DIY Mass And Liturgical Abuse In The Old Rite

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In a discussion with The Thirsty Gargoyle this morning on Twitter, I said that it would be hard to imagine a priest saying Mass in Latin messing about with the rubrics.  I was thinking as I wrote about NO Mass, but he typed back: "Now, no, but there's plenty of anecdotal data of DIY Latin Masses back in the day".  He makes a very interesting point, for there was, of course, liturgical abuse by priests celebrating the Mass before the post-VII changes.

I am going to post an extract from O'Connell's "Celebration of Mass", in fact, an extract from the section on defective ways in which Mass can be celebrated: not the sections on Mass said too slowly or too quickly, or on what constitutes valid matter, or what happens if a wasp falls into the Chalice after the Consecration and dies, or what happens if a priest dies half way through Mass, but what Fr O'Connell calls "Arbitrary Changes in the Rite of Mass".

The big, big, difference between now and then, of course, is that the general expectation was that there was only one right way to say any particular Mass, and that, once it was decided which (licitly sayable) Mass was to be said, nothing was left to the priest: there was one way to say Mass properly.  Today, the priest has more options: dramatic options like "Which Eucharistic Prayer shall I say at this Mass?" which the pre-1967 priest could not have dreamed of; and therefore potentially has more ways of accidentally or deliberately going wrong.  But he still has rubrics: the rubrics may not be as prescriptive with regard to every detail as before, but the importance of sticking to the rubrics should be, it seems to me, to be as obviously necessary today as yesterday.

With that caveat: that today's rubrics are less prescriptive than yesterday's: look at Fr O'Connell's view on the gravity of intentionally messing about with the rubrics and ask yourself whether it is the same in both forms.  If you don't think it is, ask yourself whether or not that is because what the priest is doing at the altar has changed or not.

I should say in fairness that this musing has little to do with what The Thirsty Gargoyle and I were discussing earlier, and that I have taken the discussion off in a different direction all by myself - blame a quiet motorway on a late Sunday morning - but this might contribute to an understanding of why there is such a gulf between those who like (or who can take or leave) clown Masses, and those for whom they are an abomination.

 

Arbitrary Changes in the Rite of Mass

Despite a custom to the contrary - which is expressly reprobated in the code of canon Law - the celebrant of Mass is “to observe accurately and devoutly the rubrics” of the Missal, “and take care not to add other ceremonies or prayers by his own authority.”  Arbitrarily to change in, any way - by addition, omission, or transposition - the rite of the Mass is unlawful. So strict is the interpretation of this law that S.R.C. refused to allow the celebrant of Mass, for the purpose of gaining a rich indulgence, to pronounce, even in a low tone, the words "My Lord and my God" while looking on the sacred Host at the Elevation, and cited canon 818 to justify this refusal.

Whether the mutilation of the rite of Mass .would be a grave sin, or a venial one, or no sin at all (for a sufficient cause) is discussed by the moral theologians. Their reply is that this will depend on: (a) the motive for changing - is it because of contempt for the rubrics, culpable ignorance of them, gross indifference and carelessness, or from mere human frailty, like inculpable forgetfulness, or inattention, or from "devotion" of a wrong kind? (b) The nature and extent of the change - is it one that seriously concerns the reverence owed the Blessed Eucharist, does it occur in an important part of the Mass (important in itself, or because of some extrinsic reason, such as the mystical meaning of the part), is the addition, or omission, serious because of its length? It is regarded as grave to make even a comparatively small change in the Canon of the Mass, because of its intimate connection with the Sacrifice; and it is more serious to have omissions in the ordinary parts of the Mass, the parts that occur in every, or almost every Mass, than in extraordinary parts which occur sometimes only. Thus the omission of all the Prayers of Preparation at the foot of the altar, of the Gospel, of several of the offertory prayers, would be regarded as a notable omission; to omit the purification of the paten (unless there were no visible particles on it) or chalice, would be a grave want of reverence for the Blessed Sacrament; to omit the addition of water to the wine in the chalice, or the fraction of the Sacred Host, or the commingling of the two Sacred Species, would be
a serious omission because of the mystical meaning of these rites. But to omit the Gloria, or Creed, or prayers of commemoration, or the Last Gospel would not, ordinarily, be regarded as a grave omission.

Additions to the Rite

 Arbitrarily to add prayers or ceremonies, with the intention of introducing a new rite, or to a notable extent (especially prayers not found in the Missal), would be a grave violation of liturgical law. To add the Gloria (on days when it should be omitted), or Collects not allowed by the rubrics, or ejaculatory prayers would not, ordinarily, be grave. In general, private (vocal) prayers may not be introduced into the rite of Mass, except where the rubrics provide for it, e.g., at each Memento after the reception of the Sacred Host.

Remedying Omissions in the Rite

The directions of De Defectibus do not, generally speaking, encourage the repairing of nonessential omissions.  If the celebrant should omit anything belonging to the validity, or the integrity (e.g. the Offertory), of the rite of Mass, he must, of course, repair the omission.  If an omission be trivial, it need not be supplied, and may not be, if it is not noticed at once.  If an omission be notable (though not concerned with the validity or integrity of the Sacrifice) and can be easily be made good – because, e.g., it is noticed almost at once – and without causing scandal, it should be.  Thus, if the celebrant omitted, in error, the Gloria, or a commemoration, or the Creed, he must not interrupt the Mass to repair the omission, but he may, indeed should, repair it, if he adverts to it almost immediately.

We Are Our Own Worst Enemies

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Charles Crawford, a former British Ambassador in the Balkans and in Poland, is a witty and engaging writer, who has important things to say about Eastern European states and their transition.  He is also very, very, sound on speechwriting, and on communication in general.  He has written something about how pundits frame issues here, which I thought important enough to recommend recently as an introduction to why (in my view) we are being completely and utterly trounced on Life issues in the UK media.  Millions of Frenchmen march against same sex marriage, while in this country, the subject is so settled that there is barely a debate.

Charles Crawford explains how a subject can be framed, a narrative created, so that discussion can be shut off right from the start.  We are probably all aware of its happening: gay marriage, euthanasia; we are on the back foot before the discussion even begins to take place.

How sad to see that the organisation set up to combat this distortion, by putting Catholic Voices onto the front foot in combating media manipulation, has managed to be exactly as distortive in addressing an issue internal to the Catholic Church in England and Wales.

An Agency of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales came up with a remarkable figure recently: it said that in the 1930s, on average, only 6 secular priests were ordained each year for England and Wales, and that therefore, the current figure, while down somewhat from the high figures of the 1990s, the JPII years, were nevertheless much up on the 1930s .  This 1930s figure instinctively felt odd to several of us: "odd" in the sense of "surely palpably untrue" and we raised our concern, tentatively, via various social media, not least because it had been taken up by Catholic Voices, with a comment that hinted that the decline from the JPII days, was still nothing compared to the illusory good old days of bulging seminaries which trads like to talk about.

In case the hint wasn't clear, an egregious (though not a Catholic Voice) commentator spelled it out: 'Ordinations in E&W "higher than the 1950s, which some look back to nostalgically as an era of vigorous Catholicism"'.

To the credit of the Agency which originally posted the figures, it took them down when it was pointed out to them that in fact the figures for the period 1930-1940 were that 1539 secular and 794 regular priests were ordained.  Catholic Voices didn't: apparently, the only person who could do the correction was away.  And then an addition was made to its web page: you can still see the figures, but there is now a comment (so whoever was away is now back) to the effect that as queries about the reliability of the statistics have been raised, the Agency originally posting them is now making enquiries about their validity.

This is a classic example of the sort of treatment we get outside the Church, but it's a bit much when we get it inside as well.  Whatever the validity of arguments about post hoc ergo propter hoc, the fact remains that there were many more ordinations to the priesthood before Vatican II then there have been afterwards.  I would engage with some of the arguments about the reasons for the earlier quantity with some distaste, but I would engage.  I would engage with arguments about post-Vatican II selection of candidates being based on safer psychological criteria than previously with a mixture of anger and disdain, but I would engage.  But I will not engage with an argument based on figures that even their originator withdrew a week ago.

It is ironic that those of us who want to ensure that we are not manipulated by the World have to look over our left shoulders as well.  There is a piece of news - that vocations are on the rise again - that could have been a good news story, but it has been twisted into an ideological stance about the past that has made the purveyor of the message the centre of the story: was this the purpose?

Unfortunately, I don't think that this is an isolated problem: the "Gay Masses" in Soho became a pastoral encounter, and anybody attacking them was making baseless accusations and was enjoined to hold their tongue.  In spite of what Pope Benedict said, clear dissent from Church teaching became legitimate expression of the theologian's freedom to explore.  In so many cases since (this is my blog!) 1980, clever people have framed the dialogue within the Church in England and Wales so that as their premises have been left unchallenged, their aims have been reached.

"It is pastorally insensitive to force children who aren't Catholic to sit through the preparation of those who are to make their First Communion" is a premise which leads to no preparation for the Sacraments in Catholic Primary Schools. 

"We are short of priests, but long on lay people willing to give of their abilities to help the Church" is a premise which leads to hordes of welcomers, readers, Offertory-Gifts-Bringers-Uppers, and "Eucharistic Ministers".

Those of us on this side of the divide have been tilting at windmills: those on that side haven't been aiming at (for example) the form of the Liturgy, even if liturgical argument is what we have been putting forward; they have been aiming at the clericalisation of the Laity (or at least some laity, and that "some" mainly female).

I have a disinclination for conspiracy theories, and this isn't one.  I think the people running the Church in England and Wales since 1980 have had a clear idea of exactly what they want it to be, and aren't really hiding it.  I think they have been clever enough simultaneously to speak against the empowerment of non-magic-circle Catholics (whether in orders or not) by the Internet while using the Internet to corral activist Catholics into as controlled an environment as the pre-Internet Church, all the time using top end techniques to spin and control discussion so that it is always based on their terms.

The Bishops of England and Wales had this year's Low Week meeting in Rome.  They had a retreat this year (do they when they meet at Eccleston Square?) and got to meet the Pope.  Archbishop Nichols said:

"There’s a fresh spring about the Church at the moment and I think that’s from the Pope’s eloquence in gesture and his words when he preaches and at his audiences … I think what is most remarkable in the UK is that everybody seems to have been touched by his eloquence, by his gentleness and by the humility of Pope Francis."

And so inured are we by now, that not a single one of us commented on what he was actually saying.
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Mrs Thatcher - A Point I Haven't Noticed Elsewhere

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It was Mike Cliffson (a frequent commenter on this blog)'s mother who told me in 1983 how pleased she was that for the second election in a row there was a clear ideological choice to be made: Thatcher versus Foot; capitalism versus socialism.

It's easy to argue that we should avoid extremes, but in fact, in a parliamentary democracy, the extremes are left to take care of themselves and parties attempt to appeal to the centre.

Appeals to the centre from a defined ideological position, though, whether left or right, are so much more refreshing than people eschewing ideology altogether.  Foot versus Thatcher: you can work out for yourself where you want to be along the (long) line which separates them.  Cameron/Clegg versus Milliband (or Milliband/Clegg): where is the line? Who is drawing it?

Politics actually matters.  And I'd rather people remembered the ideologically opposed days of Thatcher and Foot than pretended that consensus was a goal to be fought for.  I'd rather hear Ken Livingstone explain why he thought Thatcher was wrong, than hear Ed Balls tell us what a towering figure she was.

But I can't help feeling that people in their thirties celebrating her death with parties have lost the plot: not just of politics, but of humanity.
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Having To Explain The Pope, Again ...

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So he's a Jesuit, a Jesuit from an earlier era.  He isn't allowed to take up positions of authority in the Church without the permission of the Pope.  He isn't allowed to assume the trappings of temporal power.  But the Cardinals have just elected him Pope.  Whom can he ask?  What should he do?

Fortuitously, wonderfully, the first Jesuit Pope is elected to succeed the first Pope to have renounced his office in 600 years, so there is somebody to ask.  There is also a General of the Jesuit Order to consult.  There are ways of being Pope without adopting all of the traditional temporal trappings: fortuitously that's just what his predessor did, making the focus of his office that of the See of Rome, with the Petrine Ministry as an extra dimension to that role.  There are small things which will mark this Pontificate out (at least until the next Jesuit Pope is elected) like not wearing red capes, or red shoes, or using "PP" as a postnominal.  he is not Monarch of the Vatican City State.

But apart from that: we have a Bishop of Rome who is comfortable in Italian and Latin and does not think that saying "Happy Easter!" in sixty languages (badly) is part of his liturgical office.  He isn't a liturgiologist - but his predecessor was and left things in reasonable shape. 

The Mandatum rite on Holy Thursday will have to be sorted out by next year, but otherwise, you can only say things are going badly if you have an agenda which begins "I know how a Pope should do his poping" or "Back to the 1950s!" or some such.

Almost a year into Benedict XVI's Pontificate, and there were stories of him dressing in a simple black cassock, coat and beret (and black shoes) and sneaking back to the flat he had occupied when a curial Cardinal for ... who knew why? I think we can guess.

Of the modern Popes, Pius XII was trained for the job, John XXIII and Paul VI were led - dominated - by their staffs, John Paul I had no time to do anything but smile, John Paul II shaped the Papcy around his particular gifts: Benedict XVI and Francis are the two Popes who show that being a Pope is something Popes have to learn, if they are not to be puppets of the Vatican staff.  Again: how wonderful that Pope Benedict left Pope Francis Archbishop Gaenswein to give him the space in which to learn.

Much Catholic commentary is unedifying at present: much presents the Pope as a symbol of disunity in order to advance factional positions.  Keep away from anything which suggests that Pope Francis is already a failure, a disaster, a horror: all that tells you is something about the writer.

Pope Francis will make mistakes as he learns, just as Pope Benedict did.  Praying for him might be more useful to him and to the Church as a whole than criticising him.

Beliebstered!

Courtesy of Ben! (Read his post for the explanation, and to know what to do to join in.)

Eleven facts about Ttony:

1. Cradle Catholic
2. Mancunian
3. Really pedantic when he can be bothered
4. Loves 1930s and 40s comedians
5. Educated by Sisters of St Paul and De La Salle Brothers
6. Altar boy from 1st Communion (age 6)
7. Lived in Spain for some years
8. Married to somebody who tolerates my enthusiasms
9. Not sure about Distributism but Chesterton got pretty well everything pretty well right (especially regarding food and drink)
10. I don't have to understand to believe
11. Wishes there was more time

Ben's questions:

1. What inspired the title of your blog?

 

Fantasy: in my wildest dreams I imagine living in the sort of place that has its own muniment room: it's a touchstone of everything the perfect house would comprise

 

Why should people read your blog?

It might help pass the time?

 

What is your personal favourite post on your blog?

I still haven't written it.  It's the one which concisely and wittily pulls together all of the problems of the day and resplves them with a single (great) flourish.

 

What has been the most popular (most viewed) post on your blog?

A very recent one on Apologetics.  My previous best had about 650 hits: this one has had four times as many already.

 

Which post on your blog has attracted most comments?

The first in a trilogy about the Church in E&W post-VII.

 

What other hobbies or interests (beyond blogging) are you prepared to admit to?

Photography, oenology (very enthusiastic amateur), liturgical history

 

What are your hopes for the new pontificate?

That this Pope is as holy and good as the last

 

Where is your favourite place of pilgrimage, and why?

St Peter's, particularly since visiting the Scavi and being within a couple of feet of his bones

 

Who is your favourite spiritual author, and why?

I don't know if it's quite what you mean, but Frank Sheed.

 

Which of these questions did you fid it most difficult to answer?

The one about my hopes for the Pontificate: I think I learned from Pope Benedict's pontificate that it wasn't really about me, and that learning to find and occupy my place within the Church is part of my vocation

 

Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?

Good Lord, no!

 

Worthy Recipients

 

Between Ben and Ches nearly everybody I  would have tagged has been tagged, but not yet Dorothy or Shane.  So over to them. 

 

 

Popes Benedict And Francis: Even More Thoughts

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The hindsight continues to well up. 

The fact that Pope Benedict began a Year of Faith and then renounced his position after it had started is just one sign that he saw his Pontificate and that of his successor as a process of continuity.  I have already talked about Pope Benedict's renunciation of the trappings of a sovereign, and of his reseating of the Papacy in the See of Rome (and yesterday's ceremony was that of the Assumption of the Petrine Ministry by the Bishop of Rome): perhaps Pope Francis' job is to conform the Church itself - the institutional Church as well as the Church of believers - to this new role, a role in which the Church is abandoning the status quo which has existed since 1870 (or 1929, but same difference).

And to everybody who worries about the Pope selling off the Sistine Chapel to Disney or whomever: that's not what Pope Francis did in Buenos Aires, is it.  He gave an example of poverty: travelling by bus and looking after an elderly Jesuit housemate instead of using a car and having more staff.  This message is for everybody, from the "Princes" of the Church down: it is evangelical poverty in which service comes before self.  (My response to that challenge worries me a lot more than whether Pope Francis wears a fanon or not.)

As Pope, Francis will have to behave as Bishop of Rome, not of Buenos Aires.  As an Archbishop in Argentina he might well have wondered at the Pope paying so much attention to the SSPX and to the Ordinariates: but they are his responsibility now.  It doesn't mean that they will come anywhere near the centre of his attention - but then they don't need to because they were sorted out under Benedict (even if, in the case of the SSPX, they decided that they knew better than the Holy Father: they really made a hash of things).

Another clue as to where Pope Francis' heart lies is the way he tore away from the altar at the end of the Mass to stand in front of the statue of Our Lady to sing the Salve Regina.  It's so not Cardinal Mahoney.

Pope Benedict said that he would be the last of his kind of Pope and would be succeeded by the first of a new type: I expect that Francis is the reverse to Benedict's obverse.  That could mean that for those of us for whom Pope Benedict's liturgical renewal was inspiring, Pope Francis' evangelical resourcissement might be quite demanding.
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Pope Francis

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I'm away at the moment with intermittent access to the internet so have not posted or commented about the Pope.  It has astonished me that so many Catholic commentators have managed to infer so many bad things about him already when all I have been able to infer are good, or in some cases different-from-Benedict things.

He is a man with a simple approach to prayer: "be silent and pray for me". His Marian understanding is central to this prayer life, not peripheral. Prayers are asked for and offered.  His understanding of liturgy - perhaps better, liturgiology - is different to what he have been used to and will probably lead a return to John Paul II's and the other Marini's style: but here is somebody who as a Bishop learned to celebrate the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom.

He is as sound on Life issues as any Bishop in Christendom. As a priest he lived through a more turbulent social context in his country tnan most other Cardinals: imagine something like a cvivil war in your country in which there are priests on both sides.

He is a scientist and a Jesuit whose intellectual formation predates Vatican II. He wants to take St Francis of Assisi as his public role model, a saint whom the secular media thinks it understands, and whose misunderstanding will be used to chastise the Pope for the rest of his ministry.

I can't help feeling that the SSPX and its supporters within the Church are facing a bleak future: they won no friends to their cause by their treatment of Pope Benedict's overtures.  By forcing themselves into the centre of his pontificate and then by behaving towards him in a manner easily characterised (however wrongfully) as one of trying to humiliate the Pope, they forfeited any good will which may have remained within the upper reaches of the Church at the precise moment when the Cardinals were choosing Benedict's successor.

Both the transition from Benedictine to Franciscan Papacy and then the Franciscan Papacy itself are going to be uncomfortable for those of us for whom Pope Benedict was exactly the right Pope at the right time.  It may simply be that we should thank God for eight marvellous years, and to assume that the Holy Ghost will impel Pope Francis to do God's Will, even if the path taken isn't the one we'd have chosen.

Reflections After A "Humanist" Funeral

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In the middle of the busiest time of this year, I found myself having to attend a funeral and finding, once there, that it was to be a Humanist funeral, rather than the multiundenominational ceremony I had expected.

I was pleased to find that the Crematorium chapel had not been denuded of its crucifix, and, being Catholic, with rosary in pocket, was able to focus on the image of Our Lord and ask his Mother to intercede with Her Son for the dead person.

I didn't pay much attention to the "service" - it must have been one because we were handed an "Order of Service" - but I listened hard when the person (taking the service? leading the ceremony? celebrating?) at the front started off by telling us what Humanism is.

After a bit of "Hello sky! Hello flowers!" we got down to business: humanists believe that this is the only life we have and live it to the full here on earth; humanists don't make judgements about the different choices each of us makes about the way we will lead our lives.

It may have been that the celebrant hadn't thought it through, or it may be that the humanists haven't thought it through, but I kept thinking about Harold Shipman, especially being in a place in which the only rites celebrated are about death: do humanists really believe that Dr Shipman's were just lifestyle choices, and that his decisions to rid the world of, basically, people older than him into whom he could get to stick a needle, were simply his, and that the rest of us should not intrude on his right to make that particular choice?

I'm sure that none of them do, and that the celebrant was trying to make a different point, and was simply failing spectacularly, but I was left thinking about what happens when you start cutting away at the guy ropes.

The fact is that as Catholics we are absolutists; our Faith has a lot of blacks and whites: certainties, if you like. Some things are right and some things are wrong. You need something as bracing as a humanist service to realise that any compromise with things that don't belong to our Faith is wrong.  It would be nice to think that that sort of wrong-headedness would be alien to any Catholic.

During the funeral service I kept a straight face when one of the deceased's favourite songs was played: "Morning Has Broken": it was an opportunity for God's Grace to creep into a few places which weren't expecting it.
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Another Thought About The Benedictine Revolution

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I published some thoughts here about the Pope's renunciation, suggesting that the signals that he was going to do this had been there, had we but noticed.

I also suggested that he had not just outflanked his enemies in the Curia by keeping this momentous decision secret, but that by promoting Mgr Gaenswein had taken a side against the curial faction in the Vatileaks scandal.

Something else has gradually become clear to me over the last weeks: the Pope strove to remove the symbols of the temporal authority of the Papacy: not the existence of the Vatican City State which the Church needs to maintain its independence in the world (though it is interesting that it has its own website separate from the Vatican's) but the symbols which linked the office of Pope to that of a Monarch.  His renunciation is not something a Monarch (pace the Dutch) can do, though it is something that a Bishop should.  There were earlier signs: the way in which the Pope rejected the use of the Tiara; his abandonment of the title of Patriarch of the West, something that derived from territoriality rather than from apostolicity, was anotyher clear sign.  (I wish my foresight was as good as my hindsight, by the way.)

The clue to how Benedict XVI saw the Papacy came in his last lectio divina: when he spoke to his seminarians, the seminarians destined for the diocese of Rome, he lectured them on Peter, and on Peter's journey to Rome.  This reseats the office of Pope in the Bishop of Rome: if you like "Pope" is simply a second title of the Bishop of Rome.

Will we ever stop learning from him?

Apologetics, Again

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This began as a post, moved on to be a comment on something of Ben's and then became a post here again.

If anybody wondered what "post-Christian" meant, then the reaction to the debate on same-sex "marriage" should have shown them that apart from the militant atheism of a substantial number of people in our country, the vaguely Christian world view with which many people still identified a generation ago ("he put C of E down as his religion as that was the church he didn't go to") has been replaced by a mire of moral relativism in which if something that suits me must be good for me, then something that suits you must be good for you, and that condemnation is a uniquely fundamentalist stance, unless it's a moral relativist condemning somebody else's moral absolutism (though they'd probably say they weren't condemning so much as #justsaying - a moral relativist's way of having your cake and your ha'penny).

I noted, nearly four years ago, that post-Christian religion had begun to find its voice, and in less than four years, it seems to have mainstreamed in the Church of  England.  The issue of women "bishops" is to be resolved not within the structures of the C of E, but by ignoring them: if they don't produce a result which secular society recognises as "fair", then the structures are wrong; if Parliament legislates for gay "marriage" then the C of E will have to adapt and conform to a changing society (no doubt to remain "relevant").

We can't be complacent: at Mass toaday I heard a parish priest at Mass saying that we always have the right Pope because the Holy Spirit stops Cardinals voting for the wrong on,e and was told that supporting CAFOD was the culmination of our Catholicsm.

This country, Catholic, non-Catholic, post-Catholic - everyone - needs to be re-evangelised.  Three of us specifically - OTSOTA, Ben, me - have looked at the inter-war Catholic Evidence Guild as a model: not "let's recreate the Catholic Evidence Guild" so much as "look at how profoundly and systematically Catholic evangelists were grounded in their Faith before being sent out into the streets to proclaim their Faith".  I'm putting words into their mouths here, but I think I can confidently say that we have offered a model which, suitably adapted, could be a vehicle for the re-evangelisation of England and Wales, and have issued a challenge to anybody to find something better.

There are two problems which, as things stand, will prevent anything like this happening: the first is the lack of a committed body of people with both the faith and the teaching skills needed to identify, train, and organise the people who would carry this out.  The second is that the people who should be that committed body - the Bishops and their staffs - are unlikely to be interested: they probably think that their RCIA courses have already answered this. 

Ben put it like this:

What I would like to see, therefore, is a programme, made widely (and if possible freely) available that would help lay Catholics throughout the UK to develop as apologists. It seems to me that some of the important elements of this would be:

• Good spiritual direction and formation;
• A structured programme of study of the Faith (possibly based largely on resources already freely available), supported by both philosophy and rhetoric;
• Local support, possibly small groups meeting both to discuss and check their understanding, but also to practice putting it across convincingly and dealing with questions and objections;
• A wider community of support, where issues can be discussed, and questions raised and answered;
• A small team to make it happen.

The growth of the Catholic presence on the internet clearly supports some of these well, but others are best done on a local level (subsidiarity and all that!)

This would, of course, be a long term programme; indeed, I think it would need to be a lifelong one, so inexhaustible are the riches of the Faith. But that is no reason not to start; quite the contrary.

So I would like to ask you to pray about this, as I shall do, throughout Lent. And at Easter, I will revisit the topic and if others believe it to be a worthwhile project, explore how we can make it happen. But 40 days of prayer seems to me the best way to start.

Please join us in praying for this.  If you need a focus, imagine how the forthcoming period of Sede Vacante, Conclave, election and inauguration could be exploited by trained evangelists who set out to bring this country back to God.

Update: Marianne's comments in the combox suggest that this might not be as unaffordable as I had thought.  More food for thought as we pray.
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Some Thoughts About The Pope's ... What Word?

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Isn't the Da Vinci File view of the Pope's abdication/resignation/renunciation (can we agree on a Catholic word?) being touted by the European media (at least) wonderful?  The best they can do is pretend it's the same as a Prime Minister resigning unexpectedly (think Harold Wilson in 1976 if you want to get the bathos) and then try to interpret what is happening as though it was politics as usual.  I hope somebody is keeping a file of howlers.

But here are some observations.

• The Pope told us what he was thinking of: his visits to the tomb of Celestine V, his clear statement in the Hahn interview: he signalled clearly what was in his mind and none of us - main stream media, bloggers, specialists, amateurs - noticed.
• The Pope has not done this capriciously or selfishly: whatever the details of the state of his health - how strong he is, how quickly he expects to lose his strength, whether his mental health will hold up - this very holy man has taken a decision after a long period of prayer and discernment and we can be confident that he knows what he is doing.
• What's coming might be Don Bosco's vision ( I thought Anita Moore had that spot on here), might be a particularly Benedictine vision, or might be something the Pope (as well informed as any Head of State) has inferred: he knows he is not the man to meet the challenge.
• His decision was taken some time ago: he told his brother six months ago, but he started dropping in on Celestine V rather longer ago.  It's not unreasonabale to suppose that everything he has done in the last two or three years has been done with his leaving in mind, and with his leaving everything in as good a condition as possible for his successor.
• All of this makes his decisions about whom to elevate to Cardinal very interesting indeed.  The electors will comprise those who voted for him, a small number of those who didn't, and those whom he has elevated.
• He has looked after Archbishop Gaenswein: not just by consecrating him Archbishop.  He would have probably been made a Bishop in Germany after the Pope's death if tradition were followed, but he has been consecrated as an Archbishop and raised to Prefect of the Pope's Household.  In itself, this is a rebuke to the Curia and a public message that Vatileaks wasn't his Secretary's fault.  (And the secrecy which has been maintained in this affair is another signal that the Curia was bypassed.)
• Most importantly, perhaps, with the publication of the third volume of his work on Jesus the Pope has completed the teaching part of his ministry.

Goodness knows how many other clear signs there are that the Church is about to enter a period which we will think of as uniquely difficult, but which will simply be yet another engagement with her enemies.

My initial reaction - that he should have stayed on to death - is being replaced by an appreciation that Pope Benedict probably has a rather better idea of what he should do than me.  We have had eight years - eight game-changing years - from a Pope who couldn't have been expected to last anything like this long.  We are seeing the supernatural eddying into the natural world through his decision.

And last of all, he has given us Lent to prepare, so that we can celebrate at Easter.

The Emetic 26 January Edition

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I shall just point out the things that are worth further investigation.  Articles like Sir S Wall's, attacking the Cameron position of the EU, are not really what I think we're on about.  We might wonder why they are in The Tablet:  did the Staggers turn it down?  But anyway, not what we're here for.

Interview with Sarah Teather: all politics, and how Catholic social teaching informs her voting.  One teaser:

'“The pressure points are often the points that provoke because they make you think more deeply. I was going to Mass a bit erratically around the time I was elected and I only had one framework to engage with, with the daily challenges and the ethical challenges of being an MP – and they are multiple, such as how to vote –and that was with my faith. Over the time of being an MP I would say my faith has become more important rather than less important.”
Her commitment to church teaching and the promptings of conscience will be tested again, probably at the end of February, when she will have to decide whether to support legislation that will introduce same-sex marriage.'
I think the problem here is The Tablet's, not Sarah Teather's.  Why is she not being challenged about how she will vote?

For its Lenten lecture series for the Year of Faith, Brentford Cathedral has invited Bishop Stephen Cottrell, Anglican Bishop of Chelmsford on Wednesday 27 February 2013, to speak on "Accompanying people on the journey of faith: Catechesis and evangelism for a church in mission": leaving aside the vagaries of Brentford capitalisation, why invite somebody from another c/Church (ecclesial communuion) to preach in the Cathedral?  Why choose The Tablet to advertise it?

The only opinion given in the article about the new Coadjutor Archbishop of Armagh is given to the Association of Catholic Priests, rather than, say, to Iain Paisley, whose views might be no ,ore relevant but who, I bet, knows that "dialogue" isn't a verb, and wouldn't be intransitive even if it were!  (Are heresy and solecism related?)

'A spokesman for the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) in Ireland, Fr P.J. Madden, suggests that political considerations were apparent in his appointment. He points out that the Vatican opted for someone from Northern Ireland rather than a bishop or auxiliary with broader experience in dealing with the pastoral needs of the Church across the island of Ireland. Another ACP spokesman, Fr Sean McDonagh, hoped that Mgr Martin would be “willing to dialogue with every group in the Church and wider society”. In his own statement last Friday, the coadjutor archbishop called for “a mature relationship between Church and society, in both parts of this island” and emphasised that people of faith have a vital role to play in Irish society’s public debates.'
Cardinal Scola's article on Dignitatis Humanae is worth serious study: a Catholic and modern interpretation of a Vatican II document that leaves me cold, but that doesn't feel spirit-of-VIIist.  What The Tablet could be?  Similarly, Fr Timothy Radcliffe's short piece on VII and collegiality is not one I agree with, but is worth engaging with. 

Clifford Longley, on Obama, isn't:

"Obama is the embodiment of the nation in his person. That is powerful magic"

He wouldn't dare say ju-ju.

It is probably my fault that I found Fr Daniel O'Leary's article, nominally about "the journey of the soul", so much drivel: inchoate drivel.

"...we had been taken to the place of the soul, to that land where our deepest spirit lives – a land we are slow to enter. The urgent, daily context of our lives mitigates against such profound awareness. Too much work, anxiety and a relentless stress are filling our days and nights.
It takes great courage to set about regaining the lost rhythm of the soul. We generally postpone the work of self-realisation, of the inner journey, of the ultimate questions. We forget that if we do not live our lives abundantly now, we never will. And as death approaches, we bitterly regret the greatest tragedy of all – our unlived lives."

Fr Jim Fleming reckons that in contemporary Britain, the first step in evangelisation must be to provide a welcome for all comers.He paints a picture of a parish where parish property is used to cater for the destitute, aslyum seekers, the down and out: good!  He has perhaps been edited somewhat severely, because he seems to contrast "doing" with "teaching" or "learning" to the former's advantage, but he is certainly pointed in the right direction.

The Notebook is direr than dire.  Imagine finding a Comment Is Free commenter and giving him her a pulpit.  Here are two of the items:

"AS A Catholic who carries a rosary in his pocket it was appropriate for Joseph Biden, Vice President of the United States, to have Mass said before he took the oath of office last Sunday. Biden invited friends and family to the Vice President’s residence, in the grounds of the United States Naval Observatory, Washington DC, for the liturgy celebrated by Fr Kevin O’Brien SJ, vice president for mission and ministry at Jesuit-run Georgetown University. Following the Mass, Biden took the oath of office, for which he used a large family Bible with a Celtic cross on the cover, that has been in his family since the late nineteenth century. The oath of office was administered by another Catholic, Associate Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The United States Constitution requires the oath of office to take place on 20 January. If this day falls on a Sunday, the oath is taken privately by the President and Vice President and the public ceremony is celebrated the following day."

"HOW CATHOLICS reacted to the sexual revolution in the 1960s and 1970s is famously set out in David Lodge’s satiric novel, How Far Can You Go? Now it is to be the subject of a dissertation at Sussex University, supported by funding from the Arts and Humanities Council. The research is being conducted by David Geiringer, whose grandfather, Professor John Marshall, a neurologist and contributor to The Tablet, was one of the original members of the Pontifical Commission on Birth Control set up by Pope John XXIII. Geiringer wants to speak to 35 practising Catholic women about their experiences of the sexual revolution in the 1960s. He hopes to challenge the argument, put forward by scholars such as Professor Callum Brown, that the sexual revolution shattered the link between femininity and piousness. Geiringer is suggesting that Catholic faith is not “incompatible with a modern idea of sexuality”. Interviews are anonymous with questions submitted in advance. Email: xxx@yyy.zzz"

Robert Mickens isn't on form, only offering one real sneer:

'“Perhaps there are cases of illegal trade in ivory that is used in some parts of the world for Christian religious images used by Catholics,” he wrote in a long letter. “If such cases are identified they must clearly be condemned by the competent authorities – civil or religious – but there is no reason to attribute responsibility that it does not have to the ‘Vatican’,” he said. Indeed, being Catholic is not the same as representing the “Vatican”.'

Cute.

And finally, why on earth is St George's Anglican Cathedral in Perth (Australia) advertising in The Tablet for a Dean?  Is this a sort of post-modern take on Trollope?

The Emetic

I suggested on twitter that an online antidote to any bad results of The Tablet might be called The Emetic.  This isn't it, but it gives an idea of the ground The Emetic might have to cover.  In my last post I highlighted something unCatholic in an editorial.  From the same issue, here are a few more highlights.

(For the record, no Tablets were purchased to make this blog post.)

An advert for a course at an Anglican Retreat Centre leads to a link which contains the following:

"REMEMBER . . .
Your human love is God’s love incarnate. Your human forgiveness is divine forgiveness. Grace is everywhere. God loves us unconditionally – and cannot remember our sins!
But we have forgotten all about this real meaning of the Incarnation. We still keep God ‘out there’ and build huge walls between the sacred and the secular. We need to remember, that simply to live as best we can, is to be full of God, no matter what.

DANIEL O’LEARY
Daniel is a priest in the diocese of Leeds and has published widely on aspects of Spirituality and Ministry.
With many years’ experience as a Parish Priest, he was also Episcopal Vicar for Formation in the diocese for five years. Prior to that he was Head of the Religious Studies Department at St Mary’s College of Education, Strawberry Hill (University of Surrey).

MARGARET SIBERRY
A former teacher, Margaret has been involved in collaborative ministry and spirituality at parish and diocesan levels. She is a member of Leeds Justice and Peace Commission, a worker for CAFOD, dedicated to promoting local and global justice."

If God can't remember our sin, reconciliation becomes a bit automatic, doesn't it.

Sarah Maitland writes:

"One problem I find with the new translation of the liturgy is that it uses so much insider jargon. “Consubstantial”, “chalice”, “dewfall”, “we may merit to be co-heirs”: none of this language is going to play well in our daily lives, at work, in the pub, in our own homes."

Should someone with such an impoverished idea of daily life be writing about prayer?

In its article on Vatican II Fifty Years On, the Rev Dominic Mulroy OSB opines:

"The ghosts at the feast of Vatican II were Pius IX’s “Syllabus of Errors” and Pius X’s condemnation of Modernism. The legacy of these was a perception that the Church had allied itself definitively with a dogmatic tradition that was hostile not only to everything that could be dubbed “liberal” but also to the multiple facets of modernity.
The successive battles over the texts of Vatican II’s doctrinal and pastoral constitutions represented a very significant confrontation between two powerful currents of thought within the Church. The first (which was presumed by many to be the dominant one) was a way of thinking that would now be regarded as “fundamentalist”; the second was the new spirit of open and eirenic enquiry that had been quietly developed, in many fields, during the pontificate of Pius XII and that had inspired John XXIII to summon the council.
In the event, Vatican II came to represent a decisive rejection of the “fundamentalist” option. The term is appropriate in this context for several reasons. The fundamentalist cast of mind, whether in religion or in other areas of discourse, is one that prefers clarity to complexity. It likes to claim “ownership of the truth”, is distrustful of dialogue, and prefers the safety of known tradition to the risks of innovation.
When the council opened, many took it for granted that this was the way the Catholic Church did its business, and were amazed when the proposed drafts were, one after the other, thrown out. A new question was being asked: was the Church’s traditional way of formulating doctrine and making decisions a religious necessity or a cultural accident of history?"

I love the idea that somebody who disagrees with the condemnation of Modernism asks whether the Church's way of deciding things might be a cultural accident of history.  Meanwhile a Jesuit, Fr Gregory Baum proclaims:

"The council summoned forth faith, hope and love in people’s hearts, making them yearn for freedom,justice and universal solidarity"

Ah, THAT's what is was all about.

Fr Luke Bell OSB has an excellent article about "internships" at Quarr Abbey. A lady who lives in Austria writes an article about the Church in Germany's investigation of clerical abuse which seems to take for granted that the Church is trying some sort of cover up.  Lawrence Freeman (a third OSB) writes about a Hindu monastery.

Mr Paul Billington writes about spiritual mentoring in the parish and says:

"Moving on from the strict confines of behavioural science to parish life, but holding the notion of it in mind, we can learn to focus more broadly than the ritual aspects of church practice. Essentially, being Church is about being a community. It is about how we live together, how we share a fundamental and faith perspective of life that shapes everything we do and say. In other words, it is about how we incarnate our faith in the flesh of living and of life. This is based on a raw behavioural science principle that states simply that our behaviour demonstrates our priorities. In this sense, through our everyday behaviour, we tell the world, even without conscious intention, about what motivates us. The X Factor must be one of the greatest money-spinners on television. It displays the
nervous, self-conscious and sometimes remarkable talent of new blood for huge audiences. During the course of two months, the contestants are mentored fabulously into becoming stars. Mentoring is a powerful personal-development and empowerment tool which helps people progress. It is becoming increasingly popular as its potential is realised."

I'll just point out "being Church" and leave the rest to you.

The letters page contains what probably reflects the breadth of view of those who read The Tablet: they represent readers' reaction rather than editorial policy so I won't comment on them.  Neither will I comment on the Arts and Books sections, which could come from any weekly or Sunday - though it's rejection of the new Fr Brown series - "It's a stinker" - makes you realise that all is not lost!

The Church In The World seems uncontentious and covers more or less what one would expect any Catholic weekly to cover. 

Robert Mickens writes from Rome.  You need to read the whole column to get the picture, but here's one bit so you get the flavour:

"He said this was because homosexuality undervalued the importance of male female differences and because same-sex relationships were “de facto, self-referential”. Professor Pessina heads the bioethics
department at the Catholic University in Milan and is a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life. His article came just days after Italy’s highest appellate court ruled that a woman currently in a same-sex relationship could retain custody of the child she had while in a previous relationship with a man.
The court rejected the father’s argument that his son would suffer “negative repercussions” for his development if the two women raised him, saying that claim was based on “mere prejudice” unsupported by scientific data. The judge obviously failed to use her reason and consult the Vatican."

Ho ho ho, Robert.

News from Britain and Ireland has a large article about Bishop Brain forbidding Catholic schools in the Salford diocese from applying for Academy status (can he) though it points out that he will be offering his resignation this year.

An advert for the "Westminster Faith Debates" should have been rejected:

"What does faith, in its diversity, have to contribute to our understanding of a good life and a good death? And what does the contemporary climate of opinion have to say to faith?

Stem cell research, abortion and the ‘soul of the embryo’? Speakers include Prof David Albert Jones and Dr Abdul Majid Katme. Wednesday 13 February.
Too much sex these days – the sexualisation of society? Speakers include Donna Freitas and Jenny Taylor. Wednesday 27 February.
Is it right for religions to treat men and women differently? Speakers include Rabbi Harvey Belovski and Mary Ann Sieghart. Thursday 14 March.
What’s a traditional family and do we need it? Speakers include Prof Rosalind Edwards and Polly Toynbee. Wednesday 27 March.
Do Christians really oppose gay marriage? Speakers include Prof John Milbank and Prof Tina Beattie. Thursday 18 April.
Should we legislate to permit assisted dying? Speakers include Lord Charles Falconer and Dr Giles Fraser. Thursday 2 May."
Oh dear!

I learned of the death of Fr Chris Dyckhoff SJ, one of the priests to whom, under God, I owe the fact that I did not lose my faith at University: however wrongheaded I may have come to think him, and he me, subsequently, there are some debts which cannot be repaid in this life, and they were all owed in one direction.  Requiescat in pace.

So there it is.  Not as uniformly bad as it could be, but imbued with a sort of right-on trendiness as though Tony Blair had just become PM and it was 1997 all over again.  But where it is bad, it is very, very, bad.  Its instinct isn't grounded where I think a Catholic weekly's instinct ought to be grounded. 

A moderate, non-AngloCatholic, non-Evangelical, Anglican would find nothing to upset him in this edition of The Tablet.  I don't mean that as a compliment.

The Tablet On The Priests' Letter

I was a bit taken aback - shocked, actually - by the editorial in The Tablet criticising the priests who wrote about the Government's proposals regarding same sex "marriage". If you want to read the whole article it is here, but the bit I'd like to highlight is this:

"Rights do sometimes conflict, and as the Catholic Bishops’ Conference sensibly said in a statement afterwards, “The Church would strongly encourage disputes of this kind to be settled without recourse to the courts. In many cases, applying common sense would enable a reasonable accommodation between competing rights to be found.” But an atmosphere of paranoia would make such accommodation more difficult, and that is the danger of the priests’ letter to the Telegraph. Nor is it right to regard human rights as somehow a secular challenge to religious freedoms. Their origins are the same – in respect due to everyone for their God-given personal dignity, regardless of race, creed, orientation or any other factor. The European Convention on Human Rights was largely drafted by English lawyers, and the origins of the common law are deeply embedded in Christian thinking, including medieval canon law. Over 60 years, the human-rights convention has made Europe a far better place. In 1963 John XXIII’s encyclical, Pacem in Terris, incorporated human rights fully into the teaching of the Magisterium, where they remain. Christians should fight in favour of human rights, not against them."

The Tabletfulness of this is terrific.  It starts from the reasonable point that where rights collide, common sense is preferable to litigation.  It then says that the priests' letter would make a common sense solution harder to reach (as though this by definition makes the priests' letter wrong).

It then suddenly raises Human Rights to be suprema lex: and because the European Convention was largely drafted by English lawyers (chapter? verse?) and incorporates (presumably English) Common Law and mediaeval Canon Law it is a wonderful thing and has made Europe a better place (though it doesn't explain either how that would work or how it has worked).

But then, it plays what it thinks is its ace: "(1) John XXIII's encyclical (2) Pacem in Terris (3) incorporated human rights fully into the teaching of the Magisterium, where they remain".  1-2-3: the Catholic liberals' idea of the bit of the Magisterium that matters!  So self evident is it to the Tabletista that a reference to Pacem in Terris is the end of the argument, that it is clear that the author has never read it.  If s/he had, s/he might have noticed the following:

"51. Governmental authority, therefore, is a postulate of the moral order and derives from God. Consequently, laws and decrees passed in contravention of the moral order, and hence of the divine will, can have no binding force in conscience, since "it is right to obey God rather than men "(34).

Indeed, the passing of such laws undermines the very nature of authority and results in shameful abuse. As St. Thomas teaches, "In regard to the second proposition, we maintain that human law has the rationale of law in so far as it is in accordance with right reason, and as such it obviously derives from eternal law. A law which is at variance with reason is to that extent unjust and has no longer the rationale of law. It is rather an act of violence."(35)

(34) Acts 5:29.

(35) Summa Theol. Ia-IIae, q. 93., a.3 ad 2um; cf. Pius XII's broadcast message, Christmas 1945, AAS 37 (1945) 5-23."

 

Who is defending The Tablet?  Why?  This example shows poor journalism and appalling theology, but, dressed as Catholic, and licensed by the Hierarchy, it is showing two fingers to the thousand priest and the Pope in particular, and to the whole Magisterium in general.  If the Faith is being reduced to what a few journalists and their pals in the Hierarchy want it to be on a weekly basis, are we not entitled to know cui bono?

 

 

Ecclesia Ad Portam

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Outside the gate of every Abbey was the Ecclesia ad Portam - the Church at the Gate - where Mass was provided for local people.  After the Reformation, many of these disappeared, or were converted into parish churches.  This one remains in fairly isolated countryside.  It isn't in a centre of population.  Evensong is celebrated there on the fifth Sunday of the month except in summer.

 

 

 

 

The first thing you see is that this is a Church on which nothing but the minimum has ever been spent.

 

 

 

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But when you look closer you realise that the church was once exuberantly decorated:



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and that a tiny bit of the glass in the original Abbey had been saved, and was incorporated into a window at the same time that the murals were uncovered.

You could say Mass here tomorrow.  You could keep the sacred oils in the aumbry and use the piscina on the south wall.  But it won't happen.

 

There wasn't really very much persecution of the Church in very much of the country.  From the 1520s on, the State gradually took over and as long as people minded their own business and didn't cause trouble, for example by professing their Catholicsm openly or by becoming or harbouring priests, they were left alone, either to be a very Catholic sort of Anglican or, in the north of the country, to be Catholic, but discreet.  (Catholics were opening their own cemetery in Little Crosby as early as 1611.)  This lack of hard persecution was itself a successful form of soft persecution: untutored in the Faith, unnourished by the Sacraments, most of the faithful fell away, except for those who heroically persevered.

 

In the nineteenth century, people began to uncover what had been lost.  In the twentieth (and the events of the twentieth century no doubt enlightened the minds of historians) the great con trick played on the English people became clear.  The State had taken their Faith from them, and most of their leaders hadn't actually fought back.  The lay people who had tried to fight back had been crushed, and the few who remained retreated into the discreet non-conformism which at least kept a spark of faith alive.

 

Move along please! Nothing to be seen here!

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Is Damian A Saved Pusson? Are The Rest Of Us?

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A couple of days ago Damian wrote about Archbishop Nichols' comments about same sex "marriage", reacting to an intemperate attack on the Archbishop by a different Daily Telegraph blogger. It was classic Damian: witty, full of insider knowledge, strong on opinion, despairing of the Hierarchy's ability to affect the national mood, and not traditionally respectful in the way that (say) The Universe still is. Damian is unpopular with the liberals in the Catholic establishment precisely because he writes about what they would prefer to do without any sort of negative publicity. In a world where the Catholic press is either docile and never says anything to embarrass the Hierarchy, or is pushing a secularised agenda in which Catholicsm is a sort of Roman reflection of how the bien pensant want society to look - Polly Toynbee with modern hymns - Damian is unique. There has never been a Catholic journalist who has exposed failures within the Hierarchy as Damian has, and there hasn't been one who has attacked the Hierarchy's politics from the right with such swagger. And to crown it all, he has done it from the vantage point of the Daily Telegraph, where he is out of the Hierarchy's reach (though exactly what ++Cormac said to the Barclay brothers on his visits to the Channel Islands would be interesting to know).

The main thrust of the anti-Damian argument (which only lasted for a brief period before the announcement of the suppression of the "Gay Masses" at Warwick St moved commenters on) was that the need for a unified stand by Catholics behind Archbishop Nichols as he was being howled down by the liberal media for upholding Catholic teaching outweighed any value that criticsm of him from his right flank (as it were) might bring; that he had a duty to be more measured in his words and not give aid and succour to his opponents in the non-Catholic world.

Given Damian's influence, this is an argument worth addressing, but I'd say from the outset that what goes for Damian goes for any of us who comment on the activities of the leaders of the Church: we might not be as popular, as well-connected, as good with words, as full of insight, though some of us might think we are and many might wish they were, but we are in the same boat.

In this regard, three separate trains of thought have struck me: one is about the collective responsibility of Catholics in England and Wales; the second about the completely changed relationship between the Hierarchy and the Faithful; and a third about Rome.

From the time when the relative stability of the eighteenth century led to a grudging tolerance of Catholics to when the Church left its self-sought ghetto in the 70s and 80s, Catholics accepted they they should keep a fairly low profile as a community. Even if persecution had disappeared, low level discrimination hadn't, and the easiest way to avoid trouble was discretion. This is a very broad subject, but one aspect of it was the collective responsibility of all Catholics not to rock the boat of their own accord but instead to obey the Captain's orders. In a society where hierarchy and deference were part of the norm, it became second nature. The Catholic head only appeared above the parapet when the Hierarchy said that it was appropriate to do so: the demonstrations ahead of the 1944 Education Act are an obvious example. The fractures within the community caused by those opposed to Humanae Vitae, a first and shocking example of individual Catholics not only attacking the Hierarchy and the Magisterium, but doing so in public and in the secular media, didn't destroy the instinct towards discretion when speaking about Catholic matters in a secular environment, but while the instinct remains, well, instinctive, the fact that it could be challenged has also been noted. We tend to seek discretion and pulling together around policies we agree with, but are no longer concerned about being vociferous about those with which we don't. Yesterday's spat was an example of the clash between the two.

The new relationship between Hierarchy and Faithful which I have traced (ad nauseam?) to the Liverpool Pastoral Congress of 1980 did not affect the broad relationship between the senior Bishops and the senior Laity as it was a contract which entrenched the position of each in relation to their fellows. The Bishops who counted counted a little bit more than before, and the laity who mattered mattered quite a lot more. But the biological factor has intervened and those who led from 1980 into the new millennium have now moved on to their reward, and the fruit of their stewardship is first, a very new sort of laity: a much smaller constituency which still has a large majority of people who no interest in opining about the Church whatsoever, a declining number of 1980 Liverpool liberals, and an increasing number of people attached to some of the new JP2- and B16-inspired movements within the Church which are best characterised by being definitely not 1980 Liverpool liberal; and second an episcopal conference in which a significant proportion of Bishops are close to retirement and the first new appointments suggest a radical U-turn in episcopal selection.

And the Internet has opened up a new relationship between Catholics and their HQ in Rome. If the establishment of Episcopal Conferences weakened the authority of Bishops, Heads of their Local Churches, the Internet has removed the ability of the Bishops' Conference to mediatise what is coming out the Roman Dicasteries. We know what the Pope wants because we can hear him telling us ourselves. It must seem to some of the older Bishops that the Vatican has selected a new laity in England and Wales, faithful to Rome instead of Eccleston Square.

This is the context in which our reactions to Archbishop Nichols have caused so much internal friction. We have followed the Hierarchy's engagement with Life issues in their broadest sense, and with those who are not totally on message with the Bishops' Conference, and we have found our tongues. When our leaders haven't led, or when they have led badly or in a wrong direction, we have felt empowered to say so.  Where the lay groups they sponsor have said or done things we have felt was unauthentically Catholic, we have said so.

I said before that the main thrust of the anti-Damian argument yesterday was that he, and, I argue, by extension we "had a duty to be more measured in his words and not give aid and succour to (the Archbishop's) opponents in the non-Catholic world". I might have signed up to that ten, maybe five, years ago. I don't think I do any more.

What interesting times!
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Bring On 2013

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There's a bit of a something in the air at the moment: some of the Bishops have chosen their Christmas pastoral letters to attack the Government on the subject of same sex "marriage" and, while some of their brother Bishops carry on sending "What I did on my holidays" or "Home is where you learn table manners" letters, it's interesting that some, at least, have stirred.  Richard, at Linen on the Hedgerow, thinks that the Bishops' Conference should have spoken as one, but on balance I'm glad to see this lack of a single statement as evidence of a growing split between those leaders of the local churches who can read MENE MENE TELE UPHARSIN and react, and those who can't or won't.  And anyway, you can imagine what the Eccleston Square staffers would have produced: a sort of Tablet-lite attempt to explain the Church's teaching in a way that won't offend their friends in Millbank and Palace Street, written by somebody with a post-graduate certificate in sociological waffle, and which certainly wouldn't rouse the lumpencatholics to anything like action.

By a happy coincidence, a new Archbishop of Canterbury is about to take office and we will finally have a chance for some real ecumenism: there is no earthly prospect of structural Christian unity any more, and this ABC, an evangelical, is unlikely to rate coming up with agreed statements as particularly important on his to-do list.  This means that we should stop trying to find lowest common denominator ways of working with other Christians - in effect apologising for being Catholics - and working with them only where we can and it makes sense to do so, rather than trying to do so everywhere.

And this means that Catholic opposition to same sex "marriage" can be based on a Catholic sacramental understanding of marriage, instead of trying to argue backwards from a hypothetical "harm to the family unit" future; similarly, our discussion of proposals about Sundays can be based on a Catholic understanding of how the Sabbath can be kept holy, rather than on some sort of heretical Sabbatarian wish to keep it glum and enjoyment-free.  Lowest common denominator ecumenism has led us to soft pedal our opposition: let's put our foot down!

It means that the effective monopoly of the Bishops' Conference Conference over Catholic life can be broken, and that Bishops can regain control of their dioceses.  Can we expect five or six dioceses to announce that they are restoring the obligation to observe Holy Days on their proper date from Advent 2013 on, for example?  Might dioceses run their own education policies?  Might we try to push more and more Catholics into the medical profession to make anti-life policies unworkable?

The one thing we haven't got in place and ready is a coordinated communications policy: Catholic Voices seemed like a good idea at the time but seems to have disappeared.  It is possibly too identified with Eccleston Square anyway.  But we need something, both at diocesan and national level, which will form and put forward Catholics able to argue Catholicsm as an integral whole, as a challenge to the secular world, and as our opposition to the policies being pushed by the government. The model has to be the Catholic Evidence Guild of the 1920s, but where is our Frank Sheed?

Something is in the air, and I suspect the Nuncio has a lot to do with it, and I'm really glad.  2013 could be an exciting year.
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Sartre, Of All People

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This amazed me: an extract from a letter sent home by Jean Paul Sartre from a POW camp at Christmas in 1940. 

But today is Christmas, you have the right to demand to see the crib. Here it is. Here is the Virgin and here is Joseph and here is the Christ Child. The artist has put all his love into this ensemble but you might find it a bit naive. See, the figures are dressed up but they are stiff: they look like puppets. They certainly were not like that. If you were like me whose eyes are closed ... But listen: you only have to close your eyes to hear me and I'll tell you how I see them within me. The Virgin is pale and she looks at the child. What should be painted on her face is an anxious wonder that has only appeared once on a human face. Because Christ is her child, flesh of her flesh and the fruit of her womb. She carried him for nine months and gave him her breast and her milk became the blood of God. And at times, the temptation is so strong that she forgets that he is God. She hugs him and says “my boy!”  But at other times she is still and she thinks God is here - and she feels a religious awe for this silent God, for this terrifying child. Because all mothers are from time to time brought short before this rebellious fragment of flesh which is their child and they feel exiled from, even though close to, this new life which has been made from their lives and are occupied by alien thoughts. But no child was ever so cruelly and quickly snatched from his mother, because he is God and he exceeds all that can be imagined. And it is a hard trial for a mother to be ashamed of herself and her humanity before her son. But I think there are also other fast and fleeting moments when she feels both that Christ is her son, and that her little son is God. She looks at him and thinks: "This God is my child. This divine flesh is my flesh. It is made of me, he has my eyes and the shape of his mouth is the shape of mine. He looks like me. He is God and he looks like me." And no other woman has had her God to herself. A little God she can hug and cover in kisses, a little warm God, all smiles and breaths, a God who lives and can be touched. And it is in these moments that I would paint Mary, if I was a painter, and I would try to capture the tender air of boldness and timidity with which she moves her finger to touch the sweet skin of this God child whose warm weight she feels on her knees and who smiles at her. That’s Jesus and the Virgin Mary.

And Joseph? I wouldn’t paint Joseph. I would just show a shadow at the bottom of the stable and two bright eyes. Because I do not know what to say about Joseph and Joseph does not know what to say about himself. He adores and is happy to adore, and feels a little like an exile. I think he suffers without admitting it. He suffers because he sees how the woman he loves looks like God, how much she is already at God’s side. Because God has burst like a bomb into the intimacy of this family. Joseph and Mary are separated forever by the exlosion of clarity. And Joseph’s life, I imagine, will be about learning to accept.

Mr Inwood's Survey

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On behalf of the Portsmouth Diocese, Paul Inwood has interpreted the results of a survey about the new translation of the Mass.

Rather than question the statistical validity of the survey, let's take take the figures he provides as absolutely representative of Catholic opinion in Portsmouth and what do they tell us?  I think they are saying three things:

First, that after only four months of a new translation and new Mass settings, fewer than half of those surveyed had negative attituides towards the new translation.  I wonder what the equivalent figures would have looked like in April 1971.  (By the way, why has it taken so long to publish this survey, which seems only to have been uploaded on 12 December?)

Second, that there was a major failure by the previous Bishop, his Vicars General when he was ill, and by the diocesan clergy, to ensure that the faithful were prepared to welcome the new translation enthusiastically.  Given the reasons for adapting the translation, and the years of work that have gone into it, isn't it insulting both to question the need for it, and to suggest that the faithful of Portsmouth could have knocked something better up themselves.  (Should there be signs saying "Welcome to Portsmouth, the Home of Good Translation" in the same way as there are signs saying "Welcome to Oldham, the Home of the Tubular Bandage".)

And third, what tolerance of a sort of congregationalist pervision of Catholicsm has led all of these people surveyed to think that, in this case, their views count as though they are votes, and that because they have opined, the Church should "listen" (ie do what they want)? What sort of leadership has characterised this diocese for so many years if this is a fruit?
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