27 August 2009
Buttons
Can someone with an historical turn of mind explain to me why popish priests, on the rare occasions when they don a cassock, do not have the correct number of buttons down their soutane?
26 August 2009
Canon Law: the question.
In Summorum pontificum, our Holy Father makes clear in the first Article that any priest may, without any permissions, say a Private Mass whenever he wishes in the Extraordinary Form.
Does "Private Mass" have a legal meaning in terms of the legislation surrounding the current post-conciliar liturgical texts? Or in the current Code of Canon Law?
Does the term "Private Mass", when applied by legislative documents (such as a motu proprio) to the EF, mean what it meant in the official documents of the age when the EF was the ordinary form of the Roman Rite, back in the days of the great Rubricians, the era of O'Connell et al.?
If so, which of the eight different meanings found in those documents does it point to? Or, when there is a lack of specificity in a legal formula, does the subject of the law have the right to the least constricting of the possibilities?*
For Info: O'Connell gives these definitions of "Private Mass", with footnotes pointing to the legislative basis which each has. I simplify:
A Mass in a private place
A Mass neither High nor Sung
A non-conventual Mass
A Mass neither Sung nor Conventual
A Mass not of obligation
A Mass detached from the Liturgy of the Day (e.g. the Palm Sunday Procession)
A Requiem neither sung nor conventual nor 'privileged'
A Votive, whether High, Sung, or Low, celebrated for a cause which is not public and grave
* This sentence is the question which I am most interested in having an informed answer to.
Does "Private Mass" have a legal meaning in terms of the legislation surrounding the current post-conciliar liturgical texts? Or in the current Code of Canon Law?
Does the term "Private Mass", when applied by legislative documents (such as a motu proprio) to the EF, mean what it meant in the official documents of the age when the EF was the ordinary form of the Roman Rite, back in the days of the great Rubricians, the era of O'Connell et al.?
If so, which of the eight different meanings found in those documents does it point to? Or, when there is a lack of specificity in a legal formula, does the subject of the law have the right to the least constricting of the possibilities?*
For Info: O'Connell gives these definitions of "Private Mass", with footnotes pointing to the legislative basis which each has. I simplify:
A Mass in a private place
A Mass neither High nor Sung
A non-conventual Mass
A Mass neither Sung nor Conventual
A Mass not of obligation
A Mass detached from the Liturgy of the Day (e.g. the Palm Sunday Procession)
A Requiem neither sung nor conventual nor 'privileged'
A Votive, whether High, Sung, or Low, celebrated for a cause which is not public and grave
* This sentence is the question which I am most interested in having an informed answer to.
Hippolytus again
Yes, my post on the "Eucharistic Prayer of Hippolytus" was somewhat gung-ho, and I have some sympathy with the reader who said that words like (my) "Everyone agrees" inspire him to consider a contrary approach. Likewise. To be told that "Modern Scholarship" has a particular consensus does remind all right-thinking people of all the nonsenses which, over the years, various academic establishments have demanded that we accept on faith.
I would also agree that Paul Bradshaw does have an agenda of his own. But what I feel it is very important to emphasise is the uncertainties surrounding "Hippolytus". I am far from sure that Ap Trad can be certainly known to be by a Hippolytus who, as an early "Antipope", claims he is giving, and really is giving, the liturgical tradition of "his", id est, of the Roman, Church. I am unsure who really wrote it; what his status was; whether it represented the Tradition of a particular Church or what some shadowy writer thought ought to be its Tradition; whether (if it really has some sort of relationship with Rome) it is the Liturgy of the Roman Pontiff himself or of some other grouping within a pluriform Roman Church; whether the text as we have it is a reliable witness to the liturgical Tradition which might be recoverable from what might be identifiable as the earliest stratum of that text.
In view of all this, I feel that the way the liturgists of the Sixties rammed "Hippolytus" down our throats is itself a scholarly consensus which we do very well to view with immense suspicion. This text is not something which deserves such enormous respect that whole liturgical traditions have to be reconstructed to conform to it. It is a very interesting but highly suspicious text best left to scholars to amuse themselves with, and not to be imposed on congregations. When I recall that in the modern RC Church the "Hippolytan" Eucharistic Prayer has, de facto, become the normative Prayer, on Sundays and weekdays, all over the world (or am I wrong about that too?); and that in the C of E "Hippolytus" is used as an alibi for Eucharistic Prayers which have an 'epiclesis' after the Institution Narrative; I feel that something is decidedly askew.
Piltdown Man, well before the 'forensic' scientists exposed the fakery, had become suspicious because he increasingly failed to fit into growing amounts of new evidence about the evolution of our species. Likewise, I feel that "Hippolytus" is very hard to fit into the emergence of what we have as the Canon Romanus. The consensus seems to be that "H" is to be dated to the first half of the third century. How exactly did this Ape evolve (in Liturgy, an area given to the preservation of the archaic) into a Prayer the text of which was, in my opinion, pretty well settled in if not before the time of Leo the Great?
[Mazza, 1995, The origins of the Eucharistic Prayer; Driscoll, 2003, Theology at the Eucharistic Table; are books which do offer a different perspective to that of Bradshaw].
I would also agree that Paul Bradshaw does have an agenda of his own. But what I feel it is very important to emphasise is the uncertainties surrounding "Hippolytus". I am far from sure that Ap Trad can be certainly known to be by a Hippolytus who, as an early "Antipope", claims he is giving, and really is giving, the liturgical tradition of "his", id est, of the Roman, Church. I am unsure who really wrote it; what his status was; whether it represented the Tradition of a particular Church or what some shadowy writer thought ought to be its Tradition; whether (if it really has some sort of relationship with Rome) it is the Liturgy of the Roman Pontiff himself or of some other grouping within a pluriform Roman Church; whether the text as we have it is a reliable witness to the liturgical Tradition which might be recoverable from what might be identifiable as the earliest stratum of that text.
In view of all this, I feel that the way the liturgists of the Sixties rammed "Hippolytus" down our throats is itself a scholarly consensus which we do very well to view with immense suspicion. This text is not something which deserves such enormous respect that whole liturgical traditions have to be reconstructed to conform to it. It is a very interesting but highly suspicious text best left to scholars to amuse themselves with, and not to be imposed on congregations. When I recall that in the modern RC Church the "Hippolytan" Eucharistic Prayer has, de facto, become the normative Prayer, on Sundays and weekdays, all over the world (or am I wrong about that too?); and that in the C of E "Hippolytus" is used as an alibi for Eucharistic Prayers which have an 'epiclesis' after the Institution Narrative; I feel that something is decidedly askew.
Piltdown Man, well before the 'forensic' scientists exposed the fakery, had become suspicious because he increasingly failed to fit into growing amounts of new evidence about the evolution of our species. Likewise, I feel that "Hippolytus" is very hard to fit into the emergence of what we have as the Canon Romanus. The consensus seems to be that "H" is to be dated to the first half of the third century. How exactly did this Ape evolve (in Liturgy, an area given to the preservation of the archaic) into a Prayer the text of which was, in my opinion, pretty well settled in if not before the time of Leo the Great?
[Mazza, 1995, The origins of the Eucharistic Prayer; Driscoll, 2003, Theology at the Eucharistic Table; are books which do offer a different perspective to that of Bradshaw].
25 August 2009
Missing Votive
Yesterday morning I tried to find, in my 1950 Missale Romanum, the lovely old Sarum Votive In Gratiarum Actione pro Reditu Cinerum. But in vain. Was it eliminated by S Pius V? If so, was it because of that Pontiff's well-known and irrational prejudice in favour of Australians?
[I think it would, on the whole, be best if Americans don't try to work out this post.]
[I think it would, on the whole, be best if Americans don't try to work out this post.]
Canon Law
The Anglican Clergy (or, more specifically, the Anglican Catholic Clergy?), as everybody knows ... well, to be specific, as the Anglican Clergy know ... are ... no ... were the best educated, most learned in the world. I correct my tenses, because nowadays priestly formation in the C of E has taken a nose dive. The financial mismanagement ... the stock market misjudgements ... the sale of valuable property at the bottom of the market ... has precipitated a financial crisis in which clergy, and clergy training, can no longer be paid for. Laity may say the the old prayer "God give us priests, give us holy priests", but the bishops pray "God, give me fewer priests, give me cheaper priests". The ordination of the almost entirely untrained, often the retired who have a solid income, and especially of women at a loose end who've mislaid a husband or two along the way (so many women in irregular unions fancied themselves as priests that the rules were changed) and feel like a hobby activity, preferably one which will give them an excuse to interfere in other people's affairs, is now seen as the way ahead as far as staffing is concerned. Taking a young man from University ... especially a good one ... and giving him a thorough residential training and formation ... is the very last thing a Father in God has in mind, as he sits down with his generously configured bureaucracy to work out the next scheme for managing decline (these schemes invariably have incredibly sexy names like "Moving on in Mission and Ministry"; I'm collecting such titles and would be grateful for contributions ... genuine contributions ... remember, this business has gone beyond parody ... R C contributions would also be of interest).
Back in the Sixties, it took me seven years to attain the diaconate. Mods, Greats, Hon School of Theology, GOE, for those who know the old terminology; in other words, Latin and Greek language and literature; Ancient History; Ancient and Modern Philosophy; Biblica; Patristica; Moral Philosophy; Liturgy; Pastoralia. The last three of these years were in a seminary with a traditional daily structure: Mattins, Meditation, Mass, Lectures, Evensong, Social Time, Night Prayers, Greater Silence.
Roman Catholic readers will have noticed a particular lacuna in that lot: Canon Law. Traditionally, the Anglican clergy have not received a training in Canon Law; I know that RC clergy do, and that that is one of the big cultural differences between us. The usual RC practice of selecting bright young men for a fast track to episcopacy on the grounds of a doctorate or two in Canon Law is incomprehensible to Anglicans. Mind you, when I was in training the Anglican Canon Law had just been overhauled in the Primacy of an ex-Public-School headmaster called Geoffrey Fisher, who believed in Discipline and whose motive had been to put in place structures enabling bishops to suppress iniquitous activities like the use of the Roman Rite and the extra-liturgical cultus of the Blessed Sacrament. Such things as Canon Law were best put out of mind.
That is why my query this morning was going to be addressed to R C clerical readers, if there are any, because they know their Canon Law and most Anglicans don't ... but this proemium has overrun its natural span. The substantive query will have to come tomorrow.
Back in the Sixties, it took me seven years to attain the diaconate. Mods, Greats, Hon School of Theology, GOE, for those who know the old terminology; in other words, Latin and Greek language and literature; Ancient History; Ancient and Modern Philosophy; Biblica; Patristica; Moral Philosophy; Liturgy; Pastoralia. The last three of these years were in a seminary with a traditional daily structure: Mattins, Meditation, Mass, Lectures, Evensong, Social Time, Night Prayers, Greater Silence.
Roman Catholic readers will have noticed a particular lacuna in that lot: Canon Law. Traditionally, the Anglican clergy have not received a training in Canon Law; I know that RC clergy do, and that that is one of the big cultural differences between us. The usual RC practice of selecting bright young men for a fast track to episcopacy on the grounds of a doctorate or two in Canon Law is incomprehensible to Anglicans. Mind you, when I was in training the Anglican Canon Law had just been overhauled in the Primacy of an ex-Public-School headmaster called Geoffrey Fisher, who believed in Discipline and whose motive had been to put in place structures enabling bishops to suppress iniquitous activities like the use of the Roman Rite and the extra-liturgical cultus of the Blessed Sacrament. Such things as Canon Law were best put out of mind.
That is why my query this morning was going to be addressed to R C clerical readers, if there are any, because they know their Canon Law and most Anglicans don't ... but this proemium has overrun its natural span. The substantive query will have to come tomorrow.
23 August 2009
SERMON
We ORDO makers tend to notice things that you common folk might not spot. Today, for example, there's something odd about the second reading. You heard a passage from Ephesians and you heard it because here we use the modern Roman Lectionary. So, for the most part, does the Church of England. But the C of E decided to make an "improvement" in the selection for today. It chose a different passage from Ephesians. I will remind you of how our reading began, and then leave you all with just one guess as to why the Church of England decided to omit it. "Be obedient to one another out of reverence to Christ. Wives be subject to your husbands". Nuff said.
Of course, there are jokey explanations. There is the old story about the wife who explained how her husband made all the big decisions, she just obeyed him and made a few small ones. "He decides whether the West should get out of Afghanistan and how to solve the banking crisis, I only decide where we live, how we spend our money, where we send the children to school, and things like that". It's a picture many married men might recognise. Indeed, it's a picture we find in the Bible. In Proverbs, the Prudent Wife apparently runs the whole household and the entire family economy. She provides food for her household; she considers a field and buys it; she plants a vineyard; she opens her hands to the needy; her household are clothed in scarlet and her own clothing is fine linen and purple; she manufactures garments and girdles and does deals with the merchants. And - while she's getting on with all that - what is her husband doing? What is his contribution to the family economy? One thing only is specified in the Inspired Text: "Her husband is known in the gates when he sits among the elders of the land". Notice the verb: "sits". I've often wondered whether Proverbs may have been written by a female satirist. The husband's sole job, apparently, is to be a figure of respect and awe among the other menfolk as they sit and gossip in their male enclave and put the world to rights while the women get on with doing. Perhaps one could suggest that this model of female "subordination" does have its intriguing aspects. Joking aside, what's really going on is that in the ancient world, Hebrew, Greek, and Roman, and in most premodern societies, men and women did have distinct roles; men in a public forum, women in the domestic; and in this context the notion of the wife as subordinated to her husband does have a decidedly different look to it than if the words are stripped of context.
I will leave you with two minor additional thinking points. Firstly: could it be in fact right that men and women should have distinct roles and live and act within discrete structures? - rather than acting as we do in our unisex world? Would a lot of people, possibly, be happier?
And, lastly - I think I got this from the Tale of the Loathly Damsel (AKA the Lady Ragnold) in the Arthurian Cycle - there is the idea that women are so very much the dominant sex, so naturally programmed to dominate their menfolk, that the only way of slightly redressing the balance and restoring some degree of equilibrium is to try to subordinate them structurally. And, of course, ....
No .... er .... I think I'll end my sermon there.
Of course, there are jokey explanations. There is the old story about the wife who explained how her husband made all the big decisions, she just obeyed him and made a few small ones. "He decides whether the West should get out of Afghanistan and how to solve the banking crisis, I only decide where we live, how we spend our money, where we send the children to school, and things like that". It's a picture many married men might recognise. Indeed, it's a picture we find in the Bible. In Proverbs, the Prudent Wife apparently runs the whole household and the entire family economy. She provides food for her household; she considers a field and buys it; she plants a vineyard; she opens her hands to the needy; her household are clothed in scarlet and her own clothing is fine linen and purple; she manufactures garments and girdles and does deals with the merchants. And - while she's getting on with all that - what is her husband doing? What is his contribution to the family economy? One thing only is specified in the Inspired Text: "Her husband is known in the gates when he sits among the elders of the land". Notice the verb: "sits". I've often wondered whether Proverbs may have been written by a female satirist. The husband's sole job, apparently, is to be a figure of respect and awe among the other menfolk as they sit and gossip in their male enclave and put the world to rights while the women get on with doing. Perhaps one could suggest that this model of female "subordination" does have its intriguing aspects. Joking aside, what's really going on is that in the ancient world, Hebrew, Greek, and Roman, and in most premodern societies, men and women did have distinct roles; men in a public forum, women in the domestic; and in this context the notion of the wife as subordinated to her husband does have a decidedly different look to it than if the words are stripped of context.
I will leave you with two minor additional thinking points. Firstly: could it be in fact right that men and women should have distinct roles and live and act within discrete structures? - rather than acting as we do in our unisex world? Would a lot of people, possibly, be happier?
And, lastly - I think I got this from the Tale of the Loathly Damsel (AKA the Lady Ragnold) in the Arthurian Cycle - there is the idea that women are so very much the dominant sex, so naturally programmed to dominate their menfolk, that the only way of slightly redressing the balance and restoring some degree of equilibrium is to try to subordinate them structurally. And, of course, ....
No .... er .... I think I'll end my sermon there.
21 August 2009
Rum things, Calendars. This...
... morning I would have liked to say Mass of S Pius X and to have prayed specially for the brethren of the SSPX, but I was using the EF, which provides otherwise. Come to think of it, so were the brethren of the SSPX, so they didn't commemorate Papa Sarto either. They and I will have to wait for September 3, which is S Pius' festival in the EF Calendar. But stay: that day will be, in the OF Calendar, the festival of S Gregory the Great, Patron and Solemnity in the Western (Ebbsfleet) District, a day when I shall be saying the OF Mass, and therefore keeping ........
The only solution I can think of is for Bishop Andrew to proclaim S Pius X also Patron of his Apostolic District, and for Bishop Fellay also to make S Gregory Patron of the SSPX and for the SSPX and the Ebbsfleet District to amalgamate (FSSGPX: Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sanctorum Gregorii Piique X) and to conduct joint negotiations with the Holy See.
If the cost were a agreement that we would all use the 1962 liturgical books, this is a sacrifice I would be prepared to make.
That's so obvious that I can't imagine why it hasn't occurred to anybody else. Come along, bishops. Digiti extrahendi.
The only solution I can think of is for Bishop Andrew to proclaim S Pius X also Patron of his Apostolic District, and for Bishop Fellay also to make S Gregory Patron of the SSPX and for the SSPX and the Ebbsfleet District to amalgamate (FSSGPX: Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sanctorum Gregorii Piique X) and to conduct joint negotiations with the Holy See.
If the cost were a agreement that we would all use the 1962 liturgical books, this is a sacrifice I would be prepared to make.
That's so obvious that I can't imagine why it hasn't occurred to anybody else. Come along, bishops. Digiti extrahendi.
HEUREKA!
I have found a grave error in a preconciliar liturgical book!
My Altar Missal is Dessain 1950. It must be late 1950, because for August 15 it gives the Mass Signum magnum. I had to paste Gaudeamus into it.
But, infra Octavam, it gives for the prayers of commemoration of the Octave our old friends Famulorum etc..
My Altar Missal is Dessain 1950. It must be late 1950, because for August 15 it gives the Mass Signum magnum. I had to paste Gaudeamus into it.
But, infra Octavam, it gives for the prayers of commemoration of the Octave our old friends Famulorum etc..
20 August 2009
The sacrosanctity of 1962?
Both SSPX and Summorum Pontificum are based upon the normativeness of the 1962 books of the Roman Rite. I feel some nuancing of this position needs to happen.
It is accepted that - for example - 1962 prefaces might be added to the EF. If Pius XI could add prefaces for the Sacred Heart and Christ the King to the Missal, it is not easy to see why Benedict XVI should not add prefaces for the Assumption and the Immaculate Conception. But I feel revision of details in the EF Order of Mass should not stop there. For example, the Rite of Communion should be gently tidied up to envisage a situation in which many masses include a communion of the people. And the the punctuation of the Preface should be corrected to "Domine, Sancte Pater, ...". But this morning I look at the Calendar and at festivals of our Lady.
Pius XII replaced the Octave Day of the Assumption with the Immaculate Heart, and put the Queenship of Mary onto the last day of the Mary Month of May, a day on which the Feast of our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces had previously been spreading, by indult, to more and more places. Paul VI put the Queenship onto the old Assumption Octave Day: in my view, a good move. The Queenship in Heaven of Mary is exactly what the Octave Day of the Assumption is about. But when Paul VI put the Visitation onto May 31, he made a big mistake. The original idea was that this festival should have as one of its themes the Mediation of our Lady - and one of the hymns provided by Lentini was worded to express this. But the idea never beddded down.
What we need is a calendar on which May 31 is the BVM Mefdiatrix of All Graces; August 22 is our Lady, Queen; and the Visitation goes back to July 2, an old dating with ecumenical implications about which I have posted before. The Immaculate Heart could well go onto the Bugnini date following the Sacred Heart; this fits in with instinct of Christian people for First Saturday Masses of this devotion.
That would be an 'organic' resolution of the present confusions.
It is accepted that - for example - 1962 prefaces might be added to the EF. If Pius XI could add prefaces for the Sacred Heart and Christ the King to the Missal, it is not easy to see why Benedict XVI should not add prefaces for the Assumption and the Immaculate Conception. But I feel revision of details in the EF Order of Mass should not stop there. For example, the Rite of Communion should be gently tidied up to envisage a situation in which many masses include a communion of the people. And the the punctuation of the Preface should be corrected to "Domine, Sancte Pater, ...". But this morning I look at the Calendar and at festivals of our Lady.
Pius XII replaced the Octave Day of the Assumption with the Immaculate Heart, and put the Queenship of Mary onto the last day of the Mary Month of May, a day on which the Feast of our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces had previously been spreading, by indult, to more and more places. Paul VI put the Queenship onto the old Assumption Octave Day: in my view, a good move. The Queenship in Heaven of Mary is exactly what the Octave Day of the Assumption is about. But when Paul VI put the Visitation onto May 31, he made a big mistake. The original idea was that this festival should have as one of its themes the Mediation of our Lady - and one of the hymns provided by Lentini was worded to express this. But the idea never beddded down.
What we need is a calendar on which May 31 is the BVM Mefdiatrix of All Graces; August 22 is our Lady, Queen; and the Visitation goes back to July 2, an old dating with ecumenical implications about which I have posted before. The Immaculate Heart could well go onto the Bugnini date following the Sacred Heart; this fits in with instinct of Christian people for First Saturday Masses of this devotion.
That would be an 'organic' resolution of the present confusions.
19 August 2009
"Organic development"
Vatican II mandated that liturgical development be 'organic'. I suggest a touchstone for what is, or isn't, organic.
A change might be organic if you could just paste a newly authorised liturgical text, perhaps for a newly canonised Saint, into your Missal or Breviary ... and still keep using it. Or if it mandated revised Rubricae Generales so as to purge the Calendar a bit, so that you could use the old Books as long as you kept your eye on the ORDO.
Change certainly is not organic if it means you have to dump, as now totally unusable, your old Books, and shovel money at publishers to buy the new ones.
But - if readers are impressed by this definition - we will need a footnote to cover situations in which the Tradition was so badly ruptured a generation or so ago that one needs to be a bit radical (like the new ICEL texts) in order to pump out the bilge, get the ship on to an even keel, and put new parts into the engine, so as to get her under way again.
A change might be organic if you could just paste a newly authorised liturgical text, perhaps for a newly canonised Saint, into your Missal or Breviary ... and still keep using it. Or if it mandated revised Rubricae Generales so as to purge the Calendar a bit, so that you could use the old Books as long as you kept your eye on the ORDO.
Change certainly is not organic if it means you have to dump, as now totally unusable, your old Books, and shovel money at publishers to buy the new ones.
But - if readers are impressed by this definition - we will need a footnote to cover situations in which the Tradition was so badly ruptured a generation or so ago that one needs to be a bit radical (like the new ICEL texts) in order to pump out the bilge, get the ship on to an even keel, and put new parts into the engine, so as to get her under way again.
S Pelagius
In the late medieval glass in New College Chapel (you can't do much better than Oxford for late medieval glass; by the time the bastards had got the Reformation to stick in Oxford, the age of the Learned Georgian Antiquaries had arrived to preserve on the grounds of Antiquity what the Reformers would have destroyed on the grounds of Idolatry) there is a window with a figure wearing a papal tiara and carrying a cross, labelled "S Pelagius".
Can anybody throw any light on this?
Can anybody throw any light on this?
Query
Does anybody know what modern scholarship holds about the authorship of Omni die dic Mariae? Was it written by S Bernard or S Casimir? Did Fr Faber translate any bits other than the first part?
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