Clericalism

A few days ago, there was ... what seemed to me ... a perfectly horrible little clip on Faher Zed's Blog.

It showed a priest, I think at the Benedict Requiem, publicly forcing a kneeling woman to stand up; and then separating her joined hands, before 'allowing' her a Host.

If this isn't rampant Clericalism, I don't know what is. 

During the last pontificate, the custom was for a a representative group of communicants to form a queue to be communicated by the Pontiff himself. There was a prie-Dieu; they knelt; they received in os. I thought there were dictinct problems about this, and I am not going to sponsor a discussion about it now. But it made clear that such a mode of receinng the Most Holy was licit, and even commendable.

So this clericalist chappie was not only choosing to humiliate publicly a member of the plebs sancta Dei; he was offering an anti-Benedict gesture at Benedict's own funeral.

Nastier and nastier.

But stay!! What do I hear? The sound of hooves. Yes! It is he! Riding up sword in hand on a purple stallion is 

ARTHUR ROCHE!!! 

He will undoubtedly have the arrogant clericalist cleric identified and then catechised on 

(1) what the Church's rules actually are; and 

(2) respecting the rights of the laity; and

(3) pastoral sensitivity. 

Mr Packenham and the Space Industry

 Britain's entry into the Space Industry has (just like the dear Tower of Babel) suffered a set-back. The attempt to send up a rocket, with lots of sweet little satellites, came to naught. And the attempt was made from Newquay Airport, just up the hill from the ancient Carmelite tranquillity of Lanhearne!

When I was about eleven, I was being taught English by a Mr Packenham (nickname Pacco). I used, in one of my essays, the verb "commence". He instructed me always, if possible, to use an English word, such as "begin", rather than to reach for important-sounding French words. 

When the important-sounding people in Newquay (they are something, I think, to do with Virgins ... or should I write Maidens?) had to reveal that their rocket hadn't worked, they announced that it had suffered an anomaly. Poor Poppets.

I could never have worked in the Space Industry.

Thank you, Mr Packenham, ubicumque sis, for all that you taught me. I haven't forgotten it or you.

"The Interim Rite"

The other day, I described the rite ... High Church but not Anglo-Catholic ... which some London Anglican clergy put together in the 1940s/1950s; and which the then episcopal regime encouraged in order to destroy the widespread use of the Tridentine Rite. It was called "The Interim Rite", to imply that a properly official revised Anglican rite would eventually take its place.

The Interim Rite consisted of replacing the Roman Canon with a Prayer based on (1) Cranmer's "Prayer of Consecration" (as the Laudian enthusiasts of 1662 had renamed it); the word "Therefore"; and (2), a prayer widely known as the Prayer of Oblation, which hitherto had done duty as one of two alternative prayers designed to follow Holy Communion.

This prayer replaced the ancient Catholic offering of the Lord's Body and Blood with the offering, instead, of "our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving", together with "ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto thee."

But this idea, if expressed before Holy Communion, was arguably dubious. For the redeemed community to offer itself, united with Christ in Holy Communion, as a Sacrifice to the Father, was one thing. But for the worshippers to offer themselves in sacrifice before Holy Communion, was wide open to an accusation of Pelagianism.

Gregory Dix pointed this out.

And Pelagianism was a heresy which Calvinist Evangelicals loathed almost as much as Catholics do.

Moi, I doubt whether Evangelicals had ever noticed this little detail before. Nor, I rather suspect, had anybody else in the previous four centuries. But ...

Dix simply loved hanging people on a gallows of their own making (the Argumentum ad hominem). So he made much hay with this detail. So it became politically impossible for the large Evangelical constituency in the C of E to defend "the Interim Rite". Calvin would have ... er ...

Consequently, when, later in the twentieth century, English Anglican worship was revised officially and legally, the arrangement known as the Interim Rite failed to find even the most optional of places. 

So the Rite which had been favoured by the bishops as an admirably big stick with which to bash the Romanisers has now been banned by the broadly-smiling wit of the late Dom Gregory Dix.

A FINAL DETAIL

The Interim Rite also placed the Gloria in Excelsis Deo near the end of Mass (this had been done in 1552). So anti-Tridentine enthusiasts now did the same. Having the Gloria near the end would now be a sign that the Interim Rite was used in a particular church.

Terminal Gloria = No Roman Canon.

So the introduction of the Interim Rite had to be synchronised to happen everywhere on the same Sunday ... otherwise the laypeople of London would have voted with their feet. 

Feet are a thing Clergy have always feared.

 

A Dotty and Hypotollic Mysterium

On the Internet I came across the following strange communication, concerning the Eucharistic Prayer (III) used at the Funeral of Papa Ratzinger.

Simon Reynolds@Wintonfellow   Replying to @liturgicalben

I am tempted to say that it's been the EP used at the majority of Catholic funerals (I've personally been at three for priests and one for a bishop where it's been used). Modelled on Hypollytus's anaphora, it has a pedigree of historic usage in Rome pre (what's become) the Roman Canon.

(1) The Greek name is Hippolytus. "Only a typo", you cry? Well, this one word ingeniously manages to weld together three typos. Surely that must be indicative of something. The name is not little-known. Euripides wrote two plays with this title. Some time ago, a film adaptation was made of it called Phaedra and featuring Melina Mercouri. It uses a Greek grammatical constuction which subverts the claim that Pauline Rome knew about 'Female Apostles'.

 If some callow youff or youffess referred in her essay to a play by Shakespeare about "Cliopettra", ma'am's correcting pencil would probably shatter at the dismal profundity of the illiteracy thus demonstrated.

(2) There is a liturgical formula which once rejoiced in the title The Egyptian Church Order (Reynolds would probably have spelt it Ejjiption). It was then discovered, so we all thought, that it was really the long-lost Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus; Hooray! Frabjous Day!! And so it was a very influential text around 1930-1970. Dom Gregory Dix produced an edition, arguing for the importance of this text in establishing how the Roman Church worshipped around 210-ish. Dom Botte was dotty about it and established his academic reputation by working on it. 

After Vatican II, Botty used this dodgy document to replace the historic Roman formula for the Consecration of a Bishop, thus handing the sedevacantists a powerful weapon.

Opps-a-daisy. The identity of the Egyptian Church Order with Hippolytus, or any idea of its having any connection with Rome, is now discarded academically. Wotta Bigga Mistaka to maka! (If anybody wants to go into this, they will probably find themselves reading the Anglican liturgical historian Paul Bradshaw.)

(3) During its period of popularity, a Eucharistic Prayer based upon this so-called ""Hippolytus"" text was authorised  for the post-Conciliar "Roman" Rite. It is sometimes called EPII, although it has now become common to call it the Trastevere or Trattoria EP, since Louis Bouyer revealed in his memoires that he helped to draft it overnight in the Trastevere.

It is this EP II which for long was commonly but erroneously associated with the name of Hippolytus. 

The EP III which was used at Papa Ratzinger's Funeral has never been commonly linked with 'Hippolytus' or 'Hypollytus'.

(4) But I have discovered a Tradition which, although far from Apostolic, might help to account for a fraction of poor Rennald's confusions. 

In a book (2007) called A Challenging Reform, Archbishop Piero Marini, an admirer of Archbishop Hannibal Bugnini, wrote (concering the events of 1968) that "The fact that four Eucharistic Prayers were approved was consistent with the early Roman liturgy, which actually had used several anaphoras."

How liberally these jolly hypotolly chappies do invent their fantasy untruths!! How attached they are to spreading gibberish!!!

VIVAT HISPANIA!

On January 7, 1536, Queen Catherine of Aragon, Spouse of Henry Tudor but repudiated by him, died. She was buried in the mighty Abbey of Peterborough, which was to be erected by Reginald Cardinal Pole (24 December 1554), by his legatine powers, into a Cathedral Church.

A few months later, Anne Bullen, AKA Boleyn, by Parliamentary enactment Spouse of Henry Tudor but repudiated by him, died in her own very unique way.

Henry Tudor ("Tudor mi", as I tend to think of him) was a generous man to his repudiated 'wives'. It was his (unexecuted) intention to erect for Catherine "one of the goodliest monuments in Christendom". For the (executed) execution of Bullen, he secured the services of a world-class swordsman from Calais. 

I have a personal theory that Bullen had quite a pretty neck, and that Tudor minor couldn't bear the thought of spoiling it too much. Those Renaissance Men were aesthetes, y'know.

G H COOK records that the day before Bullen died, "the tapers that stood about Queen Katherine's sepulchre kindled of themselve, and after matins were done the said tapers quenched of themselves".

Cynics may conjecture that covert human agency was responsible. I have no doubt whatsoever that this was a matter of enthusiastic divine intervention.

Despite all of Tudor's machinations, he was eventually succeeded by a woman and, to boot, a woman born of ... Catherine of Aragon!

Among so many historical possibilities, I like to fantasise about an England in which Tudor was followed by a happy string of Spanish or half-Spanish successors, binding this Sceptred Isle ever more closely into the glorious world-wide Spanish Empire ... perhaps an England in which we would all have Spanish as our first language ... and the Drakes and the Raleighs would have secured fame by their doughty naval deeds preventing dirty proddy  pirates from attacking the Spanish treasure-galleys ... 

Peterborough Abbey/Cathedral might not have survived. It might have been rebuilt in the finest Spanish baroque style.

Bloody Bess? I suspect she was a bit of a plotter. She might have needed to be beheaded. There are so many figures in History of whom this is true.

VIVAT HISPANIA!!

 

Gold ...

On the Feast of the Epiphany, by ancient English Tradition the Sovereign's representative offers in the Chapel Royal (Catharine of Aragon's Tudor Chapel right inside the Palace of S James, where the Chapel Royal functions in the Winter months; not in Henrietta Maria's Inigo Jones masterpiece whither the Capella Regia migrates at Easter) gifts of GOLD, Incense, and Myrrh 

In 2018, Cardinal Mueller said in an Interview: 
"The biggest danger to the Pope these days are those opportunists, careerists, and false friends who are concerned not for the good of the Church, but for their own financial interests and self-advancement."

Nod nod ... ... hint hint ... ...

Then there were the episodes which took place when Cardinal Pell was tasked with having a look at the Vatican finances. I remember being told by a friendly curial insider that there had been dicasteries which had not been on talking terms for decades, but were brought together in amity by their shared detestation of Pell.

Money! There's money, Cardinal Mueller revealed to us, in being a Bergoglian! I had thought the naughty fellows were disinterestedly clustered in the Bergogliosphere simply out of mere pravitas innata haeretica. What an ex-Anglican simpleton I was!! They were after Money!!

Gold! How does one secure a share in it? Does one get in touch with the Papal Almoner? Would he provide me with a nice golden chalice and paten ... baroque ... putti crawling all over it ... you know the sort of thing ... 

What a magnificent pontificate this has been in terms of skilful PR! Remember the story (too ben trovato to be true?) of Cardinal Hoummous, after the successful ballot, saying to Bergoglio "Don't forget the poor". And PF deftly assumed the name of the Poverello ... to show that he still ... had not forgotten the poor.

The Peripheries!! That must be where they keep the money!

He was not an ordinary man.

 Archbishop Gaenswein has spoken about the grief felt by Pope Emeritus Benedict at the decision of his successor to attack those who make use of the ancient rites of the Roman Church.

As I watched just now the Funeral transmitted from Rome, I was reminded of an event in the history of S Thomas's Church in Oxford, my last Anglican priestly responsibility.

It had occurred, years before my arrival, when my predecessor Dr Trevor Jalland, Oxford's Bampton lecturer, expert on S Leo the Great, and on the history of the Papacy, had died. The funeral Mass was offered by another great Anglican scholar, Fr Michael Moreton, Prebendary of the Cathedral Church of S Peter in Exeter.

Years later, Michael explained to me his decision (despite the possibility of complaints from the Great and the Good who seem always so ready to put the boot in) to use the Canon Romanus at Fr Trevor's Funeral.

"He was a Patristic Scholar and I decided to give him a Patristic Eucharistic Prayer".

We must never forget Pope Benedict's insistence on Continuity.

C S Lewis on PF and Roche

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busibodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some time be satisfied; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own consciences."

From Gueranger

 "Joy at Christmas is a Christian instinct, which originated those many carols, which, like so many other beautiful traditions of the ages of Faith, are unfortunately dying out amongst us; but which Rome still encourages, gladly welcoming each year those rude musicians, the Pifferari. who come down from the Apennines, and make the streets of the Eternal City re-echo with their shrill melodies."

SHORTAGES OF PRIESTS

Apparently, the Diocese (Catholic) of Dublin has just a single seminarian in training. 

Well, that's not our business. And the terrible collapse of Irish Catholicism undoubtedly has multiple factors. But things are not exactly booming in this country. In 1996/1997 our numbers peaked at around 110 annual ordinations; the projected number for 2023 is 18.

Within the Church, there can be little doubt that the onslaught upon Catholicism worldwide by the promoters of Bergoglianism has a lot to do with it. As young people view the ecclesiastical landscape, who can blame them if they discern massive heterodoxy and liturgical heteropraxy. There are disincentives in Anglicanism, and they are not small; but who, some clergy wonder, can guarantee that disincentives will not multiply in the Catholic Church ... indeed, including disincentives already at work in the C of E, such as the purported ordination of women to major orders.

If anybody doubted these problems, Traditionis Custodes should dispel those doubts. The cruel malevolence of that text says it all. Its vicious hostility, targetted particularly on the young, says it all. The incessant attacks by the pontiff himself on 'rigidity' say it all. 

Another sub-factor here, in the Anglosphere, is the decline in the numbers of Anglican priests seeking to continue their priestly ministry in the Catholic Church. Ever since the 1990s, there has been a visible policy of keeping Anglican clergy out. "You need to be accompanied by a Group. You need to submit to a lengthy 'formation'. You need to dislike the 'old' Mass."

There have been so many fellow-Anglican priests, and some bishops, who have explained that they would 'join' us when a certain point was reached. 

Yes; one can identify imperfections in this attitude. I do  identify ...

But the niggling, nasty negativity in the treatment of experienced and very orthodox Catholic Anglican clergy is undoubtedly responsible for the loss to the Church of many potential clergy. If, in some places, Catholic bishops lament the paucity of clergy, they need to ask themselves whether the guilty men may not be their own predecessors in their Sees.

The ideal moment for gathering in large numbers of well-trained and experienced Anglican clergy passed some time ago. But it is not too late to ...

S Thomas of Canterbury, Patron of the Diocesan Clergy, pray for us all.

 

Cardinal Mueller

 Many Happy Returns of yesterday, Eminence!

31 December, obit of Benedict XVI, was also the Birth Day of Gerhard Cardinal Mueller. 

He deserves love and respect.

There does, however, seem to me a theological problem here.

We live at a time when there is some very fine teaching emerging from the Cardinal Bishops, Priests, and Deacons of the Holy Roman Church. But it is not coming from its Bishop, Jorge Bergoglio. On the contrary: it seems that PF continues to do as much as he can to subvert the Catholic Faith. 

Matters would be less serious if PF contented himself with expressions of personal prejudices. So much more disturbing is the situation when the venom stored up through decades of personal nastiness spills over into personal detestations.

Are there considerations, arising from the authentic Paradosis, Traditio of the Roman Church, which would enable us to give a useful and watertight account of the situation in which to distinguish between the fine teaching of the Burkes and the Sarahs and the Muellers, and the corrupting expressions of the Pontiff's own embarrassing dicta?

But, meanwhile, eis polla ete Despota!

Edward Stephens

Founded a "Religious Society of Single Women"

the defects of 1662 had "made the the morning service to him but a mourning service"

"to meet daily, at five inthe morning, at a daily Communion"

BCP "was not concluded by any unanimous Agreementof any certain lnown discreet bishops or other learned men of this church or realm; but corrupted and disordered by the councels and asistance of foreigners and by the practice and cntrivance of cramer promoted in parliament, and by parliament authority schismatically imposed upon the church and nation , without the consentof the clergy of this ntion  ..."

setting up of the royal arms in churches "was an insolent, prophane and Impious thing"

he asks "Whether the clegy in general , and every particular person of them ought not to use in the celebration of these holy mysteries a more compleat and perfect form, notwithstanding any temporal laws to the contrary, as they will answer it to God upon the Salvation of their Souls in the las day?"

"in the expunging of the Commemoration of the Saints, there was a Special Gratification of their [the devils'] Spite and Malice against Them [the Saints] ..."

"a most Solemn Act of of Communion of Saints, answered by them in their prayers for the Church upon Earth; to have all this abolished was undoubtedly a matter of much Joy and Tryumph in the whole kingdom of darkness."

"In the due Consecration of the Eucharist it hath always been believed in the Catholic Church that there is a Special Sanctification of the Elements of Bread and Wine by the Descent of the Holy Spirit at the Prayers of the Church: in the putting out therefore of that Prayer there is a double Gratification of that Malicious Spirit ... by depriving the Church of the Benefit of that Prayer and making the Consecration at least doubtfull, but none at all according to the Sentiments of the greatest part of Christians at this day ..."

Ante-Communion without the Eucharist s "A very pleasant spectacle undoubtedly to Troops of Apostate Spirits ..."

"this One Unbloody Sacrifice, ot Holy Rite of the Blessed Eucharist doth succeed as an Antitype and Memorial in the Christian Church, in the place of all those Bloody Typical Sacrifices of the Jews; as is taught  both by Ancient Christians, and by Learned Men of our own Church and Times."

" ...the taking away of the Daily Sacrifice is as notorious a Mark of the Spirit of Antichrist ... as any ..." 

"The Prayer at the Offering of Incense 

To thee, O Lord, do I offer this Incense, according to thine own Word and the Usage of thy Holy Catholic Church ... "