Ad Orientem in Toronto

The practice of celebrating Mass ad orientem seems to be spreading encouragingly. The Toronto Oratory have now had a diaconate ordination (of Br. Michael Eades — many congratulations) celebrated by the ordinary in their splendid new church, facing East and in Latin. Churches like the London Oratory have been able to maintain a tradition for facing God, but it is very difficult to (a) start one and then (b) persuade the bishop to go along with it. There are more pictures here.
Someone now needs to buy them a big set of six candlesticks and cross.

Yesterday

I should dearly have loved to have been in Westminster Cathedral yesterday for the Pontifical High Mass celebrated by Cardinal Castrillion Hoyos. I should have been in good company: the eminent Gregory Flash of Juventutem sent me a very good picture of Fr Ray there:



and I am well aware that the occasion was a historical and wonderful one. Congratulations are due to all those who worked for this.

My reason for not being there, though, is a good one. We had our annual procession of the Blessed Sacrament (date fixed a year ago), following our First Holy Communions last week. I should have liked to post pictures of our children, who were the most devout and well-instructed I have ever given first Communion to, but Child Protection Draconian Regulations forbid me doing so. The girls cast flower petals before our Lord, and the boys accompanied the Blessed Sacrament with torches in time-honoured style. I was very proud indeed of all the children. Fr Anthony Lovegrove, one of our Golden Jubilarian priests, generously agreed to preside at the procession, while I and Richard Edwards, our Permanent Deacon, assisted him.





We finished with a (slightly chilly) picnic and a (bio-degradable!) balloon race:



And, in the evening, all that was left was a few rose petals on the lawn, and a happy memory in the two hundred or so hearts that came to honour our Lord (we're only a small parish). Many thanks to the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for hosting our procession in their grounds.

Vassula 2

Thank you all for your input: I am now aware that there are deep feelings at work here on both sides of a thorny issue. Thanks particularly to Fr John Abberton; your courtesy in dialogue with people who didn't put their names to what they had to say was admirable, and your argument charitable despite strong opinions on the other side.
As in all these matters, I am thankful that the Church does not require belief in regard to private revelations, and that, as Vatican II declared, no new revelation is expected from the death of the last Apostle until the second coming.
I now think better of those Anglican clergy extending the invitation, though I still deplore the discourtesy involved in doing a mailshot of the priests of our diocese while bypassing our diocesan hierarchy who might well (=almost certainly) have had something to say on the matter. It is ecumenically insensitive, to say the least. And using the words 'authentic and authoritative' is highly misleading, however modified by writing that this is [merely] the opinion of the signatories. It suggests to me that the Rev. Gavin Ashenden and his fellows do not have the same understanding of 'authentic and authoritative' that the Catholic Church does. Once more, it appears to imply the Reformation understanding of private interpretation as being authentic and authoritative, rather than the judgement of the Church to whom the Lord promised the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth.
I shall not be attending the meeting at Chichester Cathedral. There is enough gentle dissuasion in the CDF documents to suggest that this would be the better course. There appears to be a dubium at least on the issue of these—what word should I use—maybe possible revelations. However, thanks to Fr Abberton, I shall not think badly of any of my brethren who will go.
And, as a matter of fact, I can't go: I shall be flying from Canada to the USA on that day. But I'm still glad to have been informed of the issues, and all those who participated have my thanks.
I am, by the way, still happy to post charitable and articulate comments on this subject.

Vassula Ryden

Can anyone please clarify the position concerning one Vassula Ryden, a Greek Orthodox lay woman who claims to have visions in which God directly speaks to her?
The clergy of our diocese have received an invitation to go to Chichester Cathedral to hear her speak in July. The letter implies that the Catholic Church thinks she is super.

Pope Benedict XVI, when he was Prefect of the Congregation for Doctrine and Faith [sic], asked the CDF to dialogue with Vassula Ryden to clarify the concerns they had regarding the teachings contained in the True Life in God Messages. This dialogue lasted from 2002 to 2004. Cardinal Ratzinger then wrote a letter to Catholic Bishops who were asking the CDF its assessment of the TLIG Messages, in this letter Cardinal Ratzinger made a statement that clarified all the concerns that the CDF had concerning the orthodoxy contained in the TLIG Messages. I and my fellow signatories to this letter are also of the opinion that the 'locutions' that Vassula Ryden presents to us, are both authentic and authoritative.

(emphasis mine)

Now, it is not clear what this means. The CDF statement 'clarified all the concerns'—this does not necessarily mean 'approved', simply identified the problems. And I very much doubt whether the CDF would do anything so rash as to declare that any private revelations were 'both authentic and authoritative', though the word 'also' implies it.

The letter comes above the signature of one Gavin Ashenden who is, I believe, the Anglican Chaplain to the University of Sussex. The letter is printed on University headed notepaper, no doubt to add gravitas — I wonder what the University might think of its name being used to bolster something like this. I remember this institution as being notably atheistic in its spirit, despite the large chapel/meeting house at its core.

A specific invitation to Roman Catholic Clergy to an Anglican event that bears no signatures of Catholic Clergy (though five Anglicans) seems to imply to me that they felt that Catholic authorities would not approve.

Can anyone shed light on the current status of Vassula Ryden, or on any other aspect of this?

Oh my; whatever next?

I found this on Fr Z's page, itself borrowing from Chiesa.

On January 12, [1967] Cardinal Journet wrote to Maritain to tell him that he would soon be meeting with the pope, in Rome. Neither of them knew that Paul VI intended to enact the Year of Faith. But Maritain confided to Journet that a few days before, "an idea had come to me," which he describes this way: "The Sovereign Pontiff should draft a complete and detailed profession of faith, in which everything that is really contained in the Symbol of Nicea would be presented explicitly. This will be, in the history of the Church, the profession of faith of Paul VI."
Although Maritain did not ask him to do so, Journet photocopied the philosopher’s letter and gave it to the pope, when he met with him on January 18. On that occasion, Paul VI asked the theologian for his judgment on the state of the Church’s health. "Tragic," Journet answered. Both he and the pope were in shock over the publication in Holland, one year earlier and with the blessing of the bishops, of a new Catechism aimed at nothing less than "substituting one orthodoxy for another in the Church, a modern orthodoxy for the traditional orthodoxy" (a comment from the commission of cardinals instituted by Paul VI to examine the Catechism, of which Journet was a member).

I find this quite shocking. Not the thing in itself, I mean, but that in 1967 Paul VI knew what a state the faith was in, and yet despite this still pressed ahead full pelt with his programme of reforms. Or didn't care. Or had let go of the steering wheel.

Still to come were, among other things: the 1967 recension of the Missal. The new Eucharistic Prayers. The Novus Ordo. The new Ordination rite. The suspension of the minor orders. Standing Communion. Communion in the hand. Lay ministers of Communion. The new Calendar……

Clearly Paul VI can't have been very shocked by the Dutch Catechism or the state of the Church, or else it might have given him pause to think about these other things before he signed up to them. I think his shock must have been along the lines of 'Oh my; whatever next?' .

Unpromising soil

This is a photo of the street side of my garden wall. If you look carefully, you can see, against all possible probability, that two small, pretty, plants are growing in the wall, and even in the area which has been recently pointed and therefore cannot be expected to be able to support plant life.

In a similar vein, I am just astounded to find, apparently strong and vigorous, however small, the survival of something that I honestly thought could not live at all in such barren soil. I'm referring to intelligent, Rome-regarding (for want of a better word), Anglo-Catholicism in the Church of England. Which is why I'm putting links to a couple of sites on the left, so you can see for yourselves.

I was told at a recent wedding of a dear friend in London (amazing music—Spem in Alium, and the couple went out to the Cavelliera Rusticana Easter Hymn) that this blog is occasionally read by students at St Stephen's House in Oxford. (Hello chaps, if you happen to see this.) I remember smiling politely but sceptically —I wondered what possible interest this blog might have for such people. If they had any interest in the Church of Rome, surely they would have found the C of E no longer a congenial home. Broad Anglo-Catholicism, I knew, had survived. The Society of the Holy Cross, for instance, still supports male clergy, the seven sacraments, the creeds, the Western rites celebrated decently &c., but what my friend the late Brian Brindley (and, by the way, if you were wondering where the famous cottas are, I've got two of them, including the Marian one, though I don't have the chutzpah to wear them) would call Papalist Anglicanism—well, I thought that was well and truly dead. And so did he. As I was writing this, a comment was made on the last post saying, a little grumpily, 'As an Anglican I must say I have no desire to be in communion with the Roman pope - closer ties with Orthodoxy yes but not with Rome.' That's more or less what I'd expect.

So imagine my surprise at finding, courtesy of the Hound of Heaven (woof!), that Romano-Anglo-Catholicism is still alive. But what has touched me more, in a way, is discovering in it a regard for our present Holy Father very similar to my own. Pope Benedict seems constantly to be bringing surprises. He has built far stronger links with the Eastern churches than we have seen since the Council of Florence. And now it seems he is able to reach into the churches of the Reformation, too. These people resonate with what he is saying and doing in the Catholic Church. This can only be good. So I've established a 'separated brethren' link box on the left. I'm not endorsing everything they might write, but I think you'll find some interesting stuff there.

And now, do I pray that these people be converted to Roman Unity as soon as possible, or ask God to delay it a little so that they can bring more people with them?

Extraordinary use of the Extraordinary Use

Thanks to a link on the Puppy of Heaven blog, I came across this Anglican site. The following paragraph particularly caught my eye with a sort of surreal jolt…

It may seem an absurd paradox, but somehow the event, a Latin Tridentine Mass, seemed the very epitome of the Anglican tradition as we have appropriated and preserved it since the Catholic Revival.

He was speaking of his 40th ordination jubilee Eucharist. I have to say I enjoyed looking at his blog; it is both erudite and witty, as is typical of so much of the Anglo-Catholic movement. I wish him much joy at his anniversary, and I hope he won't take it amiss if I add a prayer that he may one day find his place in communion with the Holy See.

On Labyrinths

Our local Anglican church has recently opened a (rather good) exhibition focussed around 'The Beauty of Holiness'. One of the largest exhibits is a 'labyrinth', painted onto canvas. This isn't it, in the picture, but one I found on the net. One is supposed to walk the track laid out, and experience, well, something anyway. And there is a book to write in to record your feelings.
It seems that there are a few labyrinths on church floors dating from a long time ago. A famous one is at Chartres. And some people figure that wandering around and having feelings is what they are there for.

The labyrinth is an ancient spiritual tool that has been used throughout the world for over four thousand years. A labyrinth is a circuitous path with one entrance point that leads through a series of switch-backs to its center. A labyrinth is not a maze. A maze, by contrast, has dead-ends and blind alley ways. Its intention is confusion and mystery. The labyrinth, when followed, leads eventually and without making choices to the center. It is designed for one to find his/her way. The labyrinth may be thought of as a map, but as such it should not be confused with the territory that it represents, that is the inner Being and its relationship with Spirit. Two basic principles: One, on the labyrinth, everything is metaphor. Two, there is no right or wrong way to walk the labyrinth. Find more of that here (if you want to, that is).

Others (myself included) wonder whether some bishop of long ago said 'that bit of floor looks a bit dull. Wouldn't a labyrinth look nice there?'

Many people seem to find the experience moving in some way. I have to confess that I just don't get it.

Rowan Williams and Leviathan

I just watched the Archbishop of Canterbury being grilled on Newsnight by Emily Maitlis. It was a very instructive discussion. Here's what basically went on:

Interviewer: Kids are being put in prison. Is that right or wrong?
Archbp. It's distressing, certainly. It suggests we don't like children.
Interviewer: Then what do we do about youth crime?
Arch: Ah, well, that's a difficult question. Each case has to be discussed on its merits.
Int: Don't you think that's a bit wet? Shouldn't you be saying something stern?
Arch: No no. Stern things are for Hindus, Catholics, Moslems. And they aren't quite so stern on a case-to-case basis.
Int: So you really think that Christian morality is entirely flexible…?
Arch: Oh, not at all. No, no. As a Christian, naturally I think that morality is a jolly good thing. It's just that the government doesn't, and we have to live in the real world.

I felt for him. He was giving an intelligent response to quite a pungent questioning, and one sensed his increasing irritation by him sensing that the interviewer was trying to push him to make statements he didn't want to make. And he is caught in that very awkward Anglican dilemma of having to serve two masters; God and king (or in this case, Gordon Brown), as illustrated in that picture of Leviathan above. But in the end, as he is trying to say-but-not-say, one has to stand for some principles. He could acknowledge only trees; but trees, in this context, perhaps only make sense as being part of a wood.

Here's my experience. As you may have read, we had First Communions here yesterday. Before the ceremony, I spoke to one lad; a bright, cheery, individual who aspires to be an altar server from next Sunday, now dressed in a very smart suit, and extremely happy to be making his Communion.

Me: Great day, Sammy! (not his name).
Sammy: (big grin) Yeah! Fantastic! I get to see my dad today!

Here is your solution, your Grace, and Mr Brown.

1) Families. Support them, don't make it a actual tax disadvantage to marry, as at present.
2) Legislate to keep families together. Make it difficult for a parent to abandon a family. Even a bad father (or indeed mother) is usually better than no father (except, of course, in some extreme cases).
3) You can't make people behave by threatening them with the law. They will seek to circumvent it. The only solution is to make them want to behave well, unselfishly, for its own sake, not want not to get caught.
4) For 3 to work, you need religion. Yes, atheists are always saying you don't need religion to act well. But is that true? In some individual cases, of course it is true. There are plenty of moral atheists who live responsibly for the common good. But look at our country now. Has our world-without-God made people want to work together simply for the cause of humanity or for the cause of the planet? Of course not. We have never had to have so many people in prison. Never have I seen so many unhappy faces on people dissatisfied with their lot because they can't get their 'rights'.
They have tried to make Hobbes' Leviathan work (civil coercion) instead of religion to get people to behave, and now we are reaping the rewards.

New blog

A new blog has been born: find here the puppy Hound of Heaven. Welcome!

Festal Musings

Today, the martyrology tells me, is the feast of St Columba, or, as I know him (because this is the way he is known in Kells), St Columcille (the second c is pronounced hard—colum-kill). So I thought it was a good opportunity to reflect a little on the town that preserves his memory.
Kells is a midlands town on a steep hill rising above the almost ridiculously green and fertile fields of County Meath. They will tell you that it was a monastic site founded by the monks of Iona fleeing the Vikings in 804, but in fact many strongly suspect that it is much older than that. Its very name derives from Ceann Lios (anglicized as Kenlis > Kells), a variant on Ceannanus Mór, the name it bears officially now: both mean 'head fort' (and the local nobs established nearby the Headfort estate, now a posh school). This is an unlikely name for monks to have given a monastery, and the steepness of the hill makes it a good place for a stronghold.
The monks would have built for themselves their usual arrangement of small churches, beehive huts to live in, a round tower for security, and the usual appurtenances of Celtic monasteries, especially the famous 'Celtic' cross in the grounds. Kells is unusual in that it has no fewer than five high crosses.

This, above, is the Market Cross. I remember it standing at a crossroads in the middle of the town. Every couple of years a lorry would back into it and knock it over. They would simply stand it up again. Finally, they carted it off to stand for years in a warehouse in another town until they turned the grim old courthouse (above) into a museum and put the cross under a little baldachino in front of it. The cross isn't unaccustomed to abuse, though. Cromwell's men, appallingly, used it as a gallows.

This, and the other crosses, stand in the churchyard of the Anglican church of St Columba, on the original site of the monastery. This is the best preserved, standing under the round tower.


There is only a stump left of this one.


And this one was never even finished. There are panels of stone left proud, waiting to be carved. Which shows that these crosses were carved in situ, and not brought finished from a workshop somewhere.


And here's the round tower. The trees are in the churchyard where the crosses are to be found.

The most splendid early building, though, is probably what they call Columcille's House. They think it is tenth century or earlier, though certainly not where Columcille lived—as far as we know, he never lived in Kells. One suggestion is that it was built to house and protect the relics of Columcille when they were brought to Kells from Iona. At any rate it is very sturdily built, and has two little chambers in the roof, accessible only by ladder. You will be told that this was a dwelling place for monks. Rubbish, in my opinion. Who would live there when they had a nice cosy beehive hut? Clearly, it was an inaccessible storage place for the most precious bits and pieces. You'd have a job getting in there, even today, if someone took away the ladder.



The Anglo-Norman family, de Lacy, built a castle in Kells, no doubt a successor to a Carrick fort, of which no traces remain above ground today. The whole town was fortified, though there is only one bastion remaining of the mediæval town walls—I took a picture, but it was hopeless.

The (Anglican) church of St Columba has been rebuilt several times, and the present building is uninteresting except, in a mild way, the tower. The notice stresses that the bishop who built it was Anglican—in a way, he was, since the building took place in 1578, and Kells falls well within the Pale, the area that England considered was hers at the time. But in Ireland, nothing is ever simple. I don't imagine that the bishop thought himself anything but Catholic—it wasn't until the massacres of Cromwell, really, that issues became clear. And in fact, I found this inscription which dates from the same year, and no doubt formed part of the church that the good bishop built; you can clearly see a reference to prayer for the dead:


Now, here comes my beef. I hope I have established my case that Kells has to be considered one of the most interesting and historically important towns in Ireland. But the thing that really seems to impress the Kells town council is the fact that Kells has won the County Meath Tidy Towns competition a couple of times in the 1960s. Go back to the pictures of Coumcille's House. You can see, especially in the second pic, that it is an attractive and interesting building. But look at the first. I took it with my phone, again, but you can see that right up against it has been built (in the 1980s, I think) a vast horrible police station (successor to the equally horrible—and vastly more intimidating—aptly-named 'barracks' that dated from the occupation). If you want to see inside this amazing ancient monument, incredibly, you've got to chase down a lady who keeps the key.
Huge quantities of traffic roar through the little streets of Kells; vast juggernauts from the North shake the foundations of the little houses, jam up the junctions, and run over the locals. Only today are they finally getting around to building a by-pass. The town officials simply don't seem to find Kells interesting, or see that something could really be made of the place. It is better than it used to be (the conversion of the courthouse into a museum is a good start), but there is so much more that could be done. I wonder if there has ever been an archaeological dig there? Most of the stuff will, of course, have been built over, and the ancient monastery has generations of graves where the beehive huts were. But isn't there something that could be done? By Time Team, for instance.

I took these two photos in my Aunt's garden. Her watering cans are sitting on a piece of ashlar that came from something. The Norman Castle? The town walls? A Georgian house?
And this wall is massive; very solidly built for no apparent recent purpose.

As a sort of final claim to fame, the words to The Red Flag were written by one Jim Connell of Crossakiel, just outside Kells. Well, there you go.

Round and about Huntingdon

A few weeks ago, I spent a day with my old friend Fr Nicholas Kearney, who is the parish priest of Huntingdon (the town principally renowned as the birthplace of Oliver Cromwell [hiss]). We toured around a little, and he showed me one or two interesting sites. At Houghton, my eye was caught by this tombstone, right by the church door:

Sorry the pic isn't much good; it was taken with my phone. The stone commemorates one Thomas Garner, a blacksmith, who died in 1826. His epitaph reads:

My sledge and hammers lie declined
My bellows too have lost their wind
My fire's extinct, my forge decay'd
My vice is in the dust all laid
My coal is spent, my iron gone
My nails are drove, my work is done
My fire dried corpse here lies at rest
My soul smoke-like, soars to be blest"


We also visited a little Catholic church. I am kicking myself because I have forgotten where it was. It may have been St Ives or St Neots—perhaps a reader may recognize it. At any rate, here are the pics. Again, you have to forgive the photo quality. The remarkable altarpiece was painted by a son of the famous campaigner, Victoria Gillick. I see on the net that there is a well-respected abstract artist called Liam Gillick, but whether this is the same chap, I don't know. In any event, it is encouraging to see work like this still being done, and done more than competently, too. The church was formerly a nonconformist chapel, and it has been transformed very successfully into a very attractive Catholic church in the early 19th-century style. I'm not utterly convinced that I like the lavender paint, however!


I do wish I'd been able to take a better picture of the painting. The altar actually is not ad orientem, but it looks like it, doesn't it?

First Holy Communion

This morning, twenty or so of our children made their first Holy Communions. I was immensely proud of them; all of them behaved perfectly and reverently, even those who find this difficult for various reasons which are not their fault. Please say a prayer that the devotion with which they made their communions may stay with them, and that their families will continue to encourage the faith which was very evident this morning.

Vivaldi's Women

I have never been a particular fan of Antonio Vivaldi's music, being one of those who are inclined to think that instead of writing several hundred concertos, he wrote one concerto several hundred times. Works of genius, though, there undoubtedly are; the Four Seasons, despite being overplayed and Nigel-Kennedied to death, are nevertheless astounding pieces. And his operas are terrific, too, though I've only heard extracts. I suppose that because he was writing for a school, he had to limit his music to his performers. Which is where I come to the point of this post.
I saw last night on the often-interesting BBC4 channel a documentary called Vivaldi's Women. It was all about the Pietá in Venice, a refuge for abandoned children, where girls and women would often spend all their lives. Around the time of Vivaldi, these unfortunates achieved a wonderful standard of musicality, and people would flock to hear them sing and play from behind their iron modesty screens. In this programme, they attempted to recreate the sound with a female choir and orchestra from England singing in the Pietá church. They demonstrated convincingly that women could provide all four choral parts—even the bass—without the necessity of importing men. And in a sense, what was most impressive was that they managed to get through the whole hour without suggesting even slightly that Vivaldi (or anyone else) behaved in less than a priestly fashion towards the women, or that the Pietá was anything but a good and charitable refuge and home for these unfortunates.
Very sadly, I see on the BBC website that this documentary is not available on iplayer: if it had been, I should have posted a link so that you could see it for yourselves. But here is a link to a site that will tell you a little more, as well as letting you hear the choir and orchestra that was assembled for the occasion.

The Irish Question

As for Ireland; well, everyone I knew told me constantly how much the place had changed, but I didn't find it so, at least on the surface. I like Ireland; no, actually, I love Ireland. I feel completely at home there. People look like me and behave like me. For instance: I like looking at people, because I find them interesting. In England, if someone catches me looking at them, I have to pull my eyes away and pretend that I am finding the wall behind them fascinating, in case I get hit, or arrested. In Ireland, they look right back, or else they've got the look in first. And there is no hostility in the gaze, just curiosity like my own.
And then there's children and young people. The teenagers going to school don't, on the whole, have that sullen look so many of them have here. At least, where I was, in Kells, Co Meath. They look intelligent and friendly; the schoolgirls dress neatly and modestly, and though the boys seem addicted to adidas sportswear, they don't seem to have the need to show their underwear at the same time.

The down side is that the lapsation is awful. I chatted to Martin, the parish secretary at Kells, whom I have known for years, and he tells me that marriages and baptisms are relatively rare events now. Mind you, I could see this coming years ago; religion in Ireland has, to a greater or lesser extent, in my view been confined to the obligation of Sunday Mass-going for several decades, both for priests and people, and it is not surprising that this sparse diet should have resulted in spiritual starvation (more below). Sermons were more often than not perfunctory: I was once chided by a brother priest for taking as long as a half hour to celebrate a Sunday Mass (including homily and communions). 'J....s! What kept you?' he said, as I trotted off the sanctuary, breathless. In fact, I had been well aware of what was expected of me, and, having sprinted as fast as I could, I thought that I had done 'well' to keep it under 40 minutes—and I am no slowcoach, as my parishioners will tell you.
I remember as a teenager standing on the road outside the 'Chapel' in Kells (it can seat well over a thousand; I counted the seats yesterday morning) and watching people literally flood down the streets towards Sunday Mass; the church is so large it didn't require more than four Sunday Masses, (all on Sunday morning) there being four priests in the parish, plus one Mass at an outstation. This doesn't happen now. There are only two (friendly) priests, and though there are still four Masses (one on Saturday evening), there are lots of spaces on the pews, several rows of which have been removed to create a new sanctuary on the nave floor.Here's a pic I took with my phone:



But thinking back to then, in the late seventies; people were still arriving by the Gospel and began leaving at Communion. Not by ones and twos, but streaming in and out. At the time, I thought it kind of cute that runners would cross to the Headfort Arms and tell the barman that the priest was at Communion; he would begin pouring the Guinnesses (and, as I'm sure you know, it takes several minutes to pour a good pint) for the stream of people who would shortly invade. Now I think it a sad presage of what was to come; a sign of the indifference that was in many cases to mutate into hostility.

Part of the responsibility, not just in Ireland, but throughout the developed world, has to be borne by the Liturgical Movement. There had been a real and active devotional life among the people, but this was despised by many, who, for perfectly understandable reasons, wanted people to be involved in the Liturgy. In many ways this was admirable; the Office had become a feature in parishes in France—at least Sunday Vespers—but it also had the result which we still see that most priests stopped participating in other, unliturgical, devotions, like the Rosary, Benediction, novenas, which until the 1950s still attracted popular support. So, in the English-speaking world, people then began to stop the popular devotions, but they did not begin to support the more austere Office. So that went, too. The sixties brought social action instead of prayer, leaving Mass the sole devotion of the Catholic faithful.
Don't get me wrong: it is, of course, the Mass that matters above everything else. But if it is not supported by a Christian life beyond it, if it is the sole religious element of a Christian's week, if the only Communions made are (in some cases) sacrilegious because made in mortal sin, then the practice of the faith will soon be seen as a sad burden and be done away with.
I suspect that many Irish pastors, like many here in England and elsewhere, simply lost touch with how to move their people. I do not exempt myself, either, from this charge. Our age is a very sensual one, and the Office has to be done very well indeed to become sensual. The Eastern rites manage it, of course, and there is a real beauty in Choral Evensong when it is well done. Vespers at the London Oratory can be truly wonderful, but we have not succeeded in making the offices, liturgical prayer, a part of the real diet of Catholics in ordinary parishes.
Where do we go from here? I don't know.

Airports

I've just paid a very brief visit to Ireland, so I thought I'd post some reflections. The first thing that struck me was the journey. I used to work at Gatwick Airport, and rather prefer it to Heathrow. But, honestly, the experience of flying out of it was not pleasant. I felt like a hamster, being fed along tubes made of cardboard at high speed, the ceilings only just above my head and the heat oppressive. And then being made to stand for over half an hour in one of these minuscule airless corridors while people jostled and pushed for prime position before being allowed on the (Ryan Air) plane. A lot of nasty things are said about Ryan Air, but in the end, you get what you pay for, and at those prices, you can't expect caviar and champagne. But the airport really could sort things out a bit better.
Dublin airport was a huge contrast. It's changed out of all recognition, of course. I well remember, when departing, being able to sit in the bar in the concourse sipping a last pint of Guinness, and, a couple of minutes before the flight, sauntering past the officials checking tickets (How'ya; grand day; 'tis) and onto the plane without raising the temperature one degree. Now, Dublin Airport is like the set of Gattaca; an utter contrast to Gatwick. Vast echoing granite and marble halls and corridors; the only sound being the clack-clack of heels and the rumble of those suitcases designed to trail behind you and trip people up. All the accents you hear are angular and Slavonic—a brogue is rare—and you are hustled from one place to another, not rudely (this is still, just, Ireland), but not nicely, either. On leaving Ireland, once you have been strip searched and the sins of your entire ancestry enquired into, you are squeezed into the most intense shopping mall I have ever seen. Ever since the compulsory lay-over for all transatlantic flights at Shannon, Ireland has been famous for its duty free shops. And at Dublin it feels obliged to continue the practice. But it doesn't really want you to enjoy the experience. The shops are a horrid bottleneck, full of people; there is nowhere to sit down and take a pause in your shopping; the only seats are at the flight gates, and once there you can't return to the shops (even if you felt inclined to walk several hundred miles back again). And the prices are truly appalling. €31 for a 70cl bottle of ordinary spirits! €5 for a limp sandwich in a plastic box! Forget it. I did pay €4.50 for a pint of Guinness, though—I hadn't had a chance at any other point in my trip—and enjoyed it. The flight home was delayed by an hour and a half, and I was very glad that I was in Dublin, not Gatwick. At least I could breathe there.

Ad multos annos

We are deeply blessed in the Adur Valley to have, in addition to my own feeble ministrations, the help of two now-retired priests, Canon Brian O'Sullivan and Father Anthony Lovegrove. They were ordained on the same day, 31st May 1958, and so today they celebrated their Golden Jubilee together with a Mass at Steyning, in the Adur Valley. None of our own churches were big enough for the crowd that gathered, and so the Rev. Paul Rampton, vicar of Steyning's large Norman Anglican Church, built on the site where Saint Cuthman built that first church so long ago, generously permitted us to celebrate the Mass there (the second since the Reformation—the first being Canon Brian's 40th). Our bishop, Kieran Conry, presided, and said in his homily some words that touched me very much—I won't tell you what they were, but I found them very supportive in a rather difficult situation we have to handle in the Valley right now. Many parishioners will know what I mean. Another bishop, Bernard Longley (formerly a priest of this diocese, and now an auxiliary in Westminster) also concelebrated, and, to my surprise, even sang the psalm—a liturgical practice not, perhaps, foreseen by Fortescue and O'Connell. Another priest of the diocese, Canon John Stapleton also was present, celebrating today 61 years in the priesthood.
Many parishioners, especially from the Steyning end of the parish, pulled together to make a splendid celebration: a great deal of work went into it all (all arranged by the jubilarians themselves as they wanted) and the result was prayerful and joyful.
It did, however, fall to me, as Parish Priest, to offer congratulations, and toast the jubilarians, ad multos annos, and I said that I, at 19 years in the priesthood, already felt long in the tooth, and was awed to silence at the contribution of two sets of 50 years. On the day they were ordained, my own parents' wedding still lay eleven days away. And yet, considering their joint hundred years of priesthood—well, you only need twenty of these periods to be back in the time of our Lord. We presented each jubilarian with a new set of breviaries: Canon Brian's Great Dane having taken too literally the advice to 'read, mark and inwardly digest' his former set, and Father Tony still being on his original 1975 set.
Please remember them both in your prayers.

Car Hire

I'm off to Ireland to see an aunt for a couple of days; when booking my flight and my car, I came across this intriguing page on the Hertz car rental site.
Notice anything?

The Alfa Romeo costs less than the Nissan Micra!

Hortus Conclusus

I've been rather admiring of Fr Zs photographs of the Sabine Farm. This is nothing to match, but I can't help loving my little flint-and-old-brick enclosed garden. This is, too, a lovely time of year, though the sunshine today is a bit half-hearted.
For the first time in fifteen months, I have no primroses! The plants seem to have finally decided to give themselves a bit of a break and behave as normal primroses do.
The bottom bits of the walls we think are old; there is a wall on this site from a map of the town from the 17th century. Flint is the local style here in Shoreham, and very pretty it looks on a sunny day.
I do have another problem; there are about eight cats who live in John Street, and all of them use my garden as their toilet! They never let me catch them at it, otherwise it would be waterpistols at dawn. Any suggestions? Besides getting one of my own, I mean—I'm allergic to moggy fur. And though I'd really love to get a dog again, I really don't have the leisure to be fair to it. A dog is high-maintenance, after all, though infinitely worth the pains if one can spare the time.

Lauda Sion

Does anyone know a versified English version of this sequence? It seems a shame to recite the sequence at the main Mass, and the Gregorian Chant is beyond what our choir are able (or willing) to do. On Sunday, a reader objected to even reading the shorter version, on account of its 'archaic language'.

International politics and cup size

The cult of celebrity seems to be going further and further. On serious issues, the opinions that hit the headlines seem to relate directly to chest size and, presumably, thus have influence on people who (can) vote. Here's one from Sharon Stone on being asked whether she had heard of the situation in China (earthquake &c): you can read the full piece here. To her intellectual credit, she didn't ask where China is, but said:

Of course. You know, it was very interesting because at first I am not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans, because I don't think anyone should be unkind to anyone else, and so I have been very concerned about how to think and what to do about that because I don't like that.Then I have been concerned about, oh, how shall we deal with the Olympics? Because they are not being nice to the Dalai Lama, who is a good friend of mine. And then this earthquake and all this stuff happened and I thought, 'Is that karma, when you're not nice that the bad things happen to you?'

Profound stuff! I can see a Nobel peace prize coming up. Incidentally, this is just about the only photo of Ms Stone that I could find in which she is (relatively) decently dressed.

Dolce far niente

I am reminded of Edmund Burke's famous dictum;
'For evil to triumph, it is only necessary for good men to do nothing'

The White Stone Name Seeker compares the situation in England and Wales over the Church and the recent bill to the Church of first-century Laodicea, where, she surmises, it was precisely this laziness that God condemned in the Apocalypse.

“And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: ‘The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation. ¶ “‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth. (RSV)

Eulogies and Panegyrics

I noted, a few posts ago, the passing of Bernadin Cardinal Gantin. On Thursday, I must celebrate the funeral of an old friend, perhaps the last person I shall know with memories of pre-revolutionary Russia (there can't be many left), and the parish priest of her parish (very correctly) reminded me of the Church's forbidding of eulogies at a funeral.
This is often a difficult one: my reading of the law is that a eulogy must not replace the homily of the Mass (on the Christian understanding of death &c), but this need not preclude some account of the deceased person being given outside the Mass, which is to say, before the commendation, in addition to a homily after the Gospel. One remembers that at a Requiem in the Extraordinary Form, the address (traditionally a panegyric) is given at the end of Mass.
I was very interested to see on the Whispers in the Loggia site that the Holy Father had given a very explicit eulogy/panegyric at the funeral of Cardinal Gantin, and at the end of the Mass. What I don't know was whether there had been a homily also.
The forbidding of a panegyric by the priest is a good idea, for all sorts of reasons, but at the same time one cannot help feel that it helps the mourners to have their loved one's life directly addressed in some way, and very often this does come best from somebody who knew him or her in life. I'm relieved that the Holy Father thinks so too.

As never seen before…

With many thanks to The Deacon's Bench, here's an interesting sidelight on a notorious historical figure. He obviously chose the wrong career.

Knox knocked back

It now appears that more Catholics attend Mass in Scotland than Presbyterians attend the Kirk, according to Scotland on Sunday. The same article attributes the bolstered Mass attendance and also the increase in vocations to the presence of a large number of Poles: the former is surely true, but I would have thought that the increase in vocations is due more to the forthright action of the Church in Scotland and its high-profile involvement in public life. It seems to me that Cardinals Winning and O'Brien have taken the moral high ground in dealing with the Scottish Parliament, leaving the Kirk standing. It must indeed seem that Scotland's Catholics are taking the initiative and playing a real part in public life in a very positive way. I wish our English hierarchy would be similarly courageous.

Just so you can see…

This was our procession in 2006. This is the old canopy that had been damaged, but with the B&Q improvised poles.

On Canopies

I saw from the photos on Fr Ray's blog that the Blessed Sacrament canopy has, from last year, made a reappearance at Arundel. I seem to remember that it had disappeared 'on the grounds of health and safety'.
Fr Tim, on his blog, laments that Blackfen lacks a canopy and must needs make do with an ombrellino.
Here, we had a canopy, but it had been put away wet after the last procession in about 1967, and the silk had perished. The poles, too, had gone missing. But what we discovered is that…
Canopies, unlike canapés, are pretty easy to make. You need a double bedspread-sized piece of good cloth (if you've a branch of Dunelm Mills near you, as we have, you can get a nice gold-coloured damask very reasonably). Square is a good shape, as it makes it much easier to process around corners if the bearers can simply turn themselves without turning the canopy. You need to line it heavily, make four holes about 8 or 9 inches in from the corners, and reinforce them. You should be able to get fringing at the same place, if you're into that.
Now go to B&Q and get four 3 metre lengths of shiny imitation-brass pipe and four of the sort of knobs one shoves into the end of curtain rails. All you need now is to find a way to prevent the canopy slipping down the poles. I have not yet worked out a permanent solution, but several rubber bands wound round near the tops of the poles seems to work fine.
And all of this should take one or two people very little time to do.
And now all you need is to invite a community of enclosed sisters into your parish, build them a convent, and ask them to get embroidering.

Getting Priorities Right

The UN is acting decisively to counter the tragedy in Burma. This isn't the starvation problem, or the exposure problem. No, it's something far more basic and urgent (as no doubt Cherie Blair would confirm after her tragic Balmoral experience) — the need for sex without the complication of risking the tragic possibility of a child being born. So the UN is about to dispatch to Burma 220000 condoms to stave off this major humanitarian disaster. Read about it here.

How to build a church

On the New Liturgical Movement blog, I found this YouTube video about the new shrine of our Lady of Guadaloupe in Lacrosse, Wisconsin. If you go to the NLM page here, you can find some more recent photos, too. The video is about 10 minutes; you won't notice the time go.



I want one.

Rubbing my eyes

Thanks to a tip-off on the New Liturgical Movement, I discovered these recent words of Cardinal Noe:

Ora bisogna recuperare, e in fretta, il senso del sacro nell’ars celebrandi, prima che il fumo di Satana pervada completamente tutta la Chiesa. Grazie a Dio, abbiamo Papa Benedetto XVI: la sua Messa e il suo stile liturgico sono un esempio di correttezza e dignità”.

Now we must rediscover, and quickly, the sense of the sacred in the ars celebrandi before the smoke of Satan utterly pervades the whole Church. Thanks be to God, we have Pope Benedict: His Mass and his liturgical style are an example of correctness and dignity. (my translation).

Can this really be the same Cardinal Noe who undertook the reordering of all the side altars in St Peter's, who had the Altar of the Chair smashed up, who would remove the cruets from the altars of priests whom he deemed to be attempting to celebrate the Traditional Mass……?

Is this another Vicar of Bray, or a real conversion? We must pray that it is the latter. The rest of the article repays reading, if you can read Italian. Find it here.

Cardinal Gantin RIP

Cardinal Bernadin Gantin has died in Paris. May he rest in peace. He was in some ways the natural negotiator with Archbishop Lefebvre, having known him in Africa before the Council, and if anyone could have achieved something, it would have been he.

The Times on Line has a good piece about him.

This is from the CNS site, from the time of the last conclave:

Cardinal Bernardin Gantin, Prefect emeritus of the Congregation for Bishops, President emeritus of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, Dean emeritus of the College of Cardinals, was born on 8 May 1922 in Toffo, archdiocese of Cotonou, Benin.

Cardinal Gantin’s name means tree of iron on African land, and always his people and his land have been and are present in his life. Son of a railroad official, he finished his school studies in Dahomey, in what is today known as the People's Republic of Bénin, and where in 1861 the first Christian missionaries arrived. The main Christian centre was in the city of Ouidah, and from there it spread throughout the whole territory. A strong thrust toward Christianity came with the experience of many slaves deported from the country to the plantations of Latin America, the majority of whom upon their return to Africa were witness to the strength and hope they had received from the Gospel.

In 1936, he entered the minor seminary in Bénin. On 14 January 1951, he was ordained a priest in Lomé in Togo by Archbishop Louis Parisot and was chosen as a teacher of languages at the seminar. At the same time he dedicated himself intensely to pastoral work in a group of villages and from this experience acquired a great love for the pastoral apostolate.

In 1953, leaving his heart in Africa, he was sent to Rome to study at the Pontifical Urban University and then at the Lateran. He received a licentiate in theology and in canon law.

On 11 December 1956 he was elected titular Bishop of Tipasa of Mauritania and Auxiliary of Cotonou and was consecrated on 3 February 1957.

On 5 January 1960, John XXIII promoted him to Archbishop of Cotonou when his old teacher, the ailing Archbishop Parisot, felt it was time to hand over his flock to the one who could take on the enormous work of the apostolate. His prowess as a pastor was demonstrated in a number of areas: he subdivided the diocese to adapt more effectively to individual situations; he promoted the founding of schools; he vigorously supported the activity of catechists and of indigenous sisters; and, particularly concerned with the problem of priestly vocations, he underwent many sacrifices in order to maintain seminarians and priests of the diocese in their studies.

President of the Episcopal Conference of the region that included seven countries (Dahomey, Togo, the Ivory Coast, Alto Volta, New Guinea, Senegal and Nigeria), he was called to Rome in April 1971 as the adjunct secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, of which he became the secretary two years later.

From 1975 he was the Vice-President and then President of the Pontifical Commission of Justice and Peace and also Vice-President and then President of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum (1976-1984).

President Delegate to the 5th General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (1980).

8 April 1984 until 25 June 1998, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops and President of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.

5 June 1993, Dean of the College of Cardinals. On 30 November 2002, the Holy Father accepted the request of Cardinal Gantin to be dispensed from the Office of Dean of the College of Cardinals and of the title of the suburbicarian see of Ostia, allowing him to return to his homeland, in Benin.

Created and proclaimed Cardinal by Paul VI in the consistory of 27 June 1977, of the Title of the Suburbicarian Church of Palestrina (29 September 1986).

China

I see that the Holy Father is getting generous with the old indulgences again. That's a healthy sign. He's granted a plenary for those participating in the day of prayer for China on May 24th. I got this notice on the regular Zenit mailings:

HONG KONG, MAY 13, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI is offering the opportunity to gain a plenary indulgence to those who participate in the events surrounding the May 24 World Day of Prayer for the Church in China.
In a notice to parishes, the Hong Kong Diocese announced May 9 that at the request of Cardinal Joseph Zen, bishop of Hong Kong, the Pope is making a plenary indulgence available to the faithful.
To receive the plenary indulgence, the faithful should participate in one of the solemn functions to be held May 15-25 in the diocese, as well as fulfilling the customary conditions.
Those who are unable to participate due to sickness or other grave reasons can also obtain the indulgence by uniting themselves spiritually with those present at the celebrations, offering their prayers and sufferings to the God of mercy for the Church in China.
"It is the wish of the Holy Father that the faithful will more and more yearn for and put into practice the supernatural virtues, especially faith, hope and charity, and that they will strengthen their communion with the Roman Pontiff, who is the visible foundation of the unity of the whole Catholic Church," the diocese said.
Benedict XVI proclaimed May 24, memorial of Our Lady, Help of Christians, a World Day of Prayer for the Church in China in his May 27, 2007, letter to Chinese Catholics.

Now, I think that this time of prayer is a very good idea, and I'd like to participate in some way. Since living several thousand miles from Hong Kong may be construed as a grave reason for me not physically participating in the celebrations, I wonder if I'd qualify for the indulgence?

Facebook

I have recently received quite a number of 'friend requests' on Facebook from people I don't know at all. Please don't think me rude, but I'm reluctant to accept such requests as they would reveal the names &c of people who really are my friends, and reveal notes left on my wall &c. If it is simply my memory that is faulty, you could remind me where and when we met &c by leaving a note on this blog saying 'not for publication' or whatever.
I'm sorry if this makes me sound like an old grouch; I'm flattered that nice people who read this blog would like to be friends, and no doubt if we meet one day, we shall be. But until then, please forgive my reticence.

God-free theocracy

Here are two accounts of the same event, which was the Cardinal's Westminster Cathedral lecture. Yet they could almost be describing two different occasions, two different people.

One from the BBC, here; 'Respect atheists', says cardinal'
and the other from the Guardian, here. 'Cardinal says Britain must not be a 'God-free zone'.

The BBC's approach is, I suppose, predictable—simply bad journalism, trying to make a story by taking a remark out of context—but it is nice to see the Guardian taking a more nuanced approach.

Genocide or not genocide?

Patriarch Karekin of the Eastern (non-Catholic) Armenian Church has passionately appealed in St Peter's square for the massacre of his people which took place in Turkey in and around 1915 to be recognized as true genocide. You can read about it here. The Holy Father also spoke strongly against the massacre, but he held back from using the G-word. The French lower house of parliament tried to introduce a bill to criminalize the denial of genocide of the Armenians, but the Senate blocked it. Similarly, President Bush has blocked a condemnation in the US legislature. The reason?
Well, it seems that there are two interest groups who resist labelling the deaths as genocide. One group is, of course, the Turks themselves. I should have thought that it could have been easy enough to heap the blame on the decadent Ottoman sultanate and say 'well, that was then; we, secular Ataturkists, are different'. But, it seems, they are not willing to go down that route. In fact, it is asserted that they have gone out of their way to destroy Christian monuments to bolster their claim that they are the original inhabitants of Turkey, and, incredibly, that there never were any Christians in Asia Minor. William Dalrymple in his book From the Holy Mountain (which I highly recommend) goes into this quite thoroughly.
You might care to take a look at the pictures; they are from Great Architecture of the World, a book that I received for my 16th birthday in 1977, and which was one of my favourite presents ever. I remember being fascinated by these ghostly ruined churches from the area of Lake Van—clearly very ancient, as the relief of David and Goliath shows. But I never grasped the significance of the last of these pictures, the one with the frescoes under the arch. For these frescoes or paintings to have survived in the open air like this, the church's destruction must have happened relatively recently. Turkey has begun to make some amends: the church illustrated at the top here, which has the David and Goliath relief, has been restored—though as a museum–by the Turkish Government. Read about it here, here (Western versions) and here (Turkish version).
I am told, though, that there is another group interested in keeping the g-word out of the Armenian context. This is some vocal Jewish groups, who feel that recognizing the Armenian massacre as a genocide will somehow detract from what they believe to be the uniqueness of their own holocaust. Whatever next, after all, might be recognized as an act of genocide? The Irish Potato Famine?
So I suppose it was for fear of annoying the Turks that the French held back from the g-word. No doubt it was the powerful US Jewish lobby that restrained Dubya.
The Holy Father has succeeded in annoying members of both groups during his pontificate already; perhaps he didn't want to exacerbate things.
But I really feel that the Armenians have been dealt with badly over this whole business.

In looking around the net for some more sites concerned with this issue, I have been rather unpleasantly suprised. I found a site that blamed the Jews for the Armenian slaughter, for instance, and on Google and Yahoo searches, there came up only one site that suggested that the Jews disapproved of the Armenian claim to Genocide status, this being the site of a holocaust denier. Perhaps some of you can come up with some links. Something is weird here.

New ICEL translation

Those of you with long memories may remember a blog not infinitely removed from this one published the Ordinary of the new ICEL Mass, stating that it was going to be used in South Africa from the First Sunday of Advent. I have an update on this, thanks to the visit of some friends. Apparently, the SA bishops did indeed decree this, but then revised their decision, preferring to wait until the collects &c will be published, and therefore will introduce the new translation from the coming first Sunday of Advent, 2008. However, they have already been using parts of it for some time now in many—if not most—areas, including the 'I' version of the Creed.
On the other hand, here at home, an English liturgist who I know has expressed the hope that the present first year class of seminarians should be able to celebrate with the new version at their first Mass. That is another five years, folks.
The translation has actually been used already in this country; a gathering of Forward in Faith Anglican clergy used it for a service in Winchester last year—something which has left me a little bemused.

Sorry

Please excuse slow posting: I don't seem to have any time these days. But once confirmations, first Holy Communions, Seminarians' exams &c are over, perhaps I'll be more prolix.