As I made a Commemoration this morning of S Raymond the Unborn, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of confusion. How on earth is one to virtue-signal one's political-correctness when confronted by mutually exclusive pointers?
S Raymond (men) worked for the liberation of slaves. That ought to make him a favourite and hero of the agalmatophobic zealots who are cleansing our public places of memorials honouring slave-trade profiteers.
S Raymond (de) was liberating slaves from Moslems ... who are referred to as Impii in today's collect. Ever since S Paul VI so gloriously surrendered the Lepanto banners to the Turk, and Vatican II made its questionable remarks about the Islamic religion, this sort of language has been off-limits, surely, among woke prelates? But, surely, slavers are, by definition, impii?
Furthermore, the slaves whom S Raymond was liberating probably, as a generalisation, may have had diminished pigmentation compared with the melanic enhancement (again, I take the risk of generalising) of their enslavers. How does that fit in with a dogmatic "***** Lives Matter" ideology?
Can linguistically advanced readers offer me any guidance on how to be more politically-correct? And how, in a fallen world, to avoid split-infinitives and excessive use of the hyphen?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Post Scriptum:
A week or two ago, I saw a video clip of some pigmentation-depleted young people being arrested in North America for chalking on a pavement something like "Preborn Black Lives Matter". Has that 'story' yet had a denouement?
31 August 2020
30 August 2020
The Importance of Nativity
"Dr [X] looked out of the window. 'There is my dullest pupil just ringing the bell, ' he said. 'I must go to the study, and listen to an essay on Swift beginning 'Swift was born.'"
Which fictional don (i.e. 'Dr X') said this?
Which fictional don (i.e. 'Dr X') said this?
The "binitarian" genius of the Roman Rite (4)
Oops ... instead, I'll let Gregory Dix say it for me ...
" ... the pre-Nicene theology of the incarnation as a rule regarded it, not as we do, as the effect of a conception 'by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary', but as a conception 'by the Logos (the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity) of the Virgin Mary'. The eternal Word of God Himself, the creative Logos 'coming down to us' as Athanasius himself said, 'formed for Himself the Body from the Virgin.' However perverse it may seem to us, 'the Spirit' which came upon Mary and 'the Power of te Most High' which overshadowed her were unanimously interpreted by the second century christian writers as meaning the Second not the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. And this nterpretation, general in the pre-Nicene church, lasted on in many quarters during the fourth century. It is accepted and used by all the anti-Arian stalwarts, Athanasius, Hilary, Ambrose, and Gregory Nazianzene, as a normal expression of orthodoxy. This 'Spitit = Word' terminology is obviously related to the 'Spitit = Presence-of-God' terminology ... It is also likely that both are originally connected in pre-christian jewish thought with the idea of the sanctity and 'power' of the Name of God ... The 'Spirit = Word' terminology is, like the 'Spirit = Presence idea in christian usage, a survival of the New Testament conception of the 'presence' of the heavenly Christ as the 'quickening Spirit' in His members on earth ... What is important to our purpose here is that such language was still currently used of the eucharist in the fourth century, so that S Ambrose does not hesitate to say to catechumens about the sacrament. 'The Body of Christ is the Body of "Divine Spirit", for the Spirit is Christ.'"
When Dix moves on to the first main exegete of the eucharistic, consecratory, Eucharist, he writes:
" ... from end to end of Cyril's account of the liturgy and throughout his eucharistic teaching, Christ plays only a passive part in the eucharist. He is simply the divine VictimWhose Body and Blood are 'made' by the action of the Holy Ghost, that the earthly church may offer Him to the Father 'in propitiation for our sins'. The older tradition was that He is the active agent in the eucharist, who offers the Church as found 'in Him'..
Dom Gregory Dix, using the in-house slang of dear old 1930s Anglo-Catholicism, tells us: "The church of Jerusalem in the fourth century is 'very advanced' and S Cyril is 'a very extreme man', with no overwhelming reverence for old-fashioned churchmanship."!
I have a few concluding comments.
" ... the pre-Nicene theology of the incarnation as a rule regarded it, not as we do, as the effect of a conception 'by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary', but as a conception 'by the Logos (the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity) of the Virgin Mary'. The eternal Word of God Himself, the creative Logos 'coming down to us' as Athanasius himself said, 'formed for Himself the Body from the Virgin.' However perverse it may seem to us, 'the Spirit' which came upon Mary and 'the Power of te Most High' which overshadowed her were unanimously interpreted by the second century christian writers as meaning the Second not the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. And this nterpretation, general in the pre-Nicene church, lasted on in many quarters during the fourth century. It is accepted and used by all the anti-Arian stalwarts, Athanasius, Hilary, Ambrose, and Gregory Nazianzene, as a normal expression of orthodoxy. This 'Spitit = Word' terminology is obviously related to the 'Spitit = Presence-of-God' terminology ... It is also likely that both are originally connected in pre-christian jewish thought with the idea of the sanctity and 'power' of the Name of God ... The 'Spirit = Word' terminology is, like the 'Spirit = Presence idea in christian usage, a survival of the New Testament conception of the 'presence' of the heavenly Christ as the 'quickening Spirit' in His members on earth ... What is important to our purpose here is that such language was still currently used of the eucharist in the fourth century, so that S Ambrose does not hesitate to say to catechumens about the sacrament. 'The Body of Christ is the Body of "Divine Spirit", for the Spirit is Christ.'"
When Dix moves on to the first main exegete of the eucharistic, consecratory, Eucharist, he writes:
" ... from end to end of Cyril's account of the liturgy and throughout his eucharistic teaching, Christ plays only a passive part in the eucharist. He is simply the divine VictimWhose Body and Blood are 'made' by the action of the Holy Ghost, that the earthly church may offer Him to the Father 'in propitiation for our sins'. The older tradition was that He is the active agent in the eucharist, who offers the Church as found 'in Him'..
Dom Gregory Dix, using the in-house slang of dear old 1930s Anglo-Catholicism, tells us: "The church of Jerusalem in the fourth century is 'very advanced' and S Cyril is 'a very extreme man', with no overwhelming reverence for old-fashioned churchmanship."!
I have a few concluding comments.
29 August 2020
Only for brilliant English stylists
"To say that the book is beautifully written would be mere impertinence; we expect no less from one of the most brilliant living stylists."
Who wrote this [in the 1930s] about whom?
Who wrote this [in the 1930s] about whom?
The "binitarian" genius of the Roman Rite (3)
On second thoughts, I will not do what I promised last time. Instead, I will quote the massive Historian of the Roman Rite, J A Jungmann, because, surprisingly, he says what I want to say so much better than I could say it.
He is writing about the Gloria in excelsis, but what he says applies very neatly also to the Canon.
" ... some commentators ... make excuses for the fact that the Holy Ghost is mentioned only at the very end, and then only in passing ... No, God and Christ are the pillars of the Christian order of the universe: God, the beginning and the end of all things, towards whom all religious seeking is bent and all prayer eventually is turned; but in the Christian order also Christ, the way, the road on which all our God-seeking must be directed. Therefore in St Paul's letters we find this duality of God and Christ not only in the introductory salutation, but time and time again throughout the writing. And if at times St Paul rounds out the duality and completes it in the Trinity, this is done not so much to acknowledge the three divine Persons themselves, as, rather, to mark more distiunctly the structure of the Christian order of salvation, in which our ascent to God is vouchsafed through Christ in the Holy Spirit.".
Perhaps I may put it crudely: if someone asks you what you have been doing all day, you don't say "Breathing". You assume that as the background, indeed, as an essential presupposition, to your activities. And Pneuma is the Greek for ... among a number of other things ... Breath.
In the next part of this, I give some doctrinal background..
He is writing about the Gloria in excelsis, but what he says applies very neatly also to the Canon.
" ... some commentators ... make excuses for the fact that the Holy Ghost is mentioned only at the very end, and then only in passing ... No, God and Christ are the pillars of the Christian order of the universe: God, the beginning and the end of all things, towards whom all religious seeking is bent and all prayer eventually is turned; but in the Christian order also Christ, the way, the road on which all our God-seeking must be directed. Therefore in St Paul's letters we find this duality of God and Christ not only in the introductory salutation, but time and time again throughout the writing. And if at times St Paul rounds out the duality and completes it in the Trinity, this is done not so much to acknowledge the three divine Persons themselves, as, rather, to mark more distiunctly the structure of the Christian order of salvation, in which our ascent to God is vouchsafed through Christ in the Holy Spirit.".
Perhaps I may put it crudely: if someone asks you what you have been doing all day, you don't say "Breathing". You assume that as the background, indeed, as an essential presupposition, to your activities. And Pneuma is the Greek for ... among a number of other things ... Breath.
In the next part of this, I give some doctrinal background..
28 August 2020
Only for happily married couples
"Like most happily married couples, they lived in a state of perpetual propaganda at each other's expense."
Who wrote this?
Is it true? (If responding, please state your gender or, as the case may be, your sex.)
Who wrote this?
Is it true? (If responding, please state your gender or, as the case may be, your sex.)
The "binitarian" genius of the Roman Rite (2)
Dom Gregory Dix, our great Anglo-Papalist Doctor, had a particular dislike of the quaint and ludicrous old-style proddy superstition that a Doctrine needs to be clearly laid out in Scripture before it could be imposed on the Faithful (by this daft principle, the Immaculate Conception, Papal Infallibility, and the Assumption can at best only be deemed 'opinions'). In what follows, he is concerned to explode an old adage dear to some Anglicans, limiting Doctrine to what has been believed "everywhere, always, and by all". Hear his devastating attack upon this twaddle ... appreciate the characteristically impish glee, especially in the elegant last three sentences! (His Bishops hated and feared him; he is still very much part of our Ordinariate Patrimony.)
"The doctrine of the full Deity of the Holy Ghost ... was defined in 381 ... There is nothing in the N.T. which clearly indicates that the Orthodox doctrine is certainly right ... St Athanasius and St Basil ... appealed, naturally, to scripture and tradition, and it is notorious how defective in substance their appeal is found to be when it is closely examined. It is also remarkable that in the works which they wrote to vindicate this doctrine both carefully avoid even once applying the decisive word 'God' to the Holy Ghost [the same, of course, is true of the 'Nicene Creed'] ... St Gregory Nazianzen, 'the theologian' par excellence for the East, under whose presidency the Oecumenical Council of 381 actually defined the doctrine, is explicit that there were but 'few' who acepted it in his day and that Athanasius was the first and almost the only doctor to whom God had vouchsafed light on this subject. Elsewhere he is even more devastatingly honest with the admission that while the N.T. plainly revealed the Godhead of the Son it no more than 'hinted at' (hupodeixen) that of the Holy Ghost ... This is some distance from talk of 'most certain warrants of holy Scripture' ...
"That the full doctrine of the Spirit's Godhead was then believed in some sense 'everywhere' we may hope, although the evidence is not reassuring. That it had 'always' been believed by some we may suppose, though the evidence is at least defective. That it had previously been believed 'by all' is demonstrably untrue.".
The Gloria in excelsis is old enough to predate the dogmatising of 381; hence, it only brings in the Holy Ghost with its conclusion. The same is true of the Canon of the Mass. After 381, an 'Epiclesis' came to be deemed essential in Eastern Eucharistic Prayers, and even made a few inroads in the West. But the Canon Romanus was content to continue with the much older notion that the Gifts become the Lord's Body and Blood by virtue of their acceptance by the Father.
But ... Time moves on. Perhaps the post-Vatican II innovators were right to clutter up their new Missal with Orientalising Invocations of the Spirit? I hear you all asking me this.
In my next part, I intend to justify, against the Orientalisers, against the Modernisers, and against any other -isers, the retention of the ancient teaching incorporated in our Roman Canon.
(I blame the laity for our problems. How often, dear lay readers, have you given your priest some scissors as a prezzy, making clear that you expect him to use them to cut those 'Alternative Eucharistic Prayers' out of his Novus Ordo Missal?
'Nuff said.)
"The doctrine of the full Deity of the Holy Ghost ... was defined in 381 ... There is nothing in the N.T. which clearly indicates that the Orthodox doctrine is certainly right ... St Athanasius and St Basil ... appealed, naturally, to scripture and tradition, and it is notorious how defective in substance their appeal is found to be when it is closely examined. It is also remarkable that in the works which they wrote to vindicate this doctrine both carefully avoid even once applying the decisive word 'God' to the Holy Ghost [the same, of course, is true of the 'Nicene Creed'] ... St Gregory Nazianzen, 'the theologian' par excellence for the East, under whose presidency the Oecumenical Council of 381 actually defined the doctrine, is explicit that there were but 'few' who acepted it in his day and that Athanasius was the first and almost the only doctor to whom God had vouchsafed light on this subject. Elsewhere he is even more devastatingly honest with the admission that while the N.T. plainly revealed the Godhead of the Son it no more than 'hinted at' (hupodeixen) that of the Holy Ghost ... This is some distance from talk of 'most certain warrants of holy Scripture' ...
"That the full doctrine of the Spirit's Godhead was then believed in some sense 'everywhere' we may hope, although the evidence is not reassuring. That it had 'always' been believed by some we may suppose, though the evidence is at least defective. That it had previously been believed 'by all' is demonstrably untrue.".
The Gloria in excelsis is old enough to predate the dogmatising of 381; hence, it only brings in the Holy Ghost with its conclusion. The same is true of the Canon of the Mass. After 381, an 'Epiclesis' came to be deemed essential in Eastern Eucharistic Prayers, and even made a few inroads in the West. But the Canon Romanus was content to continue with the much older notion that the Gifts become the Lord's Body and Blood by virtue of their acceptance by the Father.
But ... Time moves on. Perhaps the post-Vatican II innovators were right to clutter up their new Missal with Orientalising Invocations of the Spirit? I hear you all asking me this.
In my next part, I intend to justify, against the Orientalisers, against the Modernisers, and against any other -isers, the retention of the ancient teaching incorporated in our Roman Canon.
(I blame the laity for our problems. How often, dear lay readers, have you given your priest some scissors as a prezzy, making clear that you expect him to use them to cut those 'Alternative Eucharistic Prayers' out of his Novus Ordo Missal?
'Nuff said.)
27 August 2020
Tribalism and Xenophobia
I hope to return tomorrow to the theme I began yesterday.
I don't think 'the modern generation' understands how instictively tribal we all were, even, say, a mere seventy years ago.
Every peasant in England was either Oxford or Cambridge when it came to supporting a university in the annual Boat Race, depending on family affections (or otherwise) for Squire or Parson or Doctor. Every family was 'Labour' or 'Conservative' or 'Liberal'. My father was not protected from such tribalism by having Seen The World as a sailorman. Indeed, his primary prejudices arose from his loyalty to the Navy. In the Thirties he built an Art Deco house in the middle of the countryside ... and named it after his Ship!! The largest picture in it was a gigantic Victorian engraving of Viscount Nelson raising a wine glass; the caption was "THE TOAST IS: BRITAIN". Of course, he would use the N-word as everybody then did; but there was no animus in his unreconstructed lexical habits. Perhaps his greatest contempt for tribes which were Other was reserved for the British Army. Having grown up in a garrison town, he had strong views about their ridiculous preoccupation with Drill, the fatuous pomposity of their silly salutes, their generally absurd and class-ridden culture.
He had seen the world; so he knew for certain that Natives were happiest by far under the Btitish Empire. But after the War, when travel again became possible, and we went on holiday to a European country, I became aware of his dislike of armed police. That man, after all, could just take out that revolver and shoot someone dead with it.
He was convinced that countries with such phenomena as armed police did not count as "free".
After all, of the many gaps dividing human from human, the gap between the man who can (possibly even on mere impulse) shoot you stone dead within five seconds without even getting near you, and the man who can't, is one of the most radical divides.
In my teens, I sloughed off most of my paternal xenophobia fairly rapidly ... I discovered a fascination for languages, and you can't easily love someone's language while despising them. But my Father's loathing for gun-toting cops lingered in my mind. I recall a feeling of genuine, physical revulsion when, decades later, during a terrorism crisis, I saw a couple of plods patrolling Heathrow Airport, with guns.
As the decades continue to roll past, my inherited feeling that countries where the police wear side-arms do not really count as 'free' has (I am glad to be able to reassure you) gradually evaporated. But not, quite, entirely. Whenever I see ... for example, a video-clip on a news bulletin, showing police with fire-arms in their hands pumping multiple bullets at point-blank range into someone's back ... there comes, unbidden, into my mind, my Father's view that
That is not a free country.
I just can't help it.
C A P D
I don't think 'the modern generation' understands how instictively tribal we all were, even, say, a mere seventy years ago.
Every peasant in England was either Oxford or Cambridge when it came to supporting a university in the annual Boat Race, depending on family affections (or otherwise) for Squire or Parson or Doctor. Every family was 'Labour' or 'Conservative' or 'Liberal'. My father was not protected from such tribalism by having Seen The World as a sailorman. Indeed, his primary prejudices arose from his loyalty to the Navy. In the Thirties he built an Art Deco house in the middle of the countryside ... and named it after his Ship!! The largest picture in it was a gigantic Victorian engraving of Viscount Nelson raising a wine glass; the caption was "THE TOAST IS: BRITAIN". Of course, he would use the N-word as everybody then did; but there was no animus in his unreconstructed lexical habits. Perhaps his greatest contempt for tribes which were Other was reserved for the British Army. Having grown up in a garrison town, he had strong views about their ridiculous preoccupation with Drill, the fatuous pomposity of their silly salutes, their generally absurd and class-ridden culture.
He had seen the world; so he knew for certain that Natives were happiest by far under the Btitish Empire. But after the War, when travel again became possible, and we went on holiday to a European country, I became aware of his dislike of armed police. That man, after all, could just take out that revolver and shoot someone dead with it.
He was convinced that countries with such phenomena as armed police did not count as "free".
After all, of the many gaps dividing human from human, the gap between the man who can (possibly even on mere impulse) shoot you stone dead within five seconds without even getting near you, and the man who can't, is one of the most radical divides.
In my teens, I sloughed off most of my paternal xenophobia fairly rapidly ... I discovered a fascination for languages, and you can't easily love someone's language while despising them. But my Father's loathing for gun-toting cops lingered in my mind. I recall a feeling of genuine, physical revulsion when, decades later, during a terrorism crisis, I saw a couple of plods patrolling Heathrow Airport, with guns.
As the decades continue to roll past, my inherited feeling that countries where the police wear side-arms do not really count as 'free' has (I am glad to be able to reassure you) gradually evaporated. But not, quite, entirely. Whenever I see ... for example, a video-clip on a news bulletin, showing police with fire-arms in their hands pumping multiple bullets at point-blank range into someone's back ... there comes, unbidden, into my mind, my Father's view that
That is not a free country.
I just can't help it.
C A P D
26 August 2020
The glory of Mary; and the 'binitarian' genius of the Roman Rite (1)
Glory be to God on high, and in earth peace to men of good will. We praise thee, we bless thee, we worship thee, we glorify thee, we give thanks to thee for thy great glory:
O Lord God, heavenly king, God the Father Almighty;
O Lord the only begotten Son, Jesu Christ;
O Spirit and dear advocate of orphans.
O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, First-born of Mary the Virgin Mother, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us; thou that takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer to the glory of Mary; Thou that sittest at the right hand of God the Father, have mercy upon us.
For thou only art the Holy One, making Mary holy; thou only art the Lord, ruling Mary; thou only, O Jesu Christ, art the Most High, crowning Mary, with the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the Father. Amen..
For your interest, I have laid out the Gloria in excelsis Deo in an adapted-Cranmer translation, as it was appointed to be sung or said on feasts of our Lady in the Rite of Sarum. I have entered in red the additions made therein to the basic text. This sort of text is called 'farced', and was, I believe, mentioned at the Council of Trent as an example of liturgical corruption! Until at least the time of Leo XIII, that is, comparatively recently, the Missal of S Pius V still retained a rubric specifically indicating that the standard text was to be used even on feasts of our Lady! (Does the removal of this rubric mean that the Marian version is now debanned?!) Personally, I find these additions not unattractive, particularly in the last paragraph.
But you will be panting to point out to me that the first interpolation is nothing to do with the Mother of God; it serves instead to import the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity in a clause perhaps suggested by the Magnificat Antiphon on Ascension Day. It is designed to 'complete' the parallelism with the references to the other two Persons. Indeed, some earlier texts (Codex Alexandinus; Bangor Antiphonary) had also squeezed the Holy Ghost into this part of the canticle. (It has to be admitted that this trinitarianisation of the first part of the Canticle results in imposing upon the whole formula quite a different structure from that of the unfarced text.)
Understandable. People felt they ought to import the Holy Ghost into more or less everything, as soon as the Dogma of His Divinity had been articulated and Defined ...
... oops! I misspoke. I'd better withdraw the objectionable and improper implication that the Dogma was a novelty. I do withdraw it unreservedly. But I'll explain in part (2) how I came to make such a mistake.
O Lord God, heavenly king, God the Father Almighty;
O Lord the only begotten Son, Jesu Christ;
O Spirit and dear advocate of orphans.
O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, First-born of Mary the Virgin Mother, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us; thou that takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer to the glory of Mary; Thou that sittest at the right hand of God the Father, have mercy upon us.
For thou only art the Holy One, making Mary holy; thou only art the Lord, ruling Mary; thou only, O Jesu Christ, art the Most High, crowning Mary, with the Holy Ghost, in the glory of God the Father. Amen..
For your interest, I have laid out the Gloria in excelsis Deo in an adapted-Cranmer translation, as it was appointed to be sung or said on feasts of our Lady in the Rite of Sarum. I have entered in red the additions made therein to the basic text. This sort of text is called 'farced', and was, I believe, mentioned at the Council of Trent as an example of liturgical corruption! Until at least the time of Leo XIII, that is, comparatively recently, the Missal of S Pius V still retained a rubric specifically indicating that the standard text was to be used even on feasts of our Lady! (Does the removal of this rubric mean that the Marian version is now debanned?!) Personally, I find these additions not unattractive, particularly in the last paragraph.
But you will be panting to point out to me that the first interpolation is nothing to do with the Mother of God; it serves instead to import the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity in a clause perhaps suggested by the Magnificat Antiphon on Ascension Day. It is designed to 'complete' the parallelism with the references to the other two Persons. Indeed, some earlier texts (Codex Alexandinus; Bangor Antiphonary) had also squeezed the Holy Ghost into this part of the canticle. (It has to be admitted that this trinitarianisation of the first part of the Canticle results in imposing upon the whole formula quite a different structure from that of the unfarced text.)
Understandable. People felt they ought to import the Holy Ghost into more or less everything, as soon as the Dogma of His Divinity had been articulated and Defined ...
... oops! I misspoke. I'd better withdraw the objectionable and improper implication that the Dogma was a novelty. I do withdraw it unreservedly. But I'll explain in part (2) how I came to make such a mistake.
25 August 2020
Titular Sees ... and S Teresa of Calcutta ... and episcopal werewolves
Foul weather here in Blighty today. The Weather Community tells us that there will be calamity, disaster, disorder. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, if not their five Aunties. For some reason, they have given the storm the title "Francis". (I bet Mr Ivereigh is hopping mad. He probably blames it on the malign influence of Converts.)
However, I will do what comes so easily to us poor old gentlemen: I shall hunker down, stay at home, and meditate on how everything has deteriorated since yesteryear.
In yesteryear, when everything was so perfect, when I was a bonny baby being pushed around in my perambulator ... I just loved those glorious Episcopal Sees in partibus infidelium. What a joy to know that, in Tudor Exeter, there was William, Bishop of Hippo in partibus. How his Confirmation candidates must have hung upon his every word! How Henry Tudor must have feared his fulminations on the subject of the Civitas Dei!
I gurgled with glee.
Now that the Roman See has put a stopper to these titular delights, it is often hard to know whether some prelate is Anglican or Catholic. Take, for example, the Bishop of Much Wenlock. He is quite a source of bons mots. (Here's a choice example: "Facts are only steam which obscures the mirror of truth": reliably recorded by a Protonotary Apostolic, R A Knox).
Time was, when one could be fairly confident that such a gentleman would be an Anglican Suffragan Bishop (probably a close friend of the Bishop of Buckingham).
But now ... after seven decades of ecumenical rapprochement ... how can we be sure that he is not the latest member of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales? Perhaps, yet another Westminster auxiliary? Destined for Birmingham when Bernard gets Westminster?
Changing the subject to my next grumble: there are silly people on the internet complaining about somebody or other who has done a very sensible comparison of PF with S Pius X (possibly inspired by the rumours about the imminent encyclical Stuprandi Dominici Gregis)..
Oh dear. Does nobody nowadays ever read Plutarch? You'd better watch my Blog with trepidation, because I am preparing a major and definitive comparison of Pol Pot and Mother Teresa.
And finally ... there is a picture on the internet of Archbishop Hesse of Hamburg (didn't Hitler have a chum with this name?), whose mind (he desires us to know) is not closed to the possibility of wyminpriests. A man of the Future? More, I suggest, a man of the past. His chasuble is embroidered with the sort of cross that German military uniforms often bore during the Third Reich.
I bet he's a werewolf.
It's still raining.
However, I will do what comes so easily to us poor old gentlemen: I shall hunker down, stay at home, and meditate on how everything has deteriorated since yesteryear.
In yesteryear, when everything was so perfect, when I was a bonny baby being pushed around in my perambulator ... I just loved those glorious Episcopal Sees in partibus infidelium. What a joy to know that, in Tudor Exeter, there was William, Bishop of Hippo in partibus. How his Confirmation candidates must have hung upon his every word! How Henry Tudor must have feared his fulminations on the subject of the Civitas Dei!
I gurgled with glee.
Now that the Roman See has put a stopper to these titular delights, it is often hard to know whether some prelate is Anglican or Catholic. Take, for example, the Bishop of Much Wenlock. He is quite a source of bons mots. (Here's a choice example: "Facts are only steam which obscures the mirror of truth": reliably recorded by a Protonotary Apostolic, R A Knox).
Time was, when one could be fairly confident that such a gentleman would be an Anglican Suffragan Bishop (probably a close friend of the Bishop of Buckingham).
But now ... after seven decades of ecumenical rapprochement ... how can we be sure that he is not the latest member of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales? Perhaps, yet another Westminster auxiliary? Destined for Birmingham when Bernard gets Westminster?
Changing the subject to my next grumble: there are silly people on the internet complaining about somebody or other who has done a very sensible comparison of PF with S Pius X (possibly inspired by the rumours about the imminent encyclical Stuprandi Dominici Gregis)..
Oh dear. Does nobody nowadays ever read Plutarch? You'd better watch my Blog with trepidation, because I am preparing a major and definitive comparison of Pol Pot and Mother Teresa.
And finally ... there is a picture on the internet of Archbishop Hesse of Hamburg (didn't Hitler have a chum with this name?), whose mind (he desires us to know) is not closed to the possibility of wyminpriests. A man of the Future? More, I suggest, a man of the past. His chasuble is embroidered with the sort of cross that German military uniforms often bore during the Third Reich.
I bet he's a werewolf.
It's still raining.
24 August 2020
Formal and Material Collabration again.
D'you know, at one point I was tempted to consider a career in Criminal Law? It's as well I dropped the idea; the Law is far beyond me.
One of our judges has just sentenced a youth to at least 55 years in jug for murder ... when the fellow took no hand in a mass killing carried out by his brother but just helped to plan and facilitate it. And do you remember Adolf Eichmann? The Israeli courts sentenced him to the drop, although his defence was that he had never killed a Jew but had simply organised their transportation to Death (I shall not enable comments which tell me that not nearly as many Jews were killed etc. etc., so don't waste your time).
Yet, a few years ago, two senior Glaswegian midwives were sacked ... and our courts upheld their sacking. The midwives had argued that the Conscience Clauses in our abortion legislation excused them from having to organise other people to do the killing. The judges held that the Conscience Clauses did no more than excuse these women from their own personal physical participation in the killing.
I have problems with what seems to me to be a logical dislocation between these two approaches.
One of our judges has just sentenced a youth to at least 55 years in jug for murder ... when the fellow took no hand in a mass killing carried out by his brother but just helped to plan and facilitate it. And do you remember Adolf Eichmann? The Israeli courts sentenced him to the drop, although his defence was that he had never killed a Jew but had simply organised their transportation to Death (I shall not enable comments which tell me that not nearly as many Jews were killed etc. etc., so don't waste your time).
Yet, a few years ago, two senior Glaswegian midwives were sacked ... and our courts upheld their sacking. The midwives had argued that the Conscience Clauses in our abortion legislation excused them from having to organise other people to do the killing. The judges held that the Conscience Clauses did no more than excuse these women from their own personal physical participation in the killing.
I have problems with what seems to me to be a logical dislocation between these two approaches.
23 August 2020
Bishop John Grandisson
August 23, the day after the Octave Day of the Assumption, was designated as his Obit Day by Bishop Grandisson ... although it was not in fact the Day of his Death.
Decades before, he had ordered that his Installation was to be on that Octave Day, because of his great devotion to our blessed Lady of Mercy.
He ordered that, on that Octave Day, the Benedictus should have this interpolation:
Benedictus Filius Mariae qui venit ...
He was a very great Pontiff. He was a buddy of our late Holy Father Pope John XXII and, in my view, is probably responsible for the 'English' monument to that pope in Avignon Cathedral. He introduced Corpus Christi to his Diocese, and gave magnificent monstrances to the Cathedral and to his Collegiate Church at Ottery.
He once sent his private army to repel a Metropolitical Visitation by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
It would be great fun if Bishop O'Toole had a similar exchange with his Metropolitan Archbishop. Which side would the Tablet take?
I wonder what odds the bookies are giving on O'Toole for Westminster.
Decades before, he had ordered that his Installation was to be on that Octave Day, because of his great devotion to our blessed Lady of Mercy.
He ordered that, on that Octave Day, the Benedictus should have this interpolation:
Benedictus Filius Mariae qui venit ...
He was a very great Pontiff. He was a buddy of our late Holy Father Pope John XXII and, in my view, is probably responsible for the 'English' monument to that pope in Avignon Cathedral. He introduced Corpus Christi to his Diocese, and gave magnificent monstrances to the Cathedral and to his Collegiate Church at Ottery.
He once sent his private army to repel a Metropolitical Visitation by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
It would be great fun if Bishop O'Toole had a similar exchange with his Metropolitan Archbishop. Which side would the Tablet take?
I wonder what odds the bookies are giving on O'Toole for Westminster.
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