Right. So, just suppose that PF, faced with increasing calls for his resignation, resigns. What sort of successor do you think a divided College of Cardinals might elect? My guess is that they might elect someone whom the majority thought would at least not increase the divisions in the Church. A Pope whose aim would be, not to reverse the acts of PF, but somehow to draw a divided and sorely wounded Church together again. This would be a timorous but not ignoble aspiration.
But suppose the next Conclave were to elect a vigously orthodox and unambiguously Catholic pope ... let's call him Leo XIV. Suppose, as some commenters on this blog have liked to imagine, this pope were in some way to cancel certain elements of the 'Magisterium' of PF ... or even its entirety. Good. A new start. Yes?
But ... where would that leave us?
It would leave us with a fatally compromised and weakened Magisterium.
Because if Leo XIV can scrub out the Magisterium of Francis I, it is not easy to see upon what grounds the subsequent pope Francis II can be told that he is acting ultra vires if he tries to scrub out the Magisterium of Leo XIV.
It seems to me that by trying to scrub out the Magisterium of S John Paul and of Benedict XVI, PF has created a logical conundrum to which it is not easy to see the answer. He has damaged the ability of any pope, 'liberal' or 'traditional', ever again to use effectively the Petrine Ministry.
The only 'Magisterium' which could 'trump' that of any Roman Pontiff would be that of a Pope sitting in and with an Ecumenical Council. But who wants to go down that path? The conventional assumption that doctrinal definitions of such a Council must rest upon moral unanimity would probably mean that, even in merely prectical terms, such a Council might not deliver its expectations.
Through his wilful behavour, PF has created the inevitability of an eventual (however long it may take) schism, which will be so much the more disastrous than the last great schism of the Latin Church because it will not merely be jurisdictional, but will involve large and fundamental doctrinal elements of discord.
It is likely to take generations before the full effects of the present pontificate are finally visible.
31 August 2018
30 August 2018
Celibacy
Inevitably, the idea is being spread around that the Latin Church's rule of Celibacy might have something to do with the horror of the sexual abuse of children by clerics in Major Orders.
I think it is extremely important that Catholics approach this matter with a clear, logical, and informed mind.
By informed, I mean, in plain terms, Look at the Church of England before you leap to 'obvious' but erroneous conclusions.
The dirty washing of that ecclesial body has, only recently, been in full view before the Independant Enquiry currently going on in this country. It is a story every bit as unsavoury as anything the Catholic Church has to offer.
In the Church of England married men are ordained and the clergy are allowed to marry. This has done nothing to prevent extensive abuse, and cover-ups, at the highest levels. The most notorious abuser is a former diocesan bishop, charismatic founder of a religious order, who was once, when he was riding high, described on Wikipedia as the holiest and wisest man in the Church of England. He was the darling of the British Establishment. He has recently emerged from prison. Two metropolitan archbishops, Primates of England, were removed from public ministry by their successors for doing cover-ups. (Yes, Canterbury and York make up 100% of the Metropolitan Primates of the C of E.. Carey covered up for Ball, and Hope protected a former Dean of Manchester).
You may argue that the clerics concerned were unmarried and belonged to the Anglo-Catholic 'wing' of the C of E, so that they were pretty well as unwholesome as real papists. But you would be wholly wrong on both counts. Archbishop Carey comes from an extremely Evangelical stable, and a convicted Rural Dean (=Vicar Forane) is another evangelical. And, as for marriage as a guarantee of sexual probity, well, yet another of the convicted clergy (I know him) is a married man with children. In any case, would anybody argue that only married men should be ordained?
Don't be naive.
I am not making an attack on Anglicanism. I happen to think that the Anglican tradition of a largely married parochial clergy is a gift of God which we should all cherish.
But the simplistic bilge floating across the oceans from Australia and America, linking celibacy with abuse, is unevidenced nonsense.
Worse, it is simply another ebullition of the sick centuries-old prejudice in WASP culture against the Catholic Church and, especially, against her clergy.
I think it is extremely important that Catholics approach this matter with a clear, logical, and informed mind.
By informed, I mean, in plain terms, Look at the Church of England before you leap to 'obvious' but erroneous conclusions.
The dirty washing of that ecclesial body has, only recently, been in full view before the Independant Enquiry currently going on in this country. It is a story every bit as unsavoury as anything the Catholic Church has to offer.
In the Church of England married men are ordained and the clergy are allowed to marry. This has done nothing to prevent extensive abuse, and cover-ups, at the highest levels. The most notorious abuser is a former diocesan bishop, charismatic founder of a religious order, who was once, when he was riding high, described on Wikipedia as the holiest and wisest man in the Church of England. He was the darling of the British Establishment. He has recently emerged from prison. Two metropolitan archbishops, Primates of England, were removed from public ministry by their successors for doing cover-ups. (Yes, Canterbury and York make up 100% of the Metropolitan Primates of the C of E.. Carey covered up for Ball, and Hope protected a former Dean of Manchester).
You may argue that the clerics concerned were unmarried and belonged to the Anglo-Catholic 'wing' of the C of E, so that they were pretty well as unwholesome as real papists. But you would be wholly wrong on both counts. Archbishop Carey comes from an extremely Evangelical stable, and a convicted Rural Dean (=Vicar Forane) is another evangelical. And, as for marriage as a guarantee of sexual probity, well, yet another of the convicted clergy (I know him) is a married man with children. In any case, would anybody argue that only married men should be ordained?
Don't be naive.
I am not making an attack on Anglicanism. I happen to think that the Anglican tradition of a largely married parochial clergy is a gift of God which we should all cherish.
But the simplistic bilge floating across the oceans from Australia and America, linking celibacy with abuse, is unevidenced nonsense.
Worse, it is simply another ebullition of the sick centuries-old prejudice in WASP culture against the Catholic Church and, especially, against her clergy.
29 August 2018
Query
Does anybody know whether SS John XXIII and John Paul II have been placed, by the competent authorities of the sui iuris Oriental Churches, onto the Calendars of those Churches?
(Juridical information, please, not loud but unsupported opinions.)
(Juridical information, please, not loud but unsupported opinions.)
EPISCOPAL CONSECRATION: a Tale of Two Meddlers
Towards the end of the Middle Ages, the rite of Episcopal Consecration in the Western Church had reached a fair degree of complexity. At its heart lay the ancient Consecratory Prayer of the Roman Church. Into this had been interpolated a paragraph from the Missale Francorum. Where in all this was the 'form' of the Sacrament, essential according to the scholastic analysis of sacramental efficacy, to accompany the 'matter', the Imposition of Hands?
In a later century Pope Pius XII was to lay down that one particular sentence within the original Roman Prayer was the the irreducible minimum of a 'form'. The sentence he chose was itself by no means problem-free. It does not actually mention episcopacy, and at its heart is a couple of textual cruces. It does not point with any clarity to what is essential in Episcopacy, as is shown by the fact that in the old Spanish Mozarabic Rite this same sentence appears at the centre of the rite of ordination to the presbyterate.
But in any case, rubricists of the Medieval and Counter-Reformation periods did not look to sentences in nice old prayers for Sacramental 'form'. They liked an 'imperative' form ('Receive ...') or a 'declarative' ('I baptise/absolve ...'); forms which were uttered simultaneously with the 'matter' and which had entered liturgy rather late. (If you don't know the form by which, in the early Roman Sacramentaries, Baptism was conferred, find out. You will get quite a surprise.) So the sentence Accipe Spiritum Sanctum [Receive the Holy Spirit], said as the Consecrators imposed hands on the candidate, became a very popular candidate; indeed, although by the end of the Middle Ages it had not even secured admission to all Pontificals [in England, Exeter had it but the Sarum rubrics do not mention it, although it had probably become customary] by the nineteenth century the consensus of theologians identified the same words in the then current Pontificale Romanum as the 'form' of Episcopal Consecration.
I know what you're wondering. Faced with this complexity and these questions, what deft, sensitive, 'organic' simplifications did Bugnini (the committee was actually chaired by Dom Bernard Botte) perform? Here is the answer: he dumped into his trash-can all three of the formulae I have mentioned; the authentic Old Roman Prayer (which contained the words Pius XII had declared to be the 'form'), the possibly French interpolation, and the medieval Imperative formula (which had previously been regarded as the 'form'). Into the place of all three he shipped a prayer of dubious ('Hippolytan'? No!!!) origin which had been used in the distant Christian East by groups out of communion with Rome whose Chalcedonian orthodoxy was questionable.
Yes, I thought that would make you jump out of your seat.
In a later century Pope Pius XII was to lay down that one particular sentence within the original Roman Prayer was the the irreducible minimum of a 'form'. The sentence he chose was itself by no means problem-free. It does not actually mention episcopacy, and at its heart is a couple of textual cruces. It does not point with any clarity to what is essential in Episcopacy, as is shown by the fact that in the old Spanish Mozarabic Rite this same sentence appears at the centre of the rite of ordination to the presbyterate.
But in any case, rubricists of the Medieval and Counter-Reformation periods did not look to sentences in nice old prayers for Sacramental 'form'. They liked an 'imperative' form ('Receive ...') or a 'declarative' ('I baptise/absolve ...'); forms which were uttered simultaneously with the 'matter' and which had entered liturgy rather late. (If you don't know the form by which, in the early Roman Sacramentaries, Baptism was conferred, find out. You will get quite a surprise.) So the sentence Accipe Spiritum Sanctum [Receive the Holy Spirit], said as the Consecrators imposed hands on the candidate, became a very popular candidate; indeed, although by the end of the Middle Ages it had not even secured admission to all Pontificals [in England, Exeter had it but the Sarum rubrics do not mention it, although it had probably become customary] by the nineteenth century the consensus of theologians identified the same words in the then current Pontificale Romanum as the 'form' of Episcopal Consecration.
I know what you're wondering. Faced with this complexity and these questions, what deft, sensitive, 'organic' simplifications did Bugnini (the committee was actually chaired by Dom Bernard Botte) perform? Here is the answer: he dumped into his trash-can all three of the formulae I have mentioned; the authentic Old Roman Prayer (which contained the words Pius XII had declared to be the 'form'), the possibly French interpolation, and the medieval Imperative formula (which had previously been regarded as the 'form'). Into the place of all three he shipped a prayer of dubious ('Hippolytan'? No!!!) origin which had been used in the distant Christian East by groups out of communion with Rome whose Chalcedonian orthodoxy was questionable.
Yes, I thought that would make you jump out of your seat.
28 August 2018
The usual gangs of suspects?
The current unease in the worldwide Church Militant is not confined to any single tendenz. The Australian Archbishop Coleridge spoke for many when he said that, while PF's letter on clerical child abuse was good, action was needed. So-called liberals (Tina Beattie) and so-called conservatives (Bishop Egan) have expressed a desire for lay involvement in the solution of a problem which has, disastrously, impinged horribly upon the laity. Clergy invited to perticipate in any contemplated initiatives could profitably be married clergy drawn from the sui iuris Oriental Churches and the Ordinariates.
The Holy See has a dismal record in this area. One thinks of the support given to a multiple abuser during the Legionaries of Christ fiasco under S John Paul II; and the multiple mistakes made under PF's watch. The Curia is under a cloud, suspected of itself having a strong, perhaps dominant, homosexual element. The Episcopate's record has been lamentable or worse ... Successors of the Apostles, indeed.
Bishop Egan's suggestion of a Lay Congress followed by an Extraordinary Synpod is a good one. At the moment, we are anticipating an Ordinary Synod which, according to rumour and expectation, is being fixed up so that a married presbyterate can be brought into being in Latin America ... a move which seems to receive rather more support from Germans than it does from Latin Americans. Whispers abound that a 'gentler' elaboration of the Church's teaching about homosexuality may be promoted. We shall doubtless behold all the usual phenomena which accompany a PF synod, including bullying and ruthless manipulation, in order to secure the results which PF and his cronies desire. Perhaps the pages of the Catechism will be further amended so as to include more of what PF picturesquely calls caca.
Meanwhile, somebody is fiddling while Rome ... quinimmo much of the Catholic World ... is burning. Do I need to discuss with you the re-arrangement of the deckchairs on the Titanic?
Everybody outside a charmed Inner Circle can see that the clerical sexual abuse scandal is what actually demands decisive and immediate action. The worms in the bowels of the dogs in the street know it. Vatican II, like Lateran V, dealt with insignificant questions while totally unaware of the real problems which were beginning to show themselves. Is it really essential for us to make the same mistakes all over again?
In a sane Church, the planned synod would be put on hold, and the pressing crisis would be faced. There might be surprising practical agreements between liberals and traditionalists.
However, one new problem is arising, or, at least, moving into prominence. The PF faction in the Church hopes to detach the question of abuse from the matter of homosexuality, to define the problem as 'clericalism', and to use this presupposition to belabour traditional concepts of priesthood. The Traditional faction believes that most of the problem is one of ephebophile clergy who are homosexual.
We have heard little from Africa. How much experience do the Churches of that continent have of paedophilia, ephebophilia, or homosexuality? If the fundamental answer to that question were to be anything like "Not nearly as much as the First World does", might it not be a good thing if the next Pope, after the removal of the current blustering but ineffective occupant of the Roman See, were to charge a high-powered Commission of African experts in appropriate fields to survey the failed Churches of the Enlightenment countries, so as to produce an analysis which could form the basis of renewal?
That's what I would do! The Commission could be idiomatically called 'the Revenge', short for 'Africa's Revenge upon Walter Kasper'.
The Holy See has a dismal record in this area. One thinks of the support given to a multiple abuser during the Legionaries of Christ fiasco under S John Paul II; and the multiple mistakes made under PF's watch. The Curia is under a cloud, suspected of itself having a strong, perhaps dominant, homosexual element. The Episcopate's record has been lamentable or worse ... Successors of the Apostles, indeed.
Bishop Egan's suggestion of a Lay Congress followed by an Extraordinary Synpod is a good one. At the moment, we are anticipating an Ordinary Synod which, according to rumour and expectation, is being fixed up so that a married presbyterate can be brought into being in Latin America ... a move which seems to receive rather more support from Germans than it does from Latin Americans. Whispers abound that a 'gentler' elaboration of the Church's teaching about homosexuality may be promoted. We shall doubtless behold all the usual phenomena which accompany a PF synod, including bullying and ruthless manipulation, in order to secure the results which PF and his cronies desire. Perhaps the pages of the Catechism will be further amended so as to include more of what PF picturesquely calls caca.
Meanwhile, somebody is fiddling while Rome ... quinimmo much of the Catholic World ... is burning. Do I need to discuss with you the re-arrangement of the deckchairs on the Titanic?
Everybody outside a charmed Inner Circle can see that the clerical sexual abuse scandal is what actually demands decisive and immediate action. The worms in the bowels of the dogs in the street know it. Vatican II, like Lateran V, dealt with insignificant questions while totally unaware of the real problems which were beginning to show themselves. Is it really essential for us to make the same mistakes all over again?
In a sane Church, the planned synod would be put on hold, and the pressing crisis would be faced. There might be surprising practical agreements between liberals and traditionalists.
However, one new problem is arising, or, at least, moving into prominence. The PF faction in the Church hopes to detach the question of abuse from the matter of homosexuality, to define the problem as 'clericalism', and to use this presupposition to belabour traditional concepts of priesthood. The Traditional faction believes that most of the problem is one of ephebophile clergy who are homosexual.
We have heard little from Africa. How much experience do the Churches of that continent have of paedophilia, ephebophilia, or homosexuality? If the fundamental answer to that question were to be anything like "Not nearly as much as the First World does", might it not be a good thing if the next Pope, after the removal of the current blustering but ineffective occupant of the Roman See, were to charge a high-powered Commission of African experts in appropriate fields to survey the failed Churches of the Enlightenment countries, so as to produce an analysis which could form the basis of renewal?
That's what I would do! The Commission could be idiomatically called 'the Revenge', short for 'Africa's Revenge upon Walter Kasper'.
27 August 2018
Archbishop Vigano ... whose narratives are fictive?
UPDATE
I first published this piece on 30 July this year. I am reprinting it now because it seems to me that one of the strongest arguments favouring acceptance of Archbishop Vigano's disclosures is that the picture he gives us of PF's character fits so closely the conclusions which some of us have come to about PF's evasive attitude to Truth.
One of my motives for writing this piece in July had been the following. PF had recently accused the Four Cardinals of lying: they claimed that the Dubia had been delivered to PF's desk; he claimed that he first heard about the Dubia after they were made public: "I heard about it from the Press".
Given this conflict of testimony, it was not easy to understand why four cardinals should put themselves so very much in the wrong by behaving like that and by lying in such a way. So I wrote:
It is a now familiar picture: the Pope who shifts the blame on to others ("I was poorly informed"); the Pope who contradicts himself; who says different things to different people. The recent account of PF's dealings with the Argentine military dictatorship is unsubstantiated but terrifyingly circumstantial and unnervingly fits in with many compelling reconstructions of his character.
We have a Pope who, in any sort of Mess, rapidly takes easy and facile refuge in Fictive Narratives.
Many of us have felt driven to differ from PF's views on basically important matters of Faith and Morals. Nevertheless, he and we are fellow-Christians with all that this implies about our common life together in Christ's Body the Church.
But how easy is it to do any sort of meaningful business with a Roman Pontiff the integrity of whose word looks increasingly implausible? (Or, indeed, with his public apologists?)
Any sort of meaningful business, that is, other than waiting for these terrible days to pass.
NEW PERSONAL FOOTNOTES:
(1) The words of Pope Benedict XIV which I reported as recently as Saturday morning ("the Mug"), have been spectacularly fulfilled by Mgr Vigano: the Scum certainly now is right on the Surface of the Cooking Pot, for everyone to see! I think I had better visit Ashmole more often!
(2) PF's neat way of dodging questions in the airliner does immense credit to whichever of his aides dreamed it up. Talent there!
(3) A bishop Strickland finds the Vigano Testimony 'credible'. Now his website is down, just as Bishop Egan's was so recently.
(4) Both the Testimony of Archbishop Vigano; and the admirable letter of Bishop Philip Egan calling for a Lay Congress and an Extraordinary Synod to consider the crisis, are dated to the Octave Day of the Assumption, the Queenship of Mary aka Her Immaculate Heart.
Perhaps 22 August will go down in History as the Marian intervention which precipitated the ending of this calamitous and divisive pontificate.
I first published this piece on 30 July this year. I am reprinting it now because it seems to me that one of the strongest arguments favouring acceptance of Archbishop Vigano's disclosures is that the picture he gives us of PF's character fits so closely the conclusions which some of us have come to about PF's evasive attitude to Truth.
One of my motives for writing this piece in July had been the following. PF had recently accused the Four Cardinals of lying: they claimed that the Dubia had been delivered to PF's desk; he claimed that he first heard about the Dubia after they were made public: "I heard about it from the Press".
Given this conflict of testimony, it was not easy to understand why four cardinals should put themselves so very much in the wrong by behaving like that and by lying in such a way. So I wrote:
It is a now familiar picture: the Pope who shifts the blame on to others ("I was poorly informed"); the Pope who contradicts himself; who says different things to different people. The recent account of PF's dealings with the Argentine military dictatorship is unsubstantiated but terrifyingly circumstantial and unnervingly fits in with many compelling reconstructions of his character.
We have a Pope who, in any sort of Mess, rapidly takes easy and facile refuge in Fictive Narratives.
Many of us have felt driven to differ from PF's views on basically important matters of Faith and Morals. Nevertheless, he and we are fellow-Christians with all that this implies about our common life together in Christ's Body the Church.
But how easy is it to do any sort of meaningful business with a Roman Pontiff the integrity of whose word looks increasingly implausible? (Or, indeed, with his public apologists?)
Any sort of meaningful business, that is, other than waiting for these terrible days to pass.
NEW PERSONAL FOOTNOTES:
(1) The words of Pope Benedict XIV which I reported as recently as Saturday morning ("the Mug"), have been spectacularly fulfilled by Mgr Vigano: the Scum certainly now is right on the Surface of the Cooking Pot, for everyone to see! I think I had better visit Ashmole more often!
(2) PF's neat way of dodging questions in the airliner does immense credit to whichever of his aides dreamed it up. Talent there!
(3) A bishop Strickland finds the Vigano Testimony 'credible'. Now his website is down, just as Bishop Egan's was so recently.
(4) Both the Testimony of Archbishop Vigano; and the admirable letter of Bishop Philip Egan calling for a Lay Congress and an Extraordinary Synod to consider the crisis, are dated to the Octave Day of the Assumption, the Queenship of Mary aka Her Immaculate Heart.
Perhaps 22 August will go down in History as the Marian intervention which precipitated the ending of this calamitous and divisive pontificate.
26 August 2018
Fr Zed ...
... has very courageously published the news which has just broken about the background to the McCarrick case. It does him great credit.
Even more credit is due to Archbishop Vigano for speaking out, with such clarity and detail.
I think we should all think very carefully about the implications of this.
Even more credit is due to Archbishop Vigano for speaking out, with such clarity and detail.
I think we should all think very carefully about the implications of this.
25 August 2018
The Mug
It's arrived!! the splendid Zuhlsdorf mug with its portrait (and armorial bearings) of the Holy Father Pope Benedict XIV, otherwise known as Prospero Lambertini. If you haven't already got one, I advise you to remedy the oversight. This Zed production is a real winner. WDTPRS tells you how to order it.
An opportunity not to be missed by all right-thinking Catholics.
Long-time readers will be aware that, for some years, I have taken refuge with Papa Lambertini in the Ashmolean Museum ... one of the World's great museums, where you go up the main staircase, turn left at the top, and keep walking until you reach the Westernmost room. There you will find a set of papal busts by a little known but very competent sculptor; the first one on your right just inside the door is the great canonist, theologian, and legislator, Benedict XIV.
(You too could interview His Holiness without even visiting Oxford, using the painting of him reproduced upon the superb-value Zuhlsdorf mug.)
He sensed, when I visited him the other morning, that I was a littled frayed at my edges. Well, it was a hot day, and at this time of the year the pavements in Oxford are almost exclusively occupied by Visitors who are invariably walking in the opposite direction to mine. They are Doing the dreaming spires before their coaches take them on to some town in the Cotwolds to Do the Swan of Avon (or to Bicester Village for the Shopping). I imagine that Cambridge is similarly inundated with tourists stocking up on instant Culture before spending the important part of their day among the bookies at Newmarket. I suppose we must reconcile ourselves to being Post-Imperial.
Quid molestum? he courteously enquired. Sancte Pater, I replied, quale et quantum rogas! Ipsa Sancta Mater Ecclesia molestam se monstrat, Sponsa quae vocatur Redemptoris nostri, in qua presbyteri episcopi cardinales necnon et ipse domnus apostolicus ... He raised his mighty eyebrows to stop me in my tracks. Pusille, tace! Sponsa Christi immaculata est ... tu id bene nosti ... etiamsi peccatores ita denegent gratiam Omnipotentis ut facies eius foedetur. Sis memor ...
Rudely, disgracefully, impetuously, I interrupted the Sovereign Pontiff. Successor, Domne, vester, eiusdem nominis XVI, multa et iratus locutus est de 'spurcitia', sed nunc nemo non videt archiepiscopos et cardinales spurcitiam istam celasse et, quod deterius est, papam Franciscum se adiutorem et fautorem praebuisse talium virorum. Haeresis quoque ingravescit; parasiti nonulli ... Rosicas dico et alios ... docent (tacente pontifice) Ecclesiam, Scripturis semotis Traditione repudiata, nonnisi a tyranno regi et ab uno. Tot inter falsos pastores ...
I could not ignore the growing frown upon his brow. I fell silent. Gently, chidingly, he asked me Tu nunquam culinam intrasti?
Puzzled, I replied Et saepe, Domne.
Ibine cortinam vidisti?
Et vidi, Domne.
Et oculis id quoque tuis sensisti, in cortina dum in igne calescit spumam ab ima cortina ita in summam se tollere et evehere, ut in superficie spurcitia omnis plane et aperte oculis omnium videatur?
Et sensi, Domne.
An opportunity not to be missed by all right-thinking Catholics.
Long-time readers will be aware that, for some years, I have taken refuge with Papa Lambertini in the Ashmolean Museum ... one of the World's great museums, where you go up the main staircase, turn left at the top, and keep walking until you reach the Westernmost room. There you will find a set of papal busts by a little known but very competent sculptor; the first one on your right just inside the door is the great canonist, theologian, and legislator, Benedict XIV.
(You too could interview His Holiness without even visiting Oxford, using the painting of him reproduced upon the superb-value Zuhlsdorf mug.)
He sensed, when I visited him the other morning, that I was a littled frayed at my edges. Well, it was a hot day, and at this time of the year the pavements in Oxford are almost exclusively occupied by Visitors who are invariably walking in the opposite direction to mine. They are Doing the dreaming spires before their coaches take them on to some town in the Cotwolds to Do the Swan of Avon (or to Bicester Village for the Shopping). I imagine that Cambridge is similarly inundated with tourists stocking up on instant Culture before spending the important part of their day among the bookies at Newmarket. I suppose we must reconcile ourselves to being Post-Imperial.
Quid molestum? he courteously enquired. Sancte Pater, I replied, quale et quantum rogas! Ipsa Sancta Mater Ecclesia molestam se monstrat, Sponsa quae vocatur Redemptoris nostri, in qua presbyteri episcopi cardinales necnon et ipse domnus apostolicus ... He raised his mighty eyebrows to stop me in my tracks. Pusille, tace! Sponsa Christi immaculata est ... tu id bene nosti ... etiamsi peccatores ita denegent gratiam Omnipotentis ut facies eius foedetur. Sis memor ...
Rudely, disgracefully, impetuously, I interrupted the Sovereign Pontiff. Successor, Domne, vester, eiusdem nominis XVI, multa et iratus locutus est de 'spurcitia', sed nunc nemo non videt archiepiscopos et cardinales spurcitiam istam celasse et, quod deterius est, papam Franciscum se adiutorem et fautorem praebuisse talium virorum. Haeresis quoque ingravescit; parasiti nonulli ... Rosicas dico et alios ... docent (tacente pontifice) Ecclesiam, Scripturis semotis Traditione repudiata, nonnisi a tyranno regi et ab uno. Tot inter falsos pastores ...
I could not ignore the growing frown upon his brow. I fell silent. Gently, chidingly, he asked me Tu nunquam culinam intrasti?
Puzzled, I replied Et saepe, Domne.
Ibine cortinam vidisti?
Et vidi, Domne.
Et oculis id quoque tuis sensisti, in cortina dum in igne calescit spumam ab ima cortina ita in summam se tollere et evehere, ut in superficie spurcitia omnis plane et aperte oculis omnium videatur?
Et sensi, Domne.
23 August 2018
Extraordinary UPDATE
UPDATE Twelve hours later, the Diocese of Portsmouth is now back on the Internet, and the letter which Dr Egan sent to PF last Wednesday is available there. It is very good; I suggest you go there and read it.
I particularly applaud Bishop Philip's suggestion of lay involvement. For too long, this terrible malady has been left to popes, the Curia, and episcopal conferences to sort out. They have failed the Church and especially those vulnerable members of the Body of Christ who have been victims of abuse. This pontificate seems to me to have reverted to the worst (Maciel) days of the JP2 pontificate.
I wonder what did happen to the Portsmouth website ...
As I write this, at 21:46 on Thursday evening British Summer Time, an extraordinary situation prevails.
Try to get to the website of the Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth, and you will be told that "this site has been suspended".
Why might anybody want to access that site? Because Bishop Philip Egan has just published the text of his letter to PF suggesting an Extraordinary meeting of the Synod of Bishops to discuss the paedophile crisis. He suggests that it be preceded by a Congress affording an opportunity for laypeople to express their views.
The letter is, of course, easily to be found on the internet; and the substance of its suggestions are reported in the Catholic Herald and even the Tablet. So if this is an attempt at censorship, it is remarkably ill-judged.
I hope that when I open my computer in the morning, not only will this situation have been resolved, but that there will be an explanation of what has happened.
It would be unfair to PF, the Congregation for Bishops, the Papal Nuncio, and to Bishop Philip's Metropolitan Archbishop Peter Smith (I can't think of anybody else who is in the chain of Dr Egan's 'Line Managers') for suspicions of skulduggery to remain in the air.
I particularly applaud Bishop Philip's suggestion of lay involvement. For too long, this terrible malady has been left to popes, the Curia, and episcopal conferences to sort out. They have failed the Church and especially those vulnerable members of the Body of Christ who have been victims of abuse. This pontificate seems to me to have reverted to the worst (Maciel) days of the JP2 pontificate.
I wonder what did happen to the Portsmouth website ...
As I write this, at 21:46 on Thursday evening British Summer Time, an extraordinary situation prevails.
Try to get to the website of the Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth, and you will be told that "this site has been suspended".
Why might anybody want to access that site? Because Bishop Philip Egan has just published the text of his letter to PF suggesting an Extraordinary meeting of the Synod of Bishops to discuss the paedophile crisis. He suggests that it be preceded by a Congress affording an opportunity for laypeople to express their views.
The letter is, of course, easily to be found on the internet; and the substance of its suggestions are reported in the Catholic Herald and even the Tablet. So if this is an attempt at censorship, it is remarkably ill-judged.
I hope that when I open my computer in the morning, not only will this situation have been resolved, but that there will be an explanation of what has happened.
It would be unfair to PF, the Congregation for Bishops, the Papal Nuncio, and to Bishop Philip's Metropolitan Archbishop Peter Smith (I can't think of anybody else who is in the chain of Dr Egan's 'Line Managers') for suspicions of skulduggery to remain in the air.
Clericalism, the root of all evils ... or ... not? UPDATED
UPDATE Dr Philip Egan, Bishop of Portsmouth, has called for an Extraordinary Synod to discuss the current crisis.
My first reaction is a feeling that this is a very interesting idea, which we could agree to support.
PF has written a letter to us all in which he blames the Clerical Sexual Abuse crisis on "Clericalism".
This is quite a different analysis from that of Benedict XVI, a rather more acute judge: he believed it was the 1960s atmosphere of ethical Relativism and of freedom from moral constraints and rules, that led to a collapse of sexual morality in clerical (and other) circles.
You pays your money and you picks your pontiff. Personally, I buy Benedict.
There is a paradox in PF's words. The most obvious segment of the Christian community in which Clericalism, in my quite considerable experience, is totally absent, is in Traddy circles.
Traddidom, nationally and internationally, is organised, run, and managed by laity. The clergy who serve it, among whom I am proud to include myself, run nothing, dominate nobody, and follow lay initiatives. We are asked to do things, and we ... er ... assent; I nearly said, we obey.
This is fundamentally like the structures of Medieval Catholicism, in which the powerful elements in local communities were the lay guilds. Their cultic activities did, of course, involve clergy, and they hired and paid their clergy to do what they needed done. Just as they hired and paid their robemakers to make their robes and their kitchen boys to roast their beef.
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But it is more important for us to face today's disgusting realities than to discuss the Middle Ages.
Someone called Wuerl has denied that the McCarrick business is a crisis. That crass observation just about says it all. (OK, now that he's become a liability, Wuerl's resignation will probably be accepted; but how many more decades will Cupich be around promoting Bergoglianism? For how many years was Daneels riding high, papally nominated to Synods on the Family?)
PF's cronies appear to be defensively circling their wagons round his latest and most absurd mantra: his expressed view that Clerical Sexual Abuse is the result of Clericalism! But the main Clericalism I detect in this whole sorry affair is the Clericalism of Establishment cover-ups. Who knew what McCarrick was up to, and did nothing? Who, in England, knew of Kieran Conry's womanising, and just kept their fingers crossed? And perhaps we should look over the fence into the Church of England and contemplate the abusive life of sanctified sadism led for decades by Bishop Peter Ball. For this blasphemous libertine, "being strong for Jesus" meant "letting me flog you". But, even more disgraceful than the abuse itself were the strenuous attempts made by many within the Establishment, from Prince Charles downwards, to manoeuvre Ball back into public ministry (especially in schools!!) even after his cover was comprehensively blown in 1992, and one of his victims had committed suicide.
Deference towards the mighty, the Great and the Good, not "Clericalism" among the lower clergy, is the root problem.
You know what they're going to do now, don't you? Under the skilled and careful guidance of the Enemy himself, they're going to use this scandal, this crisis, as an excuse to try to root out of the presbyterate any surviving relics of a sense of true Priesthood (aka 'Clericalism'). Those corrupt structures of deference towards prelates which have landed us all where we are today will be viciously reinforced, and those who suffer, as well as abused victims, will be Catholic laity and Catholic clergy.
I expect to see a new onslaught* on the training of seminarians and junior clergy, in which anybody possessing a Breviarium Romanum or a cassock will risk getting the boot. And, as soon as Joseph Ratzinger is dead, the Gestapo will be let loose on Summorum pontificum.
These people are running scared and that means they will be very dangerous.
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*Actually, what I foretell started last year. Between 17 July and 2 August 2017, I published a number of blogposts about a leaked draft Instruction ordering that priest students in the Roman colleges be forced to concelebrate with their teachers rather than saying a private Mass (which might, of course, be a Traditional Mass). I have no idea whether that iniquitous draft, contradicting the canonical rights given by Vatican II and Summorum pontificum to every Latin presbyter, was put into effect.
My first reaction is a feeling that this is a very interesting idea, which we could agree to support.
PF has written a letter to us all in which he blames the Clerical Sexual Abuse crisis on "Clericalism".
This is quite a different analysis from that of Benedict XVI, a rather more acute judge: he believed it was the 1960s atmosphere of ethical Relativism and of freedom from moral constraints and rules, that led to a collapse of sexual morality in clerical (and other) circles.
You pays your money and you picks your pontiff. Personally, I buy Benedict.
There is a paradox in PF's words. The most obvious segment of the Christian community in which Clericalism, in my quite considerable experience, is totally absent, is in Traddy circles.
Traddidom, nationally and internationally, is organised, run, and managed by laity. The clergy who serve it, among whom I am proud to include myself, run nothing, dominate nobody, and follow lay initiatives. We are asked to do things, and we ... er ... assent; I nearly said, we obey.
This is fundamentally like the structures of Medieval Catholicism, in which the powerful elements in local communities were the lay guilds. Their cultic activities did, of course, involve clergy, and they hired and paid their clergy to do what they needed done. Just as they hired and paid their robemakers to make their robes and their kitchen boys to roast their beef.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But it is more important for us to face today's disgusting realities than to discuss the Middle Ages.
Someone called Wuerl has denied that the McCarrick business is a crisis. That crass observation just about says it all. (OK, now that he's become a liability, Wuerl's resignation will probably be accepted; but how many more decades will Cupich be around promoting Bergoglianism? For how many years was Daneels riding high, papally nominated to Synods on the Family?)
PF's cronies appear to be defensively circling their wagons round his latest and most absurd mantra: his expressed view that Clerical Sexual Abuse is the result of Clericalism! But the main Clericalism I detect in this whole sorry affair is the Clericalism of Establishment cover-ups. Who knew what McCarrick was up to, and did nothing? Who, in England, knew of Kieran Conry's womanising, and just kept their fingers crossed? And perhaps we should look over the fence into the Church of England and contemplate the abusive life of sanctified sadism led for decades by Bishop Peter Ball. For this blasphemous libertine, "being strong for Jesus" meant "letting me flog you". But, even more disgraceful than the abuse itself were the strenuous attempts made by many within the Establishment, from Prince Charles downwards, to manoeuvre Ball back into public ministry (especially in schools!!) even after his cover was comprehensively blown in 1992, and one of his victims had committed suicide.
Deference towards the mighty, the Great and the Good, not "Clericalism" among the lower clergy, is the root problem.
You know what they're going to do now, don't you? Under the skilled and careful guidance of the Enemy himself, they're going to use this scandal, this crisis, as an excuse to try to root out of the presbyterate any surviving relics of a sense of true Priesthood (aka 'Clericalism'). Those corrupt structures of deference towards prelates which have landed us all where we are today will be viciously reinforced, and those who suffer, as well as abused victims, will be Catholic laity and Catholic clergy.
I expect to see a new onslaught* on the training of seminarians and junior clergy, in which anybody possessing a Breviarium Romanum or a cassock will risk getting the boot. And, as soon as Joseph Ratzinger is dead, the Gestapo will be let loose on Summorum pontificum.
These people are running scared and that means they will be very dangerous.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Actually, what I foretell started last year. Between 17 July and 2 August 2017, I published a number of blogposts about a leaked draft Instruction ordering that priest students in the Roman colleges be forced to concelebrate with their teachers rather than saying a private Mass (which might, of course, be a Traditional Mass). I have no idea whether that iniquitous draft, contradicting the canonical rights given by Vatican II and Summorum pontificum to every Latin presbyter, was put into effect.
22 August 2018
The Octave of the Assumption
Personally, I rather like the Novus Ordo idea of making the Octave Day of the Assumption the feast of Maria Regina. Especially if we remember especially the association of the Assumption with our Lady's role as Mediatrix of all Graces. This idea rather disappeared from the texts provided for the Assumption after the Definition of the Dogma by Pius XII.
But whatever aspect of Marian dogma one has in mind on this day, I commend a perception of Blessed John Henry Newman, when he was still an Anglican.
Newman intriguingly argued that the Arians, who were prepared to use the most extravagant language about our Lord while firmly denying that he is coequal in his divinity to the Father, accustomed Christians to believe in an exalted yet created mediator. They were condemned by the Church, on the grounds that Christ is God and thus, like the Father, Uncreated. So the question arose : who is the merely created being that really does occupy, in God's will, the lofty place which was still considered infinitely too lowly for the Divine Word? Now read on.
[The Arians] left Him a creature and were found wanting. Thus there was a 'wonder in heaven': a throne was seen, far above all created powers, mediatorial, intercessory; a title archetypal; a crown bright as the morning star; a glory issuing from the Eternal throne; robes pure as the heavens; and a sceptre over all; and who was the predestined heir of that Majesty? Since it was not high enough for the Highest, who was that Wisdom, and what was her name, 'the Mother of fair love, and fear, and holy hope', 'exalted like a palm-tree in Engaddi, and a rose-plant in Jericho', 'created from the beginning before the world' in God's counsels, and 'in Jerusalem was her power'? The vision is found in the Apocalypse, a Woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. The votaries of Mary do not exceed the true faith, unless the blasphemers of her Son came up to it. The Church of Rome is not idolatrous, unless Arianism is orthodoxy.
Newman goes on to argue that it was thus, during the period of the Arian controversy, that it was 'determined, that to exalt a creature was no recognition of its divinity'; and to speak of those in his own day who condemned devotion to Mary as (unconsciously) heretics. 'It is not wonderful ... if those who never rise higher in their notions of our Lord's Divinity, than to consider Him a man singularly inhabited by a Divine Presence, that is, a Catholic Saint, - if such men should mistake the honour paid by the Church to the human Mother for that very honour which, and which alone, is worthy of her Eternal Son.
But whatever aspect of Marian dogma one has in mind on this day, I commend a perception of Blessed John Henry Newman, when he was still an Anglican.
Newman intriguingly argued that the Arians, who were prepared to use the most extravagant language about our Lord while firmly denying that he is coequal in his divinity to the Father, accustomed Christians to believe in an exalted yet created mediator. They were condemned by the Church, on the grounds that Christ is God and thus, like the Father, Uncreated. So the question arose : who is the merely created being that really does occupy, in God's will, the lofty place which was still considered infinitely too lowly for the Divine Word? Now read on.
[The Arians] left Him a creature and were found wanting. Thus there was a 'wonder in heaven': a throne was seen, far above all created powers, mediatorial, intercessory; a title archetypal; a crown bright as the morning star; a glory issuing from the Eternal throne; robes pure as the heavens; and a sceptre over all; and who was the predestined heir of that Majesty? Since it was not high enough for the Highest, who was that Wisdom, and what was her name, 'the Mother of fair love, and fear, and holy hope', 'exalted like a palm-tree in Engaddi, and a rose-plant in Jericho', 'created from the beginning before the world' in God's counsels, and 'in Jerusalem was her power'? The vision is found in the Apocalypse, a Woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. The votaries of Mary do not exceed the true faith, unless the blasphemers of her Son came up to it. The Church of Rome is not idolatrous, unless Arianism is orthodoxy.
Newman goes on to argue that it was thus, during the period of the Arian controversy, that it was 'determined, that to exalt a creature was no recognition of its divinity'; and to speak of those in his own day who condemned devotion to Mary as (unconsciously) heretics. 'It is not wonderful ... if those who never rise higher in their notions of our Lord's Divinity, than to consider Him a man singularly inhabited by a Divine Presence, that is, a Catholic Saint, - if such men should mistake the honour paid by the Church to the human Mother for that very honour which, and which alone, is worthy of her Eternal Son.
21 August 2018
Cassocks
PF has welcomed the fact that trainee Jesuits no longer wear a cassock when visiting their General or the Pope.
Presumably PF was actually wearing a cassock himself when he made these remarks!?!
I find it hard to understand how any human being can be pompous and so full of himself that he is unable to recognise such a comical paradox!
I am reminded of a Principal who liked to wear his MA gown when addressing the students, but disliked seeing his colleagues in gowns. He wanted the gown to be the signifier of his own unique uniqueness.
The papal white cassock, although it dates from before the twentieth century, became in that century much more of a central visible feature in the papal personality cult which, particularly since the election of Pius XII, grew so greatly and so unhealthily. S John Paul, when hiking through mountains, was always photographed doing so while wearing his cassock! As clergy of all ranks tended during this period to wear their cassock less and less, the papal cassock, naturally, stuck out more and more as a statement, an assertion of status, than it had done in the happy but far off days when even the simplest cleric wore one daily.
Don't get me the wrong way round. It's not the cassock, but the cult, that I see as so damaging to the Church. It is not the fact that PF dresses (at least partially) as befits his office that I object to, but that he discourages others from doing the same.
Presumably PF was actually wearing a cassock himself when he made these remarks!?!
I find it hard to understand how any human being can be pompous and so full of himself that he is unable to recognise such a comical paradox!
I am reminded of a Principal who liked to wear his MA gown when addressing the students, but disliked seeing his colleagues in gowns. He wanted the gown to be the signifier of his own unique uniqueness.
The papal white cassock, although it dates from before the twentieth century, became in that century much more of a central visible feature in the papal personality cult which, particularly since the election of Pius XII, grew so greatly and so unhealthily. S John Paul, when hiking through mountains, was always photographed doing so while wearing his cassock! As clergy of all ranks tended during this period to wear their cassock less and less, the papal cassock, naturally, stuck out more and more as a statement, an assertion of status, than it had done in the happy but far off days when even the simplest cleric wore one daily.
Don't get me the wrong way round. It's not the cassock, but the cult, that I see as so damaging to the Church. It is not the fact that PF dresses (at least partially) as befits his office that I object to, but that he discourages others from doing the same.
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