The Magic Circle: A Definition

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Francis Davis, whom I cited in my last post as a member of the Magic Circle, seems to have become shy about what that means.

"Oh, and for reader’s of the Muniment Room if you read on across this blog the idea that I may be part of the ‘magic circle’, I must admit, did bring light relief in my house and a few others on a rainy weekend!"

Leaving aside the grammar and punctuation, the fact is that his self definition as a member of one committe of the (Catholic) Archdiocese of Southwark and of another in the (CofE - multiply Brownie points by two for ecumenism) Diocese of Oxford (never mind the presumably secular Higher Education Funding Council Panel)  makes him part of the Magic Circle.

Damian, who popularised the phrase, has never got round to defining "Magic Circle" (mainly because it is blindingly obvious what it means, even if you're part of it and want to pretend you aren't) but, just to help poor Francis, who seems to have even lost his CV from his website, I have adopted Henry Fairlie's original definintion of the "Establishment", which fits the bill squarely:

"By the 'Magic Circle', I do not only mean Eccleston Square - though it is certainly part of it - but rather the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised. The exercise of power in the Catholic Church in England and Wales, both at diocesan level and within the structures of the Catholic Bishops' Conference, cannot be understood unless it is recognised that it is exercised socially."

We know who they are; they know who they are.  I named a whole bunch of them earlier this year, here. 

The point, though, isn't who they are, but what they are doing?  We've seen a couple of examples in the last few weeks involving Cruddas (the Catholic Intern programme, the speech at Blackfriars), but there's an awful lot more.
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Blackfriars, Cruddas, Dominicans ...

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What on earth is going on in the Order of Preachers? 

And who is Francis Davis (other than a Magic Circle insider) to stir the, errr, pot so avidly here?

If there is any question about what life's going to be like if the powers-that-be feel threatened, then this story, and this man's posts about this story, might give an idea.

Prayers for Fr Pereira.
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Liturgical Particpation, Again

During discussion on a recent post, about how the new translation might end up bringing in its wake as many problems as it might resolve, I quoted and said:

'"Assisting at Holy Mass you should have the four-fold intention of: Adoration, by which we acknowledge our dependence on God as the Ruler over life and death; of Praise and Thanksgiving for the benefits conferred on us; of Reparation for our sins and negligences; of Impenetration, to implore of Him the grace necessary for our salvation. If you desire to implore other benefits from God, through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, very well, but do not forget the main intention."

This is how we "participate" in Mass, and if we do so by praying the Rosary, then fine, but always remember that the four-fold intention is a way of describing how we become part of the sacred action which is taking place in Church for us.'

Anagnostis replied from an Orthodox point of view and made some telling points which, while not relevant to what I'm writing about here, are none the less of great interest.  The bits I'm interested in here are:

"A couple of years ago, an RC poster asked me to provide a diagrammatic description of the Orthodox Church, equivalent to the familiar "pyramid" provided by himself: Pope at the apex, then a narrow tier of Card. Metropolitans, a larger one of diocesan bishops, then presbyters and deacons, with the mass of laity forming the base. I provided, to his bafflement, a diagram of the Divine Liturgy: the bishop on his cathedra, the presbyters in the altar, the deacons running between altar and nave (i.e. "ship"/Ark)where the laity, the readers and monastics together with the Mother of God, the Angels and Saints stand to unite themselves with the death, resurrection and glorification of the Lord."
and

"Anyway - the purpose of the Eucharistic liturgy is to make present the Body of Christ in both senses: in the Eucharistic gifts and simultaneously in the people - the WHOLE people, the Mystical Body of Christ. The "Mystery of Christ" is the Eucharistic Mystery which "generates" the Mystical Body. This is how the Church is constituted/made/realised - by, in function of, the Eucharistic Liturgy."

(I stress that I am extracting only part of something Anagnostis was writing for a different purpose.)

The Catholic who is properly at home with the scholastic explanation of what actuosa participatio really means in the context of the Mass will also be sympathetic to the Orthodox mystagogical explanation of the same event, even if he takes a few goes to begin to get his mind around some breathtakingly differently ways of thinking about the Liturgy and the Church. 

My point is that the number of people in the group "Catholics who will understand Liturgy in this way" is very limited and doesn't include anybody at all (as far as I can tell) in the Magic Circle.  This in turn means that the Benedict-inspired moves towards a restoration of the baby to the bath water are being met with opposition born of incomprehension.  This is not language and these are not concepts with which (for example) the average member of the Catholic Education Service can ever have engaged.

I tread lightly here, because I just begin to wonder how far a local Church which doesn't or can't engage with things like this at the conceptual level can in fact be Catholic.  If "being Church" is in fact a result of participation with the Sacred Liturgy on its terms rather than on ours, of being absorbed into the eternal Mystery of Atonement and Salvation rather than drinking Fairtrade coffee and collecting for CAFOD, then what is actually happening weekend after weekeend in our churches?

Who Needs The Skibbereen Eagle?

Who needs the Skibbereen eagle, when we have the CBCEWDIA?  (And "Muslim fellows", surely, rather than "fellow Muslims", or even "Muslim fellow citizens"?)

Bishop Lang expresses sorrow at violence in Cairo
BISHOP Declan Lang of Clifton, chairman of the bishops' department for international affairs, has spoken of his "great sadness" at the violence  that left 26 people dead in Cairo earlier this month.  The bishop said: "It be hoped that the Egyptian political authorities will spare no effort in addressing at long last the festering problems that have affected  the Coptic faithful in Egypt so that they can become equal citizens alongside their fellow Muslims." He said his prayers were with Catholic and Orthodox leaders in Egypt.

A peaceful protest by Copts on Sunday evening was attacked by crowds armed with rifles, sticks and swords. A military vehicle later sped into a group of Copts.
H/t to the Catholic Herald.

New Translation: Two Cheers And Two Concerns

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Of course it's better.  It didn't have to be any good to be better, and it's actually good, so it's much better than what it's replaced.  So let's consign what we've just lost to the dustbin of history, and raise our first cheer for formal sacral language in our worship (even if at least one priest has already worked out where he can introduce paraphrases and ad-libs).

Second cheer: perhaps you need to have had some training in the art of translation to understand just how bankrupt a "philosophy of translation" dynamic equivalence actually is, and how corrupt (or, if not corrupt, ignorant) the people who pushed it for the 1970 "translation" were.  The idea that we could "hear" the Mass in the same way that first century Christians "heard" the Mass is risible: what happens is that ideologues impose their own version of ecclesiology and retrofit a "translation" which just happens to confirm the premises on which their ecclesiology is based. 

Simple example: actuosa participatio is translated as "active participation" in the sense of everybody doing stuff all the way through Mass and joining the priest in what he is doing instead of being translated as "conscious participation" in the sense of everybody at Mass uniting themselves with the action of the priest at the altar to unite at the re-presentation of Christ's Sacrifice at Calvary, because those pushing the New Church way believed (completely without foundation but with lots iof wishful thinking) that that is what the early Church was like. 

A more complex example would be the imposition of Eucharistic Prayer 2: the belief that an ancient prayer must be an ancient anaphora, the deformation of the ancient prayer to conform with 1960s notions of what a second century anaphora should look like, and the collapse of the stout parties when it was proved that the ancient prayer a) wasn't an ancient anaphora, and b) was a couple of centuries younger than the Roman Canon.  (Except, of course, they didn't collapse, and we still have EP 2.)

My first concern, is that more and more we are being straightjacketed into a single option for our actuosa participatio: told when to stand, when to sit, when to kneel; what to say, what to sing; when to do, when to watch the priest (and his many helpers) do.  When, at the elevation of the chalice there is a mass turning round of the faithful and a scrabble for the leaflet with the new words for the proclamtion of the mystery of faith to make sure that we all say the right new words, it becomes clear to me that something that was lost when the New Rite of Mass came in is just not going to be repaired by the new translation: indeed, the new translation, peversely, might engrain the worst effects of the lex orandi lex credendi disasters of the last forty years.  Two dimensional participation might be here for the long term.

My second concern is actually one Anagnostis first tipped me off to.  When not roaming the web calling me a Pharisee (and he was probably not far from the mark) he has some penetrating insights, one of which haunts me more and more: there is something very wrong with the Church when everybody is a liturgiologist.  The Liturgy isn't something for most of us to study, discuss, or dissect: we are not called to Missolatry.  We should be worshipping God at Mass, not watching the priest.  (Of course, there shouldn't be anything to watch: just the priest doing what every priest everywhere does every time.)

I feel more an more like somebody who believes in the spiritual value of icons during the reign of Constantine V.  Perhaps the best thing to do is to withdraw and not discuss the subject.
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The Vaughan

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I haven't written about the continuing issue of the Cardinal Vaughan school, and the dispute between its parents and governors on the one side, and the Archdiocese of Westminster on the other, because, frankly, I haven't got time to care about everything.  I did my bit in respect of CES by resigning as parent foundation governor of a Catholic school and entrustred the remainder of my childrens' education to the state, rather than to bodies which take their marching order from the staff working for the Catholic Bishops' Conference for England and Wales.

It was nevertheless interesting to read here that the Archdiocese was forced to give up its struggle to decatholicise change the nature of the school because of the pressure brought  by parents and governors.

'Tis a mad world, my masters
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Friday Abstinence

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Am I the only person who is finding the period between 2359 on Thursday and 0001 on Saturday a serious trial?  How much meat there is out there!  Why is cooked breakfast the thing everyone goes to on Friday? 

This isn't to complain, but for me at least not eating meat on Friday isn't a simple flick between two pages in a recipe book, but a fairly brutal instruction to give something up regularly in a way that two days a year could never hope to manage.  I hope in a way that it doesn't become less challenging, and that it keeps on being so hard, because it will make me better.

I still haven't had a dinner invitation, but I had one to go out for breakfast: I said "No thanks - I don't eat meat on Fridays" and was rewarded with a tremendous laugh, as if I 'd told the best joke ever.  They still expected me to turn up though, and were petulant with me for not doing so.  It's certainly not martyrdom, but I catch myself wishing that if I have to make a Catholic fool of myself it could be because of my brilliant defence of Scholasticism, or my brilliant new insight into the procession of the Holy Spirit, not for turning down a couple of sausages, some rashers and a bit of black pudding.

Did I mention that I've not eaten meat today?

I suppose black pudding is meat.  Did the Fathers say anything about it?
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Battlelines Being Drawn Up

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The Archdiocese of Westminster won't answer Ches's questions about Quest booking a diocesan venue for a Conference, and now Mass is to be celebrated publicly for Quest.

The dioceses of England and Wales are asked by a blogger how many exorcists there each have and the Communications Officer for the Diocese of Middlesborough not only refuses to asnswer him but tells him that blogging should be made a serious criminal offence.

The Catholic Truth Society has issued an instruction which accompanies just about every copy of the new translation available to Catholics in parishes that says that Holy Communion is to be received standing.

Add to this the ongoing Catholic Voices brouhaha (a good Humptydumptyish word), some remarkable examples of secular priests being moved about, and you don't need to see albino monks to think that something might be afoot.

In Austria and Ireland, the rebellion is being led by priests inn parishes.  In this country it seems to be being led by apparatchiks in Eccleston Square and diocesan curiae.

We are in for some interesting times, and the longer the Pope lives, the more interesting.  Imagine all what will be let loose if the SSPX manages to stay reasonably united and sign anagreement with Rome!
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"My Song: 'Tantum Ergo'"

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Try to guess who wrote this.  A clue: he is alive, aged 54, and has been published just in the last month in at least the Daily Mail, the Guardian and Private Eye.

"We had two Masses a week, on Wednesdays and Sundays, and two Benedictions, on Tuesdays and Fridays. Every Benediction, we would sing a hymn called "Tantum Ergo". "Tantum ergo/ Sacramentum/ Veneremur cernui/ Et antiquo/ Documentum..." We sang it twice a week for five years. We never asked what it meant, and I still don't know. Sacraments, venerate, antique, documents ... but its meaning didn't matter. Its sound was its meaning; its absence of meaning was its meaning. Latin was God's first language, its meaning floating direct to heaven on a cloud of incense pouring out of a thurible swung with such vigour by the seniors that the new boys in the front row would often disappear, coughing and splutter­ing, in an unholy fog.

Thirty or more years on, I make my living from parody, nudging sense into nonsense, translating the words of others back into their original gibberish. I find "Tantum Ergo" has lodged in my head, a dissident group of my brain cells forming a chapel choir, singing it at full blast in impromptu moments. And my imagination keeps returning to Farleigh House, Farleigh Wallop, Basingstoke, Hants. Or perhaps it has always been stranded there, the boarder that never came home.
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Craig Brown

From My Sickbed

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Well, metaphorically, at least.

I was supposed to be travelling again but instead was felled by a dose of flu which, if it is this season's, might as well be called Elephant Flu for the force with which it strikes.  Bad throat, becomes "Help! I must have swallowed some acid!" in just a few hours, and once the Tyrozets won't touch the sore throat, the temperature rockets skywards.

After 24 hours of this I decided to break through the fever: a chicken biryani and a very large brandy, followed by a large dose of Night Nurse, left me dripping wet, but I slept for 10 hours and have since "only" had sides which ache as though I'm in a straightjacket and a hacking cough as though I were back smoking 30 a day.

I have little energy for movement and ended up so bored I even set up a Twitter account, but could not think of anything to say in 140 characters or less so have left it unchristened.  The nearest I have got to going out has been to foray around some blogs.

The serious point in all of this parading of self pity is to suggest that if this is this season's flu, my very strong advice is to have the jab if you're offered one.

And to show you a chaffinch in the garden:

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