Fake Histories

Could it be, is it possible, that alterius orbis Papissa, Ms Greta Thunsberg, has placed this University under an Interdict? I only ask because at last Wednesday's Encaenia, postponed propter pestem from June, two of the eight Honorandae failed to turn up, and they both appear to have been ecologically predisposed.

The good news is that Linda Colley, currently a Professor at Princeton, to my mind the most distinguished name upon the list, was present to receive her Doctorate in Litteris honoris causa.  

Colley is an expert in the history of the seventeen hundreds. It is her view that the Tory Party was still a significant force throughout that century, busily Defying the Whig Oligarchy. I was a little miffed that Mr Orator missed the opportunity to point out that the building in which these degrees were being conferred, the Sheldonian Theatre, was the site of the last great ebullition of aggressive Toryism (and Jacobitism), Dr William King's 1749 Oration to celebrate the opening of the Radcliffe Camera. In this, only three years after the flight of the Prince Regent (later King Charles III), King declaimed, five times, "REDEAT ..." to a noisy gathering.

Mr Orator did mention Colley's demonstrations that British Imperial History is largely a dodgy fabrication of the Victorians, who expunged from the record a fair number of calamitous defeats of British armies by more sophisticated Moslems. In particular, he alluded to her demonstration that in the early years of the eighteenth century, there were some 20,000 British slaves held in the Barbary sultanates of North Africa (a fact which this blog has several times divulged). We have been taught to chant that "Britons never never never shall be slaves", indeed, but "quod interdum incommodum videatur auditu, [Colley] patefecit Britannos nonnunquam antehac id ipsum iugum acceptum ferre coactos esse". And Mrs Vice-Chancellor remarked that "nos sicut captivi acri animo legimus" Professor Colley's works.

Is there an irony in the fact that we are currently often advised to grovel on account of our History ... a History which we ourselves largely invented in order to aggrandise ourselves?!?

Yes; the Honorandae were all female, and Mrs Vice-Chancellor presided, in honour of the centenary of the admission of women to degrees in this University. Again, I felt that Mr Orator missed an opportunity: he very appropriately spoke about the 700 years since the death of Dante; he quoted him (cum permissu Vice-Cancellariae) in Italian, and appended Dorothy Leigh Sayers' English translation of Dante's lines. 

He could also have mentioned that Sayers was one of the very first batch of women to receive degrees in 1921, in that same Sheldonian Theatre.

Prayer on the Feast of our Lady of Walsingham

(1) Here is the text of the Prayer to our Lady of Walsingham, in use since at least the first edition of the Pilgrims' Manual in 1928 (in more recent decades this prayer was detudorised ... such childishness ...).

Perhaps nostalgic but infirm old persons like myself would like to make a virtual pilgrimage to the Holy House, back in time to, say, Whit Monday 1960. 

Or would it be schismatic to travel back in time to before Anglicanorum coetibus?

O Mary, recall the solemn moment when Jesus, thy divine Son, dying upon the cross, confided us to thy maternal care. Thou art our Mother, we desire ever to remain thy devout children. Let us therefore feel the effects of thy powerful intercession with Jesus Christ. Make thy Name again glorious in this place once renowned throughout our land by thy visits, favours, and many miracles.
    Pray, O holy Mother of God, for the conversion of England, restoration of the sick, consolation for the afflicted, repentance of sinners, peace to the departed.
    O blessed Mary, Mother of God, our Lady of Walsingham, intercede for us. Amen. 

(2) I think it would be gracious to pray to our Lady of Candelaria, Patron of the Canary Islands, during this time of volcanic eruption.

I remember with pleasure my visit to her splendid Shrine in San Antonio, Texas; a copy of her Shrine in the Canaries. Oret ...

The Holy House

A great benefactor of the restored Shrine at Walsingham was Sir William Milner; who, in 1926, composed the first version of the Pilgrimage Hymn, designed to utilise the melodies of the Lourdes hymn.

In the 1960s, the then Administrator replaced Sir William's wording. One can see why it was felt that some of the expressions offered problems of vocabulary or rhythm; but, well, not everybody is happy with his replacement text!

Here are some stanzas of Sir William's hymn, relating to the legend of Richeldis:

To Richeldis, a matron full blameless of life,
Who sought for the Star that leads safe through our strife
(Ave ...)
Our Lady, all clement, was pleased to appear,
And her voice sweetly sounding, Richeldis did hear:
(Ave ...)
"I come now to ask you, dear daughter of mine,
On the lands of your fathers to build me a shrine:
(Ave ... )
"See build from this model my arms now enfold --
'Tis Nazareth's homestead, more precious than gold,
(Ave ...)
"Where Jesus, my Lord, on my bosom once laid;
Thrice holy the house where His baby feet played.
(Ave ...)
. . . .
"And the spot that I choose where the House shall arise,
By a sign shall be plainly revealed to your eyes."
(Ave ...)
Next morn when Richeldis went abroad in the meads
With her chaplain conversing, and saying her bedes,
(Ave ...)
Lo! springs bright as crystal burst forth from the plain
Where but now the green pastures unbroken had lain.
(Ave ...)
"The sign that was promised see, father, revealed!
O God, for thy goodness our thanks now we yield,"
(Ave ...)
Thus in joy quoth the matron. Forthwith goodly store
Of oak trees was hewn, and of rushes galore.
(Ave ...)
Right soon the good timbers in order were laid,
And the walls, newly rising, stood forth in the glade.
(Ave ... )
When lo! in the night came a bright angel-band,
And the work was completed by Mary's own hand.

Et cetera !

Elections!

 Among bodies asking for my vote is the National Trust. 

Despite its name, this is an entirely non-governmental British charitable body which acquires and most laudably protects significant buildings and threatened countryside (I think there is an American affiliate, perhaps called the Royal Oak Foundation). The room-stewards in its properties are all unpaid volunteers.

Some time ago, the NT was in the news. As I remember the reports, in one property the volunteers had been asked to wear the 'Rainbow' diversity insignia. Some, who refused, were (if my memory is not deceiving me) told that they would be allocated to roles where they would not come into contact with members of the public.

I, and all other members, have now been sent our voting papers for the Members' Annual General Meeting in October. 

One Members' Resolution "calls on the Trust never to require its volunteers to wear badges, symbols or other items that reflect a political or social viewpoint".

The "Board of Trustees' Position" asserts that "The purpose of this resolution is not clear".

Well, it seemed abundantly clear to me. 

Offering context, the Board says that "we do not ask volunteers to wear badges or symbols, or other items that reflect a political viewpoint".

As between the text I have printed in red and the one I have printed in blue, do readers happen to notice any interesting differences?

I hope I am not the only person to notice this detail in the bumf  which I and other members have received.

Wolves, Lambs, and Wykehamists

Readers will be familiar with the deep disagreements I have on historical matters with positions taken by His Excellency Bishop Richard Williamson. Furthermore, we are warned by Dom Gregory Dix, that the heraldic symbol of a bishop is a Crook. And, of course, every Englishman remembers the solemn injunctions placed upon him by his Father on the momentous occasion when we were, each of us, sent out upon the dangers of this naughty world: "My dear boy ... one last thing ... I beg you always to remember ... whatever else you forget ... I adjure you by your grandmother's grave ... never trust a Wykehamist."

But ...

His Excellency does sometimes have a jolly point upon his Blog. The other day he was commenting on the very humble ... the very very humble ... the very very very humble ... statement issued by the Superiors of the erstwhile Ecclesia Dei communities who, for some unaccountable reason, sound scared.

Bishop Richard reminded us of a Fable by Aesop. Allow me to retell it.

A Lamb was drinking from a stream one morning when its friendly neighbourhood Wolf approached the stream higher up the channel. The Wolf, who was feeling hungry, complained ferociously that the Lamb was stirring up his drinking water and making it muddy.

The Lamb very deferentially pointed out that, since it was downstream from the Wolf, this could not be factual.

"But you told lies about me last year", raged the Wolf.

Ever a pedant, the Lamb pointed out very deferentially that, last year, it was as yet unborn.

"Well, it was your brother!"

"Your highness, I don't have brother!"

"Well, I'm going to have you for breakfast anyway", concluded the Wolf.

Finis fabulae.

Didn't that Pope Benedict once talk about wolves?

Is it speciesist to be preoccupied with wolves?

 

Only for creative philologists

Some years ago, I heard, on the wireless, a young woman with an exotically, positively rococo, East End ('Estuary') accent say that 'Mel C' was her "me:er". I'm fairly sure that this is Estuary English for "Mentor". Not very Hellenic ...

P S (1) I think 'Mel C' may have been one of the "Spice Girls". I was still in teaching when these phenomena were live, so I had them explained to me. No? ... ah, well ...

P S (2) Mentor has now (2021) spawned a lovely derivative: 'Mentee' (as 'tutor' once spawned 'tutee'). Does anybody know how far this usage, reminiscent of the old Latin Gerundive, goes back?

P S (3) How about 'Mentrix' for the feminine of Mentor? When my wife taught at Roedean, she was addressed as Ma'am. Would Mentrix have done instead?

P S (4) When a neo-Fowler is produced, I wonder if the complex rules governing the glottal stop will make it clear that a consonant preceding the eliminable T must itself also be eliminated? 

P S (5) Or should I say "elimina:ed"? Indeed, should I school myself henceforth to refer to the "Glo::al ::op"?

P S (6) The -ee suffix would seem to have endless possibilities. Murderer on death row: hangee. Candidate for gender reassignment: choppee. Potential victim of spontaneous street aggression: muggee. 

Traddy Catholic in a Franciscan pontificate: eliminatee.

A HISTORICAL PIECE, UNREVISED, FROM JUNE 10 2008 AT S THOMAS THE MARTYR, IN THE C OF E

A happy occasion, last night [2008], as I celebrated the 40th anniversary of my Ordination to the Sacred Priesthood. [Last night's celebration] was a Votive of the Holy and Undivided Trinity (in my day, most seminarians were ordained after the Whitsuntide Ember Days on Trinity Sunday) in Latin and according to the Usus Authenticus of the Roman Rite; it was a very family occasion as our Bishop, Andrew, preached a sermon which was too kind about me and inadequately catalogued my failings. 

It also, as one would expect, combined a witty exposition of the mass texts (dealing with the creative mendacity with which they appear to attribute explicit Trinitarian orthodoxy to the Book of Tobit), a treatment of the glory due to the Trinity (as he observed, people are rather more respectful of the Trinity now than was true in the Year of Revolutions, when I was ordained), and a learned and pastoral discussion of the Hermeneutic of Continuity as it applies both to the use of traditional rites and the Reform of the Reform. He could do worse than to make those parts of the homily available to a wider readership. 

I was nervous beforehand; I have said low masses many times according to the 1950s Altar Missal kindly given to me by a generous friend, the pp of Knightstown on Valentia Island in the Kingdom of County Kerry. Indeed, I used it even before the Holy Father issued his Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum (I hope this was not too daring an infringement of my ordination undertaking only to use rites allowed by canon). But never before have I attempted a Missa Cantata. I need not have worried. Led by Barry, one of our senior and long-faithful servers, resplendent in our festal tunicle, a superbly competent group of seminarians from S Stephen's House swept me through it with aplomb enough to give the impression that they polished off this sort of thing every day of their lives. 

There is, of course, a history to this. 'Staggers', my own seminary, has long had a reputation for liturgical scholarship and practical accuracy in ritual matters. In the days when that great pontiff Bishop Kirk ruled the See of Oxford, the Principal, Canon Couratin (of whom many anecdotes survive, not all of them suitable for a family blog) used to turn up with his 'circus' to put on all the major Diocesan events. Even during the bleak years after the Council when so many lost their liturgical nerve, the Staggers tradition maintained standards and preserved a high understanding of the ars celebrandi. 

You might say that the advent of Pope Benedict is a vindication of all that Staggers has stood for and does still maintain under Fr Robin (who was present last night to see the triumphs of his students). The biggest of thankyous to Daniel Lloyd, who officiated as MC, and to his colleagues, a crew faultless not only in matters ritual. The choir was the Byrd Consortium, who descend from the choir at S Mary Mag's Church back in the happy days when it was Oxford's bastion of orthodoxy. I used to attend on Sundays and weekdays when I was an undergraduate living in College, so there was a comfortable appropriateness in having them there. I am no musician, so I feel shy about ever commenting on the activities of those who are; I can only say that their memorable and haunting performance made me immensely grateful. I know how much work they put in. 

It may seem an absurd paradox, but somehow the event, a Latin Tridentine Mass, seemed the very epitome of the Anglican tradition as we have appropriated and preserved it since the Catholic Revival.

PORKIES

 Foreign readers may need to "bone up" upon what is meant by "Cockney Rhyming Slang". It is our demotic equivalent of that propensity to slip into Latin which used to be common among our educated classes in the time when ... goodness, how I do woffle.

The first and fundamental Porkie in Traditionis custodes is that Benedict XVI permitted the Usus Authenticus as a kindly concession to those who felt the need for it.

This is untrue. Benedict revealed the verdict of a canonical commission which had found that the 1570 Rite had never been properly abolished in proper canonical form. 

The Old Rite was never abolished! 

Any reworking of Summorum Pontificum clearly needs to begin conceptually from that remarkable revelation.

In addition to that canonical fact, Papa Ratzinger added a dogmatic assertion. He did not say that his successors ought not to abolish the Old Rite: he asserted that it cannot be abolished or forbidden. In other words, that an attempt to abolish it would be ultra vires. 

"CANNOT".  Pope Benedict really did mean what he said. When he was Cardinal Ratzinger, he had launched a scathing attack on the impression "that the pope really could do anything in liturgical matters, especially if he were acting on the mandate of an ecumenical council." And, before that, he had reminded us "that the Church, throughout her history, has never abolished nor forbidden orthodox liturgical forms, which would be quite alien to the Spirit of the Church."

I suppose it is hardly surprising that PF fails to understand the simple proposition that the pope cannot do anything.

But, surely, even he must see that, if he can so disdain the doctrinal teaching of his predecessor, he is sawing off the branch upon which he is himself so precariously balancing.

  

S Paul VI

I wish to propose a theory about S Paul VI for which, currently, I can adduce evidence; I wonder if there is more.

HE WAS UN POCO AMLETICO

(1) He relied upon dishonest people for advice. (a) From the Memoires of Louis Bouyer: "At different stages, be it with regard to the dumping overboard (sabordage) of the Liturgy of the Departed, or again in that unbelievable enterprise of expurgating the psalms in view of their use in the Office, Bugnini came up against an opposition, not just massive, but one could say pretty well unanimous. In some such cases, he did not hesitate to tell us 'But the Pope wants it!'. After that, to be sure, there was no longer a question of discussing it." Bouyer recounts how he once met Bugnini in circumstances in which the latter, mistakenly, believed that he, Bouyer, had just been with Pope Paul ... whom Bugnini was on his way to see. "On seeing me, he not only turned completely white but, visibly, was knocked for six (non seulement il blemit, mais, visiblement, il fut atterre)". "The answer was to be presented to me, but some weeks later, by Paul VI himself. Nattering with me about our famous labours, which he had confirmed, he finally said to me 'But why, then, did you put into this reform ...' (Here, I have to admit that I don't recall any longer which of the details which I have mentioned particularly irritated him.) Naturally, I replied 'But purely and simply because Bugnini guaranteed to us that you were absolutely set on it (avait certifie que vous le vouliez absolument).' His reaction was immediate: 'Is it possible? He said to me personally that you were unanimous in this respect!'".
(b) Bishop Tissier's biography recounts that when Archbishop Lefebvre was received in audience by the Pope, S Paul VI was hostile from the start. It transpired that he had been informed, probably by Cardinal Villot, that the Archbishop made the priests whom he formed "sign an oath against the Pope". Given such shameless mendacity, it is hardly surprising that the Holy Father's mind was poisoned against Lefebvre.

(2) S Paul VI preferred to compromise with disorder rather than to face it down. It seems clear, from Dom Cassian Folsom's Adoremus series of masterly articles, that the provision of alternative Eucharistic Prayers was a pathetic but well-meant attempt to rein in the chaos which existed particularly in the Low Countries, where home-made Eucharistic Prayers were proliferating in (literally) hundreds. S Paul was assured that the Hierarchy, given this concession, were prepared to restore order. (Big of them ... Traditionalists would also do well to remember that it was the provision of these alternatives which saved the Canon itself from being really badly mangled ... better, surely, to be unused for a few decades than permanently debased?)

As well as the human and historical tragedy, there is an ecclesiological point here. If you blend together in one saucepan an exaggerated notion of papal authority (as analysed by Joseph Ratzinger) with the activities (described in detail by Louis Bouyer) of unscrupulous and dishonest and ruthlessly determined manipulative individuals who have the pope's ear, you are gravely at risk of having a disaster the results of which it may well take generations to mitigate.  

Quod factum est.

Some old friends ... Newman ... Dix ...

Near the beginning of the Preparatory Document on PF's planned 'Synod', we read " ... what steps does the Spirit invite us to take in order to grow as a synodal Church? Addressing this question together requires listening to the Holy Spirit, who like the wind 'blows where it wills; you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes"(Jn 3:8), remaining open to the surprises that the Spirit will certainly prepare for us along the way."

Whoever drafted this ... presumably neither a Greats Man nor a Greats Woman ... appears not to have noticed that a Surprise is just that little bit less of a Surprise if we know that it is 'certainly' coming. Except, of course, within the rather mannered ritual logic of kiddies' pantomimes, the bright eternal homeland of Widow Twankey.

However, it would be unfair to suggest that PF has in any way changed his tune. He hasn't. In the template which he offered to his earlier synods which preceded Amoris laetitia, he wrote "The Synod is a protected space where the Church experiences the action of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit speaks in the Synod through the language of all persons that allow themselves to be guided by the God that always surprises ..." 

Remarkable teaching. In formal and grammatical terms, it may resemble the Definition that the Successor of S Peter, speaking ex cathedra, is protected from teaching error. The big difference is that the Definition is embodied in the dogmatic and infallible teaching of a doctrinal Ecumenical Council, Vatican I. The novel and unconciliar claim now proposed by PF, that a papally convoked "Synod" which is not even claimed to be an Ecumenical Council enjoys the privilege of being preserved from error, is a claim which I, personally, totally repudiate. The very making of it arouses, moreover, the greatest suspicions in my mind (of course, I speak only for myself).

A century and a half ago, S John Henry Newman was prepared to consider the pressures which the ultrapapalist bullies of his own time ("an aggressive insolent faction") had brought to bear upon the Fathers of Vatican I; and, if necessary, he was even prepared to "determine that the [1870] Definition is not valid". (The measured good sense of the actual Definition spared our great Saint from having to take any such step; presciently, he suggested that the result of the 1870 definition might actually be to "limit the Pope's power".)

S John Henry was no fool, nor was he a coward.

A fortiori, I, merely a poor ignorant presbyter, living my Christian life under Newman's Patronage but speaking only for myself, am not going to be corralled into accepting whatever teaching PF claims to be able to extract from his 'synod'. It is quite simply not true that, in Catholic teaching, all Councils are deemed infallible. "Only some General Councils [a]re admitted as infallible ... Bellarmine gave a list of General Councils which had erred" (S John Henry Newman). The Latrocinium, and certain rather conciliarist sessions of Constance, will spring to mind. How much more fallible are these Bergoglian 'synods', which come upon us as thick and fast as the Number 12 buses over Westminster Bridge! 

I recall Dom Gregory Dix's remarks about Old Men in a Hurry. He was no fool, either.

Again to be personal ... I speak only for myself ... I deplore the endless and unscrupulous employment of phrases like "the Holy Spirit" and "the God of Surprises" as cheap pieces of Bergoglian stage machinery deployed to evade all and any obstacles to the pursuit of the Bergoglian programme of innovation.

I discern ... speaking again only for myself ... once more in the current documents, and I as deeply resent, the use of Bergoglian gobbledy gook to privilege innovation. If "the Spirit" is to Surprise us, why are PF's apparatchiks so sure that these Surprises will have to be new things? The possibility that the Surprises might involve or imply a faithful return to Tradition ... say, to liturgical Tradition ... does not feature in the published documents and appears to have been deftly excluded in advance by the crudities of Traditionis custodes. Yet ... surely ... that would be a very real Surprise. Imagine the expression on Andrea Grillo's face!

The Swiss Guard will undoubtedly be given strict orders as they take up their positions in their fortified machine-gun posts around the Santa Marta. Admission Tickets will need to be carefully scrutinised. Only very 'safe' voices can be trusted to enter PF's "Protected Spaces".

SYNTHESIS?

I drafted this piece before PF's hospitalisation and Traditionis custodes.

There are all those able Vaticanologists who know people ... what can you and I add in this poor little blog?

But here goes a putting together of two and two.

(1) The CDF received questions about the giving of Blessings to homosexual couples. CDF drafted their response.

(2) Cardinal Ladaria showed it to PF. The usual procedure is that the Pope signifies his approval of a document and orders it to be published. BUT, this time, he simply said that he had been informed, and gave his assent to its publication. 

(3) At a subsequent Public Audience, he berated Rigid People. 

(4) An American priest devoted to a certain brand of ministry got in touch with PF: who replied in a very personal, positive, and hand-written way.

(5) Meanwhile, rumours had been circulating that PF was planning an intervention regarding the the Authentic Use of the Roman Rite.

Perhaps this simply leaves these questions: exactly how cross is PF? Cross enough to over-rule the criticisms already made by his curial advisers?

Inspirational

A Times book review by Andrew Taylor (on Simon Thurley's Palaces of Revolution) observes

"It is difficult to forget Sir John Denham, Charles II's first Surveyor of the King's Works, when you know that that, increasingly incapacitated physically and mentally by tertiary syphilis, he informed his royal master that he was the Holy Ghost."

Golly, that must have been quite a Surprise.