Homophobia...

There's a lot of hysteria among Roman Catholics about Mr Cameron's ideas about the exclusion of gay people from marriage, and what he wants to do about it. I personally couldn't care less; I am a confirmed bachelor in both the Victorian euphemistic sense and any other sense you like - I'm not remotely interested in relationships; and besides, it's a purely civil matter. It wouldn't be such a problem if Roman Catholics weren't so clearly homophobic, even if their church tells them to approach homosexuals with understanding and compassion. In my experience they either let on they don't know or they shun you altogether, in the Pauline spirit of ''expel the wicked from among you.'' Quite different if you're a priest of the London Oratory, of course, or you write books about Liturgy.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says: ''Every sign of unjust discrimination in their [homosexuals'] regard should be avoided.'' Very well. I will not belabour the obvious discrepancy between this attitude and the one enunciated by St Paul, the Fathers and the Scholastics, who place sodomites among the basest of persons, but unfortunately anything the modern Roman church says about the subject, whether condemning homosexual acts, or repeated homosexual acts which lead to homosexual lifestyles, is tainted with fear and abhorrence, which has its uttermost source in the Devil, not God. Is this toleration? If so it has come in a form that is slightly insulting. You cannot have the unity of faith, acceptance, and a sacramental life on the one hand, and the stigma of going to church every Sunday and being greeted with the ''Oh, God, you're one of those'' look, on the other. ''You cannot sire or bear children, that part of you is crooked, an evil fruit of the Fall; don't be surprised if we don't include you in our extra-ecclesial activities.'' So all the official doctrine in the world makes almost no difference at all; it is the result of popular opinion, a stinking red herring. Thick mick priest is a homophobe, had his share in picking on the weak kid at school, and grew up with this attitude, mistaking it for orthodoxy. I have myself been on the receiving end of this, and I have known Roman Catholic parents to encourage homophobia in their children. I grew up in a homophobic house, where words like ''poof,'' ''pansy'' and ''faggot'' were used without much thought.

Being a compendium of church doctrines one can't expect the catechism to go into any great detail about homosexuality, but everything it says is rather noncommittal. Perhaps this is their idea of trying to fudge over the old ideas under the false ''hermeneutic of continuity,'' or fear of being accused of wanton bigotry without reason on the other, who knows? One Roman priest said to me once that he thought homosexuality didn't exist, and that homosexual tendencies were a temptation to sin rather than an ontological reality in the person. This is, of course, a factual statement about the reality of homosexuality in the human makeup, there is evidence bearing on it, so this man's personal opinion on the matter is completely irrelevant. I daresay that this homophobic individual would be one to support such unscientific articles as this one, begotten of hatred and ignorance.

No, given everything I've just said, it's hardly surprising that Roman Catholics are eaten up with fear and paranoia about Mr Cameron's views, is it?

Reigning from on high...

''She has removed the royal Council, composed of the nobility of England, and has filled it with obscure men, being heretics; oppressed the followers of the Catholic faith; instituted false preachers and ministers of impiety; abolished the sacrifice of the mass, prayers, fasts, choice of meats, celibacy, and Catholic ceremonies; and has ordered that books of manifestly heretical content be propounded to the whole realm and that impious rites and institutions after the rule of Calvin, entertained and observed by herself, be also observed by her subjects.'' Pius V, Regnans in Excelsis, 25th February 1570.

So much for Anglican Patrimony; ''heretics,'' ''ministers of impiety,'' and, most sweeping of all, ''impious rites.'' What does Anglicanorum Coetibus say about the Anglican tradition? Oh yes, ''a precious gift nourishing the faith...and as a treasure to be shared.''

I found the woodcut of the pope in Google Images. Estote Proditores, ''go and be traitors to your King for daring to oppose the false religion we imposed on you for centuries.'' Succinctly spells out the good of the papacy, doesn't it?

So, jump...ok, how high?

The pope is now using Twitter. Isn't that the greatest news since the Angel of the Lord announced the birth of the Saviour to the shepherds in the deeps of time? It's so wonderful, so critical, I am literally on the edge of my seat awaiting the next tweet! Oh blast, I've just remembered that I deleted my Twitter account so for my penance I'll take a few cold showers, recite some novena prayers, and pray to Our Lady, Queen of Social Networking (in the vain hope that her attention isn't elsewhere, you know, battling devils and shagging priests), that my share in the superabundance of graces no doubt impeded by my objection to such social networking sites doesn't impact on the state of my soul on the Day of Judgement. We can't have everything. Sigh.

Dear God! Anyone who has greeted this non-event with any kind of Ultramontane impiety ought to be shot. Roman Catholics say that they do not worship the pope, and this may be written in their doctrine, but their actions say otherwise. It's as if Our Lord has said, ''don't read the Scriptures, listen to my pope!''

The fate of sycophants in the Divine Comedy by Botticelli, doomed to forever wade through their own shit. This may have been an early Renaissance play on the term ''brown noser,'' you never know.

The Hobbit movies...

The first part of the new Peter Jackson film trilogy loosely based on J.R.R Tolkien's great book The Hobbit premieres tomorrow in cinemas throughout the land. Unlike 11 years ago when I first saw The Lord of the Rings at my local Cineworld I will not be going to see any of these new films. Jackson eviscerated The Lord of the Rings by turning it into an action film for an audience of 15-25 year olds, and it seems that these new films will be no different. The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has gone too far for me. There is only one solution for me now, and that is to turn my head away.

As a writer...

One day I plan to print hard copies of the ''best,'' that is the most coherent, of my posts and work on a long ecclesiological/liturgical essay. I like to think that there is something in there, however small, which is academically worthwhile, and my idea is that something could well be extracted from the mass of ranting and raving and be collated, improved and expounded for the good of the Church. Maybe the Traddies don't take me seriously but at least I have some audience willing to listen. I want to talk about Church, even if it is depressing, as something needs to be said that isn't being said, by anyone anywhere, in a manner which seems fitting to me. To offend anyone nowadays is, after all, hardly ecumenical or politically correct. I think of the Church and my mind is flooded with topics, contemporary and historical, liturgical and doctrinal, each one of these things worth a thousand years of research, but it is the synthesis of all these things (and many more) that makes up the Church, augments catholicity and constitutes Tradition. In the end I think it will have to be about Tradition (encompassing liturgy, scriptural exegesis and doctrine) and Ecumenism, how these things interpenetrate, what they mean, what it means to be ''in communion,'' and the unity of faith. To what purpose is this essay, you ask? Well, I might as well forget it if I hope to win people over, but sometimes (well, oftentimes), my mind being so fickle, my posts fall short of their full intent and purpose, and I never achieve what I had set out to do. My short-term memory is shockingly bad and a lot of the time I have to write things down as they come into my mind in great impetuous and furious speed, or I forget them, and so the impression I have now, two years and more since I started writing Liturgiae Causa, is that I have failed in a very serious way as a writer on matters liturgical and even more as a Tolkienist. But it comes into my mind this very hour that perhaps, though it is a faint hope, there are fragments of coherence, a cogent point somewhere, and if so then why not do something about it?

Blue Dolly Day...

''And first for the Blessed Virgin Mary, I yield her that which the Angel Gabriel pronounced of her, which in her Canticle she prophesied of herself, that is, that she is blessed among women, and that all generations shall call her blessed. I reverence her as the Mother of Christ, of whom our Saviour took His flesh, and so The Mother of God, since the divinity and humanity of Christ are inseperable. And I freely confess that she is in glory both above angels and men, her own Son (that is both God and man) only excepted. But I dare not mock her, and blaspheme against God, calling her not only Diva but Dea, and praying her to command and control her Son, who is her God and her Saviour. Nor yet not, I think, that she hath no other thing to do in Heaven than to hear every idle man's suit and busy herself in their errands, whiles requesting, whiles commanding her Son, whiles coming down to kiss and make love with priests, and whiles disputing and brawling with devils. In Heaven she is in eternal glory and joy, never to be interrupted with any worldly business; and there I leave her with her blessed Son, our Saviour and hers, in eternal felicity.'' (King James I, A Premonition to All Most Might Monarchs, Kings, Free Princes, and States of Christendom).

All part of the Roman Catholic tradition.

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!