In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Let it be known that I have sworn an oath before Almighty God, before St Mary and all the Saints, the Apostles, the Prophets, the Martyrs and all the Faithful Departed, who rest from their labours in the bosom of our father Abraham, never to partake actively, support, endorse, ratify or otherwise any celebration of the Sacred Liturgy according to the much-reformed, erroneously designated, ''Tridentine'' Rite of 1962, also known as the ''Extraordinary Form'' or the ''Usus Antiquior.'' I reject any and all liturgical innovations of Pius XII, including the celebration of Mass after the liturgically appropriate time according to the Rubrics and kalendar day, the abolition of the Midnight Eucharistic Fast, the devastating Holy Week reforms, the structural changes to the Divine Office and the Kalendar, the false-festival of Joe the Worker, the new Signum Magnum propers for the Feast of the Assumption etc as representing an irreversible departure from the ancient Tradition of the Church. Likewise I repudiate the errors of those who claim that the ''liturgical'' books of 1962 in some way represent, though imperfectly, the constant liturgical traditions of the Church, and therefore, according to this logic, make recourse to the said ''liturgical'' books of 1962 in order to redress the shortcomings of the Missal of Paul VI. I reject also the disposition of those who, under the pretence of ''obedience'' to the Magisterium of the Church, blindly accept the ''liturgical'' books of 1962 as just another legitimate expression of the Roman Rite, as valid as (and equal to) the ancient Uses of Sarum, Hereford, Milan, Toledo and the various Eastern liturgies. It is a fact that the ''liturgical'' books of 1962 are an aberration, and have no intrinsic value, whether in terms of Liturgy or even aesthetics - they will be an example, in the eyes of posterity, of the dangers of magisterial reform of the Sacred Liturgy. So swear I, Patricius, before God the Almighty Father. Amen, and Amen.
One could also invoke the wrath of Blessed Peter and Paul...
ReplyDelete"One could also invoke the wrath of Blessed Peter and Paul..."
ReplyDeleteAnd an anathema.
I hope this doesn't mean your parish will lose an excellent M.C.
ReplyDeleteA friend and I swore something similar fifteen years ago.
ReplyDeleteGood stuff!
I suppose I could make a similar declaration regarding modern Greek practice.
ReplyDeleteQuod scripsi, scripsi...
ReplyDeleteI would also add that anyone who disagrees with me is mentally sick and should be shot.
I ask in all seriousness, what are you going to do on Sunday? Do some pseudo-liturgy in your flat or find some Indie "priest" who says Mass in his flat?
ReplyDeleteWhat is an "Indie priest"? Someone who follows an indult or is this a racist remark?
ReplyDeleteThink about it for a second...what kind of priest (not infrequently with doubtful Orders)says Mass in his own place or some hotel banquet room with a handful of other people who have self-selected themselves away from all the other Sedevacantist/Sedeprivationist etc. groups who have "sold-out" in one way or another to "modernist" Rome?
ReplyDeleteIf I may, an independent priest; one without a bishop, at least formally. But I, too, would like to know what Patricius intends to do on Sunday mornings, if anything.
ReplyDelete(I suppose it could be said that it's none of my business, but it was his choice to create a public 'blog, etc., etc. And Patricius himself frequently complains that he poses questions that no one is willing to answer.)
I think Mr. Goings has, to borrow a phrase, bowled Patricius a googly.
ReplyDeleteAuricularis,
ReplyDeletePerhaps the time comes to do something completely different?
I cannot, of course, speak for Patricius but I am quite keen to buy a kit from Frank Hubbard Inc. in the USA and build a harpsichord. That would be a very constructive way of spending Sunday mornings.
I am content enough in my parish church, where I make no secret of the fact that what happens on (most) Sundays and feasts is certainly not in accordance with the precepts either of Summorum Pontificum or the ''liturgical'' books of 1962 (except for a few unfortunate past occasions which I have complained enough about). Of course I await the coming of the next Pope with enthusiasm...the one who will either annul Summorum Pontificum and introduce women priests or impose it to the letter with a common (obviously impoverished) kalendar for both the New Rite and '62. Of course if SP were imposed to the letter in my parish I would walk out shaking the dust from my feet...perhaps to a nice Anglican church where all the externals (at least) of Liturgy are all present. Seriously though if the Pope is the great pontifex maximus, the meeting point, the great ecumenist then why is he doing his utmost to drive people like me away?
ReplyDelete'I would also add that anyone who disagrees with me is mentally sick and should be shot.'
ReplyDeleteNow where did I leave my gun? Lucky my house is so mesy at the moment.
I had wanted to find a painting of the brothers Húrin and Huor swearing their oath never to reveal the counsels of Turgon to any of the servants of the Enemy but I couldn't find one. For some reason the Oath of Cirion simply doesn't cut it...
ReplyDeleteSeriously though if the Pope is the great pontifex maximus, the meeting point, the great ecumenist then why is he doing his utmost to drive people like me away?
ReplyDeleteYou drive yourself away by a Pharisaical obsession on liturgical externals.
There are Christians in Iraq, who are slaughtered when attending mass by evil Mohammedans. Do you feel no shame in how you whine and cry about how the liturgy is not suited to your fallible tastes? Impoverished as the 1962 rite is, it is far better option than having to put up with an even (on the whole) more impoverished newer rite, which is hardly celebrated according its own rubrics most of the time. Just be glad that you can even attend mass, without a sword hanging over your head.
Of course, there are clergy who are beginning to realize the malaise in the church (liturgical) goes before Vatican II - thanks to the work of Ordo Recitandi and others. But you do no good whatsoever for the cause by these rants.
Here, here, Auricularis.
ReplyDeleteGranted, I'm one internet personage to another, but we always must remember whose backs we place our little affected intelligentsia opinions on. It was mostly those dumb bastard ultramontane/schisy (however you want to see it) '62ers back in the "old days" whose blood, sweat and tears managed to maintained some semblance of traditional liturgy. If it wasn't for them, we would pretty much have nothing in the way of decent liturgy or even a foothold in railing against the "Establishment" about these issues.
As Auricularis aptly points out, its not like we have a real threat of martyrdom hanging over us like some of our Eastern brethren. We can bitch and moan to our heart's content about folded chasubles and what a surplice should be made out of but folks like them manage to practice the Faith knowing they may very well die for it.
That is not to say that liturgical matters are not important, but it just puts things into perspective and makes everything a little more realistic. Should one actually run for the hills of schism or heresy because a certain 19th Century Italinate style predominated their local Church/churches is just sheer foolishness. We should all work within the Church and be a team player as far as this is possible. Are fiddlebacks, lace and a predominance of candles really a deal breaker? If so, I'd suggest some major soul searching...
Taking an "oath" against the '62 books to me just seems utterly futile and silly. I'm all for rolling back the "reforms" of the '50s (and even the teens) but if we could at least get to the '62 books it would give us a foothold of sanity and would be much more realistic than adopting a "Pre-'11, Pre-Tridentine, Sarum or bust" game plan. After all, we do live in the realm of reality and not mere dreams. As much as we would not like to admit, we actually have to deal with real people and not inhabitants of a liturgical ivory tower.
Rolling back to '62 (or even, God forbid, the interim state of '64-65) is much more likely than trying to convince people to go back farther than that on the grounds of historical liturgical minutiae (however profound it may be).
Like it or not, we are sons of the Church. That same Church has named Pope Pius XII as "Venerable". You are just, at best, tilting at windmills on this front.
"It was mostly those dumb bastard ultramontane/schisy (however you want to see it) '62ers back in the "old days" whose blood, sweat and tears managed to maintained some semblance of traditional liturgy. If it wasn't for them, we (...)"
ReplyDeleteBut this is simply not true.
Initial resistance to the modern stages of reform appeared in 1956 with small groups of clergy refusing the New Holy Week. The most famous example probably being the, then, Rector of the English College in Rome. Mgr. Tickel celebrated Roman Holy Week in both 1956 and 1957 in the heart of Rome under Pius's nose. Later as bishop to HM Armed Force he carried on just the same.
"62ers" were not around in the "old days", certainly not in this country. The clergy who refused change didn't use 1962. Men like Fr. Baker stuck to his guns and was cast out of his church as a result. Meanwhile when Fr. Peter Morgan arrived on these shores they didn't bring 1962 with them. Econe at the time was divided between using something like pre-Pius XII and 1967. When the LMS came into being it didn't use 1962 either. Indeed when the 'Heenan' indult appeared in 1971 the LMS Chairman wrote a disparaging letter to The Tablet basically saying it was nothing to do with the Old Rite as it specified 1967.
A friend of mine was at Cambridge in the 1970s and had the benefit of an exiled Benedictine who carried on with the Old Rite in a shed at the bottom of his garden rather than accept the changes.
1962 came a generation later. Rome's classic divide and conquer strategy (let's face it the only strategy it has) soon produced its fruits and Lefebvre asked for the 1962 books back in 1983. Then came the familiar pattern of compromise and conformity.
As a medical man I would have thought you would have read 'The Games People Play'? One can understand a lot about the dymnamics of Tradieland from reading that.
Sorry folks, I was in the middle of replying to comments last night when my Internet connexion was severed, and I can't do it by phone (though I publish comments this way mostly).
ReplyDeleteAuricularis, I find your latest comment objectionable for so many reasons.
''You drive yourself away by a Pharisaical obsession on liturgical externals.''
What is this supposed to mean? How is my reasonable and righteous anger at the abolition of, say, folded chasubles a ''pharasaical obsession'' with externals? Could you be anymore condescending? The use of folded chasubles is highly significant, and the abolition of them a very meaningful side-swipe not only at the penitential nature of certain parts of the liturgical year (the overall effect seems to be to flatten out the liturgical year - and Bugnini's later treatment of Paschaltide comes to mind presently) but also a very old, yea very Roman, aspect of the Tradition. The liturgical year is an extension of the Incarnation, just as much as hearing the Scriptures, receiving the Sacraments etc, and I find that wanton tampering at magisterial level serves merely to make a mockery of this. And precisely what do you mean by ''externals''? I would have thought that the ''externals'' of Liturgy matter just as much as the ''internals'' (whatever they are), since both interpenetrate and form the Christian man in the life of Grace, fortefying him in the teachings of Christ and all virtue. By implication you're the sort of person who thinks that some aspects of liturgical reform are all rigtht whereas others aren't? So where exactly do you draw your line? What is acceptable in your, fallible, opinion?
Please do not cheapen your argument by comparing my oath to the situation in Iraq. I am well aware that there are Christians considerably worse off than myself, and need no reminder of this from you or anyone else. I don't know what you're trying to achieve by this patronising remark (which to me is just a veiled way of saying: ''you have no right to complain about anything'') but it is not welcome here.
Again you're just one of many, too many, people who thinks that '62 is better than the New Rite. Exactly how is it, and why? The Novus Ordo contains elements, impoverished and rather smothered with a host of improprieties, far older than the liturgical books of 1962 - the restoration of the permanent Diaconate, the rite of Concelebration (which predates Low Mass), a pericope cycle, Intercessions at Mass, antiphonal acclamations in the recitation of the Psalms on Sundays...whatever the options, banal translations, too many Eucharistic prayers, diocesan variations (even very obvious parochial ones), Mass facing the crowd, the general Iconoclasm of the last 45 years...in my view the New Rite is far better than '62 - the liturgical books of 1962, by some horrible accident of history, are the worst enemy of Tradition...precisely because people who naturally get fed up with the New Rite (as I did, I won't touch it with a barge pole now) turn to such organisations as the Latin Mass Society, who provide them with what? An equally impoverished, scarcely traditional, want-of-Liturgy - all under the hypocritical pretense that what they're doing is right, orthodox and for the good of the Church. The liturgical books of 1962 can go hang as far as I am concerned.
sit autem verbo vester est, est; non, non.
ReplyDeleteRubricarius,
ReplyDeleteYes, what you say is true literally, but what I'm saying is that the fact that we have "Latin Mass" at all right now is because of the work of folks who just wanted the "Latin Mass". I use the term "'62'ers" as a catch all for those folks worked to maintain some sort of foothold for traditional liturgy. Folks who are too focused on all the liturgical minutiae (again, admitting how important these things are) simply cannot see the forest for the trees.
Rome didn't even have to explicitly use a "divide and conquer" strategy when you already have all sorts of people clamoring for their little ideas of what is proper tradition. Archbishop Lefebvre (IMO) did Tradland a favor by "standardizing" the '62 books. At least there is some sort of united front to work from.
Again, since we are dealing with reality, we cannot go into a corner and pout when exactly what we think is right and proper isn't what is happening. Sometimes we have to accept what we do have (with gratitude) and work from there. We are in a much better situation today to work for a proper restoration of the liturgy than we were forty years ago. Then it was a fight just to keep any sort of sanity. Now, with at least an uneasy peace, we have the leisure to look more closely at what exactly happened in the "reforms" of the past sixty years. There are plenty of folks (clerical and lay) who recognize that the '62 books are certainly not the pinnacle of tradition and that it would indeed be very much worthwhile to take a look not only at the disastrous NO "reform" but all of them.
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteBut the minutiae, as you term them, are actually rather important and are indicators of a process that actually happened - which you graciously admit - and point to the perpetrators of those changes, changes which have taken place over a considerable period of time.
The later hermeneutics are just a gloss to disguise, and indeed even misrepresent, these facts and shift responsibility from those who systematically dismantled what remained of a Western liturgical tradition.
"Archbishop Lefebvre (IMO) did Tradland a favor by "standardizing" the '62 books." Well, having met the man four times I can honestly say I found him fundamentally unimpressive. Wrong man, in the wrong place at the wrong time is perhaps the best view I could take of Lefebvre.
Good luck to you - but please, do me a favour and don't include me in your use of the first person plural. I for one want absolutely nothing to do with Traddieland or the parody of liturgy it calls worship.
Well, can you get absolutely everything you want right away, at the snap of your fingers? Of course not. When will folks like you be satisfied? You know very well that what you seemingly want will absolutely NEVER happen, certainly not immediately and all at once.
ReplyDeleteAs to the "first person plural" thing, it would seem my choice of words would be rather inconsequential if you have already and in all peace self-selected yourself away from this group, i.e. who cares? Me thinks thou doth protest too much...
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteUltimately the simplest thing is to vote with ones' feet.
No one can be forced to attend a 1962 celebration - though no doubt much of Traddieland would like to be able to do just that. If 1962 liturgy brings you closer to God, then good. It had the opposite effect on me.
R.
Rubricarius,
ReplyDeleteCertainly, but where would you go? The '62 is the only valid and licit game in town for, granting your predilection, somewhat-traditional Latin liturgy.
One can go Eastern Catholic, of course, if they are fortunate enough to have an Eastern parish in their locale.
"The '62 is the only valid and licit game in town.."
ReplyDeleteBack to Eric Berne again. I have stopped playing the game - games only have power if you allow them to.
Most Uniate Eastern rites are inferior to the Churches they were set up against. I wouldn't recommend them. Their equivalent 'real thing' is generally much better.
So then, where does one "vote with their feet" too?
ReplyDelete