12 June 2018

Ultra-Catholics and moustachioed Jesuit 'generals'

On this august festival of S John of Fagondez, I am giving this old post another outing.

 The Reverend Professor Canon Dr Eric Mascall, a distinguished theologian (and mathematician), was for some years the unofficial House Theologian of 'Anglo-Catholicism'. In these comic verses he portrays the extremest of the extreme in that movement. But don't be too deceived; when Mascall was not on the Christ Church Cathedral weekday Mass rota, he himself said a private Tridentine Mass in Mags. Unlike a certain sort of High Churchman, who tinkered with both Western and Eastern practices or Dearmerised with Sarumidippity, Mascall was in no doubt that he was a Latin Catholic. He was a Thomist, too, so they would have liked him at Econe. They would have liked him anyway.

Satirical verse has long been at the heart of the Anglican Patrimony. We write it far better than anybody else, and we laugh louder ... even at ourselves ...

I am an Ultra-Catholic - No 'Anglo-'*, I beseech you!
You'll find no heresy in anything I teach you.
The clergyman across the road has whiskers and a bowler,
But I wear buckles on my shoes and sport a Feriola.

My alb is edged with deepest lace, spread over rich black satin;
The psalms of Dahvid I recite in heaven's own native Latin,
And, though I don't quite understand those awkward moods and tenses,
My ordo recitandi's strict Westmonasteriensis.

I teach the children in my school the Penny Catechism,
Explaining how the C of E's in heresy and schism.
The truths of Trent and Vatican I bate not one iota.
I have not met the rural Dean. I do not pay my quota.

The Bishop's put me under his 'profoundest disapproval'
And, though he cannot bring about my actual removal,
He will not come and visit me or take my confirmations.
Colonial prelates I employ from far-off mission-stations.

The music we perform at Mass is Verdi and Scarlatti.
Assorted females form the choir; I wish they weren't so catty.
Two flutes, a fiddle and a harp assist them in the gallery.
The organist left years ago, and so we save his salary.

We've started a 'Sodality of John of San Fagondez,'
Consisting of the five young men who serve High Mass on Sundays;
And though they simply will not come to weekday Mass at seven,
They turn out looking wonderful on Sundays at eleven.

The Holy Father I extol in fervid perorations,
The Cardinals in curia, the Sacred Congregations;
And, though I've not submitted yet, as all my friends expected,
I should have gone last Tuesday week, had not my wife objected.
______________________________________________________________
*Such clerics did not in fact describe themselves as Ultra-Catholics; simply as Catholics. They did eschew 'Anglo-' because, rightly, they saw it as implying a modified form of Catholicism. (Outsiders, missing these nuances, did speak of them as 'Anglo-Catholic'.) They hated being called High Churchmen; historically they were again right, because this term preceded the Oxford Movement and didn't necessarily at all imply 'advanced' ceremonial or an addiction to the Bishop of Rome (but often a 'high' view of the C of E over against all forms of Dissent or Whiggery). Laypeople, however, generally used 'High' to describe any usage with which they were themselves unfamiliar. ( I was once accused of being 'High Church' because, for State Mattins, I wore 'preaching bands' with my surplice, scarf and MA hood ... their usual officiant didn't wear bands.)

9 comments:

  1. I once had a copy of Mascall's 'Pi in the High', in which this appeared. Another went, I think:
    The common
    or domestic cat
    Is sometimes thin
    and sometimes fat
    And though the fat ones are quite nice
    The thin ones are the best for mice

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  2. I read somewhere that Mascall once penned a limerick that began "An acolyte there was of Dun Leary..." Is there any truth to this? I'd be delighted if my home town had been so honoured...

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  3. There was an old priest of Dun Laoghaire,
    Who stood on his head for the Kaoghaire.
    When people asked why,
    He explained it all by
    The latest liturgical thaoghaire

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  4. One is reminded of the young curate of Salisbury
    Whose manners were quite halisbury-scalisbury:
    He ran around Hampshire
    Without any pampshire
    Till his vicar compelled him to walisbury.

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  5. I like the bit about the "Penny Cathechism".

    Increasingly, I think that is the answer to all our problems.


    ps, and I have a certain sympathy with him regarding the last line!

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  6. With respect to “submitted” I notice that a new study of Vatican I is out, as reviewed by the very interesting Adam DeVille:
    https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/06/10/the-long-shadows-of-the-first-vatican-council/

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  7. On a whim, I searched the library catalogue in Queen's Belfast for E. L. Mascall's works; there were a few in the general collection and almost a surfeit in the special collections. It turns out that the sometime Reader in Scholastic Philosophy bought virtually everything that Mascall ever published and left it all to the University in his will. After Queen's he ended up as Bishop of Ardagh & Clonmacnois, then Down and Connor and finally Primate of All Ireland.

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  8. Some of Eric Mascall's later books have very fine calligraphic covers, drawn by the late Michael Harvey. For example, (those that I am aware of) Theology and the Gospel of Christ, and Whatever happened to the Human Mind?

    Harvey's cover design for a work by H U v. Balthasar was adapted to a display typeface called simply Balthasar.

    An interview with Harvey, by Paul Shaw.

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  9. Said a cleric of old Abersoch
    When offered a church by a loch,
    "I'd prefer Llanfairpwllgwyngyll-
    gogerychwrndrobwll-
    llantisiliogogogoch."

    Orthography not guaranteed, I'm afraid. Maybe Fr Forrest?

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