Valle Adurni

How far we have come

2012-01-16T20:15:00.001Z

I have just been watching a programme on RTE about the Queen's visit to Ireland last year. It was an event that was deeply healing and is still being talked about there. Before the visit, the Irish Ambassador in London threw a party for the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall; it featured many people from the Irish community in Britain, both the famous and the not-so-well known. Two among the famous caught my eye; Bob Geldof was there, as one might expect. But the figure standing next to him was none other than Ian Paisley. A willing guest in the Irish Embassy! How far we have come, indeed!

When we have so much to lament in our world, there are also things to be grateful for.

Irish and the Liturgy

2012-01-16T18:36:00.002Z

A few days ago, I stumbled across the blog Lux Occulta, and rather liked it, so included it in my links section, where you can find it. I was a little intrigued by one post, called The Myth of Catholic Exceptionalism in which the author, Shane, takes issue with those on the Catholic Blogosphere who have characterized the Irish Catholic Church of the 1950s as an 'insular, peasant-led, anti-intellectual, aliturgical backwater.' I had an uneasy feeling that I might have been one of those he was rebuking. He left a comment on the last post which reinforced my suspicion.

But either he has misunderstood me in my earlier posts, or I did not express myself very well.
From the earliest days Ireland has regarded herself as indisputably part of the Western Latin Church. Those who would put blue water between her and the Holy See have had to struggle hard; there has been a myth among Anglicans that saw the Celtic Church (their sort-of predecessor, some believed) as a bravely independent body tricked into Roman submission at the Synod of Whitby (664). A look at the life of, say, St Columbanus (d.615) would give the lie to that immediately. In it we see both a devotion to the See of Peter and yet also a very different way of looking at things (not least regarding the relative importance of bishops and abbots).
Throughout the English occupation of Ireland, and especially after the Reformation, there can be no doubt of Ireland's attachment to the universal Catholic Church; indeed bishops continued to be appointed, and took up their sees whenever possible—there was often even a nuncio (or 'internuncio'). The Church was unquestionably under pressure, but never severed its link to the mainstream Church.
There are those who argue that there was a Gallican streak in Irish Catholicism, and there is a certain amount of evidence for this; many priests were trained in France, and I have heard that this accounts for the use of red sanctuary lamps throughout the British Isles (red being the French local colour for the Blessed Sacrament). But when we come to the twentieth century there can be no doubt whatever of the attachment of Ireland to the Holy See: the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin, 1932, brought a great outpouring of loyalty to the Pope.
Others may have thought Ireland a backwater; she never thought of herself that way.
Nor did Ireland lack intellectual muscle. It has always, proverbially, been a reading nation, and the establishment and quality of the National University has led to Ireland, a tiny country, being ranked eighth in the world for its high proportion of quality universities. Seven of these were in 2008 ranked by the Times Higher Education Supplement as among the 500 top universities in the world.

Shane exhorts me to write with care about the Liturgical Movement in the 1950s in Ireland because, he writes, it is a subject he knows something about and (he gently implies) I plainly don't. I confess I know very little at all about the progress of the Liturgical Movement in Ireland, and would be very interested to read anything that Shane might write (and I do hope he will). I have never seen much serious evidence for the Movement, though, on the ground. That it was present is highly probable, especially in seminaries and cathedrals; that it never crossed my path is undeniable.

I think, for instance, of the rebuilding of St Columcille's Church in Kells. Co Meath, which took place under the inspiration of the great parish priest Fr McCullen, in the very early 1960s, I think. An spatially-inadequate and ornate 19th century church was demolished (with difficulty, as it turned out—the excuse had been that the old one was about to fall down) and a new one built. Now, to my eyes, it shows a lot of Liturgical Movement influence. Pictures on the web, alas, are few and far between.

It is a very large building, without pillars or columns, so that everyone could have a view of the high altar under a simple tester, raised up on many steps. There were only two side altars, in the traditional Irish position, to the left and right of the high altar—none at all down the nave. Votive candles were strictly forbidden. The interior is very pleasing and harmonious, at least as designed, though it has had some unsympathetic reordering in recent years.
(The Blessed Sacrament is not now reserved , as one might suppose, on the old high altar, but behind Bishop Smith, and the old tester has been removed. The screen has been added, rather jarring with the style of the building) A new altar, as you can see, has been added in the nave.

The building is a good one, but I have never experienced a Mass there which was not hurried—oh, correction; a visiting priest last week celebrated beautifully. I was once (several years ago) rebuked by a resident priest for taking a whole half hour to celebrate a Sunday Mass (including sermon and many many communions).

My point has always been that good or bad liturgy has never been vital to the spirit of the Irish Church; it has relied on other things, and so has survived both a lack of liturgy in the penal days and bad liturgy today. Call the other things 'peasant' if you want; I would not, for everyone practised them. What I want to do in another post is to look at some of those things and find a Catholic rationale for them.

Of course you could always find good liturgy; the point is that is was not commonplace. And is probably less so today.

Told you so

2012-01-16T15:36:00.000Z

At the time of Ireland's closure of its Vatican embassy, I remarked to several people that Enda Kenny and his government would come to regret it. 'It will come back and bite them', I said. 'They underestimate the residual loyalty of Ireland to the faith, and are simply playing to those they think are in the gallery.'
I considered blogging upon it, but decided not to; besides, those days before Christmas were simply too busy and I didn't do much blogging at all.
I want to write some more on Ireland, and will do so soon. In the meantime, you can read the account here, thanks to Fr Z.

Indolence and truth

2012-01-10T10:36:00.001Z

Journalists are apt, like most of the human race, to take a shortcut wherever possible. The surprise that the Vatican obtained information for its biographies of the new cardinals-elect from Google (Archbishop Dolan is a Catholic, that sort of thing), directly lifted and without attribution, is but one example.

The précises of Papal homilies is another example. Inevitably journalists pick on the one phrase that they think will interest their readers, usually some sort of a negative comment, as you can read here on First Things:

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2012/01/benedict-doesnrsquot-make-headlines

(Thanks to The Pulpit, and apologies that I can't put in links very well; they aren't easy to do on an iPad)

Wouldn't it be sensible for the Vatican Press Office to send around to the accredited journos not just the full text of the Holy Fathers' homilies, but a predigested account of the central message? Just a paragraph that the journos can tweak a bit to make it different enough not to be accused of plagiarism, or to make the Telegraph's account not too like the Guardian's. Perhaps with a bottle of whiskey to encourage the journos to use that rather than trawl through the homily itself to find the most potentially inflammatory phrase (when portrayed in a particular way)

This, of course, suggests that the Holy See provide some more help to the indefatigable Fr Lombardi, who always appears to project a strange mixture of puzzlement and confidence, of blind panic and quiet reassurance.

Friday Abstinence again

2012-01-08T07:51:00.001Z

I noticed that The Bones had a dilemma about whether or not to eat meat last Friday, it being the livid scar of the feast of the Epiphany. I, too was in a dilemma.

You see, I was travelling. It is my memory that travellers were dispensed from abstinence, but in their restoration of Friday abstinence, our bishops did not grant dispensations (at least explicitly) or specify when these might apply. I think that in the old days a parish priest might dispense his parishioners for a good reason, and in certain cases (such as when travelling) the dispensation was automatic. I should have liked to see a dispensation for dining when others (who are not Catholics) have cooked and when one does not wish to cause an awkwardness. In fact our bishops explicitly directed that in such cases we were to explain to our friends that we were not permitted to eat their food, but to explain to them charitably a concept that few Catholics understand these days. It would appear to amount to:

'well, no, it isn't about doing penance, because we left all that behind us forty years ago. It is actually about us feeling good about being Catholics and being different, and this being a good witness to you about Living Simply'.

So you get to inconvenience, annoy, exclude and patronise your hosts all at one time. Fun.

Like old Boney, I thought about it being the real feast of the Epiphany, and about travelling, and so at the airport I hovered over a chicken salad sandwich before good old Catholic Guilt won out and I took the egg mayonnaise.

On arrival in my uncle's house, he was already laying a chicken casserole on the table as I came through the front door. I ate it with him. Now, we are in Ireland, and the law of abstinence doesn't apply here. But I still felt guilty, and wondered whether I should be inconveniencing, annoying and patronising him to do my religious duty.

Last night we went to the only Sunday Mass in the parish -- strangely late on Saturday night, and it was carefully explained that as we had celebrated Epiphany last Friday, the Mass would be that of the Baptism of the Lord. So even had the abstinence laws applied in Ireland, my uncle was right to serve meat, and I had felt guilty for nothing ( even though I know that I had no need to anyway).

As for the new translation in Ireland; well the stories you hear about it being a disaster area are not correct. My uncle tells me the there was some grumbling from some of the priests (during Mass of course), but that the laity just got on with it. That was my experience, too. Everyone said the prayers at their own pace as usual, the speed ranging from very fast to lightning, and all but one of the people near me were using the new text without leaflets except for the Gloria and Creed. Only one person kept up the old responses, but as she was going faster than any others around her that was perhaps to be expected. The celebrant didn't stumble or grumble once (though he ad libbed from time to time), and he encouraged the correct people's responses by saying them loudly into the microphone faster than anyone else. Only at one point did all the congregation pray all in solemn unison instead of the usual in-your-own-time,-folks style, and that was the Pater Noster, said in Irish. I really am going to have to learn that.

I asked about the lapsation in light of the recent troubles of the Church, and here in the wild and wooly parts of County Clare it doesn't seem to be a problem; Mass attendance is still about 90-95%, and even draws in the increasing number of (non-Catholic) immigrants from England, Germany and elsewhere, who have discovered for themselves what an important part of social cohesion the Church is here. Well, it's nice to hear some good stuff, isn't it?

They hadn't heard about the new Nuncio, but were highly amused to hear that he he is called Charlie Brown. No doubt he will be presented with a dog soon.

A very different way of doing the first reading

2012-01-05T08:33:00.000Z

Here, from the Sarum Christmas Missa in Gallicantu, beginneth the first reading:

(translation further down, should anyone need it)

Duo clerici de secunda forma in capis sericis in pulpito simul cantent lectionem.

Laudes Deo dicam per sæcula, qui me plasmavit in manu dextera, atque redemit cruce purpurea sanguine Nati.

Hic cantetur alternatim:

Lectio Esaiæ Prophetæ.

In qua Christi lucida vaticinatur nativitas.

Hæc dicit Dominus.

Pater, Filius, Sanctus Spiritus, in quo sunt omnia condita superna atque ima.

Populus gentium qui ambulabat in tenebris

Quem creasti: quem fraude subdola hostis expulit paradiso: et captivatum secum traxit ad tartara;

Vidit lucem magnam;

Fulserunt et immania nocte media pastoribus lumina.

Habitantibus in regione umbræ mortis: Lux

Sempiterna et redemptio vere nostræ

Orta est eis.

O stupenda nativitas,

Parvulus enim natus est nobis,

Magnus hic erit Jesus Filius Dei.

Et Filius

Patris summi,

Datus est nobis.

Ab arce summa prædictum sic erat.

Et factus est principatus super humerum ejus.

Ut cœlos regat atque arva.

Et vocabitur nomen ejus,

Messias, Sother, Emmanuel, Sabaoth, Adonai.

Admirabilis,

Radix David,

Consiliarius

Dei Patris,

Deus

Qui creavit omnia,

Fortis

Barathri claustra perimens teterrima

Pater futuri sæculi,

Rex omnipotens et cuncta regens,

Princeps Pacis

Hic et in ævum.

Multiplicabitur ejus imperium.

In Hierusalem, Judæa, sive Samaria,

Et pacis non erit finis,

Per sæcula sempiterna,

Super solium David et super regnum ejus sedebit, Et regni meta sui non erit aliqua.

Et confirmet illud,

In fidei pignore.

Et corroboret in judicio, et justitia,

Judex cum venerit judicare sæculum.

A modo

Illi debetur gloria, laus et jubilatio.

Et usque in sempiternum.

Hic cantent usque ad finem:

Ab ortu solis usque occiduos,

ad fines mundi orbis per climata

laus Creatori resonet congrua.

Amen dicant omnia.

Let two clerks of the second bench, in silk copes, chant this Lesson together in the pulpit:

I will sing praises to God for ever, Who formed me in His right hand and redeemed me on the cross with the purple blood of his Son.

Then alternately:

The Lesson of Esias the Prophet.

In which is foretold the glorious birth of Christ.

Thus says the Lord,

Father, Son and Holy Spirit, by whom are created all things in heaven and earth,

The people that walked in darkness

whom you created, whom the enemy expelled from Paradise by a subtle fraud and led captive with him into hell,

Have seen a great light.

And at midnight strange brightness shone on the shepherds,

On those who dwell in the shadow of death, a light

Everlasting, and our true redemption,

has shined.

O stupendous birth!

For unto us a child is born,

Jesus the Son of God; he shall be great,

A son

Of the highest Father

is given to us

So had it been foretold from the throne on high.

And the government shall be upon his shoulder,

That he may rule heaven and earth.

And his name shall be called

Messiah, Soter, Emmanuel, Sabaoth, Adonai,

Wonderful,

The Root of David,

Counsellor

of God the Father,

God

who created all things,

Mighty,

overthrowing the hideous gates of hell,

The everlasting Father,

King Almighty and governing all,

Prince of Peace

Here and for ever,

Of the increase of his government

In Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria,

And peace there shall be no end,

For ever and ever,

Upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom

and there shall be no bounds to his reign,

To order it

In the bonds of faith

And to establish it with judgment and with justice,

when he shall come as Judge to judge the world.

From henceforth

to him be due glory, praise and rejoicing

and for ever and ever.

Here let them sing together to the end:

From the rising of the sun to its setting

let fitting praise resound to the Creator

through all places to the ends of the world

and let everything say Amen.

By gum!

2012-01-01T00:32:00.002Z

And here was I thinking that I was an all-Irish product. My mother, at seven minutes past 2011, reveals that my great-grandmother, one Mary Burnell, was a Yorkshirewoman.

Happy new year, everyone.

To elevate or not to elevate

2011-12-31T15:07:00.001Z

Not that long ago I was upbraided for my unrubrical celebration of the Mass. I was somewhat stung, as I thought that I do take a lot of care do say the black and do the red, as Fr Z would put it. My particular offence was that
1) I elevated the Host and Chalice high after each consecration, and
2) not high enough for the 'Per Ipsum'.
It was pointed out to me that the rubric directs, after the Consecration that the priest

Hostiam consecratam ostendit populo

and, after the chalice:

Calicem ostendit populo.

The priest is to show the Host and Chalice to the people, and no more. This is underlined by the instruction that at the Per Ipsum, the priest is actually to elevate the Host (on the paten) and Chalice:

Accipit patenam cum hostia et calicem, et utrumque elevans, dicit: Per ipsum…

Therefore, I was instructed, I should lift chalice and paten high for the Per Ipsum, and merely present (as it were) the Host and Chalice after the consecration.

I took the point that this was indeed what the text said, but mutinously continued to maintain my practice, only with an uneasy conscience, on the grounds that

a) my practice was sanctioned by tradition,
b) I thought the other looked silly and (I'm afraid)
c) I wanted to.

I thought to mention this on a post that Fr Z put up yesterday, and then went to check some facts. Interestingly, I discovered that the Extraordinary Form also directs that the priest after each Consecration:

ostendit populo [Hostiam & Calicem]

and, at the Per Ipsum,

elevans parum Calicem cum Hostia, dicit 'omnis honor et gloria'.

Now it is very clear from a hundred liturgical commentaries that the 'showing' at the Consecration is a lifting up high, while the elevation at the Per Ipsum is parum, a little.

Here the Sarum use may be of help, being more explicit. The Celebrant is directed to

elevet [hostiam] super frontem ut possit a populo videri

(let him raise the Host over his forehead that it might be seen by the people)
and

elevet calicem usque ad pectus vel ultra caput.

(let him raise the Chalice to his chest or over his head)

In using the same expressions in the same places, Mgr Bugnini was clearly intending that the rubric be interpreted exactly as it always has been interpreted otherwise he would have made a change (as he did in requiring that the paten be involved in the Per Ipsum). And therefore, I contend, it is those who do not lift the Host high after the Consecrations who are being unrubrical.

There is, by way of interest, another useful connection that can be made. I do not think that this has any ancient witness to it (unless some of you know different), but surely there is an interesting parallel between the elevation and the crucifixion:

John 3:14— And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,

John 8:28 —When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he,

John 12:32—And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. (ESV)

At least catechetically, then, there is an important connection to make in people's minds here.

Christmas Prefaces

2011-12-18T08:29:00.002Z

First, the ordinary tone, which to my mind definitely needed some adjustment:

And I thought I'd have a go at setting it to the tonus sollemnior (Ben having reminded me in the last post). It actually seems to work rather better than I thought it might, though the proof of the Christmas pudding will be in the eating.
If these are any use to you, I dare say you could easily print them off. I wrote them on A4 paper, so if you're using American Letter, you might need to scale down a little.
The resolution could be higher, and I could replace these with a clearer version if anyone thinks it a good idea.

Prefaces

2011-12-17T16:25:00.001Z

On the whole I am pretty happy with the new translation. One thing, though, that I find particularly irritating is that the prefaces have not been set well to music. My spies tell me that the musicians had almost no time to reset the prefaces once Mgr Moroney had stopped tinkering, so did a rush job.
No doubt many celebrants have experienced the same thing. Particularly awkward is the fact that the musicians don't seem to have noticed that prefaces fall into three 'paragraphs' which need separate musical treatment. Some of the settings remind me of priests who can't read music, and have a go at vaguely fitting the tune to the words without preparing it first (we've all encountered those priests).

The preface for Advent I wasn't very good, nor others I've looked at, so I thought that I'd have a go myself. Here's the one for this weekend, Advent II: actually the one in the missal is very nearly okay, and I've agreed with it almost everywhere. But it was good for me to get the practice. And I prefer square notes for this sort of thing.

Services of Reconciliation

2011-12-16T15:21:00.003Z

Yesterday I held two 'reconciliation services' in the parish; one in the morning at our smaller centre, where some twenty (more senior) people came and another in the evening in the main church. I had asked two other priests to help, and they kindly came. The participants? Ten. From a Sunday Mass attendance of between 250 and 350.
I have read so often that the reason people do not come to confession is that the priests are failing in their duty to preach about it, or make opportunities. In this parish, I offer an hour and a half every week (distributed through the three churches) (when I sit alone saying my breviary), and a conveniently timed 'reconciliation service' during Advent and Lent. And I do preach about it. Occasionally very directly.
In the past, I have been told that it is 'forbidden' to hear confessions during Mass. I know that this advice is false.
I should add that the times are calculated to be easy and available, and that the opportunity in the main church coincides with the hour's exposition of the Blessed Sacrament that happens daily.
I know excellent priests who hear confessions before every Mass; these tend to be city-centre parishes, and this would simply not work here.
So, I would be interested to know whether anyone has tried the experiment of having visiting priests hearing confessions during Sunday Mass a couple of times a year.
Or, frankly, I would be grateful for any advice at all.
I am very depressed about this. My parishioners clearly think that they are saints. Some may be, but most, I suspect, are no more saintly than I am. Well, perhaps a little bit more.

Wildlife

2011-12-16T14:51:00.001Z

I have been receiving emails encouraging me to engage in some sort of competition. The prize, apparently, is to see some arctic monkeys. I do enjoy those David Attenborough programmes, and have seen polar bears (not nearly as cuddly as one might suppose), though never arctic monkeys.

Someone suggested that it might be the name of some pop group. Sounds very unlikely to me, though of course the Beetles are named after insects. What's become of them? I haven't heard them for some time.
But now I have a worry: if I enter this competition, I might stand some remote chance of winning. And if I won, perhaps they would make me go to the performance. I don't think I should like that. Flower power was never my thing.

Mythapprehensions

2011-12-12T10:52:00.001Z

I had an enquiry this morning from one of my ecumenical opposite numbers about the song A Partridge in a Pear Tree. She had heard that this was a sort of catechetical song of the Catholic Underground during penal times. This is an explanation that I have heard, too, but I have to say that I don't find it remotely convincing. The only thing that it might teach is a child to count backwards from ten; what one might want a child to learn is not that there are seven sacraments so much as what those sacraments are—children would learn that there are seven anyway.
Several of these sorts of crypto-Catholic practices were described in Fr Mark Elvins' book Old Catholic England, and I hesitate to say that I think that lots of these connections are simply fantasy, romantic invention, but, having hesitated [……], there, I'm afraid that I do think that they are just that.
I'd be interested to hear if anyone knows any more about it: I'd be very pleased if any sort of real connection were made between these things and the recusant period.

Extraordinary Form Train and a very Ordinary Form church

2011-12-10T11:03:00.001Z

While outside the church today, waiting to hear our 8-year-olds first Confessions, I was pleased to hear a chuffing in the distance from the railway line that runs past St Peter's. It's 34067 Tangmere, on the way to Bath.

What if?

2011-12-03T15:39:00.001Z

…and I write as a financial dunce (please don't rub it in)…

Catholics, Christians, were to put their money into those British Islamic banks that don't do usury? Or even have our own, similar, institutions?

In the end, has the ancient prohibition of usury been shown to have more behind it than might have appeared, say, ten years ago?

Golly!

2011-12-02T15:21:00.001Z

Golly!
Irony, do you think?

Giving the Jerusalem Bible a Belt

2011-11-28T11:31:00.001Z

On Mondays I tend to start my week reading over the Gospel for next Sunday, moving on later days to commentaries. Next Sunday we will read the beginning of St Mark's Gospel, and, as usual this morning, I read it first in the Greek, and then used various translations to get the best sense. But I discovered a peculiarity. In 1:6, the strange clothing adopted by St John the Baptist is described:

καὶ ἦν ὁ Ἰωάννης ἐνδεδυμένος τρίχας καμήλου καὶ ζώνην δερματίνην περὶ τὴν ὀσφὺν αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἔσθων ἀκρίδας καὶ μέλι ἄγριον.

The Vulgate has:

Et erat Joannes vestitus pilis cameli, et zona pellicea circa lumbos ejus, et locustas et mel silvestre edebat.

Douai-Rheims:

And John was clothed with camel’s hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and he ate locusts and wild honey.

The English Standard Version (basically RSV) has:

Now John was clothed with camel’s hair and wore a leather belt round his waist and ate locusts and wild honey.

All pretty straightforward (the translations, I mean, not St John's clothing). However, when we come to the Jerusalem Bible, we get:

John wore a garment of camel-skin, and he lived on locusts and wild honey.

Strange. Where's the belt gone? A problem of the Lectionary, I thought; these things aren't unknown. I've even discovered a passage in a Gospel where the vital word 'not' is left out (though I can't remember where). But I went to my JB and checked. No belt. Okay; the plot thickens. What about the New Jerusalem Bible?

John wore a garment of camel-skin, and he lived on locusts and wild honey.

Just the same as old JB, in fact.

Perhaps there is a variant text in the Greek; this Sunday's Gospel had one; either 'Watch' or 'Watch and pray'. But no, there seems to be no disagreements among the Greek versions; John did indeed have a leather belt.

Finally, I tracked it down in the Jerusalem Bible (original) French version:

Jean était vêtu d'une peau de chameau et mangeait des sauterelles et du miel sauvage.

But a footnote adds:

Var: Jean était vêtu de poils de chameau et se ceignait les reins d'un pagne de peau.

There we are. But nobody else seems to think that not wearing a belt is an option. It's just a JB oddity, and, no doubt, they have found a manuscript to back them up, but not one that anyone else seems to have found.

It raises a point, though: what are we supposed to hear at Mass? The biblical critics' version, or that which the Church asks of us in the Latin original Lectionary?

On another point in this verse, the commentary by Dom Paul Delatte, once Abbot of Solesmes is delightfully French: for him it isn't enough to know that John ate locusts (sauterelles; grasshoppers)—he wants to know what they tasted like!

Les sauterelles de Palestine sont longues et fortes, grosses à peu prés comme des crevettes, et, assaisonnées de certaine manière, elles en ont le goût, paraît-il.

Palestinian grasshoppers are long and strong, roughly as big as prawns, and seasoned in a certain way, it would appear that they taste like them.

I have a delightful image of French gourmets haring off to the Judean desert and demanding salade des sauterelles avec sauce Marie Rose, perhaps followed by Gâteau du Foret Noir. Or perhaps not.

—and (a later thought) it seems that Delatte considered that John the Baptist might well have enjoyed his sauterelles assaisonnées de certaine manière. Perhaps with a glass of light Chablis?

St John Fisher

2011-11-24T14:35:00.000Z

A couple of posts ago I mentioned that the Archbishop of Westminster has written a book about St John Fisher. It is now available, published by Alive Publishing.

ISBN 976-1-906278-13-7
or go here.

There is a very real danger that, simply because a man is Archbishop of Westminster, a book might (a) be published and (b) be dismissed by serious scholars.

This book is a real contribution both to scholars and to Christians generally who want to know more about Fisher. At the book launch last night in Archbishop's House, the eminent historian Eamon Duffy admitted privately that he had expected to have to 'flannel', because of who the author was, but he acknowledged that this work genuinely breaks new ground and contributes to our understanding of Fisher, not just as martyr, but as theologian and pastor. That is no mean accolade from our foremost English Reformation scholar.

Professor Jack Scarisbrick, who also spoke (and what an extraordinary man he is—the father (maybe with Haigh) of revisionist Reformation history) made the comment that whereas St Charles Borromeo has been considered the patron saint of the clergy, St John Fisher has an equal—if not greater—claim to the title. I have long thought this, and am delighted to hear it reaffirmed by so great an authority.

Professor Scarisbrick also mentioned Archbishop Peter Amigo in his talk, something that, I thought might set the foundations of the home of Cardinal Bourne a-trembling. But that's another story.

Do I recommend the book? Well, I've yet to finish it, but so far, I recommend it very highly. It is high time that St John Fisher was written about as confessor (in the old sense); as a genuinely holy and intelligent man who was saintly in his life as well as his death. It is good, too, to set him in his context and compare him to his contemporaries.

As for the launch, somebody asked me why I was invited. I said I didn't know, but I was pleased to be there. Thinking about it, I think that it was probably a mistake, and that they had meant to invite Fr Tim Finigan.

On other matters, I do apologize for the thin posting; parish work has been very pressing, extraordinarily so, and I've not been feeling at all well. Say a prayer, please.
No, don't assume it's anything serious; just lurgies, but debilitating ones. Good for my soul, if not my body.

From the Excellent St Thomas More Legal Centre

2011-10-27T11:28:00.000+01:00

THOMAS MORE LEGAL CENTRE

A Company limited by Guarantee, Co. No. 6381347

Registered Charity No. 1122184

www.thomasmorelegal.org.uk

IT IS TIME TO STAND UP FOR OURSELVES

A Catholic Mental Health Worker has been sacked by the NHS for gross misconduct. What was her offence? Treating elderly patients with callous disregard? Physically abusing mental patients? Ignoring patients who cried out for water? No, it was none of these. The charge against her is that she ‘distributed material which individuals may find offensive’.

Her ‘gross misconduct’ in fact arose from an amicable discussion with a colleague, NOT a patient, who worked as a receptionist organising abortion appointments. In the course of which she handed over the booklet Forsaken in which five women recount their experience of abortion and the mental problems they suffered afterwards. The colleague did not object to receiving the book and indeed is not being called as a witness by the NHS. The booklet contained no graphic images, and it was never suggested that it should be given to patients. The NHS objects to it because the booklet presents a ‘religious view’ of abortion, because one of the women talking about how she now views her Abortion regards it as a sin. Is the expression of a religious view now a sacking offence in Britain?

The Mental Health Worker’s case is being fought at the Central London Employment Tribunal on November 15^th. Her legal representation is being provided by the Thomas More Legal Centre. In addition, we are planning to bring a case against the NHS in the County Court under the Human Rights Act for failure to respect the nurse’s right to freedom of expression, and her right to freedom of religion. Winning such a case would set an important precedent in defending the rights of Catholics to discuss their faith and beliefs with colleagues without fear

The Thomas More Legal Centre has a strong track record of dealing successfully with similar cases of discrimination through quiet representation of clients’ interests to employers who may have misinterpreted the law and failed to respect freedom of religion. The Centre has for example successfully represented a Catholic trainee Doctor who was told he would not be allowed to qualify unless he referred patients for Abortions, and also successfully represented two Catholic Nurses who were moved to an Abortion Clinic against their wishes. It has done this voluntary legal work supported by very modest funds to cover inescapable expenses of the charity. The Trustees have always felt that they should not make any public appeal for funds for the charity until a case arose which would have to go to court.

That time has now come. We are appealing for help from everyone who believes in the freedom for Catholics to say what they believe and keep their jobs. We need funds to meet the costs of legal representation and, as there are no certainties however strong the case, to cover the risk of County Court costs being awarded against our client (which could be up to £25,000). And we need prayer.

The Thomas More Legal Centre is pursuing the case in the confidence that the Catholic community will come together to support this Mental Health Worker . Because this is not just an injustice being done to an individual, it is a threat to the freedom of the whole Catholic community to express its beliefs.

Donations can be made by cheque (made out to Thomas More Legal Centre) to The Treasurer, Thomas More Legal Centre, Palmyra Chambers, 46 Legh Street, Warrington WA1 1UJ; or by bank transfer to Yorkshire Bank, 34 Princes Street, Stockport, Cheshire, SK1 1RE; sort code 05-09-33, account no. 43102195 (Thomas More Legal Centre). If you are a UK tax-payer making a gift by cheque, please send a signed statement with your name and address asking for the donation to be treated as Gift Aid.

Thank you for standing up for Catholic freedom.

Richard Kornicki CBE

Chairman of Trustees

A new book on St John Fisher

2011-10-26T14:00:00.000+01:00

I am very happy to learn that a new biography of St John Fisher has been written, and will be published by Alive Publishing in the next few weeks. It has been written by none other than our own Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols. I will provide more details when I know them.

Along with my namesake, Fr Tim Finigan, I have long had a devotion to St John Fisher. His role as a martyr is well known, but I have always felt strongly that, had the course of history in these islands gone another way, and St John lived the full course of his natural life, that he would have been canonizable (is that a word?) as a Confessor.

Born a Yorkshireman (at Beverley) in 1469, he grew up in what I think we would call a middle-class family and showed early academic promise which led to his gaining a place at Cambridge University in 1484, where he early attached himself to the new approach to studies and theology now known as the Christian Humanist Movement. He followed what I think we can only call a brilliant academic career, and came to the notice of the extraordinary Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII. She has been variously judged by historians, supposedly being responsible with the widow of Edward IV, Elizabeth Woodville, for bringing the Wars of the Roses to an end by uniting the Lancastrians (in the person of Henry Tudor) to the Yorkists by the marriage of Henry to Elizabeth of York, and also for managing thereby to get her son onto the throne to which he had only the very slimmest of claims. Be that as it may, John Fisher had the highest regard for her and thought of her as little short of a saint.

Elected Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, he managed to persuade his wealthy friend Margaret Beaufort to endow two new colleges, St John's (he himself consecrated the chapel) and Christ's College, to study the new approach to theology and the scriptures; he attracted to Cambridge scholars of Greek and Hebrew, so that the Bible might be studied in its original languages.

It was inevitable that he be drawn into Royal circles, and the royal favour got him the diocese of Rochester, the poorest in the land. In later years he was nominated to Winchester, the richest, but refused it. He was elected Chancellor of Cambridge University, and pursued its interests at court assiduously. On the deaths of Margaret Beaufort and her son Henry VII, Fisher was chosen as the preacher.

The growth of the Lutheran Reformation disturbed him, and, at the instance of King Henry VIII, he preached a famous sermon at St Paul's, when Luther's writings were symbolically burned. He wrote assiduously against the Protestants, and has been suspected as the real author of the Assertio Septem Sacramentum, for which Henry VIII took the credit (and the title Defensor Fidei). He also wrote many spiritual works, such as his commentary on the Psalms.

He became something of a tutor and friend to the new King Henry VIII and his Queen, Catherine of Aragon, sharing with the Queen a real interest in fostering the new Christian Humanism, she promoting the scholar Juan Luis Vives, who served also as her chaplain.

Fisher could have become like so many other talented clerics of his day, a dedicated climber of the social ladder. But in his own life he maintained a strict austerity which kept him focussed on the one thing that matters. It was said that he cut a window in the wall of his study so that he could see the Blessed Sacrament at all times when writing. If there were people in Rochester whom the clergy would not visit because of the stench of their poverty, Fisher himself would go. When his rooms were searched for his valuables after his arrest, the King's commissioners, finding at last a single locked chest in his bedchamber, broke it open to reveal only a hair shirt.

The matter of the Kings's setting aside of Queen Catherine and his attempted marriage of Anne Boleyn is very well known, as is Fisher's part in it.

I remain deeply moved by his final hours; called early in the morning to be told he must die, he thanked his messenger, then rolled over and contentedly went back to sleep. Later, he dressed in his best clothes ('for this is my wedding day'), read the Bible one last time ('this is eternal life, to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent', John 17:3) and commented 'here indeed is learning to last me until my life's end'.

St John Fisher is surely the most wonderful patron for the secular priesthood in England and Wales: we already have St Thomas of Canterbury: St John deserves to be better known, in my view. And thank you, Archbishop Vincent, for bringing him to our attention once more. I look forward to reading the book.

Arrived!

2011-10-25T16:14:00.000+01:00

There's no need to post a picture, because there have been so many on the net, but today our new CTS Missals have arrived; a full one and a study edition for St Peter's, Shoreham, and a chapel edition for Christ the King, Steyning (because the altar is very small).

The doorbell rang for a delivery, and I hoped that it would be the missals, but the deliveryman (a young Pole) seemed to be making very light of the (huge) box. So I knew it wasn't them.

But it was: the vast box contained the three books nestling under a pile of air-filled plastic bags; the books themselves are much lighter than I imagined; though the full edition is quite substantial in size fatness-wise, its pages are actually only A4. It is a handsome book, smelling of leather, and with six very nicely-made ribbons in different colours. No Latin section, which surprised me, since our former altar Missal had the Missale Parvum bound in with it. The much-famed plates are very nice, though I was a bit disappointed that the gold leaf original doesn't look very gold in its reproduction.
The edges of the missal are nicely gilded, though, and the book comes with a cloth wrapper to keep it in good condition. There are page tabs for the whole Liturgy of the Eucharist, though some overlying each other which makes them a bit difficult to handle. And, more seriously, the tabs are attached to the wrong pages; normally they are affixed to the page before the one you turn to, so that you are turning actually onto the right page. These are affixed on the page itself, so that, turning over, one has to turn a page back to get to the right one. That is a mistake and should be rectified in later editions.
However, this is certainly the most handsome new liturgical book in English I have seen so far in my life. Not that that is saying much, but this is a very nice book and a great improvement on its predecessor.

What is particularly striking is that the Gospel for the Palm Sunday procession (which appears in the Missal, of course) is only in the RSV version. Let us hope that this presages the adoption of some version of the RSV (sensitively updated, perhaps, 'you', rather than 'thou') for the general lectionary down the line.

The chapel edition of the Missal is smaller, not bound with leather, and the pages edged with pink rather than gold. There is no book-cosy, either, and page tabs only for the first pages of the Eucharistic Prayers (and also on the wrong pages). Other than that, the edition is very nice too.

The study edition, bound in plastic, and printed on white, rather than cream, paper, isn't as handsome as the others, but is still very nice. I will use it as a 'book at the chair', and hope that its present propensity to close as soon as I open it and set it down, will ease with use.

The CTS is to be congratulated. Producing books of this quality cannot have been easy in our present set-up. Even the individual boxes the books came in are handsome, and shall be recycled for some other good purpose.

Revolution 2

2011-10-23T13:10:00.004+01:00

I think what demarcated the two parties that emerged in the wake of the Second Vatican Council was not at first theology (either dogmatic or moral) but something else. There had been an awakening of what one might call a moral imperative to do something about the state of the world; the Second World War had ended a mere seventeen years previously, and the horrors of war, brought by the media for the first time into every living room in the comfortable ‘first world’, the devastation of the atomic bomb, the death camps, made those with a conscience ponder what the world was becoming.

There was a picture, popular in Irish homes, called The Peace Sowers; it showed Good Pope John and President John F. Kennedy walking together in a ploughed field, casting seed; living in the shadow of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the imperative for peace seemed all-important. Yet there were still wars, especially (in the States) against what appeared to be a Communist threat—Korea, and then Vietnam later—which seemed to be going nowhere. They were guided by old men, from the pre-nuclear world who, like Senator McCarthy, destroyed their own arguments by over-stating them. The younger generation was impatient with all the old way of doing things; ‘make love, not war’ seemed a sensible proposition, given where war had got us and what war was now capable of doing.

When Pope John opened his windows to the world to ‘blow off the dust that had accumulated on the throne of Peter since the time of Constantine’, his words found a resonance with the young who wanted a similar revolution in the world. He was pushing at an open door. All the old certainties were to be reviewed and, if found wanting, discarded. At St John’s Seminary at Wonersh, Fr Michael Hollings (then the Catholic chaplain at Oxford University) in 1963 gave the students an electrifying retreat in which he urged them not simply to follow the seminary rules, but to examine their whole way of life, and if something was in their opinion wrong, then to work to get it changed, because simply going along with the old way of doing things was to collaborate in it, to give passive assent to something that was being perpetuated when it shouldn’t.

And this was the watchword. Throughout the 1950s, the Church had been extraordinarily energetic in her missions and her outlook. Vocations were abundant, especially to the missionary congregations, and these young clergy and religious were the people to be particularly energized by the new ideas.

‘What if,’ a young sister might say, ‘instead of attending Terce, Sext and None, I stayed working in the hospital? Wouldn’t that achieve even more good? Isn’t the Office sung in common actually a hindrance to doing God’s work in the world?’ These long sleeves on my habit could harbour infection. And this wimple makes me a danger when I drive on the roads. And anyway, doesn’t it frighten people off?

I really don’t think that these things were excuses for people wanting a more comfortable life. They were—misguided, in my opinion—attempts to live the Christian life more ‘authentically’ (in the existentialist cant of the day) in the service of our neighbour.

The Second Vatican Council—especially towards the end—seemed to be inclining in this same direction. I have commented before that really there were two councils; one in the Aula of St Peter’s, and the other, (more important, as it turned out) in the bars and restaurants all around St Peter’s, where the periti with their new ideas met journalists. Those journalists were not interested in the documents of the Council which mandated the retention of Latin, for instance: ‘dog bites man’ is never news. They were interested in change and revolution within the Catholic Church, and, fuelled by the speculations of the periti, and deprived of sight of the actual documents until they were published, change and innovation is what they reported in their newspapers. It caused a ferment. And that is what greeted the bishops when they returned to their dioceses; a Church on fire with the prospect of exciting and radical change.

What were the bishops to do? Reach for the fire extinguisher and tell everyone that they had got it wrong? Some tried that, but the majority decided to ride the wave and go for popularity.

Extraordinary Form in the Adur Valley

2011-10-20T17:43:00.000+01:00

Those who live in Sussex might care to know that there will be an Extraordinary Form Mass each fourth Sunday of the Month at Christ the King church, Steyning, beginning this Sunday, 23rd October, at 9.00am. The regular Wednesday morning Mass at 9.30am in St Peter's, Shoreham, will continue as before each week.

Revolution 1

2011-10-17T14:09:00.000+01:00

Robert Mickens, that bête noir of so many blogs, has written in the current edition of The Tablet of a new book published recently in Italy Mal di Chiesa, or Church Sickness.

The author is veteran Vatican journalist Gian Franco Svidercoschi, who covered the Council for the Ansa news agency and then worked two years (1983-85) as assistant editor of L'Osservatore Romano. Svidercoschi says the Catholic Church is ailing right now, not because Vatican II went too far, but because it was a "revolution, left only half done". His 120-page booklet is only one of a number of recent publications by committed Catholics here in Italy who are voicing alarm over the direction Pope Benedict appears to be taking the Church.

The word "revolution" is a telling one. For years the Church has been reassuring us that what happened in the 1960s was a "reform". The word "revolution" has tended to be used by those who resisted the changes, such as the eminent Michael Davis, and has been considered a very controversial term. So it is interesting to read the word being used by someone on the other side.

It really would seem to be only now that we are becoming able to get a bit of distance on the whole Vatican II episode and look at it with something like historical dispassion. Recently I completed a book which had to deal with that period (among others), and I felt that I could not just write another yah-boo account of the period; there have been far too many of these, from Xavier Rynne onwards, with a simplistic division of the parties in the council into 'goodies' and 'baddies', according to one's perspective.

Regular readers of this blog will probably be able to guess my own perspective fairly readily. But I did not want to make yet another Aunt Sally of those who differ from me: that does little to serve the cause of truth, and if my own perspective is to have any value at all it has to rest on truth.

Those of my persuasion are far too liable to caricature the 'liberal' wing in the 1960s as being deliberately malicious destroyers of two thousand years of history, enfants terribles who had managed to seize the wheel and had turned the Barque of Peter onto dangerous rocks, just to see what would happen. The 'liberals' were apt to caricature those of a traditional persuasion as being power-hungry despots with no care for the poor, or the Gospel; deliberate train-wreckers of reform, lacking vision, lacking faith, resisting all change simply on principle.

If we are to understand this period with hope of enlightenment, then we must firmly set aside such caricatures and try to start from the principle that all parties were zealous Christians who truly sought to do God's will.

I, for one,

2011-10-06T15:53:00.000+01:00

I, personally, do not wish to see the days of the criminal persecution of practising homosexuals return. I genuinely believe in 'live and let live', and I would rather win others round by persuasion. I hope that they would think the same thing as me, that they would rather persuade me than persecute me.

But I think that by them seeking to embrace marriage, a heterosexual lifestyle, simply with a difference in plumbing, as it were, they are actually doing themselves a disservice. They have all the advantages of unions with the civil partnership thing: it seems to me that by trying to imitate marriage they are admitting that, actually, there is something missing in the quality of their relationship.

Part of the problem is that we have failed to define marriage as what it should be, as necessarily involving openness to the gift of life, meaning children.

Once one has said that marriage is simply for the emotional, sexual, and (sometimes) economic interest of a man and woman, the question naturally arises 'why not for two men, or two women, too?'

Should the Government establish the union of two individuals of the same sex as what it calls 'marriage', I will never vote Conservative or Liberal Democrat again until the policy is reversed. And I, for one, will do my best to encourage others to think and do the same.

The Conservative Party should be very careful of alienating its natural supporters in the hope of attracting a new constituency from other parties. That they would succeed in this is highly improbable: why should proles vote for a load of toffs, after all?

Our beloved leader simply wants to show that he is right-on. Down with it. And all those other things. Blairus revidvivus, in fact. He said a year ago that the Holy Father had 'made us sit up and listen'. Well, not very much, it would appear.

Save a life!

2011-10-02T13:50:00.000+01:00

I rarely re-post material from other blogs, but I have to repost this one, about an Iranian Protestant pastor condemned unjustly to death.

Blondpidge makes a number of suggestions that might perhaps do some good. If Iran is aware that the world is watching, it might (stop laughing!) be a little more circumspect about its actions.

Thank you to Blondpidge for bringing this to our attention.

Biretta tip to Mulier Fortis.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

2011-10-01T09:16:00.001+01:00

There are a great number of Koreans who consider that Thomas An Jung-geun, a man who assassinated the Japanese Prime Minister in 1909 and was executed a few months later, might be a candidate for beatification or even canonization. The Church had condemned the murder, but in 1993, Cardinal Kim of Seoul offered a public Mass for An, and now the archdiocese is preparing to initiate the beatification process.

The comparison is being made with Joan of Arc. Well, I am now going to risk alienating all my new-found French friends by saying that I have never really been able to get my head around la Pucelle.

I mean, if An, then why not Anthony Babington?

Or Guy Fawkes?

Or Michael Collins?

Or Eamon de Valera?

There will be those who will redouble their efforts for the beatification of Francisco Franco. Or even Augusto Pinochet! After all (despite a little skulduggery on the side) these two did fight the enemies of the Church as well as those they considered the political enemies of their country.

And what about the other side? Oh, the list could go on and on.

I do hope that there is no suggestion that An be beatified as a martyr!

You can read more about An's potential for beatification here, on the UCA Asian Catholic news site. If you click on the 'opinion' button, make sure you're sitting down with a good glass of something strong.

Il faut que la France survive 7

2011-09-28T14:36:00.000+01:00

So why is it all so important to us that France survive?

The penny began to drop for me when I paid my first visit to Fontgombault Abbey in about 1984 or 5. It was late December, and there were some very hardy scouts in their blue uniforms camping in the grounds. Several of them would attend every office in the freezing church, dressed only in their uniforms (shorts!) without even a jacket. A few even came to Matins, long before dawn. What struck me most forcibly was the devout way these teenagers made the sign of the cross; not the hasty dabs made by other nations, but a slow, reverent, deliberate and beautiful gesture.

It seems that France is a country where it is very hard to do anything half-heartedly; its extremes are very important and held to tenaciously. Again, at Fontgombault, I was struck by the fact that in the monastery there were then at least sixty priests. But in the village, quarter of a mile from the monastery gates, there was a parish church which had to share a single priest with umpteen other churches. It would not occur to the monks for one minute to celebrate Mass for the parish, nor would it occur to more than one or two of the parishioners to attend one of the vast array of daily Masses in the Abbey. The secular priesthood is in a bad way in many parts of France, but the monasteries, not just the traditional ones, are thriving.

In other words, in France you can certainly find the worst, and the worst is very bad. But you can also find the best, and the best is really wonderful. And there are always surprises.

Take Paris, for instance. Given the nature of a capital city, and the state of the faith outside, in, say, the diocese of Sens-Auxerre, one might assume that the faith in Paris would be in pretty bad shape. But not at all; in fact, the diocese of Paris would appear to flourish enviably. I hear that the seminaries are doing relatively well. New movements exist here and there and keep the prayer life going. I visited Paris a few weeks ago, and each Mass I attended, including on weekdays, there was a substantial congregation. I never saw rubrics violated; priests were properly vested and said Mass devoutly. I saw extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion at Notre Dame, ( the congregation was huge and in terms of Canon Law their use might be said to be justified); the ministers were all men, wore suits and ties and behaved very properly and reverently. The only disedifying thing I saw was at Sacre-Coeur; a worshipper had presented him or herself at Communion time and asked the priest for a blessing instead of Communion. Well, the priest indignantly refused and, holding the Blessed Sacrament, roundly told the person off. Then, before giving the blessing, he went off on one (as my secretary would say) and harangued us all saying that if we weren't fit to receive Communion, we shouldn't be in church at all, that we polluted the very air with our foul sinful breath. It was really dreadful, and I felt deeply for the poor individual who had inadvertently sparked off this intemperate diatribe. My ear for French accents isn't that great, but I think the priest might have been Polish.

The highlight of my visit to Paris was unquestionably the feast of the Assumption. I attended Mass at Notre Dame, celebrated by Cardinal Ouellet. The music was Gregorian chant sung by a small (unsatisfactorily amplified) schola, who took the modern Marcel Pérès approach. It was very effective. Everything was done splendidly and, to my great surprise there were two (two!) processions in honour of our Lady on each evening; on the eve of the feast by boat around the islands, and a walking procession on the day itself. There were huge crowds participating—again to my edification and surprise.

There is a serious sense of purpose in the French Church; at one time I used to say that France was in a bad way, but the pilot light is still lit. In many parts of the country that is true, but I think that one can now find many places where the faith is very strong indeed. The Traditionalist corner is powerful and punches well above its weight, but it is not really very big (though bigger than in other countries). There is a lot of other good stuff, too (as in some of these new movements). It will take time to develop, but I think we can see something of the programme for the Church's recovery beginning to emerge above all in France.

I know very well that France still has massive problems with too few (and sometimes unbelieving) clergy, hopeless bishops, lacklustre liturgies, dying active orders of religious, arrogant modernists and the rest. But there is a great deal of energy, too; it just does not tend to be linked up with the hierarchy yet. Sooner or later, the hierarchy are going to realise that it is in these otherwise despised groups that all the future of the Church is to be found. And then it will have to come to terms with them. But they are very strong, and because of this gallic love of polarised and strong positions, they will put off the evil day for as long as possible. And meanwhile the Fontgombaults, the Communities of Jerusalem, the Communities of St Jean and the like will continue to grow and send out foundations as in the past.

We need something like this in the British Isles, but without that indomitable spirit that the French have, I doubt we will achieve it. The community of St John have already made a foundation in London. Its methods are unlikely to transfer to the English, any more than happened in the past; but their presence is very welcome and may truly inspire some good growth in this land.

You see, il faut que la France survive!

Stone

2011-09-28T07:44:00.000+01:00

Stone, in Staffordshire, has connections with two holy men, both called Dominic. The first was Blessed Dominic Barberi, who opened a small mission here—and on one occasion got stoned. People threw stones at him, I mean. Not the other thing. The little chapel he built still stands, and some years ago I was privileged to celebrate Mass there.

St Dominic is the other great Dominic; the remarkable Mother Margaret Hallahan established the first active Dominican sisters in Britain at Stone, which is now the mother house for the Congregation of St Catherine of Siena. It has a marvellous church, which it shares with the parish, and the sisters run a school and a nursing home.

Mother Margaret Hallahan

She had a friendship and long correspondence with Fr Faber of the London Oratory,

which may account for their similarity in appearance.

The sanctuary and sisters' choir to the left

The sanctuary from the sisters' choir; Mother Margaret is buried very simply

at the altar end of the choir.

Long view with some Dominican friars who kindly offered some atmosphere.

This is Bishop William Ullathorne, Bishop of Birmingham and a great friend of the

community. He, too, is buried with great simplicity in the church.

Some time I must do a post on this extraordinary man.

His simple tomb (below) is in the floor of this chapel, there being also an effigy against the wall. Perhaps the effigy used to stand over the grave slab.

The cloister is a full one; the only remaining Dominican full cloister in this country, somebody told me.

And finally, in a monastery garden…

Solemn Profession

2011-09-26T12:09:00.000+01:00

On Saturday I drove a long way; to Stone in Staffordshire and back for the Solemn Religious Profession of Sister Ann Catherine Swailes as a Dominican sister. It was my privilege to have prepared and received Sister Ann into the Church some years ago, and so the Profession was a very special occasion for me.

Before the ceremony, with a picture of the foundress, the remarkable Mother Margaret Mary Hallahan:

and, a rather blurred after-picture.

Many congratulations to Sister Ann Catherine. Ad multos annos!

Hatred

2011-09-25T13:48:00.000+01:00

I'm sorry this has come late, but I have had a very, no frantically, busy week. Celebrating Mass this morning, I found myself stumbling again and again with the new translation, microphones &c, and preaching very lack-lustredly.

But I can't let one incident go by entirely without comment. Fr Ray Blake, who is one of my dearest friends, has been sent a most unpleasant communication, accusing him, essentially, of inciting hatred and bigotry against gay people on his blog, and, essentially, threatening him with a scandal by involving his (and my) superiors.

'Hatred' and 'Bigotry' are words often used by secularists about religious people. It is such a strange comment to make. Now I think that one does encounter it among some Christians in some places; I understand that in some places in the United States certain Protestant Christians feel it their duty to display signs saying 'God hates fags' and similar things. Never, ever, have I heard or seen anything of the sort from a Catholic, however opinionated. And never, ever, have I heard or seen anything of the sort from any Christian, Protestant or Catholic, in this country. I'm not saying these have never happened; only that I have never witnessed them.

God hates nobody. God hates nothing that he has made. God loves gays, lesbians, even Richard Dawkins. Even me, which is really a miracle of tolerance.

Thinking, even writing, that gay people might be better off being continent if they wish to live the full Christian life may be disagreed with, but slinging around cheap accusations of bigotry does nothing even for the gay cause, if truth is what they are after. And this is as true for Christians as for Stonewall.

We live in a multicultural society, and we have to rub along with all sorts of ways of life that we think are less than ideal. It's part of being human. But if certain members of the gay community demand tolerance and understanding, then they have to show it to others also. They demand we understand them; they must try and understand us, and not base their accusations on caricatures of what they think we believe.

The SSPX Preamble

2011-09-19T08:50:00.004+01:00

Messa in Latino has posted what he believes to be the content of now famous Preamble given to the Society of St Pius X to sign.

Essentially, he says, there are two points. The second point is simple; the Society must change its tone and become more respectful to legitimately constituted authority.

The first expands on the different sorts of adherence that a Catholic must give to different degrees of Church teaching, as expressed in Canon 750 and the Apostolic Letter Ad Fidem Tuendam of Pope John Paul II. Solemn teachings of the Church, proclaimed to be divinely revealed, must be adhered to with firm faith; nobody in the SSPX is going to quarrel with that. Bishop Fellay instanced our belief in the Trinity as an example. Then there are the dogmas that are not explicitly in scripture, but which the Church has taught consistently or else proclaimed dogmatically; for instance the impossibility of the ordination of women or the wrongfulness of Euthanasia. Here too the SSPX is not expected to disagree. The third degree, however, regards the non-definitive teachings of the Magisterium of the Pope or College of Bishops, especially where there has been some degree of change, for example over the issue of usury. Since the Council explicitly (in the words of Pope John XXIII, if not Paul VI also) said that it wanted to define no new dogma, and though it makes assertions, they do not have a dogmatic nature of themselves, one may be cut a certain amount of slack.

Messa in Latino adds:

As the official communique of the Holy See reported, the Preamble left 'theological study and explanation of particular expressions and formulations present in the texts of the Second Vatican Council and of the Magisterium that followed it open to legitimate discussion.' It should be noted that the object of this discussion, which is expressly termed 'legitimate', is not only about the interpretation of documents, but of the text itself of the documents: the 'expressions and formulations' used in the Council documents. So we are well beyond mere hermeneutics; it has become permissible to scrutinize the words themselves (and not only the significance or interpretation of those words) which the Council Fathers chose when putting together the documents.
If the words used in the preamble and so in the official communique have a meaning, here we have a Copernican revolution in the approach to the Council. That is, a move from a mere exegetical level to a substantial one.… In his discourse of the 15th August, Bishop Fellay said that for Rome the Council was taboo, and therefore one was limited to the discussion of the external wrappings, that is of interpretation. Now, on the other hand, it is permissible to tackle also the heart of the matter. This implies furthermore that the controversial passages, insofar as they may be freely discussed, do not even demand that lesser degree of acceptance described as 'religious submission'.

Having said Mass, I've now reworked the translation, and I hope that it is clearer.Thanks to Eriugena for help with a mystery word!

Well, we must wait and see. But we live in interesting times.

I don't think The Tablet is going to like this one!

Rorate Caeli now has a fuller treatment of this topic

A Tribute

2011-09-19T07:49:00.001+01:00

Have you ever flown with RyanAir? I don't recommend the experience. But I do recommend this musical meditation on the subject.
Warning: if you don't like (even justifiable) strong language, don't press play!

H/T Eogh

Three Wassails for the Archdruid

2011-09-18T14:15:00.001+01:00

Archdruid Eileen does it again:

An interesting and, I think, enlightening comment from Jeremy Hardy on this week's news quiz (this link will expire on 23 September).

Regarding the total failure of the Large Hadron Collider to find any Higgs Bosons (my theory being that it's a bit too small for them to see) Jeremy Hardy remarks that it's this kind of thing which causes a higher proportion of physicists to believe in God and therefore incidentally makes physics not a "real science". After all, he remarks, we know chemistry works because we've got Boots. Although I suspect he's ignoring the existence of the Boots homoeopathic range. But Jeremy Hardy rightly points out that physicists eventually have that end point in their research. At the Big Bang - or even if they work out what was before it - at the Higgs Boson - or anything smaller - or whatever they decide may exist instead of it to give us all mass - at some point they're going to have to shrug their shoulders and say "maybe God did it." Maybe not Brian Cox, of course - who seems to believe in analternative higher being. And that has certainly been my experience.

The proper scientists I've known - physicists, theoretical chemists, even biochemists - seemed to have average or even above-average levels of religious belief. Not fundie 6-day-creation religion, because by definition these people can think clearly. But they certainly often have faith. Whereas the soft-scientists and almost-scientists - zoologists, economists, computer scientists - they don't. And I suspect it comes down to your priorities. Physicists and theoretical chemists are interested in truth and facts and mad stuff like that. Whereas zoologists are into fluffy bunnies, economists think human beings can actually control this world in some meaningful way and computer scientists just got into it because they thought it was a way to meet girls.

If the particle physicists have really spent about £3Bn of our money - that's 3-followed-by-11-zeroes pence, as Brian Cox would tell us - in an attempt to find something that doesn't exist, that's got to be an act of faith that outstrips the Oxford Martyrs, Christopher Columbus trying to find the Indies by sailing west, and even people tuning into Big Brother thinking it might be better this year. And what a waste of money - grief, £3Bn could have bailed Greece out for nearly a fortnight. But maybe, as Prof Brian would tell us, the basket-case Euro-zone countries will always be with us. Whereas the Large Hadron Collider will be quietly re-opened as a fairground ride in two years' time, and we'll forget what it was ever meant to be for.

Il Faut que la France Survive 6

2011-09-17T17:40:00.000+01:00

And so we find ourselves in the twentieth century.

Those secularists, in particular Georges Clemenceau, set their minds firmly against the Church, expelling many religious orders, several of whom came to England and did wonderful work. The Grande Chartreuse, having scented trouble, built the great Charterhouse of Parkminster in West Sussex, just in case (though I don't think it ever actually moved there). The Solesmes Benedictines founded Quarr on the Isle of Wight, and actually did live there for several years. And many orders of women came too and founded schools where they insisted on teaching in French, not English, and this chauvinistic impulse made many Catholic Englishwomen bilingual, to their, and their country's, benefit.

Clemenceau was every inch a child of the revolution. After the devastation of the First World War (in which France suffered truly appalling losses) he set about building a new Europe. In this he was assisted by Woodrow Wilson, the president of the USA, who was determined to 'get rid of all those old Kings' (or something like that). No doubt the idea was that it was precisely this old alliance of throne and altar which had led to monarchs being able to devastate their own and others' countries for some abstract notion of glory. Gott mit uns was a common notion on all sides, and it probably was a major contributor to the advance of secularism.

For the French, the gulf deepened between those who held to the old vision, and the secularists.

………It's just occurred to me that I never mentioned de Lammenais and the Ultramontanes in my account of the nineteenth century. Another time! ……

Come the nineteen-fifties, there was a great division in French society; the Church and the integrists on one side, and the workers and secularists on the other. Everyone knew that something had to be done to heal this wound, and it was as a result of this that the Worker Priest movement was born. The Church reached across the gulf to embrace the working world and, some would say, was making progress.

And then Vatican II happened.

It seemed that the Church herself had leapt that gulf, and in 1968 embraced the working people. The windows had been opened and the world and the Church were joined once more. The whole aesthetic of the Church was no longer elitist and separatist, but vernacular in every sense, of the people. Priests abandoned the soutane and embraced the grey suit and blue polo shirt. Choirs were dismissed, and the people would do the singing.

The trouble is that the average workman wasn't that more attracted to this than to what went before. In fact, probably less. He was not convinced that the Church had anything to say to him, and certainly he wasn't impressed by a priest who didn't dress like one, who clearly didn't have the courage of his convictions.

And the old Integrists were horrified at this sell-out, this tawdry abandonment of the vision of a millennium and a half. So they embraced their Gallican heritage and went their own way. But the word Gallican is important; there was not, is not, and cannot be a notion of breaking Roman Communion: it is an essential part of the Gallican 'creed' that it is part of the Catholic Church; simply that it exercises a certain independence of action. It is entirely within the (Integrist) French psyche that

(a) France has a mission for the Church and the world.
(b) France is the eldest daughter of the Church, and has an eldest daughter's privileges and responsibilities to teach her younger siblings.
(c) France is a loyal daughter of the Roman Church, but not her slave.
(d) The appalling division within French society is the work of the devil who seeks to strike just where it is most crucial that there be unity. It is France's greatest shame, and the Revolution is the greatest manifestation of this shame. The perpetuation of the celebration of the Revolution (July 14th and all that) is rubbing salt in the wound.

And hence the insistence of the Society of St Pius X and its co-runners that it has never ceased to be Catholic; rather it is doing its best to make the rest of the Church properly Catholic. One does not need to obey the Pope's sillier decrees to be a proper Catholic, in other words. There is more than simple blind obedience.

Within France, the trouble is that the Integrists have not really found a message that will speak to the masses. Le Pen and his political cronies are willing to use the Integrists, but they are not Integrists themselves. They lay on the Old Mass for their supporters, recognizing that there are a lot of committed Integrists who might well vote for them, but it is really just a flag of convenience. They can speak to the masses, but their message is about immigration and all those other things familiar to our own National Front. They are as republican as the other parties, in effect. The alliance between the Integrist Catholics and the Front Nationale is at best an alliance of convenience; the two in reality have very little in common except conservatism, of a sort.

So what holds this riven France together? Simply, the notion of being French. In all the troubles that beset that fascinating country, every party has been intensely proud of being French. They have disagreed about almost everything else, to the point of copious bloodshed, but the spirit of Clovis and his Franks is still alive to that extent. All of them agree that France is, simply, THE country to live in. It is, to them, self-evident. They have none of that irritating smugness of the Italians about Italy; it is simply self-evident to every intelligent person that France is the best.

And that is why, to them, il faut que la France survive.

In one more post, I'd like to look at why it is necessary for the rest of the world, for us, that France survive.

Well, quite!

2011-09-11T08:14:00.001+01:00

In last week's Tablet there was an interesting letter:

Discomfiting faith of the young?

Among some good coverage of World Youth Day I was surprised to read in Robert Mickens' 'Letter from Madrid' (27 August) remarks that implied that pilgrims had 'provoked' protesters by praying the Rosary. We must act in Christian charity, but this does not require us to hide the truth. While there may have been 'provocation' on the part of pilgrims, there was revolting conduct on the part of some protesters, which was not reported at all in Robert's letter.

Is it true that for an older generation we are simply discomfited by the very real faith of the young and wish they would join us bickering over the new Missal?

Well, quite!

Return

2011-09-04T15:20:00.000+01:00

I don't know if you have ever seen the film Cristo é fermato á Eboli? It was a bit how I felt in 2005 when I was appointed to be the Pastor to the Valle Adurni.

This morning, celebrating Mass for the first time for a year in the main church of the parish, I put the Blessed Sacrament in the hands of a teenager, into the same place that I had put the same Lord for the first time some six or seven years ago. And I saw a rosary ring there on her finger.

I wept. I hope nobody noticed, though my sight was rather blurred for the rest of the Communion line.

These moments make every moment of being a priest, all the annoyances and difficulties, worth while.

I'm home.

The Big Weekend!

2011-09-03T08:46:00.002+01:00

From the Adur Valley's newsletter this weekend:

The big news this week is, of course, the new translation of the Mass which begins today. There are few who like change, especially in the way we pray, and we have been using the now-past translation since 1975, most of a lifetime for most of us. Fr Dominic [the priest who kindly supplied my absence when I was on sabbatical] tells me that he has thoroughly gone through all the changes with you, so that it won’t be necessary to say anything further, but of course I am at your disposal as always, and if I can add anything, I will gladly do so.

Because of our natural resistance to change, I would ask one favour of you, and that is to hold back on criticism for a few weeks. As you know, I have been living in the seminary for the last year, and there we have been using the new translation since Ash Wednesday. All of us, down to the youngest student, found the transition back into the older translation when we went to parishes far more difficult than our adjustment to the new version. What I am trying to say is that I am confident that when we have all got over the hump of the newness and consequent strangeness of the new version, we will like it better. The prayers are much, much, richer; full of depth and meaning. And if words like ‘consubstantial’ bother you, well consider that if a four-year-old can manage a term like ‘Tyrranosaurus Rex’, a grown-up doesn’t need to only use words of one syllable either.

Decisions as to what things might have been translated differently, possibly better—even if we are correct—were never in our gift, so I respectfully suggest that we try not to lower the morale of our parish by grumbling about them. This wouldn’t help anyone, and, I repeat, I am very confident that within a few months almost everyone will feel happy with the new version. Let’s give it a proper try before passing judgement.

I think that for a few weeks we shouldn’t attempt to sing the Gloria or Sanctus or Memorial Acclamation, to give us time to acclimatize to the new words. Then we can learn the new music together.

God bless you all.

Sorry about the strange line-breaks: I'm not sure what happened there!

Il faut que la France survive 5

2011-09-02T18:27:00.000+01:00

The nineteenth century was probably the most traumatic and confusing period in French history—were you to include the last decade of the eighteenth century, you could remove the 'probably'. Politically, the Empire veered from republic at the beginning, middle and end, two Bonapartist imperial regimes, a Bourbon revival, and a King that tried to be both Bonapartist and Bourbon.

Religiously it was a period of revival. Benedictine Monasticism was got going again by the great Guéranger at Solesmes and spread rapidly, with other orders also being founded. There was vast number of instances of a relatively new phenomenon—women's active religious orders, some founded in the wake of the revolution to provide care and instruction to those who needed either, without the constriction of enclosure. It used to be said that even God did not know how many female religious orders there were in France (nor how much money the Franciscans had, nor what a Jesuit was thinking—no doubt there are others). There were saints, too, perhaps outstandingly St Thérèse of Lisieux.

The monasticism soon came to be what one thinks of as being 'real' monasticism today. In other words, a community dedicated to contemplation, prayer and plainchant. Guéranger unquestionably thought that he was reviving the monasticism of the Middle Ages, but really I think that French-style monasticism owes more to the Gothic Revival which was just as powerful in France as it was in England. It has long been my view that the English Benedictine Congregation, with its schools and parishes, is closer in spirit to mediæval monasticism than the various French congregations. Be that as it may, revival gothicism caught the spirit of the age more effectively, and Benedictinism flourished.

The close of the nineteenth century saw the secularists triumphant. But only just. The Third Republic that followed the Franco-Prussian war and the flight of Napoleon III to the safety of the Home Counties was on the one hand deeply in the hands of the secularists, increasingly dominated by the Freemasons (a much tougher, atheistic, breed than our home-grown kindly-motivated rotarian-writ-large trouser-rollers), but also traumatized by the events of 1870 when, besieged by the Germans, the poor starving people of Paris were driven to eat rats and the rich ate the exhibits from the Paris Zoo, to be followed by the anarchy of the Communards. In the Commune, the Archbishop of Paris was assassinated, and he became a sort of common focus of national angst which meant that the state was kind-of atheistic but with a religious twist.

The building of the great basilica of Sacre-Coeur on Montmartre was, in a way, the last flourish of the Ancien Regime, the alliance of throne and altar. In the late seventeenth century St Margaret Mary had given instructions that France was to build a great church in honour of the Sacred Heart, or else terrible tribulations would befall the country. This was later understood to be a prophecy of the Revolution and its attendant horrors. Sacre-Coeur was built with the active co-operation of the civil authorities, and even with a decree of the Assemblee-Nationale in 1910, saying that it was in reparation for the crimes of the Commune.

And yet while all this was going on, the arch-mason and secularist Georges Clémenceau was organizing the expulsion of huge numbers of male and female religious from France. Even Solesmes Abbey was closed, and the monks took refuge on the Isle of Wight, where they lived between 1901 and 1922.

So France, then, has this bifurcated understanding of herself: on the one hand profoundly Catholic, and on the other profoundly secular.

Help Save Lanherne

2011-08-30T21:36:00.003+01:00

This is a letter from Mother Maria Rosa Pia of the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate, who have a wonderful foundation in Lanherne. I will write no more, but let Mother tell you in her own words:

Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate

House of Contemplation “Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel”

Lanherne Convent, St. Mawgan

Newquay, Cornwall TR8 4ER

Tel.: 01637 860423

E-mail: fsi.lanherne@talktalk.net

Ave Maria!

July 2011

Dear Friend,

Please permit me to introduce myself. I am a Franciscan Sister of the Immaculate living the contemplative life at Lanherne Monastery in St. Mawgan, Cornwall. We are a community of 11 sisters from England, Italy, and the Philippines and we arrived here in the year 2001, 10 years ago. Prior to that, the Carmelites, who had been here since 1794, decided that they would leave Lanherne in order to amalgamate with another one of their communities. They therefore sought another religious order who would be able to continue the life of prayer and sacrifice which they had fulfilled here since their arrival. We were approached by the Mother Superior and a meeting was arranged between the Carmelites and the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate. It was decided that we would come to Lanherne and begin our contemplative life here on 11th July 2001.

However, following our arrival, the circumstances changed and it was decided that the Monastery should be sold together with its Estate. What happened, in fact, is that the surrounding buildings have been sold and all that remains now is the Monastery itself and St. Joseph’s Hall (which is used as a church hall). We have been asked if we would like to purchase Lanherne ourselves, but as Franciscans we are not allowed to own any properties, nor do we have the money to purchase it. What I ask is whether you know anyone (or a group of people) who would be interested in helping us to keep Lanherne as a place of prayer and who would purchase the Monastery and Hall, but at the same time permit us to remain here to continue our life of prayer. I do not know how much the property is estimated to be but I feel sure they would not be looking for more than £1 million. I do not think there are any other religious who would be interested in coming here and if would be a tragedy if it became a secular building as so many other Monasteries in England have become. We can think of Stanbrook Abbey and Darlington Carmel to name but two.

Lanherne is such a special place and everyone who visits it says they find great peace and a facility to pray here. One year ago we started to have adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament every day of the week after the 7.30 a.m. Holy Mass (10 a.m. on Sundays), ending with Benediction each day. You may be interested to know that the Sanctuary light before the Blessed Sacrament has remained alight for hundreds of years. Lanherne used to be the Manor House of the Arundell family who rose to high positions in the country, only to be reduced to gradual impoverishment during the times of the Reformation, due to their love of the Catholic faith. Lanherne became a place of refuge for many priests during this time of persecution and there are said to be nine priest holes where they hid from their persecutors. Tradition relates that one priest was hidden in one of these for eighteen months. St. Cuthbert Mayne often used to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass here (using the altar which is now in our small choir) and ministered to the Faithful here. He was martyred on 29th November 1577, for the simple reason that he was a Catholic priest. The Franciscans of the Immaculate are now the very privileged custodians of the first class relic of his skull which is kept in our choir, and which the people who attend the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass here on Sundays are able to venerate.

Just to tell you a little about our Institute of Franciscans of the Immaculate (friars and sisters). It was founded fairly recently by two Italian priests, Fr. Stefano M. Manelli and Fr. Gabriele Pellettieri, (both of whom are still alive) who were inspired by the life and teachings of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe. The distinctive characteristic of our Institute is the religious profession of the Marian Vow of Total Consecration to Our Lady and each of us desire to live our religious consecration under the protection and through the mediation of the Blessed Virgin Mary by means of this Vow. One very important thing in a world in which the number of religious vocations is dwindling rapidly, is that our Institute does have many vocations both for the friars and sisters and these are now coming from all parts of the world. We have communities in many countries and four Houses of Contemplation, one of which is Lanherne.

May God and Our Lady reward and bless you for reading this letter which I send to ask if you are able to help us in any way to keep Lanherne a place of prayer (which has been our most special intention for so many years). I would be most grateful to hear from you in this regard and assure you of my prayers and that of the whole community.

in Jesus Mary & Joseph

Mother Superior

Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate

Lanherne

Home!

2011-08-29T16:59:00.000+01:00

The Pastor is in his Valle.

All's well with, well, at least the Pastor.

Home at last.

Il faut que la France survive 4

2011-08-28T16:33:00.002+01:00

The revolution is the 'other' foundational event for France. It is as important to the non-religious side as the baptism of Clovis is to those with a traditional religious faith.

The American revolt was in some ways the inspiration, but it was a very different event. The American affair was not exactly unbloody, but on the whole was a fairly civilized happening (unless you believe Gibson's The Patriot version of it). The French brought all their passion to their revolution, and it must have seemed like the end of the world. The nightmare that was the Terror was truly appalling. In the Conciergerie museum, on the Ile de France, you can see a list of all those executed in Paris during those violent months, some for the crime of merely being a driver, or a baker to 'The Traitor, Capet' (aka King Louis XVI). The list goes right round a room, in small print. It makes sobering and sad reading.

When crimes so massive as those judicial murders have been committed, those connected in any way have simply to go on with it. There can be no going back; any weakening can only result in a possible victory for one's opponents, and then one is certainly going to be a victim of revenge and punishment oneself. Having committed atrocities, the only thing is to stay in charge, and be proud of what has been achieved. You brazen it out. This is the foundation of secular France, whose anthem is the extraordinarily bloodthirsty Marseillaise. Its motto is Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and by and large it (eventually) succeeded in establishing just that. Bourbon France may have been Romantic, but it was Wrong for all the reasons I have alluded to in previous posts, plus a lot more. 'Let them eat cake' (or brioche) may have been a calumny in the case of Marie Antoinette, but it was a common enough attitude before the Revolution. Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, on the other hand, have led to the liberal France being really very illiberal, imposing a sort of one-size-fits-all policy (of which the laïcité argument is a part) that denies divergence or differentiation among the countless nationalities now to be found in France. The argument about the hijab, for instance, is not so much an objection to either religion in general or Islam in particular as a determination that no Frenchman or Frenchwoman should stand out in any way from the common notion of Frenchness.

So, you have two strands of self-understanding in France. The traditional religious standpoint adheres to the Clovis moment as being the decisive moment of French self-understanding. Here you will find many monarchists and right-wingers, many, if not most of whom are also Catholics of a traditional persuasion, going regularly to the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. These have a traditional notion of the Glory of France, so it is not to be wondered at that many of these families' sons end up in the army. I heard somewhere that a few years ago, one of the great military schools (?St Cyr?) actually appointed its chaplain from the Fraternity of St Peter because so few of the students wanted the Ordinary Form of the Mass. So, in France, traditionalism in religious matters more often than not involves all these other things as well. It is a culture, an outlook entirely of itself, and not well understood outside France. in the States, in the UK, traditionalism is mostly about religion (though in the US there can be associated matters like Republicanism, opposition to big government, the right to bear arms and the rest, but they are not essentially linked, just the same sorts of people tend to hold the same sorts of views). In France, the linkage is a real one; this school of thought is usually called Integrism; a complete vision for France, one might say, honouring her glorious past (but not, of course, the revolution and all that stands for), and working to make it her future too. Il faut que la France survive!

Having been held by a large proportion of the Church, this all went pear-shaped in the 1960s. France was profoundly shaken by the events of that era (Algeria, De Gaulle, Student riots and all that), and the Church was no exception. Liberal ecclesiastics were enthused by Pope John's opening to the world, and embraced secular France with a will. Broadly speaking they turned their back on Clovis, and embraced the revolution instead as the cultural and meaningful moment of French history. What in English we call a 'trendy' or a 'liberal' is in France known as a 'Soixante-Huitard', a Sixty-Eighter, a man of 1968.

Imagine the impact this had on those to whom the vision of Clovis, the union of Throne and Altar, meant everything! It seemed like the basest treachery and betrayal to embrace the atheistic, masonic liberalism of the state, of Clemenceau, of the Marseillaise; it was like joining the tricoteuses as they jeered the Carmelite nuns of Compiegne ascending the scaffold singing the Salve Regina.

And if you ever want to see a grey-shirt French priest get apoplectic, just mention integrism to him.

I'd like in the next post to look at the nineteenth century in France, and what it had to contribute. But I hope today that I've helped explain to English speakers a little of what went to make Archbishop Lefebvre do what he did, and why his movement is so strong in France, more than anywhere else.

Il faut que la France survive 3

2011-08-26T09:17:00.001+01:00

So, by the time of the Revolution, we see a French Church:
1) Divided emotionally from the mainstream West by an firm and principled independence—Gallicanism.
2) Weakened by the abuse of the Church's resources, material and spiritual, to benefit the crown and state.
3) Weakened by the Wars of Religion, and the legacy of blood and bitterness.
4) Despised by the intellectual classes of the 'Enlightenment' who find different ways to express religion: Deism, a sort of Roman Revival Classicism, Agnosticism or even Atheism. This group felt themselves profoundly to hold the moral high ground.
5) Internally divided between Jansenism and orthodox Catholicism.
6) And yet still capable of producing saints.

This is what I call the French paradox; that you can have a situation that is from one perspective disastrous, and yet from another perspective, vibrantly alive and functioning. It is as true today as it was then, and I will be returning to this. I think that perhaps it has something to do with the French character, which, simply, is never lukewarm, but is always passionate and tending to the extreme. Rabbi Lionel Blue once described his mother (or perhaps his grandmother) as being the kind of woman who never had a headache; it was always a brain tumour. I don't think the lady was French, but the French, like her, tend to adopt radical positions and defend them passionately.

We see this most clearly in the spirituality of that pre-revolutionary age. On good Gallican principles, France had never implemented the decrees of the Council of Trent, or at least only did so very slowly. But that didn't mean to say that the spirit of reform had passed France by; it just wanted to implement reform in its own way. Dioceses retained their old mediæval rites, but instead of Romanizing them, they further distanced themselves from the mainstream. Inspired by Jansenism, they, for instance, removed from liturgical texts anything that was not strictly scriptural, and warmly approved the findings of the (Pseudo-) Synod of Pistoia, which advocated an awful lot of things that we would be familiar with today.

If you want to know more about Jansenism, Fr Anthony Chadwick has a very good trot-through the subject here.

French spirituality was very popular even outside France until quite recently. Mgr Ronald Knox famously remarked that he needed to read spiritual books in French; no other language would quite do. Sometimes its severity and austerity were characterized as Jansenist, but really I am not sure that all schools of French spirituality didn't have that mark.

As in all other things, the French wanted to do spirituality their own way. International religious orders, like the Jesuits, were not popular in France, and even the (itself very independent) Oratory would be transformed to French taste. The founder of the French Oratory, Cardinal de Bèrulle, approached St Francis de Sales and begged him to lead the new Congregation. St Francis refused, though he professed admiration from afar. One can scarcely think of a wider gulf between his spirituality and that of the French Oratory! One of its greatest luminaries, Père de Condren was described by St Jane Francis de Chantal as having a spirituality more suited for angels than human beings.

Seminaries were finally beginning to be founded at this time (priests were still being formed according to the pre-tridentine model), and the movement for seminary formation took on a huge momentum. Two whole religious congregations were founded to do this job (itself a strange concept of the time, that Religious should form secular priests), both influenced by the French Oratory, one by St Vincent de Paul, and the other by Père Olier, the Sulpicians.

Olier was a hugely apostolic and holy man whose foundation and inspiration provided generations of good and even saintly secular priests in France and Canada. I myself was formed in the only English seminary founded according to Sulpician principles. But the principle was a very strict one indeed. Again, we experience that French extremity.

Corporal mortification, for instance, has always been considered a healthy remedy for sin. But in French spirituality it became almost a good in itself. One would withdraw from every pleasure and comfort, deny all joy unless it be in God alone. Olier taught a strict custody of the eyes, and one day taking seminarians to Chartres on pilgrimage, one lad dared to lift his eyes to the great windows there and involuntarily gasped, expecting a harsh rebuke. But for once Olier said that it was all right to have a quick goggle, as Chartres was built to the glory of God.

This seems to me somewhat inhumane, and very alien to the Irish school in which I was brought up. That one might not look at a tree or a sunset lest it give one pleasure, it seems to me, is contrary to the evidence of God's goodness in his creation. It reflects a real pessimism about creation, that it is somehow totally depraved and incapable of leading us to God. Trent taught that nature (including human nature) was 'in deterius commutatur', changed for the worse, but its inherent goodness was not wiped out.

For the same reasons, extreme forms of mortification were encouraged and admired. This has often been called 'Jansenist', and I'm sure that the Jansenists were very enthusiastic about it, but I think that it also had widespread currency among those who would not call themselves Jansenists. Fr Chadwick in the article linked to above mentions that Jansenism is alive and well in the Society of St Pius X. I wonder, really, if it is really classical Jansenism, or whether it is simply this traditional French extreme approach to spirituality?

A friend, who was for a time a seminarian in the Society, was taken with his year group from Ecône to visit the new preparatory seminary at Flavigny, sited in a former religious house. There they inspected the cemetery and found many graves of men in their late teens and early twenties, worn out, it was explained, by the extremity of their mortifications.* The Rector smacked his lips with satisfaction: 'c'est bon, ça!' he said, 'c'est Catholique!'

* More likely tuberculosis, which was rife in such institutions.

Il faut que la France survive 2

2011-08-23T15:19:00.000+01:00

It will be clear that French Christianity was going to be quite different, largely because the culture that was baptized with Clovis was so very different from the 'civilized' Romano-Gallic culture which had preceded it. At one level, the Arian Goths in the south and in Iberia were more 'civilized', to the point that when Clovis announced his intention to liberate the Catholic Gauls from their oppression under the heretical Goths, those same Gauls preferred to fight with the Goths against the Franks. They lost, though, and willy-nilly found themselves part of a new, Catholic, France.

The Romans thought that the Franks were rough, uncouth and bellicose. They had a point. It took nigh on a millennium to arrive at the court of the Sun King. There is little to be astonished at that Eastern Christianity looked with barely-concealed or even open contempt at the Western Church, so deep it was in the arms (in both senses) of barbarians.

But we mustn't let the East get away with it altogether; its history, too, was brutal, and Christianity did little to ameliorate that. But the East had both subtlety and scholarship, and it took the Franks a few hundred years to acquire these, beginning under Charlemagne who initiated a deliberate policy of recreating the Western Empire, and began it by himself learning how to read, and of importing all the finest scholars he could find (like Alcuin of York).

One curious difference between East and West was that the East was in a fairly constant state of war; first with the Persians, and then with the Moslems. The West was (comparatively) peaceful; it has sometimes been said (and I'm not really sure how much credence to give this) that, lacking a great deal of real all-out war, the Franks' friskiness was in due course to be channelled into the Crusades, rather than being wasted in beating each other up.

The creation of the Holy Roman Empire had another curious side-effect. Until this point, the Western Church had been fairly undisputedly governed by the Papacy. But in time the Holy Roman Emperors came to want the same sort of influence over the Church that their opposite numbers in Constantinople exercised. In the middle ages, it developed into almost a dual authority structure in the West; some Christians looking to the Emperor, others to the Pope, for ecclesiastical leadership. It was to cause the 'Investiture Crisis', concerning who had the right to appoint bishops. There were even different theological schools. Sometimes the Imperial Church (as it were) seemed in the ascendent, and sometimes the Papal, as when in 1076/7 the Emperor Henry IV was reduced to kneeling barefoot in the snow at Canossa to beg the Pope's forgiveness.

In some ways, this 'Imperial' church survived in France where (as in some other countries) the King appointed the bishops and governed the Church as every other aspect of the country. I think that perhaps you could make a case that this Imperial-style was what Henry VIII was aiming at in his break from Rome. Not a new Church, as such, but independent and secular government of the Church in England. To many a Frenchman, the 'alliance of throne and altar', which essentially dates back to Clovis, is of the very essence of France. France, in this view, is not truly herself without the twin pillars of the monarchy and the Church. They will not disagree, however, that it went very wrong. From the late middle ages, the state began to exploit the Church for its own ends. Abbacies (and of course their incomes) were conferred on laymen whom the King wished to favour. Consequently monastic life went into steep decline. Bishoprics were conferred on politicians and civil servants for the same reasons; and it did not seem to matter much whether the man was a good one or not. Talleyrand, for instance, was, though a known unbeliever, appointed to the bishopric of Autun in the fateful year of 1789 for political reasons. This effective, principled, autonomy of the French Church is what is known as Gallicanism.

There were other negative influences also. The wars of religion during the Renaissance were truly terrible. Catholicism triumphed in the end, but it waded through seas of blood in order to do so. The famous cynical comment of Henry of Navarre, a Protestant who converted to Catholicism when confronted with the resolute Catholicism of Paris which was the the only obstacle preventing his taking the crown as Henry IV, that 'Paris was worth a Mass' suggests that, really, the wars had done much to wipe out the fervour of the high middle ages.

Some fervour did return, of course. There were saints, great saints like St Vincent de Paul, St Margaret Mary Alacoque and many others, but much of the fervour was found in the new half-Protestant and 'charismatic' heresy of Jansenism. It, too, was ruthlessly stamped out, but, like Gallicanism, its ghost continued to haunt the French Church for many years. Some would say that it still does.

Il faut que la France survive 1

2011-08-22T18:37:00.003+01:00

'Il faut que la France survive' These words are a kind of motto for a certain kind of Frenchman: it is necessary that France survive. Not just necessary for France, but for the world, for humanity. France, this motto suggests, has a message for mankind. And it isn't Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, either. In this view, the France that was born at the conversion of Clovis in 496 created something deeply important. I'd like to explore that a little.

The Roman Empire disintegrated in the West incrementally between (very roughly) the fourth century and the sixth. The low point was the sack of Rome herself in August 410, and the main agents of this disintegration (besides the internal problems of the Empire) were those groups of peoples the Romans called 'Barbarians' (because they couldn't speak Latin, going 'ba-ba-ba' instead). The Christianized Roman Empire had come to identify itself in some way with the Kingdom of God. The degree of identification can be disputed, but the Emperor had become a sort of Ikon of God and the Empire a sort of Ikon of his Kingdom.

This means that those who would wish to profess the Gospel must put themselves under the governance of the Empire. In later centuries there was an amusing sequel to this, when the Bulgarians, who wished to join themselves to Byzantine Christianity, were told that they must first take their trousers off. They were considered a barbarian thing, you see. But it also resulted in almost no missionary work being undertaken outside the Empire's borders for a very long period. Indeed, the only significant example that I can think of was the mission to the Goths by, er, the Arians! Which is why the Goths became Arians. I think that, arguably, the mission of St Augustine to Canterbury (sent by St Gregory) was the first real example of the Empire doing its duty. Perhaps some of you know others—there was the work of Frumentarius among the Ethiops, of course. But that was rather an independent scheme.

The sack of Rome in 410 brought profound heart-seeking among orthodox Christians, for it seemed that God had abandoned his Kingdom. In the shadow of this, the increasingly pessimistic St Augustine wrote his monumental work The Kingdom of God, in which he worked his way round to his insight that God's Kingdom cannot be identified with any earthly state. It is a fascinating work, and really I can't do it justice here, so I won't try.

The baptism of Clovis represented a new way. A despised, barbarian kingdom accepted the Orthodox Catholic Gospel, in contradistinction to the Arian Goths who were in Southern Gaul at the time, and this seemed to signal a change in their fortunes, and its king and its people were baptized by St Remigius in 496.

Get that: God's kingdom does not require a particular earthly political allegiance.

Now, there were political reasons for this, without doubt. And one cannot deny the appeal of wanting to be like the classy people in Rome. (Forgive this analogy). Revolutionaries may begin by living on onions and sleeping on straw, but before long their leaders find the palaces of those they have overthrown very attractive. Clovis clearly wanted to hitch his wagon to the glorious history (not to say lifestyle) of Rome. But he did so in a very different way. He and his men didn't really stop beating other people up, for instance, or (probably) putting their feet onto the table at dinner. He didn't stop being a Frank: he was just a Christian Frank. Or Frankly Christian.

(Has it ever crossed your mind to ask where we get the word 'frank' from?)

To those in the Roman Empire, Clovis remained a barbarian: the problem was all the more acute because he was very successful in his enterprises, thrashing the Arian Goths in the south of Gaul. But the Church had to decide what best to do. Should it applaud, or should it tut-tut?

It did what it does best; it havered, and waited a few centuries. The Emperor was distant, in Constantinople (he regarded the Pope as his viceroy for the West for much of this time), and Rome herself was in a pretty awful state, with various strong families dominating the scene, and the Emperor so far away that all he could do was demand taxes without fulfilling his part of the bargain to provide the necessary defence that was required.

This all came to a head in the reign of Pope Leo III (reigned 795-816). He was a surprise election, a nobody, really, who was bullied quite egregiously by the Roman families (one account has him castrated and blinded by them), and (to cut a very long story short) threw himself into the arms of the Frankish monarch, whom we know as Charlemagne. He got the support he needed, and in return, on Christmas Day 800 was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome.

To be continued………

A Tea-light…

2011-08-20T16:37:00.000+01:00

…for the Beaker Folk of Husborne Crawley.

They keep me smiling.

(and for the sake of those already clenching their theological gussets, no, I am not about to become a liberal Anglican. I just instinctively like some people.)

A Question

2011-08-19T19:08:00.000+01:00

I'm now at the end of my sabbatical and will be returning to the Valle Adurni in a matter of a few days. Naturally, especially once the book was finished, I have been reflecting on all sorts of things to do with the parish, and one of them worries me particularly. I would like to solicit your advice, and that of my clerical brothers especially.

A phenomenon that seems to be on the increase is that of the 'temporary convert'. What I mean is that somebody approaches me with a view to becoming a Catholic. For a year or so, he or she regularly comes to Mass, and attends all the preparation sessions where I myself do all the teaching (and I can assure you that it is thorough). I do my best to ensure that each convert has a 'friend base' in the parish; if he or she knows nobody, I try to introduce him to others and make sure that he never feels at sea. The time comes for the reception; he makes his first confession; he professes his new faith with fervour, he receives his first Communion with devotion…

And next Sunday, he's not there. He's already semi-lapsed. From time to time one may see him around; he might appear at Mass when there's nothing more interesting to do, but with decreasing frequency. Not all are like this, of course, but the proportion is scary.

I know very well that other priests experience the same thing, and no doubt they beat themselves up about it the way I do, which is why this matter is not addressed on blogs and things.

A few Sundays ago, we listened to the Parable of the Sower. And it struck me, for the first time, that this parable is mis-named; by thinking about the sower and the seed, I had missed the point that the parable is actually about the soil. If our potential converts are the seeds sown by the sower, we, the Church, are the soil in which they are planted. And is our parish thorny, stony, rich? Are we good soil in which they might grow?

So, I think that I might rejig things a bit. What if I were to begin the course with a retreat? To take people away to a monastery for a weekend, to learn how to pray before they learnt the content of the faith. I think that perhaps it is too much to assume that people will pray without lots of encouragement. And maybe if they pray, the faith will root more deeply in them. The new Catechism ends with prayer, and I have followed that pattern until now. What if I were to begin with it?

And has anyone else any good suggestions?

Interlude

2011-08-10T08:33:00.000+01:00

Do please go and read what Fr Tim Finigan has said about the riots here. He is right on the money.

"Just showin the Police and the rich people we can do what we want" about sums it up, I think. "I can do what I want" is the net result of moral relativism applied by the ordinary teenager affected by original sin and educated in a system that undermines any real foundation of duty to God, country or neighbour.

Few people have noted the irony of the appeals by the Police to parents to "contact their children." For several decades our country has undermined marriage, the family, and the rights of parents. Agents of the state can teach your children how to have sex, give them condoms, put them on the pill, give them the morning-after pill if it doesn't work, and take them off for an abortion if that fails - and all without you having any say in the matter or necessarily even knowing about it. Now all of a sudden, we want parents to step in and tell their teenage children how to behave.

Thank you, Fr Tim. Excellent as always.

500 (h)

2011-08-10T08:29:00.000+01:00

I think I'm getting near to the end of what I want to say about Ireland. There is a very interesting comment by GOR in the last post which provides me with a good link to this comment, which I promised some posts ago.

The parish priest in Ireland was more than just a religious functionary. In many ways he substituted for local government. Different nations react differently to occupation. The French, for instance, either resisted or collaborated. The Irish (as I have suggested some time ago) simply circumvented, and went on with business in their own way. The parish priest, their own man and public figure, in many ways became the mayor and the magistrate of a town; someone whose authority all the local Irish acknowledged. In some places, he was the 'clerk'; the one who could read and write, who could speak up for the local people and if necessary represent them to higher authority. The Irish preferred not to deal with the English establishment except where it was necessary: the parish priest, with his mutually accepted authority, performed almost all the necessary functions of government. As for religion; well, as I have suggested, the people did it themselves, except for the necessary administration of the Sacraments.

With the coming of independence, Ireland had its own governors, and the parish priest no longer exercised civil authority. But his moral prestige remained as it had always done. It's just that he didn't have so much to do. From the Renaissance onwards, the notion of pastoral practice was increasingly becoming important. No doubt it would be interesting to do a post some time on what is really quite surprising; pastoral work on the part of priests is quite a new phenomenon, championed by figures such as St Vincent de Paul, St Philip Neri and others. I'm not convinced that this aspect of priestly life ever really took hold in Ireland. When the business of government moved from the Parochial House, all that there was there to fill the void was the G.A.A. and the golf course.

Hence the anger of the Irish people. The prestige of the priesthood has been enormous in Ireland. Now people are asking just what those priests have done to earn it, and to some of them it seems that as a body they have treated the Irish people very badly. Again, of course there are exceptions, many many exceptions, but there are more than enough of those who barely deserve the name of pastor.

In the early autumn, the breviary sets out at length (it seems to go on for ever) the great sermon of St Augustine De Pastoribus, On the Shepherds. In this sermon Augustine excoriates those people called shepherds who take the sheep's milk and wool but deny those same sheep the care that they need.

Beware, they say, the wrath of the lamb!

500 (g)

2011-08-07T19:55:00.000+01:00

I hope that by this stage we have established that the Irish have traditionally had their faith nurtured in the home, rather than in the parish. This has enabled the faith to survive very adverse conditions, including the total alienation of the parish buildings and assets to Protestant worship.

Since the home cannot furnish sacramental worship without the help of a priest, the devotions of the Irish tended to be centred around other things, like the rosary, pilgrimages &c. The peculiarly Irish custom of the Station Mass (not to be confused with the Roman custom) can be seen as an extension of that. To this day, families in a parish will announce a Station Mass, when Mass will be celebrated in their home for all their neighbours. Put aside all thoughts of sixties house Masses: these were, and are, major devotional occasions and a real mainstay of the life of the parish and people. Fr Hunwicke and others might care to wonder whether this, too, connects to the paleo-Christian worship of the Irish.

So, by the end of the nineteenth century, Irish religion was concentrated largely on the pursuit of holiness expressed in ways other than the formal parish liturgy more common to countries who derived their spiritual practices from the old Roman Empire.

That the clergy were mostly formed in France during the penal times also may have had its effect. France was given to both Gallicanism and Jansenism, and I think we can see the effects of both these in Irish spirituality. The anti-Jansenistic remedy of devotion to the Sacred Heart of our Lord can also be seen in abundance in Ireland, as could the anti-Gallican profound devotion to the Holy See deriving from the Ultramontane movement. Even the custom of the red sanctuary lamp which we are all so familiar with is, I am told, an Irish custom derived from the Gallican uses of France, which used red as the liturgical colour for the Blessed Sacrament. Rome has always used white.

The introduction of the Liturgical Movement into Ireland was patchy. Certainly there were places where the liturgy was done splendidly, but they were rare. Clergy, however, understood that it was the mind of the Church to encourage good liturgy, and tried. But the heart of the people continued much as it had always done. And the priests themselves pursued holiness as they had learned at their mothers' knees, which is to say in personal prayer, in devotions, pilgrimages and all that.

The traditional rite of Mass, with its long periods of prayerful silence, hid the fact that the priest could scamper through Mass in 15 minutes. It used to be said that all the people heard of the Mass was 'SCUM!' as the priest whirled round to say 'Dominus vobiscum'.

Hand in hand with the liturgical movement was the disapprobation of other devotions; people were supposed to focus their prayer and devotion on the Sacred Liturgy. In many parts of France, this worked very well. There were many parishes which, up to the Second Vatican Council not only celebrated the regular Sunday Masses with as much solemnity as they could muster, but also celebrated parts of the Office too, the laity assisting at sung Vespers in Latin with gusto.

Not in Ireland. Even at Mass, the people, attending in huge numbers, continued to pray the Rosary—not even together, except in October, when the curate would stand in the pulpit and lead the rosary while the parish priest celebrated Mass at the altar. This is fact; I am not exaggerating.

Then came the Second Vatican Council, when the Mass was no longer something mysterious and esoteric. It was patent and vernacular. So, no need for those other 'unliturgical' devotions, then.

Father stopped saying the rosary.
Father encouraged the people to attend to the Mass, rather than say the rosary.
So people stopped saying the rosary. And all the other stuff.
Father didn't stop saying Mass at ninety miles an hour.
Father's job was to say Mass. Nothing else.
(anyone see that funny Fr Ted episode when Fr Dougal got stuck on a milk cart that he couldn't stop? Fr Ted's reaction was to say Mass alongside the milk cart)

Mass, Mass, Mass, Mass, Mass, Massy Mass Mass.
(Not that I'm against the Mass, you understand……)

And the Mass as celebrated was extremely unsatisfying (ex opere operantis, I mean, of course). Gabble, gabble, gabble. Bad homily. Gabble, gabble, gabble. Communion (given by lay people). Guinness.

The Irish spirit, as I have suggested, will find other outlets for its devotion. One good example of this is the (excellent) proliferation of Eucharistic exposition. This happens probably in most parishes now. But I have yet to see a priest present. An extraordinary minister will expose and repose; lay people will take their turns to watch. The rosary and other devotions the same.

I should here say that I do perfectly understand that there are excellent priests in Ireland. I know several.

Most priests will not engage themselves, because the prayer is 'not liturgical'. Priests aren't actually necessary to its functioning. They don't see that they have a much wider importance than the mere performance of a function. They have spent their seminary career being educated to despise that devotional life which their grandmothers so cherished, and which gave them, themselves, the faith. The liturgy can nourish the faith well, when it is done well ex opere operato. Nothing better, naturally. But when it isn't, and when the very devotions are discouraged and despised, and shunned by the clergy, then one may ask what is there that is actually nourishing the faith of the Irish people these days?

And can you wonder that ordinary people are asking just what use is a priest, and why he deserves the status he has been given?

500 f

2011-08-07T19:16:00.000+01:00

This is really a sort of excursus or clarification. I speculated several posts ago about the worship in early Irish Christianity. I knew, of course, of the Stowe Missal, but nothing much about it. It turns out that the Patrimonial Doctor, Fr Hunwicke has written a paper on it, which I have ordered. However, I thought I should give you the great man's ipsissima verba:

I published a piece in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy (Vol 102C, Number 1, 2002), which I am told is on the internet somewhere, showing (in my view) that the people stood around the Oratory, different categories (monachi, penitentes ...) often on different levels/terraces; that even the clergy only entered the oratory at the Offertory.
I suggested that perhaps the 'mass stones' of the penal period were a continuation of the same culture ... the idea that there were British troops with eagle eyes on every hill in Ireland throughout the 'penal' period seems to me improbable. Presumably some sort of shelter was erected around the mass stone.
The very extensive chants 'covering' the Communio in the Stowe Missal would suggest that this was, in fact, an extremely long part of the service.

I'm not sure about the Mass rocks: does anyone out there know more about them and how they were used during the penal era? That the early Irish were far happier out of doors than inside is commonly understood, and no doubt they were happier attending Mass in such a location than their English co-religionists might have been.

500 (e)

2011-08-01T09:44:00.000+01:00

Right, back to the fray.
In earlier posts I have tried not to defend Irish illiturgicality, but to explain it. Like many of you, I believe that sorting this question out is part of the answer to the Irish Question. It just isn't the whole answer, and it has to take account of the Irish point of view.

I am now going to give an account of a celebration I attended a few weeks ago: it will highlight many of the things I have been writing about. It will horrify many of you, but I would ask you to contain your reaction and try to understand it.

There is a monastery in the Irish midlands where monthly Sunday afternoon religious gatherings (I don't really know what I ought to call them) have taken place for many decades; these have been very popular, but are now being wound down for external reasons. I attended one of these, but sat in the congregation (and yes, I was in uniform) as I was feeling unwell.

It all began in a chapel entirely devoted to the Divine Mercy devotion. There is a large picture—you know the one, with rays coming from our Lord's heart—behind the altar, and confessionals all around (unused on this day, though I understand that confession was a usual part of these afternoons in the past). Two elderly priests entered. One of them had a smoking thurible, and this was waved at the picture. Then we all sat down and recited the Divine Mercy Chaplet, five decades. This being done, we all decamped to the main chapel. Here Mass was celebrated at breakneck speed—not irreverently, I mean, but very very quickly. I suspect that the celebrant was simply saying the English Mass in the same way he used to say the Latin Mass. When Communion time came, the concelebrant stood at the microphone and sang a traditional hymn, while the main celebrant gave out communion at the head of a side aisle. Meanwhile a woman grabbed a ciborium and headed off to us at the back of the chapel. There was no queue; she came to each person in his or her seat. When she came to my aunt and me, she demanded 'do yez want the bread?' and, I am not exaggerating, flung the Blessed Sacrament at us. When she had finished, she stumped back off to the altar, tabernacled the ciborium, bobbed a half-genuflection and went back to her place. Mass over, the concelebrant again crooned a hymn to the Blessed Sacrament into the microphone and the main celebrant proceeded to expose the Lord in a monstrance. There was no pause for prayer, but he took a humeral veil and proceeded down one side aisle of the chapel stopping every few feet to bless the people kneeling there as he passed. He went out of the chapel door, and blessed the (no doubt confused) visitors and tourists in the bookshop outside. Then he returned inside and proceeded up the other aisle, blessing as before, and back to the altar. The Lord was reposed, and the service was over.

That's it. You'll probably agree with me that it was pretty awful and the distribution of Communion even sacrilegious. But what you must understand is that in some bizarre way the whole thing (except Communion) was both genuine and nourishing. What I mean is that, well, I have sometimes said that the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. Nobody was indifferent there; there was a lot of love, and a lot of real piety. It was full of prayer, almost tangibly. It was just very untidy and very unliturgical. And they should not have allowed that woman to distribute the Blessed Sacrament.

It is ideorhythmic religion again.

I would certainly like to see liturgy in Ireland tidied up and made reverent and far more focussed. I really think it would help. However it won't be easy to achieve, because the current style is so widespread, at least in the Republic. There is little experience, no tradition, of solemn liturgy in the parishes. Things like the recent FOTA conference are very encouraging, and as people get some experience of better liturgy, I should think that other things will improve too.

But one mistake must not be made, which is to despise or remove the devotional aspect altogether. The liturgical movement from the nineteenth century did make this mistake, and to some extent we are reaping the whirlwind. Prayer needs to be affective as well as effective; if it does not engage the heart, then it will not awaken the soul. The encounter with God, whether in the Sacred Liturgy or in other devotions has to be a real encounter with Another; it is not an intellectual or an æsthetic exercise.

What I mean is that even the liturgy is not an end in itself, not a form of entertainment whether a splendid Extraordinary Form Solemn Mass or a happy-clappy feel-good let-it-all-hang-out celebration. The liturgy is not for looking at, it is for looking through, to God, to heaven, to Calvary and even (properly understood) to each other.

500 (d)

2011-07-27T23:26:00.001+01:00

This is getting to feel a bit like surfing. The longer one stays on this particular wave, the less secure one feels. But be that as it may, I think there is still more to be said.

One element in Irish Christianity to which I have alluded is what one might call the folk element. I watched a programme on the Electric Television some months ago. Three men shared a boat in Ireland; one of them was Dara O'Briain, the other two were British—Griff Rhys Jones, I think, and an irritating Rory. Somewhere in the sticks they came across a holy well, and there was by it a sight familiar to those who frequent such places. A tree stood hard by, festooned with rags of cloth. One of the Englishmen opened his mouth to say something caustic, but was forestalled by Dara O'Briain who said 'I want to mock that, but I don't want you mocking it.'

Here we have the Irish paradox. Ireland is a country that is intensely proud of its own culture, not least that it has managed to keep it alive under the most unpropitious circumstances. It is highly tenacious of it, but also aware that other cultures have despised it, and non-Irish educated people these days are at best patronising about it. Irish people, especially intelligent and educated Irish people (and there are still plenty of Englishmen who think that that is an oxymoron) feel this tug within them. The same Dara O'Briain, when a guest on that smugfest quiz Q.I. was asked by the host Stephen Fry to comment on various patron saints, among superior chortles from guests and audience. O'Briain got right up on his hind legs and objected to what amounted to the racism being expressed. He is not, I understand, a practising Catholic, but he is very sensitive to the fact that the chattering classes are allowed to be as patronising and contemptuous as they wish about Catholicism and Irishness without the slightest need to devote any energy to understanding what they are criticising. Both are self-evidently beneath contempt.

'But, but……' —I can hear people protesting right now—'surely Irishness has never been so popular. Look at all those Irish pubs, look at Riverdance, look at Enya, look at 'Celtic Spirituality'. This kind of Disney view of Ireland, sometimes called 'Oirishness' has substituted in many (non-Irish) people's minds for the real thing. A charming, out of touch, mediæval cute little land of leprechauns, shillelaghs, and Guinness keeps people from engaging with the reality of a land whose people are peculiarly articulate, with high standards of education (in everything but religion) and a unique and valuable culture which is itself in danger of being Oirished out of existence.

The Irish are keenly aware of how they are viewed, and it makes them somewhat allergic to the somewhat stranger manifestations of folk religion, like rag-festooned trees (and yes, I know that in the past, and even here and there today, such things could and can also be seen in England). This in itself distances the educated Irish from Catholicism, because the dearth of serious catechesis in the last 40 years has exposed them to the stranger elements of folk religion without the intellectual apparatus to understand the real depths of the faith. All they have got has been weak hymnody, poor sermons, inadequate religious instruction—and now clerical child abuse and irresponsible bishops.

That is one result. There is another, which is no less dangerous. I don't think that the Irish have any problem at all with the spiritual dimension of things. It was what (real) Celtic spirituality brought to Catholicism in general. The drive of the Platonic element in Christianity, vitally important though it is, tended to create an attitude to the material creation that was ambivalent at best. Matter was at the other end of the spectrum to Spirit, and the closer one wanted to draw to God, the more one should despise matter. The great Christological crises of the first centuries centred mostly around this strange fact that God, pure Spirit, could take a material nature without diminishing what He was.

I alluded in an earlier post to the (probable) fact that St Patrick never studied Plato in any thoroughgoing way. His education stopped in his mid-teens, and only restarted when he trained for the priesthood in Gaul. At any event, the Irish have never seen any problem with finding God in the material. They have seen wonders all around them, all the time. Sacraments make total sense. The old Celtic gods were primal forces in nature, unpredictable. Christianity (which spread throughout Ireland without any real opposition within a single generation, it is said) gave a whole new meaning to the world around them, and the introduction of the Latin script gave the a means to articulate this joy. The introduction of Egyptian-style penitential monasticism to Ireland was also deeply creative. The desert is a tough place to live, without much to look at, but Ireland is deeply beautiful. Even that monastic rock in the Atlantic, Skellig Michael, lifts one's mind to God. Imagine looking at a sunset from there and not wondering at the might and glory of God who could create such a thing. St Kevin stood up to his neck in the freezing water, but he did so at Glendalough, a truly lovely place. The Christian Romans didn't really look much at scenery, (many pagans did, though—think of Horace, or the villas around the Bay of Naples) but the Irish enjoy looking at everything and everyone with a perpetual and vivid curiosity and see nothing wrong in it.

What I'm trying to get to is that, deprived of proper orthodox catechesis, many Irish people will continue to look around them for the spiritual, because they expect to find it in the world around them. So they will hare off to Ballinspittle to look at moving statues, they will go to Achill Island to hear the latest message from God through Christine Gallagher, they will listen to John Bird's latest predictions concerning the end of the world……

So, there are two results from the atrociously poor catechesis of the last fifty years. The first is a tendency among the more highly-educated elite to throw everything to do with Catholicism over (though with a rather uneasy conscience, because the Irish are naturally spiritual). There's no fear of them becoming Protestants, because that would be to deny their own history. The other result is to flee after signs and wonders.

To believe nothing, in other words, or to believe anything.

For God's sake, for the people's sake, serious catechesis, well adapted for the intelligent, inquiring, mind in the modern world must be reintroduced without delay. But how, and by whom? There is a long path ahead.

500 (c)

2011-07-26T13:09:00.001+01:00

It needs saying again: Irish Christianity/Catholicism is not, and never has been, like that of any other nation. Its roots do not lie really within the Roman Empire, but has other influences, many entirely its own.

It has long been suggested, with a pretty fair degree of certainty, that there are strong links with Egyptian monasticism. This makes enormous sense to me, and explains so much. It explains the strong penitential tradition, for instance, and it also explains the unliturgical expression of the faith.

When St Anthony the Abbot walled himself up in the old fort at Pispir for twenty years, has it never occurred to anyone that he must have gone those twenty years without once receiving Holy Communion or even attending Mass? Those early monastic communities expressed their faith in extreme asceticism, in the recitation of the psalms. They were not coenobitic monks, but hermits or at least ideorhythmic monks, and this is the idea that they took to the far coast of Ireland.

St Patrick was educated as a child but abducted before that education was complete; he never went on to study philosophy, and so Irish Christianity developed its own outlook on the world; free of that platonic distrust of lowly matter it embraced the material world and loved it as God's (albeit fallen) creation.

Ireland never really developed that Imperial system of dioceses and bishops; many think that Ireland never even had a secular clergy until the coming of the Normans. There were simply monks, and there were lay folk. Enormous monasteries might have had one priest to do the sacramental things: it is not impossible that this one priest may even have been in Episcopal orders; at any rate, the bishops were monks living under the authority of the abbot. When Columbanus set up a monastery in Gaul, the local bishops were spitting feathers because of his amused disregard of their authority; he clearly saw his own authority as greater than theirs.

And then there's the liturgy. Have you ever looked at any of the most ancient Irish monastic sites? There are churches, but it would be more accurate to call them tiny little chapels. For the most part, these buildings could have just about accommodated an altar, a priest and a server. Where did the laity go? Where, even, did the monks go? In those early days, did they go to Mass much at all?

With the coming of the Normans, churches got a bit larger, but not much. An Irish Cathedral (outside Dublin anyway, or the Pale) was a small affair. And for the most parts, the Anglo-Normans assimilated to the Irish culture rather than the other way about.

So, if not in the parish church, where was the locus or perhaps focus, of the faith of the Irish? Well, for one thing, it was in the home. Like that of the monks, even the Irish laity's spirituality was ideorhythmic; rosary, holy wells, saints, pilgrimages, penances (Lough Derg, Croagh Patrick), and enthusiastic going to funerals, even those of strangers. They learnt to go to Mass, surely, and developed a love for the sacraments, but an Irish congregation at Mass is a very different thing to a congregation in any other land. They pray, fervently, at Mass, but I do not think, in general, and surely there must be exceptions, that they could be said to pray the Mass itself, even now. The Mass is something that is done in their presence, but even now any idea of direct communal participation is foreign. The responses are muttered by each person at his own speed, the Creed or Gloria being a sort of subterranean murmur that begins, and vaguely ends. People stand, kneel, sit, more or less at random. Mass is rarely more than Low Mass, celebrated quickly. 'High Mass' is a low Mass with a choir singing hymns; it's a very rare parish where the congregation would join in.

Foreign visitors are often shocked at this. But it would be a profound mistake to read into it—as far too many do—that the Irish are entirely unserious about their religion. That is absolutely not the case; it is just that the accent is (very) different to most other places.

And it is not without its advantages; for the Reformation to (largely) succeed in England, it was necessary only to change the liturgy. For English Catholics, 'it is the Mass that matters', and to deprive them of the Mass was to deprive them of the faith. For the Irish it worked differently. The churches were all taken, the liturgy changed, as in England, but people still carried on much as before. Their faith had enough sustenance coming from where it has always come: they continued to go to holy wells, say the rosary, go on pilgrimages, and, when they could, attend Mass at a Mass rock. They educated their children in the home or in hedge schools, just as they had done for generations.

The religion did not depend on the priest: in some ways, one might say that the priest was more of a political figure; a sort of alternative jurisdiction in an occupied country. I'll say more about this in another post.

Suffice it to say that Irish Catholicism has it in itself to survive this present crisis. But for something like a hundred and fifty years people have been badgering the Irish Catholics to adopt the Liturgical Movement. In the last forty years, all the things that have kept them going through the ages have been decried. I was at St Kieran's Well in Co Meath a few weeks ago; my elderly aunt commented sadly to me that when she was young, there were always crowds of people there; on that day it was only she and I. To some extent, the Irish themselves have been keen to abandon all this. For centuries this stuff has been dismissed as 'peasant religion', fit only for uneducated people, and if there is anything true, it is that the Irish value education. That charge, though, would be a telling one, particularly as there are aspects of this 'folk religion' which really do tend to the superstitious.

I have a lot more to say on this, but I'll leave it till the next post.

500 (b)

2011-07-24T08:50:00.000+01:00

The 500-strong Association of Catholic Priests are riding high right now for all the reasons that I mentioned in the last post. They are conscientious priests who probably do not spend all their time on the golf course, or else they would not be getting so generally upset over these issues. They do actually care and want real solutions to the terrible problems that they see in the Irish Church.

On the whole, they see the problem as being largely one of a conservative Vatican reining in on all the good things that the Second Vatican Council had brought and returning to a model of 'you will take what we give you, and you will like or or lump it'. Hence their opposition to the new translation of the Mass, and hence their outrage at the insufficient reaction of the hierarchy to the pædophilia crisis.

Here the reader will not be surprised to learn that I part company with them. Not all the way: in the last post I too deplored the way that the bishops have been left undisciplined.

The trouble is that you can't keep your cake and eat it as well.

• You can't abolish sin (original and actual), hell, penance, confession, and the rest, for forty years and then reinvent them for the special case of pædophiles and complacent bishops.

• You can't (in the spirit of collegiality and Vatican II) for forty years protest Rome's interference with local bishops, and now complain that it hesitates to interfere and discipline them.

It really is all of a piece. The Church has two millennia of experience of dealing with sin, but if you are going to tie her hands behind her back and then expect her to deal decisively with a wolf when it descends on the fold, then you are going to be disappointed.

That is why I think that what the Church needs is not bishops like Willie Walsh, much-loved and kind man as he is, but men like Charles Chaput who really get it.

There are not a lot of places in Ireland where what is sometimes called the New Orthodoxy has been attempted. Parishes on the whole are very much what they were in 1970, only not quite so full. Young people have not received the opportunity to encounter the genuine faith and see its power. They just find the 1970s model unconvincing, and its strictures incomprehensible in the light of the fact that it would appear to have so little else to offer them.

I wonder whether something like World Youth Day might not do some good if it were held next in Ireland.

500

2011-07-23T15:54:00.000+01:00

The debate raging in the Irish Church brings me little surprise.

It is my honest belief that the episcopate and the presbyterate in Ireland have been riding for a fall for perhaps half a century, perhaps longer.

I remember a funeral luncheon for an uncle of mine. It was on a Monday; the funeral had been exceptionally deferred from the traditional third day after death to enable me to attend and officiate. I was sat next to the parish priest—actually the Vicar General of the diocese, now deceased—and listened with scant sympathy as he grumbled about his extremely busy weekend. He lamented that that Sunday he had had to celebrate Mass twice, imagine!, and now with this lunch to attend, it might be another hour or two before he could get off to the golf course.

I quietly commented that I had had a relatively easy weekend, with only three Masses on the Sunday and five baptisms (admittedly done in one ceremony), plus the flight to Ireland.

The town is a big one (by Irish standards), with an enormous church (by any standards). In those days (no longer!) there were four priests, and the entire town could be squeezed into the church for four Masses, no more. And all four on Sunday morning. As far as I could work out, there was no pastoral work of any sort done which was not celebrating Mass. There were no youth clubs, no sacramental preparation other than that done in the schools, no care of people because that was the government's job…… you get the picture.

Money, now: that was collected regularly. Giving at Mass has never been good, so there were, and are, 'outside collections' of various types. When my father was young, the names and amounts contributed of all these collections was solemnly read out at Mass.

The only half decent cars in those days were driven by priests.

One place you would regularly see the clergy was at the GAA, the Gælic Athletic Association. The sports pages of the local papers would be covered with photographs of the Parish Priest presenting trophies to the various local sporting gods of the town.

It is little wonder that the same uncle that I buried that day had been disgusted when he heard I wanted to be a priest. He assumed that it was for money and status. He had thought that I was better than that. Though in the past we had been close, he wrote me out of his will, and, a widower having no children himself, he left everything to neighbours. This was some eighteen years ago.

Do not underestimate the anger of the Irish people right now. In the context, it is entirely understandable.

Now let us look at the bishops. Before the 60s, it was normal that episcopal appointments would be finally approved by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (or 'Holy Office'). Pope Paul Vi changed this to final approval by the Secretariate of State. This is because he wanted to pursue a policy of detente all round; ecumenism and Ostpolitik were the watchwords. So henceforward bishops would be diplomats; nice guys, people who could pour oil on troubled waters, men who would not rock the boat.

These are the men who would not pursue child abusers, for fear that a storm might arise. They are good men, nice men; they are just not what is needed now, if ever.

There has been criticism of the '500' priests. There is much I disagree with them about; however, I think that they are men of integrity who don't always actually understand what is going on.

They are right that the Vatican is not appointing the right men to be bishops in Ireland (with some exceptions). And they are right that serious surgery needs to happen if things are to be rectified. If the Vatican does not hear that the Irish people are seriously angry and need to see justice done, it will not recover the trust of what has been until recently one of the most Catholic nations on earth. Expressions of sorrow on the part of the bishops are not enough; these can be dismissed easily as crocodile tears.

Questions of the new translation of the Mass are entirely secondary right now. Ireland needs bishops of unimpeachable integrity and orthodoxy, and it needs them yesterday.

The Taoiseach's speech had a lot of this anger in it. The reference to the confessional speaks more about clerical unaccountability than demonstrating a real understanding of the issues. People need to grasp that before they get worried that Ireland will place police microphones in every confessional.

Throwing petrol on embers

2011-07-16T20:32:00.001+01:00

I am a great fan of the Catholic Truth Society—at least as presently set up. It has really found its feet, and is producing some first rate material to promote and explain the faith. And, not least, to produce a new Missal which really looks like, well, a missal.

But I am disturbed at this report of a work published by the CTS; it's a new 'explanation' of Catholic Traditionalism. I rather suspect that CTS commission all sorts of works, and then run them without reading them too clearly–they even once published something of mine, though they never approached me again.

I know and greatly respect Dr Joseph Shaw, the writer of the critique, and the fact that he wrote his article on an iPhone, no mean feat for such a long critique, suggests the depth of his feeling on the matter.

Summorum Pontificum was a watershed. It suggested to all sides that they bury the hatchet, and even laid out an ingenious strategy that would make it possible for almost all protagonists to do so without loss of face. Dr Edwards' reportedly intemperate booklet Catholic Traditionalism would, if Dr Shaw is right, appear to be grubbing up the imperfectly-buried hatchet again (as E.F. Benson put it). Why?

Dr Edwards even seems to be just as intemperate in his criticism of the traditionalists' opponents—I think this must be the first instance of Annibale Bugnini's honour being defended by a committed traditionalist!

If Dr Shaw is even half right (and I have not yet seen the booklet, though I shall strive to get one a.s.a.p.), this work really needs to be withdrawn. As he says:

The point I wish to make is not about the truth or falsity of these claims, but about the appropriateness of this polemic and speculation in this booklet. Just at the moment when Traditionalists and their various historical opponents are having to learn to live with each other, to share churches, to cooperate in parish life and in Catholic institutions of all kinds, is this spewing of vitriol in all directions really what we need? Wouldn't it be better, as well as more historically accurate, to admit at this point that these old divisions were caused by Catholics who were sincere, intelligent, and serious, but who came to different conclusions about the needs of the time, and the implications of timeless theological and liturgical principles?

This is precisely right. This is not the time for slinging mud. For heavens' sake, can't we live the bitter past behind us now?

The First Person

2011-07-12T09:53:00.000+01:00

This last weekend, I celebrated Mass for a small but enthusiastic parish in Sussex while their priest (ordained the day before I was born) was taking a well-earned post-Jubilee break. Before the Mass, I was informed by the musical directrix that it was to be a 'Folk Mass' that Sunday. Not really my cup of tea, as any reader of this blog will quickly understand. But the whole thing went with a swing; the singing was enthusiastic and there was a very positive atmosphere in the little church. I enjoyed my visit.
Some of the hymns sung have been going round in my head since. So many of the things sung in the folk-idiom use the words of the Lord in the first person; 'come, follow me…' 'I am the bread of life'. Of course these things are quotations from or paraphrases of the words of our Lord in the Gospel, which the priest or deacon reads in the first person, but I don't really feel comfortable with what feels to be taking a liberty with our Lord's words. I don't feel happy singing that I am the bread of life.

Anybody who has even a cursory familiarity with the Church's history will be aware that the phenomenon sometimes called Pentecostalism recurs from time to time. St Paul notes speaking in tongues, for instance, though he gets a bit unsure about it, perhaps later, when he insists that there must always be an interpretation. After that, the phenomenon acquired a dodgy reputation under a Phrygian called Montanus who with his two charming young lady assistants believed themselves to be 'channelling' the Holy Spirit, and would indeed speak in the first person—not quoting scripture, though—adding to it, as it were. Now here we come to another aspect of this pentecostal phenomenon: quasi-authoritative private revelation. The leaders of these groups believe themselves to be in some way divinely appointed to teach and lead. They speak with an infallibility that the Pope could only dream of and their pronouncements must be treated as divine revelation. For the most part these pronouncements are harmless 'I have a word from the Lord: I love you with an endless love' for instance, but they can also be used against individuals 'The Lord says that Mary-Lou Whaletrouser is a disturbing influence in the community, and we should all lovingly treat her like dirt until she repents'. And in some cases these leaders behave as an alternative magisterium teaching doctrine which might be at variance with official teaching (I have experienced this), but which is required to be accepted by the community as the ipsissima verba Domini.

Mgr Ronald Knox's remarkable book Enthusiasm tells the tale of this strange phenomenon in Christianity throughout the ages; it's a bit of a tough read, but very illuminating.

I should, naturally, say that the little parish where I said Mass on Sunday has none of these weird characteristics: they were charming and devout. It was just the 'first person' nature of some of the hymns that got me thinking.

And it's why I feel uncomfortable about using the Lord's words directly like that.

On Being a Blogger

2011-07-04T14:30:00.000+01:00

There are a number of things that go with the territory of being a blogger. One is the fact that one will never rise in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. That to many is, of course, a relief, but it can be a bit disconcerting. A priest friend of mine had an excellent blog, which personal circumstances caused him to suspend. Having at the time been a curate, he was immediately made parish priest 'now that you've stopped writing your blog'. The blog, regrettably, hasn't re-started.

Another thing is being importuned by other blogs, sites and even advertisers, for free publicity on one's own blog. That makes me quite cross; a blog is one's personal thing, and being pressured to recommend something naturally inclines one the other way.

Or it does if you're me.

If someone asks me to recommend them, the first thing I do is to look at their site and see if they recommend my blog, or even mention it. Quid pro quo, after all. If I see nothing, I conclude that they are insincere, though I still feel guilty for ignoring the request. It doesn't imply that I don't agree with their aims, or think that their blog is poor. I just think that some good manners are as appropriate on the internet as in other parts of life.

Not knowing what to think

2011-06-29T10:07:00.000+01:00

At the weekend, term ended here at the Seminary with the Diaconate Ordination; a very splendid occasion when Paul Andrew, a former Anglican clergyman, was ordained (transitional) deacon for the diocese of Plymouth. Deacon Paul has his own website and journal here. The other members of his class were ordained deacon in the autumn.

Still for such splendid occasions, an organist is required, and I was approached. I was surprised, because I am far down the pecking order of organists here (quite rightly, as all the others are much better than I am), but pleased to be asked. I played for many such ceremonies in the past, before rust began to gather in my joints (and I've passed the half-century mark since I wrote the last post). And though I'm a moderately competent service accompanist, these days I get very nervous playing proper pieces for voluntaries &c, and so generally make a hash of them.

So why did they ask me, then?

The usual organist, an external professional who lives on the south coast, had married a wife and could not come. Or some other reason.
The number one internal organist suddenly had to make a retreat in Canada, and couldn't wait for the last day of term.
The number two internal organist was directing the schola cantorum and preferred not to have to be rushing from one place to another, as he said to me.
The number three was needed to sing in the schola.

So, it was explained to me, that left me, and would I kindly do it?

I was flattered but, yes, you're right, I should have been suspicious.

It turns out that Carlo Curley was on the guest list; a major professional organ recitalist, who describes himself as 'The Pavarotti of the Organ'!

No wonder all the other organists headed for the hills! They all knew about it, but did they tell me? No they didn't, because they knew that if I knew, I too would have found an unbreakable subsequent engagement in Wagga Wagga or the Falkland Islands.

Mr Curley must forgive me if I say that God rushed to the defence of his priesthood and struck the Pavarotti of the organ in the foot, making his attendance at the ordination impracticable. He didn't come. Thank God.

And now I don't know whether to be furious with my colleagues for not telling me, or relieved.

On a happier note, I noticed that the Holy Father initiated the new Vatican news service with a click on an iPad. Good to know that Apple Mac Technology has reached the highest quarters. Catholicism and Apple Mac: an unbeatable combination!

In Hope of Harvest

2011-06-15T12:08:00.000+01:00

Well, the book is launched today. For anyone who might perhaps like to know something about the history of St John's Seminary, Wonersh, (why?) they can get a copy here:

Paperback, £16 + p&p

Hardback, £20 + p&p.

It has 502 pages, and covers the story of St John's from its foundation in 1889 more or less to the present day.

People are kind enough to tell me that it isn't boring.

Fr Hunwicke

2011-06-09T16:19:00.002+01:00

The closure (let us hope, suspension) of Fr Hunwicke’s Liturgical Notes is, I think, a grief for all of us of a Catholic persuasion. That very phrase should suggest the distance we have come. I think that there is nobody who has sold to us ‘Romans’ so persuasively the merits that may be found within Anglo-Catholicism. You need only see the number of Catholic blogs who link to his. I think that among all those Anglophones who welcome Pope Benedict’s various initiatives, on both sides of the Tiber, Fr Hunwicke has starred as one of the most erudite and articulate expositors.

I cannot imagine that Fr Hunwicke has suspended his work willingly. In fact, I rather suspect that in his Liturgical Notes he has found his most adaptable and functional pulpit to date. But it seems clear from what he writes that he abandons the blog in order to be able to exercise the priesthood of Jesus Christ. I find this wholly admirable. What I mean is that were John Hunwicke to be denied the priesthood, this would assuredly release him to write whatever he wanted without fear of censure. I would continue to read him, as, I strongly believe, would large numbers of people, including those in Rome.

John Hunwicke is now a Catholic; a believing, communicant member of our faith, and that will not change. Though I have never met him, I will continue to look up to him as one of the main architects of one of the most exciting changes to have taken place in Western Christianity since the Reformation. I pray that this development will not deter many others from following him across the Tiber, though I fear it may.

Correction— I know, from actual examples, that it already has.

The Benedictine Arrangement

2011-06-07T08:13:00.000+01:00

I visited Arundel Cathedral last Sunday for the Confirmation of some of the young people from the Valle Adurni, and was very pleased to see the high altar looking splendid, with the 'Benedictine Arrangement' of candlesticks and substantial cross (no seventh candle, alas). There also has appeared a rather wonderful enormous new paschal candlestick.

Cynicism

2011-06-07T07:58:00.006+01:00

Commenting on the cancelled visit of Cardinal Burke to the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice conference, the sage William Oddie has a lot of useful things to say, as usual.

He does, however, write this:

I cannot help reflecting on how much less divisive it would have been had Cardinal Burke emulated Cardinal Hume, who when Mother Angelica addressed Pro Ecclesia himself not only attended but addressed the conference, and was not only respectfully but appreciatively applauded.

Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. I was there that day; so of course was William Oddie; in fact he was in the chair. Mother Angelica was on superb form and Cardinal Hume, when he came on the platform to address the conference, was indeed warmly applauded. Everyone felt that it was good to see him there, and perhaps suggested a willingness to listen.

Until he began to speak, that is: the burden of what he said was 'you are Catholics; Catholics are supposed to obey their bishops; we know what is best for you; put up, and shut up.' The applause at the end (there was a little, out of politeness) was anything but appreciative and respectful; in fact there was a lot of angry muttering.

The idea that traditionally-minded Catholics could cynically be hoist with their own petard by liberal bishops demanding an obedience they would never even dare to ask of others, and refuse to the Holy Father ('this rule does not apply in this country') disgusted me then and disgusts me now.

It does not appear to me that our current hierarchy are of this mind, thank God. In fact, it is a pleasure to note a new spring in their step, and to see that some of them actually seem to enjoy being Catholic these days.

Sorry about the weird text; it isn't supposed to mean anything: it just went strange of its own accord, it seems, and I couldn't get it back to normal.

Rough Games

2011-05-31T06:57:00.000+01:00

I read in this morning's paper that two seven-year-old boys have been disciplined by their school (which also demanded that the parents reinforce the lesson) for making 'guns' with their fingers. I would be interested to know whether the teachers responsible for this particular act of absurdity have children of their own.

I have a friend who is an evolutionary anthropologist. Until she married and had two boys, she uncritically accepted the dogma she had been taught, that the difference between the sexes was simply a matter of plumbing. Her boys almost from the moment they could see and grasp scorned the cuddly toys and went straight for the tractors and planes, and that was only the beginning.

It is a natural instinct to protect children from becoming horrible adults, and a good one. We want our children to be 'free' when they grow up, but the trouble is that freedom is now being confused with licence. Against this, I prefer to call freedom 'the ability to act in accordance with my nature' which, since my nature is fallen, may require not a little self-discipline. So far, I am in agreement with the educators. Some actions are good for children to learn, some are not good.

The difficulty is when our real nature is poorly understood. As I mentioned in the last post, there is a notion of how some people think we 'ought' to be, rather than beginning from where we actually are. Can you make a boy a 'new man' by forbidding him to play soldiers? Is there no way that male natural instincts can be turned to good rather than by being completely suppressed?

CS Lewis had a strange opinion on this: I'm not sure I go all the way with him, but I can see what he is saying. I wish I could find the passage, but I don't have my books with me; it might even be from Mere Christianity. Lewis was not, of course, in favour of war as a thing in itself, but he lamented that a soldier was no longer entitled to see war as glorious in some way, that he had to see it as a sad necessity. In some way this is emasculating; a man ought to be able to rejoice in his masculinity. It's Lewis' opinion, and perhaps goes a bit far, but I can see what he is saying.

Among various differences, men are generally physically stronger than women. Instead of denying that strength, it needs to be focussed on a good end. It ought to be possible in childhood to enable a boy to see his strength as service for the good of a higher cause. It's the old crusader thing; to have some higher aspiration to which one gives oneself, and he who loses himself will find himself. That is the essential paradox that is fully in accord with human nature.

We talk about child-centred education, but that is not the same thing as educating in the child's best interests. In the same paper I read this morning, I also read about school trips costing the parents four figures. Add to that the designer clothes and electronics, and everything else now considered indispensable to a child. It is all of a piece with the lessons that encourage pupils to express how they feel all the time, to sit in judgment on great minds and say what they think about Shakespeare, whether he 'got it right'. Children are encouraged and helped to get what they want out of their education, so that they can get what they want out of their career, and get what they want out of their marriage—sorry, relationships—simply, we are educating people for disappointment. And, in my opinion, that is why so many of our young people look so sulky. And why they lapse from the practice of the faith. People admire the dedication and self-sacrifice of the Queen, but have no inclination to imitate it.

Instead of considering 'what can I get out of life', our young people should be encouraged to consider 'what can I do with my life'. We should begin with our teenagers asking themselves 'what am I, and what are my gifts and inclinations for?' Christianity gives the answer: to love God and my neighbour as myself.

Rough games are natural to boys; let's teach them how to use their strength for good, and not simply repress it, which is far more likely to result in its misuse.

On a lighter note, did anyone notice during the latest royal wedding that crass BBC announcer (a woman) asking a group of teenage boys 'so, boys, what did you feel when you saw the dress?' The poor lads were completely nonplussed. I imagined phalanxes of grim, grey, Guardian-reading pedagogues tutting to themselves at what young people are becoming these days……

I once was chaplain to a primary school that wouldn't number its classes because numbers are 'hierarchical'; even the children in the classes were of mixed age, lest a younger child feel disadvantaged by having a lower number (age) than an older. The classes, instead of being numbered, had tree names, 'Oak', 'Beech' and so on. The headteacher (no headmaster, he; and yes, he was a man [I assume]) told me one day that they were going to add a couple of classes, and could I suggest some nice trees to name them after. I am ashamed to record that I suggested 'Cane' and 'Birch'.

Looking for the pic at the top of this post, I came across this site, dedicated to educational idiocy.

The bleedin' obvious

2011-05-29T09:22:00.000+01:00

Just about the oldest joke in the book is about the little Catholic boy and the little Protestant girl who took their clothes off and went for a swim. Both of them went to their mothers afterwards and said, worried, 'Mummy; I didn't know there was such a difference between Catholics and Protestants!'

At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, I was struck yet again the other day at what a difference there is. From time to time I have a look at the Ugley Vicar's blog: he's usually got something interesting to say from a different perspective to mine. The particular post that interested me was one on the 1975 decision of General Synod that 'there are no fundamental objections to the ordination of women to the priesthood', which he describes as 'perhaps the most stupid thing General Synod has ever done'.

Well of course it would be impertinent of me to comment on General Synod's decisions, though as an outsider it looks to me to have had pretty catastrophic consequences. (Sorry if that's impertinent!) The Ugley Vicar comments, rightly, that to say that there are no fundamental objections is simply wrong. One might say that there are fundamental objections and they are wrong objections, and anathematize them, as a General Council might, but to say that they do not exist is simply untrue. Well, quite. It suggests that any objections that exist are merely shallow, unworthy of consideration.

The whole Evangelical method of reasoning, however, is fundamentally different to the Catholic one. For our friend the Ugley Vicar, the matter is a moral one. One should obey God's will, and one derives one's knowledge of God's will from God' Word; which is to say, from the Bible. Whether a woman can be a priest or a bishop is a matter of right and wrong; of fidelity or infidelity to the word of God as revealed in the Bible. Since most Evangelicals take a symbolic view of the sacraments, (many indeed would favour 'lay presidency' at the Eucharist), the question of whether a woman might preside at such a celebration would be a moral one; ought she to do so? Is she being disobedient to God's Word, and is the Church of England being disobedient to God's word in permitting a woman to exercise headship in the Church? The successive Synod votes on the subject of women's orders since 1975, then, have been successive mistakes, but mistakes can be put right again. All you have to do is wait things out, keep the pressure on, and get the decisions reversed in due course.

To a Catholic mind, the question is not just a moral one, but an ontological one. Priesthood and a fortiori Episcopacy are about more than just headship or leadership. This is because we believe that sacraments actually do what they say on the tin, and we ask not just 'may' or 'should' somebody do it, but 'can' they do it? To make a priest you have to do more than simply putting a vestment on and calling them a priest; a bishop is more than a pointy hat and a curly stick.

As a sort of reductio ad absurdum, I remember going to the plumbing-in of Cormac Murphy-O'Connor as the Archbishop of Westminster. There were present several leaders from Pentecostal communions, and some of them had clearly felt that on such an occasion they ought to dress appropriately, to fit in, I suppose. There were about three or four, men and women, who had clearly gone to Vanpoulles or somewhere, and, basically, bought various bits of liturgical bling which they draped about their persons and greeted the new Archbishop as equals. If cucullus non fecit monachum, then mitra non fecit episcopum either.

I think that it was Ronald Knox, when an Anglican, who believed that Anglican orders must be valid, because God would surely not have left the Church of England so long without the comfort of the sacraments. That too is a moral argument not an ontological one. If God the Son regularly obeys the words of the priest to substantially make Himself present under the forms of bread and wine because He is faithful to His promises, then is it not reasonable to assume that He does not dispense with His own laws simply because human beings have shifted the goalposts?

If we cannot (rather than should not) modify our celebration of the Eucharist with bread and wine, then we cannot make changes to the sacrament of Order without seriously worrying whether we have moved the goalposts on God's promises.

This ontological view is all of a piece with our view of the world. Some years ago, when I was, for some eighteen months, a priest in Oxford, I was privileged to attend a course of lectures given by the eminent physicist and daily Massgoer, Dr Peter Hodgson. A remarkable man, he was never afraid to nail his colours to the mast even when this courted unpopularity; at the height of the arguments against nuclear power, he was a passionate advocate—I think he even wrote a CTS pamplet on the subject—demonstrating how the arguments against nuclear power caused (appropriately) more heat than light. Hodgson was long on the lecture circuit; I discovered in the course of the preparation of my book that he had visited St John’s Seminary to lecture on ‘Science and the Priest’ as far back as 1955 or 6, I forget which, and he was already described as ‘eminent’ then.

In his old age, he turned his mind to another problem he saw emerging; the Church being perceived as the enemy of science. That is still, of course, a challenge, with the old chestnut of Galileo being trotted out regularly as it if proves the point without further need of discussion.

Hodgson’s point was that, precisely, the development of science as we know it would not have been possible without the Catholic Church. There were many strands to this, but one is, of course, the development of the Aristotelian method beginning with Albert the Great, and continuing. Secularists are quick to point out, quite correctly, that the Church got that from the Moslems, but they do not then go on to show how the Church developed it over the ages. It is all about understanding how reality works; about categories, and about how one thing observably and regularly leads to another. Whether in physics or metaphysics, things happen regularly and one can therefore deduce that they will continue to do so. As Chesterton said in Orthodoxy, the fact that the sun rises regularly each day is a recurring miracle; the point is that it does so faithfully because all the universe is subject to regular laws of behaviour, because there is a Lawgiver. This regularity makes science possible. Even particle physics which seems to reveal a certain antinomianism may well have laws which we do not yet understand.

A couple of years ago, Gem of the Ocean put on her blog a list of the eminent scientists who ‘just happened’ to be Catholic priests. I wish she would repost it, because it was very interesting. I remember that I added Gregor Mendel, the father (as it were) of genetics, to the list. Galileo is embarrassing, I suppose, but for every Galileo there must be twenty, fifty, a hundred, eminent Catholics who see no contradiction between their science and their faith.

For a Catholic, as for a scientist, we need to know whether if I do x, y will follow. We know a male priest can do the biz: why introduce variables that we cannot be assured will work at all? When I die, I want to be properly absolved, not simply to be comforted by somebody (of either sex) saying that surely God wouldn’t (read ‘oughtn’t’) to send me to hell. I want assurance that my sins are forgiven, not warm words and a comforting opinion that just might be rubbish, and dangerous rubbish.

‘If I were God, I would organize things this way rather than that way’ is not a meaningful principle of action in either theology or science. We struggle to understand a fact (we are not omniscient) but do not deny its status as a fact. Somebody may well know why copper sulphate is blue and not pink; I don’t, but I accept that it is so, that all my wishing won’t change it, and get on with my life.

Some of this, I suppose, must go back to old William of Ockham; a thing is what I say it is. I say it is a baseball bat, you say it is a club. I suppose it’s Berkeley, too, trees falling in woods making no noise and all that. When Ronald Knox answered that amusing limerick about the tree that continued to be when there is no-one around in the quad, he said something very important. For the Catholic, and, indeed, for the theist, the fact is that things have their ontological nature not because you, or I, or Parliament, or a General Synod say so, but because God says so. This is what gives stability to human thought and society; and to science too. It assures me that the cosmos is a unity subject to ‘laws’, that its functioning is not an accident, but is both observable and reliable. This makes science possible, and makes theology something equally stable that I can have a growing relationship with.

The Catholic point is that you cannot hive off part of reality and make it subject to a vote. Phrases such as ‘it’s my truth’ are meaningless.

Iam finita sunt proelia!

2011-05-24T20:49:00.000+01:00

The book is finished!

yes, really.

really!

That's a bottle of Lanson champagne on the left, and Brunello di Montalcino on the right.

Thanks to all who have got me here today.

In Hope of Harvest, the 502-page history of St John's Seminary, Wonersh, will be available to all who suffer from insomnia or have too much time on their hands in mid-June. I wouldn't bother, if I were you.

Welcome back…

2011-05-19T07:59:00.000+01:00

…to His Patrimoniality. 'Fr Hunwicke's Liturgical Notes' is, to our great relief and universal rejoicing, up and running again—and is now an indisputably Catholic blog!

On this front, I've been a little exercised as to how I should order my sidebar. Would Catholics of the Ordinariate prefer to have their own little enclave, as at present, or join hoi polloi in the Catholic Links section?

Strange times

2011-05-18T19:12:00.001+01:00

I have assisted at a Mass where an auxiliary bishop sang the responsorial psalm (he is now the Archbishop of Birmingham, and has a very beautiful voice—in fact, when still a priest, he sang at my ordination). In Rome in the old days, when the Pope celebrated, senior curial officials would act as the altar servers; however, I have never before seen a choir directed by a cardinal in choir dress, especially in St Peter's! It is, I assume, Cardinal Bartolucci.

h/t John Paul Sonnen here

Two steps forwards, one step back

2011-05-14T07:58:00.004+01:00

It has indeed been wonderful to get the news about Universæ Eccclesiæ, the restored Friday penance and the possible restoration of Epiphany and Ascension.

In France, however, there is one piece of startling news. It concerns this man:

His name is François Fonlupt; a used car salesman, perhaps, or a rep for some company?

Nope; he's the new bishop of Rodez, the only diocese in the South-West of France that has been getting back into an objectively more healthy state, according to the site Chrétienté Info, largely due to the work of the outgoing bishop Bellino Ghirard; at least, it says, Rodez was the only diocese not entirely in a coma. I notice that on its diocesan webpage it even notes where one may find the Extraordinary Form. That will probably change under what is likely to be the 18-year reign of Mgr Fonlupt (he being 57). As the photograph suggests, he is an opponent of the EF, being described as the liberal's liberal. Gloria TV news noted that he recently denied the 'material presence' of Christ in the Eucharist, and said that our Lord was as much present in the congregation. Chrétienté Info also notes that he celebrates 'second' marriages for the divorced, refuses to oppose artificial contraception because it's what people are doing anyway, and has no problem giving general absolution.

I have to say that I don't really get the strange things on his face—no, not his glasses.

How on earth could this happen today?

Has the eldest daughter of the Church gone nuts?

A very handy postscript here from the French Oasis.

How Popes Should Travel: The Holy Father in Venice

2011-05-09T12:12:00.001+01:00

How cool is this! So much better than the refrigerator-on-wheels they usually make him sit in; even the motorized version in Venice was open.

Photos: Corriere del Veneto

2011-05-09T11:55:00.001+01:00

The Latin Mass Society magazine, Mass of Ages is looking for a new editor. If you are interested, email here: michael@lms.org.uk

A Blessed Easter

2011-04-24T09:39:00.000+01:00

…to you all.

By popular request……

Our new missal

2011-04-13T16:21:00.000+01:00

Love the missal; not so keen on the other stuff. But it makes me look forward to the publication.

The Heritage Lottery Fund and Churches

2011-04-12T10:30:00.000+01:00

The architect Deirdre Waddington has drawn to my attention that the Heritage Lottery Fund doesn't seem to be too keen on giving money to churches.

The Fund is carrying out a consultation (which you can find here) about how it might allot its money. Members of the public can register their views, and I would strongly encourage you to do so and pass the word around.

Miss Waddington says:

To my mind the questionnaire is not very well designed. It seems that it is necessary to mention churches in the comments box for them to get a look in. The one good aspect is that you can review what you have written before signing off.

Here is the email that is being circulated:

“I have been told authoritatively, and from a completely dependable source, that the initial results from the HLF on-line e-mail consultation are not especially encouraging with regard to potential future funding for churches.

Although a sizeable proportion of those responding to date have indicated that they enthusiastically support future funding for historic structures and buildings, a far smaller proportion have indicated support for resources being targeted at churches. This may reflect a shortcoming in the questions themselves, and therefore a confusion in the public mind about whether funding would be offered to churches as historic buildings or whether all churches are to regarded as religious institutions, and therefore as a low priority for Heritage funding.

Given the eventual phasing-out of much English Heritage money to support historic buildings, and the need to garner support from the HLF for our churches, it is essential that we do all we can to influence the on-line consultation in the direction of continued (and greater) support for church buildings as important historic structures and part of the national patrimony.

The deadline for on-line comments is 26^th April and the documentation is available on www.hlf.org.uk/consultation2011 Please respond yourselves and get anyone else (DAC members, workers in your diocesan office, friends, complete strangers off the street…) you can to do the same. The numbers of people responding are fairly small, so the chances of having a significant effect on the statistical balance are good. “www.hlf.org.uk/consultation2011

Getting Old

2011-04-11T12:52:00.000+01:00

I have always thought of myself as essentially young in at least one respect; the priest who baptized me nearly half a century ago was still in active ministry until this morning.

Please say a prayer for the soul of Fr Brendan Burke, who gave me the most extraordinary gift of Baptism all those years ago, and who was still the Parish Priest of Rustington in Sussex until he died this morning.

Euge, serve bone et fidele!

Invitation to Catholic Bloggers!

2011-04-08T19:18:00.003+01:00

The Vatican has invited Catholic bloggers to a meeting in the Vatican.

This event, organized by the Pontifical Council for Culture and Social Communication, has as its objective to allow a dialogue between bloggers and the representatives of the Church, to share the experiences of those who are active in this field, and to understand better the needs of such a community.

There isn't much time; the meeting is scheduled to take place on 2nd May in the Pius X auditorium.

If you read Italian, you can find more here: Google Translate may help out, if you don't.

Hat tip, Palazzo Apostolico.

History Lesson

2011-04-06T08:23:00.001+01:00

A history lesson with a difference, from a Warder at the Tower of London. The best bit starts at about 3.00 and goes on to the end. Hat tip to Gary Blosh. There are more of these on the YouTube site.

Someone's laughing, Lord; Someone's crying, Lord.

2011-03-30T10:43:00.001+01:00

Hat tip: Philip Andrews.

TLM in York Minster

2011-03-28T16:47:00.001+01:00

I think that York Minster must be one of the loveliest buildings in this country. It was good news that the first ever Extraordinary Form Mass was celebrated there recently. Congratulations to all concerned. Next time, perhaps a High Mass could be celebrated.
You can find more photos here.

Decisions, decisions!

2011-03-24T18:06:00.000Z

You must not become a Catholic

2011-03-24T17:26:00.001Z

Archbishop Mennini said:

At the nunciature [in Moscow] there was also a young [Orthodox] seminarian who had stopped studying in order to make some money. I would tell him quite often: “You must not become a Catholic. You have to keep your faith in order to better serve your Church. Now you know us you can dream about going to Rome. You can go to Rome one day in order to study but you should remain a Russian Orthodox.”

Language and the Psalms

2011-03-22T18:18:00.000Z

I've been having a look at the Revised Grail Psalter, which you can find here, on Wikispooks, next to the Revised NAB version which is used in the States. It is very likely that we will be using the Revised Grail for the Breviary and for the Psalms at Mass in the future.

On the whole, the (old) Grail version has been quite successful; it rarely grates on the ear, with only the occasional infelicities:

'shooting upright men in the dark'

'he sends a scorching wind as their lot'

and the occasional weirdnesses:

'grow higher ancient doors.'

No doubt you can think of some others. And the Coverdale psalms are scarcely free from weirdnesses:

One deep calleth another / because of the noise of the waterpipes.

comes quickly to mind.

But, for good or ill, the Grail has got under our skin now in a way that the Jerusalem Bible and the now-moribund translation of the Mass have failed to do. It has sufficient quality to be familiar and easily known by heart; it reads easily, with the occasional exception.

What pleases me about the new Grail is that while using inclusive language when the sense is inclusive, it retains gender-specific language when it is not. So it recognizes (which too many versions do not) that many of the 'men' referred to in the Psalms are Types of Christ.

They seem to have retained a great deal of the old version, but this is not altogether a good thing, because familiarity can make one confident, and then along comes a change and trips one up. I don't really understand the reason for some changes;

OG: Foundations once destroyed, what can the just do?

NG: Foundations once destroyed, what can the righteous do?

Anyway, so far I'm hopeful that it will work all right, unless a closer inspection reveals anything horrid.

The Lectionary

2011-03-18T08:54:00.002Z

The original idea was that our new translation of the Missal would be accompanied by a new translation of the Lectionary, too. It was decided some time ago that we would use the NRSV version of the Bible, but that now seems to be no longer quite so certain.

Not surprisingly, Rome has been less than happy with certain aspects of the NRSV, in particular its inclusive language. The publishers of the NRSVare less than happy with what Rome proposes; not just our desired modifications to the text, but even the 'incipits' we use in the Gospel: 'At that time Jesus said to the pharisees'; 'When Jesus came to Capernaum he said…'; this, it seems, they consider tinkering with God's Word (which, apparently, their inclusive language isn't). So now we have stalemate.

There is a growing number of people who consider that the 'old' RSV would match better with the new translation of the Missal (especially if its thees and thous were altered).

I hear that the Bishops of England and Wales have now decided that there are to be no further liturgical changes for another six years: that perforce will include the new lectionary. This, I suppose, is to enable people to get some wear out of any personal missal they might buy that has the new version of the Missal but the Jerusalem Bible and Grail Psalms. So publishers can get going, in other words, and not fear being left with a lot of useless stock, or not making sales at all.

This means that we have six years to campaign for a decent version of the Bible for the Lectionary: fortunately it seems that the NRSV probably isn't going to be a runner after all.

And in the meantime, I expect that we will see publishers of temporary books like Magnificat making a killing; Magnificat is a very good thing, though whether many parishioners can be induced to take out a subscription remains to be seen.

Swishing Along

2011-03-17T16:56:00.000Z

I was reminded earlier of the alternative to the Ordinariate, known snappily as The Mission Society of St Wilfrid and St Hilda (SWISH), so I thought I'd have a look at their website to see what's going on.

The answer is, virtually nothing! This really reinforces my view at the time, which was that SPLOSH was simply dreamed up by a couple of guys over a drink or two without any clear idea of what it was going to do ('we'll fill in the details later… whose round is it?'). The heavenly patrons must have been chosen at the one-for-the-road stage, for (as others have pointed out) it is hard to think of early English saints more devoted to Roman communion.

So is SCRATCH going anywhere? Given the lack of activity, it wouldn't seem so. But perhaps there is frantic striving behind the scenes to prevent the upcoming votes going against them……

But that too is unlikely. Their website says that it is for those who are 'unconvinced' that the CofE has the authority to ordain women. If they simply aren't convinced now, then perhaps they will soon become convinced, or at least prepared to tolerate a compromise. It always pays to leave a door open for a graceful retreat, I suppose.

Fr Ray draws attention to the fact that very few in the traditional heartland of Anglo-Catholicism (London, Brighton and South Coast Religion) are taking the Roman Option in Ordinariate form (though some are joining the mainstream Church); there are a priest and some laity in Eastbourne, and two families in Chichester. That's it. It is puzzling. The Patrimonial Doctor made some reference to it a few weeks back, noting that those formerly loudest in their Romanistic Professions are those who are staying, while those who were simply steady Anglicans seem to be wading into the Tiber.

is it because Bishop John Hinde provides a temporary illusion of 'business as usual'? That might well suit some of the gin-and-lace brigade. An incumbent not far from me declared his intention of simply staying on till he retires 'and then I don't care what happens'! That's okay by me; I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable with somebody with so little zeal or principle as a colleague.

Early April Fool?

2011-03-16T08:23:00.001Z

I hope that this is just an ugly rumour put around by opponents of the Ordinariate to dissuade people from its arms, or else an early April Fool joke. This thing, according to Damian Thompson, is being considered by the Bishops' Conference as the 'pro-cathedral' of the Ordinary, or at any rate its London base. Better to share a church, I should have said.

Surely there must be better buildings around. Does the pro have to be in London? There are plenty of fine churches in Liverpool in need of a careful owner. And, if it isn't too late and there are some funds to care for it, there is the splendid church at London Colney, which the Diocese of Westminster no longer needs.

Brick by brick

2011-03-15T07:32:00.001Z

It is pretty well axiomatic that if you want to read a reasoned and charitable discussion on important issues, you won't find it in blog comment boxes. There 'Mr Angry of Purley' has full rein, barely even subject to editorial moderation, to write what his most extreme emotions tell him to write at two o'clock in the morning, perhaps having worked his way through most of a whisky bottle. And he doesn't even need to write his real name. From his hermitage (or his computer room anyway) he damns the world, and certainly weasel priests like me who hesitate to turn our altars around immediately and begin celebrating the Traditional Mass exclusively, no matter what our parishioners think.

The poor Holy Father is often invoked in all this 'why won't he just order the bishops to X…?' (here write in whatever your particular gripe is). There is no consideration as to what will happen if the bishop says 'no!' What does the Holy Father do? Excommunicate the bishop, of course! And when two-thirds of the episcopate are excommunicated, what then?

It is just the same, on a smaller scale, in our parishes. I should, apparently, order my musicians to put away their guitars and use the Liber Usualis from next Sunday. Well, what if they say no? I could indeed turn my parish into a screaming hell-hole of bitter arguments, but would that actually serve any purpose? In the end, my parishioners would, the majority of them, either mutinously put up with the situation, or else go somewhere other for Mass, or lapse. I would actually inoculate them against the very thing I was trying to bring about.

I am completely convinced that Pope Benedict and, indeed, the Doctor Lapidarius Father Zuhlsdorf have it right. 'Brick by brick, folks'.

The Church tried repression before. In the past, of course, it could back up its commands with the Inquisition and the State's pyre. Those options aren't open to us; our age in that respect is more civilized, thank God. But in our modern world, people really can vote with their feet, and they need to be persuaded, not ordered. Both Blessed Pius IX and St Pius X, wonderful men, tried dealing with what was then called 'Liberal Catholicism' and came to be called 'Modernism' with repression. It worked up to a point. But only up to a point, Lord Copper.

If a person asks an intelligent question, one is well advised to try and give an intelligent answer. The response 'you aren't allowed to ask that question!' may produce compliance, but a reluctant one. Resentments will seethe and brew under the surface, and the questions will not go away; rather they will become more insistent. In a more liberal age, they will burst forth like a dam breaking, and carry away all sorts of good stuff in the torrent. Is not that a good description of the Church of the 60s and since?

Right now, the Holy Father could jump up and down, shout and holler for obedience. He is unlikely to get it from everyone, and he risks actually putting the Church into a worse state by trying. Instead, he is using the policy of the Doctor Lapidarius; brick by brick. At last, the serious questions of the liberals are being treated seriously and being answered by someone who doesn't lose his temper or his charity. It is an awesome sight. I re-read the other day the Introduction to the Holy Father's first Jesus of Nazareth book. He begins by saying that what he wants to do is simply, reconnect the 'Jesus of Faith' with the 'Jesus of History.' And does just that. Bingo! Is not that worth thousands of anathemas? Even The Tablet has to acknowledge the Pope's theological skill and eloquence! On the liturgical front, he presents what he thinks people can manage right now, and by doing it himself, encourages others to imitate him. Hence all the 'benedictine arrangements' appearing here and there. For those who want the traditional Mass, it can be freely offered. It is up to the Mr Angrys to go to them, support them, encourage them, and, brick by brick, rebuild what has been lost, only stronger and better, having learnt important lessons along the way.

And that is the model for the parish, too. Brick by brick. No anathemas, just helping people to love and desire the truth because it is, just simply, better.

Councils

2011-03-13T11:44:00.001Z

His Patrimoniality, the estimable Fr Hunwicke has begun a series on councils. I commend it to you. I am looking forward very much to seeing what he has to say.

This is a subject which has exercised my mind for quite a number of years. There is a general assumption that councils teach infallibly and certainly with great authority. However:

1) I am not convinced that, say, Nicæa I saw itself that way. Several of those who agreed to homoousios there didn't feel particularly bound to teach consubstantiality afterwards. Its prohibitions against bishops changing sees didn't prevent Eusebius, a signatory, changing from the see of Nicomedia to Constantinople. To my view, the fathers at Nicæa saw the council as being not a lot different from a local council, just on a bigger scale. It was an agreement, not a mouthpiece for the Holy Ghost.

2) How is one to regard a council, such as at Ephesus, where the business gets under way before an important party even has time to arrive and discuss the matter? Old Cyril of Alexandria (who presided) must be one of the several examples of people who became saints despite the magnitude of their, shall we say, darker side.
The Syrians, who at that time had a problem with the dual nature in one person of our Lord, were the party concerned. They went off into schism as a result, labelled as Nestorians. A later great figure of the Syrian (or, better, Assyrian) schism, Babai the Great, with his work on qnome and parsopa came up with, basically, what Ephesus taught, but in different language. Are they to be held to the verbal formulation of Ephesus (which they don't like for reasons as much historical as anything else) if what they believe adds up to the same thing in any case?

3) The same thing can probably be said of Chalcedon and the Copts, Armenians and Jacobite Syrians.

4) Athanasius' little councilettes at Alexandria (21 bishops in 362) and Antioch (25 bishops) managed to overturn the Arian council(s) of Ariminum/Seleucia (500 (!) bishops in 359), confirmed at Constantinople in 360 (when the world groaned to find itself Arian) which certainly saw itself as an Ecumenical Council. No doubt he swung it because he had the support of the new Emperor (successor to Julian the Apostate), Jovian.

5) By the middle ages, it seems to have been established that a Canon (with an anathema) in a Council document was highly authoritative, perhaps infallible, whereas the preamble and any notes were illuminative (if I can put it like that). So when Trent teaches whoever denies that the Sacrament of Order consists of both major and minor orders, anathema sit, that's gotta be taken really really seriously, but when in a note it lists the orders as porter, lector, exorcist, acolyte, subdeacon, deacon, priest; that can be taken as seriously illuminative, but not infallible in any way (which it can't be, since the East does it differently, and Trent knew that—Council of Florence, and all that).

6) Vatican II has no canons at all. Some people, therefore, treat the whole thing as infallible. Is it all to be considered 'preamble' and therefore illuminative, or infallible?
Others consider infallible the bits they like (Gaudium et Spes, for instance) and pretend the bits they don't like (the use of Latin must continue in the Western rites) don't exist. Traddies can be as guilty of this as trendies.
Paul VI and Bd John XXIII seem to have thought that the council was to proclaim no new dogmas. What, then, does that make of the occasions when it does seem to vary from what has been held before? (e.g. Holy Orders as being Bishop, Priest, Deacon, see Trent above). Pope Benedict's idea of the Hermeneutic of Continuity is probably the best approach to this, but there are wrinkles that have to ironed out.

The East (when it stops trying to long for the days of the Emperor) seems to think that 'reception' is what makes the difference between a dodgy Council (like Ariminum/Seleucia, or the Robber Council of Ephesus) and a pukka one. I think that this is rather like our notion of the Sensus Fidelium. In other words, it all depends on whom you speak to. When Gregory the Great went to Constantinople as Papal Legate, he found almost every single church there still basically Subordinationist (kind of Arian). It was really only after centuries that Nicene orthodoxy really rooted itself in the East.

It has often been said that the Church thinks in centuries. Perhaps here we have an indication to Reception/Sensus Fidelium. It isn't an instant thing, but can take a very long time. Like the psychohistory of Hari Seldon, it only operates on a vast scale. A priest once commented to me that we are, sub specie æternitatis, still living in the Early Church; this is, of course, right. The bigger picture is something we will only see when we have all gone to our reward.

What I think is harder to prove is that the Holy Spirit whispers in the ears of every Father in an Ecumenical Council in such a way that, in effect, every Ecumenical Council takes verbal dictation from God. In some ways, a Council opens up more questions than it hopes to solve; the present dialogue taking place between the Society of St Pius X and what it calls 'Conciliar Rome' is a good example of this. That the Society is still trying to settle this matter, and hasn't simply separated itself from the Church, as so many have before, is a very good sign, and may perhaps help us to settle this issue of what a Council actually is.

If in any way I have gone over the line in this, I apologize, and submit my judgment to that of the Church. I am just trying to feel my way through an interesting set of ideas.

The New Translation

2011-03-11T08:22:00.000Z

We're using the new translation in its entirety here in the Seminary during Lent. This morning was the third celebration, and still the sky hasn't fallen down, nor has anyone walked out.

People have commented that it's much easier to listen to than to read on the page, which is encouraging. One person, who habitually likes to demonstrate his competence in the Liturgy by making all the responses louder and faster than anyone else, forgot from time to time, and a couple of times shouted out 'and also with you' (he wasn't using the crib card, to show that he didn't need such things) thus tripping others up. Some sacred ministers were a little lost ('as confused as a Jesuit in Holy Week', they used to say) but all in all, it has been prayerful and a good experience. I am encouraged.

This morning, the dismissal by the deacon was a little abrupt; 'go in peace!'. It sounded a little like 'go away!'

Land and Law

2011-03-09T11:48:00.001Z

An Anglican priest of my acquaintance spoke to me recently about a curious incident. The diocese in which he works contacted not him, but his churchwarden, to state that at the latest by the end of next year (and preferably via the diocese within a month) the land on which the church and churchyard stand must be registered with the Land Registry as always having belonged to the church. This must be asserted before a solicitor.

There are some curious angles to this:

• Why is this necessary all of a sudden? Is it because some congregations are hoping to take their buildings with them when they join the Ordinariate?
• Does this mean that the Church of England is actually aware that its confident assertion that such alienation of property is not possible is actually not as watertight as it hoped? In fact, that congregations might successfully claim ownership of their own church?
• Why was the churchwarden approached without the knowledge of the incumbent? Is it because, as a known opponent of the ordination of women, he might be thought liable to join the Ordinariate?

One hears rumours of an E.U. law which says that if a congregation has been worshipping in a building for twenty years or more and maintaining it entirely at their own expense during this period it belongs to them. And presumably they could take it with them if they voted to join the Ordinariate or, for that matter (and no doubt preferably to some in Church House) the Unification Church or the Church of Scientology.

Makes you fink, dunnit?

The triumph of hope over experience

2011-03-09T11:17:00.000Z

From time to time I have seen and heard it asserted proudly by Anglicans that it alone in the West has preserved the proper order of the sacraments of initiation (meaning giving Communion after Confirmation). They might be interested in this article.

Some Anglicans in Canada are pressing for the abolition of the requirement that communicants be already baptized. This they believe will reverse the continuing decline of the Canadian Anglican Church. According to this view, it would seem that the reason that Canadians do not attend the Anglican Church is because (a) they are not baptized, and therefore (b) are cruelly denied Communion. It follows that once it is announced that one does not need to be baptized to receive, then all the churches will fill up once more.

Ahh, bless!

Comments

2011-03-08T11:31:00.000Z

Apologies to a couple of comment posters who didn't get their comments added recently. Usually, Blogger sends me an email to let me know that comments have arrived. For some reason, it didn't this time, so it wasn't until I logged into the Dashboard thingy that I discovered comments unpublished. It has now been remedied.

Carthusiastic enquiry

2011-03-08T11:28:00.000Z

A monk of St Hugh's Charterhouse would like to know if anyone knows anything about this picture. Can anyone help, please?

Cold Dogma and Nice Feelings.

2011-02-24T20:00:00.000Z

It was my privilege the other day to celebrate Mass in a house of contemplative nuns. One sister approached me in a little distress just before Mass (it was the feast of the Chair of St Peter) to point out a guest-house resident who had made the most enormous fuss just before Mass because she had discovered that we wouldn't give her Holy Communion, she being Anglican. This is not an uncommon problem, and to obviate it, the sisters have made a little notice which outlines the situation charitably and carefully.

Throughout the Mass this lady (for such I assume she is) sat quivering in righteous outrage and created the most horrible atmosphere. At Communion she approached me, sidling up. She waited. I waited. She (barely) crossed her arms, and I blessed her. And that was that.

Except it wasn't. We all went out from Mass feeling, well, dirtied in some way. Certainly the Mass was spoilt for me and for Sister Euphrasia of the Paschal Candle Extinguished (for it was she) who knew of the situation. I didn't help matter by expressing my feelings to Sister Euphrasia more strongly than I should.

What is so galling is the natural assumption that we were being deliberately cruel in some way. Why does this lady assume that she can be a guest in a Catholic monastery and expect everybody to conform to her, Anglican, doctrine (or at least custom)? As Sister Euphrasia said, 'when we go to the Orthodox Liturgy, they don't give us Communion, and we don't expect it.' Is it because said lady thinks that, since she belongs to the Established Church, we all ought to conform to her views because they are naturally right, being By Law Established?

Why does she expect us to set aside what our Communion has held from the time of the Apostles (just you read St Ignatius of Antioch [c.110AD] on the subject!) because she didn't want to walk 50 yards to the Anglican Church for Holy Communion?

It didn't help that this lady is a dedicated Benedictine groupie. Triumphantly she revealed that she had been not just given but was invited to Communion at both Bec and Solesmes Abbeys. It did no good to explain the feeble half-way house that the Church has permitted reception where there is no access for a substantial time (ten years? half an hour? five minutes?) to one's own communion, when Pope John Paul II could give Communion to the still-Anglican Tony Blair, half a mile from All Saints Anglican Church in Rome. We were simply imposing our cold, cruel dogma to keep her out.

When I was a seminarian, for a few brief years we occasionally used (among a plethora of hymnals) a sort of supplement to Hymns Ancient and Modern called 100 Hymns for Today: I'm sure some readers will have encountered it. In it is a corker, called 'God of concrete, God of steel' (just imagine!) in which it lambasted 'dogmas keeping man from man' (itself a splendid own goal as the hymn aged). I also remember a visit of some exchange students from a Methodist theological college in Bristol. They came to a Fundamental Theology lecture I attended. The lecturer (called, remarkably, Michael Jackson, [no relation] by no means an arch-traditionalist) kindly explained to them at the beginning that he was addressing the subject of 'dogma'. There was a collective (somewhat camp but nonetheless genuine) gasp of horror from the Methodists. We all gazed at them, bemused.

Dogma. Feelings.

Dear me.

Summorum Pontificum

2011-02-24T09:34:00.000Z

I have received an email from Someone Who Says He Knows, saying that the freedom accorded by Summorum Pontificum to the Extraordinary Form is indeed under threat, and that the 'clarification' document is about to be signed.

This would be a very good moment to sign that petition, if you have not already done so.

I really don't know what all this is about. SP has, if anything, brought peace to this matter, and caused very little disturbance except in the minds of those who simply don't want us to be allowed it.

It's really quite simple; if you don't like the Extraordinary Form, don't go to it!

'That we should have lived to see these days!'

2011-02-13T16:13:00.000Z

'That we should have lived to see these days!'

These are the moving words of Deacon Edwin Barnes, formerly 'Flying' Anglican Bishop of Richborough. May God bless him in his new role, and all his colleagues.
Truly we are living in extraordinary times.

Soon bee spring……

2011-02-12T18:05:00.000Z

Feeling melancholy today (very badly let down by a health care professional,* and wondering whether to make a formal complaint), I happened to cast my eye out from the priests' kitchen on the first floor in the seminary and saw a flash of yellow in the grass below. The first flower of spring! I capered downstairs, suddenly lighter hearted, and saw another, purple, crocus with, glory be to God, a bee! And here he is, doing as bees do, going about his buzzness.

* Don't bother asking; I'm not going to give details.

The Good Sisters

2011-02-05T08:56:00.000Z

This is a picture of a meeting of Mothers General of womens' religious orders in the States (courtesy of Palazzo Apostolico). Doesn't it inspire you for the Church of the future?

Poverty, Chastity, Obedience. Well, one out of three (judging by the ages) ain't bad.

There is, I gather, another body of Superiors who employ different standards.

More on initiation

2011-02-01T08:59:00.000Z

I've been turning my mind over the last few days to this question of the sacraments of initiation.

Historically, of course, the three sacraments were celebrated in one ceremony—in Patristic times, I mean. In the east this continues, whereas in the west we have spaced the sacraments out, no doubt mostly for pragmatic reasons. When St Pius X permitted children to receive our Lord in Holy Communion once they had reached the age of reason, he made no prescription concerning Confirmation, and so it continued to be celebrated when it had been in the more recent past, which is to say, before the onset of puberty.

The change to adolescent Confirmation is a much more recent thing, and is still not done in all dioceses. My own diocese was one of the first to administer Confirmation to those 14 and over (readers won't be surprised to read that it was the initiative of the then Bishop Cormac Murphy-O'Connor). I am not one of those who see this as entirely a negative move; there are some positive features.

For a start, there is an element of Confirmation that is about conversion. Some churches in the East, I understand, will even re-Chrismate where there has been a change in one's life for the good, a turning to the Lord. To that extent, a degree of the exercise of free-will is a good thing. 14-year-olds have a degree of freedom that 10-year-olds do not have.

14-year-olds also have another thing which can be turned to advantage. They are often passionate, in every way. As the lives of the saints have shown, this is often the age when important life-decisions are made. To be part of that decision-making process is a good thing. It is often argued that this is also a very emotionally confused age, and this can be true. But messages of all sorts sink in deeply as the teenagers are trying to work out who they are; it is important that our voice be strong among these.

Catechesis at this age is a very different thing to catechesis either before or after. Information tends to go in one ear and out the other, but impressions remain strong. In my catechesis, I try to cover with the young people the normal things; the Creed, the Sacraments and the 10 Commandments. I am well aware that the kids aren't going to retain 90% of what I say. But they listen, and what I hope they will retain is an impression that the Church does have sensible things to say about what she teaches, and also the things that matter to them, and will be inclined therefore to trust her. When they were there at the meeting, I mean, the whole thing made sense, and I hope that they will remember that. It is a different method of catechesis to that employed at First Holy Communion which, realistically, is the last time that many of them ever had anything given by people who really believed this stuff.

Calm, authoritative reassurance, a preparedness to treat them as human beings with brains, an appropriate friendship, all these make teenagers inclined to trust and listen, and they can benefit far more than they would at even twelve. Only a generation ago, most 14-year olds left school and went out to work. Now they all face the prospect of continuing to live not that differently from a 9-year-old until they are 18 or more. There is no wonder that many of them get stroppy and difficult.

I hope I've made the case for a catechesis of teenagers, but that doesn't answer why it has to be accompanied by Confirmation. Well, partly it's to give them a reason to be catechized. To get them there. Yes, yes, I know that that isn't what the Sacrament is for, but neither is it contrary to the Sacrament, and, as I wrote earlier, the Sacrament does have an element of conversion, choice. Becoming a soldier in Christ's army. At my confirmation (aged 9), we sang:

I'm a soldier in Christ's army,
Confirmation made it so;
I'm a soldier in Christ's army,
I will spread the Faith wherever I go.
Oh the devil shall not harm me,
I'm the captain of my soul,
I'm a soldier in Christ's army,
marching to my heavenly goal.

Shakespeare it ain't (and the tune wasn't Mozart, either). But the implication of connecting Confirmation with Pentecost is that there is at least an element of consecration-for-mission in it.

And, after all, the Apostles were confirmed after their First Communion, weren't they?

I hope to write something on First Holy Communion soon.

The Sacraments of Initiation

2011-01-28T13:06:00.000Z

I tremble in having to disagree with His Patrimoniality Fr Hunwicke, with whom I find myself in almost constant agreement. He warmly applauds the action of the Archbishop of Liverpool in celebrating the Sacrament of Confirmation before First Holy Communion. I, I'm afraid, do not.

Now I cannot but agree with all Fr Hunwicke's arguments; he is of course quite right to say that the proper order for the Sacraments of Initiation is Baptism, Confirmation, Communion, and that there has been agreement on this in the West right down to the (relatively recent) time of Pope St Pius X. I agree too that there was more loss than gain in this change. He is also right to assert that this is a Sacrament, not a Rite of Passage.

However:

What I deplore is the ceasing of the ancient custom that this Sacrament be conferred by a bishop. If Confirmation is simply to become an adjunct to the celebration of First Holy Communions, which happen all within a few weeks of each other,

1) There is no way that even a bevy of bishops could get to every celebration. They will have to delegate the parish priest in each case, as has been happening in the Salford Diocese for several years now.

2) Given the fuss and celebration of First Holy Communion, the Sacrament of Confirmation risks becoming entirely overshadowed.

3) I cannot see that adequate catechesis in these sacraments can be given by the age of 8. Given the deplorable state of the teaching of RE in many schools there will now be no opportunity to catechize our young people. This will have to be worked around in another way, but a number of priests will simply not bother, and a number of young people will simply not bother either.

4) And what about Confession? Does the Archbishop seriously think that his teenagers are going to make a solemn Confession, like the French Communion Solenelle?

Our bishops have become increasingly distanced from their dioceses. The ever-increasing bureaucracy of the Bishops' Conference, of committees and all the mechanisms of senior management, is sucking the lifeblood out the relationship between bishop and diocese. Many years ago, the then Bishop Cormac Murphy-O'Connor ceased doing Confirmations in the parishes because, he said, it gave less time and focus to his proper parish visitations. So Confirmations were moved to the Cathedral, a deanery at at time, and thus they remain. The trouble is that when parochial confirmations ceased, so did parochial visitations. The Bishop since has just come to lend dignity to big 'occasions'.

The ancient custom in the West was, I believe, that everybody was confirmed by the Bishop as soon as possible after their baptism. That meant that when a Bishop arrived in a locality, everyone who had been baptised, from infants upwards, went (or was taken) to the Bishop to be confirmed. I remember hearing that some Bishops would confirm when passing through a district without ever descending from their horses.

Would that not be preferable to the Liverpool/Salford solution? Each bishop will regularly visit his parishes, and while there confirm all those who have been baptised. At the age of 7 or 8 they can make their First Confessions and Communions.

If that is not thought suitable, then let's leave things alone! The Ordinariate can maintain its (more ancient) practice.