Latin Mass Society

Chairman's Blog

07/02/2017 - 10:00

The Ancient Lectionary

Reposted from May 2013, in response to the strange blog post arguing for various improvements to the Extraordinary Form, one of which is that it adopt the OF Liturgical Calendar. (There's another response here, from the excellent Fr Albert Marcello.)

The lectionary seems to many to be an obvious example of something the OF does better than the EF, but it doesn't take long to see why things aren't so simple. The brevity, and the basis of the selection, of the traditional lectionary have their own advantages. As for swapping one lectionary for another, this would produce an incoherent muddle.

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Today I'm publishing a Position Paper for the Una Voce Federation on the Lectionary. Go over to Rorate Caeli to read it.

As I remark there, the claim is often made that the lectionary of the 1970 Missal is an obvious improvement on the old one, on the simple basis that more is better, and the 1970 Missal has more scripture in it. Clearly, however, there are other considerations. First and foremost, the lectionary must make sense liturgically: if we understand that, we will understand the value of the old lectionary,  in the context of the old Mass, and why it should be preserved. To replace it with the new lectionary, as if the lectionaries can just be swapped in and out of rites, would be a disaster for the Traditional Mass.

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One of the five extra readings on an Ember Saturday, celebrated in Caversham

In the Traditional Mass, the readings of each Mass are connected with the other proper prayers and chants of that Mass. There is a series of Sundays (some of the ones After Pentecost) in which, for historical reasons, the gospels have got out of sync with the other propers by one week; because of the nature of the progression of texts this doesn't matter very much. What we never have, however, in the Traditional Mass is a set of readings with absolutely no connection with the chants or prayers, and that is something which is inevitable with a multi-year cycle of readings, unless it were accompanied by the multi-year cycle of prayers and chants. But, obviously, there aren't enough appropriate ancient prayers and chants to go round. (This, of course, is part of the story of why, in the Ordinary Form, the chants are a sort of optional extra, which don't seem very closely connected with the other liturgical texts.) Imposing a multi-year cycle of Sunday readings on the EF would destroy the coherence of its propers.

Another suggestion often made is that we should have a cycle of readings for the ferias outside Lent. There were, once, such cycles (though only for three days each week), so it might even seem a 'traditional' thing to do. Before trying to restore things from the distant past (in the Roman Rite, this cycle disappeared in about 13th Century), we should ask why things developed as they did. The answer is, probably (there is no record of a debate, this is one of those things which just happened), that with the rich sanctoral cycle, and the increasing use of Votive Masses, the ferial cycle didn't get much use outside Lent, so it was pretty pointless. If we want to reverse this development, we have to reverse the whole of it: we have to impoverish the sanctoral cycle, and get rid of Votive Masses. Or else render them liturgically incoherent by insisting on readings with no connection with the theme of those Masses. Is that something we really want to do?

Why not say, with Pope Pius XII, that what happened was an organic development which made the liturgy answer the developing needs of the Faithful? And that our needs are pretty well the same: we need the sactoral cycle, because we have lots of saints to celebrate, and we need Votive Masses, because we have lots of devotions to maintain. These two things, the saints and devotions, are major parts of Catholic life and spirituality, and have been since roughly the period in which the ferial cycle dropped out of use. It's not a coincidence.

Here's Pius XII, again:
Just as obviously unwise and mistaken is the zeal of one who in matters liturgical would go back to the rites and usage of antiquity, discarding the new patterns introduced by disposition of divine Providence to meet the changes of circumstances and situation. 

This is all not to say that we can't increase our liturgical exposure to the scriptures. There are a couple of suggestions in the paper which deal with this, notably that, in line with the Second Vatican Council, the recitation of the Divine Office be encouraged. The readings of Sunday Matins are, in fact, closely connected with the readings of the Sunday, and serve as a liturgically coherent expansion and commentary on them. This would be a better outlet for our liturgical zeal than reducing the ancient liturgy to a shambles in the attempt to shoehorn more Gospel passages into it.

06/02/2017 - 11:12

Chant Training Weekend: 31st Mar to 2nd Apr, Oratory School

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At last's year's course, Colin Mawby discussing organ accompanyment.

Gregorian Chant Network Chant Training Weekend:

Led by Christopher Hodkinson and Fr Guy Nichols Cong. Orat.
Friday 31st March to Sunday 2nd April 2017, The Oratory School, nr. Reading, RG8 0PJ
Registration from 4 to 4.45pmlate Registrations 7-7.30
Course ends with lunch on Sunday. 

An intensive chant course running alongside the Catherine's Trust Family Retreat (led this year by Fr Serafino Lanzetta). Singers will be prepared to participate in the liturgies of the Retreat, including Mass Ordinaries and Propers, Chants for Benediction and the Office, as well as discussing chant interpretation and history. All liturgies are according to the usus antiquior (the Traditional Mass). With two chant tutors, the group can be split for some purposes into more and less experienced, so everyone can get the most out of it.

Large discounts available for groups coming from choirs and scholas affiliated to the Gregorian Chant Network.

Fees
LMS members: £10 discount
£195 per person
£120 each for 2 people from the same choir or schola

£90 each for 3 or more people from the same choir or schola

   
Download an application form or book online: www.stcatherinestrust.org

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Outside procession at last year's Family Retreat and Chant Course.

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03/02/2017 - 11:12

Opus Anglicanum: a belated review

The exhibition Opus Anglicanum in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London is about to close: it does so on 5th. Right now the exhibition webpage is still up so you can see a few things about it. We went to see it before Christmas, and I thought I'd put up some random observations.

The exhibition shows off the work of Medieval English needlecraft, which was famous in its own day. This is embroidery used on a lavish scale, not simply to decorate an orphery but to cover entire chasubles, the vast copes they used in that period, and all sorts of other things.  It is a tradition dating back to before the Norman Conquest: the Bayeaux Tapestry was made by English needleworkers. However, most of the surviving examples, in this exhibition, are from the 14-16th centuries. English work was so prized that these pieces made good diplomatic gifts, which is the reason that several of the things in the exhibition have survived, in cathedrals in continental Europe. Liturgical vestments covered in pictures of virgin martyrs could have a short life-expectancy in Protestant England.

Something which did survive in England was a truly wonderful coffin-cover made for, and still owned by, the The Worshipful Company of Fishmongers, complete with mermaids. The survival of these curious medieval institutions, and their innate conservatism, is one of the fun things about England.

The practice of English embroidery was saved from extinction by (what became) the Royal College of Needlework, founded in 1872: we owe the Victorians a lot. What they do, the kind of stuff you see above all on state occasions and in well-resourced Anglican cathedrals, is a direct descendant of this medieval work. What is interesting, however, is that the medieval artists used a very limited number of techniques. The great majority of the embroidery is one kind of stitch, called 'split stitch'. Another type, 'tent stitch', was used for heraldic embroidery, which was less fine and designed for hard use; it makes sense to create blocks of colour.

This split-stitch embroidery is very similar to modern 'silk shading', which you'll see today, for example, for faces on vestments; but the thread used was far coarser. The result is a wooly, rather than a silky, effect, which would I suppose have been more hard-wearing and also much faster to execute. Like silk shading, it can shade seemlessly from one colour into another, with texture being created by the direction of the stitches. So the cheeks of a female saint, for example would shade into a deeper pink in the middle, with the impression of roundness being given by a pattern of stitches in concentric circles.

The skill of the artisans must have been immense, and the value of their work enormous. To have a cope covered with more than a dozen saints and associated symbols and decoration can't have been any cheaper than covering it in semi-precious stones, and it was valued accordingly. Indeed, among the sumptory laws of the period, intended to restrain extravagance, embroidery on clothing was restricted to people of a certain income and social standing.

I noted some time ago on this blog something else about this exhibition which is interesting. Before it opened The Guardian carried a story about it, noting

'for the first time in decades, the museum has dared to use Latin in an exhibition title.'


It explained:

“We were a bit worried that people would find the title baffling,” said co-curator and textile expert Clare Browne. “Older people thought that younger people would find it off-putting – but in fact younger people thought it was mysterious and exciting.”



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31/01/2017 - 10:00

Mass in Milton Manor Sat 11th Feb

Milton Manor is one of our local historic Catholic houses here in Oxfordshire, with a lovely 18th century chapel. Come along, if you can, to honour Our Lady in her appearances in Lourdes 150 years ago. The celebrant will be Fr Philip Harris, Parish Priest at nearby Didcot.

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30/01/2017 - 10:00

What, then, should we do? Part 3: what it means for you.

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Latin Mass Society Waling Pilgrimage to Walsingham.

The first post in this series is here, the second here.

In the last two posts I have given a number of reasons why the defence of the Faith and those upholding it will best be done through the movement for the restoration of the Traditional Mass. This post is about what that means in practice for you, dear reader.

First, let me summarise the reasons for what I know will be a uncomfortable conclusion for many good-hearted Catholics, some of which I have discussed at greater length in the previous posts.




1. The Traditional movement maintains good relations with faithful non-traddie priests and laity, and does not typically exclude anyone when it comes to particular projects in defence of the Faith. Non-traddie conservatives are often less open-minded.



2. The movement combines a high level of cohesion (both common purpose and common cultural reference-points), with a looseness of formal organisation which makes it very robust.



3. The Traditional Mass acts as a barrier to those not serious about the Faith: or converts them. The orthodoxy of the liturgy and of those attached to it are mutually reinforcing.

4. The movement’s historical experience has effectively innoculated it against Papolatry.

5. The movement provides the dense network of collaboration and mutual support, within a reliably orthodox community, which is needed for priests and laity who want to maintain the Faith in the current crisis.



6. The Traditional Mass both symbolises and reinforces our connection with the Church’s tradition in all its aspects, which is essential to the long-term solution to the crisis.



Finally, to bring our deliberation back to something in our power to do, contributing to the movement is something which every Catholic, and every reader of this blog, can, personally, do.



It is frustrating to see a crisis unfolding and to feel helpless. People long to be able to get involved in some useful way. The generic advice to fast and pray is good, of course, but it is natural, and a healthy instinct, to want to do something more specifically related to the issues of the day. So do! Don't just sit on the sidelines.



If you understand the role of the Traditional movement in providing moral and sometimes practical support for priests and laity upholding the Faith (5), and the essential place a sense of Catholic continuity with the past has in restoring orthodoxy (6), and further the providential characteristics which makes the movement as it currently exists less vulnterable to attack than anything comparable (2-4), then it is evident that you can do something about the crisis. Anything you do to support the Traditional movement, to make its network bigger, denser, and more effective, will be a contribution to the defence of the Faith, and the movement does so much, in so many places, that no one, anywhere, can fail to have a part to play. No one.



Fasting and praying will have greater meaning, and indeed greater value in the eyes of God, if done in conjunction with others on some kind of organised plan. Ok, so you live in an Antarctic research station with only penguins for company, you don’t like the Traditional liturgy, and you have no money at all: you can still join, online, a sodality (/confraternity / guild) associated with a traditional Institute or lay apostolate which prays in a systematic way, supported by the celebration of Masses, and towards whose intentions you can contribute your rosaries, fasts, and sufferings. The Latin Mass Society’s Sodality of St Augustine (no joining fee) is an example; there are many others. (The websites of the Traditional Institutes would be a place to look further.)



The next thing to do is to educate yourself more deeply, not primarily in the latest conspiracy theory (fun though these can be), but in the Church’s tradition of spirituality. This will bring you into contact with issues of liturgy, theology, and history, and if you don’t yet see the point of the Traditional Mass, then your questions will begin to be answered. It is not optional for Catholics to be informed about central aspects of the Faith, in accordance with their abilities and general education. Newman’s ‘well-instructed laity’ is a necessary bulwark of the Church in its human aspect. The Traditional movement provides you with endless free opportunities to do learn about the Mass and the Faith, from the FIUV Position Papers onwards. Unless you are really penniless, however, buy a few books as well.



Even if you can’t physically get to any Masses or other devotions, you can still support your local Una Voce / Latin Mass group, and one or more of the Traditional Institutes, with your prayers, membership, and financial contributions. Everything in the traditional movement is run on a shoestring, which means that donations go a long way. Everything, that is, apart from what is needed for the service of God, when quality of materials and workmanship have special importance. How wonderful, and how rare, to be able to contribute to a movement with these priorities!



If you are neither house-bound nor marooned in Antarctica, get yourself to the Traditional Mass. Numbers attending these Masses are all-important. Perhaps we shouldn’t think this way, but we, and our opponents, inevitably do: it is essential for morale, for our ability to resist attacks, and for the spread of the apostolate, that people make the effort to come to our events. Not just Sunday Masses, of course: the Traditional movement puts on all sorts of devotional events, pilgrimages, conferences, and social gatherings. If you want to do something for the Church, help your local Traditional-Mass-saying priests and groups by supporting their initiatives. Why not support your ordinary local parish? Not because that is bad, but, for all the reasons outlined above, if you want to do something specifically about the current crisis, you need to do something to support the Traditional movement.



Go along, and volunteer to help. In the Traditional movement, there is always something to do. This may sound absurd, but I spend many hours stuffing envelopes. Latin Mass Society volunteers spend many Saturdays manning stalls, or giving people tea to pilgrims. Priests in traditional Institutes find themselves renovating their homes and churches. Diocesan priests celebrating the Traditional Mass may have no one to serve their Masses. The possibilities for expanding and making more splendid and attractive the provision of the Traditional Mass are limited by a shortage of people who can sing Gregorian Chant. There are vestments to mend, cakes to bake, and children to catechise.



It may be, dear reader, that it is impossible for you to contribute in any of these more complex ways. If so, go back to the earlier items in my list. But don’t ask ‘what are we to do?’



My answer may disappoint some readers. It would be nice to think of ourselves as queuing up before St Bernard to vow to go on crusade, and then marching off to smite the infidel. But no one can imagine that the current crisis can be solved quite like that, fun though it sounds. What is needed is a cohesive and and dedicated body of the Faithful, in support of a substantial number of truly faithful priests, to make it absolutely, if quietly, clear, that the Faith will not be taken from them. That is exactly what I am offering you the chance to take part in.

And did I mention this? Booking for the Chartres Pilgrimage (British Chapter) is now open.

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29/01/2017 - 12:00

What, then, should we do? Part 2: why the Traditional Mass

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A young man being made a soldier of Christ, at the Traditional Confirmation ceremony
organised by the Latin Mass Society in London.

The first post in this series is here.

The Church is enriched by all sorts of organisations and movements, many of them doing good work. I have just argued that in response to the current crisis Catholics of good will should rally to the banner of the Traditional Mass, and the movement which supports it. Why? What is wrong with all the other organisations and movements in the Church, and indeed one’s own geographical parish?

The advantages the Traditional movement has in the current crisis are both tactical and strategic; I shall give two examples of each. Consider the tactical ones first.



The recent history of the FFI and the Order of Malta illustrate two important tactical realities. One is that the Traditional Mass is a de facto rallying point for orthodoxy on a wide range of issues. (This has been the fear of opponents of the ancient Mass from the beginning.) The other is that internal divisions, including divisions about the liturgy, provide both an excuse and a point of leverage for attacks on an organisation (/ group / parish). It follows from these two undeniable facts that the Traditional movement has an obvious advantage. It is by definition united around this banner of orthodoxy.



Yes, it is possible for people not committed to orthodoxy to like the Traditional Mass, and yes, it may be—and has been—possible to find or foment divisions in an organisation theoretically committed to the Traditional Mass. I do not claim that particular elements of the Traditional movement are invulnerable. They are simply better off, in these respects: they are more united, and they are united, furthermore, around something with a strong connection with orthodoxy.



The second tactical advantage is that the Traditional movement is not dominated by any one organisation: the blogs, priestly Institutes, lay groups, periodicals and so forth all exist among a good number of others of their kind. The suppression of one or another would not be the same kind of disaster as is the suppression of the FFI or the Order of Malta, because resources and support can be transferred between them far more easily than between non-traddie conservative organisations. Traditional groups are not interchangeable, but the fact that they support the Traditional Mass is a decisive reason for nearly everyone who supports them, to support them, and these supporters are, normally, already very familiar and friendly with other Traditional Catholic groups and organisations, and would be highly likely to find another group to support instead, were their current favourite to disappear. The orthodox Catholics who support the Order of Malta (as with other worthy conservative bodies) do so for all sorts of complex reasons, and if the Order were, for practical purposes, to disappear, they would be scattered to the four winds. As a force for good the Order would be gone, and no similar organisations would be proportionally strengthened. This is not a criticism of the Order, but in the current crisis it is a disadvantage.



As noted in the last post, this fact means that, in fact, traditional groups are to this extent less likely to be suppressed, because they present somewhat less tempting targets. In the same way, no Traditional group has amassed huge resources which could be taken away from the movement as a whole by a strike on that one group. Their resources come from their supporters, and their supporters, if necessary, would go elsewhere within the movement.



Next, for the strategic reasons.



The first strategic reason is this. As the cases of the FFI and the Order of Malta illustrate, internal struggles over teaching and liturgy are endemic within conservative Catholic organisations, and within the broadly understood ‘conservative Catholic movement’, if we want to call it that. The tactical consequence, of offering an opening to the enemy, has already been noted. The strategic consequence is that this makes them a terrible front in the war in which to invest resources, not just because of this tactical vulnerability, but because so much of one’s efforts will be spent on internal, organisational conflict.



You might say: these internal battles need to be fought. Well, that is a judgement each person needs to make on the spot. The organisation at issue may be in a great position to make a valuable contribution to the struggle if only X, Y, and Z internal battles are won by the good guys, and that may be a realistic prospect. In my experience such prospects are never as rosy as one imagines. Nevertheless, if you really judge that to be so, good luck to you, but remember this: while this battle is going on, the efforts going into the internal battle are not going into the apostolate. They are not doing the work the organisation is supposed to be doing. In the meantime, you are helping to keep an organisation afloat which may be doing bad things as well as good ones. And finally, in my experience internal battles are disproportionately exhausting and demoralising, whereas work ad extra can be very rewarding and energising.



The second strategic reason is that the connection between orthodoxy and the Traditional Mass is not accidental: it is profound. The texts and ceremonies are beautiful expressions of the Faith, emphasising our need for penance and grace, acknowledging the role of Our Lady and the Angels and Saints, reiterating the message of the Gospel (not just the nice bits), and encouraging participants into the most profound, contemplative, engagement in the prayer of the Church.



There is more to it even than this, however. As I have written before, the ancient liturgical tradition is inseparably linked to the power and prestige of the Church’s past: of the Tradition. Attacks on the teaching of the Church have to deal with the fact that this teaching (if genuine) was upheld by the Fathers, Doctors, and Popes of the past. The success or failure of these attacks ultimately depends on whether Catholics today regard the past, the Tradition, as having real force. It is for this reason that the liberal attack on the teaching of the Church in the 1960s had to be preceded by an attack on the liturgy, because the ancient liturgy is, as we might call it, an efficacious sign of our continuity with our Catholic predecessors. It both symbolises it and makes it real. You cannot for long love the Fathers and Doctors and Popes of past centuries, and hate the liturgy which they celebrated, treat with contempt the words they used in addressing God, and claim that they were trapped in a liturgical form which excluded all real participation. They stand and fall together.



In a word, if we are serious about restoring to Catholics a lively orthodoxy, a real attachment to the teaching of the Church, then giving them the impression that it was all invented by Vatican II and Pope St John Paul II is a truly terrible idea. A real attachment to the teaching of the Church has to come from a sense of continuity in the Faith handed down from the Apostles. That sense is nurtured by the Traditional Mass. Promoting the Traditional Mass is not an optional extra in restoring orthodoxy. It is the fundamental means by which alone it can be achieved.

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28/01/2017 - 18:31

What, then, should we do? Part 1: what is required.

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They are coming... A procession at the St Catherine's Trust Family Retreat.


People keep asking this question; it is a fair question, and I want to try my hand at answering it. This is the first of a series of three posts on the subject.


The question refers to the current crisis in the Church. This may dissipate tomorrow by some intervention of Providence, but we must be prepared for the crisis to develop further according to its own logic. On this logic, we can expect priests and laity to come under increasing pressure to deny and to act contrary to the immemorial and irreformable teaching of the Church, the explicit teaching of Christ in the Gospels and of St Paul in the Epistles, about divorce and the sacraments.


We should not hope to escape all the bad consequences of the crisis while still giving witness to the Faith. We are called to give witness, and it is very likely that we will be called to confirm our witness with suffering. Many reading this will already have suffered greatly over this. Few, perhaps, will have escaped entirely unscathed. The question ‘what should we do?’ is not about finding a hole to hide in, but about finding a way to coordinate our work and provide mutual support and encouragement in such a way that, in human terms, this suffering will not be in vain. It is about avoiding a situation in which those who retain the Faith can be picked off one by one, quietly, and thereafter cease to be able to make any contribution to the cause. That, sadly, is what has been happening up to now.



Let us imagine what would serve us best in this crisis; it may be something we need to adapt ourselves to, but we should be prepared to make the necessary effort.





What is needed is a fairly close-knit network of both clergy and laity who are to the greatest extent possible committed to the Faith. They would be bound together not by a single, officially recognised, Catholic organisation, since such an organisation would quickly become a target and would be destroyed. Instead, just as the internet is supposed to be ‘robust’ (rugged) because it does not pass through a single, or even a few, central points, but consists of a diffuse and dense network, what we need is not a single organisation but a movement, which should nevertheless include organisations of a variety of types. Without a central organisation governing this movement, keeping entryists out of it, organising communication within it, and so forth, it would need to be bound together not only by a commitment to the Faith, but by something, which gives its members something deep and broad in common with each other, which keeps them in touch with each other, which obliges them regularly and relentlessly to work together on all sorts of projects, not only on things directly related to the crisis but a whole variety of public and private events which maintain contact and morale within the movement, which oblige its activists to maintain their presence on social media, and so on. This extra thing would act as a rallying point for supporters of the Faith, even if it is not itself absolutely essential to it.



To clarify what may seem puzzling, a mass movement to preserve orthodoxy cannot simply promote orthodoxy. Such a purpose would be too thin to bind it together. It would work for an elite group whose members can maintain personal relationships with each other. It would work for a formal organisation, which tied people together with a stable leadership, membership fees, newsletters, and regular events. It won't work for a movement which is diffuse, i.e. not centralised, and has a mass, not elite, membership. In a very vague sense there is already a 'movement to preserve orthodoxy' in the Church, but it is not remotely dense enough to provide systematic support for priests and laity who need it, and is riven with disagreement about what orthodoxy entails. What is needed for this particular job is a movement based around something which gives the notion of orthodoxy some more definite content, and at the same time gives its members something distinctive (distinctive from the heterodox, that is), in common. Something which can act as the movement's banner, or uniform.


The organisations within this movement would include officially recognised groups; however, were one of these to be destroyed, at least an important portion of its strength—in manpower, supporters, money and so on—could rapidly migrate to another, similar, organisation, or else find a role in the movement outside such an organisation. One reason for this is that all these organisations should ideally not rely on large endowments, long-established properties, or ancient privileges, but for the most part upon the generosity of their current, living supporters, as is the case for organisations which are fairly new. This would make them a less tempting target for suppression, and if the worst happened it would be much less of a disaster.



What would be best of all, were Providence to arrange such an extraordinary thing, is if, in a situation in which push really came to shove, and truly unjust measures were taken on a large scale against those upholding the teaching of the Church, those undertaking such measures would know that at least an important portion of the movement’s energies and resources would shift overnight into a well-established organisation which, though public and active all over the world, is effectively out of the reach of ecclesiastical sanctions, and is able to provide for the spiritual needs of its supporters. As I say, such a possibility seems too good to be true; what would be even more incredible is the possibility that such an organisation, while immune to sanctions, could by some paradox still be recognised officially, currently, as not being schismatic. Perhaps my imagination is running away with me here…



I think, however, that readers will have guessed by now that I am not talking about something which needs to be created, but of something which already exists. If not, then, ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce to you the movement for the restoration of the Traditional Mass. My last paragraph refers of course to the Society of St Pius X (SSPX). The answer to the question ‘What should we do?’ is that we should devote our energy and resources to that network best able to defend orthodoxy, to support clergy and laity who are defending orthodoxy, and to provide a spiritual home for the orthodox, and that is the Traditional movement. This means you, dear reader, playing your part in the work of priests celebrating the Traditional Mass and those, whether clerical Institutes or lay Una Voce groups, websites, journals, conferences and so on, which stand behind them and help sustain a true community dedicated to the Traditional Mass and, by the same token, to orthodoxy.

I know that many non-Traditional readers will say that what we need is a movement which includes everyone of good will, and not just those who happen to prefer a particular, rather obscure, form of the liturgy. This is mistaken, because such a broad movement would not have the characteristics required, as set out above, notably of cohesion and of the reliability of its members. I have tried to explain why above, but tomorrow I will make the case, in a slightly different way and in more detail, for saying that the Traditional movement is what we need.


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27/01/2017 - 13:55

The death of law in the Church

A general of the Vendee uprising against the French Revolution

On October 9, 1965, 450 conservative participants in the Second Vatican Council submitted written interventions for discussion, demanding the condemnation of Communism. Under the rules governing the Council, the interventions should have been debated, but they were not. At first, the excuse was made that they had not been submitted within the deadline. Then, when this proved to be untrue, Archbishop Garrone of Toulouse explained, on behalf of the Council's secretariat, that the interventions 'were not examined when they should have been, because unintentionally they had not been transmitted to the Commission members.' By then it was too late to do anything about it. So that's all right, then. (I take this summary of events from Michael Davies, Pope John's Council pp150-1.)

The recent events surrounding the Order of Malta have raised the question of the role of law in the Church, as, on the face of it, the admittedly unique and peculiar legal rights of the Order would seem to have been trampled underfoot. The problem of respect for law and legal procedure goes back further, however, as this anecdote from 1965 illustrates. Accounts of the Second Vatican Council are replete with stories of procedural shenanigans; this one was perhaps the most shameless. In the 1980s and 1990s some degree of stability was restored to the life of the Curia, perhaps, but around the world the Church's law had for many purposes simply died. Liturgical law, laws governing the training of seminarians, laws governing clerical discipline and the procedures for dealing with breaches of those laws, were only referred to, in many parts of the Church, in a purely opportunistic way to punish priests, nearly always the more conservative ones, who had annoyed their bishops or religious superiors.


Anyone during this period pointing out to priests and bishops the many laws of the Church -- whether of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, or of the Code of Canon Law -- which they routinely broke or ignored, was met with, at best, derision, and, at worst, anger and retribution. Inevitably this attitude to law carried over to issues of serious clerical wrongdoing, and also infected clerical attitudes to the law of the land, and lies behind the Church's response to clerical sex abuse cases.

The situation of lawlessness has been such that it is actually impossible for a conscientious priest or Catholic layman to keep the law even for himself. Priests who went through the liturgical rules laid out in the 2004 Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum and actually applied them in their parishes would be, in most dioceses, in deep trouble. Take the rule that Holy Communion should not be given in the hand if there was 'a risk of profanation' (section 92). Is there a priest in the developed world who would dare to apply this in the Ordinary Form?

I don't want to minimise the gravity of what is happening now, but to point out the well-laid foundations of it. Just as Traditional Catholics need to resist the temptation to think that everything before Vatican II was just fine, so conservative Catholics need to resist the temptation to think that everything before Amoris laetitia was other than catastrophically bad. Only from a catastrophically bad situation could the present hideous problems have arisen. Only after fifty years of the derision of law, and of the opportunistic, manipulative and oppressive use of law, could we have found ourselves reading about the de facto annexation of a sovereign entity by the Holy See, about priests found guilty of sexual crimes being let off if they have have friends in high places, and about a priest being suspended a divinis, by a formal decree of his bishop no less, for failing to get with the programme of Amoris laetitia: whatever that programme might be.

This last is perhaps worse than anything we have heard about in modern times: as appears from the bishop's own decree, this priest is quite literally being suspended for his adhearance to central tenets of the Catholic Faith. But it is not entirely without precedent. Remember this case? Most things like that happen more quietly.

It is no secret, of course, that theological liberalism does not have a high regard for law. Conservatives are at a disadvantage, then, in allowing themselves to be limited by the law, in dealing with liberals who do not. Liberals feel exactly the same sort of justification in breaking laws for what they see as the greater good, that Fascists and Communists did in the revolutions and conflicts of the 20th century. Their actions have the same effect, creating a situation in which only brute force can get things done, and where disciplined gangs of thugs are best positioned to weild that brute force. What conservatives want is freedom under the law: a situation in which a stable and just (if imperfect) framework of rules prevents the systematic abuse of power. That isn't the situation in the Church today, and it hasn't been for a long time.

At a certain point the remaining moral authority of deference, procedure, precedent, and rule will disappear for conservatives as it has long since disappeared for liberals. This is the moment of counter revolution: perhaps this is the moment that President Trump represents in American politics. It is dangerous because counter-revolutionaries do not always distinguish between the human laws which no longer command authority, and the Natural and Divine Laws which can never lose it. It is a phase of history for which we may need to be prepared in the Church.

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Stained glass from Belmont Abbey in England.
The saint in the middle is St John Fisher. The Beatus on the right is Bl Adrian Fortescue,
who for reasons which are unclear was singled out for execution by Henry VIII: he was a knight of Malta
and an ancestor of Fra Matthew Festing. The Beatus on the left was Thomas Percy, who led an armed
uprising against Protestantism under the banner of the Five Wounds. After laying down his
weapons in a negotiated settlement, he was arrested and executed.

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24/01/2017 - 14:55

Archbishop Longley in Holy Trinity, Hethe: photos

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Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham paid a pastoral visit to the parish of Holy Trinity, Hethe, last weekend, and celebrated Pontifical Low Mass on Sunday at noon. It was accompanied with motets sung by the Victoria Consort under Thomas Neal. The Archbishop was assisted by the Parish Priest, Fr Paul Lester, and Deacon Keith Crocker.

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20/01/2017 - 14:14

Diocese of Rockford: no Summorum Pontificum here

Bishop Malloy of Rockford in the USA has told his priests that, whatever Summorum Pontificum may say, they need his permission to celebrate the Traditional Mass.

Though this puts traditionally-minded priests at an advantage to those seeking to implement the Reform of the Reform: in the same letter, Bishop Malloy informs that celebration versus populum is forbidden.

Does the Pope's writ run to Illinois? The mind boggles.

I've blogged about this over on Rorate Caeli, where the letter can be seen in full.

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