Lost indulgences

In the first decade of the sixteenth century, the first monarch of the House of Tudor demolished the old Lady Chapel of Westminster Abbey so that it might be replaced by a new spectacular perpendicular chapel, where he and his family were to be buried, but which was technically to be the shrine of a great royal saint matching that of S Edward the Confessor nearby. Pope Julius II issued bulls authorising the introduction of the cause for the canonisation of Henry VI and the translation of his body from Windsor to this new chapel. The steps leading up to it were endowed with the same Indulgence that was attached to the Sancta Scala (the steps of Pilate's praetorium, transferred by Constantine from Jerusalem to Rome).

Henry VII was seeking to cloak himself in the aura of the saintly Lancastrian, 'our uncle of blessed memory', whose name, and whose descent from Catherine de Valois, he shared. So he saw to it that his chapel was adorned with all that was most sumptuous in the decorative arts of medieval England and renaissance Italy.

Hindsight, cruelest of the daughters of Clio, informs us that there never was to be either a Tudor King Arthur I (and II and III) or a canonised Saint Henry VI to swell the pilgrim numbers in the Abbey; that the England of popes, Indulgences, and chantries had less than forty years to run.

But that chapel, in much of its original magnificence and splendour, still remains.

One thing, however, has been ruthlessly stripped away from it in our own time.

When S Paul VI 'reformed' the system of Indulgences, he suppressed (in 1967) all the old Indulgences which had hitherto been available to God's people but had not been confirmed by his own Curia. Throughout the territories of the Latin Churches, Indulgences, multiplied over the centuries by popes and bishops, lay on the ground in greater profusion than the conkers do this autumn. They were popular: even after the Henrician schism, John Veysey Bishop of Exeter continued to grant them, and I doubt if he was the only Bishop to do so. 

But with Papa Montini, they were cleared away.

So no longer can pilgrims to Westminster acquire the Indulgence of the Sancta Scala as they ascend Henry Tudor's steps. No longer do the graces granted by that frightening old war-monger Papa della Rovere allure the faithful.

They were not expunged by Protestants or schismatics, but by a Roman Pontiff.

Even Luther, the Fraterculus, might have been amused.

Wow! Whoopee!! (CORRECTED)

Today, Saturday, the London Eucharistic Octave begins, with His Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop celebrating a Votive of the Most Blessed Sacrament at noon (hurry!) in the church of Corpus Christi  in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden. Then, throughout the week, there is Mass in various Uses at 6.30 in the evening in the same church: Monday, in the Usus Authenticus of the Roman Rite; Tuesday, in the Divine Worship form of the Roman Rite (i.e. the Ordinariate Rite ... basically the Usus Authenticus in Tudor English with some additions from the Anglican Tradition); Wednesday, in the Usus Novus of the Roman Rite; Thursday, in the Ukrainian form of the Byzantine Rite; and, on Friday, a Solemn Requiem for those who have died of Covid.

On SUNDAY (NOTICE THIS CORRECTION OF MY EARLIER CULPABLE ERROR) 19 September, at 3.30, there is planned a Blessed Sacrament Procession from the Assumption and S Gregory in Warwick Street: which was originally the Portuguese embassy Chapel in the 'penal' days when the only Catholic Worship legally offered in England was in the extra-territorial embassies of the Catholic powers. The Marquis of Pombal ... a sinister figure if ever there was one ... will have worshipped there!

Later, it became the Bavarian embassy Chapel, and so it has housed a number of Jacobite liturgical celebrations while the House of Wittelsbach has been de jure the Royal House of the Three Kingdoms. It then fell upon hard times, as the home of "Gay Masses"; these caused some disquiet in Rome, with the result that the church was, instead, handed over to the Ordinariate, where it houses our splendid liturgical heritage. 

The Procession will make Stations at the Jesuit church in Farm Street and at the Ukrainian Cathedral in Duke Street ... before ending up at S James, Spanish Place for Pontifical Benediction. This is yet another former embassy Chapel; I understand that it still possesses a Spanish flag so that, if the Rector suddenly hears of an imminent visit by the King's Majesty of Spain, he can sprint into his church and instantly haul up the Spanish flag in honour of His Most Catholic Majesty. The Rector, incidentally, is the same Father Christopher Colvin whom many readers will remember as Administrator of the (Anglican) Shrine of our Lady of Walsingham. Ave, Ave, Ave Maria! Ave, Ave, Ave Maria!!!

The Procession will be led by the Ukrainian Eparch, and by Mgr Keith Newton, Episcopus quondam Rutupiensis, Ordinary of the Ordinariate.

What a potent symbol ... what a magnificent  prolepsis of Unity ... all this is! Together with Catholics who worship according to the Missal of S Pius V, there will be Byzantines in Full Communion with the See of S Peter; (former) Anglicans now in Full Communion with the See of S Peter; and even Bergoglians in Full Communion with the See of S Peter.

And the unity implied by these celebrations will be diachronic as well as synchronic: the churches hosting the beginning and the end of the Eucharistic Procession are churches dating from Recusant days ... before there was any such See as that of Westminster, founded in 1850. Farm Street, also, dates (just) from the era of the Vicars Apostolic. Bishop Challoner, pray for us all! Maiden Lane, on the other hand, was built after the Restoration of the Hierarchy, and so could be seen as a splendid representative of Flaminian Gate Catholicism. Cardinal Manning, pray for us all!

The Procession will be led by the two hierarchs who represent within the glorious unity of our English Catholic Church the liturgical inheritances of Byzantine and Anglican Christianity. 

At a time when it has quaintly been suggested that there is only 'unicus usus' of the Roman Rite' and that liturgical diversity implies disunity, or even a schismatic mentality, it is good to have such a public demonstration that the Church's Unity, in fact, is expressed by her great diversity and by the manifold variety of her rites.

As the authentic Magisterium of Roman Pontiffs has repeatedly and consistently proclaimed.

Cassandra?? ??

The Times includes, among its Book Reviews on Saturdays, a suggestion about a book which is no longer hot-off-the-Press but is well worth a reread.

In this spirit, I offer  a book by the learned former Official Historian of the Knights of Malta, the acute and lucid Henry Sire [pronounced Seer].

'Former' because, under this Parrhesia pontificate, he was, unaccountably, expelled from the Order.

The Dictator Pope The Inside Story of the Francis Papacy. Regnery Publishing.

A taster: 

"Since Father Bergoglio, as a Jesuit, would need a dispensation to be appointed [bishop], it was necessary to obtain a report from his order, for which Cardinal Quarracino applied in 1991. It was provided by the Jesuit general, and it represents the most damning character study of Jorge Bergoglio composed by anyone before his election as pope. The text of the report has never been made public, but the following account is given by a priest who had access to it before it disappeared from the Jesuit archive: Father Kolvenbach accused Bergoglio of a series of defects, ranging from habitual use of vulgar language to deviousness, disobedience concealed under a mask of humility, and lack of psychological balance; with a view to his suitability as a future bishop, the report pointed out that he had been a divisive figure as provincial of his own order. ..."

"BUT ..." Vivat Voltaire!!

 Fr David Palmer, a brother priest within the Ordinariate of our Lady of Walsingham, has, as we say nowadays, been "cancelled" after being appointed Catholic Chaplain of the University of Nottingham. This is because he has been found guilty of having a Twitter Account in which he has unambiguously asserted Catholic Doctrine with regard to Abortion and Euthanasia.

 

Perhaps I should provide some background here for readers who do not have 'Anglican Previous'.

We in the Ordinariate come from the Church of England, where we belonged (in many cases) to an organisation called Forward in Faith. This group ran a very splendid monthly called New Directions. It was edited by a witty and highly intelligent woman called Sara Lowe (now a Catholic); and much of the content was supplied by the Revd Dr Geoffrey Kirk. He was one of the most effective satirists of the century; he continued to write sparkling satire after joining the Ordinariate (sadly, he is now dead; his Catholic blog was called Ignatius his Conclave and it contains beautiful, still relevant, demolitions of Bergoglianity).

Back in those Anglican days, we were subjected to much criticism. Establishments, Anglican or Secularist, tend ... in the memorable words of Corporal Jones in Dad's Army ... "not to like it up 'em". (They particularly dislike satire ... not least because they simply cannot stand, poor proud poppets, being laughed at.)

Much of the criticism came in the form of "You are of course entitled to express your views ... but it is your tone and manner that are unacceptable".

(Notice in 'unacceptable' the management trick of using grammatical forms which elide admissions of agency.)

Sometimes, it was a matter of "We atcherlee agree with the substance of your opinions, but the tone and manner with which you express them bring us all into disrepute".

So we of the Ordinariate know all about the disdainful modes of attempted censorship which come so easily to the lips and pens of the lordly clerisy of the Zeitgeist.

 

Back to Fr David Palmer.

Nottingham University has asserted: "Our concern was not in relation to Father David's views themselves, or the tenets of the Catholic faith which we fully respect, but the manner in which these views have been expressed in the context of our diverse community of people of many faiths."

Loverlee!! (You won't have failed to notice the word manner. And another 'management' term is concern. Management People are never so endearingly human as to be hopping mad; as Very Superior Persons, they feel only the more lofty and Whig emotion of concern.)

Of course  they're not trying to censor Fr Palmer's (and the Catholic Church's) beliefs. Oh dearie me No; of course not. Stupid they may be ... undoubtedly are ... but they are bright enough to be aware that overtly doing that would put them in the wrong.

We live in an imperfect world and we clerics partake of that imperfection. In every situation, possibly, something could have been said or done ... given hindsight ... in a better way. But perfection and omniscience are characteristics of the Godhead. They are not conveyed by the Sacrament of Holy Order.

We are bidden to preach the Gospel eukairos akairos. And to do so meta parrhesias. Palmer did just that.

In my view, it is essential to support Fr David Palmer in every possible, conceivable, way. And not to have any truck with equivocating formulae smuggled in by the conjunctive BUT.

I don't know if Voltaire, entertaining old gent, ever really did say "I totally disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".

If he didn't, he should have done.

How should we English "KAI TA LOIPA"?

So (aspicitis omnes modum hodiernum loquendi!) what is the Modern English for et cetera (or et caetera)?

D L Sayers, who had a deliciously careful ear for individuals and their idiolects, records a lower-middle-class woman undergradute who (1935) employed for this purpose the word "things" (would the Cockney equivalent have been "fings"?). 

" My mother's one of those people who work to get things open to women -- you know -- professions and things ... And they've made lots of sacrifices and things." 

But tempora mutantur. 

Nowadays, quite a few modish people say "earn stuff".

Exempli gratia: "I went shopping to get the foie gras* earn stuff." Or "I loathe Boris Johnson earn stuff."

 

Footnote 1: I suspect that I am not the only teacher who has occasionally snarled at a student "etc. means and all the other things I am supposed to know but don't." 

*Footnote 2: We are told that now, "having got Brexit done", we are fortunate enough to "have got our country back"; and so, naturally, the importation of foie gras will ... so rumour has it ... soon be made illegal. And the supplier in County Kerry from whom we have in the past bought our (wild Atlantic) smoked salmon tells us that, because of Brexit, he can no longer oblige. 

Seems like rank tyranny to me.

Is all this true? If so, I am tempted to return to the Sussex Coast and organise a massive smuggling business importing necessary foods (disguised as illegal immigrants so as to fool the Home Secretary and her Border Force). 

Rudyard Kipling's splendid Smugglers' Song will need another stanza, in (of course) the authentic old Sussex dialect as still spoken on Commuter Trains. It could be adopted as the anthem of the Free Britain guerilla force I am thinking of founding. Is there a tune that would fit?

The Tridentine Rite and the Anglican Patrimony (5)

In conclusion, I would like to make a few remarks about principle.

I have heard it argued ... I think, by Cardinal Wuerl ... that the Extraordinary Form is not part of the Anglican Patrimony. I find this difficult to understand, and, if you have read the first four parts of this piece, so will you. Of course, the Extraordinary Form was never officially authorised in the Church of England or the American and Australian branches of the Anglican Communion. But, then, neither was the Ordinary Form. Certainly, in England, the Anglo-Papalist movement which is our own much loved ecclesial background did use the Tridentine Rite, used it and loved it, and suffered persecution for that use and for that love. The Missale Romanum was the gold standard, with the English Missal providing, over half a century, an intermediate stage in the journey towards its full adoption. That is the place we have come from.

In any case, the Magisterium has solved the matter.  Anglicanorum coetibus makes clear (Paragraph III) that Ordinariate clergy may use the Roman Rite as well as using their own liturgical books, and the Apostolic Constitution makes no distinction here between the two forms of the Roman Rite which exist by law in the Latin Church. And Summorum Pontificum established that, in principle, every Catholic priest of the Latin rite may use the Extraordinary Form without permission either from the Apostolic See or from his Ordinary. To put the seal on it, the Ordinariate Order of Mass promulgated by Rome incorporates the Preparation, the Offertory Prayers, the Libera nos, the Last Gospel, from the Tridentine Rite. Thus these things have been formally accepted by Rome as part of the Anglican Patrimony. Roma locuta est.

 
This series is now complete. I include a Comment from an old thread which is of great interest ... it shows how the Anglo-Papalist clergy in one of our great churches reacted to the 1960s.

The Tridentine Rite and the Anglican Patrimony (4)

The 1960s came as a nasty shock to Anglo-Catholicism. They were expecting reform from Rome, but not the sort of radical rupture which was to occur. Thus, writing in 1962, a Fr Bertram Jones, Vicar of Wrawby (New Rites ... Right or Wrong?) acknowledged that "the desirability of revising the Roman Mass ... is evident, though haste should be, and probably will be, avoided. Eventually, it is almost certain, a revised Roman Mass will emerge, with the Latin Canon inviolate but much, if not all, of the audible part in the vernacular". He urged, for use within the Church of England, "the interim policy of treating the Roman Mass in Latin as the norm to be used whenever and wherever, all things relevant carefully considered, it is practicable to use it; the rite of 1662 and the vernacular for the audible parts as the only permissible deviations from it; and the Gregorian Canon, silent and in Latin (with the 1662 Prayer of Consecration permissibly interpolated), as of strict obligation in every Mass".

Fr Jones was, as most Anglo-Catholic clergy still were, very attached to the Roman Canon. He cited "a former Regius Professor of Divinity and certainly no uncritical admirer of all things Roman, Dr Alexander Nairne" as calling it "the best of prayers (if not the best of all Latin compositions) in its direct, unadorned prayerfulness". He strongly prefered that it be used in Latin, reminding readers that "'to be learned in the Latin tongue' was a requirement laid down no less for Anglican ordinands than for Roman". As for the silent recitation, he had "no doubt that the Holy Spirit has not only inspired the words of the Canon, but led the Western Church to the practice of quiet at that part of the Holy Mysteries and that it is unlikely ever to be abandoned".

Within five years, a raw policy of naked aggression against Tradition had put paid to everything which Anglo-Papalists such as Jones thought to be obvious. Since they had always believed in Roman Authority over Liturgy, reluctantly, and most unfortunately, they buckled down to the new rites, simply because they believed that Rome had abolished the old rites. We now know that this is not so. Summorum Pontificum clarified the matter (which had remained uncertain ever since a Committee of Cardinal Canonists in the 1980s had come to the conclusion that ythe old Roman Missal had never canonically been abolished, their report being left unpublished out of fear for its possible consequences).

A few churches continued to use the English Missal, but they were regarded as eccentric. It was the authorisation of the Ordinariate Rite which restored the substance of the English Missal.

To be concluded.

"Ebbsfleet has poped"

 What a joy it is that these dear old Anglo-Catholic verbs still survive. A famous poem by Sir John Betjeman asked "And has Sam Gurney poped?" (Sam Gurney never did.) Time was, when so many Anglican Catholics, cleric and laic, seemed to be hanging on in the House of Bondage (S J H Newman's turn of phrase) by their finger-tips, keeping all in suspense. Dr Mascall's Ultra Catholic, in that exquisitely snide final line, revealed that he "would have gone last thursday week, had not my wife objected". 

But when Pope Benedict issued his Great Invitation, the Ultra priests who had always said that, if Certain Things happened, they would be off, mysteriously seemed all to be still in place. It was the more solidly Anglican clerics who sheepishly turned up with Dossiers to be sent to Rome.

And now the Bishop of Ebbsfleet, Jonathan Goodall, has joined that noble procession of poping clerics. He deserves genuine admiration: it is no secret that the numbers of poping clerics has slumped since PF gave a new twist or two to the Petrine Ministry. Bishop Jonathan has demonstrated that the divine imperative to be in communion with the See of S Peter remains as strong as ever, whether in the times of a good pope or of, er, a Pope Francis.

Ebbsfleet has a striking history. When the C of E made 'pastoral' provision for the irreconcileables, the See of Ebbsfleet (a suffragan see of Canterbury, named not after the Railway Station or the Sandbank but after the spot where S Augustine landed) was invented, and its first 'Flying Bishop' was John Richards. He had been a solid member of the Exeter Mafia ... clerics identified with that distinctly Catholic diocese ... and had become one of Exeter's Archdeacons. This meant that he was in charge of clergy discipline and ensuring that the parishes paid their "quota". It was assumed that he would keep his iffy clergy in order; in fact, his gifts and energies were immediately refocussed on defending Catholicism against the liberal bullies. He was a very great pontiff; 'flying bishops' had little canonical authority, but 'JR' had immense auctoritas. His District contained more than a hundred parishes. When, on my retirement from teaching, I came on the market, he very wisely snapped me up.

His successor, Michael Houghton, soon died of heroic over-work. The next Bishop, Andrew Burnham, was also dogged by health problems (and so, for some years, JR continued to 'look after' the South West). But when he got going, Bishop Andrew focussed his attention on RITA (Rome is the answer). He knew that our movement needed a teleology; he reorganised the District as 'The Ebbsfleet Apostolic District' with Romish structures and terminology, and did an enormous amount to organise the movement which resulted in the 'appeal' to Pope Benedict and ... what happily followed.

Let us hope that there will be a long succession of "Bishops of Ebbsfleet", after whose names one will append in brackets the proud information "(poped)".

The Tridentine Mass and the Anglican Patrimony (3)

Thus it is recorded of one of our more eccentric clergy, Fr Sandys Wason, of Cury and Gunwalloe, that as he approached to Altar on dark weekday mornings, he would murmur to his server "Anyone here?", and if the answer were negative, would reply "Good. Latin Mass". Mr Kensit's inventory of the enormities he found in Cury church concluded "But yet more, the Vicar dares to use A ROMAN MISSAL"! In the Anglican Shrine at Walsingham, no longer in the Sacristy but since the 1960s preserved among the archives, are large numbers of the Missale Romanum, showing many evidences of long and continuous use. And there were churches in which everything, even on Sundays, was Tridentine and in Latin (details in M Yelton Anglican Papalism).

Since the revival of 'ritual' in the Church of England, there had been a tendency for the Advanced, Extreme behaviour of one generation to have become 'mainstream' in the next. Thus, as the twentieth century progressed, there was much less bother about the perceived enormities of the previous century, such as candles, Eastward Position, the Mixed Chalice, Mass vestments, even incense and sacring bells. Many of the bishops were now doing these things or some of them themselves. The new controversies centred round the Presence and the Sacrifice: the extra-liturgical cultus of the Blessed Sacrament (Benediction, Exposition, Corpus Christi Processions); and the Canon of the Mass. In other words, bishops did their best to ban Benediction and to stop the interpolation of the Canon of the Mass, said silently, before and after Cranmer's Consecration Prayer.

This made the bishops very unpopular. Just imagine. A group of disaffected Protestant laity would go to a bishop with their list of complaints about their 'High Church' Vicar; the Bishop would promise to do something about it when he came to appoint the next Vicar (the present one enjoying Parson's Freehold, and hence being unsackable). But what Protestant laity very often wanted was the return of Morning Prayer instead of the Eucharist as the main service on a Sunday morning; if not that, they desired at least the removal of incense, chanting, servers, candles, bells. Their list of desired 'reforms' would almost certainly not include the removal of the Canon of the Mass, for the very simple reason that the Vicar said it silently during the singing of the Sanctus and Benedictus. They had never heard it and so they didn't even realise that they ought to be violently against it! 

The bishop would promise to see that the next Vicar was less Extreme. When the time came, he extracted from candidates for the job an undertaking that they would abandon the Canon and, in its place, use the "Interim Rite" (which meant that two of Cranmer's prayers, gummed together, replaced the Canon).

The Low Church Laity were furious. They knew nothing about the importance of the Canon, and gave the Bishop no credit for its elimination. All they saw was that the Bells and Smells continued. They were convinced that the Bishop had done the dirty on them. Bishops became, in their eyes, devious and deceitful men who broke their promises; shifty individuals, hand in glove with 'extreme' clergy, who never looked you in eye. Catholic clergy and laity were as damning; when the living had become vacant, the bishop had assured them with his nicest pastoral smile that he would "maintain the Catholic Tradition" at S Luke's; instead, he appointed a member of the group which was coming to be called "Protestants in Chasubles". 

To outsiders, the worship in S Luke's remained completely 'Romish'; little did they understand the subtleties of whether the "Western Rite" or the "Interim Rite" was in use. All they saw was complex ritual. One old Anglo-Catholic shrine church, All Saints Margaret Street, fell into the hands of such a priest; he banned from the hospitality of his altars clergy who used the Canon. Wagging a forefinger, he would say "You know the rule here, my dear; choreography according to Fortescue but libretto by Cranmer".

For some half a century, the Anglo-Papalist clergy were persecuted for using the Canon Romanus. This resulted in an awareness of its enormous importance being branded deeply into their (our) memories. Even today such persecution continues in the Church of England; Anglican diocesans intimate that they will not make a fuss about any liturgical practice however technically illegal as long as an Anglican Eucharistic prayer is used. The Canon Romanus is something we have fought and suffered for.

To be continued.

The Tridentine Rite and the Anglican Patrimony (2)

After this, he would revert to Latin and use all the elements of the Roman Rite from the communion up to the end of the Last Gospel; the only compromise being that he would not say Placeat tibi and bless the people a second time. Despite Fr Kenrick's disavowals, this is clearly a rite compiled by a man anxious to say as much as possible of the Tridentine Mass, and to say it in Latin. And Fr Kenrick could justify all this by neatly claiming that its very language marked out his Latin materials as only "private devotions of the priest". Mass at Hoxton cannot have been brief.

Copies of the first printed edition apppear to be quite rare; it did not give the Latin texts of the Propers, but translated them into English. But it obviously supplied a need, because the second and subsequent editions abound in churches all over England and were still being purchased and used in the 1950s.

But, as the century progressed, Kenrick's nervous protestations of loyalty to the Prayer Book gave place to a new attitude among Anglo-Catholics, which was doctrinally and ecclesiologically based. An influential book The Truth about the Prayer Book was published in 1935 by Fathers Alban Baverstock and Donald Hole, in which they argued that the Prayer Book was in fact illegitimate and the Roman Rite the truly lawful liturgy of the Provinces of Canterbury and York (this was how many Anglo-Papalists preferred to refer to their Church; it was two lamentably separated provinces of the Western Church and not, as the phrase 'Church of England might suggest, an independant ecclesial body). "The Missal and Breviary formed the only 'prayer book' possessing canonical authority in the Church of England. Then, suddenly, an entirely new liturgy was forced upon the English provinces by the authority of Parliament. It possessed no spiritual or canonical authority whatever. Its introduction was in no sense the act of the Church of England, it was thrust upon an unwilling Church at the point of a sword." Even more significantly, they were inclined to argue that, anyway, "it would have been ultra vires for a provincial synod to abrogate a rite which had the prescriptive use of a thousand years behind it in the West".

This Altar book existed in many places in combination with the Missale Romanum. Depending on how 'instructed' his congregation was, a priest might use the English Missal  on Sundays, and the Missale Romanum on weekdays, and particularly at private Masses. The culture was: the Missale Romanum was the truly lawful book of the Western Latin Church of which we were (sadly, canonically separated) members members; the English Missal was a way of working towards that ideal.
To be continued.

An Imminent Centenary

 "A summer's evening: On the evening of July 6th, 1922, the bells in the quiet old Norfolk village of Walsingham rang out in a merry peal as a small procession carrying an image of ancient design moved into the church from the south porch, where it had just been hallowed by that much loved priest of the Catholic revival [in the Church of England] Father Alban Baverstock.

"A halt was made at the famous Seven Sacrament [sic] font, and the then Vicar of Holy Trinity, Reading, standing on the steps, delivered a stirring sermon on the significance of the event then taking place. At its conclusion the procession re-formed; girls carrying boughs of sweet-smelling syringa preceded the image and a small company of nine priests, followed by people of the village all singing happily in Our Lady's honour, accompanied by the still clashing bells and the pealing organ, proceeded to the Guilds' Chapel in the same church. And there, on a pillar, the statue was set up, looking towards the ruins of the old Augustinian Priory, to the north of which the original shrine of the Holy House once stood. The Rosary was said, and Devotions to the Blessed Sacrament concluded the simple yet moving ceremony.

"Our Lady of Walsingham had come back.

" --- [thereafter, prayer was offered daily] for the return of the Ecclesia Anglicana to union with the Holy See -- the ultimate aim of the Catholic revival in this land." (Father Hope Patten, 1954)

So, in a few months time, we shall have the centenary of the restoration in the village of Little Walsingham, under the auspices of leading members of the Anglican Papalist movement, of one of Europe's greatest pilgrimages.

I hope something will happen!

This coming Saturday, the Ordinariate of our Lady of Walsingham will be on pilgrimage to England's Nazareth. Devout readers might wish to pray for them: here is part of a prayer used since the early days of the restoration.

Most holy Virgin! I prostrate myself in spirit before thy Shrine at Walsingham, that Sanctuary favoured by thy visits, favours, and many miracles. I unite myself with all those who have ever sought thee, and do now seek thee, in that holy place, and join my prayers with theirs. But especially I unite my intentions with the intentions of the Priests who offer the Holy Sacrifice upon thy Altar there. ...

Dear Mother, Our Lady of Walsingham, remember me.

 

 

The Tridentine Rite and the Anglican Patrimony (1)

The point of this piece and one or two which will probably follow it is to give chapter and verse for my conviction that what, until recently, we called the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite is an integral, historical part of the liturgical inheritance which we brought with us into full communion when we accepted Benedict XVI's offer of an Ordinariate. Quite apart from wider considerations involving the entire Latin Church, it is clear to me that any attempt to deprive Ordinariate clergy of the use of the Ancient and Authentic Form of the Roman Rite is ultra vires and a breach of an implicit undertaking. It is an attack on what I signed up for when I entered the Ordinariate. I regard this as a relevant subject at a time when the Authentic Use of the Roman Rite is under attack..

Go into any Anglo-Catholic sacristy in England and, gathering dust on some top shelf, you will find The English Missal  Missale Anglicanum. And probably more than one copy in more than one edition.

Fr Henry William Gordon Kenrick, 1862-1943 was its only begetter. An evangelical in origin, he trained at the London Divinity School. Having discovered the Catholic Faith, he was, from 1905 until 1937, Vicar of Holy Trinity Hoxton; years in which Anglo-Catholicism flourished in the Church of England, in its most Tridentine form.

The genesis of his EM appears to be a Missal, hand-written for the most part between June 1904 and the beginning of 1907, which is now in Pusey House Library accompanied by a letter from the compiler and scribe. He claims that he used it at the Altar "for some time and then translated into English, made many additions then got it printed as 'The English Missal'". Published in 1912, throughout its history it bore the publisher's name of W Knott.

In his introduction to the original manuscript Missal, Fr Kenrick nervously states that its "idea" was "to group the great pictures of the world around the Altar ... There is here also an attempt to combine absolute loyalty to the English Church and Liturgy with the felt want of systematic aids to the private devotions of the priest". This device ... the provision of private devotions ... goes back to the beginning of the provision of Anglo-Catholic Altar Books; the erudite Rector of North Cerney, Fr P G Medd (compiler also of the Prayer Book in the original Latin of its Medieval and earlier sources), produced The Priest to the Altar in 1861 ("privately ... sold to subscribers) "after some consultation with Canon Liddon and other friends resident in Oxford" (Liddon himself was accustomed to say the Canon of the Mass in Latin sotto voce when celebrating the Communion). In this book, short passages coyly labelled "(Sarum)" provided, in English, extracts from the Roman Rite.

But Kenrick's manuscript goes much further than these earlier publications. It consists of nothing less than the entire Prayer Book eucharistic rite (homilies and all) in English, with almost the entire Roman Rite in Latin. Fr Kenrick writes "The Latin parts are sanctioned in principle by the Preface in the Book of Common Prayer 'Concerning the Service'. One who desires to use only the Prayer Book can do do by reading only the English parts of this book. Any exceptions need the sanction of the Bishop".

A priest using Fr Kenrick's Missal would say the Preparation at the foot of the altar, and the Introit, in Latin; followed by the introductory material from the prayer book (including the Commandments and the Collext for the King) in English, until he had read the Collect and Epistle for the day. He would then revert to Latin for the Gradual. Later in the service he would incorporate the Roman Canon before and after the Prayer Book Prayer of Consecration, and continue in Latin with the Lord's Prayer and all the other Roman material up to the Communion. After Communion he would say the Lord's Prayer - again, but this time in English. - and the rest of the Prayer Book material up to the end of the Gloria. Placeat tibi followed, and then the Prayer Book blessing (during which, since the Blessed Sacrament was still upon the Altar until the Ablutions, he had to genuflect before turning to bless the people).

To be continued.