Saturday 15 January 2011

Ordinariate thingy...


I offer my congratulations to the three new priests who have come over to join us on the astro turf, that is to say, the Roman Church.

However, I must speak my mind and ask what on earth possessed you? You must have been under the false impression that the Roman Church is the true church of Jesus Christ, or at least that the English Church's only connexion to the Catholic Church was from Rome. If so then good luck to you, but don't expect me to share your enthusiasm! I think that you will all go back at some point, or join the Orthodox Church. I know of many ex-Anglicans who once again became Anglicans because something about the Roman Church put them off.

So what will be the reason of your going back? The culture? The Liturgy? The negative doctrine? The people? The Bishops? Rome herself, perhaps? As for me it was a bitter brew with all these ingredients, and Traddieland stirred the cup. It is a fact that only a handful of Roman Catholics worldwide know anything about Liturgy, and most of these are accused of some heresy (like me). Traditionalists, as a rule, are ignorant of Liturgy because of their blind obsession with the revival of 1950s Catholicism, and pro-this and anti-that causes (not to mention their Ultramontanism). Since Liturgy is more important than all that, I would rather go where it is done properly, or at least tastefully, even if this means beyond the confines of Roman jurisdiction. I now have no qualms at all about serving Anglo-Catholic liturgy. My long-term plans ecclesiologically are nebulous, as yet, though 20-30 years from now I can see myself in a ''Western Rite Orthodox'' parish in ROCOR using the Liturgy of Old Sarum. So no lace (the very use of which I find so utterly repugnant as to warrant a most severe punishment), no big six, no Great Elevation etc, just pure Medieval Liturgy, unmutilated by popery.

If Roman Catholics find my views about the Papacy objectionable then perhaps they'd care to make earnest study of the history of Liturgy since the Council of Trent. It's quite grim reading to be honest, with succession after succession of Popes doing whatever takes their fancy with it.

14 comments:

  1. Good heavens. Oh, Patricius, my good sir. What have you done?

    Are we to assume that this belligerent post is the manifesto of your apostasy from the Holy Catholic Church?

    The devil is quite the wily one to be sure. He has actually managed to turn your love of something as pious and essential as liturgical scholarship into the very impetus for your plunge from the bow of the Barque of Peter into the abyss. There is no liturgy, no aesthetical propriety that can save your soul. Neither hanging pyxs or riddle-posts or broad stoles or conical chasubles will amount to dung in your eternal salvation.

    You are in my prayers, sir. May God enlighten you.

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  2. "There is no liturgy, no aesthetical propriety that can save your soul. Neither hanging pyxs or riddle-posts or broad stoles or conical chasubles will amount to dung in your eternal salvation."

    Nor various antiphons or kalendars or any other arcane detail become idol.

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  3. Perhaps the bishops and other Anglican clergy have become convinced, on reflection, of the claims of the Roman Catholic church to be the one true church of Christ?

    Lactantius: "The Catholic Church is alone the fount of truth and the house of Faith, the temple of God: if any man enter not here, or if any man go forth from it, he is a stranger to the hope of life and salvation. Let none delude himself with obstinate wrangling. For life and salvation are here concerned, which will be lost and entirely destroyed, unless their interests are carefully and assiduously kept in mind."

    If there is widespread disorder in the Catholic Church - which there is! - then the only place that it can be reordered is within the Church. The worship of apostates, no matter how traditional, is no substitute for the Rock of Peter.

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  4. Is it correct to say that Ultramontanes apply a priori reasoning to a posteri facts, namely history?

    Well, anyway i'm on my way to a Missa Cantata which will be celebrated in a shack that used to be a brothel as the Ordinary has forbidden us the access to churches.

    History is the weakness of both Ultramontane trads and Ultramontane liberals. What we need is perhaps a healthy gallicanism a la Bossuet. A pity the Ultrajectines have become heretics.

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  5. "My long-term plans ecclesiologically are nebulous, as yet, though 20-30 years from now I can see myself in a ''Western Rite Orthodox'' parish in ROCOR using the Liturgy of Old Sarum."

    Can't say I'm surprised.

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  6. You sure you will be quite happy in a WRO ghetto, giving up the Western medieval patrimony (Augustine, Aquinas, Francis, Dominic, the mystics and all the rest) and worshipping according to a "reconstructed" rite or the Tridentine, both with a tacked-on Byzantine epiclesis?

    For some reason God did not put you in the Middle Ages; he put you on Earth during the turn of the 21st century. Clearly he has a great purpose for you in His Church, here and now.

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  7. Lace and the Big Six are a matter of taste, not a matter of salvation or damnation.

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  8. Regarding lace and the big six, you are quite correct that they are not serious matters of personal salvation, but they are nonetheless pure modern Romanism and grate on my nerves like nothing else. If Traditionalists want Traditional Liturgy, why not actually provide something traditional and look to the medieval patrimony rather than the fashion of the 17th century?

    James C,

    I object strongly to the Byzantine abuse of artificially inserting an Epiklesis into the Roman Canon. If the Canon was good enough to procure the Blessed Sacrament before whenever you date the Schism between East and West then it is good enough without an obvious one now. I tend to view the Quam Oblationem as the Roman Epiklesis.

    I think you're right about God's plan for me in the 21st century. And in all honesty I tend to view myself and people who think like me, rather than Traddieland, as the last hope of the Western liturgical Tradition. How can holistic liturgy thrive in an environment where the Sacrament is only distributed under one kind, there is no scope for the fullness of Liturgy beyond extra candles and more lace just because a priest doesn't turn up (I am, of coruse, referring to the ridiculous scenario of a High Mass with a Deacon in choir), there is evening Mass on Holydays rather than a principle Mass in the morning and sung Office, and generally the only Liturgy provided is the Eucharistic Liturgy? There are other reasons, but I generally view Traditionalists as the absolute worst people to provide Liturgy, and tragically they among the only people who tend to bother with it.

    The Roman Church has had it, quite literally. In the last five years we have seen efforts on Rome's part at rendering the wreckage of the modern Roman Rite a tad more ''traditional'' than it could otherwise be of itself, and what do we get? Six candles and a crucifix to cover up what is clearly a pernicious aliturgical abuse (i.e, Mass celebrated facing the wrong way); an artificial translation of the Missale Romanum which clearly betrays the very principles of translation, among other things; and to top it all Summorum Pontificum, which is at best a horrible mistake, and very misleading, at worst a damned lie, and ordered to the destruction of Tradition.

    So, do I put my trust in modern Rome in liturgical matters, or my own good sense, which God gave me? Until Rome comes to her senses, becomes orthodox and annuls the last century of liturgical wreckage, and corrects her gross alterations of Liturgy, then I shall look to the unmolested Tradition of the Church rather than modern Rome; whether she be a legitimate authority or not.

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  9. Don't let us forget Rome's tendency to centralize everything. In the Middle Ages Bishops were Bishops, with real jurisdiction, and Liturgy was Liturgy, with local custom and the semblance of Tradition. Since the Council of Trent, and more so since 1970, Liturgy has been what Rome says it is, with one Missal supplanting all received custom and tradition contrary to this.

    Summorum Pontificum, fortunately, won't last. There are already efforts on the part of Rome to unify the Kalendar, among other things, and trust me, this is not the Kalendar as it was in 1962!

    It would be good to be a fly on the wall in Traddieland to see how obedient they are then. Already they completely disregard Summorum Pontificum (though hide behind it) and do what they think is best for the good of the Church, vis, pre-62 Liturgy. When the next Pope comes along and imposes his impoverished kalendar, and makes unison the rite of the Mass...well, such things are maybe farther off than I think.

    For this reason alone I am convinced beyond remonstrance that Tradition is dead in the Roman Church.

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  10. @Patricius--

    You wrote:
    "I object strongly to the Byzantine abuse of artificially inserting an Epiklesis into the Roman Canon. If the Canon was good enough to procure the Blessed Sacrament before whenever you date the Schism between East and West then it is good enough without an obvious one now. I tend to view the Quam Oblationem as the Roman Epiklesis."

    It truly is a bizarre Byzantinization, made, I suspect, during a time when the Russian Church was still under the influence of the Jesuits. Earlier Orthodox theologians were not quite as concerned with such things. For example, have you read Nicholas Cavasilas' "Commentary on the Divine Liturgy"? Written in the 14th Century, Cavasilas' commentary dates from a time when the notion that the Mass was really all about the Words of Institution was making its way East, and so Cavasilas comments about it. In his comment, he asserts that the Latins do have the equivalent of an epiklesis, and that it is the Supplices te rogamus prayer is it.

    Interestingly, Cavasilas does not use the term "epiklesis" even when responding to "the criticisms certain Latins made of us and a refutation of these." Furthermore, when discussing the Byzantine Anaphora, Cavasilas treats the Words of Institution and the Epiklesis as a single event. It therefore seems that the idea of the epiklesis being a separate "element" of the Anaphora arose as a response to the influence of Scholastic theology in the 14th Century, but even at the time of Barlaam's condemnation, leading Byzantine scholars (such as Cavasilas) were not thinking in these terms.

    Since the Roman Canon as it was in the 14th Century was good enough for us then, I see no real reason to artificially insert a Byzantine style epiklesis into it in the 20th for the Western Rite. If the Western Rite is an experiment to show that "Orthodox" and "Byzantine" are not synonymous, the end is frustrated by Byzantinizing the Roman Canon, and makes us hypocrites by turning what should be Western Orthodoxy into a form of unitatism.

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  11. Han, I appreciate your comment. I hadn't linked the modern Orthodox ''obsession'' with the explicit invocation of the Holy Ghost in the Eucharistic Prayer to Jesuit influence, though now that I think about it, I am not surprised. Fortescue wrote 100 years ago that the Epiklesis itself was a late addition, not as late as the Elevation after the Words of Institution, but still late.

    As I have said, if I were in charge of a Western Rite Orthodox parish I would simply remove the Elevation, and any genuflexions, in the Roman Canon, and conclude the Canon with the Minor Elevation of both elements of the Eucharist together, and the Great Amen followed by the Pater Noster. Holy Communion would then be administered under both kinds, as per the Lord's ordinance in the Gospel.

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  12. You've made some intelligent posts on this blog, Patricius.

    I hope that with prayer and calm, your style will refine and moderate, and will come to save us poor readers the trouble of digging through the hubris, arrogance, and egocentrism before we reach those elements of sound insight and commentary.

    "I must speak my mind..." "I see myself as..." "I object strongly to..." "Summorum Pontificum(...)a damned lie." "If I was in charge..."

    One might be forgiven for thinking that you consider yourself the leading authority and sole saviour of the Church.

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  13. "I now have no qualms at all about serving Anglo-Catholic liturgy. My long-term plans ecclesiologically are nebulous, as yet, though 20-30 years from now I can see myself in a ''Western Rite Orthodox'' parish in ROCOR using the Liturgy of Old Sarum. So no lace (the very use of which I find so utterly repugnant as to warrant a most severe punishment), no big six, no Great Elevation etc, just pure Medieval Liturgy, unmutilated by popery."

    Off you go then.

    It's sad that you reduce what should be a heroic and draining swim across the Bosphorus, something which exalts both the old you and the new you, and encourages us to Ave atque vale, rather than just Vale, to a petulant and camp exercise in the sort of Protestantism in which you define exactly what you want your religion's services to look and sound like; but perhaps that just means rump Anglo-Catholicsm is just for you.

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  14. "My long-term plans ecclesiologically are nebulous, as yet, though 20-30 years from now I can see myself in a ''Western Rite Orthodox'' parish in ROCOR using the Liturgy of Old Sarum."

    If you are truly interested in western rite Orthodoxy, you had better join now; if history is any clue, it will not be around too much longer. Actually, Fr Phillip Andrew, and English-born Russian priest, has admitted that its use is only temporary. I would have thought that simply looking at the background of "Pilgrimage to Orthodoxy" would have been history enough to prove the lack of staying power of any tradition other than Byzantine within Eastern Orthodoxy.

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