SEDEVACANTISM: only for new readers.

I don't want to bore faithful long-time readers of my effusions ... but (happily) new readers do keep turning up. To these I desire to make clear that it is my policy to decline to enable posts which assert or imply Sedevacantism.

I have often written on this distasteful subject, and my pieces can, I presume, be accessed by means of the Search Engine.

Two very brief pointers.

(1) Sedevacantism is the other side of the same coin as Ultrapapalism (Hyperbergoglioism?) expressed by a number of the undesirables who surround the Holy Father. In each case, there is the same erroneous major premise.

The Pope is a reliable teacher of the Faith;
Bergoglio is clearly not a reliable teacher of the Faith;
Therefore Bergoglio is not pope.

The Pope is a reliable teacher of the Faith;
Bergoglio is pope;
Therefore Bergoglio must be a reliable teacher of the Faith.

BOTH ARE ERRORS.

(2) Whichever of the many forms of sedevacantism you are tempted by, subject it to the Pope Honorius Test. He was condemned by an Ecumenical Council and anathematised by a successor. But can anyone produce any evidence that the Council, or any subsequent popes who condemned him, or any reputable ecclesistical writer, has ever argued that Honorius had ceased to be Pope at the moment when he acted heretically?

Both the Council, and the Pope who confirmed the condemnation it decreed, anathematised him well after his death. They did not say that he fell from office during his lifetime.

Whether or not you like Bergoglio, he is, beyond any shadow of doubt, the Pope. 

 

Mere Christianity?

What to offer when one needs to give somebody a simple explanation of the basics of the Faith?

C S Lewis's Mere Christianity has a lot to be said for it ... has had a lot said for it ... and nothing of what has been said for it will be unsaid by me. When orthodox Christianity stood (although few realised it at the time) on the verge of the apostasies of the late twentieth century, a robust and highly intelligent product of our Anglican Patrimony stood up for it and pulled no punches.

But I want to suggest an alternative ... no; not an alternative to a list which need not stand at just one volume: I mean, an addition!

The Creed in Slow Motion by Mgr Ronald Knox (Sheed and Ward Ltd. 1949).

Here we have sermons on the Apostles' Creed, preached to the schoolgirls of the Assumption Convent when, during the War, they were evacuated to Aldenham Park, Bridgnorth: the ancient Shropshire home of his friends Lord and Lady Acton. Knox served as their chaplain, and, every Sunday, preached to them in an argot which became more and more familiar and intimate.

The published version is dedicated to one of the pupils. Pupils were known to have declined to go to the cinema on Sundays with their parents because they were unwilling to miss Father's sermon.

Lewis was a don and an Ulsterman; despite the the beer-and-tobacco manner, at heart he did dour. Knox, although Scots by ancestry, was much more feline, and as you read the sermons he preached to the girls at Aldenham, you hear ... I defy you not to hear ... the girls giggling at the literary jokes which were not quite literary and not really jokes. Knox could adapt himself to the literary manners of very different styles in English, Greek, Latin.

Believe me, if you disdain these pieces because they were preached to schoolgirls, you will make a gigantic mistake. 

RUMOURS

 Rumours abound ... and have reached me from various plausible sources ... that distinguished members of a particular, respected, religious order in this country have been or are being prevented or discouraged by various means from making public protests against (apparently and prima facie) unorthodoxies recently propounded by the current occupant (tenant?) of the See of Rome.

I will say no more, because I am unable to offer a precise and evidenced account of exactly who is putting what pressures upon whom; and by whose instructions.

Out of the same sense of profound ecclesial responsibility, I shall not enable any Comments offered to me on this subject.

But, if readers do offer Comments, even though I shall not enable them, their guidance may influence me. Think of me as pretty well a tabula rasa.

Try to be objective

 I have declined to enable an offered Comment referring to some categories of women as "cow-like".

In my view, this term lacks sufficient specificity and objectivity.

It is aso open to an accusation of speciesism.

My preference is for objective terminology and for precise meaning.

I shall also decline to enable Comments referring to some categories of men as "bull-like". As for "bullock-like", I would require documentary evidence of the castration.

Out of sentiment, I would tolerate the use, in comments offered in Homeric hexameters, of the formulaic epithet boopis for particular goddesses. 'Inculturation', doncha know.

More Moreton

 Fr Michael Moreton, in a letter from which I recently quoted, also wrote as follows:

"I find it hard to believe that there is any way out of the pickle resulting from the admission of women to Holy Orders in the first place. [Archbishop] Robert Runcie once said to me that the only argument against the ordination of women is tradition. But that is the argument. The tradition has never hitherto needed apology for it rests on Christian anthropology which speaks for itself. The issue is simply between Christian and secular anthropology. At present neither view can prevail over the other. It is difficult to see how both can be provided for. ... In this as in so many ways the Church of England is a microcosm of what is happening in Christendom as a whole. I used to think that most RCs were strongly opposed to the ordination of women: and of course JPII has said that he has no authority to make such a change. But now I suspect that a majority of the clergy and laity could easily be reconciled to it. ... It makes me think that the Christian Churches can survive only with difficulty in a modern democracy. Information technology and rampant capitalism have combined to create a culture that is profoundly hostile to Christianity ...

In the eighteen years since Fr Michael wrote that, I think the circumambient culture has become even more resolutely hostile to Christian Anthroplogy. In fact, vastly more inimical. Gender fluidity ... rigid censorship of dissent ...

How wise we were not even to start sliding down that slippery slope.

Where to be married?

There are proposals to make it licit in these kingdoms to be married ... almost anywhere ...

The old restrictions, concerning the place and the time of weddings, were based on sound instinctive principles. There was a perceived need to prevent the deception and sexual abuse of girls and women by libertines who might persuade them by the simulation of the Sacrament to submit to pretended marriages. And the confining of the Sacrament to specific public buildings ... churches or registrars' offices ... afforded married people the protecion of formal recognition in community contexts. Secured also by the reading of Banns, the publicity of the event guaranteed it against jiggery pokery. This was as true for a couple of peasants as it was in gentle or noble contexts.

Now, of course, such considerations scarcely matter. The need to protect the chastity of women against those who would debauch them is not recognised in a society where consensual sexual promiscuity is perceived as normal and, probably, almost universal.

And the old securities have lost their necessity when divorce on demand is almost universally ... and rapidly ... avalable.

I don't quite know where we go from here. I do wonder how many modern marriages are valid.

And I do think that the Church should preserve the old restrictions, because they are pretty well the only safeguards against the disappearance of legitimate, life-long marriage.

Unfinished Business of Vatican II

I hope no reader disagrees with the policy of PF's admirers ... and, indeed, of the Holy Father himself ... that the intentions of Vatican II must now finally become effective throughout the Whole State of Christ's Church Militant Here In Earth. Better late than never.

Here are two examples.

(1) V2 emphasised the role of the Bishops as successors of the Apostles. But yet the corrupt old usage of the word "Apostolic" to mean "Papal" still, more than half a century after the Council, continues.

Mary Pierre Ellebracht, in her erudite Remarks on the Vocabulary of the ancient orations in the Missale Romanum (1963) cunningly noticed a shift in the liturgical use of the adjective apostolicus. 

In some early texts, it was used instead of the genitive Apostoli ("of an Apostle"). E.g., "Apostolicis Iacobi ... praesidiis": literally, "by the Apostolic protections  of James". But this was later changed to "Apostoli tui Iacobi ... praesidiis". 

Both mean the same. It may simply be that use of the adjective appeared more stylish. (Augustan epic poets would tend to refer to "the Herculean Hands" rather than referring to "the hands of Hercules" with a plain genitive singular). 

My own suspicion is that the adjectival Apostolicus was increasingly being reserved for the See of Rome.

We need to put this trend into reverse. Apostolic Nuncios ... Constitutions ... Palaces ... you name it: they should be deapostolicised.

Would "Papal" do instead? Perhaps; but in the earlier centuries every bishop was a Papa; and His Beatitude the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria is still "papa". We mustn't be anti-ecumenical.

Perhaps "Vatican" or "Lateran" would be a sensible substitute.

(2) Dr Ellebracht's doctoral supervisor was none other than Christine Mohrmann. I think there should be a massive act of penance for the way brilliant Catholic women liturgists and academics were ignored in the Sixties (and since). An Instauratio Memoriae Christinae Mohrmann, accompanied by a lock-stock-and-barrel complete reconsideration of the entire corrupt liturgical settlement of the late Seventies, would be in order. Some Grilloids could be ceremonially eundo et lustrando flogged round the city walls. "From the tyrannye of Bysshop Bugnini and al hys detestable enormities, Good lord, deliuer us" could ... by a deft appropriation of a brilliant idea of Archbishop Cranmer's ... be added to the Litanies ... a contribution from the Ordinariates ....

You know it makes sense.

Credo ...

 A very fine lecture at Gardone, by our Director of Music, David Hughes, contained this wonderful anecdote, which I suspect must date from the end of World War I.

A French train, full of German prisoners of war being sent home from France, stopped at a railway station on the border. By chance, simultaneously, a German train, full of French prisoners of war being returned to France, stopped at the same station.

Feelings were still raw and passions were high and some jostling began among the two groups of repatriated servicemen.

Then ... somebody ... intoned, using the ancient, universally known melody, the phrase Credo in unum Deum. 

Within a few moments, the entire station was ringing with this glorious affirmation of Catholicism, of supra-national unity and identity.

Couldn't happen nowadays, could it, and you know why.

horns galore?

 According to Meejah, Liz Truss, who aspires to be our next First Lord of the Treasury, had an extra-marital affaire. She said it had strengthened her marriage.

Sounds to me a very feminine sort of wile, to explain to your husband that you did him a good turn by cuckolding him.

The late Mr Johnson ... er ... ....

Sex, Status, and Ecumenism

 The admirable periodical Friends of the Ordinariate has thrown some diverting light on the events leading up to the founding of the Ordinariates.

Most readers will probably know that there were several movements leading up to that significant event. There was the RITA (Rome Is The Answer) initiative of Bishop Andrew Burnham and two of the other English Flying Bishops; this led to success, and the Ordinariates are the measure of that success. But there was also a larger group of English Anglican bishops, mostly diocesans, who took up a fair bit of Roman time and attention. But why did those bishops draw back from the brink and ... with the noble and distinguished example of Bishop Nazir Ali ... cease to aspire to unity? (Roman sources have indicated that the attempts engineered by John Hepworth were not the most significant factor in these events: "the main factor was a desire to address the English situation").

So what happened to that group of English Anglican diocesans? Friends of the Ordinariate gives evidence that their problem was that Rome would not accept married Anglican bishops as bishops. They could be authorised, like abbots and some monsignori, to use pontificalia; but they would be denied the sacramental reality of the Episcopal Order.

So that's what all that ecumenism stuff was to lead up to! Unlike Bishop Burnham and his colleagues, unlike Bishop Ali, they were not big enough men to sacrifice ... personal status!!!

Their foremost belief was ... Bishops we are and bishops, in the fullest sense, we must be acknowledged to be ...

... and hands off our wives!

 

Frankly, Ecumenism has always been a seedy plot to destroy Anglican Catholicism within the Provinces of Canterbury and York. Our elite has always made clear that:"We shall not allow anything to impede our liberal Proddy desire for pan-Protestant unity ... so you 'Catholics' are going to have to give up your belief that episcopal ordination is essential for valid ordination to the priesthood. And it's no good complaining that the Methodist use of non-wine in their communion services would render their communions invalid anyway ... and you can stop banging on about Confirmation ... O, and by the way, we shall continue to persecute you for using at the Altar that horrid Roman book ... you'll still be on our 'banned' list ... "

The Anglican Dominant Tendency invented Bergoglianity decades ago! Our resistance against it has characterised Anglican Church life throughout my own decades in the provinces of Canterbury and York. 

Six of the best?

 For some of us, the feast of S Mary Magdalen recalls happy Tridentine memories of her Church in Oxford during Prebendary Hooper's glorious reign. 

For others, it will evoke hilarious memories of the promulgation by the CDW of a Proper Preface containing a risibly schoolboy howler in its latinity.

Moi, both.

Ambrosian query

This is a request for information from those learned in the Ambrosian Rite. I am myself profoundly ignorant in this area; the only traditional resource I possess is a reprint of the 1712 Ambrosian Missal. 

The post-Conciliar, 1981, version of the Rite of Milan (and of a fair bit of Lombardy) contains a Eucharistic Prayer V and a Eucharistic Prayer VI. These are both (as far as I can see) non-Roman. They are said to date from the first millennium. They are ordered to be used, respectively, in Coena Domini and in Vigilia Paschali.

Some sections of these 1981 Prayers are found, mixed up with parts of the Roman Canon, in the 1712 Missal. I would like to know whether

(1) the mixed 1712 text of these Prayers is found in first-millennium versions of the Milanese Rite (mixed up with the Roman Canon as in the the 1712 Missal); with our conclusion being that the 1981 revisers had the bright idea of liberating these distinctively Ambrosian materials from the mixed forms of these canons; or whether

(2) there are extant first-millennium manuscripts with the texts of these prayers unmixed with the Roman Canon: implying that the 1981 reformers were simply and laudably returning to the evidenced early version of the Rite before it was Romanised.

The portions of the Prayers in the 1981 Missal which are found in 1712 are:

Maundy Thursday: para 77 tu nos participes ... primus offerri and para 81 Haec facimus ... tribuas ad salutem. [Spiritus sancti virtute is added, I presume in accordance with the predictable fads of the 1960s.]

Vigil: para 84 Vere sanctus ... liberaret a morte. 

I wonder if the prelate who ordained Alcuin Reid uses the Ambrosian Rite ...