A big Thank You to those who have funded or helped to fund my participation in this year's Gardone Conference.
I am immensely grateful for your kindness and your generosity; naturally, I will say Holy Masses for you.
I feel that, in the current crisis, there is so much that needs saying, and I am glad ... assumng that the Almighty spares me! ... that I may have the opportunity to say some of it.
God Bless You.
On my bookshelves, I have two copies of Pacem in Terris, a 1963 Encyclical of S John XXIII; both of them in the livery of the Catholic Truth Society. The first, printed in May 1963, tells us that "This translation was originally published by the Vatican Polyglot Press and is here reproduced by their kind permission".
The second, printed in August 1963, gives this information: "Translated by Rev H. E. Winstone M.A. from the Latin text as published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol. LV, 1963, num. 5. ... This translation supersedes that of the Vatican Polyglot Press previously issued by the Catholic Truth Society."
I like the situation which this reveals: the CTS (or the English Bishops?) didn't like the Vatican translation, and so they commissioned a better and more accurate translation back here in Blightie.
Good for them.
My impression is that, nowadays, unlatinate Britons only ever get to see the Vatican 'translation'; and there is also a need to remember that these Vatican 'versions' are often not translated from any Latin text at all but (I think most commonly) from an Italian draft.
Let's look at two recent examples of Vatican sharp practice.
(1) In Traditionis custodes, there is an interesting detail: at one point, bishops are urged to consult Rome about a particular matter.
Half a year later, a new version of that (already disgraceful) document emerged, asking bishops, not to consult the Vatican, but to get permission from the Vatican.
So ... which version must be correct?
Enter the mighty figure of Arthur Roche. He waggled his forefinger in all our faces and piously proclaimed that we should obey the latest version ... fair enough ... but note the reason he gave for this: that the Latin version is normative.
Hang on ... Rome had not originally provided any Latin version. How were bishops supposed to guess ... etc.. Are they given crystal balls in the modern rite of 'episcopal ordination'?
We don't need an Agatha Christie to work out what happened. It is obvious. Somebody decided that this detail should be changed ... somebody wanted it tightened up. This was done by the simple expedient of issuing an apparently previously non-existent official Latin Text and directing us to treat this as normative.
(2) Even more recently, Roche has apparently instructed some American bishops that Traditionis custodes revokes the right of bishops canonically to dispense from Universal Law. But even the text of Traditionis custodes does not contain any such statement or reservation.
In today's Vatican, there are clearly people who consider that, like the practicioners of Ingsoc in 1984, they have the right to rewrite History; even to defactualise facts; which functions, necessary in any tyranny, are carried out ... of course ... in the Ministry of Truth..
EXPLICIT AND UNASHAMED TYRANNY
I bet that the bit of paper which PF originally signed didn't have these new glosses. But ... what the hell ... who bl**dy cares ... it's important to make all those common and ordinary bishops, clerics, and laics, grovel.
Noses right down into the mud, chaps.
I profoundly dislike this present-day culture and the praxis of a Vatican in which bishops, clerics, and laics are all at the mercy of bureaucrats who experience a need to keep up with the unstable prejudices of their Master.
Legislative texts should be issued in an official, properly legally attested, Latin text, and vernacular translations of these texts should be on the authority of local Bishops, Successors of the Apostles, or their Conferences. Such texts should not be regarded as fluid products which a distant bureaucrat is permanently at liberty to 'evolve' in any way he chooses.
Anything different from this is what we Brits used to call arbitrary rule; and which we Brits used to regard as the very hallmark of tyranny.
Rightly.
Our intrepid journalists bring us terrible news of the earthquake in "Antakia".
My assumption is that this is the ancient Antiochia, the great City where the followers of the Crucified Rabbi were first called Khristianoi.
After the military conquests and death of Alexander the Great, his vast empire was divided up. Seleucus I Nikator got the middle bit; he built a number of cities called either Seleucia or Antiochia; Antiochus having been his Father's name.
I gather the earthquake has damaged Christian sites. Oremus ...
Antioch lies on the river Orontes. The satirist Juvenal condemned the orientalising dirt and corruption of his own Rome by saying that the Orontes had flowed (defluxit) into the Tiber. After Vatican II, a Father Wiltgen wrote a book in which he wittily updated this image, suggesting that the Rhine had discharged its filth into the Tiber.
Anybody know anything about the rivers in Argentina?
New material, from the pen of Benedict XVI, has recently been published. One such piece is The Meaning of Communion. It would be a great kindness if somebody could provide an indication of where/how to find an English version of this on the Internet.
Here is a detail, which may surprise some readers, but does not surprise me.
Ratzinger deploys the notion of the Jewish Chaburah meal.
Our very own Dom Gregory Dix did just this in 1945. Vide especially The Shape pp 50 sqq and 76 sqq.
I once described Pope Benedict as "The first Anglican Pope".
Here is part of something I published only two or three weeks ago.
My reason for repeating it is: there are reports from the English Anglican General Synod of moves to change the orthopraxis of referring to the First Person of the Blessed Trinity as "Father".
If this led to changes (either de facto or de jure) in the Rite of Baptism, it would render subsequent English Anglican baptisms ... by Catholic standards ... invalid.
Here is what I wrote:
"One Baptism".
It's just not true that, nowadays, there is "only one Baptism".
Immensely clever people ... immensely cleverer than the Man from Tarsus or even me ... prefer formulae like " ... in the name of the creator, the redeemer, and the sanctifier." Such phrases have even had to be dealt with in the Catholic Church. My suspicion is that in the broad sunlit uplands of the Reformation Inheritance, they are very common.
As Catholic Clergy check the Baptisms of their Paschal Neophytes, I wonder how aware they are that when somebody has written on a certificate that s/he "baptised N according to the Rites of the Church of England", this is quite possibly ... and often certainly is ... a shameless lie.
It is my belief that people entering into full communion from such religious environments should be conditionally baptised. As they once were.
And what about Holy Orders? If an ordinand was not validly baptised, then his Confirmation and Ordination are not valid.
There was a time when some Catholic Bishops, after ordaining presbyteri, reordained them all sub condicione in the Sacristy ... just to be on the safe side ...
Perhaps this wholesome instinct should be restored and extended: so that, in the Sacristy after the Ordination, the chaps would all be conditionally baptised, confirmed, and ordained.
If this would be "unecumenical", then the blame for such a sin lies with those who, despite the ecumenical agreements and assumptions of the 1960s, arrogantly took to themselves the right to render Baptism an area of sacramental uncertainty.
" ... de Lapurdo*" in Latin!
Reverend Fathers who don't already know this might be interested in the following: Dom Anselmo Lentini suspected ("fortasse") Leo XIII of being the author of Omnis expertem maculae Mariam and of Te dicimus praeconio.
(Lentini it was who led the coetus which revised the Breviary hymns for the Liturgia Horarum.)
In the latter of those two hymns, Lentini emended Intacta Mater Numinis (itself borrowed from a hymn probably written in the seventeenth century for the Feast of the Purity of our Lady, at that time observed on the Third Sunday in October) to Mater Dei purissima) on the grounds that numinis smelt too much of mythologia.
Fusspot!!
I warmly commended recently Sacrament an Alter, a fine recent edition of a catena of Patristic texts concerning the Most Holy Eucharist. D H Frost has been working on this teext for more than two decades; here we have the ripe fruits of his scholarship.
Parts of this work have, over those years, appeared, notably in Cornish Studies (e.g. 2003; 2007). I will refer today to one such episode; related by Frost in 2007 and repeated in his new publication.
Fr Thomas Stephyn, Vicar of nearby St Newlyn, was involved in a most diverting fracas in the port of Truro in 1537. An agent of the Tudor regime, Alexander Carvanell, heard about a ship called the Maudelyn which, with Fr Stephyn and two other priests and a few dozen laity, was about to set sail for the Pardon** (patronal festival) in Treguier (Lantregar) Brittany, "faynyng a poope holly pilgrymage". The pious miscreants refused to allow the Tudor employees to board the ship; Carvanell and two assistants were at first thrown overboard.
They persisted, and eventually the ship sailed off with the three government men as captives on board. Five miles out from Falmouth, the two lackies were put in a boat to row ashore, but Carvonell himself was carried all the way to Brittany. The pope holy pilgrims amused themselves by threatening to tow him behind the ship at the end of a rope. The fun continued in Treguier; the Cornishmen explained to their Breton cousins the status of Carvonell, and the more devout among those who had gathered for the Pardon duffed him up beautifully in the streets of Treguier, "shuldryng and buffeting him as though he had bene a turke or a Sarzin". But he survived to get home and to report to the Council.
Perhaps Fr Stephyn's subsequent disappearance from the records means that he went into the Catholic underground. Perhaps Sacrament an Alter went with him; in 1564 Fr Tregear, incidentally, was involved in passing on, presumably among those clergy whom he knew would make sympathetic use of them, books bequeathed by a traditionalist priest. Who knows; perhaps the volume of 'homilies' to which Sacrament had become attached spent some time, not very far away from St Allen and St Newlyn, in the Lanhearne residence of the Arundell family. They suffered in the aftermath of the 1549 rebellion; a house where the Blessed Sacrament never ceased to be reserved even during the darkest days - and where now the admirable Carmelites, formerly Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate, pray the Old Rites.
There are little details in these narratives that make me want to know more ... surely, the episode demands more treatment in its own right. What, in 1537, did Tudor lackies expect or wish to find in a ship headed for for Treguier? Why might they wish to prevent sound Cornish Catholics from attending a Pardon there (the English Reformatin had hardly by then entered its ideologically Protestant phase). What did Cornishmen know about Turks and Saracens? Were the Corsairs still raiding Cornish villages to kidnap inhabitants for the Slave Trade?
**Pardon of S Yves, mid-May. Pam and I had a marvellous fortnight near Treguier a couple of decades ago. It is a remarkable little city with very good seafood and ravishing pastries and a charming cathedral and cloister.
Ten years ... since, with a smashed shoulder patched up, I hobbled up the steps into the pulpit in the Church of S Agatha in Portsmouth. Ten years to this day; and Senior Grandson, a keen bellringer, was pealing away.
It used to be said that, if you couldn't afford a holiday in Italy, you should go to Brompton and enjoy the Roman Baroque marvels to be found in the Oratory. The point is absolutely bang-on. And, if you want an earlier phase in the Renaissance, you should go to Birmingham and enjoy that Oratory Church. (Since the Shrine of S John Henry Newman is there, you could combine your visit with a pilgrimage.)
Perhaps I could add that, as in so many Oratory churches, the preaching, the the Liturgy, and the music are top-notch.
One can add to that rather exclusive list of churches to enjoy if you can't get to the Med; and I encourage readers to do so.
I will today set an example ... by starting with that great 'Lombardic' and 'Romanesque' basilica in Portsmouth. If financial constraints discourage visits to your actual Venice, go to S Agatha's in Portsmouth. It suffered when Councils with 'Bauhaus' mindsets did their best to destroy it; earlier, it had suffered from the Luftwaffe. So it is a glorious Anglo-Catholic 'slum church' ... without any actual circumambient slums!
But Fr Maunder has gathered back many of the goodies which were dispersed when the C of E did its worst; and has brought in artistic treasures from elsewhere. And has erected a fine neo-baroque picture above one of the altars, incorporating our blessed Lady and S Agatha and Pope Benedict (with an adjacent triregnum) and the first four (Anglican) parish priests, devoutly praying for Unity with Peter.
This church is now one of the brightest jewels in the Ordinariate.
And among the collection of Relics is the Skull of S Boniface; once in the possession of Queen Mary of Modena, wife of our late sovereign liege Lord King James VII and II.
Again ... why do thoughts of possible pilgrimages not spring to life in pious breasts?
Yes, of course! Most certainly, today, February 8, should be a Bank Holiday in this Kingdom of England! (As everybody knows, England embraces Wales.)
For it is the Anniversary of the happy day (in 1550) when Pope Julius III was elected Successor of S Peter! Depromite ...
Julius, that great Papa del Monte who presided as legate over Trent (I hope all readers adhere closely to the Spirit of the Council ... that Council) and later sent Reginald Pole as Cardinal Legate to reconcile this Blessed Realm to the Petrine Unity!
May God hasten the day when another Monarch and the two Houses of Parliament (perhaps thinned out a trifle by some Acts of Attainder), on their knees, beg a Papal Legate to absolve the realm from heresy and schism!
I wish someone would re-issue the fine medal which I presume the Holy Father issued as on S Andrew's Day ... the medal with ANGLIA RESURGES; a benign pontiff stretching out his reconciling hand to a kneeling Anglia as Pole (beard, galero and all) presents her in the rejoicing presence of the Emperor, and of our late sovereign lord King Philip ...
... I wonder if anyone could explain this oddity which has puzzled me for my eighty two years: for four centuries, lists of English monarchs never mentioned that we were fortunate enough to have a King Philip ...
... and, on the far right, our late sovereign lady Queen Mary -- I think, the first of the Four Ladies of that glorious Name to be de jure Queens regnant of England.
At this point, a moment of sadness intrudes: Her Majesty has her hand upon her swelling belly; signalling, I presume, the pregnancy that turned out to be ... not.
In the exergue, the words UT NUNC NOVISSIMO DIE pointedly allude to the actual day in 1554 of the legatine Absolution; the Day of England's Resurrectio.
[The medal is among the illustrations in Duffy's Fires, and is on the front cover of Urquhart's Ceremonies.]
Chantry chapels were abolished by the Act of I Edward VI, cap 14: "The King shall have and enjoy such goods, chattels, jewels, plate, ornaments, and other moveables ... of every such college, chantry, free chapel ... ". The buildings in which the endowed Masses were offered stand stark and unused in many of England's Medieval Cathedrals.
It must have seemed to Augustus Welby Pugin a miracle of restorative grace when he was commissioned to design a magnificent Gothic Cathedral in South London. And when S George's Cathedral was finished and Pugin was dead, his son Edward Pugin was commissioned to build within it a chantry chapel for the offering in perpetuity of Holy Mass for Sir John Knill, Master of the Plumbers' Guild, and Lord Mayor of London.
Just as many earlier Catholic Mayors, such as Sir John Percival, had provided for 'perpetuity', so now there was a Catholic Lord Mayor who could endow his own chantry in London's new Catholic Cathedral.
Sadly, the Devil had his own, characteristic and extensive, plans. The cathedral was largely destroyed in the Blitz. Lamentably, it was the Pugin magnificence of S George's which suffered, while the large church near Victoria Station survived undamaged. (Had I been an Abwehr agent in London, I would have ensured that the Luftwaffe authorities in Berlin had the red-brick minaret in Westminster on their list as an important military communications facility.)
The good news is that Knill's chantry survived. You can go and see it, together with the Petre Chantry. (Southwark Cathedral was rebuilt and reopened in 1958. But the Devil had not finished his hatred of this fine building: in 1989, the vandals broke in and "reordered" the Sanctuary.)
Chantry Chapels were endowed so that, in each one, there was financial provision for a priest to say Mass there daily. I wonder ... I would love to know ... if, in Southwark Cathedral, the daily Mass for Sir John Knill is still said in his gracious chantry.
Or, like the dead and lifeless chantries neatly maintained by the Anglicans, is it left to the spiders?
I felt instantly guilty ... it was a tap upon my shoulder. The sort of tap which is likely to be followed by invitations to comealongame, and Not To Make Any Trouble, together with the chink of handcuffs.
I was about to start bleating about how I wasn't guilty; that it was the other bloke what did it, when I recollected that, in the archives of the City of London, my interlocutor was unlikely to be PC Plod or Inspector Knacker or even Dame Cressida, er, Dick.
As one enters those archives, one writes in a register the subject of one's researches. So I had written "Sir John Percival". The aimiable and erudite custodian had seen this, and had some news for me.
In the City Church of S Mary Woolnoth, there had once been a manuscript, beautifully scribed and on display, in which Sir John Percival, Master of the Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors, sometime Lord Mayor of London, detailed his benefactions, together with the provisions made to endow Masses (with chantries) for his soul. Percival was one of the closest circle of intimates of the Welsh Intruder, Tudor, known to History as Henry VII. Percival was one of the notable men of the new regime.
But his desire for the Mayorality had attracted so little support among the other livery companies that one of Tudor's heaviest enforcers, Bishop Savage of London, had needed to explain realpolitik to the City Fathers.
As everybody knows, the Great Fire of London was to destroy pretty well every single one of the old churches, together with every tiny bit of their contents. Usefully, earlier writers had recorded Sir John's text, together with the information of its certain demise in the all-consuming flames.
Except that, um, it hadn't demised. After Wren, vir nonnunquam laboriosus, had rebuilt all those churches in the style which some snooty people refer to as Impure English Baroque, the ms had (wisely) taken refuge in a ... doubtlessly 'Wren' ... cupboard.
Where it had recently been noticed, just in time for my researches!
Y'know, I do rather wonder whether the Great Fire was as determinedly catholic in its destructive embrace as we used to believe. Did Old S Paul's, with its sleek new Inigo Jones facade, really have to be dynamited away?
Lead us, Evolution, lead us /Up the future's endless stair; /Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us, /For stagnation is despair; /Groping, guessing, yet progressing, /Lead us nobobody knows where.
The erudite Fr Simon Heans has sent me the first stanza of a Sacred Lyric which C S Lewis composed and sent to D L Sayers. Possibly, someone who knows how to do such stuff might care to put all six stanzas onto this blog's thread.
The Humnos seems to be conceptually linked with Lewis's opposition to a particular 'humanist' fad whereby immortality might be sought for the human race by enabling it to mutate through evolutionary means as it spreads through the Universe. Videte the passage near the end of Out of the Silent Planet (1938), where, as instructed by the Ousiarch of Malacandra, Ransom is translating the vapourings of Professor Edward Rolles Weston, FRS.
But this stanza ...
Ask not if it's god or devil, /Brethren, lest your words imply /Static norms of good and evil /(As in Plato) throned on high; /Such scholastic, inelastic, /Abstract yardsticks we deny.
... calls to mind the elastic ethical systems of our own days, in which morality is endlessly mutable. Neatly refuted in Veritatis splendor of S JP2.
Knox could have turned this sort of stuff into Latin elegiacs at the drop a a hat. I can't. Take
Bulbous-eyed or square of stern.
Whatever would that be in metrical Latin?
