I'm feeling very excited, because the Great Fr Zed has referred to a certain megacranky American RC bishop as "Ineffable Trautman".
Excited, because (so the SEARCH facility reveals) on Feb 9 and July 5 this year I did just that on my blog.
Does this mean that Fr Zed reads my humble little blog? Or is it a matter of Great Minds Thinking Alike? Or did Fr Zed coin the phrase earlier than me and then it rested in my subconscious? Or (Source Criticism as applied the Synoptic Gospels kicks in here) was the phrase in some yet earlier and even more exciting document we could call Urhunwicke or Protozed or the Bloggenquelle?
There must be some pedant who reads this blog and could research the answer.
8 November 2009
Ordo Ordo Ordo Ordo
I would be very hurt if I thought that any reader had not already bought a copy of my 2010 Ordo. But I would like to commend an Ordo which is not mine - although it is compiled by a friend of mine.
http://www.ordorecitandi.org.uk/page2.htm
will enable you to order the S Lawrence Press Ordo.
This fine and elegantly produced ORDO provides information about the Roman Calendar and Rite as it was left on the Accession of Pius XII (although there are just two or three ... I'll come clean: I've only spotted two ... small indications that the world did not end in 1939). That cut-off is very well chosen; the Pontificate of Pius XII is the beginning of Bugnini. That gentleman began his wrecking career as Secretary of the Commission which 'reformed' the rites of Holy Week. This is commonly thought of as a mere detail; but it is not. Holy Week and the Easter Vigil are the most significant points of the Christian Year, and Bugnini changed them in ways even more radical and subversive than he subsequently did the rest of the Roman Rite. The Bug***i got away with it because - we had better be honest - the liturgical rites of Holy Week had come to be largely ignored by the great majority of the laity. They were not of obligation and they were lengthy and they were opaque.
Pius XII was not the Start of the Rot. Pius X changed the rubrics regarding the Calendar. Thus, before his time, a large number of Sundays were obscured by the permanent fixing onto the xth Sunday of Ymonth of lollipop celebrations which superseded them (see my Holy Relics post on November 5). Pius X put the lollipops onto fixed days and restored the Sunday Masses; but, out of pastoral sensitivity and an instinct for a Hermeneutic of Continuity he allowed the Lollipop masses to continue to be said on the Sundays they previously owned (the S Lawrence ORDO gives these optional survivals of the previous Baroque Calendar).
Pius X also messed up the distribution of the Breviary Psalter, eliminating, for example, psalms 148-149-150 from their permanent position at daily Lauds. Since this usage had been part of the worship of devout Jews in the time of our Incarnate Lord, a lot of liturgists were rather grumpy about it. And even Papa Sarto was not the first to breach the really ancient continuities; in the 1620s Urban VIII completely rewrote the Breviary Hymns to make them sound as if they had been written by the pagan Augustan poet Horace. Vatican II rightly ordered the ancient texts to be restored. As I have explained in recent posts (have you tried the SEARCH engine on this blog?), the invention of printing was the crucial factor which made such papal arrogance a viable possibility, and led to its apotheosis in the post-Vatican II disasters. God bless Benedict XVI for beginning a process of rolling it all back.
And the S Lawrence ORDO will also show you the full old system of commemorations. You see ... but no: I've written on that also - on the synchronic and diachronic unities involved - not long ago. Try the SEARCH facility!
If you get the S Lawrence ORDO and constantly revisit my former posts through SEARCH, you will begin to discover just how revolutionary and discontinuous the Missal of 1962 is; and how unworthy to be treated in a fundamentalist way. That was something Mgr Lefebvre got wrong.
http://www.ordorecitandi.org.uk/page2.htm
will enable you to order the S Lawrence Press Ordo.
This fine and elegantly produced ORDO provides information about the Roman Calendar and Rite as it was left on the Accession of Pius XII (although there are just two or three ... I'll come clean: I've only spotted two ... small indications that the world did not end in 1939). That cut-off is very well chosen; the Pontificate of Pius XII is the beginning of Bugnini. That gentleman began his wrecking career as Secretary of the Commission which 'reformed' the rites of Holy Week. This is commonly thought of as a mere detail; but it is not. Holy Week and the Easter Vigil are the most significant points of the Christian Year, and Bugnini changed them in ways even more radical and subversive than he subsequently did the rest of the Roman Rite. The Bug***i got away with it because - we had better be honest - the liturgical rites of Holy Week had come to be largely ignored by the great majority of the laity. They were not of obligation and they were lengthy and they were opaque.
Pius XII was not the Start of the Rot. Pius X changed the rubrics regarding the Calendar. Thus, before his time, a large number of Sundays were obscured by the permanent fixing onto the xth Sunday of Ymonth of lollipop celebrations which superseded them (see my Holy Relics post on November 5). Pius X put the lollipops onto fixed days and restored the Sunday Masses; but, out of pastoral sensitivity and an instinct for a Hermeneutic of Continuity he allowed the Lollipop masses to continue to be said on the Sundays they previously owned (the S Lawrence ORDO gives these optional survivals of the previous Baroque Calendar).
Pius X also messed up the distribution of the Breviary Psalter, eliminating, for example, psalms 148-149-150 from their permanent position at daily Lauds. Since this usage had been part of the worship of devout Jews in the time of our Incarnate Lord, a lot of liturgists were rather grumpy about it. And even Papa Sarto was not the first to breach the really ancient continuities; in the 1620s Urban VIII completely rewrote the Breviary Hymns to make them sound as if they had been written by the pagan Augustan poet Horace. Vatican II rightly ordered the ancient texts to be restored. As I have explained in recent posts (have you tried the SEARCH engine on this blog?), the invention of printing was the crucial factor which made such papal arrogance a viable possibility, and led to its apotheosis in the post-Vatican II disasters. God bless Benedict XVI for beginning a process of rolling it all back.
And the S Lawrence ORDO will also show you the full old system of commemorations. You see ... but no: I've written on that also - on the synchronic and diachronic unities involved - not long ago. Try the SEARCH facility!
If you get the S Lawrence ORDO and constantly revisit my former posts through SEARCH, you will begin to discover just how revolutionary and discontinuous the Missal of 1962 is; and how unworthy to be treated in a fundamentalist way. That was something Mgr Lefebvre got wrong.
7 November 2009
Stable Groups in the Patrimony
Our Holy Father provided, in his motu proprio, that where Stable Groups (sound like Guilds attached to the Christmass Cribs, don't they?) exist and request it, the Pastor should provide them with Mass in the EF. Happily, a Stable Group has sprung into life ex nihilo in an ecclesiastical Peculiar within this City and informally attached to this University (no names, no pack-drill. Whatever does that peculiar phrase mean?).
I would have been very willing, had the Pastor concerned not responded positively to this admirable request, to assist the Group in its appeal to the Bishop of O****d to get him to direct the Principal, Dr B***r, to fulfil the requirements of Summorum Pontificum. Indeed, had the Diocesan himself then proved remiss, I could have helped them in their further appeal to the Ecclesia Dei section of the Inquisition, God bless it, so as to make them require poor P*******d to provide for the legitimate needs of this Group.
But, fortunately, Dr B***r has proved willing ... indeed, enthusiastic ... to perform his canonical duty. So I don't have to bother. How good it is when a priest obeys to the letter the Church's liturgical law.
I regard this as another example of the Anglican Patrimony vigorously at work. We have so much to contribute to the Wider Church.
I would have been very willing, had the Pastor concerned not responded positively to this admirable request, to assist the Group in its appeal to the Bishop of O****d to get him to direct the Principal, Dr B***r, to fulfil the requirements of Summorum Pontificum. Indeed, had the Diocesan himself then proved remiss, I could have helped them in their further appeal to the Ecclesia Dei section of the Inquisition, God bless it, so as to make them require poor P*******d to provide for the legitimate needs of this Group.
But, fortunately, Dr B***r has proved willing ... indeed, enthusiastic ... to perform his canonical duty. So I don't have to bother. How good it is when a priest obeys to the letter the Church's liturgical law.
I regard this as another example of the Anglican Patrimony vigorously at work. We have so much to contribute to the Wider Church.
5 November 2009
More Patrimony
I apologise for being unjust to the SSPX by not mentioning that they have gone a lot further than FSSP; they have actually invested a lot of money in the Anglican Patrimony.
The chapel of their English House near Bristol, formerly an Anglican convent, was the work of George Frederick 'Anglican Patrimony' Bodley [we have a Bodley cope at S Thomas's].
Happily, SSPX has not 'reordered' the chapel - a fate which usually befalls former Anglican Patrimony buildings taken over by the mainstream RCC.
The chapel of their English House near Bristol, formerly an Anglican convent, was the work of George Frederick 'Anglican Patrimony' Bodley [we have a Bodley cope at S Thomas's].
Happily, SSPX has not 'reordered' the chapel - a fate which usually befalls former Anglican Patrimony buildings taken over by the mainstream RCC.
I Respond ...
... to two comments appended to a recent post:
(1) The declaration about women being not capaces of receiving Holy Order was declared to be an example of the Infallible Ordinary Magisterium of the Church.
(2) Cardinal Ratzinger declared that Apostolicae curae was not de fide but was definitively to be believed. He said nothing about the current situation with regard to Anglican Orders, which of course is quite different from the situation in the 1890s. This was made clear when the former Bishop of London was asked - by Joseph Ratzinger - to be ordained to the presbyterate only sub conditione.
(1) The declaration about women being not capaces of receiving Holy Order was declared to be an example of the Infallible Ordinary Magisterium of the Church.
(2) Cardinal Ratzinger declared that Apostolicae curae was not de fide but was definitively to be believed. He said nothing about the current situation with regard to Anglican Orders, which of course is quite different from the situation in the 1890s. This was made clear when the former Bishop of London was asked - by Joseph Ratzinger - to be ordained to the presbyterate only sub conditione.
4 November 2009
Patrimony
I blinked ... there on the FSSP website was a picture of EF High Mass at the East Altar of Pusey House, showing the very 'Comper' gold-leafed pillars holding up the baldachino and the immensely 'Comper' stained glass.
An illusion; it was really London Colney: both buildings, of course, were built for Catholic Anglicans by Sir Ninian 'Anglican Patrimony' Comper.
How good that the FSSP feels so at home in the Anglican Patrimony.
And how natural.
A dash of prolepsis here, do you think?
An illusion; it was really London Colney: both buildings, of course, were built for Catholic Anglicans by Sir Ninian 'Anglican Patrimony' Comper.
How good that the FSSP feels so at home in the Anglican Patrimony.
And how natural.
A dash of prolepsis here, do you think?
Abortion
I am sure most readers will know about an attempt to present a million-signature petition to the UN - an organisation seriously at risk of being an abortion-enforer. C-fam.
3 November 2009
INFALLIBILITY
Since this topic is again a bit of a talking-point, I will (again) quote some words of Cardinal Ratzinger, which seem to me the most remarkable observation made on Papal powers - by someone who subsequently became Pope - for well over a thousand years.
After the Second Vatican Council, the impression arose that the pope really could do anything ... especially if he were acting on the mandate of an ecumenical council ... In fact, the First Vatican Council had in no way defined the pope as an absolute monarch. On the contrary, it presented him as the guarantor of obedience to the revealed Word. The pope's authority is bound to the Tradition of Faith ... Even the pope can only be a humble servant of its lawful development and abiding integrity and identity ... The authority of the pope is not unlimited; it is at the service of Sacred Tradition.
Since this is how Benedict XVI sees papal power, how can any catholic-minded person have any objection to it?
After the Second Vatican Council, the impression arose that the pope really could do anything ... especially if he were acting on the mandate of an ecumenical council ... In fact, the First Vatican Council had in no way defined the pope as an absolute monarch. On the contrary, it presented him as the guarantor of obedience to the revealed Word. The pope's authority is bound to the Tradition of Faith ... Even the pope can only be a humble servant of its lawful development and abiding integrity and identity ... The authority of the pope is not unlimited; it is at the service of Sacred Tradition.
Since this is how Benedict XVI sees papal power, how can any catholic-minded person have any objection to it?
2 November 2009
Episcopal fallibility
Eadwinus quondam episcopus Rutubensis ... sounds like a quote from Bede, doesn't it? Or Eadwine biscop in Reptacestir ... could be from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. But I refer of course to the admirable blogger signing himself as Ancient Richborough. And he's WRONG. Thorpe le Soken is in Essex and Essex is NOT part of East Anglia. It is the Kingdom of the East Saxons and NO RELATION of that shambles to its North, the kingdom of the East Angles; divided as they are into two equally lamentable halves, the North Folk and the South Folk (Norfolk and Suffolk). I feel strongly about this because I am an Essex Man. Since both of these kingdoms of the Heptarchy were within the Richborough Apostolic District, its first Apostolic Administrator ought to know better.
But his blog - perhaps the most readable there is - does give an illustration of the Zucchetto Daughter seu potius Scarlet Woman whom I mentioned a day or two ago; and also of myself. Why do I never photograph well?
And it also blows the gaff on the last paragraph of Dr Ward's sermon, which I, ever tactful, hesitated to blow on my blog. Since Bishop Edwin has done so, I will add another detail: Fr Robin also said that if you want to jump over a wall, you'll get a softer landing if you leap where the wall is lowest.
Now I wonder whatever that can have meant.
I will leave it to a third blogger to bring into the public domain the testicular implications of all this.
But his blog - perhaps the most readable there is - does give an illustration of the Zucchetto Daughter seu potius Scarlet Woman whom I mentioned a day or two ago; and also of myself. Why do I never photograph well?
And it also blows the gaff on the last paragraph of Dr Ward's sermon, which I, ever tactful, hesitated to blow on my blog. Since Bishop Edwin has done so, I will add another detail: Fr Robin also said that if you want to jump over a wall, you'll get a softer landing if you leap where the wall is lowest.
Now I wonder whatever that can have meant.
I will leave it to a third blogger to bring into the public domain the testicular implications of all this.
The Parting of Friends
On the wireless on Sunday morning, an interview with Fr Killwick, chairman of the Catholic Group on General Synod. Unlike his recent predecessors in that position, he was rejecting the Roman Option because it would involve accepting unacceptable doctrines such as Papal Infallibillity and the 'Marian Dogmas'. At the Westminster F in F meeting, the Bishop of Fort Worth made similar remarks.
This was a common standpoint a couple of generations ago: 'Non-Papal Catholicism'. Conceptually, of course, it was exploded by Dom Gregory Dix's masterly demonstration back in the 1930s that 'the Papal doctrines' are inherent to the Catholic Faith and not just 'Romanising additions'. And ARCIC has, after all, provided ways of understanding Papal Primacy and Infallibility which keep the meaning while putting them into more cuddly language. I don't see how anyone can look at the actual texts of Vatican I without realising (as Newman did when he, a very apprehensive man, saw what the Council decrees actually said; and heaved a great sigh of relief as he realised that the Ultramontanes had lost the battle of the small print) that unless you want to find them problematic, you can find easily ways of glossing them acceptably. The plain fact is that Killwick's sort of churchmanship was for long an alibi that some Catholic-minded Anglicans clung to to save them from the complexities and possible inconveniences of accepting the Petrine Ministry.
Bishop John Broadhurst spoke for many at Westminster when he quite frankly and honestly admitted that, a decade or so ago, that was his position; but that now he had come to understand things. For very many, it is the C of E which has taught them that Catholicism without the Magisterium is not just conceptually flawed but, in the real world, just plain impractical. (Not for me. More than fifty years ago I formally joined a Papalist organisation, the Catholic League, which required that postulants sign their adherence to the decrees of Vatican I and Trent.)
There will be those now who follow Fr Killwick in clinging to this ancient alibi. It will be more because they want to find problems with Vatican I than because can't accept it.
They will always be our friends, and we shall never forget the fun we had together.
This was a common standpoint a couple of generations ago: 'Non-Papal Catholicism'. Conceptually, of course, it was exploded by Dom Gregory Dix's masterly demonstration back in the 1930s that 'the Papal doctrines' are inherent to the Catholic Faith and not just 'Romanising additions'. And ARCIC has, after all, provided ways of understanding Papal Primacy and Infallibility which keep the meaning while putting them into more cuddly language. I don't see how anyone can look at the actual texts of Vatican I without realising (as Newman did when he, a very apprehensive man, saw what the Council decrees actually said; and heaved a great sigh of relief as he realised that the Ultramontanes had lost the battle of the small print) that unless you want to find them problematic, you can find easily ways of glossing them acceptably. The plain fact is that Killwick's sort of churchmanship was for long an alibi that some Catholic-minded Anglicans clung to to save them from the complexities and possible inconveniences of accepting the Petrine Ministry.
Bishop John Broadhurst spoke for many at Westminster when he quite frankly and honestly admitted that, a decade or so ago, that was his position; but that now he had come to understand things. For very many, it is the C of E which has taught them that Catholicism without the Magisterium is not just conceptually flawed but, in the real world, just plain impractical. (Not for me. More than fifty years ago I formally joined a Papalist organisation, the Catholic League, which required that postulants sign their adherence to the decrees of Vatican I and Trent.)
There will be those now who follow Fr Killwick in clinging to this ancient alibi. It will be more because they want to find problems with Vatican I than because can't accept it.
They will always be our friends, and we shall never forget the fun we had together.
Technicalities
Getting out my rosary in between Mass Number Two and Mass Number Three, it occurred to me: is it correct, on All Souls' Day, to say Requiem aeternam rather than Gloria Patri at the end of each decade?
1 November 2009
ANGLICAN PATRIMONY AND SOCIAL JOYS
High Mass at Pusey yesterday morning, celebrating their 125th birthday. The buzz went around afterwards, at the beanfeast, that if anybody wants to know what this 'Anglican Patrimony' is, well, it's the sort of thing we had this morning. The Mass was celebrated by the Principal, Dr Baker; the choir sang a new setting of the Mass commissioned for the occasion. We had a sparkling sermon from Dr Ward, in which he presented what I can only describe as a thoroughly rococo piece of scriptural exegesis. He claimed - well, he would, wouldn't he - that it came from somewhere in S Gregory.
One acute critic expressed concern about the number of clerics going up for Communion; surely, he observed, they should have said their own masses earlier. I think I agree (I certainly had done so). I was most impressed by one of the bishops in the congregation (concelebratory games have never infected the worship at Pusey) who was accompanied by a very elegantly dressed daughter. Her coat was exactly the same shade as her father's zucchetto. There's another bit of Anglican patrimony for you.
I don't know why it is - after all, the tune is just another of those hammy old Victorian melodies, and in any case I generally refuse to sing vernacular hymns - but the hymn Sweet Sacrament Divine never fails to get the tears pricking at the backs of my eyes. (Once when arranging a United Service in Co Kerry, I nominated it to my RC opposite number as one of the hymns from 'our' side. "Ah", he said, "the older members of my congregation will enjoy that". And they did.) I particularly like the phrase "Earth's light and Jubilee", although I'm not quite sure what 'jubilee' means here; simply 'joy', perhaps. Another bit of Patrimony. Likewise, Jerusalem the Golden, with the lovely phrase "conjubilant with song". And John Mason Neale, the brilliant translator of this hymn by S Bernard as well as of so much Latin Hymnody into English - he's a definite piece of Patrimony. Since he translated the original texts, uncorrupted by Urban VIII, texts which in accordance with conciliar mandate have returned in the Liturgy of the Hours (and never disappeared from the Monastic Office), his renderings are more up-to-date than those of his RC rivals. The other phrase in his rendering of Urbs Sion, "social joys", neatly gets another aspect of Patrimony much in evidence this weekend. (A devout lady once questioned the line "The shout of them that feast" "People don't shout while they're eating", she observed. How should I have dealt with that?)
As we worshipped Christ the Redeemer whose Propitiation, as Origen neatly put it, comes from the East, the morning sun shone brightly through Sir Ninian ('Patrimony') Comper's great stained glass Pantocrator in the East window. In my blog not long ago, there were some signs of RC unease about my naughty insistence that versus orientem and facing-the-same-way-as-the-people are not necessarily the same thing; and that the former has enormous patristic and traditional support while the latter has none at all and has to be defended on quite different grounds (such as, for example, those persuasively adduced by Joseph Ratzinger). As I walked up S Giles to Pusey, a penny dropped: there are three fine churches in that street: Blackfriars; Pusey House; the Oratory. All three are built along an East-West axis. Only Pusey, however, has the Altar at the East end; the two RC churches have their altars at the West end so that to face East, as the Fathers desired to do, means facing the people. One American RC correspondent informs me that in North America RC churches pretty universally ignore the ancient Christian and Ecumenical principle of Orientation. He seems to think that this creates some problem for the point I made.
I can only say "The problem is yours. If your forebears had had a more Anglican sense of a hermeneutic of continuity, you wouldn't have this difficulty. What you need is a strong dose of Patrimony".
And I think Smugness is very much at the heart of Patrimony.
One acute critic expressed concern about the number of clerics going up for Communion; surely, he observed, they should have said their own masses earlier. I think I agree (I certainly had done so). I was most impressed by one of the bishops in the congregation (concelebratory games have never infected the worship at Pusey) who was accompanied by a very elegantly dressed daughter. Her coat was exactly the same shade as her father's zucchetto. There's another bit of Anglican patrimony for you.
I don't know why it is - after all, the tune is just another of those hammy old Victorian melodies, and in any case I generally refuse to sing vernacular hymns - but the hymn Sweet Sacrament Divine never fails to get the tears pricking at the backs of my eyes. (Once when arranging a United Service in Co Kerry, I nominated it to my RC opposite number as one of the hymns from 'our' side. "Ah", he said, "the older members of my congregation will enjoy that". And they did.) I particularly like the phrase "Earth's light and Jubilee", although I'm not quite sure what 'jubilee' means here; simply 'joy', perhaps. Another bit of Patrimony. Likewise, Jerusalem the Golden, with the lovely phrase "conjubilant with song". And John Mason Neale, the brilliant translator of this hymn by S Bernard as well as of so much Latin Hymnody into English - he's a definite piece of Patrimony. Since he translated the original texts, uncorrupted by Urban VIII, texts which in accordance with conciliar mandate have returned in the Liturgy of the Hours (and never disappeared from the Monastic Office), his renderings are more up-to-date than those of his RC rivals. The other phrase in his rendering of Urbs Sion, "social joys", neatly gets another aspect of Patrimony much in evidence this weekend. (A devout lady once questioned the line "The shout of them that feast" "People don't shout while they're eating", she observed. How should I have dealt with that?)
As we worshipped Christ the Redeemer whose Propitiation, as Origen neatly put it, comes from the East, the morning sun shone brightly through Sir Ninian ('Patrimony') Comper's great stained glass Pantocrator in the East window. In my blog not long ago, there were some signs of RC unease about my naughty insistence that versus orientem and facing-the-same-way-as-the-people are not necessarily the same thing; and that the former has enormous patristic and traditional support while the latter has none at all and has to be defended on quite different grounds (such as, for example, those persuasively adduced by Joseph Ratzinger). As I walked up S Giles to Pusey, a penny dropped: there are three fine churches in that street: Blackfriars; Pusey House; the Oratory. All three are built along an East-West axis. Only Pusey, however, has the Altar at the East end; the two RC churches have their altars at the West end so that to face East, as the Fathers desired to do, means facing the people. One American RC correspondent informs me that in North America RC churches pretty universally ignore the ancient Christian and Ecumenical principle of Orientation. He seems to think that this creates some problem for the point I made.
I can only say "The problem is yours. If your forebears had had a more Anglican sense of a hermeneutic of continuity, you wouldn't have this difficulty. What you need is a strong dose of Patrimony".
And I think Smugness is very much at the heart of Patrimony.
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