A Commentary on the Book of the Psalms, Preserving Christian Publications, Boonville, New York 2008, American ISBN 978-0-9802084-4-3, is a fine book which would feed the spirituality of those who wish to benefit from the surface text of the psalms. But, as Bishop Moriarty explained "it omits those portions which are purely philological, or which relate to the discrepancy and reconciliation of texts and versions". And, frankly, what the Archdeacon omitted is the sort of thing I, moi, love getting into.
Does all that 'dry' historical stuff really matter? Let me briefly take Psalm 91 (Vg-LXX) = 92 (MT). Bonum est confiteri, as Anglicans have always called it. There is a rabbinical legend that this was the song of praise uttered by Adam as the first Sabbath dawned upon the world, and that it descended by tradition as the special hymn for that day. Moving into historical time, what we do know is that it was sung in the Temple on the Sabbath at the offering of the Tamid, the first lamb of public sacrifice, in the morning, when the wine offering was poured out and the Breads were offered (Numbers 28). And verse 2 refers to both the morning and the evening sacrifices of the lamb. In the old Breviary, it was still in use on the Sabbath at Lauds because "the Roman Church, amongst other tokens of the poweful Judaizing influence which affected its earliest days, retains it as part of Saturday Lauds". Apparently, rabbinic Judaism still uses it on the Sabbath. And its Sabbath use survived the revision of the Palter under Pope S Pius X. Indeed, even the Liturgy of the Hours retains its use on alternate Sabbaths.
I am aware that not everybody, in their journey of Faith, needs the same props. But I don't see what harm such informations will do to any presbyter or laic as they say Saturday Lauds before setting off up the Hill to the Altar of Sacrifice.
In my second paragraph, I high-lighted one sentence. It was borrowed from A Commentary on the Psalms: from Primitive and Medieval writers; and from the Various Office Books and Hymns of the Roman, Mozarabic, Ambrosian, Greek, Coptic, Armenian and Syriac rites. By The Rev. J.M. Neale, D.D., sometime Warden of Sackville College, East Grinstead, and the Rev. R.F. Littledale, Ll.D., sometime scholar of Trinity College Dublin. 1887.
A ripe product of the scholarship of the second generation of the Catholic Revival in the Church of England (and Ireland). It does what it says on the tin. I doubt if it's still in print ...
30 July 2020
29 July 2020
Liturgical law: S Joseph and the Roman Canon
Here is an old blogpost, originally from November 13 2009, and published again in June 2019, together with the threads from those earlier versions. I reprint it because of
(1) recent debate about the editiones typicae of the Missale Romanum.
It matters whether there was an editio typica in 1962, and, if so, what its date was. Because on these details hangs the question of whether it is lawful to add S Joseph to the Canon of the Mass. Or unlawful!!
I think this is quite interesting! That insertion was the beginning of the tampering with the Roman Canon which led us to the Novus Ordo alterations in that venerable Prayer. Its discontinuation seems to me laudable.
(2) There is also the important fact that, pretty universally, the rather unsatisfactory rite of "1962" is not celebrated as printed but with a lot of the manners, mannerisms, of the previous dispensation. These variations presumably now (compare Canon 26) have the prescription of consuetudo; and remember O'Connell's discussion of consuetudines contra vel praeter legem.
This is what I had originally written in 2009:
"A very strange youtube video has appeared, from the Ecclesia Dei Commission, showing How To Say Mass. I mention here only the oddity that S Joseph is absent from the Canon. (And, in case you were wondering, there is no Third Confiteor)".I expect that youtube has long-since disappeared; and that more recently printed copies do have S Joseph.
I venture to add a word of practical advice to those newly embarking on a priestly career; or who have just learned and are now using the Old Mass (congratulations, Fathers!).
ADVICE: Printed versions of the 1962 Missal are attractively produced and light-weight enough to be useful for travelling. But that version of the Roman Rite misses out a lot of earlier stuff. I would urge you to get your hands on a second-hand copy of an earlier Missal (even if you have to get it rebound). If you want to add S Joseph to the Canon, do it ... and other such emendations ... in the margin and in pencil. Similarly, things you gum in should be removeable. Because things change, and one's own views on minor matters change, and it is a very good idea only to emend a printed liturgical text in such a way that it is easy to reverse the change. And don't forget that the CDF is likely, in your lifetime if not in mine, to add post-1962 material ... as it already has the New Prefaces.
(1) recent debate about the editiones typicae of the Missale Romanum.
It matters whether there was an editio typica in 1962, and, if so, what its date was. Because on these details hangs the question of whether it is lawful to add S Joseph to the Canon of the Mass. Or unlawful!!
I think this is quite interesting! That insertion was the beginning of the tampering with the Roman Canon which led us to the Novus Ordo alterations in that venerable Prayer. Its discontinuation seems to me laudable.
(2) There is also the important fact that, pretty universally, the rather unsatisfactory rite of "1962" is not celebrated as printed but with a lot of the manners, mannerisms, of the previous dispensation. These variations presumably now (compare Canon 26) have the prescription of consuetudo; and remember O'Connell's discussion of consuetudines contra vel praeter legem.
This is what I had originally written in 2009:
"A very strange youtube video has appeared, from the Ecclesia Dei Commission, showing How To Say Mass. I mention here only the oddity that S Joseph is absent from the Canon. (And, in case you were wondering, there is no Third Confiteor)".I expect that youtube has long-since disappeared; and that more recently printed copies do have S Joseph.
I venture to add a word of practical advice to those newly embarking on a priestly career; or who have just learned and are now using the Old Mass (congratulations, Fathers!).
ADVICE: Printed versions of the 1962 Missal are attractively produced and light-weight enough to be useful for travelling. But that version of the Roman Rite misses out a lot of earlier stuff. I would urge you to get your hands on a second-hand copy of an earlier Missal (even if you have to get it rebound). If you want to add S Joseph to the Canon, do it ... and other such emendations ... in the margin and in pencil. Similarly, things you gum in should be removeable. Because things change, and one's own views on minor matters change, and it is a very good idea only to emend a printed liturgical text in such a way that it is easy to reverse the change. And don't forget that the CDF is likely, in your lifetime if not in mine, to add post-1962 material ... as it already has the New Prefaces.
28 July 2020
The Psalms (1)
There is a splendidly produced Commentary on the Psalms, written by S Bellarmine, translated by the Venerable John O'Sullivan, Archdeacon of Kerry, and commended by David Moriarty, Bishop of Kerry. What a majestic trio!! Bellarmine was the very flower of Counter-Reformation erudition, rescuing the Faith intellectually from the Protestant claim that Popery was in opposition to 'Primitive Christianity'. David Moriarty was a close friend of S John Henry Newman, and one of, I think, only two of the Fathers of Vatican I who never actually ... as such ... subscribed the decrees of the Council. Those were the days when sound men and true were a trifle nervous that Pastor Aeternus might be used to promote ultra-papalism: they can never have suspected that the day could come when Vatican I would stand up to be counted as our protection against the ultrahyperuebersuperpapalism at the heart of the Bergoglianist error. Vivat Moriarty, Vivat Concilium. It is remarkable how le bon Dieu over-rules our errors and our anxieties.
And the Venerable Archdeacon? The Catholic Church in Ireland still maintains the honorary title of Archdeacon ... I believe the French Church did until the Revolution. Archdeacon O'Sullivan, D.D., was also Rector of Kenmare, in the part of Ireland I knew so very well for a couple of decades. Indeed, I once stood next to the then Catholic Archdeacon of Kerry (brother, incidentally, of the then Bishop of Kerry) in a sculpture Park in the little town of Sneem, as the Egyptian Ambassador unveiled a statue of the goddess Isis! Think about that for a moment ... Anglican priest ... Catholic Archdeacon ... Islamic Ambassador ... syncretistic pagan goddess! Whatever were we all doing ... well, I'll tell you: we were lending cheerful light-hearted backing to the local tourist trade. And today I will commend to you the Ring of Kerry as a fantastic place to holiday. There are hundreds of first-millennium monastic sites ... including the Skelligs ... and there is fish to guzzle.
Mind you, in this age of Pachamama I think I would now have qualms about appearing to be light-hearted about her cousin Isis. Among much else, relativist syncretist liberals have stolen from us so many possibilities for light-heartedness which were, only three decades ago, matters for innocent play; because, when Isis was just ancient history and ancient art, and Liz Taylor as Cleopatra was an object of helpless merriment, Isis was not much of an occasion of temptation to idolatry. PF, and all that lot, have changed things so terribly for the worse. May God forgive them for the grim and laughterless world which they have sponsored.
Archdeacon O'Sullivan ... Moriarty's Archdeacon ... was a staunch and effective defender of his people during the dark days of the 'Soupers': when, in times of famine, Protestants with money gave food away free of charge to the starving peasantry ... free, as long as they took part in proddy worship. And took their children along too. He was a very big and very great man, still remembered with pride.
PF, by cutting down the Monsignore industry, has happily made the Catholic Church in England look much more Indigenous ... Yes!! ... because our senior Catholic presbyters are now 'Canon Thingummy' rather than 'Mgr O'Wotsit'. Perhaps the next stage of inculturation will be for Vicars General, and all those 'Episcopal Vicars' galore, to be replaced by ... Archdeacons! Come back, your venerablenesses! All is forgiven!
That's the way ahead! You know it makes sense!!
In my next piece I will explain my hesitations about the Bellarmine-Moriarty-O'Sullivan commentary on the Psalms.
And the Venerable Archdeacon? The Catholic Church in Ireland still maintains the honorary title of Archdeacon ... I believe the French Church did until the Revolution. Archdeacon O'Sullivan, D.D., was also Rector of Kenmare, in the part of Ireland I knew so very well for a couple of decades. Indeed, I once stood next to the then Catholic Archdeacon of Kerry (brother, incidentally, of the then Bishop of Kerry) in a sculpture Park in the little town of Sneem, as the Egyptian Ambassador unveiled a statue of the goddess Isis! Think about that for a moment ... Anglican priest ... Catholic Archdeacon ... Islamic Ambassador ... syncretistic pagan goddess! Whatever were we all doing ... well, I'll tell you: we were lending cheerful light-hearted backing to the local tourist trade. And today I will commend to you the Ring of Kerry as a fantastic place to holiday. There are hundreds of first-millennium monastic sites ... including the Skelligs ... and there is fish to guzzle.
Mind you, in this age of Pachamama I think I would now have qualms about appearing to be light-hearted about her cousin Isis. Among much else, relativist syncretist liberals have stolen from us so many possibilities for light-heartedness which were, only three decades ago, matters for innocent play; because, when Isis was just ancient history and ancient art, and Liz Taylor as Cleopatra was an object of helpless merriment, Isis was not much of an occasion of temptation to idolatry. PF, and all that lot, have changed things so terribly for the worse. May God forgive them for the grim and laughterless world which they have sponsored.
Archdeacon O'Sullivan ... Moriarty's Archdeacon ... was a staunch and effective defender of his people during the dark days of the 'Soupers': when, in times of famine, Protestants with money gave food away free of charge to the starving peasantry ... free, as long as they took part in proddy worship. And took their children along too. He was a very big and very great man, still remembered with pride.
PF, by cutting down the Monsignore industry, has happily made the Catholic Church in England look much more Indigenous ... Yes!! ... because our senior Catholic presbyters are now 'Canon Thingummy' rather than 'Mgr O'Wotsit'. Perhaps the next stage of inculturation will be for Vicars General, and all those 'Episcopal Vicars' galore, to be replaced by ... Archdeacons! Come back, your venerablenesses! All is forgiven!
That's the way ahead! You know it makes sense!!
In my next piece I will explain my hesitations about the Bellarmine-Moriarty-O'Sullivan commentary on the Psalms.
27 July 2020
Bishop Graham Leonard
I have decided to publish the main parts of a letter written to me (14 June 1994) by Bishop Graham Leonard. He was the senior bishop of the Province of Canterbury after the Archbishop; he was received into full communion after the vote of the General Synod in 1992 to "ordain" women to the presbyterate. Rome decided that he should be ordained to the presbyterate sub conditione.
"... after discussions with the Cardinal [Hume] over many years, and finally after the vote, I petitioned the Holy Father to be received into the Catholic Church, setting out the position as I saw it over my Orders. I had always made it clear (vide my article in the Catholic Herald in November 1992) that I did so as a suppliant without presumption. All I asked was that I should not have to deny my former ministry. I did not seek conditional ordination which was offered by Rome. Cardinal Hume delivered my petition personally to the Pope [S John Paul II]. I am told that it was considered by 4 Cardinals and 10 consultors. The decision that I should be ordained to the priestood per saltum and not first to the diaconate was a personal decision of the Pope.
...
" ... B T Simpson played a crucial part. The Bishop who ordained me in 1948 was Edward Wynn [Bishop of Ely 1941-1957], who was consecrated by Simpson in 1941. Rome was particularly concerned about his intention in conveying Old Catholic Orders. Fortunately, Simpson executed a document of which a copy exists in Pusey House Library, certified by Darwell Stone, which makes his intention clear beyond any doubt. He writes of his 'express intention of transmitting the Old Catholic Succession as well as the Anglican'. Through the Cardinal I provided Rome with a copy of the document.
"So much for my ordination as a priest: the question of my consecration to the episcopate [as Bishop of Willesden in 1964] remains an open one. In my petition, I had said that at my age, I had no desire to exercise episcopal functions, whatever decision be made about my episcopal orders. I did point out that nine bishops in the Old Catholic succession took part in my consecration. The intention of six of them gave no cause for doubt. The then Bishop of London [Robert Stopford] and the then Bishop of Kensington had themselves been consecrated by Old Catholics, the former Archbishop of Utrecht having participated in both consecrations. I was present at the consecration of Ronald Goodchild as Kensington [in 1964] and remember what happened. However, as I say, no decision has been made about my episcopal orders. ..."
"... after discussions with the Cardinal [Hume] over many years, and finally after the vote, I petitioned the Holy Father to be received into the Catholic Church, setting out the position as I saw it over my Orders. I had always made it clear (vide my article in the Catholic Herald in November 1992) that I did so as a suppliant without presumption. All I asked was that I should not have to deny my former ministry. I did not seek conditional ordination which was offered by Rome. Cardinal Hume delivered my petition personally to the Pope [S John Paul II]. I am told that it was considered by 4 Cardinals and 10 consultors. The decision that I should be ordained to the priestood per saltum and not first to the diaconate was a personal decision of the Pope.
...
" ... B T Simpson played a crucial part. The Bishop who ordained me in 1948 was Edward Wynn [Bishop of Ely 1941-1957], who was consecrated by Simpson in 1941. Rome was particularly concerned about his intention in conveying Old Catholic Orders. Fortunately, Simpson executed a document of which a copy exists in Pusey House Library, certified by Darwell Stone, which makes his intention clear beyond any doubt. He writes of his 'express intention of transmitting the Old Catholic Succession as well as the Anglican'. Through the Cardinal I provided Rome with a copy of the document.
"So much for my ordination as a priest: the question of my consecration to the episcopate [as Bishop of Willesden in 1964] remains an open one. In my petition, I had said that at my age, I had no desire to exercise episcopal functions, whatever decision be made about my episcopal orders. I did point out that nine bishops in the Old Catholic succession took part in my consecration. The intention of six of them gave no cause for doubt. The then Bishop of London [Robert Stopford] and the then Bishop of Kensington had themselves been consecrated by Old Catholics, the former Archbishop of Utrecht having participated in both consecrations. I was present at the consecration of Ronald Goodchild as Kensington [in 1964] and remember what happened. However, as I say, no decision has been made about my episcopal orders. ..."
26 July 2020
ONLY FOR OXONIANS
If you have read the recent (pompously condescending) Quad Magazine and looked at page 8 ... "100 Years of Oxford degrees for women" ... you may have wondered who the five principals photographed together when they received their degrees on October 7 1920 were.
From the left:
(1) Miss Moberly of St Hilda's;
(2) Miss Penrose of Somerville;
(3) Mrs (Bertha) Johnson of the Societas Mulierum Oxoniae Privatim Studentium, later St Anne's;
(4) Miss Jourdain of St Hugh's;
(5) Miss Blake of the Lady Margaret's Hall.
Not a single "Ms" among them!!! !!! Glorious days!
Mrs Johnson was the first actually to receive a degree. Her husband, known as "the Johnner", was Chaplain of All Souls and taught in the Hon Sch of Modern History. He was a ferocious tutor; when one undergraduate objected "to being talked to like that", the Johnner replied "Sir, I am paid to be rude to you".
Mrs Johnson originally opposed the idea of women being admitted fully to the University as then constructed, on the grounds that it involved forcing women onto a Procrustean bed designed for men; Miss Moberly headed a college originally founded for women who did not wish their studies to be circumscribed by examinations.
When, in half a millennium's time, discerning historians look back on the twentieth century, I wonder if they might have some ideas about who were the real feminists.
At the aborted Encaenia this centenary year, 2020, the proposed honorands were all women.
Er ...
From the left:
(1) Miss Moberly of St Hilda's;
(2) Miss Penrose of Somerville;
(3) Mrs (Bertha) Johnson of the Societas Mulierum Oxoniae Privatim Studentium, later St Anne's;
(4) Miss Jourdain of St Hugh's;
(5) Miss Blake of the Lady Margaret's Hall.
Not a single "Ms" among them!!! !!! Glorious days!
Mrs Johnson was the first actually to receive a degree. Her husband, known as "the Johnner", was Chaplain of All Souls and taught in the Hon Sch of Modern History. He was a ferocious tutor; when one undergraduate objected "to being talked to like that", the Johnner replied "Sir, I am paid to be rude to you".
Mrs Johnson originally opposed the idea of women being admitted fully to the University as then constructed, on the grounds that it involved forcing women onto a Procrustean bed designed for men; Miss Moberly headed a college originally founded for women who did not wish their studies to be circumscribed by examinations.
When, in half a millennium's time, discerning historians look back on the twentieth century, I wonder if they might have some ideas about who were the real feminists.
At the aborted Encaenia this centenary year, 2020, the proposed honorands were all women.
Er ...
25 July 2020
Brideshead Revised (2)
Another passage which Waugh revised out in his second edition. What is it about Wine and Sex ...
"So at sunset I took formal possession of her as her lover ... as I was made free of her narrow loins and, it seemed now, in assuaging that fierce appetite, cast a burden which I had borne all my life, toiled under, not knowing its nature -- now, while the waves still broke and thundered on the prow, the act of possession was a symbol, a rite of ancient origin and solemn meaning."
"So at sunset I took formal possession of her as her lover ... as I was made free of her narrow loins and, it seemed now, in assuaging that fierce appetite, cast a burden which I had borne all my life, toiled under, not knowing its nature -- now, while the waves still broke and thundered on the prow, the act of possession was a symbol, a rite of ancient origin and solemn meaning."
24 July 2020
What is to be done about "The Council?
How to bury Vatican II?
There have been many good books which help us to approach "the Council". Professor Roberto de Mattei on the history of the Council; Fr Serafino Lanzetta on its nature as a pastoral Council ... going back to when the splendid Mgr Gherardini opened up the log-jam in 2009 and began to ask necessary questions which, hitherto, had been unaskable in the 'Mainstream Church'. (Mgr Lefebvre, of course, had courageously asked them.)
Today, it is hard to open a computer without finding splendid stuff about the Conciliar legacy from the more courageous of the Successors of the Apostles: from a Vigano or a Schneider. How is the Bergoglian disaster to be resolved? How can the Magisterial catastrophes of this pontificate, and the problems bequeathed by Vatican II, be sorted out? Should we all begin to check through our history books to find out how long it took the disastrous pontificate of Pope Honorius to be sorted out by the definitive repudiations of an Ecumenical Council and of his own successors? Half a century? A Century?
I am all in favour of the analyses and proposals currently being made by better men and cleverer men than I am.
But I would also like a workaday fall-back plan. I want something we can be doing now; something than doesn't depend on hypotheses and hopes about future contingencies.
There is a sense in which I hope that the Council might solve its own problem. Let me explain.
Between the death of S Pius X and the Council, there was about half a century.
When the Council began and the Rhine, ordure, offal, and all, flowed into the Tiber, the cabal which successfully kidnapped the Council for its own purposes was very sure about one thing: the analysis of the needs of the Church made by S Pius X fifty years before was no longer adequate to the Church of the 1960s.
More than the same amount of time ... half a century ... has now elapsed between the end of the Council and our own time.
Surely no-one can deny that what seemed necessary in the 1960s is now ... History.
The Cold War is no more; instead of International Communist Subversion we have the problem of Islam.
Kindly old gentlemen in the 1960s wondered if the Contraceptive Pill might be a help to nice Catholic married couples who simply wanted to "space" their clean and respectable children: now we have rampant sexual immorality: the Pill is sidelined because AIDS and all those transmissible sexual diseases with the pretty, elegiac names necessitate 'barrier' interventions in the sexual act.
"Too many mouths to feed" has been replaced as a realistic worry by a fear that the working population will soon be too small to support our society.
Above all, the cheerful optimism of the 1960s, the belief that a friendly World was just sitting there waiting to listen to the message of the Church if only we could refine our expression of the Faith ... if only we would gently open our windows ... has given place to a world that is relentlessly hostile to the Sovereignty of Christ the King. If the 1960s uncrowned Him, the 2020s are determined to get Him back on to the Cross.
Vatican II is just about as much of an irrelevancy to this new world of ours, the world of 2020, as the financial legislation of the Emperor Augustus would be to a seminar on jazz.
(Even "liberal" Catholics agree de facto with this proposition of Conciliar irrelevance. Do the Kennedys and the Pelosis, gruesome tribes, have any interest in the strong language with which the Council condemned Abortion, and did so three times?)
Getting Vatican II canonically displaced and some of the actions of PF formally repudiated is a lovely idea ... a beautiful fantasy to help one get off to sleep. I'd vote for it twice a day. But, far more important, is the need for the Council to be forgotten and to be replaced by a Catholicism vibrantly and healthily expressive of the Gospel and the Faith of the Ages.
I'm not sure you need to be certain you have created a vacuum before you decide what to put into your vacant space.
The Council of Vienne had a Spirit of the Council. In that Spirit, the Templars were burned on probably phony charges of Sodomy and their wealth seized. The French government gathered huge sums of money on the undersnding that it would lead a crusade ... and then just hung on to it all. Does anybody give that Council a second thought? When did you last wake up in the night worrying about it?
Vatican II is as irrelevant now as the Council of Vienne is. Vatican II was every bit as fully and totally a true, valid Ecumenical Council cum Petro et sub Petro as Vienne was ... and it is just about as fully and totally irrelevant today. It is not, however, any more essential for it to be formally repudiated than it would be for Vienne to be expunged from the record. Helpful, yes; edifying, I agree; elegant and logical, most certainly; but not of the esse.
Vatican II needs to be helped to fall out of the memory of the Church, just as Vienne has been. It needs to be forgotten ... left to merge into the Church's general background murmur rather than touted around as if it offered anything whatsoever to help us to deal with Now.
There have been many good books which help us to approach "the Council". Professor Roberto de Mattei on the history of the Council; Fr Serafino Lanzetta on its nature as a pastoral Council ... going back to when the splendid Mgr Gherardini opened up the log-jam in 2009 and began to ask necessary questions which, hitherto, had been unaskable in the 'Mainstream Church'. (Mgr Lefebvre, of course, had courageously asked them.)
Today, it is hard to open a computer without finding splendid stuff about the Conciliar legacy from the more courageous of the Successors of the Apostles: from a Vigano or a Schneider. How is the Bergoglian disaster to be resolved? How can the Magisterial catastrophes of this pontificate, and the problems bequeathed by Vatican II, be sorted out? Should we all begin to check through our history books to find out how long it took the disastrous pontificate of Pope Honorius to be sorted out by the definitive repudiations of an Ecumenical Council and of his own successors? Half a century? A Century?
I am all in favour of the analyses and proposals currently being made by better men and cleverer men than I am.
But I would also like a workaday fall-back plan. I want something we can be doing now; something than doesn't depend on hypotheses and hopes about future contingencies.
There is a sense in which I hope that the Council might solve its own problem. Let me explain.
Between the death of S Pius X and the Council, there was about half a century.
When the Council began and the Rhine, ordure, offal, and all, flowed into the Tiber, the cabal which successfully kidnapped the Council for its own purposes was very sure about one thing: the analysis of the needs of the Church made by S Pius X fifty years before was no longer adequate to the Church of the 1960s.
More than the same amount of time ... half a century ... has now elapsed between the end of the Council and our own time.
Surely no-one can deny that what seemed necessary in the 1960s is now ... History.
The Cold War is no more; instead of International Communist Subversion we have the problem of Islam.
Kindly old gentlemen in the 1960s wondered if the Contraceptive Pill might be a help to nice Catholic married couples who simply wanted to "space" their clean and respectable children: now we have rampant sexual immorality: the Pill is sidelined because AIDS and all those transmissible sexual diseases with the pretty, elegiac names necessitate 'barrier' interventions in the sexual act.
"Too many mouths to feed" has been replaced as a realistic worry by a fear that the working population will soon be too small to support our society.
Above all, the cheerful optimism of the 1960s, the belief that a friendly World was just sitting there waiting to listen to the message of the Church if only we could refine our expression of the Faith ... if only we would gently open our windows ... has given place to a world that is relentlessly hostile to the Sovereignty of Christ the King. If the 1960s uncrowned Him, the 2020s are determined to get Him back on to the Cross.
Vatican II is just about as much of an irrelevancy to this new world of ours, the world of 2020, as the financial legislation of the Emperor Augustus would be to a seminar on jazz.
(Even "liberal" Catholics agree de facto with this proposition of Conciliar irrelevance. Do the Kennedys and the Pelosis, gruesome tribes, have any interest in the strong language with which the Council condemned Abortion, and did so three times?)
Getting Vatican II canonically displaced and some of the actions of PF formally repudiated is a lovely idea ... a beautiful fantasy to help one get off to sleep. I'd vote for it twice a day. But, far more important, is the need for the Council to be forgotten and to be replaced by a Catholicism vibrantly and healthily expressive of the Gospel and the Faith of the Ages.
I'm not sure you need to be certain you have created a vacuum before you decide what to put into your vacant space.
The Council of Vienne had a Spirit of the Council. In that Spirit, the Templars were burned on probably phony charges of Sodomy and their wealth seized. The French government gathered huge sums of money on the undersnding that it would lead a crusade ... and then just hung on to it all. Does anybody give that Council a second thought? When did you last wake up in the night worrying about it?
Vatican II is as irrelevant now as the Council of Vienne is. Vatican II was every bit as fully and totally a true, valid Ecumenical Council cum Petro et sub Petro as Vienne was ... and it is just about as fully and totally irrelevant today. It is not, however, any more essential for it to be formally repudiated than it would be for Vienne to be expunged from the record. Helpful, yes; edifying, I agree; elegant and logical, most certainly; but not of the esse.
Vatican II needs to be helped to fall out of the memory of the Church, just as Vienne has been. It needs to be forgotten ... left to merge into the Church's general background murmur rather than touted around as if it offered anything whatsoever to help us to deal with Now.
23 July 2020
Dorothy Sayers as linguist (3)
Here is another, rather jolly, example of the still very live conviction among the illiterate that it is more 'genteel' to use the nominative cases of pronouns when the grammar of a sentence does not permit it. It comes from Have His Carcase (1932):
"Miss Garland's carefully modulated tones escaped from control and became shrill. 'And I said ... so now you know where you get off. That's what I said, and it's a good thing there's a law in this country to protect girls like I'
"'Ain't she the snail's ankles?' asked Mr da Soto admiringly.".
There is so much of linguistic interest in Sayers. There is the movement of Wimsey's own speech from huntin'-an'-shootin' English in the earlier novels to the 'Oxford Academical' diction in Gaudy Night. There is a considerable difference between the Jeevesish speech of Bunter when he is speaking to the Quality, and the way he talks when he has been sent off to extract information below stairs.
And there are the regional dialects. Quite a bit of 'West Country' in Have His Carcase, the Fens get into the Nine Tailors, but there is page after page of Lowland Scots in Five Red Herrings. A lot of this evidence is now getting on for a century old. Doubtless, the regional dialects have changed in that time (for example, it seems to me that the glottal stop has become all-conquering). But I wonder if there are evidential controls enabling some sort of judgement to be made about whether, in their time, Sayers' accounts were accurate. Or perhaps she is herself the best evidence we have for how provincials really did speak between the Two Wars.
But I think she did have a very special interest in the speech habits and patterns of those whose social situations were ambiguous (such as the individuals named in the Pauline Epistles and analysed in 1983 by Wayne Meeks [The First Urban Christians, 1983], using the sociological tool of "Status Inconsistency").
Professor Higgins could have told us whether 'dagoes' really did use phrases like "Ain't she the snail's ankles". Or did Sayers invent it off, so to speak, her own bat?
I think it is perfectly brilliant and I shall incorporate it into my own private dialect.
"Miss Garland's carefully modulated tones escaped from control and became shrill. 'And I said ... so now you know where you get off. That's what I said, and it's a good thing there's a law in this country to protect girls like I'
"'Ain't she the snail's ankles?' asked Mr da Soto admiringly.".
There is so much of linguistic interest in Sayers. There is the movement of Wimsey's own speech from huntin'-an'-shootin' English in the earlier novels to the 'Oxford Academical' diction in Gaudy Night. There is a considerable difference between the Jeevesish speech of Bunter when he is speaking to the Quality, and the way he talks when he has been sent off to extract information below stairs.
And there are the regional dialects. Quite a bit of 'West Country' in Have His Carcase, the Fens get into the Nine Tailors, but there is page after page of Lowland Scots in Five Red Herrings. A lot of this evidence is now getting on for a century old. Doubtless, the regional dialects have changed in that time (for example, it seems to me that the glottal stop has become all-conquering). But I wonder if there are evidential controls enabling some sort of judgement to be made about whether, in their time, Sayers' accounts were accurate. Or perhaps she is herself the best evidence we have for how provincials really did speak between the Two Wars.
But I think she did have a very special interest in the speech habits and patterns of those whose social situations were ambiguous (such as the individuals named in the Pauline Epistles and analysed in 1983 by Wayne Meeks [The First Urban Christians, 1983], using the sociological tool of "Status Inconsistency").
Professor Higgins could have told us whether 'dagoes' really did use phrases like "Ain't she the snail's ankles". Or did Sayers invent it off, so to speak, her own bat?
I think it is perfectly brilliant and I shall incorporate it into my own private dialect.
22 July 2020
S Mary Magdalen (2); Dorothy Sayers guides us through linguistics
HYPERCORRECTION
As for the howler hortu, I do have a theory. I think it is an example of hypercorrection.
Educated Italians are conscious of the risk of amalgamating the fourth Latin declension with the second, because this is precisely what their own language has done. So they find themselves constantly typing "Sancto Spirito" and then having to correct it to "Sancto Spiritu".
So in this preface somebody hypercorrected the correct 'horto' to the incorrect 'hortu'.
In languages where the letter H is vulnerable, poor ignorant hypercorrecting people like Catullus's Arrius put an H in where it is not supposed to be. Similarly, in our own time, they are nervous about betraying their illiteracy by saying "Tom and me are going to the chipper"; so nervous that, even where "Tom and me" is required by English grammar (e.g. "he was very rude to Tom and me") they hypercorrect and erroneously say "He was very rude to Tom and I" ... ... poor illiterate things! They will even admit that they somehow can't get out of their minds the idea that "Tom and I " just "sounds right"!!! Such is the power of incompetent nannies and thoroughly bad teachers!! And the terrible, ghastly, desire to sound genteel! Better to sound Rustic than Genteel, sez I.
[Dorothy Sayers had a fine ... and amused ... ear for linguistic nuance. In 1933 (Murder must advertise) she offered, as from a cockney youth, "She is always telling tales on we boys"; and, as from a 'reception clerk', "Strictly between you and I." I wonder how much further this sort of thing can be traced back. In Have His Carcase (1932), Doris, whose "fundamental cockney was overlaid by a veneer of intense refinement", says "'It's not so easy for we dancers.'"]
I suspect that it was hypercorrection which led the old, correct version of a place-name five miles south of here to mutate, in the early modern period, from the historically and philologically correct 'Abendon' to the incorrect 'Abingdon' under the influence of all the other place-names where rustic tongues had carelessly modified -ing to -en'.
DELAYED UPDATING
Theologically, a thorough-going up-to-date Bergoglian would, of course, have to change the final bit of that S Mary Magdalene Preface to "ad mundi fines, Israele scilicet excepto, perveniret". Sometimes, familiar phraseologies ... our automatic linguistic habits ... long survive changes which have happened in realpolitik. [I have noticed, as late as Dorothy Sayers (Strong Poison, 1930), Lord Peter Wimsey referring to "the three kingdoms" ... an anachronistic solecism, of course, since 1707.] Similarly, with all the old habitual formulae still potent just behind their tongues, Bergoglianists sometimes forget the Bergoglianist conviction according to which the Jews are not to be offered saving Faith in Christ our Redeemer. And they thoughtlessly continue to use, unmodified, *silly old outmoded biblical phrases like "preaching the Gospel to all nations" when, by their own theology, they ought to be writing "preaching the Gospel to all nations except, of course, the Jews".
Perhaps they will all have corrected, 'updated', their instincts by the time we get to the Pontificate of S Frances XII, goddess bless her.
*Trigger warning here about the imminence of unAmerican Irony.
As for the howler hortu, I do have a theory. I think it is an example of hypercorrection.
Educated Italians are conscious of the risk of amalgamating the fourth Latin declension with the second, because this is precisely what their own language has done. So they find themselves constantly typing "Sancto Spirito" and then having to correct it to "Sancto Spiritu".
So in this preface somebody hypercorrected the correct 'horto' to the incorrect 'hortu'.
In languages where the letter H is vulnerable, poor ignorant hypercorrecting people like Catullus's Arrius put an H in where it is not supposed to be. Similarly, in our own time, they are nervous about betraying their illiteracy by saying "Tom and me are going to the chipper"; so nervous that, even where "Tom and me" is required by English grammar (e.g. "he was very rude to Tom and me") they hypercorrect and erroneously say "He was very rude to Tom and I" ... ... poor illiterate things! They will even admit that they somehow can't get out of their minds the idea that "Tom and I " just "sounds right"!!! Such is the power of incompetent nannies and thoroughly bad teachers!! And the terrible, ghastly, desire to sound genteel! Better to sound Rustic than Genteel, sez I.
[Dorothy Sayers had a fine ... and amused ... ear for linguistic nuance. In 1933 (Murder must advertise) she offered, as from a cockney youth, "She is always telling tales on we boys"; and, as from a 'reception clerk', "Strictly between you and I." I wonder how much further this sort of thing can be traced back. In Have His Carcase (1932), Doris, whose "fundamental cockney was overlaid by a veneer of intense refinement", says "'It's not so easy for we dancers.'"]
I suspect that it was hypercorrection which led the old, correct version of a place-name five miles south of here to mutate, in the early modern period, from the historically and philologically correct 'Abendon' to the incorrect 'Abingdon' under the influence of all the other place-names where rustic tongues had carelessly modified -ing to -en'.
DELAYED UPDATING
Theologically, a thorough-going up-to-date Bergoglian would, of course, have to change the final bit of that S Mary Magdalene Preface to "ad mundi fines, Israele scilicet excepto, perveniret". Sometimes, familiar phraseologies ... our automatic linguistic habits ... long survive changes which have happened in realpolitik. [I have noticed, as late as Dorothy Sayers (Strong Poison, 1930), Lord Peter Wimsey referring to "the three kingdoms" ... an anachronistic solecism, of course, since 1707.] Similarly, with all the old habitual formulae still potent just behind their tongues, Bergoglianists sometimes forget the Bergoglianist conviction according to which the Jews are not to be offered saving Faith in Christ our Redeemer. And they thoughtlessly continue to use, unmodified, *silly old outmoded biblical phrases like "preaching the Gospel to all nations" when, by their own theology, they ought to be writing "preaching the Gospel to all nations except, of course, the Jews".
Perhaps they will all have corrected, 'updated', their instincts by the time we get to the Pontificate of S Frances XII, goddess bless her.
*Trigger warning here about the imminence of unAmerican Irony.
21 July 2020
S Mary Magdalen (1)
As we approach the commemoration of S Mary Magdalen ... The Novus Ordo has followed the Church of England in promoting her to a Festum ... I have revised and now repeat, with parts of the original threads, my views about the Preface authorised in the Novus Ordo. Here is its text, warts and all; my comments will follow tomorrow:
"Qui [id est, Christus] in hortu manifestus apparuit Mariae Magdalenae, quippe quae eum dilexerat viventem, in cruce viderat morientem, quaesierat in sepulcro iacentem, ac prima adoraverat a mortuis resurgentem, et eam apostolatus officio coram apostolis honoravit, ut bonum novae vitae nuntium ad mundi fines perveniret."
"Qui [id est, Christus] in hortu manifestus apparuit Mariae Magdalenae, quippe quae eum dilexerat viventem, in cruce viderat morientem, quaesierat in sepulcro iacentem, ac prima adoraverat a mortuis resurgentem, et eam apostolatus officio coram apostolis honoravit, ut bonum novae vitae nuntium ad mundi fines perveniret."
20 July 2020
Racism
This is getting quite out of hand.
During Sunday's Sunday programme on the Beeb, there was a lot of stuff about how racist the Methodist Church is.
This is none of my business. I am not a Methodist. If you were to tell me that Methodist ministers habitually conduct their services dressed in SS uniforms, I would instantly disclaim any locus standi in the matter. But ...
Auntie Beeb produced just one Methodist minister ... a rather glib-sounding young man. Asked if he had evidence for Methodist Racism, he offered just one anecdote, concerning himself. Nobody else was brought into the programme in order to dispute, qualify, or contextualise his account. You would have thought that BBC journalists might have been familiar with the possibility that, in any dispute, there may be two ... or even more ... sides to an argument. No ... the Beeb, I have concluded, employs only the most naive ingenus/ingenues.
And the story he told? That he had been rebuked for having, during a funeral service, included in his talk a brief passage in a Ghanaian language which he had also uttered in English.
Let us pass over the rather obvious fact that this appears to be about language rather than race. Because it aroused in me memories ...
Immediately after the first Ordinariate clergy began to be let loose on main-stream parishes, the amusing tales came back about worshippers complaining, after Mass, "Why did we have to have all that Latin at the start of the service?" Such, apparently, can be the "excluding" effect of the Kyries. When teaching, I once came to suspect that a couple of Chinese students were exchanging subversive written comments about myself. I commandeered the piece of paper and thenceforth made them sit separately. Not that I was able to understand the Cantonese characters they had written, but ... I had felt "excluded". Rumour has it that, in some parts of Wales, if a holiday-homing Anglo-Saxon comes into a pub, its denizens immediately break into Welsh in order to make him feel "excluded". Indeed, I have, for convenience, sometimes conversed with my wife in Latin, deliberately in order to exclude somebody at a nearby table who might overhear what I do not want them to hear.
Whether people like it or not, Language not only enables communication.
Language is also most exquisitely potent to exclude.
This is not quite the End of the World. Except for those poor souls who have been brain-washed by the liberal gauleiters to complain about "feeling excluded". Those for whom "You are making me feel excluded" is the Whining Whinge against which there is no possible appeal.
The semiliterate chattering classes who wish to impose upon us all their own tedious shibboleths cannot have it both ways.
They need to decide which of these two slogans trumps the other:
(1) "People must be allowed to express their diversity"; or
(2) "People must not be made to feel excluded"?
During Sunday's Sunday programme on the Beeb, there was a lot of stuff about how racist the Methodist Church is.
This is none of my business. I am not a Methodist. If you were to tell me that Methodist ministers habitually conduct their services dressed in SS uniforms, I would instantly disclaim any locus standi in the matter. But ...
Auntie Beeb produced just one Methodist minister ... a rather glib-sounding young man. Asked if he had evidence for Methodist Racism, he offered just one anecdote, concerning himself. Nobody else was brought into the programme in order to dispute, qualify, or contextualise his account. You would have thought that BBC journalists might have been familiar with the possibility that, in any dispute, there may be two ... or even more ... sides to an argument. No ... the Beeb, I have concluded, employs only the most naive ingenus/ingenues.
And the story he told? That he had been rebuked for having, during a funeral service, included in his talk a brief passage in a Ghanaian language which he had also uttered in English.
Let us pass over the rather obvious fact that this appears to be about language rather than race. Because it aroused in me memories ...
Immediately after the first Ordinariate clergy began to be let loose on main-stream parishes, the amusing tales came back about worshippers complaining, after Mass, "Why did we have to have all that Latin at the start of the service?" Such, apparently, can be the "excluding" effect of the Kyries. When teaching, I once came to suspect that a couple of Chinese students were exchanging subversive written comments about myself. I commandeered the piece of paper and thenceforth made them sit separately. Not that I was able to understand the Cantonese characters they had written, but ... I had felt "excluded". Rumour has it that, in some parts of Wales, if a holiday-homing Anglo-Saxon comes into a pub, its denizens immediately break into Welsh in order to make him feel "excluded". Indeed, I have, for convenience, sometimes conversed with my wife in Latin, deliberately in order to exclude somebody at a nearby table who might overhear what I do not want them to hear.
Whether people like it or not, Language not only enables communication.
Language is also most exquisitely potent to exclude.
This is not quite the End of the World. Except for those poor souls who have been brain-washed by the liberal gauleiters to complain about "feeling excluded". Those for whom "You are making me feel excluded" is the Whining Whinge against which there is no possible appeal.
The semiliterate chattering classes who wish to impose upon us all their own tedious shibboleths cannot have it both ways.
They need to decide which of these two slogans trumps the other:
(1) "People must be allowed to express their diversity"; or
(2) "People must not be made to feel excluded"?
18 July 2020
Pulpit manners
"I don't know when I've heard a discourse more to my mind. He reads extremely well , with great propriety and in a very impressive manner; and at the same time, without any theatrical grimace or violence. I own, I do not like much action in the pulpit -- I do not like the studied air and artificial inflexions of voice, which your very popular and most admired preachers generally have. A simple delivery is much better calculated to inspire devotion, and shows a much better taste. Mr Howard read like a scholar and a gentleman".
Thus a character in The Watsons, with Jane Austen's clear approval. When, recently, I was researching the Reverend Sir Harry Trelawny, Bart, I found a contemporary description of him which reminded me uncannily of the Reverend Mr Howard:
"... he performed the whole service with simplicity and devotion, and ... He has nothing studied in his manner or expression; he seems himself strongly to feel the divine truths he delivers, and makes a suitable impression on the minds of his attentive audience.".
This was penned within the same five or so years in which Jane Austen probably wrote The Watsons.
And we might move onwards a generation or so, to S John Henry Newman's pulpit manner: it is recorded that he, too, never waved his arms around or sought strange vocal effects. In the days when I was free of the extensive (and largely untapped) Victorian archives at Lancing, I read a description (I can't remember by whom) of going to S Mary's for the University Sermon; "Marriot, serviceable, but not the silver voice [of Newman]". (Perhaps it will be best if we refrain from investigating Fr Faber's pulpit manner ... there may be something in Knox's hint that it was really rather Methodist.)
Today is the Year's Mind of the incomparable Jane. She was second only to Newman in her satirical wit and devastating irony; she was a devout Churchwoman; she received the Blessed Sacrament on her death bed; she was unshockable in her detached observation of the adulteries of Georgian England ... but shocked only by the sight of a notorious adulteress "staying for the Sacrament". Please murmur an Ave for a brilliant woman who exemplified so much that was so good in Anglicanism before the Catholic Revival..
But that Anglican culture had its ... gaps. Not surprisingly, they were pointed out by S John Henry (Loss and Gain pt i cap xviii). "[The Reverend Mr Reding] was a most respectable clergyman of the old school; pious in his sentiments, a gentleman in his feelings, exemplary in his social relations. He was no reader, and never had been in the way to gain theological knowledge; he sincerely believed all that was in the Prayer-book, but his sermons were very rarely doctrinal. They were sensible, manly* discourses on the moral duties. He administered holy communion at the three great festivals, saw his Bishop once or twice a year, was on good terms with the country gentleman in his neighbourhood, was charitable to the poor, hospitable in his housekeeping, and was a staunch though not a violent supporter of the Tory interest in his county. He was incapable of anything harsh, or petty, or low, or uncourteous; and died esteemed by the great houses about him, and lamented by his parishioners.".
Newman, I am sure, is luring us into asking: "So what on earth can possibly have been wrong with such a paragon?"
I will suggest: Excessive Inculturation into the social structures of Society! Together with a lack of a compelling feeling of the primacy of the supernatural; and an absence of that sense of sacrifice which is primarily expressed in Celibacy (vide pt iii cap ii, about the Bath bookshop in Danvers Street* ... perhaps the most savagely violent piece of sustained sarcasm in all Newman's oeuvre).
S John Henry would not have favoured 'Modified Celibacy'!
* 'Manly': my printed text (Burns Oates Washbourne) reads 'mainly'. I have no hesitation in emending. I wonder if an autograph text survives.
* Was there a Danvers Street in early Victorian Bath? Did it contain a bookshop?
Thus a character in The Watsons, with Jane Austen's clear approval. When, recently, I was researching the Reverend Sir Harry Trelawny, Bart, I found a contemporary description of him which reminded me uncannily of the Reverend Mr Howard:
"... he performed the whole service with simplicity and devotion, and ... He has nothing studied in his manner or expression; he seems himself strongly to feel the divine truths he delivers, and makes a suitable impression on the minds of his attentive audience.".
This was penned within the same five or so years in which Jane Austen probably wrote The Watsons.
And we might move onwards a generation or so, to S John Henry Newman's pulpit manner: it is recorded that he, too, never waved his arms around or sought strange vocal effects. In the days when I was free of the extensive (and largely untapped) Victorian archives at Lancing, I read a description (I can't remember by whom) of going to S Mary's for the University Sermon; "Marriot, serviceable, but not the silver voice [of Newman]". (Perhaps it will be best if we refrain from investigating Fr Faber's pulpit manner ... there may be something in Knox's hint that it was really rather Methodist.)
Today is the Year's Mind of the incomparable Jane. She was second only to Newman in her satirical wit and devastating irony; she was a devout Churchwoman; she received the Blessed Sacrament on her death bed; she was unshockable in her detached observation of the adulteries of Georgian England ... but shocked only by the sight of a notorious adulteress "staying for the Sacrament". Please murmur an Ave for a brilliant woman who exemplified so much that was so good in Anglicanism before the Catholic Revival..
But that Anglican culture had its ... gaps. Not surprisingly, they were pointed out by S John Henry (Loss and Gain pt i cap xviii). "[The Reverend Mr Reding] was a most respectable clergyman of the old school; pious in his sentiments, a gentleman in his feelings, exemplary in his social relations. He was no reader, and never had been in the way to gain theological knowledge; he sincerely believed all that was in the Prayer-book, but his sermons were very rarely doctrinal. They were sensible, manly* discourses on the moral duties. He administered holy communion at the three great festivals, saw his Bishop once or twice a year, was on good terms with the country gentleman in his neighbourhood, was charitable to the poor, hospitable in his housekeeping, and was a staunch though not a violent supporter of the Tory interest in his county. He was incapable of anything harsh, or petty, or low, or uncourteous; and died esteemed by the great houses about him, and lamented by his parishioners.".
Newman, I am sure, is luring us into asking: "So what on earth can possibly have been wrong with such a paragon?"
I will suggest: Excessive Inculturation into the social structures of Society! Together with a lack of a compelling feeling of the primacy of the supernatural; and an absence of that sense of sacrifice which is primarily expressed in Celibacy (vide pt iii cap ii, about the Bath bookshop in Danvers Street* ... perhaps the most savagely violent piece of sustained sarcasm in all Newman's oeuvre).
S John Henry would not have favoured 'Modified Celibacy'!
* 'Manly': my printed text (Burns Oates Washbourne) reads 'mainly'. I have no hesitation in emending. I wonder if an autograph text survives.
* Was there a Danvers Street in early Victorian Bath? Did it contain a bookshop?
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