Different Popes

Little things can mean big things,

Papa Ratzinger used vestments and other gear from the Vatican storehouses to emphasise that he was successor of popes from both before and after 'the Council'; and the fact that the Church, both before and after 'the Council', was the same Church. 

Papa Bergoglio found it hard to resist the temptation to emphasise himself and to bang the drum for rupture. "Look at me ... I'm not dressed in the usual way ... I'm not sharing a name with any previous pope ... I'm persecuting people who respect the Old Things ... I'm different."

Benedict may have got some things wrong, and Francis may have got some things right.

But Benedict looked to Tradition ... while Francis pointed to himself ... Me and Me and Me and Me.

And Tradition is the living Word of th Living Lord among his people.

Holy Father, Pray for us. The wolves are at large. Protect us. 

Be our strong advocate.

Belles Epoques?

Someone asked: "What do you mean, Dom Gregory, when you keep saying  our Bishops are Edwardian?"

Dix: "Strictly Edward VI in theology; strictly Edward VII in mental equipment and strictly Edward VIII in their views on marriage." 

 

[Dix once wrote a satirical poem in English about an 'ecumenical' bishop ... basically in iambs until the final couplet:

His funeral was Protestant and shabby

With a memorial service in Bath Abbey. 

What is it about trochees that ineluctably suggests bathos?]

ABSTINENCE DURING OCTAVES

Here is a reprint of a piece I have shown several times.
ABSTINENCE IN THE EASTER OCTAVE
It was Pius XII who levelled out the Octaves by making all the days Doubles of the First Class, or, as some of you might nowadays say, Solemnities. Such days, canonically, do not admit Abstinence. So one is not bound to Abstinence on the Friday after Easter.

ABSTINENCE IN THE PENTECOST OCTAVE
What about Abstinence on Pentecost Friday? I repeat below a ruling by the CBCEW to the effect that Abstinence is "contrary to the mentality of an octave". But the Friday in the Pentecost Octave survives in the EF but not in the OF! Here, surely, we have a juridical gap.

My view is that, in communities or families in which the dominant "Form" is the EF, the Friday is, according to the legislation in the 1962 books, and the statement of the English and Welsh bishops, a day which excludes Abstinence. (There is, of course, a bit of an oddity in this, in as far as this Friday is an Ember Day on which historically Catholics fasted. But that was a long time ago.)
                                             
ABSTINENCE IN THE CHRISTMAS OCTAVE                              
On 16 October 2014, the Catholic Herald announced that a spokesperson of the CBCEW had stated that Boxing Day, which in 2014 was a Friday, is not a day of Abstinence. "To consider St Stephen's Day or Boxing Day as a day of abstinence would not be compatible with the festive and celebratory nature of the Christmas Octave ... An octave is an ongoing celebration of the two highest ranking solemnities of the Liturgical Year ... it is contrary to the mentality of what an octave is to consider one of its days as penitential ... Octaves are weeks of joy, not abstinence, even though the Easter Octave ranks unambiguously higher than that of Christmas."

There is no doubt that local hierarchies do have the canonical right to make rules about Abstinence (Canon 1253 Episcoporum conferentia potest pressius determinare observantiam ... ieiunii et abstinentiae ...).


Interestingly, the statement makes clear that the ruling applies not just to a Boxing Day which falls on a Friday, but, every year, to whichever day in the Octave of Christmas is a Friday*.

When I first published a version of this, some people got worried about whether the CBCEW spokesman was misleading them. Two basic rules of Traditional Catholic Moral Theology: (1) Doubtful laws do not bind. In other words, if there is some doubt whether a law applies to me ... it doesn't. If the Bishops say it doesn't apply to me, then their statement creates at least an objective doubt as to whether it applies to me
(2) We are NOT obliged to be Rigorists, Tutiorists, or Probabiliorists. The Church condemned the Jansenists. If there is a genuine doubt between two possibilities, one is entitled to exercise one's free choice.

That is what the pre-Conciliar books on Moral Theology say.

Not that there is any doubt in this matter. YOU NEED NOT ABSTAIN FROM MEAT ON THE FRIDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS, IF YOU LIVE IN ENGLAND OR WALES.
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*  Where a National or Diocesan or Ordinariate or Parochial Patron is observed as a Solemnity and falls on a Friday, that Friday is not a day of Abstinence.

The King's Champion

At coronations up to that of George III, the rites were followed by agreat banquet ... at the end of which, a memorable ceremony occurred.

Into the Banquet Hall rode a knight in full armour. He uttered a challenge to any who might dispute the right to the throne of the prince who had just been crowned; then he threw down his gauntlet (gage, armoured glove) onto the ground. 

Any man who took up that gauntlet, leaving behind him on the ground his own gauntlet, would be deemed to have accepted the challenge. Monomachy .. or disgrace ... must follow.

After the coronation of George III, rumours spread that a mysterious Person had, indeed, accepted that challenge. The novelist Sir Walter Scott incoporated a fictionalised account of this into his novel Redgauntlet. The 'Narrator' in what follows is a young lady called Lilias, whose Jacobite uncle Redgauntlet has smuggled her into the Banquet.

"It is indeed", said I, "all that my mind could have fancied of regal power and splendour."

"Girl, " he whispered, ..."all that is noble and worthy in this fair land are there assembled -- but it is to bend like slaves and sycophants before the throne of a new usurper."

"For God's sake, "I whispered, "consider where we are." 

"Fear nothing", he said, "we are surrounded by friends. " As he proceeded, his strong and muscular frame shook with suppressed agitation. "See," he said, "yonder bends Norfolk, renegade to his Catholic faith;" there stoops the Bishop of --, traitor to the Church of England; and, --the shame of shames! yonder the gigantic form of Errol bows his head before the grandson of his father's murderer!..."

I was not long held in suspense. A loud flourish of trumpets and the voice of heralds were mixed with the clatter of horses' hoofs, while a champion, armed at all points like those I had read of in romances, attended by esquires, pages, and the whole retinue of chivalry, pranced forward, mounted upon a barbed steed. His challenge, in defiance of all who dared impeach the title of the new sovereign, was recited aloud-- once, and again.

"Rush in at the third sounding," said my uncle to me; "bring me the parader's gage, and leave mine in lieu of it."

... at the third sounding of the trumpets, a line opened as if by word of command, betwixt me and the champion, and my uncle's voice said, "Now, Lilias, NOW!"

With a swift and yet steady step, and with a presence of mind for which I have never since been able to account, I discharged the perilous commission. I was hardly seen, I believe, as I exchanged the pledges of battle, and in an instant retired. "Nobly done, my girl!" said my uncle, at whose side I found myself, shrouded as I was before, by the interposition of the bystanders. "Cover our retreat, gentlemen," he whispered to those around him ...

Magnus aeterni logotheta Verbi

Vatican II very sensibly suggested that the old Breviary collection could be enriched by rescuing other hymns from the treasury of the Western Church. Happily, a gorgeous composition by S Peter Damian (d1072) was found for the Festum of S John the Evangelist: Virginis virgo venerande custos, in the Sapphic metre (I wonder what the dear old girl would have made of it if she could have known how much Christian Latins would make enthusiastic use of her metrical innovation). The bad news: Dom Anselmo Lentini and his merry men decided to Correct it.

Starting even before the Carolingian Renaissance, Latin writers and especially hymnographers, often when they wanted an effect of majesty and grandeur, reached for the Greek language. So, after the first line with its alliterative wordplay (O venerable virgin guardian of the Virgin) S Peter went one better in his second line: magnus aeterni logotheta Verbi. Given a pedestrian translation, this would be 'Great wordplacer of the eternal Word', where the Greek neologism logotheta hits you, in all its quadrisyllabic sonority, immediately after the caesura. It plays with the Johannine description of our Lord as the Word, the Logos, Verbum, and a suggestion of assonance in aeterni ... logotheta. But whereas in the first line, with its "Virginis ... virgo", the Saint uses the same Latin word but changes the case ('anaphora with polyptoton'; an elegance particularly associated with the 'hellenistic' poets), in the second line he achieves an elegant variatio by creating a Greek compound containing logos to match his Latin Verbi.

The post-Conciliar Revisers detested any sort of fun with words; in their austere schoolmasterly comments there are few stricter see-me-afterwardses than nimius lusus verborum. Here they call in aid the principle of 'graecismum nunc insuetum'. And Dom Anselmo claims to find the nominative 'magnus' (instead of the vocative 'magne') unacceptable: naughty Anselmo; he must have known perfectly well that this little problem, if problem it is*, could have been corrected by "magne et".

So what did the revisers write? 'praeco qui Verbi coleris fidelis'.

Oh dear. (But to be fair, Lentini was himself a Latin poet of no mean ability, and did his best with the assonance 'praeco ... coleris'.)

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*Nominatives in place of vocatives seem to be no problem in the Gloria in excelsis Deo, Sanctus, Agnus ... the more you look for them, the more of them you find both in Classical Latin and in Ecclesiatical.

God sheathed.

"The Blessed Sacrament is God. Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament is simply divine worship. Turn it which way we will, throw the light of love and knowledge now on one side of it now on another, still the result is the same, the one inexhaustible sweet fact, the Real Presence. In the hands of the priest, behind the crystal of the monstrance, on the tongue of the communicant, now, and for a thousand times, and almost at our will and pleasure, there are the Hands and Feet, the Eyes and Mouth, the swift Blood and living Heart of Him whom Thomas touched and Magdalen was fain to touch, the Soul that delighted Limbus with its amazing beauty and set the prisoners free, nay the Eternal, Incomprehensible, Almighty Word  who is everywhere and yet fixed there, the flashing fires of whose dear glory we could not bear to see, and so for love of us He stills them and He sheathes them in the quiet modesty of the Blessed Sacrament."

Fr Faber.

Identities, identities ...

 A diverting piece by Ben Macintyre in The Times last week informed us that Superman is Jewish. His Creators were a couple of Hebrew immigrants into North America (Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster), members of the Huddled Masses. Superman's own name, Clark Kent, is indeed exactly the sort of name often chosen by Jewish immigrants when they wished to elide their former identities.

The suggestion has been made that Superman's iconographical identity should be semitised. I heartily concur. There are far too many WASPs around. A prequel portraying his Bar Mitzvah would also be in order. Is it true that his uncle was a rabbi? Ashkenazi or Sephardim?

How wonderfully varied American society is. I heard the other day that somebody visited Washington DC and returned with an account of how, in that great city, there are loads of sad old gents stumbling around mumbling "I'm Irish, y'know".

Can anybody supply verification of this?

A very happy Christmass to all my readers. And a prosperous New Year.

And a Thank You to all who have sent me cards.

A Favour??

Before the Ordinariates, an earlier attempt to secure a corporate solution for Anglicans seeking unity with the Holy See was scuppered by the English Catholic bishops. The Revd Dr William Oddie wrote an account of those shenanigans.

I think it was called THE ROMAN OPTION.

I have never read it. If anybody has a copy they are prepared to part with, I culd be a grateful recipient. 

CORONATIONS

 Is it true that Good Queen Mary asked the Pope to send her a specially blessed chair for her Coronation; made of wood, covered with purple velvet and fastened by gilt nails, which is still kept in Winchester Cathedral?

According to the records, Her Majesty was proclaimed as "the most high, most puissant, and most excellent Princess, Mary the First, by the grace of God Queen of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and of the Church of England and Ireland supreme head."

"the first" is interesting; on the large tower at Westminster, if my eyes do not deceive me, Victoria is described as 'Victoria Prima'.

SUPERTUNICA ... Dirtie Bertie amongst the Lotophagoi ...

 Have I got this right? That the Supertunica worn by an English monarch at the Coronation has a historical connection  with the uniform of a Consularis of the Byzantine Emnpire?

That it is embroidered with flower symbols for each of the monarch's realms?

That because of a long tradition which few readers will need to have explained to them, Queen Victoria (or, if you prefer, Princess Alexandrina of Saxe Coburg etc..) wore a Supertunica enriched with fleurs de lys?

But that her eldest son 'Edward VII', instead, sported the lotus which was held to symbolise India?

I wonder what ... er ...

Professor Peter Geach

Today is the obitus, or Year's Mind, of Peter Geach, whom readers will recall as a philosopher of distinction. He converted to Catholicism in the early 1940s while reading Greats at Oxford ... and married a no less distinguished philosopher, Elizabeth Anscombe, who also converted while reading Greats. The Geaches formed a last link with one of the principal philosophers of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and helped to ensure that in extremis he had a priest at his bedside, and received a Catholic burial. Quorum omnium animabus propitietur Deus.

The young Geach proclaimed King Robert I & IV, in 1937, standing on the steps of the Martyrs' Memorial, wearing his scholar's gown and doffing his academic cap. He was not arrested. Not even by a stray passing bulldog. Newspapers in the distant and dusty climes of Texas and the Malay Straits as well as in England covered the event. It would be very jolly to know whom the fifty-odd gathering of undergraduates included. 

 
The writer Luke Gormally, son-in-law of Geach, informed this blog that it was in 1938, his last year at Balliol, that Geach was received into the Church; the same year, Elizabeth Anscombe was received towards the end of her first year at St Hugh's.

Each of them had received instruction from Fr Richards Kehoe OP. They did not meet until after their respective receptions; their meeting occurred at the Corpus Christ procession at Begbroke, to the North of Oxford, where there was at that time a Servite Priory.

Not now, of course. Needless to say.But if you are driving to Woodstock, you will pass the site ...

CORONATIONS

 "One of the most extraordinary scenes imaginable". That is how Dale Hoak describes a moment in the Coronation of Elizabeth Tudor, alias Gloriana, alias Bloody Bess, alias Elizabeth I. 

Before the moment in the service when the new monarch swore the oath, Mr Secretary Cecil emerged from the side of the coronation stage and 'delivered' to the bishop of Carlisle, who was standing before the seated queen, a book containg the questions to be put to her.

The bishop of Carlisle was officiating at the coronation because the rest of the bishops refused, having little confidence in Bess's catholic orthodoxy. 

Part of this mystery arises from the fact that we do not have the text of the oaths sworn byTudor Monarchs. These texts are securely kept in Clio's bosom. 

Hoak argues that the oath sworn by Elizabeth was 'substantially' the oath sworn by the heterodox infant Edward Tudor in 1547, with an addition to the effect that in respect of the law, the sovereign was to act 'according to the laws of God, [and] the true profession of the gospel established in this kingdom.' Cranmer and Cecil are likely to have had a hand in designing this oath. Cranmer is on record as having argued that "the solemnites of coronation have their Ends and Utility", but that kings "be anointed, not in respect of the oil which the bishop useth, but in consideration of their Power, which is Ordained ... Your Majesty is God's Vicegerent and Christ's Vicar within your own Dominions".

One might, indeed, wonder why Zwinglians such as Cranmer needed a coronation service at all. My suspicion is that the Coronation was so securely integrated into the consciousness of [at least] the elite, that leaving a monarch uncrowned was deemed to be dangerous: it offered malcontents a ready-made argument for denying a monarch's legitimacy.

As far as concerns the oath, it transformed the transaction from being merely a declaratory statement or definition of the law as it was thought to exist; instead, its laws existed in their own right. 

" The effect", Hoak concludes, "was to remove all limitation on the scope  and authority of statute."

As so often, I a grateful to Professor Tighe for showing me this piece.