What Does The Prayer Really Say?
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I received this:

BIRMINGHAM - 1 October 2008 – 380 words

Cardinal Newman Lying-in-State and Reinterment Mass

Statement by Peter Jennings, Press Secretary to the Fathers of the Birmingham Oratory and for the Cause of the Beatification and Canonisation of the Venerable John Henry Newman (1801-1890), Wednesday 1 October 2008:

"I am able to announce today that in preparation for the Beatification of Cardinal Newman his remains will lie in state in the Upper Cloister Hall at the Birmingham Oratory, Edgbaston, on Friday 31 October and Saturday 1 November 2008.

"A special reinterment Mass will be celebrated at the Birmingham Oratory at 11am on Sunday, 2 November 2008, the transferred Feast of All Saints.

"The celebrant at this High Mass will be the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Birmingham. The Very Reverend Paul Chavasse, Provost of the Birmingham Oratory and Postulator of the Newman Cause will preach.

"At the beginning of Mass the coffin containing the remains of Cardinal Newman will be placed on a catafalque outside the sanctuary.

"At the end of Mass the coffin containing the remains of Cardinal Newman will be taken in procession and placed in a sarcophagus, made of green Italian marble, situated between the columns opposite the Holy Souls Altar in the Oratory Church.

"With the Permission of the Roman Postulator of the Newman Cause, Dr Andrea Ambrosi, I am able to announce that the Board of Theologians attached to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome met early yesterday evening, Tuesday 30 September 2008 to consider the miraculous nature of the inexplicable cure of Deacon Jack Sullivan.

"The Theologians, who received the relevant documentation eight weeks ago, have asked for more time to study the high profile Cause for the Beatification of Cardinal Newman.

"Further details and times of the Lying-in-State will be announced on Friday 10 October.

"Further details about the reinterment Mass will be announced on Friday 17 October.

"Forms to apply to attend the reinterment Mass will be available to collect in person from the Oratory Church from Sunday 5 October. Alternatively they can be downloaded from Monday 6 October at http://www.newmancause.co.uk. Forms may also be requested by telephone from Tuesday 7 October on (+44) 0121 455 6323.

"The allocation of tickets rests with the Provost and Fathers of the Oratory, whose decision is final.

"Applications should be returned by 6pm on Sunday 19 October 2008, either online or by post to: The Newman Cause Office, The Oratory, Hagley Road,
Edgbaston, Birmingham B16 8UE"

LAD 0
CHC 2

Top of the 5th

I am conflicted. 

I have a soft spot for both the Cubs and the Dodgers. 

I have spent time in Vero Beach, FL, where the Dodgers had their spring training for so long – since they were from Brooklyn, where they belong.  I have sat in the stands next to Tommy Lasorda.  I met Sandy Koufax and the great Vin Scully.

I have eaten Dodger Dogs!

On the other side, I try to get to Wrigley Field for my favored Cubs each summer.  No place is better.  Wrigley by itself is enough.  I have great memories of those friendly confines, with the ivy and mid-week day games and no exploding scoreboards.

But I am mad at the Dodgers for abandoning Vero Beach.  Grrr.

Therefore, ...

Eamus Catuli!

Besides, I don’t think the Dodgers have anything going for them in the Latin language cheers category.

Detail from the photo to the right…



UPDATE:

TOP of the 5th after a Dodger grand slam…

LAD 4
CHC 2

Sometimes I wonder if my rooting for a team means the kiss of death.

I am conflicted again.

Still, if things go really badly for the Cubbies, I may have the satisfaction of watching Lou Piniella kick his hat around the infield and maybe pull up a couple bases on his way to the locker room.



UPDATE:

TOP of the 7th after a Dodger HR

LAD 5
CHC 2

sigh

UPDATE:

BOTTOM of the 8th

LAD 6
CHC 2

C’mon men! 

UPDATE:

TOP OF 9th

LAD 7
CHC 2

This is where I wax lyrical… or become aenigmatic… i don’t know which:

Iamque meum tibi quod narro mirabile dictu
fatum: nam geminis constat mihi robur in armis,
captandi sub rictibus est fiducia grandis;
non praedura uel aspera neu me feruida terrent;
rictibus intrepidis sed cuncta capessere tempto.

[Tatuinus Aenigmata 27

What is it about? and why did I put those words in bold?]

Anyway… here comes

The Red Sox at the ANGELS.

What to do… as we begin between the feast of St. Michael and the feast of the Guardian Angels.


 

I head to Kansas City, MO where the church, Old St. Patrick will be made truly "up to date" by its consecration with the older, traditional Pontificale Romanum. 

The great Bp. Robert Finn will take Old St. Patrick "just about as far as it can go" and not just be transported into heaven.

I will be heading to Mater Ecclesiae for their 40 Hours Devotion 17-19 October.

Fr. Pasley and I will hit the road for a bit, to visit a few places in the area.

We may wind up in the area of Anapolis, MD during that week.

Blognic(s)?

Then I go to Kansas City, MO for the dedication of Old St. Patrick’s in the older, traditional Rite, but the great Bp. Robert Finn.

Catholic Key alerts us to a new offering by the great Bp. Robert Finn of Kansas City – St. Joseph.

I admire this bishop more and more.

More on this later, but here it is with my emphases.

Freedom of Choice Act Would Remove All Limitations on Abortions

The Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), was first introduced in November of 1989 by Representative Don Edwards (D- Calif) and Senator Alan Cranston (D-Calif). It was proposed to “codify Roe v. Wade,” and was, at that time, opposed by Senator Carol Moseley Braun (D-Ill), who argued that it did not go far enough to unleash – on a national level – a complete and unrestricted access to abortion. The first version, according to the Senator, dangerously allowed some conscience protection to health care professionals and did not require states to fund abortions.

The more recent wording of FOCA, introduced last year, is as follows:

“A government may not (1) deny or interfere with a woman’s right to choose – (A) to bear a child; (B) to terminate a pregnancy prior to viability; or© to terminate a pregnancy after viability where termination is necessary to protect the life or health of the woman; or (2) discriminate against the exercise of the rights set forth in paragraph (1) in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services, or information.

This act applies to every Federal, State, and local statute, ordinance, regulation, administrative order, decision, penalty, practice, or other action enacted, adopted, or implemented before or after the date of enactment of this act.” Text of H.R. 1964 and S. 1173, introduced on April 19, 2007.

It is clear that FOCA would immediately make null and void every current restriction on abortion in all jurisdictions. According to a recent article by Tom McCloskey, “FOCA Would Harm Women and Remove Freedoms,” and reported by the Family Research Council, if FOCA was passed it would automatically overturn:

- State abortion reporting requirements in all 50 states
- Forty-four states’ laws concerning parental involvement
- Forty states’ laws on restricting later-term abortions
- Forty-six states’ conscience protection laws for individual health care providers
- Twenty-seven states’ conscience protection laws for institutions
- Thirty-eight states’ bans on partial-birth abortions
- Thirty-three states’ laws on requiring counseling before an abortion
- Sixteen states’ laws concerning ultrasounds before an abortion

There is evidence of a very significant reduction of reported abortions, particularly among teens, through the passage of parental involvement laws and the use of ultrasounds. The August, 2008, report of the Alan Guttmacher Institute notes the greatest decline in abortions over the last 30 years is among teens, attributable in large part to the above restrictions, as well as a later initiation of sexual activity. It must be concluded that chastity formation or abstinence education has a positive effect on lowering these rates, as well as enriching the lives of our young men and women.

I was recently asked to comment on claims by a group calling itself Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, which says that electing candidates who have permissive or clearly pro-choice stances in support of abortion, but are determined to provide more assistance to poor and vulnerable women and families would actually help to reduce abortions in the United States. This group, I believe has its priorities backwards. It seems unlikely that candidates advocating full access to abortion – which attacks the most vulnerable poor, the unborn – will at the same time have a consistent or principle-based plan for helping other poor people.

It should be noted that the Catholic Church worldwide provides more help in assisting the needy than any other single private agency – religious or secular. At the same time, she operates from the principle that the measure of our charity is first defined by what we do to and for the most vulnerable.

When a candidate pledges to provide “comprehensive sex education” to school children and promises to promote – or to “sign immediately upon taking office” – the Freedom of Choice Act, Catholics and all people of good will have cause to question the sincerity of the candidate’s determination to reduce abortions, when these already existing limits have caused a decrease of more than 100,000 abortions each year. (cf. Michael New-Matthew Bowman, Combined Reductions in Abortions, with data supplied by NARAL Pro-Choice America)

As Archbishop Naumann and I stressed in our recent Pastoral Letter, “Our Moral Responsibility as Catholic Citizens,” we can never vote for a candidate because of his or permissive stand on abortion. At the same time, if we are inclined to vote for someone despite their pro-abortion stance, it seems we are morally obliged to establish a proportionate reason sufficient to justify the destruction of 45 million human persons through abortion. If we learn that our “candidate of choice” further pledges – through an instrument such as FOCA - to eliminate all existing limitations against abortion, it is that much more doubtful whether voting for him or her can ever be morally justified under any circumstance.

I urge you to learn more about the Freedom of Choice Act and its advocates so that you can make informed decisions in the voting booth. 

You will want to watch the interview with His Excellency Most Reverend Charles Chaput, Archbishop of Denver which is to be found on the site of the Hoover Institute.

Archbishop Chaput discusses the scandal caused by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Meet The Press about the Church’s teaching on the beginning of life and also about Vice-Presidential candidate Sen. Biden’s (D-DE) similar views.

Archbishop Chaput is very articulate. 

The 41 minute interview occurred on 17 September.

You should also seek out Archbp. Chaput’s book.



There is a much higher quality video available here, at a great site where you get lots of additional information and the ability to break up the interview in smaller "chapters" identified by theme.  Good site!  Go visit.

 

 08-09-17 Hoover Institute Interview of Archbp. Chaput: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

By a reader it is asked:

I’m betting somebody has already asked this, but do you think the Holy Father will ever offer Mass in the Extraordinary Form? It’s been well over a year since the Motu Proprio has come out, and I haven’t heard any word on this. I ask this, because one friend of mine said that the Holy Father does not necessarily approve of the old Mass, because he has never celebrated it during his pontificate. Obviously this is incorrect, but it still raises an important question: if the Holy Father does approve of the Extraordinary Form, why has he not yet offered Mass in this form?

First, I am not sure that it really would make a critical difference whether the Holy Father says the older Mass in public.  His provisions in Summorum Pontificum are a matter of law.  His writings before his election are clear.  Would it "make a difference"?  Sure it would!  But it would be highly politicized as well.  It might do harm as well as good.  Frankly, I am fine with that, but the Holy Father alone has his particular perspective.

Second, when the Roman Pontiff celebrates solemnly in the older Rite, there are a lot of things involved.  The ceremonial of the Roman Pontiff is pretty much impossible now, because the court was abolished and many things were swept away.  It would take eons to redevelop those things and they are probably not so desirable in many ways.  However, I think the Holy Father could celebrate the TLM as a bishop would in his diocese: that is doable.  Also, if he didn’t want to celebrate it himself, he could have it celebrated in his presence.  I would be fine with those things.

Third, I think the Holy Father is spending a lot of his capital on pulling the Novus Ordo out of the tail-spin it is in.

Fourth, the Holy Father has been positioning people around him who are very favorable toward and knowledgeable about the older form.  It seems to me that he could be paving the way for a public celebration.  I don’t know that.  That is a supposition on my part.  The Holy Father will do as he believes best for the Church in this regard and, in this regard, I am content with his decision: I really trust that he is doing what he can, through liturgy, as part of a larger plan. As a student of Ratzinger for years, a careful observer, I think I have figured out the outlines of what he is trying to accomplish.

Do I think the Holy Father will say the TLM publicly? 

Given time, yes.  I think so. 

But I think he will wait until enough progress has been made, through the provisions of Summorum Pontificum and other facets of the Benedictine "Marshall Plan", so that it can be as irenic as possible, a source of more light than mere heat.

Therefore, pray that Almighty God grant our Pope length of days, health and strength, and that his enemies be confounded.

V. Let us pray for Benedict, our Pope.
R. May the Lord preserve him, and give him life, and make him blessed upon the earth, and deliver him not up to the will of his enemies. [Ps 40:3]

Our Father,...
Hail Mary,....

O God, Shepherd and Ruler of all Thy faithful people, look mercifully upon Thy servant Benedict, whom Thou hast chosen as shepherd to preside over Thy Church. Grant him, we beseech Thee, that by his word and example, he may edify those over whom he hath charge, so that together with the flock committed to him, may he attain everlasting life. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

AmericanPapist made a good catch today:

 Pope’s next encyclical delayed until April 2009?!
That’s what it now says on Amazon.

Que pasa?

And I bet I know what the problems are.

Translation… translation and translation.

The Cranky Professor has a good post tying into our investigation of an ancient Roman recipe.

He deals with the dating of the Vesuvius eruption and.. garum!

mmmmm…. garummmmm

Garum, made from fermenting fish in saltwater, was basically the ketchup of the ancient Romans. It boasted a much appreciated sweet and sour taste, and was used on almost on every dish, often substituting expensive salt.

Most likely it was widely available at the numerous open air trattorias, known as thermopolia, where Pompeian "fast food" was served. The sunken jars on the counter contained spiced wine, stews of meat or lentils as well as garum.

Producing garum was relatively simple. A garum maker such as Aulus Umbricius Scaurus would have first placed a layer of fish entrails on a bed of dried, aromatic herbs such as coriander, fennel, celery, mint and oregano.

Then he would have covered the fish entrails under a layer of salt about two fingers high. The layer sequence—herbs, fish and salt—was repeated until the container was filled. The concoction was then left in the sun to macerate for a week or so, and the sauce was mixed daily for about 20 days.

The process produced a smelly liquid—a local delicacy to the Romans.

"Pompeii’s last batch of garum was made with bougues, a fish that was cheap and easy to find on the market in those summer months. Still today, people living in this region make a modern version of garum, called "colatura di alici" or anchovy juice, in July when this fish abounds on the markets," Ciarallo said.

Yesterday I posted that I was watching my DVD Papacy of Reason: Inside the Mind of Benedict XVI.  I posted a clip wherein liturgy is discussed.  Lot’s of you looked at that clip!

Here is the intro section, just to spur you to consider getting this DVD. 

 

 Papacy of Reason - LEAD IN: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Why is Gwen Ifill to be the moderator of the Palin-Biden VP debate?

Gwen Ifill has written a highly favorable book about Sen. Obama, Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. 

The release of the book is 20 January. 

Does that date sound familiar?

He book release is timed to coincide with the January Presidential inauguration.

Gwen Ifill has a financial interest in Sen. Obama’s victory.

This is a conflict of interest, and she should step aside gracefully.

But let’s take this a bit deeper.

Who thought this was a good idea?

Perhaps because Gov. Palin is a woman, they wanted a female moderator.

Would questions be raised if Ann Coulter had been selected for her work on If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans? 

Not a media show host, you say?  Okay, how about Laura Ingraham... she has a show and writes books too.

No no… let’s leave the female angle aside, you insist.  They wouldn’t be that shallow.

Would questions be raised if, for example, Jerome Corsi, author of The Obama Nation, were chosen to be the moderator?

I’m just askin’...

I am still working on the pork roast, but last night, hungry, I added some pasta.  I made a sauce from things grown here in the Sabine garden.



You can see my sweet and small hot peppers, garlic, tomatoes, basil, garlic, fresh green fennel seeds.  I didn’t grow the salt.

The whole thing had to be reduced for a while.  Then I added the herbs.

I didn’t want to overdo basil with this.  I could have used oregano, but I wanted to keep it on the sweeter side.

At a certain point it can help to add some starchy water from the pasta pot.  This can bring the sauce together if it is sufficiently starchy.  I don’t often do this, because you mostly run a risk of making the sauce watery at the wrong time of the process: bad!

Yum.

Then I settled in to watch the noble Twins against the hated White Sox. 



Alas, evil triumphed, ...

... but supper was great!

I tried to figure out how to make cuts in this, but it is all so good that I think you should read it in its entirety.

This is long, but it is good and closely argued.  You have to pay attention.

30 Sep 2008
Rediscovering traditionalism

One year after re-introducing the Tridentine Mass and two years after the Regensburg address, Benedict XVI’s popular new traditionalism has re-ignited the Catholic culture wars.

By John Casey for openDemocracy.net

On 14th June this year about 1,500 people filled Westminster Cathedral. Every seat was taken; people stood in the aisles and spilled out on to the piazza outside. The occasion was a mass, but not an ordinary mass. It was indeed a mass in what is now officially called the "extraordinary form" of the Roman rite, i.e. the mass as it had existed before the changes that followed the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). It was celebrated by Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, and was the first mass in the traditional form to be celebrated in the Cathedral by a cardinal in thirty nine years.

Before the mass, Cardinal Castrillon had addressed the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, a group which had striven for forty years to preserve the ancient liturgy. He told them to `take heart’ because the new Pope sympathised with them, and he spoke of the `sacrifices’ of those members of the Society `who have not lived to be here today.’

To outsiders, all this emotion, this talk of sacrifices made by dead Catholics for the liturgy might well be unintelligible. What are the great issues at stake? [Very good.] Why should people throng Westminster Cathedral and spill out onto the street, including many too young to remember the old ways, just to experience a service in Latin conducted by a prelate with his back to the people?

In July the Pope was in Australia for World Youth Day. About four hundred thousand of the young, who had travelled from all parts of the globe, acclaimed him at a vast open-air mass in Sydney. But the mass had some new-old features Latin (Gregorian) chant, an altar adorned in the old style with crucifix and seven candles, and an attempt at solemn reverence that is not usually seen at these mass liturgical events. Something is in the air. [There were some defects in the choices at the concluding WYD Mass, but this is substantially correct.]

The truth is that the Roman Catholic Church has been in crisis ever since the Second Vatican Council, [Yes.]  a crisis not only of falling numbers attending mass, a reduction of vocations, the virtual extinction of some religious orders, but a crisis of identity of the Church itself. The confident, tightly centralised "triumphalist’’ Catholicism that followed the sixteenth century Council of Trent and regained many of the lands that had been lost to Protestantism, the Church that claimed to be "the one ark of salvation for all," has been replaced by the "pilgrim Church," tentatively stretching out to other faiths, often apologetic about the past, sometimes ready to play down its most distinctive doctrines.

There is a deeper issue. Hilaire Belloc had said "Europe is the Faith, and the Faith is Europe." Although Catholicism is a world-wide religion, and an Abrahamic faith, its European inheritance has been central, its philosophical theology deriving from Greece, its language and structures of authority from Rome.  [It is precisely this confluence that Pope Benedict is defending.  He is striving to undo damage of those who want to tear the Hellenic-Roman thought stream from Christianity.]  It was not for nothing that Hobbes described the papacy as "the ghost of the dead Roman Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof." Enthusiasts for Vatican II thought they had changed all that. Rituals, language, even theology were to reflect the diverse cultures of the faithful, and even the subjective convictions of the individual.

The attempt since the Counter-reformation of the sixteenth century to resist some of the most important developments in modern culture, with an index of books forbidden to Catholics to read that included most of the greatest philosophers and imaginative writers of the modern world, was to be seen as a sort of auto-immune disorder – an inability to cope with foreign bodies. In the light of this, an attachment to tradition seemed like a rejection of intelligence, and a scarcely defensible surrender to clerical dictatorship. The Church had raised the drawbridge against the modern world, and Vatican II would confidently lower it again. Central to that was the rejection of the traditional Latin mass. It was there that the battle lines were most obviously drawn.

The culture wars

[This next part is fascinating.]

Nearly 25 years ago, a Pole was dining in my college in Cambridge. He told us that he had been an altar boy in Poland, and had often served the masses of the Archbishop of Cracow. [Karol Wojtyla] A year or two after that prelate, Karol Woytila, [sic] had been installed in the See of Rome, he decided to visit him, for John Paul II never became too grand for his old Polish friends. The Pope (so he told the story) strode up to him, punched him lightly in the chest, and began: Introibo ad ad altare dei … to which our guest responded: Ad deum qui laetificat iuventutum meum. ("I will go unto the altar of God’’ "To God who giveth joy to my youth.’‘) This was the opening exchange between priest and server of the old "Tridentine’’ Latin mass, abolished in the early1970s, and the two continued it right down to the Confiteor. Then the Pope shrugged his shoulders and said: "Well, that’s no use to us anymore." His old altar boy replied: "No, Holy Father, and that’s why I no longer go to church." To which the Pope (he said) instantly rejoined: "Don’t blame me. Blame that maniac John XXIII!"  [Whew!]

Last September, a motu proprio (legislation of his own volition) of Pope Benedict XVI, liberating the old mass, and obliging parishes to provide it for those of the faithful who want it, came into effect. It was clearly an attempt to console those who were still attached to the old rite, including the followers of Archbishop Lefebvre, who rejected the new mass and many of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (summoned by "that maniac, John XXIII.") "Liberal’’ Catholics grimly suspect that the Pope himself has long been disillusioned with the Council, and is bent on restoration of the old order. One Italian bishop said that he actually wept when he read the motu proprio, because he saw one of the greatest achievements of the modernists, a new style of liturgy, dissolving before his eyes. He was right to be alarmed. [In sense, that’s right!  When you are on the wrong side, you are going to be afraid, very afraid.]  Benedict’s undoubted love of the old liturgy is also a love of the European culture which produced it.

On the other side, traditionalist Catholics, who were so joyously in evidence at Westminster cathedral, rejoiced mightily. Benedict XVI is on the way to becoming a hero as dear to them as Cyrus the Great was to the ancient Jews, because he freed them from the Babylonian captivity. When the motu proprio was issued, their websites [Not this one…] triumphed in the imminent defeat of the philistines and were filled with accounts of celebratory champagne parties and suggestions that everyone should send flowers to the Pope in sign of gratitude.

Not just talking to God in Latin

But what is the fuss all about? Is this just a matter of some people preferring to talk to God in Latin?  [Which is enough, btw.] Or is it the re-igniting of a subterraneous culture war that has troubled the peace of the faithful over the past forty years?

First of all: it is not just a question of Latin. [Right.] The "Tridentine’’ mass and the Latin mass are not one and the same thing. True, the Tridentine mass must be said in Latin in the Roman church. But decades ago you could attend Tridentine masses in High Anglican churches in Cornwall celebrated entirely in English. The new order of mass, promulgated by Pope Paul VI after the Second Vatican Council, was originally meant to be usually in Latin, but is nearly always said in the vernacular. But whatever the language, it is different from the old mass, in feel, liturgical gesture and some would even say in theology. The liturgy has always embodied both prayer and doctrine: it is both lex orandi and lex credendi. The ultras would argue that the changes in the mass were part of a stealthy attempt to alter doctrine. [Ehem… In the book that came out under Archbp. Piero Marini’s name, the writer states that the changes in the liturgy were about changing doctrine.]  The great Council of Trent (1546-63) marked the final separation between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism with ferocious clarity. Catholic doctrines such as the real presence of Christ in the eucharist, reaffirmed by Trent, are liturgically enforced in the Tridentine mass with no possible ambiguity.  [And Trent wanted to defend doctrine through liturgical reform.  It is always about doctrine and identity.]

The ultras have a point. A pious Catholic who had fallen asleep in 1960 and woken up forty years later would be puzzled indeed at a modern mass (unless he had been allowed to slumber all those years in Brompton Oratory or a few other traditionalist redoubts.) He would find the modern Church culturally and psychologically so altered that he might be tempted to see it as a new religion masquerading under the old name. [Yep] He might, like my Polish acquaintance, decide not to bother any more. [And many thousands of others… millions?]

The first time I was taken to mass as a child, my mother told me to watch the altar attentively, because an angel might fly across it. My hope in seeing the angel faded quite soon, well before my faith did, but the feeling that the celebration of mass marked a mystery in which Godhead was truly present on the altar, body, blood, soul and divinity, under the appearances of bread and wine was astonishingly powerful. The form of the old mass enforced it. There was an overwhelming emphasis on the mass as an actual sacrifice, a mysterious re-enactment of Christ’s sacrifice on Mount Calvary. The priest began at the foot of the altar, with prayers that he might be worthy to ascend the steps: Introibo ad altare dei. In mounting the altar steps the priest was being brought "unto thy holy mount, and into thy tabernacles.’’ These are the words of psalms from the Hebrew Bible, and they go with an extraordinary insistence on using the language of ancient Jewish sacrifice – "a holy victim, a pure and unblemished sacrifice." (A Jewish friend of mine, attending a Tridentine mass for the first time, said that this language, and the elaborate cleansing of the sacred vessels, took his mind back to Temple Judaism.) The ritual proceeded with the inevitability of a piece of intricate and beautiful mechanism, as the priest mounted the steps, read the epistle and gospel and came to the canon of the mass. The climax, the obvious focal point of the exercise, was the consecration. The Latin words of this were uttered in a very audible stage whisper, and were followed by genuflection, elevation, genuflection, accompanied by the ringing of bells.

Every gesture by the priest, the signs of the cross, the genuflections, the many kissings of the altar, were strictly controlled by the rubrics. There was no place for "creativity‘’ or the expression of personality. The authority of liturgy has always been its immemorial antiquity, and this strange, intensely focussed ritual certainly took you back to the remote past. This was sometimes a cause of scandal. The Good Friday liturgy (which was not actually a mass, Good Friday being the only day in the year when mass was not said) notoriously had a prayer for the "unbelieving Jews" (perfidis Judaeis) that God would remove their "blindness’’ and lead them to Christ. Even worse, this was the one prayer during which the congregation did not have to kneel. (John XXIII removed the offensive words in 1962.) There were also curiosities of an innocent sort. A missal published in 1935 contains a Good Friday prayer that God will "look favorably on the Roman empire" and "render all barbarous nations" subject to the Emperor.

The curious thing about the old mass was that it did not much matter if it was performed badly. [Well…. it did, but in a sense he is right.] It often was. Some priests spoke the Latin intelligently and well. Others gabbled it. We altar boys fought to serve the Low Mass of a certain Franciscan priest because he got through it, by means of remarkable elisions, in 12 minutes flat.

The priest was a craftsman, [I wish we could shift the implication of the word "priestcraft".  Aside from the ontological issues, it would be perfect for what the priest must do as a matter of course, simply being a craftsman diligent in the details of his vocation.]  bringing Christ to the altar, and distributing Him to the faithful in communion. In many ways, it was the priest’s mass, to which the congregation were onlookers, or listeners in. Much of it was in silence, with the priest raising his voice at certain moments to indicate what point the mass had reached. In northern Europe and the United States most of the congregation followed in their missals, which were in Latin and English. But in earlier times people would instead read "prayers during mass,’’ rather than follow the actual words. Illiterates would simply tell their beads. Perhaps they looked for angels to fly across, or at the stained-glass windows. Yet there is overwhelming evidence that they, too, were moved, for they participated in a ritual that signified visually and in terms of movement as well as in words.

Participation theology

Vatican II decreed that the people should "actively participate" in the mass. To the older idea that active participation could take place largely in silence and stillness was opposed the feeling that the congregation should always be doing things, [Excellent.] saying prayers aloud, reading passages of scripture, presenting the bread and wine for the mass. The priest became less one who offered an awe-inspiring sacrifice, and more like one who presides over a community meal. Altars were turned round, so that the priest faced the people, rather than praying on their behalf to the East, as had been done from ancient times. (Critics of the new order often suggest – rightly – that this leads to a cult of the priestly personality.) The first part of the liturgy is now given over to scripture readings, somewhat in Protestant style, so that when the priest goes to the altar to say the actual canon of the mass, this can seem like an afterthought, rather than the focal point of the whole proceedings. The priest’’s genuflections and other ritual signs of assent to the real presence, which in the old mass enacted an idea of worship and transcendence, seemed to have been cut to a minimum. For many, the remarkable beauty of the Latin text itself, set by so many great composers over the centuries, and a profound influence on the authors of the Book of Common Prayer, had helped create a sense of the sacred which had now all but vanished.

How did this happen? There had been a liturgical movement, strong in northern Europe, going back to the nineteenth century. It emphasised the intelligent participation of the laity, the use of missals, and a partial return to what were believed to be pre-mediaeval liturgical practices. This led to the half-conscious assumption that there was some golden age before the "accretions’’ that led to the elaborate liturgy of modern times. This was rather like the Protestant idea of the "primitive’’ Church before Roman "corruptions.’‘

There was another line of thought. This was that the Council of Trent had been a tragedy just in that it had sealed the division between Catholic and Protestant in the sixteenth century. Trent had re-affirmed the hierarchical structure of the Church, the role of the priest, and the mass as the continual re-enactment of Christ’’s death on the cross. The Anglican Thirty nine Articles say that the `one oblation of Christ is finished on the cross .Wherefore the sacrifice of Masses were dangerous fables and blasphemous deceits.’ The underlying purpose of the new rite was reconciliation with Protestantism. Its chief inventor, Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, actually said: "We must strip from our Catholic prayers everything which can be the shadow of a stumbling block for our separated brethren, that is, for the Protestants."  [Ugh.]

Traditionalists oppose Papal power

To undo the Council of Trent would be no mean endeavour, although to anyone with a sense of the religious history of Europe during the last four hundred and fifty years it must seem a madly ambitious one. But what really ignited the Catholic culture wars was the way it was done: by an unprecedented exercise of papal power. Hardly anything of what happened was prescribed by the Second Vatican Council, not the turning around of the altars, not the almost universal use of the vernacular, not the scaling down of the sense of transcendence and sacrifice, not the discouraging of the faithful from kneeling when receiving holy communion, not the receiving of communion in the hand rather than on the tongue. [EXACTLY RIGHT] Traditionalists point out that the Council had decreed that the Latin language was to be preserved. (And the "maniac" John XXIII had been totally opposed to the vernacular in the mass.) It had all been done by Pope Paul VI, Archbishop Bugnini and a close circle of liturgical experts. It was never even passed by a synod of bishops.

The paradoxical conclusion might have been forseen: it was the most pious Catholics, most devoted to the papacy and its prerogatives who were most outraged, but who felt most bound by loyalty and obedience. Their anguish when they were presented in 1971 with the abolition of the old rite can be imagined. (The most popular English Catholic newspaper, The Universe, informed its readers on 26th November that year that `as from this Sunday it is forbidden to offer Mass in the Tridentine rite anywhere in the world.’)

Only in France was there open rebellion. Led by Archbishop Marcel Lefevbvre, a thousand or so traditionalists occupied the Church of St. Nicholas in Paris, resisted all attempts to evict them, reintroduced all the old ceremonies, and have been there ever since. The Lefebvrists decreed that with Vatican II Rome had departed from Tradition, and had as good as apostatised.

The bitterness (even despair) of traditional Catholics ran deep. The enthusiasts for Vatican II hailed it as inaugurating an epoch of religious liberty. Yet the abolition of the old mass actually depended upon a Vatican diktat. The Anglican Church has introduced new forms of service, often distressingly banal. But it is impossible to imagine the Anglicans wishing, let alone being able, suddenly to forbid the Book of Common Prayer in all churches of the Anglican Communion. I remember in the 1970s attending out of curiosity a Tridentine mass "illegally’‘celebrated by Archbishop Lefebvre in the Great Western Hotel at Paddington. The atmosphere was extraordinary, like that of some improbably enormous catacomb where a clandestine ceremony was going on. Catholics had come from all over England, and many were in tears as they participated in a rite that had suddenly been forbidden them. It was tempting to see this as religious persecution.  [And that would be right.]

Iconoclasm and novelty

The changes were accompanied by an astonishing outbreak of what one can only call iconoclasm, for that is what it literally was. In the University Catholic chaplaincy in Cambridge, the furniture of the chapel, including a charming little baldachino, was largely destroyed at the instigation of the Chaplain. The parish priest of the main Catholic church in Cambridge proposed replacing all the pews with raked cinema-style seats, removing the stained glass, and dismantling their own noble baldachino. (He was frustrated by his congregation, which had been infiltrated by dons.) In my own old parish church, the Franciscans smashed to pieces the whole Byzantine-style sanctuary. Such scenes were replicated all over the country.

There was also liturgical vandalism, especially in America, including priests with red-nose masks celebrating "clown-masses,’’ Halloween masses, dancing-girls and various New Age fooleries. In England, Catholic practice plummeted, and churches were shut.

English Catholics had a special reason for attachment to the old mass. In penal times, several hundred English priests had been executed for saying it. [Lest we forget.] At the place of execution they would often kiss the scaffold, as the priest kisses the altar in the Tridentine mass (much more rarely in the new rite.). The English, more docile than the French, did not rebel. Instead they organised a letter signed by cultural luminaries, many of them non-Catholic, politely asking the Pope for an "indult’’ – permission to celebrate the old mass on special occasions, with the permission of bishops. But their letter did not conceal their feelings of horror: "If some senseless decree were to order the partial or total destruction of basilicas or cathedrals, then obviously it would be the educated, whatever their personal beliefs, who would rise up in horror ‘’ The old mass "in its magnificent Latin text, has inspired a host of priceless achievements by poets, philosophers, musicians, architects, painters and sculptors in all countries and epochs. Thus it belongs to universal culture as well as to churchmen and formal Christians.’‘ 

The Agatha Christie exception

How could the Pope fail to respond to such a letter, signed as it was by (amongst many others) Vladimir Ashkenazy, Agatha Christie, Kenneth Clark, Robert Graves, Graham Greene, FR Leavis, Cecil Day-Lewis, Nancy Mitford, Iris Murdoch, Yehudi Menuin, Malcolm Muggeridge, Joan Sutherland and the Anglican Bishops of Exeter and Rippon? The story goes that Paul VI was quietly reading through the list of signatories and then suddenly said: "Ah, Agatha Christie!‘’ and signed his approval. Ever since, this permission has been known in traditionalist circles as the Agatha Christie Indult.  [What an amazing anecdote, which I believe is true.  But how sad.  It took Agatha Christie’s name to get the POPE’s attention over this important issue.  Thus it is in a Church in which human beings strive to fulfill roles instituted by divine will.]

But although this indult had been granted, many bishops were unwilling actually to give permission. The traditionalists, including the Latin Mass Society, were often treated as trouble-makers and rebels.

The authority to change

[This is great…]

I once interviewed the Patriarch of Antioch, in Damascus. I asked His Beatitude whether he, like the Bishop of Rome, believed he had power radically to alter the liturgy. "Oh yes, we have authority in liturgical matters. And in 1,500 years we did once alter a prayer."

Clearly the idea of virtually inventing a new rite had never entered the Patriarch’s head. (The so-called "Tridentine’’ rite was not invented by the Council of Trent, but was a codification of the Roman rite which dated back many centuries.) The question all along was whether pope and bishops really do have such authority. One distinguished Catholic thinker [pay attention] judged that there was no such sweeping power, that liturgy had its own authority based on immemorial tradition, and that the pope’s authority in liturgy "is at the service of Sacred Tradition." The same thinker even dared to describe the new mass as "no re-animation but devastation… fabricated liturgy… banal-on-the-spot product." The man who wrote those words is now Pope Benedict XVI. The Cardinals elected Ratzinger knowing that these were his convictions. It cannot have been done in a fit of absence of mind.  [Right.]

Mass and Invariance

The Catholic Church has often enforced unity with ferocity. Yet in the present culture war (officially denied, of course) real unity seems far away. As the Pope’s intentions become clear (Cardinal Castrillon said that the Pope wants to make the old rite available "in all the parishes" of England and Wales) the English bishops have fallen into a curious silence. The parish priest of a famous Jesuit church, politely asked whether he would make some traditional masses available, responded with unconcealed rage. (This church advertises a children’s liturgy, Japanese masses, services for Brazilians and Filipinos, but apparently drew the line at the ancient Roman liturgy). 

The dispute about liturgy is part of a wider battle. [YES!]  Those who want to align the Church with modernity, which inevitably means drawing on current liberal values, became influential following Vatican II. But if they hoped that the Church would change its stance on liberation theology, divorce, homosexuality, the ordination of women, they found their nemesis in John Paul II . Woytila’s [oops] reassertion of tradition in all these areas was less flamboyant than Pio Nono’s famous denial that "the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to come to terms with progress, liberalism and the modern world," but it came to much the same thing.

Pope Ratzinger is even more profoundly traditional than his predecessor, and he believes that disputes about liturgy are disputes about the very nature of the Church. [YES! YES!] He prizes a mass that develops according to its own laws throughout the ages. [not artificially cobbled together on a desk by "experts" with ideological axes to grind]  He is also attracted by the Eastern Orthodox conception of a liturgy "whose light illumines our changing times with its unchanging beauty and greatness." Those who altered the mass after Vatican II thought it possible to create a form of worship that was illumined, indeed determined by the changing times. These are two wholly incompatible visions. As Benedict puts it in a letter to the bishops that accompanied his motu proprio: "What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful."

Tradition re-discovered in every age

Something unexpected seems now to be happening in the Catholic Church. Far from attachment to the old forms dying away, a generation of younger priests and lay Catholics is coming into view that is enthusiastically attached to the Tridentine mass, and to Catholic orthodoxy. In France, one in five of all priests currently being ordained is devoted to the old mass. [WOW] And this is a committed, determined minority growing up in a virtual wasteland for the French Church. Only five per cent of French Catholics attend mass regularly. [I heard 2%] In one diocese, the Cathedral attracts seventy worshippers on Sunday, while the chapel of semi-schismatic Society of St Pius X (of Archbishop Lefebvre) attracts seven hundred to a traditional mass. Indeed, it is suggested that an actual majority of church goers on a Sunday in France attend Lefebvrist services.

Pope Benedict himself is a philosophical traditionalist of a sort that is barely understood in the modern world. In a lecture to the University in Regensberg he enraged some Muslims because he quoted a Byzantine Emperor who suggested that Mohammed countenanced violent religious conversion. But what he was talking about was the relation between religion and reason. Ratzinger suggested that the God of certain Muslim theologians – like that of some late mediaeval philosophers, as well as Luther and Calvin – so transcends our categories, even of rationality, that all that is left for us is his sovereign will. If God so commanded, we would have to practice idolatry, or violence. The Pope argued that the Christian understanding of God has to be rooted in rationality: God is reason, the logos, so any attempt to convert by violence is contrary to the nature of God. This may seem an arcane dispute in theology, but what it comes to is that Christianity is inevitably tied up with Greek philosophy, is, indeed, a marrying of Judaic religion with Greek thought. [Precisely, as I said above.  And even in the famous Curia Address the Pope was working against the vision of those within the Church who are trying to strip Christian thought of the Hellenic-Roman component, so necessary to be able to express our fundamental beliefs.] Add the Roman heritage, and we can say (in Ratzinger’s remarkable words at Regensberg) that "Christianity created Europe."

In other words, Christianity is a culture as well as a set of beliefs. Equally, Europe should remember its Christian roots. (Cardinal Ratzinger once said that if Turkey were ever allowed to join the EU this would represent "the triumph of economics over culture.’‘) Catholic liturgies have to keep their Roman and European heritage, and cannot simply be adapted to local conditions, tongues and cultures. [We must not admit false inculturation to distort who we are.] The mass in China should not be celebrated with rice and rice wine; and in America it should not express folksy inclusiveness. For Ratzinger, this special blend of Judaism, Greek philosophy and Romanitas is essential to the Church, an idea that Luther scorned. [And a list of other, modern Catholic thinkers.] So it is almost literally unthinkable that a genuine liturgy could be fabricated, rather than grow out of immemorial tradition.

Admirers of Ratzinger insist that his traditionalism is no blinkered love of the past, no theological auto-immune disorder. As TS Eliot put it, tradition cannot be blindly inherited, but has to be re-discovered in every age, an enterprise that requires great labor. No one who reads Ratzinger can deny that he brings a very lively intelligence into his attempt to rediscover tradition. It is his critics of the ageing Vatican II generation who begin to look intellectually lazy.

In Benedict XVI, Catholic modernists meet a formidable antagonist indeed. His gentle manner and readiness to persuade rather than bludgeon conceals (from those that have not eyes to see) a philosophy of tradition that challenges not only liturgical philistines, but all those Catholics for whom history began with the Second Vatican Council. He is the immediate cause of all those joyful traditionalist Catholics congregating in Westminster cathedral and overflowing onto the pavement. The authority of a pope of Rome is not to be underestimated. When the Pope’s motu proprio became known to Catholic traditionalists, not a few of them wept for joy. At the moment his election was announced in St Peter’’s square in 2005, several priests of modernist sympathies were also seen to weep – but with chagrin. Provided his health holds, then (to misquote Henry James) those tears are not the last they are destined to shed.

John Casey is lecturer in English at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Gonville and Caius College. He writes and reviews frequently in newspapers and journals. Among his books are Pagan Virtue: An Essay in Ethics (Clarendon Press, 1990).

Well done.  This article is PACKED.

You heard, I am sure, about the Vatican Gendarmerie joining Interpol.

There is a ZENIT story about this.

There is more to this than meets the eye.

For the last year or so the Secretariat of State has been preferring the Gendarmerie to the Swiss Guard.  This preference has provoked conflict between the recently fired Commandant of the Swiss Guard and the Secretariat.

The integration of the Vatican police into Interpol signals changes in Vatican City State (SCV – Stato della Città del Vaticano) security, including more restricted access to areas within the SCV and the extraterritorial properties. 

There will be more electronic surveillance, including telephone and computer wire-tapping. 

There will follow an infiltration into the SCV of Italian and other national security agencies.

The SCV is going to be one of the real security hot-spots in Europe. 

Increasingly hotter.