What did the Magisterium of Pope Paul VI teach about the the use of the First Eucharistic Prayer, the Roman Canon?
He made a legislative statement which he did not make with regard to the other three Prayers. It was that it semper adhiberi potest. This has a very valuable consequence. It means that a priest who resolves that he will use that Prayer invariably cannot be accused of lacking the true mind of the Church, on the grounds that he never uses three other authorised Prayers. It means that when the same text goes on to suggest that Payer II is most suitable on weekdays, this cannot be held to render the use of the Canon Romanus on weekdays to be inappropriate. To use EP I invariably cannot be contrary to the spirit of the new Ordo Missae, because this provision explicitly sanctions such a resolve. Since this Ordo Missae states on its first page that it is ex decreto of the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council, it cannot, unless the Pope was lying, be contrary to the spirit of that Council invariably to use the Canon Romanus.
The Instructio Generalis also remarks that the Canon Romanus is used opportunius on the Sundays and Solemnities of the year; on the festivals of Saints whose names occur in that Prayer; and on days when Proper formulae are provided for the Communicantes or the Hanc igitur.
There are 52 Sundays in the year; and, by my rough estimate, 53 days covered by the other occasions thus listed. So, on something like a third of the days of the year ... and certainly on Sundays and Days of Obligation ... a strong preference for the use of the Canon Romanus is eminently in accordance with the expressed mind of the Legislator.
Even where the Pastor feels that he cannot celebrate versus Orientem or in Latin, surely he could, as a first step, restore the Roman Canon as the normative Eucharistic Prayer? Another indication of the Mind of the Church: this is exactly what the Ordinariate Missal has done! And I know a very flourishing Church in Connecticut where this is the rule!
30 April 2017
28 April 2017
The Prisoner in the Tabernacle
In the OF, the priest genuflects to the Blessed Sacrament only on approaching the Altar at the beginning of Mass; and immediately after Mass as he returns to the Sacristy. To me, the symbolic body-language of the rite could be given this vernacular expression: "Good morning, Lord. Glad you're still here. Notice that I am giving you your due respect. But now - I'm sure you won't mind - I'm going to ignore you for a bit, and do some extremely important things with my back to you, centering myself upon pieces of furniture that bear no spatial relationship to the part of the church where we keep you. In fact, for a fair bit of time I shall actually be sitting with my back to you. But don't worry. Before I go back to the Sacristy I shall, very respectfully, notice you again."
I am unfamiliar with this ethos; I have never officiated regularly in a church where I had to have my back to the Tabernacle. Sometimes, as at S Thomas's and in my un-reordered very-moderate C of E churches in Devon, I have faced East. Sometimes, as at Lancing, I have regularly for decades celebrated versus populum but (Lancing Chapel is 'cathedral' in scale and in ordering) with the Tabernacle in a separate Blessed Sacrament Chapel. The usual modern set-up seems to me to teach - thoroughly effectively - the liturgical theology of the 1970s. For those of us who share Papa Ratzinger's critical evaluation of 1970s assumptions, this set-up cannot fail to be to some degree unhelpful. Of course one can worship in such a place ... indeed, one has little choice but to do so; but one is worshipping against the grain of the whole architectural arrangement - unhelped rather than helped by it.
This arrangement represents the apotheosis of that closed-circle liturgical culture, criticised by Benedict XVI, in which the Eucharist is as it were generated in the middle of a gathered community which ritually seems to exclude what is outside that circle. It is, in my fallible judgement, very much worse than versus- populum-without-the-Tabernacle because, in our modern arrangement, the Tabernacle of the Lord's sacramental presence is itself explicitly relegated by the geometry to outside the enclosed and exclusive ritual circle. I hesitate to appear to advocate the removal of the Tabernacle from the focal point of a church ... but, well, recall what happened at old-style Pontifical High Masses. Because the rigmarole of showing proper respect to a prelate was instinctively felt to be inconsistent with the sort of respect one should display to the Sacrament Reserved, the Tabernacle was left empty for the pontifical celebration. If the place of Reservation is at the focal point of the sanctuary, its treatment in the fashionable liturgy of the 1970s seems to me profoundly questionable.
There is a history of apprehension about too 'localised' an understanding of sacramental presence. I am not, of course, entering into that game. My point is that signs teach; the arrangement of churches is a complex of signs which are not meaningless - otherwise the liturgists of the 1970s would not have gone to the trouble to make all the changes they did make. And those changes increasingly seem to this one very fallible commentator to be difficult to reconcile with the decencies of orthodoxy.
The OF itself in no way exclusively mandates this culture; and still less did the Council. In my recollection, it is only a few years since an Irish bishop who was (still) trying to re-order his Cathedral (a famous landmark with a distinguished architectural history), claimed that he was obliged to do so by Vatican II. Happily, he was forced to take his arguments to a planning enquiry where his ... er ... inaccuracy ... was exposed. Places like Brompton demonstrate that it is not impossible to 'stage' decent OF worship, and to avoid vandalising a building which was lovingly - and expensively - constructed to enhance a particular liturgical culture. Places like Westminster Cathedral demonstrate ... under the influence of Cardinal Nichols ... how Decent things can be made if the arrangements of the 1970s are intelligently but radically reconsidered.
I am unfamiliar with this ethos; I have never officiated regularly in a church where I had to have my back to the Tabernacle. Sometimes, as at S Thomas's and in my un-reordered very-moderate C of E churches in Devon, I have faced East. Sometimes, as at Lancing, I have regularly for decades celebrated versus populum but (Lancing Chapel is 'cathedral' in scale and in ordering) with the Tabernacle in a separate Blessed Sacrament Chapel. The usual modern set-up seems to me to teach - thoroughly effectively - the liturgical theology of the 1970s. For those of us who share Papa Ratzinger's critical evaluation of 1970s assumptions, this set-up cannot fail to be to some degree unhelpful. Of course one can worship in such a place ... indeed, one has little choice but to do so; but one is worshipping against the grain of the whole architectural arrangement - unhelped rather than helped by it.
This arrangement represents the apotheosis of that closed-circle liturgical culture, criticised by Benedict XVI, in which the Eucharist is as it were generated in the middle of a gathered community which ritually seems to exclude what is outside that circle. It is, in my fallible judgement, very much worse than versus- populum-without-the-Tabernacle because, in our modern arrangement, the Tabernacle of the Lord's sacramental presence is itself explicitly relegated by the geometry to outside the enclosed and exclusive ritual circle. I hesitate to appear to advocate the removal of the Tabernacle from the focal point of a church ... but, well, recall what happened at old-style Pontifical High Masses. Because the rigmarole of showing proper respect to a prelate was instinctively felt to be inconsistent with the sort of respect one should display to the Sacrament Reserved, the Tabernacle was left empty for the pontifical celebration. If the place of Reservation is at the focal point of the sanctuary, its treatment in the fashionable liturgy of the 1970s seems to me profoundly questionable.
There is a history of apprehension about too 'localised' an understanding of sacramental presence. I am not, of course, entering into that game. My point is that signs teach; the arrangement of churches is a complex of signs which are not meaningless - otherwise the liturgists of the 1970s would not have gone to the trouble to make all the changes they did make. And those changes increasingly seem to this one very fallible commentator to be difficult to reconcile with the decencies of orthodoxy.
The OF itself in no way exclusively mandates this culture; and still less did the Council. In my recollection, it is only a few years since an Irish bishop who was (still) trying to re-order his Cathedral (a famous landmark with a distinguished architectural history), claimed that he was obliged to do so by Vatican II. Happily, he was forced to take his arguments to a planning enquiry where his ... er ... inaccuracy ... was exposed. Places like Brompton demonstrate that it is not impossible to 'stage' decent OF worship, and to avoid vandalising a building which was lovingly - and expensively - constructed to enhance a particular liturgical culture. Places like Westminster Cathedral demonstrate ... under the influence of Cardinal Nichols ... how Decent things can be made if the arrangements of the 1970s are intelligently but radically reconsidered.
27 April 2017
NOTICE: No Comments on this Blog.
I am taking ... again ... about a fortnight off from the computer. Daily I will, Deo volente, put a post on the blog but I will not be reading my emails, and that includes looking at comments submitted to the blog. So you can read me but not address me!!
Readers may wonder why I do not simply allow comments to pop up without bothering to moderate them, as I did when I started my first blog, Liturgical Notes. The reason is that it was made clear to me (not by my Ordinary) that clerical bloggers are to a degree considered responsible for the comments which appear on their blogs.
I am a simple soul, an increasingly frail, absent-minded and wool-gathering retired priest concerned to serve the Lord and his Church, to defend and explain to the best of my ability the Magisterium and the Liturgy; and I have no desire to create or endure hassle.
I would, by the way, appreciate it if friends tried not to fill up my email in-box during this imminent fortnight. It is a little overwhelming eventually to face several hundred emails all stacked up and waiting.
And I would recommend all readers to try the experience of not being open to the input which the Wonderful World daily offers us, whether by the Internet or the TV or the Wireless or the Daily Newspaper or the Telephone or even the Mails. Without all that, one experiences life just as it was experienced by the great majority of the members of the human race during the hundreds of generations preceding our own. The mind is so much more sensitive to actual real human interactions. And to the presence of the Lord in Holy Mass and Divine Office and Mental Prayer. And to the natural interstices of space and time. I do not even need to know about the Holy Father's Abdication the very moment it is announced! As it happens, I did not hear about Pope Benedict's Election until several days later. Before modern communications began, millions of Catholics probably had to wait for weeks before hearing that one pontiff had died and another had been elected. Did the delay matter?
Call it, if you like, the concept of a Secular Retreat.
(Although I am very attached to the Italian Lakes, there is no truth in the rumour that by Cardinal Nichols' kind invitation I shall be chairing this year's Spring Plenary of the CBCEW. Humility would incline me to decline such an invitation, anyway. I know the limitations to my man-management skills.)
Readers may wonder why I do not simply allow comments to pop up without bothering to moderate them, as I did when I started my first blog, Liturgical Notes. The reason is that it was made clear to me (not by my Ordinary) that clerical bloggers are to a degree considered responsible for the comments which appear on their blogs.
I am a simple soul, an increasingly frail, absent-minded and wool-gathering retired priest concerned to serve the Lord and his Church, to defend and explain to the best of my ability the Magisterium and the Liturgy; and I have no desire to create or endure hassle.
I would, by the way, appreciate it if friends tried not to fill up my email in-box during this imminent fortnight. It is a little overwhelming eventually to face several hundred emails all stacked up and waiting.
And I would recommend all readers to try the experience of not being open to the input which the Wonderful World daily offers us, whether by the Internet or the TV or the Wireless or the Daily Newspaper or the Telephone or even the Mails. Without all that, one experiences life just as it was experienced by the great majority of the members of the human race during the hundreds of generations preceding our own. The mind is so much more sensitive to actual real human interactions. And to the presence of the Lord in Holy Mass and Divine Office and Mental Prayer. And to the natural interstices of space and time. I do not even need to know about the Holy Father's Abdication the very moment it is announced! As it happens, I did not hear about Pope Benedict's Election until several days later. Before modern communications began, millions of Catholics probably had to wait for weeks before hearing that one pontiff had died and another had been elected. Did the delay matter?
Call it, if you like, the concept of a Secular Retreat.
(Although I am very attached to the Italian Lakes, there is no truth in the rumour that by Cardinal Nichols' kind invitation I shall be chairing this year's Spring Plenary of the CBCEW. Humility would incline me to decline such an invitation, anyway. I know the limitations to my man-management skills.)
24 April 2017
Saint Augustine and Limbo
A Colloquium on Limbo? A visit to the restored Pugin Shrine of S Augustine of Canterbury? 30 June to 1 July? £150 but only £75 for Seminarians, because they are already in a type of Limbo.
Try googling the Dialogos Institute.
Go on, have a look
Try googling the Dialogos Institute.
Go on, have a look
23 April 2017
The child-like simplicity of some Natural Scientists (1)
I once read an article in New Scientist, exulting (as I must confess I also do) in then-recent Pluto fly-past, which enquired 'where we go to next'. The author replied to his own question by suggesting a visit to Alpha Centauri, our nearest neighbouring star, which is a mere four light-years away. Acknowledging that a space-craft constructed in accordance with our current technology would take a rather long time to get there, he nevertheless enthusiastically urged such a project on the grounds that it would be tremendously exciting for our descendants, in 100,000 years, to be getting the pictures (and other data) back.
I think this sort of sweet and child-like simplicity really marks out the instinctive differences between those like me, bred to cynicism and scepticism in the Humanities, and what I will call the naive journalism-end of Science writing. (I put it like this because, during my teaching career, I had colleagues, published scientists, who were men and women of very broad interests and formidable intelligence, whom I have no desire to patronise or insult.) For me, litteris humanioribus nutritus, nothing is more obvious than that the interests and assumptions and intellectual fashions of our species vary hugely from year to year, generation to generation, century to century, millennium to millennium. My own immensely shallow forays into intellectual history have included the 1930s, the 1840s, the 1630s, the 1490s, the Classical Roman World, the Classical Greek World ... in other words, brief, superficial forays into brief periods spread over a little more than two thousand years. Many readers will recall that a very able mind, Mgr Ronald Knox, described with erudition and brilliance the mutating preoccupations in a fictional Oxford Senior Common Room by eaves-dropping its after-dinner conversations at fifty year intervals from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries (Let Dons Delight).
Of course, I may be wrong, and I grant you the liberty to be quite certain that I am. But I have to say that nothing strikes me as more totally, mind-blowingly, absurdly improbable than the idea that, in 100,000 years, our human descendants, assuming that we have any, will be possessed of interests even remotely similar to those of early twenty-first century astronomers.
Anyone who can believe that (I feel inclined to say) will believe anything.
I think this sort of sweet and child-like simplicity really marks out the instinctive differences between those like me, bred to cynicism and scepticism in the Humanities, and what I will call the naive journalism-end of Science writing. (I put it like this because, during my teaching career, I had colleagues, published scientists, who were men and women of very broad interests and formidable intelligence, whom I have no desire to patronise or insult.) For me, litteris humanioribus nutritus, nothing is more obvious than that the interests and assumptions and intellectual fashions of our species vary hugely from year to year, generation to generation, century to century, millennium to millennium. My own immensely shallow forays into intellectual history have included the 1930s, the 1840s, the 1630s, the 1490s, the Classical Roman World, the Classical Greek World ... in other words, brief, superficial forays into brief periods spread over a little more than two thousand years. Many readers will recall that a very able mind, Mgr Ronald Knox, described with erudition and brilliance the mutating preoccupations in a fictional Oxford Senior Common Room by eaves-dropping its after-dinner conversations at fifty year intervals from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries (Let Dons Delight).
Of course, I may be wrong, and I grant you the liberty to be quite certain that I am. But I have to say that nothing strikes me as more totally, mind-blowingly, absurdly improbable than the idea that, in 100,000 years, our human descendants, assuming that we have any, will be possessed of interests even remotely similar to those of early twenty-first century astronomers.
Anyone who can believe that (I feel inclined to say) will believe anything.
22 April 2017
"Archbishop Becciu"?
So an English gentleman, Fra Matthew Festing, has been ordered by some Italian archbishop called Becciu not to set foot in Rome. Such is the degree of petty tyranny to which Christ's Church Militant has now descended.
Did I say 'archbishop'? This Becciu has never discharged a pastoral role as a real Bishop, let alone an 'arch'bishop. He is styled 'Archbishop' because of a nasty, corrupt practice set in place by S John XXIII, of spraying episcopacy over pen-pushing bureaucrats.
I complained about this twice in 2014. Interestingly, Cardinal Kasper made exactly the same point around the same time. In this matter, he is absolutely right. This is a massive abuse calling for reform, but still unreformed even in an allegedly reforming pontificate.
I wonder what conclusions we should draw from the spectacle of a Pope whose rhetoric is about Shepherds Smelling of Sheep, and about a Church Which gets Its Hands Dirty, but who actually functions oppressively through 'archbishops' who smell of nothing so much as the Computer.
Here is one of the pieces I originally wrote in 2014.
It is nice to know that Important People in Rome read my blog so carefully and take it so seriously. Cardinal Walter Kasper, I gather, agrees with me that: it is an abuse to thrust episcopacy upon curial bureaucrats as a sort of 'honour'. Kasper points out that even the great and admirable Cardinal Ottaviani, that hugely wonderful apotheosis of doctrinal rigour combined with Traditional peasant Catholicism [that bit's my description, not Kasper's], was not a bishop until S John XXIII, in accordance with his deplorable new policy, forced him to become one. Indeed, back even in the days of the derided 'Renaissance Prince' papacy, this was not thought necessary. (Blessed John Henry Newman was a cardinal but never a bishop.) Why can't the present Holy Father see the logic of my and Kasper's point? To thrust the charism of a Successor of the Apostles upon someone who is not going to be using that sacramental status in et cum Ecclesia, as the Shepherd of a Particular Church with its presbyterium, diakonia, and laos, but is merely going to have a 'titular' see in some long-forgotten place, is an abuse of the Sacraments. It is to use the Sacraments themselves merely to augment a bureaucrat's dignity and vanity ... as well as Signor Gammarelli's profits! Of course, there are bishops whose ministry of episkope is unusual but is pastorally episcopal (one thinks of Archbishop Pozzo, in the Ecclesia Dei Commission), but I do not think that this is typical of curial roles.
Neither Walter Kasper nor I are attacking the present Pope individually in saying this. Pope Benedict XVI and S John Paul II used episcopal Consecration in precisely the way we are criticising. In my view, it would show Pope Francis in a very good light if he took the opportunity of his reform of the structures of the Curia to introduce this reform as part of the package. He's removed all the silly stuff about curial prebyters getting automatically to call themselves Monsignore ... good ... but the abuse of the Apostolic Ministry carries on, and is a far worse abuse. [Frankly, the speed with which Bergoglio made Tucho Fernandez an archbishop, in little more than hours after becoming pope, calls into question his credentials as a 'reformer'.]
Let curial Cardinal Presbyters be and remain Cardinal Presbyters! (And wear, daily, a galero, if they want to!) But what is worst is that secretaries of dicasteries are made archbishops. Is the Holy Father not aware that, in the local churches throughout the world, 'Archbishop' is a title of some distinction?
Sometimes it is suggested that such 'rank' is necessary so that the curial chappy concerned can 'outrank' Bishops from dioceses (rather as the Officer commanding a naval base used to be made the 'Harbour Admiral' so that he could outrank pushy visiting ships' Captains).
But does the Body of Christ need this infantile preoccupation with rank?
Did I say 'archbishop'? This Becciu has never discharged a pastoral role as a real Bishop, let alone an 'arch'bishop. He is styled 'Archbishop' because of a nasty, corrupt practice set in place by S John XXIII, of spraying episcopacy over pen-pushing bureaucrats.
I complained about this twice in 2014. Interestingly, Cardinal Kasper made exactly the same point around the same time. In this matter, he is absolutely right. This is a massive abuse calling for reform, but still unreformed even in an allegedly reforming pontificate.
I wonder what conclusions we should draw from the spectacle of a Pope whose rhetoric is about Shepherds Smelling of Sheep, and about a Church Which gets Its Hands Dirty, but who actually functions oppressively through 'archbishops' who smell of nothing so much as the Computer.
Here is one of the pieces I originally wrote in 2014.
It is nice to know that Important People in Rome read my blog so carefully and take it so seriously. Cardinal Walter Kasper, I gather, agrees with me that: it is an abuse to thrust episcopacy upon curial bureaucrats as a sort of 'honour'. Kasper points out that even the great and admirable Cardinal Ottaviani, that hugely wonderful apotheosis of doctrinal rigour combined with Traditional peasant Catholicism [that bit's my description, not Kasper's], was not a bishop until S John XXIII, in accordance with his deplorable new policy, forced him to become one. Indeed, back even in the days of the derided 'Renaissance Prince' papacy, this was not thought necessary. (Blessed John Henry Newman was a cardinal but never a bishop.) Why can't the present Holy Father see the logic of my and Kasper's point? To thrust the charism of a Successor of the Apostles upon someone who is not going to be using that sacramental status in et cum Ecclesia, as the Shepherd of a Particular Church with its presbyterium, diakonia, and laos, but is merely going to have a 'titular' see in some long-forgotten place, is an abuse of the Sacraments. It is to use the Sacraments themselves merely to augment a bureaucrat's dignity and vanity ... as well as Signor Gammarelli's profits! Of course, there are bishops whose ministry of episkope is unusual but is pastorally episcopal (one thinks of Archbishop Pozzo, in the Ecclesia Dei Commission), but I do not think that this is typical of curial roles.
Neither Walter Kasper nor I are attacking the present Pope individually in saying this. Pope Benedict XVI and S John Paul II used episcopal Consecration in precisely the way we are criticising. In my view, it would show Pope Francis in a very good light if he took the opportunity of his reform of the structures of the Curia to introduce this reform as part of the package. He's removed all the silly stuff about curial prebyters getting automatically to call themselves Monsignore ... good ... but the abuse of the Apostolic Ministry carries on, and is a far worse abuse. [Frankly, the speed with which Bergoglio made Tucho Fernandez an archbishop, in little more than hours after becoming pope, calls into question his credentials as a 'reformer'.]
Let curial Cardinal Presbyters be and remain Cardinal Presbyters! (And wear, daily, a galero, if they want to!) But what is worst is that secretaries of dicasteries are made archbishops. Is the Holy Father not aware that, in the local churches throughout the world, 'Archbishop' is a title of some distinction?
Sometimes it is suggested that such 'rank' is necessary so that the curial chappy concerned can 'outrank' Bishops from dioceses (rather as the Officer commanding a naval base used to be made the 'Harbour Admiral' so that he could outrank pushy visiting ships' Captains).
But does the Body of Christ need this infantile preoccupation with rank?
20 April 2017
William Cardinal Allen ...
... is one of my favourite Cardinals. What a shame the Armada, perhaps the greatest Ecumenical venture ever planned, was unsuccessful! What a loss to the Ecclesia Cantuariensis!
In Westminster Cathedral, a large church in a Byzantine-derived style near Victoria Station, there are big brassy brass lists, dating from the pontificate of Cardinal Vaughan, erected to demonstrate the links of communio between successive Roman Pontiffs and the heads of the Catholic Church in England. (I have written about them before; my suspicion is that they are intended as an attempted counter-blast to Anglican claims of linear succession from S Augustine's quite successful little Church Plant from the Caelian Hill.)
What I want to know is: Why is Cardinal Allen not on that list?
Was he not appointed Head of the English Mission on September 18 1591 by Gregory XIV (an admirable pope who was a friend of S Philip Neri and of S Charles Borromeo, perpetuator of our own dear Cardinal Pole's Counter-Reformation).
What has the Ecclesia Westmonasteriensis got against William Allen? Or against Gregory XIV?
Was Vaughan in Lord Burley's pay?
A toast to the Glorious Memories of Popes Gregory XIV, Benedict XIV, and Clement XIV! And of William Cardinal Allen!!
In Westminster Cathedral, a large church in a Byzantine-derived style near Victoria Station, there are big brassy brass lists, dating from the pontificate of Cardinal Vaughan, erected to demonstrate the links of communio between successive Roman Pontiffs and the heads of the Catholic Church in England. (I have written about them before; my suspicion is that they are intended as an attempted counter-blast to Anglican claims of linear succession from S Augustine's quite successful little Church Plant from the Caelian Hill.)
What I want to know is: Why is Cardinal Allen not on that list?
Was he not appointed Head of the English Mission on September 18 1591 by Gregory XIV (an admirable pope who was a friend of S Philip Neri and of S Charles Borromeo, perpetuator of our own dear Cardinal Pole's Counter-Reformation).
What has the Ecclesia Westmonasteriensis got against William Allen? Or against Gregory XIV?
Was Vaughan in Lord Burley's pay?
A toast to the Glorious Memories of Popes Gregory XIV, Benedict XIV, and Clement XIV! And of William Cardinal Allen!!
19 April 2017
"In communion with the Pope"
Some bishop somewhere out there in foreigner-land has suspended a priest who criticised Pope Bergoglio in a sermon.
Personally, I think it is bad form to use a sermon to criticise directly any other Catholic cleric ... including the Pope. It is not what sermons are for.
But I take great exception to the wording which this bishop is reported to have used. And I mention it because it is a linguistic usage I have come across elsewhere during this increasingly illiberal pontificate.
Preaching should serve, said the bishop, "meditation of the readings of the day, and certainly not to give personal judgements, especially if they were not in communion with the Pope ... It is certain that priestly ministry in the Catholic Church presupposes communion with the Holy Father [sic all the syntax]".
Being in Communion with the Pope, or (since baptised non-Catholics may be said to be in partial communion) being in full Communion with the Pope is, surely, a juridical category whch implies that one has not been separated from the Communion of the Catholic Church by some formal judgement or by committing a canonical crime which, according to Canon Law, carries with it a sentence of excommunication latae sententiae.
Simply to criticise the Pope (however improperly or unwisely) surely does not incur such a sentence. Or, if it does, which Canon says so? And which Canon says that a cleric so acting incurs suspension either latae or ferendae sententiae?
If criticising the Pope automatically puts one out of communion with Christ's Body the Church, then there must be quite a lot of people who criticised Pope Benedict and who are still wandering around with an invisible but very real excommunication latae sententiae dangling round their necks and clashing at embarrassing moments with their pectoral crosses.
Personally, I think it is bad form to use a sermon to criticise directly any other Catholic cleric ... including the Pope. It is not what sermons are for.
But I take great exception to the wording which this bishop is reported to have used. And I mention it because it is a linguistic usage I have come across elsewhere during this increasingly illiberal pontificate.
Preaching should serve, said the bishop, "meditation of the readings of the day, and certainly not to give personal judgements, especially if they were not in communion with the Pope ... It is certain that priestly ministry in the Catholic Church presupposes communion with the Holy Father [sic all the syntax]".
Being in Communion with the Pope, or (since baptised non-Catholics may be said to be in partial communion) being in full Communion with the Pope is, surely, a juridical category whch implies that one has not been separated from the Communion of the Catholic Church by some formal judgement or by committing a canonical crime which, according to Canon Law, carries with it a sentence of excommunication latae sententiae.
Simply to criticise the Pope (however improperly or unwisely) surely does not incur such a sentence. Or, if it does, which Canon says so? And which Canon says that a cleric so acting incurs suspension either latae or ferendae sententiae?
If criticising the Pope automatically puts one out of communion with Christ's Body the Church, then there must be quite a lot of people who criticised Pope Benedict and who are still wandering around with an invisible but very real excommunication latae sententiae dangling round their necks and clashing at embarrassing moments with their pectoral crosses.
18 April 2017
Canon Brian Brindley ...
... wrote a nice piece on S Mary's Bourne Street ... or, as we called it once, Graham ['Grahm'] Street. My last visiting preachment as an Anglican was to this lovely 'Travers' building; the Marylebone Ordinariate Group, in aeternum floreat, represents in my mind the Faithful Remnant of that great old tradition, with its 'Mascall' connections.
Brindley explained that the key to understanding this Church was that it was intended to look like a Catholic Church which had gently and organically evolved over the centuries. He went on:
" ... in the Church of England, in all circles, low church and moderate as well as high church, the liturgical initiative is seen to lie with the Roman Church, and the Roman Church on the continent of Europe in particular. All the gimmicks which we see accepted without demur in the most official Anglican circles within the Church of England today - evening Mass, 'concelebration', Mass facing the people, 'primitive' vestments - all of them came to us direct from the Roman Church. Even in the matter of liturgy 'understanded of the people', where the Church of England has had a few centuries' start, it must be confessed that it has lagged behind the Romans. Church people who travel on the continent now find a very different external manifestation of Catholic continuity from that which delighted Maurice Child and Ronald Knox in the days before the Great War - tabernacles empty, high altars stripped and deserted, statues removed, votive-stands gone, high mass abandoned, plainsong and polyphony alike cast out in favour of vernacular hymns and trivial melodies; and, everywhere, communion-tables strictly in accordance with Cranmer's rubrics of 1552, in use at Mass. A Belgian or a Spanish visitor, wandering by chance into St Mary's, might be forgiven for thinking that he had strayed into some forgotten land of liturgical conservatism."
Father got some things wrong:
(1) Evening Mass was invented by Evangelicals, probably (has anybody researched this?) as an attempt to subvert Tractarian emphasis on Fasting Communion; and
(2) the 1552 BCP rubrics ordered the priest to stand at the North, or left, side of the Table. Thus he would be sideways-on to the people, who would have a good view of his right ear but would not be required to be confronted by his grinning face ... as the custom is in most Novus Ordo Churches. And
(3) are things quite as bad now?
Thanks to the erudite Dr Cotton for this.
Brindley explained that the key to understanding this Church was that it was intended to look like a Catholic Church which had gently and organically evolved over the centuries. He went on:
" ... in the Church of England, in all circles, low church and moderate as well as high church, the liturgical initiative is seen to lie with the Roman Church, and the Roman Church on the continent of Europe in particular. All the gimmicks which we see accepted without demur in the most official Anglican circles within the Church of England today - evening Mass, 'concelebration', Mass facing the people, 'primitive' vestments - all of them came to us direct from the Roman Church. Even in the matter of liturgy 'understanded of the people', where the Church of England has had a few centuries' start, it must be confessed that it has lagged behind the Romans. Church people who travel on the continent now find a very different external manifestation of Catholic continuity from that which delighted Maurice Child and Ronald Knox in the days before the Great War - tabernacles empty, high altars stripped and deserted, statues removed, votive-stands gone, high mass abandoned, plainsong and polyphony alike cast out in favour of vernacular hymns and trivial melodies; and, everywhere, communion-tables strictly in accordance with Cranmer's rubrics of 1552, in use at Mass. A Belgian or a Spanish visitor, wandering by chance into St Mary's, might be forgiven for thinking that he had strayed into some forgotten land of liturgical conservatism."
Father got some things wrong:
(1) Evening Mass was invented by Evangelicals, probably (has anybody researched this?) as an attempt to subvert Tractarian emphasis on Fasting Communion; and
(2) the 1552 BCP rubrics ordered the priest to stand at the North, or left, side of the Table. Thus he would be sideways-on to the people, who would have a good view of his right ear but would not be required to be confronted by his grinning face ... as the custom is in most Novus Ordo Churches. And
(3) are things quite as bad now?
Thanks to the erudite Dr Cotton for this.
17 April 2017
Fr Thurston again
Fr Altiere has kindly told me that Fr Thurston's book Lent and Holy Week can be read integrally online:
jhttps://archive.org/details/lentandholyweek00thuruoft
Father adds that Ft T also has an interesting article on the O Antyoiphons and, among other things, a study of the English Coronation Service, probably written at the time of the Coronation of George V.
jhttps://archive.org/details/lentandholyweek00thuruoft
Father adds that Ft T also has an interesting article on the O Antyoiphons and, among other things, a study of the English Coronation Service, probably written at the time of the Coronation of George V.
16 April 2017
RISUS PASCHALIS
A courtier once asked Benedict XIV, Prospero Lambertini, whether he had noticed the large cross being worn suspended from a necklace by a certain well-endowed marchesa.
The enquiry was a cheeky one because the lady was displaying her emerald cross just above a very plunging neckline.
"Yes", replied the Sovereign Pontiff. "And I've also noticed the hill of Calvary upon which it is set up".
The enquiry was a cheeky one because the lady was displaying her emerald cross just above a very plunging neckline.
"Yes", replied the Sovereign Pontiff. "And I've also noticed the hill of Calvary upon which it is set up".
Easter Morning
In medieval England, Mattins on Easter morning, which some modern forms of the Office assure us we can leave unsaid if we have been at the Vigil, was a centrally important corporate part of the life of the community, for which parish magnates were proud to lay out money to provide the resources. The Liturgy, of course, which we call the Vigil, had happened earlier on Holy Saturday; now, early on the Sunday morning before Mattins began, the Host and Crucifix (which on Good Friday had been 'buried' in the 'Easter Sepulchre') were taken in procession, the former to the High Altar, the latter to a side altar. Antiphons were sung; the versicle and response
V The Lord hath risen from the grave
R Who hung for us upon the Cross.
were followed by a collect. Similar services took place in many parts of Europe, some even surviving to our own time. So culturally important was it that Archbishop Cranmer, in his First English Prayer Book, felt obliged to leave a shadow of it still in existence (vide inferius).
Around 1000ish, on Easter morning, the Roman Pontiff entered his Cathedral and opened the silver doors which gave access to the ancient Resurrection Ikon. He kissed the Lord's feet three times and then chanted the same versicle, to which the response was given. He then venerated the Cross, and his household did the same. The Pope then gave the Peace to each of them, with the words
V The Lord hath risen indeed; to which each replied
R And hath appeared unto Simon.
In recent years, a form of this rite, with the same verses (although no longer in V and R form) being used, has been restored as a preliminary to Easter morning Mass at S Peter's. It is now seen as an expression of the tradition that the Lord appeared either first or most significantly (Luke 24:34; I Corinthians 15:5) to S Peter; so that when the Pontiff, in whom Peter lives and witnesses, venerates the ikon, that Meeting is re-enacted.
Back to England, Sarum, and Archbishop Cranmer: when translating the Medieval texts, he replaced the first versicle and response with
V Show forth to all nations the glory of God.
R And among all people his wonderful works.
This strikes me as motivated by a desire to eliminate the idea of a Mystery experienced and presently relived, and its replacement by the scaled-down notion of remembering and proclaiming his past wonders. The poor old gentleman just could not bear the thought that, for the devout common peasantry of England and in objective reality, the Lord in His most August Sacrament had been in the Sepulchre in the North Wall of the Chancel of their Church.
I don't think Thomas Cranmer and Dom Odo Casels would have found much upon which to agree.
V The Lord hath risen from the grave
R Who hung for us upon the Cross.
were followed by a collect. Similar services took place in many parts of Europe, some even surviving to our own time. So culturally important was it that Archbishop Cranmer, in his First English Prayer Book, felt obliged to leave a shadow of it still in existence (vide inferius).
Around 1000ish, on Easter morning, the Roman Pontiff entered his Cathedral and opened the silver doors which gave access to the ancient Resurrection Ikon. He kissed the Lord's feet three times and then chanted the same versicle, to which the response was given. He then venerated the Cross, and his household did the same. The Pope then gave the Peace to each of them, with the words
V The Lord hath risen indeed; to which each replied
R And hath appeared unto Simon.
In recent years, a form of this rite, with the same verses (although no longer in V and R form) being used, has been restored as a preliminary to Easter morning Mass at S Peter's. It is now seen as an expression of the tradition that the Lord appeared either first or most significantly (Luke 24:34; I Corinthians 15:5) to S Peter; so that when the Pontiff, in whom Peter lives and witnesses, venerates the ikon, that Meeting is re-enacted.
Back to England, Sarum, and Archbishop Cranmer: when translating the Medieval texts, he replaced the first versicle and response with
V Show forth to all nations the glory of God.
R And among all people his wonderful works.
This strikes me as motivated by a desire to eliminate the idea of a Mystery experienced and presently relived, and its replacement by the scaled-down notion of remembering and proclaiming his past wonders. The poor old gentleman just could not bear the thought that, for the devout common peasantry of England and in objective reality, the Lord in His most August Sacrament had been in the Sepulchre in the North Wall of the Chancel of their Church.
I don't think Thomas Cranmer and Dom Odo Casels would have found much upon which to agree.
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