ABENDONIA, S HELEN, and CHURCH DEDICATIONS (1)

 It was not every 'townscape' that delighted the eye of our beloved 'Bauhaus' Pevsner. But he was able to begin his 1966 Berkshire volume with 'Abingdon'. And to say some kind things. (By the way: the historical evidence I have seen suggests strongly that the name was truly "Abendon" or "Abendonia', depending on which language you speak. From me, you will get the older spelling but the English language. It will be Latin you will get if you open the Breviarium Romanum.)

"Abendon owes its existence to the Abbey founded in 675. ... The Abbey extended along the Thames. So did the town, with the church at the far end. It makes a very fine view from the bridge, in spite of the bloody-minded insistence of the gaol on its own presence. The prosperity of Abendon was first that of the abbey, later of a flourishing woollen trade. ... The steeple rises splendidly at the South end of East St Helens. It is a C13 steeple, which is surprising considering the rest of the church. ... Part of the East wall still remains, but the rest was remodelled when, in the C15 and C16, Abendon built itself an exceedingly spacious new church with double aisles North and South."

And the church, of course, is dedicated to S Helen.

Er ... regular readers will sense that I have a theory ro deploy. Here we go.

Dr Cotton gives us some approximate figures for Dedications to S Helen: Yorkshire: 34; Lincolnshire; 28. And Bishop Kirk offers a chatty account of the Wool Trade in this part of Berkshire: "Berkshire also had once a great wool and cloth industry. Archbishop Laud himself was the son of a Reading clothier; John Wynchcombe--the famous 'Jack of Newbury', who rebuilt the fine parish church of St. Nicholas in the sixteenth century--was a rich master-clothier; of Abendon, Leland writes: 'The town stondeth by clothing.' ... East Hendred--now a village of about 600 inhabitants--was famous throughout the Middle Ages for its cloth industry and the annual fair held on the Golden Mile--the 'green road' which runs up from the village to Scutchamore Knob on the downs; several fifteenth-century cloth merchants have their brasses in the village church. As regards the earlier stage of the industry--that of sheep-breeding and shearing--it is enough to notice that until living memory East Ilsley sheep market, held every fortnight from April to Easter, was the most important in England; whilst ...  a 'Tadpole Revel' (tod = 'cleansed' wool) was held on Milton Hill on the day following the village feast. ..."

I am going to suggest that S Helen was popular in Woolly areas and especially among women.

The passage from Proverbs (31: 10-31) often used at Holy Mass on the feast of S Helen suggests that 'the Strong Woman' is a competent and robust business-woman. She has sought wool. She has considered and purchased land. Her lamp never goes out; her spindle never rests; she gives alms generously; there may be snow outside but her household is warm; her staff are well covered; linen and purple are her own garb. She sells what she has woven; and produces a girdle for passing foreign merchants. She has planted a vineyard ...

And that's not the half of it!

Were the English Middle Ages really awash with women who matched these specifications?

To be concluded tomorrow.

The Miraculous medal, S John Henry Newman, and the Anglican Patrimony

In our Ordinariate Church of our Lady Assumpta and S Gregory in Warwick street, there is a statue of our Lady of the Miraculous Medal. See below for an account of S John Henry's devotion to the MM. I do not believe in coincidences. I think that this devotion ought to be more vividly understood as part of the Ordinariate's patrimonial, God-given, devotional inheritance.

On Saturday 27 November 1830, a young French nun, (S) Catherine Laboure, beheld her second and third visions of the Mother of God in the Sanctuary of her Convent Chapel in the Rue du Bac in Paris. Our Lady appeared to her, radiant, standing on a globe, and with her arms stretched out in a compassionate gesture. From her fingers rays of light fell upon the globe at her feet. An oval frame then formed around her with gold lettering that read: O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee. Our Lady promised great graces to those who wore this design with confidence; she showed the Saint the design which now appears on the back of the Miraculous Medal: a large M surmounted by a bar and cross, with two hearts beneath it, one crowned with thorns, the other pierced with a sword, all encircled by twelve stars.

In 1836, Abbe Desgenettes, who had taken over the Church of Our Lady of Victories (a church degraded and desecrated during the Revolution and with a minute congregation), dedicated his parish to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and founded a Confraternity of Prayer, which had the Miraculous Medal as its badge. In the days before S John Henry Newman's conversion, intense prayer was offered for him in this Church by the members of that very same Fraternity. Back in Blighty, it was on the Octave Day of the Assumption in 1845 (a very patrimonial day: it was also the birthday of blessed Edward Bouverie Pusey!) that our great Saint first began to wear the Miraculous Medal.

Yes! The greatest intellect of the nineteenth century! Like the sort of simple peasant whom a snooty English protestant might despise, he wore a miraculous medal! Is there a sobering message here for our supercilious North European cultural pride? With his customary sweet irony, blessed Benedict XVI once observed that the devotion to our Lady's Immaculate Heart can be "surprising" "for people from the Anglo-Saxon and German cultural world"!  

Should we each be a little more thorough in rooting out of our own minds the sordid dregs of Enlightenment superstitions? 

I stand by my mixed metaphor!!

Now, please, we go back two or three years, to January 20, 1842. On this day, a wealthy Jewish banker called Alphonse Ratisbonne had, in the Church of S Andrea delle Fratte in Rome, a vision of our Lady just as she appeared on the Miraculous Medal. Shunt forward ... please ... to 1847: S John Henry and St John (who, after their reception, had visited the shrine in Notre Dame des Victoires in thanksgiving for the prayers offered for him there) found themselves now awaiting admission to the presbyterate of the Latin Church, lodged in the Collegio di Propaganda in Rome. Newman makes clear in a number of letters that their windows looked down on the Church of S Andrea delle Fratte; it clearly made some considerable impression upon him.  

On June 9 1847, his long-time intimate woman friend, Maria Giberne, painted a picture of Newman and his friend St John in a room at Propaganda, with our Lady, as she appears on the Miraculous Medal, between the two of them.

In the 1962 Missal, in the Appendix pro aliquibus locis, November 27 is the feast of Our Lady Immaculate of the the Miraculous Medal. As Michael Hodges' splendid new edition of the Warwick Street History and Guide makes clear, the Immaculate Medal statue is not an innovation in Warwick Street: in the mid-1870s, a statue of this design was put into the Church, and when Bl Pius IX granted copious spiritual prvileges to the same Church, his Grant carefully mentioned "the Church dedicated to God in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary assumed into heaven, and the statue of the Blessed and Immaculate Virgin Mary which is placed in that church ... to the faithful who, being sorry for their sins, at least visit the church and statue aforesaid ... May 15 1877, the thirty first of our Pontificate."

Let us hope that this commemoration, already lawful as an option in the Extraordinary Form, will one day make its way into the Calendar and praxis of the Patrimony!

The Magisterium of Pio Nono ... three queries

In Mr Hodges' magnificent new version of the Guide To and History of the Church of our Lady of the Assumption and S Gregory in Warwick Street, there is a splendid text (do I rightly assume that it is a translation?) of a decree of Bl Pius IX, granting multiple indulgences, many plenary but some whopping great Partial Indulgences (Seven Years!) as well, to those performing certain exercises in that Church. 

At the end of the Decree, the Blessed Pontiff writes: "These Presents to be valid in perpetuity, notwithstanding whatsoever may be done to the contary."

Remember that I am only a poor ignorant convert, unlearned in Canon Law. Once again, I need help.

My questions: (1) What does 'valid in perpetuity?' mean ? 

(2)  What does 'notwithstanding whatsoever may be done to the contrary' mean? 

(3) How does this legislation marry up with the rules issued by S Paul VI?

It All Came True!

This comes from a fairly recent newspaper report; I merely have changed a few details out of Delicacy. The report relates to a couple of 'women priests' who planned to be blessed together in church.

"For Moneypenny and Krebs, it will feel 'very special'. Both have two children in their twenties from previous marriages to men and bonded over their shared faith and love of boxing and and mud-wrestling. They said that 'some of our friends found it very hard' when they first got together. 'We had to be courageous', Moneypenny said." 

[I have always deeply envied the innumerable journalists who know so accurately how other people will 'feel' in certain contingent future situations.]

Back in the eighties and nineties, we were constantly told that, when we got women priests, we would realise the wonderful but very different gifts ordained women would bring to priestly ministry. With what curiosity did I wonder what those mysteriously esoteric gifts would be! 

How glad I am to have lived long enough to find out! 

What a romantic shared life: "Well, Darling, have we got time for a quick Courage before the PCC?"

Our Lady of Oxford (2)

I wonder who composed this Prayer; does it date from 1869 when Hartwell de la Garde Grissell promoted the cultus of our Lady of Oxford, from his lofty residence at the bottom of the High?

"O Blessed Virgin Mary, whom we venerate in this thy Sanctuary under the sweet title of Mother of Mercy: thou who wast of old so loved and honoured in this University and City, look with mercy on those who are now without the fold of thy Son, and obtain for them by thy powerful intercession the gift of faith.

"O Mother Immaculate, make this place the special object of thy solicitude and care. Thou who art the Mother of the Eternal Wisdom, and the seat of Wisdom, who didst bear in thy blessed arms the Source of all Knowledge, ask, we pray thee, the grace of faith for those who come here to seek it, that they may be brought to bow their intellect before that one Truth, which was foretold of old by the Prophets, and preached by the holy Apostles.

"Obtain also for the Catholics of this land, that their light may so shine before men, that their separated brethren, seeing their good works, may glorify God, and be brought to the one Fold under one Shepherd, Jesus Christ our Lord."

I wonder how you judge that. Moi, I'm not sure it quite reaches the heights of a Beta Minus. It reminds me of the fussy, cluttered Victorian Front Room which my maternal grandmother Kept For Best ... and not least, of the great glass dome there which protected a colourful exuberance of fruit (all made of wax). I think I am probably a bit of an Art Deco man. 

This Prayer also reminds me of the ethos of that earnest Prayer for the Conversion of England which (I think) Merry del Val composed. 

But ... good heavens ... short decades after the Definition of 1854, such a Prayer as this does, surely, deftly allude to an unraveller who did sway our spirits to peace ... who, from this grey beauty, did fire France and England for Mary without spot. 

And 'Wisdom', reiterated, can be taken as a reference to the University motto:

SAPIENTIA FELICITAS. 

Because those two words, a not rivalled insight, are what was written in the book on the University's Shield of Arms, before, in the decades after the "Reformation", they mysteriously mutated into Dominus Illuminatio Mea.

Phos aprositon

"At the voice of him that cried out in the desert Prepare ye the way of the Lord! thou didst come, O Lord! taking to thyself the likeness of a servant, and, thou that knowest not sin, asking for Baptism! The waters saw thee, and trembled. The Precursor trembled, and exclaimed: 'how shall the lamp give light to the Light? How shall the servant impose his hands on his Lord? O Saviour! that takest way the sins of the world, sanctify me and the waters.'

"His right hand trembled, for, though Precursor, and Baptist, and Prophet greater than all prophets, he saw before him the Lamb of God that washes away the sins of the world: oppressed with anxious doubt, he exclaimed:"O Word! I dare not put my hand upon thy head: do thou sanctify and enlighten me, O merciful One! for thou art the life, and Light, and peace of the world'

"... Thou didst bend thine Head to thy Precursor; thou didst crush the heads of the serpents. Thou didst enlighten all things that they might glorify thee, O Saviour, thou Light of our souls!

"He that is clad with light as with a garment, deigned, for our sakes, to become like unto us ...

"The Precursor, the herald of Christ, exclaimed: 'Who is there that has seen a spot upon the sun, the orb of bightnesss! And how shall I, that am but as grass of the field, baptise thee thou brightness of glory, and image of the Eternal Father? How shall I dare touch the fire of the Divinity? for thou art the Christ, the wisdom and the power of God.'

"Christ , the great Light, has shone on Galilee of the Gentiles, the country of Zabulon, and on the land of Nephthalim; to them that sat in darkness there has appeared a bright Light in Bethlehem the bright. But, the Sun of Justice, the Lord, has risen from Mary, and shown far brighter rays on the whole earth. ... thou art come, O Christ! to be the clothing of the naked, and the Light of them that are in darkness. O Light inaccessible! thou hast appeared to the world."

Dom Gueranger, reproducing the Greek Menaia.

LUX

Megaboringly, I often explain that "Textual Criticism" doesn't mean anything like what most people assume, but refers to the attempt to rediscover what an 'original ' text said, before the process of manuscript copying changed it.  

Today, I offer you another bit of 'textcrit'.

 During this Epiphany period, we consider tria mysteria, the Magi, the Wedding at Cana, and (possibly, most anciently) the Lord's Baptism. In S Matthew's account of the third of these, there is an intriguing addition between verses 15 and 16 of chapter 3. Some early witnesses add: "And when he was baptised, a gigantic light shone all around from the water, so that all who had come were full of fear".

Obviously not original ... it is to be dumped. But there is a little problem about the dumping.

The insertion is very old indeed. And it seems to receive some some support from a now-lost Jewish-Christian Gospel, the Gospel according to the Ebionites, and from S Justin. And vide the Homily at PG 10: 858-862.

Obviously, we have here a tradition which goes back to an early time when the distinction between Orality and Literacy was far from rigid; to a time when the traditions were fluid. 

With a keener eye, you will discern in our immeasurably ancient Roman Liturgy hints of this tradition, in which Light streams from Water. In our Mass for the Epiphany, we urge Jerusalem (Lectio et vide  Graduale) to be illuminated, because her Light is coming. And in the Preface, there is that wonderful phrase nova nos immortalitatis suae luce reparavit.  

I have sometimes wondered whether the Leading Star of the Magi became associated with the Festival of Baptismal Light so as to give us our combined Western Festival of Light.

At nearly every Mass, we Latins splendidly conclude with the Johannine prologue, which ... think about it, look at it ... intrigues us by playing with the the notion of the Life being the Light of men; the Light which shines in the darkness which cannot master it. S John instructs us who is not, and who is, the Light. The identity of the incarnate God is one of S John's greatest themes; perhaps we think too little about it. Barrett's Commentary on the Greek Text of John has been helpful to me. And I suspect that, just as S John teaches us about the Eucharist in chapter 6 rather than when the Last Supper is in our minds, so he explains about the Light at the beginning of his Gospel when those ancient traditions about the Lord's Baptism were still alive and fruitful.

The Glories of Mary

When the End comes, we may finally hear the full tally of the graces received in the Universal Church through the Ministry of S Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, including the prayers of his Sons. Not least shall we know what, in our own dark days, the Community on Papa Stronsay have done for us all by their prayers, sufferings, and good works.

The Sons published, some years ago, the first part of The Glories of Mary, which is a beautifully rich commentary on the Salve Regina. This work of S Alphonsus is far from modern! But be instructed by C S Lewis, who, in his essay on Reading Old Books, points out the advantages of reading the writings of ages not our own. It is not, argues Lewis, that another age will have been infallible, but at least any errors will not be the same mistakes as we, in our age, make. This is alone capable of validating Old Books.

If this is true of the merely secular literature of which Lewis writes, how much more true will it be true of the devotional labours of as great a Saint, filled with the Holy Ghost, ardent in his love for our Most Holy Redeemer, activated by passion for the Immaculate Mother of God! But it certainly does take us to another age; to the beauties and profundities of baroque devotion. S Alphonsus was immensely widely read, and stories, anecdotes, evidences of Divine Grace, from all the previous ages of the Church, abound . One is led from page to page by striking accounts and illuminating episodes.

And, not least, the pages are full of awareness of the presence, and the maleficent power, of the Evil One. This alone would make it an important document for our own age, in which Satan's strategy is to go in subtle disguises. In two millennia, he has never been so successful in deceiving the worldly wise! Even now, I gather, he has not ceased to attack the Redemptorist communities which found their charism among the Sons of Papa Stronsay.

I don't know if the Sons still have this book on sale. But they certainly have Good Stuff still available!

The Desert Will Flower Press
Golgotha Monastery Island
Papa Stronsay
KW17 2AR
Orkney Islands,
Scotland
United Kingdom
(http://papastronsay.com/bookshop)

REPUDIATING OCCIDENTAL ERRORS (2)

 Patriarch + Sviatoslav's document repudiates the latest novel Occidental Bergoglio/Fernandez dogmas about Blessings. This is perhaps the most significant theological divergence to arise between Catholics of the East and West since the Fall of Constantinople and today. It means that while Western Catholics are, apparently, obliged slavishly to follow Bergoglio-Fernandez, this burdensome obligation does not rest upon the happier shoulders of Ukrainian, Byzantine Rite, Catholics.

The idea that Blessing may properly be given to those who fully intend to perform or to continue to perform immoral actions without Penance and Absolution, has massive consequences. 

Those who intend to persist in genocide may be blessed and encouraged to continue. House-breakers and embezzlers ... rapists and paedophiles ... liars ... murderers ... "Go for it Sunshine" is the message from the Seven Hills.

Bergoglio/Fernandez have opened their door to every conceivable evil. I appreciate that this is all really a smart dodge to find a way around certain aspects of Catholic teaching, particularly in areas of sexual morality; but that, frankly, does not make the policy any less disastrous or any less thoroughly wicked.

Importantly for all of us, His Beatitude makes clear that (whatever may apply within the poor, cowed Latin Churches) Bergoglio/Fernandez pronunciamentos are not  part of the teaching of the Universal Catholic Church founded by Jesus of Nazareth.

Some years ago, Fr Aidan Nichols caused outrage among Bergoglio/Fernandez enthusiasts by giving a lecture about what a future pontificate is going to need to do to re-establish Catholic teaching. It is interesting that His Beatitude + Patriarch Sviatoslav ... Lux  indeed ex Oriente ... has started to pencil-in where that 'future pontificate' will need to go, and what it will have to do.

Stables ... ... Augean ...

REPUDIATING OCCIDENTAL ERRORS (1)

A kind Ukrainian-Rite friend sends me materials which relate to that Byzantine Catholic Church; among these documents I have found an important Teaching Document from His Beatitude Patriarch +  Sviatoslav. In this well-argued communication (Given in Kyiv and dated December 22 2023), His Beatitude deals with the DDF (i.e. Bergoglio/Fernandez) document which redefines blessings in such a way as to make it licit to bless couples in 'same-sex' relationships ... Fiducia Supplicans.

The Patriarch points out (with many references) that Canon Law upholds the distinctive liturgical, theological, canonical and spiritual heritage which all the Ukrainian faithful are obliged to observe and cherish. He points out that the meaning of the concept of 'blessing' in the UGCC differs from the teaching of the Latin Church.

Blessings cannot be reduced only to circumstances and needs of private piety. "According to the traditions of the Byzantine rite, the concept of 'blessing' means approval, permission , or even an order regarding a certain type of action. It is obvious that the blessing from the priest ... cannot in any way contradict the teaching of the Catholic Church about the family as a faithful, indissoluble and fruitful union of love beteen a man and a woman, which our Lord Jesus Christ raised to the dignity of the Holy Sacrament of Marriage. Pastoral promptness prompts us to avoid ambiguous gestures, statements and concepts that would distort the Word of God and the teachings of the Church."

To be concluded.
 

 

 

Betsie Livingstone (2)

 Why on earth did this University never honour Betsie with an honorary Doctorate? I am not part of the inner workings of the academic bureaucracy; but it is my strong suspicion that the narrow biases of dominant secularism were already powerful. At Encaenia, honorands for the degree of Doctor of Divinity (Sacrae Theologiae Professor) are unknown (well, not quite; such a degree was conferred upon some American woman called Jefferts ... see what I mean ...). But, in the end, Archbishop Rowan Williams conferred a Doctorate by virtue of his Primacy: the capacity to do this, I think, is a surviving remnant of the powers of medieval Archbishops as legati nati of the Apostolic See. Time, absurdly, was, when all undoctored diocesan Bishops got one automatically.

Betsie was very much a Christ Church person ... as Dr Cross had been. She was a daily communicant. And, when the Church of England purported to ordain women to sacerdotal ministries, this meant, for Betsie, a recurrent problem.

She remained in the C of E until her death. And she managed this by making arrangements to avoid the Cathedral on those mornings when this regime operated. This meant, of course, finding churches in Oxford where the new dogma was not enforced. And this was what brought her in my direction at S Thomas's. 

By this time, she was living in one of the fine Georgian Houses in St John Street. S Thomas's was built originally in vile slums (now redeveloped and expensive properties) around the Railway Station. For a woman in her seventies to walk down to my church early in the morning must have been a duty and a discipline, even when the weather was good. And she did it, if necessary, when the weather was far from good ... indeed, dangerous underfoot. This was when Pam and I got to know her.

She was an acerbic conversationalist with a devastating wit ... and she was extremely hospitable. Although Macular Degeneration was already taking its toll of her eyesight, she provided us with very many lunches. When family matters took Pam away from Oxford, Betsie made sure that I never lacked a lunch. As reading became increasingly difficult for her, I was able to give some small amounts of help with her continuing academic work. It was not difficult to look forward to the food and conversation behind the Georgian architectural facade!

I had better not conceal that we often gossiped about mutual acquaintances, by no means avoiding members of the University! And she was ... well ... merciless. I suppose it would be bad manners to pass on her views about still-living persons. I will misbehave only to the extent of revealing that, after a less than complimentary but convergent exchange of judgments, Betsie would ... not infrequently ... observe "But have you seen his Wife?"

Eius animae propitietur Deus.

Betsie Livingstone (1)

 Today, January 1, is the first obit, Year's Mind, of Betsie Livingstone. She died in a care home in Iffley.

Betsie was one of the most considerable people I have known. Not that I had the privilege of knowing her intimately for most of the decades of her long life. I first 'knew' her from a very respectful distance: during my visits to the Patristics Room in Bodley, she would be occupying a table set aside for her, swathed in old-style galley-proofs of the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, with Bodleian attendants bringing her books she had ordered up. We did not know each other; awe ... on my part ... was our relationship.

Elizabeth Anne Livingstone was, at first, a research asistant of Dr F L Cross, Student of Christ Church, originator ... editor ... compiler ... of the ODCC from 1939. I don't know how he came to discern her genius: she once said to me that he did not formally offer her the role "until I had shown that I could do something"; i.e. had got her First. She soon became the research assistant. As he wrote, "No problem that arose could be allowed to rest until it had been pursued to its limits, whether by research, correspondence, or personal interviews, and in somecases by all three means ... The drafting of the bibliographies is almost wholly due to the same collaborator. There are relatively fewof the books or articles cited which Miss Livingstone has not handled, or, where this has proved impossible, pursued to an unimpeachable source; and, it need hardly be said, there are a vast number of others which, though examined, have been passed by unrecorded, either through the exigencies of space or  their want of permanent interest. This task has involved the consultation of what must be almost, if not quite, a record number of books in public libraries ..."

Betsie, like not a few of the English professional classes of her generation, was born (1929) in India. She matriculated in 1948 at St Anne's College, when it was still "St Anne's Society" and when its senior members were products of the days when it had been the "Society of Oxford Home Students" with origins back in 1879. The bookplates in the older  volumes of its Library included words, I think, something like Societas Mulierum Oxonii Privatim Studentium! She became Artium Magistra  in 1955. She, and my Wife (St Anne's, matriculated 1960), were able to exchange and compare reminiscences of that very distinguished institution! It is, of course, no longer single-sex ... the young men, I fear, think it amusing to refer to it as Stans.

She was also the begetter and organiser of the Oxford Patristic Conferences (and of the later Oxford New Testament Conferences), which brought scholars from all over the world to exchange brief papers ... which, naturally (but however did she find the time?), provided her with the labour of handling the publication of very large amounts of very diverse material. I recall the first day of one such conference: Bodley had just introduced a requirement that you had to show a card in order to be admitted. The Quadrangle, inevitably, was thronged on the first morning with foreign scholars who, vainly, had hoped to Verify the References in their Papers before having to read them!

Some readers of this blog may be interested in one tiny detail: Michael Moreton's paper Blepete eis tas Anatolas first appeared in those volumes, demonstrating that, contrary to the superstitions of the 1960s, Christians in the early centuries had faced East in order to worship.

To be concluded.