Wason's Bishop and his Extraordinary Sunday

Not long ago, the Internet contained some (hilarious) accounts of reactions in the American Catholic Church to liturgical reforms introduced by wise young incoming clergy in their new parish churches. Perhaps some of us aged ex-Anglicans can lend a helping hand here.

When we were "Catholic Anglicans", we had something like a century's experience of introducing what we used then to call "the Western Rite", i.e. the 'Tridentine' liturgy associated with the name of S Pius V, into parishes which had not previously known it. Quite often this was done overnight; as an interregnum came to its end, the newly instituted incumbent sprang (what Pope Benedict was later to name) the Extraordinary Form on the parish on his very first Sunday morning. I have previously shared with you Fr Bernard Walke's moving account of how he did this at S Hilary's in Cornwall.

His friend Fr Sandys Wason did likewise at nearby Cury and Gunwalloe (where he was incumbent 1905-1919). Fr Wason's bishop heard that some of the congregation were restive. (Wason had also sacked a 'gentry' Churchwarden and appointed in his place a villager; and had expressed from the pulpit his view of the Ordo Recentior by holding aloft a Book of Common Prayer, and affecting to look inside it before throwing it down to the ground with the words "Made in Germany!") So the bishop let it be known that he was coming over on the next Sunday to officiate in the church and to Sort Things Out. Probably conjecturing that his Lordship might not be intending to use a rite that included the Third Confiteor, Father saw to it that he was already well into his own Tridentine Missa Cantata by the time the right reverend prelate's conveyance rolled up at the church. The latter announced to the large crowds of gaping sightseers (who had come to watch the 'fun'), that he would await the end of the Vicar's Service, and then celebrate the Holy Communion.

The Bishop underestimated both the stamina of the Anglo-Catholic clergy and laity ... and their appetite for Marian devotion. Immediately after Mass, with no greater interruption than the (essential) removal of his maniple, Fr Wason began Solemn Rosary ... not one of those rapid Irish Rosaries with the laity racing into the Holy Mary before the priest has even got to the fruit of thy womb, but a slow, meditative, Anglican Rosary in which, at the end of each Mystery, Father preached about it generously and extensively, allowing no typological crumb to fall unexamined to the Patrimonial ground. Eventually the Pontiff, almost fainting because he had not had a bite of lunch, gave up and was driven back to his Palace at Lys Escop. When Fr Wason - after delivering what may have been the most exhaustive treatise on the Coronation of our Lady in the history of Christian homiletics - finally emerged into the setting sun, he dismissed the waiting mob of journalists with a vigorous wave of his hand and the information that, since he was of course still fasting, he was off to have his breakfast. (I fear I have no detailed information about his bladder, but analogy suggests ... er ... .)

Wason's Cornish critics did score some points against him, most notably when they dumped the putrescent corpse of a donkey on the Vicarage doorstep. There were times when West Country humour may, like dead donkeys, have had its slightly heavy side.

Happy days, that blessed era of the Walkes and the Wasons, the glittering Age of Confessors when 'Faith was taught and fanned to a golden blaze'. 

So that's how it can be done! Go for it, Fathers!!

Knox on Trollope on Butterfield

Mr Cheesemeadow the Architect paid his first visit to Barchester during the episcopate of Bishop Deadletter. The West front of the Cathedral had long been crumbling; and the chapter, instead of being content to reface it, had the whole front rebuilt by Mr Cheesemeadow, whose name then stood high in public estimation. As Mgr Knox goes on, "I am glad to say that Mr Cheesemeadow built in stone; but he chose for his purpose a dull, yellowish stone which took a great deal of polish when dressed, and the result was a a very shiny and monotonous surface. Nor have subsequent generations been able to discover the meaning or the usefulness of the two large peppercorns (as they are generally called) with which he decorated the corner towers. Meanwhile, he failed to discover the beginnings of that settlement in the foundations of the building, which called for such expensive underpinning when Dean Plumbline had to deal with it at the beginning of the [twentieth] century."

Cheesemeadow appears again in Knox's Barchester Pilgrimage as the architect of a house built for Ludovic Lufton at Lufton. The great architect built in the manner of the time; "that is to say, it was large, draughty, and uncomfortable within, and as ugly outside as red, blue, and yellow bricks could make it. A stranger, confronted for the first time with its appearance, is led to suppose that a Norman baron must have employed a fifteenth century Venetian architect to build it."

I fully understand the sentiment. How often, dear reader ... please Own Up ... as you have strolled, uxorious, across the Parks to fetch her tea for your wife during a break in the cricket, have you raised your eyes to Keble Chapel ... and then as hurriedly looked away again? Yes, you are aware that Butterfield himself described all that riotous polychromy as "gay", but you also recall that Sir John Summerson, no mean architectural critic, acidly remarked upon Butterfield's "sadistic hatred of beauty".

Since Butterfield did very little Country House work, I wonder where on earth Knox was able to experience the draughty discomfort to which he alludes with ... apparently ... such feeling.

Inigo Jones, incidentally, no fool, did not scruple to bung a deft and chaste Palladian West Front onto Gothic S Paul's in London. "Unity by Inclusion", as Sir Ninian Comper might have said. 

I think perhaps he did.

Communion Procession in a new Dark Age (3)

Well, we all know what happened in the twentieth century. Divorce got its toe in the door ... and within decades the door was wide open. Unnatural and disordered sexual practices corrupted Marriage. Fornication gradually ceased to be furtive and, after being 'Free love' in the 1930s, had by the end of the century become the natural assumption of Western societies. Homosexuals ... no; some homosexuals ... ceased to enjoy inhabiting an amusing subculture and became aggressive public ideologues. The mortal sin of missing Mass without good cause ceased to be a matter of guilt. You know all this, and much more.

My analysis, and suggestion, is this. Society has in effect regressed to the superficially christianised state it was in during the 'Dark Ages'. We are, in other words, in a new Dark Age of widespread unrepented mortal sin. In fact, ours is an even darker age, because people do not even accept that they are in a state of sin, and do not repent, not even once a year. Nor, probably, even when they die.

Unhappily, however, we have inherited the ecclesial sacramental culture, to which the reforms of S Pius X have led, in which it appears that a General Communion is the normal custom at every Mass. It is not commonly preceded by Confession; that sacrament has become so uncommon that, at the beginning of the Year of Faith, I heard (yes, I heard this with my own ears) one priest in a mainstream church, say this to his congregation: "I have decided to use the Year of Faith to revive confession. As you all know, in this church we have for long used the Confessional for storing what gets left unsold after a Parish bring and buy sale. It's pretty full, and we need to get rid of all the stuff so as to use the Confessional for confessions again. There are a lot of books ... I invite everyone to come and help themselves to any thing at all they can take away and use; and then we'll have a Work Party to clean it out."

So people who have not been to their duties for years receive Communion when, at family events, they have the rare experience of being at a celebration of Mass. People who have committed sexual sins for which they feel no repentance, which they have no intention to strive to avoid in future, naturally troop up to the Altar and receive Communion. As a product myself of Anglican culture, I am still horrified by the widespread Catholic custom of receiving communion into the hand and then walking nonchalantly away putting the Host into ones mouth as one walks.

The way ahead? Getting rid of the assumption that everybody always receves Communion. And a good start here would be the rooting out of an organised, military, Communion Procession in which a person actually has to make herself obvious if she declines to troop up to the altar.

Yes; only a first step; but some step has to be the first.

ORDINARIATE SHOCK

This appeared exactly ten years ago, as people sorted out whether they were going to join Pope Ratzinger's Ordinariate, or to stay in the House of Bondage ... I reprint it for those who enjoy period pieces!

It is becoming apparent that very many 'extreme' clerics with yards of lace on their albs who, everybody assumed, would be certain to be "going", have, apparently, discovered fantastically good reasons for "staying". The clergy who are "going" seem largely to be very 'Church of England men' ... the sort who, a decade ago, would never in a month of Sundays have 'poped'; priests soaked in the ethos of the life and spirituality of the real Church of England; priests, very often, who were known to have theological problems about the Ordination of Women but whose own personal and professional relationships with women priests were so warm and friendly that their friends sometimes wondered whether Fr X or Archdeacon Y really was totally 'sound'. It is what you might call the Grantleys rather than the Arabins who now who sidle up to you and shyly, proudly, tell you that their dossiers have come back from the CDF marked with a great big tick*.

Something similar seems to be true with regard to the laity. The sort of precious lay persons who are always dashing around the country to ritualistic extravaganzas; who never miss an opportunity of telling you how much they loath women priests ... brother priests will know what an embarrassment these people are ... and who go on and on about what an important Principled Stand they love to make by walking out of services which have women clergy in them ... these types seem to be remaining in the C of E; it is solid, sensible, sober, men and women, apparently, who will be making up the Ordinariate congregations.

Bad news, I fear, for those Anglicans who secretly welcomed Professor Ratzinger's initiative because they hoped it would "clean out the Church of England"!

Ho Ho Ho. All rather jolly, really.

__________________________________________________________________

*Since I drafted this piece, I have received in this morning's post a letter from a brother priest, quite senior among the 'leadership in the catholic movement', who writes about the departure of "Brethren whom I clearly remember only a couple of years ago declaring that they could never deny their Anglican heritage and orders; similarly, among the 'stayers' are those who would I thought have been off at the start." 

Exactly.

Communion Procession in a new Dark Age? (2)

The thesis I am testing is that the moment when S Pius X started encouraging frequent communion is the moment at which the the mass cultural Catholicism of post-Constantinian Chritianity, in which mass conversions led to a situation in which most people and most societies were not radically 'converted', had been superseded. Some anecdotes from my own unsystematic reading of Irish Church History: a twelfth century Bishop of Ardfert (i.e. Kerry) was reputed to be "chaste". Just think what that implies for the most of the episcopate! I once amused byself by looking at the entries in episcopal registers of the late medieval parochial clergy of Kerry. Time and time again, the record revealed that a cleric was dispensed for illegitimacy. That might mean that most couples were not canonically married and that therefore most children were canonically illegitimate; or, more probably, that these clerics were the sons of priests who naturally planned to inherit their fathers' trade: in either case, it tells us something about society!

But the counter-Reformation implied a clericate different from the medieval priesthood in which a man who could read but had no training could turn up at the Embertide and be ordained (the old system which, like so many of the medieval abuses, survived in the Church of England long after the Catholic Church had moved on). The introduction of seminaries meant a much more professionalised priesthood with an expectation that they would have a more professional attitude to the formation of their laity.

By the time of S Pius X, things were ripe for a new Catholicism in which frequent Confession and frequent Communion could be encouraged. The Dark Ages had finally come to an end. Their ritual marks remained; Communion from the tabernacle rather than within Mass was still common in Oxford Anglo-Catholicism when I was an undergraduate in the 1960s; in both East and West the Body of Christ was not delivered into the hands of the laity; neither was the Chalice delivered into the hands of the laity. Both of these were practices which developed in the 'Dark Ages' out of fear of profanation or sacrilege. But, with a more trained and 'sacramentalised' laity, the situation had become ripe for change.

Dv, to be continued.

Quaeritur

Somebody has told me that the First Vatican Council taught that "If the pope, as a private person, encourages heresy, the Apostolic See would be vacant, and then we must not innovate anything, but stick to what has been handed down."

 

I do not know where, in the Conciliar Acta, this occurs. Can anybody help me?

"Communion Procession" in a new Dark Age? (1)

In the middle of controversy about methods of receiving the Holy Communion of Christ's Body and Blood during pandemics, I wonder if, perhaps, it might help to stand back a bit and consider the rituals of Communion in a broader context. I am moved to consider the trendy concept of the Communion Procession!

In the CTS Daily Missal, where one might expect a heading "COMMUNION", there is instead the heading "COMMUNION PROCESSION"; "Communion" has, functionally, become adjectival. Syntactically, this rather teutonic agglutinisation of nouns is a phenomenon which has become very common, and is often found in newspaper headings. "Football Manager" "Rape Victim" "Crash Survivor". Is there any justification in the Ordo Missae itself for this particular insertion? It seems to me strange that emphasis should thus be taken off the centrality of the act of Holy Communion and the weight made to rest upon the act of processing.

But there is reference to the Communion Procession in the IGMR. In its original 1969 version it read (56 (i) "... cantus ad Communionem, cuius est  ... processionem ad Corpus Christi suscipiendum magis fraternam reddere." In 2001, this became " ... cantus ad Communionem, cuius est ... indolem 'communitariam' processionis ad Eucharistiam suscipiendam magis in lucem ponere." This is undoubtedly a strengthening of the idea. As for the idea itself, I can't see much in Jungmann's Volume II to support it.

The propriety of this development seems to me to arise from the process of frequent communion encouraged by S Pius X, and so accentuated since the middle years of the last century that it became  what we Anglicans used to call a "A General Communion". I want to suggest that the impetus given to this by the Holy Pontiff needs to be seen in a particular historical context.

It was in the nineteenth century that Catholicism in many countries was reformed very radically in its social manifestations. Cardinal Cullen, Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland, presided over a revolution which eliminated the centuries-old peasant Catholicism of Irish culture (elements of which I strongly suspect go back to the sixth century) and finally imposed the discipline ... I nearly wrote 'military discipline' ... of the Counter-Reformation. In particular, out went the 'patterns', the old Patronal Festivals, which although cultic were occasions of every known kind of debauchery. The old Catholicism, in which one went to confession before Easter so as to be in a state of Grace and 'fit' to receive at Easter the Holy Communion which most people did not receive during the rest of the year, was laudably replaced by a new Catholicism in which the clergy were encouraged to strive to ensure that their people were normally, and not just for a few days each spring, in a state of Grace.

I suspect that a connection could be found between this and the general increase in disapproval of adultery, and other sexual sins, in both Protestant and Catholic contexts. As late as the seventeenth century royal courts, nobody failed to believe that adultery was a mortal sin. But equally, it was a cultural assumption that Kings did commit that mortal sin of adultery and even had mistresses en titre, right down - in France - to the accession of the saintly Louis XVI; and acknowledged and ennobled their bastards. I read somewhere of an uxorious German prince who maintained mistresses he didn't sleep with because princely status required it! In England, that culture lasted until William IV in the 1830s; the eldest of his bastards by Dorothy Bland, of Parknasilla in Co Kerry (where Pam and her sons and sons-in-law used to play golf in just about the most scenic 12 hole hotel course there must be anywhere) was made Earl of Munster ... but nota bene ... only the eldest son and only an earl. By the end of the same century it had become unthinkable that Albert Edward Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, certainly one of the hundred most unedifying lechers known to history, should acknowledge and ennoble bastards.

Things had changed.

Dv, to continue.

Are Lapwings Lenten Fare?

(1) "There are girls so cold-looking, pretty girls, too, ladylike, discreet, and armed with all accomplishments, whom to attack seems to require the same sort of preparation as a journey in quest of the north-west passage. One thinks of a pedestal near the Athenaeum as the most appropriate and most honourable reward of such courage. But, again, there are other girls to abstain from attacking whom is, to a man of any warmth of temperament, quite impossible. They are like water when one is athirst, like plovers' eggs in March, like cigars when one is out in autumn. No one ever dreams of denying himself when such temptation comes in the way. ... Phineas was not allowed to thirst in vain for a drop from the cool spring." (1869)

(2) "Sebastian lived in Christ Church, high in Meadow Buildings. He was alone when I came, peeling a plover's egg taken from the large nest of moss in the centre of his table.

"'I've just counted them,' he said. 'There were five each and two over, so I'm having the two.  ... 

"The party assembled. There were three Etonian [a large school near Slough] freshmen ... Each as he came in made first for the plovers' eggs ...'The first this year, they said. 'Where do you get them?'

"'Mummy sends them from Brideshead. They always lay early for her.'" (1945; the narrative is describing a February day.)

Having consulted Cocker and Mabey Birds Britannica s.v. Lapwing, I am confident that the 'plovers' were lapwings. See there for the evidence.

Sadly, this simple commodity is (like foie gras) no longer on the Waitrose list (memo try Fortnum's). A shame, because such watery fowl ... and their eggs ... might have counted as Fish. There is an Irish witticism to the effect that gannets used to be allowed in Ireland as Lenten fare, since their diet was exclusively piscine (I have always suspected that this is a joke kept up their sleeves by the Irish wherewith to gull gullible [geddit?] Englishmen like me).

BTW: I remember, I think in Maria Edgeworth, reading of a fowl called the 'Irish Ortolan'. Does anybody know what that was?

Varia

 (1) A nice up-to-the-moment bit from S Bede in today's Office: " ... the boat was in the middle of the sea ... because quite often the Church ... is not only afflicted but also befouled (foedata), so that, if it were possible, her Redeemer would seem completely to have deserted her for a time ... but He does not ... turn away His face, but rather helps those who are fighting with enemies so that they conquer, and crowns them for ever as Victors". [This sort of boat-typology goes back beyond Horace (Odes I 14) to Alcaeus of Lesbos.]

(2) I was very glad to read the news that Mother Miriam, and her sisters of the Daughters of Mary the Mother of Israel's Hope, have at last found a kind and pastoral Bishop (vide Lifesitenews). 

I met Mother when she came, a few years ago, to the LMS Latin Summer School which I run. Readers will understand how important it is that Jewish people are enabled to hear the Good News, and what wonderful tidings it is (and a magnificent Eschatological Sign) when they are gathered into the One Fold of the Redeemer.

There are, of course, well-meaning but profoundly misguided folk who regard it as an "offence to Judaism" to welcome Jews into the Universal Gathering (ekklesia; synagoge) of Jesus the Jew.

I can only say that I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of such builders of barricades when or if they meet S Paul! I wonder if that exquisitely fierce Jewish wordsmith is occasionally allowed to stroll around Purgatory, in righteous anger tearing strips off antisemites who have tried to erect barriers againt the entry of Jewish people into the Land of Milk and Honey. I do hope so!!

(3) I know I need not nag readers to continue to pray for the great Fr Zed. It is probably also our duty to pray for those who are giving him grief, that they may receive God's gift of metanoia. These people, also, raise exactly the same pressing problem of over-population in Purgatory.

(4) What fun to read the new legal arragements for the Catholic church in China, as published by the Chinese Government. Bishops are to be elected by their diocese and confirmed by the "Conference". Nil de Romano Pontifice. Of course, the elegant legal enactments of dictatorships usually have little bearing upon the actual  bully-boy behaviour of powerful or petty tyrants on the ground ... but it is interesting that the Vatican appears to have gone along with this. (I don't feel that the Ostpolitik chappies in Rome will be able, indefinitely, to keep their agreement with Peking under wraps.) Given this relaxed and chummy approach, could anyone consistently forbid the SSPX to consecrate new bishops sine mandato apostolico? Sauce, ganders, goose!!

That a Bishop should be elected locally does have a certain attractiveness to it. It would stymie the  dreary phenomenon of an 'episcopal class' of Rising Career Clerics who start as Westminster Auxiliaries and then take a diocese and then take a Metropolitan See and then keep their fingers crossed for Westminster. Translation, according to Tradition, is Adultery! Of course, there would be disadvantages at the moment in letting diocesan presbyterates, still full of nice old gentlemen who were 'formed' in some very suspect decades, anywhere near the selection of Bishops. But, in principle, I find the old idea of the Bishop being the 'Man of his Church', rather than a blow-in, rather attractive.

The current Archbishop of Southwark has written recently about the symbolism of the fact that his cathedra  is directly above the crypt where his predecessors are buried. A bishop, as the Man of his own Particular Church, should be aware, every time he sits on his cathedra, of his obligation to hand on, complete, intact, and unadulterated, the Taught Faith of the Universal Church which he received from the local series episcoporum of which he is but the most recent member.

Stop the steal!

A little while ago, I referred to the revision of the rules of a North American Parliament. I made mention of a Ms Pelosi, for which mention one reader rebuked me strongly. So I will not refer to silliness in this present piece.

The theft of our birthright, aka the deformation of the English lanuage, has now spread to this Kingdom ... if Brighton and Hove is truly part of the Kingdom of England. If there is a Kingdom of England.

Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust Maternity Services Department is leading the way.

Oops ... "Perinatal Services". We speak of a wokeish Department where they have "human milk" "Breast/chestmilk" "milk from the feeding mother or parent". And where "woman" becomes "woman or person"; "Father" becomes "parent, co-parent or second biological parent". 

I feel that bit diminished by the fact that that my own life came just that weeny bit too early for me to hear five little voices at family bed-time squealing "Second biological parent, can you read us another chapter of Narnia?"

The story in The Times rather archly commented "An estimated 1 per cent of the adult population in Britain identifies as transgender or non-binary but the trans population in Brighton and Hove is understood to be larger".

"Understood to be." I really do like that. Nice one. It deserves to be added permanently to our armoury of twee and evasive circumlocutions. 

I also recently mentioned that I had firmly refused to enable a thoroughly deplorable comment describing Ms Pelosi as a monstrous old hag. I am, indeed, prepared to go to any lengths necessary to train readers to avoid dittography. It would, I presume, have been within the current rules of engagement if the disgraceful person who offered me those out-of-order words had instead written  ... Pelosi, who is understood to be a ... et cetera.

Oz and ends

Nice spring weather, so ... utilising the Period of Daily Exercise currently still allowed to us by the Bojarch ... I strolled down after Mass to the Isis. I can assure worried presbyters of the diocese of Westminster that the trim little craft called Vinny Boy is still safely tethered to the bank just North of Sandford Lock, only a few feet from Nirvana.

Then back home to read my emails ... where there was a piece from the admirable Lifesitenews about important Roman Conferences between Catholics and Moslems regarding "Mary".

Personally, the Mary I have most interest in is the one called Theotokos. Will she feature?

Next ... an item there which I don't really understand about the Australian Ordinariate and money and the future. Money is a mystery to me (I leave such matters to Pam), but one possibly helpful suggestion occurs to me. Has the Southern Cross considered a coabitazione with the Oz province of the SSPX?

My own acquaintance with that Society has been universally favourable. Its clergy seem friendly and sensible, the sort of devout yet down-to-earth brother priests with whom it would be a pleasure to do business. And, of course, the faith-history of the SSPX ... and that of ex-Anglicans in the Ordinariates ... are in many ways rather similar. Heresy, after all, when everything is said and done, is Heresy. (Is there, somewhere on the Internet, a video of a full solemn Divine Worship Mass ... Judica me Deus down to the Last Gospel ... which SSPXers could peep at to assure themselves of our respectability?)

Given the dislike of Tradition demonstrated recently in a questionnaire by the French Bishops, it seems rather providential that the SSPX has sturdily kept its independance. Who knows what need the Universal Church may have of the Society in the sunlit years to come. From the constraints of canonical structures, Good Lord, deliver them!

And (I can't remember what my train of thought was here) has anybody heard recently anything about the Franciscans of the Immaculate? Have those masterful chappies in the Congregation for Despoiling Religious sorted them out yet? What a long time it's taking to rectify what was wrong ... those FIs must have been most terribly wicked!! 

Or is it that their Trustees are still refusing to hand over the money and the property? Even wickeder!!! Definitely not in the Spirit of the Council!!!!

Wrong again

Really devoted readers may recall that, some months ago, I tentatively floated my theory that, since PF seemed to have gone a bit easier on his abuse and obscenity, perhaps somebody he respected had suggested to him that these things did his cause more harm than good. It seemed to me, in turn, appropriate to go easier on PF. Perhaps you have noticed ...

Sadly, I seem to have been wrong. PF has again attacked traditionalist Catholics, apparently considering them a phenomenon parallel to extremist Islam (when did traddies last blow up a concert audience?).

And he has reverted to calling journalists whom he dislikes "Shit-lovers" and "Shit-eaters". 

Frankly, I do not believe that this is how a Roman Pontiff should address the world. Or even a junior curate his parish.

Surely, there must be senior lay Catholics ... and I am not referring only to traddies ... who find this sort of thing as distasteful or even possibly deranged as I do. Do they ever drop a tactful private word to Cardinals they know? Do concerned Cardinals ever confidentially pick the brains of trustworthy psychiatrists? Behind the scenes, is anybody trying to put together a seemly and becoming way of bringing this pontificate to a tidy conclusion?

(I drafted this piece some time ago, and have left it for my reconsideration before publishing it. I shall not enable any comments.)