APRES MESSE

Another of those discussions one has after Mass ... stimulated, on this occasion, by the Corpus Christi sequence. In our vernacular Mass, it was a Cento: a Latin word, not much found in classical authors, meaning a patchwork. It is commonly used to refer to a translation which has been stitched together from different translators, taking (hoffentlich) the neatest renderings from each. In Lauda Sion the Anglican translation is a Cento; I haven't checked ... I expect some reader will know ... but I imagine Dr Neale and Fr Caswall may be substantial contributors.

The metrical and rhyming scheme in Lauda Sion is the same as in Stabat Mater. Who originated it? The 12th century poet Adam of S Victor is usually credited with it (earlier sequences not having anything like the same tight structure). Extracts from one of his sequences in this metre were used at the Office of Readings on Pentecost by those of us who use the Latin Liturgia Horarum: "Lux iucunda, lux insignis". You could call the basic line a trochaic dimeter: tumty is a trochee; a metron is two of them; here we have two metra. The last line of each stanza is the same but catalectic: i.e. the last syllable of the dimeter is missed out. The structure is deliciously emphasised by the (unclassical) heavy rhyming scheme. And I just love the way the stanzas get longer as we reach the end of the poem: there seems a pathos, a plangency, in the increasing delay before one is granred the release of the catalectic line. Look again at the last two stanzas of Lauda Sion; either in the Latin or in the English Hymnal Cento.

Post scriptum

A reader asks about legal questions concerning the use of the Roman Canon in the provinces of Canterbury and York.

A browse through recent posts will reveal that I have already touched a fair bit upon this. I hope to return to it several times before June 24.

The Roman Canon

When I was a little lad in Essex (yes, all those Essex Man jokes you have ever heard find their fulfilment in me) I used to drop in quite often to the local RC church. One of the clergy there - I can still remember his name: it was Fr Horace Tennant of the Oblates of S Charles - used to say Mass with incredible rapidity. He 'recited' the (silent in those days) Canon quicker than I could flick my eye down the text of it in my hand copy of Missale Romanum. Frankly, one can only call this sacrilegious.

Nowadays, many clergy say the Eucharistic Prayer in just as brief a time-span ... aloud; they achieve this by using the 'Hippolytan' Second Eucharistic Prayer: which is unnaturally brief. My accusation is this: what was a corruption before the 'reforms' has been now institutionalised as law: i.e. clergy treat the Eucharistic Prayer as an unfortunate formality which has to be disposed of as quickly as possible so that neither priest or people have to spend a nanosecond longer than the possible minimum before they get back to doing all things they'd rather be doing which are so much more important than saying a lot of tedious old prayers with affection and devotion.

Soon we reach the 450th anniversary of the day when the English parliament made the use of the Roman Canon a penal offence. This was an act of oppressive tyranny which could only be imposed by the shedding of much blood, both priestly and lay. At this time I implore clerical readers seriously to consider making the Roman Canon their normative Eucharistic Prayer. It was used for the first millennium of English Christianity; it is the Canon of the oldest liturgical book to survive in these islands, the Stowe Missal; it was dear to the Fathers of the Catholic Revival in the Church of England. The current Roman rubrics make it pretty clear that it ought to be the normative prayer on Sundays and Festivals, and say - uniquely of this prayer - that it may "always be used". And I urge lay readers to nag their clergy to use it. Many clergy sincerely think that their people will be grateful to be let out of church as soon as possible. Disabuse them of this notion!

Sixty Years

On June 12, 1949, Fr Michael Moreton was ordained to the Sacred Priesthood in the Cathedral Church of S Andrew in Wells. He is one of the few considerable liturgists in the Church of England; a distinguished if rather liberal New Testament scholar; and a much sought-after spiritual director. He is still going strong.

Fr Michael was a lone voice many years ago, in that chaotic period when altars were being moved around and priests started squeezing their way behind them. He was the small boy who shouted out that the Emperor had no clothes. He demonstrated that versus Orientem was the practice of ecumenical antiquity; he was adamant in his insistence on the Canon Romanus. His voice, of course, was one crying in a wilderness. Indeed, there are still ignorant clergy in the C of E who, when they discover an 'unreformed' altar, can't wait to 'rectify' it. Only last year, in a nice Roman Rite (OF with subsidiary EF) church in Plymouth, an illiterate priest doing duty during an interregnum 'reformed' the church; out went versus Orientem; out went the Roman Rite. It makes you want to weep, doesn't it. Talk about Smoke-of-Satan.

I first met Fr Michael when I moved into the Diocese of Exeter for six years, and was invited to join 'The Society of S Boniface'; Catholic priests who met for study of the Greek New Testament and fellowship and to read papers to each other. I was introduced by my friend and colleague John Richards, the first Bishop of Ebbsfleet, ecce sacerdos valde magnus, who in the bleak days after the vote for wyminpriests in 1992 built up a new people for the Lord amidst the wreckage of the Church of England. John had previously been an archdeacon with a reputation for being a stern disciplinarian and episcopal enforcer. He was also instinctively 'Church of England' and no Romaniser. It was a grand day when he sidled sheepishly up to me (he wasn't often sheepish) and said: "Now, boy [a common vocative on his lips]; I'm down to say the Mass at Boniface this month ... now ... um ... er ... this "Roman Canon" ... I know Michael sets great store by it ... do you happen to have a copy?"

I did.

Father Michael, ad multos annos.

NOVUS ORDO

As ever, a fine Corpus Christ Mass at Pusey House. How good it is, on Ascension Day and Corpus Christi, not to be in full communion with the See of Westminster.

Even the finest Novus Ordo celebrations seem to me to have an awkwardness built into the centre of them. Fine music is sung (and at PH it really is very fine; particularly one of the female voices) which includes Sanctus and Benedictus sung while the celebrant stands mute at the Altar before consecrating. We really do need to put in place a Custom whereby the first part of the Canon Romanus is said during the Sanctus, and the Benedictus is sung after the Consecration. The canon doesn't have to be said sotto voce; it could be said in a normal speaking voice while the singing went on.

There would be a spin-off advantage: the congregation might not hear who was - or was not - named in the Te igitur.

Dudley Symon (1959) again

"The 'English Missal', which allows the v Prayer Book to appear in small type, but otherwise is completely the 'Roman' missal, has become the standard Altar Book and increasingly popular among the laity ... the Mass restored to us would not only be the deepening of our knowledge and appreciation of the Divine Mysteries, but a proclamation of our unity with the true source of our being, the rock whence we were hewed. It would safeguard officially and in the surest way - for worship is the truest expression of belief - those essential Catholic tenets which the Archbishop of Canterbury assures us are still our heritage in spite of the controversies and upheavals of the Reformation".

Supplices te Rogamus ...

In the Eastern rites, and in the invented Eucharistic Prayers which were introduced into both Roman Catholic and Anglican worship in the 1970s and 1980s, the Epiclesis is treated as crucially important. The Holy Spirit is invoked to come and make the elements the Body and Blood of Christ. I am not a Byzantine and I have no interest in rubbishing their ancient and noble tradition. Nor would I stand for any 'latinising' of their tradition. The only criticism I have is of those Byzantines who encourage an Orthodox 'Western Rite' in which an epiclesis has been intruded into the Roman Canon. Because the epiclesis is not our tradition. And our tradition should not be Byzantinised.

At the beginning of the 20th century, liturgists commonly believed that the epiclesis was 'primitive' and must somehow have got 'lost' from the Roman Canon. If you have a copy of Fortescue, you will find an account by him of the various theories which were held about this; and the various ingenious attempts made to 'reconstruct' the 'original Roman epiclesis'.

A succession of distinguished Anglican scholars disposed of this nonsense. Yes: Anglican. I know that it is natural for Roman Catholics to feel that there is something impertinent in Anglicans playing in their backyard by taking such an interest in 'their' Canon. The fact is, the Canon is something which we lost 450 years ago - and then, in the middle of the 19h century, rediscovered. What you discover for yourself often means more to you than something that Daddy Tried To Make You Do.

Where Easterners call upon the Spirit to come down upon the elements, our ancient Western, Roman tradition asks the Lord to take his Church's offerings to the Altar on high. E C Ratcliff, one of our great Anglican liturgists, summarised this as "a ticket to the Royal Enclosure". That we, in the Mass, are swept up into the heavenly places with our offerings, which become his, so that we can be filled with all heavenly benediction and grace, is quite as august a notion of the Eucharist as the idea that the Spirit comes down upon us from above.

It also happens to be distinctly older. Look again at the paragraph Supplices te rogamus in your missal.

Is the Prayer Book legal?

In 1959, the Anglican Catholic priest and writer Dudley Symon summed up what so many of his predecessors had said and written since the Catholic Revival. He spoke of "the right of the Church of England to the Roman Mass and its use", and went on: "Clearly the moral and spiritual case, apart from any matter of State law, is extremely strong. The Mass was never canonically abolished by the Church in this country, each of the successive Prayer Books of 1549, 1552, and 1559 being imposed by State action pure and simple ... on strict canonical and moral grounds it has no claim to loyalty either external or internal".

He could have pointed out that at the very time the government in 1559 was bullying Parliament into passing the Act of Uniformity, Convocation and the Universities solemnly declared "The authority of handling and defining concerning the things belonging to faith, sacraments, and discipline ecclesiastical, hath hitherto ever belonged, and ought to belong, only to the pastors of the Church; whom the Holy Ghost for this purpose hath set in the Church; and not to laymen".

Symon - and such earlier writers who had pushed the same argument (notably Fathers Baverstock and Hole) - was dead right. Goverment acted ultra vires and such acts as that Uniformity do not oblige in conscience. The Roman Rite - in some shape or form - is the lawful rite of the Ecclesia Anglicana.

Hugh Ross Williamson was the ...

... son of a Congregationalist minister; he found the Catholic Faith and was ordained as an Anglican papalist priest. In 1955 he wrote a fine book on the Canon of the Mass, arguing that, since it was so primitive, and preceded the Reformation controversies by so many centuries, it was something all Christians could agree upon as the expression of their common faith. In The Great Prayer: concerning the Canon of the Mass he makes this case, and in doing so also manages to write a very lovely devotional book. It convinced a number of clergy - notably, Fr Hope Patten, Restorer of the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham - that this was the right Eucharistic Prayer to put one's money on.

If you are fortunate enough to find it in a second hand bookshop ...

Societas Sanctae Crucis

Great fun to be at the annual Synod for the South East of Engand, with hundreds of brethren. In these dodgy times, with heterodoxy and heteropraxy (is there a difference?) rife, we need these expressions of fellowship.

The liturgy was interesting: Novus Ordo (third Roman Eucharistic Prayer) in the style which used to be called "Modern Catholic". I remember finding that sort of thing very refreshing when Eric Kemp introduced it at Chichester diocesan events in the 1970s - Chrism Masses, diocesan pilgrimages to Walsingham, etc. - because it it was such a lovely change from what had been the style of official Anglican liturgy: turgid, safe, pompous, tedious, self-conscious, with a whiff of the Victorians about it. But that was the 1970s. And, even then, I remember being uneasy about those Glorias and Sanctuses and Agnuses which involved jolly choruses superimposed upon very free paraphrases of texts. Liturgiam authentican was subsequently to agree with me on this. Presumably SSC will catch up with the newer Roman dispensation; perhaps next year's Synod Mass will be the last in the genuine 1970s style.

Perhaps someone should make a video of it for the archives.

APOSTOLIC ADMINISTRATIONS

A nice report in the post about the Apostolic Administration of Campos in Brazil; about its vibrancy, its apostolic charity, its devotion to traditional liturgy. I was reminded of life in the Ebbsfleet Apostolic District, where we too have the same sense of closeness to our bishop and of fellowship with each other.

This Apostolic Administration goes back to ther post-Conciliar 'reforms', which the then Bishop of Campos refused to implement. Eventually he incurred automatic excommunication by joining Mgr Lefebvre in the uncanonical Consecration of the four SSPX bishops, and so there were, in effect, two parallel dioceses of Campos. But a couple of years ago, the 'traditionalist' 'diocese' regularised its position with Rome. Technically, its bishop is the superior of a 'Priestly Society' to which his clergy belong, and is thus a local ordinary in full communion with the Holy See.was given the status

How good that the Lord is showing to both Anglicans and Roman Catholics Fresh Ways of Being Church. Perhaps this is a presage of an ecumenical future.

PENTECOST-TIDE

For the Byzantine tradition, 'Pentecost' refers to the Fifty Days (so that the 'Pentecostarion' is what modern Westerners might call a 'Paschaltide' book). This is in line with the Greek New Testament; compare "When the days of Pentecost were completed". It seems to me that the classical usage is to call Easter Sunday "the Pasch"; to call the Sundays following "Sundays after Pasch"; to give Pasch an Octave (during which the baptised wore their albae and were catechised) ending on Saturday, after which we say that we have finished (peregimus) the Paschal mysteries. Whitsunday is the day when the Fifty Days have been completed, and, if those Fifty Days are to have an official title, "Pentecost" is what they should be called.

In addition to this, we in the West have a concept of "Tempus Paschale"; "Eastertide", during which Alleluias are multiplied, Regina Caeli is said, and so on. The Easter precept can be fulfilled during this period. Traditionally it ends at None on the Saturday after Pentecost Sunday.

I surmise that misunderstanding has arisen from confusion between the "Days of Pentecost", i.e. the Fifty days which begin with the Pasch and last a week of weeks; and Tempus Paschale. I suspect that these two are not the same thing, despite the fact that treating them as such is at the basis of the Bugnini reform of the Calendar.

Everything above is really a question. I may have got it all wrong. I am seeking enlightenment and failing to find it in the standard places of refence.

Perhaps a reader can put me right!