Sunday, 10 April 2011
''The West has failed...
...it is time for all to depart who would not be thralls.'' Kudos to whomever can guess who said that. I've lost all interest in this blog, as you may have noticed from the last few weeks of inadequate posts (the last being the absolute worst). I pray that you all (well some of you, if I'm honest) have a holy and decorous Passiontide and Holy Week. I'll be busy being liturgically orthodox against the apostate Roman Church again so if there are any '62ists out there pretending that they're being traditional, or worse those Traddies who cannot extricate themselves from evening Mass and likewise put on airs, fare you ill. During Paschaltide we shall see what we shall see.
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The quotation is, surely, from “The Return of the King”, where the words are uttered by Denethor, the Steward of Gondor, prior to burning himself on his own funeral pyre; but my edition has “The West has failed. It is time for all to depart who would not be SLAVES.”
ReplyDelete"Such counsels will make the Enemy's victory certain indeed."
ReplyDeleteLector Orientalis,
ReplyDeleteYou are correct, all editions say slaves. I misquoted from memory since I had not the book to hand. It has been corrected.
James C, if the Roman Church were the true Church the Novus Ordo would not exist and there would be no Pope of Rome to have made it.
Do I take this as an indication that you are now looking to Moscow or Byzantium? Best of luck.
ReplyDeletePatricius: James C, if the Roman Church were the true Church the Novus Ordo would not exist and there would be no Pope of Rome to have made it.
ReplyDeletePope Paul VI was framed. He's not the villain but the tragic figure. Bugnini sold a sack of shit to a gullible, bleeding-heart sort of il Papa and left him holding the stinking mess. I'm thoroughly convinced that Pope Paul truly thought that the Novus Ordo would be the dawn of a "new evangelization" for "modern man". If only he lived to see the utter devastation it has wreaked on Western Christianity. I'm convinced he wouldn't've signed off on the Novus Ordo if he knew what would happen. Nevertheless, Pope Paul held the Keys.
Christ's Church has survived Nero, Trajan, Montanus, Marcion, Arius, Odoacer, the battle of Tours, Al-Andalus, Mehmed II, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Jansenius, and Pius Parsch.
If the Church can weather all of this, she'll find her holy ancient liturgy again. The radiant splendor of liturgical orthodoxy will emerge again when and as the Holy Spirit decides.
sortacatholic
Patricius, if you read further in the Lord of the Rings, you will notice that Denethor doesn't get the last word. Do you think, perhaps, you are being a bit too hasty in burying the Catholic Church? Tolkien dutifully fought the Long Defeat because he maintained (theological) hope in final victory.
ReplyDeleteChrist's Church has survived Nero, Trajan, Montanus, Marcion, Arius, Odoacer, the battle of Tours, Al-Andalus, Mehmed II, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Jansenius, and Pius Parsch
ReplyDeleteYou're right, of course - but almost certainly not in the way you think. Separated from Orthodoxy, even once-great Rome falls subject to entropy, as any unillusioned assessment of her career since she monkeyed with the Creed bears witness; a cautionary tale writ as large as you like (what was Vatican I but the triumph of Luther and Zwingli, functioning as counter-reformation?). Constance was perhaps the Last Chance Saloon; today the Tradition in the West is attenuated beyond any hope of undistorted recovery, and the "Western Rite" is also implicated. How could it be otherwise?
Monitini was up to his neck in it, in collaboration with his boss Pacelli. When will Catholics ever consent to acknowledge the facts about the development of Novus Ordo? Never, I guess - the facts will always be at the mercy of the necessity to protect reputations and myths.
The Lord Denethor had Sauron in mind, not either himself or the King of Gondor in mind - in other words an enemy beyond the boundaries of his realm. The great problem in the Roman Church is the Pope, head honcho himself - upon whom arguably all ''disagreements'' in the history of the Church rely! All unfortunate liturgical reform in the 20th century is directly traceable to the authorisation of the Pope. Traditionalists fondly suppose that Pius XII was ''too ill'' and was taken advantage of; and I daresay they think similarly of Paul VI; that is when they're not accusing him of being an anti-pope or a Modernist. My position is that the Pope was well within his authority to put a stop to the reforms, only didn't and by not doing so imposed aliturgical heterodoxy upon the entire Roman Church. These matters are not like the great heresies of the past, which were suppressed by the Magisterium. In this matter, the matter of the Sacred Liturgy, the Pope is himself to blame for the problem and until the Roman Church sees that, and stops blaming Bugninis and their ilk, the better. Though I do not see this ever happening. The Roman Church is in a state of de facto schism with its own tradition, is not worthy of that tradition. Any hope of the salvation of that tradition must be sought outside the Roman Church, for reasons I have already elaborated. You rely on Traddies, and you get a sung Low Mass in the '62 Rite in Yorkminster, where the Dean and Chancellor looked more stately than the lonely priest and MC...
ReplyDeleteIs it really so unreasonable or hasty to turn one's back on ''Peter'' when he has simply stopped doing his job properly? (That is assuming that his claims to such stewardship were authentic in the first place and not simply lies based on faulty Scriptural exegesis)...
Anagnostis: Separated from Orthodoxy, even once-great Rome falls subject to entropy, as any unillusioned assessment of her career since she monkeyed with the Creed bears witness; a cautionary tale writ as large as you like (what was Vatican I but the triumph of Luther and Zwingli, functioning as counter-reformation?).
ReplyDeleteI agree with you to a great deal. The filioque was an attempt to curb Spanish heresy that distorted, rather than clarified, orthodox Christian pneumatology. Rome would do well to return to 381, not out of a gesture to the East but rather because the filioque does not have theological value.
Infallibility has been used only twice, and even then for two doctrines that did not need dogmatic definition. The "Immaculate Conception" did not need to be dogmatized, as a doctrinal belief in Our Lady's preservation in grace served the Western Church well for many centuries. The same is true for the Assumption, which would've been better left "un-scholasticized". Pius XII questioned the orthodox understanding of the Dormition for no apparent gain.
I also agree that Vatican I set the stage for the Great Deformation under which we Romans now labor. I don't think Paul VI, as proxy for the Concilium, could have committed the same degree of iconoclasm if not given the carte blanche of hyper-magisterium.
The issue for traditional Western Christians now is not a fight over aesthetics. Baroque or Gothic, low or solemn, Irish austere or Austrian bombastic -- all hands need to be on deck to keep the Barque from sinking. What I don't get is Orthodoxy's silence while Rome sinks. We traditional Catholics have been sending the distress signal for decades, and many Orthodox would rather let the Westerners drown. Is it a matter of pride? Payback for the injustices that the Latins visited upon Byzantium? The conflict between Croats and Serbs? Patriarch Kirill has voiced some lukewarm solidarity with Pope Benedict, but no other patriarch, metropolitan, or eparch, has even voiced token sympathy for Catholic liturgical orthodoxy. I don't expect the Greeks to help, but perhaps the Russians might lend a hand.
I wish our Eastern brethren would send some of their armada to prop up the Western faith until orthodoxy can be re-established. Are the Orthodox that proud?
It's as plain as a pikestaff that the Papacy is a human fabrication. If fits the pattern of human fabrications, and its effect, over many centuries, has been precisely what you'd expect of a human fabrication. It has progressively falsified the Church in the west and corrupted the Tradition and instilled an irresponsible "false consciousness" in its subjects. Functionally, it's no different from any other authoritarian bureaucratic centralism, requiring a vast and ever-burgeoning apparatus of intricate constructions and assiduously maintained myths, marshalled in defence of the Big Lie, the maintenance of which has become an end in itself. Eventually, unable to maintain the entropic levels of energy required to sustain the system, it all comes crashing down under the sheer weight of falsehood, stupidity and failure.
ReplyDeleteIt's as plain as a pikestaff that the Papacy is a human fabrication
ReplyDeleteI mean, of course, the "evolved" Papacy, as defined at Vatican I - a different animal entirely from the primacy of the first few centuries; though it's very much to the point to insist that the primitive model was itself understood in terms of human institution, and not of ontological, Dominically sanctioned, exclusive title to the person and "office" of St Peter.
"We traditional Catholics have been sending the distress signal for decades, and many Orthodox would rather let the Westerners drown."
ReplyDeleteThe EO have their hands full with their own crises. They are not in a position to help us much, even if they were willing. The grass is not greener yonder East, as I discovered some few years ago when I was close to joining them.
I'm Catholic now, and I see no need to constantly examine or even think about Eastern Orthodoxy's myriad problems. Haven't we enough of our own within the Church? And I've decided no longer to debate/discuss the problems in my Church with non-Catholics who are strangely so intently interested in discussing them.
As for Rome... Thank God for Rome, for all the missteps of the occupants of Apostolic See. Rome may falter (and it has in the past half-century), but Rome endures by the grace of Christ.
"‘Trends’ in the Church are…serious, especially to those accustomed to find in it a solace and a ‘pax’ in times of temporal trouble, and not just another arena of strife and change.... Now we find ourselves nakedly confronting the will of God, as concerns ourselves and our position in Time.... I know quite well that, to you as to me, the Church which once felt like a refuge, now often feels like a trap. There is nowhere else to go! (I wonder if this desperate feeling, the last state of loyalty hanging on, was not, even more often than is actually recorded in the Gospels, felt by Our Lord’s followers in His earthly life-time?) I think there is nothing to do but pray, for the Church, the Vicar of Christ, and for ourselves; and meanwhile to exercise the virtue of loyalty, which indeed only becomes a virtue when one is under pressure to desert it."
Written by Tolkien in 1967, in the midst of the maelstrom.
Can you heed Tolkien's advice, Patricius? Or is it Denethor after all? Have the virtues of faith and hope departed from you, along with charity?
Perhaps James C could reflect on where one can go for a traditional Roman rite Palm Sunday service (not some obnoxious crap from the 1950s).
ReplyDeleteThe fact that such celebrations are as rare as hen's teeth speaks volumes as to the state of decay in the Roman Church.
James C you haven't answered my question. Why, if the claims of the Pope are true, does the New Rite exist? This isn't just some heresy that has sprung up in some remote corner of the Church and which will eventually be suppressed by the infallible Pope - this is a case of the Pope himself imposing liturgical heterodoxy and defective liturgy upon the entire Church, by his authority alone. Please don't riddle my comment box with hackneyed Scholastic clap-trap and false distinctions between ordinary infallible magisteriums and extraordinary disciplinary matters or what not. Just answer the question. If the Pope is who he says he is, and his job is to safeguard Tradition, why has the Roman Church, by the very act of Papal ratification, so distanced itself from Tradition?
ReplyDeleteOh I shall bend the knee to Mother Rome...when pigs fly. Until then she is a Scarlet Whore.
We traditional Catholics have been sending the distress signal for decades, and many Orthodox would rather let the Westerners drown … I wish our Eastern brethren would send some of their armada to prop up the Western faith until orthodoxy can be re-established. Are the Orthodox that proud?
ReplyDeleteJM
Please forgive me – I somehow managed to miss your last post. I'm obliged to confess that I don't honestly understand the nature of your very heartfelt plea. What can the Orthodox do for you, other than witness to the unchanging faith and constitution of the Catholic Church, and, as humbly and charitably as they can, to their principled resistance to the various errors and distortions that have combined to land you in this tragic predicament? That's what the Orthodox contributors here and elsewhere are engaged in (one hopes and expects) – not sterile partisan polemic for its own sake, but help and encouragement to those trying to see their way clear of the toxic fallout that has enveloped the West in post-war era. How is possible that we could otherwise intervene to “prop up the Western faith”? Western Rite Orthodoxy? - The Russians and Antiochenes are already engaged in that experiment; in my own humble opinion, for whole host of intractable reasons it's doomed to failure, but I don't think that's what you mean anyway. You have to stop looking for somebody to come and cut your meat for you, whether it's the fabled “next Pope” (isn't it always only the next Pope that's infallible?), the present one, or those you've spent the past millenium condemning as “schismatics”.
In the 1920's, Fr Bulgakov concluded his essay on Vatican I with following prophetic observation:
The task of theoretically disproving the claims of papacy has been done; it is now life itself that must do the work. What is needed is a new experience, which Catholicism so far does not know. Papacy has gone through great upheavals and dogmatic doubts at the time of the Avignon captivity, in the XV century, and at the end of the XVIIIth. Is it guaranteed against them at our epoch of great upheavals? “Peter’s rock” seems unshakable, but the fortress of Tsaristcæsaropapism seemed so too—and yet it collapsed in the course of a few days.
For many years I was convinced that Vatican II had set the match to purgatorial fire (as opposed to the pentecostal variety claimed by its supporters), from which a chastened, purified, authentic Roman Orthodoxy would eventually emerge; that in the mean time it was my duty to grow where God had planted me, striving to be Orthodox-in-communion-with-Rome, one tiny “living stone” in the Great Church rebuilt from the bottom up. In the end, I concluded that this was a temptation and delusion. You can't live an Orthodox life wedded to a pack of lies. You can't place loyalty to institutions (juridical OR liturgical) over loyalty to the truth. Much as I miss many things about the Western rite, in the end what happens to it simply isn't my business. I'm not here to save it, but to save my soul and to pass on to my children a realisable means of doing likewise.
"Why, if the claims of the Pope are true, does the New Rite exist?"
ReplyDeletePerhaps the question should not be answered, because, as with the question of God and the rock, the underlying logic of this question is false?
As for questions, you yourself, Patricie, have failed to answer mine on several occasions: If the changes of Paul VI, John XXIII, Urban VIII and Pius V were all unwarrantable abuses of Papal primacy, then what of the changes to the Roman liturgy of Gregory the Great?
Anagnostis --
ReplyDeleteFor many years I was convinced that Vatican II had set the match to purgatorial fire (as opposed to the pentecostal variety claimed by its supporters), from which a chastened, purified, authentic Roman Orthodoxy would eventually emerge
Yes, I also have hoped that Vatican II would be a wilderness for a Latin Exodus. I have prayed for years that a vibrant and restored orthodoxy would emerge after this vale of tears. I am now realising that the Great Deformation is indelible, and that my great love of the older liturgy is nothing more than the faint reminder akin to the English Recusancy.
As I have said, I have almost no doctrinal disagreements with Orthodoxy. Practically I am not a Byzantine nor am I an Oriental Christian. I am a Latin. Romanitas is my lifeblood. I read the Latin fluently, love the devotions of the Western Church, and live her classical liturgy. I am also a pietist (trans. I struggle with Jansenism). Even so, I love the simple meditation of a devoutly said Low Mass or a well said Rosary. The current infatuation with the Baroque and theatrical in some sectors of the Extraordinary Form movement is a fool's errand that is just as destructive as liturgical progressivism.
Aside -- "Western Orthodoxy" is simply a way for former American evangelical protestants to "play Catholic" without having to become one. The AWRV and ROCOR translations of the Roman Mass are horrible. Mass must be said in Latin to maintain its doctrinal and patrimonial integrity. In some American cultures, especially the Protestant South, there is still quite a bit of anti-Catholicism. WRO is a way to get smells-n-bells without the social sacrifice of joining an hated religious group.
How could I be Orthodox if its liturgical culture is so foreign to my piety? I have a deep respect for the Byzantine rites, but their praxis appear chaotic and even emotionally exhausting to me. Yes, perhaps the orthodox Latin remnant should swim the Bosphorus or march to Moscow. What is on the other side to welcome us?
sortacatholic
@JM 'sortacatholic'
ReplyDeleteMuch to agree in what you say. We cannot do without Romanitas. Howsoever much we yearn for Eastern Orthodoxy we are also the sons of Clement,Benedict, Gregory, Odo, Paschasius,etc. Romanitas...that of the new catacombs, and not of glorious domes, or lusty madonnas. We must pray for a monastic revival-for this alone can bring about genuine liturgical revival. It is to the secularisation of the Papacy that many of our problems can be attributed. We need zealous young men giving up everything earthly to go about Europe and the face of the earth to proclaim the gospel of charity and the word of truth.
For those of our kind, those whose vocation is to found a family or remain celibate, we must find a holy monastery, an abbey or priory where the Work of God is continuously being done, and live in its neighbourhood- as Kireevsky(under the correction of Anagnostis) did in Optina.
Mission then. As our foes used it as a pretext to destroy the liturgy and impose their fabrications on us, so let us pray that God may allow us to engage in genuine missionary work to bring souls to him and restore everything in his Son.
"Western Orthodoxy" is simply a way for former American evangelical protestants to "play Catholic" without having to become one.
ReplyDeleteActually, this is not the case in the United States. The Evangelicals who converted to Byzantium, almost to a man have converted, hook line and sinker, to Byzantine culture (the only real alternative offered by the E.O.). Those who are entering Orthodoxy, with the western rite, are almost exclusively Anglo-Catholics or very high church Lutherans in origin. There has been a small movement of Evangelical Episcopalians (not to be confused with the Protestant Episcopal Church) into western rite Orthodoxy recently, but the main movement from this group has been in New England, but judging by surnames this conversion is mostly French Canadian in background and former Roman Catholics. Needless to say, even those who convert with the western rite do not remain western rite for long. They are either Byzantinised, or leave.
Of course, and I have mentioned this before, the western rite, or any non-Byzantine tradition will never find a refuge within Byzantium. Byzantinism is so stained with phyletism that any culture beyond Byzantine ethno-centricism will never find a home. Bigotry amongst the Byzantines is so ingrained that it extends not only to the western liturgical tradition but to any non-Byzantine eastern tradition as well. In the last century a diocese of the Nestorians was converted to Byzantium, using the east Syrian rite, but within a short time all had been Byzantinised (They had been promised that their ancient liturgical tradition would be respected, it was not).
Let us all be careful about old and new rites, as if this were a disease simply to be found in Rome. The Russian Church experienced a huge schism over their institution of a new rite in 1666 in Russia. The Russian Church is still divided between new and old rite communities; one should mention that the Russian Church reacted to the schism of the Old Ritualists by a truly dreadful persecution, and in the early years of persecution this included mass burnings, until the beginning of the 20th century.
In the end, who are the Byzantines in communion with other than themselves? They have broken communion with the Copts, the Syrians (both of whom they brutally persecuted), the Ethiopians, the Malabars, and finally Rome. They have erected imperial and artificial Greek Patriarchates in Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem to give them the pretence of respectability and universalism, but in the end they act simply like a rather pretentious ethnic sect.
"Evangelical Episcopalians (not to be confused with the Protestant Episcopal Church)"
ReplyDeleteSorry, this was meant to be Charismatic Episcopalians as in the Charismatic Episcopal Church, which is an independent liturgical denomination of both Catholic and Protestant background.
I am glad though that Christ did not fully entrust the preaching of the Gospel to the Orthodox alone and that Rome for all her failings did manage to baptize my nation in the name of the Trinity. Otherwise, I'd still be worshiping my ancestors while the Orthodox succumb to the might of the turban.
ReplyDelete