Paschal Candle

For how long should it rest in the sanctuary and burn? I always felt that there was a certain mechanistic naivete in the reasons given for extinguishing it after the Gospel of Ascension day. I wonder if readers can supply information about the varieties of usage which have existed in the Western Church: I believe, for example, that in Durham Cathedral it burned for 50 days: from Maundy Thursday until the Octave of the Ascension. And if we ever restore the baptismal understanding of Pentecost which the older liturgical books encourage, it will certainly be neater to retain the Candle's use until at least Pentecost Sunday (since it is lit and made use of in the Blessing of the Font in the Pentecost Vigil).

And I like the Novus Ordo idea of using the Candle at Baptisms and Funerals. I'm not a Pius V Fundamentalist!

Such questions could do with being resolved; since it is very untidy, in those churches that give a home to both forms of the Roman Rite, for the Candle to be alight at OF Masses ... but dematerialised away for EF Masses.

PUZZLED

Looking at my Site Metre, I see that visits are going down by about a thousand a month. Of course I realise that I am a Bore, but are there other, technical, reasons, which a technical approach might remedy? I am very technically uneducated. Since it is as much work to write a blog read by 5 people as by 100,000, one has a natural disposition to hope that one might be read by more rather than by fewer, if one is to feel it worthwhile to continue!

CIEL

If there are other participants in Saturday's CIEL Conference at the Oratory, as well as Sue, who see this blog, may I make suggestions in the hope that they, too, if they were to agree with me, might express their views to the CIEL secretary?

Since 'we' moved from Spanish Place, we have not had a sermon. Perhaps I'm just, deep down, an unreconstructed Protestant (that's a rhetorical question), but I like the homily. Not just for its own sake, but because it seems to punctuate the Mass rather nicely. Pausing after the contemplation of the rites which dignify the Word seems to me the correct thing to do, rather than rushing on at once and feeling, at the end of the Mass, that it has slipped away just a little too quickly. And I do believe that the Proclaimed Word of Christ our God does involve a form of Transubstantiation; the Words which emerge from the mouth of Christ's diaconal minister are, by divine power and the ordained minister's charism, truly the Words of the Lord; they are not a record of something said 2000 years ago but teaching and commands uttered by the Redeemer in His actual Now, calling now for my reverence and submission. That is why the traditional dignities of chanting are so appropriate, and why, just as at the elevations of the transubstantiated Body and Blood, incense is offered. A bit of Gospel informally read in a 'meaningful' way by a jolly chappy would be deeply wrong. This is why I believe the Gospel should be accorded both dignity and contemplation before the Priest sings Dominus vobiscum and begins the Adorable Sacrifice.

Secondly, I was disappointed not to hear discussion of Fr Crean's paper giving reasons for prefering the pre-Conciliar forms of Unction and Commendation. I felt both clergy and laity could have exchanged experiences and viesws, to our mutual profit.

Hymn to S Augustine

Here is the text of the Hymn which Lentini and the other Liturgia Horarum hymn-wallahs originally intended for Lauds and Vespers and gave in their first draft. It is particularly useful within the Ebbsfleet Apostolic District, in which S Augustine, who sanctified our sacred sandbank by walking across it, is a Festum. (OOps: I should have supplicated the Apostolic Administrator to authorise it. By next year ...)

Fecunda sanctis insula,/ tuum canas apostolum,/et filium Gregorii/ laudes piis concentibus.//Eius labore fertilis,/ messem dedisti plurimam,/ quae sanctitatis floribus/ diu refulges inclita.// Turma quadragenaria/ stipatus intrat Angliam:/ vexilla Christi proferens,/ dux pacis affert pignora.// Crucis tropaeum promicat,/ verbum salutis spargitur,/ fidem quin ipse barbarus/ rex corde prompto suscipit.// Mores feros gens exuit,/ undisque lota fluminis/ ipsa die renascitur/ qua Sol salutis ortus est.// O Pastor, alme, filios/ a sede pascas siderum;/ in matris ulnas anxiae/ gregem reducas deviam.// Praesta, beata Trinitas,/ quae rore iugi gratiae/ vitem rigas, ut pristina/ fides resurgens floreat.

It's in Gueranger, and the old Benedictine Breviary (the author was Benedictine). Lentini and co wanted to make the obvious bits more ecumenical, but I give you Francois Le Bannier's (d 1867) unexpurgated unbowdlerised original.

Sorry, I'm no good at metrical translations of hymns. Perhaps somebody ...

The Apostle of Rome

Last night, to the Oratory for First Vespers of S Philip Neri. Latin, Extraordinary Form, and followed by Latin Benediction and then Veneration of the Relic of S Philip. The propers for the Saint are elegant compositions, making use of biblical texts about the Heart, weaving them into an exposition of that experience of Divine Love which S P had early in life and which left him with a permanent deformity in his chest. And a fine vernacular hymn at the end by Mr Newman, Sapphics, with this stanza:
Love is his bond, he knows no other fetter,/Asks not our all, but takes whate'er we spare him,/ Willing to draw us on from good to better,/ As we can bear him.
There must be a sermon, or a lecture in a seminary Pastoralia course, in that.
Altogether, a faultless and well-judged succession of edifying liturgical episodes (well, not quite; the choir did make a little booboos at start of Vespers. S Philip would have laughed at that).

But then, a pretty well-judged Mass this morning at S Thomas's too, even though we were only three; EF Latin Mass of S Philip ... the rite the Saint knew and used daily (well, not quite; being Anglicans with a weakened sense of Sin, we do omit the Third Confiteor). I can't think of a better thing to do at 7.45 any morning of the year.

A WORRY

Father Zed ... is he OK? Is he still Sound? Less and less Liturgy in his blog and more and more on the double tailed Texan hoopoe finch, followed by treatises on how to cook mussels the way they do it across the bacino in Venice. I calculate that, at this rate, by 2016 his blog will be 100% about Ornithology and St Epicurus the Unmartyr.

New Management?

Yesterday, while in London for the CIEL Mass and Conference at the Oratory (as always, fun), I found myself with half an hour to kill near The Victoria Railway Station (as our Court Circulars describe it). So I dropped into that large red-brick church nearby which is such a triumph of Edwardian taste over Byzantine intention. Two things struck me.

The Sanctuary now seems to lack the small altar 1970s in front of the original altar. The lines of vision are such that it appears that Crucifix and six candles are on the original altar; in fact they are behind it. Good news: it looks better. Bad news: no evidence of a Benedictine arrangement.

More bad news: papers and periodicals used to be laid out at the back, and I (and, I think, quite a few other right-thinking people) used to sit in one of the seats nearby and read the Tablet without paying for it. Now they've all disappeared, and live in the shop. I did think of taking one and sauntering off into the Cathedral to read it , but desisted out a desire not to be arrested for shop-lifting.

Inconsequential Thoughts

The latest revision of the Novum Missal offers a Pentecost Vigil ... as the Old Rite did. I wonder if anyone in reach of S Thomas's would be interested in a very low-key celebration of the Old Vigil, perhaps on the Saturday afternoon?

If one solemnly celebrated baptisms on the Whit Vigil (not that I propose to!) would this not mean that an octave - in which the neophytes wore their Whites until the Saturday - would be a logical consequence?

Duffy quotes a lovely phrase from one of Cranmer's prosecutors: that Cranmer's "Gospell began ... with periurie, proceeded with adulterie, was maintained with heresie, and ended in conspiracy". In English Protestant usage, conduct which breaks every moral principle in the unscrupulous pursuit of some end has often been called "jesuitical". Would "cranmerian" be a more accurate term?

1559-2009 (2)

The final breach between the English provinces and Western Catholic Europe is pinpointed by the Feast of the Nativity of S John Baptist, June 24 in 1559. On that day, it became illegal, according to statute law, for that Liturgy to be celebrated which had formed and sanctified the peoples of England since 596. From this rupture, affecting every parish church in the kingdom, flowed all the other discontinuities which have marred and corrupted our national life since that day.

I'm sure readers will be able to think of their own ideas for an appropriate way to commemorate that day. For myself, I cannot think of anything better than to make absolutely sure that - whatever Eucharistic Prayer one might normally use - on that day one uses the Roman First Eucharistic Prayer: the prayer brought here by S Augustine and used daily for nearly a millennium.

Wise words from the great Anglican liturgist G G Willis: In liturgical quality, both of language and structure, it excells all other Eucharistic rites...it is the best one available ... It is time for the Church of England to forsake inveterate prejudices derived from Reformation Protestantism, and to accomplish something in liturgical revision which would give unity and peace on the basis of an ancient and well-tried form of prayer.

ECUMENICAL SOCIETY OF THE BVM

The Oxford branch meets tomorrow, TUESDAY, in Pusey House at 7.30 for 8.00. Ian Boxall will talk about the reception in the Church of Revelation 12.

1559-2009 (1)

This year represents the 450th anniversary of the saddest event in the history of England; when the Provinces of Canterbury and York were forcibly sundered from the unity of Western Christendom and from the See of Peter. For Anglican Catholics, at this particular moment, such a commemoration is not merely 'History' and 'Heritage'; it relates directly to where we are now and where we are going. There is a sort of symmetry between that sundering, and the sundering involved in the decision of 'our' bishops and synods to dump the ARCIC ecumenical process which seemed so promising and, in place of ecumenical convergence, to choose a path of deliberate and irrevocable (because structural) divergence.

At this timely moment, Professor Eamon Duffy has published his Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor (Yale; ISBN 978-0-300-15216-6). It should be read by everybody with a serious interest in the history of our provinces at that particular turning point and moment of rupture; it demonstrates the vibrancy of Marian Catholicism, its popular appeal, its intellectual strength, its personal heroism. It demonstrates how England, as a unique locus in which Protestantism had been turned back and replaced by a renewed and invigorated Catholicism, became an early laboratory for the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Duffy shows how the English Counter-Reformation of 1553-8 helped to shape the reforms of the Council of Trent and of Catholic mainland Europe. Did you know, for example, that S Charles Borromeo incorporated Cardinal Pole's decree on Pastoral Visitation word for word into the document issued by his first Milan Synod of 1565? When you've read Duffy, you'll know a lot of significant details like that; and you'll have a clear understanding of how Whiggish historiography has corrupted our national memory of that brief but exciting five years.

ORDO

The ORDO which for so many years I have compiled ... IS currently being printed. I say this to reassure worried users; the TuftonPress/Church Union withdrew the publication of it from the Canterbury Press because of unresolved problems concerning the ideology of some of the advertisements which Canterbury Press included. The ORDO will be distributed by THE ADDITIONAL CURATES SOCIETY (Gordon Browning House, 8 Spitfire Road, BIRMINGHAM B24 9PB; Tel 0121 3825533; info@additionalcurates.co.uk). The 2010 edition will appear a little later than hitherto, but I trust its appearance will not be much longer delayed.

The ORDO will continue to provide full information of the Calendar both of the Modern Roman Rite and of Common Worship, plus the local calendars of the provinces of Canterbury and York, of Wales, Scotland, Dublin, and Armagh, and the modern Roman RC calendars for England and Wales.

It also provides full daily bible references for the readings at Mass and the Office in the Church of England, and in the current Roman Mass Lectionary. It includes full and, I hope, up-to-date directions for the particular observances of the Liturgical Year, according to modern Western usage. There are some historical explanations, and information from Orthodox sources which throw light on Western Liturgy.

It gives the full 1961 Divine Office Lectionary designed to complement the 1662 Prayer Book. And, in view of the growing interest in Traditional Liturgy, it gives growing amounts of guidance to those who wish to give their worship an increasing bias in a traditional direction (whether Prayer Book or Roman); although it does not yet give the full 1662 and Roman 1962 calendars.

Many Anglican users have valued the section on the Law of Worship of the Church of England, and have found it useful when confronted by bishops who ...

A Book Review

"The fabled clergyman who gave out from his pulpit, "Today is Easter Day; last Friday was Good Friday, but as it was overlooked it will be kept next Friday", might have spared himself these embarrassments if he had possessed a copy of the unpretentious but tastefully produced booklet that reaches us from Burns, Oates, & Washbourne, entitled Ordo Recitandi Divini Officii, etc., etc., etc. (1/6 net). The author modestly preserves anonymity, nor does he betray his identity by any marked individuality of treatment; but his colleagues will be glad to welcome a piece of solid work from his pen, and will not fail to recognize his attention to detail and his terse, nervous Latinity."
I'm sure you'll have no trouble guessing who, in 1923, wrote that?