Anglicanae traditiones...

Dear pope Benedict,

This is not your tradition. It came into existence in spite of you, and you had no part in its formation, you have no part in its excellence and you cannot, for all your unapostolic power, rewrite the history of Liturgy.

Sincerely yours,

Patrick Sheridan

P.S: ''Melkor indeed declared afterwards that Fëanor had learned much art from him in secret, and had been instructed by him in the greatest of all his works; but he lied in his lust and his envy; for none of the Eldalië ever hated Melkor more than Fëanor son of Finwë, who first named him Morgoth...'' J.R.R Tolkien, The Silmarillion, p.67.

(Substitute Melkor for the pope, and Fëanor for the Church of England, and Morgoth for Antichrist and you get the picture).

I wonder if the Traddies have added Lancelot Andrewes to their libraries and St Charles the Martyr to the Litany of the Saints yet? Oh no, sorry. I was forgetting that this newfound esteem for Anglican traditions has no substance or history.

Lost in Translation...

According to this sweeping statement over at Style-over-Substance (no, that's not its real name; that is a name I invented to better account for the constant tat) Roman Catholics overwhelmingly support the new translation of the Roman Missal. Never mind that this survey was completed by just over 1,000 Roman Catholics (out of 1 billion), that it was only done over an eight day period and all the things I've (and I'm sure you've) heard about the new translation.

The new translation is complete and utter rubbish. Roman Catholic liturgical and ecclesiastical affairs are just doomed to eternal artificiality as a result of it, and the latter day history of approved vernacular liturgical books. By the 1960s it was really too late. Rome can't seriously look to the Prayer Book or the King James Bible for ''liturgical'' English in the Latin Rite (notwithstanding the new craze for Patrimony brought about by the Ordinariates) as these are the compositions of their time, and a modern ''liturgical'' and vernacular language in the Latin Rite just raises a host of questions about the place of Latin, the relationship of great choral music to contemporary liturgy, and other complex questions about what constitutes a ''liturgical language,'' if there is such a thing at all, pastoral questions, etc. They either end up aping Myles Coverdale and Lancelot Andrewes or producing something that reads like a noticeboard at the railway station; and who on earth has sentimental and religious feelings about the railway station? Rome has opted for the latter, and what a monstrosity! Conversations I've had with lapsed Roman Catholics (I am myself a kind of lapsed Catholic) tell me that they find it all irrelevant and condescending. You may think that their opinions are not worth considering but they are in many ways the salt of the earth, and if you're trying to win them back by a verbose, ugly translation then good luck!

But who cares? Religion blows anyway.

The new Aspergers...

According to this article from The Guardian Asperger Syndrome will no longer exist as a separate diagnosis in May of 2013. It is to be replaced by a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder on a severity scale. I'd read about things like this before in authors such as Attwood and Baron-Cohen, who say that in the psychiatric world there has been an age-old debate about the differences (if any) between Asperger Syndrome and High-Functioning Autism, with obvious concerns about accuracy of diagnoses, prognosis and appropriate treatment options for patients.

I am not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, so what do I know? My concerns are that ''severity'' cannot really be measured by a clinician and that there are clear differences between classic autism and Asperger Syndrome. Autistic people are generally mute and find communication impossible and autism is, by nature, pervasive - it pervades over every aspect of that individual's life, from clinically significant delays and lifelong hindrance in communication, learning difficulties, routines, rituals, tics etc.; everything built up to defend an otherwise defenceless person. People with Asperger Syndrome are more prone to comorbid conditions such as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Schizophrenia and Major Depressive Disorder, each one of these debilitating enough in its own right. I also have no doubt that some of the characteristics of Asperger Syndrome can increase the intensity and prolong the duration of all of these separate conditions. Autistic children are generally ''stupid,'' that is to say that because of language delays and learning difficulties they are significantly below average intelligence. In Asperger Syndrome there is no delay and generally no learning difficulties and most children and adults with Asperger Syndrome have above average intelligence. I don't tell most people in my life about my condition because it's none of their business, and sometimes when I do I'm met with disbelief, ''oh, but I've read about autism and you don't strike me as autistic,'' or ''but you're just slightly odd.'' That's not always the case; when I told my tutor at Heythrop about it he said ''now I understand.'' How I miss the society of bright people.

I'm afraid I don't welcome this change, as I'm sure you've already guessed. I always saw myself as different, even in the deeps of time when I was wont to manipulate light switches, open and close the curtains or walk on my toes, and when I was diagnosed four years ago (finally) I felt as though I had something to explain my eccentricities. Autism Spectrum Disorder on a severity scale is too nebulous for me; it's almost as if someone has said: ''you're lost and we've given up trying to find you, so feel free to wander in travail and sorrow through this wilderness we've tried, but failed, to understand.'' So like the latest papal pronouncement I think it behoves us all to simply ignore it.

Speaking your mind...

Speaking your mind is a good thing but most people don't understand this because they don't like home truths, or even the plain Truth. My mother once said that the reason people don't like me very much is because I can't keep my mouth shut. I value honesty and if people want to live in a world of lies, yes-men and ''we're all weak, emotionally unstable people; we take pleasure in sycophancy in our little cliques, where we comfort one another with false praise and stab each other in the back;'' then they have problems and I confess myself totally innocent of human behaviour. People stop speaking to me all the time because I upset them in some way; it happens in all areas of my life; at church, at work, home and formerly at school. Lord knows how I have tried to curb this, but it usually takes the form of recourse to absolute solitude where human contact is completely eshewed for fear of offending someone else. At work it took the form of silence, a breakdown in communication with colleagues and my line manager. But then you're brought to book about this as well. Then the dam bursts and you unleash a blast of pent-up anger. People don't like being told that the company is cheap (general manager), that when I come to you for help, you don't actually help (HR manager), that the reason you didn't make it as a supervisor is because you had to do actual work (someone else), or in another sphere of my life, that the reason I never tell you anything is because I think you're prejudiced, ill-informed and I don't value your opinion (she asked why, and I told her), or again the reason I refused to get any of my ''ecclesiastical contacts'' to sign your passport application is because I don't think very highly of people who use the church in this way. Another example would be my being thrust from my old parish church for expressing my views about ecclesiastical polity, liturgical compromise and the various ups and downs of church discipline, depending on the incumbent of the Roman see. Do I think that the pope of Rome is the Antichrist? In all likelihood, yes he is. Do I think that the Church of England is finished? Pretty much.

And blah, blah, blah. People can say whatever they want about me; I know my shortcomings. I live in a state of constant anger, I am very dismissive, I am not as intelligent as I let on sometimes and I am lazy. But I do enjoy art, choral and classical music, ballet and good, catholic literature.

Femininity and the call...

I began this post the day after I read about the trouble with women bishops in the Church of England but, like so much else recently, you lose your place, you make a mistake, a sentence doesn't quite make sense and you're flooded with feelings of hopelessness, and you just give up. But I decided to return to the matter after a conversation with arguably the only decent man at work on Friday morning. It was asked: ''when did women cease to be feminine?'' Eventually I said ''…which is why I don't like lesbians,'' to which my friend said ''you really are an oddball, Patrick!'' and laughed. I can't say I blame him. Now, my relationship to the fairer sex is complicated by my own ''problem,'' with that and with domineering women (like my mother); nevertheless I like women and like the society of women. But I can't understand sexual attraction to women, even less sexual attraction among women. Even more confusing is that lesbians generally dislike men, and yet many (if not most) look like men (more than me!) and are attracted to other women who look like men! But the question is apposite all the same and is not solely restricted to ''butch'' women. You don't have to cut your hair short, grow out your body hair, put on weight and wear boots to be considered an inferior woman by me. I can think of a number of women who like to dress up, wear their seven inch heels out and instigate drunken brawls with some unlucky sod. Femininity has little (if anything) to do with how much foundation you paint onto your face. Femininity is an innate quality and means rather a woman's deportment, how she carries herself, her dignity, her grace, her gentleness, the things she finds amusing. Unfortunately this concept is maligned these days and you're considered a weirdo by some for thinking of it, a misogynist by others; feminists accuse me of trying to pigeon-hole women into one particular ''idea'' of womanhood - at the kitchen sink, for example. I'm sure you'd agree that a drunken woman in a revealing dress shouting abuse at someone in a night club is just a man in drag. What difference is there between her and a football hooligan? None whatsoever. But I do think that a truly feminine woman, someone like Darcey Bussell or Audrey Hepburn, is so wonderful. I'm sorry but put Darcey Bussell next to the man in drag shouting abuse and the difference is startling; akin to the difference between Michelangelo's Pieta and Tracey Emin's Bed.

Now, where were we? Ah yes, disparaging butch women. This is not a treatise on how or why the differences between men and women are breaking down any more than a call from me to try and change anything - you would only be wasting your time. Time. Jacob Bronowski once said that the arrow of Time points always in the direction of diminishing difference. Time was when there was a clear difference between the sexes; now, thanks to a society built on secular principles, there's almost none. Lord only knows to what uneasy, unnatural future we are all bound. So where does this cultural and gender revolution leave the young woman with aspirations to join the priesthood? What shall we say of her femininity?

 

I am not convinced of theological arguments against the ordination of women (although I would be interested to read any theological argument in their favour); I think they are reactionary constructs and just a tad misogynistic. Rome, of course, cites its own authority in the battle; “we can no more ordain a woman than we can govern the tides!” – a rather unconvincing argument, I daresay, since Rome’s authority fluctuates depending on the incumbent of the Holy See. No institution, be it as old as the hills, is sacred in the Roman church (except the papacy)! However I would look to the ecclesiastical polity handed down to us from the Fathers as the norm and standard of contemporary church governance and hierarchy. If it is not the case in the fifth century, why should it be so now? The ordination of women may not be a purely theological matter but it is fundamental nonetheless and goes to the heart of our understanding of the Church. The very notion of a ''priestess,'' let alone a ''bishopess,'' would have been abhorrent to the Fathers, and I would say more for scriptural than cultural reasons. The ordination of women comes in the wake of a very recent history of women's rights campaigning and, to me at any rate, just seems to be a rub off from all that. This alone renders the “desire” rather dubious. How far back, then, does the “desire” among women to be the “equal” of men in ecclesiastical matters go? Whence came it? Do young girls really go up to their mothers and say: “mummy, when I grow up I want to be a bishop?” Of course, that’s not entirely how it happens and priestly or episcopal vocations are different from that of, say, a gymnast or a ballerina. The difficulty I find with priestesses nowadays, more than in the days when I was blindly obedient to Roman authority on the question, is that I do not think that a vocation to the priesthood is a feminine pursuit, nor am I convinced of the reality of the vocation among priestesses. This is, of course, not the end of the matter and it is merely the result of my own subjective thought. I am not a theologian; I can merely articulate what I feel in conscience to be a truth begotten of the unwritten natural law and the constant Tradition of the Church. I can say with total confidence that my belief in God is founded on the same principle.

 

Of course, my trouble is my inability to put forward an argument about anything without sounding like a bigot, and often my argument is marred by some sudden stroke. Let me say now that I do not think that women are less capable of piety and ministry than men and contrary to what I may have implied earlier I do not equate a “priestly vocation” in a woman with any kind of homosexual tendencies nor with unlawful, antisocial behaviour. I simply think that religious women who feel called in this way ought to channel their gifts and their pious notions in such a way as to be more in line with the ecclesiastical polity long established. I’m sure they have much to offer. What to do with priestesses already in existence is another matter.

 

This is the first post in quite a while at which I actually had to sit down and think so comments would be welcome!

2013 Ordines...

The 2013 ordines are ready for despatch. Go over to the St Lawrence Press 'blog to buy one now.

Why do I use the ordo, you ask? Well, I don't, actually. Why do I advertise it? Probably because I admire the spirit in which the St Lawrence Press (now approaching its 40th anniversary) was founded. St Lawrence was not chosen in idle fancy (as Gandalf said of the name Entwood among the Rohirrim). The founding members wanted a saint with both a Vigil and an Octave; St Lawrence has (or had as the case may be) both, though his vigil was displaced by the feast of John Mary Vianney, and under the new rules for simple octaves (in force in the 1939 Missal) it might as well not have existed.

May I take this opportunity to remind Roman Catholics who buy the Ordo of a certain feast day in May? (This is taken from the 2012 ordo):

1(Maji) (R) ‡ Fer III. SS PHILIPPI* ET JACOBI* APP, D II CL. (pdF) Off pr. Ad Mat LL in 1n Incipit Ep catholica beati Jacobi Ap e Dom IV post Pasch cum ℟℟ de coi App T.P. Ad Primam in Mart 1°loco: Octava Solemnitatis S Joseph etc. In M Gl, Cr,Praef App. In V com seq (e I V fest) et S Athanasii ECD (ant ad Magn: O Doctor...beate Athanasi). (pd)

Feel free to pick and choose which legislation is more important, of course - that of Paul VI, who abrogated the liturgical books of 1962 or Benedict XVI who reinstated them in the name of ''tradition.'' As for me, I think it's all shite. Truth needs no assistance, only lies require so much maintenance. Legislation, of course, makes virtually no difference whatever, as I have seen with my own eyes. The more laws you have, the more fixers and the more snoopers.

I can't wait for the next pope, who will, pray God, bring the whole lot crashing down. How long, O Lord!

Visions...

Years ago I was sat in the back of my father's car by myself as he went to see a mechanic about something. It was late in the afternoon; maybe it was after school; the sky was dark, heavy with rain. I remember looking up at the second story of this man's house, the windows were dark, and the walls were smothered in what seemed to be light brown pebbledash, and in the light of the sun, going down in the West, it seemed that I stood there, not in the place itself, but the light was familiar. I had the feeling that in some far distant day, beyond recall, I would stand in the same light, waiting for the onset of a ruinous storm, looking around my room, dusty floorboards, an old unmade bed, and looking out into the street, old and tired, at eternity's gate. But the light was there.

I envy the insane. If I were someone like Susanna Kaysen I could have made this so much more interesting...

By the way, the photo is rather nice but has little in common with the sky or the house I saw. It's like on the Thursday that Michael Jackson died; I walked home with an old acquaintance (he wasn't a friend, exactly; he got on my tits), and told him to look at the moon, wreathed in silver clouds, and told him to enjoy it, for it would be the last time he (or anyone) ever saw it. I'm not a literary genius like Tolkien; I cannot describe a hauting sunset, conjuring before you a vivid picture as though you too were there; nor express exactly what I felt, why I felt it, for I am not like Kaysen either. You may think I'm a crackpot for bothering to write this post, but is the significance of any life event, even a reminiscent sunset, diminished because only one person experienced it? I don't believe in ESP, and I am not saintly enough to have visions, but such things have happened before; either in dreams or waking memory, and have ''come true,'' in a sense. Now is the time to just wait for that room.

Children in Need...

Children in Need is a complete sham, and I'm not saying that because I hate Terry Wogan. Apart from allocating funds to any old cause indiscriminately (such as the infamous case of the young Muslim girl who tried to sue her school because she found integration into British society intolerable), there is something incredibly vulgar about dressing up like an idiot to raise money. Community-oriented fund-raising activities are all well and good, but it's like I said in a previous post - it's just the height of laziness, shewing off and hypocrisy. Look at me, I'm a philanthropist! And anyway, it's just another opportunity for has-been celebrities to try and resurrect their dead or dying careers on prime time television. What better way than to act like you give a crap?

But who am I to criticise? I stopped giving to charity when I realised that I live in a state of near penury myself.

The social graces...

''Hullo, how are you?''

''Hullo'' is an acceptable form of greeting, but I'm not so sure about ''how are you?'' This is why:

1. There are two answers to that question: ''I'm fine, how are you?'' This leads to another, ''yes, I'm fine thanks,'' or similar variations of that answer. But what if you're not feeling ''fine'' - whatever that means? Does fine mean adequate? So so? Neither good nor bad? Does it have any bearing on the day itself? Does the weather affect your disposition for the day? In which case, whatever ''fine'' means, if you're not ''fine,'' then the social graces apt to this interaction are riddled with small talk, a lot of yeses and lies. In which case, what is the point in asking the question? Or dignifying it with an answer?
2. So, what if you said how you really felt? Well, two things to say about that. One, are you really confident in the other person's actual interest in your well being? Do you feel comfortable in telling them, of all people, how you really feel? And two, is not telling that person how you really feel a complete waste of your (and for that matter, their) time? Is it socially acceptable to go into a long discourse about what you feel, how you feel about what you feel, and so on?

Such social graces as these are completely incomprehensible to me. What is the point in asking someone how they ''are'' if you have no actual interest in the truth and are not prepared to listen to them? Apropos, asking people about their health and well being is a complete waste of breath.

The social network...

I know I did this last year, at about this time too, but I have left facebook again. I don't know, since the ''account settings'' on facebook are very difficult to navigate anyway, but facebook doesn't seem to have any concrete way of facilitating an actual account deletion, only a deactivation (which only serves to suspend the account, where you are free to re-open it again, at any time, and more or less pick up from where you left off), and so I went to great lengths the other day to manually delete almost everything on my account. I have ''unliked'' all my ''liked'' pages, untagged all my friends' photos, deleted all my own albums, deleted all the past statuses, links, check-ins on my timeline (although there were two I simply could not delete, so I made them visible only to myself), deleted all old messages, wiped my profile information clear, etc. I then went on to ''unfriend'' all my friends. Of course, it would have been impossible to delete absolutely everything, and I was not about to waste time going through peoples' timelines and looking for past likes and comments of mine, but after all that I changed my name and sex, and then deactivated my account. I just hope I have the will power this year to actually not go back. The Liturgiae Causa page will be deleted in two weeks.

Why, you ask? Well, it's simple really. The reality is that facebook does not enhance friendship. In the balance facebook had more of a negative influence on my life than a positive one. I am suffering from clinical depression and nothing was more irksome to me than to be constantly presented with such things as: ''now waiting at the airport, going on Safari with friends,'' or ''just off to the Maldives,'' or ''sampling some very expensive claret,'' or even ''I just love my job,'' a host of lives riddled with standard of living. I never was an envious person, having indeed a store of my own life experience (and a monstrous sense of entitlement), but I have hit rock bottom; and I am one of those people that if I am miserable, I want the whole world to share in my misery. I could, of course, have simply ''unfriended'' all my real friends and replaced them with an inferior stock, in order to lord over them, but that would hardly have worked, would it? This is not to mention the constant vanity, the endless pointlessness. Everywhere you look on facebook you see people tagged in thousands of photos, most of which look exactly the same, and the vulgarity of ''checking-in.'' No I'm not interested if you're having your nails done; no I'm not interested if you check into some night club with a string of your friends. Of course, facebook does have ways of restricting who sees what, but then your friends just become a number in a list, and so what is the point in having them there? Having no qualms at all about this sort of thing I started to ''unfriend'' some of them, going from some 180 friends to 113 (at which point I started deleting indiscriminately). This, of course, impacts on your life in other ways; maybe you won't receive a Christmass card from that person, or maybe you won't be invited to their wedding, or something. To think that facebook has this kind of monopoly on human interaction! What on earth did we do before it!?

What am I left with? Nothing, and at the moment this suits me. Yesterday I spent the afternoon in town; I had tea at Brown's, went into the National Gallery (where I spent about ten minutes staring at Constable's Cenotaph to the Memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds, a painting so wonderfully autumnal and melancholy), and then went to see Swan Lake at Covent Garden. The music and choreography are so familiar but ballet is an art form that, like liturgy, I never thought would grow stale. The performance was marvellous but I felt nothing, only tired and uncomfortable, and people don't dress appropriately anymore. I am blessed that the performance lifted any sense of bitterness I had felt throughout the day but I fear that I am still left with an exhausting sense of apathy. Even my dogs don't help.

Those of you who will may email me at my personal address: patrick.sheridan88@gmail.com.

Fanon...

The papal fanon has returned, sing joyfully unto God! I first saw the fanon in a biography of John Paul II by Lord Longford many years ago and thought it a rather ugly thing, and I guess it's one of those things where I really can't understand the enthusiasm for its return; although the photograph was taken somewhere like Phoenix Park or Knock (I think it was in Ireland), and the general hideousness of John Paul II's attire may have formed my view of the fanon; who cares? I certainly don't care for modern papal liturgy. This ''Rome is home'' mentality, the pope is a Mr Fix-it (who can't fix it) idea are sentiments foreign to my nature. The pope was the peasant who dropped the stone in the mountains...I know, we'll all look to the pope a century later to try and sort it all out. Never mind that the pope publically celebrates Mass facing the wrong way...oh what's the bloody point in carrying on? Why bother repeating myself? Just take this as a proverbial raspberry and two fingers up.

St Edward...

I am not dead, though I am not at all well at the moment. I decided against going on pilgrimage to the Shrine of St Edward the Confessor as I didn't feel up to being so far from home by myself, though I have made intercession unto him for counsel and help in my travail. St Edward was a paragon of kingship and piety; no wonder no Roman Catholic 'blog (to my knowledge) has made mention of him! I cannot say that I have been reading any 'blogs of late, though, or indeed any literature of any description. So, what have I been up to recently, you ask? Nothing; just work and sleep.

The image at the top of this post is a 15th century rendering of St Edward from the rood screen in the church of Sts Peter and Paul in Eye, Suffolk. It was restored by Sir Ninian Comper, I believe.

This scene from the Bayeux Tapestry depicts not St Edward but Harold Godwinson at his coronation. Note that the Archbishop Stigand wears something strikingly akin to the Russian Orthodox felon; something else which supports the much-maligned fact that the Saxon Church was Orthodox, not Roman. It was under William the Bastard, marching under the papal banner, that Roman Catholicism was brought to these shores.

St Edward the Confessor, pray for us; fortify Her Majesty and all the Royal Family in righteousness and fear of the Lord, and keep the illustrious church of St Peter at Westminster in the faith of our fathers. You may like to read posts I wrote in 2010 and 2011. I cannot presently add to them.