Martin Bucer, a failed Dominican from Strasbourg whom Cranmer had invited to England and eased into the Regius Chair at Cambrdidge, died there in 1551, while the Godly were still in power, and was buried in the University Church. When the Marian Commissioners made their Visitation of the Daughter University in 1557, they were offended, as any right-thinking person would be, to find his remains still interred there. The Vice-Chancellor presided over the highly fitting ritual proceedings which concluded with the incineration of Bucer's remains, those of another Strasbourg 'reformer' called Phagius, and the available books of the said 'reformers'. The country folk who flocked in to watch were apparently vastly amused to see the dramatically decaying corpses chained as if out of a fear that they might do a runner ... what happily unsqueamish days! According to a Protestant woodcut in Foxe, round the conflagration went a procession which looks like a Procession of the Blessed Sacrament ... you will find it on the dust-cover of Duffy's Fires of Faith. (Several of the clergy who go in front, singing Salve Festa Dies, appear to be wearing spectacles.) I wonder how probable such liturgical riches would have been on the Tuesday after Septuagesima. Perhaps Foxe has naughtily let his imagination run away with him.
That presiding Vice-Chancellor was Perne; and he spoke very strongly, and with real animus, against Bucer. Let us now resume our account of his career seven years later, when the political and theological situation had become rather different.
In 1564, when Henry Tudor's bastard daughter was on a state visit to the University, Perne preached so well that "the Queen made her pleasure manifest". But in a later disputation on the question Maior est scripturae quam ecclesiae authoritas, Perne got his head well above a dangerous parapet. He maintained that the Church was the final court of appeal, since it was anterior to Scripture and thus the basis of the authority of Scripture. He quoted S Cyprian ("principalis ecclesia") on the Roman Primacy, and argued that the Roman Church, so far from being (what his opponent had called it) a meretricious whore, was the "apostolica et matrix ecclesia". Anticipating the Tractarians, he drew attention to the fact that many of the texts in the Prayer Book were drawn from Roman Sources. He gave advice that the Queen's religion was a comfortable one in which to live but not a safe faith in which to die ... the Jesuit missionary Fr John Gerard recorded hearing this from an ex-Calvinist convert who had herself consulted Perne.
To be continued. (An earlier version of this post contained, at the end, an error which I have corrected.)
10 January 2017
9 January 2017
Infantilising the laity
I'm afraid this is really just an update of my recent post (SEE BELOW) about the enthusiam of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity for silly games with empty shoe boxes.
Readers, of course, intelligently diagnosed (see thread) what was going on here. This is a quality blog!! The whole spirit of the PCCU enterprise resembled ... to a quite uncanny degree ... an English TV programme called Blue Peter in which children are encouraged to be creative with string and boxes. Good for children ... our five children had more fun with string and boxes than they ever did with expensive toys. But ... adults ...?
Much of what is wrong goes back to a wrong turning taken by the Liturgical Movement. The realisation of the immense riches in the Roman Rite led to a very laudable desire to open those riches more fully to the laity. This led in turn to the desire for (some??) vernacular. But the Enemy can pervert any good endeavour. So the ancient Roman Eucharistic Prayer, within a decade, was effectively displaced by a spurious confection which attracted employment by nothing except its brevity. And the seasonal Sunday Collects were eliminated en bloc. Then came Stage 2: the already mangled Roman Rite was corrupted still further in Anglophone regions by being 'translated' into the most cretinous, the most vacuous dialect of English imaginable. And, believe it or not, liturgical translators without Latin (!!) used the English version as the basis of their own renderings into minority languages. You just couldn't make it up.
Unsurprisingly, this has all fed through into the present crisis, in which God's People are treated with contempt; or, to be more precise, treated like very little children. Although the old corrupt translation has now been replaced (despite the fury of Tablet readers) by something markedly less unworthy, the damage had been done. The liturgical texts, in my experience, are still very rarely explained or expounded. Some clergy illegally but regularly paraphrase the authorised texts (even the Consecration), and do so in a way which reveals their own broad and deep incompetences. Nor are the Scriptures expounded, despite the explicit desire of Vatican II. Much preaching is pitiful. To cap it all, we now have a Roman Pontiff who talks about s**t-loving and s**t-eating and clearly feels he is a very fine fellow for doing so. Some clergy, presumably getting the message, break the rules by avoiding preaching whenever they can. Not surprisingly, they hate the Creed, especially if it's Nicene. But time can always be found for daft and soppy music.
The solution is really immensely simple. From Roman Pontifical Councils downwards [or do I mean upwards?], the clergy need to start treating the laity as grown-up Christians who do not need anybody's condescension. Who deserve respect rather than verbal cuddling. And seminarians need to be taught the essentially and unavoidably masculine character of the Roman Rite; they could well start by studying the work of those superb lay Catholic liturgists Edmund Bishop [The Genius of the Roman Rite] and Christine Mohrmann [The Origins of Liturgical Latin].
NOW FOLLOWS THE ORIGINAL POST!
The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, invented by Anglican Papalists and originally, admirably, known as the Chair of Unity Octave, starts on Wednesday January 18; which, in the Old Calendar, was the Feast of the Chair, the Cathedra, of S Peter. This year the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity in collaboration with some Ecumenical Partners, has set out quasi-liturgical formulae for use. These forms constitute successful attempts to scale heights of risibilty which have not to my knowledge previously been attempted. This is your real hard-core Guinness-book-of-records rubbish.
The central ritual involves the moving of stones. But, because carrying real stones might be a bit like hard work for the aged biddies of each sex who are likely to be symbolising their second childhoods by taking part in these rituals, the "stones" will in fact be shoe boxes covered with packing paper. No, I'm not making this up. Twelve of them. With labels. Labels naming 'things that divide'. The 'stones' will be built up to make a 'Wall of Division' which will then be dismantled and formed into a Cross. (What happens if the officiants disagree about the neatest way in which twelve empty shoe-boxes can be arranged into a Cross, and end up in a melee of fisticuffs, is a rubrical detail which these curial nut-cases have not catered for.)
At least two things worry me here.
(1) Some of the names on the stones involve non-statement, since they imply a tautology. How helpful is it, for example, to say that Division Divides?
(2) The Divisive Factors selected by the PCCU, of course, imply a specific (and distinctly narrow) mindset. I can best illustrate this by telling you some of the things which will not be written on any of the shoe boxes. 'Heresy' is not included. Nor is 'Disobedience to the Commandments of God'. No mention of 'Divergence from Holy Tradition'. Or of 'Failure to Worship God as He has commanded'. Try guessing what, in the Spirit of the Zeitgeist, these Ecumenists have come up with, then turn to the Vatican Website and discover how close you have got to analysing accurately the Spirit of the Age. And, No: 'Following the Spirit of this Passing Age' does not claim the dignity of a shoebox.
Nor does 'Encouraging grown men and women to play daft games with shoe boxes'.
Readers, of course, intelligently diagnosed (see thread) what was going on here. This is a quality blog!! The whole spirit of the PCCU enterprise resembled ... to a quite uncanny degree ... an English TV programme called Blue Peter in which children are encouraged to be creative with string and boxes. Good for children ... our five children had more fun with string and boxes than they ever did with expensive toys. But ... adults ...?
Much of what is wrong goes back to a wrong turning taken by the Liturgical Movement. The realisation of the immense riches in the Roman Rite led to a very laudable desire to open those riches more fully to the laity. This led in turn to the desire for (some??) vernacular. But the Enemy can pervert any good endeavour. So the ancient Roman Eucharistic Prayer, within a decade, was effectively displaced by a spurious confection which attracted employment by nothing except its brevity. And the seasonal Sunday Collects were eliminated en bloc. Then came Stage 2: the already mangled Roman Rite was corrupted still further in Anglophone regions by being 'translated' into the most cretinous, the most vacuous dialect of English imaginable. And, believe it or not, liturgical translators without Latin (!!) used the English version as the basis of their own renderings into minority languages. You just couldn't make it up.
Unsurprisingly, this has all fed through into the present crisis, in which God's People are treated with contempt; or, to be more precise, treated like very little children. Although the old corrupt translation has now been replaced (despite the fury of Tablet readers) by something markedly less unworthy, the damage had been done. The liturgical texts, in my experience, are still very rarely explained or expounded. Some clergy illegally but regularly paraphrase the authorised texts (even the Consecration), and do so in a way which reveals their own broad and deep incompetences. Nor are the Scriptures expounded, despite the explicit desire of Vatican II. Much preaching is pitiful. To cap it all, we now have a Roman Pontiff who talks about s**t-loving and s**t-eating and clearly feels he is a very fine fellow for doing so. Some clergy, presumably getting the message, break the rules by avoiding preaching whenever they can. Not surprisingly, they hate the Creed, especially if it's Nicene. But time can always be found for daft and soppy music.
The solution is really immensely simple. From Roman Pontifical Councils downwards [or do I mean upwards?], the clergy need to start treating the laity as grown-up Christians who do not need anybody's condescension. Who deserve respect rather than verbal cuddling. And seminarians need to be taught the essentially and unavoidably masculine character of the Roman Rite; they could well start by studying the work of those superb lay Catholic liturgists Edmund Bishop [The Genius of the Roman Rite] and Christine Mohrmann [The Origins of Liturgical Latin].
NOW FOLLOWS THE ORIGINAL POST!
The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, invented by Anglican Papalists and originally, admirably, known as the Chair of Unity Octave, starts on Wednesday January 18; which, in the Old Calendar, was the Feast of the Chair, the Cathedra, of S Peter. This year the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity in collaboration with some Ecumenical Partners, has set out quasi-liturgical formulae for use. These forms constitute successful attempts to scale heights of risibilty which have not to my knowledge previously been attempted. This is your real hard-core Guinness-book-of-records rubbish.
The central ritual involves the moving of stones. But, because carrying real stones might be a bit like hard work for the aged biddies of each sex who are likely to be symbolising their second childhoods by taking part in these rituals, the "stones" will in fact be shoe boxes covered with packing paper. No, I'm not making this up. Twelve of them. With labels. Labels naming 'things that divide'. The 'stones' will be built up to make a 'Wall of Division' which will then be dismantled and formed into a Cross. (What happens if the officiants disagree about the neatest way in which twelve empty shoe-boxes can be arranged into a Cross, and end up in a melee of fisticuffs, is a rubrical detail which these curial nut-cases have not catered for.)
At least two things worry me here.
(1) Some of the names on the stones involve non-statement, since they imply a tautology. How helpful is it, for example, to say that Division Divides?
(2) The Divisive Factors selected by the PCCU, of course, imply a specific (and distinctly narrow) mindset. I can best illustrate this by telling you some of the things which will not be written on any of the shoe boxes. 'Heresy' is not included. Nor is 'Disobedience to the Commandments of God'. No mention of 'Divergence from Holy Tradition'. Or of 'Failure to Worship God as He has commanded'. Try guessing what, in the Spirit of the Zeitgeist, these Ecumenists have come up with, then turn to the Vatican Website and discover how close you have got to analysing accurately the Spirit of the Age. And, No: 'Following the Spirit of this Passing Age' does not claim the dignity of a shoebox.
Nor does 'Encouraging grown men and women to play daft games with shoe boxes'.
Andrew Perne A Papist? (1)
High above the fenland landscape of the Daughter University may be descried a weathercock bearing the letters AP. It was placed there by the Master of Peterhouse for thirty five years, Andrew Perne. Wags - for there are such things in Cambridge - opined that it stood for "A Papist, A Protestant [which at that time meant an Anglican], A Puritan". In other words, A Perne was seen as a man who shifted with the various and shifting winds of the Tudor Regimes.
It is easy to see Perne as a Vicar of Bray, because his successful career at Cambridge began in the reign of Henry 'Gestapo' VIII; continued through even the most overtly Zwinglian phase of Cranmer's ascendancy under the Sickly Boy King; gathered impetus and benefices under Good Queen Mary; and continued triumphantly well into the reign of Bloody Bess. But the notion that Perne had any overt or covert sympathy for Puritanism is ... as the essays in this book demonstrate ... a calumny!
Which book? Perne is in my mind because a most kind friend, whom I ask to accept this as a warm thank-you, has had sent to me a thoroughly diverting volume (Cambridge Bibliographical Society Monograph No. 11 Andrew Perne Quatercentenary Studies CUP 1991; posted to me from Bennett and Kerr Books). It has set me thinking about a number of things.
Weathercock or not, Perne was a man of greater courage ... Parrhesia, indeed ... than he has normally been credited with having. In the first Convocation of Queen Mary, he "spoke against transubstantiation, and with exceptional boldness". But he soon conformed and was commended by Stephen Gardiner for the Mastership. And he served on the Commission to put down heresy in Cambridge ... a Commission which seemed loath to set alight many of what Eamonn Duffy has called the Fires of Faith (much more satisfactory blazes were lit and fanned here in Oxford).
But when it came to the Reformer Martin Bucer, the treatment dished out by Perne was gruesome in the extreme ... you would never guess what he did so I will have to tell you tomorrow ... get ready to hold your noses ...
To be continued.
It is easy to see Perne as a Vicar of Bray, because his successful career at Cambridge began in the reign of Henry 'Gestapo' VIII; continued through even the most overtly Zwinglian phase of Cranmer's ascendancy under the Sickly Boy King; gathered impetus and benefices under Good Queen Mary; and continued triumphantly well into the reign of Bloody Bess. But the notion that Perne had any overt or covert sympathy for Puritanism is ... as the essays in this book demonstrate ... a calumny!
Which book? Perne is in my mind because a most kind friend, whom I ask to accept this as a warm thank-you, has had sent to me a thoroughly diverting volume (Cambridge Bibliographical Society Monograph No. 11 Andrew Perne Quatercentenary Studies CUP 1991; posted to me from Bennett and Kerr Books). It has set me thinking about a number of things.
Weathercock or not, Perne was a man of greater courage ... Parrhesia, indeed ... than he has normally been credited with having. In the first Convocation of Queen Mary, he "spoke against transubstantiation, and with exceptional boldness". But he soon conformed and was commended by Stephen Gardiner for the Mastership. And he served on the Commission to put down heresy in Cambridge ... a Commission which seemed loath to set alight many of what Eamonn Duffy has called the Fires of Faith (much more satisfactory blazes were lit and fanned here in Oxford).
But when it came to the Reformer Martin Bucer, the treatment dished out by Perne was gruesome in the extreme ... you would never guess what he did so I will have to tell you tomorrow ... get ready to hold your noses ...
To be continued.
7 January 2017
Fr Z and Professor Finnis
I commend to readers a careful reading of Fr Zed's important and scholarly piece dated January 6, in which he brilliantly and painstakingly exposes the unscholarly piffle and twaddle of some cleric called Cameli who has set himself (in some Jesuit magazine) to defend Papa Bergofglio's Amoris laetitia.
Father does not mention that the cleric concerned, in using a faulty translation of a text by S John XXIII, simply repeats claims already erroneously made, decades ago, by a failed Jesuit called Hebblethwaite.
This whole controversy has, in other words, been run before! And the truth was exposed, back in 1991, a quarter of a century ago, by Professor John Finnis, a distinguished scholar of International Law in this University. And he exposed it in the Tablet !!!
I have myself explained this matter several times before, and I repeat, with this, two of my earlier pieces.
The promoters of error hope, by repeating themselves and each other endlessly and ad infinitum, to bamboozle us into swallowing their slanted narratives.
See underneath!
Father does not mention that the cleric concerned, in using a faulty translation of a text by S John XXIII, simply repeats claims already erroneously made, decades ago, by a failed Jesuit called Hebblethwaite.
This whole controversy has, in other words, been run before! And the truth was exposed, back in 1991, a quarter of a century ago, by Professor John Finnis, a distinguished scholar of International Law in this University. And he exposed it in the Tablet !!!
I have myself explained this matter several times before, and I repeat, with this, two of my earlier pieces.
The promoters of error hope, by repeating themselves and each other endlessly and ad infinitum, to bamboozle us into swallowing their slanted narratives.
See underneath!
A Happy Christmas ...
... to all readers who follow the Calendar of Caius Iulius Caesar; to all Byzantines, all Orthodox, all Old Believers and old Calendarists; to all 'Oriental' Christians.
And, of course, to all consistently fundamentalist enthusiasts for the liturgical books authorised by Pope S Pius V. (vide the Tridentine Rite Blog)
Happy Christ Mass!
And, of course, to all consistently fundamentalist enthusiasts for the liturgical books authorised by Pope S Pius V. (vide the Tridentine Rite Blog)
Happy Christ Mass!
6 January 2017
A ghostly Triple Triumph
Dom Prosper Gueranger suggests that the wonderful Epiphany antiphons Tribus miraculis and Hodie caelesti are designed to trump a commemoration, in the pagan Roman Calendar, of a triple Triumph by Augustus, aka il Duce, on January 6.
I this is rather intriguing; except that I can't find back-up for the assertion. Not in the obvious Internet resources; not in the Res gestae; not in Ovid's Fasti. (Perhaps you would have considered me more scholarly if I had listed those in the reverse order. Think of it as an ascending tricolon.)
But then, Ancient History is not really my professionalism. And Bodley has been closed for its winter break. Can anybody help?
UPDATE I thank learned contributors, both those whom you will find on the thread and those who were in touch with me more privately.
You will see that Orosius is pretty clearly the chappy from whom Dom Gueranger got his information. The thread contains the relevant passage, and a English crib is easily found on the Internet. I suspect that Orosius made up this Triple Triumph in order to provide an aition or, more correctly, a typos, for the Epiphany. The author of the Res Gestae is not, in my judgement, the sort of bloke who hid his Triple Triumphs under either a bush or a bushel.
Here are translations of these two Antiphons:
"We worshipfully keep (colimus) a Holy Day adorned with three miracles; today the Star led the Magi to the manger; today wine was made from water for the wedding; today in the Jordan Christ willed to be baptized by John, that he might save us: ALLELUIA!!"
"Today the Church is joined to her heavenly Bridegroom, since in the Jordan Christ washed away her sins; the Magi run with gifts to the Royal Wedding; and the wedding guests rejoice at the wine made from water [ex aqua facto vino]: ALLELUIA!!"
Textual Note:
In 1972 and 1984 editions of the Liturgia Horarum, the second antiphon ends "... et ex aqua facta vino laetantur convivae". You could easily make an argument that this odd phrase would most naturally mean "and the wedding guests rejoice as a result of water made by/from/with wine". All Breviary editions I possess give the reading and meaning I give above.
UPDATE The textual evidence is all but unanimous that facta is a blunder.
I this is rather intriguing; except that I can't find back-up for the assertion. Not in the obvious Internet resources; not in the Res gestae; not in Ovid's Fasti. (Perhaps you would have considered me more scholarly if I had listed those in the reverse order. Think of it as an ascending tricolon.)
But then, Ancient History is not really my professionalism. And Bodley has been closed for its winter break. Can anybody help?
UPDATE I thank learned contributors, both those whom you will find on the thread and those who were in touch with me more privately.
You will see that Orosius is pretty clearly the chappy from whom Dom Gueranger got his information. The thread contains the relevant passage, and a English crib is easily found on the Internet. I suspect that Orosius made up this Triple Triumph in order to provide an aition or, more correctly, a typos, for the Epiphany. The author of the Res Gestae is not, in my judgement, the sort of bloke who hid his Triple Triumphs under either a bush or a bushel.
Here are translations of these two Antiphons:
"We worshipfully keep (colimus) a Holy Day adorned with three miracles; today the Star led the Magi to the manger; today wine was made from water for the wedding; today in the Jordan Christ willed to be baptized by John, that he might save us: ALLELUIA!!"
"Today the Church is joined to her heavenly Bridegroom, since in the Jordan Christ washed away her sins; the Magi run with gifts to the Royal Wedding; and the wedding guests rejoice at the wine made from water [ex aqua facto vino]: ALLELUIA!!"
Textual Note:
In 1972 and 1984 editions of the Liturgia Horarum, the second antiphon ends "... et ex aqua facta vino laetantur convivae". You could easily make an argument that this odd phrase would most naturally mean "and the wedding guests rejoice as a result of water made by/from/with wine". All Breviary editions I possess give the reading and meaning I give above.
UPDATE The textual evidence is all but unanimous that facta is a blunder.
Mgr Graham Leonard
Today is the Year's Mind (as we say in the Patrimony) of the Right Reverend the Father in God the Lord Bishop Emeritus of London, Mgr Graham Leonard.
Having considered the extensive documentary evidence he provided about the participation of Dutch schismatics in Anglican episcopal consecrations since the the 1930s, Joseph Ratzinger's CDF decreed that there was a doubt about the invalidity of his presbyteral ordination, and ordered its repetition to be private and sub conditione. The monsignor was convinced that the CDF declined to consider the validity of his episcopal consecration out of an apprehension that they might have to declare it valid and find themselves stuck with a married bishop!
It our Ordinary's study on Golden Square in London, there is a fine portrait of Bishop Leonard. He is most truly the Forerunner of our Ordinariate.
Ecce sacerdos magnus qui in diebus suis placuit Domino et inventus est iustus. C A P D.
Having considered the extensive documentary evidence he provided about the participation of Dutch schismatics in Anglican episcopal consecrations since the the 1930s, Joseph Ratzinger's CDF decreed that there was a doubt about the invalidity of his presbyteral ordination, and ordered its repetition to be private and sub conditione. The monsignor was convinced that the CDF declined to consider the validity of his episcopal consecration out of an apprehension that they might have to declare it valid and find themselves stuck with a married bishop!
It our Ordinary's study on Golden Square in London, there is a fine portrait of Bishop Leonard. He is most truly the Forerunner of our Ordinariate.
Ecce sacerdos magnus qui in diebus suis placuit Domino et inventus est iustus. C A P D.
When did the Church of England finally come to an end?
A dodgy question ... which I only revisit because Rowan Williams (for whom, to the surprise of many of my friends, I still retain a very friendly respect), in effect, raised it recently. These were his words:
"The Anglican Church no longer shows so clearly the same combination of rootedness in the early Christian tradition and unfussy, prayerful pragmatism".
This is is very much the conclusion to which Gary Bennett came in his Preface to the 1987 Crockfords (for which the Great and the Good, the Liberal Men of Mercy, hounded him to suicide). He wrote of the demise of "the usual Anglican assumptions about the authority of Scripture and the normative character of patristic usage".
Yes, I know that many of you, with justice, might assign the demise of the Ecclesia Anglicana to the year 1559. But you know what I mean ... or, if you don't, don't bother further with this.
For what it's worth, I think I might pick on the date 2008, the year Henry Chadwick died. Readers who know anything about him will understand why I do this.
"The Anglican Church no longer shows so clearly the same combination of rootedness in the early Christian tradition and unfussy, prayerful pragmatism".
This is is very much the conclusion to which Gary Bennett came in his Preface to the 1987 Crockfords (for which the Great and the Good, the Liberal Men of Mercy, hounded him to suicide). He wrote of the demise of "the usual Anglican assumptions about the authority of Scripture and the normative character of patristic usage".
Yes, I know that many of you, with justice, might assign the demise of the Ecclesia Anglicana to the year 1559. But you know what I mean ... or, if you don't, don't bother further with this.
For what it's worth, I think I might pick on the date 2008, the year Henry Chadwick died. Readers who know anything about him will understand why I do this.
4 January 2017
Bishop Philip North of Burnley
Some readers might welcome a little information about an Anglican suffragan (i.e. assistant) Bishop who has been in the news recently.
Philip North was 'one of us'; and when the C of E resolved to have Women Bishops and Pope Benedict offered us an Ordinariate, we each had to decide whether to accept the offer. It became clear from what he said at public meetings that Fr North was not going to accept; his reason being that he wished to discharge a ministry which stretched out to the whole of society in a way that the non-Established ecclesial bodies, in his view, could not. He was subsequently nominated to the see of Whitby, because the Whitby area contained many of the parishes in the North who would need alternative episcopal oversight. Bigotry, however, raised its ugly head, and Father withdrew. Upon his appointment to Burnley, a novel system was put in place ... allegedly, because the powers that be were anxious to save as many people as possible from the clutches of the Ordinariate. The consecration was not performed by the Primatial Archbishop of York, but by a senior bishop who does not ordain women and two coconsecrators who also do not. Thus those dissenting from the ordination of women to sacerdotal ministies secured a sort of ecclesiola in ecclesia. This stimulated some disquiet, and in one parish the toddlers in the Church Primary School, sweet little ecclesiologists, were helped to write letters of protest.
So I am not surprised that Bishop Philip has written a most thought-provoking article in the Church Times, in which he defends ordinary working class people from the contempt of chattering classes. The context, of course, is the aftermath of the Brexit vote, which is thought by many to have been swung by the votes of xenophobic working class people. Bishop Philip names three matters of affection and/or concern which the working classes have: Family, Nation, Work (it has not been revealed whether he is aware of the rather 'Vichy' nature of this triad!). He thinks they deserve to have their concerns taken more seriously.
Broadly, I am in agreement with him. I would only have some hesitations in the matter of country. In Britain, our armed forces have been disgracefully used in immoral (and unsuccessful) military adventures. From the Gulf Wars onwards. We cheered on the fatuous Arab Spring and bombed Libya into a chaos from which it shows no signs of recovering. We bear the main responsibility for the horrors, for the millions of the killed and wounded and dispossessed, in Iraq and Syria. Affection for ones country and respect for her Armed Forces must not be extended to cover unquestioning acceptance of such government decisions.
Where the bishop is arguably right is in suggesting that there are more important things for Christians to be endlessly concerned with than gender and sexual matters. Everybody claims to agree with this. But, in the C of E, those endlessly demanding 'reforms' phrased the matter thus: "The Church should devote its energies towards the needs of the poor, so immediately give us what we demand with regard to the Ordination of Women and Marriage equality".
Poor dim things, they never spotted that there might be an equally logical alternative second half to that quaint proposition. Or did they?
Philip North was 'one of us'; and when the C of E resolved to have Women Bishops and Pope Benedict offered us an Ordinariate, we each had to decide whether to accept the offer. It became clear from what he said at public meetings that Fr North was not going to accept; his reason being that he wished to discharge a ministry which stretched out to the whole of society in a way that the non-Established ecclesial bodies, in his view, could not. He was subsequently nominated to the see of Whitby, because the Whitby area contained many of the parishes in the North who would need alternative episcopal oversight. Bigotry, however, raised its ugly head, and Father withdrew. Upon his appointment to Burnley, a novel system was put in place ... allegedly, because the powers that be were anxious to save as many people as possible from the clutches of the Ordinariate. The consecration was not performed by the Primatial Archbishop of York, but by a senior bishop who does not ordain women and two coconsecrators who also do not. Thus those dissenting from the ordination of women to sacerdotal ministies secured a sort of ecclesiola in ecclesia. This stimulated some disquiet, and in one parish the toddlers in the Church Primary School, sweet little ecclesiologists, were helped to write letters of protest.
So I am not surprised that Bishop Philip has written a most thought-provoking article in the Church Times, in which he defends ordinary working class people from the contempt of chattering classes. The context, of course, is the aftermath of the Brexit vote, which is thought by many to have been swung by the votes of xenophobic working class people. Bishop Philip names three matters of affection and/or concern which the working classes have: Family, Nation, Work (it has not been revealed whether he is aware of the rather 'Vichy' nature of this triad!). He thinks they deserve to have their concerns taken more seriously.
Broadly, I am in agreement with him. I would only have some hesitations in the matter of country. In Britain, our armed forces have been disgracefully used in immoral (and unsuccessful) military adventures. From the Gulf Wars onwards. We cheered on the fatuous Arab Spring and bombed Libya into a chaos from which it shows no signs of recovering. We bear the main responsibility for the horrors, for the millions of the killed and wounded and dispossessed, in Iraq and Syria. Affection for ones country and respect for her Armed Forces must not be extended to cover unquestioning acceptance of such government decisions.
Where the bishop is arguably right is in suggesting that there are more important things for Christians to be endlessly concerned with than gender and sexual matters. Everybody claims to agree with this. But, in the C of E, those endlessly demanding 'reforms' phrased the matter thus: "The Church should devote its energies towards the needs of the poor, so immediately give us what we demand with regard to the Ordination of Women and Marriage equality".
Poor dim things, they never spotted that there might be an equally logical alternative second half to that quaint proposition. Or did they?
3 January 2017
Newman and the Prayer Book
In his semi-autobiographical 1848 novel Loss and Gain, Blessed John Henry Newman mercilessly satirises all non-conformity, Evangelicalism, and vacuous ritualism. He does not criticise solid old-style Anglicanism (although one can easily discern a hermeneutic of its inadequacy).
In Chapter 8, the Misses Bolton, "very Catholic girls", have just been discussing the religious vocation with two rather handsome young ritualists; the discussion has manifestly been little other than a cover for flirtation. When they get home, their mother bursts out "Catholic, Catholic? give me good old George the Third and the Protestant religion. Those were the times! ... I value the Prayer Book as you cannot do, for I have known what it is to one in deep affliction. May it be long, dearest girls, before you know it in a similar way; but if affliction comes on you, depend on it, all these new fancies and fashions will vanish from you like the wind, and the good old Prayer Book alone will stand you in any stead. Come my dears; I have spoken too seriously. Go and take your things off, and come and let us have some quiet work before luncheon time".
One old Anglican custom was to learn the week's collect each week. Since nearly all of these are, of course, translated from the ancient Roman sacramentaries, this was a way of tapping into and being fed by an ancient and deeply orthodox euchological tradition.
Those, of course, who are in the Ordinariate can quite simply learn the collects in the old Prayer Book, which our Rite reproduces verbatim. I am not so sure what we should be commending to other Catholics.
No sane Catholic, of course, would have learned the old ICEL translations of the Sunday collects off by heart. But, given the current translation, Catholics may have a set of texts which could indeed be so treated. I wonder what readers think. Indeed, Liturgiam authenticam sees the provision of sound translations, and a period of stability, as being an important cultural opportunity for liturgical formulae to become a nutrient part of the spirituality of the Catholic worshipper.
In Chapter 8, the Misses Bolton, "very Catholic girls", have just been discussing the religious vocation with two rather handsome young ritualists; the discussion has manifestly been little other than a cover for flirtation. When they get home, their mother bursts out "Catholic, Catholic? give me good old George the Third and the Protestant religion. Those were the times! ... I value the Prayer Book as you cannot do, for I have known what it is to one in deep affliction. May it be long, dearest girls, before you know it in a similar way; but if affliction comes on you, depend on it, all these new fancies and fashions will vanish from you like the wind, and the good old Prayer Book alone will stand you in any stead. Come my dears; I have spoken too seriously. Go and take your things off, and come and let us have some quiet work before luncheon time".
One old Anglican custom was to learn the week's collect each week. Since nearly all of these are, of course, translated from the ancient Roman sacramentaries, this was a way of tapping into and being fed by an ancient and deeply orthodox euchological tradition.
Those, of course, who are in the Ordinariate can quite simply learn the collects in the old Prayer Book, which our Rite reproduces verbatim. I am not so sure what we should be commending to other Catholics.
No sane Catholic, of course, would have learned the old ICEL translations of the Sunday collects off by heart. But, given the current translation, Catholics may have a set of texts which could indeed be so treated. I wonder what readers think. Indeed, Liturgiam authenticam sees the provision of sound translations, and a period of stability, as being an important cultural opportunity for liturgical formulae to become a nutrient part of the spirituality of the Catholic worshipper.
2 January 2017
Pneumatology
I have no intention, this morning, of laying down the law about something! I wish, instead, to raise a question. And to ask you to regard most of what follows as a question.
They have got me thinking. By "they" I mean the Hypersuperueberpapalists who seem to me to constitute one of the most problematic heretical groupings currently at work in the Church Militant. The keep on about the Holy Spirit; how He desires us to accept constant surprises; how He speaks to us through the very lips of the Roman Pontiff ... particularly the present one. Kai ta loipa.
But, like Edgar Alan Poe's nocturnally silent dog, the Holy Spirit seems absent from places one might expect Him to be. Vatican I tells us that the Holy Spirit does not inspire the Roman Pontiff with new teaching but simply helps him to plug the old stuff. Ecumenical Councils do not routinely suggest that the Spirit is guiding them in their new articulations of doctrine. Anti-Gnostic polemicists such as Irenaeus find guarantees of pure Teaching in the historical succession of orthodox bishops from the time of the Apostles, not in the activity of the Spirit. Pius popes defining Marian doctrines do not claim the inspiration of the Spirit. The "Nicene" Creed refrains from claiming the Holy Spirit as the church's guide; locutus est per prophetas (contra Marcionem) is the role it appears to highlight (I know of no credal document which offers loquitur in Ecclesia). Yet that Symbolum Fidei was promulgated by Fathers who had everything to gain from claiming the Holy Spirit as witness to their own very decisive doctrinal interventions. And if, while on holiday near Pepuza, we find groups getting excited about the Spirit, we are inclined to be very cautious about their orthodoxy.
In S John's Gospel, the Lord says, indeed, that the Holy Spirit will lead his disciples into all truth: but I discern no evidence that this refers to anything beyond the ambit of the Gospel Narratives themselves. When the Council of Jerusalem writes edoxen gar toi Pneumati toi Hagioi kai hemin, they are surely not so much claiming the inevitable concurrence of the Spirit with their own conciliar decision-making as referring to the Outpourings of the Spirit as narrated in the earlier chapters of Acts.
So; I have offered you something of a clearing of the ground done from what you might loosely call an apophatic stance. Now we come on to the more positive exploration: what is the ecclesiological role of the Holy Spirit? Over to you.
They have got me thinking. By "they" I mean the Hypersuperueberpapalists who seem to me to constitute one of the most problematic heretical groupings currently at work in the Church Militant. The keep on about the Holy Spirit; how He desires us to accept constant surprises; how He speaks to us through the very lips of the Roman Pontiff ... particularly the present one. Kai ta loipa.
But, like Edgar Alan Poe's nocturnally silent dog, the Holy Spirit seems absent from places one might expect Him to be. Vatican I tells us that the Holy Spirit does not inspire the Roman Pontiff with new teaching but simply helps him to plug the old stuff. Ecumenical Councils do not routinely suggest that the Spirit is guiding them in their new articulations of doctrine. Anti-Gnostic polemicists such as Irenaeus find guarantees of pure Teaching in the historical succession of orthodox bishops from the time of the Apostles, not in the activity of the Spirit. Pius popes defining Marian doctrines do not claim the inspiration of the Spirit. The "Nicene" Creed refrains from claiming the Holy Spirit as the church's guide; locutus est per prophetas (contra Marcionem) is the role it appears to highlight (I know of no credal document which offers loquitur in Ecclesia). Yet that Symbolum Fidei was promulgated by Fathers who had everything to gain from claiming the Holy Spirit as witness to their own very decisive doctrinal interventions. And if, while on holiday near Pepuza, we find groups getting excited about the Spirit, we are inclined to be very cautious about their orthodoxy.
In S John's Gospel, the Lord says, indeed, that the Holy Spirit will lead his disciples into all truth: but I discern no evidence that this refers to anything beyond the ambit of the Gospel Narratives themselves. When the Council of Jerusalem writes edoxen gar toi Pneumati toi Hagioi kai hemin, they are surely not so much claiming the inevitable concurrence of the Spirit with their own conciliar decision-making as referring to the Outpourings of the Spirit as narrated in the earlier chapters of Acts.
So; I have offered you something of a clearing of the ground done from what you might loosely call an apophatic stance. Now we come on to the more positive exploration: what is the ecclesiological role of the Holy Spirit? Over to you.
1 January 2017
The Feast of the Circumcision
Why, people ask, was January 1 deprived of its old name of the Feast of the Circumcision? Since it manifestly is eight days after the Nativity, and eight days after His birth was when the Lord was circumcised.
The question is a mere detail. In the Gregorian Sacramentary, today was called simply the Octave of the Lord, and its Collect (as today) concerned the Mother of God (Deus qui salutis aeternae). (The Byzantine Rite also has a natural inclination to concentrate on an aspect of a great feast on a nearby day). During the Middle Ages, today came to have the title of the Circumcision, but the propers were not changed. So even while it was called the Feast of the Circumcision, most of the Mass and Office (except for the Gospel and some readings at Mattins), did not have any reference to the Circumcision. They were about the Incarnation, our Lady's part in it, and her perpetual Virginity.
At Lauds, the first Antiphon (O admirabile commercium) is a superb reminder that the Incarnation of God makes us, the baptised, into Gods (or, to be pedantic, sharers in the Godhead of the one into whom we have been baptised). What a wonderful Swap (commercium)! The Creator of the human race, taking an animated body, has deigned to be born of a Virgin, and, going forth as a human without seed, has granted to us his Divinity. The second antiphon typologically uses the dew that fell upon Gideon's flece; the third sees the bush that was burned but not consumed as a type of Mary's virginity, undiminished by her childbearing.
Personally, I feel that the simplest and best title is that of Octave of the Nativity; surely we could call it that and then leave the unchanged ancient texts to make their own different but interrelated points. I suspect the post-Conciliar tamperers changed it to Mary Mother of God simply to give themselves an excuse for suppressing Pius XI's feast on October 11. (And it would be jolly to start rescuing the term Octave from practical oblivion.)
Mutual Enrichment ... Dom Anselmo Lentini, in the Liturgia Horarum, mandated by the Council to increase the use of ancient hymnody drawn from the vast treasury of the Latin Church, introduced the fine Prudentian hymn Corde natus ex Parentis [Of the Father's Heart begotten] as an Office Hymn for today. A marvellous idea. I love so much of its phraseology ... Corde natus ... ipse fons et clausula ... as well as those great striding trochaic tetrameters catalectic. A mature and glorious moment in the evolution of Christian Latin. (What a Diabolical scandal that, within a decade of Sacrosanctum Concilium, its provisions [especially paras 93 and 101] were so brazenly suppressed in order to eliminate a latinate and literate clergy connected to their roots ... as part of a wider conspiracy frankly revealed by Screwtape at the end of Chapter XXVII.)
Hymns are a weak point in the 1961 Breviary; their texts still stand as they were corrupted by Urban VIII, and more variety is surely needed. Is there any cleric who really enjoys saying Iste Confessor day after day? It will be a great day when, on both 'sides', we have a sufficiently balanced, relaxed, and distanced view of Vatican II and its aftermath to be able to incorporate some of their worthier elements into our incomparable ancient rites.
The question is a mere detail. In the Gregorian Sacramentary, today was called simply the Octave of the Lord, and its Collect (as today) concerned the Mother of God (Deus qui salutis aeternae). (The Byzantine Rite also has a natural inclination to concentrate on an aspect of a great feast on a nearby day). During the Middle Ages, today came to have the title of the Circumcision, but the propers were not changed. So even while it was called the Feast of the Circumcision, most of the Mass and Office (except for the Gospel and some readings at Mattins), did not have any reference to the Circumcision. They were about the Incarnation, our Lady's part in it, and her perpetual Virginity.
At Lauds, the first Antiphon (O admirabile commercium) is a superb reminder that the Incarnation of God makes us, the baptised, into Gods (or, to be pedantic, sharers in the Godhead of the one into whom we have been baptised). What a wonderful Swap (commercium)! The Creator of the human race, taking an animated body, has deigned to be born of a Virgin, and, going forth as a human without seed, has granted to us his Divinity. The second antiphon typologically uses the dew that fell upon Gideon's flece; the third sees the bush that was burned but not consumed as a type of Mary's virginity, undiminished by her childbearing.
Personally, I feel that the simplest and best title is that of Octave of the Nativity; surely we could call it that and then leave the unchanged ancient texts to make their own different but interrelated points. I suspect the post-Conciliar tamperers changed it to Mary Mother of God simply to give themselves an excuse for suppressing Pius XI's feast on October 11. (And it would be jolly to start rescuing the term Octave from practical oblivion.)
Mutual Enrichment ... Dom Anselmo Lentini, in the Liturgia Horarum, mandated by the Council to increase the use of ancient hymnody drawn from the vast treasury of the Latin Church, introduced the fine Prudentian hymn Corde natus ex Parentis [Of the Father's Heart begotten] as an Office Hymn for today. A marvellous idea. I love so much of its phraseology ... Corde natus ... ipse fons et clausula ... as well as those great striding trochaic tetrameters catalectic. A mature and glorious moment in the evolution of Christian Latin. (What a Diabolical scandal that, within a decade of Sacrosanctum Concilium, its provisions [especially paras 93 and 101] were so brazenly suppressed in order to eliminate a latinate and literate clergy connected to their roots ... as part of a wider conspiracy frankly revealed by Screwtape at the end of Chapter XXVII.)
Hymns are a weak point in the 1961 Breviary; their texts still stand as they were corrupted by Urban VIII, and more variety is surely needed. Is there any cleric who really enjoys saying Iste Confessor day after day? It will be a great day when, on both 'sides', we have a sufficiently balanced, relaxed, and distanced view of Vatican II and its aftermath to be able to incorporate some of their worthier elements into our incomparable ancient rites.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
