... to end all wars ...

In the preface to the 1940 edition of Liddell and Scott, there is a reference to "The Four Years War".

Has anybody else come across this way of describing World War One? Or is there something I have misunderstood? I suppose 1939/1940 would have been a moment at which "the Great War", and other familiar naming conventions, might call for reconsideration?

One of the baddies in Hideous Strength, Professor Frost, whose eugenic concerns incline him to favour a much reduced human population, explains that "the two last wars" were "simply the beginning of the programme--the first two of the sixteen major wars which are scheduled to take place in this century ..."

Lewis signed the book off on Christmas Eve 1943; after Stalingrad.

Pope Francis, Idolatry, Syncretism, and Pachamama (2)

The essential error in Syncretism is that it is a denial of the central principle of all the millennia of our Faith History: the truth that YHWH is our God and that he admits no other. How often do we clergy, as we say our Divine Office, use phrases like "DOMINUS deus noster"; our God is DOMINUS=YHWH. 

From his call to Our Patriarch Abraham, through his Revelation to Our Teacher Moses, he alone is our God. To have anything to do with other legomenoi theoi or legomenoi kyrioi (I Cor 8:5: so-called gods or so-called lords) is to go a-whoring after idols. It merits the sternest punishment of our Covenant God.

But in the Greek and Roman World, there were so many gods and 'lords' on offer. And 'ladies'! And there was a particular fashion for the deities of the 'Mystery Cults' ... which tended to move over from the East ... Isis ... Mithras ... Osiris ... Sabazios ... so many of them (and, to the syncretist, all of them available because they are all essentially the same). So many 'names', onomata. To many in a mobile and unstable society, these Oriental deities seemed more interesting that the ancestral civic deities worshipped in the older temples up the hill. They had traction. 

And they provided a real smorgasbord of Pick-n-mix!

I suspect that this is why, even in Jerusalem, the Apostle (Acts 4:12) felt he should emphasise that oude onoma estin heteron by which one can be saved. Every time we say the Gloria at Holy Mass, we make the same point: tu solus Dominus, tu solus altissimus ...  (thoughtful worshippers must often have stifled a puzzlement here: surely, the Father and the Spirit also merit the titles 'Lord'; 'Most High'? But, in the theic economy of the ancient world, the text does not mean "only the Son, but not the Father, is Lord"; it means "only Jesus Christ, and not the kyria Isis or the kyrios Mithras, is Lord").

I know, because of his actions, that Pio Nono, who had the Isiac imagery scraped off the magnificent pillars in the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere, Deipara Virgo trans Tiberim, was not a syncretist idolator. Deep in my heart, I work hard to feel confident that our Holy Father PF is also not a syncretist idolator.

But the Pachamama episodes ... what he allowed in his garden and what he did in S Peter's ... his Abu Dhabi document ... continue to put my confidence severely to the test.

Is this really the sort of peirasmos which a Roman Pontiff ought to put before souls for whom Christ died? 

The sort of skandalon he ought to place before their feet?

Blesed Pius IX, Idolatry, Syncretism, and Pachamama (1)

 If you venture trans Tiberim to the Church of of our Lady ... possibly the oldest of Rome's churches ... you will see such fantastic mosaics (Cavallini) that you might miss the splendid rows of ancient pillars with Ionic capitals. It is not certain whence they were 'sourced' but one hypothesis is that they came from a nearby Temple of Isis. This is supported by the fact that, originally, they included little carvings of Isis and Osiris and Horus.

Originally ... because Blessed Pius IX employed a sculptor to remove the pagan imagery.

There were no flies on Pio Nono. What is holding up his canonisation?

Isis was an originally an Egyptian goddess, but in the three centuries of 'Ptolemaic', Greek, rule over Egypt, she had been transformed into an international Greek deity, and, in her hellenised form, was one of the favourite, most fashionable, objects of worship throughout the mediterranean world. The heart of her cult, which might make it seem right-on to some moderns, was that she excluded no other divinity. In fact, she was every other divinity. All people worship the same mighty Deity, so Isiac devotees explained, but they do so under varied names and with differing ceremonies. But we are all, they assured us, worshipping the same Ultimate Divine Reality. "Quoquo nomine, quoquo ritu, quaqua facie te fas est invocare", as one worshipper addressed her. In her reply, the Gracious One listed many of the names under which she was invoked ... Minerva; Venus; Diana; Proserpina; Ceres; Juno ... But the Egyptian do have a bit of an edge: "caeremoniis me propriis percolentes, appellant vero nomine Reginam Isidem".

Yes, followers of Isis taught; we all worship the same One, but under varied names and with different ceremonies ... but the Cult of Queen Isis is the truest and the best. There is nothing exclusive here; one ancient papyrus (P Oxy 1380) lists literally hundreds of her aliases. Adhere to any of them ... to as many as you like ... and you can do so simultaneously. One of her Greek titles was Polyonumos: She of Many Names. Pachamama can be added to the list of names without the tiniest problem!!

This is the religious system known as Syncretism. It is tolerant ... it is inclusive. It is, I understand, the essential dogma of Freemasonry. And when PF signed a document which applauded Diversity of Religion as being the will of God, I came the closest I have ever been to feeling that PF is a syncretist apostate and therefore manifestly cannot be pope. I quickly recovered! You'll find no sede-nonsense in my writings! Load of silly rubbish! That is why I do not allow it in Comments. But it remains true that his creation of such a blasphemous ambiguity was one of the most truly terrible moments in what has been a consistently terrible pontificate.

But why are Christianity and Syncretism so totally and radically incompatible? I hope to deal with that in the second part of this piece.

Pinxit seu pinget Rubens? Vel probabilius Thornhill? Laguerre?

Some dimboid on the box talking about "The Queen's Ascension ..."

Pietas, Veritas, and Cranmer

Pius is an interesting word. It notoriously describes in Vergil's Aeneid the hero Aeneas, who is pius because he fulfils his duties to Country, Family, and Gods. So we think of it as a word that refers to humans and their duties. (Neatly and unsurprisingly, the renaissance pope, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, 'nomen sibi assumpsit Pii II'; a very renaissance way of alluding to his secular name. There hadn't been a Pius since 155; Piccolomini's action is almost as arrogant as calling oneself Linus II or Cletus II or even Francis I).

Three ancient Sunday Collects spring to my mind. Epiphany V (= 5 per annum) asks God to keep his family continua pietate; and Trinity XXII (= Pentecost 21) starts with exactly the same phrase. In the former case, Cranmer translated 'keep thy household continually in thy true religion'; in the latter case,'keep thy household in continual godliness'. In other words, he took pietas to mean the same quality, roughly, which Aeneas had; human dutifulness; our duty to (among other 'things') God. But I suspect he was wrong. I suspect it refers to God's benevolence to humankind. Our Covenant God is faithful ... we dare to say dutiful ... to his Covenant. So in this collect God is being asked to keep his household the Church with his continual love.

That, of course, fits in with the use of pius in Verdi's Requiem. We ask that God will grant light perpetual with his saints for evermore, because his merciful love ceases not through all eternity. And do you know the final eulogia of the Byzantine liturgy, in which the priest, by the prayers of the Theotokos and all the saints, invokes the mercy of Christ upon the people, hos agathos kai philanthropos kai eleemon Theos: 'since he is a good and humanloving and merciful God'. Philanthropos surely means the same as pius in our Latin liturgy; it speaks of the endless and unconditional mercy of God and, coming in the final phrase of the liturgical text just as pius does in the Requiem, leaves in our ears and minds a sweet and haunting yet theologically profound memory.

For the old English and Northern European use, represented by the Divine Worship (Ordinariate) Missal, Pietas also occurs in the Latin original of the collect for Trinity XII, (= Pentecost 11 = per annum 27). 'Almighty and everlasting God, who in the abundance of thy pietas exceedest what either we desire or deserve'. Cranmer, wrongly taking pietas to mean solely human religion, our response to God, naturally felt that it was outrageous to praise God for having a lot of religiosity, as if the Almighty can be praised for saying his Rosary regularly. So he cut out the phrase and replaced it with another which is both a lovely piece of English and an edifying thought, but has little to do with the Latin.

And on Trinity XXIII (the same collect used by S Pius V on Pentecost 22), God is described as 'auctor ipse pietatis' ('himself the author of pietas') and asked to 'be ready to hear'( Cranmer neatly gets the feel of adesto) the piis prayers of his Church. Cranmer fails to pick up the parallelism of the Latin, which is that our prayers are dutiful (in the Vergilian sense) only because God himself has taken the initiative in setting within our hearts both that sense of duty and the grace to respond in duty to him. A shame he missed it: the Latin fits so perfectly his own Protestant emphases on the Divine initiative.

There is no single undifferentiated 'Christian Latin'. I have so far been talking about a 'Roman Latin', based on the prayer-language of pagan Rome. This is why I have been able to refer to Vergil. But there is also a 'Hebrew Latin', found particularly in the psalms. Here you will not, I think, find Pietas, but the sense of Veritas, representing the Hebrew hMT, bears an almost identical sense of the covenantal fidelity between God and His People.

Platinum

 Well, I wish her well. She is a far better person than those who denigrate her or sneer at her.

But I cannot forget a day in 1967 when the Clerk of the Parliaments uttered the words La Reine le veult.

Two Churches of S Agatha, Virgin and Martyr, both 'unique'!

Gaudeamus ... because it's S Agatha's Day! So congratulations to the people of S Agatha's Ordinariate Church in Portsmouth, with their admirable Parish Priest Fr John Maunder and Mgr Robert Mercer, the great missionary Bishop of Matabeleland, now in Ordinariate 'retirement'. And the warmest assurance of prayers and love.

S Agata dei Goti is a unique church in Rome: it was once an Arian church. Perhaps S Agatha should be the patroness of all those fine people who rescue churches from schism, for Catholic use! Most readers will not need me to tell them that this is the Titular Church of Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke. (It still is, because when recently he was promoted from Cardinal Deacon to Cardinal Presbyter, he was left in his deaconry church, elevated pro hac vice to the status of a presbyteral Title.)

Most Enthusiastic Thanks be to Almighty God and S Agatha for the recovery of Cardinal Burke from Covid; for his return both to the Altar and to his ecclesial ministry of Restoration.

Some years ago, when I badly broke my shoulder, I was in Rome and prevented by my accident from the pleasure of preaching in Cardinal Burke's titular Church. After my return to Blighty, I did preach in S Agatha's in Portsmouth: it was my first engagement after rising from my hospital bed. And one of our grandsons, a keen campanologist, was in the team ringing the bells. Yes!! Change-ringing from the Anglican Patrimony in a 'Venetian' basilica!!

S Agatha's in Portsmouth, of which the Ordinariate has the use, was sold off by the C of E as redundant. Like its sister church in Rome, it is unique; it is the only place in England ... I think ... where you can see a church built by the Anglo-Catholics in the palmy days of their high and optimistic glory, and full of the most exquisite artwork and shrines, now in Full Communion with the See of S Peter and offering worship in the finest tradition of triumphalist Anglican Catholicism.

Fr Maunder has added to the glories of his church by putting in place over the S Agatha Altar a Martin Travers reredos now containing a large representation of our Lady and S Agatha granting Anglicanorum coetibus to Pope Benedict (who is accompanied by the Triregnum). It includes the early Anglican incumbents looking on ... good and holy priests who had prayed daily for the unity of Christendom with the Successor of S Peter. Domine Iesu Christe, qui dixisti Apostolis tuis ...

Did anybody ever tell you that such prayer ... that all those Holy Masses ... can go unanswered? 

From the portals of Heaven, Fathers Linklater, Dolling, Tremenheere, and Coles look down and inform you otherwise.

Sancta Agatha, ora pro nobis.

RUSSKIES GALORE

I posted this on 27 June 2018. I reprint it as a historical curiosity, enabling readers to conclude that I was just as much a fool in 2018 as I am now.

 At least three times people have been killed in our towns in circumstances in which it is very easy to suspect some elements somewhere in the Russian machine of awareness or even collusion (the Bulgarian Umbrella; the Polonium Tea; the Novichok). It is difficult not to feel aggrieved about what happened in Salisbury. Even if, in a crude way, the Russians might feel that they have a right to deal with their own people on our streets, they need to understand that when others, including one of our policeman, suffer, we can hardly smile and do nothing. Mutatis mutandis, they jolly well wouldn't.

You're right; there's a BUT coming. After the Fall of Communism, the first thought of many in the West was to move the borders of NATO and the EU right up to the borders of the Russian Federation. There was no recollection that Russia had been invaded by both Napoleon and Hitler, with disastrous cost to the Russian people. Russia, despite the phobias of the Cold War period, has never invaded the West.

In our Meejah and government circles, there appear no signs of proper respect for the Russian people. The best Russia can exspect, apparently, is lectures about 'Human Rights' and the iniquity of locking up the feminists who behaved blasphemously in a Cathedral; and the overwhelming importance of  "Gay Rights". (In my view, each day it becomes clearer that Western "Human Rights" are a facade for something diabolically nasty.)

There are arguments that Russian policy in Syria is at least less culpable than the behaviour of those Western powers including my own which aided and abetted the "Arab Spring", that radix malorum. The continuing disorders in Afghanistan remind us that the Taliban are still fighting with the weapons given them by the CIA in order to destabilise a legitimate Russian sphere of influence in that area.

I really do believe that the time has come for a new start, in which there will be recognition that Russia and we do have common interests. And that mutual respect might pay better dividends than disdain and 'sanctions'.

Curiously, I drafted this some time ago, and yesterday morning Nick Houghton said a lot of the same stuff in an interview on the Beeb. Nick used to be Chief of the Defence Staff (what we once called Chief of the Imperial General Staff before our cousins across the water explained to us that we were not allowed to have an Empire any more). Upon retirement he was given a life peerage, because over here we have a ridiculous and almost powerless institution called the House of Lords, which is really simply a very grand national debating chamber. The convention is that retired persons who have been eminent in different walks of life join it after retirement. Thus their experience is retained in the service of the Kingdom. It is a totally lunatic system which works remarkably well.

There are times when I wonder if we would have a more peaceful world if decisions concerning War and Peace were made by admirals and generals rather than by politicians.

The Sacrament of Confirmation (3): the Last Battle

I suspect that the first-millennium Fathers, had they been forced to express themselves in the terms of Scholastic categories, might have said that the Form of Confirmation was the Prayer for the Spirit which precedes the consignations, or, perhaps, the words within it Emitte Spiritum Sanctum etc.. Then the Pontiff, or his presbyters, did the Matter by consignating the candidates, saying nothing. Compare the pattern of the Roman Rite of Presbyteral Ordination.

It is around the end of the First Millennium that we encounter the Formula

SIGNO TE SIGNO CRUCIS ET CONFIRMO TE CHRISMATE SALUTIS.

It may, of course, have been used long before then. Liturgical books produced for the use of bishops may not always record customs which had grown up but which did not affect the pontiff himself. But this formula, whatever its age, seems to me to have a very great deal to be said for it. Not least because of the strength of the first four words. (Cranmer, incidentally, preserved them in his first, 1549, Book of Common Prayer; and they were restored by the ('usager') Non-Jurors in their Book of 1719.)

Marking ones possessions ... even ones human possessions ... was a convention in the Greco-Roman world. One branded cattle ... and one also tattooed slaves and soldiers who were enrolled under the princeps. A runaway slave was branded HFE (Hic fugitivus est) so that, if he ran away again, he would be cruelly identifiable. It was natural, therefore, for those who followed the Mystery Cults of the early centuries to set a marker of their religious allegiance upon their bodies. Circumcision, of course, is another example of similar thinking; and the Marking of the doorposts of the Jews to avert the Avenging Angel served a similar purpose. 

Jewish apocalyptic literature was very familiar with the idea that, in the perils and conflicts of the Last Times, the Righteous would be protected from destruction by having God's Mark upon them. We already find this in Ezekiel 9, where the Scribe is to go through Jerusalem and to mark with the letter Tau those who are still faithful to YHWH. In early Hebrew scripts, Tau was written like a chi (X); or as T or +. Margaret Barker tells us that the mark X is the ancient sign of the Name of YHWH and was marked on the forehead of a High Priest when he was anointed. 

 (The S Paul VI rite of Confirmation, like a number of post-Conciliar novelties, makes the SIGNUM CRUCIS verbally invisible. It seems almost to be designed to rupture the continuities which link and illuminate the 'Testaments'. Antisemitism at work??)  

The customary 'little slap' upon the cheek of the confirmand, by a historical chance, reinforces the valuable notion of Confirmation as the Sacrament of those about to go into battle.

In Antiquity, you might authenticate a letter by (licking your signet ring and then) pressing your Mark into the wax or clay. If you have purchased some merchandise and left it on the quay until you can have it moved into your warehouses, your seal marked all over it will secure it as your possession. 

The SIGNUM CRUCIS shows you as God's possession, under his protection, destined, at the eschaton, to be moved into his property.

CONFIRMO (bebaio) suggests not only the legal confirmation of a document but the strengthening necessary in the struggles of the Last Times. CHRISMATE reminds the hearer that we are all Christoi, sharing the Lord's status as we have been anointed with his Spirit. Its physical precision reminds both recipient and Congregation, in words, of what might not be visually accessible. And SALUTIS, triumphantly, indicates the redemptive finality of the rite: Ephesians 1:14 and 4:30 are strongly in evidence here. S Paul pictures the Holy Spirit deposited within us as a pledge given by God, who is faithful to his promises.

I hope nobody will think that I am in any way disparaging the Byzantine formula which the roches of this world desire us now exclusively to use. My sole motive is to make clear that the Western Rite of Confirmation which we have inherited is something of which we have no need ... no need whatsoever ... to be ashamed. 

ENDNOTE: the Roman Rite is worth preserving. In this particular matter, it is best preserved by the confirmandi receiving the Sacrament from their bishop, thus expressing and strengthening the communio between them. It will be a tragedy if Bishops and laics alike are deprived of this mark of communio. After all, Canon 87 does give bishops the right to dispense from Traditionis custodes. 

But, of course, in these strange and menacing times of clear Necessity, it may be necessary for unusual provisions to be made to secure the survival of this important part of our Latin patrimony ... until the black clouds have passed over.

Former Anglicans will remember Eric Mascall's "[the Bishop] will not come and visit me or take my confirmations/ Colonial prelates I employ from far-off mission-stations."

The Sacrament of Confirmation (2)

S Paul VI removed the Roman Form of the Sacrament of Confirmation, as it was understood by Benedict XIV (Ex quo primum tempore 52). In its place, he put the Form used in Byzantine Christendom: Sphragis doreas Pneumatos Hagiou latinised as Accipe Signaculum doni Spiritus Sancti.

What general comments might be made about this? Vatican II laid down "Innovationes ... ne fiant nisi vera et certa utilitas Ecclesiae id exigat". 

Exigat is a strong word. It is clearly intended as a remora against change: change can only be made if a true and certain usefulness of the Church enforces (cf OLD sub voce exigo) it. In other words, innovation is given, by the Conciliar text Sacrosanctum Concilium, a very high hurdle to jump. An arguable usefulness is no good. A merely plausible benefit will not be enough to commend it. Nor will a preference.

Sacrosanctum Concilium was signed by S Paul VI on December 4, 1963. His Apostolic Constitution changing the Form of the Sacrament of Confirmation in the Latin Church was 'given' on August 15, 1971. In those eight years, clearly, the bulwark against change so wisely established by the Council had been seriously eroded. The Pope now wrote: "dignitatem venerabilis formulae, quae in Ecclesia Latina adhibetur, aequa aestimatione perpendimus quidem; ei tamen praeferendam censemus antiquissimam formulam ritus Byzantini ...". 

Did I imply that S Paul VI adopted the Byzantine way of doing things lock, stock, and barrel? Well, it is not quite as simple as that. In the Byzantine Rite, the priest, using Chrism, makes the sign of the Cross while saying the words Sphragis ktl, on the forehead of the candidate ... and also his eyes and nostrils and mouth and ears and chest and hands and feet. Incidentally, when a baptised person returns to Orthodoxy, even if already baptised/chrismated/confirmed, the same words are used and he is chrismated on the forehead, ears, beard, hands, chest and knees. The words are repeated each time.

This raised a number of questions, discussed at considerable length by Benedict XIV with his customarily profound erudition in Ex quo primum tempore. Sharp readers will have guessed them. Let us here cut straight to the ... er ... mustard and observe that the Byzantine ceremonies at Chrismation must be remarkably impressive: consecrating ... sealing ... the entire human organism. 

The Latin Rite, in its quite different way (which I hope to suggest in the third and final part of this series) has, because of its own very Roman directness, simplicity, and biblical intertextuality, a power which it is a crime to abandon.

In the additional Eucharistic Prayers stuffed into the 'Roman Missal' by the 'reformers' in the Sixties, the authentic Roman notion of Eucharistic Consecration is elided; but the substituted Byzantinisation is not given its own completeness of effect. The worshipper is deprived of the austere and suggestive simplicity of the ancient Roman tradition, and is not recompensed by a full-blooded Byzantine Consecration (have you ever watched a video of His All-Holiness the Patriarch of All the Russias consecrating by Epiclesis?).

This is precisely what is also done in the 1971 Vatican rite of Confirmation. The inherited Western Formula, with all its meaning, is stolen from us; but the full, massively impressive (and thought-provoking) Byzantine ceremonies are not offered in reparation.

We are left with a pallid hotch potch which is neither the one thing nor the other. A cockerel with cod's fins and its tail cut off. Play around in this sort of way and you get something which is neither Latin nor Byzantine.

Byzantine liturgy should not be latinised.

Latin liturgy should not be byzantinised.

Each should flourish proprio vigore.

QUERY: S Cyril's Catecheses record the anointing of forehead, ears, nostrils, breast. I wonder if the Byzantine formula Sphragis ktl was designed ... specifically ... to accompany with economic brevity these multiple anointings? In other words, perhaps that formula was not intended to accompany a single sealing, and thus to bear the weight of the meaning of the entire rite, as it is made to do in the rite of S Paul VI. Does any reader know?

The Trattoria dei Pescatori, and the Sacrament of Confirmation (1)

 Younger readers may not be aware of this, but, back in the 1960s, there was a Golden Age in which London was the City of the Trattorie. These bright, white-tiled, cheerful restaurants introduced many of us to Italian food. Sadly, the fashion passed; most 'Italian Restaurants' nowadays just do pizza and pasta; and the physical sites on which the Trats stood are mostly occupied by Oriental fooderies. Try strolling through Soho ...

A little way up Charlotte Street (memories of Prinny's mummy?), not far from the White Tower and on the other side of the road from the Little Acropolis, Northish from Bertorelli's, stood the Trattoria dei Pescatori. It was not the best of the Trats; but its strong fish menu made it an interesting change. I was reminded of it an evening or two ago.

Why? Well, y'see, after Vin Nichols, exemplary Hellenophile, spread the joyful news that Confirmation, in his diocese, would not henceforth be available in the pure native rite of the Western Church but only in a Byzantinised form, I thought I'd better read the Constitutio Apostolica of S Paul VI, Divinae consortium Naturae (15 August 1971), which is cited as authoritative in this context. As one does, I got the text up on the Vatican website, printed it off, stapled the three pages together, and settled down to have a comfortable read. I can't read stuff on screens.

Sed frustra.

From its fifth word onwards, it is choc-a-bloc full of typographical errors. In the end, I counted twenty two; but I wasn't actually searching and I certainly didn't check through the Patristic references. (The gibberish that held me up longest was "iur positionis", until the penny dropped that this was a corruption of "impositionis".)

Have you ever tried to read Catullus from the Bodleian apograph of the Codex Veronensis deperditus? It was as bad as that.

I'm afraid I became cross. I still haven't quite defeated this temptation of the Evil One. Intemperate thoughts battled for my attention. If these mighty people, I angrily thought, with their grandiose titles and their airs of lofty consequence, can't be bothered to provide a clean, correct, readable text of the Oh-so-important documents of the much-lauded 'Magisterium' which they are so keen to stuff down my recalcitrant throat, why should I take at all seriously any of their daft but pompous games and their silly documents? Lazy, indolent, illiterate poseurs ... arrogant ignoramuses ... you know the sort of thoughts. We all have our battles.

But then, by the grace of God, I found the funny bit ... the Trat reference.

I find laughter the truest antidote to the wiles of Satan, as I hope you do.

"In Baptismo neophyti accipiunt remissionem pescatorum ..."

How entertaining! Of course, the typist was an Italophone, so that pescatorum instead of piscatorum was an easy slip to make ... one must try to be understanding ...

In my essentially pastoral way, I started to muse on how lucky those Neophytes were. Most people, whether neophytes or palaeophytes, are not offered the luxury of Remission of their Fishermen. I am not aware of ever having even been offered this spiritual benefit myself. When, some years ago, I used to hear quite a lot of Confessions, sadly ... mea culpa ... I messed up (I now realise) the Absolutions. Instead of saying, in the true Peronist Spirit of the Novus Ordo, "I absolve you from your sins and your fishermen", I only remitted their sins, leaving them mired up to their ears in fishermen galore.

When reassuring over-scrupulous penitents, I now realise I should have made much clearer that Absolution cleansed them from all their fishermen, however bad those fishermen were. 

"But Father: some of them were extremely serious fishermen ..."

"However serious, my dear, I assure you that the Sacrament has wiped them all away."

"They weren't all serious, Father. My most recent fisherman was quite a small one comparatively speaking ..."

The "Formation" we sat through at Allen Hall as a prelude to the seriously decent lunches we got there never reached as far as the distinction between Mortal and Venial Fishermen. Even Staggers (better formation, worse food), I have to admit, was a bit light on the piscatorial side of Priesthood, despite the proximity of Parsons' Pleasure..

Tomorrow, much more on Divinae Consortes Naturae, but no more on Trattorie.

"Wafers"

 The 1960s fad among Latin Christians for using at the Eucharist 'real' ... that is, leavened ... bread was not new. I thank my indefatigable benefactor Professor Tighe for an article by Christopher Haigh in 2003, about usage within the newly protestantised Church of England in 1559 and the following decades.

I tend to feel that the jury may still be out on the religion ... deep within any heart she had ... of Elizabeth Tudor. Sometimes, one can see her choices as straightforward political gestures. She needed, she felt, to be able to say (she did say) that she had been crowned and anointed by Catholic bishops according to Catholic rites ... and so she saw to it that she was. But there was another constituency; the Protestant activists. The more extreme of these already resented or suspected politicians ... including Elizabeth herself ... who had conformed in the Marian period; at least, conformed to the extent of neither fleeing the country nor being publicly guilty of Protestant heresy. So she made a ...?political ... issue of the Elevation of the Host.

On the other hand, one could cite the ornaments of her private chapel ... the preservation of Church Music ... her dislike of married clergy ...

Her Prayer Book of 1559 had followed the BCP of 1551 in ordering that "to take away the superstition which any person hath or might have in the bread and wine, it shall suffice that the bread be such as is usual to be eaten at table with other meats ...". But, strangely, she seems to have added to the Injunctions of 1559 a reversion to the 1549 rubric, "that the same sacramental bread be made and formed plain, without any figure thereupon, of the same fineness and fashion, round, though somewhat bigger in compass and thickness, as the usual bread and wafer heretofore named singing cakes, which served for the use of the private mass."

A correspondent reminds me that the question of "wafer bread" came up in the C of E during the Ritualist Controversies. A Churchwarden, engaging with others to persecute his incumbent for the use of "wafers", surreptitiously conveyed a Wafer away from Communion in order to use It as Evidence in a prosecution. The sacrilege was only resolved by the Archbishop of Canterbury himself demanding to be shown "the Evidence" ... being handed It ... and taking the opportunity to consume It.

The contradiction between statutory provision, and the Royal Will of Elizabeth Tudor, naturally caused confusion. Bishops did not know which to enforce; parishioners would go so far as to refuse the Sacrament if their parish priest made the 'wrong' choice. 

At this point, I found myself wondering whether, in some cases, those who thus refused Communion might have been Catholics or 'Church Papists' who had found thereby a clever way within the Law of not receiving Communion in a Protestant rite. One writer (Haigh) briefly alludes to this possibility; but he does not perform the intricate task of correlating the names and families of such recorded 'principled' non-communicants with the Recusancy lists. That might be fun for some young researcher to take in hand!

He also claims that the use of wafer bread did not last beyond "the end of [Elizabeth's] reign". But here I have personal query to enter.

My last job in the Church of England was as pp of S Thomas the Martyr iuxta ferriviam in Oxford. My predecessor in the years 1616-1640 was Robert ('Melancholy') Burton.

And during his incumbency, wafer bread was (?still) used at S Thomas's!