It is not for me to comment on Foreign Politicks. But I may say how diverted I was by the neat rhetorical device ... or do I mean demagogic trick ... of priming an audience to respond to certain simple stimuli with trisyllabic chants in the form of what Classicist metricians term a 'Cretic' (long-short-long).
"Lock her up."
"Yew Ess Ay."
"Drain the Swamp."
Perhaps the President-elect is a Yale Classicist by training? This would make him a formidable player on the World Stage.
9 November 2016
8 November 2016
Family life in Limerick
A pity: I was unable to get to the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy last week because of a clashing invitation to talk in Limerick, which I had not visited since the mid-1990s. But the Conference there held under the auspices of Catholic Voice and the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest was ...
The Conference was everything ... informative, moving, and happy, and very efficiently organised. If, this year, you were in two minds, and ended up not going, I urge you not to make the same mistake next year! I was glad to meet friends ... from a fortnight ago when I visited Connecticut and New York; from my annual jaunts to Pantasaph in Wales for the LMS Latin Course (I hope people are signing up to that). And to make new friends.
The star speaker was Raymond Cardinal Burke, whom I had not met before. Naturally, I was intrigued by the thought of getting to know him; and I was impressed by what an unaffected, affable and kindly man he is. And by how well he knew how many people. He clearly has a profoundly important world-wide ministry among people and groups who are concerned to restore Catholic authenticity ... for example, after the very taxing Conference he drove off to visit my friends at Silverstream ... whose Prior, Dom Mark Kirby, will by then have got back from the Colloquium of the English Confraternity of Catholic Clergy, at which he was a speaker. And at which my Ordinary and Father in God was one of the Celebrants. A small world ... no! a big and growing world of prayer and sanctity and orthodox witness, but yet with an engagingly 'family' feel to it. How can one not be full of optimism about the future of the Church?
Cardinal Burke was, of course, the Eucharistic Celebrant on Sunday, Feast of All the Saints of Ireland, at the Institute Church of the Sacred Heart. It was originally Limerick's Jesuit Church, back in the generous days before Vatican II when the religious orders all had their city-centre churches and so the lucky Faithful had a rich and generous choice of varying charisms. The Church is beautifully restored, although the Clergy House must still be an immensely spartan environment in which to live. They are at the top of a rather grand street of nineteenth century houses, largely unspoilt, and the Church possesses a fine renaissance facade in rose-coloured stone. Unusually for today, it is kept open for visits and prayer (as all Catholic churches were when I was a boy and learned so much by browsing through the CTS pamphlets at the back). I wonder what O'Connell Street was called before it was called O'Connell Street ... his statue outside the Church reminded me of happy days visiting the Liberator's family home nestling beside Kenmare Water at Derrynane in Co Kerry.
I was grateful to Canon Lebocq, and his brethren, for their Eucharistic hospitality, and for the genuine warmth of their welcome. Having watched video clips of some very accurate marksmanship, I now understand why it is a bad idea to tangle with the Institute! And what a memorable meal! This was my first experience of the Institute, and it was an impressive one. It must be a missionary experience in itself for the people of Limerick to see young clergy in their streets wearing cassocks!
The Conference was everything ... informative, moving, and happy, and very efficiently organised. If, this year, you were in two minds, and ended up not going, I urge you not to make the same mistake next year! I was glad to meet friends ... from a fortnight ago when I visited Connecticut and New York; from my annual jaunts to Pantasaph in Wales for the LMS Latin Course (I hope people are signing up to that). And to make new friends.
The star speaker was Raymond Cardinal Burke, whom I had not met before. Naturally, I was intrigued by the thought of getting to know him; and I was impressed by what an unaffected, affable and kindly man he is. And by how well he knew how many people. He clearly has a profoundly important world-wide ministry among people and groups who are concerned to restore Catholic authenticity ... for example, after the very taxing Conference he drove off to visit my friends at Silverstream ... whose Prior, Dom Mark Kirby, will by then have got back from the Colloquium of the English Confraternity of Catholic Clergy, at which he was a speaker. And at which my Ordinary and Father in God was one of the Celebrants. A small world ... no! a big and growing world of prayer and sanctity and orthodox witness, but yet with an engagingly 'family' feel to it. How can one not be full of optimism about the future of the Church?
Cardinal Burke was, of course, the Eucharistic Celebrant on Sunday, Feast of All the Saints of Ireland, at the Institute Church of the Sacred Heart. It was originally Limerick's Jesuit Church, back in the generous days before Vatican II when the religious orders all had their city-centre churches and so the lucky Faithful had a rich and generous choice of varying charisms. The Church is beautifully restored, although the Clergy House must still be an immensely spartan environment in which to live. They are at the top of a rather grand street of nineteenth century houses, largely unspoilt, and the Church possesses a fine renaissance facade in rose-coloured stone. Unusually for today, it is kept open for visits and prayer (as all Catholic churches were when I was a boy and learned so much by browsing through the CTS pamphlets at the back). I wonder what O'Connell Street was called before it was called O'Connell Street ... his statue outside the Church reminded me of happy days visiting the Liberator's family home nestling beside Kenmare Water at Derrynane in Co Kerry.
I was grateful to Canon Lebocq, and his brethren, for their Eucharistic hospitality, and for the genuine warmth of their welcome. Having watched video clips of some very accurate marksmanship, I now understand why it is a bad idea to tangle with the Institute! And what a memorable meal! This was my first experience of the Institute, and it was an impressive one. It must be a missionary experience in itself for the people of Limerick to see young clergy in their streets wearing cassocks!
6 November 2016
Dicasterial bigotry
I wonder if any of my fellow Ratzingerians would ever have said, during the last pontificate, "If you find Pope Benedict confusing, you have not read or do not understand the Gospel of Jesus Christ". I very much hope not. I think not.
There is some American, however, called Kevin Farrell, who is on record as writing "If you find Pope Francis confusing, you have not read or do not understand the Gospel of Jesus Christ".
Well, when the list of new cardinals came out, I imagine we all murmured quietly into our cups apekhei ton misthon autou. Additionally, this dottily misguided individual has already been made head of a Roman dicastery! His little old grandmother back in the Emerald Isle must be dead thrilled. I remembered that witty line in A Man for All Seasons "But for Wales, Richard?" But for a Dicastery, Kev?
This sort of thing really does bring home what an unwholesome little gang of nasty narrow-minded bigots we do seem now to be at the mercy of. I would think better of the Holy Father if he didn't seem so comfortable about surrounding himself with these dementedly ultrahyperueberpapalist ... is the noun I am here groping for 'careerists'? Benedict was a big enough man to appoint people whom he knew did not agree with him (Tagle, for one) because he thought he discerned quality. It would be good to see Francis oftener making the same disarmingly generous mistake.
POST SCRIPTUM: I gather this particular narrow-minded bigot has also recently categorically informed us that the deliberations of the two synods, and the composition of Amoris laetitia, were the Work of the Holy Spirit. I wonder if we have on record Bishop Farrell explaining to the world that the Holy Spirit was the pen which wrote Summorum Pontificum and Veritatis splendor.
And if you want to call me an unreconstructed Anglican, as Manning in effect called Blessed John Henry, you can. As often as you like. Sticks and stones ... But I would rather Kev had said that the Scriptures, Migne, and the pages of Denzinger, not Amoris laetitia, would be the foundation of his dicastery for years to come; and that he always found such amazing new depths in Scripture and in the Fathers rather than in some recent slipshod papal Exhortation that he has "read seven or eight times" [is he a slow reader?].
But her Immaculate Heart will prevail. Never doubt that.
There is some American, however, called Kevin Farrell, who is on record as writing "If you find Pope Francis confusing, you have not read or do not understand the Gospel of Jesus Christ".
Well, when the list of new cardinals came out, I imagine we all murmured quietly into our cups apekhei ton misthon autou. Additionally, this dottily misguided individual has already been made head of a Roman dicastery! His little old grandmother back in the Emerald Isle must be dead thrilled. I remembered that witty line in A Man for All Seasons "But for Wales, Richard?" But for a Dicastery, Kev?
This sort of thing really does bring home what an unwholesome little gang of nasty narrow-minded bigots we do seem now to be at the mercy of. I would think better of the Holy Father if he didn't seem so comfortable about surrounding himself with these dementedly ultrahyperueberpapalist ... is the noun I am here groping for 'careerists'? Benedict was a big enough man to appoint people whom he knew did not agree with him (Tagle, for one) because he thought he discerned quality. It would be good to see Francis oftener making the same disarmingly generous mistake.
POST SCRIPTUM: I gather this particular narrow-minded bigot has also recently categorically informed us that the deliberations of the two synods, and the composition of Amoris laetitia, were the Work of the Holy Spirit. I wonder if we have on record Bishop Farrell explaining to the world that the Holy Spirit was the pen which wrote Summorum Pontificum and Veritatis splendor.
And if you want to call me an unreconstructed Anglican, as Manning in effect called Blessed John Henry, you can. As often as you like. Sticks and stones ... But I would rather Kev had said that the Scriptures, Migne, and the pages of Denzinger, not Amoris laetitia, would be the foundation of his dicastery for years to come; and that he always found such amazing new depths in Scripture and in the Fathers rather than in some recent slipshod papal Exhortation that he has "read seven or eight times" [is he a slow reader?].
But her Immaculate Heart will prevail. Never doubt that.
4 November 2016
emails
I'm having trouble receiving/sending emails. Friends, contacts, who fail to achieve contact ... this is why.
Sedevacantism yet again
I venture to draw the attention of those readers who write to me about one or other of the many, indeed, Protean, forms 'Sedevacantism' takes, to the fact that Bishop Richard Williamson, on his blog, has written a two-part series on Sedevacantism. It is the second time in recent months that he has done this.
I often don't agree with what his Excellency does, says, or writes; and I wouldn't always express myself as he does. But I warmly second his apprehension that this pernicious error can be a real danger to souls.
My often-expressed view (and I think the Bishop's view is along the same lines) is that the Ultrahyperueberpapalism of some who surround Papa Bergoglio, and Sedevacantism, are two sides of the same dangerously erroneous coin. Or, if you prefer, a pair of inseparably joined Siamese Twins. They both massively exaggerate the personal inerrancy of the man who is the Roman Pontiff. Accepting an absurdly inflated notion of personal papal inerrancy, Bergoglian ultras (correctly believing him to be Pope) conclude that therefore his every word and even hint must be the ipsissimum verbum Spiritus; sedevacantists (deeming him to be guilty of repeated blunders) conclude that he "obviously" cannot really be pope.
Both views are equally absurd. And both involve the same erroneous premise: personal papal inerrancy. I have called it an error; I think I could justify calling it a heresy in view of the defined dogma of Vatican I that the Successors of S Peter have not been given the Holy Spirit so that by His inspiration they can propagate new doctrine.
And both are equally dangerous to souls.
Bergoglio is Pope. He's not my own favourite pope, but he's Pope. Vicar of Christ. Successor of the Prince of the Apostles. Capable of being the mouthpiece of the Catholic Church's own infallibility and of binding all our consciences were he manifestly to fulfill the immensely careful conditions laid down by the admirable decree Pastor aeternus of Vatican I.
To deny that is a most grave danger to Catholic Faith and to Communio.
There have been less than good Popes before now, as Cardinal Pell very wisely pointed out a couple of years ago in his Iuventutem sermon. Sensible Catholics take the long view. And sensible Catholics also know that the College of Cardinals is not guaranteed the peremptory guidance of the Holy Spirit when it meets in electoral conclave. Some real 101% shockers have, in the past, emerged from the pope-making process! If that were, sadly, to happen in our own time, there would be nothing new about it!
I remind readers that I do not enable comments which seem to me Sedevacantist or Sedeprivationist or which claim that the elected candidate is in some way not quite fully pope, or that Benedict XVI is still pope or that the real pope is Mr Smith two doors down the road who was elected by a conclave of five and a half laypeople and his Auntie Mildred's cat. Also unwelcome: abusive rhetoric about the man who is also Pope. This is, after all, my blog. Just don't waste your time. Spend it praying for our Holy Father Pope Francis.
I often don't agree with what his Excellency does, says, or writes; and I wouldn't always express myself as he does. But I warmly second his apprehension that this pernicious error can be a real danger to souls.
My often-expressed view (and I think the Bishop's view is along the same lines) is that the Ultrahyperueberpapalism of some who surround Papa Bergoglio, and Sedevacantism, are two sides of the same dangerously erroneous coin. Or, if you prefer, a pair of inseparably joined Siamese Twins. They both massively exaggerate the personal inerrancy of the man who is the Roman Pontiff. Accepting an absurdly inflated notion of personal papal inerrancy, Bergoglian ultras (correctly believing him to be Pope) conclude that therefore his every word and even hint must be the ipsissimum verbum Spiritus; sedevacantists (deeming him to be guilty of repeated blunders) conclude that he "obviously" cannot really be pope.
Both views are equally absurd. And both involve the same erroneous premise: personal papal inerrancy. I have called it an error; I think I could justify calling it a heresy in view of the defined dogma of Vatican I that the Successors of S Peter have not been given the Holy Spirit so that by His inspiration they can propagate new doctrine.
And both are equally dangerous to souls.
Bergoglio is Pope. He's not my own favourite pope, but he's Pope. Vicar of Christ. Successor of the Prince of the Apostles. Capable of being the mouthpiece of the Catholic Church's own infallibility and of binding all our consciences were he manifestly to fulfill the immensely careful conditions laid down by the admirable decree Pastor aeternus of Vatican I.
To deny that is a most grave danger to Catholic Faith and to Communio.
There have been less than good Popes before now, as Cardinal Pell very wisely pointed out a couple of years ago in his Iuventutem sermon. Sensible Catholics take the long view. And sensible Catholics also know that the College of Cardinals is not guaranteed the peremptory guidance of the Holy Spirit when it meets in electoral conclave. Some real 101% shockers have, in the past, emerged from the pope-making process! If that were, sadly, to happen in our own time, there would be nothing new about it!
I remind readers that I do not enable comments which seem to me Sedevacantist or Sedeprivationist or which claim that the elected candidate is in some way not quite fully pope, or that Benedict XVI is still pope or that the real pope is Mr Smith two doors down the road who was elected by a conclave of five and a half laypeople and his Auntie Mildred's cat. Also unwelcome: abusive rhetoric about the man who is also Pope. This is, after all, my blog. Just don't waste your time. Spend it praying for our Holy Father Pope Francis.
2 November 2016
IDENTITY
Evelyn Waugh was once described as a man who thought of himself as being, in the sight of God, an English Country Gentleman of ancient and recusant ancestry. In fact, he was the son of a parvenu Anglican publisher quite well down in the Middle Class. I suspect that it is one of the characteristics of this last century and a half ... say, since the time of Disraeli ... I wonder why is it he that comes to my mind ... that we construct our sense of self-identity, not from our actual and family backgrounds, but from what we have discovered for ourselves; and not infrequently in reaction against our real and fearfully prosaic individual inheritances. Is it all to do with the cultural disintegration of this period?
I plead guilty to being myself a prime example of this embarrassing phenomenon of radical inauthenticity. I have always regarded myself as a Latin Catholic, deeply rooted in Classical Antiquity, but at home in ancient Rome while only a sympathetic visitor in ancient Athens ... where my wife, so much more of a Hellenist, is at home. Classicism Baptised makes me feel profoundly the product of the latinate culture and Liturgy which has shaped Western Europe for centuries. I am not, subjectively, in the least English; in fact ... well, Waugh once described me rather acutely in his account of Scott-King, another equally dim classics master: " ... he was filled, suddenly, with deep homesickness for the South. He had not often nor for long visited those enchanted lands; a dozen times, perhaps, for a few weeks ... but his treasure and his heart lay buried there. Hot oil and garlic and spilled wine; luminous pinnacles above a dusky wall; fireworks at night, fountains at noonday; the shepherd's pipe on the scented hillside ... he had left his coin in the waters of Trevi; he had wedded the Adriatic; he was a Mediterranean man." Hot oil and garlic and spilled wine ... ah, how that tugs at me even now while I sit here tapping at my computer in the chilly English autumn. My carnal temptations are to reach for Ovid's Metamorphoses when I should be saying my Office and to dream about Tiepolo ceilings while I should be making my meditation. I rarely pass through London without going to gaze upon the statue of S Pius V, the Victor of Lepanto and the Author of Regnans in excelsis. He stands on the right hand side of the Lady Altar at Brompton; originally, with its spectacular North Italian pietra dura, from Brescia. It is where, through the generosity of the Provost, I said my first Mass in Full Communion with the See of Rome, before going across the road with two immensely dear friends from Papa Stronsay, and the brilliant, the convivial, Father Ray, to eat a French lunch and to drink a lot of French wine.
My father, on the other hand, was a British naval officer who was otherly romantic and squandered his affections on crooks like Drake and Raleigh; who loathed Irish, frogs, papists, waps, and dagoes; who entertained suspicions about people who mispronounced Trafalgar; and who had an enormous picture of Nelson upon his wall.
1 November 2016
Lund
Well, I do not feel a need to be embarrassed by my Prophecy that at Lund nothing horrendous would actually be done with regard to 'Intercommunion'. I am always happiest when I have been proved right. This is why I am so happy most of the time.
The assertion that both Catholics and Lutherans have wounded the visible unity of the Church seems to me radically similar to the language about 'wounds' in Cardinal Ratzinger's Communionis notio.
I would want to qualify the Holy Father's suggestion that 'more unites us than divides us' by entering a distinguo: I would deem this to be true with regard to many very worthy orthodox Lutherans, but I believe there is evidence that some Lutherans, not least in Sweden, are way out in some quasi-gnostic stratosphere where very little of the Christian God survives. I suspect that there might be Lutherans who would themselves agree with this analysis, and who would be uneasy about 'Intercommunion' with such "fellow Lutherans".
I disliked most a sly little suggestion that Catholics and Lutherans should be 'creative' in their relationships. It seemed to me an example of a dodgy and very typically Bergoglian trick: the use of words which in themselves cannot reasonably be deemed heterodox, but do represent the tiniest of toes gingerly inserted into doors so that those doors can gradually in the future be prised further and unacceptably open.
However, I have my own, immensely creative, suggestion. The erection of a Lutheran Ordinariate, in which Lutherans who are still Christians would retain their own Patrimony in the full Communion and Magisterium of the Catholic Church. I am not convinced that this is as ludicrous a proposal as most of my readers probably will. I bet Papa Ratzinger would have been open to it.
The assertion that both Catholics and Lutherans have wounded the visible unity of the Church seems to me radically similar to the language about 'wounds' in Cardinal Ratzinger's Communionis notio.
I would want to qualify the Holy Father's suggestion that 'more unites us than divides us' by entering a distinguo: I would deem this to be true with regard to many very worthy orthodox Lutherans, but I believe there is evidence that some Lutherans, not least in Sweden, are way out in some quasi-gnostic stratosphere where very little of the Christian God survives. I suspect that there might be Lutherans who would themselves agree with this analysis, and who would be uneasy about 'Intercommunion' with such "fellow Lutherans".
I disliked most a sly little suggestion that Catholics and Lutherans should be 'creative' in their relationships. It seemed to me an example of a dodgy and very typically Bergoglian trick: the use of words which in themselves cannot reasonably be deemed heterodox, but do represent the tiniest of toes gingerly inserted into doors so that those doors can gradually in the future be prised further and unacceptably open.
However, I have my own, immensely creative, suggestion. The erection of a Lutheran Ordinariate, in which Lutherans who are still Christians would retain their own Patrimony in the full Communion and Magisterium of the Catholic Church. I am not convinced that this is as ludicrous a proposal as most of my readers probably will. I bet Papa Ratzinger would have been open to it.
30 October 2016
"Intercommunion" in Lund?
Cardinal Burke has recently uttered some very (of course!) wise remarks relating to the sharing of the Sacraments between Catholics and Non-Catholics. See Rorate. But there can be a risk that his words will be misunderstood.
What his Eminence actually talks about is not, formally, the admission of 'Non-Catholics', as such, to the Sacraments. This is because he is well aware that Sacramental Sharing is not merely allowed by the Church's current canonical legislation, but even in some circumstances encouraged. This is most true with regard to those ('Eastern') communities in which the Church recognises the valid existence of her own Sacraments, such as Holy Order and the Eucharist, although outside her own strict canonical unity. Lest, however, there be some who might be tempted to use this fact as a rod with which to beat the 1983 Codex Iuris Canonici, I will again draw the attention of such readers to my pieces on the Church's praxis before 1983 ... in the eighteenth century Aegean and, with the permission of Pope S Pius X himself, in twentieth century Ukraine and Russia.
For obvious reasons, things are much less positive with regard to the ecclesial communities which emerged from the 'reformation'. But, even here, the canonical negative is not absolute.
What Cardinal Burke, with pinpoint accuracy, is concerned to make clear is that, for their own sake, the Eucharist ought not to be offered to those who do not truly believe that the Elements are the Body and Blood of Christ. This is because S Paul made clear that those who so eat and drink, "not discerning the Lord's Body", eat and drink ... nothing less than their own damnation. The current law is very insistent on this point, and properly so.
I will stick my neck out and say that I regard it as very highly improbable that, in Lund, tomorrow, as he visits Swedish Lutherans, the Holy Father will issue any general invitation to Lutherans and Catholics to receive at each other's altars. The most I would regard as within the realms of the remotely possible is some sort of minor move within the limits of what is already permitted by the current law. But even this I strongly doubt. Thirty six hours will show whether I am right! But I do think that some people allow themselves to be upset by unreal fears begotten by simplistic and irresponsible headlines.
Further arguments against any major change include these:
(1) the arrangement could not be made reciprocal, because of the unlikelihood that any Lutheran Orders, even in Sweden, are valid; and
(2) it would understandably profoundly upset those Anglicans who accept the fulness of Catholic Eucharistic teaching if favours were granted to Scandinavian Lutherans (not a few of whom Luther himself would probably not now find it easy to recognise as even Christian) which had not been granted to Catholic Anglicans.
Any slight movement in this area would need to be approached very carefully; it is not the sort of thing that is suitable material for gesturpolitik. Anything that even looked like this would be the height of imprudence.
What his Eminence actually talks about is not, formally, the admission of 'Non-Catholics', as such, to the Sacraments. This is because he is well aware that Sacramental Sharing is not merely allowed by the Church's current canonical legislation, but even in some circumstances encouraged. This is most true with regard to those ('Eastern') communities in which the Church recognises the valid existence of her own Sacraments, such as Holy Order and the Eucharist, although outside her own strict canonical unity. Lest, however, there be some who might be tempted to use this fact as a rod with which to beat the 1983 Codex Iuris Canonici, I will again draw the attention of such readers to my pieces on the Church's praxis before 1983 ... in the eighteenth century Aegean and, with the permission of Pope S Pius X himself, in twentieth century Ukraine and Russia.
For obvious reasons, things are much less positive with regard to the ecclesial communities which emerged from the 'reformation'. But, even here, the canonical negative is not absolute.
What Cardinal Burke, with pinpoint accuracy, is concerned to make clear is that, for their own sake, the Eucharist ought not to be offered to those who do not truly believe that the Elements are the Body and Blood of Christ. This is because S Paul made clear that those who so eat and drink, "not discerning the Lord's Body", eat and drink ... nothing less than their own damnation. The current law is very insistent on this point, and properly so.
I will stick my neck out and say that I regard it as very highly improbable that, in Lund, tomorrow, as he visits Swedish Lutherans, the Holy Father will issue any general invitation to Lutherans and Catholics to receive at each other's altars. The most I would regard as within the realms of the remotely possible is some sort of minor move within the limits of what is already permitted by the current law. But even this I strongly doubt. Thirty six hours will show whether I am right! But I do think that some people allow themselves to be upset by unreal fears begotten by simplistic and irresponsible headlines.
Further arguments against any major change include these:
(1) the arrangement could not be made reciprocal, because of the unlikelihood that any Lutheran Orders, even in Sweden, are valid; and
(2) it would understandably profoundly upset those Anglicans who accept the fulness of Catholic Eucharistic teaching if favours were granted to Scandinavian Lutherans (not a few of whom Luther himself would probably not now find it easy to recognise as even Christian) which had not been granted to Catholic Anglicans.
Any slight movement in this area would need to be approached very carefully; it is not the sort of thing that is suitable material for gesturpolitik. Anything that even looked like this would be the height of imprudence.
29 October 2016
Oh dear
The personel changes at the Congregation for Divine Worship look like very bad news for the heroic figure of its Prefect, Cardinal Sarah. It looks as though some crude revenge is taking place ...
Bishop Alan Hopes, a former Anglican, is the only piece of good news I can see on the new list. But, as a bishop with a large diocese, he will not be able to be often in Rome.
But Bad Marini lives in Rome and has a minuscule job ... Eucharistic Congresses ... quid dicamus ...
Bishop Alan Hopes, a former Anglican, is the only piece of good news I can see on the new list. But, as a bishop with a large diocese, he will not be able to be often in Rome.
But Bad Marini lives in Rome and has a minuscule job ... Eucharistic Congresses ... quid dicamus ...
25 October 2016
Father Tim ...
If anybody hasn't noticed that Father Tim of Margate has resumed blogging regularly, then I'm telling you! Congratulations to Father for his return to health and good Liturgy and elegant, erudite blogposts!
THE HERMENEUTIC OF CONTINUITY is as active as ever!!
THE HERMENEUTIC OF CONTINUITY is as active as ever!!
Fatima (6): the Conversion of Russia
I think we should see the Conversion of Russia from the ecclesiological perspective outlined in my Fatima (5) piece. And, for those unfamiliar with this, I allude also to the willingness of that great Pope S Pius X to envisage communicatio in Sacris between Catholics and Orthodox in Russia (facts in my piece of 22 November 2014).
When our Lady at Fatima contingently foretold the Conversion of Russia, I do not think that she meant that every single Russian would automatically become a a faithful and sacramentally regular worshipper (as I do not think that her promise about the preservation of the Faith in Portugal was falsified by the referendum vote of 2007 to admit abortion). That, this side of the Eschaton, is not the sort of place we are in. Nor, I think, did she mean that Patriarch Cyril and all Russians would immediately come into full juridical communion with the See of S Peter. What she did mean, surely, is something which can embrace (but is not exhausted in) the revival currently going on within the post-Soviet Russian Patriarchate, as well as in the other parts of the former Soviet bloc, such as the Ukraine.
[Incidentally, I have been told (was I misinformed?) that, during Patriarch Cyril's recent visit to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Russian Orthodoxy in this country, the Anglican incumbents of Canterbury and London (Chartres presumably proudly wearing his enkolpion) were present, and a Coptic bishop, but not the Archbishop of Westminster. I imagine an invitation did go to Westminster and that probably a representative was sent. This would suggest a more nuanced and tactful approach to Ukrainian sensitivities than Pope Francis was able to manage at that bungled meeting in Cuba! I wonder if Eparchial Bishop Hlib had a quiet word with Vin ... ]
When our Lady at Fatima contingently foretold the Conversion of Russia, I do not think that she meant that every single Russian would automatically become a a faithful and sacramentally regular worshipper (as I do not think that her promise about the preservation of the Faith in Portugal was falsified by the referendum vote of 2007 to admit abortion). That, this side of the Eschaton, is not the sort of place we are in. Nor, I think, did she mean that Patriarch Cyril and all Russians would immediately come into full juridical communion with the See of S Peter. What she did mean, surely, is something which can embrace (but is not exhausted in) the revival currently going on within the post-Soviet Russian Patriarchate, as well as in the other parts of the former Soviet bloc, such as the Ukraine.
[Incidentally, I have been told (was I misinformed?) that, during Patriarch Cyril's recent visit to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Russian Orthodoxy in this country, the Anglican incumbents of Canterbury and London (Chartres presumably proudly wearing his enkolpion) were present, and a Coptic bishop, but not the Archbishop of Westminster. I imagine an invitation did go to Westminster and that probably a representative was sent. This would suggest a more nuanced and tactful approach to Ukrainian sensitivities than Pope Francis was able to manage at that bungled meeting in Cuba! I wonder if Eparchial Bishop Hlib had a quiet word with Vin ... ]
24 October 2016
Homosexualist ideologues
News has come through that the Ulster Appeal Court has published its judgement on the case of the Protestant Bakery fined for refusing to ice homosexualist propaganda onto a cake. The conviction stands. So does this mean that the homosexualists will be able to queue up outside the bakery daily to make the the same requests until the fines and damages bankrupt the business? The 'Gay Marriage' which the cake was intended to demand is in fact not legal in Northern Ireland; so will followers of other non-legal causes such as paederasts or murderers be able to employ the same logic and order cakes with the message "Free Inter-generation Love" or "Cacothanasia Now", and profitably take their cases through the courts?
Incidentally, has the Catholic hierarchy been speaking in sympathy for these Protestants who, at personal risk, espouse the teaching of the Church on some sexual matters? Is it not part of the Church's ecumenical policy, since Vatican II, to affirm with joy those "elements of the Church" which may be found among Separated Brethren?
At the same time, we have another trendy policy: the suppression of the convictions of subjects of the Crown who were convicted of homosexual acts back in the days when such acts were illegal. I rather wonder how far back these historical amnesties will go. Will they merely encompass those still alive? I could see a certain human kindliness in that. OK. But if the game goes back to embrace the now dead (as it did in the case of the pardon granted to Alan Turing), the additional question, surely, arises of How Far Back Do We Go? What logic could there be in having any particular cut-off point anywhere? Similar questions arise with regard to the granting of Free Pardons to those shot for cowardice during the First War.
And what about the women burned as witches? The Protestants burned under Henry VIII and his off-spring and the Catholics HDQed under Bloody Bess? Titus Oates' victims? Those executed after the '45? Casement and Lord Haw Haw?
But, of course, under our Constitution, Parliament can do anything. What a lot of problems this can solve. Changing the Past is a prime example of what the ancients called an adunaton, an impossible thing. If all the adunata are now potentially dunata, why stop at any fashionable or convenient fantasy? Why only reconstruct the Past by decree? Why this prejudice against also reconstructing by administrative fiat the Present and the Future? Why doesn't Parliament just enact that Global Warming has never happened and is not happening? Instead of erecting expensive flood defences, why don't we just have an Order in Council enacting that the Somerset Levels will not be flooded? We could all live happily for ever after, in Fairyland, especially the people of Somerset, who would be comforted by the sure and certain reassurance that the water swirling round their necks could not possibly be a flood.
Winston in 1984 spent his entire working life rewriting the past. I wonder if Orwell ever suspected how soon his sick prophecy would be made into a gruesome reality.
I don't for one moment think there is any real desire for 'justice' involved in daft attempts to rewrite the past.
It is simply a matter of the homosexualist ideologues making clear "We are the Masters now, and we want to watch you bastards squirm". In the idiolect of the Zeitgeist, this is called "Diversity".
What a very unpleasant spectacle it all is.
Incidentally, has the Catholic hierarchy been speaking in sympathy for these Protestants who, at personal risk, espouse the teaching of the Church on some sexual matters? Is it not part of the Church's ecumenical policy, since Vatican II, to affirm with joy those "elements of the Church" which may be found among Separated Brethren?
At the same time, we have another trendy policy: the suppression of the convictions of subjects of the Crown who were convicted of homosexual acts back in the days when such acts were illegal. I rather wonder how far back these historical amnesties will go. Will they merely encompass those still alive? I could see a certain human kindliness in that. OK. But if the game goes back to embrace the now dead (as it did in the case of the pardon granted to Alan Turing), the additional question, surely, arises of How Far Back Do We Go? What logic could there be in having any particular cut-off point anywhere? Similar questions arise with regard to the granting of Free Pardons to those shot for cowardice during the First War.
And what about the women burned as witches? The Protestants burned under Henry VIII and his off-spring and the Catholics HDQed under Bloody Bess? Titus Oates' victims? Those executed after the '45? Casement and Lord Haw Haw?
But, of course, under our Constitution, Parliament can do anything. What a lot of problems this can solve. Changing the Past is a prime example of what the ancients called an adunaton, an impossible thing. If all the adunata are now potentially dunata, why stop at any fashionable or convenient fantasy? Why only reconstruct the Past by decree? Why this prejudice against also reconstructing by administrative fiat the Present and the Future? Why doesn't Parliament just enact that Global Warming has never happened and is not happening? Instead of erecting expensive flood defences, why don't we just have an Order in Council enacting that the Somerset Levels will not be flooded? We could all live happily for ever after, in Fairyland, especially the people of Somerset, who would be comforted by the sure and certain reassurance that the water swirling round their necks could not possibly be a flood.
Winston in 1984 spent his entire working life rewriting the past. I wonder if Orwell ever suspected how soon his sick prophecy would be made into a gruesome reality.
I don't for one moment think there is any real desire for 'justice' involved in daft attempts to rewrite the past.
It is simply a matter of the homosexualist ideologues making clear "We are the Masters now, and we want to watch you bastards squirm". In the idiolect of the Zeitgeist, this is called "Diversity".
What a very unpleasant spectacle it all is.
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