Since rumours abound about a planned 'reform' of the Roman Cuioa, I am reprinting three old blogposts on this subect. My motive is this. If I wait until the document is signed and promulgated, suspicious individuals might feel that I am just reacting automatically by opposing every 'reform' that springs fully-formed from the Head of PF.
Jorge Bergoglio has no Magisterial authority whatsoever. The Bishop of Rome does. But, of course, Jorge Bergoglio is Bishop of Rome; and so, qua Bishop of Rome, Pope Francis possesses the very considerable authority defined dogmatically by the First Vatican Council and expressed legally in the two Codices Iuris Canonici. Being Bishop of Rome is what counts. And being Bishop of Rome, like being Bishop of Anywhere, means being Bishop of Somewhere. And being Bishop of Somewhere means being Bishop of certain people ... of certain living and breathing Christian humans.
What is "a Bishop"? There is a (largely Anglophone) ecclesiastical underworld populated by what are often called "Episcopi vagantes", "Wandering Bishops". These are persons who have privately secured for themselves technically 'valid' episcopal orders. Many people suspect that their motive for doing this has been personal vanity, because these are 'bishops' who are not surrounded by the serried and serious ranks of their presbyterium, nor ministered to ad altare by their cheerful bustling Deacons, and who lack the boisterous, sometimes disorderly, mob of 'their' Laity, laos. And they are not, these Episcopi vagantes, in peace and communion with the Apostolic, or indeed with any other, See. Far from it.
Per contra, in Catholic (and Orthodox) ecclesiology, a Bishop is a man who discharges the functions of the high Episcopal office in the context of the structured Church life of People, Deacons, and Presbyters. A gathering of Christians so structured is known as a "Particular Church". Like any other Diocesan Bishop, the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, is a Bishop with a Presbyterium, a Diakonia, a Laos. He is not a lonely isolated individual with technically valid orders and a technically valid Electio in Summum Pontificem tucked into his back pocket. He is not, that is to say, a Papa vagans. With his usual acuity, Blessed John Henry Newman argued, in the case of some early popes who showed signs of doctrinal wobble, that, since this happened after they had been beaten up in Byzantine prisons, it had no bearing on the Papal Office, since they were acting as individuals in physical and moral isolation from their Ecclesia.
In the Particular, local Church of Rome, the "Cardinal Presbyters" are the Pope's presbyterium, which is why they have "titular" churches assigned to them of which they are the titular parish priests. Mutatis mutandis, the Cardinal Deacons. You will see where this is leading. The 'Cardinalate', if that is the right word, is not without theological significance. It is part of the organic structure of the very important Particular (i.e.local) Church of which the Successor of S Peter is the Bishop. This is seen most easily and most visibly in the persons of the curial Cardinals who permanently work in Rome. But it applies also to the other Cardinals throughout the world, who qua Roman Presbyters have their titular churches and are distributed among the boards of the Roman dicasteries. The Cardinal Archbishop of Timbuctoo wears red and is addressed as 'Eminence' not because he is the important local 'Primate' of a big 'National Church', but because he is Cardinal Presbyter of the Titular Church of SS Promiscuus and Miscellaneus*, which, until the Risorgimento, the Pontiff used to visit for the Stational Mass on February 31.
There has sometimes been a tendency, which I very strongly condemn, to want to separate the notion of the Pope from that of the Curia. The Pope, it is sometimes said, is the Pope and has his highly significant dogmatically based prerogatives which we can't really avoid fessing up to because they were dogmatically defined at Vatican I. But the Curia ... that is nothing more than a civil service, and a rather unattractive one to boot ( ... er ... ). Not only is it without doctrinal significance, but its members get in the way; they behave in a bossy fashion in their dealings with the Churches throughout the world. Perhaps they should be cut down. Perhaps they should be put in their place. Might we not be happier without them? Liberal journalists are programmed to cheer any pope whose sycophants put it about that he intends to savage the Curia.
In my view, this is not merely humanly unfair but is also extremely flawed theologically. It is a direct assault upon that structure, the structure of the Particular local Church of Rome, within which the Supreme Pontiff necessarily discharges his unique and indispensible role. It is a solvent which, because it seeks to split off the Pope from the structures of his Particular local Church, has the potential to leave the Roman Pontiff as a lonely and decontextualised figure; in effect, a very powerful Episcopus vagans. And that sounds to me very much like saying 'a theologically dubious Absolute Monarch'.
To be continued.
___________________________________________________________________
*I owe this intriguing duo, and their Feast Day (a semidouble), to the fertile imagination of the late Rt Revd Mgr Ronald Arbuthnott Knox, Protonotary Apostolic and Master of Arts (Oxon.).
11 July 2019
10 July 2019
Definition and Dogma
When, in 1950, Papa Pacelli defined the dogma of the Corporeal Assumption of the Mother of God, the formula with which he did so very carefully avoided saying either that she died before her Assumption, or that she did not die (expletu terrestris vitae cursu). This definition had the practical effect of eliminating from the devotional life of Catholics much of the 'apocryphal' narrative which, in both the East and the West, had surrounded the Eschaton of the Theotokos. Prayers which are found in earlier Western liturgies (e.g. festivitas ...in qua dei genetrix mortem subiit temporalem ...) became unusable; many iconographic representations became problematic; tropes, such as that of S Gregory Palamas, explaining to prepon that she had to die to be like her Son, while by no means excluded as pious opinions, became beliefs which it was impossible to describe as the Teaching of the Church. In effect, far from being a novel imposition, the doctrine proclaimed in 1950 constituted the elimination of 95% of what had previously been taught or believed. What was left was but an austere and minimalist doctrinal skeleton of the rich narrative tapestries which nourished Christians from Ireland to India before the Definition.
The root within the verb/noun definire/definitio is -fin-, meaning a boundary. To define a proposition is thus to place boundaries round it, to limit it. While, therefore, a definition may make an additional claim upon the consciences of some, upon others it is likely to have the quite opposite effect. Foliage surrounding the defined doctrinal core has, in effect, been scythed away.
In 1870, the Decree Pastor aeternus did, I would have to concede, impose an additional claim upon 'Gallicans' and 'Conciliarists': they were obliged to believe that the Roman Pontiff ex cathedra was infallible. But he was only described as infallible in matters of Faith and Morals. That is limiting. The Council admirably discerned and even boasted that it was narrowing the notion of Infallibility which Catholics were free to accept before the Council. Neque enim Petri successoribus Sanctus Spiritus promissus est ut eo revelante novam doctrinam patefacerent, sed ut, eo assistente, traditam per Apostolos revelationem seu fidei depositum sancte custodirent et fideliter exponerent.
As we prepare to have a Bean Feast ... or do I mean a Bun Fight ... to celebrate the canonisation of Saint John Henry Newman, we might revisit the vexing question of the exact binding force of a canonisation.
Theologians had for centuries discussed the possession by the Roman Bishop of an infallible magisterium. But they had not conducted that discussion within the tight boundaries of the 1870 Definition. If a theologian writing BEFORE 1870 asserted that X had been infallibly taught, you cannot fairly claim that he asserted X to have been infallibly taught in THAT sense of Infallibility which was only to be defined in 1870. He may be thinking in broader, or narrower, categories than those of Pastor aeternus.
Thus, when writers of the eighteenth or earlier centuries argue that Canonisations are infallible, they are not claiming that a canonisation concerns Faith or Morals and that it is part of the Revelation handed on by the Apostles ... for rather obvious reasons: if the Saint lived in the sixteenth century, their sanctity can clearly not be part of that immutable body of truth which was taught and believed also in the fifth and fifteenth centuries; and Saint So-and-so did not exist within the depositum which the Apostles tradiderunt.
I share the view of Benedict XIV, writing as a private doctor, that questioning a canonisation is temerarious. Nor do I deny the propriety of any use of the I-word with regard to canonisations. But it seems to me clear that a canonisation cannot claim that infallibility, that binding force, which the Decree Pastor aeternus of 1870 attributes to the Roman Pontiff when speaking ex cathedra.
I have returned to this question because the current, apparently politically motivated, frenzy for canonising recent Bishops of Rome may have tainted for many the very concept of canonisation ... may have rubbed off it some of the gloss. How can we enjoy the oncoming event with proper exuberance when the currency of canonisation has been so devalued, so reduced to a political formality?
I have no problems. Since Saint John Henry taught a great deal which is directly in opposition to the attitudes of the current pontificate, his canonisation cannot be seen as a political act intended to subvert the Great Tradition.
On the contrary.
I regard it as a triumph of divine Grace in the midst of the dark clouds of this pontificate; as a sudden bright burst of sunlit glory piercing the clouds and giving us a certain pledge of the ultimate triumph of orthodoxy!
Deo gratias!
The root within the verb/noun definire/definitio is -fin-, meaning a boundary. To define a proposition is thus to place boundaries round it, to limit it. While, therefore, a definition may make an additional claim upon the consciences of some, upon others it is likely to have the quite opposite effect. Foliage surrounding the defined doctrinal core has, in effect, been scythed away.
In 1870, the Decree Pastor aeternus did, I would have to concede, impose an additional claim upon 'Gallicans' and 'Conciliarists': they were obliged to believe that the Roman Pontiff ex cathedra was infallible. But he was only described as infallible in matters of Faith and Morals. That is limiting. The Council admirably discerned and even boasted that it was narrowing the notion of Infallibility which Catholics were free to accept before the Council. Neque enim Petri successoribus Sanctus Spiritus promissus est ut eo revelante novam doctrinam patefacerent, sed ut, eo assistente, traditam per Apostolos revelationem seu fidei depositum sancte custodirent et fideliter exponerent.
As we prepare to have a Bean Feast ... or do I mean a Bun Fight ... to celebrate the canonisation of Saint John Henry Newman, we might revisit the vexing question of the exact binding force of a canonisation.
Theologians had for centuries discussed the possession by the Roman Bishop of an infallible magisterium. But they had not conducted that discussion within the tight boundaries of the 1870 Definition. If a theologian writing BEFORE 1870 asserted that X had been infallibly taught, you cannot fairly claim that he asserted X to have been infallibly taught in THAT sense of Infallibility which was only to be defined in 1870. He may be thinking in broader, or narrower, categories than those of Pastor aeternus.
Thus, when writers of the eighteenth or earlier centuries argue that Canonisations are infallible, they are not claiming that a canonisation concerns Faith or Morals and that it is part of the Revelation handed on by the Apostles ... for rather obvious reasons: if the Saint lived in the sixteenth century, their sanctity can clearly not be part of that immutable body of truth which was taught and believed also in the fifth and fifteenth centuries; and Saint So-and-so did not exist within the depositum which the Apostles tradiderunt.
I share the view of Benedict XIV, writing as a private doctor, that questioning a canonisation is temerarious. Nor do I deny the propriety of any use of the I-word with regard to canonisations. But it seems to me clear that a canonisation cannot claim that infallibility, that binding force, which the Decree Pastor aeternus of 1870 attributes to the Roman Pontiff when speaking ex cathedra.
I have returned to this question because the current, apparently politically motivated, frenzy for canonising recent Bishops of Rome may have tainted for many the very concept of canonisation ... may have rubbed off it some of the gloss. How can we enjoy the oncoming event with proper exuberance when the currency of canonisation has been so devalued, so reduced to a political formality?
I have no problems. Since Saint John Henry taught a great deal which is directly in opposition to the attitudes of the current pontificate, his canonisation cannot be seen as a political act intended to subvert the Great Tradition.
On the contrary.
I regard it as a triumph of divine Grace in the midst of the dark clouds of this pontificate; as a sudden bright burst of sunlit glory piercing the clouds and giving us a certain pledge of the ultimate triumph of orthodoxy!
Deo gratias!
9 July 2019
Read Ker
I read somewhere that a layman, said to be a buddy of some of the English Bishops, had claimed that for Blessed John Henry to be canonised by PF was highly suitable, because JHN was opposed to papal Infallibility, while PF often admits that he is wrong.
I can think of few suggestions more childishly perverse. JHN was most certainly not opposed to the dogma of papal infallibilty. Indeed, the claim itself demonstrates a woeful lack of appreciation of a brilliant, subtle, and nuanced mind.
Nor is PF famous for admitting his errors. Try asking the unfortunates whom he has viciously attacked and continues to lacerate.
I am afraid that we are going to get more of this: as we approach the canonisation, Begoglians, illiterates, and other life-forms will crawl out of the woodwork, claiming to instruct us on the teaching, and the significance, of this great Saint. How irritating. I suggest that readers who have not already done so should educate themselves by reading Dr Ker's biography of JHN in the 'Oxford Lives' series.
A thoughtful friend is uneasy about the canonisation because, she feels, for JHN to be canonised by such a pope runs the risk of bracketing JHN with some dodgy individuals canonised by this pope. I do see her point.
But apart from the clearly identifiable disorder of canonising 'the conciliar popes' as a crude piece of highly unedifying church politics, most canonisations have been of individuals who were already moving comfortably through the pipeline. Although the Bishop of Rome does the final formalities, I believe we should look upon canonisation as an act of the Church.
In order to give expression to this conviction, I shall in future refer to JHN as "S John Henry", even before October!
I can think of few suggestions more childishly perverse. JHN was most certainly not opposed to the dogma of papal infallibilty. Indeed, the claim itself demonstrates a woeful lack of appreciation of a brilliant, subtle, and nuanced mind.
Nor is PF famous for admitting his errors. Try asking the unfortunates whom he has viciously attacked and continues to lacerate.
I am afraid that we are going to get more of this: as we approach the canonisation, Begoglians, illiterates, and other life-forms will crawl out of the woodwork, claiming to instruct us on the teaching, and the significance, of this great Saint. How irritating. I suggest that readers who have not already done so should educate themselves by reading Dr Ker's biography of JHN in the 'Oxford Lives' series.
A thoughtful friend is uneasy about the canonisation because, she feels, for JHN to be canonised by such a pope runs the risk of bracketing JHN with some dodgy individuals canonised by this pope. I do see her point.
But apart from the clearly identifiable disorder of canonising 'the conciliar popes' as a crude piece of highly unedifying church politics, most canonisations have been of individuals who were already moving comfortably through the pipeline. Although the Bishop of Rome does the final formalities, I believe we should look upon canonisation as an act of the Church.
In order to give expression to this conviction, I shall in future refer to JHN as "S John Henry", even before October!
8 July 2019
Rosica lives
Readers will recall the splendid exposition of Bergoglianity given by Fr Thomas Rosica (some months before he felt that the disgrace of plagiarism merited early retirement).
"Our Church ... is openly ruled by an individual rather than by the authority of Scripture alone or even its own dictates of tradition plus Scripture".
PF himself recently reaffirmed the accuracy of Rosica's analysis. He gave away some relics of S Peter.
In doing so, he explained that he himself no longer said Mass in the chapel in which they were kept. He could easily, of course, have moved them to the chapel in Santa Marta, where he does often say Mass. So the message clearly is that PF sets little value on saying Mass before the relics of the Apostle whose Successor he is.
That is, he does not value the symbolism of demonstrating liturgically his daily adherence to Apostolic Tradition.
I am surprised that the Orthodox recipients of this gift see it as a move towards Unity. The policy of this pontificate, of setting aside Holy Tradition, would, you might have thought, put thoughtful Orthodox off the idea of Unity. Aren't they supposed to be quite keen on Tradition? And a bit less keen on having the Church ruled by an arbitrary individual?
And if PF had any genuinely political sense, he might have wondered what the occupant of the other Petrine See, Antioch, would think of this prioritising of the 'Andrean' See. And he might have suspected, given the current schism between Constantinople and Moskow, that the Third Rome might see his action as a taking of sides with the patriarch whom Moskow accuses of the heresy of papism. Giving Bartholomew relics of S Peter is hardly going to diminish the temptation to 'papism' of the Church of Constantinople, is it? Or am I missing something?
I wonder how widely and prudently PF consulted before taking this decision.
"Our Church ... is openly ruled by an individual rather than by the authority of Scripture alone or even its own dictates of tradition plus Scripture".
PF himself recently reaffirmed the accuracy of Rosica's analysis. He gave away some relics of S Peter.
In doing so, he explained that he himself no longer said Mass in the chapel in which they were kept. He could easily, of course, have moved them to the chapel in Santa Marta, where he does often say Mass. So the message clearly is that PF sets little value on saying Mass before the relics of the Apostle whose Successor he is.
That is, he does not value the symbolism of demonstrating liturgically his daily adherence to Apostolic Tradition.
I am surprised that the Orthodox recipients of this gift see it as a move towards Unity. The policy of this pontificate, of setting aside Holy Tradition, would, you might have thought, put thoughtful Orthodox off the idea of Unity. Aren't they supposed to be quite keen on Tradition? And a bit less keen on having the Church ruled by an arbitrary individual?
And if PF had any genuinely political sense, he might have wondered what the occupant of the other Petrine See, Antioch, would think of this prioritising of the 'Andrean' See. And he might have suspected, given the current schism between Constantinople and Moskow, that the Third Rome might see his action as a taking of sides with the patriarch whom Moskow accuses of the heresy of papism. Giving Bartholomew relics of S Peter is hardly going to diminish the temptation to 'papism' of the Church of Constantinople, is it? Or am I missing something?
I wonder how widely and prudently PF consulted before taking this decision.
7 July 2019
NOTICE
Deo volente, after today I shall be at the Lake Garda Roman Forum Conference for a fortnight. I hope to post every day, but I shall not be dealing with (or even reading) incoming Emails and Comments. Until I am back home.
Last time I put up a notice like this one, I came back to find a highly irascible comment from somebody who obvious does not read Notices. He was furious that I had "decided to ignore" a comment he had submitted.
I know that readers are under no canonical obligation to read everything I write, or to remember what I put in a Notice; but neither am I under any obligation to take any notice of their communications.
Last time I put up a notice like this one, I came back to find a highly irascible comment from somebody who obvious does not read Notices. He was furious that I had "decided to ignore" a comment he had submitted.
I know that readers are under no canonical obligation to read everything I write, or to remember what I put in a Notice; but neither am I under any obligation to take any notice of their communications.
Green
Tastes differ, but I greatly relish getting back to these delicious Sundays after Trinity, in green vestments, with their exquisitely simple yet compact Collects from the old Roman Sacramentaries, penned by pontiffs going back to S Leo. Today, we have Deprecationem nostram , quaesumus, Domine, benignus exaudi: et quibus supplicandi praestas affectum; tribue defensionis auilium. Or, as Archbishop Cranmer rendered it, Lorde, we beseche thee mercifully to heare us, and unto whom thou hast geven an heartie desyre to pray; graunt that by thy mightie ayde we may be defended. (Later meddlers filled it out by adding and comforted in all dangers and adversities.)
But you are puzzled. That is not the Collect you heard at your EF Mass this morning! No; because there are dislocations in the Masses of these Sundays, between the Southern European propers found in the Missal of S Pius V and the Northern European propers found, for example, in the English Missals of the Sarum, Hereford, and York 'Uses' and still preserved, with only very minor changes, in the Book of Common Prayer.
Furthermore, the old Mass for the first Sunday after Pentecost is appointed in the Use of S Pius V to be used on weekdays after Trinity Sunday, while the English Uses transferred that Mass to the following Sunday. Hence dislocations: the EF and the BCP have the same Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, but distributed over different Sundays. And today's Collect, absent from the post Pentecosten Masses (but used elsewhere by S Pius) creates an additional factor of complication.
Because of the proximity of the Solemnity of SS Peter and Paul, in the Sarum and similar Uses, a reading from I Peter is paired on Trinity 5 with the Gospel about the Lord teaching from Simon's boat. This sort of connectivity between Temporale and Sanctorale used to be more common.
But you are puzzled. That is not the Collect you heard at your EF Mass this morning! No; because there are dislocations in the Masses of these Sundays, between the Southern European propers found in the Missal of S Pius V and the Northern European propers found, for example, in the English Missals of the Sarum, Hereford, and York 'Uses' and still preserved, with only very minor changes, in the Book of Common Prayer.
Furthermore, the old Mass for the first Sunday after Pentecost is appointed in the Use of S Pius V to be used on weekdays after Trinity Sunday, while the English Uses transferred that Mass to the following Sunday. Hence dislocations: the EF and the BCP have the same Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, but distributed over different Sundays. And today's Collect, absent from the post Pentecosten Masses (but used elsewhere by S Pius) creates an additional factor of complication.
Because of the proximity of the Solemnity of SS Peter and Paul, in the Sarum and similar Uses, a reading from I Peter is paired on Trinity 5 with the Gospel about the Lord teaching from Simon's boat. This sort of connectivity between Temporale and Sanctorale used to be more common.
6 July 2019
More about County Kerry
You will recognise this poetic voice:
There in pinnacled protecton,/ One extinguished family waits/ A Church of Ireland resurrection/ By the broken, rusty gates./ Sheepswool, straw and droppings cover,/ Graves of spinster, rake and lover, / Whose fantastic mausoleum/ Sings its own seablown Te Deum, /In and out the slipping slates.
The old and ruined Church of Ireland Church at Knightstown in County Kerry is a little bit like that. When we used to spend our Summer Vacations there, I sometimes passed the time of day with Sir Adrian Fitzgerald, who would be vigorously cutting back the rampant vegetation threatening to cover the graves of his forebears. Because this church was just up the road from Glanleam, the one-time estate of the Fitzgerald Hereditary Knights of Kerry. Sir Adrian no longer owned the property, but had retained ownership of a cottage on the shore of the bay.
The newer Anglican Church down in Knightstown retained the Prayer Books previously used in the Family pew, with 'Glanleam' in gold on the covers. Not that Sir Adrian worshipped there; because he had become a Catholic.
Indeed, he is now Patron of the Latin Mass Society.
Some readers may be surprised by the phrase "Hereditary Knights". Certainly, such beings do not exist in England; but there survives one such family in the West of Ireland. In the reign of Victoria, an attempt was made to bring them to heel by giving them baronetcies, which assured to them the style 'Sir' without accepting that Knighthood really could be hereditary.
I do not, of course, spend my summers now sustaining the Church of Ireland. But I did meet Sir Adrian again a couple of years ago, when I was being splendidly entertained (by a member of the Irish bar who also belongs to Fr Gerald Deighan's congregation in Harrington Street) in a distinctly stylish club on St Stephen's Green.
Sir Adrian was one member of a group of gentlemen who arrived when we were getting ourselves round our main courses. They were members of the once-sovereign Military Order of Malta. One of them recognised me and cheerfully suggested that the Ordinariate was moving into Ireland.
I wish it were ... just as I wish that the Knights were still Sovereign ...
There in pinnacled protecton,/ One extinguished family waits/ A Church of Ireland resurrection/ By the broken, rusty gates./ Sheepswool, straw and droppings cover,/ Graves of spinster, rake and lover, / Whose fantastic mausoleum/ Sings its own seablown Te Deum, /In and out the slipping slates.
The old and ruined Church of Ireland Church at Knightstown in County Kerry is a little bit like that. When we used to spend our Summer Vacations there, I sometimes passed the time of day with Sir Adrian Fitzgerald, who would be vigorously cutting back the rampant vegetation threatening to cover the graves of his forebears. Because this church was just up the road from Glanleam, the one-time estate of the Fitzgerald Hereditary Knights of Kerry. Sir Adrian no longer owned the property, but had retained ownership of a cottage on the shore of the bay.
The newer Anglican Church down in Knightstown retained the Prayer Books previously used in the Family pew, with 'Glanleam' in gold on the covers. Not that Sir Adrian worshipped there; because he had become a Catholic.
Indeed, he is now Patron of the Latin Mass Society.
Some readers may be surprised by the phrase "Hereditary Knights". Certainly, such beings do not exist in England; but there survives one such family in the West of Ireland. In the reign of Victoria, an attempt was made to bring them to heel by giving them baronetcies, which assured to them the style 'Sir' without accepting that Knighthood really could be hereditary.
I do not, of course, spend my summers now sustaining the Church of Ireland. But I did meet Sir Adrian again a couple of years ago, when I was being splendidly entertained (by a member of the Irish bar who also belongs to Fr Gerald Deighan's congregation in Harrington Street) in a distinctly stylish club on St Stephen's Green.
Sir Adrian was one member of a group of gentlemen who arrived when we were getting ourselves round our main courses. They were members of the once-sovereign Military Order of Malta. One of them recognised me and cheerfully suggested that the Ordinariate was moving into Ireland.
I wish it were ... just as I wish that the Knights were still Sovereign ...
5 July 2019
Meadowsweet and the Irish Ritual Canons
We went strolling the other day in our adjacent meadow to enjoy the orchids, now at their best, and in the (successful) hope of finding Marbled White butterflies. But also, one of my favourite flowers is just coming on stream: Meadowsweet.
During the happy decades when I did annual summer duty in the Dromod Union of the Church of Ireland in County Kerry, the then Bishop of Limerick, Ardfert, Aghadoe, Killaloe, Kilfenora, Clonfert, Kilmacduagh, and Emly, with his wife Patricia (eight Sees but only one Wife), used to motor across for one of the Sundays I was there. On (I think) our second Kerry summer, I greeted Bishop Ned with the news that I was breaching the Ritual Canons of the Church of Ireland. I must explain to you that one of these forbids that incense or "any substitution therefor, or imitation thereof, shall at any time be used in any church or chapel, or other place in which the public services of the Church are celebrated". The Pontiff looked a trifle anxious, until we entered the Church and he realised that I had in mind the vases full of Meadowsweet on the windowsills. Who needs arcane and incendiary Oriental spices when there is Meadowsweet?
He had initially, I rather think, regarded me with possibly just a tadge of reserve. But not hereafter.
He taught me some pieces of priestcraft which, unaccountably, my Staggers training had omitted. For example: the way of compressing and cutting leavened bread so that it can be administered sacramentally without risk of crumbs. And how to give the Blessing in the Irish language. He shared with me the information, which had clearly struck him, that in the Devon Anglican parish where one of his children lived, the full Roman Rite was in use. He mentioned this as something interesting, perhaps even surprising, but not outrageous.
I hope he and Patricia are enjoying his retirement. I found him a kindly, highly intelligent, and quietly sociable Bishop, who knew his people and was liked by them. A Corkman by descent, perhaps he had picked up the gracious ethos of traditional Anglican ministry from his many clerical ancestors!
During the happy decades when I did annual summer duty in the Dromod Union of the Church of Ireland in County Kerry, the then Bishop of Limerick, Ardfert, Aghadoe, Killaloe, Kilfenora, Clonfert, Kilmacduagh, and Emly, with his wife Patricia (eight Sees but only one Wife), used to motor across for one of the Sundays I was there. On (I think) our second Kerry summer, I greeted Bishop Ned with the news that I was breaching the Ritual Canons of the Church of Ireland. I must explain to you that one of these forbids that incense or "any substitution therefor, or imitation thereof, shall at any time be used in any church or chapel, or other place in which the public services of the Church are celebrated". The Pontiff looked a trifle anxious, until we entered the Church and he realised that I had in mind the vases full of Meadowsweet on the windowsills. Who needs arcane and incendiary Oriental spices when there is Meadowsweet?
He had initially, I rather think, regarded me with possibly just a tadge of reserve. But not hereafter.
He taught me some pieces of priestcraft which, unaccountably, my Staggers training had omitted. For example: the way of compressing and cutting leavened bread so that it can be administered sacramentally without risk of crumbs. And how to give the Blessing in the Irish language. He shared with me the information, which had clearly struck him, that in the Devon Anglican parish where one of his children lived, the full Roman Rite was in use. He mentioned this as something interesting, perhaps even surprising, but not outrageous.
I hope he and Patricia are enjoying his retirement. I found him a kindly, highly intelligent, and quietly sociable Bishop, who knew his people and was liked by them. A Corkman by descent, perhaps he had picked up the gracious ethos of traditional Anglican ministry from his many clerical ancestors!
4 July 2019
Lavington Churchyard
A few days in Sussex gave us the opportunity of walking to Lavington Church to visit Caroline (nee) Sargent's grave. I hadn't been there since the mid-1950s, and we had trouble rediscovering it ... you know how hard inscriptions can be to read when lichen has superimposed its own arabesques upon the lettering. Eventually we found it, under a shady wall, right under the steep and sunless wooded North incline of the Downs. I had to kneel down to trace the inscription with my fingers, my knees crunching in the beechmast. Her husband is not buried beside her.
They were married in 1833 in the nearby church by her brother-in-law Soapy Sam, later bishop of Oxford and then of Winchester, who was to earn eternal detestation among prim and humourless people by getting a cheap laugh at Darwin's expense. Four years later, childless, she died of consumption. Had she lived, might she have been the wife of an Archbishop of Canterbury? I have lost count of the number of bishops, not to mention the mere parsons, in her family connections.
Her husband succeeded her father, whose curate he had been, as Rector of Lavington and Graffham. He left behind him diverting accounts of his peasant parishioners, in which the summaries, if critical, ex. gr. 'addictus inebrietati', 'familia malo et ignaviae addicta', are in Latin or Greek. "The morning and evening prayers and the music of the English Bible for 17 years became part of my soul. If there were no eternal world, I could have made it my home".
A friend described his deathbed, nearly sixty years after the marriage: "I was by his bedside; he looked around to see that we were alone: he fumbled under his pillow for something; he drew out a battered little pocket-book full of a woman's fine handwriting. He said 'For years you have been a son to me, Henry; I know not to whom else to leave this - I leave it to you. In this little book my dearest wife wrote her prayers and meditations. Not a day has passed since her death, on which I have not prayed and meditated from this book. All the good I may have done, all the good I may have been, I owe to her. Take precious care of it'. He ceased speaking and soon afterwards unconsciousness came on".
You will remember the edifying accounts of how, when the body of S Thomas More was prepared for burial, under his outer finery was discovered a hair shirt. But on this occasion what they found on this corpse was a small locket, containing the portrait of his 'dearest wife' Caroline.
I hope they had the decency to leave that locket where they found it, round his neck, beneath the pallium. I like to feel, as I approach the Byzantine edifice to which they moved his body, that, under all the haughty marble assertion, beneath the dangling red hat, there lies a tiny picture of the very devout and pretty girl who was the daughter of a squarson and the wife of his curate and who lies in spe beatae resurrectionis under the beechmast in Lavington churchyard.
They were married in 1833 in the nearby church by her brother-in-law Soapy Sam, later bishop of Oxford and then of Winchester, who was to earn eternal detestation among prim and humourless people by getting a cheap laugh at Darwin's expense. Four years later, childless, she died of consumption. Had she lived, might she have been the wife of an Archbishop of Canterbury? I have lost count of the number of bishops, not to mention the mere parsons, in her family connections.
Her husband succeeded her father, whose curate he had been, as Rector of Lavington and Graffham. He left behind him diverting accounts of his peasant parishioners, in which the summaries, if critical, ex. gr. 'addictus inebrietati', 'familia malo et ignaviae addicta', are in Latin or Greek. "The morning and evening prayers and the music of the English Bible for 17 years became part of my soul. If there were no eternal world, I could have made it my home".
A friend described his deathbed, nearly sixty years after the marriage: "I was by his bedside; he looked around to see that we were alone: he fumbled under his pillow for something; he drew out a battered little pocket-book full of a woman's fine handwriting. He said 'For years you have been a son to me, Henry; I know not to whom else to leave this - I leave it to you. In this little book my dearest wife wrote her prayers and meditations. Not a day has passed since her death, on which I have not prayed and meditated from this book. All the good I may have done, all the good I may have been, I owe to her. Take precious care of it'. He ceased speaking and soon afterwards unconsciousness came on".
You will remember the edifying accounts of how, when the body of S Thomas More was prepared for burial, under his outer finery was discovered a hair shirt. But on this occasion what they found on this corpse was a small locket, containing the portrait of his 'dearest wife' Caroline.
I hope they had the decency to leave that locket where they found it, round his neck, beneath the pallium. I like to feel, as I approach the Byzantine edifice to which they moved his body, that, under all the haughty marble assertion, beneath the dangling red hat, there lies a tiny picture of the very devout and pretty girl who was the daughter of a squarson and the wife of his curate and who lies in spe beatae resurrectionis under the beechmast in Lavington churchyard.
3 July 2019
LORD OF THE WORLD
Since PF is reported to have enjoyed Mgr Benson's apocalyptic novel Lord of the World, I thought I had better read it ... truth to tell, His Holiness's ideology and strategy still leave me in a state of some incomprehension; if anything is going to help me, I thought, to acquire the key to his mind, perhaps this volume might; and so I ought to give it a try.
I don't know that it has helped. PF does quite often mention the Devil, and this novel certainly takes seriously the personal power of Evil. And, I think in future, I will keep my eyes open in case his utterances indicate a belief that the End is very imminent. But the novel's profound conviction is that, in the Final Apostasy, Mankind is to be divided very radically between those who fall for Satan and the Antichrist, and those who reject them and adhere to the Catholic Church; and I don't think this idea comes out in PF's utterances. Still, perhaps I have been careless and obtuse in failing to detect this subtext. I will examine what he says more carefully in future for signs of what, back in the 1960s, our lecturers used to call Unrealised and Imminent Eschatology.
Entertainingly, one can find a hint in Mgr Benson's oeuvre of the Ordinariates! In his world, Protestantism has evaporated, squeezed out, and all that is left facing the Antichrist is the Church. So, realignment has occurred: the 'Ritualists' went over from the Church of England when the Nicene Creed was abolished (no; Benson does not foresee the gender errors and dysfunctions symbolised by the Ordination of women) and, during the course of the narrative ... while clergy of the diocese of Westminster, and surviving old Recusant families, fall into apostasy and have to be excommunicated ... the Bishop of Carlisle and half-a-dozen of his clergy enter the Church. (It will be remembered that the Monsignore, God bless him, was an ex-Anglican ... one of us ...)
Benson did not foresee the rise of the Great Dictators and their passionate love-affairs with Death. His dystopia was written in 1907, and, true, his fantasy world is richly endowed with Euthanasia (which my OED indicates was first used in its modern sense of murder in 1869). But he could not know that Hitler was to give all that sort of thing a terribly bad name, and that it would be half a century or more after 1945 before the Death Movement fully got all its courage back.
I don't think this book is great literature, but it is a decided cut above most of what is offered for us to read nowadays. I'm extremely glad that PF enjoyed it. If he wants to enjoy more of our very fine English-language fiction, and thus acquire a taste for our rather specialised Anglo-Saxon sense of humour, I would recommend a Lenten retreat spent in the Close at Barchester and a tour around the Ireland of Miss Nugent and Castle Rackrent, followed by a sabbatical year or two in Shrewsbury College Oxford [co-educational since the death of Miss Hillyard in 1982] with long, lazy, bibulous vacations spent at Brideshead playing croquet, riding (side-saddle?) to hounds, and daily celebrating the Extraordinary Form in the Art Nouveau Chapel which Lord Melstead* has recently restored.
What would be your recommendations? (Comments nominating Blandings Castle will not be enabled; the current Lord Emsworth keeps delaying his entry into the Ordinariate.)
____________________________________________________________________________
* Transpontine readers may welcome an explanation of who this gentleman is. Upon the extinction of the Hanoverian Marquisate of Marchmain and the Earldom of Brideshead, the 1415 Barony by writ of summons survived by having passed through a woman in a cadet (and Recusant) branch of the Flyte family. His Lordship is the 23rd Baron, and he inherited Brideshead (there being no entail) under the will of his fourth cousin twice removed, the Lady Julia Flyte. His grandfather had recouped the family's finances by marrying a Transpontine heiress and his own daughter has married a Russian oligarch. Consequently, there are no financial constraints to force the House to open to the Public, and its Lodges are manned by heavily armed Slavic security personnel, rendering it a safe and agreeable residence for any Sovereign Pontiff with a mind to avoid being troubled by common ordinary folk or Cardinals carrying Dubia or, especially, Archbishop Vigano.
I don't know that it has helped. PF does quite often mention the Devil, and this novel certainly takes seriously the personal power of Evil. And, I think in future, I will keep my eyes open in case his utterances indicate a belief that the End is very imminent. But the novel's profound conviction is that, in the Final Apostasy, Mankind is to be divided very radically between those who fall for Satan and the Antichrist, and those who reject them and adhere to the Catholic Church; and I don't think this idea comes out in PF's utterances. Still, perhaps I have been careless and obtuse in failing to detect this subtext. I will examine what he says more carefully in future for signs of what, back in the 1960s, our lecturers used to call Unrealised and Imminent Eschatology.
Entertainingly, one can find a hint in Mgr Benson's oeuvre of the Ordinariates! In his world, Protestantism has evaporated, squeezed out, and all that is left facing the Antichrist is the Church. So, realignment has occurred: the 'Ritualists' went over from the Church of England when the Nicene Creed was abolished (no; Benson does not foresee the gender errors and dysfunctions symbolised by the Ordination of women) and, during the course of the narrative ... while clergy of the diocese of Westminster, and surviving old Recusant families, fall into apostasy and have to be excommunicated ... the Bishop of Carlisle and half-a-dozen of his clergy enter the Church. (It will be remembered that the Monsignore, God bless him, was an ex-Anglican ... one of us ...)
Benson did not foresee the rise of the Great Dictators and their passionate love-affairs with Death. His dystopia was written in 1907, and, true, his fantasy world is richly endowed with Euthanasia (which my OED indicates was first used in its modern sense of murder in 1869). But he could not know that Hitler was to give all that sort of thing a terribly bad name, and that it would be half a century or more after 1945 before the Death Movement fully got all its courage back.
I don't think this book is great literature, but it is a decided cut above most of what is offered for us to read nowadays. I'm extremely glad that PF enjoyed it. If he wants to enjoy more of our very fine English-language fiction, and thus acquire a taste for our rather specialised Anglo-Saxon sense of humour, I would recommend a Lenten retreat spent in the Close at Barchester and a tour around the Ireland of Miss Nugent and Castle Rackrent, followed by a sabbatical year or two in Shrewsbury College Oxford [co-educational since the death of Miss Hillyard in 1982] with long, lazy, bibulous vacations spent at Brideshead playing croquet, riding (side-saddle?) to hounds, and daily celebrating the Extraordinary Form in the Art Nouveau Chapel which Lord Melstead* has recently restored.
What would be your recommendations? (Comments nominating Blandings Castle will not be enabled; the current Lord Emsworth keeps delaying his entry into the Ordinariate.)
____________________________________________________________________________
* Transpontine readers may welcome an explanation of who this gentleman is. Upon the extinction of the Hanoverian Marquisate of Marchmain and the Earldom of Brideshead, the 1415 Barony by writ of summons survived by having passed through a woman in a cadet (and Recusant) branch of the Flyte family. His Lordship is the 23rd Baron, and he inherited Brideshead (there being no entail) under the will of his fourth cousin twice removed, the Lady Julia Flyte. His grandfather had recouped the family's finances by marrying a Transpontine heiress and his own daughter has married a Russian oligarch. Consequently, there are no financial constraints to force the House to open to the Public, and its Lodges are manned by heavily armed Slavic security personnel, rendering it a safe and agreeable residence for any Sovereign Pontiff with a mind to avoid being troubled by common ordinary folk or Cardinals carrying Dubia or, especially, Archbishop Vigano.
2 July 2019
Petrine Primacy
An interesting piece on Erick Ybarra's blog about Byzantine perspectives on the Petrine Primacy. He concludes it by wondering what S Maximus the Confessor (perhaps the most explicitly papalist Eastern Father) could have said about PF.
When the Fathers of Chalcedon shouted "Peter has spoken through Leo", I do not for one moment believe that they meant "What an exciting novel doctrine! How clever of Leo to think it up!" I think they meant something very much more like "Leo has discharged the Petrine duty of defending us against heretical innnovation".
In both the East and in the West, the Papacy has at least wished to function as an obstacle against doctrinal innovation. Blessed John Henry Newman, whose imminent canonisation was happily made official yesterday, called this function that of being a remora, a barrier. Vatican I most felicitously asserted that the Holy Spirit was not promised to the Successors of Peter so that, by His inspiration, they could teach new doctrine. Dr Trevor Jalland, a predecessor of mine in my last Anglican job, devoted his monumental Bampton Lectures to making just this point.
The ultrapapalism of Bergoglianism is not something more than Catholicism; it is something very greatly less.
The clique around PF has, in fact, deprived us of the Papacy we are entitled to have, a Papacy bestowed by God and devoted to guarding and expounding carefully what has been handed down. Instead of this, an "aggressive, insolent faction" (Newman puts things so succinctly!) has endeavoured and is still endeavouring to foist upon us a fake Papacy which Vatican I explicitly repudiated, operating as a pseudoPapacy which is an indefatigable engine of doctrinal innovation, ambiguity, and disorder, disguised as inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
I have myself collaborated in documents attempting to specify and enumerate the heretical positions that PF has favoured. I do not repent of having done this. They were valuable contributions to the Universal Church. But I do feel that the essence of PF's doctrinal delinquency lies in his de facto repudiation of what Vatican I taught about the limitations and purpose of the papal ministry.
Doellinger, poor fellow, was (to Newman's sorrow) excommunicated for feeling unable to subscribe to the teaching of Vatican I. (Little did he realise that, in God's most merciful providence, Vatican I would be a monument against papal misbehaviour.)
PF is undoubtedly the one and only genuine pope, as Professor Ratzinger again recently made clear. Let there be no doubt about that. Sedevacantism is a disorder equal to Bergoglianism.
But geese; ganders; sauces; Doellinger; Bergoglio.
When the Fathers of Chalcedon shouted "Peter has spoken through Leo", I do not for one moment believe that they meant "What an exciting novel doctrine! How clever of Leo to think it up!" I think they meant something very much more like "Leo has discharged the Petrine duty of defending us against heretical innnovation".
In both the East and in the West, the Papacy has at least wished to function as an obstacle against doctrinal innovation. Blessed John Henry Newman, whose imminent canonisation was happily made official yesterday, called this function that of being a remora, a barrier. Vatican I most felicitously asserted that the Holy Spirit was not promised to the Successors of Peter so that, by His inspiration, they could teach new doctrine. Dr Trevor Jalland, a predecessor of mine in my last Anglican job, devoted his monumental Bampton Lectures to making just this point.
The ultrapapalism of Bergoglianism is not something more than Catholicism; it is something very greatly less.
The clique around PF has, in fact, deprived us of the Papacy we are entitled to have, a Papacy bestowed by God and devoted to guarding and expounding carefully what has been handed down. Instead of this, an "aggressive, insolent faction" (Newman puts things so succinctly!) has endeavoured and is still endeavouring to foist upon us a fake Papacy which Vatican I explicitly repudiated, operating as a pseudoPapacy which is an indefatigable engine of doctrinal innovation, ambiguity, and disorder, disguised as inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
I have myself collaborated in documents attempting to specify and enumerate the heretical positions that PF has favoured. I do not repent of having done this. They were valuable contributions to the Universal Church. But I do feel that the essence of PF's doctrinal delinquency lies in his de facto repudiation of what Vatican I taught about the limitations and purpose of the papal ministry.
Doellinger, poor fellow, was (to Newman's sorrow) excommunicated for feeling unable to subscribe to the teaching of Vatican I. (Little did he realise that, in God's most merciful providence, Vatican I would be a monument against papal misbehaviour.)
PF is undoubtedly the one and only genuine pope, as Professor Ratzinger again recently made clear. Let there be no doubt about that. Sedevacantism is a disorder equal to Bergoglianism.
But geese; ganders; sauces; Doellinger; Bergoglio.
1 July 2019
The Visitation and the Precious Blood
How very ruthless of the post-Conciliar 'reforms': Westminster Cathedral, overnight, lost its Patronal Festival when the 'reformers' reduced July 1 to a feria on the almost sacrilegiously flippant grounds that the Precious Blood would get a perfectly adequate 'covering' by being merely added to the title of Corpus Christi. Maestissimi homunculi. Thus a gorgeous piece of B Pius IX liturgy disappeared: the Solemn Festival he had placed on the calendar to commemorate his return to the City after the Roman Revolution of 1848. (There is nothing vulgar, incidentally, about doing that sort of thing to the calendar, or, if there is, it is simply the vulgarity of an incarnational religion. Byzantine calendars are richly and very appropriately peppered with such observances related to events in Christian history.)
Good news, however: the Ordinariate Church South of the River, Precious Blood Southwark, keeps its patronal festival on the proper day, today.
Incidentally, on the same occasion B Pius IX also raised our Lady's Visitation from a Greater Double to a Double of the Second Class. Urban VI had fitted that festivity onto July 2 as a prayer for Unity. It was the first day available after the Octave of S John, and had long been, among Byzantines, the Feast of the Deposition of the Protecting Robe of the Theotokos in the great Basilica of Blachernae in Constantinople. All that, even the Ecumenical relevance of it, was treated in the post-Conciliar 'reforms' as so much extravagance to be shovelled away: and so the Visitation had a more 'logical' date discovered for it.
B Pius IX's original date for the Precious Blood had been the First Sunday in July. It was the reforms of S Pius X that shifted the Festival onto July 1. S Pius X's liturgists felt, in my view rightly, that too many of the old Roman Sunday Masses were unused on their Sundays year after year because so many feasts were permanently anchored on "the xth Sunday of such-a-month". S Pius X's change did not, of course, mean that the Precious Blood never fell upon a Sunday; it meant that it only fell on a Sunday once every six or seven years. And, with a pastoral flexibility which characterised papal liturgical interventions before the fateful, deplorable collaborazione between Pius XII and Hannibal, S Pius X still allowed, for pastoral reasons, all the Masses on the First Sunday of July to be of the Precious Blood even though the festival had been moved.
For those of us who so wisely use 'the Old Breviary' today has superb Office Hymns (their authors, sadly, unknown). The one provided for Lauds relates particularly well to the old English devotion to the Five Wounds. The English Catholic Hymn Book gives the Vespers hymn Festivis resonent in translation; a great majestic hymn in striding all-conquering Asclepiads, a monument to the triumphant Counter- Reformation. Anyone who's interested in its metre will find an article of mine at 19 March 2019. (Viva viva Gesu, of course, appears in modern hymnals as 'Glory be to Jesus'.)
During the Month of the Precious Blood, perhaps the Litany authorised by S John XXIII could be dusted off and given an airing ... I wonder if any Byzantine poet has ever composed a Paracletic Canon in honour of the Precious and Life-giving Blood of our Most Holy Redeemer.
Good news, however: the Ordinariate Church South of the River, Precious Blood Southwark, keeps its patronal festival on the proper day, today.
Incidentally, on the same occasion B Pius IX also raised our Lady's Visitation from a Greater Double to a Double of the Second Class. Urban VI had fitted that festivity onto July 2 as a prayer for Unity. It was the first day available after the Octave of S John, and had long been, among Byzantines, the Feast of the Deposition of the Protecting Robe of the Theotokos in the great Basilica of Blachernae in Constantinople. All that, even the Ecumenical relevance of it, was treated in the post-Conciliar 'reforms' as so much extravagance to be shovelled away: and so the Visitation had a more 'logical' date discovered for it.
B Pius IX's original date for the Precious Blood had been the First Sunday in July. It was the reforms of S Pius X that shifted the Festival onto July 1. S Pius X's liturgists felt, in my view rightly, that too many of the old Roman Sunday Masses were unused on their Sundays year after year because so many feasts were permanently anchored on "the xth Sunday of such-a-month". S Pius X's change did not, of course, mean that the Precious Blood never fell upon a Sunday; it meant that it only fell on a Sunday once every six or seven years. And, with a pastoral flexibility which characterised papal liturgical interventions before the fateful, deplorable collaborazione between Pius XII and Hannibal, S Pius X still allowed, for pastoral reasons, all the Masses on the First Sunday of July to be of the Precious Blood even though the festival had been moved.
For those of us who so wisely use 'the Old Breviary' today has superb Office Hymns (their authors, sadly, unknown). The one provided for Lauds relates particularly well to the old English devotion to the Five Wounds. The English Catholic Hymn Book gives the Vespers hymn Festivis resonent in translation; a great majestic hymn in striding all-conquering Asclepiads, a monument to the triumphant Counter- Reformation. Anyone who's interested in its metre will find an article of mine at 19 March 2019. (Viva viva Gesu, of course, appears in modern hymnals as 'Glory be to Jesus'.)
During the Month of the Precious Blood, perhaps the Litany authorised by S John XXIII could be dusted off and given an airing ... I wonder if any Byzantine poet has ever composed a Paracletic Canon in honour of the Precious and Life-giving Blood of our Most Holy Redeemer.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
