TO Thee, before the close of day,

Creator of the world we pray...

This hymn was discovered, clearly painstakingly copied from an older text, wrapped in decaying silk and stored in a wax-sealed jar, in a hidden vault recently discovered in a Franciscan church that is undergoing some late 'updating' according to the 'norms' of Vatican II. I am told that while the workmen were levering up the marble of the sanctuary in preparation for the altar to be moved to the centre of the church, they discovered an oak and iron trap door that, when opened, led down a set of stone steps to a little room. I have no further information as to the contents of the room but suffice to recall that Franciscans in some places have some very odd methods of storing their dead superiors.

The hymn's exact provenance is unknown, but the subject matter oddly indicates events that happened centuries after it was written. It is thought to have been part of a longer liturgical piece, possibly a portion of the Divine Office.

I have been told by a Roman scholar of my acquaintance that its discoverers believe that it may be linked to a small sect of "spirituals", one of the early reforms of the Franciscans and possibly refers to events related by a visionary about the future. Exactly how the text came into my possession is something I shall keep to myself for the moment. Given the current climate, it is safe only to say that my source believes it relates a story of Pope Paul VI after the implementation of the "reforms" of the liturgy c. 1965.

I offer my interlocutor's note:

You may have heard that when His Holiness went in the morning to celebrate Mass in his private chapel, he was surprised to find that green vestments had been put out, instead of the red which the real Roman Liturgy prescribes on Pentecost Monday, the second day in the Octave of said Feast. With much consternation he asked his sacristan why the "wrong" vestments had been laid out, to which he responded, with not a little confusion: "But your Holiness abolished the Octave of Pentecost, and we are now in 'ordinary time'." At which the Pontiff wept.

It can be sung to the simple tone of Te Lucis

Funesta huc piacula,

Anni reduxit orbita,

Quae Paulus, horum artifex,

Deflevit Urbis Pontifex.



Qui mala nobis prodidit,

Curare gregem noluit,

Sed tantum acri sustulit

Amare flere lacryma.



Linguis loquuntur barbaris

Qui polluunt solemnia,

Ut quemque cogant flaminem

Nescire prorsus omnia.



Patrata sunt ab impio

Cum fraude ista crimina;

Novusque Poenus Hannibal

Romana sacra perdidit.



Audire voces supplicum

Deum precemur citharis:

"Novi repellas taedium,

O Christe, hujus Ordinis!



Imbutum felle deputa,

Quod sacra tibi serica,

Paraclito rubentia,

Tulit virens subucula."



Laus inclyto Paraclito,

Qui punit haec peccamina

Cum impiis in Tartaro

In saeculorum saecula.

Translation:

The annual cycle has brought back to this place the dire rites of expiation, over which Paul, the Bishop of Rome, wept, though he himself was the architect.

He who gave us all manner of wicked things, and did not wish to care for his flock, but only suffered to weep most bitterly.

They who pollute the solemn rites, speak in barbarian tongues, in order to force every single priest, to be utterly ignorant of everything.

Such crimes were perpetrated with guile by an impious man, and like a second Hannibal of Carthage, destroyed the holy Roman rites.

Let us beseech God with our guitars to hear the prayers of His suppliants:
"Drive away, O Christ, the boredom of this 'Novus Ordo'

Regard it as filled with gall, that the silks sacred to you, and coloured red in honour of the Holy Ghost, were replaced by a green poncho."

Praise be to the glorious Holy Spirit, who punishes with the impious these sinful crimes in the pit of hell, for ever and ever. Amen.

But Fooling About Aside,

Andrew has a great post on Fra Bertie, Catholic Prince, Statesman, humanitarian, black belt in Judo, raiser of oranges and all 'round good egg.

Requiestcat in Pace.


Andrew Willoughby Ninian Bertie
Prince and Grand Master
of the Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of St. John
of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta
Most Humble Guardian of the Poor of Jesus Christ

May 15, 1929 - February 7, 2008

I see he got my memo

The Vatican will advise bishops around the world this next week to be more rigorous in their selection of the candidates they propose for sainthood, ANSA reports.

A 20-page document to be presented in the Vatican on February 18 will ask bishops to show “greater sobriety and rigor” in accepting requests to begin inquiries into a prospective saint’s life.

Initial investigations into the life of a proposed saint take place in the diocese where he or she died. The local bishop must begin the inquiry and oversee the first phase, which produces a dossier of evidence to be sent to Rome.

...

Cardinal Saraiva Martins said the new document would “respond better to the new spirit introduced by Benedict XVI.”

Since the formal canonization procedure was founded by Pope Sixtus V in the 16th century until the start of the pontificate of John Paul II, the Church had canonized 296 saints. During John Paul's pontificate, he had canonized that number by November 21, 1999.

Community Communion Distributors

(Non-Catholics can just go look at another blog for a second, it's kind of technical, and therefore very dull...)

I know we've been all over this one and there isn't much need for it, but something just popped into my head while reading this:

Canon law, that is, the law of the Roman Catholic Church, is clear: when a person distributing Communion objectively knows that another person seeking Communion is, in the words of Canon 915, “excommunicated, interdicted, or…obstinately persist[ing] in manifest grave sin,” the person distributing is obligated ro refuse Communion to the person seeking.

In response to the question,“Who is to judge the state of a Catholic communicant's soul? Who may make the decision to refuse Holy Communion?,” Archbishop Raymond Burke responded: “Canon 915 does not require that the competent authority in the church actually judge the state of a person’s soul, which only God can do, but rather the objective contradiction between the faith the person professes and his or her persistent actions contrary to clear teaching, after pastoral admonition, especially in the light of the harm that such counter-witness causes."

It made me realize yet another reason the employment of non-consecrated persons to touch the sacred species is bad.

The writer refers to "a person distributing Holy Communion" who was, until recently always a priest or deacon. In the old Church, these people were trained in situations under which it is necessary to refuse a potential communicant. An extraordinary minister of Holy Communion, as we call them officially, is not a trained person. He, or more usually she, is in no position to be able to implement the canonical requirement to refuse Holy Communion to someone whom she knows to be in manifest grave sin. (In most cases, she has no idea that there is such a thing as grave sin, and what the word "manifest" might mean, but that's a rant for another day.)

This led me to the next conclusion. Has the Church, by allowing people who are not trained and have no competence to refuse Holy Communion declared or even assumed that there is no reason at all, in any circumstance to refuse a communicant. The implication is that the Church as accepted the protestant assertion that there is nothing about that little white disk that is especially important. Certainly nothing about it important enough to say, "No, I'm sorry Mr. Kerry, I can't give you Communion."

I'm not sure whether this is the result on the disposal of the idea that the bread actually becomes the body and blood of Christ, or the ancient and ever-new heresy that Christ isn't really God, or the widespread assumption that God isn't very important. Catechesis in the last 40 years would support all these ideas equally felicitously I think.

Anyway,

sorry about getting all Catholic for a second. It just popped in there.

Gnosticism vs. Faith

The other day I was given the task of discovering what sort of a man the new Black Pope is.

I failed to find anything significant. But it seems I didn't look hard enough, or with enough attention.

The new Superior General of the Jesuits, Father Adolfo Nicolás, had this to say in 2005 about the "liberating ways of religious wisdom":

The real spiritual Masters of all ages are more keen in teaching the way to God, than in giving answers to questions about God. Asia has produced an incredible wealth of such "Ways". The search for wisdom or for the Divinity is a very concrete search and the Masters continue to guide people in the journey of the heart. It is in this context that we Christians have to think and reconsider our Christian practices, from simple devotions to Sacramental celebrations.

I must increase so He must decrease.

Here's what the late Jesuit Father Jean Daniélou had to say on the same subject:

For syncretism, those who are saved are the inward-looking souls, whatever the religion they profess. For Christianity, they are the believers, whatever level of inwardness they may have achieved. A little child, an overworked workman, if they believe, stand at a higher level than the greatest ascetics. "We are not great religious personalities", Guardini once said; "we are servants of the Word." Christ himself had said that St. John the Baptist might well be "the greatest among the children of men", but that "the least among the sons of the kingdom is greater than he." It is possible for there to be great religious personalities in the world even outside of Christianity; it is indeed very possible for the greatest religious personalities to be found outside Christianity; but that means nothing; what counts is obedience to the Word of Christ.

The difference is between gnosticism, the salvation of the few through 'secret' knowledge, and the desire of God to save everyone through trusting surrender to His mercy.

I know which one I'd pick.

Thanks to Diogenes for the answer that we all had more or less already guessed.

Call me romantic

But I still go a little giddy whenever I hear the words "Cardinal" and "Pell" put together.

highlights:

environmentalist fanatics represent "a minority neo-pagan, anti-human mentality,"

Extreme environmental proposals are often expressions of modern society's deep confusion about the place and value of the human person in the world. They should set off warning bells for us. If we have learnt anything from the atrocities of the last century, it is that wide scale attacks upon human life and dignity both stem from and sustain reductive understandings of the human person.

It all makes me think that the kill-the-humans environutters are really just very very unhappy people who don't like their own lives and can't understand why anyone would be interested in life at all.

This:

the root cause of the many and varied human rights abuses which afflict our world today is contemporary man's inability to see himself as "mysteriously different" from other earthly creatures; to grasp the "transcendent" character of his "existence as man"; and to consider life as a splendid gift of God, something "sacred" entrusted to his responsibility and thus also to his loving care and "veneration"

would simply be utterly non-sensical to them.

I remember being a chronically depressed hippie-leftie-socialist feminist who hated life and couldn't see why anyone wouldn't volunteer for the euthanasia centre. It wasn't nice.

Maybe that's why they all come from Vancouver. The 362-day-a-year overcast can make you pretty unhappy, even with all the snowboarding and pot toking.

Cardinal Egan's Cathedral.

(Egan being a JPII fav pic BTW.)

Those wishing to express their gratitude and compliments may contact:
Reverend Monsignor Robert T. Ritchie
Rector
460 Madison Ave
New York, NY 10022, USA
(212) 753-2261
rector@saintpatrickscathedral.org

Lies, damned lies and...

This just in from that fun-lovin' bunch at the National Secular Society:

"Catholic Church shown to be economical with the statistical truth"
(and isn't that a great headline? Worked on me!)

Anthony Spencer, who runs Pastoral Research, said the Church’s own figures were little more than guesswork, based on rough estimates of mass attendance.

Mr Spencer said: “Mass immigration is masking a huge alienation among the Catholic community. There is a huge unexplained loss of people to be found when you look at those who were baptised as babies, but who are not getting married or holding funerals and subsequent baptisms in Church.”

Mr Spencer said that his statistics showed that 530,000 Catholics had ceased even minimal involvement with the Church since 1997, whereas official Church statistics put it at 72,000.

[Aside: Naturally, the NSS is way behind. This revelation of the Church's duplicity is, of course, a straw man...or could be a red herring... anyway, the idea that the Catholic Church's governing class knows that we're in big trouble statistically and is trying to hide it, is absurd. Anyone who goes to Mass anywhere in this country will see for themselves. And, of course, it's being reported in the news all the time. The phrase "decline in Mass attendance" is so common in the news that you can use it effectively for a Google News keyword search. But hey, its the NSS, another organization well known for its objectivity and intellectual honesty.]

Now, putting aside the NSS' obsessive hatred of the Catholic Church, (nothin' we aren't used to by now!) these are some interesting and useful statistics, I think. But what the NSS fails to note is that those of us Catholics who still bother are mostly those who actually believe the doctrines and dogmas of the Catholic religion. What has happened in recent decades for reasons we won't bother with here, is that most of the people who are, or were, actually sitting in pews and who are drifting away, are those who don't.

As I've pointed out elsewhere. For the most part, those who are left are the ones for whom it would be unthinkable, unimaginable to "drift" out of the practice of the Faith. Those whose daily existence and entire universal outlook are formed by a religious understanding that can be replaced by nothing else and who appreciate the seriousness of the obligations that understanding imposes. This sort does not “drift away” from the practice of their faith.

As we know Papa R. has said somewhere that we will be looking at a much smaller and much more faithful Catholic Church in the coming years. There will be no more idle pew-sitters, or cultural Catholics or people who go because their mothers go. People who go to Mass, will be the sort willing to risk what others have risked for the same thing in the past. The sort who will hide priests in their homes, if necessary, and give sturdy defences of the Faith while standing before the gallows.

All indications, including those in Mr. Spencer’s report show that this is coming to pass.

Personally, with all respect to the NSS (meaning none) I’d call it an improvement.

I would be loath to speak anything that might sound of any insolent brag or challenge, especially being now as a dead man to this world and willing to put my head under every man's foot, and to kiss the ground they tread upon. Yet I have such courage in avouching the majesty of Jesus my King, and such affiance in his gracious favour, and such assurance in my quarrel, and my evidence so impregnable, and because I know perfectly that no one Protestant, nor all the Protestants living, nor any sect of our adversaries (howsoever they face men down in pulpits, and overrule us in their kingdom of grammarians and unlearned ears) can maintain their doctrine in disputation. I am to sue most humbly and instantly for combat with all and every of them, and the most principal that may be found: protesting that in this trial the better furnished they come, the better welcome they shall be.

How I spent my Christmas Holiday

Novitiate tea with guests.

Colwich Abbey, one of the survivors.

St Mary's Abbey of English Benedictine nuns has its origins in 1623 at Cambrai in the Spanish Netherlands. At that time, persecution made it impossible for women to become nuns in England. By 1645, the Cambrai community under Abbess Catherine Gascoigne had increased to 50 nuns, and was living in conditions of extreme poverty.

On 6th February 1652, the community was established in Paris as the Priory of Our Lady of Good Hope under Dame Bridget More as their Prioress. She was a direct descendant of the martyr, St Thomas More, and had been taught at Cambrai under the spiritual supervision of the great mystical theologian, Dom Augustine Baker.

I was shown a room full of treasure. The library of books, many of them hand-copiedand dating to the 17th century, brought with the nuns when they fled Paris after being released from prison. A friend, who is a fan of Dom Augustine Baker, speculated that there are unpublished works in that room.

A beautiful and magical place.

Lenten Penances for Bibliophiles

Fr. _____ and I were discussing appropriate Lenten penitential practices. I thought Fr.'s definition of the kind of book one can legitimately buy during Lent, particularly helpful, ie: the sort of book one would need if one were aware of its existence.

We share a kind of mystical mind about bookbuying. There are books that are simply meant for you, and that are waiting in bookshops for you to come and retrieve them. The small matter of cash exchanging hands is beside the point. Of the little rectangular bits of coloured paper, there will always be more sooner or later, if one only waits long enough. Of that book, there is only the one, since it is (usually) at least 50 years out of print and you may never see it again.

It's a game really. God spends His free evenings placing these books, like easter eggs in the garden, onto the shelves of bookshops for us and watches chuckling indulgently as we blunder about hunting for them.

___

Fr. Underscore wrote:

What I am doing for Lent is walking briskly to Abelard and back every day, no matter how cold it is while saying the Jesus prayer. That much I have determined I can keep up, I think. What I am not sure about is going to Abelard and not making at least a token purchase.

Hilary wrote:

Not entirely convinced that daily book-shopping is a legitimate Lenten penance for such as we. I suppose taking a daily three mile walk in the freezing cold could qualify though.

Mine is much simpler. Go to Mass every day and do not give up the practise of the Faith or lapse into despair.

Fr. U wrote:

What I'm trying to decide is whether occasionally buying a book (only of course when it is something one has long wanted or needed or would have wanted or needed had one only known about it) might not be justifiable. I find for long nasty walks one should have some kind of temporal goal in mind, as well.

...

P.S. Maybe it's okay to get a book if one doesn't stop off at Second Cup for a latte?

As I was walking back from getting Ashed this morning, I was re-thinking my criticism of Father Underscore's pentitential plan. It was about -13 C. this morning and the fifteen minutes it takes to get from there back to the comfort of my eremetical stylos, was quite enough for me!

I am sure that God will understand the necessity of stopping off for a latte on the way home.

The Love Pope

The lefties in the press, having set up their memes, are now shocked and horrified as Ratzi, like John Paul before him, openly defies their categorizations...

Could it be "part of a vast, rightwing Opus Dei conspiracy, one to set expectations so low that when his first encyclical was released giving us love, love, love everyone is perplexed"?

Hey, everyone said he was evil, and a Nazi and Hitler and everything...

What gives with all the love stuff? This must be a trick.

I have to say I burst out laughing when I read the New York Times headline: "Benedict's First Encyclical Shuns Strictures of Orthodoxy"

because, of course, if you're the New York Times, the entire doctrine and dogma, discipline and sacraments, art and history of the Roman Catholic Church is about contraception, abortion and gays. If the New York Times says that the Church's "strictures of Orthodoxy" are about the Big Three Topics, it must be so...

Now we have a Times columnist getting a clue. Do these people read nothing but each other's editorials?

So, we've never come across St. John of the Cross hey? Never heard of Teresa or Therese?

There's something here the crossed my mind. Perhaps Ratzi didn't like being the prefect of the CDF, a job that was far from using his talents to the full. A guy like Ratzinger, someone whose love of God needs to pour out of him in words, having only his piano to express it, cast by the whole world as the heavy, the Church's bad cop. Maybe he likes being pope better because he can tell us all the stuff he has been saving up and have the world's biggest pulpit to do it from.

Passionate Prose is a Real Revelation
By Ruth Gledhill
Times UK

I STARTED reading Deus Caritas Est expecting to be disappointed, chastised and generally laid low. An encyclical on love from a right-wing pope could only contain more damning condemnations of our materialistic, westernised society, more evocations of the “intrinsic evil” of contraception, married priests, homosexuality. It would surely continue the Church’s grand tradition of contempt for the erotic, a tradition that ensures a guilty hangover in any Roman Catholic who dares to indulge in lovemaking for any reason other than the primary one of reproduction. How wonderful it is to be proven wrong.

The first half of the encyclical, the part on eros written by the new Pope himself, is a startling revelation, almost akin to reading one of George’s Herbert’s poems on love and God, or C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves. The language itself verges at times on the erotic.