I have had a look at the site metre map. Whichever visitor I hit, I was given a lot of info about him/her. What puzzles me is that in each case it assured me that the length of the visit was nil seconds.
I shall never understand this computer business.
15 February 2010
14 February 2010
11 February 2010
Lent
As the weeks of deprivation approach, I observe in a newly opened supermarket lobsters for only £4.99. They come frozen all the way from British North America.
Even observant Byzantines, I gather, are allowed to eat such food, categorised as marine rubbish, during Lent.
Roll on the happy season.
Is it philologically correct to speak of the "carbon footprint" of a lobster?
Even observant Byzantines, I gather, are allowed to eat such food, categorised as marine rubbish, during Lent.
Roll on the happy season.
Is it philologically correct to speak of the "carbon footprint" of a lobster?
10 February 2010
Rainbows
Tomorrow, Feast of our Blessed Lady of Lourdes, affords one of those liturgical coincidences with which the Compiler of the Celestial ORDO delights to delight us. If the day had been a feria, the Mattins reading from Genesis would have been about YHWH setting his Bow in the heavens as a sign to Noah of His Covenant. But it isn't. Yet in the Mattins which the Old Rite gives us of our Lady's Appearance, we find this elegant piece of typology: "R Like a bow shining among the clouds, and like the blossom of roses in days of spring, and like lilies in the places that water passes through,* Thus shines the Virgin Immaculate. V I shall set my bow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of my Covenant with you. Thus ..."
Did Leo XIII's liturgists dream this up, or is the typology from one of the Fathers? Anyway, a pretty 'organic' piece of liturgical development, sez I . (Perhaps you gather from this that I have just started reading for review Laszlo Dobszay's The Restoration and Organic Development of the Roman Rite.)
I like the feast, and texts, of our Lady of Lourdes, anyway. They suggest that spring might come soon.
Unless, of course, you're Oz.
Did Leo XIII's liturgists dream this up, or is the typology from one of the Fathers? Anyway, a pretty 'organic' piece of liturgical development, sez I . (Perhaps you gather from this that I have just started reading for review Laszlo Dobszay's The Restoration and Organic Development of the Roman Rite.)
I like the feast, and texts, of our Lady of Lourdes, anyway. They suggest that spring might come soon.
Unless, of course, you're Oz.
8 February 2010
Is this the End?
Like those nice old London Routemasters, all of a sudden juicy bits of news arrive in convoys. That pert Ms Gledhill (did the naughty girl disregard an embargo?) prematurely blew the gaff on the refusal of the Manchester Group to envisage an honourable place in the Church of England for Catholics. In the world of secular politics, that obnoxious Blair redivivus David Cameron is advising the ABC to reform the C of E along the lines of his own 'transformation' of the Conservative Party: what a hoot! And how clear now is his New Liberal agenda to bully Political Correctness through with just as much determined brutality as any old-style Lefty. You won't catch me rooting for that tacky little crook-on-the-make. Under Cameron, the old idea that at least there were a few shreds of Toryism left in the 'Conservative' party has finally expired.
And poor Sentamu is getting a battering for his claim that Ordinariate members would not be 'real Catholics'. I think people should lay off him. The plain and obvious fact is that he is not very bright. Dissecting his utterances is just cruelty to dumb animals. The last time Canterbury was vacant, they had to bring a Welshman in to fill it ... and another name mentioned was that of an Irish bishop ... because the quality of the English bench of bishops (with extremely few exceptions) can hardly ever have been lower. (Possibly this is because the job is such a lousy one nowadays that very few men of any distinction are likely to want it: remember the Chadwicks?). As long ago as 1944, Gregory Dix wrote "Even when the stately summer of the Carolines was over, the 'Whig grandee' bishops of the eighteenth century and the 'Greek Play' bishops of [the 1860s] still had something for which the genial energy of a business man in gaiters does not quite compensate. It was a dignified tradition, with much of solid good about it in spite of its gaps. But the growing poverty of the clergy and the growth of great industrial dioceses have today made it permanently impossible to maintain something which was more a consequence of the social 'set-up' based on landed property in the aristocratic rural England of the seventeenth-eighteenth centuries than a product of Anglicanism in itself. And the loss of the old otium cum dig. has brought with it a lowering of the general level of clerical scholarship, which counted for a good deal in building up that particular tradition ... Nor could I personally cling to the C of E only or chiefly because of the singular graciousness and goodness of some aspects of its past ... these things are now in the past, you know!"
Canon Gary Bennett made some of the same points in his 1987 Crockford's preface, for which he was hounded to suicide ("The vultures are already circling round this man", one of those kindly episcopal liberals observed the day before his death). More than two decades later, the situation is even more stark. We are emerging into a new, hard-faced, savage world in which even the velvet glove around the iron fist is being discarded as an outmoded civility. 'Conservatives' are determined to hack away any remnants of the idea that human beings exist within a tradition. 'Liberals' are notorious for their illiberal determination to root out any who question their own dogmatic rigidities. And the Church of England is substantially in the hands of very little men whose lack of any idea where they are going is surpassed only by their determination to go there as fast as possible. Facilis ... and, indeed praeceps ...
This is the basic reason - far beyond such mere symptoms as womenbishops - why the Ordinariate scheme is essential. Newman, notoriously, did not want the Church of England (even after he had left it) to be damaged while it still functioned as a bastion against infidelity. But he forsaw a day when sects like the Church of England would have been so infiltrated and taken over by the Enemy that, instead of being fortresses contributing to the defence of Christendom, they would themselves have become part of the military strength of the advancing Enemy.
I am not completely sure that we have quite reached that point; there are still small groups of embattled Christians precariously surviving within the Established Church. I am certain that it is against the background of such an analysis that we must try to discern our future. Heaven knows, there is enough Satanic Smoke, as Paul VI put it, in the current RC Church. But we are being offered a position in one of the last strongpoints during what may, in terms at least of this present civilisation, be the Last Battle.
And poor Sentamu is getting a battering for his claim that Ordinariate members would not be 'real Catholics'. I think people should lay off him. The plain and obvious fact is that he is not very bright. Dissecting his utterances is just cruelty to dumb animals. The last time Canterbury was vacant, they had to bring a Welshman in to fill it ... and another name mentioned was that of an Irish bishop ... because the quality of the English bench of bishops (with extremely few exceptions) can hardly ever have been lower. (Possibly this is because the job is such a lousy one nowadays that very few men of any distinction are likely to want it: remember the Chadwicks?). As long ago as 1944, Gregory Dix wrote "Even when the stately summer of the Carolines was over, the 'Whig grandee' bishops of the eighteenth century and the 'Greek Play' bishops of [the 1860s] still had something for which the genial energy of a business man in gaiters does not quite compensate. It was a dignified tradition, with much of solid good about it in spite of its gaps. But the growing poverty of the clergy and the growth of great industrial dioceses have today made it permanently impossible to maintain something which was more a consequence of the social 'set-up' based on landed property in the aristocratic rural England of the seventeenth-eighteenth centuries than a product of Anglicanism in itself. And the loss of the old otium cum dig. has brought with it a lowering of the general level of clerical scholarship, which counted for a good deal in building up that particular tradition ... Nor could I personally cling to the C of E only or chiefly because of the singular graciousness and goodness of some aspects of its past ... these things are now in the past, you know!"
Canon Gary Bennett made some of the same points in his 1987 Crockford's preface, for which he was hounded to suicide ("The vultures are already circling round this man", one of those kindly episcopal liberals observed the day before his death). More than two decades later, the situation is even more stark. We are emerging into a new, hard-faced, savage world in which even the velvet glove around the iron fist is being discarded as an outmoded civility. 'Conservatives' are determined to hack away any remnants of the idea that human beings exist within a tradition. 'Liberals' are notorious for their illiberal determination to root out any who question their own dogmatic rigidities. And the Church of England is substantially in the hands of very little men whose lack of any idea where they are going is surpassed only by their determination to go there as fast as possible. Facilis ... and, indeed praeceps ...
This is the basic reason - far beyond such mere symptoms as womenbishops - why the Ordinariate scheme is essential. Newman, notoriously, did not want the Church of England (even after he had left it) to be damaged while it still functioned as a bastion against infidelity. But he forsaw a day when sects like the Church of England would have been so infiltrated and taken over by the Enemy that, instead of being fortresses contributing to the defence of Christendom, they would themselves have become part of the military strength of the advancing Enemy.
I am not completely sure that we have quite reached that point; there are still small groups of embattled Christians precariously surviving within the Established Church. I am certain that it is against the background of such an analysis that we must try to discern our future. Heaven knows, there is enough Satanic Smoke, as Paul VI put it, in the current RC Church. But we are being offered a position in one of the last strongpoints during what may, in terms at least of this present civilisation, be the Last Battle.
7 February 2010
Patrologia Graeca
Very many thanks to kind colleagues for their help with Migne .
As far as I can make out, having tried out the help offered, PG 151 (with S Gregory Palamas' homilies, or rather, some of them) is not available free online. If anybody discovers that it is, I'd be grateful...
As far as I can make out, having tried out the help offered, PG 151 (with S Gregory Palamas' homilies, or rather, some of them) is not available free online. If anybody discovers that it is, I'd be grateful...
6 February 2010
Uterque Calix
Can anyone explain to me why, on videos from EWTN of EF Masses, the celebrant (?always) appears to prepare, consecrate (and subsequently ablute) two chalices?
Are they crypto-Anglicans?
============================================================
No, it's not a matter of one chalice being used as a ciborium. Look for yourself.
Are they crypto-Anglicans?
============================================================
No, it's not a matter of one chalice being used as a ciborium. Look for yourself.
5 February 2010
Nomina Sacra
Recently I was at a RC OF Mass; and, as so often, was struck by the fact that not even the clergy (there were about fifty concelebrants) bow their heads at the Name of Jesus, let alone at the names of the Great Mother of God, the Saint of the Day, or the Sovereign Pontiff. Is this the result of the demise of the Biretta culture? In the Patrimony, we are so used to keeping our ears pricked for those blessed Names at which we twitch our hats that, even when we are hatless, these Names don't just sweep over us unnoticed as we loll comatose.
Each of the RC OF Masses I have been to in the last three or four months has been deeply moving because of the personal reasons that drew me to attend ... persons of whom I am deeply fond. But, liturgically, I have obcurely felt that the experience had an alien dimension. Even though each of them was, I was informed, at the "good end" of the spectrum of 'performance'. Indeed, I found myself wondering if Newman's point had not, by some strange paradox, been turned on its head. He, you remember, explained to an Anglican that: "The idea of worship is different in the Catholic Church from the idea of it in your Church". Faith, he went on to argue, is needed to take the convert over the gap so that he can understand the Catholic idea of worship. How different things are today. Nowadays, Charles Reding would not get the liturgical flash of enlightenment which he has in the last pages of Loss and Gain by going to a RC church. Nowadays, in effect, an Anglican Catholic convert to the RCC is invited to transfer from liturgy which does express the "Catholic idea" to a culture in which, it seems to me, that "idea" has sometimes to be read into the rite rather than being read out of it. In saying this, I reveal, perhaps, personal inadequacies, and I have no desire to be combative or cause offence.
But I can't rid myself of a feeling that in our time, Reding's sort of transformative experience would be much more likely to be had in an Anglican Catholic church. It is there, and in but a very small handful of RC 'show' churches, and in Oriental rites, that worship which is manifestly transcendent, objective, and an irruption of the Divine, can be encountered. In very many RC churches, where the worship is not strongly distinct from what you find among devout high church Methodists, it can require a real act of will, logic, and of Faith to remind oneself that the minimum technical requirements for validity are being fulfilled and that therefore This really is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. I am not surprised that Evelyn Waugh's felt as he did after the post-conciliar 'reforms'.
In our time, Newman's RC Willis would be very unlikely to say: "To me, nothing is so consoling, so thrilling, so overcoming, as the Mass, said as it is among us. I could attend Masses for ever, and not be tired."
Who was it who called the Mass the most beautiful thing this side of heaven? Was it the Novus Ordo that he had in mind?
Each of the RC OF Masses I have been to in the last three or four months has been deeply moving because of the personal reasons that drew me to attend ... persons of whom I am deeply fond. But, liturgically, I have obcurely felt that the experience had an alien dimension. Even though each of them was, I was informed, at the "good end" of the spectrum of 'performance'. Indeed, I found myself wondering if Newman's point had not, by some strange paradox, been turned on its head. He, you remember, explained to an Anglican that: "The idea of worship is different in the Catholic Church from the idea of it in your Church". Faith, he went on to argue, is needed to take the convert over the gap so that he can understand the Catholic idea of worship. How different things are today. Nowadays, Charles Reding would not get the liturgical flash of enlightenment which he has in the last pages of Loss and Gain by going to a RC church. Nowadays, in effect, an Anglican Catholic convert to the RCC is invited to transfer from liturgy which does express the "Catholic idea" to a culture in which, it seems to me, that "idea" has sometimes to be read into the rite rather than being read out of it. In saying this, I reveal, perhaps, personal inadequacies, and I have no desire to be combative or cause offence.
But I can't rid myself of a feeling that in our time, Reding's sort of transformative experience would be much more likely to be had in an Anglican Catholic church. It is there, and in but a very small handful of RC 'show' churches, and in Oriental rites, that worship which is manifestly transcendent, objective, and an irruption of the Divine, can be encountered. In very many RC churches, where the worship is not strongly distinct from what you find among devout high church Methodists, it can require a real act of will, logic, and of Faith to remind oneself that the minimum technical requirements for validity are being fulfilled and that therefore This really is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. I am not surprised that Evelyn Waugh's felt as he did after the post-conciliar 'reforms'.
In our time, Newman's RC Willis would be very unlikely to say: "To me, nothing is so consoling, so thrilling, so overcoming, as the Mass, said as it is among us. I could attend Masses for ever, and not be tired."
Who was it who called the Mass the most beautiful thing this side of heaven? Was it the Novus Ordo that he had in mind?
3 February 2010
The Brandsma Review
Somebody kindly sent me a copy of this Irish bimonthly; which is full of good stuff. An article on the Hiberno-Catholic priest (Anglo-Catholic seems an inept term) Fr Basil Maturin; on Dr Johnson's sympathy for Catholicism; and many sound opinions well argued. Oestrogen pollution in our waterways ... Filippo Lippi's La Madonna dell' umilita with a discussion about whether the Infant Lord is portrayed as a Down 's syndrome baby. ...
Interesting, that last. Artists have portrayed Christ, so as to make a point, as negroid or Asiatic; no harm there, since he was Jewish and yet we have often portrayed him as Caucasian. But offensively female Christs have appeared, as avant garde artists and ultraliberal clerics conspire to make their silly point. We could play this game too. Christ with Down's Syndrome would be a telling way of making a good point about the holocaust to which those thus formed are subjected in our thanatophiliac culture. And about the equal worth of all humans. Yes?
brandsmabooks@eircom.net
Interesting, that last. Artists have portrayed Christ, so as to make a point, as negroid or Asiatic; no harm there, since he was Jewish and yet we have often portrayed him as Caucasian. But offensively female Christs have appeared, as avant garde artists and ultraliberal clerics conspire to make their silly point. We could play this game too. Christ with Down's Syndrome would be a telling way of making a good point about the holocaust to which those thus formed are subjected in our thanatophiliac culture. And about the equal worth of all humans. Yes?
brandsmabooks@eircom.net
Papal Visit
Well, the news that the Pope is to visit Britain is hardly news, is it, and we still know absolutely nothing about the itinerary. A month or two ago, I speculated on what might happen if the Holy Father comes - as rumour had it he would to Oxford. Let me be more explicit. When Heads of State come here, the custom is for them to be given Honorary Degrees "by Diploma". This means that, instead of an Oration which might be, in parts, light-hearted, Mr Orator reads out a dignified legal document (most sections start with "Cum ...") on the excellences of the distinguished visitor. Clearly, this is even more appropriate when the visitor is himself of considerable academic standing. If it does not happen with regard to the Holy Father, I think I will be interested to know why.
More speculations from me: the media are distinctly more overtly hostile now than they were during the last papal visit in 1982. For one thing, John Paul's lifetime opposition to varying forms of totalitarianism tended to restrain the secularists a little at a time when memories of Stalinism were a trifle fresher. No such considerations apply now. And they've got a real head of steam going. I don't suppose the Hitlerjugend question will be much good except for a few sneers and cartoons; unless the "investigative journalists" who are undoubtedly even now burrowing away can come up with something really new and dramatic in this field, to make very much of it would just cause yawns. But one possibility is that they will attempt to smear the Sovereign Pontiff by suggesting that he was involved in paedophile cover-ups. They might use their familiar weapons of suggestio falsi and suppressio veri by examining all the cases that might have passed over his desk, and then testing whether any of the characters involved might have crossed the pontiff's path in other contexts: so as to suggest that he protected a vast network of iffy cronies.
When Benedict became Pope, he restored some items of pontifical garb which had become obsolete: red shoes, and so on. And journalists noticed that he wore sunglasses; and such things were combined into a narrative of campness, which was then linked with the claim that his middle-aged secretary was not totally ugly, so as to create a suggestion of homosexuality. He and Mgr G were alleged to have spent nights together - sinister, that - in Dr Ratzinger's flat. This is all totally risible, but the papers might try it on if they can't come up with something better.
And, talking about sexuality, there is the question of Newman's 'orientation'. I would be surprised and disappointed if the Grauniad did not do an article on that which would appeal to the credulous dogmatists who read that once great newspaper. Possibly, too, there may be pickings for Top Names in Academe, especially in the History Faculty. Diarmuid McCullough and David Starkey might be able to pocket some fees for various pieces of 'background'. However that may be, I have very little doubt that dissident 'Catholics' will be wheeled out to repeat their tired claptrap.
One thing you can be sure of: the Devil will not spend his entire summer sunbathing on some beach in Florida. Not a lot will happen while we have other things on our minds with a British General Election pending, nor while a new government is having its First Hundred Days. But a fortnight or so before the Holy Father's arrival ...
More speculations from me: the media are distinctly more overtly hostile now than they were during the last papal visit in 1982. For one thing, John Paul's lifetime opposition to varying forms of totalitarianism tended to restrain the secularists a little at a time when memories of Stalinism were a trifle fresher. No such considerations apply now. And they've got a real head of steam going. I don't suppose the Hitlerjugend question will be much good except for a few sneers and cartoons; unless the "investigative journalists" who are undoubtedly even now burrowing away can come up with something really new and dramatic in this field, to make very much of it would just cause yawns. But one possibility is that they will attempt to smear the Sovereign Pontiff by suggesting that he was involved in paedophile cover-ups. They might use their familiar weapons of suggestio falsi and suppressio veri by examining all the cases that might have passed over his desk, and then testing whether any of the characters involved might have crossed the pontiff's path in other contexts: so as to suggest that he protected a vast network of iffy cronies.
When Benedict became Pope, he restored some items of pontifical garb which had become obsolete: red shoes, and so on. And journalists noticed that he wore sunglasses; and such things were combined into a narrative of campness, which was then linked with the claim that his middle-aged secretary was not totally ugly, so as to create a suggestion of homosexuality. He and Mgr G were alleged to have spent nights together - sinister, that - in Dr Ratzinger's flat. This is all totally risible, but the papers might try it on if they can't come up with something better.
And, talking about sexuality, there is the question of Newman's 'orientation'. I would be surprised and disappointed if the Grauniad did not do an article on that which would appeal to the credulous dogmatists who read that once great newspaper. Possibly, too, there may be pickings for Top Names in Academe, especially in the History Faculty. Diarmuid McCullough and David Starkey might be able to pocket some fees for various pieces of 'background'. However that may be, I have very little doubt that dissident 'Catholics' will be wheeled out to repeat their tired claptrap.
One thing you can be sure of: the Devil will not spend his entire summer sunbathing on some beach in Florida. Not a lot will happen while we have other things on our minds with a British General Election pending, nor while a new government is having its First Hundred Days. But a fortnight or so before the Holy Father's arrival ...
2 February 2010
LENT Carni "vale" dicamus
Meat during Lent? Some good comments from readers about the ecology of cows and the importance of eating woodcock and rabbits. I used to when we lived in the Sussex and Devon countrysides. Indeed, I was Master in charge of the Shoot ...
1 February 2010
Declining numbers
Since last November, visitor numbers have been declining by about a thousand a month. Perhaps readers who enjoy this blog could promote it by providing links to it from other blogs? At this rate, numbers will be down to nil in a couple of years.
A friend says that many people hit a blog by accident when they are seeking some particular word or idea through a search engine; and that on (or just before?) the feast that comes on February 14 I should include words that resonate with those hungry for lerve. Ideas?
Keep it clean.
A friend says that many people hit a blog by accident when they are seeking some particular word or idea through a search engine; and that on (or just before?) the feast that comes on February 14 I should include words that resonate with those hungry for lerve. Ideas?
Keep it clean.
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