... writes in a paper called the Catholic Times, passed on to me occasionally by a friend.
The man is a complete charlatan in the way he uses misinformation to deceive. I have just read a piece about how Rome subverts the desire of Vatican II for a vernacular liturgy. In this he fails to mention what V2 actually says ... and supports this assertion by a rhetorical trope of Paul VI, the word Dammit, and a claim that V2 is all about ecclesia semper reformanda.
Goodness gracious me.
31 August 2010
30 August 2010
Vatican II Reforms: So what?
These pieces have demonstrated that there is a an auctoritas* problem about LH. As Cardinal Ratzinger wrote, the idea that a Pope can muck around as he likes with the Liturgy if he has the mandate of an Ecumenical Council, is mighty dodgy. Even more flawed is a reform which was not mandated by a Council, and which in many respects went contrary to the explicit words of a Council: I mean the instruction that "There must be no innovations unless the good of the church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing". No innovations, indeed! Certainly, indeed!
It seems to me that, ideally,what we need is a revision of the Breviary which evolves organically from what was in place before the Council in the ways mandated by the Council. Ideally, it would go behind the revision of the Psalterium by Pius X and of the Hymnarium by Urban VIII, and would reconsider elements of the rubrical changes under Pius XII in 1955 which built on those of Pius X. However, to hope for this would, at the moment, be optimistic and beyond the realms of any likelihood. What would be comparatively easy for Authority to provide would be a decree which enabled one to use preconciliar books to say the Office in broadly the way mandated by the Council. In my view, this should leave Lauds and Vespers basically unchanged; diminish the obligation to recite the lesser hours in accordance with SC; and reduce the length of Mattins while permitting it to be used, as the Council suggested, at any hour by those not bound to say it in choir. Perhaps it would also permit ad lib the use of the Lentini Hymnarium. I recall once reading a comment on this blog the effect that there is a 1960s Decree broadly along these lines. Can anyone pin it down for me?
Are there practical ways ahead which the individual can take while remaining within the bounds of what is lawful? I would also remind readers that there is nothing illegal in saying some hours from the LH and others from the Breviary. This is in effect what happens in the English Oratories, and there is already an established praxis in those places, or in some of them (details?), of adapting the old form of Vespers to the modern calendar. (I am not sure whether one would describe that as contra legem or praeter legem.)
I admit that there are problems (mostly arising from diversity of Calendar) about - for example - saying Lauds and Vespers from the Breviary, and the rest of the Office from LH. But might it not be the best interim measure, or at least a viable option, for a generation or two?
______________________________________________________________
*I hope to return to what I mean by auctoritas.
It seems to me that, ideally,what we need is a revision of the Breviary which evolves organically from what was in place before the Council in the ways mandated by the Council. Ideally, it would go behind the revision of the Psalterium by Pius X and of the Hymnarium by Urban VIII, and would reconsider elements of the rubrical changes under Pius XII in 1955 which built on those of Pius X. However, to hope for this would, at the moment, be optimistic and beyond the realms of any likelihood. What would be comparatively easy for Authority to provide would be a decree which enabled one to use preconciliar books to say the Office in broadly the way mandated by the Council. In my view, this should leave Lauds and Vespers basically unchanged; diminish the obligation to recite the lesser hours in accordance with SC; and reduce the length of Mattins while permitting it to be used, as the Council suggested, at any hour by those not bound to say it in choir. Perhaps it would also permit ad lib the use of the Lentini Hymnarium. I recall once reading a comment on this blog the effect that there is a 1960s Decree broadly along these lines. Can anyone pin it down for me?
Are there practical ways ahead which the individual can take while remaining within the bounds of what is lawful? I would also remind readers that there is nothing illegal in saying some hours from the LH and others from the Breviary. This is in effect what happens in the English Oratories, and there is already an established praxis in those places, or in some of them (details?), of adapting the old form of Vespers to the modern calendar. (I am not sure whether one would describe that as contra legem or praeter legem.)
I admit that there are problems (mostly arising from diversity of Calendar) about - for example - saying Lauds and Vespers from the Breviary, and the rest of the Office from LH. But might it not be the best interim measure, or at least a viable option, for a generation or two?
______________________________________________________________
*I hope to return to what I mean by auctoritas.
29 August 2010
Vatican II Reforms: Psalter
As far as the text of the psalms is concerned, we need to recall that the Council met in the aftermath of the disastrous Translation of the Psalter commissioned by Pius XII and authorised by him for use in the divine Office (yet another example of the fact that major errors in the methodology of liturgical reform had already gripped the Latin Church before the Council; the Council was merely one episode in a flawed process which was already under way, and even under some of the same personel). The departure of the Pian psalter from the characteristics of Christian Latin - and this at a time when Christine Mohrmann's researches were still fresh in the minds of learned readers - meant that there was a very widespread unease about it. Tactfully, SC decreed that the "work of revising the psalter, already happily begun, is to be finished as soon as possible, and is to take account of the style of Christian Latin, the liturgical use of psalms, also when sung, and the entire tradition of the Latin Church". Thus the psalter included in the LH can decently claim to have been mandated by the Council, even if one's personal preference would have been to keep the words which had sanctified the lives of latinophone worshippers for a millennium and a half.
As far as the distribution of the psalter is concerned, the Council mandated that the psalms were to be distributed over a longer period than one week. LH, of course, distributed them over four weeks. One may have one's own views about the wisdom of what was done, and the opportunities that were missed of returning to something more traditional. In only one matter, however, is it clear that LH innovated without a conciliar mandate. Into the Psalterium, which by long tradition had included Old Testament canticles in Lauds, were now introduced New Testament canticles at Vespers every day. They were taken from S Paul's purple passages and from the songs of the angels in the Apocalypse (the production of the latter category of canticle required some use of scissors and paste). To introduce without a conciliar mandate a feature which increased the amount of psalmody to be arranged at a time when the reformers were under orders to reduce the burden on the clergy, seems perverse. Objectively, it is another example of the dynamics of a process in which those driving the engine slipped, perhaps even without noticing it themselves, from implementing a mandate, to giving themselves free rein to innovate 'creatively'.
As far as the distribution of the psalter is concerned, the Council mandated that the psalms were to be distributed over a longer period than one week. LH, of course, distributed them over four weeks. One may have one's own views about the wisdom of what was done, and the opportunities that were missed of returning to something more traditional. In only one matter, however, is it clear that LH innovated without a conciliar mandate. Into the Psalterium, which by long tradition had included Old Testament canticles in Lauds, were now introduced New Testament canticles at Vespers every day. They were taken from S Paul's purple passages and from the songs of the angels in the Apocalypse (the production of the latter category of canticle required some use of scissors and paste). To introduce without a conciliar mandate a feature which increased the amount of psalmody to be arranged at a time when the reformers were under orders to reduce the burden on the clergy, seems perverse. Objectively, it is another example of the dynamics of a process in which those driving the engine slipped, perhaps even without noticing it themselves, from implementing a mandate, to giving themselves free rein to innovate 'creatively'.
28 August 2010
Blackwells
I strolled into Blackwells the other day to get the diary for the next academic year; and thought I'd just check what was on show to earn money for publishers on the back of the late Mr Newman. Well, there are several glossies, of which the only one that appealed to me was one published by Gracewing and done by the sisters of the Way, who are the guardians of Littlemore. I commend it. I suggest that you think twice before buying any of the others. If you need confirmation of my commendation, I need only say that this little book has a preface by Dr Ker, the expert on Newman.
There appeared to be no copies of Dr Ker's own definitive biography of Newman. This is perfectly ridiculous. I made enquiries of an attendant,who assured me that copies were on the way. This shortage may be the result of masses of sensible people having bought up the last print. More probably, it results from incompetence somewhere in the book trade. Conceivably, there is a plot to move a lot of the glossies by sparing them competition. This is tragic. People are surely more likely to be buying Newman books in the weeks building up to the beatification than just after it, and Ker's book, as Chadwick observed, could well be the Newman book for several generations.
And Ker's book is perfectly brilliant; it received a rave review from Henry 'Patrimony' Chadwick. It has the gift of telling the story of Newman and of his thought largely in Newman's own words. By the way: it used to be available in paperback. I trust that there will not be some seedy plot to unload lots of much more expensive hardback copies on the reading public.
In the next month, as our satanic media gleefully spread misrepresentations galore about Newman, it will be most unfortunate if intelligent enquirers do not have access to the definitive Newman biography.
There appeared to be no copies of Dr Ker's own definitive biography of Newman. This is perfectly ridiculous. I made enquiries of an attendant,who assured me that copies were on the way. This shortage may be the result of masses of sensible people having bought up the last print. More probably, it results from incompetence somewhere in the book trade. Conceivably, there is a plot to move a lot of the glossies by sparing them competition. This is tragic. People are surely more likely to be buying Newman books in the weeks building up to the beatification than just after it, and Ker's book, as Chadwick observed, could well be the Newman book for several generations.
And Ker's book is perfectly brilliant; it received a rave review from Henry 'Patrimony' Chadwick. It has the gift of telling the story of Newman and of his thought largely in Newman's own words. By the way: it used to be available in paperback. I trust that there will not be some seedy plot to unload lots of much more expensive hardback copies on the reading public.
In the next month, as our satanic media gleefully spread misrepresentations galore about Newman, it will be most unfortunate if intelligent enquirers do not have access to the definitive Newman biography.
27 August 2010
Vatican II Reforms: Hymns REVISED VERSION OF POST
SC, in Article 93, mandated that "the hymns, as far as seems expedient, are to be restored to their original (pristinam) form, those things being removed or changed which have a flavour of mythology or offend Christian piety. Also, as may be opportune, other hymns should be received which are found in the treasury of hymns".
The first part of this reform was long overdue. Urban VIII had ordered the correction or even total rewriting of the Breviary hymns so as to make them fit the canons of Augustan, classical, Latin poetry. The restoration of the original texts was one of the unambiguously good results of a conciliar mandate. It has the result that, as far as English translations are concerned, those done by Tractarian Anglican Catholics, who were rendering the texts found in the Sarum and other medieval breviaries, are much closer to the texts now restored in the LH than are the translations done by nineteenth century Roman Catholics such as Fr Caswall - who felt obliged to translate the Barberini texts.
In 1968, Dom Anselmo Lentini published an interim set of "Hymni instaurandi Breviarii Romani". One can quibble about details; I think he rather overdid the Reception of Other Hymns, providing whole sets of alternative cycles (recovered, indeed, from traditional sources) to sit beside the old hymns. But I think a fair general verdict would be that he did as he had been told. For a couple of decades, as I said the Prayer Book Divine Office, I used the hymns in this interim collection, and was generally satisfied with it. In particular, it is attractive not to have to read at Mattins a hymn which is a duplication of one appointed elsewhere in the same festal office.
However, the increasing radicalisation of the 'reform' process had shown itself by the time LH was published in 1971. Most notably, a new composition had been provided for the Lauds of each apostle. I wonder if I am the only one to find that the hymns in the Commons, particularly for Pastors, are not of sufficient merit to stand their constant repetition.
But, generally, Lentini* provided the most scholarly and traditional element in the new Office Books, and one that should influence any new edition of the old Breviary.
________________________________________________________________
*Rubricarius, in his comment below, is quite right. He usually is. Sometimes to aid singability, texts were changed by the Lentini coetus. The worst example is Ad coenam agni providi, which in the original is extraordinarily jerky. Lentini smoothed it out line by line. A shame; I think the original rhythmic effects are intentional and poetic. A lesser example is in Venatius Fortunatus. "ferre pretium saeculi" is a syllable too many; it is revised to "ferre saecli pretium". But we should remember that Latin was still a vernacular for VF and he undoubtedly pronounced "pretium" as "pretsum". [Elsewhere, "oculi" is deemed to have an excessive syllable; but it was probably pronounced "ocyi"; compare modern Italian.]
My point was to "pass" a general verdict, and I think it would be unfair to pass a negative one. But of course, we none of us would have done this revision in exactly the same way.
__________________________________________________________________
The answer to Albertus' query is that Dom Lentini's chums, like Albertus, felt that ne polluantur corpora "excultis nostris moribus non opportuna est, unde expunctam velimus". In its place they brought in two stanzas from a sixth century hymn in the Regula Caesarii Christe, precamur, adnue. Lentini kept the opening stanza from Te lucis because, being an Eyetie, he deemed it "ab ipso Alagherio quodammodo consecratam". Personally, I'm not too certain about our age being ethically so much more sophisticated than earlier Christian centuries. My instinct would have been to offer both hymns in their uncorrupted integrity as options. But you don't need to explain to me the problems about "option" liturgy.
The first part of this reform was long overdue. Urban VIII had ordered the correction or even total rewriting of the Breviary hymns so as to make them fit the canons of Augustan, classical, Latin poetry. The restoration of the original texts was one of the unambiguously good results of a conciliar mandate. It has the result that, as far as English translations are concerned, those done by Tractarian Anglican Catholics, who were rendering the texts found in the Sarum and other medieval breviaries, are much closer to the texts now restored in the LH than are the translations done by nineteenth century Roman Catholics such as Fr Caswall - who felt obliged to translate the Barberini texts.
In 1968, Dom Anselmo Lentini published an interim set of "Hymni instaurandi Breviarii Romani". One can quibble about details; I think he rather overdid the Reception of Other Hymns, providing whole sets of alternative cycles (recovered, indeed, from traditional sources) to sit beside the old hymns. But I think a fair general verdict would be that he did as he had been told. For a couple of decades, as I said the Prayer Book Divine Office, I used the hymns in this interim collection, and was generally satisfied with it. In particular, it is attractive not to have to read at Mattins a hymn which is a duplication of one appointed elsewhere in the same festal office.
However, the increasing radicalisation of the 'reform' process had shown itself by the time LH was published in 1971. Most notably, a new composition had been provided for the Lauds of each apostle. I wonder if I am the only one to find that the hymns in the Commons, particularly for Pastors, are not of sufficient merit to stand their constant repetition.
But, generally, Lentini* provided the most scholarly and traditional element in the new Office Books, and one that should influence any new edition of the old Breviary.
________________________________________________________________
*Rubricarius, in his comment below, is quite right. He usually is. Sometimes to aid singability, texts were changed by the Lentini coetus. The worst example is Ad coenam agni providi, which in the original is extraordinarily jerky. Lentini smoothed it out line by line. A shame; I think the original rhythmic effects are intentional and poetic. A lesser example is in Venatius Fortunatus. "ferre pretium saeculi" is a syllable too many; it is revised to "ferre saecli pretium". But we should remember that Latin was still a vernacular for VF and he undoubtedly pronounced "pretium" as "pretsum". [Elsewhere, "oculi" is deemed to have an excessive syllable; but it was probably pronounced "ocyi"; compare modern Italian.]
My point was to "pass" a general verdict, and I think it would be unfair to pass a negative one. But of course, we none of us would have done this revision in exactly the same way.
__________________________________________________________________
The answer to Albertus' query is that Dom Lentini's chums, like Albertus, felt that ne polluantur corpora "excultis nostris moribus non opportuna est, unde expunctam velimus". In its place they brought in two stanzas from a sixth century hymn in the Regula Caesarii Christe, precamur, adnue. Lentini kept the opening stanza from Te lucis because, being an Eyetie, he deemed it "ab ipso Alagherio quodammodo consecratam". Personally, I'm not too certain about our age being ethically so much more sophisticated than earlier Christian centuries. My instinct would have been to offer both hymns in their uncorrupted integrity as options. But you don't need to explain to me the problems about "option" liturgy.
24 August 2010
Mixed News ends
I always felt that there was something very bizarre about what is sometimes known as Kentish Town Liturgy, spread throughout England - and further - by the charismatic figure of Fr Graeme Rowlands of S Silas's: Baroquery, lace, birettas, as far as the eye can see; combined with those dreadful old, horribly unbaroque, ICEL texts. I suspect most 'Kentish Town' -style Churches will remain in the Church of England for a variety of reasons which I will probably delete from the thread if readers start amusing themselves too much with the topic. It will be interesting to see whether they stick with Old ICEL or go for 2010. The problem in many Anglican churches will be that Common Worship and Old ICEL could be fitted very well together, so seamlessly that congregations were bamboozled as to whether the service the Vicar was doing was Anglican or Roman. Now these poor dears will have to decide whether to stick with And also with you, or to stick their necks out with And with your Spirit. What they do will be interestingly indicative of their ecclesiology. Fun days lie ahead.
And the Bad News about 2010? Someone has done some nastinesses in 2010, rather reminiscent of the little corners of S Thomas's churchyard where the druggies have been. It is that bit less in accordance with the admirable prescriptions of Liturgiam authenticam than was 2008. Are we to presume that these are concessions to the Trautmanntendenz? I will pick ou just one: in the Memento, "vota sua" is translated as "homage". How this can be considered either an appropriate rendering of the Latin, or as in accordance with the rituals of modern culture? Homage is something that exists nowadays in the feudal customs which have survived in the English Coronation Service (and are probably eliminated even from that in the highly secret revision of it which has been produced for use with the Defender of All the Faiths). It is suggestive neither of the world of the fourth century sacramentaries nor of that of with-it Trautmannesque Americans who can't say "ineffaffable". Why on earth ...
I wonder exactly who was involved in the final tweaking of 2010 (except, of course, that it might not be final; an even more Binding and Definitive version may appear). But historians should be informed of the fool's name.
And finally: Christ has died ... has disappeared. Or I hope so. There couldn't be a risk of it surviving in some sort of Local Appendix, could there? Though mind you, I always use it at S Thomas's. My reason is a trifle eccentric: I profoundly dislike those 'Affirmations'; but to change them or vary them seems to me to draw attention to them. So I have stuck with what I inherited here, deeming it a formula that the congregation can say on autopilot and without thinking about it. Any ideas ...
And the Bad News about 2010? Someone has done some nastinesses in 2010, rather reminiscent of the little corners of S Thomas's churchyard where the druggies have been. It is that bit less in accordance with the admirable prescriptions of Liturgiam authenticam than was 2008. Are we to presume that these are concessions to the Trautmanntendenz? I will pick ou just one: in the Memento, "vota sua" is translated as "homage". How this can be considered either an appropriate rendering of the Latin, or as in accordance with the rituals of modern culture? Homage is something that exists nowadays in the feudal customs which have survived in the English Coronation Service (and are probably eliminated even from that in the highly secret revision of it which has been produced for use with the Defender of All the Faiths). It is suggestive neither of the world of the fourth century sacramentaries nor of that of with-it Trautmannesque Americans who can't say "ineffaffable". Why on earth ...
I wonder exactly who was involved in the final tweaking of 2010 (except, of course, that it might not be final; an even more Binding and Definitive version may appear). But historians should be informed of the fool's name.
And finally: Christ has died ... has disappeared. Or I hope so. There couldn't be a risk of it surviving in some sort of Local Appendix, could there? Though mind you, I always use it at S Thomas's. My reason is a trifle eccentric: I profoundly dislike those 'Affirmations'; but to change them or vary them seems to me to draw attention to them. So I have stuck with what I inherited here, deeming it a formula that the congregation can say on autopilot and without thinking about it. Any ideas ...
23 August 2010
Homage
Is it really impossible to get a reconsideration on Una Voce of the ludicrous decision to translate vota sua (in the Memento) as homage? Couldn't those better placed than me get some sort of roll going on this? This translation could be in use for several generations.
Query
If I were about to be ordained to the Diaconate, which I am not, and my Latin were rusty, which it isn't, where would I find on the Internet ... or any(accessible)where else ... an English translation of either the Tridentine rite for Diaconal Ordination; or of the rite in the Bugnini Pontifical; so that I could use it/them on my Ordination Retreat?
Invalidity
Fr Zed gives a splendid example of the phenomenon that some readers have criticised me for describing: the very strong tendency to call the Sacraments of those we disagree with "invalid" without any awareness of how difficult it is, according to the formal teaching of the Latin church, for sacraments to be invalid.
A writer had been assured by a RC priest that someone baptised in the SSPX would have to be conditionally rebaptised.
What nonsense. More: illiterate nonsense. That priest clearly had no satisfactory seminary training on the question of sacramental validity. Rather like the Vatican Press office when it declared that Archbishop Milingo's ordinations were invalid.
A writer had been assured by a RC priest that someone baptised in the SSPX would have to be conditionally rebaptised.
What nonsense. More: illiterate nonsense. That priest clearly had no satisfactory seminary training on the question of sacramental validity. Rather like the Vatican Press office when it declared that Archbishop Milingo's ordinations were invalid.
Mixed news ...
... from the American RC Bishops. The 2008 English translation of the Ordo Missae has now been published in a definitive version, which we can call 2010.
Mind you, the 2008 version was pretty definitive too, or, as Cardinal Arinze put it, "is to be considered binding". Non-RCs sometimes need to be reminded that when Rome says that something is Definitive and Binding, it only means that this is where we are until something even more Definitive and Binding is issued. I often wonder what legal jiggery pokery has to go on behind the scenes: for example, JP2 signed the Third Typical Edition of the Latin Missal; the Instructio generalis from it was published as a separate booklet; but then, when the printed version of the Missal appeared, it had been extensively changed (the directions for saying a Novus Ordo private Mass were completely rewritten). And the recent 'reprint' of that Missal contains, not just a correction of misprints, of which there are indeed several hundred; but substantive alterations.
I will give you the Good News first. The 2008 version has not been 'improved' (forgive the Anglican terminology) too much. It's main lines remain intact. Anglicans will give it a mixed reception. Those of us who, devoted admirers of Christine Mohrmann, believed in the importance of a specifically sacral dialect and accordingly valued the liturgical dialect associated with the name of Cranmer, will be moderately delighted. There are some actual Cranmerisms: notably, the use of "Hosts" to render "Sabaoth" in the Sanctus. But the main joy is that, since when Cranmer was translating canticles he did it quite literally, and since 2010 is also quite literal, the two versions (except that 2010 eschews thou/thee English) are often very similar, both in wording and rhythms. Thus 2010 will seem very unstrange to those brought up on the Prayer Book or its idiom.
Anglican Catholics, however, who out of slavish imitation of English Roman Catholicism adopted the old ICEL texts, will, like Anglophone RCs, have a great deal of rehabituation to do. And a category of Anglicans who will be chewing glass will be the Bubbles Stancliffes, who were dotty about the idea of common translations being used across the Anglophone ecumenical scene. They saw to it that the ICEL renderings were incorporated into Common Worship, and they even tried to be sexily ahead of the Roman game by incorporating formulae from the abortive ICEL version of the 1990s. That whole game is now definitively (er) over. It marked a particular ecumenical phase which is now also over. If the Stancliffes are irritated that it is over, let them ask themselves who killed it.
Concludes soon.
Mind you, the 2008 version was pretty definitive too, or, as Cardinal Arinze put it, "is to be considered binding". Non-RCs sometimes need to be reminded that when Rome says that something is Definitive and Binding, it only means that this is where we are until something even more Definitive and Binding is issued. I often wonder what legal jiggery pokery has to go on behind the scenes: for example, JP2 signed the Third Typical Edition of the Latin Missal; the Instructio generalis from it was published as a separate booklet; but then, when the printed version of the Missal appeared, it had been extensively changed (the directions for saying a Novus Ordo private Mass were completely rewritten). And the recent 'reprint' of that Missal contains, not just a correction of misprints, of which there are indeed several hundred; but substantive alterations.
I will give you the Good News first. The 2008 version has not been 'improved' (forgive the Anglican terminology) too much. It's main lines remain intact. Anglicans will give it a mixed reception. Those of us who, devoted admirers of Christine Mohrmann, believed in the importance of a specifically sacral dialect and accordingly valued the liturgical dialect associated with the name of Cranmer, will be moderately delighted. There are some actual Cranmerisms: notably, the use of "Hosts" to render "Sabaoth" in the Sanctus. But the main joy is that, since when Cranmer was translating canticles he did it quite literally, and since 2010 is also quite literal, the two versions (except that 2010 eschews thou/thee English) are often very similar, both in wording and rhythms. Thus 2010 will seem very unstrange to those brought up on the Prayer Book or its idiom.
Anglican Catholics, however, who out of slavish imitation of English Roman Catholicism adopted the old ICEL texts, will, like Anglophone RCs, have a great deal of rehabituation to do. And a category of Anglicans who will be chewing glass will be the Bubbles Stancliffes, who were dotty about the idea of common translations being used across the Anglophone ecumenical scene. They saw to it that the ICEL renderings were incorporated into Common Worship, and they even tried to be sexily ahead of the Roman game by incorporating formulae from the abortive ICEL version of the 1990s. That whole game is now definitively (er) over. It marked a particular ecumenical phase which is now also over. If the Stancliffes are irritated that it is over, let them ask themselves who killed it.
Concludes soon.
22 August 2010
Gardening Leave and the Catechism of the Catholic Church
Many of the very best bishops go from time to time on Gardening Leave. Not that Bishop Williamson of SSPX, who is on Gardening Leave, is one of the Best Bishops. His Blog ... always readable (I liked his coinage 'televideots') ... is usually dotty. But it now reports a rumour that SSPX is being offered the option of subscribing to the Catechism rather than to the corpus of Vatican II.
Now where have I heard of that mechanism before?
I wonder why he did visit America recently? Possibly to check out how the Anglican Use parishes operate?
Is it true that he is to be Chairman of the new Gardening Bishops' Club?
Now where have I heard of that mechanism before?
I wonder why he did visit America recently? Possibly to check out how the Anglican Use parishes operate?
Is it true that he is to be Chairman of the new Gardening Bishops' Club?
21 August 2010
My opinion on Apostolicae curae
I welcome the bull for various reasons. It represented a crucial stage in the acceptance by the Roman Magisterium that the Imposition of Hands is the sole Matter of the Sacrament of Order. It was a reaffirmation of the principle that Schism does not, on its own, invalidate orders. It reaffirmed that heresy in itself did not eliminate an adequate intention (it saw the problem as lying in the fact that heresy had led to the substitution of an inadequate Form). Incidentally, judging from a recent post, Fr Zed is unaware of this basic principle of Western sacramental theology: although he thinks that things have not yet become that bad, it is in his view possible that defective episcopal orthodoxy might invalidate orders. And Apostolicae curae, by its very silence, implied the reformability of a pontifical document as solemn as the Decree of Eugene IV for the Armenians ... and thereby logically implied its own reformability. It was a useful slapdown for our Anglican arrogance. And, by that word disciplinae, it limited its own doctrinal scope.
In the last resort, however, I contextualise its celebrated conclusion theologically and historically thus:
(1) It is an echo of the old gut feeling that the people-I-don't-like-have-invalid-Orders. Its juridical foundation was a decision of the Holy Office, which in the seventeenth century had declared null the Orders of a Scottish bishop (whose consecration is now thought not to have been by the Church of England's Ordinal). And the Holy Office, like British courts, is bound by its own precedents. The participation of Dutch Tutchers I regard as adequate to settle any doubts there may be; the hoards of Roman theologians who thought that Accipe Spiritum Sanctum is an adequate Form of Consecration satisfy me. The action of the Church of England in getting the Tutch I regard as a solemn, significant and meaningful ecclesial act, and in this context I regard the reality of the diffusion of the Tutch as morally certain.
(2) It is an ultra-rigorist application of the principle that, in the matter of valid orders, it is important to be certain beyond any possibility of cavil. This principle is indeed far superior to Anglican habit of being lackadaisical ... and then going all Hurt and Wounded when other people don't feel so sure that what you've done is right. But ultra-rigorism can be taken too far. There are plausible stories about scrupulous RC bishops in the old days who reordained all their neopresbyteri in the sacristy immediately after the ordination as a matter of course, just to be absolutely sure that there could be no possibility of a fatal slip having occurred (I wonder if it ever occurred to them that if perchance their own ordination had been technically vitiated, this would not be much use). I don't really believe that God is quite the sort of God which this scrupulosity implies. And Rome itself is less categorical now about invalidity than it used to be; what would Leo XIII's generation have said if asked to judge upon the adequacy of a Eucharistic Prayer (Addai and Mari) which lacked an Institution Narrative? And this is in effect a return to a slightly less regimented Roman praxis: in the 1860s, the Holy Office declared that Abyssinian priests were to be regarded as validly ordained, notwithstanding the fact that the Abyssinian rite of priestly ordination, as found in their books, "in praxi paene abolitum est, neque alio modo presbyteros ordinari quam per impositionem manuum cum his verbis dumtaxat, Accipe Spiritum Sanctum, quae in libris non inveniuntur ...". One recalls Newman's discovery, when he arrived in Rome in 1846, "various persons there in the belief that [Anglican Orders] were valid, and none, I think, clear that they were not".
I am not insensitive to the rhetoric about how the Anglican rites were stripped of sacrificial language in the sixteenth century (nevertheless, Catholic praxis accepts the validity of Baptism by ecclesial bodies which have stripped the liturgy of Baptism of any mention of Regeneration). And I am more amused than I probably should be to find that some integralists, especially among sedevacantists, use precisely Dr Messenger's and Leo XIII's argument to argue for the invalidity of the Orders of the post-conciliar Church (even within SSPX, the argument is heard that some postconciliar Orders may because of dodgy intention be invalid; that each case should be considered individually). Plausibly; for the Sarum formulae mentioning sacrifice, which Dr Messenger and others so pedantically listed as having been eliminated by Cranmer, are pretty well the elements eliminated also by Bugnini. Who, while he kept the Porrection of the Instruments, provided it with a new formula which most certainly would not have been regarded as an adequate Form by those earlier writers who thought of this rite as the essential part of the Ordination. Perhaps Anglicans, in order to feel totally confident of their Orders, should ask to be reordained according to the Tridentine Pontifical and by a bishop who was consecrated with that Pontifical.
No; only joking. But it would be a nice experience. Is Mgr Rifan due to be in England soon?
One more.
In the last resort, however, I contextualise its celebrated conclusion theologically and historically thus:
(1) It is an echo of the old gut feeling that the people-I-don't-like-have-invalid-Orders. Its juridical foundation was a decision of the Holy Office, which in the seventeenth century had declared null the Orders of a Scottish bishop (whose consecration is now thought not to have been by the Church of England's Ordinal). And the Holy Office, like British courts, is bound by its own precedents. The participation of Dutch Tutchers I regard as adequate to settle any doubts there may be; the hoards of Roman theologians who thought that Accipe Spiritum Sanctum is an adequate Form of Consecration satisfy me. The action of the Church of England in getting the Tutch I regard as a solemn, significant and meaningful ecclesial act, and in this context I regard the reality of the diffusion of the Tutch as morally certain.
(2) It is an ultra-rigorist application of the principle that, in the matter of valid orders, it is important to be certain beyond any possibility of cavil. This principle is indeed far superior to Anglican habit of being lackadaisical ... and then going all Hurt and Wounded when other people don't feel so sure that what you've done is right. But ultra-rigorism can be taken too far. There are plausible stories about scrupulous RC bishops in the old days who reordained all their neopresbyteri in the sacristy immediately after the ordination as a matter of course, just to be absolutely sure that there could be no possibility of a fatal slip having occurred (I wonder if it ever occurred to them that if perchance their own ordination had been technically vitiated, this would not be much use). I don't really believe that God is quite the sort of God which this scrupulosity implies. And Rome itself is less categorical now about invalidity than it used to be; what would Leo XIII's generation have said if asked to judge upon the adequacy of a Eucharistic Prayer (Addai and Mari) which lacked an Institution Narrative? And this is in effect a return to a slightly less regimented Roman praxis: in the 1860s, the Holy Office declared that Abyssinian priests were to be regarded as validly ordained, notwithstanding the fact that the Abyssinian rite of priestly ordination, as found in their books, "in praxi paene abolitum est, neque alio modo presbyteros ordinari quam per impositionem manuum cum his verbis dumtaxat, Accipe Spiritum Sanctum, quae in libris non inveniuntur ...". One recalls Newman's discovery, when he arrived in Rome in 1846, "various persons there in the belief that [Anglican Orders] were valid, and none, I think, clear that they were not".
I am not insensitive to the rhetoric about how the Anglican rites were stripped of sacrificial language in the sixteenth century (nevertheless, Catholic praxis accepts the validity of Baptism by ecclesial bodies which have stripped the liturgy of Baptism of any mention of Regeneration). And I am more amused than I probably should be to find that some integralists, especially among sedevacantists, use precisely Dr Messenger's and Leo XIII's argument to argue for the invalidity of the Orders of the post-conciliar Church (even within SSPX, the argument is heard that some postconciliar Orders may because of dodgy intention be invalid; that each case should be considered individually). Plausibly; for the Sarum formulae mentioning sacrifice, which Dr Messenger and others so pedantically listed as having been eliminated by Cranmer, are pretty well the elements eliminated also by Bugnini. Who, while he kept the Porrection of the Instruments, provided it with a new formula which most certainly would not have been regarded as an adequate Form by those earlier writers who thought of this rite as the essential part of the Ordination. Perhaps Anglicans, in order to feel totally confident of their Orders, should ask to be reordained according to the Tridentine Pontifical and by a bishop who was consecrated with that Pontifical.
No; only joking. But it would be a nice experience. Is Mgr Rifan due to be in England soon?
One more.
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