My cards are on the table. I think reception kneeling is the most important ritual adjunct to Holy Communion. Not that I in any way deny the very great propriety and suitability of receiving in os. It is certainly to be strongly encouraged in all three forms of the Roman Rite.
In the Church of England, before the 'Catholic Revival', reception was in manum. It had not always been so. In his first (1549) essay at a vernacular rite, Cranmer laid down that the Host should be received in the mouth. This was because people "many tymes conveyghed the same secretly awaye, kept it with them, and diversely abused it". At that stage, hosts were still unleavened bread, and round, thereby setting them aside from the common estimation of common bread. (The main change which Cranmer's rite ordered was that hosts should be broken, "and menne muste not thynke lesse to be receyved in parte then in the whole, but in eache of them the whole body of our savioure Jesu Christ". Not very Zwinglian language! My own suspicion is that this is an example of linguistic habits trailing some way behind a man's latest speculative musings.)
In his second Prayer Book, Cranmer changed things so that the consecrated Bread was delivered into the hands of the communicants. At the same time, he changed his earlier requirement of unleavened, round, hosts, to this: "it shall suffyse that the bread be such as is usuall to bee eaten at the Table wyth other meates ...". In these changed circumstances, he probably thought that nobody was now likely to bother to "conveygh the same secretly awaye".
As for kneeling, Cranmer, even at his most Zwinglian, retained it. Faced with strong pressure to rescind the practice, he tartly pointed out that, since "the Booke" had been through all its Parliamentary stages and received Royal Assent, making changes would be legally questionable. "The Counsell" contented itself with gumming their illegal "Black Rubric" (denying "anye reall and essenciall presence") into the already printed Prayer Books. Happily, a few months later Good Queen Mary was on the throne, and right-thinking people were organising big bonfires, just as, in 1549, many of them had already done once. Fire is so very cleansing.
In the Church of England, in which I ministered for more than four decades, well-instructed devout lay persoms who are not High Church communicate kneeling, with their hands stretched out, the left hand "making a throne" for the right hand ... which is flat. The host having been placed on the palm of the right hand, the worshipper brings his tongue down to the host and, using the natural moisture of the tongue, takes the host into his mouth. It is good practice to keep the palm of one's right hand clean by not having used it "to exchange a sign of Peace"; and to check, after Communion, that there are no tiny crumbs left.
I also have quite a bit of experience of the Church of Ireland, which traditionally was thought of as a rather Protestant couple of provinces, and which continued to prescribe the use of leavened bread. The amiable and civilised Ned Darling, Bishop of Limerick (and of seven other places) showed me how to prepare the bread. One rolled it flat, and then cut it into neat squares with a sharp knife. This meant that one never (in my experience) had any problem whatsoever with crumbs.
And, while the 'Catholics' down the road strolled nonchalantly around their church to collect a host and then communicated themselves with it while still walking, in the Church of Ireland the communicants reverently knelt. I know which usage seems to me the more congruent with the Eucharistic dogmatic teaching of the Council of Trent!
Incidentally and irrelevantly, I am referring to Knightstown on Valentia Island, where S John Baptist's C of I Church was built by an ancestor of Sir Adrian Fitzgerald, Hereditary Knight of Kerry, Knight of Malta, Patron of the Latin Mass Society.
12 July 2020
11 July 2020
The TABLET takes an interest in Oxford!!!
A DELATOR has graciously taken an interest in the Catholic life of this City! He has done this in the traditional Tabletista way of complaining via that periodical about a priest of the diocese.
English Catholics remember the trials to which Fr Tim at Blackfen was subjected some years ago. Fr Tim is a priest of great learning and great pastoral instincts.
And so is Fr John Saward, pp of SS Gregory and Augustine in the North of Oxford. He is a dogmatic theologian and spiritual writer of enormous ability. Like Fr Tim, he is a former Seminary professor.
And Fr John is uneasy about the reverence ... or rather, irreverence ... involved in administering Holy Communion according to the present CBCEW regulations. (Vide my posts over the last four days.)
I would not like you to get the impression that a member of his congregation has made a complaint. Most certainly not. Indeed, the diocese of Birmingham is at pains to make exactly this clear. There has been no complaint to Father; there has been no complaint to the diocese.
Instead, a complaint to the Tablet, which has then ... you'd never have guessed, would you? ... passed the complaint on to the diocese.
The DELATOR did not put himself to the irritating trouble of actually attending public worship. Oh dear me No; these people are not as crude as that. Peering at a sophisticated screen, he watched a 'streamed' Mass and then took out his subtle pen.
But perhaps this is the time to offer constructive suggestions. So ... ...
One of the concerns of Governments and Hierarchies making regulations about public worship during this pandemic is, absolutely rightly, to discourage people from projecting potentially infected particles from their mouths in the direction of congregations. Medical opinion still seems uneasily uncertain about how far such projection might reach and how effective masks really are.
Father has been very careful about this. His care has taken the immensely sensible form of celebrating ad Orientem. At a time when, unhappily, there are still some priests who, despite the wise advice of Cardinal Sara, still persist in celebrating versus populum, surely Fr Saward should be given the credit for going this extra mile in the battle against the plague.
And surely, strong pressure should be put on other clergy to follow the same responsible and pastoral policy.
Why should congregations be put at risk, just because of clerical caprice, in the interests of some rigid 'liberal' shibboleth?
English Catholics remember the trials to which Fr Tim at Blackfen was subjected some years ago. Fr Tim is a priest of great learning and great pastoral instincts.
And so is Fr John Saward, pp of SS Gregory and Augustine in the North of Oxford. He is a dogmatic theologian and spiritual writer of enormous ability. Like Fr Tim, he is a former Seminary professor.
And Fr John is uneasy about the reverence ... or rather, irreverence ... involved in administering Holy Communion according to the present CBCEW regulations. (Vide my posts over the last four days.)
I would not like you to get the impression that a member of his congregation has made a complaint. Most certainly not. Indeed, the diocese of Birmingham is at pains to make exactly this clear. There has been no complaint to Father; there has been no complaint to the diocese.
Instead, a complaint to the Tablet, which has then ... you'd never have guessed, would you? ... passed the complaint on to the diocese.
The DELATOR did not put himself to the irritating trouble of actually attending public worship. Oh dear me No; these people are not as crude as that. Peering at a sophisticated screen, he watched a 'streamed' Mass and then took out his subtle pen.
But perhaps this is the time to offer constructive suggestions. So ... ...
One of the concerns of Governments and Hierarchies making regulations about public worship during this pandemic is, absolutely rightly, to discourage people from projecting potentially infected particles from their mouths in the direction of congregations. Medical opinion still seems uneasily uncertain about how far such projection might reach and how effective masks really are.
Father has been very careful about this. His care has taken the immensely sensible form of celebrating ad Orientem. At a time when, unhappily, there are still some priests who, despite the wise advice of Cardinal Sara, still persist in celebrating versus populum, surely Fr Saward should be given the credit for going this extra mile in the battle against the plague.
And surely, strong pressure should be put on other clergy to follow the same responsible and pastoral policy.
Why should congregations be put at risk, just because of clerical caprice, in the interests of some rigid 'liberal' shibboleth?
10 July 2020
Communion in the Hand (3)
But Stay. Surely, we should find out what the Primitive Church did at Communion time, and just follow that?
Fair enough. But we shall still need to sort out some of the more minor details. For example: when we prostrate ourselves flat upon the ground before Communion, should we (1) kiss the ground; or (2) kiss the priest's foot? (Or both?) 'Primitive' usage appears to have differed from place to place. (2) could be deemed a breach of social-distancing. But if we do (1), might this not spread the virus if we all kiss the same spot upon the ground?
Should we touch the Lord's Body to our eyes? Not a bad idea, emphasising the importance of custody-of-the-eyes. If my lips are moist from the Chalice, should I touch that moisture to all my senses? How about the common ancient custom of communicating bare-foot? But this might lead to a spate of shoe-thieves infesting our churches. Just imagine the clustering spivs outside the Brompton Oratory after Sunday Mass: "'Ere, Missus, pair of Gucci double G ankle-boots 'ardly worn at all fifty quid to you."
I hope it will not seem that I am writing irreverently in highlighting the the variety of customs common in antiquity ... indeed, throughout the first Christian millennium. In fact, I am going to make the point that all this bewildering diversity expresses one single very simple and extremely important perception.
Receiving Holy Communion is such an immensely significant action that it ought to be surrounded by a lot of fuss and bother, tons and tons and tons of ritual and 'palaver'.
For this reason, it seems to me that kneeling is, in many ways, more important than the question of hand or mouth. Not that I am criticising or discouraging in os. I am saying what I am saying: that I think kneeling is even more important.
One more part in this series.
Fair enough. But we shall still need to sort out some of the more minor details. For example: when we prostrate ourselves flat upon the ground before Communion, should we (1) kiss the ground; or (2) kiss the priest's foot? (Or both?) 'Primitive' usage appears to have differed from place to place. (2) could be deemed a breach of social-distancing. But if we do (1), might this not spread the virus if we all kiss the same spot upon the ground?
Should we touch the Lord's Body to our eyes? Not a bad idea, emphasising the importance of custody-of-the-eyes. If my lips are moist from the Chalice, should I touch that moisture to all my senses? How about the common ancient custom of communicating bare-foot? But this might lead to a spate of shoe-thieves infesting our churches. Just imagine the clustering spivs outside the Brompton Oratory after Sunday Mass: "'Ere, Missus, pair of Gucci double G ankle-boots 'ardly worn at all fifty quid to you."
I hope it will not seem that I am writing irreverently in highlighting the the variety of customs common in antiquity ... indeed, throughout the first Christian millennium. In fact, I am going to make the point that all this bewildering diversity expresses one single very simple and extremely important perception.
Receiving Holy Communion is such an immensely significant action that it ought to be surrounded by a lot of fuss and bother, tons and tons and tons of ritual and 'palaver'.
For this reason, it seems to me that kneeling is, in many ways, more important than the question of hand or mouth. Not that I am criticising or discouraging in os. I am saying what I am saying: that I think kneeling is even more important.
One more part in this series.
8 July 2020
Communion in the hand (2)
But what about those of you who reject the Conciliar and post-Conciliar 'reforms? OK, you reject Memoriale Domini of 1969. But where does that leave you?
As we saw, Memoriale Domini rightly says that the Latin custom of receiving in os 'rests' (innititur) on the custom handed down by many ages. But it cites no legislative enactments. The Old Missal does not mention the communion of the People at all in the Ordo Missae; one has to turn for that to the Rituale Romanum. Here, there are varous requirements: communicants should have been to Confession; be fasting since midnight; be kneeling on both knees; and, as far as possible, with men separated from women. All of which sounds good to me. But nothing about mouths or hands.
Perhaps a canonist might argue that the mandate of 1929 (YES! as recently as that!) requiring the use of the Communion patten implied in os. But, frankly, it didn't. And a theologian might point out with warm approval the very considerable weight attached in Memoriale Domini to Tradition. Fair enough. I would agree. But Memoriale Domini left Episcopal Conference free to request a differemt usage, and Rome started issuing dispensations within days. Was everything, you suggest, so obvious pre-1962 that it seemed unnecessary to spell it out? Possibly; but that can be a dangerous argument.
Of course, Traditionalists will be the last people to wish to abandon a mos plurium saeculorum. Nor would I wish them to. But it seems to me that the matter is not quite as tightly and explicitly tied up in the legislation pre-1962 surrounding the Mass of Ages, the Vetus Ordo, as it is in the rules of 1969 and later, relating to the Novus Ordo.
Pre-Vatican II, there is at least the arguable possibility of wriggle room. Post-Vatican II, the law is rigid to the point of being Mosaic: lay folk desiring Communion in os are entitled to it.
So what is going on? I am sure that the Catholic Bishops, learned and principled men, know what they are doing. Given the admirable subtilty of their minds, I feel it is our duty to read-between-the-lines and thus to discover what they really want us to do.
So here is my hypothesis. What they are saying, with a nudge-nudge here and a wink-wink there, is: "During this pandemic crisis, we want all our clergy exclusively to use the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, and to use its gaps and ambiguities to administer Communion only in the hand."
They are surely entitled to expect adherence to an expectation so simple and sensible.
Continues.
As we saw, Memoriale Domini rightly says that the Latin custom of receiving in os 'rests' (innititur) on the custom handed down by many ages. But it cites no legislative enactments. The Old Missal does not mention the communion of the People at all in the Ordo Missae; one has to turn for that to the Rituale Romanum. Here, there are varous requirements: communicants should have been to Confession; be fasting since midnight; be kneeling on both knees; and, as far as possible, with men separated from women. All of which sounds good to me. But nothing about mouths or hands.
Perhaps a canonist might argue that the mandate of 1929 (YES! as recently as that!) requiring the use of the Communion patten implied in os. But, frankly, it didn't. And a theologian might point out with warm approval the very considerable weight attached in Memoriale Domini to Tradition. Fair enough. I would agree. But Memoriale Domini left Episcopal Conference free to request a differemt usage, and Rome started issuing dispensations within days. Was everything, you suggest, so obvious pre-1962 that it seemed unnecessary to spell it out? Possibly; but that can be a dangerous argument.
Of course, Traditionalists will be the last people to wish to abandon a mos plurium saeculorum. Nor would I wish them to. But it seems to me that the matter is not quite as tightly and explicitly tied up in the legislation pre-1962 surrounding the Mass of Ages, the Vetus Ordo, as it is in the rules of 1969 and later, relating to the Novus Ordo.
Pre-Vatican II, there is at least the arguable possibility of wriggle room. Post-Vatican II, the law is rigid to the point of being Mosaic: lay folk desiring Communion in os are entitled to it.
So what is going on? I am sure that the Catholic Bishops, learned and principled men, know what they are doing. Given the admirable subtilty of their minds, I feel it is our duty to read-between-the-lines and thus to discover what they really want us to do.
So here is my hypothesis. What they are saying, with a nudge-nudge here and a wink-wink there, is: "During this pandemic crisis, we want all our clergy exclusively to use the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, and to use its gaps and ambiguities to administer Communion only in the hand."
They are surely entitled to expect adherence to an expectation so simple and sensible.
Continues.
7 July 2020
Communion in the hand? Why I am Infuriated (1)
Well, y'know, I started writing this in a state of fury. Y'see, I thought I'd better read the 1969 decree Memoriale Domini of the Liturgy dicastery, all about the methods of receiving Holy Communion. But ... could I find the actual text anywhere on the internet? Answer: No! So in the end ... I hate doing this because it always seems to end up with lots of tedious scrolling up and down ... I turned to Acta Apostolicae Sedis 1969 pp 541sqq, and read quickly through it (it's not very long) right down to the last line. That last line consists of the great name, the name above (or rather, below) all other names ... that of the Worshipful Grand Master of Liturgy himself, H Bugnini. (Even in this blog, I bet there are readers so ignorant that they weren't aware that 'Annibale' starts with an H. Now you know.)
Of course, for those of you, megatraddies, who refuse any and every piece of liturgical legislation later than the Council of Laodicea oops I meant Vatican II, Memoriale Domini is out-of-court. 1969 is well after the Council; well after the cut-off point of 1962 as appointed by Benedict XVI in Summorum Pontificum. So you will not be AT ALL interested in the facts that (1) it orders Communion in the mouth to be retained (servari debet, non solum quia in tradito plurium saeculorum more innotitur, sed praesertim quia Christifidelium reverentiam erga Eucharistiam significat); (2) it leaves the door a few millimetres ajar for exceptions to be made; and (3) it preserves the right of faithful Christians to receive in the mouth even where permission has been given for optional reception in the hand. For you hardline Extraordinary Form traditionalists, none of this has any relevance at all. That is why I have not just explained it with such care.
But for keen post-Concilar types, Bugniniphiles; Tablet readers; many Bishops; the clear directive here is that a layperson who wishes to reive in os must be allowed to do so. And these safeguards have been iterated since 1969. Bugnini locutus est, causa finita est, as S Augustine put it after he sacked his girl-friend. Obedience is important! Bow, bow, before his daughter-in-law elect!!
I shall delete unread any comments offered before I have completed this post in a day or two.
Of course, for those of you, megatraddies, who refuse any and every piece of liturgical legislation later than the Council of Laodicea oops I meant Vatican II, Memoriale Domini is out-of-court. 1969 is well after the Council; well after the cut-off point of 1962 as appointed by Benedict XVI in Summorum Pontificum. So you will not be AT ALL interested in the facts that (1) it orders Communion in the mouth to be retained (servari debet, non solum quia in tradito plurium saeculorum more innotitur, sed praesertim quia Christifidelium reverentiam erga Eucharistiam significat); (2) it leaves the door a few millimetres ajar for exceptions to be made; and (3) it preserves the right of faithful Christians to receive in the mouth even where permission has been given for optional reception in the hand. For you hardline Extraordinary Form traditionalists, none of this has any relevance at all. That is why I have not just explained it with such care.
But for keen post-Concilar types, Bugniniphiles; Tablet readers; many Bishops; the clear directive here is that a layperson who wishes to reive in os must be allowed to do so. And these safeguards have been iterated since 1969. Bugnini locutus est, causa finita est, as S Augustine put it after he sacked his girl-friend. Obedience is important! Bow, bow, before his daughter-in-law elect!!
I shall delete unread any comments offered before I have completed this post in a day or two.
6 July 2020
Departed Worlds??? (1)
A Patrimonial friend once passed on to me a dear little volume called Euchologium Anglicanum; and, if that very title isn't an echo of an Anglican culture which has passed away, what is? It was printed in 1963. Could one imagine, in 2015, such a name being given to such a book anywhere in this solar system? But stay: let me tell you how it came into existence, and what it contains.
John Eyre Winstanley Wallis, sometime Scholar of Brasenose College in this University, and from 1945 Canon Chancellor of Lichfield Cathedral (d.1957), had begun to compose devotions for use after the Third Collect at Sunday Evensong in his Cathedral. "It seemed to me that the early Sacramentaries supplied the very models that I wanted, Christian but not technical. I set to work first to translate prayers from these, but I was driven in time to write prayers."
And at the beginning of 1957, Wallis proposed to a friend (and undergraduate contemporary), F C Geary, Fellow of Corpus 1928-1952, that he, Geary, provide Latin versions to accompany the English prayers Wallis had been "driven ... to write": "The Latin ... will be used mainly by the Vicar and his educated laity at their prayer desks, where the work of engaging the mind with the heart in its devotions is very greatly assisted by the use of Latin ...". In his Foreward, Geary remarks that Wallis's own English compositions were "based ... on the language and rhythms of the early Sacramentaries, which from long study were familiar to him".
If all that doesn't bring tears to your eyes, O ye hard of heart, nothing will. It conjures up a picture in which the parson knows the Roman Sacramentaries and his 'educated laity' understand how Latin would enrich their life of private prayer; a picture in which gentle and scholarly priests make their way across the Cathedral Close as formidably learned spinster ladies critically dissect last Sunday's sermons after collating manuscripts in the Chapter Library. Whatever happened to all that? Is it not a Departed World??? And, while that world had its lacunae, are we the better off or the worse off for its demise? For those of us with age and memories, it is perhaps suggestive ... and chilling ... to think how different the 1970s were from the 1950s. Yes ... you see what I mean! Just suppose the 1960s had never happened! And Euchologium Anglicanum wasn't the only little book to be published in 1963, was it ... ? But more of that later.
You want to know about F C Geary? You want to read examples of these prayers? And so you shall!
John Eyre Winstanley Wallis, sometime Scholar of Brasenose College in this University, and from 1945 Canon Chancellor of Lichfield Cathedral (d.1957), had begun to compose devotions for use after the Third Collect at Sunday Evensong in his Cathedral. "It seemed to me that the early Sacramentaries supplied the very models that I wanted, Christian but not technical. I set to work first to translate prayers from these, but I was driven in time to write prayers."
And at the beginning of 1957, Wallis proposed to a friend (and undergraduate contemporary), F C Geary, Fellow of Corpus 1928-1952, that he, Geary, provide Latin versions to accompany the English prayers Wallis had been "driven ... to write": "The Latin ... will be used mainly by the Vicar and his educated laity at their prayer desks, where the work of engaging the mind with the heart in its devotions is very greatly assisted by the use of Latin ...". In his Foreward, Geary remarks that Wallis's own English compositions were "based ... on the language and rhythms of the early Sacramentaries, which from long study were familiar to him".
If all that doesn't bring tears to your eyes, O ye hard of heart, nothing will. It conjures up a picture in which the parson knows the Roman Sacramentaries and his 'educated laity' understand how Latin would enrich their life of private prayer; a picture in which gentle and scholarly priests make their way across the Cathedral Close as formidably learned spinster ladies critically dissect last Sunday's sermons after collating manuscripts in the Chapter Library. Whatever happened to all that? Is it not a Departed World??? And, while that world had its lacunae, are we the better off or the worse off for its demise? For those of us with age and memories, it is perhaps suggestive ... and chilling ... to think how different the 1970s were from the 1950s. Yes ... you see what I mean! Just suppose the 1960s had never happened! And Euchologium Anglicanum wasn't the only little book to be published in 1963, was it ... ? But more of that later.
You want to know about F C Geary? You want to read examples of these prayers? And so you shall!
5 July 2020
Three Emigre French clergy
At the beginning of May in 1619, a Carmelite House was founded at Antwerp for exiled English recusant ladies. The community in 1794 transferred to Lanherne in Cornwall. If you discount a recent hiatus of three or four years, there are four centuries of Carmelite continuity now represented at Lanherne.
During one of my early visits there, "We'll put out the five kilo chasuble" said Reverend Mother through the grille. "It dates from when the House was opened in Antwerp in 1619. But we'll also put out a lighter chasuble in case it's too much for you."
Of course, I wore the five kilo chasuble, its embroidery a heavy riot of baroque cornucopias. How could one resist such a challenge? After Mass, as I left the Chapel, and looked at the gravestones surrounding the first millenium crucifix outside the door, this inscription caught my eye: Beneath is interred the Rev Louis Dourlen Chaplain of Lanherne formerly priest of the Diocese of St Omers and Canon of Arras Cathedral 1839. Aged 85.
It suddenly dawned upon me that M le Chanoine would very probably have worn that five kilo chasuble; the penny dropped that he must have been a gentleman clergyman who had left France during its Revolutionary troubles. I later discovered (George Oliver, Collections, page 287) that Dourlen joined, for a while, the considerable community (unmentioned by Jane Austen) of French emigres in Bath. There, "he was much respected and esteemed for his integrity and polished manners"; he was gout-ridden but never wore spectacles! I suppose he was in his thirties when Arras Cathedral was declared the Temple of Reason and, presumably, he lost the stipends of his canonry (so it is no surprise that, according to a Guide to Regency Bath, he was available to give French lessons!). The Cathedral was subsequently demolished.
I have recently written about an Abbe Chauvel, whose life was interwoven with the activities of the Catholic Trelawnys. Tentatively, I wonder if he may be the cleric listed as "A Pannece. Chauvel (Jean), ex-vicaire; y exerce. Insoumis, peu eclaire, sans moyens, tres pieux" (E Sevestre, Le clerge Breton en 1801 d'apres les enquetes prefectorales de l'an IX et l'an X conservees aux archives nationales). Peu eclaire! what an accolade! Faxit Deus ...
There were some 5,000 emigre clergy from France in this country after the Revolution, including thirty bishops. They were organised by the Bishop of Saint Pol de Leon, Jean Francois de la Marche, who had escaped to England in the spring of 1791. He played a big role in organising the emigre clergy of London; Sir Harry Trelawny could have known him in London before the bishop's death in 1806. But, although Wilson records that Trelawny spent "a considerable time" in Saint Pol de Leon, it is not easy to see how he could have done this at the same time as while de la Marche was resident in his See.
These clergy ... confessores Fidei in the old sense ... had lived through the days when the ambiguities of the Oath, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and of the Concordat tried the consciences of the Clerus Gallicanus; the despoiling of the Church in the Hiberian and Italian peninsulars; the period in 1799 when "the last pope" died, a lonely prisoner of the triumphant and invincible French revolutionary regime ... the pope at whose death the long history of the Catholic Church came, manifestly, unmistakably, definitively, to its end: and the gates of Hell prevailed, as the Enemy had always known they certainly would.
As people say, the rumours of the Catholic Church's demise were much exaggerated. Pius VI did, after all, have a successor, and Bonaparte was, happily, ultimately vincible. There are no historical inevitables except the Church's indefectibility.
Ambiguities; ruptures; continuities. The Church Militant always has, in her institutions, even in the Papacy, a tension between continuita interiore and appearances of discontinuity.
Does her life really change much?
During one of my early visits there, "We'll put out the five kilo chasuble" said Reverend Mother through the grille. "It dates from when the House was opened in Antwerp in 1619. But we'll also put out a lighter chasuble in case it's too much for you."
Of course, I wore the five kilo chasuble, its embroidery a heavy riot of baroque cornucopias. How could one resist such a challenge? After Mass, as I left the Chapel, and looked at the gravestones surrounding the first millenium crucifix outside the door, this inscription caught my eye: Beneath is interred the Rev Louis Dourlen Chaplain of Lanherne formerly priest of the Diocese of St Omers and Canon of Arras Cathedral 1839. Aged 85.
It suddenly dawned upon me that M le Chanoine would very probably have worn that five kilo chasuble; the penny dropped that he must have been a gentleman clergyman who had left France during its Revolutionary troubles. I later discovered (George Oliver, Collections, page 287) that Dourlen joined, for a while, the considerable community (unmentioned by Jane Austen) of French emigres in Bath. There, "he was much respected and esteemed for his integrity and polished manners"; he was gout-ridden but never wore spectacles! I suppose he was in his thirties when Arras Cathedral was declared the Temple of Reason and, presumably, he lost the stipends of his canonry (so it is no surprise that, according to a Guide to Regency Bath, he was available to give French lessons!). The Cathedral was subsequently demolished.
I have recently written about an Abbe Chauvel, whose life was interwoven with the activities of the Catholic Trelawnys. Tentatively, I wonder if he may be the cleric listed as "A Pannece. Chauvel (Jean), ex-vicaire; y exerce. Insoumis, peu eclaire, sans moyens, tres pieux" (E Sevestre, Le clerge Breton en 1801 d'apres les enquetes prefectorales de l'an IX et l'an X conservees aux archives nationales). Peu eclaire! what an accolade! Faxit Deus ...
There were some 5,000 emigre clergy from France in this country after the Revolution, including thirty bishops. They were organised by the Bishop of Saint Pol de Leon, Jean Francois de la Marche, who had escaped to England in the spring of 1791. He played a big role in organising the emigre clergy of London; Sir Harry Trelawny could have known him in London before the bishop's death in 1806. But, although Wilson records that Trelawny spent "a considerable time" in Saint Pol de Leon, it is not easy to see how he could have done this at the same time as while de la Marche was resident in his See.
These clergy ... confessores Fidei in the old sense ... had lived through the days when the ambiguities of the Oath, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and of the Concordat tried the consciences of the Clerus Gallicanus; the despoiling of the Church in the Hiberian and Italian peninsulars; the period in 1799 when "the last pope" died, a lonely prisoner of the triumphant and invincible French revolutionary regime ... the pope at whose death the long history of the Catholic Church came, manifestly, unmistakably, definitively, to its end: and the gates of Hell prevailed, as the Enemy had always known they certainly would.
As people say, the rumours of the Catholic Church's demise were much exaggerated. Pius VI did, after all, have a successor, and Bonaparte was, happily, ultimately vincible. There are no historical inevitables except the Church's indefectibility.
Ambiguities; ruptures; continuities. The Church Militant always has, in her institutions, even in the Papacy, a tension between continuita interiore and appearances of discontinuity.
Does her life really change much?
4 July 2020
The New Normal
Well, in these kingdoms our rulers, gracious and sympathetic persons, are permitting layfolk to attend the Sacraments from now onwards (provided pastors jump through a large number of ingenious hoops). Similar things may be happening in other lands.
Personally, given PF's insistent claim to be opposed to something he has been pleased to call "clericalism", I am surprised that he has been so happy about a situation in which the clergy have been able, indeed, encouraged, to offer the August Sacrifice daily in their homes, while the Holy People of God have been forced to undergo a "Eucharistic Fast". He is even reported to have described Lombard clergy who, in breach of the de facto Interdict, have ministered to their people, as "adolescent". I shall never understand this remarkable man or his ever-more-bulging lexicon of insults. Having once insulted grandmothers, what is his strategy in now insulting adolescents? Is it simply his innate Argentinian sense of fair play?
But life has not stood still during these last months. It is no secret that many clergy have been spending their lock-down time teaching themselves the Old Rite. And others have been streaming celebrations of the Old Rite from their churches, thereby making it easy for the even moderately curious lay person to sample it ... painlessly ...
I think we should pray for priests and people in this new situation; for the enrichment of both; thanking God for these new opportunities to reappropriate the authentic liturgical patrimony of the Latin Churches; begging Him that it may bear a rich fruit.
"Eucharistic Fast" is a concept some of us have experienced before. When the Ordinariates were erected, it was somehow decided (no sign of it in Anglicanorum coetibus) that incoming Anglicans should be required to spend a non-sacramental few weeks between leaving the Church of England on Shrove Tuesday and being received into Full Communion. Playful people referred to it as "detox"!
No explanation of the theology or purpose of this policy was ever given. At a clergy meeting with our Anglican 'flying bishops' together with a RC bishop, I publicly asked where this idea came from. In a very embarrassing moment, the Anglican bishops pointed at the RC bishop ... and he pointed at them!! Afterwards, I was quietly told that the insistence upon this came from somewhere within the CBCEW.
Personally, given PF's insistent claim to be opposed to something he has been pleased to call "clericalism", I am surprised that he has been so happy about a situation in which the clergy have been able, indeed, encouraged, to offer the August Sacrifice daily in their homes, while the Holy People of God have been forced to undergo a "Eucharistic Fast". He is even reported to have described Lombard clergy who, in breach of the de facto Interdict, have ministered to their people, as "adolescent". I shall never understand this remarkable man or his ever-more-bulging lexicon of insults. Having once insulted grandmothers, what is his strategy in now insulting adolescents? Is it simply his innate Argentinian sense of fair play?
But life has not stood still during these last months. It is no secret that many clergy have been spending their lock-down time teaching themselves the Old Rite. And others have been streaming celebrations of the Old Rite from their churches, thereby making it easy for the even moderately curious lay person to sample it ... painlessly ...
I think we should pray for priests and people in this new situation; for the enrichment of both; thanking God for these new opportunities to reappropriate the authentic liturgical patrimony of the Latin Churches; begging Him that it may bear a rich fruit.
"Eucharistic Fast" is a concept some of us have experienced before. When the Ordinariates were erected, it was somehow decided (no sign of it in Anglicanorum coetibus) that incoming Anglicans should be required to spend a non-sacramental few weeks between leaving the Church of England on Shrove Tuesday and being received into Full Communion. Playful people referred to it as "detox"!
No explanation of the theology or purpose of this policy was ever given. At a clergy meeting with our Anglican 'flying bishops' together with a RC bishop, I publicly asked where this idea came from. In a very embarrassing moment, the Anglican bishops pointed at the RC bishop ... and he pointed at them!! Afterwards, I was quietly told that the insistence upon this came from somewhere within the CBCEW.
3 July 2020
Silly Question ...
Exactly where is it laid down that Holy Communion in the Extraordinary Form must be given in os? My 1912 Rituale makes clear that communicants must be kneeling and that men and women should be separate, but I can't find in os.
Fr Michael Melrose of S Giles, Reading
I inherited a fine collection of liturgical books from Father; in one of them was this old prayer card.
IPSE DOMINUS HOSTIA OMNIUM SACERDOTUM EST. IPSIQUE SUNT HOSTIAE SACERDOTES. S Paulinus de Nola
MICHAEL MELROSE
offered for the first time to the honour
and propitiation
of Almighty God
the Most August Sacrifice of the Mass
for the Peace of Holy Church
a blessing on all his friends and for
himself the gift of apostolic and
priestly charity.
ALL SAINTS CHELMSFORD
JULY 3rd, 1972*
O ADMIRABILE COMMERCIUM
Father was a shy and bookish and devout priest deeply loved and trusted by his people. I have very little doubt that he would have been with us in the Ordinariate. His predecessor, Blessed John Eynon, was a Benedictine monk (probably) of Reading Abbey and pp of S Giles, who was hanged, drawn, and quartered together with Abbot Faringdon, on November 15, 1539.
* By 1972, I presume that the Church of England had invented "the Petertide Ordinations". They did this not so much out of an exuberant affection for the See of Rome as out of a desire to get a full academic year in before the main ordinations. Trinity Sunday, drat it, was inconveniently situated. They even had the nerve to reposition the Ember Week. Thus ordinati were deprived of the joy of reading Isaiah 6 (both in the C of E Lectionary and the Old Roman Breviary) at Mattins on the morning of their ordination and on its subsequent anniversaries.
Fr Melrose presumably said his first Mass on the Monday after being priested on the Sunday.
2 July 2020
The Next Conclave
A couple of years ago, to cheer myself up a bit, I drafted this piece, so as to have it at the ready in case something interesting happened. It then went on hold. But, since the admirable Ed Pentin has a book coming out marking up the odds on the front runners, I have decided to put this humble piece before you now.
I think I am among many who feel that the method of electing a Roman Pontiff has become disfunctional to the point of being calamitous.
The electorate ... the College of Cardinals ... Purpurati Patres ... once consisted, theologically, of the clerus of the Holy Roman Church. Although a man might be Primate of some great regional See, he took part in this election qua being the presbyter of a Roman titular Church ... or the Deacon of one of its Deaconries (remember that in the earlier centuries the Roman Deacons were very powerful men) ... or the Bishop of one of the suburbicarian bishoprics.
In formal terms, this system was structurally corrupted in the latter part of the twentieth century. S John XXIII decreed that all the members of this body should receive episcopal consecration; which sends out precisely the wrong message. (Benedict XVI only half-heartedly retreated from this mistake when he laudably restored the practice of the Cardinal Deacons wearing dalmatics.) And some of the Oriental Patriarchs were made members of the Order of Cardinal Bishops, again corrupting its essential character as part of the clerus Romanus. But perhaps these are pedantic details compared with the practical change brought about by the great increase in the numbers of this electorate.
No longer was the Sacred College a small group of perhaps twenty or twenty-four members who knew each other. In the sixteenth century (with another hike in the twentieth century) it became a large body in which forceful men with a flair for organisation, or a group who had plotted their tactics in advance of the Conclave, could ... organise matters. PF has stopped the Consistories at which, before this pontificate, the Cardinals could discuss matters together with Parrhesia. There are natural suspicions that he has done this because he wishes to restrict, in any way he can, the possibilities for realistic interaction between the members of the next Conclave. He wants a compliant assembly in which sharp men can fix another coup.
Nescioquis dicet: "But a long Conclave would be disastrous. Anything rather than that!"
Oh Yeah? Prospero Lambertini was so fortunately elected pope on 17 August 1740; his predecessor had died on the 8th of February. That is an interregnum of some six months. Was this disastrous? Does the Catholic Church cease to exist when she "has no visible Head"? Of course not. Given the august and Petrine Majesty, the God-given Primacy, of the Roman See, a long interregnum in that See might indeed weaken the Church Universal (some readers may feel that a good long inerregnum would, however, be prefereable to another disordered pontificate ... I couldn't possibly comment). But we surely need to believe that the Church, in all its essential functions, continues to exist during a papal interregnum. And, after the death of Clement IV in 1268, it was two years, nine months, and two days before Blessed Gregory IX was elected. And how do we juggle with the Great Western Schism and the adage Papa dubius Papa nullus? Moreover, during the earlier period known as the Pornocracy, although there was a formal succession of popes, they were men of infamous, depraved, and murderous natures; it is hard to resist the conclusion that the Universal Church was indeed deprived of the genuine exercise of the Petrine Ministry. A characteristic mode of papal succession in that period became the murder of one's predecessor. Unsurprisingly, it is still a matter of academic uncertainty which of those blood-stained Pontiffs is to be deemed "validly" to have secured the cathedra Petri.
In my view, the first sign that things are going well in the next Conclave will be ... if it turns out to be a very long one.
Why are Popes nowadays elected so rapidly? It is, surely, a function of the maudlin and sickly Personality Cult which has deformed and unbalanced the Catholic Church especially since the 1930s. Even when the Roman Pontiff was still the 'Prisoner in the Vatican', Eugenio Pacelli invented, as Cardinal Secretary of State, the idea of a quasi-papal travelling circus framing himself ... from which he acquired the nicknames Il Vice-Papa, Il Cardinale volante. This phenomenon, so demeaning to the Local Churches, created a situation in which, at the next Conclave, he was elected pope on (was it?) the third ballot. And that is more or less where we are now. Adoring, febrile mobs jostle as they await the white smoke, while, inside the Sistine Chapel, the electors convince themselves that, once it is clear which way the ballots seem to be tending, it will Look Better to the Customers if matters are made pretty unanimous pretty quickly. Hence, the almost inevitability, nowadays, of the Two or Three Day Conclave.
If we had, say, a two-month Conclave, the crowds of excited tourists and giggling nuns might just possibly have thinned out a bit.
The modern two-day Conclave easily feeds into the gross and embarrassing superstition that popes are chosen by God Himself (probably God the Holy Spirit). When John Paul I was elected, I remember Cardinal Hume making a characteristically foolish remark: "For my part, he was God's Candidate". While the inscrutable designs of Providence are indeed beyond our reckoning, in human terms it did seem to me almost funny when 'God's Candidate' was so decisively snatched from us a mere month later. Despite Joseph Ratzinger's gently ironic but firm dismissal of this sort of nonsense, from here it was a straight line of development to today and to the pernicious errors of Bergoglianism. A central feature of this phenomenon is: the Pontiff is surrounded by cronies and sycophants determined to assure the world that he is the Voice of God, the Mouthpiece of the Spirit. And, possibly blasphemously, references to the "Holy Spirit" and to his close associate "the God of Surprises" are used to shortcut the normal and wholesome (if often lengthy) processes by which the Petrine See had, over centuries, functioned within the Church and served the great good of the Church.
If I had anything to do with Conclave arrangements, I would fix things so that the food got better and better within the Conclave as its weeks lengthened into months. And the wine became ever more plentiful. After two months, I would transfer the whole Conclave, lock, stock, and barrel, to Lake Garda and borrow some houris from PF's Islamic chums ... 'Ecumenical Feminae Probatae' they could be called.
So much is so wrong that it is hard to be very optimistic about the next Conclave. But, for me, the longer it takes, the more I will, in my subjective, fallible way, suspect that, possibly, just some of Their Eminences may have smuggled in their rosaries.
I think I am among many who feel that the method of electing a Roman Pontiff has become disfunctional to the point of being calamitous.
The electorate ... the College of Cardinals ... Purpurati Patres ... once consisted, theologically, of the clerus of the Holy Roman Church. Although a man might be Primate of some great regional See, he took part in this election qua being the presbyter of a Roman titular Church ... or the Deacon of one of its Deaconries (remember that in the earlier centuries the Roman Deacons were very powerful men) ... or the Bishop of one of the suburbicarian bishoprics.
In formal terms, this system was structurally corrupted in the latter part of the twentieth century. S John XXIII decreed that all the members of this body should receive episcopal consecration; which sends out precisely the wrong message. (Benedict XVI only half-heartedly retreated from this mistake when he laudably restored the practice of the Cardinal Deacons wearing dalmatics.) And some of the Oriental Patriarchs were made members of the Order of Cardinal Bishops, again corrupting its essential character as part of the clerus Romanus. But perhaps these are pedantic details compared with the practical change brought about by the great increase in the numbers of this electorate.
No longer was the Sacred College a small group of perhaps twenty or twenty-four members who knew each other. In the sixteenth century (with another hike in the twentieth century) it became a large body in which forceful men with a flair for organisation, or a group who had plotted their tactics in advance of the Conclave, could ... organise matters. PF has stopped the Consistories at which, before this pontificate, the Cardinals could discuss matters together with Parrhesia. There are natural suspicions that he has done this because he wishes to restrict, in any way he can, the possibilities for realistic interaction between the members of the next Conclave. He wants a compliant assembly in which sharp men can fix another coup.
Nescioquis dicet: "But a long Conclave would be disastrous. Anything rather than that!"
Oh Yeah? Prospero Lambertini was so fortunately elected pope on 17 August 1740; his predecessor had died on the 8th of February. That is an interregnum of some six months. Was this disastrous? Does the Catholic Church cease to exist when she "has no visible Head"? Of course not. Given the august and Petrine Majesty, the God-given Primacy, of the Roman See, a long interregnum in that See might indeed weaken the Church Universal (some readers may feel that a good long inerregnum would, however, be prefereable to another disordered pontificate ... I couldn't possibly comment). But we surely need to believe that the Church, in all its essential functions, continues to exist during a papal interregnum. And, after the death of Clement IV in 1268, it was two years, nine months, and two days before Blessed Gregory IX was elected. And how do we juggle with the Great Western Schism and the adage Papa dubius Papa nullus? Moreover, during the earlier period known as the Pornocracy, although there was a formal succession of popes, they were men of infamous, depraved, and murderous natures; it is hard to resist the conclusion that the Universal Church was indeed deprived of the genuine exercise of the Petrine Ministry. A characteristic mode of papal succession in that period became the murder of one's predecessor. Unsurprisingly, it is still a matter of academic uncertainty which of those blood-stained Pontiffs is to be deemed "validly" to have secured the cathedra Petri.
In my view, the first sign that things are going well in the next Conclave will be ... if it turns out to be a very long one.
Why are Popes nowadays elected so rapidly? It is, surely, a function of the maudlin and sickly Personality Cult which has deformed and unbalanced the Catholic Church especially since the 1930s. Even when the Roman Pontiff was still the 'Prisoner in the Vatican', Eugenio Pacelli invented, as Cardinal Secretary of State, the idea of a quasi-papal travelling circus framing himself ... from which he acquired the nicknames Il Vice-Papa, Il Cardinale volante. This phenomenon, so demeaning to the Local Churches, created a situation in which, at the next Conclave, he was elected pope on (was it?) the third ballot. And that is more or less where we are now. Adoring, febrile mobs jostle as they await the white smoke, while, inside the Sistine Chapel, the electors convince themselves that, once it is clear which way the ballots seem to be tending, it will Look Better to the Customers if matters are made pretty unanimous pretty quickly. Hence, the almost inevitability, nowadays, of the Two or Three Day Conclave.
If we had, say, a two-month Conclave, the crowds of excited tourists and giggling nuns might just possibly have thinned out a bit.
The modern two-day Conclave easily feeds into the gross and embarrassing superstition that popes are chosen by God Himself (probably God the Holy Spirit). When John Paul I was elected, I remember Cardinal Hume making a characteristically foolish remark: "For my part, he was God's Candidate". While the inscrutable designs of Providence are indeed beyond our reckoning, in human terms it did seem to me almost funny when 'God's Candidate' was so decisively snatched from us a mere month later. Despite Joseph Ratzinger's gently ironic but firm dismissal of this sort of nonsense, from here it was a straight line of development to today and to the pernicious errors of Bergoglianism. A central feature of this phenomenon is: the Pontiff is surrounded by cronies and sycophants determined to assure the world that he is the Voice of God, the Mouthpiece of the Spirit. And, possibly blasphemously, references to the "Holy Spirit" and to his close associate "the God of Surprises" are used to shortcut the normal and wholesome (if often lengthy) processes by which the Petrine See had, over centuries, functioned within the Church and served the great good of the Church.
If I had anything to do with Conclave arrangements, I would fix things so that the food got better and better within the Conclave as its weeks lengthened into months. And the wine became ever more plentiful. After two months, I would transfer the whole Conclave, lock, stock, and barrel, to Lake Garda and borrow some houris from PF's Islamic chums ... 'Ecumenical Feminae Probatae' they could be called.
So much is so wrong that it is hard to be very optimistic about the next Conclave. But, for me, the longer it takes, the more I will, in my subjective, fallible way, suspect that, possibly, just some of Their Eminences may have smuggled in their rosaries.
1 July 2020
The Visitation and the Precious Blood
How very ruthless of the post-Conciliar 'reforms': Westminster Cathedral, overnight, lost its Patronal Festival when the 'reformers' reduced July 1 from a Double of the First Class to a feria on the almost sacrilegiously flippant grounds that the Precious Blood would get a perfectly adequate 'covering' by being merely added to the title of Corpus Christi. Maestissimi homunculi. Thus a gorgeous piece of B Pius IX liturgy disappeared: the Solemn Festival he had placed on the calendar to commemorate his return to the City after the Roman Revolution of 1848. (There is nothing vulgar, incidentally, about doing that sort of thing to the calendar, or, if there is, it is simply the vulgarity of an incarnational religion. Byzantine calendars are richly and very appropriately peppered with such observances related to events in Christian history.)
Good news, however: the Ordinariate Church South of the River, Precious Blood Southwark, keeps its patronal festival on the proper day, today.
Incidentally, on the same occasion B Pius IX also raised our Lady's Visitation from a Greater Double to a Double of the Second Class. Urban VI had fitted that festivity onto July 2 as a prayer for Unity. It was the first day available after the Octave of S John, and had long been, among Byzantines, the Feast of the Deposition of the Protecting Robe of the Theotokos in the great Basilica of Blachernae in Constantinople. All that, even the Ecumenical relevance of it, was treated in the post-Conciliar 'reforms' as so much extravagance to be shovelled away: and so the Visitation had a more 'logical' date discovered for it.
B Pius IX's original date for the Precious Blood had been the First Sunday in July. It was the reforms of S Pius X that shifted the Festival onto July 1. S Pius X's liturgists felt, in my view rightly, that too many of the old Roman Sunday Masses were unused on their Sundays year after year because so many much newer feasts were permanently anchored on "the xth Sunday of such-a-month". S Pius X's change did not, of course, mean that the Precious Blood never fell upon a Sunday; it meant that it only fell on a Sunday once every six or seven years. And, with a pastoral flexibility which characterised papal liturgical interventions before the fateful, deplorable collaborazione between Pius XII and Hannibal, S Pius X still allowed, for pastoral reasons, all the Masses on the First Sunday of July to be of the Precious Blood even when July 1 fell on a weekday.
For those of us who so wisely use 'the Old Breviary' today has superb Office Hymns (their authors, sadly, unknown). The one provided for Lauds relates particularly well to the old English devotion to the Five Wounds. The English Catholic Hymn Book gives the Vespers hymn Festivis resonent in translation; a great majestic hymn in striding all-conquering Asclepiads, a monument to the triumphant Counter- Reformation and the rediscovery of Catholic self-confidence under B Pius IX. Anyone who's interested in its metre will find an article of mine at 19 March 2019. (Viva viva Gesu, of course, appears in modern hymnals as 'Glory be to Jesus'.)
During the Month of the Precious Blood, perhaps the Litany authorised by S John XXIII could be dusted off and given an airing ... I wonder if any Byzantine poet has ever composed a Paracletic Canon in honour of the Precious and Life-giving Blood of our Most Holy Redeemer.
Good news, however: the Ordinariate Church South of the River, Precious Blood Southwark, keeps its patronal festival on the proper day, today.
Incidentally, on the same occasion B Pius IX also raised our Lady's Visitation from a Greater Double to a Double of the Second Class. Urban VI had fitted that festivity onto July 2 as a prayer for Unity. It was the first day available after the Octave of S John, and had long been, among Byzantines, the Feast of the Deposition of the Protecting Robe of the Theotokos in the great Basilica of Blachernae in Constantinople. All that, even the Ecumenical relevance of it, was treated in the post-Conciliar 'reforms' as so much extravagance to be shovelled away: and so the Visitation had a more 'logical' date discovered for it.
B Pius IX's original date for the Precious Blood had been the First Sunday in July. It was the reforms of S Pius X that shifted the Festival onto July 1. S Pius X's liturgists felt, in my view rightly, that too many of the old Roman Sunday Masses were unused on their Sundays year after year because so many much newer feasts were permanently anchored on "the xth Sunday of such-a-month". S Pius X's change did not, of course, mean that the Precious Blood never fell upon a Sunday; it meant that it only fell on a Sunday once every six or seven years. And, with a pastoral flexibility which characterised papal liturgical interventions before the fateful, deplorable collaborazione between Pius XII and Hannibal, S Pius X still allowed, for pastoral reasons, all the Masses on the First Sunday of July to be of the Precious Blood even when July 1 fell on a weekday.
For those of us who so wisely use 'the Old Breviary' today has superb Office Hymns (their authors, sadly, unknown). The one provided for Lauds relates particularly well to the old English devotion to the Five Wounds. The English Catholic Hymn Book gives the Vespers hymn Festivis resonent in translation; a great majestic hymn in striding all-conquering Asclepiads, a monument to the triumphant Counter- Reformation and the rediscovery of Catholic self-confidence under B Pius IX. Anyone who's interested in its metre will find an article of mine at 19 March 2019. (Viva viva Gesu, of course, appears in modern hymnals as 'Glory be to Jesus'.)
During the Month of the Precious Blood, perhaps the Litany authorised by S John XXIII could be dusted off and given an airing ... I wonder if any Byzantine poet has ever composed a Paracletic Canon in honour of the Precious and Life-giving Blood of our Most Holy Redeemer.
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