The Circumcision?

The Sarum Missal, like our earlier Leofric Missal, labeled this day as In die Circumcisionis Domini, rather than calling it the actual Feast of ....  The Roman dialect of the Roman Rite historically referred to it as simply the Octave Day of Christmas. 

Sarum/Leofric barely mentioned the Circumcision (only in the Gospel and [Leofric] obiter in a Preface). The theme of the Mass was simply what they called an iterata Solemnitas of Christmas Day. Sarum, despite its enthusiasm for Sequences, fails to mention the Circumcision in its quite lengthy Sequence. The theology that is hinted at is the carnale Commercium whereby His assumption of Flesh and our incorporation into His Divinity are a wondrous exchange (remember the Antiphon in the Divine Office: "O wonderful exhange! The Creator of the human race, taking an ensoulled body, deigned to be born of a Virgin; and, proceeding as a Man without Seed, granted unto us his Godhead." And recall the Christmas Collect which the priest at Mass whispers daily as he mingles wine and water ... almost certainly a felicitous composition by S Leo himself.)

The Mass in the Gregorian Sacramentary and the Missal of S Pius V, celebrated by the Pontiff in Sancta Maria ad Martyres (Agrippa's old foundation of the Pantheon) or, after Gregory IV, in her Basilica trans Tiberim, concentrates on Mary as Theotokos.  It is a fitting liturgical custom to take a subsidiary element in a Major festival and to give it a fuller expression nearby; I believe that Byzantium concentrates on our Lady on December 26.

To use January 1 to concentrate on the Lord's Circumcision is an example of the 'historicisation' of the Calendar and, I suspect, a medieval instinct. This does not make it reprehensible. But it does make it rather awkward to sweep a lot of much older liturgical material right away from January 1, replacing it with expressions of the fashions of a later age.

Which is exactly what Cranmer did. As Dom Gregory Dix loved to explain, the Reformers, in their endearing desire to be 'biblical', often revealed themselves as Very Medieval Men! So, in 1549, into the Anglican Divine Office came Genesis 17 and Deuteronomy 10; Romans 2 and Colossians 2. The Epistle became Romans 4. And this was to be the Collect:

Almyghtie God, whiche madeste thy blessed sonne to be circumcised and obedyente to the law for man; graunt us the true circumcision of thy spirite, that our hertes, and al our membres, being mortifyed from al worldy and carnal lustes, may in al thinges obey thy blessed wil; through the same ...

What is the advantage of celebrating the Circumcision? It reminds us that God became a male Man, fully endowed even with those bodily members which Victorian males did not always discuss in front of the Ladies, nor the Ladies in front of the Gentlemen. It reminds us that He was and is, like His Mother and His Apostles, a Jew; it brings before us great swathes of Biblical teaching about Circumcision and Covenant. It commemorates the Lord's first blood-shedding for our Salvation.

Could it go into the Missal as a Votive? I think not, because the convention is that we do not have votives of events in the lives of our Lord and His Mother.

I suggest that it could enter the Liturgy, possibly in a later edition of the Ordinariate Rite, on January 2 as an optional alternative to the celebration that day of our Redeemer's most precious Name. 

D*m Whiggery.

Well, I spent time today watching the goings-on in the House of Commons. Because we are a 'democracy', our current regime actually allowed them nearly six hours to discuss a piece of legislation which is as significant in its innumerable lacunae as it is in its actual text. 

Not many speakers gave much historical context. Two who did ... 'Knights of the Shires' as we call them ... Sir William Cash and Sir Bernard Jenkins ... commended this legislation (I can't recall their precise words) for being in the spirit of the Dutch Invasion of 1688. Months ago, silly little Rees Mogg made a similar admission. 

Nice to know that even people seen as being on the 'traditional' side of politics are in favour of welcoming a foreign invader with enthusiastic courtesy. Hardly surprising that so many membrs of our 'Establishment' in 1939 were on the lists of potential collaborators. When Field Marshal von Rundstedt disembarked at Lyme Regis, he would have been surrounded at dinner that evening by the Great and the Good, all hurriedly Making their Name with the new order. Best of all, we can rejoice that the Conservative benches still now include Members who regard Treason as really a rather jolly sort of lark. At least, as long as it's in a slightly distanced area of History.

I can think of two good reasons for us being 'out of Europe':

(1) The attempt of Europe, some years ago, to write a Constitution with a Preface including a historical survey of Common European Values which leap-frogged all the way from ancient Greece and Rome to the 'Enlightenment'. As in 1984, real History was to disappear down the little tube which consigned it to oblivion ... the Real History in this case being a millennium-and-more of Christianity.

(2) Two Eastern European countries, members of the EU, keep getting ganged-up on by the rest because they try to retain a few shreds of Christendom in their national cultures. Had we remained in the EU, our de facto regime would probably have joined the bullies and kept voting against them. 

So perhaps it is best for us to be off their backs. 

Good luck to both of them.

God bless Christendom.

Attendite ad Abraham patrem vestrum ... but only for hellenists REVISED

Mike Sheil has triumphed gloriously!! See the thread. The inscription is a nice example of the collapse of Koine Greek in terms of spellings and verb forms. I expect there are people who could date it quite precisely from the philology. (I've always been thankful that Margaret Hubbard suggested I buy the Eighth Edition of Liddell and Scott because of the Byzantine material it retained.)

KARPOPHORIA, indeed!

 

Attendite ad Abraham patrem vestrum, et ad Saram, quae peperit vos: quia unum vocavi eum. Moved by this morning's first Lectio from Isaias, I offer a Christmastide puzzle for hellenists. The raw materrial ... a photograph ... is in the Mailonline for yesterday, Tuesday.

Recently excavated is a Byzantine church in Gethsemane. Within it is a Greek floor inscription which, we are told, has been translated 

For the memory and repose of the lovers of Christ + God who have received the sacrifice of Abraham accept the offerings of your servants and give them remission of sins + Amen

Sadly, I am not an epigrapher. The only sequence I have been able to discern securely (?!) in the Mailonline photograph, is:

 ... ho theos ho prosdexamenos ten thus{i}an tou Abraam ...

I presume we have here an allusion to the Sacrifice of Isaac, type of the Sacrifice of Christ, offered on the Hill identified with the Hill of Calvary, up which, presumably, pilgrims were about to climb from Gethsemane.

Texts and comments???.

 

 

KILLER DOCTORS ... How many does one need?

On Christmas Eve, the Beeb, with her reliable sense of what is singularly inappropriate, provided a programme before breakfast on "Assisted Dying" (which is what we now call Euthanasia in order to make it sound more 'human').

The point at which the shiver went down my spine was the statement that Two Doctors woild have to sign pieces of paper, for the killing to be legal.

A safeguard?

When this depraved and murderous Kingdom democratically allowed Abortion, Two Doctors featured in the regulations. Abortion was not, in fact, legalised; it remained illegal except in certain limited circumstances. These were: danger to life; to mental health. So Two Doctors had each to sign a form, to guarantee that one of these risks applied. Pregnancy might kill Ms X; or Ms X is mentally sick. Or both.

The figures currently running tell us that some 600 pregnant women daily are medically guaranteed to be in danger of their lives or to be mentally sick. Two Doctors examine each of them extremely carefully and certify this by signing on the dotted line.

Except that they don't. Not long ago it came to light that, in a medical practice one Doctor would sign large numbers of such forms in batches, leaving the patients' names for his/her colleague to fill in as and when needed. As Obersturmbannfuehrer Adolph 'banality-of-evil' Eichmann could suavely have explained, it is smart little details like this which can help a killing machine to function that bit more smoothly.

The evidence about these goings-on was clear. The British Crown Prosecution Service, however, announced that it "would not be in the public interest" to prosecute the killers.

This seems to me unfair discrimination against ordinary, normal killers without medical qualifications.

Dictionary Makers

After some of my recent philological excursions, learned readers pointed out to me that languages evolve and change. Indeed; I believe one of my pieces admitted that "correct pronunciations" are simply what the makers of Dictionaries recorded at particular times. I might have gone on to say that, if we were to take seriously the Latin origins of some of the words I dealt with, we might be compelled to ... pronounce them in "incorrect" ways!! 

Take cervical. Thus is the word commonly and 'correctly' pronounced, especially by the proculoptical classes. I suspect they do it for a wrong reason: by false analogy with tropical and topical. But these are Greek borrowings, where the recessive emphasis might be said to be protected by the Greek as it used to be pronounced by Englishnen in the 1920s. In Latin, cervice has a long I in the middle of it ... Pedantry might suggest pronouncing this word as the Latin suggests, just to show how far one is above the profanum vulgus ...

Once I was in discussion with a bright young couple Universitatis Dunelmensis who kept referring to something ... this was an informal conversation: we were not shouting at each other ... apparently called c'meen-er g'day-liker. It took me some time to realise that they were referring to the collection of Hebridean poetry called Carmina Gadelica.

Once, I was talking to a help-line somewhere in the Indian sub-continent about a computer problem. I simply could not understand what the woman was saying. I had to keep asking her to repeat ... to go slower ..."I am very old; could you speak louder" ... Eventally, with a rather strange giggle, she gave me a different telephone number to use. When I tried it, it turned out to be Alcoholics Anonymous.

Once, in hospital, a Glaswegian nurse came up and said to me (this is what I worked out subsequently) "wi' y'gi'us so'o'y' wi". I simply could not make out what she meant. After she had repeated the same unchanged succession of sounds four times, I took to smiling at her in a compliant if fatuous way. She went off ... a minute or two later, another nurse came up and rather definitely said "My colleague tells me that you are refusing to give a urine sample." ["Will you give us some of your wee"; 'Wee' apparently being Gaelic for Urine.]

My philological preferences are mainly, I will concede, the product of my on-going struggle to understand and to be understood in a linguistically fluid milieu.

CEREMONIES OF THE SARUM MISSAL [Corrected]

Is there still a present you need to send to a liturgically-minded friend or colleague? If so, I commend the book of this name (CSM), by R J Urquhart, pubd T and T Clark.

It is exacltly what it claims: "A careful Conjecture". For, while it is clear from the Sarum service books, most of the time, what they did solemnly in Salisbury Cathedral, what happened in humbler places and contexts, where Sarum was used in a status declivior, is not. A widely cast net enables Mr Urquhart to give you as much information as is humanly possible. 

Readers of this blog will have read herein, several times, something like the following:

"Lots of books will tell you that S Pius V permitted the continued use of medieval rites having a prescription of more than 200 years. This is erroneous. It is so erroneous as to be pretty well the opposite of the truth. He gave NO such permission to anybody."

If you have any book that says this, I ORDER YOU to fetch it at once and put big question-marks against such assertions. THEY ARE CONTRAFACTUAL. 

What S Pius did do ... well, if you're not a regular reader of this blog, or if you sometimes forget the wisdom I so generously share, or ... worst of all  ... if you don't regard me as a reliable authority, then you need to get CSM instantly and to read carefully Urquhart's explanation of Quo primum. TAKE IMMEDIATE STEPS ...

One detail in CSM seems to me arguable. The Compiler, footnoting 'Reid', suggests that it might be contrary to the mind of the Church actually to celebrate Sarum. But in a letter dated 10 December 2013 (Prot. N. 39/2011L) Archbishop Pozzoli, writing from the then Ecclesia Dei Commission propria manu, says

In relation to your first question, this Dicastery confirms that the Use of Sarum, whilst no longer in regular use, has never been formally abrogated.

In relation to your second question, it is the judgement of this Pontifical Commission that any celebration of the liturgy according to the Use of Sarum is to be carried out under the responsibility  and supervision of the Ordinary.

Interesting, yes? Suggestive, yes? 

PLEASE take my commendation seriously. This is a massively important book which needs all the support it can get in this age when publishers are naturally nervous about publishing things which might bring them narrow profits. PLEASE don't put it off ... ... PLEASE ...

PLEASE ... 

 

Mary Mother of God

Once upon a time, a thousand years ago in the great basilica of Blachernae in Constantinople, high up on the ceiling near the Altar, was an enormous picture of a Palestinian teenager, that selfsame Girl who is such a lead-player in the Christmass celebrations. There she stood orans, Mediatrix of All Graces, as we Westerners would say, her hands raised in prayer, and in front of her womb, in a round circle, a painting of her Divine Son - his hand lifted in blessing. That image of Mary was called Platytera tou kosmou, the Woman Wider than the Universe. Mary was Great with Child; her Child was Almighty God. She contained the One whom the heaven of heavens is too narrow to hold. Can a foot be larger than the boot or an oyster greater than the shell? For Christians, apparently, Very Often. Mary's slender womb enthroned within it the Maker of the Universe, the God who is greater than all the galaxies that stream across the firmament. The tummy of a Girl was wider than creation.

Then on the crisp night air came the squeal of the newly born baby. It came from the cave that was both a stable and a birth-place. That stable in Bethlehem, as C S Lewis memorably explains in The Last Battle, 'had something in it that was bigger than our entire world'. The stable, like Mary, was great with child; very great, for that Child is God. And what is true of the womb of the Mother of God, and what is true of that stable at Bethlehem, is also the great truth of the Sacrament of the Altar. Bread becomes God Almighty; little round disks of unleavened bread are recreated by the Maker of the World to be Himself. As Mary's Baby was bigger than all creation, than all the stars and clouds and mass of it, so the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar is bigger than the Kosmos.

As you made your Christmass communion, glorious and loving Infinity came to make His dwelling in your poor body; so that, as you walked or drove home for the rest of Christmass, you were platyteroi tou Kosmou: broader than the Universe.

Ecce Agnus Dei; Ecce.

"She wrapped Him in swaddling clothes"

"I need not to tell you who this 'she' or who this 'Him'. The day rises with it in its wings. This day wrote it with the first ray of the morning sun upon the posts of the world. The Angels sung it in their choirs, the morning stars together in their courses. The Virgin Mother, the Eternal Son. The most blessed among women, the fairest of the sons of men. The woman clothed with the sun, the sun compassed with a woman. She the Gate of Heaven, He the King of Glory that came forth. She the Mother of the everlasting God: He the God without a mother; God blessed for evermore. Great persons as ever met upon a day.

"Yet as great as the persons, and great as the day, the great lesson of them both is to be little, to think and make little of ourselves; seeing the infinite greatness in this day become so little, Eternity a Child, the rays of glory wrapt in rags, Heaven crowded into the corner of a stable, and He that is everywhere want a room.
....

"It is Christmas time, and let us keep open house for Him; let His rags be our Christmas raiment, His manger our Christmas cheer, his stable our Christmas great chamber, hall, dining room. We must clothe with Him, and feed with Him, and lodge with Him at this feast.

He is now ready by and by to give himself to eat; you may see Him wrapped ready in the swaddling clothes of His Blessed Sacrament; you may behold Him laid upon the Altar as in His manger. Do but make room for Him
     and we will bring Him forth,
          and you shall look upon Him,
                and handle Him,
                    and feed upon Him;
bring we only the rags of a rent and torn and broken and contrite heart, the white linen cloths of pure intentions and honest affections to swathe Him in, wrap Him up fast, and lay Him close to our souls and bosoms.

It is a day of mysteries: it is a mysterious business that we are about;
     Christ wrapped up;
          Christ in the Sacrament;
               Christ in a mystery;
let us be content to let it go so, believe, admire and adore it."

Mark Frank, STP, Master of Pembroke College Cambridge (1613-1664), Chaplain and Censor Librorum to His Grace Archbishop Sheldon. From the Second Sermon for Christmas Day.

Philology: a strange stress shift?

I keep hearing such things as ...

mandatory pronounced mandatory

formidable pronounced formidable.

pastoral pronounced pastoral. 

adversary pronounced adversary.

integral pronounced integral.

efficacy pronounced efficacy ... this last example recently afforded some comedy. There is an 'Andrew Marr' who does an interview programme on the Beeb (he has never been exactly the sparkiest match in the box, despite an expensive private education in Scotland and a first at Cambridge in English) and who pronounced it thus; and admitted that ... he had never met the word before!! The Imperial don he was interviewing (about Covid vaccines) pronounced it correctly; so did the First Minister of Scotland ... but Marr stuck, poor fellow, to his guns.

Is there a widespread unease with regard to words in which the stress seems "too far back" for the oral comfort of many otherwise apparently healthy and even admirable folk?

If the dear ancient county of Westmorland still existed, I bet they'd be pronouncing it Westmorland, as I believe people do in some American place of the same name. So could the phenomenon which puzzles me be an Americanism?

I remember being puzzled some years ago when I was dealing with an early sixteenth century will. The property concerned was called Westmanton. But the scribed copy of Dame Thomasina Percival's will read it as Westpinton. 

-man- and -pin- are, on the face of things, really rather different-sounding syllables. But the penny then dropped in my mind. The placename must have been pronounced Westmanton, Westm'nt'n, which left the London scribe uncertain how to spell the unstressed middle syllable.

So what is the modern problem about English polysyllabic words with an early stress? Is there a parallel mutation in any other modern languages? Is it really that, for some reason, early stress has come to feel awkward to mis-shapen modern mouths? 

I don't think so.

On my theory, it is the result, in a semi-educated society, of an over-mastering fetich for orthography. This is what leads the fluvial peasantry North of Oxford to think that the river Cherwell (first syllable correctly rhyming with car, as in Berkshire), should be pronounced so that the first syllable rhymes with fur. Similarly, I suggest, individuals who have been more accustomed to meeting  'formidable' and 'mandatory' in print than they have been to hearing them in spoken discourse, feel a compulsion to 'regularise' the middle vowel. They have heard the words so rarely that, when they do need to use them, they don't know how most people in the past (which, of course, is what the dictionaries are recording) have pronounced them.

Should I call this 'schwaphobia'? Or, as one learned reader informs me, "Spelling Pronunciation"?

Or is it something else I haven't thought of?

 

 

PS: A Latin word which has suffered the same ruthless treatment on fallible modern tongues: musicians seem invariably to mispronounce Carmina (as in Carmina Burana) as cameeena.

CONTRADICTIONS

It seems to me that I am quite often expected to hold two contradictory views simultaneously.

IN THE SECULAR WORLD

A news bulletin not long ago had, for its first item, a report about the Secretary General of the UN, who had made a speech in which he criticised Humanity for "making War" on Nature. (My immediate reaction was to wonder why he couldn't tell Nature to stop making war on Humanity ... or, at least, ask her politely what her terms are for an armistice.)

The second item in the same bulletin was about the war against the Coronavirus. The implication throughout was that this is good war to be fighting.

There was no suggestion that these two attitudes stand in any sort of contradiction to each other: is it good, or is it bad, to be at war with Nature?

Perhaps there are nuances here which are beyond me. Perhaps the goodness or badness of fighting Nature depends upon other considerations. I don't know, because I have never heard anybody explaining the matter.

Perhaps, indeed, the sword is light, sharp, and easily available, by which we can cut though this Gordian knot. But how come, that I am the only person ... as far as I know ... who has this problem? Am I uniquely stupid? 

Surely, even those who are laughing loudest at my obvious stupidity, cannot refuse to admit that we have here at least a prima facie contradiction.

IN THE ECCLESIASTICAL WORLD

I gather that the new vernacular Italian translation of the Novus Ordo disregards the explicit orders of Pope Benedict that "... pro multis ..." should be translated literally ("for many"). Apparently, it continues, with the connivance of the Italian bishops and of PF,  to translate it as if it meant "for all people".

There can be no objection to this sort of language on theological principle. The Authentic Form of the Roman Liturgy has the priest, at the Offertory, raising the Chalice and asking the Father to accept it "pro totius mundi salute". The meaning of such phrases in orthodox Catholicism is that the Salvation by Christ's Blood is available, without exception, to all who approach God in Faith and ask for it. Just as Warburton's Seeded Loaf is available for anybody, for the whole world, to go and buy in Waitrose's.

But, being suspicious, my apprehension is that the desire to mistranslate the Verba Domini over the Chalice arises from some form of Universalism.

Be that as it may, the Contradiction I sense here is that many of the sort of people who would prefer "for All" are also the sort of people who would raise their hands in horror at any suggestion that the Jewish people need to be saved through the Blood of Jesus. No, they cry, Israel has its Covenant and they need nothing more. Christians who try to proselytise Jews are very badly mistaken. Indeed, they are anti-semites.

But, in that case, surely the Verba Donini need to be further amended ... the Lord, surely, needs even more of their wise and gracious help from the Italian Bishops' Conference and from PF. The essential formula must be yet further improved so that it reads "This is the Chalice of my Blood, of the New and Everlasting Covenant, the Mystery of Faith, which will be shed for you and for all people except of course the Jews, for the remission of sins".

Again, elucidation of my own personal problem concerning self-contradiction may be easy. But, in that case, why does nobody ever offer explanations? Why are the cognoscenti so mean-minded to simple souls like me who just want help?

A final point applying to both of the instances above: in each case, the Thoughtpolice expect, indeed, peremptorily demand, that we should accept and assert both of the apparently contradictory statements simultaneously and with equally extreme vehemence.  

Perhaps we have here another example of PF's peronista enthusiam for self-contradiction? 

 

 

 

I think ...

 ... I am now ... hereby ... closing down some trains of discussion on the threads.

The LORD will come from the East

Auctoritas, I believe, has more pull with a Traditional mind than mere Power. So I am going to ask:

How can one apply the the principle of auctoritas to the question of whether or not the eucharistic celebrant should face the people ... or deliberately not do so? I feel there are particular principles which have to be taken together.

The celebrant should face the East. This has enormous auctoritas, both in the archaeological evidence for the 'Orientation' [Eastfacingness] of church buildings and in early Christian writings. I will refrain from mentioning the enormous amount of learned 'Patrimony' literature establishing this, from the time when our 'Ritualists' were arguing for the 'Eastward Position' as against the then fashionable 'North End' custom. More recently, liturgists such as Michael 'Patrimony' Moreton re-established this truth, followed by Roman Catholics such as Cardinal Ratzinger and Dr Lang.

What I find very weakly evidenced - if it is at all - is the idea that it is important for priest and people to face in the same direction. 'Traddies' often overlook the fact that facing in the same direction is is not necessarily the same as facing East. Because ...
(1) some buildings, notably but not only the Roman basilicas, are specifically designed so that, by facing East, the celebrant thereby faces where the congregation has gathered. The rules of the Missal of S Pius V explicitly provide for what the priest does in such circumstances. The immemorial usage of the Urbs itself has great auctoritas, and so does the traditional praxis to which the Missal of S Pius V bears witness.
(2) some churches, particularly when built in confined urban spaces, are not built along an East-West axis.
Some 'traddies' try to get round the problem by cheerfully referring to something they are pleased to term 'the ritual East', as though it is at our disposal to pretend that East is wherever it is convenient for us to pretend that it is. I regard this as wholly frivolous. More important: early writers who emphasise the need to face East write about the need to face the Lord who comes to us from the East, and about the rising sun as his great Ikon. I do not think they would be impressed by a notion that East is wherever my whimsy takes me. The notion subverts any possibility of words meaning anything. Was it the Red Queen in Alice who said that she could make words mean whatever she wished them to mean? Just as many 'trendies' have what seems to me a sad fetich for always facing the people, some 'traddies' seem to me to have an equally unfortunate fetich for invariably having their backs to the people. I suspect that neither fetich would have been comprehensible, either to Easterners or Westerners, in the first Christian millennium.

But, unlike Kevin and Sharon, they did know where the EAST was.

Another principle with great auctoritas is the idea of the One Altar. Byzantine churches by prescriptive custom only have one altar (although they can consult practicality by adding parekklesiai; I regard the side altars in the side chapels of Latin churches as in effect parekklesiai too). This principle is bound up with important concepts such as the unity of God's people round his one altar celebrating his one sacrifice. To have an (unused) old altar up against the East wall, and another for actual use in front of it for the priest to stand behind, I regard as profoundly wrong, for theological as well as aesthetic reasons.

Where a church is Eastward facing and has an altar at the East end, the matter is perfectly clear. It is quite improper to move it or stand behind it. If the old altar has been shifted forward, it should be moved back. If an altar for versus populum has been placed in front of it, it should be got rid of. If it was made of wood, a parish bonfire would be a reverent way of disposing of a piece of furniture which has, remember, known the August Sacrifice.

Where a church is designed so that the sanctuary is at the West end, and the architect has structured the sanctuary so that the priest can thereby face East only by facing the people, my own view, which is not going to make me universally popular, is that he should do just that. I think not only of the Roman basilicas but, for example, of the Oratory and Blackfriars Churches in Oxford. As I mentioned, the ritus servandus in the Missal of S Pius V provides very explicitly for the celebration of Mass versus populum, and in my view ... not that anyone is likely to ask for it! ... this is what auctoritas suggests should be done. Versus Orientem rules OK.

But what about the Blackfriars' Church in Oxford? There the principle of One Altar is disastrously vitiated; a small modern table stands in front of the old majestic High Altar. Dunno. What do you think? My own gut feeling is ... go with the flow of the building as it is actually built; remove the little modern table, celebrate facing West, with the congregation facing West too ... although I would have to admit that the ancient Fathers would have had paroxysms if they could have seen both priest and people with their backs all turned in unison away from the East, away from the direction from which the Lord promises his Epiphany.

As regards churches built to face neither East nor West ... such as the Brompton Orsatory and Westminster Cathedral ... again, dunno. I am sure that the principle of One Altar should apply, so dump any coffee tables. Thank the Lord that the Brompton Fathers never messed around with their sanctuary and that Vin has restored the One Altar at Westminster. Again, my own, purely personal but quite strong, gut instinct is to go with the flow of the building as it was actually designed, and to celebrate with ones back to the people. But this is not facing East and does not have a great weight of auctoritas behind it.