Is it true that ...

... the Sovereign Pontiff gave the Aborma a gift of the text of the Vatican document on bioethics?

Let nobody ever again say that Germans don't have a sense of humour.

Annus Sacerdotalis

It infuriates me ... significant Roman decisions about the calendar are always made well after my ORDO has been printed. Things like the Year of Paul - and now the Year of the Priest.

Had I known about it, I would have made provision. Here is the information I would have given!

Just as there is a custom of saying a Votive of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the first Friday, and of the Immaculate Heart of Mary on the first Saturday, of each month (see page 42 of the 2009 ORDO and page 38 of the 2010), as long as there is no solemnity or festum, except during Lent, so the Tradition offers the old custom of saying a votive of our Lord Jesus Christ, High and Everlasting Priest, on the first Thursday of each month. This observance, as well as being inherently edifying, seems particularly appropriate in this Year of thePriest.

This votive may be inaccessible to many, since it is not in the first editions of the post-Conciliar Missal, and the Third Edition (which does contain it) is still not published in the new translation which bishop Donald "Ineffable" Trautmannnn is obstructing in America. There is, however, the older votive text in the English Missal.

Rambling round Ecclesiae Unitatem

The Holy Father's latest motu proprio, happily, does not do exactly what had been expected and feared. It does not combine the Pontifical Ecclesia Dei Commission (which looks afterTridentinists who are in good standing with the Holy See and is charged with facilitating the reconciliation of the SSPX, which is not) with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Instead, in view of the large doctrinal element in the regularisation of the position of SSPX, it provides that the Prefect of the CDF should also be the President of PCED. It then leaves the PCED with an intact and separate structure. This is wise; PCED also has a strictly liturgical and regulatory duty.

The opening paragraph could almost have been drafted as the beginning of the awaited motu proprio on the reconciliation of Anglican Catholics. We recall how the Holy Father, at his inauguration, made clear that he regarded Unity as the principal duty laid upon him by the Lord. But, as someone completely ignorant of canonical niceties, I find one phrase a bit puzzling. In para 4 he talks about inviting the SSPX bishops "ut ad plenam cum ecclesia communionem iter denuo invenirent". But their excommunications have been lifted. Granted, they have no missio canonica and remain technically suspended a sacris. As individuals, however, they surely are in full communion.

Fr H and the Pope and some ramblings

A friend points out to me that the Holy Father, like me, has not forgotten the association of the beginning of July with the Precious Blood. It is nice to have confirmation that my instincts are sound. And that the Pope's are.

Incidentally, IGLH para 245 allows "any votive office" to be said on any day except Solemnities, Sundays in Advent, Lent, and Easter, Ash Wednesday, Holy Week, Easter Week, and November 2, simply "for the sake of devotion". This is a remarkably wide discretion; and it is not accompanied by any restrictions about where one might get these votive offices from. I don't see any reason why one shouldn't borrow material from the old Breviary on days like July 1. And, of course, since Summorum pontificum there is no reason why, on such days (or any days) one should not substitute - for example - Mattins Lauds and Vespers from the old books for those in ones LH. I do. (And I found some Proper Hymns for SS Cyril and Methodius in my pars aestiva the other day ... they would enrich the OF Office.)

As I understand it, for one to have a Sunday votive Mass of one of those suppressed solemnities, one is supposed to have permission from the bishop in view of an unusually serious pastoral need.

Another friend points out to me some simple but outstanding catechetical materials available at http://www.sancarlo.pcn.net/argomenti_inglese/pagina0.html

Hanging above my computer, I have the rather nice Calendar of the ICKSP. This month, there is a picture of S Laurent sur Sevres ... is that the shrine of S Louis Marie de Grignion? (I've been fond of him since I saw his statue, and bought his book, as a boy in the RC church at Clacton in Essex - I am an Essex Man). My churchwarden lent me a tape of songs from there.

Chattering after Mass on Sunday, one or two of us revisited the question of the benefits of infrequent communion. I said I might do a post on it. Then I recalled that - I think - I did one; probably in February or March, when the question had cropped up in this year's Oxford Bampton lectures. Does anyone remember where it is?

Last night I watched the video of Cardinal Canares doing the EF in the Lateran basilica last May. I was surprised by how much of it he got wrong ... e.g. not genuflecting after the consecrations; not keeping his thumbs and index fingers together after the consecration ... and I'm not sure he knew how to cense an altar. Castrillon was a bit shaky on that last year in Westminster Cathedral. Frankly, I do understand the thinking of Vincent Nichols when he declined, at an EF Conference in Merton a year or two ago, to celebrate the EF himself. If one is going to do a thing, one ought to try to get it right.

A very good Conference on Chesterton last Saturday in the Old Palace. Sheridan Gilley, Ian Ker, John Saward, Aidan Nichols, William Oddie (all very good; Aidan sparkling and brilliant as ever).

Are any of those gentry cradle Catholics? Where would the English RC Church be if it didn't receive continual infusions of Anglican Catholic blood? Why is its own culture so impoverished?

More Daft Rituals

Anointing; or, as the people who typeset services often spell it, Annointing. We have a new fashion - or do I mean fad - what is the difference? - of anointing a cleric whenever he or she changes jobs. Priests going to a new parish; bishops committing the spiritual adultery of swapping bishoprics (do you remember the conversation between Bertie Stanhope and Bishop Proudie: Bishop: "Translations from see to see happen rather less frequently nowadays"; Bertie: "Yes, they've cut them all down to more or less the same income now, haven't they?").

When I was licensed at S Thomas's, I had to make a stand against being anointed; Ordination is the only Unction a priest needs. And I gather that the installation of new diocesans is now generally accompanied by lavish unctuosity.

Is there a connexion between the fact that the C of E has definitively set out on a path of ecumenical divergence from Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy, and the new appetite for misusing (and thus cheapening) traditional Catholic usages? And does anyone know when all this nonsense started? Is it another of B*****'s inspirations?

Last Gospels

I think it's probably the idea of "Bubbles" Stancliff, Bishop of Salisbury, a resolute enemy of our Integrity but a very High Church lover of exotic ritual novelty: the Ritualists' ritualist. The idea? "Resurrect the Last Gospel"! It's suggested in a recent semi-official book of Fancy Rituals which I won't give you the details of because I disapprove of that sort of thing and I wouldn't want anyone to go out and buy a copy (I haven't. Give me the sober dignity which characterises both traditional Roman Liturgy and the old ethos of the C of E, any day of the week.)

The idea? To bring back the last Gospel. No; not the traditional Johannine prologue. This new idea is perhaps inspired more by the (rather late) Roman Rubric providing for a variety of different Last Gospels (usually from important Masses which have been reduced to a commemoration in the Mass which one has just said).

The new "Bubbles" style Last Gospels would conclude Mass on Festivals with a brief Reading which would summarise the theme and meaning of the festival, and be ringing in the ears of the faithful as they left church.

Moving chairs on the Titanic, do I hear you say? Well, yes, but the Bubbleses of this world do not believe in icebergs.

Post scriptum

(1) "Was Bishop Andrew's Jubilee an ecumenical event?"
Definitely. There was a very nice gentleman there called Bishop Colin representing the Church of England.
(2) "Anglican Catholics have no sense of humour".
Untrue and unfair. Inside the cover of last evening's service book is a sentence "Common Worship ... material from which is included in this service, is copyright C The Archbishops' Council".

Dies triplex

Yesterday, up the road to the Oxford Oratory for the Requiem and Funeral ceremonies of a Roman Catholic parishioner, Mr Paul Mellins. Paul had stipulated (liturgical orthopraxy is in the very air of West Oxford) that his exsequies should be according to the old rite; and how decently it was done. Low Mass with a cantor; the Roman liturgical tradition at its very finest - so dignified, restrained, objective; nothing but the certainty of death and judgement and the fact of Man's sin, Man's need, God's mercy.

The rite ended with a champagne reception, which I sadly had to miss to hurry back to S Thomas's for the Wednesday 12.30 Mass. Fort the first time since the 1960s I observed the Feast of the Most Precious Blood - and what a fine way that is to start July. What glories Bugnini robbed us of; this celebration of the shed blood of the suffering Redeemer which for ever speaks for us before the Father's throne. Incidentally, the Lauds Office hymn is a beautiful expression of the spirituality of the devotion to the Five Wounds, which so animated our Anglican Catholic forefathers in their rebellions against the Tudor tyrannies. Three cheers for Pio Nono, one of my favourite pontiffs.

Viva viva Gesu; S Alfonso's lovely hymn to the Precious Blood (Caswall translation) began another manifestation of West Oxford liturgical orthopraxy, the celebration by our Apostolic Administrator of the Silver Jubilee of his Sacerdotal Ordination. S Barnabas' was packed with clergy and faithful laity who were edified by a homily preached by Bishop Keith, of the Richborough Apostolic District, naturally very relevant to the Year of the Priest proclaimed by our Holy Father, and by a Solemn Pontifical Mass which represented the very best of all that is meant by the Reform of the Reform. It concluded with Procession of the Blessed Sacrament and Solemn Pontifical Benediction, and the presentation of flowers at the feet of our Lady while the choir sang Ave Maria.

Since Bishop Andrew is a distiguished musiclogist, our aural appetites were not starved. I felt the welcome presence of the Catholic Counter-Reformation and the contribution to it of early recusant England; two hymns by S Alfonso; music by Byrd and Tallis and de Victoria (long a favourite of Bishop Andrew). And the Avignon origins of so much that we love in the Counter-Reformation was represented by the Anima Christi attributed to Pope John XXII "arr. AB".

Bishop Andrew observes "A polyphonic Sanctus is designed to be sung over a silent canon and a polyphonic Benedictus is intrinsically a meditation on the eucharistic presence while the canon proceeds". And that is what we had. Memories of days as an Anglo-Catholic undergraduate were revived by hearing the propers sung according to the psalm tones.

For liturgical pundits, a rarely observed ritual was the rite described in the Appendix 77 of some editions of the Caeremoniale Episcoporum, the one headed De floribus ad uxorem Pontificis deferendis in Iubilaeo celebrando.

Ordo Ordo Ordo

My ORDO is printed by the Additional Curates Society at Gordon Browning House, 8 Spitfire [Yes!] Road, Birmingham B24 9PB Telephone 0121 382 5533 ; and is a product of Tufton Books, The Church Union 2A the Cloisters, Gordon Square, London WC 1H 0AG and Faith House, 7 Tufton Street, London SW1P 3QN Telephone 0207 222 6952. The ISBN number is 9-780851-913278.

"The purpose of this ORDO is to serve worship needs of Anglicans and Roman Catholics. For the former it provides for the recitation of Morning and Evening Prayer and the celebration of Holy Communion in accordance with modern forms autorised or encouraged in the Provinces of Canterbury and York. These forms are selected, arranged, and interpreted in the the spirit of what has become generally customary in Western Christendom since the Second Vatican Council; but notes draw attention to Orthodox insights.

"It also provides a full Calendar according to the modern Roman Rite, together with explanatory and catechetical notes ...

"Anglicans who prefer forms of Liturgy based on the Book of Common Prayer will find a lectionary designed for use with the BCP ... "

Fidei Defensatrix

Moved by Duffy's new book, I went to look at some medals in the B Mus; not least the one Duffy reproduces showing Anglia supplex being raised up by a beneficent Roman Pontiff.

There is another medal nearby, presumably dating from before the Spanish Marriage since Good Queen Mary is shown alone and without any Hapsburg titles. But she does have the title Fidei Defensatrix.

Was the statute by which Henry Tudor secured Fidei Defensor to himself after the breach with Rome still on the statute books? Did Mary continue too use it? Was Elizabeth ever Defensatrix, or did she go for the unisex Defensor?

That's just the sort of information Professor Tighe would have at his fingertips.

A Swiss PEV

I've just listened to the interview Bishop Fellay did with a Canadian priest-journalist; I was struck by the resemblance between his manner and that of our English "PEVs", the 'emergency' bishops who look after traditionalist Anglicans. There is the same unpompous kindly humility and sense that only a crisis in orthodoxy has propelled him into a less than normative structure of episcopal service to an orthodox remnant.

I wonder whether there would be the present revirescence of Traditionalism in our Western churches (Motu proprio; Reform of the Reform) if Marcel Lefebvre had not done what he did.

On this anniversary of Bishop Fellay's consecration, I think we should pray for him and the flock he guides. And for the English PEVs and the flocks they guide.

Palliate Concelebrants

I think I observed, on the video of the Mass at which the Sovereign Pontiff delivered the Pallia to new archbishops, that when they came up to the altar to make their communions each first took a half of a 'priest's host' out of a low lying vessel, intincted it in a Chalice, and then received it.

This seems a lot neater than having deacons running round with ciboria, an artificial pause while the celebrants waits for this to be completed so that he and the concelebrants can then receive the Host simultaneously, and then the journey of the concelebrants up to the chalice.

Assuming, of course, that the Concelebration fashion is to continue anyway. How much neater still for each priest to have said his own Mass ealier and to sit in choir. I shall see whether Bishop Andrew, at his Jubilee Mass tomorrow, is neat, neater, or neatest.

(For the record: I am not a supporter of the current pseudo-traditionalist fad - or do I mean fashion - of sneering at Concelebration where it is deeply suitable and sanctified by the tradition of the Latin Church: at Ordinations and Chrism Masses and ...)