I have added this blog to my Blogroll: Ex Fide, the blog of an ''enthusiastic'' Anglo-Catholic. I was alerted to their liturgically exquisite Palm Sunday Liturgy by both Fr Hunwicke and Rubricarius. Do also have a look at the preview of their Black Folded Chasubles. I can't say I approve much of Anglicans, and I find Anglo-Catholics very strange indeed (Tolkien couldn't stand them), but I feel compelled to ask: which is more ''catholic'' - a parish church in schism with the liturgical history and traditions of its See (i.e; almost every Catholic parish church in the world), or a parish church legally in schism with Rome, but with more liturgical sense than Rome? This is not so complex a question as you might think. All you need to do is get ideas of ''validity'' and externals out of your head. Since, according to the lex orandi, ceremony and liturgy are the factors that determine what one believes, ceremonial, passed down by an unbroken and living Tradition, certainly uninterrupted by liturgists and popes, surely the Anglo-Catholics at St Magnus the Martyr are more catholic than most who profess to be Catholics? To quietly go on accepting novelty, to me, indicates a fundamental flaw in one's acceptance of Truth and Liturgy, and is also indicative of a rather slovenly approach to Liturgy (and therefore God). To cut a long story short, it means you accept violence against Liturgy as acceptable, and indeed praiseworthy, because Rome says so...would that traditional priests in the '50s and '60s, not bowed down by Ultramontanism, had said: ''I don't care what Rome said, I am observing the Octave.'' What does St Thomas Aquinas say about obedience to one's superiors again? In all things but sin?
Perhaps the Lord vouchsafes to send the Holy Ghost down upon the Altars of those legally in schism with Rome, and ignores those pseudo-Catholics who obliquely recite the Nicene Creed at New Rite services (I cannot bring myself to call it liturgy, it's so far removed from that), not believing a single word of it, every Sunday, use ''Eucharistic Prayer III'' and enjoy shaking eachothers' hands? I would have no qualms at all about attending St Magnus the Martyr over such a church - at least St Magnus has Liturgy. In all honesty, I wonder whether Anglo-Catholics are all that interested in Anglicanorum Coetibus. I am sure they look around Rome and see all the similar signs as they see in their own schismatic church, liberals here, modernists there, plus a host of vegetarians, homosexuals, climate-change fanatics, women-getting-above-themselves etc. All this, plus Traditionalism, is because of the collapse of Traditional Liturgy. For this very reason Anglicanorum Coetibus might end up being another has-been, a fruitless effort by Rome to pick the pieces up after the damages wrought by Low Mass, Ultramontanism and Bugninis...but one can hope still.
Tuesday 30 March 2010
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Pope Eugene IV at the Council of Florence said:
ReplyDelete“The Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that all those who are outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans but also Jews or heretics and schismatics, cannot share in eternal life and will go into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless they are joined to the Church before the end of their lives; that the unity of this ecclesiastical body is of such importance that only for those who abide in it do the Church’s sacraments contribute to salvation and do fasts, almsgiving and other works of piety and practices of the Christian militia produce eternal rewards; and that nobody can be saved, no matter how much he has given away in alms and even if he has shed blood in the name of Christ, unless he has persevered in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church” (“Cantate Domino,” 1441, ex cathedra).
Patricius :
ReplyDeletewith great respect both to you and Sirian, whose comment I note, it seems to me that a determined adherence to antiquity (or anything else) in the face of contrary papal and conciliar authority simply makes you a Protestant.
In one way or another, both of the positions you adopt seem to me to resemble that of the Sedevacantists : 'we don't approve of what has happened, so it's clearly not Catholic'.
Sorry : but 'ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia' - which loosely translated means that if you think you know better than the Holy Father, then go and found your own ecclesial community : but don't claim to be Catholic.
I don't see how my comment can be construed as "Protestant" at all?
ReplyDeleteDominic Mary,
ReplyDeleteThe late Mgr. Alfred Gilbey was without doubt the finest, and most charming, priest I have ever had the privilege of knowing and counting as a friend.
Mgr. Gilbey had 'permission' to celebrate the 1967 rite. However, like so many of his generation, he quitely carried on with the Old Rite. Most weekdays, except Thursdays, he celebrated pre-Pius XII Low Mass in St. Wilfrid's Chapel of the Brompton Oratory right up until Lady Day 1998, he died the following day. A couple of years earlier he had celebrated the 'Low' form of the Old Palm Sunday rite to which Patricius refers at his chapel near Henley-on-Thames.
Would you describe him as a schismatic and non-Catholic for doing so?
What about John XXIII? A photograph from two days ago on the Rorate Caeli blog shows him celebrating the Old Rite Good Friday liturgy in 1959. Are you going to condemn him too?
Your comments lack historical perspective.
Sirian;
ReplyDeletesorry : your quote is, of course, pefectly Catholic.
However, it is also not in accordance with the way the Church expresses that particular truth of the faith today; and whilst I have little doubt that you are well aware of how that particular expression meshes with the current one, and that you personally have no difficulty with the congruence, you must also accept that the Church has seen fit to modify the way that truth is expressed - largely, I suspect, because it was so frequently misunderstood in its previous form.
My comment - which was primarily directed at the original Post, and not your comment; that came in only by extension - was meant to suggest that refusal to accept developments in the Church's teaching amounts to a form of protestantism, in that you are preferring your own opinion to that of the Church.
As I said, 'it seems to me that a determined adherence to antiquity (or anything else) in the face of contrary papal and conciliar authority simply makes you a Protestant'.
If you merely put the statement forward for reflection, then all is well; if you propose it as preferable to the current mode of explaining that truth - thereby implying that the current mode is defective - then I stand by my comment.
Rubricarius;
ReplyDeletePlease don't misrepresent my meaning.
Preferring a particular rite is (of course) entirely legitimate; and even celebrating in defiance of lawful authority (were that the case) is no more than a sin of disobedience.
My point was to do with the implication in the original post that there was a right (or even, arguably, an obligation) to ignore the Church's decisions in such matters, and to prefer one's own opinion to that of the Church - indeed, the quote from Aquinas strongly implies that any revision of the Pius V Rites amounted to sin : and it was that position which I was criticising.
One may not like the way the Church chooses to teach the Faith in a given age; and one may even regret it publicly - but if one explicitly states that it is actually wrong on any material point (still more sinful), then (as far as I can see) one is schismatic : I can't find another word for it.
I am well aware that Mgr Gilbey could express himself pungently about the liturgical antics of some 'modern' clergy; but I am perfectly sure that he never said publicly (even if he may have thought) that Sacrosanctum Conclium was wrong, still less sinful - which was the implication of the original post.
Dominic Mary,
ReplyDeleteI am not misrepresenting what you have said. You stated that to follow antiquity (and I presume by that you would include custom – but am happy to be corrected) rather than contemporary papal prescription is ‘Protestant’.
Certainly the liturgical changes in the 1950s were based on very mediocre scholarship that would not stand modern scruitiny. I have no doubt in my mind, and conscience, that the changes of Pius XII were both wrong and deeply pernicious.
I don’t really see that Sacrosanctum Concilium is really the issue. It cannot really be said to have been implemented. Rather one has had committee work liturgies being imposed in the 1950s and 1960s which have, as Patricius states in his original post, caused the contemporary Roman communion to be in a state of de facto schism with its own past.
Mgr. Gilbey chose to reject the 1962 changes etc, now ‘rebranded’ as the ‘EF’. He once, rather spectacularly cast a 1962 missal from the vesting press in the Oratory sacristy.
Dominic Mary, perhaps you should be reporting all this sinful disobedience. Why not start with the Oratory? The ‘OF’ solemn Mass breaks a number of rules prescribed by the Holy See e.g. the made up Asperges, position of the Agnus Dei, pretend subdeacons etc. Then there is the long standing practice of the Oratory refusing Pius XII’s hymn for the new Assumption as the father’s are partial to Monteverdi’s setting of Ave Maris stella.
Cast your net a little further. How many ‘EF’ Masses have the Confiteor before the distribution of communion? How many have bows to the altar Cross at the Holy Name, Oremus etc. Peruse the photographs of supposed 1962 celebrations of Holy Week celebrations on Rorate Caeli and similar blogs to see, inter alia, veiled processional Crosses on Palm Sunday, Tenebrae on Wednesday evening in parish churches (with in some cases a final Miserere), treating the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified as it was the old rite, not changing into violet for the communion service etc etc. You are going to be very busy indeed writing letters...
Who actually obeys the pope? Very few in reality, generally a certain type of papalist Anglican one suspects.
Again Dominic Mary your comments lack any historic perspective, papololatry has never saved anyone and is rather depraved IMHO. If the worshipping community is forever changing its rites due to the latest papal novelty is it surprising that Western Catholicism is in rapid decline?