...why do they despise the Church of England so much? Are they like me? Was their experience of the Church of England not to their liking, as mine was of the Roman Church? I can't personally see that going from Modernist in the Anglican Communion to Modernist in the Roman Church is necessarily an improvement. The most competent practitioners of Liturgy of my acquaintance are certainly not Romans! Romans may condemn Anglican Orders are null and utterly void but Roman Orders are equally invalid. Rome severed communion with the Catholic Church centuries ago. What incenses me is when this condemnation comes from pathetic Ultramontane types with no sense of tradition. Have you considered that some Anglo-Catholics don't want communion with Rome for very sound reasons? Rome is bent on absolute power and authority. Are there not bureaucrats even now in the Vatican bending the whole mind and purpose of the Scarlet Whore upon stretching the Ultramontane cancer to the uttermost corners of the earth? Rome will not be content until the world is under her thumb; not until all confessing Christians use their new translation (which clearly rivals the Coverdale Psalter), the Benedictine altar arrangement and the impoverished '62/'02 kalendar and Mass rubrics will Rome be content. And then her priests and suck-ups (aren't they in every parish? You know the sort, a woman who turns up 30 minutes before Mass to have a word with father...) will sap all sense of Tradition and orthopraxis from everyone and they'll all be mindless robots parroting devotional prayers at side altars, fulfilling their Sunday obligations by attending a New ICEL ''mass'' with hymns sung to Taize chants and having fasted for one hour before Communion. The Roman church is finished. Divine mercy chaplets and the New ICEL are the ultimate legacies of centuries of bad theology and Papal tampering with the Liturgy.
Or you can just sever communion with Rome, shake off the influence of any despot authority (misnamed ''apostolic''), and quietly get on with Tradition, pick up where Rome left off and be content. I have chosen even so. There's no use looking to Rome when Rome is full of idiots; Cardinals wearing scarlet during Lent, Deacons wearing dalmatics at Papal liturgies during penitential times, and advocates of sticking a row of candles on the Altar to re-orient liturgical worship to some faux-compass direction (which I am sure is in breach of the 2002 GIRM anyway). Some may argue that such things are not important in the great scheme of things. Maybe the colour of one's dalmatic is not that important when one is face-to-face with the Just Judge. But such things do mean that Rome has forgotten her own tradition, and is now making a ham-fisted effort to try and make it up again. How does a row of six candlesticks make an iota of difference to a clear liturgical abuse? The new translation is equally repugnant. You're either traditional, or you are not. You either face the right way in liturgical worship, or you face the wrong way. You're either in communion with the Catholic Tradition as it was handed down for centuries, or you're in schism with that Tradition. It's that simple.
Or you can just sever communion with Rome, shake off the influence of any despot authority (misnamed ''apostolic''), and quietly get on with Tradition, pick up where Rome left off and be content. I have chosen even so. There's no use looking to Rome when Rome is full of idiots; Cardinals wearing scarlet during Lent, Deacons wearing dalmatics at Papal liturgies during penitential times, and advocates of sticking a row of candles on the Altar to re-orient liturgical worship to some faux-compass direction (which I am sure is in breach of the 2002 GIRM anyway). Some may argue that such things are not important in the great scheme of things. Maybe the colour of one's dalmatic is not that important when one is face-to-face with the Just Judge. But such things do mean that Rome has forgotten her own tradition, and is now making a ham-fisted effort to try and make it up again. How does a row of six candlesticks make an iota of difference to a clear liturgical abuse? The new translation is equally repugnant. You're either traditional, or you are not. You either face the right way in liturgical worship, or you face the wrong way. You're either in communion with the Catholic Tradition as it was handed down for centuries, or you're in schism with that Tradition. It's that simple.
You do know that SMM is very much the "exception" rather than the norm' liturgically in Anglicanism?
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, Anglican priestesses (and in some places, bishopesses) are a far more dangerous attack on Tradition than anything yet done by Rome.
I fail to see the difference between buggering up the Psalter and the ordination of women. At least the Book of Common Prayer has whole psalms...
ReplyDeleteAt any rate I am generally pleased with tiny pockets of orthodoxy and orthopraxis. There is the true Church, not Traddieland with their '62 books and evening Masses.
ReplyDeleteYou aren't being serious when you say that you fail to see the difference between buggering up the Psalter and the ordination of women, are you?
ReplyDeleteI fail to see the difference; they are equally abhorrent.
ReplyDeleteIs the poster in question attempting to suggest that the ordination of women to the priesthood is more acceptable than the buggering-up of the psalter?
ReplyDeleteJust this month I was in Rome for academic rigamarole. During my last week in Rome I had the time to hear ferial private Masses in St. Peter's. On some days up to half of the morning celebrants in St. Peter's were saying the EF. The priests had a hard time finding servers who knew how to serve the EF. At one or two Masses, I said many of the responses for the servers. Even so, I wish you all could have seen the happiness of these young priests as they said their Masses. Many of these priests were quite competent at saying Mass, despite their recent ordination!
ReplyDeletePatricius, please stop picking out the little deficiencies in the liturgical reconstruction. We traditional faithful are slowly moving back to orthodoxy. We need to follow the lead of priests who are striving to restore romanitas. Please, don't drag down the flowering of liturgical and theological orthodoxy just because certain aspects of the true "liturgical renewal" do not follow the ideals of the past. Just read Pray Tell Blog to find out what's at stake if we cease to work together for the successful reintroduction of the orthodox faith.
sortacatholic
The successful reintroduction of the Orthodox Faith into the West has been progressing apace for more than an hundred years; and the Church of Russia has taken the lead in this missionary work. “Traditional faithful” have no need to move back to Orthodoxy, slowly or otherwise; they already belong to It.
ReplyDeleteI assume that “EF” refers to some bastardized form of the Roman Rite produced in the early 1960s, which is much beloved by those papists who call themselves “traditionalists”. There is nothing traditional about “private Masses”, though I am interested to learn that “On some days up to half of the morning celebrants in St. Peter's were saying the EF.” One wonders what these celebrants’ other halves were doing at the time. Perhaps the “morning celebrants” were only paying up-to-half their attention to whatever they were doing; or, maybe, these “morning celebrants” were, somehow, simultaneously saying something else, in addition to the “EF”?
Of one thing, we may be certain: the “morning celebrants” in question were not priests; Roman Catholicism possesses no sacraments. As for the notion of following “the lead of priests who are striving to restore romanitas”, I can only quote, “[…] all that is Roman is not ancient[…]”; “Because a practice is Roman, it is not therefore of necessity good, or ancient, or Catholic.”
I feel that—having quoted various phrases from it on this blog recently—I ought to post a certain passage from Dr John Wickham Legg. I, therefore, present the penultimate paragraph of his paper read before St Paul’s Ecclesiological Society on October 27, 1887, as published in “Essays on Ceremonial” in 1904. I apologize that the paragraph is a lengthy one, and ask readers to forgive me for any errors that I may have made in typing it. It is, in fact, so long that I have been forced to divide it between two separate comments posted to this blog. Moreover, I have omitted the eight footnotes pertaining to this paragraph (I suspect that I may post these, separately, later). I have also refrained from annotating the text in any way, to the extent that I have (much to the disappointment of some readers, I daresay) abstained from any interpolation of such things as ‘sic’. Reading through this paragraph, I am astonished that it should have been written a century and a quarter ago; it seems so pertinent to our own times.
ReplyDelete“The practical lesson which the study of these ancient customs teaches us is the caution which we should use in forming a judgment as to the source of the practices which some of us are old enough to remember in our youth. They are not all due to Puritan neglect, “the soft, easy, and comfortable pillow which ignorance and indifference make for a well-disposed head”; but many of them are part of the inheritance which has come down to us from our medieval forefathers. Sometimes we have suffered reproaches for belonging to a communion in which such slovenly practices could be found; just as we have been told that the Sundays after Trinity were brought in by Queen Elizabeth, instead of Sundays after Pentecost; whereas Trinity comes straight from the Sarum Missal, and may be found in many medieval German and French missals; and even to this day in the Dominican Breviary. Now the Middle Ages are thought to have been unrivalled in the dignity of their worship, and there is nothing to be ashamed of in customs which trace their lineage back to so noble a time. Indeed it is to the middle ages that the Prayer Book bids us look for our ecclesiology. It declares that “the chancels shall remain as they have done in times past,” that is, in the times which went before the edition of 1552. So that as a general rule we may take as safe guides medieval customs in ecclesiology, and also in ritual when not opposed to the present rubrics of the Prayer Book. Now the earlier ecclesiologists thought they might gain some knowledge of the customs of the middle ages by a study of modern Roman practices, receiving the assertion that Rome never alters with too confiding generosity; and accordingly they proceeded to change some of the inherited medieval customs in accordance with the dictates of modern Rome. But from modern Rome we can learn next to nothing of the practices of the middle ages. A very little study soon convinces us of the deep division there is between the practice of modern Rome and of medieval England, and that modern Rome will only lead us astray if we trust its liturgical decisions. Because a practice is Roman, it is not therefore of necessity good, or ancient, or Catholic.
[CONTINUED]
ReplyDeleteIn the first place, the liturgy of modern Rome is the liturgy of the Franciscan Friars, while that of the national medieval Churches is the old Liturgy which was used in the parish churches of Rome before the days of Nicholas III. Theologians often tell us of the mischief which these Friars have caused in their science, and to philosophy; and the harm they have done in ecclesiology is certain. They are credited with the introduction of the Stations of the Cross, which even Mrs. Jameson can see set forth unworthy ideas. Further, how little of antiquity remains in practice in the Roman Communion may soon be gathered by those who will attend a few popular functions. Liturgical services, with the exception of the Mass, have well-nigh disappeared; and the seasons of the Christian year, which we prize so much, are but little thought of. Lent has given way to the month of Joseph; Easter and Whitsuntide are swallowed up in the month of Mary and the Sacred Heart. A distinguished Fellow of the Royal Society told me that the only sign by which he now knew of the presence of Whitsuntide was the red colour of the vestments. If then the more conservative in the Roman Communion have been unable to save from the wreck the Breviary services and the Christian seasons, are they likely to have kept anything ancient in such comparatively unimportant things as the details of the ornamentation of the altar? They are rather likely to have been overwhelmed by the Oratorianism which, in the early days of the ecclesiological movement, was shown to be destructive of a scientific ecclesiology. As in Germany, in philosophy, the cry has been of late years Back to Kant, so in ecclesiology I am sure we must raise the cry of Back to Pugin, to the principles which Pugin advocated; we must throw away the worldly spirit of the Renaissance, and take our inspiration from the middle ages, remembering the direction of the Prayer Book that the chancels shall remain as in times past, and holding fast to a medieval liberty of practice as contrasted with the attempts of the Congregation of Rites to establish all over the world the iron uniformity which is the aspiration in most things of the nineteenth century. The end of this paper will have been attained if I should succeed in persuading some ecclesiologists that all that is Roman is not ancient, and all that is English is not Puritan.