Another Affecting Story

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I'm about to go away for a couple of days. I wanted to make sure an expected e-mail had arrived, and succumbed to looking up a few favourite blogs. How lucky I was to read this from Cathcon.

I feel blessed. I even feel ready for the Diocese of Portsmouth.

The Feast of Bl Charles of Austria

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A King, Emperor, and Saint.

Read about this holy man at The Remnant.

Not Quite Fr Ray's Meme

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Fr Ray asked me to do his meme: "If I were Archbishop of Westminster I would ..."; but I can't. I don't know enough about the mechanics of running a diocese and I don't know enough about how a Bishop should nurture his clergy. However, I can do a different one:

"How Will We Know the Vatican Has Got The Right Man?"

The Church in England and Wales will have a Leader who will inspire Catholics to a deeper Catholicsm, because he will be a theologically sound man of prayer and Catholic Action.

We will be distinct from the other Christian Communities in E&W, and we will be proud of it.

The Archbishop of Westminster's regular public pronouncements will always be newsworthy, even in the secular press.

The number of priests and religious will rise.

The number of conversions will rise dramatically.

Politicians will court the "Catholic vote".

Participation in Corporal Works of Mercy will be a natural mark of being a Catholic.

The Liturgy, in whichever Use, will always be celebrated reverently.

Guilds, Societies and Sodalities will become part of parish life.

Parish life will become part of everyday life for Catholics.

Catholic education will mean more than just orthodox RE lessons: where there is a Catholic school, homeschooling, or non-Catholic education would become unthinkable for Catholics.

We will happily put what we are paid for an hour's work into the plate on Sundays because we will know the good use to which it is put.

Non-Catholics will look at us and see that we have something they haven't.

And we will be the King's good servants, but God's first.

Another One of Jeffrey's Quizzes

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What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm You're probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people's grammatical mistakes make you insane.
Dedicated Reader
Literate Good Citizen
Book Snob
Non-Reader
Fad Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

Offerring Advice on the Next Archbishop of Westminster

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I have spent what seems an inordinate amount of time recently ploughing my way through "The Worlock Archive" and Archbishop Bugnini's history of the reform of the Liturgy. The direness of the latter will become apparent in some future post (though I think I am amassing evidence to prove my point that the man was wrong-headed and out of his depth rather than malevolent).

Reading the former was like bathing in something unpleasant: good for the soul but bad for the senses. But one startlingly good thing shines out like a light.

Cardinal Heenan did not like Worlock: in fact, I think that it is not stretching the point to say that he loathed him. Worlock was the apparatchik that Heenan never was, and the Cardinal hated the fact that Worlock saw the See of Westminster and the Red Hat as his manifest destiny.

So Cardinal Heenan put a spoke in the irresistible rise of Derek Worlock: a couple of years before his death he invited the priests and people of his Archdiocese to think about who they might want as his successor; what qualities should the Archbishop of Westminster have? And he asked them to let the Apostolic Delegate know.

Liberated from the complaisant acquiescent stereotype in which English Catholics had allowed themselves to be understood from within and without the Church, the people spoke and wrote, and eventually the Abbot of Ampleforth rather than the Bishop of Portsmouth was appointed to the See. ("The best man did not win", Worlock said.)

Cardinal Murphy O'Connor has not invited the people to express an opinion. It is unlikely that he loathes any member of the Bishops' Conference, after all, and he is probably pretty sanguine about his successor: it will be one of the boys.

But it doesn't have to be. Fr Ray, here, has said exactly what has gone wrong in the role of the laity in the Church, and, more jocularly, in response to a couple of blog posts, said here what he would do were he to be appointed Archbishop (elevated Gloucester Old Spots noted).

This can be the start of the mass consultation that Cardinal MO'C has not asked for. Let's all start writing to the Apostolic Nuncio now, and tell him what we think the big issues facing our Church are, and how they can be resolved, and, if we have any idea, who might be the right person to resolve them.

Blogging is fun; letting Rome know what the Church in England and Wales know is rather more important.

A Poem by Robert Frost

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One of the delights of having a son who has started AS Level English Literature is the voyage of discovery which comes from finding new poetry, especially as my son, who has never learned explication de texte as we were taught it, faced having to analyse from scratch a poem by Robert Frost. He asked for help!

For my sins, I was only aware of two poems by Frost: "The Road Not Taken" and the one about snow falling in the woods in winter which ends "and miles to go before I sleep"

So to be faced with a poem which was as new to me as to him meant unleashing intellectual muscles which I feared might have atrophied with time, only to discover that not only could I get excited by a new poem, I could convey the enthusiasm and help somebody who (to be honest) started out without much interest to get enthused not just by the ideas in the poem but by the structure and the techniques Frost uses to carry the poem along.

I enjoyed it so much I have even left in the American spelling! The wall which the narrator feels as a division is an artefact which his neighbour feels unites them. At the same time they are making wall, and the wall is making them.

Mr Amazon will be pleased that more money will be winging his way shortly, but this has cleansed me from the excess of Worlock and Bugnini I have been undergoing.

Making Wall

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
He is all pine and I am apple-orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down!" I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Reflections on the Charismatic Renewal

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David Palmer has posted about his experience of a charismatic service. It set me to thinking about my experience of "the Renewal".

I should preface my comments by pointing out that I was never much of a rebel: my rebellion against doing the Oxbridge scholarship exams was to fearlessly insist on doing A Levels and going to a (venerable) Redbrick University instead. Similarly, while contemporaries denied God and took to chemical substances, I took to the Charismatic Renewal. For much of the period between 1974-1979, I would be found at "Days of Renewal", arms outstretched, "speaking in tongues" and praising God.

One of the curses of middle age is looking back at one's youth and experiencing the embarrassment one should have felt at the time: the elaborate pursuit of some girl who, you realise with hindsight, was as attainable as the Koh-i-Noor, and as contemptuous of you as you were moonstruck by her; the brilliant essay one wrote as an 18 year old which, you informed your Professor, was the final answer to the subject in question; your insistence that, drunk as you were, you could still perform in front of a crowd of some hundreds.

I add to this list my belief, proclaimed to so many people, that the Charismatic Renewal was the fruit of the Holy Spirit: that we were the first generation since Apostolic times to be able to receive God's Spirit as he had always intended us to do.

I was that knowall. How I appreciate with hindsight the kindness and love of so many priests and nuns who seemed to pay me attention and to meditate on what I was telling them: not one of them ever laughed. My parents "didn't understand"; they mocked: I know now that they did understand, really understand; they understood their son, and they understood the Church.

Now I am older I understand a lot better what was really happening: somebody who was not really a rebel had to find a safe rebellion, one that wouldn't threaten anything too serious. If I was to embarrass my family, then a surfeit of religious enthusiasm (and a beard) was better than an absence of religion (with or without a beard).

I knew instinctively what I have only recently found demonstrated by phonologists: that the "gift of tongues" is rarely, if ever, a new Pentecost, and is rather an emotional reaction to what is going on.

However, I received a real gift: I learned how to praise God. I learned to praise God just for being God; to praise Him for His Creation; to stand before Him in awe at His Magnificence; to praise Him for the Greatness which, I perceived for the first time, wasn't remote, but could be experienced here and now, even if through a glass, however darkly. The absolute Wonder of God was everywhere, and was so Great that He could contain himself temporally in a host which He would allow me to receive. That gift has not left me, even if it is rarely as vivid now; but I used at the same time to go to confession far, far more frequently than now (another fruit of the Renewal), and I am left concluding that the two are connected.

I wonder if two different trends were in operation in the Charismatic Renewal in that period: on the one hand, the "ultras" of Vatican II aggressively pushed an agenda of "new, "modern", "different". On the other, lots of individuals reached out for a sense of actuosa participatio which they were being denied in their parishes: that of individual participation in Christ amongst their community. It was better than nothing: it was much, much, better than nothing.

I may be wrong: but the Charismatic Renewal carried me through a period in which I could have gone wrong in so many ways. It has nothing to say to me today, except in my memories, which, as I say, are not mellow. But I can't condemn it: not the Renewal I experienced.

I still have the beard.

The Westminster Stakes - an Update

The lists went quiet when Cardinal Murphy O'Connor was asked to stay on, but the latest betting on the succession shows that things are beginning to stir. (The betting had remained pretty well unchanged through most of 2007 until the last couple of weeks. Here's how they stand (Name, current betting, (earlier betting)):

Rt Rev Vincent Nichols 2-1 (7-2)
Rt Rev Kevin McDonald 5-1 (7-2)
Rt Rev Alan Hopes 11-2
Fr Timothy Radcliffe 6-1 (10-1) (6-1)
Bishop William Kenney 15-2 (6-1)
Cardinal Pell 10-1
Archbishop Michael Louis Fitzgerald 10-1 (12-1)
Fr Aidan Nichols 11-1 (5-1) (6-1)
Rt Rev Patrick Kelly 12-1 (10-1) (12-1)
Rt Rev Arthur Roche 12-1 (10-1) (12-1)
Rt Rev Bernard Longley 12-1
Rt Rev Peter Smith 12-1
Rt Rev Michael Evans 16-1
Bishop Patrick O’Donoghue 16-1
Fr Christopher Jamison 20-1
Bishop John Rawsthorne 20-1
Bishop John Patrick Crowley Non-runner (33-1)

What does this say? First, that Abp Nichols is now a clear favourite, ahead of Abp McDonald.

Second, that Dominican fanciers have put their money on Fr Radcliffe (who is surely too liberal for the Pope's taste) ahead of the Pope's friend, Fr Nicols (an unlikely outsider, but the doubling of his odds is, well: odd).

Third, that an Outsider has become an outsider: were Cardinal Pell to follow Cardinal MO'C in Westminster, the Pope's most powerful English-speaking ally would come to Europe while still exercising a pastoral ministry (not least over the episcopacy of England and Wales). The Catholic Herald mentions the Abbot of Pluscarden and the Dominican Rector of Oxford as two other outsiders under consideration, even if no odds have been quoted for them.

Does anybody else get a sense that the succession in Westminster is going to be founded on serious change? What sort of a message does it send that two non-English or Welsmen are candidates?

Liturgical Reform - Liturgical Change

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In private correspondence, Moretben reminded me of a posting of his which, I realise, has been gnawing away at me for just under a year, and which was the source of an increasing concern: why should anything in the Church change?

I understand the need for aggiornamiento: the Church must always be able to proclaim the Faith in a way in which people of each Age can respond to; a nineteenth century priest reading out an eighteenth century court sermon of Bourdaloue to a bunch of working class men and women is, to say the least, inappropriate.

I understand the need for resourcissement: we can't understand the Tradition unless we constantly seek to understand where it has come from. Pius IX said "La tradizione sono io": "I am Tradition"; and he was completely and utterly wrong.

But (and here's a big but) why does either of these principles mean that, for example, the Easter Vigil has to take place at Midnight, when over the course of 1500 years the sense of the Church had gradually moved the time of the celebration?

These are deep waters, and I am not a confident swimmer: but if the Extraordinary Use is to be recognised again, and the anti-traditionalism of the post-Vatican II era is finally to be challenged; and if the 1965 revision of the Missal is to be ignored; and if the idea of "change by Papal Fiat" has gone away; why has the 1962 Missal been selected as a high water of orthodoxy?

Annunciation, Visitation

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For a dear friend who is finally going to have to go to hospital. Please pray for him.

Elizabeth and Zechariah
Walk into the house of fire
Where the angels wreath the spire
And one old man alone
In the temple finds desire
Like a dog his bone.

Gabriel, Elizabeth
Is shaken with your burning breath,
meanwhile in humble Nazareth
The virgin in the house
Attends upon a birth and death
And trembles like a mouse.

Look at her, unwind your scroll,
Let the heavenly message roll
Like thunder through her pale white soul
As ghostly as her room,
Trample like an angry bull
About her seedless womb.

Hail Elizabeth! our meeting
Sees our children leap in greeting,
Hear their fists and foreheads beating
Hard against the wall,
While the lambs in flocks are bleating,
Come one, come two, come all.

Come one, come two, come all to feast,
Come to the lesser and the least,
Come to us out of the East,
While one old man alone
Becomes as dumb as any beast
And still as any stone.

George Szirtes - Annuciation, Visitation

Tagged for a Meme

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Tagged by Moretben, first in his combox (which I could have pretended not to have read), then in mine.

1. Do you attend the Traditional Latin Mass or the Novus Ordo?

I attend the TLM very very rarely: it isn't available in this diocese (or in the neighbouring one) at any time at which an absence of family or work commitments would allow me to attend. On occasion I have been in London and have managed to arrange a schedule which has allowed me to attend. I like to read my TLM for the appropriate Sunday each week.

2. If you attend the TLM, how far do you drive to get there?

n/a

3. If you had to apply a Catholic label to yourself, what would it be?

I'll appropriate Piers Paul Read's comment on a description of himself; he said he wasn't a "stern moralist": he was a bad Catholic.

4. Are you a comment junkie?

A bit, but the addicition is under control. If someone writes something that I really like (or rarely, that I really don't) then I like to tell them.

5. Do you go back to read the comments on the blogs you’ve commented on?

Only if I leave a question, or am participating in a continuing discussion.

6. Have you ever left an anonymous comment on another blog?

Yes: though not on Catholic ones.

7. Which blogroll would you most like to be on?

HH the P's, if he had one.

8. Which blog is the first one you check?

Moretben's, when he's posting; otherwise Fr Tim's or Fr Ray's. Occasionally Fr Z (whom God preserve)'s if something is going on.

9. Have you met any other bloggers in person?

Not to my knowledge.

10. What are you reading?

I'm struggling through Anibale Bugnini's "The Reform of the Liturgy": I think I'm gradually coming to an understanding of why things happened the way they did. Light relief comes from "While Rome Burns": collected pieces by Alexander Woolcott (one of the Algonquin Circle). When alert, I am working on an informal peer-review of an article for a historical review for a friend: this means I am reading through various files from the National Archives. And I'm sharing "My Family and Other Animals" with my daughter, who is reading it for the very first time.

Bonus Question!
Has your site been banned by Spirit of Vatican II?

If it were "the spirit of Vatican II", then I would hope so! See the first part of my answer to question 10, however: I am more and more convinced that Vatican II, or, rather, the decisions of Vatican II, were hijacked by a bunch of people who didn't really know what they were doing, and who were expecting to be stopped at any moment.

Which Composer are you?

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Courtesy of Jeffrey.

You scored as J.S. Bach, You are dedicated and intelligent. People who know you don't understand how you get it all done, and you never give up on life. J.S. Bach 85% Mozart 75% Handel 70% Brahms 70% Schubert 65% Haydn 60% Beethoven 55% Tchaikovsky 55% Wagner 50% Hector Berlioz 45% Chopin 40% Liszt 35% Schumann 25% Which classical composer are you?created with QuizFarm.com

Brahms is worryingly high on the list ...

It Made Me Laugh

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Cardinal Pell on Harry Potter ...

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... and why the series is so popular. Hat-tip to Sentire cum Ecclesia, an Australian convert-from-Lutheranism blogger whose blog goes onto my blogroll as one which I feel I ought to keep up with.

Here is part of what His Eminence says:

"We should remember that young people today are so used to the marvels of technology that magical fantasies are less exceptional for them than for their parents and grand parents. As always most children love entering the world of magic, fairy stories, escaping the limits of normality (I wasn't one of these) and readers love a fast moving tale, especially when the adventures are exotic, the trumpets are calling the good to battle and the narrative is strong and racy.

Through television and computers young people know much more than their predecessors, but often only at a surface level. They are encouraged to be curious, provided the curiosity is not costly or demanding and many have an itch for novelty, a fascination with technological marvels, the mysterious and abnormal, especially if they are ignorant of genuine religious traditions.
Many of this last group are restless and rootless, seeking limits, yearning for a good cause and more than happy to identify with the victims of injustice, with those who bravely confront evil and loyally stick with one another.

Harry Potter fits their bill as a hero, although he also appeals to good young Christians.
The series deserves to be widely read, but I am unsure why it is so hugely popular. We live in an uneasy, somewhat empty time of change."

Here is a Catholic Prelate who really seems to understand: his being host to the World Youth Day in Sydney next year seems providential.

A Reflection

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I turned fifty a few weeks ago, and next week approach the ninth and eigth anniversaries of my father and mother's deaths. So my mind is fixed on the past.

A piece of music took me back to the 1970s: "I'll Be Your Sweetheart, If You Will Be Mine"; not, obviously, because it wasn't a piece of 1970s music.

I grew up in a house where everybody sang: I grew up in an extended family where everybody sang. That meant that we knew "old songs", for the older members of the family liked to hear the songs of their childhood, and as we, as a family, are blessed (mainly) with longevity, long generations and respect, it meant that we sang for Grandmothers (I never knew my Grandfathers) and Great Aunts the songs of their childhood, and some of those were the songs that their parents had sung: Victorian parlour ballads, like "Nelly Dean" or "Come Into The Garden, Maud"; or Stephen Foster songs like "Lily of Laguna". We knew the lot! And when it came to Music Hall - well, my (maternal) Grandmother had trod the boards and we could sing songs none of you would ever have heard of!

My (paternal) Grandmother ran an Over 60s Club (in fact she ran two, but we'll leave the one she shared with Bernard Manning's mother for the purposes of this post) in the parish. A couple of times a year, my father, two uncles and me would dress up in bow ties and cadies (straw boaters to the ignorant) and impersonate a barber shop quartet, my mother accompanying us on the piano.

The songs they (and "they" would number up to 100) loved were the songs of their childhood: for people aged around 70 in 1970, this meant the songs of the First World War. The First World War had affected all of them: this was Lancashire Fusiliers territory, the area of Pals' Batallions; they had pretty well all lost brothers and cousins. Many of the old ladies were spinsters: there hadn't been enough young men to go round in the 1920s and 1930s. (When there was a dance, they used to dance with each other: they'd all learned to dance both parts.)

They loved "Roses Are Blooming In Picardy": Uncle Jim had a fine tenor voice; and would all join in "Keep The Home Fires Burning"; but we always had to finish with "Tipperary", because it had become a lodestar that "Tipperary" was what the boys sang as they marched to the Front. This was keeping faith:

"If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields."

This is what Tradition is all about: the world changes and we change with it, but the change is informed and softened by the past, and we venerate the past and those who lived in it and through it; not the change.

My Grandmother, dying, relived August 4th 1914: she was on the prom at Blackpool and saw the soldiers marching and the young men forming up behind the band to go and join up: "Come on Willie" she said, in her delirium, to her cousin "are you going to join them too? Look at the lovely red uniforms!" (Willie had far more sense, by the way, and lived until his 90s.)

My other Grandmother told me that as a girl, her Grandmother had told her that, as a girl, she remembered the trains coming to the station in Liverpool with the magazines containing the latest instalments of Charles Dickens' novels, and how people would pay a penny to sit in the room of somebody who could read to hear them read aloud.

In my lifetime I have seen the idea of Tradition as a Good Thing disappear completely; the idea of passing things orally from one generation to the next has gone. We are losing our History, and that means we are losing our identity: I shudder to think what life will be like for our children, locked into a Present like this.

Lisbon, twinned with Portsmouth

I haven't the energy to translate the letter to priests sent by The Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon which I linked to from the Casa de Sarto.

D. José Policarpo, the Cardinal Patriarch is what some of my military friends like to describe as an oxygen thief.

Here are some new conditions for celebrating the Extraordinary Rite: the people should understand the Latin spoken by the Priest; the Priest must be able to sing the Gregorian Chant appropriate for the celebration; no changes may be made (in fact they are positively prohibited) to the Sanctuary to enable the celebration of Mass ad orientem; the Priest must be able to discern that those asking for the Extraordinary Rite are in favour of the Ordinary Rite as well.

Most importantly:

"8. Let us be vigilant, so that this concession granted by the Holy Father, who was bearing in mind the good of the whole Church, cannot be turned into a campaign in favour of the Old Mass. This would be a move against the Reform of the Liturgy and the whole spirit of Vatican II, and would be to ignore the label of Extraordinary which the Holy Father has clearly attached to the use of the 1962 Missal."

And this is from a Patriarch of the Roman Church. O infelix Lusitania!

Crispian contra Mundum?

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Have a read of Damian Thompson's blog in the Daily Telegraph.

The Bishop of Portsmouth has really put his cards on the table - or rather, in modern fashion, has got somebody else to put his cards on the table in a way that the Bishop can later condemn as being "not quite the message he wished to convey".

The enemy is out and in full view: or is he?

My guess is that the B of P is a stalking horse. He is deliberately setting out, on behalf of the liberal Hierarchs, to gauge people's reactions. "His" document (not his, of course, but his "Director of Liturgy's", and what a pretty pass we have come to when the post of Director of Liturgy is given to a musician) is setting out a stall. How people react to the stall will guide Crispian's brother Bishops in what they are going to be able to get away with.

Is this the field on which we wish to fight?

We might as well: let's start here, and then take the battle to "them".

Malayan Food (or Drink)

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I don't know what Andrew is on, in Penang, but we could all do with a dose.

A double, in fact.

God, Not Man

Courtesy of Overheard in the Sacristy, a graphic illustration of what 14 September might mean.

Not Much Time for Blogging

Not only Alstair Campbell's Diaries (which are superb) but Fr Michael Seed's harrowing account of his childhood, The Worlock Archive, Archbishop Annibale Bugnini's self-serving account of the The Reform of the Liturgy (hardback, shrink-wrapped, and only £6), and out of the blue, courtesy of a friend, Fiorella de Maria's unputdownable "Father William's Daughter".

SWMBO has been laid low by a virus, and hasn't noticed more than the odd box from Amazon: four 900-pagers from Neal Stephenson mean nine new books.

And it was Louis MacNeice's hundredth birthday a couple of day's ago: "a cat who walked by himself"; and I have been reading the Autumn Journal.

"Why do we like being Irish? Partly because
It gives us a hold on the sentimental English
As members of a world that never was,
Baptised with fairy water;
And partly because Ireland is small enough
To be still thought of with a family feeling."

I love blogging, and the Internet, but as long as you'd allow me e-mail, I'd choose books first, every time.

Another Poem by John Hegley

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This is an alternative to the parable of the Rich Man. It's about people like us, like me.

Messiah

This Messiah walks into a bar
and asks for a drink of tap water.
'Why don't you buy a drink for a change,
instead of changing water into one?'
says the barman.
'Buy one? What with?' asks the Messiah.
'How come you never have any money?'
'Because I don't believe in it.'
'What do you believe in?'
'I believe in you. I love you.'
'Don't give me that,
you buy a drink, or you get out.'
'Oh, come on, what does a drink of water cost?'
'It costs me labour to pour it.
You take up space to drink it,
then I have to wash the cup up after you.
And what if you break it?
Who pays then?'
'I could mend it.'
'Perform a miracle, you mean?
And have everyone crowding around
in amazement
and not buying drinks? No thanks.
Out.'

John Hegley from Uncut Confetti

A Meditation for 14 September

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Minotaur

In the myth,
in the deep-down maze of the cave,
he went to find the Minotaur.
And before he went
he took a reel of twine:
a trick to traipse the return trip
back to the world of sense and sunshine.
It was sound thinking:
be enticed by new chance and challenge,
but keep in touch
with your place of origin.
Don't let your past be lost,
or it'll cost
your future.

John Hegley - from Uncut Confetti

A New Blog on the Blogroll

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Well - new to me anyway.

Roman Christendom is a blog by Tribunus. I have my suspicions about the identity of Tribunus: indeed, I think that I have said less than kind things about him on this blog. Tribunus writes about Tradition, but Tradition writ large. There are not many blogs which quote the Collect from the Mass Pro Imperatore in their sidebar. And even if I feel that Jacobitism has, well, has had its day, his posting on the Carmelite nuns martyred during the French Revolution is enough to make me think that here is a blogger whom we must pay heed to.

My guess is that he is a Romantic Tory: whatever else he is, he is a Reactionary, a Reactionary of the first order. There is no greater praise than this in my vocabulary.

The quote on his sidebar on monarchy:

"The character of kings is sacred; their persons are inviolable; they are the anointed of the Lord, if not with sacred oil, at least by virtue of their office. Their power is broad - based upon the will of God, and not on the shifting sands of the people's will... They will be spoken of with becoming reverence, instead of being in public estimation fitting butts for all foul tongues. It becomes a sacrilege to violate their persons, and every indignity offered to them in word or act, becomes an indignity offered to God Himself. It is this view of kingly rule that alone can keep alive in a scoffing and licentious age the spirit of ancient loyalty that spirit begotten of faith, combining in itself obedience, reverence, and love for the majesty of kings which was at once a bond of social union, an incentive to noble daring, and a salt to purify the heart from its grosser tendencies, preserving it from all that is mean, selfish and contemptible." (Dr John Healy, early 20th Century Roman Catholic Archbishop of Tuam, Ireland)

tells us all about monarchy, and it tells us all we need to know about Tribunus too.

I will not speculate further on his identity, but will declare him the spiritual heir to the man who, until his untimely death, was the greatest living Englishman: Michael Wharton.

Archbishop Nichols - Three Cheers?

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Fr Ray posts the text of Abp Nichols' sermon at the Merton College training session for priests wishing to learn to use the Extraordinary Rite.

Everything the Archbishop says about the Mass is true, and it is wonderful to see a member of the Hierarchy in England and Wales speaking so eloquently about the Mass.


"I’m sure many of you recall, as I do, the lovely image of the priest at Mass raising the consecrated host and seeing, just above it, the figure of the crucified Lord. This picture hung on my bedroom wall. It helped to form my faith. It is, I believe, always helpful for the eye to move easily from the elevated host or chalice to an image of the crucifix. That juxtaposition teaches us, through eye and imagination, the reality of what is taking place."

But ...

am I alone in discerning a bit of a tone?

"The Missal of Pope John XXIII will remain the extraordinary form of the celebration of the Mass, for, as Pope Benedict says, its use ‘presupposes a certain degree of liturgical formation and some knowledge of the Latin language; neither of these is found very often.’ And the decision of the Church was that, for general use, it needed to be revised. But there are truths of which it can still remind us and it has treasures and consolation to offer."

or:

"The celebrant, acting in the person of Christ and in the name of the Church, needs to ensure that his actions enable the souls in his care to participate in this saving mystery, to take part in each of its steps. This participation has to be profound, spiritual, informed by understanding – an active participation and not passive, not ‘leaving it to the priest to celebrate the Mass for us.’"

I'm not convinced that the message has got through.

There is not a single word to disagree with, (sound Eucharistic theology, thank God!) but there is a sense that the Extraordinary Rite is a relic, that the young priests who are learning it are perhaps being a bit exquisite, that without a greater amount of study by both priest and people than many of us think the Pope intended, the Extraordinary Rite will not be acceptable.

It may be, of course, that I am too suspicious; and it's very likely that I'm wrong! But Archbishop Nichols' opportunity to unite the two Uses of the Roman Rite has not produced anything that looks to me like a wholehearted welcome: more an acceptance in words which seem to accept grudgingly a new reality which he would have preferred not to have come about.

A Festival with a Difference

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Greenbelt is not for people like us. It is an Evangelical Rock and Worship Festival.

However, a text from a colleague who is attending has alerted me to something that might make any of us stop and take notice. This year, there is a beer tent, in which people (well, men) spend their time drinking beer and bellowing out hymns. And guess what: all the hymns they bellow out are traditional ones. The text doesn't say whether there is a tape to sing along to, or whether there are hymn books, or whether the drinkers are just blessed with fine memories. The fact that the texter is into the folk scene in a big way suggests to me that this is people singing what they know and what works when people sing, which means traditional tunes which everybody knows.

This (I texted back) is very Catholic. Pre-Reformation, the Parish Ale would have been brewed every time there was a feast day. Post-Reformation, the connection between drinking and celebrating God's Glory is still there, though much stronger among Catholic Christians than elsewhere.

I also suggested that, on being furnished with proof that this is as good as it sounds, I might, just might, be tempted along to a tent evening next year.

A Book for a Sunday Afternoon in the Garden

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I have just finished Fr Nicholas Schofield and Fr Gerard Skinner's excellent book on the English Cardinals. Can I recommend it most heartily to anybody who wants an overview of the History of Catholicism in England (and Wales, though only slightly). A short biography of each Cardinal as a way of fixing a piece of time into its context was a wonderful idea.

(Were they interested, I would like to give the two Fathers some advice about how to make the second, revised, edition longer, by asking them to answer all the questions they raised in my mind. I suspect their answer might be for me to do a bit of the work for myself.)

The perfect Christmas present for any Catholic who has the slightest interest in history: once the book is open, its unputdownable.

And now the children have finished their tea, it's back out there to get to grips with Alastair Campbell's diaries. I've been dipping in and out since the book arrived from Amazon, but I was good, and read the book about the Cardinals first.

And on its way from America is the Worlock Archive, Clifford Longley's mining of the archive left by the late Archbishop. Don't worry: I will read this in the same spirit as British Staff Officers read Clausewitz, or Conservative philosophers read Das Kapital. It is only by understanding the ideas which inspire our opponents that we will have chance of undermining and defeating them.

How bad can things get?

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Well ... try this at Catholic Conservation, courtesy of Carpe Canem.

Bishop Hollis was born on 17 November 1936: that means only four years two months and some days to go.

Poor old Pompey - even poorer old Basingstoke.

Fork Handles - Another Rumour

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Which Auxiliary Bishop is set to celebrate the Extraordinary Rite, at least in his private Masses after 14 September? Who is it that members of the Bishops' Conference are accusing of careerism?

Bishop Arnold of Westminster in to celebrate Confirmation in the Extraordinary Rite in November, but rumour has it that an Auxiliary outside London seems to be ready to "come out" as an Extraordinarilist.

Does anybody know who?

That book - more news

If you go to the website of the organisation which published it, you get the following message:

Caritas - Social Action
We apologise for the limited information available on this page.
Caritas - social action's new website is currently under construction.
Caritas - social action is the umbrella organisation for Catholic social care organisations working within England and Wales. We are an agency of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales and part of Caritas International.
Please feel free to contact us on 020 7901 4875 or email caritas@cbcew.org.uk
If your require more information on the Catholic Church in England and Wales please go to www.catholicchurch.org.uk Or, if you would like more information on international development issues please go to www.cafod.org.uk

So, if there is any question about whether or not Caritas' activities are a responsibility of the Bishops' Conference or not, just look at their e-mail address.

And CAFOD, unsurprisingly to me at least, gets drawn in as well. Not that CAFOD and Caritas are singing off the same hymn sheet, you understand: it's just that if you want to know what Caritas thinks, while it's off the air, then CAFOD's the place to go.

This stinks: it stinks to high heaven, indeed, to High Heaven. A follow-up letter to Cardinal Re seems in order.

I'm sure someone will tell me I'm wrong, but ...

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... I have come to the conclusion that the Holy Father, in publishing Summorum Pontifcum, has launched a coup d'etat against the liberality of some Bishops, and is trusting priests to undo some of the mischief which the Bishops have been responsible for.

Reading the blog of Fr Z (whom God preserve!) has been instructive recently: lots of Bishops trying to interpret what the Pope must have meant when he issued his Motu Proprio and concluding that they can still dictate what Use will be used once we reach 14 September, in spite of what the words on paper actually say.

But the Pope absolutely and categorically returned this choice to the priests. the Bishops have no right to stop a suitably qualified (idoneus) priest from saying his private Mass according to the form he wishes. He cannot stop the faithful from asking for, and in consequence receiving, the Extraordinary Rite.

The Bishops are rebuked for allowing men to be ordained whose Latin is not up to celebrating Mass (in either Use) in Latin. They have not fulfilled their obligation, as Heads of Local Churches, to ensure that Men are sent to seminaries where they can be properly formed as priests of the Roman Rite. In short, they can no longer be trusted, in matters liturgical, to maintain the communion with Rome which is an intrinsic mark of dioceses in the Roman Church. So they have been bypassed, and Oh! how they hate it.

The next eighteen months are likely to be ugly, at least in parts of the English-speaking world. What will happen when a priest is forbidden or prevented by his Ordinary from celebrating the Extraordinary form of the Mass? We can be confident about Rome's reaction, but the potential for grave scandal is there.

But I think we'll miss it in England and Wales, at least initially. I understand that Bishops have been advised not to get involved in any public way: the Eccleston Square view is that the less publicity given to the priests who start using the Extraordinary Rite, the less will be the demand from the laity to have access to it. But they have no plan to cope with a situation in which a significant number of priests start celebrating the Mass traditionally, because they are confident that it just won't happen. They are irritated by the Motu Proprio, and make jokes about German Shepherds barking a lot, and being vicious when provoked, but are so confident that their conception of the Church is the right one that they can't imagine anything else.

How they might react to what they might think of as mutiny is yet to be seen. We are living in interesting times.

Archbishop Conti

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Wasn't Archbishop Conti the Bishop who celebrated the Sarum Use in Aberdeen (forgetting that Aberdeen had its own Use, and that it was probably the first time that the Sarum use had ever been celebrated there).

Fr Z (whom God preserve) suggests that the Archbishop is setting stringent conditions in an Ad Clerum to his priests, so stringent that he might actually be instructing his priests to ignore the Pope's Motu Proprio?

Are we in light blue button down shirt territory again?

A feeble Archbishop

According to the Telegraph, the Headmaster of the Catholic primary School in Liverpool who has had a Civil Union with another man can't be sacked for legal reasons.

Yes he can. He can be sacked tomorrow. If he goes to an Employment Tribunal, he'll probably win. Then he'll have to be paid off. Or, if an order was made for reinstatement, the Archbishop could refuse and go to prison. Or he could close the school down; now: just before the start of term (and go to prison).

But that would mean Archbishop Kelly standing up for what the Church believes in instead of kowtowing to the state.

Does anyone have a photo of him, tieless, in smart casual, button-down collar, preferably very pale blue shirt?

How many people know that the solution to the problem of how the Liturgy is celebrated in joint Anglican/Catholic schools in Liverpool?

They don't have any.

I'd like to thank Fr Dwight for the link, but will merely tip my hat, in the circumstances.

What happens when you do one of Jeffrey's quizzes

You Are 8% Politically Radical

You're a very traditional person and perhaps a little resistant to change. In a few more years, your beliefs will be so old fashioned that they'll be radical!

Are You a Political Radical?

You Are 8% Politically Radical

You're a very traditional person and perhaps a little resistant to change. In a few more years, your beliefs will be so old fashioned that they'll be radical!

http://www.blogthings.com/areyouapoliticalradicalquiz/">Are You a Political Radical?

8% radical? How dare they score me so high! And why do they have to do it twice?

And so it begins

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The first Catholic adoption agency to shut up shop, faced with SORS. I haven't seen comment about this anywhere.

Spot the Bishops!

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Courtesy of the Northern Cleric.

Their Lordships the Bishops of Portsmouth, Plymouth and Clifton.

At the Conference at which the photo was taken, there were over twenty different workshops on topics ranging from Youth Ministry to banner making, the person of Christ to the relationship between science and religion.

Banner making? Banner making? Felt, I imagine.

There are those who believe that these three Bishops represent the future of the Church in England and Wales ...

... and then there are those who don't.

More on how to protest! And we need a leader

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Two separate messages lead me to suggest that Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, who is in charge of the Congregation for Bishops, is the man to complain to (as well as the Nuncio and Cardinal Levada, both of whom have formal responsibilities in this regard). I can't find an e-mail address for him, but a written letter, hundreds, thousands of written letters, might be a better way of waking the Vatican up anyway. Contact him at:

Palazzo della Congregazioni,
00193 Roma,
Piazza Pio XII, 10

(Cardinal Levada's address is:

Piazza del S. Uffizio, 11,
00193 Roma)

It is intriguing that both messages referred to two members of the hierarchy whom Cardinal Re has serious concerns about, one of whom has been blogged about as having packed his books ready for Southwark, only to be rudely interrupted when Kevin McDonald received the appointment as Archbishop.

I asked Damian Thompson through his combox to take the lead in rallying Catholics on this subject: he skipped the question. We need a leader, who should be a lay person: we can't have priests attacking Bishops. (We shouldn't need to have lay people attacking Bishops, but the Bishops started it!) Any ideas? Any volunteers with adequate profile?

There is a real opportunity here, though one which I think the Holy Father may have anticipated: we need a new Archbishop of Westminster, and we need one who is not part of the current hierarchy, all of whom reflect the fads of 1970s seminaries.

Once World Youth Day in Sydney is over, can we have Cardinal Pell?

How to protest about that book

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[Your address]

[Date]

[Your Bishops address] (available from here)

My Lord, (or Dear Bishop Christian Name,)

I have recently read on the Internet that an Agency of the Catholic Bishops' Conference has recently published a book called "Catholic Social Justice" which attacks both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI and makes statements about the family which are anything but Catholic.

Please may I have your assurance that neither you, nor your brother Bishops have allowed any such thing to happen, and that I might buy this book and read Catholic teaching about social justice.

Humbly at the feet of your Lordship (or Yours Sincerely)

Your Name

Copied to:

Archbishop Sainz Munoz, Apostolic Nuncio
Cardinal Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

A Parable

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Although Fr Tim, Mac, and Orthfully Catholic were at the Faith Movement Conference, it was Auntie Joanna who spotted how tradition - in fact Tradition - is a unifying force:

"... yesterday evening saw a splendid ceilidh, a vast improvement on the traditional disco. Here, the dancing was lively and continued non-stop until late: a really delightful sight with people quickly getting a grasp of the dance and twirling partners and forming circles and jiggling round the room in terrific style to traditional Scottish music. It was a joy to watch."

I shan't labour the comparison: I don't think I need to. Disco: too much noise and half the people not joining in; ceilidh: room for everybody who wants to do things properly; disco: everybody do your own thing; ceilidh: everybody follow the rubrics.

One for Brighton!

Inspired by Rafael, I recount a short version of the story St Pelayo, Martyr. (911-925)

This nephew of Bishop Hermogio of Tuy, in Galicia, was brought up in a still-Christian part of Spain, and went to school to learn the Psaltery and how to serve at the Mozarabic Rite of Mass. But as happened with so many children in those times, he was captured during a Moorish raid and became a prisoner of the Emir, Abderramán III. His uncle was captured in 920 at the battle of Val de Junquera and was to be ransomed, but, as no gold appeared, Pelayo himself became the ransom. He became a slave of the Emir, building the wonderful buildings of Córdoba, and suffered as he saw the sufferings of his companions.

His good behaviour meant that his captors were tolerant towards him and he was allowed to study, and to learn from priests who were also held captive. His great prayer, in the terrible circumstances in which he was held, and in the terrible moral climate of the city in which he was held, was that he might maintain his purity. One day the Emir caught sight of him and insisted that he be bathed and perfumed and brought to him. Pelayo chose the best part.

"I am a Christian and always will be. Your riches are worth nothing. I will not renege on Christ who is my Lord, and yours, even if you don't wish Him to be so." And when the Emir tried to touch his clothes he said "Get away, dog! Do you think I'm like the young men who you always have by your side? Lord: free me from the hands of my enemies."

It was too much: he was fired by a catapult across the River Guadalquivir and being found not yet to have died, was decapitated by a palace guard.

His relics are venerated to this day, but not, I imagine, by those who think that sodomy is a Catholic option. We should venerate St Pelayo as much as we venerate St Maria Goretti.

Harry Potter and Catholics

Some comments on a post Mac made about buying Harry Potter 7 saddened me: some people seem not to have stopped and thought. I hate it when Catholics repeat the comments of ignorant Evangelical fundamentalists as though these latter have developed some insight which the Church seems not to have reached. I hate it just as much when people don't understand what books are for.

Ready? Deep breath ... J K Rowling is an excellent children's author and her Harry Potter series is great!

Now - I told you to take a deep breath - her books are not about witchcraft, any more than P G Wodehouse wrote books about the semiotics of Class, or than Lady Chatterley's Lover is about the economics of rearing game on a Staffordshire estate in the 1920s. Nobody is going to be inspired to Devil-worship by reading her books, who wouldn't be by reading about Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop. Her books are about humans: and are about the differences between human beings, and how those differences are transcended by things like Love and Hate, by Selfishness and by self-sacrifice.

The fact of magic in the stories is as relevant as the fact of magic in a fairy story: was Rapunzel a real girl who could grow her hair 20 feet long and strong enough to allow a suitor into her tower? Was Snow White really lucky enough to come across a colony of seven dwarves? Of course not: tales are about the imagination, and about learning how moral choices are made; they are parables.

I bought, once, from a coin dealer, a couple of leptons as a present for my parents: a lepton was the lowest denomination coin in circulation in Palestine during the time of Christ. It was the widow's mite. Could either of those leptons have been the widow's mite? No, because Jesus' story was a parable. Did holding those leptons help us understand the story more? Of course they did!

The Harry Potter books are a series of stories: they are not works of apologetics, but there is plenty there for a Catholic child or adult to grab hold of: Hell, as the final end of those who have no remorse; the Communion of the Saints, in the sense that those who have died without meriting Hell are available to help those still on earth when called upon; self-sacrifice, in that the hero is called on to accept death, if that is the end to which he is lead; love for one's enemies, even to the risk of death; the joy of fellowship; Limbo.

I repeat: these are not works of Catholic apologetics, any more than Tolkien's stories were; but they are good and wholesome, and will inspire children towards what is good, and Catholic children towards what is Good and True.

Cardinal Pell: Please Get a Grip

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The official hymn for World Youth Day has been released. You don't want to hear it (oh well, if you do it's here, but boy! do the organisers of WYD2008 have something to learn about bandwidth) as a look at the words should tell you all you need to know.

1. Every nation, every tribe,
come (sic) together to worship You.
In Your presence we delight,
we will follow (sic) to the ends of the earth.

Chorus

Alleluia! Alleluia!
Receive the Power, from the Holy Spirit!
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Receive the Power to be a light unto (sic) the world!

2. As Your Spirit calls to rise (sic)
we will answer and do Your Will.
We’ll forever testify
of Your mercy and unfailing love.

Chorus

Bridge

Lamb of God, we worship You,
Holy One, we worship You,
Bread of Life, we worship You,
Emmanuel, we worship You.
Lamb of God, we worship You,
Holy One, we worship You,
Bread of Life, we worship You,
Emmanuel, we will sing forever.

Chorus

I feel, listening to it, like I feel when my daughter has the radio on in her room. The music and the singing are vacuous. But I feel offended when I think this is meant to be a hymn: the lyric is trite, the music is banal, and the totality is unsingable. It is a pop song, and the assembled Yoof will no doubt listen and applaud, but it has nothing to do with Divine Worship. It's not written in English, but then no pop song is.

And what a monstrosity to visit upon an elderly gentleman who likes music!

Cardinal Pell: while we appreciate all that you have been doing on the world stage recently, it's time to turn your gaze inward. Something involving boiling oil is called for.

Harry Potter 7 - no spoilers here

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The best yet. I spent all day yesterday reading it. I have spent some of today rereading crucial bits. The good news is that JK Rowling has left herself plenty of wiggle room to allow for further books.

I'm happy to discuss the book offline, but I reckon we should leave a week before we start talking about the contents in public.

Purity

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As Rafael points out, responsible fatherhood, in the meditation I have translated below, does not mean contraception.

If being pure was easy, there wouldn't be
So many anonymous fathers
So many single mothers
So many betrayed husbands
So many cheated wives
So many abandoned children
So many immature engagements
So many wounding affairs
So many casual encounters
Such a cult of eroticsm
Such sexual violence
Such shame of virginity
Such credulity
And such brazenness disguised as love.

It isn't easy to be pure in the absence of Jesus and Mary.
When responsible fatherhood is absent,
When the miracle of motherhood, accepted and wanted, is absent,
Or when love for children is absent,
Somebody ends up being just something for somebody else.
Sexuality without God is a disaster.
Sexuality with God is a Blessing.

Fr P. Zezinho

(When was the last time I heard a sermon on purity? Actually, I can remember: it was 1973, and at the end of the sermon the priest said "John Smith, I want to see you in the sacristy after Mass". He needed a server for a funeral the next day, but we didn't let John Smith forget it.)

O infelix Anglia!

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Last December I made a prediction about the reaction of the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales to the Motu Proprio. I said that they would say:

"Private Masses are not the 0930 Mass that the Parish Newsletter advertises for every weekday. Private Masses are not, in fact, to be advertised, because they are "private". You can have a few people round but under the same conditions as for a "House Mass" in the Novus Praxis.

No priest can be forced to say Mass in the Old Rite (as if any could, but the Bishops will make a big deal about the pressure the Old Massians will put on a few simple priests).

"Parish Masses" ( however defined by the local Ordinary) must be in the New Rite.

No priest can celebrate the Old Rite who has not passed a test, and we will establish a committee to set one: it will put in place conditions by 2012.

No unreordering of Churches may take place just to favour celebration of the Old Rite.The Novus Ordo must always have primacy over the Vetus Ordo.

And we have leant so far back to accomodate you that any cavilling against our authority is an attack against the Church."

I also wrote:

"I'm probably wrong: the Bishops will welcome the opportunity for Mass to be celebrated always and everywhere as it was always celebrated. I can recognise a flying pig when I see one!"

The public line from the Hierarchy is that the MP is an opportunity for a few old people who have gone to SSPX Masses to go to LMS Masses instead (I caricature, but not much). The private line seems to be one of panic. The MP isn't the only thing to have happened recently: the Pope's letter to China has restated the role of the Church in civil society; the MP has freed priests from the shackles of modern Catholic Episcopalianism; the letter from the Holy Office has put an end to the Ecumenism we have known and endured for the last forty years.

I understand that some of our Bishops are in denial, and are having difficulty coming up with an agreed statement that they can all sign up to and which will actually accord with the MP; the Nuncio, who is broadly sympathetic with them, has little help to offer.

Fr Z {]:¬) (whom God preserve) has pointed out that the relationship between Bishop, Priest, and Laity has been changed significantly by the MP. It has always been ironic that liberal Bishops are those most likely to demand total obedience: it is those Bishops who are seeing their world collapse around them and who will fight hard to retain what they see as their place in the sun.

This may all turn a bit nasty.

Ugly Rumours

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This was, of course the name of the former Prime Minister's "band" when he was at Oxford. Rest assured that that is not my subject.

The ugly rumours of which I write concern a cabal, a combination, of priests who are setting out to subvert the Pope's intentions in respect of the Extraordinary Rite. There are alleged to be e-mails doing the rounds among priests who are opposed to "the return of the Latin Mass" (as one English diocesan website puts it) suggesting that they are allowed, in the terms of the Motu Proprio, to declare themselves incapable of celebrating Mass in any form other than the Ordinary Rite. If enough priests in any given locality agree, then the only way to accomodate the Extraordinary Rite will be for the local Ordinary to ask a priest from outside to say it. "The pressure of normal Sunday services" will be quoted to ensure that legitimate celebrations of the Extraordinary Rite will take place at odd times: like 4.00 pm on a Sunday afternoon; and in a different parish every week: thus making the building of a community difficult.

Were such ugly rumours true, it would suggest that the current extent of Indult Masses accorded to the LMS might be as much as would be achievable even under the Motu Proprio. Surely this can't be what the Holy Father intended!

But look to the websites of the dioceses of England and Wales and, with the honourable exception of the Archdiocese of Birmingham, look in vain for a welcome to a Church in which our common Rite has, from September, two Uses.

We shouldn't start planning for the worst; a few ugly rumours might be no more than just that: ugly, and rumours. But it might be worth spending five minutes thinking about the way me might mobilise ourselves were such a thing to come to pass where we live.

Fr Dwight scores a 180!

Fr Dwight posts as follows:

'B16 says in Jesus of Nazareth, "The Scriptures can only rightly be interpreted in the lives of the saints."

Doesn't that just kick you? Not first and foremost textual criticism. Not redaction criticism. Not the historico-critical method. Not psychological interpretations or feminist interpretations or lesbi gay trans reading. Not the Schofield reference Bible or Mrs Baker Eddy or the Watchtower or the five points of Calvinism or whatever else interpretative method you want.

Scripture is rightly interpreted in the lives of the saints. I love it. Scripture is a living book of the Holy Spirit and it is through the life of the Church and the teaching of the Church and most of all in the Truth incarnated lives of the saints that the same Holy Spirit who inspired the Scriptures is at work in the lives of ordinary men and women, and therefore still at work in the world.'

This has been ringing in my head since I first read it at the weekend: it is so right. A hat tip to Fr Dwight for bringing it to my attention.

I am increasingly awestruck that I live in the times in which God has raised Josef Ratzinger to be the Servant of the Servants of God. I mentioned to a friend yesterday that having three weeks off to think and pray might refresh the Pope to the point at which he comes out with lots more of the stuff he has been coming out with this year.

Can we take it? You bet!

Two footnotes to the Motu Proprio

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7 July is the feast, in what we probably should now call the Extraordinary Calendar, of SS Cyril and Methodius.

They are Co-Patrons of Europe, and are venerated in the East as "like-Apostles". What better day to promulgate the start of the return of the Western Church to its liturgical roots? What better Triple-Crown-tip to the Orthodox Sister Churches? What brighter token of the Pope's faithfulness to Tradition?

A wider query. In the military:

"Information operations (IO) are described as the integrated employment of electronic warfare (EW), computer network operations (CNO), psychological operations (PSYOP), military deception (MILDEC), and operations security (OPSEC), in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own." (JP3-13)

What is the Catholic equivalent that HH the P has been employing so gainfully to outflank his opponents so comprehensively? Elements are clearly visible: the wonderful video of him concelebrating the NO with his secretaries and listening to a female Vatican employee reading the Epistle; saying the Brazilian 5th Eucharistic Prayer while at CELAM; convincing the liberal Western press that the Cardinal Ratzinger who ran the Congregation for Doctrine and Faith like a leopard had changed his spots and was now a pink and fluffy liberal.

One or two people were impatient at the two and a bit years this Motu Proprio has taken. How wonderful to have a Pope who understands the difference between a Campaign and an Operation. Let us hope that the SSPX, who play Blucher's role here, understand that Wellington is in command.

A meme about blogging

I've been sent an e-mail from a reader who asked me to start a meme, and I couldn't think of a good reaon to say no! She said she wanted to know more about bloggers than she could learn from their profiles, which, she said, we play for effect (she's right there!). So here goes.

1. How did you start blogging?

The immediate cause was Moretben beginning his blog: I read his, and followed some of his links and thought: "I'll give that a go". A more important reason was an increasing frustration with the Universe's discussion forum, on which debate and discussion seemed to me to be increasingly replaced by name-calling, and on which some startling assumptions about the Faith were revealed by people who thought of themselves as Catholics, and who thought that these were assumptions we all shared.

2. What do you hope to achieve or accomplish with your blog? Have you been successful?

As it says above: "Musings about Tradition in the Catholic Church in England and Wales, and an attempt to collect essays and articles which would appear in a Catholic press which exercised critical solidarity with the Hierarchy." Another point of my writing this blog was to try to provide for the two or three people who know as much and as little theology as I do, and as much and as little about ecclesiastical politics as I do with a forum, as, with the exception of most of the Catholic Herald most of the time, there is no print Catholic resource to provide Catholic news and Catholic intellectual stimulation to the more traditionally minded in England and Wales. Furthermore, Eccleston Square, the Headquarters of the Bishops' Conference seems as forthcoming as the Kremlin in the 1950s.

3. Has the focus of your blog changed since you started blogging? How?

The focus has changed a bit, in that there are plenty of essays and articles out there on the Web, particularly in the Blogosphere, and it would be presumptuous of me to try to claim that I have contributed ore ever could contribute very much on that side of things at all. And I think that my musings about Tradition have possibly gone well beyond Tradition in the Church as I understood it when I embarked on this mission, not least because of the amount I have learned from reading other bloggers. I've probably grown more impatient with the Hierarchy as well. I'm quite pleased that I've been able to bring a couple of things in that readers who don't speak Spanish or Portuguese have been able to enjoy: I didn't think I'd be translating.

4. What do you know now that you wish you'd known when you started?

I wish I'd known that the blog would gain its own personality rather than be just what I wanted it to be. I wish I'd known how well it would connect me to people around the world: I might have started sooner. I wish I'd guessed that I'd end up saying more about myself than I would. I wish I'd realised that Catholics can be incredibly nasty when hiding behind anonymity: at least I had the sense to set up a disposable e-mail account! What might have started me blogging sooner is the number of really nice, friendly, supportive, sympathetic people out there.

5. Does your immediate or extended family know about your blog? If so, do they read it? If not, why?

No. I embarrass my teenage children enough already. Part of the deal has to be that I don't do this more than they have to endure. (I burst into song in public: when they were 6 or 7 years old, they thought this was "cool"; they don't now that they think they know what "cool" means.)

6. What advice would give to a new blogger?

Have a subject for six postings decided before you publish your first: that way you won't dry up. And enjoy writing for the few rather than for the many: there are very few bloggers who reach hundreds of people, mainly because most people have more sense than to waste their time reading other people's blogs; if there are a few people who seem interested in what you have to say, say it to them, and you might entertain and stimulate them. Encourage others to blog. Put up with some of the rubbish you see from time to time, and enjoy the pearls which your new friends will cast before you. And try to remember to say Fr Z's prayer before logging onto the Internet.

Orátio ante colligatiónem in interrete:

Omnípotens aetérne Deus,qui secúndum imáginem Tuam nos plasmástiet ómnia bona, vera, et pulchra, praesértim in divína persóna Unigéniti Fílii Tui Dómini nostri Iesu Christi, quáerere iussísti, praesta, quaésumus, ut, per intercessiónem Sancti Isidóri, Epíscopi et Doctóris, in peregrinatiónibus per interrete, et manus oculósque ad quae Tibi sunt plácita intendámuset omnes quos convenímus cum caritáte ac patiéntia accipiámus. Per Christum Dóminum nostrum. Amen.

A prayer before logging onto the internet:

Almighty and eternal God, who created us in Thine image and bade us to seek after all that is good, true and beautiful, especially in the divine person of Thine Only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, grant, we beseech Thee, that, through the intercession of Saint Isidore, Bishop and Doctor, during our journeys through the internet we will direct our hands and eyes only to that which is pleasing to Thee and treat with charity and patience all those souls whom we encounter. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

So there we are. I tag Moretben, Strongwoman Mac, and Rafael Castela Santos to tell us a bit more about themselves.

The first New Zealand VC since WWII

Read this slowly and carefully and allow the pictures to paint themselves in your mind.

The official citation for Corporal Bill Henry Apiata NZSAS.

"Lance Corporal (now Corporal) Apiata was, in 2004, part of a New Zealand Special Air Service (NZSAS) Troop on patrol in Afghanistan, which laid up in defensive formation for the night.
At approximately 0315 hours, the Troop was attacked by a group of about twenty enemy fighters, who had approached by stealth using the cover of undulating ground in pitch darkness. Rocket-propelled grenades struck two of the Troop's vehicles, destroying one and immobilising the other.

The opening strike was followed by dense and persistent machine gun and automatic rifle fire from close range.

The attack then continued using further rocket-propelled grenades and machine gun and rifle fire. The initial attack was directed at the vehicle where Lance Corporal Apiata was stationed.
He was blown off the bonnet by the impact of rocket propelled grenades striking the vehicle. He was dazed, but was not physically injured.

The two other vehicle crew members had been wounded by shrapnel; one of them, Corporal D, was in a serious condition.

Illuminated by the burning vehicle, and under sustained and accurate enemy fire directed at and around their position, the three soldiers immediately took what little cover was available. Corporal D was discovered to have sustained lifethreatening wounds. The other two soldiers immediately began applying basic first aid.

Lance Corporal Apiata assumed command of the situation, as he could see that his superior's condition was deteriorating rapidly.

By this time, however, Lance Corporal Apiata's exposed position, some seventy metres in front of the rest of the Troop, was coming under increasingly intense enemy fire. Corporal D was now suffering serious arterial bleeding and was lapsing in and out of consciousness.

Lance Corporal Apiata concluded that his comrade urgently required medical attention,or he would likely die. Pinned down by the enemy, in the direct line of fire between friend and foe, he also judged that there was almost no chance of such help reaching their position.

As the enemy pressed its attack towards Lance Corporal Apiata's position, and without thought of abandoning his colleague to save himself, he took a decision in the highest order of personal courage under fire. Knowing the risks involved in moving to open ground, Lance Corporal Apiata decided to carry Corporal D singlehandedly to the relative safety of the main Troop position, which afforded better cover and where medical treatment could be given.

He ordered his other colleague, Trooper E, to make his own way back to the rear.

In total disregard of his own safety, Lance Corporal Apiata stood up and lifted his comrade bodily. He then carried him across the seventy metres of broken, rocky and fire swept ground, fully exposed in the glare of battle to heavy enemy fire and into the face of returning fire from the main Troop position. That neither he nor his colleague were hit is scarcely possible. Having delivered his wounded companion to relative shelter with the remainder of the patrol, Lance Corporal Apiata re-armed himself and rejoined the fight in counter-attack.

By his actions, he removed the tactical complications of Corporal D's predicament from considerations of rescue.

The Troop could now concentrate entirely on prevailing in the battle itself. After an engagement lasting approximately twenty minutes, the assault was broken up and the numerically superior attackers were routed with significant casualties, with the Troop in pursuit.

Lance Corporal Apiata had thereby contributed materially to the operational success of the engagement. A subsequent medical assessment confirmed that Corporal D would probably have died of blood loss and shock, had it not been for Lance Corporal Apiata's selflessly courageous act in carrying him back to the main Troop lines, to receive the immediate treatment that he needed."

A Catholic Story

Everything in the story that follows is true, even if I have taken the trouble to disguise names and locations so that the very real people depicted will not be hailed, congratulated or abused by strangers who should not be able to connect the facts with the people involved. It is a parable, but one based on a real occurence. If you object to human pleasures such as smoking and gambling, look away now.

Fr Callaghan has been Parish Priest of the parish of the Miraculous Medal for many years. The parish serves an overspill estate in a northern city. Overspill estates were planned for the people who lived in the nineteenth century slums which disfigured our industrial cities until the 50s, 60s and 70s, when they were destroyed for the soulless new slums which replaced them. Always poor, the collapse of industry left the parishioners much poorer. Many of the men have been out of work since the 1980s, their wives on part-time jobs, and whole families live on benefits - these are the people who would not or could not get on their bikes, but their Church did not desert them.

Fr Callaghan heard his vocation in the fields of an Irish farmhouse in the early 1960s and was trained at Maynooth for the English Mission. Never really aware of how he ended up in the particular diocese, he has given his life to the people he serves. Not an intellectual, not a liturgist or a rubricist, not one for polemic, not one for ecumenism: one for visiting his flock, especially the housebound, the sick, and, in particular, the old people who are frightened to leave their houses after dark because of the violence they feel (quite rightly) is likely to be visited upon them.

Midnight Mass at Christmas is at 7.00 pm on Christmas Eve, and every pensioner will be picked up and escorted home by a bunch of men who have not got work that night as bouncers, and who will be rewarded by free beer at the local Parish Club afterwards. But Father Callaghan makes sure that the bouncers are coming to Church too, and will usually persuade them, when "interviewing" them, to confess their sins so that on that night at least, they can approach their Saviour in a state of grace.

Insofar as he has a mission, it is to the poor, and insofar as he supports organisations, he supports the SVP. Local Corporal Works of Mercy for local people: he wouldn't get the joke, and would be irritated by it, because it makes fun of subsidiarity, a word he has to have explained to him every time I mention it (and I only see him about once a year and don't always mention it) but a thing that he practices. "Nobody understands our people like we understand ourselves." Christmas hampers are personalised, and if Mr Smith likes a drink, then there will be a bottle of whiskey for him, and if Mrs Jones smokes, there will be 50 Rothmans for her. "I'm nor going to judge somebody's pleasures, especially when they can't afford to indulge them."

The SVP conference meets on Tuesdays, and one Tuesday one of the members is able to say that they have won a decent prize on the lottery syndicate they run. Nine of them, including Fr Callaghan put in 50p each week and they buy three tickets, putting the othe £1.50 into the SVP fund. They have won over £400. This is real money: nearly £50 each. The ticket holder promises to get the money in time for the next meeting.

And somebody remembers: Fr Callaghan loves horse racing and has always wanted to put on a big bet. He goes home every summer and loves hearing the stories of the hundreds of euros his brothers and cousins put on the big races, and what they've won, and, usually, what they've lost.

And as a thank you to their priest for being their priest, the Conference members decide unanimously to give all the winnings to Fr Callaghan as long as he has a single bet with it, and buys himself a cigar to smoke at the bookmaker's. He argues, they insist, he gives in and accepts the present.

Anybody who has read this far will want to know: "did he back a winner?" That's not the point of this story. This is a story about a simple priest who gave up a lot of things to serve others. One of the things he gave up was the chance to swagger into a bookie's with a large wad of cash and a Cuban cigar. And, as a thank-you, some of the people who loved him gave him the chance to do just that.