Saint John Henry's Altar

Tomorrow is the Thursday within "Noughth Week" ... in our Anglican days, back in 2009, I once kicked off the University 'Hilary' Term in the University Church by celebrating in Latin the 1662 rite. 

This was in the very same church in which Cranmer its author made his last academic appearance ... viva voce!! ... before his final public appointment outside the Master's Lodgings of Balliol College, in the City ditch we now call Broad Street. (You can still discover the North walls of the city behind and built into the shop fronts along the South side of Broad Street.)

And what strange Latin I used on that occasion.. 

I think the Altar Book placed in front of me was compiled in 1706; it attempts to translate Cranmer's English without much regard for Cranmer's Sarum originals. The 'Standard' Latin BCP as used since the 'Oxford Movement'  by latinate Anglo-Catholics has more than an eye on Sarum: Vere dignum et iustum est, aequum et salutare. But 'Oxford 1706' has Vere dignum et iustum est, quodque iure debemus. Standard has: Simili modo posteaquam coenatum est. 'Oxford 1706' offered: Similiter ... And Standard retains the enim which a Latin dislike of asyndeton inserts into the Words of Dominical Institution; 'Oxford 1706' omits it. Servet instead of custodiat in the Words of Administration seems just plain contrariness!

The stalls at which the congregation knelt had houselling cloths; I wonder if this is a Tractarian innovation, or a genuine medieval survival.

The Bedell of Medicine led in the Senior ProProctor and the ProViceChancellor; you might deem that to be a bit of a come-down since the days when the whole majesty of an Anglican University, led and represented by Proctors and Vice-Chancellor, was present, but I thought it was jolly nice of them to come.  

Gummed into the front of the service book was a typed sheet with the vestry prayers, and, as I read the one at the end of Mass, I realised: it was a Latin translation of the 1928 Prayer Book's Corpus Christi collect. Which, in turn, was an English translation of S Thomas Aquinas' Latin collect. (!!!!!)

Anglicanism does have its quaint side. But I venerated with a kiss before Mass the engravings in the vestry of Saint John Henry  ... and of blessed Charles Stuart.

The views of Fr Adrian Fortescue on the limitations upon the Papal Office

 " ... even in religious matters the Pope is bound, very considerably, by the Divine constitution of the Church. There are any number of things that the Pope cannot do in religion. He cannot modify, nor touch in any way, one single point of revelation Christ gave to the Church; his business is only to guard this against attack and false interpretation. We believe that God will so guide him that his decisions of this nature will be nothing more than a defence or unfolding of what Christ revealed. The Pope can neither make nor unmake a sacrament, he cannot affect the essence of any sacrament in any way. He cannot touch the Bible; he can neither take away a text from the inspired Scriptures nor add one to them. He has no fresh inspiration nor revelation. His business is to believe the revelation of Christ, as all Catholics believe it, and to defend it against heresy."

Thus Dr Fortescue, in his (beautifully printed!) The Early Papacy, 1920, three years before his death.

I think that readers who perused the texts I printed yesterday ... the Reply of the German Bishops to the attacks of Bismarck, and the enthusiastic approval by Pope Pius IX of what they wrote ... may be struck by the close, even verbal, similarity of Fortescue's lucid and engaging exposition to the passages I cited from Denzinger (although his book is carefully footnoted, he does not give references to these passages).

I have printed, above, in red, those of Fr Fortescue's words which laudably emphasise, just as S John Henry Newman did in his Apologia, the essentially negative function of the Petrine Ministry; it is a remora against innovation. 

Like Vatican I, AF emphasises that the Roman Pontiff is not the recipient of new inspiration or revelation. 

I am not a Dogmatic Theologian; but it is at this point that the praxis of this pontificate worries me most. I write, of course, subject to appropriate correction, but the persistent suggestion that the Holy Spirit is using Pope Francis to guide the Church into "surprises", seems to me, prima facie, so diametrically opposed to the clear words of Vatican I that I cannot help wondering if the Bergoglianity on the lips both of PF and of his admirers counts formally as heresy. 

In his unfortunate Epiphany homily last week, he once again took the opportunity to roll out his tired and angry rhetoric about the Spirit of Change. 

In this inordinately lengthy pontificate, already far too many painful decades long, he has expressed his own Surprise that so many, particularly the younger, turn to the Authentic forms of the Roman Rite ... it never seems to occur to him that this Surprise might just possibly be one of the Surprises of the Holy Spirit. On the contrary: his response to the Surprise of Tradition is to attempt to restrict and extinguish it it by minute and rigid regulation accompanied by intemperate abuse and sheer cruelty of action. 

When the youthful lads and lasses of the Franciscans of the Immaculate developed Surprising liturgical preferences, he and his thugs soon put paid to them and that, didn't they?

Why is he so eaten up with hatred? Does it go back to unhappy childhood experiences?

I gave evidences of these Bergoglianical preoccupations in my paper published in Defending the Faith Against Present Heresies, Arouca, 2021. Among many examples, I included some words of Vincent Nichols, the retiring Archbishop of Westminster, asserting that the Holy Spirit guided PF's election and guides him daily. 

Nichols claimed to be writing to PF "on the behalf of the Catholic Community of England ...". 

Not in my name.

THE VIEWS OF B PIUS IX ON THE LIMITATIONS UPON THE PAPAL OFFICE

(1) "The decrees of the Vatican Council give not even the shadow of a foundation to the assertion that the pope has been made by them an absolute ruler (principem absolutum), and, indeed, by virtue of the Infallibility, "a monarch more absolute than any in the world". ...  even as far as concerns ecclesiastical matters, the pope cannot be called an absolute monarch (monarchus absolutus), since indeed he is subject to Divine Law and is bound to those things which Christ set in order (disposuit) for His Church. He cannot change the constitution (constitutionem) of the Church which was given to it by its Divine Founder, after the manner of a civil legislator who can change the constitution of the state. The constitution of the Church in all essential matters is founded in the divine arrangement (ordinatione) and is therefore immune from every arbitrary human disposition." (Denzinger 3114)

(2) "Venerable Brethren, you have continued the glory of the Church, since you have undertaken to restore the genuine sense of the definitions of the Vatican Council which had been twisted by the deceptive interpretation publicised by a certain circular letter, lest it deceive the faithful and, converted into an object of ill-will, appear to provide a handle to machinations being placed in the way of the freedom of election of a new pontiff. Indeed, such is the perspicuity and solidity of your declaration, that, since it leaves nothing to be desired, it ought to provide the occasion for our most fulsome congratulations; unless the crafty (versuta) voice of some journals were to demand from us an even weightier testimony - a voice which, in order to restore the force of the letter which has been refuted by you, has tried to deprive your hard work of credibility by arguing that the teaching of the conciliar definitions approved by you has been softened and on that account does not truly correspond with the mind of this Apostolic See. We therefore reject this sly (vafram) and dodgy (calumniosam) insinuation and suggestion; since your declaration expresses the inherent (nativam) catholic judgement, which is accordingly that of the sacred Council and of this Holy See, skilfully fortified and cleverly (nitide) explained with such brilliant (luculentis) and inescapable arguments (rationum momentis) that it can demonstrate to any honest person that there is nothing in the attacked definitions which is new or makes any change ..." (Denzinger 3117)

Let me explain. (1) is part of the response of the German Hierarchy to Chancellor Bismarck, who, after the definition of Papal Infallibility in 1870, had attacked it as being subversive both of State and of Church. The German Bishops thus vigorously refuted the notion that the Pope is an absolute monarch who can do anything.

Their admirable declaration was then attacked on the grounds that they were toning down what Papal Primacy and Infallibility really meant; that their motive in doing so was simply to calm things down in Germany; it was even suggested that Rome itself was angry with them.

(2) is part of the message of Blessed Pius IX to the German Bishops, confirming their interpretation of the Council. And can you detect anything niggardly about his approbation of their words? Even Pio Nono, despite his undeserved reputation, had no notion of the arbitrary, absolutist, and despotic view of the Papacy which is held ... but only when it suits them! ... by modern liberals enthusiastic about promoting an innovatory agenda.

(3) ORDINATIO SACERDOTALIS

 In the light of (1) and (2), let us now consider the centrally important paragraph by which S John Paul II, in his brief document Ordinatio sacerdotalis, condemned the idea of women priests.

"Ut igitur omne dubium auferatur circa rem magni momenti, quae ad ipsam Ecclesiae divinam constitutionem pertinet ... declaramus Ecclesiam facultatem nullatenus habere ordinationem sacerdotalem mulieribus conferendi, hancque sententiam ab omnibus Ecclesiae fidelibus esse definitive tenendam."

The Holy Pontiff thus unambiguously declares that the inability of the Church to ordain women is a matter which "pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself". The language he uses is a clear allusion to (1) above. Indeed, we know that Cardinal Ratzinger, who presumably drafted this passage, had (1) very much in his mind: you will recall his famous condemnation of the "Spirit of Vatican II" error that the Pope is an absolute monarch who, especially if acting upon the mandate of a ecumenical council, can do anything.

I hope this simple clarification may be of assistance to anybody who finds him/herself obliged to oppose the idea that 'WO' is a matter which is up for any discussion other than that of further demonstrating the coherence of the Holy Pontiff's teaching with the general body of Catholic doctrine. To argue for this aberration would be an assault, not merely upon the infallible Ordinary Magisterium of the Universal Church which S John Paul here declares, but upon the very wise limitations with which Vatican I surrounded its teaching on the Papacy ... "the Holy Spirit was not promised to the popes so that they could disclose new doctrine but so that they can guard the Deposit of Faith handed down from the Apostles." 

To be fair: I here add that PF has used opportunities to reinforce the teaching of his predecessors about the impossibility of woomen in priesthood. My assumption is that he has looked into this matter; has had it explained to him that there is no way of 'getting round' this teaching; and has accepted that fact.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Ordinatio sacerdotalis declared that the Church nullatenus has the facultas to ordain women. The sense of these two Latin words is important. Facultas comes from the root of facere, to do; and has a general sense of the wherewithal, the means, to do, to effect something. To say that the Church lacks the facultas to ordain women is like saying that a man with an empty purse does not have the facultas to to give a sovereign to a beggar; a man without a membrum virile does not have the facultas to perform sexual intercourse. In other words, the Holy Pontiff is not saying that the Church ought not to ordain women; he is saying that she is unable to do so. If she attempted to, the action would be a nullity, just as to give someone a 'dud cheque' is to give them nothing. Nullatenus [accent on the a; I once heard a liberal so-called scholar mispronounce it in a symposium with comically vigorous decision] is a post-classical word meaning literally "right as far as, absolutely all the way up to, nothing". The Holy Pontiff could have written nullam habere facultatem ... ("has no wherewithal to ... ") or facultatem non habere ... ("does not have the wherewithal to ... "), but instead chose, more  emphatically, to assert that the Church has "absolutely no wherewithal whatsoever ... none at all ...
                                                     nil, zilch ... ".

A happy hymn

Leo XIII deserves to be better known. And he deserves to be better known for his hymns. 

He wrote the hymns we use on today's feast of the Holy Family. Gregory diPippo once passed on to me a splendid story about Pope Leo waking up in the middle of the night and frantically ringing the bell for his servants, and shouting "Il piede! Il piede!". [Piede is Italian for Foot, and metres as well as popes have feet.] They assumed he had hurt his foot and wanted a medic; instead, he called for pen and paper. He had just solved, in his sleep ... as one does ... a metrical problem in a poem he was working on ... waking up with the solution in his head, he needed to jot it down before he forgot it. I wonder if he explained this to his footman. (Yes!! It's Pantomime Time!!!)

Back to today's Holy Family hymns.

The Mattins hymn Sacra iam splendent. was composed by Leo in the Sapphic Metre, which was either invented or brought into prominence by Sappho, a poetess of the Greek island of Lesbos (which PF loves to visit) around 600ish BC, and made popular in Latin by Catullus and Horace; a metre which has always been a favourite among schoolboys because it is one of the easier metres in which to write Latin verse. Perhaps that is why it was so widely used in the Carolingian period; but Leo was too good a Latinist to have chosen it from such a base motive. [Incidentally, you can always recognise this metre on a printed page because it is the metre where the fourth line is shorter than the first three, and goes Tumtitty Tumtum; e.g. English Hymnal 335 Wherefore, O Father, we thy humble servants, which was used (and probably written) to cover the silent repetition by the Anglican Catholic clergy of the Unde et memores etc. of the Canon Romanus, the oblatory language of which it echoes.]

Back yet again to Leo and his Holy Family hymn ... he bequeathed three problems to the post-Vatican II revisers.
(1) Horror of horrors, the hymn was ten (10!!) stanzas long. Far too long for modern clergy.

(2) The first stanza evokes a lovely picture of a Catholic (or Orthodox) church at festival time; lights burning; altars wreathed; clouds of incense. Just think how maddened PF and Arthur Roche would have been, had it been allowed to remain! Just imagine the spittle-flecked pontifical tirades!
Sacra iam splendent decorata lychnis
Templa, iam sertis redimitur ara,
Et pio fumant redolentque acerrae
        Thuris honore. 

 
(3) "fessis". Disgusting? It is disgusting. Let me tell you why.

Leo wrote that our blessed Lady, a good Mother and a good spouse, gave a helping hand to both Son and husband,
.......................................... felix
si potest curas relevare fessis
       munere amico.
[ ................. happy
if she can lighten, with a friendly duty,
      cares for the weary.]
But 'fessis' suggests to the Francophone or Italophone ear not 'weary' but 'buttocks'. [A Late Latin word? Cognate with fascia?] So Dom Anselmo Lentini, boss of the coetus which revised the hymns of the Divine Office after the Council, changed it to the problem-free word 'lassis', thus spoiling the nicely alliterative "felix ... fessis" but sparing the blushes of those notoriously bashful constituencies, the French and Italian clergy. 

I will award this Blog's Order of Chastity, Fourth Class, which authorises you to have a pink pompom on your biretta, to any reader who can demonstrate that there is another language in which 'lassis' sounds even more indelicate than 'fessis' does to French and Italians.

Leo was a fluent French speaker. Yet, as a cultivated Latinist, he wrote "fessis" without a moment's anxiety. 

What sort of cultural shift has landed us with an 'emancipated' society in which the word is too sniggerworthy to be printable? 

I wonder if Dom Anselmo considered spelling fessis as f***is.

Big lies and little lies and polychrome diversity

 "Summorum Pontificum confirmed juridically that the Latin Church had lived for some four decades under the dominion of a lie. The Vetus Ordo had not been lawfully prohibited. Much persecution of devout priests and layfolk that took place during those decades is therefore now seen to have been vis sine lege [force without law]. For this so long to have been so true with regard to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which lies at the heart of the Church's life, argues a profound illness deep within the Latin Church. And the Big Lie was reinforced by multitudes of Little Lies ... that the Council mandated reordered sanctuaries ... that the Council mandated exclusive use of the vernacular ... The de facto situation created by the Big Lie and the Little Lies combined ought not to be regarded as normative. Its questionable parentage must give it a degree of provisionality, even (perhaps especially) to those who find it comfortable to live with. The onslaught upon the Franciscans of the Immaculate suggests that there are those, high in the Church's administration, who have still internalised neither the juridical findings of Summorum Pontificum nor its pastoral call for harmony."

 I wrote this in January 2014. Rereading it seven years later, reproduced in Professor Kwasniewski's highly cogent recent article (onepeterfive), I feel its force even more strongly! A clique of men who now de facto hold high power in the Church never did respect the teaching of Summorum Pontificum; now, unhappily, they feel strong enough to demand that bishops, priests, and people should all bow down before them and their Big Lie.

On December 2 last, PF, in Cyprus, talked about the Latin Church as a "polychrome people", a "true point of encounter between different ethnicities and cultures." He went on to conclude:

"Please remember, walls do not and should not exist in the Catholic Church. For the Church is a common home, a place of relationships and of coexistence in diversity."

Oh Yeah?? So is this exciting "common home" big enough to encompass "in diversity" the Authentic Form of the Roman Rite? 

We already had one indication of PF's preferred polychrome diversities when he explained to us (in Abu Dhabi) that they include the diversity of false religions. Pretty broad, huh? Pretty tolerant type of bloke, eh?

Strangely, his Epiphany homily on Wednesday showed a man still determined to continue his spiteful campaign of facile sneers against those fellow-Catholics whom he hates.

No; "hates" is not too strong a word. Hatred is the sick leitmotiv of this pontificate. 

 

Fr Aidan Nichols on heretical popes

On August 18, 2017, Dan Hitchens published news in the Catholic Herald about a paper read by the Dominican, Oxford and Cambridge, theologian, Fr Aidan Nichols. 

Fr Aidan publishes a lot; his connection with us goes back to the years long before the Ordinariate when he devoted enormous amounts of time and care to helping us as we worked towards what finally came to fruition in the Ordinariate. He is a major theological heavyweight.

Back in 2017, we were all coming to terms with Amoris laetitia, PF's first major encouragement of heresy and incitement to sexual immorality. Aidan's paper entered into those topics ("an extremely grave situation") . 

Today, however, I'm planning to give a new airing to his more general remarks. Sadly, the full text of the paper is not available; after the Hitchens report, Aidan appears to have been forbidden to share it further. 

In Easter Week, 2019, he broke silence to the extent of signing the Open Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church; in 2020, he was sent to teach in the seminary in Jamaica (seven seminarians!).

Fr Nichols said that neither the Western nor Eastern Codes of Canon Law contain a procedure "for enquiry into the case of a pope believed to have taught doctrinal error, much less is there provision for a trial." He remarked that the tradition of canon law is that "the first see is judged by no-one". But the First Vatican Council had restricted the doctrine of papal infallibility, so that "it is not the position of the Roman Catholic Church that a pope is incapable of leading people astray by false teaching as a public doctor. He may be the supreme appeal judge of Christendom ... but that does not make him immune to perpetrating doctrinal howlers. Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly given the piety that has surrounded the figures of the popes since the pontificate of Pius IX, this fact appears to be unknown to to many who ought to know better." Given the limits on papal infallibility, Aidan remarked, canon law might be able to accommodate a formal procedure for inquiring into whether a pope had taught error ... "a procedure for calling to order a pope who teaches error."

He said that the judicial process would "dissuade popes from any tendency to doctrinal waywardness or simple negligence", and would answer some "ecumenical anxieties" of Anglicans, Orthodox, and others who fear that the pope has carte blanche to impose any teaching. "Indeed, it may be that the present crisis of the Roman Magisterium is providentially intended to call attention to the limits of primacy in this regard."

He thought that this procedure might be less "conflictual" if it took place during a future pontificate, rather as Pope Honorius was only condemned after he had ceased to occupy the chair of Peter.

Help needed with Hymn

Here is the text of a hymn, part of which is still used at the Epiphany in Milan.

Illuminans altissimus Micantium astrorum globos, Pax, Vita, Lumen, Veritas, Iesu fave precantibus.

Seu mystico baptismate Fluenta Iordanis retro Conversa quondam tertio Praesentem sacraris diem;

Seu stella partum Virginis Caelo micans signaveris Et hac adoratum die Praesepe magos duxeris. 

Vel hydriis plenis aqua Vini saporem infuderis, Hausit minister conscius Quod ipse non impleverat.

Aquas colorari videns, Inebriare flumina, Mutata elementa stupe[n]t Transire in usus alteros.

Sic quinque milibus virum Dum quinque panes dividis, Edentium sub dentibus In ore crescebat cibus,

Multiplicabatur magis Dispendio panis suo, Quis haev videns mirabitur Iuges meatus fontium.

Inter manus frangentium Panis rigatur profluus, Intacta quae non fregerant Fragmenta subrepunt viris.

I am genuinely unsure about what is going on in some places. I wonder if, like ex.gr Ad Cenam Agni it dates from a disintegrating era in Roman grammar. Does the second stanza contain that construction beloved of the dimmer members of the Lower Sixth, an Accusative Absolute? Is adoratum a supine of purpose following a verb of motion? etc.etc.. Here is the crudest of crude and crudely literal translations, in the hope that it will enable you to see where I have gone wrong. I think I have in the final stanza!

Jesu, very high above, illuminating the spheres of the shining stars: Peace, Life, Light, Truth; be favourable to those who beseech.

Whether you shall have sanctified the present day with mystic baptism, the streams of the Jordan of old turned backwards three times,

Or, as a star shining from heaven, you shall have marked the birth-giving of the Virgin and on this day led the Magi to worship the manger,

Or poured the taste of wine into jars full of water, the steward decanted knowing that he himself had not filled them,

Seeing the waters being coloured, the flows becoming inebriated, he wonders at the changed elements transitioning into other uses.

Thus, while you divide five loaves for five thousands of men, the food was increasing in the mouth under the teeth of the eaters,

The loaf was being multiplied more by its own distribution; who, seeing these things, will wonder at the never-failing flows of fountains.

Between the hands of those breaking the flowing bread is chanelled; untouched fragments which they had not broken creep secretly into the men.

I can't help liking it. The idea of water becoming inebriated ... the jingle edentium sub dentibus ... the notion that the multiplying loaves resembled flowing water ...

I like the topos of the Jordan turning back for the third time; I like the idea of bringing in the Feeding of the Five Thousand to complement the Intoxication of the Wedding Guests ... I think it is in a sermon of S Augustine; and Prospero Lambertini, later Pope Benedict XIV, brings his erudition to bear on the subject in his de Festis.

There's more to Epiphany than meets the eye!

 

Perhaps ... Saint John Henry on pre-'Ecclesiological' English Church buildings

 " ... the dilapidated deformed church, with its outside staircases, its unsightly galleries, its wide-intruded windows, its uncouth pews, its low nunting table, its forlorn vestry, and its damp earthy smell ... there were the old monuments, with Latin inscriptions and strange devices, the black boards with white letters, the Resurgams and grinning skulls, the fire-buckets, the faded militia-colours, and, almost as much a fixture, the old clerk, with a Welsh wig over his ears, shouting the responses out of place  ... "

Almost like a cartoon by Hogarth verbis picta, yes? But, tucked away in a corner of a box-pew, perhaps there was a Jane Austen or a Maria Edgeworth ... or perhaps an elderly spinster remembering when the militia colours were not so faded ... remembering when the next pew contained an interesting young man in a red coat who, perhaps, was not to survive Waterloo ... whose eye, perhaps, occasionally, accidentally, met hers ...

When the Pevsners of this world censoriously notice that a particular church suffered a 'harsh' restoration under the Victorians, perhaps they forget how horribly dilapidated and deformed so many churches had become.

S John Henry remembers so much for us.

Dearly beloved, the Scripture moveth us in sundry places ...

If someone asked me to be specific about what 'Englishness' means, perhaps I might invite her to read Newman. She would at least discover what Englishness was.

Must Rhodes fall? More light on the elimination of politically incorrect statues.

Should statues be pulled down?  Of erstwhile slavers? Of British colonialists? Of Confederacy generals?

There is a neat, possible resolution to this controversial modern dilemma in an essay (Mobled King, 1911) by an English belletrist ... I will not insult your perspicacity by spelling out his name. He was inspired by the haunting sight, in Italy, of a statue of King Umberto I which, once erected, had never been unveiled.

"I had hoped that by this essay I might rid my mind of him. He is inexcutible, confound him! ...

"In my young days, I wrote a plea that all the statues in the streets and squares of London should be extirpated and, according to their materials, smashed or melted down. From an aesthetic standpoint, I went a trifle too far: London has a few good statues. From a humane standpoint, my plea was all wrong. Let no violence be done to the effigies of the dead. There is no disrespect in setting up a dead man's effigy and then not unveiling it. But there would be no disrespect, and there would be no violence, if the bad statues familiar to London were ceremoniously veiled, and their inscribed pedestals left just as they are ...

"Let an inventory be taken of those statues. Let it be submitted to Lord Rosebery, and he be asked to tick off all those statesmen, poets, philosophers and other personages about whom he would wish to orate. Then let the list be passed on to other orators, until every statue on it shall have its particular spokesman. Then let the dates for the various veilings be appointed. If there be four or five veilings every week, I conceive that the whole list will be exhausted in two years or so. And my enjoyment of the reported speeches will not be the less keen because I can so well imagine them ...

"Not, however, because those speeches will so edify and soothe me, nor merely because those veiled statues will make less uncouth the city I was born in, do I feverishly thrust on you my proposition. The wish in me is that posterity shall be haunted by our dead heroes even as I am by Umberto. Rather hard on posterity? Well, the prevision of its plight would cheer me in mine immensely."

BREAKING NEWS: 1 APRIL 2023

 In probably the most serious crisis to hit the Catholic Church in its nearly two-thousand-year history, Pope ABC has abdicated only 21 days after his Election and just nine days after his Solemn Inauguration. The news broke last night shortly after reports emerged that the DEF newspaper group was planning to publish allegations that, as a young priest in his thirties, he was guilty of the multiple sexual abuse of young people and transpersons of several sexes and varied genders.

The abdication takes effect in two weeks. It is thought that this elapse of time is designed to give ABC the opportunity to relocate in seclusion away from the Vatican while still having Sovereign Immunity to protect him from arrest. His departure from Fiumicino airport by private jet late yesterday evening has been connected with a flurry of unusual transactions in the Vatican Bank ... ... ...

In unrelated news, it is reported that the previous pope, ABC's predecessor pope Francis, having recognised a retired reporter lurking at the back of an elderly airliner, forced him to take part in an off-the-cuff interview concerning ... etc.etc..

Perhaps the details of such a scenario are not quite as improbable today as they might have seemed a couple of generations ago. Popes are (by convention rather than by strict law) elected from among the body of Cardinals, and there have been unfortunate cases among members of the Sacred College in recent years. McCarrick ... O'Brian ... rumours involving the name of another dead British Cardinal ... quite apart from reports about disreputable goings-on involving, if not directly implicating, curial officials of various ranks. And: how thoroughly is each papabile Cardinal vetted before the final ballot and the catasterising white smoke? At all?

Yes ... the practicalities. I know. But one way of circumventing this problem would be the careful vetting of all Cardinals before their final admission to the Sacred College. I don't just mean psychometric tests at Manchester; I have in mind searching investigations by professional operators with a track record of uncovering nastinesses which were buried decades earlier.

Corrupt Cardinals and unworthy Popes may have been less of a menace to the Church in past centuries. But the advent of the Global Village with its instant mass communications, combined with the ultra-hyped cult of the godlike 'Holy Father' who is always right because he is reputed to be, daily, guided by the Holy Spirit, make the dangers of a proven criminal pope all the more terrible to contemplate.

Rather than just carrying on as before, fingers-crossed behind her back, I think our indefectible Holy Mother the Church should take steps now to protect herself against future catastrophes just waiting to happen.

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 Anglican bishops are such funny old poppets and poppetesses: not so many decades ago, those of them who did celebrate Chrism Masses did so rather secretly ... the news got around on a grape-vine! 

Years later, things changed: those events became very popular; and it ended up with clergy being told that if they were not going to be present, they should humbly seek permission to be absent!

Needless to say, that was in the period after the admission of women to sacerdotal ministries in the Church of England. That process was what made all the difference: bishops who had previously regarded consecrating oils as iffy and high church, suddenly cottoned on to the new possibilities. Getting clergy to turn up now became a way of trying to bully into submission those who did not wish to enact their full communio with bishops who were ordaining women.

I wonder if some officers of the Catholic Church will behave similarly, forcing traddy clergy to make the Chrism Mass the occasion for making a massive symbolic act of conformity with Traditionis custodes. 

If this happens, I do hope that 'traditional' priests will not play into the hands of their enemies by giving them pretexts for persecution. 

Rumours abound of Visitations and of other jolly ways of persecuting those who adhere to the Authentic Use of the Roman Rite. 2022 may turn out to be a richly nuanced year!

The basic fact, is of course, that 'legislation' including, and issuing from, Tc, can in no way bind in conscience. For a long time, liberals and modernists have been quoting that thing of S John Henry's, about the drinking of toasts ...

Again, I recall how matters turned out in the Church of England.

The word was spread that congregations leaving the C of E to join the Ordinariate could in no way take their churches with them. Perhaps this was inevitable.  But it was also made clear that any sort of shared use of property was out of the question.

One prominent bishop was reported to have said that he would rather any church of his should be bulldozed to the ground than used by Ordinariate Groups! And such attitudes came from men who had mis-spent most of their silly lives declaring that no considerations whatsoever should stand in the way of Christian Unity! When Pope Benedict actually parked Unity right in front of their episcopal noses, they did not recognise it! It didn't look exactly how they had always imagined it! Its pullover was the wrong colour! Outrageous!

There is (not identity but) an interesting set of similarities between the Anglican and the Catholic situations. In each case, we seem to have a highly orgulous elite, culturally heavily infected by the Zeitgeist (lots of 'viral load' around, as we say nowadays), setting itself to subjugate a subclass ... including both intellectuals and non-intellectuals ... which has maintained a sturdy, God-mandated independence from the Zeitgeist. 

So what is going on? 

Is it that the Bergoglian elite sees accommodation with the Zeitgeist as a necessary way of maintaining its own privilege at a time when it might otherwise come under threat? Is PF's Declaration of his Liturgy War based upon his fear even more than upon his evident hatreds? What might future cultural historians make of all this?

My hope and prayer is that Traditionalists will, in these dangerous next few months, be as wise as serpents.

This may be a time to be cunning and devious. And to remember that, according to many moralists, there are circumstances in which Suppressio veri and Suggestio falsi can be morally justified. S John Henry has some interesting things to say about all this in his Apologia.

New Year's Resolution: preach about the Sacrifice of the Mass

After the Catholic Revival in the Church of England, we emphasised the reality of the Lord's presence in the consecrated elements. And so we should have done. Indeed, perhaps we should have done more of it. While I was in Devon, nearly every sermon I preached for six years was about the Eucharist; and, right at the end of it, one distinctly intelligent parishioner told me that he was starting to realise what it was all about. 

Moreover, the extent to which Roman Catholic laity have forgotten the Lord's Eucharistic Presence is notorious. I once heard some of my Church of Ireland people talking in shocked tones about the irreverence with which RCs received Communion. Yes; this job is still not finished. 

But there is another job which I sometimes feel we have barely started. And that is teaching about the Eucharistic Sacrifice. In 1947, Dom Gregory Dix congratulated the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, which he was addressing, upon having done 'notable work' in restoring adoration, corporate and personal; reparation; and many other aspects of Eucharistic devotion which centred round the doctrine of the Real Presence. But he felt that the sacrificial aspect had proved much less easy to bring out. 

I would like to leave you - and especially brother priests - with this thought. I think we have been made much too nervous by Protestant attacks upon the Sacrifice of the Mass on the grounds that it undermines the uniqueness of Calvary. We have tended to feel that, rather than saying something which, horror of horrors, led to this appalling error, it will be better to say nothing. I think this is completely wrong. 

Laypeople get a whole lot of things wrong; and if you don't think your laity do, then I think you should try to talk to them more. We can't ensure that every woman-jill of them puts everything just precisely accurately. Even among clergy, I often feel that some sort of general approximation and a few dollops of goodwill are the best we can hope for. So, sez I, teach them that the Mass is the sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ and that it is offered daily in your church by the priest and that it is the sacrifice appointed by God to take away sins. 

Don't put a paragraph or two into your homily about how incredibly careful we must be to avoid compromising the uniqueness of Calvary. If the Calvary question gets raised, of course you can do some finessing. But even if their understanding is likely to be askew, nevertheless just teach the basics, simply and ... yes ... crudely. And ...yes ... repeatedly.