I have great admiration for the LMS ORDO (LO hereafter) and often look at it. I have never found a misprint or any sort of mistake; I am myself the compiler of an ORDO and find the LMS accuracy well nigh miraculous!
So I am not criticising it; and most certainly not by snide implication. I am simply hoping to open up to the learned among my readers a question which is logically diverting but also has practical implications.
(a) LO thinks it is right to give the local calendars "as they were or should have been" on January 1 1961. I am unsure about this. Local Calendars have always tended to evolve and mutate organically. This continued to happen after 1961 just as it had before, probably by the old means of a Bishop seeking and receiving a particular grant from the SCR, until the publication of the Novus Ordo calendar in 1970, at which point, of course, the whole game-plan changed radically. Should we not incorporate such changes that appear to have happened 1961-1969? As examples, I would take the following: an ORDO of 1969 which I have (i) gives certain directions for the Christian Unity Octave in January. These mainly involve the use of the admirable Mass for the Removal of Schism. (ii) on March 17, S Patrick is shown as a Class ii feast throughout England and Wales.
Yes, I know Summorum Pontificum privileged the rite of 1962, but it did not address the inherently messy business of Local Calendars. It didn't say "local Calendars are to be held frozen at the point of evolution they had reached by 1961". After all, "1962" Missals are published nowadays which include S Joseph in the Canon, despite the fact he was added after the editio typica had been authorised and published.
(b) As LO says, a problem arises with regard to dioceses which did not exist in 1961. (i) So, e.g., Arundel and Brighton, taken out of the diocese of Southwark, is assigned by LO the Calendar of that diocese. My problem here is that the calendar concerned was not designed for Sussex. It was designed for an area including Canterbury in Kent, and so it includes (for just one example) a number of canonised Archbishops of Canterbury. These are of minimal local concern in Sussex. It also follows, of course, that the Southwark calendar, now that Sussex has left that diocese, should no longer show specifically Sussex Saints. (ii) Hallam was made up of territory taken both from Leeds and from Nottingham; and LO only allows it Feasts "which are common to both". Logically, this could be disastrous, because ... well, just suppose there were some Saint who really did belong specifically to the area included in the present diocese of Hallam ... someone who lived his Christian life there or witnessed to Christ by his death there. I don't know whether there is!! But there could be. In this case, he/she would not appear in LO as to be celebrated in Hallam unless he/she had been on the Calendars of both Leeds and Nottingham. And he/she would almost certainly not have been on both! So Hallam would lose a genuinely indigenous Saint; who would continue to be observed in another diocese which no longer embraced the area of his/her relevance!
(c) I rather wonder about those English Martyrs canonised October 25 1970 or beatified 22 November 1987. It seems a shame ... er ... I do realise that this raises questions of a different order from those in (a) and (b); particularly that of the update of the old calendar in general.
Since it is unlikely that Ecclesia Dei has the manpower or archives to sort out such problems as (a) and (b) for however many dioceses worldwide the Catholic Church has, it is, I feel, arguable that knowledgeable people should use the methodology sensibly laid out in Canon 19 and do it themselves ad interim (it could be a long interim).
I would be interested to hear of readers who happen to have English diocesan ORDOs from the years 1961,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9.
5 May 2016
4 May 2016
Ascensions
So which Collect will be used on Ascension Day in the OF next year?
At the Vigil Mass and at the First Vespers, the Editio tertia Missalis Romani of 2002 offers a new Collect, which will be used this year in the new Translation.
And moreover, for the Day itself, the Third Edition gives the alternative of yet another new Collect: except that in this case it isn't new, it's the ancient Roman Collect preserved in the 1962 Missal and, of course, the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (and, I presume, in the Ordinariate formulae). Here is a literal translation of the Latin:
Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that we who believe thy only-begotten Son our Redeemer this day to have ascended into the heavens, may also in mind dwell in the heavenly places.
As an example of how Cranmer expanded his Latin originals, I suspect out of a pastoral desire to ensure that the Collect wasn't over before a dozey congregation had cottoned on to what it was saying, I offer his version:
Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens: so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continually dwell.
The current Roman Collect uses a beautiful piece of Leonine antithetical rhetoric: literally: for the ascension of Christ thy Son is our provection, and, whither the glory of the Head has gone first, thither also is called the hope of the body. I don't like to say anything that even seems disrespectful towards Pope Leo's latinity, but I wonder whether the thought pattern is bit too tight and rapid for a Collect. Rhetoric suitable for a homily (which is where the compilers of the post-Conciliar Missal found this phrase) is not necessarily appropriate for the terse and brief literary form of the Collects of the Roman Rite. Perhaps that is why the old Collect is now on offer again.
There was a horrible tendency for Twentieth Century Liturgical Committee-persons, both Roman Catholic and Anglican, to be too-clever-by-half in the formulae they dreamed up as they sat around their tables.
At the Vigil Mass and at the First Vespers, the Editio tertia Missalis Romani of 2002 offers a new Collect, which will be used this year in the new Translation.
And moreover, for the Day itself, the Third Edition gives the alternative of yet another new Collect: except that in this case it isn't new, it's the ancient Roman Collect preserved in the 1962 Missal and, of course, the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (and, I presume, in the Ordinariate formulae). Here is a literal translation of the Latin:
Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that we who believe thy only-begotten Son our Redeemer this day to have ascended into the heavens, may also in mind dwell in the heavenly places.
As an example of how Cranmer expanded his Latin originals, I suspect out of a pastoral desire to ensure that the Collect wasn't over before a dozey congregation had cottoned on to what it was saying, I offer his version:
Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens: so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continually dwell.
The current Roman Collect uses a beautiful piece of Leonine antithetical rhetoric: literally: for the ascension of Christ thy Son is our provection, and, whither the glory of the Head has gone first, thither also is called the hope of the body. I don't like to say anything that even seems disrespectful towards Pope Leo's latinity, but I wonder whether the thought pattern is bit too tight and rapid for a Collect. Rhetoric suitable for a homily (which is where the compilers of the post-Conciliar Missal found this phrase) is not necessarily appropriate for the terse and brief literary form of the Collects of the Roman Rite. Perhaps that is why the old Collect is now on offer again.
There was a horrible tendency for Twentieth Century Liturgical Committee-persons, both Roman Catholic and Anglican, to be too-clever-by-half in the formulae they dreamed up as they sat around their tables.
2 May 2016
'Righteous among the Romans'
Jews laudably and graciously honour as 'Righteous among the Gentiles' those gentiles whom they deem to have defended, even at personal risk, members of the Jewish race during the horrible antijudaic persections of the twentieth century. The instinct is an admirable and a generous one. During this Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity, a thought occurs to me. Just suppose we in the Ordinariates ... assisted, perhaps, by our dear brethren who still linger in Welbiland ... were to form a list of those Roman Catholics who, in the years before Anglicanorum coetibus, dealt justly with Anglicans ... we could even have it engraved on big brass tablets and hung on the walls of Warwick Street ...
Firstly, of course, heading any and every possible list, there stands Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI. For us in the Ordinariates, he is our great and admired Benefactor and Founder. Which is why some of us rather dislike the malevolent and spiteful way in which (some of) the German bishops and others are currently campaigning to trash his legacy.
Next, among the distinguished living, Fr Aidan Nichols is head and shoulders above the rest. The hours that man has worked, writing on our behalf, helping, advising, planning, preaching, lecturing.
Among the departed, I will mention a figure who appeared in my blog some time ago: the Cardinal MERCIER, who presided over the Malines Conversations. "The Church of England United but not Absorbed".
And another Cardinal: RAMPOLLA, Secretary of State to Leo XIII, who, in the troubled days of the 1890s, when some English RCs asserted that England would be converted if only they could persuade Rome to condemn Anglican Orders, remained a firm friend of Anglicans and of England. He absented himself from the final meeting of the Holy Office at which the formal vote was taken to condemn Anglican Orders.
For today, just one more Cardinal will suffice: GASPARRI, the great and learned canonist, who brought into being the first Codex Iuris Canonici, who, again in the 1890s (when he was not yet a cardinal), found it difficult to understand why Anglican Orders were invalid. In one of the text books he had written he had taken the view that the words in the Roman Pontifical Accipe Spiritum Sanctum [Take the holy goste was the Anglican Form from 1550 onwards] were, on their own, an adequate Form for episcopal consecration, even if the the old consecratory Prayer in the Roman Sacramentaries were not used. As a member of the Papal Commission set up on the Anglican Question, he found it hard to go further than to agree that, for the avoidance of doubt and scruple, Anglicans should be conditionally reordained.
Happily, those old controversies of the 1890s are now just History. It is far from my intention to revive them. But I hope you agree that it is right to honour the memories of good, honest and principled men who were fair to us in difficult times.
Other nominees?
Firstly, of course, heading any and every possible list, there stands Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI. For us in the Ordinariates, he is our great and admired Benefactor and Founder. Which is why some of us rather dislike the malevolent and spiteful way in which (some of) the German bishops and others are currently campaigning to trash his legacy.
Next, among the distinguished living, Fr Aidan Nichols is head and shoulders above the rest. The hours that man has worked, writing on our behalf, helping, advising, planning, preaching, lecturing.
Among the departed, I will mention a figure who appeared in my blog some time ago: the Cardinal MERCIER, who presided over the Malines Conversations. "The Church of England United but not Absorbed".
And another Cardinal: RAMPOLLA, Secretary of State to Leo XIII, who, in the troubled days of the 1890s, when some English RCs asserted that England would be converted if only they could persuade Rome to condemn Anglican Orders, remained a firm friend of Anglicans and of England. He absented himself from the final meeting of the Holy Office at which the formal vote was taken to condemn Anglican Orders.
For today, just one more Cardinal will suffice: GASPARRI, the great and learned canonist, who brought into being the first Codex Iuris Canonici, who, again in the 1890s (when he was not yet a cardinal), found it difficult to understand why Anglican Orders were invalid. In one of the text books he had written he had taken the view that the words in the Roman Pontifical Accipe Spiritum Sanctum [Take the holy goste was the Anglican Form from 1550 onwards] were, on their own, an adequate Form for episcopal consecration, even if the the old consecratory Prayer in the Roman Sacramentaries were not used. As a member of the Papal Commission set up on the Anglican Question, he found it hard to go further than to agree that, for the avoidance of doubt and scruple, Anglicans should be conditionally reordained.
Happily, those old controversies of the 1890s are now just History. It is far from my intention to revive them. But I hope you agree that it is right to honour the memories of good, honest and principled men who were fair to us in difficult times.
Other nominees?
27 April 2016
Parochial affections in Alnwick
While looking round the old Medieval Parish Church at Alnwick in Northumberland a few months ago, I got talking to the Steward by whose kind presence the church was open for people like me to look around it. He lamented that the church, although handy for the Castle, was very uncentrally placed as a place of worship for the town. "Well," I said, "perhaps you should have kept S Paul's in the middle of town and sold this church to the Catholics". (You see, the Anglican early Victorian church of S Paul ... by Salvin ... was, a few years ago, sold to the Catholic Church.)
"Yes", was his reply, "that would have been a rational thing to do. But it would have been unthinkable."
It has a lot of Christian sense to it, this very Anglican and very lay attitude. A church was solemnly anointed and consecrated and for, perhaps, a millennium has been a place where prayer has been valid and generations have been christened and churched, married and buried, in which the community has had its centre ... and such things do matter. Ours is an incarnational religion, in which places are sacred. Matter matters.
But ... affection for a building can become a fetich, an idolatry. It is no secret that this is the factor which led to a smaller percentage of layfolk than of clergy making the transition to the Ordinariate. It is why the Anglican Bishops, Olympic gold medallists in Anal Retentivity, desperately made sure that no church, however much unwanted by the Church of England, fell into the hands, or even the shared use, of the Ordinariate.
S Paul's, in the middle of Alnwick, is a fine building with a tall, assertive, rather East Anglian tower. It is a curiosity in as far as, built by the Third Duke, it contains his effigy over his tomb. It was carved by J E Carew, the irascible Irishman who did so much neo-Classical sculpture for the Earl of Egremont at Petworth in Sussex, not to mention that large marble carving of the Assumption which used to be the altar piece in the Ordinariate Church of our Lady and S Gregory in Warwick Street. His Grace lies wearing his ducal coronet and his Garter robes ... is this a customary combination? I wonder what he would have thought if he could have known that his building, which makes such a statement, now makes that statement for the papists of Alnwick. And I wonder if the pp has him on his obits list.
Those papists, incidentally, had previously worshipped in a much smaller church, S Mary's, lower in the town, which was built in the decade after the Emancipation and is now the Town Museum. Gothic as that style was before it became grammatical, even in alienation it still feels a friendly, homely little place. As congregations numerically decline, I wonder if it is now actually just about the right size for the Catholic congregations of Alnwick. But it doesn't have its own carpark. Beside it, part of the ensemble, is its convent, with a statue of the Mother of God in a niche high up above the entrance, so that still, happily, survives. Or rather, it did do until the end of last September when the few remaining sisters were relocated and the House closed. You knew I was going to add that last sentence, didn't you?
At nearby Berwick on Tweed, the Catholic church is still the intimate unobtrusive building that was put up in 1829, lurking well back from the street and behind the presbytery; accessed through an alleyway. Georgian-gothick windows; still, despite the 1970s, with more than a whiff of the era of Mrs Fitzherbert about it.
There is something, to me, exquisitely, intensely, appealing about Catholic churches of that era. Before the great expansion of the earlier twentieth century, yes ... but before the catastrophic post-conciliar collapse. Have you read Blessed John Henry Newman's description of those years in The Second Spring?
"Yes", was his reply, "that would have been a rational thing to do. But it would have been unthinkable."
It has a lot of Christian sense to it, this very Anglican and very lay attitude. A church was solemnly anointed and consecrated and for, perhaps, a millennium has been a place where prayer has been valid and generations have been christened and churched, married and buried, in which the community has had its centre ... and such things do matter. Ours is an incarnational religion, in which places are sacred. Matter matters.
But ... affection for a building can become a fetich, an idolatry. It is no secret that this is the factor which led to a smaller percentage of layfolk than of clergy making the transition to the Ordinariate. It is why the Anglican Bishops, Olympic gold medallists in Anal Retentivity, desperately made sure that no church, however much unwanted by the Church of England, fell into the hands, or even the shared use, of the Ordinariate.
S Paul's, in the middle of Alnwick, is a fine building with a tall, assertive, rather East Anglian tower. It is a curiosity in as far as, built by the Third Duke, it contains his effigy over his tomb. It was carved by J E Carew, the irascible Irishman who did so much neo-Classical sculpture for the Earl of Egremont at Petworth in Sussex, not to mention that large marble carving of the Assumption which used to be the altar piece in the Ordinariate Church of our Lady and S Gregory in Warwick Street. His Grace lies wearing his ducal coronet and his Garter robes ... is this a customary combination? I wonder what he would have thought if he could have known that his building, which makes such a statement, now makes that statement for the papists of Alnwick. And I wonder if the pp has him on his obits list.
Those papists, incidentally, had previously worshipped in a much smaller church, S Mary's, lower in the town, which was built in the decade after the Emancipation and is now the Town Museum. Gothic as that style was before it became grammatical, even in alienation it still feels a friendly, homely little place. As congregations numerically decline, I wonder if it is now actually just about the right size for the Catholic congregations of Alnwick. But it doesn't have its own carpark. Beside it, part of the ensemble, is its convent, with a statue of the Mother of God in a niche high up above the entrance, so that still, happily, survives. Or rather, it did do until the end of last September when the few remaining sisters were relocated and the House closed. You knew I was going to add that last sentence, didn't you?
At nearby Berwick on Tweed, the Catholic church is still the intimate unobtrusive building that was put up in 1829, lurking well back from the street and behind the presbytery; accessed through an alleyway. Georgian-gothick windows; still, despite the 1970s, with more than a whiff of the era of Mrs Fitzherbert about it.
There is something, to me, exquisitely, intensely, appealing about Catholic churches of that era. Before the great expansion of the earlier twentieth century, yes ... but before the catastrophic post-conciliar collapse. Have you read Blessed John Henry Newman's description of those years in The Second Spring?
26 April 2016
April 26: Our Lady of Perpetual Succour
150 years since the great Ikon, after repairs, was enthroned in Rome.
Prayers for the brthren of the Redemptorist community on Papa Stronsay.
Prayers for the brthren of the Redemptorist community on Papa Stronsay.
23 April 2016
Sacking bishops
Back in the 1850s, Cardinal Wiseman had a falling-out with his Coadjutor, Archbishop Errington. For these purposes, we do not need to know much about why, nor to speculate on the involvement of Henry Manning.
The plain fact was that Wiseman and Errington could not work together, and Errington made little effort to conceal the fact. The matter went to Rome, where Mgr Talbot, not one of our heroes, exacerbated matters by accusing Errington of Gallicanism. It is perhaps fair to say that Errington was out of sync with the current style of Catholicism represented by Pio Nono, Wiseman, and Manning. It sometimes can happen that a bishop may be out of sympathy with the Roman Pontiff ... or even vice versa.
Errington went to Rome and, of course, was received by the Pope. It is, surely, well-nigh inconceivable that a bishop whose job was in question should not be welcomed fraternally and paternally and sympathetically in Rome by the Sovereign Pontiff. Pio Nono begged Errington, as a personal favour to himself, to resign his coadjutorship and to accept the Archbishopric of Port of Spain. Errington refused to resign, but made clear that he would obediently leave his job if the Pope so ordered him. Papa il conte Mastai-Ferretti was unwilling to take such extreme action; and again implored Errington to accept the post offerred him in Trinidad. It was made clear that Talbot's slanders were not believed. Errington took out a pocket book and started to transcribe the Pope's words, which was a novel experience for the Pontiff. Matters deteriorated; soon the guards and the prelates in the ante-chamber were surprised to hear, from behind the closed doors, the two hierarchs shouting angrily at each other.
Errington stormed out of Rome crying Vim patior; patior iniustitiam. The Holy Father felt he had no alternative but to relieve him of his Coadjutorship; upset by the uniqueness of the action to which he was driven, Pope Pius referred to it as Il colpo di stato di Dominiddio. Brian Fothergill, the author (2013) of a biography of Wiseman, quotes a description of it as "an exercise of [the pope's] supreme authority and an exertion of power altogether unwonted and perhaps unprecedented".
Of course, Blessed Pio Nono was an ultramontane tyrant; a baroque throw-back to the unhappy days of Renaissance absolutism. Everybody knows that. Equally, everybody knows how inconceivable it is that, in our happier age, a pope would dismiss or constructively dismiss a bishop for anything other than the very gravest doctrinal or moral delinquency. Deo gratias.
The plain fact was that Wiseman and Errington could not work together, and Errington made little effort to conceal the fact. The matter went to Rome, where Mgr Talbot, not one of our heroes, exacerbated matters by accusing Errington of Gallicanism. It is perhaps fair to say that Errington was out of sync with the current style of Catholicism represented by Pio Nono, Wiseman, and Manning. It sometimes can happen that a bishop may be out of sympathy with the Roman Pontiff ... or even vice versa.
Errington went to Rome and, of course, was received by the Pope. It is, surely, well-nigh inconceivable that a bishop whose job was in question should not be welcomed fraternally and paternally and sympathetically in Rome by the Sovereign Pontiff. Pio Nono begged Errington, as a personal favour to himself, to resign his coadjutorship and to accept the Archbishopric of Port of Spain. Errington refused to resign, but made clear that he would obediently leave his job if the Pope so ordered him. Papa il conte Mastai-Ferretti was unwilling to take such extreme action; and again implored Errington to accept the post offerred him in Trinidad. It was made clear that Talbot's slanders were not believed. Errington took out a pocket book and started to transcribe the Pope's words, which was a novel experience for the Pontiff. Matters deteriorated; soon the guards and the prelates in the ante-chamber were surprised to hear, from behind the closed doors, the two hierarchs shouting angrily at each other.
Errington stormed out of Rome crying Vim patior; patior iniustitiam. The Holy Father felt he had no alternative but to relieve him of his Coadjutorship; upset by the uniqueness of the action to which he was driven, Pope Pius referred to it as Il colpo di stato di Dominiddio. Brian Fothergill, the author (2013) of a biography of Wiseman, quotes a description of it as "an exercise of [the pope's] supreme authority and an exertion of power altogether unwonted and perhaps unprecedented".
Of course, Blessed Pio Nono was an ultramontane tyrant; a baroque throw-back to the unhappy days of Renaissance absolutism. Everybody knows that. Equally, everybody knows how inconceivable it is that, in our happier age, a pope would dismiss or constructively dismiss a bishop for anything other than the very gravest doctrinal or moral delinquency. Deo gratias.
21 April 2016
Censing the Altar at High Mass
Let the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice: words said by the Priest as he censes the Altar at the Offertory at High Mass.
The evening sacrifice: That is, the Minchah, or 'meat-offering', of fine flour, mixed with oil and frankincense, and salted, which was added to the daily burnt-offering of a lamb, both morning and evening; but, for a typical reason, a greater stress was laid on the evening rite. The Minchah was, first of all, made of corn, the chief food of man, but not until it had been made, by bruising and grinding, into flour; thus typifying the sufferings of CHRIST, the Bread of Life, which fitted Him to be the offering for the sins of the world. Wheaten flour so ground is pure white, marking CHRIST'S perfect holiness. It had to be fine flour for the Minchah, boulted more than once, to make it free from husks and other foreign matter; as in CHRIST there was no unevenness nor inequality, no changefulness nor uncertainty. Oil was poured upon it, to denote His anointing by the Holy Ghost; frankincense because of His acceptance, sweetness, and Ascension; salt because of His incorruptibility and preserving power. His prayer for man's salvation ascended with Himself into Heaven in perpetual mediation as the incense at the golden altar. His lifting up His hands upon the Cross where they were nailed was the evening sacrifice, at the close of the Mosaic day of legal ceremonies, for the sins of the whole world; wherefore too it was on the night before His Passion, He constituted that new Minchah of the Gospel which Malachi foretold, offered now in all places amongst the Gentiles, and made the food of his royal priesthood.
And therefore, O Lord, as my trust is in that all-sufficing oblation upon the Cross, let the lifting up of my hands in final penitence, in the evening of my days, when the shadows of the night are coming fast around me, be like that evening sacrifice, and in union with it, be acceptable unto Thee, that as I have abided by Thy Cross in the sorrows of the Passion, so I may offer Thee the morning sacrifice too, in the bright dawn of the Resurrection!
John Mason Neale
A typical piece of Anglican Patrimony from our 'Classical' period. A superb example of what we have to offer for the restoration of Tradition within the maimed and limping Catholic Church.
Neale exegetes Liturgy and Scripture with an erudition that extends with moving devotion to the Old Testament, as well as to the New and to the great Tradition of the Worship of the Universal Church. I feel that if our beloved Jewish brethren understood how it truly is their Temple Faith which still lives and is practised among us, they would hurry from the Synod of Jamnia to ascend the Temple Mount with us to offer daily the Tamid lamb.
Furthermore, if ignorant people who write Papers for the Vatican on Christianity and Judaism really understood the Traditional, Biblical, Patristic way of handling Scripture, called Typology, in which the OT antitype is fulfilled and replaced in the NT type, we would get less nonsense put before us.
The evening sacrifice: That is, the Minchah, or 'meat-offering', of fine flour, mixed with oil and frankincense, and salted, which was added to the daily burnt-offering of a lamb, both morning and evening; but, for a typical reason, a greater stress was laid on the evening rite. The Minchah was, first of all, made of corn, the chief food of man, but not until it had been made, by bruising and grinding, into flour; thus typifying the sufferings of CHRIST, the Bread of Life, which fitted Him to be the offering for the sins of the world. Wheaten flour so ground is pure white, marking CHRIST'S perfect holiness. It had to be fine flour for the Minchah, boulted more than once, to make it free from husks and other foreign matter; as in CHRIST there was no unevenness nor inequality, no changefulness nor uncertainty. Oil was poured upon it, to denote His anointing by the Holy Ghost; frankincense because of His acceptance, sweetness, and Ascension; salt because of His incorruptibility and preserving power. His prayer for man's salvation ascended with Himself into Heaven in perpetual mediation as the incense at the golden altar. His lifting up His hands upon the Cross where they were nailed was the evening sacrifice, at the close of the Mosaic day of legal ceremonies, for the sins of the whole world; wherefore too it was on the night before His Passion, He constituted that new Minchah of the Gospel which Malachi foretold, offered now in all places amongst the Gentiles, and made the food of his royal priesthood.
And therefore, O Lord, as my trust is in that all-sufficing oblation upon the Cross, let the lifting up of my hands in final penitence, in the evening of my days, when the shadows of the night are coming fast around me, be like that evening sacrifice, and in union with it, be acceptable unto Thee, that as I have abided by Thy Cross in the sorrows of the Passion, so I may offer Thee the morning sacrifice too, in the bright dawn of the Resurrection!
John Mason Neale
A typical piece of Anglican Patrimony from our 'Classical' period. A superb example of what we have to offer for the restoration of Tradition within the maimed and limping Catholic Church.
Neale exegetes Liturgy and Scripture with an erudition that extends with moving devotion to the Old Testament, as well as to the New and to the great Tradition of the Worship of the Universal Church. I feel that if our beloved Jewish brethren understood how it truly is their Temple Faith which still lives and is practised among us, they would hurry from the Synod of Jamnia to ascend the Temple Mount with us to offer daily the Tamid lamb.
Furthermore, if ignorant people who write Papers for the Vatican on Christianity and Judaism really understood the Traditional, Biblical, Patristic way of handling Scripture, called Typology, in which the OT antitype is fulfilled and replaced in the NT type, we would get less nonsense put before us.
20 April 2016
Commemorating the Cross
In the pre-1960s Roman Rite, during most of Eastertide, the rubrics sometimes ordered that a commemoration at Lauds and Vespers be made of the Holy Cross. I find this wholly edifying, as a reminder that Cross and Resurrection are two sides of the same redemptive coin. Although divided chronologically, they are inseparable doctrinally; so that it is bad method to forget the Resurrection when concentrating on the Lord's Passion, or the Cross when glorying in his Resurrection. Thus in the Western Rites the triumphalist hymns Pange lingua and Vexilla Regis are sung during Holy Week and even on Good Friday.
Here is the Commemoration, which followed the Collect of the Day.
Antiphon The Crucified hath risen from the dead and hath redeemed us, alleluia, alleluia. V Tell it among the nations, alleluia. R That the Lord hath reigned from the Tree, alleluia.
Let us pray.
God, didst will that for us thy Son should undergo the suffering of the Cross that he might drive out from among us the power of the Enemy: grant to us thy servants; that we may attain unto the grace of the Resurrection. Through the same.
The Response (" ... YHWH hath reigned from the Tree") comes from a version of Psalm 95 (aka 96) verse 10. This was how it read in early Latin translations of the Psalter, and it is known that the reading goes back at least to S Justin. It is found in many later Latin Fathers, and in Venantius Fortunatus' original text of Vexilla regis. The admirable (Anglican Patrimony) translator of Latin hymnology, John Mason Neale, renders Venantius thus:
Fulfilled is all that David told
In true prophetic song of old;
Amidst the nations, God, saith he,
Hath reigned and triumphed from the Tree.
The more recent history of this stanza is highly interesting and significant. The first (1968) draft of the hymns for the new breviary finds Dom Anselmo Lentini (who was in charge of the post-Conciliar coetus set up to revise the hymns), explaining the unbelievably venerable history of this reading; he concludes by observing "So we do not dare to suppress the stanza or change the line". But, in the three years before the Liturgia horarum was actually published in 1971, that stanza had bitten the dust. Somebody had 'dared'. Here we have a minute footnoted detail which penetratingly illustrates the entire post-Conciliar process; "Experts" feeling increasingly liberated, as creative day followed inventive day, from a need to respect texts which had fed the Latin Church for 1,500 years. The Council had wisely mandated only such changes as were certainly necessary; in less than a decade the "Experts" had gradually come to gloss this as meaning Fay ce que voudras. (Was Theleme a Benedictine House?)
It is easy to see the 'problem'. The old text of this hymn alleges that King David, regarded as the composer of the psalms, had written the words about God having reigned "from the tree". Pedantic 'Enlightenment' readers of the Hebrew Massoretic Text will speedily if ponderously point out that they are absent from it. Indeed, even in the Greek Septuagint only the bilingual 'Verona' psalter, I think, gives this reading (apo xulou).
But this demonstrates exactly what is wrong with that sort of approach to the august interwoven synthesis of littera scripta and Tradition which is at the heart of our Faith. And even some secular literary critics would inform you that "Reception is part of Text".
This reminds me of the point made by Benedict XVI in his Regensburg Lecture about the divine inspiration of the Septuagint. And Mgr Andrew Burnham, in his splendid book on Liturgy, pointed out that, for the Orthodox, the Septuagint is a divinely inspired correction of the Hebrew Old Testament.
Footnote Before 1956, the 'Commemoration of the Cross' was somewhat more complicated than the simplification I give above.
Here is the Commemoration, which followed the Collect of the Day.
Antiphon The Crucified hath risen from the dead and hath redeemed us, alleluia, alleluia. V Tell it among the nations, alleluia. R That the Lord hath reigned from the Tree, alleluia.
Let us pray.
God, didst will that for us thy Son should undergo the suffering of the Cross that he might drive out from among us the power of the Enemy: grant to us thy servants; that we may attain unto the grace of the Resurrection. Through the same.
The Response (" ... YHWH hath reigned from the Tree") comes from a version of Psalm 95 (aka 96) verse 10. This was how it read in early Latin translations of the Psalter, and it is known that the reading goes back at least to S Justin. It is found in many later Latin Fathers, and in Venantius Fortunatus' original text of Vexilla regis. The admirable (Anglican Patrimony) translator of Latin hymnology, John Mason Neale, renders Venantius thus:
Fulfilled is all that David told
In true prophetic song of old;
Amidst the nations, God, saith he,
Hath reigned and triumphed from the Tree.
The more recent history of this stanza is highly interesting and significant. The first (1968) draft of the hymns for the new breviary finds Dom Anselmo Lentini (who was in charge of the post-Conciliar coetus set up to revise the hymns), explaining the unbelievably venerable history of this reading; he concludes by observing "So we do not dare to suppress the stanza or change the line". But, in the three years before the Liturgia horarum was actually published in 1971, that stanza had bitten the dust. Somebody had 'dared'. Here we have a minute footnoted detail which penetratingly illustrates the entire post-Conciliar process; "Experts" feeling increasingly liberated, as creative day followed inventive day, from a need to respect texts which had fed the Latin Church for 1,500 years. The Council had wisely mandated only such changes as were certainly necessary; in less than a decade the "Experts" had gradually come to gloss this as meaning Fay ce que voudras. (Was Theleme a Benedictine House?)
It is easy to see the 'problem'. The old text of this hymn alleges that King David, regarded as the composer of the psalms, had written the words about God having reigned "from the tree". Pedantic 'Enlightenment' readers of the Hebrew Massoretic Text will speedily if ponderously point out that they are absent from it. Indeed, even in the Greek Septuagint only the bilingual 'Verona' psalter, I think, gives this reading (apo xulou).
But this demonstrates exactly what is wrong with that sort of approach to the august interwoven synthesis of littera scripta and Tradition which is at the heart of our Faith. And even some secular literary critics would inform you that "Reception is part of Text".
This reminds me of the point made by Benedict XVI in his Regensburg Lecture about the divine inspiration of the Septuagint. And Mgr Andrew Burnham, in his splendid book on Liturgy, pointed out that, for the Orthodox, the Septuagint is a divinely inspired correction of the Hebrew Old Testament.
Footnote Before 1956, the 'Commemoration of the Cross' was somewhat more complicated than the simplification I give above.
19 April 2016
19 april
Thirteen hundred years since the Monks of Iona adopted the Roman Easter. So the beautiful calendar produced by their spiritual successors, the Redemptorists of Papa Stronsay, reminds us! What do readers suggest is the the great lesson we should learn from this centenary?
16 April 2016
Pontifex magnus sed Magnus non pontifex
A day of great whooppee for all good men and women and true, a day marked for us by the birthday of our Holy Father the Pope emeritus Benedict XVI, the Pope of Unity to whom we in the Ordinariate owe so much; to whom the Whole State of Christ's Church Militant here on Earth owes so much. The erudite Pope who was able to set the problematic decades since Vatican II into a conceptual framework which enabled us to make sense of the Divine purpose during those difficult years; the Pope who made clear that it is theologically impossible for a Catholic Rite to be abolished - and went on to legislate that, whatever any nay-sayer of whatever dignity might wish, any presbyter of the Latin Rite has an inalienable right to celebrate the Mass we associate with the name of his great predecessor, S Pius V. How can any of us tuck into our lunches today without thinking of that gentle old pastor and wise scholar tucking into something Bavarian, in the company, one hopes, of his brother?
This day will always remind me of my unforgettable visit to Papa Stronsay two years ago; a break in my journey enabled my kind hosts to take me to visit the exquisite rose-coloured Romanesque Cathedral at Kirkwall in the Orkneys. At the Reformation, the relics of the martyred Earl Magnus were removed from their shrine but carefully preserved behind a stone in the transept arch; so his presence is still living in his own Church. Because, you see, today is the Feast of S Magnus the Martyr! I think of my dear friends on Papa Stronsay solemnly celebrating the Patronal Festival of the Orkneys in their wind-swept but immaculate chapel.
It doesn't end there. We in the Ordinariate owe our present laetitia in large measure to the work and witness of Fr Henry Joy Fynes Clinton, Rector of S Magnus the Martyr by London Bridge, Founder of the Catholic League, Apostle of Romanita within the Church of England; Confessor of the Faith; another devoted lover and upholder, against whatever Anglican episcopal persecutions, of the liturgy we used to call "the Western Rite". One of those intimately involved in the restoration of the Holy House of the Mother of God at Walsingham, to whom our Ordinariate is dedicated.
So it is surprisingly unsurprising that, upon this day of days, the Particular Calendar of the Ordinariate of our Lady of Walsingham offers us this Nordic Saint to celebrate, enabling us Caecubum depromere in honour of a great Pontiff; to celebrate our fellowship with the Redemptorists on Papa Stronsay whose regularisation, like ours, is the fruit of that great Pontificate of Christian Unity, and who, like us, suffered in their journey into full canonical status; to remember with affection and prayer our own Anglican Fathers in the Faith who did not live to see the the new dawn of Anglicanorum coetibus.
Sancte Magne, quot habes et quales filios tuos et clientes tam vivos quam defunctos pro quibus ut preces effundas deprecamur! Ora pro nobis, ora pro omnibus!
This day will always remind me of my unforgettable visit to Papa Stronsay two years ago; a break in my journey enabled my kind hosts to take me to visit the exquisite rose-coloured Romanesque Cathedral at Kirkwall in the Orkneys. At the Reformation, the relics of the martyred Earl Magnus were removed from their shrine but carefully preserved behind a stone in the transept arch; so his presence is still living in his own Church. Because, you see, today is the Feast of S Magnus the Martyr! I think of my dear friends on Papa Stronsay solemnly celebrating the Patronal Festival of the Orkneys in their wind-swept but immaculate chapel.
It doesn't end there. We in the Ordinariate owe our present laetitia in large measure to the work and witness of Fr Henry Joy Fynes Clinton, Rector of S Magnus the Martyr by London Bridge, Founder of the Catholic League, Apostle of Romanita within the Church of England; Confessor of the Faith; another devoted lover and upholder, against whatever Anglican episcopal persecutions, of the liturgy we used to call "the Western Rite". One of those intimately involved in the restoration of the Holy House of the Mother of God at Walsingham, to whom our Ordinariate is dedicated.
So it is surprisingly unsurprising that, upon this day of days, the Particular Calendar of the Ordinariate of our Lady of Walsingham offers us this Nordic Saint to celebrate, enabling us Caecubum depromere in honour of a great Pontiff; to celebrate our fellowship with the Redemptorists on Papa Stronsay whose regularisation, like ours, is the fruit of that great Pontificate of Christian Unity, and who, like us, suffered in their journey into full canonical status; to remember with affection and prayer our own Anglican Fathers in the Faith who did not live to see the the new dawn of Anglicanorum coetibus.
Sancte Magne, quot habes et quales filios tuos et clientes tam vivos quam defunctos pro quibus ut preces effundas deprecamur! Ora pro nobis, ora pro omnibus!
13 April 2016
Can my eating slake your hunger? (2) The Transalpine Redemptorists
There is little point in reading this if you have not read Part 1
Pickstock, drawing heavily upon Bossy, emphatically demanded a positive answer to Luther's typically late medieval and individualistic question Can my eating slake your hunger? She demonstrated the profound authenticity of a corporate understanding of Christianity in which what we do does affect our fellow-members of the Body of Christ. You may wonder how anybody who had read I Corinthians 12 could possibly not be familiar with this truth. It is a measure of the intense individualism which Protestantism inherited from some of the latest strands in medieval thought, that the implications of S Paul's teaching were so long ignored. (It is relevant to recollect Dom Gregory 'Patrimony' Dix's demonstration, Shape pp 605 sqq., that the characteristic tropes of Protestant public worship constitute nothing other than the objectification and canonisation of what in late medieval piety had been the subjective devotion of the individual layman.)
This recovery of Pauline corporatism places in an entirely new and favourable intellectual context some of the most derided loci of medieval theology. You may indeed think of the Treasury of Merit and of Indulgences. I would like, today, to concentrate upon the medieval system of chantry Masses for the departed; and I might as well quote Pickstock.
"The doctrine of Purgatory permitted both the living and the dead both to be involved in one unfinished story of salvation and reciprocal aid. ... Such active charity was grounded in a concern with their members beyond the point where those members could possibly be seen to confer any positive, immediate or predictable benefits back towards the fraternity ... [and Pickstock goes on to speak of] the working out of salvation itself as a process of interpersonal support and reconciliation."
Above my desk as I write this I have a Certificate of Perpetual Membership of the the Purgatorian Archconfraternity in honour of The Most Holy Redeemer of Golgotha For the Relief of the Poor souls in Purgatory, maintained by the Transalpine Redemptorists who pray and work and live on the northern island of Papa Stronsay. I find it a source of great strength to know that both now and after my death I shall be in the fellowship of prayer which this represents, that the One Sacrifice will be offered again and again for me. Does it seem like a throw-back to a departed model of Catholic life, to a style of Catholicism which has faded like a dream in the clear dawn of the Spirit of Vatican II? Is there a danger even that some may value it merely because it has the charm of something retro? Or that we shall simply make lofty and detached observations about how the pendulum certainly seems to have swung back rather since the 1970s?
Of course, this culture of prayer for the departed is 'old' in the sense that it represents the ancient and authentic conviction of the Church that the Sacrifice of Calvary ought to be offered for the departed; that we and they remain one fellowship of life and prayer, members still together of Christ's Body. One remembers S Monica's last words to S Augustine and her other son: "Tantum illud vos rogo, ut ad Domini altare memineritis mei, ubicumque fueritis". One thinks with affection of the armies of Chantry Priests at their laudable work in our English parish churches during the Middle Ages. I have so far associated myself with this wholesome tradition as to add my name to the list of those who who offer Masses on behalf of those enrolled in the Rorate Confraternity!
But I thought there would be little harm in pointing out that this wonderful culture of interdependence is actually also the culture of the best liturgical thinking and rethinking of the last three decades. What the dear fathers and brethren on Papa Stronsay do is not only immemorially ancient; not only ineradicably founded in the teaching of the New Testament; not only rooted in the unavoidable command to apply the benefits of Christ's redemption to quick and to dead; but is also at the Cutting Edge!
God bless them and reward them for what they do on behalf of all of us.
Pickstock, drawing heavily upon Bossy, emphatically demanded a positive answer to Luther's typically late medieval and individualistic question Can my eating slake your hunger? She demonstrated the profound authenticity of a corporate understanding of Christianity in which what we do does affect our fellow-members of the Body of Christ. You may wonder how anybody who had read I Corinthians 12 could possibly not be familiar with this truth. It is a measure of the intense individualism which Protestantism inherited from some of the latest strands in medieval thought, that the implications of S Paul's teaching were so long ignored. (It is relevant to recollect Dom Gregory 'Patrimony' Dix's demonstration, Shape pp 605 sqq., that the characteristic tropes of Protestant public worship constitute nothing other than the objectification and canonisation of what in late medieval piety had been the subjective devotion of the individual layman.)
This recovery of Pauline corporatism places in an entirely new and favourable intellectual context some of the most derided loci of medieval theology. You may indeed think of the Treasury of Merit and of Indulgences. I would like, today, to concentrate upon the medieval system of chantry Masses for the departed; and I might as well quote Pickstock.
"The doctrine of Purgatory permitted both the living and the dead both to be involved in one unfinished story of salvation and reciprocal aid. ... Such active charity was grounded in a concern with their members beyond the point where those members could possibly be seen to confer any positive, immediate or predictable benefits back towards the fraternity ... [and Pickstock goes on to speak of] the working out of salvation itself as a process of interpersonal support and reconciliation."
Above my desk as I write this I have a Certificate of Perpetual Membership of the the Purgatorian Archconfraternity in honour of The Most Holy Redeemer of Golgotha For the Relief of the Poor souls in Purgatory, maintained by the Transalpine Redemptorists who pray and work and live on the northern island of Papa Stronsay. I find it a source of great strength to know that both now and after my death I shall be in the fellowship of prayer which this represents, that the One Sacrifice will be offered again and again for me. Does it seem like a throw-back to a departed model of Catholic life, to a style of Catholicism which has faded like a dream in the clear dawn of the Spirit of Vatican II? Is there a danger even that some may value it merely because it has the charm of something retro? Or that we shall simply make lofty and detached observations about how the pendulum certainly seems to have swung back rather since the 1970s?
Of course, this culture of prayer for the departed is 'old' in the sense that it represents the ancient and authentic conviction of the Church that the Sacrifice of Calvary ought to be offered for the departed; that we and they remain one fellowship of life and prayer, members still together of Christ's Body. One remembers S Monica's last words to S Augustine and her other son: "Tantum illud vos rogo, ut ad Domini altare memineritis mei, ubicumque fueritis". One thinks with affection of the armies of Chantry Priests at their laudable work in our English parish churches during the Middle Ages. I have so far associated myself with this wholesome tradition as to add my name to the list of those who who offer Masses on behalf of those enrolled in the Rorate Confraternity!
But I thought there would be little harm in pointing out that this wonderful culture of interdependence is actually also the culture of the best liturgical thinking and rethinking of the last three decades. What the dear fathers and brethren on Papa Stronsay do is not only immemorially ancient; not only ineradicably founded in the teaching of the New Testament; not only rooted in the unavoidable command to apply the benefits of Christ's redemption to quick and to dead; but is also at the Cutting Edge!
God bless them and reward them for what they do on behalf of all of us.
12 April 2016
Anglican Proselytism
I noticed the other day the phrase "The Rt Revd Nick Baines Bishop of Leeds". Gosh, I thought, Bishop Marcus Stock must have "reached the retirement age", or else fallen foul of Pope Francis for more interesting reasons. Good Heavens! Poor chap! He's young enough to be my son! But No. Happily, his Lordship continues to lead with great distinction the Ecclesiam Loidensem in Full Communuion with the See of S Peter. It turns out that this Baines chappy is the C of E Bishop of Leeds, in Full Communion with the Successor of Matthew Parker.
I've no objection to the body called the C of E continuing to have district managers it terms 'Bishops' for as long as it is allowed to do so by a General Synod which is omnicompetent to juggle around with Faith and Order. But I do think it is ecumenical bad manners for these people to claim "sees" which are already long-since occupied by validly consecrated bishops in Peace and Communion with the Holy See.
The Catholic Church in England has always acted scrupulously in this regard. Out of pure unalloyed ecumenical courtesy (let's have no nonsense about some so-called "Ecclesiastical Titles" Act), Catholics avoided from the beginning proselytising Anglicans by using Anglican titles so as to confuse and deceive. Has there ever been a post-Reformation Catholic Archdeacon of Barchester?? Exactly! 'Nuff said. But the C of E has never shown the same ecumenical good manners. So is this an attempt to proselytise? I suspect it must be. Faced with their collapsing pewfodder numbers, the few surviving Anglicans hope that seizing Catholic titles will enable them to mislead and to pervert newly-arrived Lithuanian immigrants. Lithuanian clergy, it is well-known, give this advice to the hordes setting off to invade Yorkshire before Boris pulls up the drawbridge: "Be careful! Don't be tricked by the Anglicans! You will know that a church is genuinely Catholic ONLY if it in communion with the Bishop of LEEDS".
It makes things no better that it's all been going on for decades ... the country is littered with towns (Birmingham ... Liverpool ... Southwark ... Portsmouth ... Plymouth ... etc. ad inf..) where Johnny-come-lately Anglicans have come trotting in without even knocking on the door, and have said to established incumbent Catholic bishops "Move over in bed! Quick about it! I'm getting in too!".
Have Anglicans never heard of the Ba'alamond declaration banning proselytism? Cheeky lot.
Perhaps ARCIC should deal with this during its next sumptuous meeting at the Palazzo Dogale, perhaps during the daily coffee break in Florian's.
I've no objection to the body called the C of E continuing to have district managers it terms 'Bishops' for as long as it is allowed to do so by a General Synod which is omnicompetent to juggle around with Faith and Order. But I do think it is ecumenical bad manners for these people to claim "sees" which are already long-since occupied by validly consecrated bishops in Peace and Communion with the Holy See.
The Catholic Church in England has always acted scrupulously in this regard. Out of pure unalloyed ecumenical courtesy (let's have no nonsense about some so-called "Ecclesiastical Titles" Act), Catholics avoided from the beginning proselytising Anglicans by using Anglican titles so as to confuse and deceive. Has there ever been a post-Reformation Catholic Archdeacon of Barchester?? Exactly! 'Nuff said. But the C of E has never shown the same ecumenical good manners. So is this an attempt to proselytise? I suspect it must be. Faced with their collapsing pewfodder numbers, the few surviving Anglicans hope that seizing Catholic titles will enable them to mislead and to pervert newly-arrived Lithuanian immigrants. Lithuanian clergy, it is well-known, give this advice to the hordes setting off to invade Yorkshire before Boris pulls up the drawbridge: "Be careful! Don't be tricked by the Anglicans! You will know that a church is genuinely Catholic ONLY if it in communion with the Bishop of LEEDS".
It makes things no better that it's all been going on for decades ... the country is littered with towns (Birmingham ... Liverpool ... Southwark ... Portsmouth ... Plymouth ... etc. ad inf..) where Johnny-come-lately Anglicans have come trotting in without even knocking on the door, and have said to established incumbent Catholic bishops "Move over in bed! Quick about it! I'm getting in too!".
Have Anglicans never heard of the Ba'alamond declaration banning proselytism? Cheeky lot.
Perhaps ARCIC should deal with this during its next sumptuous meeting at the Palazzo Dogale, perhaps during the daily coffee break in Florian's.
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