Pope Francis has replied to a plea for an answer to a question, and has done so within SIX WEEKS!!
A well-known theologian has commented with immense joy, pointing out how wonderful it is
"that Francis answered at all and did not let my appeal fall on deaf ears";
"that he replied himself and not via his private secretary or the secretary of state";
"that he clearly read the appeal most attentively";
"that he is highly appreciative".
Who is the theologian? Hans Kueng. What was his appeal? That PF would allow free discussion concerning the doctrine of papal infallibility, which Kueng has spent a lot of his life attacking.
Kueng wrote to PF on March 9 2016; his ecstatic press statement describing PF's reply was released to The Tablet on April 27 2016.
Papal Infallibility is a dogma solemnly defined by an Ecumenical Council, Vatican I, in 1870. Its teaching included anathemas against those who denied the doctrine.
Kueng says that PF "set no restrictions. He has thus responded to my request to give room to a free discussion on the dogma of infallibility. I think it is now imperative to use this new freedom ..." etc. etc..
This gripping news broke some weeks before the recent spate of Internet papers by court theologians arguing that documents like Amoris laetitia require a more obsequious acceptance from the theological community than they have in some quarters received.
So ... assuming that Kueng has not been telling naughty porkies ... on the one hand, obsequious submission is required; on the other, the whole fundamental substructure of the Petrine Ministry is up for grabs!!
You couldn't make it up, could you?
Double standards (2), (3), and (4) are due to follow.
7 November 2017
6 November 2017
A Pope and the Liturgy: Non Potest
Following on from my post about possible dangers to sound Liturgy arising from PF's own personal liturgical fads and his dirigiste instincts, I want to draw to the attention of readers two loci of Magisterial status. (I presume that readers are already familiar with what the then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in The Spirit of the Liturgy, when he criticised the hyperpapalism which, after Vatican II, played on an erroneous assumption that the pope can do anything. This, of course, could be argued to be non-Magisterial.)
The two places that I wish, very briefly, to draw to your attention are full exercises of a Papal Magisterium.
(1) In the Letter to the Bishops which accompanied Summorum Pontificum, pope Benedict XVI wrote "What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden forbidden". Notice the expression cannot. The learned pontiff says, not "should not be"; he says "cannot be".
(2) I suspect Ratzinger of being responsible for drafting paragraph 1125 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, although, of course, it was promulgated with the force of an Apostolic Constitution in 1992 by Pope S John Paul II.
The second sentence of this paragraph begins with the phrase "Ipsa auctoritas Ecclesiae suprema [Even the supreme authority of the Church itself]". This is a phrase commonly used, especially at Vatican II, of the Pope himself (although surely it would also apply to an Ecumenical Council). Next comes "non potest [is not able]". I ask you to notice that we do not have "non licet" ["he is not permitted"], nor do we have a jussive subjunctive ["he shouldn't do it"]. What is being excluded is being excluded as an impossibility. Just as S John Paul II excluded the sacerdotal ordination of women as an impossibility (nullam facultatem habere).
The sentence in the Catechism continues: "liturgiam ad placitum commutare suum [change the Liturgy in accordance with his own fads] sed solummodo in oboedientia fidei et in religiosa mysterii liturgiae observantia [but only in the obedience of the Faith and in the religious observance of the mystery of the Liturgy]."
In other words, if a pope were to attempt to change the Liturgy in accordance with his personal fads, he would be acting ultra vires. And so his attempt would be null.
I suspect we would have to go back to the principled and glorious teaching of Vatican I (Pastor aeternus) to find as clear and forthright a Magisterial statement of what a pope is not competent to do!
My apologies to readers who recognise this as the theme of a paper I have read in a number of places during the last five years, sometimes under the title "Can the pope abolish the Vetus Ordo?". I am willing to dig it out and update it and come and read it again if anyone else wants to hear it!!! Anywhere in Europe! Just my expenses!
The two places that I wish, very briefly, to draw to your attention are full exercises of a Papal Magisterium.
(1) In the Letter to the Bishops which accompanied Summorum Pontificum, pope Benedict XVI wrote "What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden forbidden". Notice the expression cannot. The learned pontiff says, not "should not be"; he says "cannot be".
(2) I suspect Ratzinger of being responsible for drafting paragraph 1125 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, although, of course, it was promulgated with the force of an Apostolic Constitution in 1992 by Pope S John Paul II.
The second sentence of this paragraph begins with the phrase "Ipsa auctoritas Ecclesiae suprema [Even the supreme authority of the Church itself]". This is a phrase commonly used, especially at Vatican II, of the Pope himself (although surely it would also apply to an Ecumenical Council). Next comes "non potest [is not able]". I ask you to notice that we do not have "non licet" ["he is not permitted"], nor do we have a jussive subjunctive ["he shouldn't do it"]. What is being excluded is being excluded as an impossibility. Just as S John Paul II excluded the sacerdotal ordination of women as an impossibility (nullam facultatem habere).
The sentence in the Catechism continues: "liturgiam ad placitum commutare suum [change the Liturgy in accordance with his own fads] sed solummodo in oboedientia fidei et in religiosa mysterii liturgiae observantia [but only in the obedience of the Faith and in the religious observance of the mystery of the Liturgy]."
In other words, if a pope were to attempt to change the Liturgy in accordance with his personal fads, he would be acting ultra vires. And so his attempt would be null.
I suspect we would have to go back to the principled and glorious teaching of Vatican I (Pastor aeternus) to find as clear and forthright a Magisterial statement of what a pope is not competent to do!
My apologies to readers who recognise this as the theme of a paper I have read in a number of places during the last five years, sometimes under the title "Can the pope abolish the Vetus Ordo?". I am willing to dig it out and update it and come and read it again if anyone else wants to hear it!!! Anywhere in Europe! Just my expenses!
5 November 2017
Development
Almost at the very end of the press conference to 'present' Amoris laetitia, a young woman, who, I think, was sitting next to the erudite Professor Roberto de Mattei, was allowed to ask a question. Unlike most of the hacks and hackettes, Diane Montagna asked a question ... an appeal for "clarification" ... "everybody wants to know" ... which was very short and totally to the point. She just wanted to know whether there was anything in this new document which contradicted paragraph 84 of Familiaris consortio. The question went for answer to some Austrian called von Schoenborn. He repudiated strongly the idea that there could possibly be a contradiction. But he proceeded to explain that Doctrine develops.
The Austrian gentleman referred us instead to Blessed John Henry Newman's Essay on Development. I think anybody who wants to be up-to-the-minute should reread that brilliant tour de force. Remember, incidentally, that the Blessed did not write it as a guide to how future curial spokespersons, by a neat conjuring trick, could present Change as Non-change; but as an analysis of how in fact Catholic Doctrine had in the past developed while remaining true to type.
Newman shared with S Paul the advantage of not being an Austrian aristocrat.
When Pope Francis was later asked about the coherence of Amoris laetitia, he replied by referring us all to this 'Introduction' by von Schoenborn, whom he described as a great theologian and a former secretary of the CDF. (It is a mercy that Vatican I, in defining the Primacy and Infallibility of Roman Pontiffs, did not claim that they had good memories with regard to the Curricula Vitae of their associates.)
I have recently been repeating some previous posts making clear what the Church has formally taught about DEVELOPMENT, in a Magisterium which begins with a phrase of S Paul's which was then taken up by writer after writer, pope after pope, Council after Council, until our own time.
The phrase is
EODEM SENSU EADEMQUE SENTENTIA.
People ought to chant this at PF whenever he .... er ...
New readers might like to read back over these old articles of mine, which I usually published at 5 in the afternoon.
The Austrian gentleman referred us instead to Blessed John Henry Newman's Essay on Development. I think anybody who wants to be up-to-the-minute should reread that brilliant tour de force. Remember, incidentally, that the Blessed did not write it as a guide to how future curial spokespersons, by a neat conjuring trick, could present Change as Non-change; but as an analysis of how in fact Catholic Doctrine had in the past developed while remaining true to type.
Newman shared with S Paul the advantage of not being an Austrian aristocrat.
When Pope Francis was later asked about the coherence of Amoris laetitia, he replied by referring us all to this 'Introduction' by von Schoenborn, whom he described as a great theologian and a former secretary of the CDF. (It is a mercy that Vatican I, in defining the Primacy and Infallibility of Roman Pontiffs, did not claim that they had good memories with regard to the Curricula Vitae of their associates.)
I have recently been repeating some previous posts making clear what the Church has formally taught about DEVELOPMENT, in a Magisterium which begins with a phrase of S Paul's which was then taken up by writer after writer, pope after pope, Council after Council, until our own time.
The phrase is
EODEM SENSU EADEMQUE SENTENTIA.
People ought to chant this at PF whenever he .... er ...
New readers might like to read back over these old articles of mine, which I usually published at 5 in the afternoon.
4 November 2017
Argumentum ad hominem UPDATED
UPDATE: The Bibliography attached to the Wikipaedia entry suggests that the "modern" usage is not found earlier than 1986; and that the Lockean meaning still held force in Fowler, 1926. Whoever wrote that entry appears not to have heard of Locke or to have read much literature from before the 1990s. This exemplifies another cultural problem: the erecting of barriers between the ages. C S Lewis attributes this to the activity of devils. It probably also exemplifies a decline in the study of the Classics. Another C S Lewis point ...
I seem to keep seeing, day after day, the phrase Argumentum ad hominem misused. A recent example occurred in Fr Tom Weinandy's otherwise splendid Letter to PF.
People use it now, apparently, to mean "a personal attack". That is, when you attack somebody in a violent and deeply personal way, rather than arguing politely and rationally about a question in hand. That is how Fr Tom uses it; his point is that PF and the Bergoglians refuse polite dialogue and simply hurl nasty hate-filled personal abuse around. And, of course, he's dead right. That is exactly what they do. But this is not what Argumentum ad hominem means.
Well, language changes. If enough people use Argumentum ad hominem in this incorrect sense, then I suppose one will, regretfully, have to stop calling it wrong. Usage validates. Every philologist knows that.
But I think it is a great shame that an elegant and well-observed description of a certain sort of precise argument is being taken over and forced to mean something crude which is totally different. Something useful is being lost in the field of human discourse, with no apparent compensating advantage that I am capable of discerning.
And ... I am sorry to be personal!! ... I greatly mistrust the motives of some who misuse the phrase. I think the poor things sometimes do it because they think it sounds fine and dandy to say something in Latin. I think saying something in Latin, when you think it means something quite the opposite to what it really means, is embarrassingly pretentious and, to be frank, a display of ignorance. Why not just say "You are making this attack rather personal"? What harm is there, for heaven's sake, in speaking English? It's a very respectable language ... the language of Jane Austen and Ronald Knox and C S Lewis and etc.etc..
So what really is an Argumentum ad hominem? A proper one, in its true native habitat?
Here is Locke's very neat definition: "To press a man with consequences drawn from his own Principles and Concessions".
I've written about this before, giving examples from Socrates to Newman. You could find my earlier blogposts via the search Engine attached to this blog, sub voce Argumentum ad hominem ... if you were interested.
I seem to keep seeing, day after day, the phrase Argumentum ad hominem misused. A recent example occurred in Fr Tom Weinandy's otherwise splendid Letter to PF.
People use it now, apparently, to mean "a personal attack". That is, when you attack somebody in a violent and deeply personal way, rather than arguing politely and rationally about a question in hand. That is how Fr Tom uses it; his point is that PF and the Bergoglians refuse polite dialogue and simply hurl nasty hate-filled personal abuse around. And, of course, he's dead right. That is exactly what they do. But this is not what Argumentum ad hominem means.
Well, language changes. If enough people use Argumentum ad hominem in this incorrect sense, then I suppose one will, regretfully, have to stop calling it wrong. Usage validates. Every philologist knows that.
But I think it is a great shame that an elegant and well-observed description of a certain sort of precise argument is being taken over and forced to mean something crude which is totally different. Something useful is being lost in the field of human discourse, with no apparent compensating advantage that I am capable of discerning.
And ... I am sorry to be personal!! ... I greatly mistrust the motives of some who misuse the phrase. I think the poor things sometimes do it because they think it sounds fine and dandy to say something in Latin. I think saying something in Latin, when you think it means something quite the opposite to what it really means, is embarrassingly pretentious and, to be frank, a display of ignorance. Why not just say "You are making this attack rather personal"? What harm is there, for heaven's sake, in speaking English? It's a very respectable language ... the language of Jane Austen and Ronald Knox and C S Lewis and etc.etc..
So what really is an Argumentum ad hominem? A proper one, in its true native habitat?
Here is Locke's very neat definition: "To press a man with consequences drawn from his own Principles and Concessions".
I've written about this before, giving examples from Socrates to Newman. You could find my earlier blogposts via the search Engine attached to this blog, sub voce Argumentum ad hominem ... if you were interested.
3 November 2017
Gimme money!
Don't miss this ... a wonderfully, miraculously funny piece of hysteria in The National Catholic Reporter by an individual called Michael Sean Winters, screaming his abuse at Fr Weinandy. It is a classic, a real winner!
One little factual query. Winters says that the opponents of PF (opponents whom, incidentally, he appears to invite to leave the Church or at least her Ministry) are "well-funded and very noisy". If he would count me in this category, I would have no problem about being deemed "very noisy".
But "well-funded"? My wife and I live off our Church of England pension, with one or two modest additions.
"Well-funded"! How do I get my hands on all this limitless loot which is apparently swilling around? Who dispenses it? To whom should I make application? Why has nobody told me about this before? How is a poor convert supposed to know about this eldorado if nobody tells him?
I want money! And I want it now! Just tell me whom to ask!
One little factual query. Winters says that the opponents of PF (opponents whom, incidentally, he appears to invite to leave the Church or at least her Ministry) are "well-funded and very noisy". If he would count me in this category, I would have no problem about being deemed "very noisy".
But "well-funded"? My wife and I live off our Church of England pension, with one or two modest additions.
"Well-funded"! How do I get my hands on all this limitless loot which is apparently swilling around? Who dispenses it? To whom should I make application? Why has nobody told me about this before? How is a poor convert supposed to know about this eldorado if nobody tells him?
I want money! And I want it now! Just tell me whom to ask!
November 5, is the Feast of the Holy Relics
However, this year, the Feast is displaced by a Sunday. But does that prevent homilists from expounding its themes at the Sunday Mass? After all, modern custom is to identify Sunday mainly with the Resurrection, and Resurrection is what the Feast of all the Holy Relics preserved in our churches is really about. (And the Mass can be said as a Votive on any free day ...)
What a wholesome liturgical instinct this festival represents. In the medieval English rites, it tried out various dates; May 22 or the Monday after the Ascension at Exeter; the Sunday after the Translation of S Thomas (July 7) at Hereford and Sarum - although Sarum notes that 'nuper' it occupied the Octave Day of our Lady's Nativity, with an appropriate Collect "Grant we beseech thee Almighty God, that the merits may protect us of the holy Mother of God and Ever Virgin Mary and of thy Saints whose relics are kept in this church ...". The traditional Benedictine rite keeps this festival on May 13, presumably a learned allusion to the Dedication of the Pantheon in Rome, upon this day, as the Church of Sancta Maria ad Martyres. Before the reforms of S Pius X, this festival was to be found among the Masses For Some Places on October 26, or on the Last Sunday of October.
After S Pius X, the Feast of the Relics settled, most appropriately, onto a day within the Octave of All Saints, November 5, where it was observed by papal indult in certain places (often as a Greater Double). The colour to be used is red. This is consistent with the fact that the Office is the Common of Many Martyrs, despite the fact that not all the Saints whose relics we this day venerate were martyred. Perhaps we may relate this usage to the primitive notion that the Martyrs are the prototypical saints; that the unmartyred sancti et sanctae in a sense just piggy-back along upon the martyrs.
The Sacred Congregation of Rites sometimes felt tempted to turn to Byzantine sources to get a richer mixture than one always finds in formal Western texts (Sessio xxv of Trent is sound enough on the relics but a trifle sober). So the proper lections at Mattins for this feast are taken from that always-reliable Doctor of the Church S John of Damascus (Fr Eric Mascall once observed the propensity of Roman liturgists to resort to Eastern sources whenever they felt moved to say something 'extreme'). "For since Life itself and the Author of Life was numbered among the dead, we do not call those who finished their last day in the hope of Resurrection and of faith in Him 'Dead'. For how can a dead body utter miracles? Through relics the devils are cast out, diseases sent fleeing, the sick healed, the blind see ..." etc. etc.. The Collect is a fine composition which likewise sees the miracles performed through the relics of Saints as pledges of the Resurrection: Increase in us O Lord our faith in the Resurrection, who in the relics of thy Saints dost perform marvellous works: and make us partakers of the immortal glory of which our veneration of their ashes [cineres] is a pledge.
This celebration disappeared from Church life in the post-Conciliar period, for presumably the same reasons that at the same time caused the Jesuits, who then occupied the Church of S Aloysius in this City, to have a massive bonfire of all the relics and reliquaries in their splendid Relics Chapel (Fr Bertram's elegant booklet about those events reminds one uncannily of the similar things which happened throughout England in the late 1540s ... mercifully, the gracious spirit of S Philip Neri has now restored lost glories by filling the Alyoggers Relics Chapel with a grand new collection).
This feast is, in my view, rich in themes for evangelical preaching and teaching, and ripe for wider revival. It teaches the goodness of material things against a false 'spiritualism'; it preaches the ultimately indissoluble link between Body and Soul against the sub-Christian notion that only the soul really matters; it proclaims the transforming eschatological glory which will clothe this perishable with what is imperishable, and this mortal with what is immortal, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.
What a wholesome liturgical instinct this festival represents. In the medieval English rites, it tried out various dates; May 22 or the Monday after the Ascension at Exeter; the Sunday after the Translation of S Thomas (July 7) at Hereford and Sarum - although Sarum notes that 'nuper' it occupied the Octave Day of our Lady's Nativity, with an appropriate Collect "Grant we beseech thee Almighty God, that the merits may protect us of the holy Mother of God and Ever Virgin Mary and of thy Saints whose relics are kept in this church ...". The traditional Benedictine rite keeps this festival on May 13, presumably a learned allusion to the Dedication of the Pantheon in Rome, upon this day, as the Church of Sancta Maria ad Martyres. Before the reforms of S Pius X, this festival was to be found among the Masses For Some Places on October 26, or on the Last Sunday of October.
After S Pius X, the Feast of the Relics settled, most appropriately, onto a day within the Octave of All Saints, November 5, where it was observed by papal indult in certain places (often as a Greater Double). The colour to be used is red. This is consistent with the fact that the Office is the Common of Many Martyrs, despite the fact that not all the Saints whose relics we this day venerate were martyred. Perhaps we may relate this usage to the primitive notion that the Martyrs are the prototypical saints; that the unmartyred sancti et sanctae in a sense just piggy-back along upon the martyrs.
The Sacred Congregation of Rites sometimes felt tempted to turn to Byzantine sources to get a richer mixture than one always finds in formal Western texts (Sessio xxv of Trent is sound enough on the relics but a trifle sober). So the proper lections at Mattins for this feast are taken from that always-reliable Doctor of the Church S John of Damascus (Fr Eric Mascall once observed the propensity of Roman liturgists to resort to Eastern sources whenever they felt moved to say something 'extreme'). "For since Life itself and the Author of Life was numbered among the dead, we do not call those who finished their last day in the hope of Resurrection and of faith in Him 'Dead'. For how can a dead body utter miracles? Through relics the devils are cast out, diseases sent fleeing, the sick healed, the blind see ..." etc. etc.. The Collect is a fine composition which likewise sees the miracles performed through the relics of Saints as pledges of the Resurrection: Increase in us O Lord our faith in the Resurrection, who in the relics of thy Saints dost perform marvellous works: and make us partakers of the immortal glory of which our veneration of their ashes [cineres] is a pledge.
This celebration disappeared from Church life in the post-Conciliar period, for presumably the same reasons that at the same time caused the Jesuits, who then occupied the Church of S Aloysius in this City, to have a massive bonfire of all the relics and reliquaries in their splendid Relics Chapel (Fr Bertram's elegant booklet about those events reminds one uncannily of the similar things which happened throughout England in the late 1540s ... mercifully, the gracious spirit of S Philip Neri has now restored lost glories by filling the Alyoggers Relics Chapel with a grand new collection).
This feast is, in my view, rich in themes for evangelical preaching and teaching, and ripe for wider revival. It teaches the goodness of material things against a false 'spiritualism'; it preaches the ultimately indissoluble link between Body and Soul against the sub-Christian notion that only the soul really matters; it proclaims the transforming eschatological glory which will clothe this perishable with what is imperishable, and this mortal with what is immortal, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.
2 November 2017
Liturgical Arts Journal
Older readers will remember with affection the name of Shawn Tribe who, back in the days when Liturgical Restoration was just beginning, founded the blog New Liturgical Movement.
Mr Tribe is at it again! The Liturgical Arts Journal is now up and running, with website, facebook, and twitter presences. It cannot but be good!
Mr Tribe is at it again! The Liturgical Arts Journal is now up and running, with website, facebook, and twitter presences. It cannot but be good!
Fr Weinandy
I very much regret that I have never met Fr Thomas Weinandy, whose letter to PF has just been published. He is a distinguished American theologian; he was in Oxford for a decade or two and his reputation was high when I came back here later than his return to America. He was Warden of Greyfriars, a Permanent Private Hall of the University, and for a time Chairman of the Theology Faculty.
The fact that the American Episcopal Conference, within minutes, sacked him from being a Consultor of their Doctrine Committee must indicate that America is awash with brilliant theologians. If that Conference really can so easily do without someone of his standing ...
It must also indicate that the USA Episcopal Conference is dominated by very little men. God bless the dear little fellows.
This cheap and vulgar ritual humiliation exemplifies the extent to which PF is presiding over a bully-boy Church in which midget bishops and minicardinals compete to defeat each other in the sycophancy stakes. Just as Tom Weinandy has, in effect, just said.
The young Weinandy was taught at Kings, London, by the great Anglican Thomist Canon Professor Eric Mascall, which gives him a link with our great Anglican Patrimony. I like to think that his action redeems the honour of the American Church, just as the courageous lecture given in August by Fr Aidan Nichols redeemed that of the English Church. Nichols is an Oxford man (Cardinal College) and Weinandy is Oxonian by adoption, so I feel that dear S Frideswide Universitatis specialis adiutrix must be quietly satisfied that, despite the demonic spirit of secularisation at work in modern Oxford, some of her lads have turned out good during this unparalleled crisis in the Church Militant. Floreat Oxonia.
The fact that the American Episcopal Conference, within minutes, sacked him from being a Consultor of their Doctrine Committee must indicate that America is awash with brilliant theologians. If that Conference really can so easily do without someone of his standing ...
It must also indicate that the USA Episcopal Conference is dominated by very little men. God bless the dear little fellows.
This cheap and vulgar ritual humiliation exemplifies the extent to which PF is presiding over a bully-boy Church in which midget bishops and minicardinals compete to defeat each other in the sycophancy stakes. Just as Tom Weinandy has, in effect, just said.
The young Weinandy was taught at Kings, London, by the great Anglican Thomist Canon Professor Eric Mascall, which gives him a link with our great Anglican Patrimony. I like to think that his action redeems the honour of the American Church, just as the courageous lecture given in August by Fr Aidan Nichols redeemed that of the English Church. Nichols is an Oxford man (Cardinal College) and Weinandy is Oxonian by adoption, so I feel that dear S Frideswide Universitatis specialis adiutrix must be quietly satisfied that, despite the demonic spirit of secularisation at work in modern Oxford, some of her lads have turned out good during this unparalleled crisis in the Church Militant. Floreat Oxonia.
1 November 2017
Joseph Ratzinger
Happy All Hallows! May the Saints pray for the whole stae of Christ's Church Militant here in Earth. We need you!
This is a slightly unusual post which some people ... probably rightly ... may consider in bad taste.
Archbishop Gaenswein has described the life of emeritus pope Benedict as flickering away like a candle flame. Please God, he may yet live to give service to the Church. Back in 2013, some unwholesome individuals were already gleefully anticipating his funeral ... one of whom has actually just cheerfully suggested that Ratzinger should now campaign in support of PF! "Brazen", did you say? But nobody lives for ever. If his death is within sight, it seems to me that there are some practical points which it might be useful to make.
It will be an occasion for grief but also for retrospectives. The Media love retrospecting! It will also be a time in which even some of the nastier specimens in the bilge water of the Barque of S Peter will by convention put their gut hatred temporarily on hold. Joseph Ratzinger may, for a week, become in death more audible!
It seems to me that this should be an occasion for emphasising and showcasing what we think is important about his distinguished pontificate; not simply out of nostalgia and affection but with an eye on what needs to be emphasised for the good of the Church's ongoing life. It is my view that any of us who have any sort of entree into the Media world should have given some sort of forethought to this question.
Secondly, I have a suspicion that PF, out of a thoroughly commendable sense of decency, has not liked to savage elements of Papa Ratzinger's legacy too obviously while his predecessor is still alive. And I doubt if he would wish to do so on the very morrow of his death. But there is some evidence that PF is aware of his own mortality, and might not wait as long as he would wish before doing some spoiling. We must also not forget his unfortunate tendency to be easily influenced by some immensely dodgy people.
'Liturgy' springs to mind; and not least the position of Cardinal Sarah, around whom the Wolves ... and probably the Vultures as well ... have been circling for some time. It is rumoured that he was appointed by PF on a recommendation of Papa emeritus Ratzinger. Repeated and rather nasty public humiliations by PF have happily failed to persuade His gutsy Eminence to behave like an Anglo-Saxon and fall on his own sword. I wonder how long his heroic service to the Church in his present lonely role will survive Joseph Ratzinger's death.
Sarah, Liturgiam authenticam, and Summorum Pontificum are treasures which the Church can ill afford to lose. And they are what the Wolves particularly have their eye upon.
This is a slightly unusual post which some people ... probably rightly ... may consider in bad taste.
Archbishop Gaenswein has described the life of emeritus pope Benedict as flickering away like a candle flame. Please God, he may yet live to give service to the Church. Back in 2013, some unwholesome individuals were already gleefully anticipating his funeral ... one of whom has actually just cheerfully suggested that Ratzinger should now campaign in support of PF! "Brazen", did you say? But nobody lives for ever. If his death is within sight, it seems to me that there are some practical points which it might be useful to make.
It will be an occasion for grief but also for retrospectives. The Media love retrospecting! It will also be a time in which even some of the nastier specimens in the bilge water of the Barque of S Peter will by convention put their gut hatred temporarily on hold. Joseph Ratzinger may, for a week, become in death more audible!
It seems to me that this should be an occasion for emphasising and showcasing what we think is important about his distinguished pontificate; not simply out of nostalgia and affection but with an eye on what needs to be emphasised for the good of the Church's ongoing life. It is my view that any of us who have any sort of entree into the Media world should have given some sort of forethought to this question.
Secondly, I have a suspicion that PF, out of a thoroughly commendable sense of decency, has not liked to savage elements of Papa Ratzinger's legacy too obviously while his predecessor is still alive. And I doubt if he would wish to do so on the very morrow of his death. But there is some evidence that PF is aware of his own mortality, and might not wait as long as he would wish before doing some spoiling. We must also not forget his unfortunate tendency to be easily influenced by some immensely dodgy people.
'Liturgy' springs to mind; and not least the position of Cardinal Sarah, around whom the Wolves ... and probably the Vultures as well ... have been circling for some time. It is rumoured that he was appointed by PF on a recommendation of Papa emeritus Ratzinger. Repeated and rather nasty public humiliations by PF have happily failed to persuade His gutsy Eminence to behave like an Anglo-Saxon and fall on his own sword. I wonder how long his heroic service to the Church in his present lonely role will survive Joseph Ratzinger's death.
Sarah, Liturgiam authenticam, and Summorum Pontificum are treasures which the Church can ill afford to lose. And they are what the Wolves particularly have their eye upon.
31 October 2017
Traditional Catholics in the Baltimore area...
... Ordinariate news!! Mount Calvary Catholic Church, centre of a flourishing Ordinariate Group, is being erected into a parish of the Ordinariate. Bishop Lopes, Ordinary of the Chair of S Peter, will celebrate Pontifical High Mass (ORDINARIATE RITE) at 4.00 on Saturday 11 November. During Mass he will consecrate the Altar, and seal into it a relic of S John of the Cross.
Mount Calvary has taught and practised the Faith since 1842; its first Vicar, Fr Alfred Curtis, was received into Full Communion by Blessed John Henry Newman himself, and subsequently became the second Bishop of Wilmington.
It sounds a jolly area; the Shrine of S Alfonso Liguori (FSSP); and America's first Catholic Cathedral, our Lady Assumpta, are not far away.
Mount Calvary has taught and practised the Faith since 1842; its first Vicar, Fr Alfred Curtis, was received into Full Communion by Blessed John Henry Newman himself, and subsequently became the second Bishop of Wilmington.
It sounds a jolly area; the Shrine of S Alfonso Liguori (FSSP); and America's first Catholic Cathedral, our Lady Assumpta, are not far away.
All Hallows' Eve
A lovely day, in which the Roman Liturgy, with its beautiful Mass of the Eve, or Vigil, of All Saints, sets up a big marker against the heathen puerilities of "Hallow Een". And carries forward the themes of the Social Kingship of Christ. I am sure that both clergy and devout laity enjoyed this morning the texts of this Mass.
Except that most of them didn't. What a shame that Vatican II, or the Novus Ordo, abolished it. Just another example of all that has been wrong since the 1960s.
Except that the Vigil of All Saints was not abolished by Vatican II (or by the undoubted vandals who did use "Vatican II" as a dishonest excuse to ignore what the Council did actually mandate).
No; this lovely Vigil was abolished by Pius XII, hero-pope of a certain sort of Traddy!!
Pius XII it was who employed Hannibal Bugnini and began the deformation of the Roman Rite, years before Papa Roncalli had any notion of summoning a Council. They began by interfering with the rites of Holy Week.
If, in a second-hand bookshop, you spot an old pre-1950 Missal going cheap, snaffle it up!
Except that most of them didn't. What a shame that Vatican II, or the Novus Ordo, abolished it. Just another example of all that has been wrong since the 1960s.
Except that the Vigil of All Saints was not abolished by Vatican II (or by the undoubted vandals who did use "Vatican II" as a dishonest excuse to ignore what the Council did actually mandate).
No; this lovely Vigil was abolished by Pius XII, hero-pope of a certain sort of Traddy!!
Pius XII it was who employed Hannibal Bugnini and began the deformation of the Roman Rite, years before Papa Roncalli had any notion of summoning a Council. They began by interfering with the rites of Holy Week.
If, in a second-hand bookshop, you spot an old pre-1950 Missal going cheap, snaffle it up!
30 October 2017
Christ the KING: Tom Wright's view
Many readers of this blog will not have heard of Tom Wright. A former don in this University, he was made Bishop of (the prestigious see of ) Durham, because of his formidable academic reputation. After ... I think ... seven years he joined that distinguished number of heavyweight Anglican intellectuals who've either turned down episkope or else abandoned it after a short trial to return to academe. He is an Evangelical but has 'broadened' (when he was Chaplain of Worcester College in this University, he used to waggle incense around). He tries to understand the Catholic Faith, but, not having experienced it from the the inside, often gets things wrong. His books on S Paul and Pauline doctrine are very well worth reading. (Don't bother with For all the Saints, because he gets the Catholic/Orthodox cult of the Saints wrong.)
Tom is no fool. Writing about the adoption by the Church of England of the feast of Christ the King on the Sunday Next Before Advent, he objects because "this particular novelty ... gets it completely wrong. It presses all the wrong buttons. It completes the job of pulling the Church's year out of shape. Once again, more is less. This "feast" devalues other feasts and occasions ... by concluding the implicit story-line at the wrong point, thereby throwing out of kilter the narrative grammar of the whole story. It implies that Jesus Christ becomes King at the end of the sequence, the end of the story, as the result of a long process". So it devalues Ascension Day. It is, he opines, "like trying to eat the Christmas pudding first and stir it afterwards".
Actually, I wonder if the Feast of Christ the King may be up for review in more circles than one. Traddies very naturally prefer the intention manifested by Pius XI, that the Festival should be closely associated with the Feast of All Saints. I gather that all this stuff about Kingship appeals less and less to some Trendies, because they would rather think of the Lord as a Servant and all that sort of stuff. And people soaked in good old Anglican Patrimonial traditions miss Stir up Sunday. And people whose Patron Saint is S Andrew can't celebrate their Patron when he occurs on a Sunday and, of course, are prevented every year from celebrating his External Solemnity on the Sunday.
Does the current Novus Ordo treatment of Christ the King really make anybody happy? Pragmatically, you're more likely to have good enough weather for a procession of the Blessed Sacrament at the end of October. And the Pius XI date at the end of October would help to provide a bit of an antidote to the commercially-inspired 'Hallow'een' spookfest. Best of all, it provides a Christian alternative to Reformation Sunday.
Rather like Pius XII's clever idea of making May 1 the feast of S Joseph the workman, the November date for Christ the King has never really bedded down into the mentality and popular culture of ordinary Christians. Clever ideas quite often don't. Because Liturgy is, after being the property of the Almighty, the property really of the plebs sancta Dei, God's common ordinary folk, not of chaps with clever ideas who write learned papers about Inculturation but treat Liturgy like a gamesboard on which they and their chums are entitled to move the counters around.
Tom is no fool. Writing about the adoption by the Church of England of the feast of Christ the King on the Sunday Next Before Advent, he objects because "this particular novelty ... gets it completely wrong. It presses all the wrong buttons. It completes the job of pulling the Church's year out of shape. Once again, more is less. This "feast" devalues other feasts and occasions ... by concluding the implicit story-line at the wrong point, thereby throwing out of kilter the narrative grammar of the whole story. It implies that Jesus Christ becomes King at the end of the sequence, the end of the story, as the result of a long process". So it devalues Ascension Day. It is, he opines, "like trying to eat the Christmas pudding first and stir it afterwards".
Actually, I wonder if the Feast of Christ the King may be up for review in more circles than one. Traddies very naturally prefer the intention manifested by Pius XI, that the Festival should be closely associated with the Feast of All Saints. I gather that all this stuff about Kingship appeals less and less to some Trendies, because they would rather think of the Lord as a Servant and all that sort of stuff. And people soaked in good old Anglican Patrimonial traditions miss Stir up Sunday. And people whose Patron Saint is S Andrew can't celebrate their Patron when he occurs on a Sunday and, of course, are prevented every year from celebrating his External Solemnity on the Sunday.
Does the current Novus Ordo treatment of Christ the King really make anybody happy? Pragmatically, you're more likely to have good enough weather for a procession of the Blessed Sacrament at the end of October. And the Pius XI date at the end of October would help to provide a bit of an antidote to the commercially-inspired 'Hallow'een' spookfest. Best of all, it provides a Christian alternative to Reformation Sunday.
Rather like Pius XII's clever idea of making May 1 the feast of S Joseph the workman, the November date for Christ the King has never really bedded down into the mentality and popular culture of ordinary Christians. Clever ideas quite often don't. Because Liturgy is, after being the property of the Almighty, the property really of the plebs sancta Dei, God's common ordinary folk, not of chaps with clever ideas who write learned papers about Inculturation but treat Liturgy like a gamesboard on which they and their chums are entitled to move the counters around.
29 October 2017
Post Scriptum to Bishop Roche
PS I have just remembered a highly Ecumenical liturgical suggestion made in 1955 by an Anglo-Catholic priest called Fr Hugh Ross Williamson in a book called The Great Prayer. This book was reissued, by the way, in 2009 by Gracewing, accompanied by a warm commendation from Bishop Alan Hopes, now the Roman Catholic Bishop of East Anglia, and a member of your Lordship's Congregation for Divine Worship.
Fr Hugh wrote about the Canon of the Mass, "the first Eucharistic Prayer" as some people call it nowadays, in the following words:
" [T]he Canon today is not only the prayer for unity within the Church itself. The sects which have sprung up since the Reformation could all unite in saying the Canon. There can be nothing in the doctrine implied there from which any presbyterian or congregationalist or methodist could dissent, for no dissenter disagrees with the Catholic Church on the question of the original Christianity St Augustine brought to England. There is in the Canon only the teaching of the primitive Church (for, of course, Gregory the Great only put the finishing touches to prayers which had slowly developed or hardened into particular forms from apostolic times) and nothing whatever of 'late medieval accretions' against which the reformers inveighed. The Canon had already been in use, in its present form, for six hundred years before 'transubstantiation' was defined in 1215. ... in knowing the Canon, we become grounded in the teaching of the primitive Church which Protestants no less than Catholics accept, and so we may find that the Lord's table, despite all the controversies which have disgraced his followers, is indeed the centre of unity."
Isn't this exactly what your Lordship's committee is commissioned to search for? At least one member of your committee, Mr Andrea Grillo, is certain to go along enthusiastically with this proposal!
Fr Hugh wrote about the Canon of the Mass, "the first Eucharistic Prayer" as some people call it nowadays, in the following words:
" [T]he Canon today is not only the prayer for unity within the Church itself. The sects which have sprung up since the Reformation could all unite in saying the Canon. There can be nothing in the doctrine implied there from which any presbyterian or congregationalist or methodist could dissent, for no dissenter disagrees with the Catholic Church on the question of the original Christianity St Augustine brought to England. There is in the Canon only the teaching of the primitive Church (for, of course, Gregory the Great only put the finishing touches to prayers which had slowly developed or hardened into particular forms from apostolic times) and nothing whatever of 'late medieval accretions' against which the reformers inveighed. The Canon had already been in use, in its present form, for six hundred years before 'transubstantiation' was defined in 1215. ... in knowing the Canon, we become grounded in the teaching of the primitive Church which Protestants no less than Catholics accept, and so we may find that the Lord's table, despite all the controversies which have disgraced his followers, is indeed the centre of unity."
Isn't this exactly what your Lordship's committee is commissioned to search for? At least one member of your committee, Mr Andrea Grillo, is certain to go along enthusiastically with this proposal!
Best wishes ...
... to all readers on this joyously triumphalist Feast of Christ our King; but especially brother priests. I wonder if, like me, you find the Breviary propers provided by Pius XI quite exhilarating. Not least the extracts from Quas primas.
Not everybody knows this: while the Novus Ordo dumps the important bits of the Pius XI Collect for Christ the King, the Church of England retains it in a faithful and elegant translation. Perhaps the C of E was a little more faithful to the Vatican II mandate that liturgical changes should only be made if "vera et certa utilitas Ecclesiae id exigat", as well as to the admirable directions of Liturgiam authenticam with regard to the style of liturgical vernaculars.
Today's Sunday Slot on the Home Service seemed to be preoccupied with Martin Luther instead of with Christ the King. They had even sent some Anglican bishop to Wittenberg, presumably at the licence-payer's expense (I didn't leave the wireless on long enough to find out whether the Right Reverend gentleman went round the town setting fire to synagogues as instructed by the fraterculus). Suddenly there came into my mind the powerful words of Blessed John Henry Newman, when he protested formally in 1841 against the Jerusalem Bishopric scheme:
" ... the recognition of heresy, indirect as well as direct, goes far to destroy" the claims "of any religious body ..." and "Lutheranism and Calvinism are heresies, repugnant to Scripture, springing up three centuries since, and anathematised by East as well as by West ...".
It is surely the duty of Ordinariate Catholics never to let their fellow Catholics forget the teachings and counsels of Newman, so directly relevant to the errors of this twenty first century. This is what we are for!!!
Not everybody knows this: while the Novus Ordo dumps the important bits of the Pius XI Collect for Christ the King, the Church of England retains it in a faithful and elegant translation. Perhaps the C of E was a little more faithful to the Vatican II mandate that liturgical changes should only be made if "vera et certa utilitas Ecclesiae id exigat", as well as to the admirable directions of Liturgiam authenticam with regard to the style of liturgical vernaculars.
Today's Sunday Slot on the Home Service seemed to be preoccupied with Martin Luther instead of with Christ the King. They had even sent some Anglican bishop to Wittenberg, presumably at the licence-payer's expense (I didn't leave the wireless on long enough to find out whether the Right Reverend gentleman went round the town setting fire to synagogues as instructed by the fraterculus). Suddenly there came into my mind the powerful words of Blessed John Henry Newman, when he protested formally in 1841 against the Jerusalem Bishopric scheme:
" ... the recognition of heresy, indirect as well as direct, goes far to destroy" the claims "of any religious body ..." and "Lutheranism and Calvinism are heresies, repugnant to Scripture, springing up three centuries since, and anathematised by East as well as by West ...".
It is surely the duty of Ordinariate Catholics never to let their fellow Catholics forget the teachings and counsels of Newman, so directly relevant to the errors of this twenty first century. This is what we are for!!!
28 October 2017
IS the Magisterium in crisis?
Here is an old post; I have chopped off a section on Humanae Vitae
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to Capital Punishment, if that is the only possible effective way of defending human lives against an unjust aggressor.
Doctrine develops, evolves, is nuanced. But it must always be eodem sensu eademque sententia.
So, under S John Paul II, the Magisterium, after reiterating the traditional teaching, went on to teach us (CCC 2267 citing Evangelium vitae 56) that in our time, given the resources at the State's disposal, such occasions are rare, even very probably non-existent.
How can anyone find fault with that prudential judgement? Most certainly not I. All power to that Great and Holy Pontiff's elbow.
Recently, however, we have been told that Capital punishment is "inadmissable, no matter how serious the crime committed", and "an offence against the inviolability of life and the dignity of the human person"; that "Thou shalt not kill has absolute value and applies to both the innocent and the guilty"; and that "even a criminal has the inviolable right to life". "Absolute", mark you. And "Inviolable".
I do not see how all this is eodem sensu as the Traditional teaching. I do not see how it is a development eadem sententia from CCC 2267. It is a novel theologoumenon which in fact contradicts the Tradition.
I view Capital Punishment with quite as much personal revulsion as the Holy Father does. When I read about the Death Rows and the botched executions in a handful of North American states; about the gentle delicacy with which the Chinese shoot their convicts so as not to damage organs which can be profitably 'harvested'; I feel both very angry and uncomfortably sick. But his and my revulsion is not the point.
Perhaps one should make allowances for the fact that Jorge Bergoglio spent his middle years in a barbarous land in which thousands were 'disappeared' and many more tortured under a murderous and corrupt military dictatorship (to the downfall of which my own country may have made some small contribution).
But when every allowance is made, the Magisterium is not an arena in which the Sovereign Pontiff is entitled to attach the prestige of his office to some personal enthusiasm.
Let me conclude by sharing with you my very own daring view about all this stuff.
I do not, I am afraid, believe that the Holy Spirit was given to Pope Francis, or to any other pope, so that by His revelation they can put out some new doctrine, but so that (with the Holy Spirit's help) they can guard and set forth the Tradition handed down through the Apostles ... what we call the Deposit of Faith.
Does this bold admission put me beyond the pale?
Dear Bishop Roche
My dear Lord Bishop
There are credible report on the Internet that you are chairing a group commissioned by our Holy Father to draft a form of the Holy Eucharist which could be used by Catholics and Protestants (and Orthodox and Copts etc. etc. etc., I take it?). Accordingly, I thought you might find it helpful if I shared with you the experience of the Church of England, which I witnessed for more than fifty years. As you will know, that body is an uneasy coalition of every known version of Christianity from the Tridentine to the Zwinglian, and so it has had much experience in the last century of attempting to square this particular circle.
The game started, substantially, in 1927/8. A form of Eucharist was devised which was intended to be acceptable to nearly all tendencies within the Provinces of Canterbury and York. It was turned down by Parliament, but the bishops made it clear that since it had been given the approval of the Church, they would permit its use, and would make to cease all liturgical practices which "went beyond 1928" (they meant the liturgical life of papalist Anglo-Catholics who used the full Roman Rite in either Latin or English). Notwithstanding this episcopal encouragement, "1928" attracted very little use, and after 1945, the situation had dramatically changed. In particular, a Dom Gregory Dix had published an enormously influential book, The Shape of the Liturgy, which transformed our attitudes to Liturgy. If "1928" enjoyed a fitful and spluttering half-life in a few 1930s churches, for, let us say, about 15 years, it was certainly a dead letter after the War.
My dear lord Bishop: we both know that Liturgy is a subject in which fashions, both academic and cultural, do change with some rapidity. Like me, you have only one life on this planet; are you really sure you wish to devote very much of it to confecting a Liturgy which in a couple of decades will be a laughing stock, as "1928" was in the 1940s? Surely there are more useful ways an intelligent man can spend his time ... fly-fishing ... the Times Crossword ...
Since the late 1960s, English Anglicans have resumed the game of composing liturgies. The process has been bedevilled by the unwillingness of Conservative Evangelicals to allow any texts to be authorised which they consider unbiblical. It is not that anybody has ever wished to force them to use any liturgical forms to which they themselves objected; it was a matter of other people having the permission to use various alternatives. Your lordship could peruse the lengthy published debates of the English General Synod. Or perhaps there is a less time-consuming process you could use. Let me ... I hope, helpfully ... explain the background.
Evangelicals used to claim to be the authentic voice of the Church of England as set forth in its official formularies. But during the latter part of the twentieth century, a new fashion arose. Some Evangelicals gave up relying on the Anglican formularies; instead they began to call for something much more radical: "the Completion of the Reformation". In the context of world-wide Anglicanism, this newer policy is particularly associated with the Anglican Metropolitan See of Sidney in Australia.
My suggestion to you would be that, once your committee has created a first working draft, you should not waste time going through it with a fine-toothcomb. Instead, send it immediately to the Archbishop of Sidney and ask for his wise guidance. You will find that Conservative Anglican Evangelicals are immensely knowledgable with regard to which liturgical words and phrases currently lie under the Divine Veto, and every bit as generous about sharing that knowledge.
Your lordship's obt servt and child
John Hunwicke
PS follows tomorrow.
There are credible report on the Internet that you are chairing a group commissioned by our Holy Father to draft a form of the Holy Eucharist which could be used by Catholics and Protestants (and Orthodox and Copts etc. etc. etc., I take it?). Accordingly, I thought you might find it helpful if I shared with you the experience of the Church of England, which I witnessed for more than fifty years. As you will know, that body is an uneasy coalition of every known version of Christianity from the Tridentine to the Zwinglian, and so it has had much experience in the last century of attempting to square this particular circle.
The game started, substantially, in 1927/8. A form of Eucharist was devised which was intended to be acceptable to nearly all tendencies within the Provinces of Canterbury and York. It was turned down by Parliament, but the bishops made it clear that since it had been given the approval of the Church, they would permit its use, and would make to cease all liturgical practices which "went beyond 1928" (they meant the liturgical life of papalist Anglo-Catholics who used the full Roman Rite in either Latin or English). Notwithstanding this episcopal encouragement, "1928" attracted very little use, and after 1945, the situation had dramatically changed. In particular, a Dom Gregory Dix had published an enormously influential book, The Shape of the Liturgy, which transformed our attitudes to Liturgy. If "1928" enjoyed a fitful and spluttering half-life in a few 1930s churches, for, let us say, about 15 years, it was certainly a dead letter after the War.
My dear lord Bishop: we both know that Liturgy is a subject in which fashions, both academic and cultural, do change with some rapidity. Like me, you have only one life on this planet; are you really sure you wish to devote very much of it to confecting a Liturgy which in a couple of decades will be a laughing stock, as "1928" was in the 1940s? Surely there are more useful ways an intelligent man can spend his time ... fly-fishing ... the Times Crossword ...
Since the late 1960s, English Anglicans have resumed the game of composing liturgies. The process has been bedevilled by the unwillingness of Conservative Evangelicals to allow any texts to be authorised which they consider unbiblical. It is not that anybody has ever wished to force them to use any liturgical forms to which they themselves objected; it was a matter of other people having the permission to use various alternatives. Your lordship could peruse the lengthy published debates of the English General Synod. Or perhaps there is a less time-consuming process you could use. Let me ... I hope, helpfully ... explain the background.
Evangelicals used to claim to be the authentic voice of the Church of England as set forth in its official formularies. But during the latter part of the twentieth century, a new fashion arose. Some Evangelicals gave up relying on the Anglican formularies; instead they began to call for something much more radical: "the Completion of the Reformation". In the context of world-wide Anglicanism, this newer policy is particularly associated with the Anglican Metropolitan See of Sidney in Australia.
My suggestion to you would be that, once your committee has created a first working draft, you should not waste time going through it with a fine-toothcomb. Instead, send it immediately to the Archbishop of Sidney and ask for his wise guidance. You will find that Conservative Anglican Evangelicals are immensely knowledgable with regard to which liturgical words and phrases currently lie under the Divine Veto, and every bit as generous about sharing that knowledge.
Your lordship's obt servt and child
John Hunwicke
PS follows tomorrow.
27 October 2017
Development (5)
A phrase of S Paul, in one of the earliest documents of the Church's Magisterium, was, we have seen taken up by S Vincent of Lerins in his insistence that development in Doctrine must be eodem sensu eademque sententia. In the last couple of centuries it has been transformed, by repetition, into a central plank of the Magisterium. Two Ecumenical Councils and a succession of Roman Pontiffs have done this. You will find it in Ineffabilis Deus, by which in 1854 S Pius IX defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. It appears in the Dogmatic Constitution of Vatican I Dei filius (at the end, just before the anathemas). S Pius X's Pascendi Dominici gregis repeats (para 28) these words of Dei filius in its treatment of Modernism, and the phrase was incorporated into the Anti-Modernist Oath taken by all clergy until 1967. After S John XXIII used it in his highly significant and programmatic Address at the start of Vatican II, it was repeated in Gaudium et spes (para 62), and S John Paul II, interestingly, extended its use from Dogmatic to Moral Theology in Veritatis splendor (para 53). And, if the Rule of Believing really is established by the Rule of Praying, then eodem sensu eademque sententia is right at the heart, not only of Vatican II, but also of the 'Spirit of Vatican II' as enunciated by the post-Conciliar liturgical changes: the crucial passage from the Commonitorium of S Vincent of Lerins is ordered to be read each year in the Liturgia Horarum (Week 27 of the Year, Friday). It is not surprising that Pope Benedict cited these words in his programmatic Address to the Roman Curia in 2005.
Fifteen hundred years ago ... and, if the world endures, fifteen hundred year from now, when Pope Francis XVI during some crisis or other is busily writing a Post-Synodal Exhortation ... it was and will be as true as it is today that the Deposit of Faith, the Tradition handed on through the Apostles, can only ever exist, can only ever be expressed, so that it comes to Christ's People with the same sense and with the same meaning.
Fifteen hundred years ago ... and, if the world endures, fifteen hundred year from now, when Pope Francis XVI during some crisis or other is busily writing a Post-Synodal Exhortation ... it was and will be as true as it is today that the Deposit of Faith, the Tradition handed on through the Apostles, can only ever exist, can only ever be expressed, so that it comes to Christ's People with the same sense and with the same meaning.
Mueller getting into his stride ...
"They believe the pope is infallible when he speaks privately, but then when the popes throughout history have set forth the Catholic Faith, they say it is fallible".
Lifesite News provides an elegant English translation of a fine article by Gerhard Cardinal Mueller. The sentence above encapsulates the root problem of Bergoglianity ... its papolatry, its corrupt hyperueberultrapapalism, its gleeful insistence on rupture within the Church's sacred continuities.
Mueller's article is about Luther and the Reformation. You must not miss it. You will not read anything better in this "Luther Year". And it is particularly apposite as we approach what some, appallingly, call Reformation Day.
Luther was evil. His legacy has been even more evil. And it has corrupted the daily teaching of PF, largely because he does not understand it.
I beg you also to read my own paper explaining all this in Luther and his Progeny, Angelico Press.
There are a lot more fine articles, too, by even finer writers, in that volume!
Lifesite News provides an elegant English translation of a fine article by Gerhard Cardinal Mueller. The sentence above encapsulates the root problem of Bergoglianity ... its papolatry, its corrupt hyperueberultrapapalism, its gleeful insistence on rupture within the Church's sacred continuities.
Mueller's article is about Luther and the Reformation. You must not miss it. You will not read anything better in this "Luther Year". And it is particularly apposite as we approach what some, appallingly, call Reformation Day.
Luther was evil. His legacy has been even more evil. And it has corrupted the daily teaching of PF, largely because he does not understand it.
I beg you also to read my own paper explaining all this in Luther and his Progeny, Angelico Press.
There are a lot more fine articles, too, by even finer writers, in that volume!
26 October 2017
Canonisation again
Fr Zed refers to King Alfred, who is indeed commemorated on October 26 in modern Anglican Calendars. Here is a piece I published in 2014.
In 1441, I think, King Henry VI wrote to Pope Eugenius IV enquiring how the Cause for the Canonisation of King Alfred the Great was proceeding. Since then I have been daily on tenterhooks wondering whether the Holy See has responded, or, if it hasn't, when it will.
Throwing out some encumbrances from my library, I hit upon an old Northampton ORDO (2007, I think) in which October 26 shows "Feria; or St Alfred the Great, King and Confessor - op.mem. (white)".
Does this mean that, only a few years ago, the Court of S James's did receive the much-delayed reply from Rome canonising ... I suppose, equipollently ... King Alfred? Or did the then Bishop of Northampton decide that since Alfred was a first millennium worthy, it would be licit for him as a diocesan bishop to canonise Alfred despite the legislation of Pope Urban VIII reserving such decrees to Rome? Is this eventuality covered by the treatise on the subject by Benedict XIV?
Oh! ... I've just noticed another odd thing ... Alfred is decribed in that ORDO as "King and Confessor". But since the post-conciliar reforms eliminated the title 'Confessor' from the descriptions of Saints in the Sanctorale and Calendar, the canonisation, whether it happened in Rome or in Northampton, must predate the 1960s.
Very mysterious. Can anyone help?
In 1441, I think, King Henry VI wrote to Pope Eugenius IV enquiring how the Cause for the Canonisation of King Alfred the Great was proceeding. Since then I have been daily on tenterhooks wondering whether the Holy See has responded, or, if it hasn't, when it will.
Throwing out some encumbrances from my library, I hit upon an old Northampton ORDO (2007, I think) in which October 26 shows "Feria; or St Alfred the Great, King and Confessor - op.mem. (white)".
Does this mean that, only a few years ago, the Court of S James's did receive the much-delayed reply from Rome canonising ... I suppose, equipollently ... King Alfred? Or did the then Bishop of Northampton decide that since Alfred was a first millennium worthy, it would be licit for him as a diocesan bishop to canonise Alfred despite the legislation of Pope Urban VIII reserving such decrees to Rome? Is this eventuality covered by the treatise on the subject by Benedict XIV?
Oh! ... I've just noticed another odd thing ... Alfred is decribed in that ORDO as "King and Confessor". But since the post-conciliar reforms eliminated the title 'Confessor' from the descriptions of Saints in the Sanctorale and Calendar, the canonisation, whether it happened in Rome or in Northampton, must predate the 1960s.
Very mysterious. Can anyone help?
People "who ought to know better"
Since, mysteriously, the full text of Fr Aidan Nichols' Cuddesdon lecture will not be made available, we must make the most of the passages which the Catholic Herald published.
By the way: that lecture is highly important, and not only because of Dr Nichols' considerable theological prestige. It addressed the points that some of us did our best to articulate in our Correctio. I do beg you to read and reread it, and to pass its teaching on to as many people as you can.
Today, I give you Fr Aidan's words on whether popes can teach error.
"It is not the position of the Roman Catholic Church that a pope is incapable of leading people astray by false teaching as a public doctor. He may be the supreme appeal judge of Christendom ... but that does not make him immune to perpetrating doctrinal howlers. Surprisingly ... this fact appears to be unknown to many who ought to know better."
"Doctrinal howlers". Gerhard Cardinal Mueller has recently reminded us ... aptly ... of the abrupt observation of S Robert Bellarmine to the pope of his day: "Holy Father, you know nothing about that."
By the way: that lecture is highly important, and not only because of Dr Nichols' considerable theological prestige. It addressed the points that some of us did our best to articulate in our Correctio. I do beg you to read and reread it, and to pass its teaching on to as many people as you can.
Today, I give you Fr Aidan's words on whether popes can teach error.
"It is not the position of the Roman Catholic Church that a pope is incapable of leading people astray by false teaching as a public doctor. He may be the supreme appeal judge of Christendom ... but that does not make him immune to perpetrating doctrinal howlers. Surprisingly ... this fact appears to be unknown to many who ought to know better."
"Doctrinal howlers". Gerhard Cardinal Mueller has recently reminded us ... aptly ... of the abrupt observation of S Robert Bellarmine to the pope of his day: "Holy Father, you know nothing about that."
25 October 2017
Development (6)
Again, that phrase which was used by Pope S John XXIII in his address opening address to Vatican II, but which was mistranslated in the English translation put out at the time (the error survived into the Abbott translation of Conciliar texts). Those same words were also used by Benedict XVI in his highly important Address to the Roman Curia in which he laid out his Hermeneutic of Continuity (the English translator made a mess of it by treating Abbott's translation of the Conciliar texts as accurate). Here is the phrase:
EODEM SENSU EADEMQUE SENTENTIA.
It means:
WITH THE SAME SENSE AND THE SAME MEANING.
In whatever ways the Faith is expressed; however new its presentation; whatever theological refinements and developments may be the gifts of the centuries ... it must always be a formulation with the same sense and the same meaning.
To be blunt, these words irritated - and irritate - those who see Vatican II as constituting a rupture with the past. This phrase makes clear that Catholic teaching is essentially unchangeable, even though the Church's understanding of her inheritance grows ever more mature. Eodem sensu eademque sententia is a red rag to any and every errant and heterodox bull. Where does it come from? What degree of Magisterial weight has it acquired over the centuries? What does it mean for us in the present crisis?
S Vincent of Lerins (c434) is often given the credit for this elegant and lapidary affirmation of continuity and identity within Catholic Tradition. Less often do people point out that he seems to have got it from S Paul. We had better look at S Paul's words and their context. And don't forget that, in terms of Magisterium and Authority, Scripture has gallons and gallons of it.
Given the sense of urgency with which the Man from Tarsus felt he had to teach the Gospel to the whole oikoumene, it is hardly surprising that he repeatedly received information that a crisis had arisen in an imperfectly formed ekklesia from which he had just moved on. So it was undoubtedly with a sense of deja vu that he sat down to dictate a letter to his Corinthian converts hoping thereby to repair the damage just reported to him by Chloe's People. He beseeches them dia tou onomatos tou Kuriou hemon Iesou Christou (notice this explicit insistence on his Apostolic Magisterium: "through the authority of the Lord's Name"), to "say [legete] the same thing, all of you"; to eschew schismata; and to be "fitted together [katertismenoi]" in (RSV) "the same mind and in the same judgement". S Vincent read this in his Latin Bible as eodem sensu eademque sententia; S Paul had written en toi autoi noi kai en tei autei gnomei.
S Paul is urging the Corinthians to a synchronic unity. It is not be a vague pluralist unity in which different, even contradictory, statements can be judged, "deep down", to mean the same. To auto legete pantes, he insists. He requires a unity manifested in verbal identity. And, for a subsequent Christian generation, diachronic unity - 'vertically' down through the history of the Church - is going to be just as important as the 'horizontal' unity within the universal Christian community at a particular time. So S Vincent of Lerins very properly expanded the reference of the phrase so that it described the development of Christian doctrine generation by generation. But it never ceases also to retain its original Pauline synchronic reference; in Origen's Homily 9 (which is included in the Liturgia Horarum as a reading for the Solemnity of the Dedication of a Church); and most recently when Paul VI aptly quoted I Corinthians 1:10 in Humanae vitae.
In its synchronic sense (all Christians now should say the same thing) it is a powerful antidote to any rubbish about Sophisticated Germans having a more Nuanced Faith than Uneducated and Superstitious Africans. In a diachronic sense (all Christians throughout the ages should say the same thing) it has had a long and important dogmatic history.
To be continued.
Pronunciation ... roughly ... ay-OH-dem SEN-soo ay-ah-DEM-kway sen-TENT-si-ah
(but say the 'ay' syllables quickly.)
EODEM SENSU EADEMQUE SENTENTIA.
It means:
WITH THE SAME SENSE AND THE SAME MEANING.
In whatever ways the Faith is expressed; however new its presentation; whatever theological refinements and developments may be the gifts of the centuries ... it must always be a formulation with the same sense and the same meaning.
To be blunt, these words irritated - and irritate - those who see Vatican II as constituting a rupture with the past. This phrase makes clear that Catholic teaching is essentially unchangeable, even though the Church's understanding of her inheritance grows ever more mature. Eodem sensu eademque sententia is a red rag to any and every errant and heterodox bull. Where does it come from? What degree of Magisterial weight has it acquired over the centuries? What does it mean for us in the present crisis?
S Vincent of Lerins (c434) is often given the credit for this elegant and lapidary affirmation of continuity and identity within Catholic Tradition. Less often do people point out that he seems to have got it from S Paul. We had better look at S Paul's words and their context. And don't forget that, in terms of Magisterium and Authority, Scripture has gallons and gallons of it.
Given the sense of urgency with which the Man from Tarsus felt he had to teach the Gospel to the whole oikoumene, it is hardly surprising that he repeatedly received information that a crisis had arisen in an imperfectly formed ekklesia from which he had just moved on. So it was undoubtedly with a sense of deja vu that he sat down to dictate a letter to his Corinthian converts hoping thereby to repair the damage just reported to him by Chloe's People. He beseeches them dia tou onomatos tou Kuriou hemon Iesou Christou (notice this explicit insistence on his Apostolic Magisterium: "through the authority of the Lord's Name"), to "say [legete] the same thing, all of you"; to eschew schismata; and to be "fitted together [katertismenoi]" in (RSV) "the same mind and in the same judgement". S Vincent read this in his Latin Bible as eodem sensu eademque sententia; S Paul had written en toi autoi noi kai en tei autei gnomei.
S Paul is urging the Corinthians to a synchronic unity. It is not be a vague pluralist unity in which different, even contradictory, statements can be judged, "deep down", to mean the same. To auto legete pantes, he insists. He requires a unity manifested in verbal identity. And, for a subsequent Christian generation, diachronic unity - 'vertically' down through the history of the Church - is going to be just as important as the 'horizontal' unity within the universal Christian community at a particular time. So S Vincent of Lerins very properly expanded the reference of the phrase so that it described the development of Christian doctrine generation by generation. But it never ceases also to retain its original Pauline synchronic reference; in Origen's Homily 9 (which is included in the Liturgia Horarum as a reading for the Solemnity of the Dedication of a Church); and most recently when Paul VI aptly quoted I Corinthians 1:10 in Humanae vitae.
In its synchronic sense (all Christians now should say the same thing) it is a powerful antidote to any rubbish about Sophisticated Germans having a more Nuanced Faith than Uneducated and Superstitious Africans. In a diachronic sense (all Christians throughout the ages should say the same thing) it has had a long and important dogmatic history.
To be continued.
Pronunciation ... roughly ... ay-OH-dem SEN-soo ay-ah-DEM-kway sen-TENT-si-ah
(but say the 'ay' syllables quickly.)
Fatima, Apostasy and the Tail of the Devil
In 1977, Blessed Paul VI, on the sixtieth anniversary of the last Fatima Apparition, said this: "The tail of the Devil is functioning in the disintegration of the Catholic world. The darkness of Satan has entered and spread throughout the Catholic Church, even to its summit. Apostasy, the loss of the Faith, is spreading throughout the world and into the highest levels within the Church".
I know some of you chaps out there sometimes feel a bit dubious about Blessed Papa Montini, but, really, faced with words of such prophetic discernment, how can you maintain your reservations? Come on!
By the way: have you yet read Cardinal Burke's very fine Buckfast Address on ... Apostasy? If not, you jolly well ought to get on with it ...
Apostasy is a word we ought to be more willing to do business with. The beginning of the Catholic Revival in the Church of England is commonly dated to 1833, when blessed John Keble preached a sermon on "National Apostasy"! Very Patrimonial! Immensely Prophetic!
I know some of you chaps out there sometimes feel a bit dubious about Blessed Papa Montini, but, really, faced with words of such prophetic discernment, how can you maintain your reservations? Come on!
By the way: have you yet read Cardinal Burke's very fine Buckfast Address on ... Apostasy? If not, you jolly well ought to get on with it ...
Apostasy is a word we ought to be more willing to do business with. The beginning of the Catholic Revival in the Church of England is commonly dated to 1833, when blessed John Keble preached a sermon on "National Apostasy"! Very Patrimonial! Immensely Prophetic!
24 October 2017
Ecumenical Agreements
"Catechismus Catholicae Ecclesiae fidem Catholicam exprimit, quam Ordinariatus sodales profitentur". So says Anglicanorum coetibus. Accordingly, the CCC is an integral part of the structural grammar of the Ordinariates ... wired into their DNA, as people curiously say nowadays.
How appropriate is it for PF unilaterally to change this document? But he has recently said that he wishes it to be changed. Has he consulted the three Ordinaries? News of such consultation has not reached me.
If the Catholic Church subsequently signs an agreement to re-establish canonical links with the XYZ Church, will a later pope be able to change that agreement, and to do so without any sort of previous bilateral consultations with the XYZs?
Some of the hyperultraueberpapalists have argued that Amoris laetitia is Magisterial, and hence binds in conscience. Have these individuals explained to the XYZs and to the Church's other Partners in Ecumenical Dialogue that, should they sign up to Unity, they would be obliged to accept de Fide papal diktats issued by this or a subsequent pope without bilateral agreement?
Or is it their thinking that for those already in canonical union with the See of S Peter, a more draconian system of demanding assent to the whimsies of each successive pope can be required than will be asked of the XYZs when they enter into unity?
How would such a system, in any case, be possible? If the XYZs were in Full Communion with the Catholic Church, then a member of the Latin diocese of Outopia who disagreed with some particular recently imposed papal eccentricity, could abandon Outopia and join the XYZs ... and still be within a fully Catholic Particular Church, but one in which the eccentricity concerned would not demand assent.
When PF goes around embracing leaders of Churches and ecclesial bodies, does he whisper in their ears "Of course, while I very much hope you will come into unity, if you do so you will need to understand your obligation to accept whatever novelties I or my successors unilaterally and suddenly promulgate"?
Or is there a bizarre and gigantic hiatus between PF's frothy ecumenical enthusiasms, and his tyrannous and tight-lipped treatment of his own subjects, together with his absolutist praxis of changing doctrine and practice?
This pontificate has seen the wilful attempted imposition of doctrinal novelties upon the Catholic Church; some of these have contradicted teaching explicitly repeated by previous popes as little as a decade before. If I were Superior of the SSPX, I would sign no agreement with the current regime unless the Society were therein assured complete liberty in law to choose its own Superiors; and had all its property legally secured in such a way that no power in Rome ... or anywhere ... could get their hands on it.
These are no less dangerous times than when the Wolves were let loose on the Franciscans of the Immaculate.
How appropriate is it for PF unilaterally to change this document? But he has recently said that he wishes it to be changed. Has he consulted the three Ordinaries? News of such consultation has not reached me.
If the Catholic Church subsequently signs an agreement to re-establish canonical links with the XYZ Church, will a later pope be able to change that agreement, and to do so without any sort of previous bilateral consultations with the XYZs?
Some of the hyperultraueberpapalists have argued that Amoris laetitia is Magisterial, and hence binds in conscience. Have these individuals explained to the XYZs and to the Church's other Partners in Ecumenical Dialogue that, should they sign up to Unity, they would be obliged to accept de Fide papal diktats issued by this or a subsequent pope without bilateral agreement?
Or is it their thinking that for those already in canonical union with the See of S Peter, a more draconian system of demanding assent to the whimsies of each successive pope can be required than will be asked of the XYZs when they enter into unity?
How would such a system, in any case, be possible? If the XYZs were in Full Communion with the Catholic Church, then a member of the Latin diocese of Outopia who disagreed with some particular recently imposed papal eccentricity, could abandon Outopia and join the XYZs ... and still be within a fully Catholic Particular Church, but one in which the eccentricity concerned would not demand assent.
When PF goes around embracing leaders of Churches and ecclesial bodies, does he whisper in their ears "Of course, while I very much hope you will come into unity, if you do so you will need to understand your obligation to accept whatever novelties I or my successors unilaterally and suddenly promulgate"?
Or is there a bizarre and gigantic hiatus between PF's frothy ecumenical enthusiasms, and his tyrannous and tight-lipped treatment of his own subjects, together with his absolutist praxis of changing doctrine and practice?
This pontificate has seen the wilful attempted imposition of doctrinal novelties upon the Catholic Church; some of these have contradicted teaching explicitly repeated by previous popes as little as a decade before. If I were Superior of the SSPX, I would sign no agreement with the current regime unless the Society were therein assured complete liberty in law to choose its own Superiors; and had all its property legally secured in such a way that no power in Rome ... or anywhere ... could get their hands on it.
These are no less dangerous times than when the Wolves were let loose on the Franciscans of the Immaculate.
23 October 2017
Development (7)
Pope Benedict XVI gave us an admirable piece of advice in his celebrated 2005 Discorso ai Membri della Curia. He referred us to and quoted from the Discorso d'apertura del Concilio of S John XXIII, delivered on the Feast of the Maternity of our Lady, October 11 1962. But ... what did S John actually say? Here there is a most lamentable confusion which is still extant and which is even perpetuated and accentuated by - it appears - current Vatican employees. Let me explain ... even if this does take me into some intricacies.
I presume that the authentic text of the Holy Father's Address to his Curia, since I cannot find a Latin version, was delivered in Italian. In this version, he cites the words of Papa Roncalli about expressing the Faith in ways adapted to our own time, concluding, as Pope John did, with the phrase conservando ad esse tuttavia lo stesso senso e la stessa portata. In the original Latin of Pope John, this is eodem tamen sensu eademque sententia. But the English version of Pope Benedict's quotation from Pope John concludes "The substance of the ancient doctrine of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another ..." In other words, the quotation is cut short in such a way (after "another ...") as to imply that Pope John did not say eodem sensu eademque sententia. Then, after those quotation marks, the English quotation continues retaining the same meaning and message. This is indeed, in my view, a fairish, if not particularly good, rendering of eodem sensu eademque sententia. But the point is that the English translator implies .... and presumably thought ... that those words were not part of Pope John's original text but had been added by Pope Benedict.
It then becomes clear why and how the English translator has made this rather significant and profoundly deplorable mistake. In brackets, he gives his source: "(The Documents of Vatican II, Walter M. Abbott, S.J., p 715)". Abbott's English translation of the Conciliar documents was what my generation put upon its bookshelves. But here, Abbott is not giving an accurate rendering of the Latin. In fact, Abbott omitted the words eodem sensu eademque sententia from his rendering of what the Pope had actually said. I think, I hope, that I should blame the English translator of Pope Benedict's words for simple error rather than for conspiracy. Here is what must have happened.
He had, on his bookshelf as I do on mine, Abbott's yellowing little paperback, and he looked at that rather than bothering himself with silly old Acta Apostolicae Sedis. But, in doing so, he did, as far as Anglophone readers were concerned, considerably muddy the waters for anybody who tries to trace the lineaments and history of a phrase which is of very considerable Magisterial significance, and he has badly blunted the intended impact of the Holy Father's teaching with regard to the Second Vatican Council and the hermeneutic by which it should be understood.
Nightmares, nightmares!
Last night, I browsed through the Statement on Abortion, put out by the British Episcopal Conferences and embargoed until coffee time this morning. No; that was not a nightmare. The Statement is deft, definite, sensitive and sensible. It does both the Conferences, and the drafter, much credit.
The nightmare struck at about 2.00 a.m. this morning, Monday. I am only just recovering from it. Hang on for a jiff while I mix myself yet another White Lady (you see, I am quite Americanophile).
I dreamed that I had woken up ... in 2067!
Worse: the Church was in crisis!!
The Pope seemed to be a Francis IV. He had recently published an Apostolic Exhortation called Vitae sanctissimum donum. It contained, at about paragraph 666 or perhaps not quite so early in the text, a completely orthodox statement about Abortion. Good, so far. But it then descended into a miasma of qualifications and footnotes, the jist of which appeared to be that we can't just leave the matter there. We need to bring to bear all the most sensitive up-to-the-minute moral considerations, as a result of which it is clear that, if a woman wants an Abortion, her priest needs to Accompany her sensitively as she explores her conscience. If she feels that Conscience impels her to ... er ... entrust back to God the life which ... er ... she is unable to accept, then Father must respect that and drive her to the ... er ... clinic.
It got nastier than that. Apparently, some 'Conservative' Cardinals had addressed some Dubia to the Pontiff; and a small group of insignificant reactionaries in the Church had had the impertinence to address a Filial Correction to the Holy Father in which they interminably cited all the previous Conciliar and Papal statements condemning Abortion as being always illicit. They made great play with the very definite statements against Abortion made by pope Francis I and the 2017 Statement by the Bishops of Great Britain. They even suggested that, being a substantive change in Catholic doctrine and morals, the document was ultra vires Successoris S Petri, and accused Francis IV of propagating heresies.
Worser and worser: Pope Francis IV refused any answer. But others were at hand to supply replies. Cardinal von Schwaermerei of Vienna got quickly to work, explained that Vitae sanctissimum donum was a development, not a contradiction, of the previous teaching, and that Newman would been proud of it. Meanwhile, he ensured that any signatories in Austrian establishments were either sacked or expelled or verbally beaten up. Cardinal Engels said that the German Bishops had already been applying the policy favoured by Francis IV for some decades. Archbishop Stiletto of Malta, having declared that the gates of his seminary were wide open to the departure of its one remaining seminarian, emphatically explained that any woman with an unscheduled pregnancy should "listen to the pope ... not to Pope Francis III nor to Pope Francis II nor to Pope Francis I but to the present pope, Pope Francis IV". Cardinal Pierrepoint of Westminster explained that the 2017 Statement on Abortion by the English, Welsh, and Scottish Episcopal Conferences had been sadly lacking in the ethical sophistication required in the second half of the twenty first century. He insisted that ...
Happily, at this point I woke up. Rarely have I been so relieved to return to 2017. Three cheers for Archbishops Nichols and Tartaglia and their colleagues. I hope their Statement will be carefully read both by Catholics and by our partners in ecumenical dialogue (including poor Welby) and ... perhaps, rather a forlorn hope, this ... by the Media.
The nightmare struck at about 2.00 a.m. this morning, Monday. I am only just recovering from it. Hang on for a jiff while I mix myself yet another White Lady (you see, I am quite Americanophile).
I dreamed that I had woken up ... in 2067!
Worse: the Church was in crisis!!
The Pope seemed to be a Francis IV. He had recently published an Apostolic Exhortation called Vitae sanctissimum donum. It contained, at about paragraph 666 or perhaps not quite so early in the text, a completely orthodox statement about Abortion. Good, so far. But it then descended into a miasma of qualifications and footnotes, the jist of which appeared to be that we can't just leave the matter there. We need to bring to bear all the most sensitive up-to-the-minute moral considerations, as a result of which it is clear that, if a woman wants an Abortion, her priest needs to Accompany her sensitively as she explores her conscience. If she feels that Conscience impels her to ... er ... entrust back to God the life which ... er ... she is unable to accept, then Father must respect that and drive her to the ... er ... clinic.
It got nastier than that. Apparently, some 'Conservative' Cardinals had addressed some Dubia to the Pontiff; and a small group of insignificant reactionaries in the Church had had the impertinence to address a Filial Correction to the Holy Father in which they interminably cited all the previous Conciliar and Papal statements condemning Abortion as being always illicit. They made great play with the very definite statements against Abortion made by pope Francis I and the 2017 Statement by the Bishops of Great Britain. They even suggested that, being a substantive change in Catholic doctrine and morals, the document was ultra vires Successoris S Petri, and accused Francis IV of propagating heresies.
Worser and worser: Pope Francis IV refused any answer. But others were at hand to supply replies. Cardinal von Schwaermerei of Vienna got quickly to work, explained that Vitae sanctissimum donum was a development, not a contradiction, of the previous teaching, and that Newman would been proud of it. Meanwhile, he ensured that any signatories in Austrian establishments were either sacked or expelled or verbally beaten up. Cardinal Engels said that the German Bishops had already been applying the policy favoured by Francis IV for some decades. Archbishop Stiletto of Malta, having declared that the gates of his seminary were wide open to the departure of its one remaining seminarian, emphatically explained that any woman with an unscheduled pregnancy should "listen to the pope ... not to Pope Francis III nor to Pope Francis II nor to Pope Francis I but to the present pope, Pope Francis IV". Cardinal Pierrepoint of Westminster explained that the 2017 Statement on Abortion by the English, Welsh, and Scottish Episcopal Conferences had been sadly lacking in the ethical sophistication required in the second half of the twenty first century. He insisted that ...
Happily, at this point I woke up. Rarely have I been so relieved to return to 2017. Three cheers for Archbishops Nichols and Tartaglia and their colleagues. I hope their Statement will be carefully read both by Catholics and by our partners in ecumenical dialogue (including poor Welby) and ... perhaps, rather a forlorn hope, this ... by the Media.
22 October 2017
Explanation
Last night, a draft, unpolished, breaking off suddenly in mid-sentence, of tomorrow morning's post appeared; I have no idea why. Two people submitted each a comment. I have removed both the post and two comments.
I would be glad if the writer of the second comment resubmitted it tomorrow, if he feels it still fits the post as it will be published. The other comment sadly misunderstood my post as being an attack on women who have abortions. In fact, it was a satirical atack on something totally different.
I do rather assume that readers will be genre-savvy.
I would also appreciate it if readers who notice hostile jiggeryPokery on the blog would keep me inform
I would be glad if the writer of the second comment resubmitted it tomorrow, if he feels it still fits the post as it will be published. The other comment sadly misunderstood my post as being an attack on women who have abortions. In fact, it was a satirical atack on something totally different.
I do rather assume that readers will be genre-savvy.
I would also appreciate it if readers who notice hostile jiggeryPokery on the blog would keep me inform
Piltdown Man and the proposed Catholic/ Protestant Eucharistic Prayer
I have a lovely postcard which I bought when I was a keen little boy very interested, I can't now remember why, in Science. It came from the Natural History Museum, and showed the skull which was the final glorious proof that Men are descended from Apes; the long awaited proof of Darwinianism: Eoanthropus Dawsonii, AKA the Piltdown Man, AKA the Great Hoax. If I had time to waste being childish, I'd pin it up with a picture beside it of the mighty Dawkins.
Liturgy has its Piltdown Man; the 'Liturgy of Hippolytus'. Actually, I'm not being quite fair; Piltdown Man was a deliberate forgery; an attempt to provide the evidence for a dogma for which genuine evidence had been tantalisingly too coy to show itself. 'Hippolytus' is no forgery, but a genuine first millennium liturgical text.
But, everyone now agrees, it is not by Hippolytus, nor was it a very early liturgy of the Roman Church. And Professor Paul Bradshaw has shown good reason to think that it is not nearly as early as used to be assumed. Yet this text dominated the Committee-Liturgy reconstructions of the twentieth century. It provided the basis of the Eucharistic Prayer which is by far the most commonly, and disastrously, used in the Catholic Church: Prayer 2. It was the model of the drafts which started to be considered in the Church of England in the late 1960s.
Gregory Dix was among the many taken in by the then consensus that (what earlier writers had called) 'The Egyptian Church Order' was really an early form of the Roman Rite; although his instincts were too sound to swallow the idea that really early liturgy had an Epiclesis of the Holy Spirit after the Institution Narrative (he concluded that this must have been an interpolation into 'Hippolytus' dating from the fourth century, when notions of Epiclesis became popular in the East).
Despite its dodgy origins, 'Hippolytus' became real politics in the C of E in 1965, and initially appeared to be productive of highly useful results. The Liturgical Commission offered a draft Eucharistic Prayer which ran "Wherefore ... we offer unto thee this bread and this cup; and we pray thee to accept this our duty and service in the presence of thy divine majesty (note the echoes of the Canon: ... offerimus ... panem ... calicem ... hanc ... oblationem servitutis nostrae ... ... in conspectu divinae maietatis tuae ...). A year later they offered the explanation "this need mean no more than 'we put this bread and this cup at God's disposal', so that he may use them to feed those who receive in faith. It can, of course, be interpreted to mean something else; but it does not assert the fully developed doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. It confines itself to the simple language of the first two centuries ... Hippolytus ... Irenaeus ... Justin ... Clement ... The use of the phrase is in line with the Anglican appeal to antiquity". But a tiny 'note of dissent' followed from one Colin Buchanan: "I reluctantly dissent ... Inquiry has shown that the phrase ... is unacceptable to many Anglicans".
Buchanan was not just a single individual. He was front man for the (mostly) Calvinist extreme Evangelical wing of the Church of England. In the decades which followed, his eagle eye relentlessly spotted and vetoed (through the Evangelical block vote in Synods) any phrase expressive of the Eucharistic Sacrifice; not because he wanted to save evangelicals from having phrases they disliked forced upon them; there was no proposal or desire on anybody's part to make evangelicals use anything they didn't like - he just couldn't stand the thought that, in a long list of optional alternatives, there might be even just one on the menu which Anglo-Catholics could use with a moderately good conscience.
The poor bloke would go apoplectic if anybody pointed this out to him, but the main fruit of his long and active life was the unwillingness of many Anglican Catholics to use any of the Eucharistic prayers authorised by the Church of England. All those decades of Liturgical Revision since the 1920s, Green Books and Orange books and 1927 and 1928 and goodness knows what, Series One, Two, Three ... the Alternative Service Book and Common Worship ... mostly with options galore ... and "Catholics in the Church of England" still don't have one single usable Eucharistic Prayer!
Even 'Non-Conformist' churches use 'offer' language nowadays; I've heard it among Methodists and URC: after all, it is based on a diachronic and synchronic ecumenical consensus. But not in Buchanan's C of E. Paradoxically, the 'Reformation' body which retained the most 'Catholic' doctrines, traditions, and structures became, in the second half of the twentieth century, the most inflexibly anti-Catholic of the whole lot in its refusal to allow any approximation, however ambiguous, to Catholic doctrine in its Eucharistic rites. The dear old whore (I say this with great affection and in my very friendliest tones) is now Liberal in ethical matters and Church Order; and extreme Proddy in the texts of her worship.
There are rumours that in some secret Vatican angulo a Eucharistic Prayer is being confected which may be used by both Catholics and Protestants. I wonder if it will be usable by Evangelical Anglicans ... if it includes any suggestion of 'offering' the Eucharistic Elements, it won't be. Secondly, I wonder if it will be usable by Byzantines. When, in 1928, the Church of England proposed a revision which included an Epiclesis, Orthodox critics made very clear that that Epiclesis did not match up to Byzantine standards. Orthodox can be very rigid!
While we remained in the C of E, we 'papalists', of course, used the rites of 'another Church'. But for those of you who turned down Pope Benedict's offer and are still hunkering down in the bilge water of Old Mother Damnable, the only liturgies legally available to you are perched on the extreme 'left' wing of the Reformation spectrum!
Liturgy has its Piltdown Man; the 'Liturgy of Hippolytus'. Actually, I'm not being quite fair; Piltdown Man was a deliberate forgery; an attempt to provide the evidence for a dogma for which genuine evidence had been tantalisingly too coy to show itself. 'Hippolytus' is no forgery, but a genuine first millennium liturgical text.
But, everyone now agrees, it is not by Hippolytus, nor was it a very early liturgy of the Roman Church. And Professor Paul Bradshaw has shown good reason to think that it is not nearly as early as used to be assumed. Yet this text dominated the Committee-Liturgy reconstructions of the twentieth century. It provided the basis of the Eucharistic Prayer which is by far the most commonly, and disastrously, used in the Catholic Church: Prayer 2. It was the model of the drafts which started to be considered in the Church of England in the late 1960s.
Gregory Dix was among the many taken in by the then consensus that (what earlier writers had called) 'The Egyptian Church Order' was really an early form of the Roman Rite; although his instincts were too sound to swallow the idea that really early liturgy had an Epiclesis of the Holy Spirit after the Institution Narrative (he concluded that this must have been an interpolation into 'Hippolytus' dating from the fourth century, when notions of Epiclesis became popular in the East).
Despite its dodgy origins, 'Hippolytus' became real politics in the C of E in 1965, and initially appeared to be productive of highly useful results. The Liturgical Commission offered a draft Eucharistic Prayer which ran "Wherefore ... we offer unto thee this bread and this cup; and we pray thee to accept this our duty and service in the presence of thy divine majesty (note the echoes of the Canon: ... offerimus ... panem ... calicem ... hanc ... oblationem servitutis nostrae ... ... in conspectu divinae maietatis tuae ...). A year later they offered the explanation "this need mean no more than 'we put this bread and this cup at God's disposal', so that he may use them to feed those who receive in faith. It can, of course, be interpreted to mean something else; but it does not assert the fully developed doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. It confines itself to the simple language of the first two centuries ... Hippolytus ... Irenaeus ... Justin ... Clement ... The use of the phrase is in line with the Anglican appeal to antiquity". But a tiny 'note of dissent' followed from one Colin Buchanan: "I reluctantly dissent ... Inquiry has shown that the phrase ... is unacceptable to many Anglicans".
Buchanan was not just a single individual. He was front man for the (mostly) Calvinist extreme Evangelical wing of the Church of England. In the decades which followed, his eagle eye relentlessly spotted and vetoed (through the Evangelical block vote in Synods) any phrase expressive of the Eucharistic Sacrifice; not because he wanted to save evangelicals from having phrases they disliked forced upon them; there was no proposal or desire on anybody's part to make evangelicals use anything they didn't like - he just couldn't stand the thought that, in a long list of optional alternatives, there might be even just one on the menu which Anglo-Catholics could use with a moderately good conscience.
The poor bloke would go apoplectic if anybody pointed this out to him, but the main fruit of his long and active life was the unwillingness of many Anglican Catholics to use any of the Eucharistic prayers authorised by the Church of England. All those decades of Liturgical Revision since the 1920s, Green Books and Orange books and 1927 and 1928 and goodness knows what, Series One, Two, Three ... the Alternative Service Book and Common Worship ... mostly with options galore ... and "Catholics in the Church of England" still don't have one single usable Eucharistic Prayer!
Even 'Non-Conformist' churches use 'offer' language nowadays; I've heard it among Methodists and URC: after all, it is based on a diachronic and synchronic ecumenical consensus. But not in Buchanan's C of E. Paradoxically, the 'Reformation' body which retained the most 'Catholic' doctrines, traditions, and structures became, in the second half of the twentieth century, the most inflexibly anti-Catholic of the whole lot in its refusal to allow any approximation, however ambiguous, to Catholic doctrine in its Eucharistic rites. The dear old whore (I say this with great affection and in my very friendliest tones) is now Liberal in ethical matters and Church Order; and extreme Proddy in the texts of her worship.
There are rumours that in some secret Vatican angulo a Eucharistic Prayer is being confected which may be used by both Catholics and Protestants. I wonder if it will be usable by Evangelical Anglicans ... if it includes any suggestion of 'offering' the Eucharistic Elements, it won't be. Secondly, I wonder if it will be usable by Byzantines. When, in 1928, the Church of England proposed a revision which included an Epiclesis, Orthodox critics made very clear that that Epiclesis did not match up to Byzantine standards. Orthodox can be very rigid!
While we remained in the C of E, we 'papalists', of course, used the rites of 'another Church'. But for those of you who turned down Pope Benedict's offer and are still hunkering down in the bilge water of Old Mother Damnable, the only liturgies legally available to you are perched on the extreme 'left' wing of the Reformation spectrum!
21 October 2017
Four Words
Recently, attempts to change the Church's Teaching have been justified by appealing to some words of S Vincent of Lerins about development.
I have been writing about this subject since at least 2009. Henceforth, I shall repeat some of these old posts, with threads, daily around five o' clock. Starting below.
But it is my intention, Deo volente, to continue putting up a new post every morning.
Four words of S Vincent of Lerins: 'Development' in the Christian Church and in her Doctrine: Development must take place eodem sensu eademque sententia [keeping the same meaning and the same judgment/opinion]. (In the Liturgy of the Hours the whole passage can be found in Vol IV.)
This phrase has a big place in the Conciliar Magisterium. It appeared (para 62) in Gaudium et Spes, and even before that it lay at the heart of the address by B John XXIII at the start of the Council. But here it is necessary to avoid a dangerous tripwire. In the popular English paperback collection of Conciliar documents (Chapman) edited by W M Abbott, a misleading paraphrase of this speech is given in which the phrase is totally omitted. This became the occasion of an important correspondence in the Tablet in December 1991, in the course of which Professor John Finnis of this University demonstrated conclusively that Peter Hebblethwaite's Pope John XXIII (p 432) is guilty of gross errors. Hebblethwaite, a failed Jesuit, fabricated a story about how some 'brave' and liberal words of John XXIII in his adddress to the Council were distorted, in a curial plot, by the later addition, in publication, of the words I quote. The papal address did not, according to Hebblethwaite, originally contain them. This gross distortion of events promptly became part of the mythology of the 'liberals', being cited as fact by Basil Hume and [the present Bishop of Guildford] Christopher Hill.
This passage by S Vincent lies at the heart of Newman's Essay on Development, which straddles his life as an Anglican and as a Roman Catholic (Chapter 5 Section 1). Its presence in the post-Conciliar Liturgia Horarum marks it as a part of the Conciliar documents which remains the everyday Magisterium of the modern Chuch.
I have been writing about this subject since at least 2009. Henceforth, I shall repeat some of these old posts, with threads, daily around five o' clock. Starting below.
But it is my intention, Deo volente, to continue putting up a new post every morning.
Four words of S Vincent of Lerins: 'Development' in the Christian Church and in her Doctrine: Development must take place eodem sensu eademque sententia [keeping the same meaning and the same judgment/opinion]. (In the Liturgy of the Hours the whole passage can be found in Vol IV.)
This phrase has a big place in the Conciliar Magisterium. It appeared (para 62) in Gaudium et Spes, and even before that it lay at the heart of the address by B John XXIII at the start of the Council. But here it is necessary to avoid a dangerous tripwire. In the popular English paperback collection of Conciliar documents (Chapman) edited by W M Abbott, a misleading paraphrase of this speech is given in which the phrase is totally omitted. This became the occasion of an important correspondence in the Tablet in December 1991, in the course of which Professor John Finnis of this University demonstrated conclusively that Peter Hebblethwaite's Pope John XXIII (p 432) is guilty of gross errors. Hebblethwaite, a failed Jesuit, fabricated a story about how some 'brave' and liberal words of John XXIII in his adddress to the Council were distorted, in a curial plot, by the later addition, in publication, of the words I quote. The papal address did not, according to Hebblethwaite, originally contain them. This gross distortion of events promptly became part of the mythology of the 'liberals', being cited as fact by Basil Hume and [the present Bishop of Guildford] Christopher Hill.
This passage by S Vincent lies at the heart of Newman's Essay on Development, which straddles his life as an Anglican and as a Roman Catholic (Chapter 5 Section 1). Its presence in the post-Conciliar Liturgia Horarum marks it as a part of the Conciliar documents which remains the everyday Magisterium of the modern Chuch.
20 October 2017
Correcting the Correctio
Excellent news for you ! There is now a pro-Bergoglian counterblast to the Correctio Filialis. Go and read; go and enjoy! Spread knowledge of it! It is important that journalists and the Internet do not forget our Correctio!
Strictly entre nous ... and entirely within these four walls ... the counterblast was actually masterminded in the echoing marble halls of the Correctio Secretariate as a disinformation device to keep our Correctio Filialis in the news. On no account divulge this; it is top secret. I know I can trust you.
We had no trouble collecting signatures for the Correctio Correctionis! For some reason, fear of reprisals doesn't seem to deter people from signing a pro-Bergoglian manifesto! Among the signatories we secured is the (Jesuit) Master of Campion Hall in this University. I knew he would be up for it because he authored a pro-Bergoglian document which, festooned with the word CONFIDENTIAL, was circulating earlier this year in at least one English diocese. I got a copy which, as far as my recollection goes, had fallen off the back of a lorry.
But our biggest coup was a much more interesting signatory. Martha Heizer, leader of the Austrian branch of We Are Church. Martha belongs to a very elite group: those who have been excommunicated in and by this pontificate ... yes, even under the regime of Mercy, excommunications happen!!
Why were Martha and her husband, in 2014, excommunicated? For the canonical offence of Simulating the Sacrament of the Eucharist. The pair of them hosted priestless "celebrations of Mass" in their own home. Ergo ... is it Canon 1378? Rigid, but fair!
After receiving the sentence, Martha interestingly expressed the view that they were still members of the Church because of their Baptisms, and would remain so unless they themselves left the Church.
(1) The Good News: Martha understands and accepts the dogma of the indelible Character marked upon the soul in Baptism.
(2) The Bad News: Martha seems to think that she (and hubby) do themselves have the power to wipe the Character of Baptism off their souls by 'leaving' the Church.
Rubbish!
Nobody has the power to extinguish the full effects of Baptism. Not the Pope; not the Canon Lawyers; not the Heizers.
Martha's mental confusions are the reason why I am now going to disappoint all you hardline bloodthirsty Traddies: I am uneasy about this use of Excommunication. I do understand the importance of marking the seriousness of offences the Heizers had committed against the Body of Christ, the Church. But ... these poor dim silly confused creatures ... would it not be more merciful to excommunicate them formally but to suspend the full effect of the sentence to the extent of allowing their canonical pastor to use his discretion ad salutem animarum?
Strictly entre nous ... and entirely within these four walls ... the counterblast was actually masterminded in the echoing marble halls of the Correctio Secretariate as a disinformation device to keep our Correctio Filialis in the news. On no account divulge this; it is top secret. I know I can trust you.
We had no trouble collecting signatures for the Correctio Correctionis! For some reason, fear of reprisals doesn't seem to deter people from signing a pro-Bergoglian manifesto! Among the signatories we secured is the (Jesuit) Master of Campion Hall in this University. I knew he would be up for it because he authored a pro-Bergoglian document which, festooned with the word CONFIDENTIAL, was circulating earlier this year in at least one English diocese. I got a copy which, as far as my recollection goes, had fallen off the back of a lorry.
But our biggest coup was a much more interesting signatory. Martha Heizer, leader of the Austrian branch of We Are Church. Martha belongs to a very elite group: those who have been excommunicated in and by this pontificate ... yes, even under the regime of Mercy, excommunications happen!!
Why were Martha and her husband, in 2014, excommunicated? For the canonical offence of Simulating the Sacrament of the Eucharist. The pair of them hosted priestless "celebrations of Mass" in their own home. Ergo ... is it Canon 1378? Rigid, but fair!
After receiving the sentence, Martha interestingly expressed the view that they were still members of the Church because of their Baptisms, and would remain so unless they themselves left the Church.
(1) The Good News: Martha understands and accepts the dogma of the indelible Character marked upon the soul in Baptism.
(2) The Bad News: Martha seems to think that she (and hubby) do themselves have the power to wipe the Character of Baptism off their souls by 'leaving' the Church.
Rubbish!
Nobody has the power to extinguish the full effects of Baptism. Not the Pope; not the Canon Lawyers; not the Heizers.
Martha's mental confusions are the reason why I am now going to disappoint all you hardline bloodthirsty Traddies: I am uneasy about this use of Excommunication. I do understand the importance of marking the seriousness of offences the Heizers had committed against the Body of Christ, the Church. But ... these poor dim silly confused creatures ... would it not be more merciful to excommunicate them formally but to suspend the full effect of the sentence to the extent of allowing their canonical pastor to use his discretion ad salutem animarum?
19 October 2017
Newman and Ratzinger
A friend drew my attention the other day to a post on the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog, which printed an ancient piece of mine from 10 September 2009. I thought it read rather well, but then, I suppose I would, wouldn't I! Anyway, here it is again, unchanged. PLEASE remember its date!
The other day, in Fr Ker's admirable biography of Mr Newman, I found a diverting error in the Index. Nothing less than a description of Cardinal Manning as Archbishop of Canterbury.
Ah, the might-have-beens of History. Today, I would remind you of Manning's bad-tempered criticism of Newman; that with Newman, even after his reception into Full Communion, it was still the same old Anglican, Oxford, Patristic tone. We can do worse than recall this as we approach the beatification of that very great man. This may irritate some readers, but since this is my blog I will say it all the same: the whole point of Newman is that Manning was right; he never ceased to be an Anglican; that is to say, a superb exemplar of all that was best, God-given, grace-given, wholesome, and holy, in the life of the Provinces of Canterbury and York while in separation from the Voice of Peter. When he put off all that was schismatic, separatist, narrow, flawed, partial, heretical, in the ethos he imbibed from the Church of England, he was free to be more perfectly and fully Anglican than ever he had been before.
Because there is more to say about 'Anglicanism'than I said in yesterday's post. An Anglicanism which purports to be a doctrinally distinctive, even a superior, form of Christianity: yes, it is a diabolical mirage. But in the unhappy centuries of our separation from Peter, grace was not stopped up. A tone emerged; a style, a way of doing theology, of living the Christian life, which in itself is by no means unCatholic; a sober tone, a careful tone, a tone which read deeply and with understanding in the Fathers and looked to Byzantium and beyond as well as to Rome.
I know I surprised some readers and enraged others not long ago by describing Benedict XVI as the first Anglican Pope. But I believe it is wonderfully providential that it falls to this man to raise his fellow-Anglican John Henry Newman to the Altars of the Church. Have you read the Ordinary Teaching that this pope gives week by week? His sympathetic exposition of the Fathers of East, West, Syria? When you read his own theologising, can you avoid a feeling (I can't) that you are reading one of the Fathers; that you have picked up a volume of Migne ... you aren't quite sure whether it's from the PG or the PL, and you're even less certain which volume it might be, but anyway, that's the corner of Bodley that you're sitting in, and out of the window there's Newman's Church of S Mary, with his college of Oriel just beyond. And it is very easy to feel that it would be the most natural thing in the world to raise your head from your desk in the Patristics Room and see, in the chair opposite you, the diffident, erudite face of Professor Ratzinger, verifying a reference or two before hitching an ancient MA gown round his shoulders and scuttling through the traffic in the High back to his lodgings in Tom Quad.
Anglicanism as some self-important separatist codswallop that prides itself in its separation from the Successor of Peter: let's flush it away fast. But then the cry can go up: "Anglicanism is dead! Long live Anglicanism!"
The other day, in Fr Ker's admirable biography of Mr Newman, I found a diverting error in the Index. Nothing less than a description of Cardinal Manning as Archbishop of Canterbury.
Ah, the might-have-beens of History. Today, I would remind you of Manning's bad-tempered criticism of Newman; that with Newman, even after his reception into Full Communion, it was still the same old Anglican, Oxford, Patristic tone. We can do worse than recall this as we approach the beatification of that very great man. This may irritate some readers, but since this is my blog I will say it all the same: the whole point of Newman is that Manning was right; he never ceased to be an Anglican; that is to say, a superb exemplar of all that was best, God-given, grace-given, wholesome, and holy, in the life of the Provinces of Canterbury and York while in separation from the Voice of Peter. When he put off all that was schismatic, separatist, narrow, flawed, partial, heretical, in the ethos he imbibed from the Church of England, he was free to be more perfectly and fully Anglican than ever he had been before.
Because there is more to say about 'Anglicanism'
I know I surprised some readers and enraged others not long ago by describing Benedict XVI as the first Anglican Pope. But I believe it is wonderfully providential that it falls to this man to raise his fellow-Anglican John Henry Newman to the Altars of the Church. Have you read the Ordinary Teaching that this pope gives week by week? His sympathetic exposition of the Fathers of East, West, Syria? When you read his own theologising, can you avoid a feeling (I can't) that you are reading one of the Fathers; that you have picked up a volume of Migne ... you aren't quite sure whether it's from the PG or the PL, and you're even less certain which volume it might be, but anyway, that's the corner of Bodley that you're sitting in, and out of the window there's Newman's Church of S Mary, with his college of Oriel just beyond. And it is very easy to feel that it would be the most natural thing in the world to raise your head from your desk in the Patristics Room and see, in the chair opposite you, the diffident, erudite face of Professor Ratzinger, verifying a reference or two before hitching an ancient MA gown round his shoulders and scuttling through the traffic in the High back to his lodgings in Tom Quad.
Anglicanism as some self-important separatist codswallop that prides itself in its separation from the Successor of Peter: let's flush it away fast. But then the cry can go up: "Anglicanism is dead! Long live Anglicanism!"
18 October 2017
Newman on the Suspense of the Functions of the Magisterium
Speaking only on my own, individual, behalf, I have to say that I feel very let down by PF's apparent decision not to reply to the Correctio Filialis which I together with others sent to him at the Domus Santa Marta last August. I retain to the full my feeling of the proper respect due to the individual who currently occupies the Petrine See, but in human and affective terms, his apparent view that I and so many others are not worth bothering with introduces a sense of hurt and pain, if not alienation. I am sure that there is a providential purpose in all this, and I pray that I may be enabled ever more profoundly to embrace the humiliations permitted by the Divine Will.
The decision of PF not to fulfil the Petrine mandate to confirm (sterizein) his brethren, is a striking event not easily paralleled. And a refusal to respond to formal requests can hardly not itself constitute a formal act. So I turned, as surely we in the Ordinariate instinctively do, to our beloved Patron Blessed John Henry Newman, quo quis doctior, quis sapientior?
"... the body of the episcopate was unfaithful to its commission ... at one time the pope*, at other times a patriarchal, metropolitan, or other great see, at other times general councils*, said what they should not have said, or did what obscured and compromised revealed truth ... I say, that there was a temporary suspense of the functions of the Ecclesia docens. The body of bishops failed in their confession of the faith. They spoke variously, one against another; there was nothing, after Nicaea, of firm, unvarying, consistent testimony, for nearly sixty years ..."
I am testing in my thoughts (doing what we colloquially call "sleeping on it" or "thinking aloud") the possibility that PF's decision to ignore the cries for help which are sent to him, whether by Eminent Fathers of the Sacred College or by nonentities like me, may be seen as formally constituting the beginning of a period in which the functions of the Papal Magisterium are in "temporary suspense"; in a vacatio which will be ended at the moment when the same Petrine Magisterial organ as formally returns from dogmatic silence to the audible exercise of the functions rightly attributed to it in Catholic Tradition and Magisterial Conciliar definition; that is, devoutly to guard and faithfully to set forth the Tradition received through the Apostles; i.e. the Deposit of Faith.
If readers want an expansion of my way of thinking, I refer them to the masterly address on Apostasy delivered last week at the Buckfast Fatima Conference by Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke. "The poisonous fruits of the failure of the Church's pastors in the matters of Worship, teaching, and moral discipline ... ". His dear Eminence always puts things so much better than I could! Incidentally, I suspect that the Conference ... and, not least, Cardinal Burke's powerful address ... may go down in history as one of the significant moments in the recovery, the 'fight-back', of orthodoxy.
As if to confirm my thoughts, in the last few days PF is reported to have contradicted another of the Church's teachings: the teaching with regard to Capital Punishment; and to have done so not obiter or in an airliner but formally, reading a written text to one of those "Pontifical Councils" which absorb so much money and effort. This suggests to me that PF has himself consciously stopped even bothering to remain within the parameters set by the Magisterium to which he is as much under an obligation to submit as anybody else. The current careful formulation of the Church's teaching with regard to the Death Penalty, which PF said he wants changed, is precisely twenty years old. A "Magisterium" which contradicts itself every twenty years is not a Teaching Authority to which many people are likely seriously to consider themselves obliged to give assent. (I say this as a strong opponent of the use of Capital Punishment in modern states.)
I can see no present grounds plausibly to speculate that PF's divagations from orthodoxy will in future tolerate any restraints. It is as if, having discovered himself at the bottom of a hole, he has decided that the only thing to do is to keep digging with redoubled energy. Or, like the Duke of Wellington in the Fifth Act of the Battle of Waterloo, perhaps he is saying to the world "In for a penny, in for a pound"! Or does he think that he might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb? Will his parting gift to the Church Militant be a ringing endorsement of the homoiousios? En pote hote ouk en?
By joining with Newman in this analysis, I do not, of course, in any way suggest that PF and the silent or heterodox bishops have lost the right or capacity to use the Magisterium of his and their office. Precisely as Newman did, I am simply observing that, as a matter of fact, he is not and they are not using it. I am certainly not suggesting (and I do not believe) that this Suspense makes any difference whatsoever to the status or powers of the current occupant of the Roman See or of other bishops. Those who argue that PF has forfeited his See, or that his Election was for any reason void or voidable, are, in my judgement, talking piffle. (Quae sit huius verbi etymologia quaero. Num verbi 'pontificalis' depravatio est?)
I shall not consider comments which ignore the paragraph immediately above this.
Note: Newman is referring to Pope* Liberius; and, in referring to general councils*, he does not mean Ecumenical Councils. He explained later that he follows S Robert Bellarmine in distinguishing between Ecumenical Councils and councils which, even if large, do not count as Ecumenical. So ... not applicable to Vatican II!
The decision of PF not to fulfil the Petrine mandate to confirm (sterizein) his brethren, is a striking event not easily paralleled. And a refusal to respond to formal requests can hardly not itself constitute a formal act. So I turned, as surely we in the Ordinariate instinctively do, to our beloved Patron Blessed John Henry Newman, quo quis doctior, quis sapientior?
"... the body of the episcopate was unfaithful to its commission ... at one time the pope*, at other times a patriarchal, metropolitan, or other great see, at other times general councils*, said what they should not have said, or did what obscured and compromised revealed truth ... I say, that there was a temporary suspense of the functions of the Ecclesia docens. The body of bishops failed in their confession of the faith. They spoke variously, one against another; there was nothing, after Nicaea, of firm, unvarying, consistent testimony, for nearly sixty years ..."
I am testing in my thoughts (doing what we colloquially call "sleeping on it" or "thinking aloud") the possibility that PF's decision to ignore the cries for help which are sent to him, whether by Eminent Fathers of the Sacred College or by nonentities like me, may be seen as formally constituting the beginning of a period in which the functions of the Papal Magisterium are in "temporary suspense"; in a vacatio which will be ended at the moment when the same Petrine Magisterial organ as formally returns from dogmatic silence to the audible exercise of the functions rightly attributed to it in Catholic Tradition and Magisterial Conciliar definition; that is, devoutly to guard and faithfully to set forth the Tradition received through the Apostles; i.e. the Deposit of Faith.
If readers want an expansion of my way of thinking, I refer them to the masterly address on Apostasy delivered last week at the Buckfast Fatima Conference by Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke. "The poisonous fruits of the failure of the Church's pastors in the matters of Worship, teaching, and moral discipline ... ". His dear Eminence always puts things so much better than I could! Incidentally, I suspect that the Conference ... and, not least, Cardinal Burke's powerful address ... may go down in history as one of the significant moments in the recovery, the 'fight-back', of orthodoxy.
As if to confirm my thoughts, in the last few days PF is reported to have contradicted another of the Church's teachings: the teaching with regard to Capital Punishment; and to have done so not obiter or in an airliner but formally, reading a written text to one of those "Pontifical Councils" which absorb so much money and effort. This suggests to me that PF has himself consciously stopped even bothering to remain within the parameters set by the Magisterium to which he is as much under an obligation to submit as anybody else. The current careful formulation of the Church's teaching with regard to the Death Penalty, which PF said he wants changed, is precisely twenty years old. A "Magisterium" which contradicts itself every twenty years is not a Teaching Authority to which many people are likely seriously to consider themselves obliged to give assent. (I say this as a strong opponent of the use of Capital Punishment in modern states.)
I can see no present grounds plausibly to speculate that PF's divagations from orthodoxy will in future tolerate any restraints. It is as if, having discovered himself at the bottom of a hole, he has decided that the only thing to do is to keep digging with redoubled energy. Or, like the Duke of Wellington in the Fifth Act of the Battle of Waterloo, perhaps he is saying to the world "In for a penny, in for a pound"! Or does he think that he might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb? Will his parting gift to the Church Militant be a ringing endorsement of the homoiousios? En pote hote ouk en?
By joining with Newman in this analysis, I do not, of course, in any way suggest that PF and the silent or heterodox bishops have lost the right or capacity to use the Magisterium of his and their office. Precisely as Newman did, I am simply observing that, as a matter of fact, he is not and they are not using it. I am certainly not suggesting (and I do not believe) that this Suspense makes any difference whatsoever to the status or powers of the current occupant of the Roman See or of other bishops. Those who argue that PF has forfeited his See, or that his Election was for any reason void or voidable, are, in my judgement, talking piffle. (Quae sit huius verbi etymologia quaero. Num verbi 'pontificalis' depravatio est?)
I shall not consider comments which ignore the paragraph immediately above this.
Note: Newman is referring to Pope* Liberius; and, in referring to general councils*, he does not mean Ecumenical Councils. He explained later that he follows S Robert Bellarmine in distinguishing between Ecumenical Councils and councils which, even if large, do not count as Ecumenical. So ... not applicable to Vatican II!
17 October 2017
Buckfast
There can't be many institutions in the Kingdom of England which go back to 1018 ... as Buckfast Abbey does! Westminster seems like a New Boy on the Block in comparison. After the Henricean Interruption, the great monastery was rebuilt in the last century by French monks, on the same foundations and with the same River Dart running noisily but cheefully beside it.
When I turned up there for last week's Marian Conference, I had not realised that next year there are going to be massive celebrations for the Buckfast Millennium. These are to include ... Patrimony, Patrimony ... an event for the incumbents and churchwardens of Anglican parishes which belonged to Buckfast in the Middle Ages. (For my daily Mass, Dom Thomas Regan had very sensitively assigned me the twelfth century chapel of S Michael, where, I was told, the local Ordinariate group offers the Holy Sacrifice.)
When I was a tiny boy, so I recall, I was struck, visiting S Alban's Abbey, by the paintings of the Crucifixion on the West faces of the Nave pillars marking where the Altars had been for the Morning Masses. That is where the altars are for that same purpose at Buckfast. Much use of them was made last week by clergy attending the Conference.
But if, like me, you haven't been to Buckfast for some decades, what will strike you will be the incredible (research via the Search Engine and you will discover I don't often employ that hyperbole) make-over the Abbey Church has recently received. It looks ... just ... spectacular. Go and see! Find out what the Millennial Year has to offer you! Incidentally, 24-27 November this year, 2017, there is to be a big Vocations Weekend. I can think of nowhere better to go in order to listen to God, if you have any thoughts of living the Rule of S Benedict in an Abbey with a long history and which is also deeply rooted in the present because of the ministry it daily offers to the many thousands who flock there.
Dom David Charlesworth, the Lord Abbot, very kindly gave me some of his time telling me about the work of restoration. You wouldn't be disappointed if you only went there to look at the floor. The temporary floor left by the monks who did the original work has been replaced by square Purbeck limestone tiles; a stone so exquisite that it seems to generate light.
But this floor is but a taster for the Sanctuary floor. Those who have 'done' Westminster Abbey will remember the 'Cosmati' floor there and will recognise the magnificence of the floor at Buckfast. They will be further edified to be told or to read that the circular stones near the High Altar were originally given by Lord Elgin and came from the Temple of Diana of the Ephesians. What a very biblical floor! And there is purple stone from the Imperial Porphyry Quarry in Egypt. 'Nuff said!
When I turned up there for last week's Marian Conference, I had not realised that next year there are going to be massive celebrations for the Buckfast Millennium. These are to include ... Patrimony, Patrimony ... an event for the incumbents and churchwardens of Anglican parishes which belonged to Buckfast in the Middle Ages. (For my daily Mass, Dom Thomas Regan had very sensitively assigned me the twelfth century chapel of S Michael, where, I was told, the local Ordinariate group offers the Holy Sacrifice.)
When I was a tiny boy, so I recall, I was struck, visiting S Alban's Abbey, by the paintings of the Crucifixion on the West faces of the Nave pillars marking where the Altars had been for the Morning Masses. That is where the altars are for that same purpose at Buckfast. Much use of them was made last week by clergy attending the Conference.
But if, like me, you haven't been to Buckfast for some decades, what will strike you will be the incredible (research via the Search Engine and you will discover I don't often employ that hyperbole) make-over the Abbey Church has recently received. It looks ... just ... spectacular. Go and see! Find out what the Millennial Year has to offer you! Incidentally, 24-27 November this year, 2017, there is to be a big Vocations Weekend. I can think of nowhere better to go in order to listen to God, if you have any thoughts of living the Rule of S Benedict in an Abbey with a long history and which is also deeply rooted in the present because of the ministry it daily offers to the many thousands who flock there.
Dom David Charlesworth, the Lord Abbot, very kindly gave me some of his time telling me about the work of restoration. You wouldn't be disappointed if you only went there to look at the floor. The temporary floor left by the monks who did the original work has been replaced by square Purbeck limestone tiles; a stone so exquisite that it seems to generate light.
But this floor is but a taster for the Sanctuary floor. Those who have 'done' Westminster Abbey will remember the 'Cosmati' floor there and will recognise the magnificence of the floor at Buckfast. They will be further edified to be told or to read that the circular stones near the High Altar were originally given by Lord Elgin and came from the Temple of Diana of the Ephesians. What a very biblical floor! And there is purple stone from the Imperial Porphyry Quarry in Egypt. 'Nuff said!
16 October 2017
Married Clergy
There are some signs on the Internet of the ordination of married men to the presbyterate of the Latin Church becoming a talking-point.
Just for the record: the practice of ordaining married men who had formerly ministered in Separated Western Ecclesial Bodies did not originate in the post-Conciliar period, nor was it introduced in order to favour ex-Anglicans.
It began in 1950, at the direction of Pius XII, and embraced former Lutheran pastors.
Just for the record: the practice of ordaining married men who had formerly ministered in Separated Western Ecclesial Bodies did not originate in the post-Conciliar period, nor was it introduced in order to favour ex-Anglicans.
It began in 1950, at the direction of Pius XII, and embraced former Lutheran pastors.
Fatima
What a splendid few days we had at Buckfast sharing and learning with regard to our Lady's Fatima messages! A gifted young priest from Bishop Egan's diocese, Dr Serafino Lanzetta, crafted and held together a variety of contributions with an immensely sure touch. It was fun to make so many new friends as well as to meet again with already friends. Our dear Cardinal Burke was welcomed with evident and warm enthusiasm by the Bishop of Plymouth, Bishop Mark O'Toole, who kindly gave a morning to the Conference. Professor de Mattei ... Fr Houlden ... Fr Finigan ... Dr Thomas Crean OP ... Fr Duffield ... et ceteri ... if you didn't attend, what a scintillating gathering you missed. Don't make the same mistake in 2117!
The flower-decked feretory from which the Theotokos of Fatima presided was, I gather, constructed by the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate from London, whom I much enjoyed meeting. There can't be many Reverend Mothers whose academic careers began on the Playing Fields of Roedean and journeyed through Mechanical Engineering into the sunlit uplands of Marian festivities! God preserve them in their wonderful Tracchia Mariana and their devotion to the Mass of Ages! They know full well that her Immaculate Heart will prevail!
Tomorrow, some words about Buckfast Abbey.
The flower-decked feretory from which the Theotokos of Fatima presided was, I gather, constructed by the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate from London, whom I much enjoyed meeting. There can't be many Reverend Mothers whose academic careers began on the Playing Fields of Roedean and journeyed through Mechanical Engineering into the sunlit uplands of Marian festivities! God preserve them in their wonderful Tracchia Mariana and their devotion to the Mass of Ages! They know full well that her Immaculate Heart will prevail!
Tomorrow, some words about Buckfast Abbey.
15 October 2017
Intercommunion; tedium
German (ex-)Catholics have recently held a joint communion service with Protestants. It is causing some controversy. Boring. Mega, mega, boring.
In 1913, Anglicans in the Kikuyu area of Kenya held a joint communion service with Protestants. This, of course, led to great controversy. Eventually, a couple of years later, the Archbishop of Canterbury issued an on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand statement which subsequently Dix wittily summarised as meaning that the event had been immensely pleasing to God but must on no account be repeated.
We of the Patrimony do get bored seeing some "Catholics" making the same mistakes that our predecessors made more than a century ago. Tedious. Why can't they think up some new mistakes of their own? Why do they have to tag tardily along behind Anglicanism? Have these daft jokers no imagination?
Why can't they have some compassion for our high boredom-threshold?
In 1913, Anglicans in the Kikuyu area of Kenya held a joint communion service with Protestants. This, of course, led to great controversy. Eventually, a couple of years later, the Archbishop of Canterbury issued an on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand statement which subsequently Dix wittily summarised as meaning that the event had been immensely pleasing to God but must on no account be repeated.
We of the Patrimony do get bored seeing some "Catholics" making the same mistakes that our predecessors made more than a century ago. Tedious. Why can't they think up some new mistakes of their own? Why do they have to tag tardily along behind Anglicanism? Have these daft jokers no imagination?
Why can't they have some compassion for our high boredom-threshold?
Copenhagen
It seems a long time ago now ... but it's only a fortnight. Yet again, I was graciously invited to Copenhagen to sing Mass for the Latin Mass Group, and to meet them socially. It is a great pleasure to meet again with old friends ... and a privilege to admire their growing families! And, not least, I am moved by the friendship and hospitality of Mgr Czeslaw Koslon, Bishop of Copenhagen, who not only allows me to say my morning EF Mass in his elegant domestic Chapel, but even serves it for me! I bet not many presbyters have had their Masses served by the President of an Episcopal Conference!
This recent visit was the last occasion in which I shall stay in the Bishop's House, because the Church is relinquishing the lease and refurbishing a large ecclesiatical complex, formerly Jesuit, in the centre of the City. It will have flats for his Lordship, his Vicar General, accommodation for Franciscans ...
Ulf, who knows everything, kindly spent Saturday taking me round the Danish and Nordic Art section of the State Museum of Culture. We live in an age of highly expensive blockbuster international exhibitions, yet many of us ... I mean me ... know practically nothing about the art of other European countries in their own terms. Delving into the art of another country, one also gets sidelines on ones own. A portait might make one feel "If that were in the Wallace Collection, it might be by Boucher" or "That could be by Fuseli".
And how many people on the top of a Clapham omnibus have even heard of Thorvaldsen?
This recent visit was the last occasion in which I shall stay in the Bishop's House, because the Church is relinquishing the lease and refurbishing a large ecclesiatical complex, formerly Jesuit, in the centre of the City. It will have flats for his Lordship, his Vicar General, accommodation for Franciscans ...
Ulf, who knows everything, kindly spent Saturday taking me round the Danish and Nordic Art section of the State Museum of Culture. We live in an age of highly expensive blockbuster international exhibitions, yet many of us ... I mean me ... know practically nothing about the art of other European countries in their own terms. Delving into the art of another country, one also gets sidelines on ones own. A portait might make one feel "If that were in the Wallace Collection, it might be by Boucher" or "That could be by Fuseli".
And how many people on the top of a Clapham omnibus have even heard of Thorvaldsen?
14 October 2017
Pope S Agatho the Good ... and heretical popes
S Agatho's Synod was, when you think about it, quite a big one: 125 bishops. Larger, I think, than some 'Ecumenical Councils'. He was summoning it (Bede H.E. V 19) adversus eos qui ... dogmatizabant. This Synod was held against a doctrinal error that had just arisen: against those who dogmatized that there was but one Will and Working in the Lord our Saviour (i.e. Monothelites). But the Holy Father did not call his Council to find out what those 125 bishops thought, nor to discover whether they had some splendid new ideas.
Inevitably, there was an Englishman in Rome and inevitably that Englishman was S Wilfrid. This indefatigable missionary tended to find himself embroiled in rows, and his instinct on such occasions was invariably the same: go to Rome. (After all, if one got there fast enough, the Holy See only heard one side of the story!)
So S Agatho invited Wilfrid to join in his synod so as to benefit from his thinking and his erudition ... NO: not a bit of it; Wilfrid was invited to speak his Faith, in other words, to make formal confession of his orthodoxy; but not of his own merely personal Faith: that of the Province or Island from which he came. His adherence to Catholic orthodoxy was incorporated into the Acta Synodi: "Wilfrid, the God-beloved Bishop of the City of York ... was set in the seat of judgement in Synod with his 125 coepiscopi; and, in the name of (pro) the whole Northern part of Britain and Ireland, and the islands which are inhabited by the nations of the Angles and Britons, and also the Scots and the Picts, he confessed the true and Catholic Faith, et cum subscriptione sua corroboravit."
The confidence with which S Wilfrid spoke for so much of (what in Irish scholarship is now neatly called) the Atlantic Archipelago, and for the orthodoxy of thousands of Scottic monks who had never met him and, had they done so, might have had strong things to say about his Paschal Mathematics, may well take our breath away. But I want to point out what this Synod was for.
A heresy had arisen, and a previous pope (Honorius I) half a century before had actually promoted the error. Heresy is a very grave matter; but a Pope is there to condemn it. Just think of what a massive ecclesial disorder is involved if the pope himself actually favours the heresy and uses his office to spread it.
So our Holy Father Pope Agatho held a synod; and his brother bishops were there to strengthen his hand by bearing (written, formal) witness to the orthodoxy which they had, each of them, received and to which their Particular Churches bore witness. Subsequently, he called an Ecumenical Council, at which Pope Honorius, together with his fellow heresiarchs, was condemned and anathematized in the strongest possible language.
That is why, on this blog, he is known as S Agatho the Good.
The next pope, S Leo II, confirmed the Conciliar condemnations.
When will there be a Pope Agatho II? Domine, exaudi et miserere!
Inevitably, there was an Englishman in Rome and inevitably that Englishman was S Wilfrid. This indefatigable missionary tended to find himself embroiled in rows, and his instinct on such occasions was invariably the same: go to Rome. (After all, if one got there fast enough, the Holy See only heard one side of the story!)
So S Agatho invited Wilfrid to join in his synod so as to benefit from his thinking and his erudition ... NO: not a bit of it; Wilfrid was invited to speak his Faith, in other words, to make formal confession of his orthodoxy; but not of his own merely personal Faith: that of the Province or Island from which he came. His adherence to Catholic orthodoxy was incorporated into the Acta Synodi: "Wilfrid, the God-beloved Bishop of the City of York ... was set in the seat of judgement in Synod with his 125 coepiscopi; and, in the name of (pro) the whole Northern part of Britain and Ireland, and the islands which are inhabited by the nations of the Angles and Britons, and also the Scots and the Picts, he confessed the true and Catholic Faith, et cum subscriptione sua corroboravit."
The confidence with which S Wilfrid spoke for so much of (what in Irish scholarship is now neatly called) the Atlantic Archipelago, and for the orthodoxy of thousands of Scottic monks who had never met him and, had they done so, might have had strong things to say about his Paschal Mathematics, may well take our breath away. But I want to point out what this Synod was for.
A heresy had arisen, and a previous pope (Honorius I) half a century before had actually promoted the error. Heresy is a very grave matter; but a Pope is there to condemn it. Just think of what a massive ecclesial disorder is involved if the pope himself actually favours the heresy and uses his office to spread it.
So our Holy Father Pope Agatho held a synod; and his brother bishops were there to strengthen his hand by bearing (written, formal) witness to the orthodoxy which they had, each of them, received and to which their Particular Churches bore witness. Subsequently, he called an Ecumenical Council, at which Pope Honorius, together with his fellow heresiarchs, was condemned and anathematized in the strongest possible language.
That is why, on this blog, he is known as S Agatho the Good.
The next pope, S Leo II, confirmed the Conciliar condemnations.
When will there be a Pope Agatho II? Domine, exaudi et miserere!
13 October 2017
Psalm 18 (RSV19) and the Miracle of the Sun.
A great day, the centenary of the Miracle of the Sun, when the Sun was seen to dance down upon the Earth. I wish to share a few thoughts about the Typology of this event, with its deeply scriptural and traditional roots.
Our starting point should be Psalm 18, and the rich use which Holy Tradition has made of this psalm.
In the Pius XII Psalter which was masterminded by Cardinal Augustin Bea (bad ... bad), we read (verse 5) "He has made a tabernacle for the sun". An accurate translation, it may be, of the Hebrew. But this is not what we find in both the ancient Latin Vulgate and the Greek Septuagint (abbreviated to LXX): the two versions by which Christians of both East and West have always worshipped. Here is a literal rendering of what these versions give us:
5.In the sun he has placed his tabernacle: and he himself like a bridegroom going forth from his chamber has rejoiced (LXX: will rejoice) like a giant to run his course.
6. From highest (LXX: furthest) heaven {is} his going forth: and his meeting is even unto its highest (LXX: furthest); neither is there one who might hide himself from his heat.
Our Catholic and Orthodox forebears took the Sun to be our Lady (S Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem from 634: "For in thee, O Virgin, as in a most pure and sparkling Heaven, God has placed his tabernacle"). They understood the bridegroom to be Christ. The bridal-chamber is the womb of the Blessed Virgin. In that Womb he united Godhead with manhood as bridegroom is united to bride, so that he is a giant with two Natures in one Person. His going forth is his eternal generation, as the Divine and Only-begotten Son, from the Father. His meeting is the Son's equality with the Father.
Let's consider the Advent Office Hymn Conditor alme siderum. We will take the clever and accurate translation of stanza 3 by the Anglican John Mason 'Patrimony' Neale which appears as Number 1 in the English Hymnal:
Thou cam'st, the bridegroom of the bride,
As drew the world to evening-tide;
Proceeding from a virgin shrine,
The spotless Victim all divine.
And a hymn by the great S Ambrose himself, Veni Redemptor gentium
Forth from his chamber goeth he,
That royal home of purity,
A giant in twofold substance one,
Rejoicing now his course to run.
The Liturgy of the hours unfortunately misses out ('ad brevitatem') the next stanza, also based on our psalm, which Neale (English Hymnal 14) renders
From God the Father he proceeds,
To God the Father back he speeds;
His course he runs to death and hell,
Returning on God's throne to dwell.
The Pre-Conciliar Breviary and the English Hymnal do not provide another ancient hymn, Fit porta Christi pervia, which the Liturgy of the Hours dug up and ordered to be said at Morning Prayer on January 1. Here is a literal version of the second stanza; it shows its indebtedness to Psalm 18:
The Son of the highest Father has gone forth from the palace of the Virgin, bridegroom, Redeemer, Creator, the Giant of his Church.
I'm sure you've noticed the relevance of all this to the importance of celebrating Mass versus Orientem, towards the Lord who comes to us at the dawning of the day, walking to meet us from the womb of his Mother, the Woman clothed with Sun, the Tabernacle of Divinity.
But today, we think of the Sun as the great cosmic Ikon of the Mother of God, which spectacularly confirmed the authenticity of the Fatima Message; confirmed it for 1917 and for every successive year.
Our starting point should be Psalm 18, and the rich use which Holy Tradition has made of this psalm.
In the Pius XII Psalter which was masterminded by Cardinal Augustin Bea (bad ... bad), we read (verse 5) "He has made a tabernacle for the sun". An accurate translation, it may be, of the Hebrew. But this is not what we find in both the ancient Latin Vulgate and the Greek Septuagint (abbreviated to LXX): the two versions by which Christians of both East and West have always worshipped. Here is a literal rendering of what these versions give us:
5.In the sun he has placed his tabernacle: and he himself like a bridegroom going forth from his chamber has rejoiced (LXX: will rejoice) like a giant to run his course.
6. From highest (LXX: furthest) heaven {is} his going forth: and his meeting is even unto its highest (LXX: furthest); neither is there one who might hide himself from his heat.
Our Catholic and Orthodox forebears took the Sun to be our Lady (S Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem from 634: "For in thee, O Virgin, as in a most pure and sparkling Heaven, God has placed his tabernacle"). They understood the bridegroom to be Christ. The bridal-chamber is the womb of the Blessed Virgin. In that Womb he united Godhead with manhood as bridegroom is united to bride, so that he is a giant with two Natures in one Person. His going forth is his eternal generation, as the Divine and Only-begotten Son, from the Father. His meeting is the Son's equality with the Father.
Let's consider the Advent Office Hymn Conditor alme siderum. We will take the clever and accurate translation of stanza 3 by the Anglican John Mason 'Patrimony' Neale which appears as Number 1 in the English Hymnal:
Thou cam'st, the bridegroom of the bride,
As drew the world to evening-tide;
Proceeding from a virgin shrine,
The spotless Victim all divine.
And a hymn by the great S Ambrose himself, Veni Redemptor gentium
Forth from his chamber goeth he,
That royal home of purity,
A giant in twofold substance one,
Rejoicing now his course to run.
The Liturgy of the hours unfortunately misses out ('ad brevitatem') the next stanza, also based on our psalm, which Neale (English Hymnal 14) renders
From God the Father he proceeds,
To God the Father back he speeds;
His course he runs to death and hell,
Returning on God's throne to dwell.
The Pre-Conciliar Breviary and the English Hymnal do not provide another ancient hymn, Fit porta Christi pervia, which the Liturgy of the Hours dug up and ordered to be said at Morning Prayer on January 1. Here is a literal version of the second stanza; it shows its indebtedness to Psalm 18:
The Son of the highest Father has gone forth from the palace of the Virgin, bridegroom, Redeemer, Creator, the Giant of his Church.
I'm sure you've noticed the relevance of all this to the importance of celebrating Mass versus Orientem, towards the Lord who comes to us at the dawning of the day, walking to meet us from the womb of his Mother, the Woman clothed with Sun, the Tabernacle of Divinity.
But today, we think of the Sun as the great cosmic Ikon of the Mother of God, which spectacularly confirmed the authenticity of the Fatima Message; confirmed it for 1917 and for every successive year.
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