I am doing a bit of research on the genesis and early history of The English Missal Missale Anglicanum. I have been unable to detect a copy of the First Edition, said by Google to be 1910, in Bodley (which suggests that the Anglo-Catholic publishing firm of Knotts failed to send the statutory copies of its productions into the copyright libraries). Or indeed anywhere else in Oxford. But I'm not very good on computers; if anyone can detect a copy any Oxford library or church, I'd be grateful for the help. Or if anyone is aware of research already in the public domain on this subject.
I'm sure someone out there must possess as First Edition; if so, and if you're not in Oxford, it would be kind if you would send me your email address so that I can ask you some questions about it.
21 September 2009
20 September 2009
VERSUS OCCIDENTEM
The other day Pam and I walked up the Thames to Eynsham and - how nice to find a RC church unlocked - looked in S Peter's, built on the site of Eynsham Abbey. It was begun in 1940, but because of WW2 only the sanctuary was completed; the rest of the church was just a wooden hut. And that sanctuary was a nice apse in a pared-down Romanesque style, at the East end of the site, thus maintaining the old tradition of Orientation.
Fr Lopes, the priest responsible, was a resolute man, and was determined that the church should be completed to its original design; a good egg; One Of Us, you might say. So it wasn't until after his death that a scaled down version was built; consecrated in 1968.
By then, of course, the Smoke of Satan etc. etc.. So a new sanctuary was constructed at the West End with a free-standing Altar so that the priest would stand behind it (thus facing East) facing his people who would thus be facing West. In fact, just as in Roman basilicas such as S Peter's. The old apse at the East was converted into a baptistry.
Fast-forward to 2009. We have been taught, originally by Anglican liturgists such as Fr Michael Moreton but more recently by RCs such as Dr Lang , that 'Towards the East' is the proper thing. And so it is. There are heaps of patristic evidence for celebrating towards the East, from where we expect the Dayspring; the returning Saviour and Judge; because, as Origen put it, it is from the East that Redemption comes. But this has, in practice, mutated into something subtly different: a belief in the importance of celebrating versus apsidem; facing the sanctuary wall, facing away from the people and in the same direction as them. Much has been written to justify this.
But what are we to make of a church like S Peter's Eynsham? If you face East, you will be facing the people. If you celebrate 'with your back to the people', you will be facing West. Just imagine that one of the splendid new brand of High Church RC priests were appointed to Eynsham; let's call him, for convenience, Fr Theophilus Finegan (because the English RC Church is in dire need of as many Finegans as it can get). Should he get a local carpenter to make him a portable gradine so that when he says an EF Mass, he can pop it onto his altar and celebrate facing away from the people? Or should he face East, even at the cost of his face being visible to the laity, and use the rubrics in the EF Missal which give clear directions about how to use the Old Rite while facing the people (many people tend to forget that S Pius V gave careful instructions how to do this; he had to, didn't he, because he was Bishop of Rome and so many Roman basilicas are thus arranged).
Frankly, if my name were Finegan, I'd face (the real) East. (And if I were Fr T Finegan Cong Or I would feel a bit of a bias towards saying my Masses at that superb - real Italian Baroque - Lady Altar at Brompton which does face East.) But I bet a lot of you out there think - despite the insistance of the Fathers on facing East - that facing away from the people is the most important thing.
(Don't bother to write in with the obvious suggestion of getting the masons in and swinging the church round. And if anyone points out that several times a week I say Mass in S Thomas's at the Holy Rood Altar, which faces North, I shall delete the contribution unless it comes from one of my particular favourites.)
Fr Lopes, the priest responsible, was a resolute man, and was determined that the church should be completed to its original design; a good egg; One Of Us, you might say. So it wasn't until after his death that a scaled down version was built; consecrated in 1968.
By then, of course, the Smoke of Satan etc. etc.. So a new sanctuary was constructed at the West End with a free-standing Altar so that the priest would stand behind it (thus facing East) facing his people who would thus be facing West. In fact, just as in Roman basilicas such as S Peter's. The old apse at the East was converted into a baptistry.
Fast-forward to 2009. We have been taught, originally by Anglican liturgists such as Fr Michael Moreton but more recently by RCs such as Dr Lang , that 'Towards the East' is the proper thing. And so it is. There are heaps of patristic evidence for celebrating towards the East, from where we expect the Dayspring; the returning Saviour and Judge; because, as Origen put it, it is from the East that Redemption comes. But this has, in practice, mutated into something subtly different: a belief in the importance of celebrating versus apsidem; facing the sanctuary wall, facing away from the people and in the same direction as them. Much has been written to justify this.
But what are we to make of a church like S Peter's Eynsham? If you face East, you will be facing the people. If you celebrate 'with your back to the people', you will be facing West. Just imagine that one of the splendid new brand of High Church RC priests were appointed to Eynsham; let's call him, for convenience, Fr Theophilus Finegan (because the English RC Church is in dire need of as many Finegans as it can get). Should he get a local carpenter to make him a portable gradine so that when he says an EF Mass, he can pop it onto his altar and celebrate facing away from the people? Or should he face East, even at the cost of his face being visible to the laity, and use the rubrics in the EF Missal which give clear directions about how to use the Old Rite while facing the people (many people tend to forget that S Pius V gave careful instructions how to do this; he had to, didn't he, because he was Bishop of Rome and so many Roman basilicas are thus arranged).
Frankly, if my name were Finegan, I'd face (the real) East. (And if I were Fr T Finegan Cong Or I would feel a bit of a bias towards saying my Masses at that superb - real Italian Baroque - Lady Altar at Brompton which does face East.) But I bet a lot of you out there think - despite the insistance of the Fathers on facing East - that facing away from the people is the most important thing.
(Don't bother to write in with the obvious suggestion of getting the masons in and swinging the church round. And if anyone points out that several times a week I say Mass in S Thomas's at the Holy Rood Altar, which faces North, I shall delete the contribution unless it comes from one of my particular favourites.)
19 September 2009
Via Nordica Media
In i933 Dom Gregory Dix wrote a couple of scintillating articles about the errors of one Dr N P Williams (formerly, I have to admit, a priest on the strength of S Thomas's). Williams had invented "Nordic Catholicism", "neither Roman nor Byzantine ... non-Papal, but at the same time specifically Western in its outlook and temper". He associated this with the 'Nordic' lands of Britain, Scandinavia, Holland [included presumably so as to incorporate the minute gang of schismatics called the'Old Catholics'] and North Germany.
Interesting, isn't it, that a donnish Oxford Anglican should be devising this Aryan racist nonsense just as Hitlerism was on the up. Of course Williams did not get all this from Nazism; it is, rather, a superb example of how things can be in the air; the fashion of the times ... the spawn of the Zeitgeist ... an idea whose time has come and whose time will through the mercy of God undoubtedly go. You will recall the parallel of Eugenics and racial purity, which were already being peddled by birth-controllers in America and Europe when the euthanasia of the unfit and the elimination of European Jewry were merely a gleam in Herr Hitler's artistic eye.
Dix was merciless in the satirical bite of his articles (I believe Williams never spoke to him again). I will give but one example. Williams had written of the "essential religious genius of the Northern peoples ... mystical soaring quality ... beneath grey and weeping skies ... quality which urges it to pierce straight upwards to the ineffable Godhead itself, and forbids it to take over-much delight in symbols, or to rest with satisfaction in material objects of devotion". Dix begins his clinical demolition of this claptrap thus:
It is a vivid and sympathetic picture. One can almost see these mystical and polygamous freemen at their simple devotions, and catch the rustle of their golden beards as they bend forward to breathe unsuperstitious prayers into their winged casques, seated on damp logs beneath the grey and weeping dome of heaven.
At the end of his first article, Dix writes:
It has been the nemesis of all racial Christianities from St Paul's opponents to the present day that they have proved sterile and inadequate just in proportion as they have expressed only the emphatic qualities of a race. Truth will be held most entirely and in due proportion in a Church which is truly "universal", supra-racial, AND UNAFFECTED BY THE TRANSIENT SPIRIT OF A PARTICULAR AGE.
And in the other paper, he writes:
Above all else, the Oxford Movement was an attempt to recover for the magisterium of the Church that final control of belief which "liberalism"claims for irresponsible private scholarship. ... "liberal Catholics" ... seek to impose on the Oxford Movement a theology which is not its own, which springs indeed from the principles of that "liberalism" which, as Newman said, "is the enemy".
66 years later, how relevant are Dix's words to the Liberal establishment of today, to its servitude to the Spirit of the Age in matters such as Priestesses, and to its certain transience.
Interesting, isn't it, that a donnish Oxford Anglican should be devising this Aryan racist nonsense just as Hitlerism was on the up. Of course Williams did not get all this from Nazism; it is, rather, a superb example of how things can be in the air; the fashion of the times ... the spawn of the Zeitgeist ... an idea whose time has come and whose time will through the mercy of God undoubtedly go. You will recall the parallel of Eugenics and racial purity, which were already being peddled by birth-controllers in America and Europe when the euthanasia of the unfit and the elimination of European Jewry were merely a gleam in Herr Hitler's artistic eye.
Dix was merciless in the satirical bite of his articles (I believe Williams never spoke to him again). I will give but one example. Williams had written of the "essential religious genius of the Northern peoples ... mystical soaring quality ... beneath grey and weeping skies ... quality which urges it to pierce straight upwards to the ineffable Godhead itself, and forbids it to take over-much delight in symbols, or to rest with satisfaction in material objects of devotion". Dix begins his clinical demolition of this claptrap thus:
It is a vivid and sympathetic picture. One can almost see these mystical and polygamous freemen at their simple devotions, and catch the rustle of their golden beards as they bend forward to breathe unsuperstitious prayers into their winged casques, seated on damp logs beneath the grey and weeping dome of heaven.
At the end of his first article, Dix writes:
It has been the nemesis of all racial Christianities from St Paul's opponents to the present day that they have proved sterile and inadequate just in proportion as they have expressed only the emphatic qualities of a race. Truth will be held most entirely and in due proportion in a Church which is truly "universal", supra-racial, AND UNAFFECTED BY THE TRANSIENT SPIRIT OF A PARTICULAR AGE.
And in the other paper, he writes:
Above all else, the Oxford Movement was an attempt to recover for the magisterium of the Church that final control of belief which "liberalism"claims for irresponsible private scholarship. ... "liberal Catholics" ... seek to impose on the Oxford Movement a theology which is not its own, which springs indeed from the principles of that "liberalism" which, as Newman said, "is the enemy".
66 years later, how relevant are Dix's words to the Liberal establishment of today, to its servitude to the Spirit of the Age in matters such as Priestesses, and to its certain transience.
Embers???
According to the Book of Common Prayer, the Missal of S Pius V, my Ordo, and the admirable S Lawrence Ordo, today is the Saturday of the the September Ember Days, or 'Quater Tense' as I have heard them called (Quatuor Tempora, Latin for 'Four Times'). We observe them on the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after Holy Cross Day. But the silly old C of E Common Worship moved them to the week before the Sunday nearest to Michaelmass - which would be next week.
At this point my eye strays to the Gricigliano Calendar hanging, for its nice pickies, beside my computer. Di immortales! There I see that the Institute is keeping these Ember Days on the Common Worship date. I find this highly mysterious. Does anybody know the reason? As an Anglican Catholic I feel I have to warn them that this is a slippery slope which will end up with Women Priests (just imagine them in the blue pompoms!) and Episcopussies (apologies to Professor Tighe for not using his rather clever flaminicae).
In am not often moved to miss my breakfast, but after all those readings and collects about fasting in this morning's EF Mass (I said that option), and the fact that today is also the anticipated Vigil of S Matthew, I was shamed into doing so.
I shall make up later when the news comes through that Good S Januarius has liquefied. I hope Neapolitan readers will keep me informed.
At this point my eye strays to the Gricigliano Calendar hanging, for its nice pickies, beside my computer. Di immortales! There I see that the Institute is keeping these Ember Days on the Common Worship date. I find this highly mysterious. Does anybody know the reason? As an Anglican Catholic I feel I have to warn them that this is a slippery slope which will end up with Women Priests (just imagine them in the blue pompoms!) and Episcopussies (apologies to Professor Tighe for not using his rather clever flaminicae).
In am not often moved to miss my breakfast, but after all those readings and collects about fasting in this morning's EF Mass (I said that option), and the fact that today is also the anticipated Vigil of S Matthew, I was shamed into doing so.
I shall make up later when the news comes through that Good S Januarius has liquefied. I hope Neapolitan readers will keep me informed.
16 September 2009
Consecration
How lovely to see distinguished blogger Brother Lawrence Lew being solemnly professed in the Oxford Blackfriars on Sunday. May God bless him and give him multos annos in his service to his people.
REFORM OF THE REFORM: THE BREVIARY
A 'traditional' approach to the post-conciliar Divine Office would start, I suppose, with the proper implementation of the rubrics that are in the Liturgy of the Hours. Thus incense should, when the office is in common, always be used at the Gospel Canticles at Morning and Evening Prayer. This reproduces the Sacrifice of Incense in the worship of the Temple in Jerusalem, and, quite apart from reminding us of the proper dignity of those canticles and of those who uttered them (our Blessed Lady and S John Baptist), recalls the Temple basis of our worship and the Hebrew basis of our whole Faith.
And real doctrinaire enthusiasts for Vatican II could recall the assumption made there and expressed in the decree Sacrosanctum Concilium that the overwhelming majority of clergy apart from a few duffers would continue to say the Office in Latin.
Then there are things unmentioned in the new Office but arguably assumed, such as the old custom of Deo gratias at the end of Brief Readings and Tu autem Domine miserere nobis - Deo gatias at the conclusion of longer ones. [Thanks be to God; But do thou O Lord have mercy upon us: thanks be to God]
And next, things deliberately omitted but easily restored, such as the full dialogue (as in the Prayer Book) before the first office of the day; and the use of the versicle, response, and collect after the Marian anthem.
But these are slight details compared with my next suggestion. A big loss in the liturgical reforms was the concept of 'commemorations'; the idea that, as well as observing the Saint of the Day, just one observance on one day, the person praying the Office 'commemorates' some other saint. In the old rite, this meant that one remembered a saint who in a previous age of the Church had had a considerable cult, which had now faded and been overlaid by a more recent observance. 'Commemorating' created a diachronic unity with our fellow-believers of earlier centuries. And if one 'commemorates' a saint who is important today in some other part of the world, there is a synchronic unity with fellow Christians in another place now. As an ORDO compiler, it always irritates me that when one comes to November 17, one has to choose between S Hugh and S Hilda and S Elizabeth, or else subject one or more of of them to the indignity of being shifted off their 'proper' day.
'Commemorating' involved saying, after the collect of Lauds and Vespers, the following elements from the Office of the saint you are not treating as the main saint of the day but wish also to remember: the Antiphon which accompanied the Gospel Canticle, plus the Versicle and Response that followed the hymn (one could in the new Office use the Responsory or part of it) plus the Collect.
I remind readers that it is perfectly lawful to use parts of the old Office- Dominical and Festal Lauds and Vespers spring to mind - in place of the forms in the Liturgy of the Hours. One could for example use the ancient text of the Venite and the old usage of invitatories.
And real doctrinaire enthusiasts for Vatican II could recall the assumption made there and expressed in the decree Sacrosanctum Concilium that the overwhelming majority of clergy apart from a few duffers would continue to say the Office in Latin.
Then there are things unmentioned in the new Office but arguably assumed, such as the old custom of Deo gratias at the end of Brief Readings and Tu autem Domine miserere nobis - Deo gatias at the conclusion of longer ones. [Thanks be to God; But do thou O Lord have mercy upon us: thanks be to God]
And next, things deliberately omitted but easily restored, such as the full dialogue (as in the Prayer Book) before the first office of the day; and the use of the versicle, response, and collect after the Marian anthem.
But these are slight details compared with my next suggestion. A big loss in the liturgical reforms was the concept of 'commemorations'; the idea that, as well as observing the Saint of the Day, just one observance on one day, the person praying the Office 'commemorates' some other saint. In the old rite, this meant that one remembered a saint who in a previous age of the Church had had a considerable cult, which had now faded and been overlaid by a more recent observance. 'Commemorating' created a diachronic unity with our fellow-believers of earlier centuries. And if one 'commemorates' a saint who is important today in some other part of the world, there is a synchronic unity with fellow Christians in another place now. As an ORDO compiler, it always irritates me that when one comes to November 17, one has to choose between S Hugh and S Hilda and S Elizabeth, or else subject one or more of of them to the indignity of being shifted off their 'proper' day.
'Commemorating' involved saying, after the collect of Lauds and Vespers, the following elements from the Office of the saint you are not treating as the main saint of the day but wish also to remember: the Antiphon which accompanied the Gospel Canticle, plus the Versicle and Response that followed the hymn (one could in the new Office use the Responsory or part of it) plus the Collect.
I remind readers that it is perfectly lawful to use parts of the old Office- Dominical and Festal Lauds and Vespers spring to mind - in place of the forms in the Liturgy of the Hours. One could for example use the ancient text of the Venite and the old usage of invitatories.
15 September 2009
Irish referendum
A reminder/call to prayer to all those who think that a Lisbonised Europe will be one that increasingly lies vulnerable to the imposition of the Zeitgeist and in which it will increasingly difficult to resist anti-Christian morality, particularly in the spheres of Life issues and Sexuality.
I support financially an organisation called COIR. They do admirable work in facing the pressures in Ireland for Abortion; I support them rather than British organisations because Ireland is one of the few countries in which the matter is still being fought over. And COIR are vigorous young people who propagandise attractively with effective roadshows, do not mind being roughed up by the Plods (Gods, I suppose, in Ireland), and get into colleges and universities. They are refreshingly free of a middle-aged desire to be restrained and responsible.
After the Referendum, I suspect that their coffers will be rather empty. Irish law prohibits us foreigners from financially intervening in Irish politics, but afterwards will be another matter.
www.coircampaign.org
I support financially an organisation called COIR. They do admirable work in facing the pressures in Ireland for Abortion; I support them rather than British organisations because Ireland is one of the few countries in which the matter is still being fought over. And COIR are vigorous young people who propagandise attractively with effective roadshows, do not mind being roughed up by the Plods (Gods, I suppose, in Ireland), and get into colleges and universities. They are refreshingly free of a middle-aged desire to be restrained and responsible.
After the Referendum, I suspect that their coffers will be rather empty. Irish law prohibits us foreigners from financially intervening in Irish politics, but afterwards will be another matter.
www.coircampaign.org
14 September 2009
Married Priests: Practicalities
And I have tended also to chide those well-meaning Anglicanophile Irish with the Financial Question. "It's lovely to hear you so enthusiastic about our Anglican tradition of a clergy allowed to be married. I take it that you and your fellow laity would be prepared to put your money where your mouths are and shell out the much larger sums of money needed to support a married clergy". At this point they usually tend to go quiet and thoughtful.
It is no secret that English RC bishops have tended to cope with the Financial Question by appointing ex-Anglican married priests to the sort of chaplaincies which are well-paid because the Government provides the salaries. I cannot say that I would like to be a RC bishop constrained in his appointments by this consideration. And I can imagine the sort of thoughts that must go through the minds of celibate presbyters as they watch this policy in operation. And there have been sad cases of married Anglican clergy who have been received into full communion and have been extremely disappointed when they have been eventually refused presbyteral ministry on the grounds that there is no way of providing for their families.
I believe that a married clergy is a major part of our Anglican patrimony which God calls us to bring into the unity of the universal Latin Church. And a real married clergy; not just a clergy in which the already married are tolerated as a concession for the first generation. But we can't expect other people to pay for it. We need to be a discrete organisation in which we raise the money to sustain our own custom. And there must be no sense in which our custom undermines the tradition of celibacy in the rest of the Latin Church. We would ordain the already married who had a long-term association with our community but those already ordained would not be allowed to get married and under no circumstances would we accept clergy from elsewhere who sought to join us so that they could get married. Our shortage of money would in any case prevent us from welcoming with particularly open arms Fr O'Murphy when he suddenly and simultaneously discerned his loves for the Anglican liturgical tradition and for the Sacrament of Matrimony.
Oh yes ... and I think we should come into line with the custom both of East and West of having a celibate episcopate. Would it be the end of the world for the ambitious to have to choose between a mitre and a wife?
It is no secret that English RC bishops have tended to cope with the Financial Question by appointing ex-Anglican married priests to the sort of chaplaincies which are well-paid because the Government provides the salaries. I cannot say that I would like to be a RC bishop constrained in his appointments by this consideration. And I can imagine the sort of thoughts that must go through the minds of celibate presbyters as they watch this policy in operation. And there have been sad cases of married Anglican clergy who have been received into full communion and have been extremely disappointed when they have been eventually refused presbyteral ministry on the grounds that there is no way of providing for their families.
I believe that a married clergy is a major part of our Anglican patrimony which God calls us to bring into the unity of the universal Latin Church. And a real married clergy; not just a clergy in which the already married are tolerated as a concession for the first generation. But we can't expect other people to pay for it. We need to be a discrete organisation in which we raise the money to sustain our own custom. And there must be no sense in which our custom undermines the tradition of celibacy in the rest of the Latin Church. We would ordain the already married who had a long-term association with our community but those already ordained would not be allowed to get married and under no circumstances would we accept clergy from elsewhere who sought to join us so that they could get married. Our shortage of money would in any case prevent us from welcoming with particularly open arms Fr O'Murphy when he suddenly and simultaneously discerned his loves for the Anglican liturgical tradition and for the Sacrament of Matrimony.
Oh yes ... and I think we should come into line with the custom both of East and West of having a celibate episcopate. Would it be the end of the world for the ambitious to have to choose between a mitre and a wife?
Hierarchy
Why is it that, in the authentic traditional ordination rites of the Western Church (by which I bet my RC clerical readers were no more ordained than I was ... let's just keep our respective fingers crossed and trust God that rites maimed by Cranmers or Bugninis do really work), presbyters had their hands anointed with the oil of catechumens, but bishops were anointed on the head with Chrism.
Is the difference of the oils used a mark of the superiority of bishops - to show that only the bishop has the summum sacerdotium of the Christos? Or something to do with the hierarchical superiority of heads over hands?
Is the difference of the oils used a mark of the superiority of bishops - to show that only the bishop has the summum sacerdotium of the Christos? Or something to do with the hierarchical superiority of heads over hands?
12 September 2009
CROUCHMAS
Apologies to the confused. This medieval term for the Festival of the Holy Cross was indeed used for the Feast of its Invention [Finding] in May. Since that Feast is abolished in the NO Calendar, I have tended to keep the word alive by apply it to the surviving Feast of the Cross in September.
The abolition of the Invention was a great shame; not only because it was so popular a feast in the Middle Ages, but because it is good to reflect on the Cross in Eastertide; letting our appropriation of Resurrection illuminate the Passion and remembering that Passion and Resurrection are two sides of one coin. I believe S Margaret Mary believed our Lord wanted a feast of the Saqcred Heart in Easter Week.
The abolition of the Invention was a great shame; not only because it was so popular a feast in the Middle Ages, but because it is good to reflect on the Cross in Eastertide; letting our appropriation of Resurrection illuminate the Passion and remembering that Passion and Resurrection are two sides of one coin. I believe S Margaret Mary believed our Lord wanted a feast of the Saqcred Heart in Easter Week.
Married Priests
If there is to be a proper set-up for Anglican Catholics united with the Holy See, among the subjects addressed must be that of a married priesthood - which is something deeply embedded in our Tradition.
Vatican praxis is that those clergy already married are accepted as married priests into Full Communion; but those not married upon their reception are not allowed to get married. Nor are widowed priests. And the acceptance of married clergy is restricted to the 'first generation'. No future married ordinands will be ordained. Let me explain what I think is right about this.
The Anglican Tradition of priests marrying needs a rethink. Few things are more indecorous than the old Anglican custom of a young curate arriving in a parish and being competed for by the unmarried young women of that parish. And the Great Tradition is not very welcoming of the concept of priests marrying. Anglicans of that peculiar type that rejoices in finding areas where our tradition coincides with the Byzantine tradition and stands against the Roman praxis tend to forget that Byzantines are far from keen on priests marrying.
What is wrong with current Vatican praxis is the refusal to accept that, after unity, future generations of married ordinands will be accepted. A married priesthood is a long-standing part of what we are, and is not repugnant to the practice of Byzantines both 'dissident' and 'uniate'. Refusing to contemplate the possibility of this continuing among us is a radical rejection of our faith-history and of what God has done among us; it is reminiscent of the bully-boy tactics of Latin bishops in America over the years to prevent the continuance of a married clergy among American 'uniates'. It is no secret that this has led to quite unnecessary dissensions and schisms.
Against and for a married clery continues.
Vatican praxis is that those clergy already married are accepted as married priests into Full Communion; but those not married upon their reception are not allowed to get married. Nor are widowed priests. And the acceptance of married clergy is restricted to the 'first generation'. No future married ordinands will be ordained. Let me explain what I think is right about this.
The Anglican Tradition of priests marrying needs a rethink. Few things are more indecorous than the old Anglican custom of a young curate arriving in a parish and being competed for by the unmarried young women of that parish. And the Great Tradition is not very welcoming of the concept of priests marrying. Anglicans of that peculiar type that rejoices in finding areas where our tradition coincides with the Byzantine tradition and stands against the Roman praxis tend to forget that Byzantines are far from keen on priests marrying.
What is wrong with current Vatican praxis is the refusal to accept that, after unity, future generations of married ordinands will be accepted. A married priesthood is a long-standing part of what we are, and is not repugnant to the practice of Byzantines both 'dissident' and 'uniate'. Refusing to contemplate the possibility of this continuing among us is a radical rejection of our faith-history and of what God has done among us; it is reminiscent of the bully-boy tactics of Latin bishops in America over the years to prevent the continuance of a married clergy among American 'uniates'. It is no secret that this has led to quite unnecessary dissensions and schisms.
Against and for a married clery continues.
11 September 2009
Our Lady of Oseney
Puritans always feel critical of the popular observances which popular piety heaps upon the Calendar. Thus, S Pius V, the saintly but rather Puritan pope under whom Raffael's great picture of the Madonna di Foligno was evicted from the Church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli on the Capitoline Hill (here at S Thomas's we have a superb copy as part of our High Altar), also evicted a number of popular commemorations from the Calendar, including SS Anne and Joachim. They very soon crept back in. The not-very-saintly-at-all Bugnini evicted ... well, quite a lot of people; but among the casualties of his era was the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Mary. Towards the end of the Pontificate of John Paul II this memoria was edged back onto September 12. It's the way of things.
When this commemoration returned, the Roman authorities made the suggestion that it would do very nicely as a day on which the makers of local calendars could include the Mother of God under some local title. Not a bad idea. I shall commemorate our Lady of Oseney, the Titular of the great abbey - one of the greatest in England - just across the railway lines from us, by whose monks the original S Thomas's was built. (Mind you, I think in future years I might go back to the usage of my learned predecessor Dr Jalland, who, in the 1930s, according to his Parish Newsletters, used to sing a Votive of our Lady for Oseney Abbey on the day after ther feast of S Thomas's Translation in July. Or - sometimes - on July 2, old Visitation day.)
Not that September 12 was the original date for the festival of the Name of Mary. Before the Calendar was reformed by S Pius X, quite a number of festivals were permanently lodged on Sundays. Liturgists tended to dislike this sort of thing, because it meant that the lovely old Roman Sunday Masses, with their prayers composed by fourth and fifth century popes, never got a look-in. And this feast (double major) occupied the Sunday in the Octave of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Third Sunday in September was the Festival of the Seven Dolours of our Lady; Pius X shifted it to the Octave day of her Nativity, which is also, most suitably, the day after Crouchmas (the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, as you RCs call it). It survives there as one of the tiny number of former Octave Days on the modern Calendar. The First Sunday in October was the Festival of the Holy Rosary; under Pius X it went happily to its natural day, October 7, anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto. S Joachim occupied the Sunday after the Assumption. You get the idea. People found that the 'Green' season did rather go on.
Frankly, I'd rather have interruptions of that sort than the endlessly fashionable So-and-so Sundays favoured by the modern English RC hierarchy (and by other modern hierarchies???).
When this commemoration returned, the Roman authorities made the suggestion that it would do very nicely as a day on which the makers of local calendars could include the Mother of God under some local title. Not a bad idea. I shall commemorate our Lady of Oseney, the Titular of the great abbey - one of the greatest in England - just across the railway lines from us, by whose monks the original S Thomas's was built. (Mind you, I think in future years I might go back to the usage of my learned predecessor Dr Jalland, who, in the 1930s, according to his Parish Newsletters, used to sing a Votive of our Lady for Oseney Abbey on the day after ther feast of S Thomas's Translation in July. Or - sometimes - on July 2, old Visitation day.)
Not that September 12 was the original date for the festival of the Name of Mary. Before the Calendar was reformed by S Pius X, quite a number of festivals were permanently lodged on Sundays. Liturgists tended to dislike this sort of thing, because it meant that the lovely old Roman Sunday Masses, with their prayers composed by fourth and fifth century popes, never got a look-in. And this feast (double major) occupied the Sunday in the Octave of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Third Sunday in September was the Festival of the Seven Dolours of our Lady; Pius X shifted it to the Octave day of her Nativity, which is also, most suitably, the day after Crouchmas (the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, as you RCs call it). It survives there as one of the tiny number of former Octave Days on the modern Calendar. The First Sunday in October was the Festival of the Holy Rosary; under Pius X it went happily to its natural day, October 7, anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto. S Joachim occupied the Sunday after the Assumption. You get the idea. People found that the 'Green' season did rather go on.
Frankly, I'd rather have interruptions of that sort than the endlessly fashionable So-and-so Sundays favoured by the modern English RC hierarchy (and by other modern hierarchies???).
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