For the sake of the Liturgy...

Liturgiae Causa can be said to be three years old to-day (it was started at Pentecost A.D 2010). The idea was conceived during a sort of convalescence from my old blog Singulare Ingenium and I set about creating a new blog on a very hot May afternoon after I had attended a Pentecost Vigil at St Bede's church, Clapham Park. At the time I was still a Roman Catholic traditionalist, though an unorthodox one who made the Sign of the Cross in the correct, Orthodox way.

No, writer's block has not set in but I feel decidedly apathetic about matters liturgical now. The points have been made, and debated at length. I have tried to destroy delusional conviction and error but ostensibly I have failed. I haven't even managed to procure my own happiness or fulfilment.

I would actually like to go away, far away and indefinitely, somewhere foreign and remote like Japan, if just to forget and start anew. I used to argue a lot about waking memory and the connexion of Tradition, past and present and so on, but these days the very mention of the word ''tradition'' fills me with wrath; the word is used so liberally it has become a bastardised concept. And so perhaps to forget is a blessing, if only for me. The only problem is money. I feel that if I could just change my circumstances and forget the past and all my connexions I would be happier. So much for Liturgy!

Vicious...

Brian Sewell has written an understandably bitter review of the new ITV sitcom ''Vicious'' for the London Evening (lack of) Standard here. From what I have seen of it I can only agree: Vicious is a well-deserved name for something that just regurgitates old stereotypes and makes the impression that homosexuals, of whatever generation, are generally catty and over the top. It's not even funny, and a lot of it doesn't make sense; for example Freddie and Stuart's aversion to having the curtains drawn. Heaven forbid that they might be seen to be living together, locked in nightly embrace, and in Covent Garden of all places! And the profanity is something else. I swear sometimes, usually when riled by something, but why do you need to utter profanities to appear humorous nowadays? Most contemporary comedy that I have seen has been either crass or ostensibly insulting, unless I have a peculiar, plain sense of humour (or none at all), and this one is no different. Bickering old dears can be funny, but I rather think that Hinge & Bracket did it better.

I must say I am very sorry for Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Derek Jacobi, two of the finest actors I have seen. What a stain on their acting careers this must be. I think there are seven episodes and a Christmass special coming up. Let us hope that that will be the end of it.

My books...

I have lost the ability, patience, attention or something to read books recently, which means I am bored and isolated much of the time. I have a number of books in a kind of master in-pile, waiting to be read, and I have a number of books ''to acquire'' listed somewhere upstairs, but the prospects of actually acquiring and reading them are becoming more and more unlikely. I even have a few books awaiting dispatch to an old reader, now many months overdue; I hope he will forgive my negligence. I have tried to read in many different ways, at different times, even literature I wouldn't otherwise bother with (such as a John Adams essay on Canon and Feudal law), but the words go in and then go out, and there is no memory, and boredom, much like the the apathy I mentioned before, just sets in. And the trouble is I feel like I am running out of time. I have felt like this for many months already, and May will turn into September in a few seconds, and September into a new year, and that will turn into 2073 in no time at all. As Basil Fawlty adequately put: ''Zhooooom, what was that? That was your life, mate! Oh...do I get another? Sorry, mate, that's your lot.'' It's almost as if I am standing at the top of a cliff watching at a safe enough distance the onset of a ruinous storm, all in slow motion, and it comes nearer and now nearer until inevitably I am swept away. Do I conceive of finding some safe place in which to hide? Of course not; what would be the point?

Our Lady of Pew...

A very happy Easter to you all. For those of you who are interested the Society of Our Lady of Pew will be having their annual Mass at the shrine in Westminster Abbey on Friday 10th May after Evensong. Like the Banqueting House I go merely to shew solidarity.

Do come along if you have a mind.

Apathy...

Indifference, listlessness, not giving a (choose your profanity)...It's all about being insular, confining yourself to your bedroom, shutting out the light and letting the dust pile high. What is the point in the light of day? Why waste your time cleaning when you have to do so much cleaning the next day? I haven't dusted my bedroom for many months, perhaps a year, but who is counting the days? Of course, such an outlook pervades over all your life. I now have a healthy disregard for work too, turning up many days unkempt and unshaven. I look around departments, see the amount of work that really needs doing, and just give up. You go around in circles, you get nowhere, you get no help, there aren't enough hours in the day, so why bother? There's no point in knocking at the same door for ages when the occupant of the house is inexorable and won't answer, so turn your face the other way and go about your business. There is no point in reaching out to people who aren't interested in reaching back to you, so why reach out? Why appeal to the good nature or common sense of other people when they are neither good nor sensible? If the incompetence of other people irritates you, why get angry? Why be angry about anything? You'll just make yourself unhappy.

Apathy is both a philosophical concept and a symptom of many psychiatric illnesses. Do you think I have adopted a new philosophical disposition or am I labouring beneath some kind of handicap of the mind? Is the answer to that question even relevant?

Trial by Jury...

I finished my Jury Service yesterday; an interesting experience. I cannot tell you what it feels like to be placed in judgement of someone; it all happens very suddenly. My first case was a Grievous Bodily Harm one, rather simple really. You know the scenario: unprovoked attack, defendant flees the scene and is later arrested. I didn't personally see the need for the expense of a trial and thought the whole affair an absolute travesty of the judicial establishment, that I, not to mention the Honourable Judge and the learned Counsel, was taken out of my life, during Easter Week, and forced to listen to the garbled sounds of those humanoid beasts of the field who, by some art, can mimic actual speech (the case was of a ''gangland'' nature), then forced to watch CCTV evidence, now in slow motion, now in real time; and thought all the while that for cases such as these outlawry would be the least doom. That way we could all go home and resume our own decent lives, shutting out for a while the great unwashed. I was not foreman of this Jury but I did, more or less, chair the deliberations. The Judge was a very sweet man.

The next case was considerably more complex, being two counts of fraud. Complexity of documents, lots of dates, funds, locations, etc, to remember. I felt rather sorry for the defendant, who was well-educated and articulate, though thought that the spouse was rather shifty; clearly the spouse (not implicated in the trial) was the primary influence. I was unanimously elected foreman and the deliberations lasted in excess of five hours, which the Judge (of a more commanding nature than the former) thought indicated a good deal of care, thoroughness and conscientiousness on our part. I must say I was disappointed, and actually rather insulted, that we were no longer asked to be ''beyond reasonable doubt'' in the matter of our collective verdict; instead we were instructed in the ''burden and standard of proof,'' and given a list of criteria by the Judge on intention. I think that goes back to the time (I don't know if this is true) when a Jury was suspended by a Judge because they put this question to him: ''what is 'beyond reasonable doubt?''' A Jury of one's peers, indeed! I felt very steady and alert when I delivered the verdict to the court clerk but was informed afterwards that both Counsels were surprised by it. The Crown Prosecution counsel reminded me of a priest formerly of my acquaintance, though the learned counsel's diction was comparatively far superior.

Perhaps I might venture to give some advice to those of you who have never done Jury Service? Forget what I said about outlawry; it wouldn't work in the modern world (there are simply too many people and too much migration), the deliberations are not the forum to express one's opinions not relevant to the evidence and jurors are not expected to be miniature judges in matters of law themselves. You share the authority of the Honourable Judge; but his province (indeed his life's work) is in matters of law, yours is in matters of fact. Go in with an open mind; try to forget any prejudices you might have. You cannot make judgements in an a priori way on any matters in the case not derived from the evidence exhibited in the court. Bring a good book as you will have to do lots of waiting around; always make sure that your mobile phone is switched off as it is Contempt of Court for your phone to ring in the court or adjacent areas; and for God's Sake do not, for any reason whatever, partake of the fare of the Jurors Canteen (not that I did). You would think that the food provided by a Government building would be of a certain standard, but no. Either take a packed lunch or, if desperate, go to the nearest Marks & Spencers.

None dare call him Antichrist...

"He was a ferocious fanatic, whose object was to destroy all the improvements of modern times, and force society back to the government, customs, and ideas of mediaeval days. In his insensate rage against progress he stopped vaccination; consequently, small-pox devastated the Roman provinces during his reign, along with many other curses which his brutal ignorance brought upon the inhabitants of those beautiful and fertile regions. He curtailed the old privileges of the municipalities, granted new privileges to the religious communities, and enlarged the power of the clergy to the extent that bishops and cardinals had the power of life and death in their hands. He set the Inquisition to work with new vigour; and though torture had been nominally abolished in 1815, new kinds of torment were invented, quite as effectual as the cord, the thumbscrew, and the rack of old times. He renewed the persecution of the Jews; drove them back into the Ghetto from whence they had begun to emerge, rebuilt its walls, and had them locked in at night; and issued an edict ordering all Israelites to sell their goods within a given time on pain of confiscation." G. S. Godkin, Life of Victor Emmanuel II, Macmillan (1880) pp. xiii–xiv.

I came across that wonderful quotation about pope Leo XII (1823-1829), who was undoubtedly one of the most arrogant and destructive men of the 19th century, when looking up the temporal power of the popes on Wikipedia. It is highly convenient that the temporal power was never dogmatized. I read somewhere once that the idea was put forward at the Council of Trent, but was rejected, and clearly Papal Infallibility had political rather than theological import, being no article of the Catholic faith hitherto. Clearly Pio Nono saw that his temporal authority over Rome and Lazio was slipping away, didn't like it, and thought: ''This cannot be borne! I am the Pope, the supreme vicegerent of God on earth, dispensing God's Grace as a commodity to all who kiss my toe'' and resolved, with sour grapes, to exalt himself spiritually in the Church to a new height. Remember Boniface VIII and the King of France? Popes tend to be at their most fanatical when politically they are at their weakest. I mean it would be very rich if the temporal power were made a dogma, akin to belief in the Blessed Trinity and the Hypostatic Union. But there we are, we have Papal Infallibility instead, the most blasphemous and ridiculous heresy ever to plague the poor Church of God.

A Paschal Sermon...

 

Igitur, si con-surrexistis cum Christo, quae

sursum sunt quaerite, ubi Christus est in

dextera Dei sedens.

Quam sursum sunt sapite, non quae super terram.

Colossians 3:1-2



 

A very Happy Easter to you all; that is to those of you who use the Gregorian Kalendar. On Easter Day in the Year of Our Lord 1613 Lancelot Andrewes preached a beauteous sermon before His Majesty King James VI and I on the subject of the aforesaid Scripture about how right it is that on Easter Day we seek after Christ, just as the holy women sought for him in the morn. The reason we seek above, as says the Scripture, is because that is Christ's most comely abode and thither we shall see His glory. It is there that we have our rest after all the travails of life under the sun of this world. The great man of the Golden Age of Anglicanism says:

 

''For this day was, indeed, a day of seeking. I know whom you seek, you seek Jesus Who was crucified, says one angel. Why seek you the living among the dead? says another. To rise when He rose, to seek Him when He was sought. This day He was sought by men, sought by women. Women, the three Maries; men, the two apostles. The women at charges, the apostles at pains. Early by the one, earnestly by the other. So there was seeking of all hands.

 

''And they who sought not went to Emmaus, yet they set their minds on Him, had Him in mind, were talking of Him by the way. So that these do very fitly come into the agendum of this day; thus to seek and set our minds. At least not to lose Him quite, that day we should seek Him, or have our minds farthest from Him, that day they should be most upon Him.

 

''The Church by her office, or agendum, does her part to help us therein, all she may. The things we are willed to seek she sets before us, the blessed mysteries. For these are from above; the Bread that came down from heaven, the Blood that has been carried into the holy place. And I add ubi Christus for ubi Corpus, ubi sanguis Christi, ibi Christus, I am sure. And truly here, if there be an ubi Christus, there it is. On earth we are never so near Him, or He us, as then and there. There in efficacia, and when all is done, efficacy, that is it must do us good, must raise us here, and raise us at the last day to the right hand; and the local ubi without it of no value.

 

''He was found in the breaking of the bread; that bread she breaks, that there we may find Him. He was found by them who had their minds on Him: to that end she will call to us, Sursum corda, which, when we hear, it is but this text iterated, Set your minds, have your hearts where Christ is. We answer, We lift them up; and so I trust we do, but I fear we let them fall too soon again.

 

''Therefore, as before so after, when we hear, Thou Who sitteth at the right hand of the Father; and when again Glory be to God on high, all is but to have this. But especially, where we may sentire and sapere quae sursum, and gustare donum caeleste, taste of the heavenly gift, as in another place he speaks; see in the breaking, and taste in the receiving, how gracious He was and is; was in suffering for us, is in rising again for us too, and regenerating us thereby to a lively hope.  And graciously in offering to us the means, by His mysteries and grace with them, as will raise us also and set our minds, where true rest and glory are to be seen.

 

''That so at this last and great Easter of all, the Resurrection day, what we now seek we may then find; where we now set our minds, our bodies may then be set; what we now but taste, we may then have the full fruition of, even of His glorious Godhead, in rest and glory, joy and bliss, never to have an end.'' The Sermons of Lancelot Andrewes, Volume II: Paschal and Pentecostal, pp.83-84.

Oh dear...

It would be nice to see some photos of a real Palm Sunday liturgy on the New Liturgical Movement blog. But no, instead we have Keith Harrison of the Birmingham Oratory wearing a red cope and blessing palm branches at a table facing the people. Is this part of the movement for liturgical renewal in the Roman church? Mediocrity and liturgical abuse in the Roman Rite? Thank God I'm no longer a Roman Catholic, that's all I can say! At least I have the freedom to say what I want about all this nonsense.

Rubricarius of the St Lawrence Press has published a very good commentary on the reform with his usual masterly commentary on the real thing here. I have said often enough that the most moved I ever was by liturgy was at a celebration of Palm Sunday four years ago, my first in the Old Roman Rite, at the Blackfen chuch. It was during the chanting of St Matthew's Passion narrative; Scripture in situ as it ought to be heard; and I understood every word.

Another random post...

''The great pagan civilisations march their eternal round like weary ghosts through the schoolroom; at the stroke of the clock they vanish, and the activities of real life are resumed. Hardly does the thought occur that these too, like other restless spirits, have a message to deliver, and are burning to speak.'' Sir Walter Raleigh.

An old friend, a confirmed secularist, once said to me that Latin has no place in modern society, per se. I found this awfully funny even if what he said had a grain of truth. Now, I'm not going to repeat all that nonsense about the decline in Latin being another attack on the Roman Catholic church but I would say that a lot of young people, myself included, are considerably more stupid to-day because of it. Even from a pragmatic perspective, if a boy who attends public school is taught Latin and Greek, achieves some mastery of them; whereas a boy who attends a comprehensive school is taught neither but has a meagre instruction in modern French; then the public school boy has a skill that the unfortunate other schoolboy has not, whatever you might think of the ''point'' in learning these languages might be. I was taught Latin at school but the instruction was minimal. A few abridged passages from Caesar and Cicero and a few lines from Virgil - a poor return for two years of my life. It's as if a French boy were taught English at school and given a few pages of Wellington's dispatches or a speech of Burke, augmented with some lines from Paradise Lost. Would that give the boy a decent, nuanced view of our history and culture? No, and they're not even the best examples of English literature either; plus Milton's skill as a poet is dimmed, in my opinion, by his political and religious views. At any rate we're not always fighting, and neither were the Romans.

I never understood the decline. Maybe it's because people can't be bothered? Who knows. There's no use complaining, though. I have felt very deflated recently, very apathetic. Eventhough I was at Evensong at the Abbey on St Patrick's Day I have only been to one other service in the last three months, namely that put on at the Banqueting House by the Society of King Charles the Martyr on 30th January. Yesterday was my first aliturgical Palm Sunday in four years; five years ago I was in Ireland and, as I have already explained, I was then of the opinion (much as I am now, actually) that most liturgy celebrated throughout the world was beneath my taste. So, feeling deflated? Just as well that to-day's Collect at Mass asks God that we might get our breath back (respiremus).

Springtime...

 

Iam ver egelidos refert tepores,
iam caeli furor aequinoctialis
iucundis Zephyri silescit aureis.
Linquantur Phrygii, Catulle, campi
Nicaeaeque ager uber aestuosae:
ad claras Asiae volemus urbes.
Iam mens praetrepidans avet vagari,
iam laeti studio pedes vigescunt.
O dulces comitum valete coetus,
longe quos simul a domo profectos
diversae varie viae reportant.

Catullus 40.

My Latin has gone all rusty of late. I enjoy Catullus but seem to be relying more and more on translations. This poem was written in the Spring of 56 B.C, when he was leaving Bithynia to tour ''the renowned cities of Asia.'' He says that Spring has come with a breeze of Zephyr (egelidos means ''ex-chill''); he desires to get him gone from the plains of Nicaea into the cities of Asia; that his soul is praetrepidans, literally fluttering with anticipation; and he bids the commitum, the staff, farewell as he longs (avet) for the way home diversae variae viae, in divers paths and through different lands.

Scribens...

I can't seem to concentrate very well recently. In my post on Latin Christian poetry I was going to conclude it by making some comment on the continuity of forms and metres being by no means aping or disrespecting that of the pagan Romans but a genuine fusion, almost like the integration of Roman culture into Britain before the days of the Saxons, but never mind. To be honest I sometimes wonder why I bother continuing this fast-failing blog - most of my readers are gone, most people don't take me seriously anymore and all the ''interesting'' stuff is from two and three years ago, and it wouldn't be worth repeating all that, would it? At any rate, the posts into which I put the most effort are the least-read of them all.

I am persona non grata at home again and during Easter Week I shall be starting Jury Service so posts will be sparse from now on.