More news from the Orkneys

The Transalpine Redemptorists have now publicly confirmed that they are beginning to investigate seeking an accommodation with the Holy See. A friend in Rome told me that he had seen them there on two separate occasions in recent weeks: I did not like to publish this fact for fear of putting their efforts in peril. The same friend has sent me this link (thanks!) which tells of the T.Redemptorists' efforts to, on the one hand open the doors of possibility with Rome while, on the other hand, not shutting the doors on the Society of St Pius X et al entirely. I fear that the latter may not be possible—reaching an accommodation with Rome will almost certainly be seen as a betrayal by many in the SSPX (Bp Williamson at the very least), but were it possible to establish a sort of bridge, as the TReds seem to want to do, it could be very helpful indeed for the future.
Perhaps you could put a comment on their blog (at the link above) encouraging them and promising your prayers.
I see also on their blog that their seminarians have had to be withdrawn from an SSPX seminary over this question.

one of the three Brothers was called to the Rector’s office. During the course of the interview the Rector suggested that possibly the only way to stop me from carrying out negotiations with Rome was by threatening to start up a breakaway community. This suggestion was also repeated at another time to all three Brothers.
I later received an email from the Society saying that if we made an agreement with Rome, our seminarians would not be welcome in any SSPX seminary.

Well, the SSPX position seems pretty clear. How sad.

LMS announcement

At the request of the Latin Mass Society, I am pleased to publish the following press release:

* Westminster bishop to confer Traditional Latin Rite Confirmations

Bishop George Stack, auxiliary bishop in Westminster, will administer Confirmations in the Traditional Latin Rite at St James’s Church, Spanish Place, London W1 on Saturday, 15 November at 11.00 am at the request of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster. This will be the fifth consecutive year that Westminster auxiliary bishops will have conferred Confirmation in the Traditional Rite. Last year in November 2007, a record 54 candidates received the sacrament at the hands of Bishop John Arnold – 50 children and 4 adults.

Also in November 2007, Bishop Peter Doyle of Northampton became the first diocesan bishop of England and Wales to administer Traditional Rite Confirmations when he confirmed 7 candidates during a pastoral visit to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour Church, Chesham Bois, Bucks on Sunday 18 November 2007. Bishop Doyle also celebrated Sunday Mass in the Traditional Rite on that occasion.

John Medlin, General Manager of the Latin Mass Society, said, “There is no sign of slackening of demand for Traditional Rite Confirmations – in fact the opposite. The numbers are increasing every year and I expect this trend to continue after Pope Benedict’s Motu Proprio. We hope it will not be long before bishops all over England and Wales respond to pastoral demand for Mass and the Sacraments in the Traditional Rite. Those attached to the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite are very grateful to Cardinal Cormac and the Westminster auxiliary bishops for making provision for the Traditional Mass and Sacraments.”

At St James’s, Spanish Place, in November 2007, a packed congregation of 600 family and friends were led by the St James’s choir in singing the Veni Creator Spiritus and other traditional hymns. During the anointing, the choir sang polyphony and plain chant. After the anointing, Bishop Arnold led the congregation in the Divine Praises and then conferred Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.

After the Confirmations, at a reception, Julian Chadwick, Chairman of the Latin Mass Society, thanked Bishop Arnold for his pastoral concern and led the assembly in a traditional roof-raising round of applause. Bishop Arnold then spoke informally and cut the special Confirmation cake with many parents taking photographs. Later, the bishop mixed with the parents and children whilst everyone enjoyed the refreshments provided by the LMS.

Note:
Parents who require Traditional Confirmation for their children in November 2008 should contact the LMS office for full details of how to register.


For further information, please contact John Medlin, General Manager, or James Murphy, LMS Office Manager, on (T) 020 7404 7284; (F) 020 7831 5585;
(E mail) thelatinmasssociety@snmail.co.uk

The real old Mass.

Those who are out and about in the traddy world may well know that to some lovers of the old rites in the UK I am (sometimes bitterly) disapproved of for my defence (ten or more years ago!) of the use of the 1962 missal (as opposed to that of any number of possible dates before this). My point, by the way, is not that the Holy Week (or other) reforms of Pius XII were necessarily an improvement on what went before (I don't think they were) or even that I would rather die than have a Confiteor before Communion (I can think of far more interesting things to die for) but that I believe that, simply, it is good for us to celebrate Mass cum Ecclesia, and the 1962 missal is, as the great Michael Davis asserted, very acceptable, and has the great virtue of being indisputably part of the Church's prayer as Church, now clearly acknowledged by the Holy Father. My comments box has been reinforced for the storm of protests.
But you might be interested to read of the formation of a new group who are bitterly opposed to anything but the most traditional of forms of the Roman Rite. This is the society of St Pius I. H/T The Cafeteria is Closed.

If you want to know the time, ask…

…an Imam. Moslems at a great Islam and science gathering have called for the world to replace GMT with, er, Mecca time, because they have, er, scientifically proven that Mecca is actually the centre of the world. Well there you go, then.

Read about it here. (H/T New Oxford Review).

So, it's goodbye to GMT (genetically modified time) and BST (bovine spongiform time), and hello to MST (microsoft time).

I wonder how long before Damian spots this one?

Papa Stronsay and the Papa

Damian Thompson has mentioned the possible full reconciliation of the curiously-named traditionalist Transalpine Redemptorists with the Holy See. I visited their blog to find out more, and found this most interesting (if a little long) account by their superior, Fr Michael Mary, about his attitude to this question.
I have been reading their regular newspaper, Catholic, for some years now, and have found it really quite edifying. It would be a genuine joy to be able to have no reservations at all about their work.
They have members following a number of different rites who, as you'll see on the accompanying YouTube video, wear a curious variety of headgear.
They have wandered quite a lot over the years; I seem to remember them being in Guildford when I was a seminarian nearby, at the SSPX Mass centre run by the formidable Miss Hobbs (who I seem to remember was a childhood friend of Charles de Gaulle). I used occasionally to attend Mass there, until the Episcopal consecrations put me off the idea. Then, I think, the community moved to the Isle of Sheppey, a bleak spot at the best of times. That not being bleak enough, they moved to their present home on Papa Stronsay, in the Orkneys. This establishment looks very permanent; they are in the process of building a substantial monastery which has already attracted quite a lot of attention, and from this remote spot carry out quite an apostolate.
Which is to say, it would be very encouraging to have them fully on board, as it were.

Communion not on the hand

Cardinal Cipriani Thorne of Lima, Peru has banned the reception of Holy Communion on the hand. Read about it here, on the excellent Rorate Caeli blog.

There's a new world beginning…

From the Washington Post: the whole article is worth reading.

Imagine a bizarro world where all the 25-year-olds want Mozart and all the 60-year-olds want adult-contemporary. The kids think the adults are too wild. The backlash against "Kumbaya Catholicism" has anyone under 40 allegedly clamoring for the Tridentine Mass in Latin, while the old folks are most sentimental about Casual Sunday (even more rockin', the Saturday vigil Mass), and still cling to what's evolved from the lite-rock guitar liturgies of the 1970s. The result, for most parishes, has been decades of Masses in which no one is entirely satisfied, and very few enjoy the music enough to sing along.

Eighty-one today

Happy birthday, Pope Benedict! Please take it easy; don't overdo it. We need to celebrate a good lot more of these birthdays. Thank you for all you have done and continue to do.

Something worth reading from the NY Times

Pay Attention to the Pope’s Onion

By Alejandro Bermudez

As soon as Pope Benedict starts speaking publicly on American soil, all those interested, Catholics or not, should pay attention to the three possible layers of his message.

His message’s first layer will be obvious and predictable. The pope will repeat the church’s teachings on all the “controversial” issues: the beginning and the end of life, marriage, family, celibate priesthood and Catholic education. After all, the pope is, of course, Catholic, so do not expect surprise announcements about lay people electing bishops or women becoming priests.

A second aspect of Pope Benedict that might appear in his addresses — the second layer — is the fact that “political correctness” is not in his dictionary. His straightforward approach is evident in the surprising and controversial statements he has made in places like Regensburg and Aparecida, Brazil. This Pope is a creative, independent thinker, and he is more used to intellectual honesty than to crowd-pleasing.

But I believe the “meat” of his visit will be delivered in “Ratzingerian” — the third layer of his message that, I am afraid, most of the press will miss.

This meaty but mostly stealthy part of his message will not come in the form of catchy phrases that are easy to quote or to show on TV. To get to this layer, some of his phrases, though abstruse at first sight, will have to be reread with two crucial keys of interpretation:

First, within the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict is convinced that Catholic theology needs to engage in an honest discussion with modernity. However, by “discussion” he does not mean naively embracing modernity. Quite the opposite: for Benedict, the blind embracing of modernity that many Catholics see as the future of the church is the kiss of death to the integrity of the church’s message.

Second, to the dismay of the Richard Dawkinses of the world, Pope Benedict is convinced that faith is not only not opposed to reason, but is rather its best ally in the fight for reason to survive the postmodern belief that truths worthy of being transmitted down the generations don’t exist.

For him this is not a mere abstract, philosophical issue. He believes it is a tragedy when kids at school ask what car Napoleon was driving in Marengo, or if Salvador Dali is a relative of Muhammad Ali (by the way, I didn’t make up these two examples).

Benedict is convinced that if the new generations have nothing important to learn at a deeper, human level, both faith and reason lose. Even worse, humanity loses.

My humble suggestion: pay attention to what the pope says, but pay special attention to his less quotable words. Those will not be cotton candy.

Directly lifted from here. I think it is encouraging that the American nation is so eagerly anticipating the Holy Father's visit.

In Shoreham

The New Liturgical Movement (link on the left) has been posting pictures recently of freestanding altars conforming themselves to the Holy Father's custom of having candles and crucifix on the altar in front of him. This is how we have done it in Shoreham, arranged for both the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. The pictures were taken at Easter.
Click on the pics to make them bigger.

Garibaldi's Chaplain

Garibaldi was not, of course, a very popular man with the Church. The Janiculum hill is pretty well given over to commemorating him and his fellow freemasons who overthrew the Papal States in 1870. There is a very dramatic statue of his wife on horseback brandishing a gun in one hand and clutching a baby to her breast with the other. One lesser-known fact is that Garibaldi had a chaplain. Still less well-known is the fact that he was, er, a Methodist! His name was Alessandro Gavazzi, 1809-89) and he is commemorated on the outside wall of the Methodist church in Rome, just over the bridge from the Castel S. Angelo. He had been a Barnabite monk, but had left and, having participated in the short-lived Roman Republic in the 1840s, fled and joined the Methodists in London, returning to join 'Biscuits' Garibaldi's army as a chaplain, and founding the Christian Free Church ('Chiesa Metodista') which still exists, I think, though hardly huge.
Methodism isn't exactly what springs to mind when you think of Italy, but it does have its own Protestant church, the Waldensians. Actually, the Waldenses, a northern phenomenon, predate the Reformation, but they were happy to join in as soon as they could. I don't think these guys are Waldenses, though; on their sign they identify themselves as Methodists. I suppose we are simply going to have to think of it as one of those things… unless any of you have any more information, of course.

Baroque around the Clock

One encouraging thing in Rome was that, whatever might have been happening in St Peters, the Holy Father is having his effect further down the line. One has always seen nice things in the windows of Gammarelli's, ('Splenditatis Vendor'), but now the windows of the various merchants in the Via dei Cestari and other ecclesiastical suppliers have burgeoned with Roman chasubles and lace, where once there was only lurex and itchy knickers for nuns.
Several of the assisting clerics at the Sunday Mass in St Peter's wore proper lace, not the rather restrained box-pleated albs and cassocks with a single strip of insert lace approved in the Noe/Marini mk.1 era. I noticed that they (and the Holy Father) also did so at the Good Friday Liturgy—I actually thought that a little inappropriate.
The picture shows a less happy addition to the holy-things shops. One might reasonably expect statues of John Paul II, but it seems you can already buy ones of Pope Benedict. Don't bother; they are pretty horrible, as you can see even in this pic which I took with my phone.

Changed from glory into glory

On the subject of papal thrones…

I came across this picture of Pius XII's coronation. Does the chair look familiar……?

Mass in St Peter's

I attended the main 10.30am Mass in St Peter's Basilica on Sunday. It was interesting (in a disappointing way) that the style of Marini MkI is still very much to the fore. The Mass, celebrated nicely by Cardinal Schönborn, was at the Papal Altar, furnished with groups of three short candles at the corners. No frontal. The sole concession to Pope Benedict's new style was the presence of a short, shabby, wooden cross in the middle of the altar. The Cardinal sat enthroned in front of the altar in the Pope's place; the offertory gifts were brought just as if he were the Holy Father; in other words, the brightly-clad Korean women knelt before him at his chair while he touched the gifts and blessed them. I also noticed that he was made to sit down every time his mitre was taken off or put on. It looked most awkward. One concelebrating bishop sat with the lappets of his mitre still folded over the front; he looked like a tired rabbit. Does every bishop get treated just like the Pope in St Peter's, even if he is a cardinal?
The thing that I find increasingly annoying is the treatment of the 'throne' as a simple chair to sit down on. There is a great deal of important theological significance to the diocesan bishop's throne and, much as I admire Cardinal Schönborn in many ways, he should not be sitting where the Pope sits (and even though, actually, I think the Pope too should have his throne elsewhere), though of course, the Cardinal can hardly be blamed for what the MCs make him do.
The music was somewhat disappointing. Bits of Missa de Angelis, Credo III, the Pater Noster were in plainchant. At the offertory and communion were a couple of pieces in Italian that sounded somewhere between Paul Inwood and John Rutter. The offertory one was quite nice. But there was nothing classical at all.
And the final grump is that most of the Mass (except the Preface, Canon and Pater Noster) was in Italian. Actually, the first reading was in Spanish, and the second in something Slavonic. Again, I can see an argument that in St John Lateran, the Cathedral for the diocese of Rome, the local people's language might be appropriate. But St Peter's has an international significance. Only Italians speak Italian; it is in no sense a lingua franca outside Italy. At a serious international Mass, not to make the Mass substantially Latin is absurd. Especially absurd is the practice of reciting the Prayers of the Faithful in six or seven different languages. If one is expected to say amen to something, it has to be the prayer of the Church or one must understand it. Would it not be more sensible to have a standard form, like a litany, in Latin, on these occasions? How can I say amen to a gabble of Croatian or Armenian? I'm sure it's saying something nice, but effectively it's meaningless as far as I am concerned.
The occasion, by the way, was the closing Mass of a congress all about the Divine Mercy.

Moves afoot

I'm back now, having spent a few days in the Eternal City with family. On Monday, I bumped into Fr Uwe Michael Lang in St Peter's Basilica. I gather that he has been given a new job in the Congregation of Rites. I am sure he will do very well there.

I also heard, from another source, that the document on the interpretation of the Holy Father's Motu Proprio on the traditional Mass went to the Pope's desk for approval shortly after Easter. How long it'll take to make its way back to the publishers is another matter. I'm afraid I heard nothing about the document's content, however.

Away

I'm away for a few days, so there won't be any posts or comments until I return.

More on orders

Fr G commented on the last post:

It is also of course the case that various priests have historically had the power to ordain to various grades. Boniface VIII allowed the Abbot of London's Augustinian Monastery to ordain his subjects as priests (albeit this was soon revoked wanted to reserve this power to himself). Martin V allowed some abbots in Saxony to ordain and Innocnet VIII allowed certain cistercian abbots to ordain, something contained in their rituals right up the the 20th century (although the practice, I believe, had fallen out of use a long time previously).

This is certainly true, though I understand that this information has only relatively recently become known. I read some time ago that Cardinal Ottaviani, at the council, wishing to oppose the making of a distinction of kind between Episcopacy and Presbyterate, had commented 'if only we could find one single case of presbyteral ordination, we could finish this attempt off for good'. And yet the matter had been known to, at least, the eminent liturgiologist and doorkeeper of Archbishop's House, Westminster, Archdale King.
I've tried hunting around the documents of Vatican II for where this matter is dealt with, but no luck yet. — update: see the comments box.