7 April 2009

Hunwicke and the Holy Father

I'm sure you remember my BYZANTIUM 1 post on March the 25th; Lady Day. I quoted Joseph Ratzinger's words on how the West has an imperative duty to appropriate the iconographical developments of the East.

And have you now read - courtesy of NLM - how the beginning of the Easter Sunday Papal Mass has been overhauled in the last few years and a splendid new icon created for the pontiff and the people to venerate?

If you want to know what's in the Holy Father's mind, Hunwicke is essential reading.

I notice, by the way, that through the Triduum the Sovereign Pontiff is using the Canon Romanus at the Lord's Supper Mass, but otherwise the Third Eucharistic Prayer.

And that some intercessions are to be in Arabic and Hebrew. That's splendid. But I wouldn't mind betting that some Nasties will complain. For example, when JP2 canonised Edith Stein, there were complaints that Rome was trying to commandeer the Holocaust. And there have been Moslems who have complained about the use of the vocable Allah to refer to any God but their own.

It's not what the Pope actually does or actually says that they dislike; they have a frenzied and bigotted hatred of the man ... whatever he ... they're determined .......

5 comments:

  1. Any idea what the specific Arabic and Hebrew intercessions will be?

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  2. Arabic and Hebrew? Oh yeah right, all day long...God forbid, never Latin! It pains my old gulliver!

    A humble suggestion for the Pope's Valet "Charlie" de chambre: get a loaner from S B's.

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  3. RAGE. I love the eastern liturgy but I HATE it when easternisations come into the Latin Rite. I HATE it...

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  4. Christian... calm the rage - as I understand it the veneration of the icon is a genuine piece of restoration to the Papal liturgies, not the new importation of an eastern tradition. Unless, that is, you regard pre-Avignon, and probably pre-1054, Papal practice as involving dangerous innovation. Circumstances may have changed the format for the icon's veneration but the tradition is genuine - it is not like the 1950s and 1960s messing around with long-established traditional practice.

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  5. Malta's language traces some descent from the Phoenician and her faith comes from St Paul, which means that "Muleh Allah" had been heard in Christian worship for about 500 years before Muhammad was born. If - as shouldn't be the case - there's a question of copyright...

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