The English Sequence For Whitsunday

Here, in Latin and (somewhat Victorian) English, is the old Sequence for Whitsunday from the English pre-Tridentine Uses.

Sancti Spiritus adsit nobis gratia,
Quae corda nostra sibi faciat habitacula,
Expulsis inde cunctis vitiis spiritalibus.
Spiritus alme, illustrator hominum,
Horridas nostra mentis purge tenebras.
Amator sancte sensatorum semper cogitatuum,
Infunde unctionem tuam clemens nostris sensibus.
Tu purificator omnium flagitiorum Spiritus,
Purifica nostri oculum interioris hominis,
Ut videri supremus genitor posit a nobis,
Mundi cordis quem soli cernere possum oculi.
Prophetas tu inspirasti, ut praeconia Christi praecinuissent inclyta.
Apostolos confortasti, ut tropaeum Christi per totum mundum veherent.
Quando machinam per verbum suum fecit Deus caeli, terrae, marium.
Tu super aquas, foturus eas, numen tuum expandisti, Spiritus.
Tu animabus vivificandis, aquas fecundas;
Tu, aspirando, das spiritales esse homines;
Tu divisum per linguas mundum et ritus adunasti, Domine.
Idolatras ad cultum Dei revocas, magistrorum optime.
Ergo nos supplicantes tibi exaudi propitius, Sancte Spiritus,
Sine quo preces omnes cassae creduntur, et indignae Dei auribus.
Tu, qui omnium saeculorum sanctos
Tui nominis docuisti instinctu amplectendo, Spiritus,
Ipse hodie apostolos Christi
Donans munere insolito et cunctis inaudito saeculis,
Hunc diem gloriosum fecisti.

May the Holy Spirit's grace
Be present with us now,
And for Himself our hearts
An habitation make,
And from our inmost souls cast out
All spiritual wickedness.
O gracious Spirit, Thou Who dost enlighten all,
The darkness chase away Which fills our minds with gloom.
O Thou Who ever lov'st
Thoughts holily conceiv'd,
Thy unction graciously
Infuse into our hearts.
Spirit of purity,
Who dost all evil cleanse,
Enable Thou the eyes Which light our inner man
The Father to discern
Who dwelleth in the highest,
Whom they alone can see who are the pure in heart.
Thou didst inspire the prophets to make known
Their glorious predictions of the Christ;
Thou the Apostles didst with strength endue
To bear Christ's trophy throughout all the world.
When God by His Almighty Word did frame
The fabric of the heaven and earth and seas;
Thou, Spirit, brooding o'er the waters' face,
Didst spread abroad Thy fostering Deity;
Thou, to give life to souls,
Water dost fertilize;
And breathing on them deign'st
To make men spiritual;
Thou the world, rent by variance, by tongues
And rites, O Lord, hast set at one again;
Thou, best of masters, dost recall
Idolaters to worship God;
Then, Holy Spirit, graciously
Hear us who lift our prayers to Thee,
Without Whom every prayer is counted vain,
Unworthy by God's ear to be received.
Thou, Spirit, Who the Saints of every age
In Thy embrace enfolding hast instructed
By inspiration of Thy Holy Name,
Thyself a gift unwonted pouring out
Upon the Apostolic band devout,
A gift throughout all ages yet unknown,
Hast made this day a day of high renown.

The Hail Mary In The Bidding Prayers

In response to a couple of Twitter comments which suggested that according to the Catholic Herald Bishop Conry of Arundel and Brighton was about to ban the Hail Mary from the end of the Bidding Prayers because they were a liturgical abuse, I said that Cardinal Heenan had won permission from Rome for the Hail Mary's inclusion at the end of the prayers and promised to look for a source.

The bad news is that I can't find a source, at least not on line, and not in any of the muniments I have to hand (though this room is sprawling and there are dusty corners which have not been visited these several years).

But I find that Fr Leon Pereira OP (now a teacher at Oscott) certainly remembers as I do: this is taken from his catechesis on the revised translation of the Novus Ordo available at the website of his last Priory:

"The  structure  of  each  bidding  prayer  is  (a)  the  deacon  invites  us  to  pray  for  an  intention,  and  (b)  during  a  significant  pause  we  pray  for  that  intention.  There  are  two  options  for  how  we  respond  after  our  prayer.  One  option  is  by  means  of  prayerful  silence.  The  other  option  is  the  priest  (not  the  deacon  or  intercession  proposer)  prompts  us  to  respond,  in  one  of  the  following  ways.   

℣  Lord,  in  your  mercy.   ℟  Hear  our  prayer.  
℣  Lord,  we  ask  you:   ℟  Hear  our  prayer.  
℣  Lord,  hear  us.   ℟  Lord,  graciously  hear  us.  
℣  We  pray  to  the  Lord:   ℟  Lord,  hear  our  prayer.
   
We  must  say  our  response  sincerely.  Try  to  remember  at  least  one  of  the  petitions,  and  keep  on  praying  for  it  during  the  week.    In  England  and  Wales  it  is  common  to  seek  Our  Lady’s  intercession  at  the  end  of  the  petitions,  praying  the  ‘Hail  Mary’  (permission  for  this  was  obtained  by  the  late  Cardinal  Heenan).  Then  the  concluding  prayer  is  made  by  the  priest,  addressing  God  now,  usually  with  a  Trinitarian  formula:  to  the  Father,  through  the  Son,  in  the  Holy  Spirit."

The other thing I've found comes from Zenit, and is dated 18 October 2005.  Fr Edward McNamara, Professor of Liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University opined:

"Some other readers asked about the practice of reciting the Hail Mary during the Prayer of the Faithful.

While this custom is not universal, it seems to have its roots in English liturgical practice from even before the Second Vatican Council.

One reader suggested that a document exists impeding this practice, but I have been unable to find it. I would say that, barring some authoritative intervention, the practice could continue where it has been customary to do so.

The objections to the use of the Hail Mary are usually based on the principle that liturgical prayers are practically always directed to the Father, and on rare occasions to the Son.

However, when the Hail Mary is used in the Prayer of the Faithful she is not addressed directly but is usually invoked as a mediator to carry our prayer to the Father within the context of the communion of saints.

This invocation is certainly unnecessary from a liturgical standpoint, and it is probably better not to introduce it where it does not exist. However, I do not believe it needs to be forbidden where already well established."

It would be helpful if somebody can find a copy of the correspondence between Cardinal Heenan and the Congregation for Divine Worship in which the permission will have been given.  I have no access to a GIRM for England and Wales earlier that 2005 and I note with surprised interest that the permission to say the Hail Mary is not noted there.  Furthermore, the Liturgy Office of the CBCEW published Celebrating the Mass: A Pastoral Introduction as a practical interpretative guide to the GIRM and included this statement:

"The Roman Rite does not envisage the inclusion of devotional prayers in the Prayer of the Faithful.  As is traditional with liturgical prayer, the Prayer of the Faithful is addressed to the Father, through the Son and in the Spirit."

Now a) what we are talking about is a special permission for the Dioceses of England and Wales, not something for the whole Roman Rite (though lucky us and unlucky rest of the world) and b) Fr McNamara,  (Professor of Liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University, you'll remember) dismissed the liturgical argument put forward by the CBCEW's Liturgy Office.  But you still might get the idea, if you had a suspicious mind, that something not unlike a time bomb had been buried in 2005.

Finding a copy of the permission would be really, really, helpful.

Sacrosanctum Concilium

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Ben Trovato's blog has had a couple of thought provoking posts about the Liturgy recently.  Arising from a comment on a posting on Cardinal Heenan's comments on the new Rite of Mass, he produced a second which looked more closely at what is perhaps the most frequently raised criticsm of the new Rite by those attached to the former Rite, that is that there is less emphasis on the sacrifical action of the Mass, and less emphasis on the Real Presence.

In a separate part of the thicket, I have been following the Society of St Gregory's forum, in particular recently a discussion about the musical settings of the new translation of the Mass which the musicians who are members of the Society are using.  Two things stand out clearly: first, that their love of the Liturgy and their wish to beautify it in music are as strong as those of any member of the LMS; and second that they stand hard and fast in the tradition of Bugnini and the Consilium, as rooted in Pope Paul's New Mass, as the LMS members are in Pope John's Old Mass.

A narrative has been developing, in the context of the Pope's wishes to better situate our understanding of Vatican II in the context of the tradition of the Church, which suggests that the Council did not want the changes which Mgr Bugnini and his Consilium produced: that they were a bunch of adventurers playing fast and loose with some desires for cautious and judicious change expressed by the Bishops in the Council.  Chasing down a comment in Bugnini's Reform Of The Liturgy to make a point in a comment on Ben's blog, I realised that he actually felt confident that his Reform was rooted entirely within the express wishes of the Council fathers, and cited Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Apostolic Constitution on the Liturgy solemnly proclaimed at the Couincil, as his source.

Reading it (it's here), you can see why he thought he might have a point.

Here are three extracts:

"To promote active participation, the people should be encouraged to take part by means of acclamations, responses, psalmody, antiphons, and songs, as well as by actions, gestures, and bodily attitudes. And at the proper times all should observe a reverent silence."

"Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.  But since the use of the mother tongue, whether in the Mass, the administration of the sacraments, or other parts of the liturgy, frequently may be of great advantage to the people, the limits of its employment may be extended. This will apply in the first place to the readings and directives, and to some of the prayers and chants, according to the regulations on this matter to be laid down separately in subsequent chapters.  These norms being observed, it is for the competent territorial ecclesiastical authority to decide whether, and to what extent, the vernacular language is to be used; their decrees are to be approved, that is, confirmed, by the Apostolic See. And, whenever it seems to be called for, this authority is to consult with bishops of neighboring regions which have the same language."

"Even in the liturgy, the Church has no wish to impose a rigid uniformity in matters which do not implicate the faith or the good of the whole community; rather does she respect and foster the genius and talents of the various races and peoples. Anything in these peoples' way of life which is not indissolubly bound up with superstition and error she studies with sympathy and, if possible, preserves intact. Sometimes in fact she admits such things into the liturgy itself, so long as they harmonize with its true and authentic spirit.   Provisions shall also be made, when revising the liturgical books, for legitimate variations and adaptations to different groups, regions, and peoples, especially in mission lands, provided that the substantial unity of the Roman rite is preserved; and this should be borne in mind when drawing up the rites and devising rubrics."

My point is not that Clown Masses or Easter Bunny Masses are somehow validated, but that the overwhelming majority (2147 for, 4 against) of Bishops at the Council in 1963 believed that radical change in the form of the Roman Rite and in the way that lay people participated in it was necessary, and gave Bugnini a framework in which to develop this new form.  We can't pretend that he was some sort of Militant Tendency entryist, an ecclesiastical Derek Hatton burrowing within to change by stealth what everybody wants to hold fast to, other than by denying that he was doing what a couple of thousand Bishops, including, as far as I can tell, all of what might be thought of as the diehard traditionalists, wanted him to do.

I don't think that the Michael Davies argument - that a small group of periti deliberately conspired to make Sacrosanctum Concilium sufficiently vague to allow them to do as they wished subsequently - holds either: it's quite clear, for example, from the extract above, that vernacular readings were intended to be a first step, and that its use could be extended wherever the local authorities wanted.

All of which suggests that these waters are deep, even if they aren't still, and that any resolution is a long way off, assuming that "resolution" means that some sort of thesis and antithesis need to be synthesised.  Meanwhile, the Bishop Davies who has recently turned over a major church in his diocese to the Traditional Rite is going to be welcomed to a Confirmation celebration in another of his parishes by a guitar group which writes its own settings of the Mass and hopes to get him at least to tap a toe.  Is that really what two forms of the Roman Rite should mean?

Help Sought

I said a while ago that I was working on a piece about the reception of Humanæ Vitae by the Church in England and Wales, but I have fallen into a deep and interesting (and possibly significant) rabbit hole: how influential were some of the lay organisations in the Church in England and Wales at the time of the Council and subsequently.

I'm interested in how they became influential: whose agenda was suited by support from lay organisations?  Who provided them with ecclesiastical support?

And how far were they used by "progressive" Bishops and clergy to leapfrog their more conservative confrères?

I'm thinking of organisations like the Laity Commission and the Newman Society, in particular in the early phase, but there might be more. Later on you come across lots more.  I obviously don't mean the KSC, SVP, UCM or CWL: PBI, to add another TLA to the list.

The Hierarchy in England and Wales has always actively sought "representative" laity, from the Catholic Union in the latter part of the nineteenth century to Catholic Voices in the twenty-first, representative, that is, of what the Hierarchy thought lay Catholics should be like; but what I'm chasing down here are the relationships between key members of the Hierarchy and key members of what became key lay organisations.

Any pointers gratefully received.

Liturgical History, Grumpiness ...

I bought "Festa Paschalia" for non-spiritual Holy Week reading, as most of my knowledge of the liturgical history of this period comes from Herbert Thurston's "Lent and Holy Week" which, while fascinating, is a bit dated, receiving its Imprimatur and Nihil Obstat in 1904.

I'm sure that Philip Goddard won't mind my recommending his book as a "must read" for anybody with any interest at all in the development of the structure of the week, even if a recommendation from The Muniment Room isn't exactly the last step before ordering a pipe of the Cockburn '24.  The scholarship feels very sound indeed, and there are odd flashes of insight, for example into the relationship between the readings on the Ember Saturday in Lent and the modelled-on-the-synagogue pattern of readings in first century Christian services that took my breath away.

The awfulness that comes over the reader has nothing to do with the book itself, but with what starts as a casual throwaway line, and becomes a sort of macabre colophon to many sections of the book: "its form was fixed by the end of the seventh century and remained unchanged until 1970" - a paraphrase of something repeated again and again.

I can understand the motivation of the litugical archaeologist, even if I think it is a self-evidently wrong approach to liturgiology; but what was it about the Reformers of the 50s and 60s that led them to such hatred of tradition - tradition in the sense of "doing things the way we always do them".  How did these people cope with family Christmasses (for example)?  Did they suddenly insist that from 1970 on there could be no turkey or goose, as these were late interpolations, but that everybody should eat salted pork?  That the TV couldn't be watched as it hadn't been invented in the first century and that families should play "Hunt the Myrrh" or (a rather different version of ) "Pin the Tail on the Donkey"?  I could go on ...

It is still quite easy to come across pre-1955 hand Missals for a reasonable price (less than £40 - compare the price of a decent 1962 Missal): do think about buying one and using it as a guide to how we might have been celebrating festivals like Passiontide and Easter if the practice of organic development hadn't been allowed to give way to the slash and burn we endured at the end of the 1960s.

A very Happy and Holy Easter from a grumpier than usual Eeyore.

Poem For The Season

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Mgr Ronald Knox famously dreamed of the day he could answer every letter on the letters page of The Times with one letter.  It would be even harder to do so with blogs, but here is something which answers recent posts from both Valle Adurni and Mac: the Sequence from the Mass of the Five Holy Wounds according to the Use of York, which fits the metre of Good King Wenceslas (with the exception of the final two verses.

A Holy Triduum to you all.

Cenam cum discipulis, Jesu celebrasti,
Et mortem apostolis palam nuntiasti,
Et auctorem sceleris Judam demonstrasti,
Et egresses protinus hortulum intrasti.
 
Tunc procedens Dominos humi se prostravit,
Et transferri calicem a se postulavit,
Sed Patris arbitrio illud commendavit,
Et mox ecce sanguinis sudor emanavit.
 
Judas post haec osculum Christo dedit tristi
Ad quid, inquit Dominos, amice, venisti ?
Numquid tradis osculo, quem jam vendidisti
Assistentes protinus irruerunt ministri.
 
Nox insomnia icaque tota ducebatur ;
Nulla prorsus requies Jesus praestabitur;
Magistrorum impia plebs injuriatur,
Alapis et colaphis innocens mactatur.
 
Dum Jesum eripere Pilatus conatur,
Judaeorum furia magis inflammatur,
Et tumultus populi ingens excitatur,
Et plebis vox intonat ut crucifigatur.
 
Traditur militibus, vinculis arctatur,
Undique verberibus corpus cruentatur,
Caput regis gloriae spinis coronatur,
Postque flexis genibus quisquis irritator.
 
Ecce caro tenera nostri Salvatoris,
Ad columnam nequiter coarctatur loris,
Sic flagellis caeditor impii tortoris,
Quod emanant rivuli rubei cruoris.
 
Post per urbis medium Jesus procedebat,
Et crucis patibulum humeris ferebat,
Ad fares, ad ostia populus fluebat,
Ejusque confusio omnibus patebat.
 
Ad pudoris cumulum, Jesu, denudaris,
Et vento ac frigori nudes spoliaris,
Innocens cum impiis in cruce damnaris,
Et quasi dux sceleris medio locaris.
 
Tensis ligno brachiis, manus conclavantur
Corpus, membra singula, pedes perforantur.
Nervi, venae, simili modo poenis tractabantur,
Pedes, plantae Domini ferro concavantur.
 
Fundunt rivos sanguinis membra Salvatoris,
Properet huc anima tristis peccatoris.
Ut hauriat quippiam sacrati liquoris,
Quo frequenter liniat vulnera doloris.
 
Lognens Jesus postea, Sitio, dicebat
Et acetum protinus felleque miscebat;
Ac infusum spongia ori porrigebat,
Quad degustans paululum, sumere nolebat.
 
Mi Jesu mirifice, quid est quod agebas?
Tu de siti congoerens, de truce silebas
Numquid hanc doloribus magis sentiebas;
Sed salutem potius nostram sitiebas ?
 
Vocem promens ultimam, Patrem invocasti,
Spiritum in manibus ejus commendasti:
Cum clamore valido tandem exspirnsti,
Et salutem omnium ita consummasti.
 
Nunc ego superbio, to humiliatis ;
Ego culpas perpetro, tu poenis gravaris;
Ego pomum mordeo, tu felle potaris;
Ego peto mollia, to dire cruciaris.
 
Cujus demum valeat mens vel lingua furi,
Quantum Virgo creditur intus cruciari;
Dum cernit jam mortuum latus vulnerari,
Atque Nati viscera lancea rimari?
 
Corpus quidem mortuum jam nil sentiebat,
Sed militis lancea pectus aperiebat :
Quam fixam in latere Filii videbat,
Unde aqua sanguine mixta effluebat.
 
Ad hunc ergo propera fontem Salvatoris,
Ut fluentis quippiam haurias dulcoris;
Atque vitae lavacrum pretium cruoris,
Hinc tui curatio profluat languoris.
 
Redemptor fidelium, Tu qui sic obisti,
Per cruorem vulnerum de Te quem fudisti,
Ne relinquas orphanos quos sic redemisti;
Mitte nobis Spiritum tuis quem dedisti.
 
Sumus quidem miseri rei peccatores,
Et multorum criminum magni debitores;
Sed sint tua vulnera tuique livores
Pro nobis et hostia ac intercessores.
 
Rex aeterne a gehennae salva supplicio,
Quos peccato solvis dato tuae mortis pretio.
 
Jesu bone, sic dispone horam nostri transitus,
Ut ad choram Angelorum noster pergat spiritus. Amen

Lex Orandi Lex Credendi

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We don't have enough new Churches built and consecrated these days for this to have become a noticeable problem, but after putting part of the following text on Counter Cultural Father's blog the other day, I realised that it might be of wider interest.

This is by Archbishop Bugnini and explains the changes to the rite of Blessing of a Church and an Altar in the new dispensation.  It includes two of his footnotes.

The material building is a sign of the Church as people of God. This Church becomes visible when the Christian community gathers with its ministers and the local bishop to inaugurate a place of worship that it wanted and has built. If possible, the people go in procession to the church; there they and the individuals who worked on the building of the church hand it over in symbolic fashion to the bishop; its doors are solemnly opened and the community enters.

The bishop takes possession of the presidential chair. He then blesses the water that will be used in sprinkling the faithful, the altar, and the walls of the church. This sprinkling has taken on a new meaning: in the old rite it was regarded primarily as a purification; now it is a reminder of baptism and a call to conversion.
After the singing of the Gloria and collect, the inauguration begins at the ambo, the place where the word of God is proclaimed and where the book of the Scriptures is solemnly enthroned.

The homily is followed by the most expressive actions in the rite of dedication: the invocation of the saints and the deposition of their relics beneath the altar;8 the prayer of dedication;9 the anointing of their relics and church walls by the bishop, who can be helped by other priests as at a concelebration; lighting of the incense on the altar and incensensation of the altar; preparation of the altar and lighting of it and the church.

The Eucharistic liturgy has a proper preface. After communion the place where the Eucharist is to be reserved is inaugurated by solemnly bringing the Blessed Sacrament there. The entire celebration ends with a solemn blessing.

8. The relics of the saints are placed beneath the altar and not in the table; the latter is not to be incised. Furthermore, the relics are not to be in the form of small "fragments" but are to be "meaningful," that is, of sufficient size; otherwise the rite is to be omitted.  The relics are carried into the church in the entrance procession.
9. This point was also the subject of lengthy discussion. Initially the study group thought that the preface of the Mass should serve as the prayer for the dedication of the church. But then the celebration would have been deprived of a characteristic element and one of great importance and instructional value. Therefore the decision was reviewed, and the prayer of dedication was retained.

This is all taken from page 796 of the translation of Bugnini's The Reform of the Liturgy 1948-1975.

Note that the altar of sacrifice has been cast aside in a footnote.  Note that in the same footnote the rationale of relics has been cast aside.  Note that in another footnote the very reformers had to be reminded about the reason behind the structure of their worship.  Note further up that an element of the rite has changed meaning.

Oh so wrong! in oh so many ways! Even more than in the changes in the Mass "the enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off".
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Looking To The Future

NOT a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corpse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light
And the lantern dimly burning.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
Not in sheet nor in shroud we wound him;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him.

Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
But we steadfastly gazed on the face of the dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

We thought, as we hollow'd his narrow bed
And smoothed down his lonely pillow,
That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head,
And we far away on the billow!

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone,
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him;
But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

But half of our heavy task was done
When the clock struck the hour for retiring,
And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory.

Actuosa Participatio

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A great service provided by Shane is a series of what you might call e-scrapbooks: cuttings from Irish papers and journals chronicling the changes which took place in the Church around the time of the Vatican Council.

One piece - a monument to lucid prose - is a paper read to a Liturgical Congress in Glenstal Abbey in 1961 by Bishop (later Cardinal) Conway.  I will only reproduce a part of it here, but this section, on how the faithful should approach the Canon, is full of food for thought.

Closely linked with this is the second means which I have already mentioned - the focusing of greater attention on the Preface and Canon of the Mass. There is no need to emphasise that here again one must be realistic. Large numbers of our people assist at Mass most devoutly by reciting their own prayers or meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary and it would be wrong to discourage them from this. But a large and growing number of people use the Missal and it is of these that I am thinking in the, present context. Because one does get the impression that not all of those who are using the Missal derive the benefit from it that they should - that they concentrate rather a lot on getting the right Mass or getting the Collects correctly, and that the core or the Mass, the great Eucharistic prayer which is the Preface and the Canon, does not speak to them as it should. If that is so it is a great pity because nothing can compare with the simple strength and beauty of this prayer, whose roots go back to the earliest centuries of the Church, for bringing home to the faithful the sacrificial character of what is happening and the fact that the plebs sancta are participating in it. The wonderful prayer of the Preface which soars like the flight of an eagle up to the very throne of God where the Cherubim and Seraphim are singing Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, the profound bow of the priest at the Te Igitur now that he is standing before the altar of God, the simple opening words of his address: "Most Merciful Father, we humbly beg and beseech thee ... to please accept these gifts, these offerings, this holy unspotted sacrifice", the, prayer for the Church "throughout the whole world", the calling on the heavenly court, the stark poignancy of the petitions of the Hanc  Igitur: "arrange our days in Thy peace; save us from eternal damnation; number us among the flock of thy chosen ones" and so on. Nothing, I think, can compare with the simple beauty and dignity of this ancient prayer whose ipsissima verba must have fallen front the lips of Saint Patrick when he celebrated Mass here and which have been uttered by every priest who has said Mass in Ireland since his time. Nothing can surpass the simple and ineffable way in which it teaches the great truths we have been speaking about and applies them to the very action which is taking place - the notion of sacrifice and the plebs sancta who are participating in it are threaded through every paragraph and that in a language which the people can easily understand: “therefore O Lord, we beseech Thee, to please accept this sacrifice from us Thy servants and from thy whole Family ..." And yet, to very large numbers of our people this prayer is virtually unknown.

There are, I think, a number of reasons for this. For one thing, although the Latin is transparently clear, it is very often translated in Missals into rather stilted and archaic language (one version in a popular Missal speaks of "all true professors of the Catholic and apostolic faith").  Again it is often unattractively printed in a single narrow column, with nothing to make it stand out in prominence as it should and with little assistance to the eye in reading it intelligently. Lastly it is a prayer which requires some little explanation; the architecture of its various parts, the sequence of its ideas, are not immediately obvious (although they are there and very beautiful) and some of the references in it (like those to Abraham and Abel) may not reveal their full significance to the ordinary faithful. I think there would be a great deal to be said for having a clearly and attractively printed version of this prayer, In language which reflects the limpid  freshness of the Latin, made out as a text for study in the schools. It is difficult to believe that people would not grow to love it and use it always at Mass if once they really came to know it. And I think too that there would be something to be said for having it, along with, perhaps the offertory prayers, printed separately for the use of people who perhaps feel somewhat overawed by the Missal itself. Something like that used to be done in the old-fashioned prayer-books, and one feels that many people who never used a Missal, knew and loved the Canon of the Mass, without recognising it as such, in a way that some people who now use the Missal do not.

As The Dog Returns To Its Vomit

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Q: Who said that state provision of welfare would 'eliminate selective elimination' thus leading to more congenitally deformed and feckless people?

A: The Manchester Guardian, welcoming the NHS on 5 July 1948.

Eugenist then, eugenist now; more honest then, better at euphemistic language now.
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Changing Church Teachings

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For anybody who has been watching the CBCEW wrestling with the issue of marriage recently, here is something which might make one think “plus ça change ...”

On 7 May 1964 the Hierarchy of England and Wales published a statement on Contraception (h/t to Shane for the link).

"It has even been suggested that the Council could approve the practice of contraception. But the Church, while free to revise her own positive laws, has no power of any kind to alter the laws of God. “Any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offence against the laws of God and nature.” — (Pius XI, Encyclical Letter “Christian Marriage,” 1930).

The Pope, in saying this, was not introducing a new doctrine. Fifteen hundred years ago St. Augustine bore witness to the same belief and practice in the Catholic Church: “Intercourse is unlawful and wicked where the conception of the offspring is prevented.” — (De Coniug. Adult. 11, 12). In our own day, Pope Pius XII has spoken with equal bluntness: “This precept is as valid to-day as it was yesterday, and it will be the same to-morrow and always, because it does not imply a precept of human law but is the expression of a law which is natural and divine.” — (Address to Catholic midwives, October, 1951).

While recalling the plain teaching of Christ, we nevertheless wish to express our fatherly compassion for Catholic husbands and wives who sometimes find themselves in a position of great difficulty. We know that sometimes there can be an agonising choice between natural instincts and the law of God. Our hearts are full of sympathy, but we cannot change God’s law. We must all — married and unmarried, priest and layman — realise that following Christ calls for sacrifice and self-denial. Holy Scripture, Ecumenical Councils and the Popes, are at one in declaring that, aided by Divine grace, all God’s children are capable of chaste living. “There is no possible circumstance in which husband and wife cannot, strengthened by the grace of God, fulfil their duties faithfully and preserve purity in wedlock” — (Pius XI, Encyclical Letter “Christian Marriage,” 1930).

Many husbands and wives are troubled in conscience. They know that the Church is an infallible guide in matters of faith and morals. But doubts are shown in their minds by imprudent statements questioning the competence of the Church in this particular question. It is true that progress is made in the understanding of Christian doctrine. The Church is the Body of Christ and is always growing in wisdom and knowledge. But truth cannot contradict itself. The bishops feel bound to proclaim the unchanging nature of God’s law. We would be failing in our duty as pastors of souls were we to remain silent when so many voices are being raised to lead our people astray. The faithful are not incapable of the high degree of virtue which the observance of God’s law sometimes demands. Let them beware of false leaders: “If the blind lead the blind, both fall into the pit.” — (Matt. XV: 14.)"

A clear statement, you will agree, on where the Catholic Church stands.

On 17 September 1968 the Catholic Bishops published a document responding to Humanæ Vitæ. It included the following statement:

"The Pope, bishops, clergy and faithful must all be true to conscience. But we are bound to do everything in our power to make sure that our conscience is truly informed. Neither this Encyclical nor any other document of the Church takes away from us our right and duty to follow our conscience. But if we were to neglect the guidance of the Church, morality could easily become subjective. This would be disastrous. It is well to remember the “Declaration on Religious Freedom” in the Second Vatican Council: “In the formation of their consciences, the Christian faithful ought carefully to attend to the sacred and certain doctrine of the Church. For the Church is, by the will of Christ, the teacher of the truth. It is her duty to give utterance to, and authoritatively to teach, that truth which is Christ Himself, and also to declare and confirm by her authority those principles of the moral order which have their origins in human nature itself.”

Theologians will seek clarification of the teaching in the Encyclical. Much of the field of human sexuality remains to be explored. We must ourselves continue sponsoring such research with assistance to initiatives already taken and the pooling of experience already gained. The Pope himself exhorts doctors to persevere in their studies in order to benefit the married people who consult them. We need to learn to what extent secular science can contribute to a solution of marriage problems.

We must also enquire what are the implications of the Encyclical’s reference to the use of therapeutic means. Those competent in these matters will continue their researches but the personal problems have to be faced by faithful couples genuinely wanting to do God’s will but facing formidable obstacles."

Not quite as black and white, perhaps. But then even before the encylical had been published, an Archbishop had felt able to tell the priests of his diocese:

“The Church’s awareness of the essential values of marriage especially as a ‘community of love’ has undergone remarkable development in the recent past. If in a given case these values are seriously endangered by following the Church’s traditional teaching on contraception, an individual couple may judge that they are excused from the observance of the concrete directive which is embodied in this teaching.”

Archbishop Beck, this was.

Bugnini And The Offertory

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Ben Trovato has posted here on the changes to the Offertory in the New Mass.  I had a look at Bugnini's History of the Reform to see how he described the changes.

Here they are: forgive the punctuation, which was American anyway and has probably been mangled in the OCR process.  bear in mind too that I have extracted his comments on the Offertory from his section on the revision of the Mass. Bear in mind that there is some paraphrase from me to try to keep the sense.

By 1965 a proposal for a new Order of Mass was under consideration.

The offertory begins with the washing of hands; it continues with the preparation of the gifts, which are brought to the altar, where the celebrant places them on the altar to the accompaniment of short formulas.

A passage from the Didache (with some adaptation) was proposed for the placing of the bread on the altar: "As this bread was scattered and, having been gathered, is now one, so may your Church be gathered into your kingdom." For the chalice: "Wisdom has built herself a house; she has mixed her wine and set her table. Glory to you through all ages" (Prov 9:1-2). The Fathers approved the formulas, with five nays for the formula for the bread.)

After the prayer "In a spirit of humility . ," the celebrant immediately says aloud the prayer over the gifts; he then enters into the Eucharistic Prayer by beginning the dialogue before the preface.

On 24 October 1967 an experiment was made of this Mass.


It must be said flatly that the experiment was not a success and even that it had an effect contrary to the one intended and played a part in the negative vote that followed. Few of the Fathers were disposed and ready for the experiment; this was even more true of those who had grasped the value and essential character of the normative Mass. The majority of the Fathers entered the Sistine Chapel with their minds made up and ill-disposed to the new Mass.

As a result a vote was taken

3. Observations on the liturgy of the Eucharist:
a) The offertory seems impoverished; therefore, keep the prayers and rites now in use, especially the mingling of water with the wine and the accompanying prayer.
b) The prayers to be said by the priest privately during the offertory should be obligatory.
c) The Orate, fratres and its answer should be kept.


All these details show how disagreeable many of the Fathers found the path of reform. It is not easy to cut one's ties with age-old practices, open oneself to new horizons, and force oneself to accept the demands expressed in the signs of the times. That which may seem obvious in theory must come to grips in practice with armour-clad contingencies.

In addition, a unique international assembly such as a Synod shows the human variations amid which the Church lives, grows, and acts.

Among the qualifications opposing viewpoints are at times found side by side. For example, one man calls for more numerous moments of silence, but another calls for the elimination of all such moments; one asks greater freedom of action for the conferences, bishops, and individua:, celebrants, while another-and there were many-asks for rigid, specific inflexible legislation.

An editor was left with the task of selecting and choosing from the mass of materials thus provided and of proceeding with extreme cautie-to build the house of prayer. It was the Consilium that had to undertake this task, which demanded responsibility, sensitivity, and prudence, and to do so in accordance with the guidelines provided by the Fathers.

After all comments had been taken into consideration, a report was sent to the Pope on 10 December. After pointing out that the negative votes received should not be taken as being in any way representative, it brought to the attention of the Holy Father that in the Offertory every "action" should to be accompanied by a formula. After considering the reasons pro and con the Orate Fratres, and with a view to giving prominence especially to the prayer over the gifts, the dialogue before the preface, and the Canon, the Consilium was not averse to doing away with it, though if the Pope thought appropriate to keep it, the formulas would be revised. The problem was discussed at length in the Consilium. The following arguments were offered in favor of retention: the formula is in current use and is one of those in which the congregation participates more fully; it is an expression of participation in the offering of the sacrifice; unlike other prayers of the offertory, this one does not anticipate ideas proper to the Eucharistic Prayer. Against retention: lack of uniformity in the way the Church uses the formula (said aloud in read Masses; said in a low voice in sung Masses); lack of congregational participation because of the difficulties in translating the formula in many regions; it detracts from the solemn dialogue of the preface; the difficulty of some ideas expressed in it ("my" sacrifice and "yours," as though these were two distinct and juxtaposed sacrifices); repetition of ideas already expressed during the prayer of the faithful in the intention for the congregation here gathered.

As an experiment, the new Mass was said in the presence of the Pope early in January 1968 in simply said, mainly said with hymns, and sung forms. The Pope commented:

The offertory seems lacking, because the faithful are not allowed any part in it (even though it should be the part of the Mass in which their activity is more direct and obvious) and because the offertory formulas are reserved to the celebrant and are said silently and in Latin. The offertory should be given special prominence so that the faithful (or their representatives) may exercise their specific role as offerers.

(The offertory rites were organized differently than in the original schema for the normative Mass. Their sequence was the one regularly followed in the celebration of Mass that time: placing of the bread on the altar with a formula said in a low voice by the celebrant; mixing of water with the wine, with its formula; presentation of the wine, with its formula; the prayer "In a spirit of humility"; washing of the hands, immediately followed by the prayer over the gifts.

The texts differed from those found in the first schema for the normative Mass and were the product of a study undertaken by Professor Jounel at the bidding of the secretariat of the Consilium:

-Presentation of the bread: "Holy Father, accept this bread which we offer from the fruit of our labors, that it may become the body of your Only-begotten Son."
-Mingling of water with the wine: "Lord, by the mystery of this water and wine may it come to share the divinity of him who deigned to share our humanity, Jesus Christ, your Son and our Lord."
-Presentation of the chalice: "Lord, we offer you this cup that expresses the mystery of the unity of your people, so that it may become the blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ."

-Washing of the hands: "Create a clean heart in me, God, and renew in me an upright spirit.")

The views of the clerics who had attended the Masses were collected as follows:


First remark: "I do not see why the offertory is still in Latin and said in a low voice. An offertory that is more understandable (in language and gesture) would be more effective." Another made the point that "the rite should have an air of greater simplicity. It should be reduced to a simple offering of the bread and wine."

Several thought the Lavabo to be superfluous: "It should be kept only in Masses in which the celebrant must really dirty his hands, for example, by using incense. Eliminate it from other Masses."

By the end of January, and with an aim of starting to use the new Mass in Advent 1968, Bugnini made a statement of the Pope's views:

"There should be a single set of formulas that will express the idea of an offering of human toil in union with the sacrifice of Christ. There should also be active participation of the congregation, at least when there is no singing. In the latter case, the priest recites the formulas in a low voice."

In April the Consilium met to discuss the Pope's wishes. It concluded regarding the Offertory that there should be a new redaction of the formulas. But the experts asked again that the priest be free not to say the prayers aloud, even when there was no singing. The reason: to give the faithful an opportunity to recollect themselves in some moments of silent prayer after the liturgy of the Word. The experts also pointed out that the acclamation of the people did not fit in with the structure of the offertory and that it duplicated their participation through their "Amen" at the prayer over the gifts. The new redaction yielded substantially the formulas later approved and put into use. In the schema, which was then submitted for study to the prefects of the curial agencies and to the Holy Father, the phrase "which we offer to you" ("quem/quod tibi offerimus") was lacking. The Pope was the one who added it. This formula, which was the same for the bread and the wine, was judged appropriate by the committee, because it expresses God's generosity, human collaboration through work, and the destining of the gifts for the Eucharist, while not promoting an erroneous understanding of the meaning of the offertory. This meaning is clearly different from the meaning of the sacrifice of Christ's body and blood. In his letter of February 26, the secretary had suggested the adoption for this purpose of the acclamation in the Didache: "Blessed be the Lord for ever." The Orate, fratres was not included in this schema either.

Bishop Manziana was asked by the Pope for his comments.

"Offertory: This part of the Mass is especially criticized both because of the change of formulas and because of the formulas proposed . . . . In my view, they are successful and remove the equivocal impression that the offertory rite is a "little Canon"; they are further explained by the prayer over the gifts. The collaboration of human work with creation is a disposition for sacrifice. If the newer prayers over the gifts are insufficiently expressive, they can be revised.

With regard to the formula for mixing water with the wine: . . . it is to be noted that the present formula is a Christmas oration which in its full form is not suitable for the action. The preparation of the altar for the sacrifice, after and not during the prayers of the faithful, allows room for singing, and for an offertory procession, if there is to be one.

(The Pope had been giving special attention to the organization of this part of the Mass; in the margin at this point he lightly penciled in a question mark.)


By September, the Pope made his comments on the final version:

"Offertory. The Pope noted that the formulas used in offering the bread and the wine are two fine euchological utterances, but they do not express any intention of offering if the phrase "which we offer to you" is removed from the two formulas; without it they are not offertory formulas. The phrase seems to be what gives the gesture and words their specific meaning as offering. However, I leave the decision as to their retention or removal to the collegial judgment of the Consilium."

After lengthy discussion the collegial judgment of the Consilium took this form: 12 for retention of the phrase, 14 against, and 5 in favor of finding an expression that would refer to the presentation of the elements for the sacrifice, but without using the term "offer." This was the word that caused difficulty, since it seemed to anticipate, or at least detract from the value of, the one true sacrifice of the immolated Christ that is expressed in the Canon.

The phrase suggested was kept, since it could ease the difficulties earlier pointed out in the translations. The Italian version, for example, has: "which we present to you." Almost all the languages followed the same line.
With regard to the offertory, the Pope also asked: "Is it necessary to shorten and thus mutilate the prayer, '0 God, who wonderfully ennobled ...'?' The reply to this was the one given in the observations of Bishop Manziana, and the text remained as it was.

Orate, fratres. The Pope asked: "Should the Orate, fratres be removed? Is it not a beautiful, ancient, and appropriate dialogue between celebrant and congregation before beginning the prayer over the gifts and the sacrificial liturgy? Its removal would be the loss of a pearl."

Here again the reasons were given, and they were such that the Consilium once again asked itself whether the Orate, fratres should be kept. The result: 15 against retention, 14 for, 1 in favor provided some phrases were altered, 1 abstention. The prayer was therefore kept.

Mac's Meme

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Mac has decided on a meme: which three books (apart from the Bible, Missal, Breviary, Simple Prayer Book etc and Shakespeare) should she have on her Kindle.

(A Kindle is an electronic pretend book, by the way. I have books.)

"You post the rules and a link back to the person who tagged you. You also tell them that they've been tagged on their own blog, rather than just hoping they'll discover it for themselves. Then you decide what three books are essential reading for anyone with a Kindle. Reasons would be good, but not essential. Then you tag five people."

The books she should have on it are:

 - the complete OED;
 - the complete Dickens;
 - the complete P G Wodehouse.

At least that's what I think!

Over to Dorothy, Ben, Richard, and the Left Footer for their views. 

(Yes, I know it said five: "God's scorn for all men governing" etc)

How Did We Get Here (Sources)

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I deliberately didn't footnote the sources for this trilogy, as I had hoped it might be sufficiently provocative to Magic Circulistas to encourage a response.  That they haven't responded either means:

a.     they recognise the sources and are keeping quiet;
b.     they have decided that not responding might lead to lack of interest; or, and most likely
c.     they have guessed correctly that nobody is going to read this stuff who doesn't agree with it anyway.

I had been very careful to stick to just three sources:

The Worlock Archive by Clifford Longley (2000) - he was allowed to go through Worlock's papers, presumably to prepare a positive accompaniment to the official biography.  The book is a revelation for anyone who wants to understand Worlock's metholodology.

Liverpool 1980 (1981) the official report of the NPC which includes all of the pre-Congress material, the documents prepared by the groups, the final report, and The Easter People, as well as a wealth of detail about the manipulation organisation of those who took part.

Basil Hume By His Friends (1999): a collection of unctuous hagiography and some Tabletista appreciation of how Hume was one of them, and what he did as one of them, for them.

The conceit was that any attack from the Magic Circle can be met by: "but this comes from something written by one of yours".  I've tweeted (from these sources) a couple of Hume and Worlock one-liners  on other subjects along the way: things like Worlock writing about the Lay Apostolate: "Unless (the layman) was properly formed and trained for his task, he could be a menace." (5 March 1964)  Maybe we could work up an anthology ...

I'm going to start work on something about the Catholic Church in England and Wales and Humanae Vitae.  This already overlong trilogy had in draft some knockabout stuff about the way at least one Bishop was happy about one of his priests saying something different in the Confessional from what he was telling them to say in his encyclicals, but I held back, not only to tighten the piece I was writing about how the CBCEW had got its teeth and claws into Catholic Life, but because I still can't rid myself of the notion that no "official Catholic" could be so base, however well documented the baseness appeared to be.

And in less than 24 hours, Catholic Voices told us that we no longer believed in repealing the Abortion Act!

They will ignore me, and that's fair enough.  But these are resources for all of us to use to challenge the narrative of the CBCEW and its agents.  This blog is not called the Muniment Room for nothing!
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How Did We Get Here (Part Three And Final)

And it is here that I shall home back in on my starting point: how was the Bishops’ Conference to be structured, and what role would what lay people play in it?  Here is the section on Conference and Diocese.  I don’t apologise for quoting at length.

“112. The sense of sharing in the life and mission of the Church comes from our understanding of baptism as the means through which we are drawn mystically into Christ's body and are formed thereby into a community.  Rooted in Christ we are set free to live and work together in a loving, confident partnership.  We are truly incorporated into a body which is living and growing, a community marked by love, care, acceptance and respect. This community of faith is Christ-centred through its worship, teaching and service.  At its heart is the living presence of Jesus Christ in the eucharist.  And the eucharist both celebrates and forms the community: at the same time it both expresses and creates the Church.  It gives the community a missionary purpose.  Each local Church, each diocese, deanery and parish is a living expression of God's people.

113. The Second Vatican Council, in its Decree on the Bishops' Pastoral Office n. 36, recalled that “from the earliest ages of the Church, bishops in charge of particular churches, inspired by a spirit of fraternal charity and by zeal for the universal mission entrusted to the apostles, have pooled their resources and their aspirations in order to promote both the common good and the good of individual churches”.  But although this relationship of mutual help was long established, until recently relatively few countries had formalised the relationship in a Bishops' Conference, with statutes recognised by the Holy See as a basis for its exercising juridical power in certain circumstances.  The establishment of our Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, which was formally recognised in January 1967, was a natural consequence of this grant of juridical status, but in many ways its concern has been primarily with pastoral affairs.  To that time meetings of the Hierarchy of England and Wales were no more than opportunities for consultation between individual local Ordinaries who might or might not agree a common policy in administering their own dioceses.  The Bishops' Conference, as now established, is a nice balance between on the one hand adequate responsibility and initiative for the local bishop's pastoral care for his diocese, and on the other hand his collegial responsibility for the mission of the universal Church and especially for the good of the territory or country of which his diocese is only part.  Strictly a national Church as such does not exist: there must be respect for the reasonable autonomy of a diocese, and for this there is a strong theological as well as historical basis.  Nevertheless a national group of dioceses, if not exactly a national Church, is a reality. It responds to the needs of a particular nation or territory; it relates to the Holy See with regard to the Church in that nation and it can take certain national initiatives. The National Pastoral Congress was a good example of this.

114. The scope of our Bishops' Conference is explicitly drawn from the Council's decree we have just mentioned:  “An Episcopal Conference is a kind of council in which bishops of a given nation or territory jointly exercise their pastoral office by way of promoting that greater good which the Church offers mankind especially through forms and programmes of the apostolate which are fittingly adapted to the circumstances of the age” (Christus Dominus, n. 38, 1).  The Conference possesses detailed statutes regarding its structure and procedures, and it makes provision also for “episcopal commissions, consisting of bishops and experts”, who, in accordance with the powers granted to them, assist the Conference in the fulfilment of its functions”. These commissions are of an advisory or consultative nature, each with a bishop as its president or chairman, and with a membership which is drawn from among clergy, religious and laity. “To ensure that the basis of the advice offered should be reasonably comprehensive, membership of each commission should be widely-drawn and varied in age-range and experience. But its task is essentially to offer advice to the bishops and to assist the Church through the Conference in the various fields of the Church's mission for which responsibility is shared but in which the bishops as a body have a particular ministry to fulfil'” (Review Committee Report, 1971, n. 8).

115. We welcome this opportunity to place on record our gratitude to the laity, clergy and religious who in the past thirteen years have served on these commissions and have given our Conference and the Church in this country able and generous assistance.  The needs of society and the challenges facing the Church change constantly.  From time to time it is necessary for us to review both the procedures of our Conference and the structure and work of its constituent commissions.   For example, in an earlier section of this Message we have indicated that, if we are to work more closely with the British Council of Churches, it will be necessary for us to review our commission structure to make sure that there is no unnecessary duplication or wastage of our resources.  At such a time it may well be desirable to consider the establishment of a commission to advise specifically about pastoral concerns and developments, including the implementation of certain policy recommendations in this Message.  This would provide for the co-ordination of experience and possibly of resources, but not as an interference in the proper responsibilities and local initiatives of individual dioceses.  But for the immediate future, save where we have indicated that we are taking direct action ourselves, the follow-up to the Congress lies definitely within the responsibility of the dioceses, aided locally, we hope, by the religious orders, by lay organisations and other apostolic groups and of course by the delegates themselves.

116. We have already referred to the statement by the Council Fathers that “a diocese constitutes a particular Church in which the one holy, catholic and apostolic Church of Christ is truly present and active” (Christus Dominus, n. 11).  Each diocese is therefore a community of faith called to fulfil the life and mission of God's people in an effective way. Its capacity to realise its worshipping, sanctifying, missionary and pastoral purpose, within the total mission of the universal Church, is the primary consideration in assessing its viability. In 1974 a working party established by the Bishops' Conference produced a report entitled Ground-Plan.  This was published as a consultative document to guide those concerned with the possible re-organisation and re-division of the dioceses of England and Wales. Certain principles were offered; since then two new dioceses have been established and proposals for two others were, after consultation, set aside.  Other developments will doubtless be carried through in the future.

117. It is generally agreed that a diocese must be an effective pastoral “unit”. Yet that very description implies something rather impersonal, whereas there is an increasing awareness of a diocese as a community of the faithful people of God, led by a bishop able to make suitable provision for their spiritual and pastoral needs. It is not just a convenient geographical unit with appropriate numbers.  Great importance is rightly attached to the mutual sense of “belonging” between pastors and people.  Clearly the numbers who can be known to a bishop and who can know him are limited but the real criterion is the bishop's capacity, with and through his collaborators to provide for his priests and people a leadership and service suited to their purpose as a ”particular” Church. The service required is bound to vary with the nature of the diocese, its social and cultural needs, its rural or urban situation.

118. Diocesan development remains under constant review. In the meantime certain valuable experiences are being gained from discovering the relative advantages of the creation of new smaller dioceses (at a time when the overall number of priests is still falling), the use of area bishops acting as a team under the leadership of the bishop of the whole diocese, and the system of episcopal vicars, not themselves necessarily bishops but exercising ordinary jurisdiction in their various spheres of responsibility.  It seems unlikely that any one solution will necessarily serve every part of our countries.  The important consideration remains the effective spiritual and pastoral collaboration of the bishop with the laity, clergy and religious of the diocese in their life and purpose as a community of faith.”

You might think that the story ends here but there is one last story to tell.  One of the promises made to the members of the NPC by the Cardinal in his final sermon was that “in loyalty and obedience we shall lay before him our hopes and anxieties” – “him” in this case, meant the Holy Father, Pope John Paul.  The opportunity to do same came shortly afterwards: Archbishops Hume and Worlock were elected by the Bishops’ Conference to be their representatives at the European Synod of Bishops, and off they went, with Father “Vin” Nichols, who had chaired one of the NPC groups, as Worlock’s assistant.

The Archbishops presented a copy of the conclusions of the NPC to Pope John Paul II either open on the page demanding access to contraception or not, depending on who was telling the story to whom, only for it to be completely ignored by the Pope (whether contemptuously or not again depends on who was telling the story to whom).  The two Archbishops then tried to sell both the NPC view on contraception and its view on the admittance of divorced Catholics to the sacraments to the Synod: they were heard politely and ignored: the 1980 Synod marked the point at which John Paul II’s putting an end to the “spirit of Vatican II” began to become Church policy again after a decade of doctrinal anarchy.

It should also be noted that to their great and lasting credit, two English Bishops, Holland of Salford, and Lindsay of Hexham and Newcastle, denounced in The Universe what they saw as a misrepresentation of the views of the Bishops of England and Wales by Hume and Worlock in Rome.
On their return, they found themselves greeted with a communication from the National Council of Priests, welcoming The Easter People but disappointed that Hume and Worlock had not pressed the case for it sufficiently at the Synod for it to have been adopted by the Church at large.  Mgr David Norris, Secretary of the Bishops’ Conference wrote a note of the meeting, which included an extraordinarily candid section about the Synod: 

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

The Cardinal replied that he considered that conservatism was succeeding in many parts of the world and was also rising in Rome.  We had to remember that Western Europe was now a minority in the Church and places like Africa and South America were very conservative.  Our local church has to find its way in the present circumstances and it is not always clear how it should proceed.
The Cardinal was sure that it would not help to have public calls on our bishops to act by themselves. 
There were some conservatives in this country who were already attacking what had already been done by himself and Archbishop Worlock.

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

Hume and Worlock made sure that this record of their meeting was suppressed – in fact it was not published until 2000.  But it shows that the decision had been made to trim: to appear outwardly as loyal as any other Conference, while doggedly pursuing as much of the NPC/Easter People agenda as could be got away with.

I thought, the first time I showed a friend this piece in draft that the awfulness of what happened on the return from Rome spoke for itself, but it didn’t.  I forget how much time has passed, how many things have happened.  By avoiding a fight over the poster issues, Hume and Worlock got away with much more.

The Hierarchies in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the US and Holland had picked a fight with the Vatican over the “spirit of Vatican II”.  All lost, though the losses to the Church in those countries were grievous.  Hume, the smooth Prince of the Church, and Worlock, the outstanding apparatchik, made sure that didn’t happen in England and Wales.  Instead, they invited the Pope to come on a pastoral visit, and allowed the schmaltzy side of British ultramontanism temporarily to seem to take over while, with the help of successive complaisant Nuncios, the plan took root and took hold as the old Bishops were succeeded by priests who were “on message”.

And it is all of this which, for the last thirty years, has governed the way the Church in England and Wales has been run.  A sympathetic Nunciature has made sure that the agenda has been advanced: it hasn’t changed.   Look, for example, at the stranglehold on liturgical music by a tiny coterie of activist laypeople.  Look at the way that Catholic schools stopped preparing children for First Confession and First Holy Communion so that the catechesis could take place in parishes, run by lay people.  Look at the multiplicity of lay “ministries” in the Church.

And understand why the Internet is such a threat.  Understand that there are Catholic voices which belong to many people who are finding them and using them, and understand that losing control, as the regimes in Eastern Europe lost control in 1989, or as regimes in the Middle East and North Africa lost control in 2010, and you may begin to understand why the pathological hatred of any manifestation of “unofficial” Catholicism is so manifest today.

Maybe, as so often, Chesterton was looking close to home as well as more widely:

“We hear men speaking for us of new laws strong and sweet,
Yet is there no man speaketh as we speak in the street.
It may be we shall rise the last as Frenchmen rose the first,
Our wrath come after Russia's wrath and our wrath be the worst.
It may be we are meant to mark with our riot and our rest
God's scorn for all men governing. It may be beer is best.
But we are the people of England; and we have not spoken yet.
Smile at us, pay us, pass us. But do not quite forget.”

How Did We Get Here (Part Two)

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You are probably expecting me to say that the NPC voted through a set of propositions along the lines mentioned in part one above which the Bishops then ratified: in fact the story gets even more complicated.  The activist laity voted through a set of propositions too radical even for the Bishops, but the Bishops used what the laity asked for to create a set of structures which kept the Vatican from interfering in the Church in England and Wales for the rest of the Pontificate of John Paul II and which reinforced and solidified the hold of the activists on the whole of Catholic life.

Delegates were chosen by a complicated process, based on each diocese sending one delegate per 1000 of its normal Sunday Mass attendance, along with representatives of Catholic national organisations, HM Forces, universities, seminaries, religious orders, the commissions (?), the Prison Service, ethnic groups, and “a limited number of Catholics chosen because of their expertise, but whose national secular duties would normally exclude them from being chosen as members of diocesan delegations”.  The main criterion, however, was people who were able to spend a period of Friday to Tuesday at the NPC: not the sort of thing your average Catholic would want to do, or would be able to do.  The organisers prided themselves on choosing a bank holiday weekend, so those attending would only have to ask for two days off work: but how many people at that time had that degree of flexibility?  And how many housewives (there were rather more of them then than now) would be able to leave husband and children for such an extended period?  The activists, who would dominate anyway, would be predominantly middle class, articulate, and with agendas that reflected where they were in the world.

The Bishops were few in number, but the Council was not binding on them.  They were being manoeuvred by Hume and Worlock (and their agents) into a position where the cost to them of rejecting the most extreme propositions the Congress would propose would be the acceptance of limitations to their autonomy by the creation of stronger structures within the Episcopal Conference and a greater role for lay activists within these structures.

The losers- the squeezed middle - were the priests.  Both the Bishops and the lay members of the Congress treated them as though they were lay people with a special role something less than a Bishop's.  The role of the priest was to be eclipsed by the role of the activist lay person, without the Bishops surrendering any of their authority and independence downward.  The National Council of Priests, which would anyway be diminished by the shrinkage in the number of priests and the consequent need for more and more of them to have to be full time PPs rather than have the luxury of chaplaincies, special ministries and extended sabbaticals, gradually faded from the scene.

And so the Congress.  Seven themes were chosen, and within each of those themes a series of topics. 

The seven major themes for the agenda were: The People of God - Co-responsibility and Relationships; The People of God - Ministry, Vocation, Apostolate; Family and Society; Evangelisation; Christian Education and Formation; Christian Witness; Justice

Each theme was discussed in a separate sector of the Congress and in each sector there were approximately 300 delegates. But each item was itself divided into four or five topics or aspects: so for each topic group there were approximately 60 delegates. These 60 delegates were themselves to be divided into discussion groups of 12-15 delegates for preliminary work on each topic. The headings of the full agenda, with the topic titles, were as follows:

THEME A: PEOPLE OF GOD (i) Co -responsibility and Relationships
The Worshipping Community
The local Church: diocese, deanery, parish, basic communities, prayer groups
Co-responsibility and Consultation
Promotion of Christian Unity
Christian Stewardship and Church Finances

THEME B: PEOPLE OF GOD (ii) Ministry, Vocation, Apostolate
The Ordained Ministries: episcopate, priesthood, diaconate
The Community and Other Ministries
The Religious Life
The Apostolate of the Laity
The Role of Women

THEME C: FAMILY AND SOCIETY
Christian Marriage and the Family
Single People
Old People
Young People
Special Groups: disabled, immigrants, seafarers, non-Christians

THEME D: EVANGELISATION
At Home: the work of conversion
Missionary Activity Overseas
Funding and Sharing in Mission
World Development

THEME E: CHRISTIAN EDUCATION AND FORMATION
Parish Catechesis
Schools (including school liturgy)
Tertiary Education and Academic Life
Adult Education and Sacramental Living

THEME F: CHRISTIAN WITNESS
World of Work
Urban and Rural Life
Public and Civic Life
Communications

THEME G: JUSTICE
Human Rights
Racial Justice
International Peace
Prisoners

The obvious problem was that the division of delegates into such small groups would lead to fragmentation, so members of the Congress committee were not boarded out with families, as the delegates were, but were housed separately in Christ College, specifically so that they could consult before and after each day’s work.  Delegates were kept informed by means of a Congress newspaper.  A complex procedural system of voting, reporting back, drafting, considering drafts and reporting to Congress ensured that the final papers presented accurately reflected the way in which the activists present had been able to gather support for their vision of a new sort of Catholic Church in England and Wales, and in which the committee chose to present it.

This story is long enough already: I am not going to go through the reports on each of the subjects under discussion: they are depressingly predictable.  Much more interesting is the manner in which the Hierarchy used the results of the Congress, and how this played against a changing Church in which John Paul II was getting control in the Vatican, and the “spirit of Vatican II” was beginning to be reined in.

Key to understanding the sleight of hand that was to follow the NPC is the Cardinal’s Homily at the final Mass, which he preached at the Metropolitan Cathedral on 6 May 1980.  I won’t reproduce the whole thing, just some key sections:

“So the pilgrim Church of England and Wales has paused for a moment on its journey through history, and assembled here.  Our purpose has been to see whether or not we are on the right way, to discover, that is, whether we are truly disciples and followers of Jesus Christ, our Lord and our Saviour.  We felt, too, the need to examine many aspects of our Christian lives to ensure that we are in fact living in accordance with the truth that comes from the Gospel.

Indeed this Congress has been the prototype of what should take place in each of our parishes - it is the building of true community witnessing to the risen Christ always in our midst.   Our problem is to know how we can communicate to our families and parishes the spirit and atmosphere of these days, and how to awaken in the Catholic community a concern for the issues which have formed our Congress agenda.  Time for reflection and prayer are needed, but action cannot be delayed.

The Church is community; it is the people of God, the Body of Christ, the living Temple in which the Holy Spirit dwells.  Within that community each one of us has a role to play and a contribution to make.  Christ, our Lord, requires the laity to play an active and full part in the life of the Church under the leadership of their bishops, and this in virtue of the baptism they have received.  You, the laity, must share your insights with us, your bishops and priests, and you must collaborate in the apostolate.  And what riches you have brought to this Congress, and how much we, your pastors, need to listen to ‘the Spirit of truth, who directs the hearts of the faithful’, for this, the ‘sensus fidelium’, is necessary as we explore together the mystery of God and of his unfolding and developing plan for us, his sons and daughters.

We remind ourselves that we must all acknowledge the divine authority given by the Lord himself to him who is the successor of Peter.  It was with joy that we received the messages from the Holy Father, and to know that he had welcomed and blessed our Congress.  In loyalty and obedience we shall lay before him our hopes and anxieties.”

In his homily, Hume has turned the NPC from being the work of a few self-selecting people representative, not of the Church in England and Wales, but of a group of core activists, into the sensus fidelium: they have become the voice of the whole Church.  Not only that, but, under the leadership of the bishops, the role of the laity is to do more.  The final paragraph quoted here is important: we shall see why presently.

It is interesting to note that for a period Archbishop Heim was ill, and while he had been very supportive of the NPC, his deputy at the Apostolic Delegation in Wimbledon, Monsignor Mario Oliveri, was deeply suspicious.  While Heim was away ill, he allowed himself to become a channel through which Catholics outside of the NPC fold could denounce the Congress to the Vatican.  One paper he for¬warded was headed “REASONS WHY THE NATIONAL PASTORAI. CONGRESS OUGHT TO BE STOPPED”, and another complained that the Congress delegates “appeared to be drawn, on the whole, from either those holding progressive views or from amongst those who know little or nothing about the nature of the Church”.

Heim’s illness, though, was shortlived, and on his return to Wimbledon a process to reverse the damge began.  Various Bishops organized a letter writing campaign in support of the Congress, asking the Nunciature to ensure that the letters were forwarded to the Holy See.  By July 1980, Heim was apologizing to Worlock: “I am sorry about all this trouble which has arisen during my absence.  I believe that Rome is now properly informed and that any damage has been undone.”

Worlock had a dual role after the Congress: he was responsible for writing its official report, and was also responsible for arranging the drafting of the Bishops’ response to it.  (I write sentences, sometimes, and have to stop myself, reread what I have written, and confirm to myself that what I have written was really what happened.)  It is probably no surprise that both the official report, and the draft response, which sailed through the Bishops’ Conference, with barely an amendment, and was published as The Easter People, accorded so well with Worlock’s vision.