I like to think that the Patrimonial Anglican lay theologian C S Lewis offered a good refutation of the Bergoglianist error. By 'Bergoglianism' I do not mean the thoughts of PF within himself ... how could I know these? ... but the view expressed so loudly by his admirers: that the Holy Spirit speaks certainly through PF's mouth, even when he is a very long way from his Cathedra and not least when he appears to be a considerable distance from the Great Tradition. They use the Holy Spirit as a fast, plausible and cheap way of bridging the gap between the Deposit of Faith and the words of Jorge Bergoglio ... as their own personal, ready-made Deus ex machina.
In Lewis's novel, an eminent physicist called Edward Rolles Weston (1896-1942) has fallen under the influence of the Enemy. He and a philologist called Edwin Ransom, a Christian, are thrown together on an unfallen planet called Perelandra. Weston is speaking here:
" ... God is spirit, Ransom. Get hold of that. You're familiar with that already. Stick to it. God is a spirit."
"Well, of course. But what then?" ... ...
[Weston] "It is through me that Spirit itself is at this moment pushing on to its goal."
"Look here," said Ransom, "one wants to be careful about this sort of thing. There are spirits and spirits, you know."
"Eh?" said Weston. "What are you talking about?"
[Ransom] "I mean a thing might be a spirit and not good for you."
[Weston] "But I thought you agreed that Spirit was the good -- the end of the whole process? I thought you religious people were all out for spirituality? What is the point of asceticism -- fasts and celibacy and all that? Didn't we agree that God is a spirit? Don't you worship Him because He is pure spirit?"
[Ransom] "Good heavens, no! We worship Him because He is wise and good. There's nothing specially fine about simply being a spirit. The Devil is a spirit."
Perhaps someone should send PF a copy of Lewis's Space trilogy.
31 May 2020
30 May 2020
Sex and Scandal on the River
The Internet may have convinced us that Coronavirus is just a Chinese hoax, but the University's Rowing clubs, unaccountably, have cancelled Eights Week. For any who may have withdrawal symptoms, I here follow an ancient British custom, exemplified by the Beeb, and give you a Repeat! (The old thread has one or two very sweet comments.)
Well, Eights Week, the annual Summer Bumping Races on the Isis, is now over. Nothing changes; the accents of upper-class girls from New England (and I don't mean the one in New South Wales) as ubiquitous as ever. The usual male undergraduates who, having Pimms taken, loudly try feebly to cap each other's feeble jokes to impress women undergraduates ... why is it that the girls never even hint by word or body-language their contempt for all this pathetic male preening? Shall I ever understand Sex?
But, this year, a Scandal. Let me tell you all about it. In the final race of the top Division, the Scone boat, with effortless superiority, came first out of the Gut. It was followed by the Judas eight, now renamed Amazonia, and greeted by the traditional undergraduate cheers of 'Dobson, Dobson'. Close behind in third place was the Simon Magus boat. But as the Judas cox steered his boat over to the Rain Forest on the Green Bank, he went too close, and the eight came to a juddering halt tangled in undergrowth and baboons and viri probati. This enabled Simon Magus to bump it spectacularly, indeed catastrophically, seriously damaging the entire stern of the Judas boat. Thanks to a supernatural premonition, the Judas cox had already leaped out of his seat onto the bank, and so, alone of his crew, escaped serious injury. Klaxons all round, chaps!
The fourth boat out of the Gut was also going strongly; 'DLS' painted on its bow, and the familiar domestick cat of Shrewsbury College on its oars. It avoided the melee; and careered onwards at such a speed as to catch up with and to bump Scone (the crew of which, having seen Judas bumped, had foolishly slackened their pace). So Shrewsbury ended up Head of the River!
The scandal? It transpires that the Judas cox had been bribed with money and (he is a poor simple American boy) the lure of "Irregular Relationships"; the Senior Common Room at Simon Magus, led by Mr Provost himself, had organised it all!! It seems that my lord Chancellor may have to be called in.
Rumours abound about how Mr Orator might allude to such an episode at Encaenia in his Creweian Oration. Might he quote the Pro Caelio? Or mention the technological aspects of the death of Agrippina?
Well, Eights Week, the annual Summer Bumping Races on the Isis, is now over. Nothing changes; the accents of upper-class girls from New England (and I don't mean the one in New South Wales) as ubiquitous as ever. The usual male undergraduates who, having Pimms taken, loudly try feebly to cap each other's feeble jokes to impress women undergraduates ... why is it that the girls never even hint by word or body-language their contempt for all this pathetic male preening? Shall I ever understand Sex?
But, this year, a Scandal. Let me tell you all about it. In the final race of the top Division, the Scone boat, with effortless superiority, came first out of the Gut. It was followed by the Judas eight, now renamed Amazonia, and greeted by the traditional undergraduate cheers of 'Dobson, Dobson'. Close behind in third place was the Simon Magus boat. But as the Judas cox steered his boat over to the Rain Forest on the Green Bank, he went too close, and the eight came to a juddering halt tangled in undergrowth and baboons and viri probati. This enabled Simon Magus to bump it spectacularly, indeed catastrophically, seriously damaging the entire stern of the Judas boat. Thanks to a supernatural premonition, the Judas cox had already leaped out of his seat onto the bank, and so, alone of his crew, escaped serious injury. Klaxons all round, chaps!
The fourth boat out of the Gut was also going strongly; 'DLS' painted on its bow, and the familiar domestick cat of Shrewsbury College on its oars. It avoided the melee; and careered onwards at such a speed as to catch up with and to bump Scone (the crew of which, having seen Judas bumped, had foolishly slackened their pace). So Shrewsbury ended up Head of the River!
The scandal? It transpires that the Judas cox had been bribed with money and (he is a poor simple American boy) the lure of "Irregular Relationships"; the Senior Common Room at Simon Magus, led by Mr Provost himself, had organised it all!! It seems that my lord Chancellor may have to be called in.
Rumours abound about how Mr Orator might allude to such an episode at Encaenia in his Creweian Oration. Might he quote the Pro Caelio? Or mention the technological aspects of the death of Agrippina?
29 May 2020
Hate Liturgy? (4) Sub tuum praesidium ...
With the background afforded by my meditations upon the final paragraph of the Gloria in Excelsis Deo [GIED], I now revisit the ancient Marian prayer, which I examined early in this Mary Month: Sub tuum praesidium [STP]. My suspicions are quite simple: that it fits very snugly into the same cultural format, somewhere towards the end of the third century; the period when psalmi idiotici were still all the rage. You will remember that an early Christian papyrus contains this prayer [PAP means this papyrus] in one of its slightly differing versions.
Like GIED, STP appears to be aware of the New Testament scriptures. Our Lady is addressed as Eulogemene, Blessed, the word used in S Luke's narrative of the Annunciation. PAP also has rhusai, which is very rare in the Gospels (the Byzantine version replaces this with lutrosai). But it has a high profile use, coming at the end of the Matthaean version of the Lord's Prayer: "Deliver us ...".
Then there is the word eusplangkhnian, a noun with the corresponding adjective eusplangkhnos. This is a compound Greek word. Literally, it means 'having bowels well'. So the term appears in ... medical textbooks! As 'bowels' had a sense of compassionate emotion, the meaning expanded to take in the idea of kindness or mercy. Interestingly, where the Roman version of the STP has praesidium [protection], the Ambrosian version, closer to the Greek, has misericordiam. In the NT Epistles, the idea applies to human beings (I Pet 3:8; Eph 4:32). But in the 'Prayer of Manasses', it is applied to the Almighty: su ei Kyrios hypsistos, eusplangkhnos, makrothumos, kai polyeleos. Notice here hypsistos (Most Highest). The Prayer of Manasses hovered on the fringes of the Biblical Canon right down to the time of Pope Clement VIII; all we know about its dating is that it cannot be later than the early years of the third century.
But what I find of most interest is the description of our Lady in STP/PAP as mone hagne mone eulogemene. She is called "The Only pure, The Only blessed" just as her Son is addressed in GIED as "The Only Holy, The Only Lord, The Only Most High." [the Roman form of STP omits the Only; but it is retained in the Ambrosian form]. I followed Jungman in seeing these Onlys as exclusionary when we met them in GIED. How might that play into the context of PAP?
When the composer of STP/PAP wrote Only Holy/Chaste (mone hagne; in the Ambrosian version of STP, sola casta), he or she was using a term applied to divinities and more or less anything connected with them, but most especially goddesses. In particular, the Virgin Huntress Artemis. Artemis was regularly for Homer "Golden-throned". And Isis was "she of the throne". In an Isiac papyrus, Isis proclaims herself as having the title Hagne at Paphos.
Perhaps it hardly needs pointing out that STP, like GIED, was clearly composed at a time, like that of PF's Vatican, when polytheism and syncretism were still live problems and merited being implicitly refuted, even in a devotional formula.
But what sort of formula is STP? I have finished my study of GIED and Hate Liturgy; but, with regard to STP, I have a very tasty fact or two or three which don't appear in books likely to be on the shelves of many readers. These will follow.
Like GIED, STP appears to be aware of the New Testament scriptures. Our Lady is addressed as Eulogemene, Blessed, the word used in S Luke's narrative of the Annunciation. PAP also has rhusai, which is very rare in the Gospels (the Byzantine version replaces this with lutrosai). But it has a high profile use, coming at the end of the Matthaean version of the Lord's Prayer: "Deliver us ...".
Then there is the word eusplangkhnian, a noun with the corresponding adjective eusplangkhnos. This is a compound Greek word. Literally, it means 'having bowels well'. So the term appears in ... medical textbooks! As 'bowels' had a sense of compassionate emotion, the meaning expanded to take in the idea of kindness or mercy. Interestingly, where the Roman version of the STP has praesidium [protection], the Ambrosian version, closer to the Greek, has misericordiam. In the NT Epistles, the idea applies to human beings (I Pet 3:8; Eph 4:32). But in the 'Prayer of Manasses', it is applied to the Almighty: su ei Kyrios hypsistos, eusplangkhnos, makrothumos, kai polyeleos. Notice here hypsistos (Most Highest). The Prayer of Manasses hovered on the fringes of the Biblical Canon right down to the time of Pope Clement VIII; all we know about its dating is that it cannot be later than the early years of the third century.
But what I find of most interest is the description of our Lady in STP/PAP as mone hagne mone eulogemene. She is called "The Only pure, The Only blessed" just as her Son is addressed in GIED as "The Only Holy, The Only Lord, The Only Most High." [the Roman form of STP omits the Only; but it is retained in the Ambrosian form]. I followed Jungman in seeing these Onlys as exclusionary when we met them in GIED. How might that play into the context of PAP?
When the composer of STP/PAP wrote Only Holy/Chaste (mone hagne; in the Ambrosian version of STP, sola casta), he or she was using a term applied to divinities and more or less anything connected with them, but most especially goddesses. In particular, the Virgin Huntress Artemis. Artemis was regularly for Homer "Golden-throned". And Isis was "she of the throne". In an Isiac papyrus, Isis proclaims herself as having the title Hagne at Paphos.
Perhaps it hardly needs pointing out that STP, like GIED, was clearly composed at a time, like that of PF's Vatican, when polytheism and syncretism were still live problems and merited being implicitly refuted, even in a devotional formula.
But what sort of formula is STP? I have finished my study of GIED and Hate Liturgy; but, with regard to STP, I have a very tasty fact or two or three which don't appear in books likely to be on the shelves of many readers. These will follow.
28 May 2020
Hate Liturgy? (3) Hitler, Pachamamma
But I feel there still remains a nagging doubt about that final paragraph: "Thou only art The Holy. Thou only art The Most High". The Byzantine Liturgy, in the response of the People before Communion, raises a similar question: heis Hagios, heis Kyrios, Iesous Christos ... When all is said and done, doesn't that leave an uneasy query in one's mind: we are addressing God the Son. So when we tell him that he alone is The Holy One; he alone is The Lord; he alone is The Most High ... well, isn't His Father (and the Holy Ghost) equally entitled to these honorifics? Jungmann explains "If we refer [these epithets] to Christ, they must also by that fact be claimed for the triune God". Indeed. Very True. But, again ... ...
Jungmann, writing, I think, during the Nazi tyranny, argues that "in the period when our hymn originated, such expressions very vividly outlined the sharp antithesis between our Catholic worship and heathen worship with its many loosely-given attributes of divinity, its many kyrioi, and its emperor-worship. Above and beyond all these creations of human fancy stands Jesus Christ, radiant and grand, the sole and only Lord. Our own day has great appreciation of this sublime contrast." [My italics.] Indeed. Jungmann's 'day' had more than its belly-full of Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer. In the context of such tyranny, isn't the final paragraph of the Gloria in excelsis still endowed with all its old subversive power? Does it not still breathe the spirit of all the Martyrs of all the ages? Is its truth not still increasingly necessary as liberal tyranny fastens its hold upon our own society, and even upon the Church?
So S Paul admits that in his society there are theoi polloi kai kyrioi polloi, but opposes to this heis Theos ho Pater, heis Kurios Iesous Christos (I Corinthians 8:5-6; cf Ephesians 4:5-6). Indeed, in syncretistic polytheistic cultures, there certainly are many Kyriai and many Kyrioi: Isis, Osiris, Sabazios, Mithras, Pachamamma ... All of whom the Christian radically rejects. Our shout inevitably and inexorably goes up "In Tiberim, in Tiberim". Splash Splash!! Sink Sink!!!
So 'only' and 'monos' and 'solus' clearly function as exclusionary and excluding dogmatic terms. They are profoundly and deliberately anti-ecumenical. That is their value and their immense strength. And, I would say, their necessity. Our society is focussed upon being 'inclusive', and this ambiguous 'virtue' (newly and cunningly manufactured in the laboratories of Hell) makes its way even into the religious sphere, where it encourages syncretism only yards from where S Peter bore his uninclusive Witness. But the ideologically powerful final paragraph of the Gloria in excelsis, which is not just poetry and not even solely prayer, is an unfurled dogmatic standard around which to gather in the battles ahead.
Jungmann realised this in Nazi Vienna. How clear is it to us here and to us now?
In the fourth and final section, I shall return to the Marian prayer Sub tuum praesidium.
Jungmann, writing, I think, during the Nazi tyranny, argues that "in the period when our hymn originated, such expressions very vividly outlined the sharp antithesis between our Catholic worship and heathen worship with its many loosely-given attributes of divinity, its many kyrioi, and its emperor-worship. Above and beyond all these creations of human fancy stands Jesus Christ, radiant and grand, the sole and only Lord. Our own day has great appreciation of this sublime contrast." [My italics.] Indeed. Jungmann's 'day' had more than its belly-full of Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer. In the context of such tyranny, isn't the final paragraph of the Gloria in excelsis still endowed with all its old subversive power? Does it not still breathe the spirit of all the Martyrs of all the ages? Is its truth not still increasingly necessary as liberal tyranny fastens its hold upon our own society, and even upon the Church?
So S Paul admits that in his society there are theoi polloi kai kyrioi polloi, but opposes to this heis Theos ho Pater, heis Kurios Iesous Christos (I Corinthians 8:5-6; cf Ephesians 4:5-6). Indeed, in syncretistic polytheistic cultures, there certainly are many Kyriai and many Kyrioi: Isis, Osiris, Sabazios, Mithras, Pachamamma ... All of whom the Christian radically rejects. Our shout inevitably and inexorably goes up "In Tiberim, in Tiberim". Splash Splash!! Sink Sink!!!
So 'only' and 'monos' and 'solus' clearly function as exclusionary and excluding dogmatic terms. They are profoundly and deliberately anti-ecumenical. That is their value and their immense strength. And, I would say, their necessity. Our society is focussed upon being 'inclusive', and this ambiguous 'virtue' (newly and cunningly manufactured in the laboratories of Hell) makes its way even into the religious sphere, where it encourages syncretism only yards from where S Peter bore his uninclusive Witness. But the ideologically powerful final paragraph of the Gloria in excelsis, which is not just poetry and not even solely prayer, is an unfurled dogmatic standard around which to gather in the battles ahead.
Jungmann realised this in Nazi Vienna. How clear is it to us here and to us now?
In the fourth and final section, I shall return to the Marian prayer Sub tuum praesidium.
27 May 2020
Hate Liturgy (2)
By the way, you'd better not whisper to PF what I've just explained, or he may "correct the translation" (to employ the silly terms he used in altering the Our Father) of the Gloria in excelsis to cut it down to what he can himself understand, and to prevent it from 'offending' people. Not least because our Moslem friends are, in their Christology, Unitarian rather than Trinitarian. I have, incidentally, wondered whether the irritation felt in Trendiland by the translation, in the Creed, of homoousios as consubstantial may arise from a crypto-Arian mindset. Similarly, the replacement of the 'Nicene' Creed by the 'Apostles' Creed'. (I don't know what ultra-orthodox and very witty Anglican liturgist had the idea of allowing the 'Athanasian Creed' to be used at Mass in the C of E!! That really would be a step in the right direction!)
But, however the baddies may tamper with the text or use of the Creed, I find it reassuring that the Gloria still preserves the Church's orthodox Christology. And expresses it with very great beauty.
How should we date the Gloria? It had certainly got itself, in a variety of versions, all over the Christian World by the middle of the fourth century. It can hardly be later than the third century. Dix suggests an origin "even, perhaps in the second century".
That would not be surprising. Batiffol and Jungmann see it as a surviving example of the psalmi idiotici ... psalms wriiten by private individuals rather than being found, like the Psalms of David, in the Scriptures. Gloria in excelsis attracts our attention first as part of the psalmody of the morning Office; by the second half of the fourth century Catholic worship tended to banish them (that is when the Council of Laodicea simultaneously banned psalmi idiotici and the reading of 'uncanonical Scriptures'). Dix points out that it is only with Tertullian at the turn of the century that we begin to find Scripture employed as normative and as constitutive of sound doctrine. "Unless we recognise the important change produced in Christian theological method by the definite canonisation of the NT Scriptures, which only begins to have its full effect after c. A.D. 180, we shall not understand the second-century Church".
Yet this Song does start off with a 'motto' (to use the terminology of commentators on the Classics) drawn from NT Scripture: the Song of the Angels recorded by S Luke in his infancy narrative. This is surely some indication of the growing liturgical influence of the Scriptures. Perhaps Gloria in excelsis should be dated to the end of the second century, although one must remember how fluid its text for some time remained.
To be continued.
But, however the baddies may tamper with the text or use of the Creed, I find it reassuring that the Gloria still preserves the Church's orthodox Christology. And expresses it with very great beauty.
How should we date the Gloria? It had certainly got itself, in a variety of versions, all over the Christian World by the middle of the fourth century. It can hardly be later than the third century. Dix suggests an origin "even, perhaps in the second century".
That would not be surprising. Batiffol and Jungmann see it as a surviving example of the psalmi idiotici ... psalms wriiten by private individuals rather than being found, like the Psalms of David, in the Scriptures. Gloria in excelsis attracts our attention first as part of the psalmody of the morning Office; by the second half of the fourth century Catholic worship tended to banish them (that is when the Council of Laodicea simultaneously banned psalmi idiotici and the reading of 'uncanonical Scriptures'). Dix points out that it is only with Tertullian at the turn of the century that we begin to find Scripture employed as normative and as constitutive of sound doctrine. "Unless we recognise the important change produced in Christian theological method by the definite canonisation of the NT Scriptures, which only begins to have its full effect after c. A.D. 180, we shall not understand the second-century Church".
Yet this Song does start off with a 'motto' (to use the terminology of commentators on the Classics) drawn from NT Scripture: the Song of the Angels recorded by S Luke in his infancy narrative. This is surely some indication of the growing liturgical influence of the Scriptures. Perhaps Gloria in excelsis should be dated to the end of the second century, although one must remember how fluid its text for some time remained.
To be continued.
26 May 2020
Hate Liturgy? (1)
"From the tyrannye of the bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities, Good lorde deliver us.".
As the victims of the Tudor regime were being dragged to their ritual disembowling, it must have comforted them mightily to reflect that at least the kyngs maiestie and his counsaile were keeping papal influence well beyond the boundaries of the Staple of Calais.
The words I quote above are the sort of thing I mean by Hate Liturgy.
But I must confess that I do have a softer spot for our own sort of Hate Liturgy. At the Byzantine Liturgy, when the Monogenes is being sung ... I must admit this ... there does surge within me the warmly combative sentiment "T*ke th*t, N*st*r**s!" I'm sure you experience the same feeling. It's only human.
Today, I want to look at a delightful piece of Hate Liturgy which frequently crops up in our beloved Roman Rite.
For thou only art the Holy, thou only art the Lord; thou only, O Jesus Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art the Most High in the glory of God the Father..
Keen eyes will spot that the definite article has been added in the phrase the Most High. It is not in the Latin. Latin does not have articles, either definite or indefinite. But the addition in the translation is correct, because the phrase is being used as a title. And that is why, in modern translations, the same is done to Holy. Since it is being used as a title, it can indeed be usefully rendered as the Holy One. It is important also to remember that 'the Lord' is used, following Septuagint and Vulgate precedent, as the equivalent of YHWH, the ancient and unutterable Name of the God of Israel. It is quite something that we are saying in this paragraph about our Lord Jesus Christ.
So where does the 'hate' come in?
We should never forget the Arians, particularly because so many Christians today (without, poor poppets, being aware of it) are Arian; they do not instinctively believe that, within the undivided and ever-blessed Trinity, our Lord is co-equally God with his Father. Whenever a speaker ... even a homilist ... uses a phrase like "God and Jesus", we should be suspicious. Jesus is God. Just as 'much' as the Father is.
Arians, aka Unitarians, believe that Jesus Christ is no more than the greatest created being. S John Henry Newman explained that, in asserting this, Arians (and modern liberal Protestants and all the rest) are demoting Christ to the slot properly occupied by our Lady. It is not surprising that, meeting the way we Catholics and Orthodox talk about Mary, ignorant modern proddies might accuse us of raising Mary into the place of Christ. They fail to understand that, merely by entertaining this suspicion in their poor simple heretical minds, they reveal themselves not to have a nearly 'high' enough belief ... not within a million million miles ... about Christ: about who/what he is. They show themselves, all unwittingly, to be Arius-groupies.
If you now look back at that last paragraph from the Gloria in excelsis Deo, you will realise how precisely and effectively it is crafted to 'get at' the Arians. The Man from Nazareth is YHWH! He is 'the Holy One'! There were, indeed, the more 'high church' Arians who were prepared to use the loftiest language they, in good conscience, could manage to describe Christ. But obviously, even they could hardly describe Him as 'the Most High'. Obviously, that title would appear to make Him outrank the Father, who .... obviously ... is the 'mostest High' (Jungmann adduces PL LXII 387).
So, every time we partake in the final paragraph of this splendid hymn, we are really saying "S*d y**, Ar**n sc*m!" As well, of course, as praising the Lord!!
To be continued.
As the victims of the Tudor regime were being dragged to their ritual disembowling, it must have comforted them mightily to reflect that at least the kyngs maiestie and his counsaile were keeping papal influence well beyond the boundaries of the Staple of Calais.
The words I quote above are the sort of thing I mean by Hate Liturgy.
But I must confess that I do have a softer spot for our own sort of Hate Liturgy. At the Byzantine Liturgy, when the Monogenes is being sung ... I must admit this ... there does surge within me the warmly combative sentiment "T*ke th*t, N*st*r**s!" I'm sure you experience the same feeling. It's only human.
Today, I want to look at a delightful piece of Hate Liturgy which frequently crops up in our beloved Roman Rite.
For thou only art the Holy, thou only art the Lord; thou only, O Jesus Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art the Most High in the glory of God the Father..
Keen eyes will spot that the definite article has been added in the phrase the Most High. It is not in the Latin. Latin does not have articles, either definite or indefinite. But the addition in the translation is correct, because the phrase is being used as a title. And that is why, in modern translations, the same is done to Holy. Since it is being used as a title, it can indeed be usefully rendered as the Holy One. It is important also to remember that 'the Lord' is used, following Septuagint and Vulgate precedent, as the equivalent of YHWH, the ancient and unutterable Name of the God of Israel. It is quite something that we are saying in this paragraph about our Lord Jesus Christ.
So where does the 'hate' come in?
We should never forget the Arians, particularly because so many Christians today (without, poor poppets, being aware of it) are Arian; they do not instinctively believe that, within the undivided and ever-blessed Trinity, our Lord is co-equally God with his Father. Whenever a speaker ... even a homilist ... uses a phrase like "God and Jesus", we should be suspicious. Jesus is God. Just as 'much' as the Father is.
Arians, aka Unitarians, believe that Jesus Christ is no more than the greatest created being. S John Henry Newman explained that, in asserting this, Arians (and modern liberal Protestants and all the rest) are demoting Christ to the slot properly occupied by our Lady. It is not surprising that, meeting the way we Catholics and Orthodox talk about Mary, ignorant modern proddies might accuse us of raising Mary into the place of Christ. They fail to understand that, merely by entertaining this suspicion in their poor simple heretical minds, they reveal themselves not to have a nearly 'high' enough belief ... not within a million million miles ... about Christ: about who/what he is. They show themselves, all unwittingly, to be Arius-groupies.
If you now look back at that last paragraph from the Gloria in excelsis Deo, you will realise how precisely and effectively it is crafted to 'get at' the Arians. The Man from Nazareth is YHWH! He is 'the Holy One'! There were, indeed, the more 'high church' Arians who were prepared to use the loftiest language they, in good conscience, could manage to describe Christ. But obviously, even they could hardly describe Him as 'the Most High'. Obviously, that title would appear to make Him outrank the Father, who .... obviously ... is the 'mostest High' (Jungmann adduces PL LXII 387).
So, every time we partake in the final paragraph of this splendid hymn, we are really saying "S*d y**, Ar**n sc*m!" As well, of course, as praising the Lord!!
To be continued.
25 May 2020
Variis linguis loquebantur Apostoli ...
... but among the many tongues the Church speaks nowadays, Latin, the proper language of the Latin Church, apparently is not to feature. We are preparing for the liturgical celebration of Pentecost, the bestowing upon the Church of the gifts of tongues. Yet the language most securely fixed into place by Tradition and by the enactments of popes and councils, Latin, has had a gag rudely thrust into its mouth by the Enemy and by those whom he has corrupted. It is difficult to avoid a conclusion that the bishops, as a body, are largely the guilty men.
I have noticed, over the years, three or four occasions when a bishop, perhaps when asked to provide a celebrant for the Extraordinary Form, has cheerfully informed the world that not many clergy know Latin nowadays, so that it's hard for him to find someone who can celebrate the Extraordinary Form.
I am amazed by the nonchalant and shame-free way that bishops make this revelation without any apparent awareness that Canon Law (249) requires the clergy to be proficient in Latin. If a diocesan bishop were rebuking a cheeky young curate for ignoring Canon Law, what would be his reaction if the junior cleric cheerfully (and nonchalantly) said "Come off it, Bish dear, nobody takes any notice of all that old Canonical C**p any more nowadays! Crawl out from under your poncy mitre and try to get real!" But apparently there are bishops who feel exactly this same disdainful contempt with regard to Canon Law. Is chirpy insouciance combined with dereliction of duty any less reprehensible when expressed in po-faced management-talk by self-important bishops than it would be among lowly and racy presbyters?
I am moved to repeat the actual teaching of the Conciliar and post-Conciliar popes on this highly important matter.
S JOHN XXIII and Latin.
Roman Pontiffs do not commonly sign their Magisterial documents on the High Altar of S Peter's in the presence of the body of Cardinals. But S John XXIII thus promulgated his Apostolic Constitution Veterum sapientia, 1962, in which he insisted that the Latin language must remain central to the culture of Western Christianity. What on earth could the good old gentleman have done in order to make his point more emphatically?
That Letter was praised by S Paul VI (Studia Latinitatis, 1964, " ... principem obtinere locum dicenda sane est"), who was anxious that seminarians "magna cum cura et diligentia ad antiquas et humanas litteras informentur"; and S John Paul II (Sapientia Christiana) emphasised the requirement for knowlege of Latin "for the faculties of the Sacred Sciences, so that students can understand and use the sources and documents of the Church". Benedict XVI (Latina lingua, 2012), praised Veterum sapientia as having been issued iure meritoque: it is to be taken seriously both because of its legal force and because of the intrinsic merit of its arguments; and in his Encyclical Sacramentum Caritatis wrote specifically about the need for seminarians to be taught Latin. We have, in other words, a coherent and continuous expectation in the teaching of popes S John XXIII, S Paul VI, S John Paul II, and Benedict XVI that all seminarians should become proficient in Latin, the language of the Church. [So let nobody argue that the provisions of Canon 249 have fallen into desuetude because the legislator has failed within living memory to continue to insist upon them.] And the attitude of the popes to the promotion of Latin studies in even broader contexts than that of the formation of the clergy is demonstrated in the establishment by S Paul VI of a Latin Academy; a foundation re-established and strengthened by Benedict XVI.
This papal teaching by no means relates solely to the language of worship; it desires Latin to remain a living vernacular for the clergy and not least for their formation; and it is explicitly based upon the belief that, by being latinate, a clerisy will have access to a continuity of culture. My post would have to be very long indeed if it quoted fully all the words of all four popes to this effect. Coming as I do from the Anglican Patrimony, I will instead share the witness of C S Lewis's Devil Screwtape, who confessed, "Since we cannot deceive the whole human race all the time, it is most important thus to cut every generation off from all others; for where learning makes a free commerce between the ages there is always the danger that the characteristic errors of one may be corrected by the characteristic truths of another". And in his Pilgrim's Regress, Lewis suggests that the growing disuse of Classical languages is a Diabolical trick to isolate the educated classes from the wisdom of the Past. Both in secular culture and within the Church, there is a risk that the educated class will be cut off and imprisoned in the narrow confines of a particular culture - victims of its particular Zeitgeist. A literate clerisy is one that reads what other ages wrote, which means that it will at least be able to read Latin; and an obvious sign of such a clerisy, in practical terms, will be that it can with ease say its Divine Office in Latin.
VATICAN II and Latin.
It is in this context that we must see the requirement of Vatican II (Sacrosanctum Concilium 101): "In accordance with the centuries-old tradition (saecularis traditio) of the Latin rite, the Latin language is to be retained by clerics in reciting the Divine Office". And it is highly significant that it goes on to make any use of the vernacular an (apparently very rare) exception which bishops can grant "only on an individual basis". One might plausibly surmise that this exception may have been envisaged as useful in areas where resources for clerical formation were limited, like the remoter parts of the 1960s Third World. I wonder how the Council Fathers - or a significant proportion of them - might have reacted to the information that in less than a decade the bishops of Western, Old, Europe (whose culture both religious and secular had been based upon Latin for nearly two millennia, the continent of the great universities in which the civilisation of the Greek and Roman worlds had been transmitted) would regard both this conciliar mandate, reinforced by the directions of the Conciliar Decree Optatam totius on seminary training, as an irrelevant dead letter. As early as 1966, S Paul VI was deploring (Sacrificium laudis) the habit of requesting dispensations for a vernacular Office.
Readers of this blog are probably familiar* with the other prescriptions of Vatican II for the retention of Latin, particularly in the Liturgy, and I will not labour the point. I emphasise that I am not basing an argument for the retention of a living Latin culture simply and nakedly upon the words of the Council. The auctoritas for that retention is very much more broadly based, as the Council Fathers themselves emphasised by calling it and invoking it as a saecularis traditio. The conciliar mandate is merely a dutiful affirmation, proper to an Ecumenical Council of the Church, of the continuity and abiding prescriptiveness of the Church's Tradition; the guarantee making explicit that in an age of revolutions the old assumptions are still in place. Without these words of the Council, it might have been plausibly argued by ill-disposed persons that a radical cultural and intellectual shift had invalidated previous assumptions. In view of the plain language of the Council, such a thesis can only be advanced as a deliberate repudiation of the explicit words of an Ecumenical Council ... as well as of the centuries preceding it and of the teaching of subsequent popes.
CANON LAW and Latin.
But not long ago I met a bright and recently ordained young priest who had been taught "a little Greek but not a word of Latin". So, despite Canon 249 (in the post-Conciliar Code of Canon Law), the clergy have not all learned, and are not now all being taught, Latin as part of their seminary formation?
Well, of course they all haven't so learnt, and are not all being so taught. Everybody knows that. A priest of my acquaintance once wrote to me "When I was a seminarian in the 1980s, the very fact of having done a course in Latin at University was considered tantamount to a declaration in favour of Archbishop Lefebvre. A priest who gave a retreat (a prominent moral theologian of those days) searched our places in choir and denounced those who possessed Latin Breviaries as certainly having no vocation". One can hardly blame the present generation of English bishops for a problem which looks as though it arose more than half a century ago (in any case, blame is not my purpose). Indeed, I have heard that matters may now be a little less bad. But not, I believe, everywhere, and certainly not for all seminarians. Surely Catholic Bishops have some say about the syllabuses taught in seminaries? Surely they have some responsibility for the formation of their own clergy? Are they happy that seminaries are run in a way which pays only very selective regard to the Magisterium of S John XXIII? And to the Second Vatican Council, which (vide Optatam totius 13) laid emphasis on the role of Latin in seminary education: or is that particular Conciliar document now to be consigned to oblivion? S Paul VI, as the first in his list of academic priorities for seminarians, wrote "The cultural formation of the young priest must certainly include an adequate knowledge of languages and especially of Latin (particularly for those of the Latin Rite)." (Summi Dei verbum.) There has long been a tacit assumption among some that the Magisterium of the 'pre-Conciliar popes' is to be quietly forgotten. Pius IX? Pius XII? Who on earth were they? But now one might be forgiven for wondering whether the Magisterium of the Council itself, and the teaching of the 'post-Conciliar popes', are now also (when it suits) being treated with similar contempt by these grand men. Are those more recent Pontiffs to be elaborately honoured with questionable Beatifications and break-neck-speed Canonisations and facile rhetorical praise, while their actual teaching, emphatically and insistently given, is tossed aside as irrelevant or impractical?
"There just isn't room on the syllabus for any of that". Really? When Seminary syllabuses are composed, shouldn't it be the first aim to ensure that the insistent mandates of Roman Pontiffs are not be ignored? Since entering into Full Communion in 2011, I have met significant numbers of clergy who have deplored the fact that, at seminary, they were robbed of what the Catholic Church regards as the first building block of a priestly formation. They have seemed to have in mind quite a number of useless topics which could profitably have been omitted so as to liberate syllabus time.
Cardinal Basil Hume, back in the 1990s, rather impertinently reminded Anglican enquirers that "Catholicism is table d'hote, not a la carte". Surely that gives an ex-Anglican some right to wonder whether this principle also applies as much to those who run or who episcopally supervise seminaries as it does to Anglican enquirers?
A final quotation from S John XXIII. "The teachers ... in universities or seminaries are required to speak Latin (latine loqui tenentur) and to make use of textbooks written in Latin. Those whose ignorance of Latin makes it difficult for them to obey these instructions shall gradually be replaced by teachers who are suited to this task (in eorum locum doctores ad hoc idonei gradatim sufficiantur). Any difficulties that may be advanced by students or professors must be overcome (vincantur necesse est) either by the patient insistence of the bishops or religious superiors, or by the good will of the teachers."
And a final question: how many of those currently teaching in English seminaries are (in the sense of S John XXIII's precise use of the word) idonei, 'fit for the job'? Indeed, are there any?
____________________________________________________________________________
*You sometimes find claims made to the effect that "Vatican II mandated more extensive use of vernacular languages in the liturgy". Sacrosanctum concilium para 54 says 'Linguae vernaculae in Missis cum populo celebratis congruus locus tribui possit'. Doesn't sound to me much like a 'mandate'. It doesn't even say 'potest'! Somebody must have decided to put the verb into the subjunctive! It goes on to say 'praesertim' and mentions the readings. Then, much more cautiously, it raises the possibility of the vernacular 'even' (etiam) 'in partibus quae ad populum spectant' linking this with a specific requirement that the laity should also be able to sing and say those selfsame parts in Latin. Hardly a 'mandate' for the vernacular! Rather, a nervously tentative partial permission.
I have noticed, over the years, three or four occasions when a bishop, perhaps when asked to provide a celebrant for the Extraordinary Form, has cheerfully informed the world that not many clergy know Latin nowadays, so that it's hard for him to find someone who can celebrate the Extraordinary Form.
I am amazed by the nonchalant and shame-free way that bishops make this revelation without any apparent awareness that Canon Law (249) requires the clergy to be proficient in Latin. If a diocesan bishop were rebuking a cheeky young curate for ignoring Canon Law, what would be his reaction if the junior cleric cheerfully (and nonchalantly) said "Come off it, Bish dear, nobody takes any notice of all that old Canonical C**p any more nowadays! Crawl out from under your poncy mitre and try to get real!" But apparently there are bishops who feel exactly this same disdainful contempt with regard to Canon Law. Is chirpy insouciance combined with dereliction of duty any less reprehensible when expressed in po-faced management-talk by self-important bishops than it would be among lowly and racy presbyters?
I am moved to repeat the actual teaching of the Conciliar and post-Conciliar popes on this highly important matter.
S JOHN XXIII and Latin.
Roman Pontiffs do not commonly sign their Magisterial documents on the High Altar of S Peter's in the presence of the body of Cardinals. But S John XXIII thus promulgated his Apostolic Constitution Veterum sapientia, 1962, in which he insisted that the Latin language must remain central to the culture of Western Christianity. What on earth could the good old gentleman have done in order to make his point more emphatically?
That Letter was praised by S Paul VI (Studia Latinitatis, 1964, " ... principem obtinere locum dicenda sane est"), who was anxious that seminarians "magna cum cura et diligentia ad antiquas et humanas litteras informentur"; and S John Paul II (Sapientia Christiana) emphasised the requirement for knowlege of Latin "for the faculties of the Sacred Sciences, so that students can understand and use the sources and documents of the Church". Benedict XVI (Latina lingua, 2012), praised Veterum sapientia as having been issued iure meritoque: it is to be taken seriously both because of its legal force and because of the intrinsic merit of its arguments; and in his Encyclical Sacramentum Caritatis wrote specifically about the need for seminarians to be taught Latin. We have, in other words, a coherent and continuous expectation in the teaching of popes S John XXIII, S Paul VI, S John Paul II, and Benedict XVI that all seminarians should become proficient in Latin, the language of the Church. [So let nobody argue that the provisions of Canon 249 have fallen into desuetude because the legislator has failed within living memory to continue to insist upon them.] And the attitude of the popes to the promotion of Latin studies in even broader contexts than that of the formation of the clergy is demonstrated in the establishment by S Paul VI of a Latin Academy; a foundation re-established and strengthened by Benedict XVI.
This papal teaching by no means relates solely to the language of worship; it desires Latin to remain a living vernacular for the clergy and not least for their formation; and it is explicitly based upon the belief that, by being latinate, a clerisy will have access to a continuity of culture. My post would have to be very long indeed if it quoted fully all the words of all four popes to this effect. Coming as I do from the Anglican Patrimony, I will instead share the witness of C S Lewis's Devil Screwtape, who confessed, "Since we cannot deceive the whole human race all the time, it is most important thus to cut every generation off from all others; for where learning makes a free commerce between the ages there is always the danger that the characteristic errors of one may be corrected by the characteristic truths of another". And in his Pilgrim's Regress, Lewis suggests that the growing disuse of Classical languages is a Diabolical trick to isolate the educated classes from the wisdom of the Past. Both in secular culture and within the Church, there is a risk that the educated class will be cut off and imprisoned in the narrow confines of a particular culture - victims of its particular Zeitgeist. A literate clerisy is one that reads what other ages wrote, which means that it will at least be able to read Latin; and an obvious sign of such a clerisy, in practical terms, will be that it can with ease say its Divine Office in Latin.
VATICAN II and Latin.
It is in this context that we must see the requirement of Vatican II (Sacrosanctum Concilium 101): "In accordance with the centuries-old tradition (saecularis traditio) of the Latin rite, the Latin language is to be retained by clerics in reciting the Divine Office". And it is highly significant that it goes on to make any use of the vernacular an (apparently very rare) exception which bishops can grant "only on an individual basis". One might plausibly surmise that this exception may have been envisaged as useful in areas where resources for clerical formation were limited, like the remoter parts of the 1960s Third World. I wonder how the Council Fathers - or a significant proportion of them - might have reacted to the information that in less than a decade the bishops of Western, Old, Europe (whose culture both religious and secular had been based upon Latin for nearly two millennia, the continent of the great universities in which the civilisation of the Greek and Roman worlds had been transmitted) would regard both this conciliar mandate, reinforced by the directions of the Conciliar Decree Optatam totius on seminary training, as an irrelevant dead letter. As early as 1966, S Paul VI was deploring (Sacrificium laudis) the habit of requesting dispensations for a vernacular Office.
Readers of this blog are probably familiar* with the other prescriptions of Vatican II for the retention of Latin, particularly in the Liturgy, and I will not labour the point. I emphasise that I am not basing an argument for the retention of a living Latin culture simply and nakedly upon the words of the Council. The auctoritas for that retention is very much more broadly based, as the Council Fathers themselves emphasised by calling it and invoking it as a saecularis traditio. The conciliar mandate is merely a dutiful affirmation, proper to an Ecumenical Council of the Church, of the continuity and abiding prescriptiveness of the Church's Tradition; the guarantee making explicit that in an age of revolutions the old assumptions are still in place. Without these words of the Council, it might have been plausibly argued by ill-disposed persons that a radical cultural and intellectual shift had invalidated previous assumptions. In view of the plain language of the Council, such a thesis can only be advanced as a deliberate repudiation of the explicit words of an Ecumenical Council ... as well as of the centuries preceding it and of the teaching of subsequent popes.
CANON LAW and Latin.
But not long ago I met a bright and recently ordained young priest who had been taught "a little Greek but not a word of Latin". So, despite Canon 249 (in the post-Conciliar Code of Canon Law), the clergy have not all learned, and are not now all being taught, Latin as part of their seminary formation?
Well, of course they all haven't so learnt, and are not all being so taught. Everybody knows that. A priest of my acquaintance once wrote to me "When I was a seminarian in the 1980s, the very fact of having done a course in Latin at University was considered tantamount to a declaration in favour of Archbishop Lefebvre. A priest who gave a retreat (a prominent moral theologian of those days) searched our places in choir and denounced those who possessed Latin Breviaries as certainly having no vocation". One can hardly blame the present generation of English bishops for a problem which looks as though it arose more than half a century ago (in any case, blame is not my purpose). Indeed, I have heard that matters may now be a little less bad. But not, I believe, everywhere, and certainly not for all seminarians. Surely Catholic Bishops have some say about the syllabuses taught in seminaries? Surely they have some responsibility for the formation of their own clergy? Are they happy that seminaries are run in a way which pays only very selective regard to the Magisterium of S John XXIII? And to the Second Vatican Council, which (vide Optatam totius 13) laid emphasis on the role of Latin in seminary education: or is that particular Conciliar document now to be consigned to oblivion? S Paul VI, as the first in his list of academic priorities for seminarians, wrote "The cultural formation of the young priest must certainly include an adequate knowledge of languages and especially of Latin (particularly for those of the Latin Rite)." (Summi Dei verbum.) There has long been a tacit assumption among some that the Magisterium of the 'pre-Conciliar popes' is to be quietly forgotten. Pius IX? Pius XII? Who on earth were they? But now one might be forgiven for wondering whether the Magisterium of the Council itself, and the teaching of the 'post-Conciliar popes', are now also (when it suits) being treated with similar contempt by these grand men. Are those more recent Pontiffs to be elaborately honoured with questionable Beatifications and break-neck-speed Canonisations and facile rhetorical praise, while their actual teaching, emphatically and insistently given, is tossed aside as irrelevant or impractical?
"There just isn't room on the syllabus for any of that". Really? When Seminary syllabuses are composed, shouldn't it be the first aim to ensure that the insistent mandates of Roman Pontiffs are not be ignored? Since entering into Full Communion in 2011, I have met significant numbers of clergy who have deplored the fact that, at seminary, they were robbed of what the Catholic Church regards as the first building block of a priestly formation. They have seemed to have in mind quite a number of useless topics which could profitably have been omitted so as to liberate syllabus time.
Cardinal Basil Hume, back in the 1990s, rather impertinently reminded Anglican enquirers that "Catholicism is table d'hote, not a la carte". Surely that gives an ex-Anglican some right to wonder whether this principle also applies as much to those who run or who episcopally supervise seminaries as it does to Anglican enquirers?
A final quotation from S John XXIII. "The teachers ... in universities or seminaries are required to speak Latin (latine loqui tenentur) and to make use of textbooks written in Latin. Those whose ignorance of Latin makes it difficult for them to obey these instructions shall gradually be replaced by teachers who are suited to this task (in eorum locum doctores ad hoc idonei gradatim sufficiantur). Any difficulties that may be advanced by students or professors must be overcome (vincantur necesse est) either by the patient insistence of the bishops or religious superiors, or by the good will of the teachers."
And a final question: how many of those currently teaching in English seminaries are (in the sense of S John XXIII's precise use of the word) idonei, 'fit for the job'? Indeed, are there any?
____________________________________________________________________________
*You sometimes find claims made to the effect that "Vatican II mandated more extensive use of vernacular languages in the liturgy". Sacrosanctum concilium para 54 says 'Linguae vernaculae in Missis cum populo celebratis congruus locus tribui possit'. Doesn't sound to me much like a 'mandate'. It doesn't even say 'potest'! Somebody must have decided to put the verb into the subjunctive! It goes on to say 'praesertim' and mentions the readings. Then, much more cautiously, it raises the possibility of the vernacular 'even' (etiam) 'in partibus quae ad populum spectant' linking this with a specific requirement that the laity should also be able to sing and say those selfsame parts in Latin. Hardly a 'mandate' for the vernacular! Rather, a nervously tentative partial permission.
23 May 2020
Urbi et Orbi (2): A Greta-Compliant Pontificate
Placing people within social structures can be so very difficult. Catullus belonged to the 'establishment' classes; somebody had got him onto the cohors of a proconsular governor. But, at least in his poetic persona, he scarcely has a quadrans to bless himself with. Yet in the world that he describes, it is apparently plausible that he should have a lectica in which he could be carried through the streets of Rome, carried loftily above the polloi ... and also apparently plausible that even a pushy little demi-mondaine might be able at least to borrow somebody else's litter (and eight Men) in which to be carried to one of the fashionable Hellenised-Egyptian cult centres (if that was really where she planned to go). Litters, apparently, were not confined to consulares and ... ...
Di immortales! It has suddenly occurred to me! I bet you hadn't thought of this! S Peter, when he was in Rome and starting to become a little bit frail, must pretty certainly have had pressed upon him for his use, by an enthusiastic member of the congregation (probably a Devout Lady), a litter, a lectica. I'd call that a moral total certainty ...
When I am elected Pope, I shall restore this beautiful Apostolic and Evangelical custom. I shall be carried around upon a litter, which I shall call the Sedia Petrina. It will be so much more Ecological and Green than those beastly fuel-guzzling Popemobiles used by my resource-prodigal predecessor Francis. Entirely Fossil-Fuel-Free and Greta-Compliant, it will be lifted and carried by eight stocky females from the Amazon Basin who will be called the donne della periferia or, for short, the diaconisse. To support and encourage the humble and oppressed ostrich farmers of Sub-Saharan Africa and Rutlandshire, I shall be fanned, as I progress, with ostrich feather flabella. As for actuosa participatio, the people will fall prostrate and cross themselves while I, scattering blessings, pass through their midst; and, as an Ecumenical Gesture towards Orthodoxy, they will shout Eis polla ete Despota! In deference to Health-and-Safety (mine), babies will not be thrust up for me to kiss but handed straight over to my Extraordinary Apostolic Basiator Archbishop 'Tongue' Fernandez. Given our current Covidic biodiversity, his Ministry may be sweet but short.
Security will be in the hands of gigantic Australians who, like sniffer dogs, will have been trained to recognise and, without any hesitation or second thought, to exterminate Jihadists, Sede-vacantists, and Liturgists. They will be known popularly as the Matildas. The very sound of their simple but uplifting vernacular war-song will be enough to strike terror into the hearts of the German Episcopal Conference and Cardinal Baldissieri. When I return to the Apostolic Palace (the Domus Sanctae Marthae will by that time have been handed over for holiday use to the Indigenous Married Priests, all of them Viri Probatissimi, of the Ordinariates) I shall then ...
Oh dear ... am I getting carried away?
Di immortales! It has suddenly occurred to me! I bet you hadn't thought of this! S Peter, when he was in Rome and starting to become a little bit frail, must pretty certainly have had pressed upon him for his use, by an enthusiastic member of the congregation (probably a Devout Lady), a litter, a lectica. I'd call that a moral total certainty ...
When I am elected Pope, I shall restore this beautiful Apostolic and Evangelical custom. I shall be carried around upon a litter, which I shall call the Sedia Petrina. It will be so much more Ecological and Green than those beastly fuel-guzzling Popemobiles used by my resource-prodigal predecessor Francis. Entirely Fossil-Fuel-Free and Greta-Compliant, it will be lifted and carried by eight stocky females from the Amazon Basin who will be called the donne della periferia or, for short, the diaconisse. To support and encourage the humble and oppressed ostrich farmers of Sub-Saharan Africa and Rutlandshire, I shall be fanned, as I progress, with ostrich feather flabella. As for actuosa participatio, the people will fall prostrate and cross themselves while I, scattering blessings, pass through their midst; and, as an Ecumenical Gesture towards Orthodoxy, they will shout Eis polla ete Despota! In deference to Health-and-Safety (mine), babies will not be thrust up for me to kiss but handed straight over to my Extraordinary Apostolic Basiator Archbishop 'Tongue' Fernandez. Given our current Covidic biodiversity, his Ministry may be sweet but short.
Security will be in the hands of gigantic Australians who, like sniffer dogs, will have been trained to recognise and, without any hesitation or second thought, to exterminate Jihadists, Sede-vacantists, and Liturgists. They will be known popularly as the Matildas. The very sound of their simple but uplifting vernacular war-song will be enough to strike terror into the hearts of the German Episcopal Conference and Cardinal Baldissieri. When I return to the Apostolic Palace (the Domus Sanctae Marthae will by that time have been handed over for holiday use to the Indigenous Married Priests, all of them Viri Probatissimi, of the Ordinariates) I shall then ...
Oh dear ... am I getting carried away?
Two Other blogs
(1) NLM describes a fine Flanders rood-screen in the V&A. My advice to prospective Catholic art-lovers visiting London would be to visit the building next door to the V&A, the Brompton Oratory. Its shell is a [very good] Victorian pastiche of Roman baroque, but nearly all the fittings are genuine baroque artefacts. Perhaps the loveliest thing is the fabulous pietra dura Lady Altar from Brescia, at which I was kindly permitted to offer my first Mass in Full Communion with the See of S Peter (incorporates a statue of S Pius V).
It is far better to enjoy such wonders in a proper, used, cultic, Catholic context than to see them reduced to the horrible status of Exhibits at the mercy of appallingly ignorant secular "Art Historians". (I am also unhappy about Exhibitions of Icons.)
(2) Lifesite has the full text of a good homily from Bishop Schneider, in which he holds up for admiration the devoted ministry, during a plague, of the Victorian Anglo-Catholic 'slum clergy' of London. This, rather than the ARCIC nonsense, is genuine Ecumenism! Perhaps his Excellency could invite himself to to the Ordinariate Church of the Assumption and S Gregory in Warwick Street, where he would find the very same Anglican tradition but now happily reconciled in Full Communion.
It is far better to enjoy such wonders in a proper, used, cultic, Catholic context than to see them reduced to the horrible status of Exhibits at the mercy of appallingly ignorant secular "Art Historians". (I am also unhappy about Exhibitions of Icons.)
(2) Lifesite has the full text of a good homily from Bishop Schneider, in which he holds up for admiration the devoted ministry, during a plague, of the Victorian Anglo-Catholic 'slum clergy' of London. This, rather than the ARCIC nonsense, is genuine Ecumenism! Perhaps his Excellency could invite himself to to the Ordinariate Church of the Assumption and S Gregory in Warwick Street, where he would find the very same Anglican tradition but now happily reconciled in Full Communion.
22 May 2020
Urbi et Orbi (1): The Forum to the Serapeum ... Varus me meus ...
"This is how it happened. Me in the Forum. Totally at a loose end. My chum Varus carted me off to see his Significant Other; a dear little bimbo - it stuck out a mile - amusing, sexy, fashionable. She steered the conversation round to Bithynia. 'What's it like there? I bet you made lots of like money while you were on the Governor's like staff.' I told her the truth: that the Governor was an absolute ** ** ** ** ** ** **; so that not one of us had made brass quadrans. 'But' says she, 'you must have got hold of some like slaves to carry your litter. Everybody knows that Bithynia's the place they like come from'.
"I wanted to look good ... it's the sort of effect a girl has on a chap ... so I said: 'Well, obviously it wasn't so terrible that I couldn't at least get hold of eight upright blokes.' (Fact is, neither there nor here could I lay my hands on a single bloke to put a single stick of broken bedstead anywhere near his shoulder.)
"Depraved is too good a word for that sort of girl. Her true character showed up in what she said next. 'Darling Catullus, please ... dearest Catullus', says she, 'just for a teensy weensy moment, please lend them to me ... I want to go like down to the Temple of Serapis just like soooo badly ...'"
I will leave you to find out for yourselves, if you don't already know, how Catullus struggled to wriggle out of that social dilemma. You are, I expect, put in mind of Nanny's apophthegm about What a tangled web we weave ...
I should make clear, by the way, that the above rendering is my humble attempt to translate Catullus following ad litteram the principles of the infamous Vatican document Comme le prevoit which enjoined 'dynamic equivalence' upon 1960s translators of liturgical books. It was one of the Enemy's most skilfully organised strategies, and it worked abysmally well. Its methodology managed to ensure that any disiecta membra, any distant echoes, of Tradition that survived into the Novus Ordo would be frog-marched out of it at the Vernacular stage, through the process of 'translating' them into non-existence ... a bit like Marshal Stalin's approach to the art of photography.
But I think it's absolutely made for the sort of literature I've used it on above.
Back to Catullus, and 'his' litter, Deo volente, tomorrow. Believe me, this is important stuff with significant doctrinal implications. Give it another chance!
"I wanted to look good ... it's the sort of effect a girl has on a chap ... so I said: 'Well, obviously it wasn't so terrible that I couldn't at least get hold of eight upright blokes.' (Fact is, neither there nor here could I lay my hands on a single bloke to put a single stick of broken bedstead anywhere near his shoulder.)
"Depraved is too good a word for that sort of girl. Her true character showed up in what she said next. 'Darling Catullus, please ... dearest Catullus', says she, 'just for a teensy weensy moment, please lend them to me ... I want to go like down to the Temple of Serapis just like soooo badly ...'"
I will leave you to find out for yourselves, if you don't already know, how Catullus struggled to wriggle out of that social dilemma. You are, I expect, put in mind of Nanny's apophthegm about What a tangled web we weave ...
I should make clear, by the way, that the above rendering is my humble attempt to translate Catullus following ad litteram the principles of the infamous Vatican document Comme le prevoit which enjoined 'dynamic equivalence' upon 1960s translators of liturgical books. It was one of the Enemy's most skilfully organised strategies, and it worked abysmally well. Its methodology managed to ensure that any disiecta membra, any distant echoes, of Tradition that survived into the Novus Ordo would be frog-marched out of it at the Vernacular stage, through the process of 'translating' them into non-existence ... a bit like Marshal Stalin's approach to the art of photography.
But I think it's absolutely made for the sort of literature I've used it on above.
Back to Catullus, and 'his' litter, Deo volente, tomorrow. Believe me, this is important stuff with significant doctrinal implications. Give it another chance!
20 May 2020
A bit messy?
Those familiar with Vespers of the Dead (Old Rite) and the old propers for the Departed, and with one of the old Masses for a Confessor Bishop, may have shared puzzlements of my own with regard to what some people call The Afterlife. Here are two.
(1) I refer firstly to all those old texts which ask that the departed be delivered from Hell. Such texts do not, I think survive into the postconciliar texts, presumably because of the assumption that, immediately after death, the eternal destiny of the defunctus is definitively and tidily settled. Either he is in Hell or he will eventually be in Heaven. Do the ancient texts suggest rather that in the journey his soul is undergoing it might yet fall eternally? Or even that in the mysterious working of divine mercy Hell might not, for everybody there, be the last word? Or that the same Place might prove to have been Hell to those who never emerge from it but Purgatory to those who get out!?! This is the view explicitly taken by C S Lewis in The Great Divorce. Is it capable of being squeeezed under a Catholic umbrella? I simply love his picture of the Liberal, Apostate bishop, who persists in refusing Joy and Mercy.
(2) Secondly: the Common Sacerdotes tui in the Old Missal. The second set of texts, in the Secreta, asks God that our oblations might 'be profitable unto [the holy bishop] for the reward of blessedness'. How does this fit in with the idea that there is a tidy distinction between those who need our prayers and those who are fully in blessedness and pray for us? Could it be that even the Saints have yet progress to make in God's grace?
Perhaps the relationship between God and Time ... Perhaps ... ... Perhaps ...
Are such Perhapses contrary to the Magisterium? Of course, I have no desire to be anything but an obedient servant of what has been defined. But there is, surely, something amusing about the fact that such speculations can be suggested by the Old Rite but not the New; as if the great prayer-bag of Tradition is an older, freer, more thought-provoking, less narrow and prescriptive world than Bugnini-style scholasticism and its passion for being Safe and Tidy.
I'm glad one can still buy unpasteurised cheese, even though, given my age, I steer clear of it.
(1) I refer firstly to all those old texts which ask that the departed be delivered from Hell. Such texts do not, I think survive into the postconciliar texts, presumably because of the assumption that, immediately after death, the eternal destiny of the defunctus is definitively and tidily settled. Either he is in Hell or he will eventually be in Heaven. Do the ancient texts suggest rather that in the journey his soul is undergoing it might yet fall eternally? Or even that in the mysterious working of divine mercy Hell might not, for everybody there, be the last word? Or that the same Place might prove to have been Hell to those who never emerge from it but Purgatory to those who get out!?! This is the view explicitly taken by C S Lewis in The Great Divorce. Is it capable of being squeeezed under a Catholic umbrella? I simply love his picture of the Liberal, Apostate bishop, who persists in refusing Joy and Mercy.
(2) Secondly: the Common Sacerdotes tui in the Old Missal. The second set of texts, in the Secreta, asks God that our oblations might 'be profitable unto [the holy bishop] for the reward of blessedness'. How does this fit in with the idea that there is a tidy distinction between those who need our prayers and those who are fully in blessedness and pray for us? Could it be that even the Saints have yet progress to make in God's grace?
Perhaps the relationship between God and Time ... Perhaps ... ... Perhaps ...
Are such Perhapses contrary to the Magisterium? Of course, I have no desire to be anything but an obedient servant of what has been defined. But there is, surely, something amusing about the fact that such speculations can be suggested by the Old Rite but not the New; as if the great prayer-bag of Tradition is an older, freer, more thought-provoking, less narrow and prescriptive world than Bugnini-style scholasticism and its passion for being Safe and Tidy.
I'm glad one can still buy unpasteurised cheese, even though, given my age, I steer clear of it.
19 May 2020
Perpetually drunk.
"Do you find it easy to get drunk on words?"
"So easy that, to tell you the truth, I am seldom perfectly sober.".
Since Dorothy Sayers records these words of Peter Wimsey, it may be that we could suspect her of thereby revealing one of her own her own weaknesses. Certainly, the first half of the twentieth century ... and possibly most of all, the 1930s ... were the years of the consummate stylists; the men and women for whom deft juxtapositions, sparkling paradoxes, layers of irony, afforded infinite satisfaction. They could even, on occasion, be martyrs to it ... like poor Plum Wodehouse, whose ironic description of the German Army prevented him getting his knighthood until long after the war. We very much lesser epigonoi suffer from the hangover; American friends often gently remind me that most of their fellow-countrymen 'don't do irony', so that my own literary weaknesses and ineptitudes can lead to serious misunderstandings.
It surprises me how many of the Mighty were writers of detective fiction. G K Chesterton; Ronald Knox; Dorothy Sayers; Ernest Bramah ...
Ernest who? Well, Sayers thought that Bramah deserved to be bracketed with Donne and Burton. Wimsey was, apparently, never far from the stories of Kai Lung. And Bramah wrote detective fiction in an age when it was an intellectually respectable recreation (as late as 1957, Dacre Balsden spoke of dons as beginning the new academic year by "changing their detective fiction at the Library in Elliston's").
'Max Carrados' was Bramah's blind detective; but those who still remember the writer most probably remember him best for Kai Lung ... the Chinese Teller of Stories whose mannered diction so often contains menace underneath its flowery courtesies and Mandarin conventions. Let me give you an example. A young woman's lover is about to go on a dangerous journey; she gives him what seems to be a suicide potion, with these words: "This person [i.e.'I'] places her lover's welfare incomparably before her own happiness, and should he ever find himself in a situation which is unendurably oppressive, and from which death is the only escape -- such as inevitable tortures, the infliction of violent madness, or the subjection by magic to the will of some designing woman -- she begs him to accept this means of freeing himself without regarding her anguish ...".
You can't speed-read Bramah; only if you read him with attention, I suspect, will you appreciate that, once the rhetoric and the courtesies are stripped away, what is left is the lady's ruthlessly determined intention that her admirer should die rather than fall into the hands of another woman.
I rather think that Bramah's elaborate Mandarin courtesies were in C S Lewis's mind when he imagined the cruel but endlessly well-mannered Calormenes. As we made our bed-time-story way en famille through The Horse and his Boy, which like all the Narnian books is full laughs for adult readers as well as for children, the line that amused me most ... which I always looked forward to declaiming to those five pairs of little ears ... occurred when the Tisroc has contrived to "send my first born son on an errand so likely to be his death", and concludes business with a para prosdokian, worthy of Aristophanes, "And now, O excellent Vizier, the excess of my paternal anxiety inclines me to sleep."
Many of these writers were Catholic or Anglican; Bramah, I think, was not. But Belloc, no mean stylist, no half-hearted Catholic, thought it worth his while to write an enthusiastic preface to one of the Kai Lung volumes.
I was introduced to them by my 'Gardone' friend Alex Sepkus, a man of rare discernment.
"So easy that, to tell you the truth, I am seldom perfectly sober.".
Since Dorothy Sayers records these words of Peter Wimsey, it may be that we could suspect her of thereby revealing one of her own her own weaknesses. Certainly, the first half of the twentieth century ... and possibly most of all, the 1930s ... were the years of the consummate stylists; the men and women for whom deft juxtapositions, sparkling paradoxes, layers of irony, afforded infinite satisfaction. They could even, on occasion, be martyrs to it ... like poor Plum Wodehouse, whose ironic description of the German Army prevented him getting his knighthood until long after the war. We very much lesser epigonoi suffer from the hangover; American friends often gently remind me that most of their fellow-countrymen 'don't do irony', so that my own literary weaknesses and ineptitudes can lead to serious misunderstandings.
It surprises me how many of the Mighty were writers of detective fiction. G K Chesterton; Ronald Knox; Dorothy Sayers; Ernest Bramah ...
Ernest who? Well, Sayers thought that Bramah deserved to be bracketed with Donne and Burton. Wimsey was, apparently, never far from the stories of Kai Lung. And Bramah wrote detective fiction in an age when it was an intellectually respectable recreation (as late as 1957, Dacre Balsden spoke of dons as beginning the new academic year by "changing their detective fiction at the Library in Elliston's").
'Max Carrados' was Bramah's blind detective; but those who still remember the writer most probably remember him best for Kai Lung ... the Chinese Teller of Stories whose mannered diction so often contains menace underneath its flowery courtesies and Mandarin conventions. Let me give you an example. A young woman's lover is about to go on a dangerous journey; she gives him what seems to be a suicide potion, with these words: "This person [i.e.'I'] places her lover's welfare incomparably before her own happiness, and should he ever find himself in a situation which is unendurably oppressive, and from which death is the only escape -- such as inevitable tortures, the infliction of violent madness, or the subjection by magic to the will of some designing woman -- she begs him to accept this means of freeing himself without regarding her anguish ...".
You can't speed-read Bramah; only if you read him with attention, I suspect, will you appreciate that, once the rhetoric and the courtesies are stripped away, what is left is the lady's ruthlessly determined intention that her admirer should die rather than fall into the hands of another woman.
I rather think that Bramah's elaborate Mandarin courtesies were in C S Lewis's mind when he imagined the cruel but endlessly well-mannered Calormenes. As we made our bed-time-story way en famille through The Horse and his Boy, which like all the Narnian books is full laughs for adult readers as well as for children, the line that amused me most ... which I always looked forward to declaiming to those five pairs of little ears ... occurred when the Tisroc has contrived to "send my first born son on an errand so likely to be his death", and concludes business with a para prosdokian, worthy of Aristophanes, "And now, O excellent Vizier, the excess of my paternal anxiety inclines me to sleep."
Many of these writers were Catholic or Anglican; Bramah, I think, was not. But Belloc, no mean stylist, no half-hearted Catholic, thought it worth his while to write an enthusiastic preface to one of the Kai Lung volumes.
I was introduced to them by my 'Gardone' friend Alex Sepkus, a man of rare discernment.
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