he was killed by Clytemnestra's lover Aigisthos at a banquet; but Aeschylus cheerfully makes Clytemnestra herself entangle Agamenon in his bath with a net, and then slaughter him with her own hands. And the first audience of Euripides' Medea would have known that her and Jason's children were going to end up dead; but who killed them - Jason's relatives? - would have been unclear until it was revealed to them, in the play, that their own mother slaughtered them to spite her unfaithful husband. Euripides actually got away with a play that portrayed Helen as not even eloping to Troy; it was but a wraith of her which fled with Paris. Meanwhile, she visited Egypt, and ... ... ...
In the Middle Cornish dramas, probably composed by the Canons of Glasney College, the outline is often Biblical and known. However ...
The Resurrexio Domini follows the main outline of the Gospel narratives. But at the end of it (curiously like the way in which the Athenian dramatists, after a dramatic trilogy, added a fourth play in a lighter and racier genre ... perhaps to relax the atmosphere) is added a much briefer Mors Pilati.
We begin with Tiberius sick of leprosy; he is cured by Veronica who deploys her vernicle. Now a fervent Christian, he desires to execute the Pontius Pilatus who killed the Lord. Some knock-about comedians called the Tortores (Anglice Special Branch) secure Pilate; but when he is brought before Tiberius, the emperor is unable to harm him. This turns out to be because Pilate is wearing the Seamless Robe of Christ, which he declines to remove on the dual grounds that it is rather dirty by now; and that it would be disrepectful to appear naked before his sovereign ...
And so and so it goes on. An erudite reader, Mrs Sue Sims, once much enlightened this ignorant classicist by explaining that the story comes from the Golden Legend. I wonder if that popular work was as well known to the peasantry as it clearly was to the Glasney clerics. I bet Dr Cotton, another erudite reader, knows whether this work features in church iconography, thus giving a pointer to whether the Cornish peasants were on the edges of their seats to know what would happen next ... or whether they a;ready had a pretty shrewd idea.
In the Middle Cornish dramas, probably composed by the Canons of Glasney College, the outline is often Biblical and known. However ...
The Resurrexio Domini follows the main outline of the Gospel narratives. But at the end of it (curiously like the way in which the Athenian dramatists, after a dramatic trilogy, added a fourth play in a lighter and racier genre ... perhaps to relax the atmosphere) is added a much briefer Mors Pilati.
We begin with Tiberius sick of leprosy; he is cured by Veronica who deploys her vernicle. Now a fervent Christian, he desires to execute the Pontius Pilatus who killed the Lord. Some knock-about comedians called the Tortores (Anglice Special Branch) secure Pilate; but when he is brought before Tiberius, the emperor is unable to harm him. This turns out to be because Pilate is wearing the Seamless Robe of Christ, which he declines to remove on the dual grounds that it is rather dirty by now; and that it would be disrepectful to appear naked before his sovereign ...
And so and so it goes on. An erudite reader, Mrs Sue Sims, once much enlightened this ignorant classicist by explaining that the story comes from the Golden Legend. I wonder if that popular work was as well known to the peasantry as it clearly was to the Glasney clerics. I bet Dr Cotton, another erudite reader, knows whether this work features in church iconography, thus giving a pointer to whether the Cornish peasants were on the edges of their seats to know what would happen next ... or whether they a;ready had a pretty shrewd idea.
28 April 2018
Catholic Cornwall
Down to Cornwall for a day or two in the holiday cottage of the Posbury Sisters (the Anglican Franciscan Servants of Jesus and Mary) at Porthcurno near Land's End. As we drive to look at 'our' ravens' nest, we pass the First and Last Anglican church in the land, at St Just. Happy memories: it was on the notice board of that ('Ebbsfleet') church that I first saw the news of the election of papa Ratzinger. Less happy memories as we pass churches which were once great Catholic shrines, back in the days when the Truro diocese had the reputation of being the most Catholic in the Church of England. Bishop Graham Leonard, the great praecursor of the Ordinariate, whose portrait hangs proudly in our Ordinary's study, epitomised that tradition. Ecce sacerdos valde magnus. But the last two or three bishops of Truro, obedient servants of the Zeitgeist, put paid to it all. So many Altars now with women; so many Tabernacles with cobwebs.
Sometimes impertinent people hijack our Patrimonial fathers and apply some condescending argument to the effect that the 'papalism' of those great figures was so conditioned by the circumstances of the time that it doesn't really 'count'. So the heroic Fr Bernard Walke of St Hilary, who had to watch his church being wrecked by a protestant mob, had the heroism of his witness neutered decades later by the disdain of the smoothly unpleasant Donald Allchin. But Walke's words are just as powerful and as relevant now as when he wrote them in 1935: '[I] was convinced that the Catholic movement in the Church of England, which began in the discovery of the Church as a divine institution, could have no other end but a corporate union with the Apostolic See of Rome. Outside that unity there could be no assurance of the preservation of the faith and morals of the Christian revelation'. This is indeed the conviction which has brought us into the Ordinariate.
Notice there the words and morals. Fr Walke did indeed begin his incumbency by immediately replacing Prayer Book Mattins with the Tridentine Rite; but he was not some silly 'smells and bells' but unprincipled high churchman. Not long before he wrote, the Lambeth Conference had begun, albeit tentatively, the long but unambiguous process of uncoupling Anglicanism from the common ancient tradition of historic Christendom with regard to sexual morality, by admitting the possibility of artificial contraception. Only, of course, in the rarest and most exceptional cases. Where would the liberal agenda be if wedges did not have such very thin ends?
I am sure Walke had this in mind, and how right his prognosis has proved to be. It is instructive to compare his words with those of Bishop Gore, in a pamphlet which can be found on PROJECT CANTERBURY. Gore, a 'non-papal catholic', was a good enough scholar to know that what had happened at Lambeth was a disaster, both ethical and ecclesiological, of major proportions. But, blind to the significance in the divine dispensation of the Roman Primacy, his paper, for all its erudition, quite simply flounders.
We must pray that the divinely instituted Roman Primacy may soon be again as great and unambiguous a bulwark against the World, the Flesh, and the Devil as it was in the days of Pope Pius XI ... and of Fr Bernard Walke and Bishop Gore. What are five or six years of hiatus sub specie aeternitatis?
Sometimes impertinent people hijack our Patrimonial fathers and apply some condescending argument to the effect that the 'papalism' of those great figures was so conditioned by the circumstances of the time that it doesn't really 'count'. So the heroic Fr Bernard Walke of St Hilary, who had to watch his church being wrecked by a protestant mob, had the heroism of his witness neutered decades later by the disdain of the smoothly unpleasant Donald Allchin. But Walke's words are just as powerful and as relevant now as when he wrote them in 1935: '[I] was convinced that the Catholic movement in the Church of England, which began in the discovery of the Church as a divine institution, could have no other end but a corporate union with the Apostolic See of Rome. Outside that unity there could be no assurance of the preservation of the faith and morals of the Christian revelation'. This is indeed the conviction which has brought us into the Ordinariate.
Notice there the words and morals. Fr Walke did indeed begin his incumbency by immediately replacing Prayer Book Mattins with the Tridentine Rite; but he was not some silly 'smells and bells' but unprincipled high churchman. Not long before he wrote, the Lambeth Conference had begun, albeit tentatively, the long but unambiguous process of uncoupling Anglicanism from the common ancient tradition of historic Christendom with regard to sexual morality, by admitting the possibility of artificial contraception. Only, of course, in the rarest and most exceptional cases. Where would the liberal agenda be if wedges did not have such very thin ends?
I am sure Walke had this in mind, and how right his prognosis has proved to be. It is instructive to compare his words with those of Bishop Gore, in a pamphlet which can be found on PROJECT CANTERBURY. Gore, a 'non-papal catholic', was a good enough scholar to know that what had happened at Lambeth was a disaster, both ethical and ecclesiological, of major proportions. But, blind to the significance in the divine dispensation of the Roman Primacy, his paper, for all its erudition, quite simply flounders.
We must pray that the divinely instituted Roman Primacy may soon be again as great and unambiguous a bulwark against the World, the Flesh, and the Devil as it was in the days of Pope Pius XI ... and of Fr Bernard Walke and Bishop Gore. What are five or six years of hiatus sub specie aeternitatis?
27 April 2018
"The Dictator Pope"
To refresh your memories, I reprint a piece I wrote when an earlier electronic edition of the Dictator Pope was published under a pseudonym: Marcantonio Colonna.
I do think that this is a very important book. At the present moment, the papacy is more dominant that it ever has been before, its iron grip on the Church strengthened by the mechanisms of the instant world-wide Media. Inevitably and properly, the person and personality of the pontiff himself are subjected to detailed scrutiny, especially when it appears that we are going to have yet more 'surprises of the Spirit' sprung upon us.
This book brings together pretty well everything which can currently be known about PF. I suspect that Marcantonio Colonna is a trained historian, so you will find in his book not only a wealth of information about the rise of PF, but a subtle analysis of the cultural background which has formed him. Have you ever wondered what people have in mind when they say "PF's Peronism accounts for it all"? Dr Colonna will explain to you what that means. Would you like a careful explanation of PF's skills in playing people off against each other, in making use of a person and then discarding him, in ruthlessly humiliating or disposing of people whose aptitude for sycophancy he finds insufficiently crafted? It's all here.
Every book has its particular take on things, and Colonna's take on PF will not in itself surprise anyone. It has, I think, become so clear as now to be uncontroversial that what you get in PF is not what it says on the tin. He is not a kindly humble avuncular figure with a winning smile and a passion for cripples and babies, who spends his days and nights thinking about the poor. He is a hard and determined politician with a vindictive temper and an appetite for power and a disinclination to let anybody or anything stand in his way. Colonna shows how this was already apparent to PF's own fellow-countrymen well before he burst on to the international scene with his Buona Sera. Under Colonna's tutelage, you will not only understand PF's past, but you will be able to hazard an informed guess about what he might do in his future!
The unscrupulous manipulation of the 'Synods'; the dismembering of the Franciscans of the Immaculate; the 'Reform' of the Vatican finances; the assault upon the Knights of Malta; the 'Reform' of the Roman Curia; PF's poor record in dealing with the scandal of paedophile or ephebophile priests; the St Gallen Group and the parts played by Martini and Daneels and Murphy-O'Connor and the rest of them in plotting for the last two Conclaves; the antics of the Vatican's Gay Mafia; Marcantonio's historian's scalpel will expose to your view all the subcutaneous realities of this pontificate.
The whole game is not yet played out; but we already have a lot of data. Let Dr Colonna offer you a guided tour through them!
I do think that this is a very important book. At the present moment, the papacy is more dominant that it ever has been before, its iron grip on the Church strengthened by the mechanisms of the instant world-wide Media. Inevitably and properly, the person and personality of the pontiff himself are subjected to detailed scrutiny, especially when it appears that we are going to have yet more 'surprises of the Spirit' sprung upon us.
This book brings together pretty well everything which can currently be known about PF. I suspect that Marcantonio Colonna is a trained historian, so you will find in his book not only a wealth of information about the rise of PF, but a subtle analysis of the cultural background which has formed him. Have you ever wondered what people have in mind when they say "PF's Peronism accounts for it all"? Dr Colonna will explain to you what that means. Would you like a careful explanation of PF's skills in playing people off against each other, in making use of a person and then discarding him, in ruthlessly humiliating or disposing of people whose aptitude for sycophancy he finds insufficiently crafted? It's all here.
Every book has its particular take on things, and Colonna's take on PF will not in itself surprise anyone. It has, I think, become so clear as now to be uncontroversial that what you get in PF is not what it says on the tin. He is not a kindly humble avuncular figure with a winning smile and a passion for cripples and babies, who spends his days and nights thinking about the poor. He is a hard and determined politician with a vindictive temper and an appetite for power and a disinclination to let anybody or anything stand in his way. Colonna shows how this was already apparent to PF's own fellow-countrymen well before he burst on to the international scene with his Buona Sera. Under Colonna's tutelage, you will not only understand PF's past, but you will be able to hazard an informed guess about what he might do in his future!
The unscrupulous manipulation of the 'Synods'; the dismembering of the Franciscans of the Immaculate; the 'Reform' of the Vatican finances; the assault upon the Knights of Malta; the 'Reform' of the Roman Curia; PF's poor record in dealing with the scandal of paedophile or ephebophile priests; the St Gallen Group and the parts played by Martini and Daneels and Murphy-O'Connor and the rest of them in plotting for the last two Conclaves; the antics of the Vatican's Gay Mafia; Marcantonio's historian's scalpel will expose to your view all the subcutaneous realities of this pontificate.
The whole game is not yet played out; but we already have a lot of data. Let Dr Colonna offer you a guided tour through them!
Could there be an armistice with the "Lost Shepherd" or the "Dictator Pope"?
I am a lucky chap; Leila and Philip Lawler have very kindly sent me a copy of Philip's fine book Lost Shepherd: How Pope Francis is misleading his flock. You may be thinking that this is rather like London buses; you wait for half an hour and then a couple come along together ... because last Monday was the publication day of Henry Sire's magnificent The Dictator Pope (about which I have just written a rave review for a monthly periodical). I hope you have already procured and devoured your copies of that volume! Later today, I will reprint my earlier comments on this book. Although, of course, there are some overlaps between these two books, it is remarkable how comfortably they sit together on the bookshelf. Obviously, there is such a glut of material, that two authors can write books which are complementary rather than identical! Philip's book is, I think, perhaps a tadge gentler than Henry's in as far as it is clear that Philip hoped against hope that things would come right with this pontificate ... that, as we say, it wouldn't come to this ....
I think it "came to this" the very moment PF trudged out to greet the People of God (and the tourists) with an unhappy face, refusing to share the simple joy of the Lord's Flock committed to his charge; when he indicated his determination to mark out the discontinuities of his pontificate by not dressing like a pope and by taking a strange name.
Philip begins his book by observing that every day the pope issues another reminder that he does not approve of Catholics like us ..."day after weary day ... the pope upbraids me..." That's exactly how I feel. So many of us started by doing our best to put the best possible gloss on this pontificate, and have been mercilessly driven to the realisation that this is not possible. As I wrote recently, every day there seems to be a new provocation, either from PF or from one of his sycophantic cronies. In self-examination, I have asked myself again and again whether I have fallen into self-absorbed obsession in so often defending Truth against what flows from the man who, after all, does sit on the cathedra Petri. But, when I was priested on June 9 1968, Bishop Harry Carpenter asked me "Will you be ready, with all faithful diligence, to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God's Word...?" and I replied "I will, the Lord being my helper." If I had instead had the joy of being ordained according to the old Tridentine Pontificale, the Pontiff would have said to us, rather mixing his metaphors, "Sit doctrina vestra spiritualis medicina populo Dei ... ut praedicatione ... aedificetis domum, id est, familiam Dei ..." So what choice do I have?
Is there an alternative to all this open warfare? Could there be an armistice? Could PF stop stinging us into continuous reaction? Is he a big enough man to do that? Could we stop this endless series of criticisms of the pope? I, for one, would be overjoyed to be able to do so. I think the first essential proviso would have to be the appointment of someone to the Congregation for Bishops who would be given the power to ensure that the episcopate were rebalanced, and who would confer with PF about redressing the balance in the Sacred College. For orthodox Catholics, perhaps the biggest worry of all concerns a future which PF is clearly trying to fashion in his own likeness by the unfortunate appointments he makes. Cupich a Cardinal, indeed!! Additionally, it would be necessary for PF to refrain from uttering into a public forum or a scalfari anything to which the CDF had not given its previous OK. PF has so grossly enlarged the amount of material which comes to us with Papa dicit attached, that the the entire genre needs to be radically pruned and carefully controlled.
Meanwhile, get The Lost Shepherd to sit beside The Dictator Pope!
I think it "came to this" the very moment PF trudged out to greet the People of God (and the tourists) with an unhappy face, refusing to share the simple joy of the Lord's Flock committed to his charge; when he indicated his determination to mark out the discontinuities of his pontificate by not dressing like a pope and by taking a strange name.
Philip begins his book by observing that every day the pope issues another reminder that he does not approve of Catholics like us ..."day after weary day ... the pope upbraids me..." That's exactly how I feel. So many of us started by doing our best to put the best possible gloss on this pontificate, and have been mercilessly driven to the realisation that this is not possible. As I wrote recently, every day there seems to be a new provocation, either from PF or from one of his sycophantic cronies. In self-examination, I have asked myself again and again whether I have fallen into self-absorbed obsession in so often defending Truth against what flows from the man who, after all, does sit on the cathedra Petri. But, when I was priested on June 9 1968, Bishop Harry Carpenter asked me "Will you be ready, with all faithful diligence, to banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God's Word...?" and I replied "I will, the Lord being my helper." If I had instead had the joy of being ordained according to the old Tridentine Pontificale, the Pontiff would have said to us, rather mixing his metaphors, "Sit doctrina vestra spiritualis medicina populo Dei ... ut praedicatione ... aedificetis domum, id est, familiam Dei ..." So what choice do I have?
Is there an alternative to all this open warfare? Could there be an armistice? Could PF stop stinging us into continuous reaction? Is he a big enough man to do that? Could we stop this endless series of criticisms of the pope? I, for one, would be overjoyed to be able to do so. I think the first essential proviso would have to be the appointment of someone to the Congregation for Bishops who would be given the power to ensure that the episcopate were rebalanced, and who would confer with PF about redressing the balance in the Sacred College. For orthodox Catholics, perhaps the biggest worry of all concerns a future which PF is clearly trying to fashion in his own likeness by the unfortunate appointments he makes. Cupich a Cardinal, indeed!! Additionally, it would be necessary for PF to refrain from uttering into a public forum or a scalfari anything to which the CDF had not given its previous OK. PF has so grossly enlarged the amount of material which comes to us with Papa dicit attached, that the the entire genre needs to be radically pruned and carefully controlled.
Meanwhile, get The Lost Shepherd to sit beside The Dictator Pope!
Fr George Rutler ...
... gives in Crisis Magazine a very jolly account of Pope Benedict XIV. (Thank-you to friends who drew this to my attention, and to Father for writing it.)
The only blemish in the Pope's character appears to have been that he disliked Jesuits and would never deign to admit that type of person into the Sacred College.
Father wittily includes a Latin epigram about Lambertini, including a couple of Teacher's Intentional Errors just to give his readers a bit of intelligent fun in the art of textual emendation.
And, happily, Father does not mention my own favourite Benedict XIV story ... his reaction to the Marchesa who wore, on her imperfectly veiled chest, a very large emerald cross. Given Internet resources, there must be ways that prurient readers can research such things proprio Marte.
He's upstairs in the Ashmolean, as you know, and along at the end. I haven't narrated any of my recent visits to see him because publicising the violence of his judgement on his current successor would simply have got me into trouble. There are sceptical people out there, y'know, who think that when I report our conversations, I am really just giving my own views. And anyway, I wouldn't want to risk stirring up a gang of inflamed Bergoglianistae, led by the Master of Benets, to take their enraged pickaxes to his patient bust.
Diu illaesus permaneat.
The only blemish in the Pope's character appears to have been that he disliked Jesuits and would never deign to admit that type of person into the Sacred College.
Father wittily includes a Latin epigram about Lambertini, including a couple of Teacher's Intentional Errors just to give his readers a bit of intelligent fun in the art of textual emendation.
And, happily, Father does not mention my own favourite Benedict XIV story ... his reaction to the Marchesa who wore, on her imperfectly veiled chest, a very large emerald cross. Given Internet resources, there must be ways that prurient readers can research such things proprio Marte.
He's upstairs in the Ashmolean, as you know, and along at the end. I haven't narrated any of my recent visits to see him because publicising the violence of his judgement on his current successor would simply have got me into trouble. There are sceptical people out there, y'know, who think that when I report our conversations, I am really just giving my own views. And anyway, I wouldn't want to risk stirring up a gang of inflamed Bergoglianistae, led by the Master of Benets, to take their enraged pickaxes to his patient bust.
Diu illaesus permaneat.
26 April 2018
NO MORE COMMENTS
I'm going to take a week or two off from reading emails, which includes Comments offered to this Blog. I shall still provide a daily Post, but I will be unresponsive to all comments. Nor shall I watch any Television or open any letters or ... etc. etc..
I have done this fairly regularly in the past, and I can recommend it to anybody else out there who is a seeker for sanity.
I have done this fairly regularly in the past, and I can recommend it to anybody else out there who is a seeker for sanity.
Note
Having just read a statement from the JAHLF, signed by members for whose competence I have great respect, I have deleted part of my recent Post on the CBCEW, together with the associated thread.
"Be what I say"
At the start of the Synodical processes concerning the Family, PF repeatedly begged the Synodal Fathers to demonstrate parrhesia. I took this to mean that he believed they were all bursting with new and liberal ideas with regard to certain theological/pastoral questions; and that all he needed to do was to give them the courage to speak out ... to untie their tongues for them.
Recently, with the 'Youth Synod' on the horizon, PF has spoken about the "daring" of the young, and has asked them to "fight the logic of 'it's always been done this way' ... a poison, a sweet poison, that tranquillises the heart and leaves you anaesthetised so that you can't walk".
[UPDATE: I drafted this about six weeks ago: since then, PF, on Palm Sunday 25 March, returned to this theme by exhorting the Young to SHOUT ... and suggesting that perhaps, if their elders failed to shout, they should do it!! He also cheerfully suggested to them that Old People who try to silence them are corrupt ... You'd think that the Protector of the Lettergate Scoundrels would be more careful not to put ideas into other minds.]
Is this, again, an attempt to persuade a certain group to conform to the stereotypical view of that group which PF has formed in his own mind?
"Be what I think you are"?
"Be what I want you to be"?
"Be what my plan of Hagan lio prescribes you to be"?
A couple of years ago, PF complained bitterly about all those dreadful Young People who want the Extraordinary Form. He seems now to have forgotten about that disorderly yet rigid group.
Recently, with the 'Youth Synod' on the horizon, PF has spoken about the "daring" of the young, and has asked them to "fight the logic of 'it's always been done this way' ... a poison, a sweet poison, that tranquillises the heart and leaves you anaesthetised so that you can't walk".
[UPDATE: I drafted this about six weeks ago: since then, PF, on Palm Sunday 25 March, returned to this theme by exhorting the Young to SHOUT ... and suggesting that perhaps, if their elders failed to shout, they should do it!! He also cheerfully suggested to them that Old People who try to silence them are corrupt ... You'd think that the Protector of the Lettergate Scoundrels would be more careful not to put ideas into other minds.]
Is this, again, an attempt to persuade a certain group to conform to the stereotypical view of that group which PF has formed in his own mind?
"Be what I think you are"?
"Be what I want you to be"?
"Be what my plan of Hagan lio prescribes you to be"?
A couple of years ago, PF complained bitterly about all those dreadful Young People who want the Extraordinary Form. He seems now to have forgotten about that disorderly yet rigid group.
25 April 2018
Good News UPDATED
The Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, meeting (as we have all been taught by this pontificate to assume) 'with the guidance of the Spirit', has happily not come to a common mind on the question of the controverted sections of Amoris laetitia. This will be a source of great relief to many biblically-oriented Christians.
It is important to point out that each time a Conference or even a single bishop declines to make use of a formal opportunity to promote the Bergoglian interpretation of AL, this very act of so declining is itself a Magisterial action. Because: it is a formal if tacit clarification that the pro-Bergoglian bishops' interpretation is not part of the Church's Ordinary Universal (hence infallible) Magisterium. And ... important this ... the more panicky pressure that power-hubs in Rome put on the world-wide episcopate to fall into line, the more significant will be any and every failure to submit.
AL, is, of course, far inferior in status to an infallible conciliar or papal decree, and PF's own ambiguous glosses as to what his own original ambiguities really mean are at an even lower (thoroughly sub-Magisterial!) level. These considerations make it yet more important to apply to AL the methodological test which Blessed John Henry Newman insisted had to be applied to Pastor aeternus after it was promulgated in 1870: Does this come to me as the free and unforced teaching of a moral unanimity within the episcopate?
Things are looking up! They're not getting away with it! Two years after AL was published, it is no nearer to passing the Newman Test. Still less near is that particular interpretation of its ambiguities upon which the Bergoglians need to rely.
I get a comforting feeling that some younger bishops may sense that, when the natural time comes for the next stage of their episcopal careers, PF is unlikely still to be Bishop of Rome.
Establishing that the Bishops of the oikoumene have not taught what PF desired them to teach (indeed, he grotesquely manipulated two synods to achieve his end), will also be an important factor when eventually a future pontificate sets about restoring the explicit witness of orthodoxy.
But our bishops have powerfully enforced one particular paragraph in AL. This is the section which deals with, and roundly condemns, Gender Theory and all that. By employing a section of AL to underpin this condemnation, their Lordships have given us a deft and elegant example of an argumentum ad hominem. Nice one!
It is important to point out that each time a Conference or even a single bishop declines to make use of a formal opportunity to promote the Bergoglian interpretation of AL, this very act of so declining is itself a Magisterial action. Because: it is a formal if tacit clarification that the pro-Bergoglian bishops' interpretation is not part of the Church's Ordinary Universal (hence infallible) Magisterium. And ... important this ... the more panicky pressure that power-hubs in Rome put on the world-wide episcopate to fall into line, the more significant will be any and every failure to submit.
AL, is, of course, far inferior in status to an infallible conciliar or papal decree, and PF's own ambiguous glosses as to what his own original ambiguities really mean are at an even lower (thoroughly sub-Magisterial!) level. These considerations make it yet more important to apply to AL the methodological test which Blessed John Henry Newman insisted had to be applied to Pastor aeternus after it was promulgated in 1870: Does this come to me as the free and unforced teaching of a moral unanimity within the episcopate?
Things are looking up! They're not getting away with it! Two years after AL was published, it is no nearer to passing the Newman Test. Still less near is that particular interpretation of its ambiguities upon which the Bergoglians need to rely.
I get a comforting feeling that some younger bishops may sense that, when the natural time comes for the next stage of their episcopal careers, PF is unlikely still to be Bishop of Rome.
Establishing that the Bishops of the oikoumene have not taught what PF desired them to teach (indeed, he grotesquely manipulated two synods to achieve his end), will also be an important factor when eventually a future pontificate sets about restoring the explicit witness of orthodoxy.
But our bishops have powerfully enforced one particular paragraph in AL. This is the section which deals with, and roundly condemns, Gender Theory and all that. By employing a section of AL to underpin this condemnation, their Lordships have given us a deft and elegant example of an argumentum ad hominem. Nice one!
24 April 2018
Personalia
Dear Ansgar
For reasons I cannot fathom, my computer will not allow me to reply to your personal, and courteous, email.
Can we amicably agree to differ?
Dear John
Thank you for your repetitively offered comment. Frankly, it would have been even more convincing if you had found the energy to offer it a fourth time, or even a fifth.
Is the 'Chittister' whom you so thricely commend to me and my readers of Irish origin? I am no philologist, but her name sounds to me rather like that of the old Ulster Protestant gentry Chichester family as it might be reproduced by someone who had got tied up in a titillating tongue-twister. I hesitate, on a Family Blog, to offer a reconstruction of what that twongue-tister might be.
Dear Sadie
It's news to me that PF "inherited" Amoris laetitia and all the other rubbish from poor Professor Ratzinger. It all goes to show what a cunning old ***************** he was.
Are you sure you've got this right?
For reasons I cannot fathom, my computer will not allow me to reply to your personal, and courteous, email.
Can we amicably agree to differ?
Dear John
Thank you for your repetitively offered comment. Frankly, it would have been even more convincing if you had found the energy to offer it a fourth time, or even a fifth.
Is the 'Chittister' whom you so thricely commend to me and my readers of Irish origin? I am no philologist, but her name sounds to me rather like that of the old Ulster Protestant gentry Chichester family as it might be reproduced by someone who had got tied up in a titillating tongue-twister. I hesitate, on a Family Blog, to offer a reconstruction of what that twongue-tister might be.
Dear Sadie
It's news to me that PF "inherited" Amoris laetitia and all the other rubbish from poor Professor Ratzinger. It all goes to show what a cunning old ***************** he was.
Are you sure you've got this right?
23 April 2018
Urban VI ...
... was the Pope whose personal failings, including an irascible inclination to torture and execute his Cardinals, led to the Great Western Schism.
There were very serious grounds for suspecting that his election, in 1378, was invalid on account of duress; the Cardinal Electors were under the menace of being torn to pieces by the Roman mob. Indeed, the dear little 1958 CTS pamphlet listing the popes, which never leaves my desk, says simply that his election "has been generally deemed valid" ... not a very wholehearted or ringing endorsement.
A few months later, most of the Cardinals repudiated their allegiance and declared the election invalid.
Yet he is always included nowadays in the list of 'genuine' popes, and the prelate, 'Clement VII', whom the Cardinals then elected in his place, is relegated to the list of 'antipopes'.
It was not until 1429, when 'Clement VIII' abdicated, that Christendom at last had only one claimant to the See of Peter.
Half a century of Schism.
Why am I reminding you of this?
Because, in our present crisis, glib people talk easily about getting rid of flawed popes. Urban VI was, surely, in the half-dozen most flawed popes ever, but securing the consent and collaboration to get rid of him was found to be difficult ... nay rather, in view of the fact that he never was successfully disposed of, one might say 'impossible'.
And, during that half-century, there never was an undisputed pope. Indeed, from 1409 until 1415, there were as many as three claimants simultaneously disputing the cathedra Petri.
I feel that this demonstrates the immense dangers of approaching ecclesial crises with simplistic 'remedies'.
Devising fictional solutions to real problems is no answer. Prayer and the bearing of witness are the Catholic remedy.
There were very serious grounds for suspecting that his election, in 1378, was invalid on account of duress; the Cardinal Electors were under the menace of being torn to pieces by the Roman mob. Indeed, the dear little 1958 CTS pamphlet listing the popes, which never leaves my desk, says simply that his election "has been generally deemed valid" ... not a very wholehearted or ringing endorsement.
A few months later, most of the Cardinals repudiated their allegiance and declared the election invalid.
Yet he is always included nowadays in the list of 'genuine' popes, and the prelate, 'Clement VII', whom the Cardinals then elected in his place, is relegated to the list of 'antipopes'.
It was not until 1429, when 'Clement VIII' abdicated, that Christendom at last had only one claimant to the See of Peter.
Half a century of Schism.
Why am I reminding you of this?
Because, in our present crisis, glib people talk easily about getting rid of flawed popes. Urban VI was, surely, in the half-dozen most flawed popes ever, but securing the consent and collaboration to get rid of him was found to be difficult ... nay rather, in view of the fact that he never was successfully disposed of, one might say 'impossible'.
And, during that half-century, there never was an undisputed pope. Indeed, from 1409 until 1415, there were as many as three claimants simultaneously disputing the cathedra Petri.
I feel that this demonstrates the immense dangers of approaching ecclesial crises with simplistic 'remedies'.
Devising fictional solutions to real problems is no answer. Prayer and the bearing of witness are the Catholic remedy.
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