On Not Blogging

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For the record, and in answer to Fr Ray's Where Have All The Bloggers Gone, the two reasons I have blogged but little lately are because of extensive travel for work, and a filling of my time with teaching myself how to become a rubrician, a rubrician of a stern and pre-Pius X variety.  It is much more fun than blogging.

I haven't blogged for quite a while on Pope Francis and frankly, I am unlikely to do so, because I really don't understand what he is trying to do to the Church.  I'm not naïve enough to say: I don't understand the Pope, but he's the Pope, and therefore it's my fault I don't understand him: it most certainly isn't.  But given that we have no, or at least little, context for most contentious decisions he is making (I hold the FFI very close to my heart and prayers), I have decided that insofar as he is involved in some of the bizarre things coming out of Rome, he is beating his own path, and nothing I say, frankly, will add or subtract an iota from the significance of what is going on, or on his responsibility for what transpires, especially in respect of where the path he beats leads us.

I tweet, of course, and while some tweeters seem to think that in 140 characters it is only possible to be rude, many of the rest of us have found that it is possible to be completely civil: we even use Twitter to recite the Angelus in (fairly limited but nevertheless existing) community.

We found that the Hierarchy in England and Wales have managed to put "Catholic Blogging" into a box marked "To be ignored", and I reckon most of us aren't too worried: we blog for each other.  I will just say, though, that the day the Hierarchy turns to us and asks us to open the tap on their behalf, they'll find out that they reset our relationship when they decided to ignore us.  If they say we don't matter now, we won't be turnable-on when they decide that we may well matter.

But, odd hiccoughs aside, we will all continue to blog as it pleases us: we are the people of England who are always speaking and worthy of being smiled at, passed and forgotten: "Nothing matters very much; very little matters at all" those who look at us will say.  But they are wrong, because at the heart of what we care about is the one thing that does matter, and the great calamity, it seems to me, is that we blog about the one thing that matters because we aren't getting our fill of it elsewhere, and nobody seems to care, except us.
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The Vigil Of Pentecost

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If you want to get a good idea of what has been lost, look at the entry here on the St Lawrence Press blog which goes through what the Vigil of Pentecost used to consist of.  You will see how it echoes the Easter Vigil, not least in the way in which they stress Baptism.

It is important to stress that the loss of this celebration has nothing to do with Pope John's Missal or with Vatican II: it was suppressed by Pius XII at the same time as the reordered the ceremonies of Holy Week.  Not only was the shape and direction of Holy Week changed, but Pentecost was reduced.

As I mentioned recently, it is clear that the change movement was active a lot earlier than I had realised.  Another throwaway line in the 1939 hand Missal comes after a reminder that the Vigil originally took place at night: "It is this which must be kept in mind in order to understand all the offices this morning".  Well, no, actually.

This sort of archaeologism is wrong for two reasons: first, because it supposes that up to 1955 nobody except for a tiny handful of scholars actually understood what was going on; second, because it is so selective.  When Pius XII reordered Holy Week, I bet it never entered his head or his advisers' that perhaps he should, for example, reintroduce the fasting practices which characterised Holy Week in the fourth century and which shaped the liturgical experience for those who observed the original late evening and night time vigil.  (Actually, it's wrong for lots more reasons, but these are the two I want to stress here.)

Why had the Ester Vigil ended up being celebrated on the morning of Holy Saturday, while the Vigil of Pentecost took place after None, ie in the afternoon or early evening of Whitsun eve?  I don't know the answer, but it demonstrates that the organic development of the liturgy does not depend on a fiat from a Vatican liturgical expert which would aim, as we came to see in Bugnini's day, at flat standardisation, but on gradual changes arising from the nature and importance of a particular part of the celebration of the liturgy.

By the time the major revisions to the liturgy which culminated in the 1967 Novus Ordo were being studied, the abolition of even the Octave of Pentecost went through pretty well on the nod.  Why such an important feast was so downgraded is something I don't understand at all.
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Since When Was There Only One Right Way To Attend Mass?

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I had thought that the push towards uniform congregational practice at Mass was a fruit of the latter years of Pope Pius XII, in parallel with the start of the serious reordering of the Liturgy.  Read this, for example:

Method of Hearing Mass Well.

The Mass. says Père Lacordaire, is an act too sublime and holy for us to occupy ourselves with anything other than what the priest says and does. It is not the time for pious reading or private devotions. These latter cut us off from the priest, and keep the mind away from the end and object of the Holy Sacrifice.

The Mass is more than an ordinary prayer. It is a sacrifice, that is to say, a social act accomplished by the priest in the name of a body of people of whom he is the interpreter and representative. The offering is made in the name of all those who are assisting. They should therefore associate themselves with it. Several times the priest reminds them of this:  at the Orate fratres, when he says "Pray, brethren, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the Father Almighty"; at the Memento of the Living: "Be mindful of Thy servants, for whom we offer, or who offer this sacrifice to Thee". Likewise we find in the greater part of the prayers it is the plural and not the singular person which is used. The priest does not in fact say "I pray" or "I beseech" but "we pray" and "we beseech" ( quaesumus, petimus, rogamus ).

To participate in a real way in the Holy Sacrifice, the faithful should not be present simply as spectators, indifferent or distracted, but they should unite their intention with that of the priest who is offering.

The simplest and most commendable method which will be facilitated by the explanations contained in this Roman Missal, consists in associating oneself with the liturgical rites, prayers and chant of the, Mass.

The faithful follow in their Missals, at the same time as the priest at the altar is saying, the prayers of the Ordinary of the Mass, and those which are proper to the office of the day. These latter are the Introit, Collects, Epistle, Gospel, Offertory, Secret, Preface, Communion and Postcommunion. These are the ancient liturgical prayers, so beautiful and expressive, and in every way incomparably superior to the modern productions that they must assuredly be preferred to any of them. There is no necessity, however, to pay such close attention to one's book that one would scruple to raise one’s eyes to watch the movements of the celebrant at the altar; the faithful who would so act would create a sort of breach between themselves and the priest who offers the sacrifice in their names; they would be reading their Mass, but not following it.

It is much to be desired that all the faithful wherever possible should join in the singing of the chant of the Church, being careful to avoid such faults as are liable to be committed when numbers are singing together, as for instance singing loudly or drawling the melody. The singing of hymns is permitted at Low Masses but forbidden at High Masses. The Church demands that these hymns should be as much as possible in keeping with the sacrifice and the feast of the day. The Church does not approve of there being singing without a break, and forbids any voice to be raised during the most solemn part of the Mass, namely, at the Consecration.

 

The two characteristics of the reformers attitude to lay participation at Mass were, first, that nobody should pray anything other than the Mass: the ordinary and the propers of the particular Mass being celebrated; and second, that they should do so in unison.

 

The surprise to me is that this is written in a layman's hand missal which received its Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur in 1938, which means that the seeds which would grow into the crop which the reformers would reap were planted a lot earlier than I had realised.

 

There is another clue that the changes were being realised much earlier: in hand missals of the nineteenth century, there are extensive instructions to allow somebody attending Mass to work out what the propers for any day will be, and in the period before Pius X began the 20th Century's deep changes to the Calendar, working this out was complicated: not impossible for the average person-that's why the instructions were printed at the start of the missal; but complicated.

 

By the time of the 1938 Missal, laypeople are told that the rubrics are far too complicated to explain and that every Catholic should obtain a copy of the diocesan almanac for the year to find out what feasts were being celebrated. This is the first step on a path which would leak to clerical ownership of the calendar and sacred time and, consequently, the right to change it.

 

You would only need to be sixty to have been alive when today was the Sunday within the Octave of the Ascension; many young people today will not remember a time when the Ascension wasn't celebrated on a Sunday. I know which I prefer.

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World Communications Day - What You'll Be Giving To

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Tomorrow, in England and Wales at least, we mark World Communications Day and there will be a second collection for the Catholic Communications Network which serves the Bishops' Conference.

Ascension Sunday ... Ascension Sunday!  The media office for the Catholic Church in England and Wales thinks that tomorrow is Ascension Sunday!

The barbarians aren't just within the gates: the barbarians have seized control of the printing presses and have worked out how to use them.

If the CBCEW really doesn't understand how appallingly awful this is, we are in for interesting times indeed.
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Communion And The Remarried: We Have Been Here Before (Pt 2)

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Dicebamus hesterna die that Cardinal Hume and Archbishop Worlock were facing a new threat.  I have written before about the ecclesial polity they had devised for the Church in England and Wales: a collegial House of Bishops Bishops' Conference, with the Cardinal, of course, as Archbishop of Westminster, as perpetual Head, and a House of Laity nexus of lay people, bound to the progressive world view of Hume and Worlock.  There was no room for a House of Clergy powerful voice for diocesan clergy: given that for most of the laity, most of the time, a Bishop was someone seen every two or three years when he came round for confirmations, the diocesan priest tended to be the bridge between the average lay person and the Pope, who, in the excitement first of the Year of the Three Popes and then of the election of a young, dynamic, Polish Pope, had become a fixture on the nation's TV screens. This was not to be encouraged. The clergy was to be marginalised, in the same way as the more reluctant Bishops would be marginalised, though the clergy would be marginalised in the name of rejecting clericalism, where Bishop Holland would be dismissed as a mere reactionary.

The plan called for what Clifford Longley described as the sentimentalisation of the Papacy for the lumpencatholic masses while the project, dear to the editors of the Catholic press who were part of the nexus of lay people, could be established and take root without anything ruffling the surface, and forcing the Vatican to take note.  The Papal Visit to England in 1982 was to cement this new view: the laity would turn out, and the Hierarchy would take the credit for being good pastors.  But things became urgent, for while Hume and Worlock were at the 1980 Rome Synod they had begun to realise just how hard the Vatican was cracking down on some of the dissenting hierarchies (such as in The Netherlands or Switzerland), and they needed to ensure that the focus of the Roman dicasteries did not turn towards England and Wales.

Unfortunately, the priests hadn't yet been told that they weren't part of the plan.  In the seventies, and particularly in the lead up to the Liverpool National Pastoral Congress, the National Conference of Priests had been an active and vocal participant in charting the new direction of the Church.  They had noted that The Easter People, the Bishops' response to the final report of the Congress, had watered down some of its recommendations.  So, on the return of the Cardinal and the Archbishop from the Synod in Rome, the Committee of the NCP asked to meet them.  They did, and the Secretary of the Bishops' Conference wrote a note of the meeting to be circulated to the Bishops.

The note shows first, just how much Hume and Worlock feared that Rome might intervene in England and Wales, and second, just how much they felt they needed to control the agenda.  Hume and Worlock were shown a copy of the note just before it was sent to the Bishops, at which point, to use an inappropriate secular expression, all hell broke loose.


REPORT OF MEETING WITH MEMBERS OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE OF THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF PRIESTS

Present: The Cardinal and Archbishop Worlock, Frs R. Spence, J. Carter, Mgr J. Buckley, Frs J. Breen and D. Forrester. Mgr D. Norris (Secretary).

A. Declaration from NCP

(1) General

The Declaration accepted wholeheartedly the findings of the National Pastoral Congress and welcomed the bishops' message The Easter People. However, the National Conference had some problems with the bishops’ message for they felt that the bishops had moved away from some of the resolutions of the Congress. The bishops appeared to give up their right as a local Church and to be too willing to give way to the Roman Curia.

The Cardinal replied that he considered that conservatism was succeeding in many parts of the world and was also rising in Rome. We had to remember that western Europe was now a minority in the church and places like Africa and South America were very conservative. Our local church has to find its way in the present circumstances and it is not always clear how it should proceed.

The Cardinal was sure that it would not help to have public calls on our bishops to act by themselves. There were some conservatives in this country who were already attacking what had already been done by himself and Archbishop Worlock.

The Archbishop was more optimistic - he compared the Synod with the last council - then the minority had proposed renewal and had managed to become the majority by the end of the council. Now there had been a change during the four weeks of the synod, though perhaps not a full acceptance of the minority view. The pope, too, had attended all the plenary sessions and had made no attempt to interfere with the freedom of those taking part. In his closing speech, the Pope had not closed the door and had in fact welcomed the propositions. Nor had he rejected the famous law of gradualness; what he had condemned was a graded law.

(The law of gradualness meant that people who were not complying with the Church’s teaching but who were of good will could eventually be brought towards compliance with the rules by catechesis, prayer and example.  A ‘graded law’ meant that there were people who would never comply with the teaching of the Church but could be allowed to settle for less.  This latter sounds familiar.)

When Hume and Worlock saw the draft they determined immediately that it must be suppressed: not just the front page, copied here, but the entire document even though the rest was uncontentious.  If it got to the Bishops, it would get to Rome, and if it got to Rome, then Rome might want to look more closely at what was going on.

 

(It is worth noting too that Mgr Norris' minute is probably a lot more temperate than what was actually said: notes of meetings usually reflect light rather than heat.)

 

Worlock wrote to Norris on receipt of the draft:

 

I hope you will understand when I say that I think it would be disastrous if this report were circulated to the Bishops. Indeed I must confess I am most unhappy about the whole of the first page and I doubt very much whether the cardinal would want his remarks reported. The reference to the attacks upon himself and myself could throw our meeting of the Conference later this month into all kinds of chaos ...

 

He copied his letter to Norris to the Cardinal, with a covering note:

 

I enclose a copy of a letter I have written to David Norris on the subject of his report of the meeting with the standing committee of the NCP. I think the report would be disastrous if it goes to the NCP. It would be even more disastrous if it is sent out with the papers for the Bishops' meeting. It will probably be best if I prepare a single sheet.

 

To which the Cardinal replied:

 

I am in full agreement with what you say about the report concerning the NCP.

 

So the report was suppressed.

 

The final part of the jigsaw, the Pope's visit, was played well: the English Hierarchy convinced the Vatican that it should play a major role in drafting the Pope's public statements if he were not to trample all over national, ecumenical and historical sensitivities.  In truth, they didn't want a visit of a Pope who would focus on issues like contraception and abortion, but curial diplomats, aware of the importance and sensitivity of this visit, simply accepted the offer of help at face value, and the visit was a tremendous success, the Pope saying what the CBCEW wanted the laity to hear.

 

Anybody who has been paying attention will have noted an interesting line in the note of the NCP meeting: "the Bishops appeared to give up their right as a local Church and to be too willing to give way to the Roman Curia".  The ultimate end of the plans adopted by Hume and Worlock aimed at turning the Church in England and Wales into a semi-detached federal unit of the Catholic Church: like one of the Greek Catholic Churches though less insistent on orthodoxy or loyalty to the Pope.  It would be hard to argue that over 30 years later, things were on a better course.

 

There is one footnote which doesn't reflect fantastically well on anyone, but which is a moment to raise the heart slightly at the end of such a depressing story.  During the Papal visit it was agreed that there would be one day in the North West of England with one Mass.  The Mass would be at Heaton Park in North Manchester, in the diocese of Salford, so there would be no Mass in Liverpool, which the Pope would visit after Manchester.  It was common knowledge at the time that Archbishop Worlock had informed Bishop Holland that, as Metropolitan, he would be the principal co-concelebrant with the Pope.  Bishop Holland, who had won a DSC as a naval chaplain during the Normandy Campaign, Bishop Holland who was privy to what Hume and Worlock were trying to do, Bishop Holland who would confound his successor, Bishop Kelly, by receiving Chief Constable James Anderton into the Church behind Kelly's back and against his wishes, was having none of it.  "Bugger off!" he said to Worlock.

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Communion And The Remarried: We Have Been Here Before (Pt 1)

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I have written extensively about the National Pastoral Congress which took place in Liverpool in 1980, and which, in my opinion, led the Church in England and Wales in the wrong direction.  What happened next is equally depressing.  Cardinal Hume told later how he and Archbishop Worlock had visited Pope John Paul II in Rome and had handed him a copy of the Conference's report, The Easter People, provocatively open at the section on birth control, and drew his attention to that page.  The Pope dismissively waved it aside.

Clifford Longley describes Archbishop Worlock's retelling of this story:

Worlock tended to follow Heenan's custom of sentimentalizing the papacy for public consumption, always giving the impression that everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Thus in a speech on the work of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission in Croydon in 1982, he does not repeat Hume's account of them visiting the Pope to hand over a copy of The Easter People, deliberately drawing the section on contraception to the Pope's attention and seeing him wave it aside dismissively. Instead: 'With Cardinal Basil Hume I flew to Rome and we handed the first copy to Peter’s successor, John Paul II, the symbol of unity. To him we said: "Here is our church in England and Wales. Now will you come to visit us?"' etc.

Nevertheless, Hume and Worlock went to the subsequent Synod of Bishops which took place in Rome in 1980 empowered, as they felt, by having been requested by the Congress to deliver a particular message, one which the Bishops' Conference had endorsed.

It was clear that the election of John Paul II had changed the mood (or had been a reflection of the change of mood) of the Church.  The high tide of the Spirit of Vatican II at the heart of the Church was receding, and it was already much less likely that the direction the leaders of the Church in E&W wanted to follow would be the direction the Synod would discern as correct. 

Archbishop Worlock nevertheless spoke to the Synod in terms that would seem familiar (and just as wrong) today:

Personal factors increasingly today include the desire for genuine interpersonal communication and relationships in marriage and in the family, the ability of couples to control fertility, and the changed status of women, and therefore also of men, in society and the family.

External, or social, factors which endanger the family today are frequently cited as including a spirit of materialism, hedonism and other secular values. It would, however, be more accurate, and perhaps more just to many Christian couples, to point also to lack of adequate housing, poverty, unemployment and enforced leisure arising for many from economic recession or from the micro-electronic revolution. These social factors are the more damaging to families insofar as they condemn them to living conditions which are unworthy of their dignity, increase the pressures on the family from within, and prevent it from giving positive Christian witness to love, fidelity and security, and from resisting materialistic values ...

But the church cannot turn a blind eye to the many family tragedies which are increasing in society, and no less in the Church itself.  To these victims of misfortune, not necessarily of personal sin, or of sin which has not been forgiven, the church, both universal and local, must have a special healing mission of consolation. Nor can the church neglect those Catholics whose first marriage has perished and who now find themselves in a second more stable and perhaps more mature union which might have many of the desirable qualities of the Christian family. Many acknowledge that their union is irregular in the eyes of the Church, and yet nevertheless feel, even if inarticulately, that they are not living in a state of sin, that they love God and may in some mysterious way be living according to his will, even if against, or outside,  the Church's legislation. The number of such members of the Church is growing daily, and very many long for full Eucharistic communion with the Church and its Lord.

As is well known, many pastors, and many theologians are of the view that such Catholics may be admitted to Holy Communion, under certain conditions, notwithstanding the danger of scandal, namely that other Catholics, either about to marry or living in a weakened marriage, may disregard the Church’s teaching on the fidelity and indissolubility of Christian marriage, with ruinous results. But what is most interesting and calling for close consideration, is that many married laity, moved by pastoral compassion, are of the same opinion, and do not fear that Christian marriage will be destroyed by such a practice. They seem to consider that fidelity and indissolubility are human and Christian values on their own account, and do not derive their force from being regarded as necessary dispositions for receiving Holy Communion. In this, as in every other aspect of marriage and the family, it would be desirable to listen to the voice, experience and Christian wisdom of married couples themselves.
It is breathtaking to hear such sophistry from a Bishop: the range of economic reasons for remarriage, the seeming fact that if people discern that "living in sin" they are possibly living God's will, and the fact that some married lay people wouldn't mind if these remarried people received Communion: it is as shocking to read these words 34 years later as it is to read Cardinal Kasper's today.

He got nowhere of course, though it amusing that the arch-fixer of the CBCEW was so out-fixed by Synod officials in the drafting of its recommendations to the Pope that he complained, but was ruled out of order.  He and Cardinal Hume had become exposed, and two Bishops, Lindsay of Hexham and Newcastle and Holland of Salford, complained in an article in The Universe that Hume and Worlock appeared to have departed from the line agreed by the Bishops' Conference.  And another threat was appearing from the other side ...

But that will have to wait for Part 2.
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The Calendar And Our Identity

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One lost feast, and two feasts tragically reduced in significance show how we have ruptured our relationship with the past, how the changes pre-Vatican II paved the way for what was to follow. 

Today should have been the feast of Our Lady Help of Christians, a feast of thanksgiving, instituted by Pius VII in 1815 to commemorate the end of the Popes' exile from Rome because of the French Revolution.  As an annual reminder of the threat to Christian religion from the powers of secularism, it should have been raised in importance rather than abolished!

Monday should be the feast of St Augustine of Canterbury.  Before Pius X, this feast was a double of the first class in England, as important a feast as could be with its own octave.  This commemorated the fact that St Augustine was the Apostle of the English.  Of course there were already Christians in England, but, sent from Rome, he organised the Church in England in dioceses, evangelised the English, and, most importantly, brought the Roman Mass with him so that the Church in England never had its own rite but always used the Roman. 

Tuesday should be the feast of St Bede, a Doctor of the Church: not quite as important as St Augustine, but his feast, which has been celebrated in the eleventh and twelfth centuries on 26 May, was moved to 27 May simply so that the two great English saints could be commemorated on consecutive days.

By the time of the 1962 Missal, the two feasts had been reduced to the third class (although in Hexham and Newcastle St Bede could be celebrated as a second class feast).  In the new calendar and with the dates subtly messed about, St Bede is simply an optional memorial while St Augustine, although still classified as a feast (though only in England), isn't so important that a priest can't substitute his Mass for the Mass of a weekday in Eastertime (and, anyway, neither feast can come before "Saint Sunday" any more).

This is yet another example of how the calendar has been flattened and cut off from its roots, and, as a result, how we have been separated, not just from our history, but from the contextualisation that showed our forebears how everything was linked together.  It is another example of the contempt for tradition which started at the beginning of the twentieth century and grew in pace along with the century.
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Unity Before Truth?

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Mark Lambert, @sitsio, linked to a wonderful diocese-by-diocese round-up by ACTA which contains many gems, but none quite as good as this.  Portsmouth Diocese ACTA had a meeting with the new Bishop (I get the impression this was somewhat to their surprise)

"Other areas of concern (some of which were raised with the bishop) included ... the translation of the Missal (the bishop favours letting it bed down – we said attendance would continue to haemorrhage)"

It seems surreal that a group of people most representative of those who have presided over the decimation of Church attendance since the mid-1960s should imagine that they have just noticed that the churches suddenly seem emptier, and that it is all down to the new translation.

I can imagine that the Bishop was extremely polite and let this go, but should he have?

Dr Shaw has argued, here, here and here, that the Bishops' putting up with significant dissent in order that those dissenting should not leave the Church, is a fundamentally flawed argument:

"The underlying misjudgment, in my view, is a failure to understand how much damage dissent does. The Faith is passed on, the life of grace is developed, nearly always in the context of institutions: the home, the school, the parish. This is logical because Catholic institutions manifest the community of the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, in a tangible way, to us as individuals. These institutions can be turned into a nightmare of conflict, or just rendered completely useless, by a minority of dissidents, if they are given a free hand."

In a tweet yesterday evening, Mark said that this sort of thing happens when you consider that unity has priority over truth.  I think this is a profoundly accurate insight into one of the ways in which things have gone wrong.

I'm sure that "unity before truth" is not the way any of the Bishops would characterise their actions: they will think that they are tolerating legitimate freedom of divergence; they will think that they are being charitable; they may secretly agree with the dissenters; they may simply be hoping that they die off before they can do any damage.  But I think that they are more frightened by disunity. 

Disunity is to Catholicism what anarchy is to civil society: it removes the foundation on which the edifice stands.  The Bishops are right to fear it, but they won't protect the Church from disunity by moving the boundaries to accommodate dissent, or by gagging those who call dissent for what it is: they will protect the Church from disunity by facing up to those who wish to disunite it, just as society has to stand up to anarchists.

The truth is the best weapon that there is against dissenters because it preserves our unity.  We may lose the odd dissenter, but the unity shared not just by those who don't dissent with each other, but with all of the generations who have gone before us as well, comes from the truth. 

Unity can't produce the truth, but the truth guarantees unity.
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Pope Benedict XIII

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From Duffy's History of the Popes:

"Unworldliness, however, was no better protection for the papacy. The saintly Dominican Benedict XIII (1724-30) had resigned a dukedom to become a friar. He was elected Pope in the stalemated Conclave of 1724 because everybody knew he was unworldly, and would preserve neutrality between France, Spain and the Austrian Habsburgs. He was unworldly and he did try to be neutral. But he also refused to behave like a pope, instead behaving like a simple parish priest, living in a whitewashed room, visiting hospitals, hearing Confessions and teaching children their catechism. Meanwhile, he put all the affairs of the papacy into the hands of his secretary, Niccolo Coscia. Coscia was totally corrupt, and surrounded himself with a disreputable parcel of cronies and profiteers. The administration of the Papal States became a public scandal. Nepotism had been formally abolished by Pope Clement XI, but now the Church had all the evils of nepotism without the nephew.

In 1728 Benedict provided more evidence that unworldliness can be a bad thing in a pope. He commanded the compulsory celebration of the Feast of St Gregory VII, formerly a local Italian observance, by the universal Church. The breviary lesson prescribed for the Feast was tactless in the extreme, and praised Gregory's courage in excommunicating and deposing Henry IV. The states of Europe set up a howl of anger.

Venice protested to the Pope, Sicily (and Protestant Holland) forbade the celebration of the Feast at all, Belgium banned the offending lesson, the Parisian police prevented the breviary containing the service being printed. The ancient claim of the Pope to temporal power was no longer acceptable in 1728."
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Two Lost Feasts Of Our Lady

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Once upon a time, when my grandparents were young, they would have been celebrating two Marian feasts next week: on Monday they would have had the feast of the Humility of the BVM, and on Thursday, Our Lady of Grace.

Their collects were, respectively:

O God, who lookest down on the humble and regardest the proud from afar, grant to thy servants to imitate with pure hearts the humility of the blessed Mary, ever virgin, who in her virginity pleased, and in her humility conceived our Lord Jesus Christ thy Son.

O God, who, by the fruitful virginity of blessed Mary, hast conferred the grace of redemption on the human race; grant that, as we call her on earth the Mother of Grace, so may we for ever enjoy her happy company in heaven.

There really is nothing to add, is there!
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Why Would Anyone Want To Suppress Protect The Pope?

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One of the more interesting things I've read recently came in a comment on James Preece's blog here. "Anon" makes some interesting comments about the decline in the influence Catholic blogs have at Eccleston Square, the HQs of the CBCEW.  It is instructive to reflect on the fact that the authorities were exercised once about how much influence bloggers might have (remember the hatchet job The Suppository tried on Fr Tim?) but had realised that the Cathosphere was having no significant effect on life in the Church in E&W.

"Anon" helpfully suggested Alexa as a way of getting a feel for the relative influence of different websites, and a quick look reveals quite a lot.  Here are some websites and their rankings:

Fr Z 88,328

Rorate 205,095
Protect the Pope 735,871
Mundabor 753,038

Fr Tim 1,568,178
Catholic and Loving It 1,905,622
Fr Ray 2,228,042
LMS Chairman 2,364,124
Fr Hunwicke 2,636,220
Catholic Voices 3,461,259
Eccles and Bosco 5,345,139
Countercultural Father 8,366,107

Due diligence: this blog doesn't even register, it gets so few views!

There are two points to be made about using Alexa as an analytical tool in this context: first, ignore the numbers and think of orders of magnitude: 1 to 10; 10 to 100; 100 to 1,000; 1,000 to 10,000; 10,000 to 100,000; 100,000 to 1,000,000; 1,000,000 to 10,000,000; the rest.  The second is that however accurate Alexa is or isn't, it is the counter of choice at Eccleston Square.

I chose a few UK sites which reflect what I thought would be their relative popularity and sure enough Frs Tim and Ray are up there, with James Preece loving it in their company.  Eccles and Countercultural Father both occupy a respectable position: not up with the world's opinion formers, but in a respectable spot.

But look at Deacon Nick: not in the preeminent world class of Fr Z, but far and away the highest ranking E&W blogger.  I put Rorate and Mundabor's  figures in NOT to compare him with them, but to give some idea of his reach.  If there are more popular UK sites, or sites in the same general area, let me know.

I've said before that what goes on between Deacon Nick and his Ordinary is between them: but you can see why warning bells might have begun to sound in Eccleston Square as his blog began to climb so high up the rankings.

If this is right, we know what we have to do: find somebody who is completely orthodox to the Magisterium, who has the time to devote to ferreting things out, and whose job, livelihood, or pension is unthreatenable by the people who want to control the narrative of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.

Deacon Nick, Mgr Loftus

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Irrespective of what might look like rights and wrongs to those who (like me) don't have access to all the information, Deacon Nick's blog is to close down, because he is being obedient to his Ordinary, who has asked him to close it down.

We should be grateful to Deacon Nick for the witness he has shown hitherto, and for the witness he continues to show.

We should pray for him, and, usual suspects, you will see me propose a Twitter Novena shortly.

But as an imaginative response, why don't we combine to ask Mgr Loftus's superiors to invite him to consider the virtue of silence as well?  The Apostolic Administrator of the diocese of Leeds (I assume Mgr Loftus is still incardinated in Leeds) can be contacted through the diocesan webmaster john.grady@dioceseofleeds.org.uk.  You might want to raise your concern through the editor of the "catholic" paper which publishes his heresy who can be contacted here: joseph.kelly@thecatholicuniverse.com or on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/CATHOLIC_MD or you might think that the editor of a paper sold in catholic churches ought to be equally subject to his Ordinary, in which case contact Bishop Brignall of Wrexham here: diowxm@globalnet.co.uk.

We might ask the editor of the Catholic Herald by email here: editorial@catholicherald.co.uk or on Twitter @LukeCoppen whether Fr Rollheiser has a dispensation to preach non-orthodox Catholicism from the newspaper's website.

These are just a few ideas that would allow Bishop Campbell's actions in Lancaster to be contextualised by other bishops and responsible people as pastoral activity to combat the publication of views and ideas which any Catholic might find offensive.
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Messing Up The Calendar

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For some bizarre reason, it was thought in the time of Pius XII that making Mayday, which had been adopted by communists and socialists as their holiday, the feast of St Joseph the Worker, communism and socialism would be utterly defeated, or neutralised, or something, or at least it would give Italian men an excuse to have the day off on 1 May and walk up and down a bit.  This is the sort of thing that happens when you take the Papal States off somebody and don't define their new job properly.

The problem is that 1 May already is a feast, and an important one at that.  It is the feast of SS Philip and James, two of the twelve apostles.  So they have to be moved (they can't be ignored).  They take over 11 May. That is the feast of Pope St Alexander I in Rome (and St Francis of Jerome elsewhere, but elsewhere is expendable) so St Alexander has to be moved to 3 May, where he in turn displaces the Finding of the Holy Cross which can be merged with 14 September with the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.

We talk about wreckovation of churches as a "fruit" of the Spirit of Vatican II: wreckovation of the calendar began a long time before.
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Very Old Bishops

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H/t De la Cigoña

The oldest Bishop in the Church today is the Frenchman Leuliet, Bishop Emeritus of Amiens, who is 104.

There are two American Bishops who are 101.

There are two who are 100: one Argentine, and one from the Democratic Republic of Congo, (though he was born in Europe).

One 99 year old Italian.

Seven who are 98, and one who on 30 April will join this group. Among these is notable presence of the first cardinal on the list, the (recently named Cardinal) Loris Capovilla from Italy. 

Seven are 97 years, although, as we have said, one is about to be promoted

Three are 96, eight, 95, twelve, 94, thirteen, 93, twenty-four are 92 and seventeen are 91.
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A Missing Feast That Would Have Been Missed

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Tomorrow wouldn't have been celebrated this year as the Feast of Our Lady of Good Counsel because it falls in the Easter Octave.

But the Feast of Our Lady of Good Counsel has not been celebrated for many years, and won't be until we get our Calendar back.

(That was a joke, not a slogan.)
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Learning From The Patrimony

One of the joys of the creation of the Ordinariate for me has been the opportunity to connect to a current of thought of which I was unaware before: a corpus of liturgical history which has greatly influenced me.

I recently bought a copy of Dr Eric Mascall's Corpus Christi. It is really worth reading, not just for his beautiful English prose style (another potential gift of the Ordinariate, by the way, to those used to what English Bishops write).  I found what appears to be a photo of the author being used as a page marker: the joy of second-hand books!

I also found something published in 1953, at the very height of ultramontanism which offers a clear view of a healthy view of the relationship between Bishop and Pope, and which, it seems to me, points towards an answer to the question: how do we recover from where we are?


"To return to our previous point, The Church, as a visible and tangible society, living in the historic process, needs a visible and tangible organ of its unity, though that union is, as I have emphasised, an interior and mystical unity and not a moral or political one.  The Church is a visible and tangible society, but it is a sacramental one, and the organ of its unity will be a sacramental organ.  This is why, as I see it, the apostolic Episcopate precisely fulfils the requirements for such an organ, for the episcopal character is conferred by a sacramental act.  And this is why it seems to me impossible to locate the organ of the Church's unity in the Papacy, for the papal character is not conferred by a sacramental act at all, but by the purely administrative and organisational process of election.  Whether the Papacy has, by divine providence, a unique status in the Church and, if so, what are the functions which attach to it are, of course, important questions, but by its very constitution the Papacy does not, so far as I can see, possess the nature which is required in the organ of the Church's unity.  It might be an adequate organ if the Church's unity was the unity of an organisation; it does not seem to be adequate to the unity of a sacramental organism.  (Neither would the Episcopate be an adequate organ if it were in its essence what many people believe it to be, a merely governmental and organisational contrivance; but it is adequate if it is, as Catholic theology maintains, a reality of the sacramental order.)It is perhaps an unconscious realisation of this fact that has led the Pope to appropriate more and more exclusively to himself the episcopal character, to the detriment of his episcopal brethren.  There are, I believe, some theologians who maintain that all episcopal character primarily inheres in the Pope as universal bishop and that other bishops possess it only by delegation from him; it is certainly commonly maintained by Roman Catholic theologians that the Pope has a direct and immediate episcopal relation to every one of the faithful. I do not deny that the Pope is the successor of Peter, but the common post-Tridentine Roman attitude seems to me to make Peter not merely the Prince of the Apostles but, in effect, the only apostle.  I think the Roman Church is right in insisting that the Church is a visible and not an invisible body, but I think it has gone wrong in treating the Church's visibility as an organisational rather than as a sacramental one, and so in locating that unity in the organisational organ of the Papacy rather than in the sacramental organ of the Episcopate; and the consequence has been, as I have suggested, that the Papacy has infringed upon the Episcopate and, in the Papal Communion, has all but absorbed it. However I do not think that the remedy is for the Episcopate to claim that it is collectively what the Pope claims to be individually; that would only perpetuate the error in another form.

I would maintain, then, that as a visible reality in the historic order, the Church's unity is established in our lord's institution of the Apostolate, which is continued in the universal Episcopate; the bishop is the link between the local and the universal Church. This fact is reflected in the ancient requirement that for the consecration of a new bishop at least three bishops are normally required as consecrators; that is to say, although the diocese gathered round its bishop is the self-coherent manifestation of the Body of Christ, its perpetuation requires, at least in principle and ideally, a repeated recourse to the universal Apostolate.  This requirement, which had largely become obsolete in the West, was restored by the Church of England in the sixteenth century; it has, I gather, never been abandoned in the Eastern Church.  With the devolution of so many of the bishop's sacramental functions upon the second order of the ministry - the presbyterate - the status of the diocese, gathered round its bishop, as the organic local manifestation of the Catholic Church has, of course, become very  much obscured. It is the parish priest, rather than the bishop, round whom the faithful are normally assembled for the great liturgical action by which the Church's life is maintained, though I am told that in the small dioceses of such countries as Greece the bishop has retained more of his primitive liturgical position. Nevertheless, the sacramental functions of the presbyterate are limited and partial, and nowhere in Catholic Christendom has the bishop abandoned his status as the sole minister who can sacramentally delegate, even partially, the apostolic character to others. Every presbyter has received his partial apostolate from the hands of the bishop in the sacramental rite of ordination; while the bishop himself has received his full apostolate from those other bishops who represent the Apostolate of the universal Church.  The diocese, gathered round its bishop, is thus not merely a part of the Church of God, but is its full manifestation in a particular place.  Like the cell in a living organism, it is a coherent organic entity, yet it lives only because it coheres in the whole body.  Like the sacramental body of Christ in the Eucharist, the mystical Body of Christ which is the Church is not divided into portions by its extension in space and time; it is tota in toto, et tota in aliqua parte."

Dr Mascall makes some very interesting points here, not least in identifying the episcopate of each Bishop (I'm Catholic enough to prefer a few more capitals, by the way) and pointing out the absurdity of Bishops' Conferences having any locus in the Church.

What he also points to, however, is that the way forward will come from good Bishops who understand the Liturgy and who regulate it within their dioceses.  There is no reason why, for example, the Bishop of Dunderthorpe shouldn't authorise some of his priests - indeed a parish - to become Sarum Use parishes in accordance with the Tridentine decrees, and look to see how pre-twentieth century liturgical practice might inform the worship of his subjects.  I could imagine it rather popular: I could imagine that diocese attracting vocations; I could imagine a virtual spiral: and none of this would trespass on his brother Bishop of Withernesea who, determined to follow the practices of the recently replaced Archbishop of Los Angeles, was emptying his diocese of all worshippers under the age of 50.

There is a good reason for the Bishops to meet in Low Week.  It is a good idea to make sure that there is a coordinated Catholic response to government initiatives affecting all of England and Wales. 

But each Bishop is the successor of the Apostles.

Feast Of The Seven Sorrows And A Rant

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Today should have been the Feast of the Seven Sorrows of the BVM, but as the readings are all in your 1962 Missals, and the St Lawrence Press blog has covered the pre-1962 here, (and I'm still as jetlagged as when I arrived at Terminal 5) I thought I'd offer some preliminary thoughts about the lost feasts.  I'll keep the series going right up to the end of the year - there are a lot more to come - but here are some first thoughts.

You will have heard enough about Bugnini from me: his ruthless, methodical, pseudo-scientific reformation of the Church's calendar was, I believe, an absolute disaster, as it divorced the new calendar from all 1900 years of development.  What I hadn't really worked out was that Pius X and Pius XII were just as enthusiastic mutilators of the calendar, and that the "simplifications" introduced by the time of the 1962 Missal had already so attacked the foundations of the calendar and, importantly, of the way the calendar governed liturgical praxis, that Bugnini was able to knock the whole structure over.  Rome had arrogated the calendar and liturgical celebration to itself, and Bishops no longer governed liturgy in their dioceses: then Rome decided to change the calendar and the liturgy.

What was wrong with the old way?  The reformers seem to have felt first that removal equalled simplification, and that simplification was a goal to be aimed for.  I am Miss Prism, I'm afraid, where mention of the Early Church goes: nothing is better, simply because the Early Church had a reduced version of what came later.  For example, you would have to argue, following the example of the Roman Canon, that the epiclesis was an innovation and should be expunged from Eucharistic Prayers.</>  (Mind you, unlike the composers of the 1967 Mass, you'd have to know something about the Early Church as well, but that is one for later, one for a book rather than a blog.)

What was removed was sold as a sort of pruning: in the garden pruning is good, because it removes unhealthy growth and allows the old stem to continually generate new shoots.  Why on earth do we think that this is a good analogy for the development of the liturgy?  In the past, the sober Roman rite formed the foundation on which an exuberant Gallican rite grew: observation of the austerity of the Roman rite led to the gradual recession of the Gallican, but not before the latter had managed to make the Roman slightly more gentle.  Cutting and chopping doesn't really happen until Pius X comes in and starts on the Breviary, but why is cutting and chopping appropriate to the Liturgy?

Pius X's aim was to reduce the load on priests: the Breviary he inherited had grown and grown over the years and he felt the load pastorally.  But instead of slashing the Breviary - casually removing the immemorial link to worship in the Temple in Jerusalem - why couldn't he have thought about making the priests' obligation more nuanced?  Couldn't some variation of: full office in monastery and collegiate church - Matins and minor hours and Vespers in big parish church - sole priest in busy parish says a reduced office but celebrates Vespers on Sundays - you get the point.  The integrity of the office could have been preserved.  Isn't this the sort of clericalism we should be wary of? 

(Actually, imagine the papolatry that underpins the acceptance of: "these are the psalms said in the Temple for centuries before the birth of Christ and said by His Church ever since He established it, but I am abolishing them because priests are too busy these days to recite them".)

And from then on all is cuts: slash and burn.  A move towards two dimensionality, cutting extra collects, cutting any last Gospel which wasn't John 1:1, and gradually introducing a flattening of the vibrant worship of the Church, which allowed Bugnini subsequently to introduce a radical two dimensionality to the calendar and to worship.  Ladies and Gentleman: Bugnini's calendar and Bugnini's Mass suffer from banality.  All the changes to the Mass before the twentieth century revolve around additions and subtractions from the original, plus the original: after the advent of Pius X comes regulation and justification for change which equates Liturgy with what weak men can do instead of allowing an eternal Liturgy to give men the strength to fulfil their part in it: we subtract rite and only add words.

Do you know what is worst of all?  That all of this started just as the laity became mainly educated and literate!  My 1890 hand Missal gives full instructions to the lay man or woman on how to work out what should be celebrated each day, and, as I think I've shown, it is really easy.  And so much easier today, with computers and printers: each week's parish Bulletin could easily contain the relevant English version of the Propers for each day of the week - indeed everything a Catholic in the pew might have needed.

I'm not a Pius V-ist: I go to Mass each weekend in the OF and rarely have the opportunity to attend an EF Mass.  But if we want to talk about liturgical renewal - and the SSPX managed to put paid to any question of serious change in my lifetime, I reckon - we need to look beyond 1962 and think about the whole question of centralised Roman control and the damage that was done during the whole of the twentieth century.
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Feast Of The Most Precious Blood Of Our Lord Jesus Christ

(It'll still be Friday here for quite a while.)

Today would once have been the first celebration in the year of Feast of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the primary celebration at that time being on the First Sunday in July.  Exactly the same readings as on the Feast itself would have been said, while the propers for the fourth Friday of Lent would have been said after the propers of the Feast.

To the eyes of the rationalist, it must seem odd that there are two celebrations of the same Feast, but we can see that the Friday Feasts from Septagesima onwards are about preparing ourselves for Good Friday, while the July celebration celebrates God's gift of Himself in Communion: one leads us into the Sacrifice, the other shows us what we draw from it.

The Flying Inn: Chesterton And Benson

I blogged a while ago about The Lord Of The World: courtesy of the same wonderful juxtaposition of e-readers, out of copyright books, and the willingness of volunteers to scan, I was able to spend a long, bright afternoon of the soul (aka a flight to the East Coast of the US) reading The Flying Inn by G K Chesterton.

I don't quite understand how I have missed this book so spectacularly.  When I downloaded it, and when I opened it to read it, I assumed that I was rereading rather than starting from scratch.  But a couple of paragraphs in, I realised that this wasn't the case and that I had never read it before.

And what a read it is.

Most of the poems in the book are well known, and happily celebrate drinking and drinkers (bear that in mind: Chesterton doesn't just simply praise alcohol, but rather the way he praises the way that alcohol and balanced happy people go so well together)r.  But that's not what the book is about.

It is about the way that the UK has been taken over by a coterie of driven people and the way in which that for reasons of idleness and venality on the part of the majority, they have been able to get away with it.  In the same way as The Lord Of The World looks at the whole question of the Church in the world, and its vulnerability, The Flying Inn looks at the way in which a small and determined groupuscle can turn the laws of England upside down, without most people really understanding what has happened, or how.

Whatever will or won't be decided about whether or not GKC should be canonised, this book, like R H Benson's, shines a light on much more than the England of their day.

A Thought From 2007

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Looking for something else serendipity struck and I saw a comment made by Anagnostis in 2007:

"It is this more than anything which accounts for the grotesque, topsy-turvy, parallel-universe quality of TabletWorld (whose Rome correspondent recently sneered that the Pope was not, after all, "a trained liturgist"). What looks like comical, mind-bending hypocrisy and intellectual perversity is merely an indication of people struggling desperately to make reality fit their theories and foundational myths: it's cognitive dissonance on public display. They need our prayers, but they will also benefit enormously in the long run from unrelenting ridicule."

This is remarkably prescient: it is as true today in the reign of Pope Francis as it was in Pope Benedict's.  The precision with which Anagnostis diagnoses the problem and prescribes a solution leaves me wishing I could be as pithy.

The inhabitants of TabletWorld are fighting on two fronts: their once fierce grip on the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales is getting steadily weaker; and Pope Francis is not delivering what they want: he is not nor ever will be the caricature version of Pope John XXIII they are portraying him as.

So let's not be too despondent: they will not prevail.  And remember to pray for them whether or not you ridicule them.
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Feast Of The Five Sacred Wounds Of Our Lord Jesus Christ

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Tomorrow would once have been the Feast of the Five Sacred Wounds of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  The Collect of the Feast would have been:

O God, who by the passion of thine only-begotten Son, and the shedding of his blood through his five wounds, hast renewed the nature of man that was ruined through sin; grant to us, we beseech thee, that as we venerate on earth the wounds that he received, so we may deserve to obtain the fruit of the same precious blood in heaven.

 

The Gospel of the Mass would have been John 19 28-35, and the Last Gospel would have been the proper for the Friday in the third week of Lent: John 4 5-41, the woman at the well which we heard in the OF last Sunday.

 

The propers for the third Friday of Lent would have been said after the propers of the Feast.

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Collect for Feast of The Good Thief

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The Collect for tomorrow's former Feast of The Good Thief is:

O almighty and merciful God, who justifies the wicked, we humbly beseech thee that thou wouldst draw us to a proper repentance with that loving regard with which thy only-begotten Son attracted the goof thief, and wouldst grant us that everlasting glory which was promised to him.
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Yet Another Missing Feast: St Dismas, The Good Thief

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Although 25 March, traditionally the date of the Crucifixion would be the proper date, the Feast of St Dismas, the Good Thief, was celebrated on the next day, 26 March, because of the need to celebrate the Annunciation on that day.

I think the loss of the Feast of the Good Thief is one of the saddest of all of the twentieth century losses.  There are two reasons: first, he was the only person canonised by Jesus.  Even on the Cross Jesus was teaching his Church how to do things after His death and resurrection.  Second, because if any of the Saints in Heaven can be said to stand for Everyman, it is the Good Thief.  He was like the rest of us: a sinner. But at the end he recognised Jesus for what He was, when his fellow criminal could do nothing but mock.

"And one of those robbers who were hanged, blasphemed him, saying: If thou be Christ, save thyself and us.  But the other answering, rebuked him, saying: Neither dost thou fear God, seeing thou art condemned under the same condemnation?  And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this man hath done no evil.  And he said to Jesus: Lord, remember me when thou shalt come into thy kingdom.  And Jesus said to him: Amen I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with me in paradise."

The coincidence of this Feast's coming just after the Annunciation obviously isn't a coincidence.  Mary's assent to Gabriel's message contrasts with the Bad Thief's refusal to accept Jesus.  And in between them comes Dismas, who, as one of us, has fallen away, but who recognises Jesus even as he is being crucified, criticises his companion for his impiety, confesses his misdeeds and the justice of the punishment he is incurring and asks Jesus for His mercy.

Here is a saint for all of us.  he is the patron saint of thieves and those in prison, and there is one devotion to St Dismas which asks him to intercede with God to open the eyes of mass murderers and war criminals: he is a saint for the worst of us.  Yet this Feast had to go. 

I do not understand liturgical reformers: I am less and less convinced by the idea that "pruning" the liturgy - actively removing, rather than letting those accretions which can not stand the test of time wither away - can have enough positive fruits to outweigh the negatives.  I'll post the propers for the Feast on Tuesday and, while obediently not celebrating the Feast, we will nevertheless have a chance to meditate on the Good Thief.
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Abp (des) McMahon: 2.913 Cheers

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In the circumstances, I can't see how the translation of Bishop McMahon to Liverpool can be seen as anything other than good news.  Not very great news, because there has obviously been a decision to translate within England and Wales rather than find somebody completely new: but of those available, we, and Liverpool (remember this matters to the archdiocese more than it matters to the rest of us) should be glad that the Pope, on the advice of the Nuncio and of the Cardinal, has chosen a Bishop who is not part of the Magic Circle, the apparatus whose stranglehold on the Church in England and Wales I believe the Cardinal has been weakening since he arrived at Westminster.

I'm not too worried about the new Archbishop's willingness to celebrate Tridentine Masses, though it will be an encouragement to a lot of people whose priests have implacably opposed it, or his politics, because for a Dominican of his generation he is probably as untarnished by the 80s as it is possible to be.  I'm really pleased that he is Catholic, intellectually capable, not afraid of engagement with the public sphere; a Bishop, rather than the manager of a diocese, and one who appreciates the importance of the Liturgy.

He isn't perfect: neither am I, nor, I dare to venture, are you.  But let us offer our prayers for his ministry, and hope that for Merseyside, the Isle of Man, South Lancs, and Salford irredenta, and by extension, for the rest of us, he can turn his cathedra into a Northern powerhouse of Catholic regeneration.
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Feast Of The Holy Winding Sheet Of Our Lord Jesus Christ

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Tomorrow would once have been the Feast of the Holy Winding Sheet of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  The Collect of the Feast would have been:

O God, who in the holy winding-sheet in which thy most sacred body was wrapped by Joseph when it was taken down from the cross, hast left us a memorial of thy passion, mercifully grant that, by thy death and burial, we may be brought to the glory of thy resurrection.

 

The Gospel of the Mass would have been Mark 15 42-46, and the Last Gospel would have been the proper for the Friday in the second week of Lent: Matthew 21 33-46.

 

The propers for the second Friday of Lent would have been said after the propers of the Feast.

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Missing Feast: St Gabriel

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Tomorrow would once have been the Feast of St Gabriel.  before the separate Feasts of the three Archangels were wrapped up into one general Feast for Angels, we would have celebrated, one day before the Feast of St Joseph,eight days before the Feast of the Annunciation, the Feast of the Archangel who brought the news to Mary. 

Archangelic commemoration flitted about a bit: by 1962 St Gabriel was celebrated as a sort of Vigil of the Annunciation.  But it took Bugnini to tidy up all of the Angels into one Feast.
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Bishops and Bloggers

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We have had some really welcome appointments to the episcopate in England and Wales, with another announcement today about a third, but we have also had the Bishop of Lancaster asking Protect the Pope to stop posting on his blog, and Bishop Burns appearing to suggest that "re-marriages" can be good.

What is a Bishop for?  Canon law gives us a clue:

Can. 384 With special solicitude, a diocesan bishop is to attend to presbyters and listen to them as assistants and counsellors. He is to protect their rights and take care that they correctly fulfil the obligations proper to their state and that the means and institutions which they need to foster spiritual and intellectual life are available to them.

He also is to take care that provision is made for their decent support and social assistance, according to the norm of law.

Can. 385 As much as possible, a diocesan bishop is to foster vocations to different ministries and to consecrated life, with special care shown for priestly and missionary vocations.

Can. 386 §1. A diocesan bishop, frequently preaching in person, is bound to propose and explain to the faithful the truths of the faith which are to be believed and applied to morals. He is also to take care that the prescripts of the canons on the ministry of the word, especially those on the homily and catechetical instruction, are carefully observed so that the whole Christian doctrine is handed on to all.

§2. Through more suitable means, he is firmly to protect the integrity and unity of the faith to be believed, while nonetheless acknowledging a just freedom in further investigating its truths.

Can. 387 Since the diocesan bishop is mindful of his obligation to show an example of holiness in charity, humility, and simplicity of life, he is to strive to promote in every way the holiness of the Christian faithful according to the proper vocation of each. Since he is the principal dispenser of the mysteries of God, he is to endeavour constantly that the Christian faithful entrusted to his care grow in grace through the celebration of the sacraments and that they understand and live the paschal mystery.

We could assume that Bishop Campbell has decided that he, and only he, is going to exercise the mission of  proposing and explaining to the faithful the truths of the faith which are to be believed and applied to morals, and taking care that the prescripts of the canons on the ministry of the word, especially those on the homily and catechetical instruction, are carefully observed so that the whole Christian doctrine is handed on to all. 

That's fine: I'm not absolutely convinced that the clergy should have as free a hand as us lay people when it comes to engagement in the public square. I'm a lot happier when they use the space for homiletics and exegesis, but if Bishop Campbell is saying that he will call out the heretics, heterodox and ill-willed, and that the mission shouldn't be just left to a Deacon, then fair enough.

He's not saying that though, is he.  And Bishop Burns doesn't mean widows and widowers remarrying.  We know what they are up to.  Can. 386 §2 cited above tells us what Bishops should be saying, and we know from what Pope Benedict said to the Bishops of England and Wales about dissent what the second sentence means: not permission to advance any old heretical idea in the name of honest speculation.

Bishops are human beings and get things wrong.  We probably all know of priests getting a very raw deal, of decisions about diocesan property which could have been much better thought through: but we should be able to trust them to safeguard the deposit of the Faith and to act in Justice.

What happens when, as a layman, I begin to wonder if they haven't in fact begun to err on matters that matter?
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