"A range of measures are in place ..."

 From a letter in the Times.

Everybody seems now to use this horribly unmathematical construction. Am I the old dissentient left?

Dominae et Magistrae

October 14, 1920, was the day when women first were granted degrees by the University. One week earlier, they had been matriculated: their admission took place within the Vice-Chancellorship of Herbert Blakiston, who had been a resolute opponent of granting degrees to women (he also, as President of Trinity, resisted strong government pressure to admit Indian undergraduates ... the lucky fellows went to Balliol instead). It must have been striking to sit in the Sheldonian Theatre and to hear the ancient formula grammatically adapted: "Dominae, scitote vos in matriculam Universitatis hodie relatas esse" (how was it pronounced? Dommi-nee, sigh-toe-tea vos in may-trick-you-lamb You-nee-virsy-tay-tiss  hod-eye-ee ree-lay-tass essee?)

I regard their Admission to Degrees at the Ancient House of Congregation the following week, a century ago today, as a most significant advance for the weaker and humbler sex, that is, for us chaps.

It created for us the delectable possibility of proposing Matrimony to a woman who was a graduate of this University, Domina et Magistra.

Back in 1920, Dorothy Sayers pulled strings to ensure that she was one of the first batch of women to be 'done at that memorable ceremony. Later, in her Gaudy Night, where she marries off Lord Peter Wimsey, Harriet Vane's final acceptance of his addresses is made to evoke a University  ceremony. In Wimsey, the once-male University affirms and respects the full status and integrity of women within the ancient continuum of the English and European academy.

Wimsey and Vane have emerged from a concert in Balliol (the institution which occasioned the best joke ever made about the architecture of an Oxford college, C'est magnifique mais ce n'est pas la gare) and they are walking down New College Lane to 'send their love to London River' ... 'the light wind fluttering their gowns as they walked'.

"Peter!"

She stood still; and he stopped perforce and turned towards her. She laid both hands upon the fronts of his gown, looking into his face while she searched for the word that should carry her over the last difficult breach.

It was he who found it for her, With a gesture of submission he bared his head and stood gravely, the square cap dangling in his hand.

"Placetne, magistra?"

"Placet."

The Proctor, stumping grimly past with averted eyes, reflected that Oxford was losing all sense of dignity. But what could he do? If Senior Members of the University chose to stand--in their gowns, too!--closely and passionately embracing in New College Lane right under the Warden's windows, he was powerless to prevent it. He primly settled his white bands and went upon his walk unheeded; and no hand plucked his velvet sleeve.

(The Proctors patrolled the streets to keep order among the undergraduates; and at degree ceremonies performed a ritual walk among the Regent Masters to enable any Master to veto the graduation of a supplicant by plucking a proctorial sleeve. 'Placet' is the formal ceremonial assent to a formal proposal.)

 

The Kingdom of England

Best wishes to foreign readers who have a soft spot for this realm, on this feast day of one of our greatest Saints, S Edward, King and Confessor. He is one of a tiny handful of our Saints whose relics still rest where they were before the Reformation. The Breviary Office makes a particular point of talking about his virginity. Oret pro nobis.

And we certainly need his prayers. The fragility of our social fabric can rarely have made us so manifestly vulnerable. Our government is in the hands of a man who sought power because he had an agenda: he wished to be the Churchillian figure whom History would remember as the man who, by 'getting Brexit done', restored the independance of England ... or do I mean Britain?

But Clio put paid to this unhumble ambition by whacking us with the plague. Johnson immediately adopted the policy of "following the Science". Fraudulent, of course, because there is no more a univocal 'Science' than there is a single Philology or just one Theology. But it served until this week, when the government had a final dust-up with its scientific advisers, resulting in the Chief Medical Officer ... a dry individual whose Mother I knew ... putting the boot in, and how publicly.

And there are the young people. They are currently turning up at their universities. We all know how idealistic youth are; numbers of them have recently been saving the planet by striking ... not going to school ... on Fridays ('Extinction Rebellion'). But the idealism and principled altruism of the young is rarely much better than skin-deep; beneath it is the fallen human nature common to us all, fuelled in their case by over-impetuous and very dirigiste hormones. Something called 'Freshers' Week' (which did not exist in our time) means that they begin their university career with a week of alcohol, drugs, and sexual promiscuity. Here in Oxford, it was reported that when the 'junior deans' and a College Servant in a particular college tried to break up a disorder, they were ignored, and one undergraduate deliberately coughed over ...

Yes ... where was the Dean? Where was the Head of House? In a sense, we are reaping the harvest of the late 1960s, when the colleges abandoned any attempt to discipline the young, and made their profession a 10.00-5.00 job with much of the teaching farmed out to penniless doctoral students.

So now the Covid numbers are soaring in places where there are universities. 

And the Government, cut loose from any pretence of objective policy-making, is floundering helplessly. The Welsh are threatening to put Offa's Dyke back into commission to keep out the infectious English!

Yes ... we really  do need S Edward's prayers. And yours.

Our Lady of Walsingham??

My suspicion is that the wooden "Madonna of Langham" in the V & A is, as the former Vicar of Little Walsingham Fr Michael Rear cogently argued (Catholic Herald 15 July 2019), 'really' the actual medieval statue of our Lady of Walsingham (why on earth do 'Art Historians', a largely illiterate gang of poseurs, so love the word 'Madonna'? Are they all compulsive and incurable Italophones?).

Father's evidence was circumstantial rather than direct, but, in my judgement, it is just about as strong as 'circumstantial' can get. I will not repeat the points he makes, but offer a remark or two about background.

It is clear that very many clergy and parishioners did a great deal to ensure that the agents of the Tudor regime and other would-be despoilers found very little left to loot. In some cases they may have been motivated even more by financial gain than by piety. Not only did our Lady of Ipswich get to Nettuno in Italy, but our Lady of Aberdeen made her way to the nether lands. To this day, some of Bishop Grandison's vestments are in the Azores! And there is an inventory of Exeter Cathedral made in advance of the despoliation under Edward VI which, when compared with the inventory of 1509, reveals what a truly vast amount of marketable objects had, in that half-century, 'walked'. 

Readers of Duffy (Voices) will recall the measures taken by Parson Trickay under Edward VI to 'launder' vestments and ornaments around Morebath parish; when Good Queen Mary came to the throne, his parishioners "like good Catholic men" brought everything back. And the Lichfield relics of S Chad, now in Pugin's Cathedral at Birmingham, were whisked away and secured in a farm. So there is a high contextual probability that OLW may have been ... looked after.

I can think of a rather jolly modern example of vulnerable cultic objects being hidden and replaced by substitutes. At S Hilary in Cornwall, after the Anglican courts ordered some 'illegal ornaments' to be removed from the Parish Church, Fr Bernard Walke, who had, as we Anglo-Papalists used to say, put a lot of Good Stuff into his church, had it all replaced by cheapo plaster substitutes just in case ...

... and, indeed, Mr Kensit's Protestant Truth Society did pay a violent visit, and did smash up the plaster substitutes. After Fr Ber and his parishioners had cleared up the mess, the Good Stuff was put back in place. When the prods discovered this neat sleight of hand, they regarded it as a typical example of jesuitical dishonesty and unEnglish underhandedness and Not Playing the Game.

Fr Rear points out the evidence that something has been chiselled away from between the feet of the "Langham Madonna", and links this with the account by Erasmus that OLW had a 'toadstone' (a fossilised fish tooth believed by medieval scientists to have curative properties) in exactly that place. Near here, at Sandford on Thames, a fine late-medieval statue of the Assumpta, buried in the churchyard and now in the church, has, beneath her feet, a tiny but carefully carved repository. It is too small to have been a tabernacle and I find it difficult to see how it could have been made a safe repository for a valuable relic (such as a fragment of our Lady's girdle ...). I wonder if a Toadstone could have been fixed into it.

Might the Sandford statue be our Lady of Oseney? Or our Lady of Abendon? Either of them could easily have got to Sandford by walking on the Thames ... and the local Family at Sandford would have been sympathetic ...

More on Tutti Frutti

" ... I had a source of inspiration in my brother Bartholomew, the Orthodox Patriarch, who ..."etc.etc..

This is from the English version. Of languages which I can stumble through, the definite article is absent from the French. The comma after Patriarch is present only in the English (could someone give me a hand with the Polish?).

Does it matter?

Well, consider this: "I had dinner with Booboo, the king of Timbuctoo, who ...". It implies just one holder of that august regal title. Now consider: "I had dinner with Booboo an African chieftain who ..." It allows ... even, I think, requires ... a plurality of such dignitaries.

There are more Orthodox Patriarchs than just one. But the English phrase makes it sound as if there is only one such personage, "the Orthodox Patriarch". The direct article is reinforced by the comma, because, without the comma, you could read the sentence as meaning "Bartholomew, that particular one among the Orthodox Patriarchs who ..."

But what a waste of time, examining different translations ... isn't it inevitable that ...

No!! It is not inevitable! Time was, when important formal documents emerging from Rome would be in a dead language the juridical precision of which only rather rarely left ambiguities to be haggled over. 

But still ... does it really matter?

Just possibly, it might. His All-Holiness might not regard English as his first-to-turn-to language among those offered him by Rome, but his 'Minister of Foreign Affairs, Metropolitan Hilarion, did his Patristics in Oxford (under Timothy Ware) and he speaks English like an Englishman. He might, indeed, read this document in its English version. 

And the Patriarch of Constantinople, and the Patriarch of Moskow and All the Russias, are not currently in communion. Is our most holy Father Cyril going to like it that PF regards Bartholomew as the Orthodox Patriarch?

 

MAGISTERIUM??

 Documents emerging from the Domus Sanctae Marthae often seem to beg the questions: Is this part of the Magistrium? If it is, at what level?

Fortunately, PF has given a clear answer to this question. "In the preparation of Laudato si, I had a source of inspiration in my brother Bartholomew, the Orthodox Patriarch, who has spoken forcefully of our need to care for creation. In this case, I have felt particularly encouraged by the Grand Imam Ahmad Al-Tayyeb. with whom I met in Abu Dhabi, where we declared that 'God has created all human beings equal in rights, duties, and dignity, and has called them to live together as brothers and sisters.' This was no mere diplomatic gesture, but a reflection born of dialogue and common commitment. The present Encyclical takes up and develops some of the great themes raised in the Document that we both signed. I have also incorporated, along with my own thoughts, a number of letters, documents and considerations that I have received from many individuals and groups throughout the world."

You coudn't want a more honest admission that this document is not the result of searching the Scriptures, examining the Fathers, scrutinising the arguments of the schoolmen; the manualists and the liturgy, as well as the Roman Pontiffs and the Ecumenical Councils of two millennia, have not been ransacked. "My own thoughts" have played a large role; and so have materials received from "many individuals and groups".

Readers of this blog will not need this umpteenth reiteration of the teaching of Vatican I: that the Holy Spirit is promised to the Successors of S Peter so that, by His help, they may religiously guard and devoutly put forth the Tradition received through the Apostles; the Deposit of Faith. In Tutti Frutti there is so sense that the Bishop of Rome is setting forth what he has received from the long line of his predecessors. Primacy is accorded to "my own thoughts". Vatican II may have discussed whether Scripture and Tradition make up one 'Source of Revelation' or two; but little more than half-a-century later, both of these have been smoothly displaced by "my own thoughts".

I expect this lengthy document will, confusingly, appear in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, but even that cannot cancel out the frank ... indeed, forcefully situated ... admission in paragraph 5.

Benedict XVI did the same when he presented Jesus of Nazareth. "It goes without saying that this book is in no way an exercise of the magisterium, but is solely an expression of my personal search ... Everyone is free, then, to contradict me".

Different words; different men. But the point is the same.

 

". 

Septemebr 24 ... queries

 ... was, of course the Solemnity of our Lady of Walsingam, although, previously, the feast of our Lady of Ransom. A great day. And it was also the day on which, after Pontifical High Mass from the throne, the reliquiae of Archbishop Lefebvre were translated to a new tomb in the crypt of the Church of our Lady's Immaculate Heart. The entire event is linked by Fr Zed; it is well done and good to watch.

It was pleasant to see Bishop Fellay officiating; he deserves to be remembered as the only bishop ... sole representative of the Collegium Universale Episcoporum ... to join in the signing of the Correctio Filialis. Ad multos annos, Domne.

The Mass was that of Mary's Immaculate Heart. Is such a celebration on that particular day part of the SSPX's general use, or, perhaps, a local usage in Econe?

Could someone-in-the-know tell me: Is that Church part of the complex at Econe? 

There was a statement that the event represented the 50th anniversary of the foundation of Econe (or of the SSPX?). But in Bishop Tissier's fine biography of the Great Archbishop, I can find no particular event recorded as of this particular day in 1970. 

Knowing that the Archbishop disavowed any suggestion of conferring jurisdiction on the four bishops he consecrated in 1988, I wonder when they adopted the liturgical use of the crozier and the episcopal throne (I noticed that, above the throne, Bishop Fellay's Arms are displayed ... they are also on the candles ... but simply his own [assumed?] arms with no impalement).

I mean no disrespect by the following observation: as the Bishop, after the Praeparatio at the foot of the Altar walked up the steps, he started from his left foot. This is a detail I tend to notice because, as a seminarian back in 1966, this was the first mistake I made in my first Mass practice. Canon Allen was quick to correct me! (Was this a Staggers idiosyncrasy?)

Dots galore. Do you have a pencil handy? I invite you to join me on a ramble ...

Even elderly readers may remember those sweet pages in children's puzzle books where the Tiny is invited to join up the dots; and ... behold! ... as if by magic a picture appears before his very eyes. Or her eyes. Or its eyes. Oh ... d*mn ... why can't you do the pronouns?

Dots. It's a bit like that in Rome now, it seems to me. How would you join up these dots:

(1) Bishop Becciu has renounced the legal rights of his cardinal's status (echoes of Henry VIII's order that the Blissful Martyr be henceforth referred to as 'Bishop Becket');

(2) A prosecutor has been appointed in Rome; and 

(3) Cardinal Pell ... he who found so much money stuffed down the backs of so many sofas in so many Roman dicasteries ... is in the air flying back to the Eternal City. 

So what do you get from these dots? Vide infra ad pedem.

The mystery of the $A700,000 which made its way to Oz is entertaining those people who love to make connections (aka 'Conspiracy Theorists'); and folks are suddenly remembering old news stories ... such as the reports last year that BB devoted quite a lot of Simon bar Jonah's shekels to a film ... do we use the term 'biopic'? ... about Sir Elton John.

Some transpontine readers may be in need of context here. Sir Elton is one of our National Treasures, a status based upon his friendship with an unwholesome woman called Diana Spencer. He is a homosexual, and, when he visited Oxford, an undergraduate newspaper recorded him as calling Pope Benedict XVI an "arsehole". That detail failed, I think, to get into the national press: I suspect this omission might just possibly have happened because it is important to censor from the record anything that might make people realise just what a very nasty piece of work this National Treasure is. 

Vladimir Vladimirovich, however, is a bit deficient in respect towards our poor little island and even its equites auratae. So, in Russkieland, the film had its 'gay sex' sequences censored. I'd better not say "Good for him" because you might attack me for being too soft on Russkies (I'm not ... timeo Scythos et venena ferentes ...). 

BTW, I wonder what Vladimir V P makes of the troubles facing the Armenians at this moment. The World really does need a Russia mindful of its historic role as protector of Christian minorities in the Middle East. Because it rather looks as if some of Mr Erdogan's sidekicks might be tempted to a dash of 'ethnic cleansing' in the spirit of the genocide of Armenians in the first decades of the last century, a genocide which of course never happened. (What a busy lot they are ... plundering Greek marine resources ... terminating Kurds ... making Hagia Sophia into a mosque ... it does them immense credit that they also have time to ... er ...).

Earlier in his pontificate, PF was quite brave in being explicit about the Armenian genocide. It would be nice if he said something now, before any new genocide happens to Christian Armenian people. Which, of course, is impossible because, er, there never was an old genocide.

Some of you might not like the following bit: PF seems to me less focussed on slandering traddy clergy than he used to be in his old, carefree days. I wonder if the erudite, specialist researcher in Brighton who used to collect Papal Insults has been able to add many new gems to his lexicon in the last year or so. Have the delights of Coprophagia featured in recent numbers of Acta Apostolicae Sedis? And some orthodox edicts have emerged from the CDF with PF's say-so. Could it be ... has he belatedly realised that high church clerics and ecclesiastical millinery are no longer the Enemy's main threat to the Kingdom of God in this Third Millennium?? 

Or is he just too busy, what with one thing ... and another ...

Which brings me back to the dots.

 

Our Lady of Victories; and S John Henry Newman

As your St Lawrence Press (Old Mass) ORDO will remind you, today we are entitled to celebrate an External Solemnity of our Lady of the Rosary. And I probably don't need to remind readers of this blog that the original title of this celebration was our Lady of Victory.

And I do remind you that next Sunday, October 11, until the time of Pius XII, was the feast of the Maternity of our Lady; it was extended to the whole (Latin) Church in 1931 by Pius XI to celebrate the 15th centenary of the Council of Ephesus; and he took care on this occasion also to refer to Casti Connubii [he had issued that bull in 1930] and the education of the young [Divini illius Magistri came out in 1929]. Moving on through October, in aliquibus locis the following Sunday commemorated Mary's Purity and the Sunday after that, her Patronage (Patrocinium).

What a wealth of teaching, in fact, came thus to us from the Liturgy and, indeed, from the Popes of the decades beteen Vatican I and Vatican II. Pius XI was pre-eminent among these; and you should not need me to recall that it was he who in 1925 instituted the Feast of Christ the King. This, of course, was so altered in meaning after Vatican II as effectively to have been abolished. This 'reform' was perhaps the single most destructive of the changes made by the trio de maniaques who, according to Louis Bouyer, 'revised' the Calendar. Archbishop Lefebvre's volume They have uncrowned Him (Angelus Press) gives information upon the background of this.

On October 9, S John Henry Newman may, in accordance with the CDF legislation of last March for the Extraordinary Form, be observed. When this is done, the Divine Office may be of the Saint. For the time being, the Common will have to be used. In the Ordinariate, our Patron is a First Class feast with a First Vespers. And, in the Ordinariate, the newly authorised Preface Of Patrons may be used (it was composed originally for the Paris Missal of 1738).

In the Ordinary Form, S John Henry is now a festum within England and Wales.

The First Day of Sukkot

I hadn't even taken my skull cap with me. 

The young boy, who looked about eight years old, nevertheless, having peered at my countenance, seemed convinced that I must be Jewish and offered me a palm branch. That's New York for you. 

 Today brings us to the First Day of the great Feast of Tabernacles, Sukkot. And I am among those who are convinced that the psalm we Latin clergy use in the Latin Divine Office every Sunday morning of the year was composed in or for the first great joyful celebration of Sukkot after the completion of the Second Temple. 

 Readers of this blog are unlikely to need to be reminded that the unspeakable Name of the Jewish God, the consonants of which are YHWH (the 'Tetragrammaton'), is expressed, when someone is praying or reading aloud, by the Hebrew, or Greek, or Latin, or English and whatever, word LORD (when this is happening, bibles in the Anglican tradition print LORD in capitals to remind us that what the Hebrew actually reads is YHWH). Clergy who in their Office say, over and over again, the psalms, will have noticed how LORD, Dominus, functions quite differently from any other word for the Deity. 'God' might mean just 'God' but YHWH (LORD) means God-of-Israel. The word often occurs in close relationship with mentions of Israel, or Israel as sharply distinguished from the gentile nations, or the need of the Nations to submit to the God of Israel, or the Holy City, or the Temple in which the Name YHWH is present in power. Its every occurrence summons us from every Ba'al or Asherah or Pachamama of our idolatrous natures to the one and only God, the God of Israel.

And Sukkot is (Leviticus 23:39) the Feast of YHWH; sometimes just 'the Feast'. Josephus informed his Hellenic readers that it is the holiest and greatest of Hebrew feasts. So try looking at psalm 117 (Vulgate number; 118 in the Masoretic text). And you will find that this exuberant, repetitive text is about

YHWH 

YHWH 

YHWH 

YHWH and, yes,

YHWH ... all the way through. 'Open to me the gates ...' as the procession arrives at he Temple. 'Blessed be he who enters in the Name of YHWH!' 'We bless you from the house of YHWH! ''Bind the festal procession with branches up to the horn of the Altar'!. 'This is the Day which YHWH has made: let us rejoice and be glad in it!' 

The LORD'S Day! Dies Dominica ... Dimanche ... Domenica ... Diumenge ... Domingo ... Duminica ... Kyriake ... in language after language (excepting our barbarous Northern dialects) the very name of the LORD's Day reminds us that it is the great Festival of the Name of YHWH, the LORD. 

Every Sunday is our great Sukkot; and we should pray that the little New Yorker who accosted me, and all his People, may turn and recognise the Stone which the builders rejected as the Head of the corner, and may come to join us in the Temple of YHWH and offer with us the true Lamb and share the Blood of the Covenant.  'This is YHWH's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes'. Gratias agamus YHWH Deo nostro!

His steadfast love endures for ever!

AEIPARTHENOS

Ah, this exquisitely Marian month ... this month of Lepanto ... month of the Virgo Potens, Our Lady of Victories, the Hupermakhos Strategos ... let's contemplate one of our Lady's oldest and most ecumenical titles. (There is a thread dating from an earlier version of this piece.)

EVERVIRGIN, SEMPER VIRGO, AEIPARTHENOS, has been a title of our Lady from the earliest days; it appears, albeit obiter, in the documents of Ecumenical Councils from Chalcedon onwards. It still appears (confiteor; Communicantes) in the Novus Ordo Mass; was rather more frequent in the Classical Roman Rite; and pops up very often in the Byzantine Rite. It is part of the Church's Marian dogma, and was treated respectfully, if rather evasively, by the ARCIC document on Mary. Non-Catholics sneer at it. The great Tom Wright is dismissive ... well, he would be, wouldn't he? It must be lovely being so infallible ... Let's consider the question in the form of a 'Socratic' Dialogue.

Haereticus: The Gospels make it quite clear that Jesus had brothers.
Catholicus: They don't. Adelphoi can mean kinsmen. It doesn't have to mean uterine (that is, born-of-the-same-womb) brothers.
So you say. But that's the obvious meaning if anyone talks about "Jesus' brothers" in any language, isn't it? 
 Not at all. S Mark's and S Matthew's Gospels, in their accounts of the Crucifixion, both talk about "Mary the mother of James and Joses [or Joseph]". If this Mary had been the same as Christ's own mother, it would have been very odd for them not to refer to her as the Mother of Jesus. The "obvious" and natural inference is that the "Mother of James and Joses" was a different Mary from "Mary the Mother of Jesus".
So what?
Well, in Mark 6:3 and Matthew 13:55, the places where those "brothers of Jesus" are mentioned, the full text reads: " Jesus the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses [or Joseph] and Judas and Simon". We've just seen that this James and this Joses are apparently the sons of some Mary who was not the same as Mary the Mother of Jesus. And they're the first two on the list here. The list is thus clearly not itemising individuals who were uterine brothers of Jesus.
Well, I still think it's obvious that ...
If it's so "obvious", you've got some explaining to do. Throughout the second century the Gospels were increasingly regarded as 'canonical' and authoritative. If it is so "obvious" that James and the rest of those listed in the Gospels were uterine brothers of Jesus, then the tradition that Jesus was Mary's only child must have arisen well before those Gospels came to be regarded as authorities. Otherwise, when somebody started saying "she never had any more children", somebody who had read the Gospels would have said "Aha, you're wrong: here's a list of his brothers". So, if you're right about it being so "obvious", you're going to have to admit that Mary's perpetual virginity is so early a tradition as to predate the acquisition of authority by our Four Gospels; which modern scholarship dates to the beginning of the second century at the latest. I've got you either way.
That's all gobbledegook. It's obvious ...
That's the problem with you Prods and you Liberals. You're impervious to evidence and to reason.
Of course we are. "Reason is the Devil's Whore". Martin Luther said so. It's obvious.

NEWS FROM THE ASHMOLEAN: BENEDICT XIV DREAMS ABOUT THE DEGRADATION OF CARDINALS: WORLD EXCLUSIVE

Cupidine motus visitandi Summum Pontificem Benedictum XIV, et Museum nostrum Ashmoleanum ingressus, laetum pontificem et quasi iocis circumfusum inveni. Qui rem sic mihi totam lepide exposuit.

"Somnium vidi; in quo Cardinalis degradandus degradatatus est. Quod autem ad risum me maxime commovit erat istud: in illo somnio audivi, et clare audivi, omnia quae dicta sunt. Sed hoc quoque accidit: in mente mea sensi ea quae non voce sed mente innuebantur ... et haec quoque lingua vestra barbarica Anglica sensi!!

"Inductum vidi degradandum in Basilicam beati Petri et usque ad pedes Romani Pontificis tractum; ubi Signum Pacis a Papa datum est degradando, his verbis: Fili carissime, salus tibi et pax. Sed novi et hoc paene tacitum subaudivi: You ----- ------ , you've made me look stupid! Cui palam respondit degradandus Et tibi, beatissime Pater, sed ad aures meas verba *** you, Fanny clam pervenerunt. Pontifex iussit Cappam Magnam ab humeris degradando demi et ipse Galerum sua manu a capite amovit dicens Auctoritate beatorum Apostolorum Petri et Pauli, huius usum a te tollimus, Anglice autem Well, Sunshine, you won't be needing this any more now. Degradandus debita humilitate respondit Quod a te accepi, tibi fidelis reddo nisi quod Anglice cogitavit Would you like me to tell you where you can put it?

"Degradatus inde ductus est per frequentissimos ordines S R E Cardinalium quorum omnes ei dixerunt Misereatur tui Omnipotens Deus ... Anglice autem Jolly jolly rotten luck, old man, jolly jolly jolly rotten luck seu fortasse Rather you than me. Cum ad ostium Ecclesiae perventum esset, Georgius Cardinalis Pell et Archiepiscopus Carolus Maria Vigano ... ii enim degradatum ducebant ... eum tradiderunt Equitibus quibusdam Melitensibus ibi casu exspectantibus, et ...

"Mirabiliora!! Hic omnia mutata sunt ... quoties vero in somniis hoc accidit?! Audivi verba aperta Anglice; sensus eorum nunc subaudiebatur Latine. Go and buy him a nice big pizza voce magna dicebatur; Ite Tortores et munus vestrum adimplete intus audivi.

"Post breve tempus, redeuntes Equites clamaverunt Anglice He's had it [i.e. the pizza], Latine autem illud Marci Tulli sensi verbum Vixit.

"A schola Sixtina tunc inchoatus est hymnus Te Deum laudamus, et campanae Ecclesiae magno concentu concrepuerunt; Plebs Sancta Dei gaudium suum et pietatem cantilenis saltationibus Baccho Cerere ostenderunt.

"Cardinalis vero et Archiepiscopus praedicti ad Pontificem regressi et provoluti dixerunt Ad Multos Annos Domine, Anglice autem We did try to tell you."

Ab his denique Sanctissimus Dominus Noster Benedictus papa XIV tacuit.

Pontifici audenter ego susurravi "Wuerl? Cupich?"

Caput eius marmoreum annuere visum est, labia quamvis lapidea cacchinare.