Sunt lacrimae rerum ... and especially when one enters a church in which there are manifest signs of the elimination, at the Reformation, of Catholicism and of Catholic worship. S John Henry deftly allowed the physical and the metaphorical to throw light on each other with his words "Oh, that miserable day, centuries before we were born! What a martyrdom to live in it and see the fair form of Truth, moral and material, hacked piecemeal, and every limb and organ carried off, and burned in the fire, or cast into the deep! But at last the work was done. Truth was disposed of, and shovelled away ..."
Yes indeed ... shovelled so literally away ... but for those of us who have emerged from the 'Anglican Patrimony', the nastiness is sometimes redoubled. We've had to experience it twice.
Dorchester Abbey near Oxford offers an example: despoiled at the 'Reformation' ...the shrines demolished, the August Presence ejected, the signs of the care of the Most Holy Mother of God destroyed. But, in the course of the Catholic Revival, it all came back. A succession of faithful priests, and of faithful congregations, put Truth back into her place. Fr Poyntz, who loved to be in Brittany especially in order to witness the Corpus Christi processions, wrote "we must not be surprised therefore if often we find our religion is very much like the Roman Catholic religion ...". During those days, "the whole or main part of the Canon of the Mass, according to the Roman or Sarum Use"was kept on the Altar"for private devotion".
Wht a blessing it was for the Tractarian clergy, that the Canon was, in the Catholic Church, said secreto: the Anglo-Catholics could plausibly subsume it under the heading of Priest's Private Devotions!
Closely associated with the Abbey was the Missionary College, training clery for Mission. Jolly photographs survive showing students and clergy, many of the latter in birettas, in long processions. Fr Darwell Stone was for a while Principal of the College; later he became Principal of Pusey House, Oxford's Anglo-Catholic Library, Chaplaincy, and House of Studies, and it is recorded that, at the Altar there, he interpolated the Canon memoriter. What a shame that, since 1970, the Canon Missae has almost totally disappeared from the use of the mainstream Latin Church. Especially as, de facto, it has been shamefacedly replaced by the Second Eucharistic Prayer, with its spurious origins ... and with its Brevity its only seedy advocate!
Catholic restoration might sometimes meet resistance. But if a hostile witness could claim that "nearly half the parishioners were deterred from attending church" by these illegal Roman practices ...well, is this not an admission that more than half the congregation were not deterred?
To be concluded
1 comment:
How many Latin Catholics have been "deterred" from assisting at Mass due to the outrageous fabrications that started following "the council" and under which we still are forced to suffer.
As for the consecration sub secreto, that is as it should be because what is most sacred should not be stripped of its mystery, ie, should be veiled. The shouting of the consecration in the vernacular reminds me of the passion which with our leaders make talk of all things lewd pertaining to the marriage bed.
Both the consecration for those in holy orders, as the marriage embrace for those in holy matrimony, should be veiled in quiet, reverent secrecy and not left to be balked at by the public.
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