Clearing the Decks

To know oneself is a miracle greater than raising the dead.
 - St Isaac the Syrian

Only Christ is the End; everything else is a means. If we approach Orthodoxy looking for anything but Christ - well, we might find it; more likely we won't, but it won't satisfy in any case.  If, on the other hand, it's Christ we're seeking, we'll certainly find Him, and we'll certainly suffer. So, first of all, we have to be honest about what it is we're really looking for, and then we have to be prepared to pay the price.

If anyone is seeking simply to exchange one system of ideas for another, possibly more coherent, less problematic system, he needn't waste any more time following these reflections.  Christianity is a Life, essentially - a life that must be lived if we're to know it for ourselves - and we have to know it for ourselves for it to save us.  Repeating second-hand formulations, acquiring a "correct" apparatus, won't suffice.  Ortho-doxy, "right-glory" is "a human being fully alive" in Christ (St. Irenaeus). It is nothing other than recovery of the "image and likeness of God" by participation in the death, resurrection and glorification of Jesus.  It's quite possible that this doesn't interest us at all, and that we'd really rather have "religion" instead...

Four years ago, a kind Anonymous commented here as follows:

 If you can live a proper Christian life within Rome, why leave? And if you can't live a proper Christian life within Rome, might the solution be found not in Byzantium, but rather by examining yourself?  I have lately stood often at that quayside, and looked out at the sea. But to sail away is merely to turn my back on the problems I have here, and now; and my greatest fear is that I'll find them on the other side.

 This is absolutely right, I think.  This is the question that must be confronted as the basic pre-condition of boarding.  Attempting to get anywhere by grappling with "big ticket" issues in theology and ecclesiology, in the absence of a ruthlessly honest engagement with this question, is insane.  But how on earth are we to get at the truth, through the thicket of vanity, ignorance, passion, misapprehension and self-deception?

The answer, I believe, is to do as follows.  It is distilled from a riveting lecture by Fr Thomas Hopko (the link to which I shall post in due course, when we've got several other issues out of the way).  I think that anyone who makes a serious attempt to follow this "Twelve Step Programme" will find the answers he needs - or, at least, the equipment he needs realistically to address the questions.  In fact,  this is nothing other than the permanent, perennial pre-condition of an authentic spirituality, which all of us are required to renew, daily and hourly, to our last breath on Earth.  This "never stops":

1. We must really desire the Truth, and we must be willing to do whatever is necessary.
2. We must be hungry and thirsting  - we must pray, in other words, for illumination, begging for God as He really is, and not some metaphysical construct or pious fantasy.
3. We must be reading the New Testament, constantly; "not the Philokalia, not the Typikon, not the Canons, not The Rudder - the New Testament Scriptures." What we don't understand, we leave for the time being.  What we do understand, we put into practice.
4. We must go to Church.  We must not, at this time, chant or serve or concern ourselves with anything other than standing there and being immersed in the Divine Liturgy.  "If you feel like you're gonna throw up if you hear one more "Lord, have mercy!", throw up! - but stand there and let it lacerate you!"
5. We must not tell any lies. We must not harm anyone.  On the contrary, we must be kind to, and forgive, absolutely everyone, starting with those under our own roof.  We must try regularly to do something good for others, without anyone knowing.  If we have a little extra money, we should give it away. 
6. Unless we are married we must engage in absolutely no sexual activity - "not with yourself, not with the computer - not with anything".  If we fall, we get up again immediately, say "Lord, have mercy on me" and begin again.
7. We must not get drunk and we must abstain from bad food altogether and rich foods on a regular basis (Wednesdays and Fridays, usually) - we must begin to fast, in other words.
8. We must practice silence for at least 15 minutes a day - not theologising or fantasising or "thinking" at all - when thoughts intrude, simply pushing them away; if they involve persons, commend them to God; and  in general we must try, as far as possible without annoying others, to be quiet - not to talk much, and certainly not to chatter.  We absolutely must not pretend at this time to teach, argue about, or formulate theological views.
9. We must do our work, whatever it is, conscientiously and to the best of our ability, living in the present moment and not worrying about the past or the future. We must aspire to be rooted, not moving impulsively or precipitately.
10. We must find somebody we can trust and discuss our lives frankly with them, dealing honestly with our parents, our childhood, our relationships, our religion, our culture.  We must not, however, discuss in detail sexual matters, or other people.
11. We must be honest in confronting addictions and compulsions - alcohol, drugs, pornography, rage, "religion" (on which more subsequently) - in order to be delivered from them. 
12. We must be ready seek help without shame or hesitation.

So there it is.  Broaching the Philokalia, or forming views on hesychasm or the filioque, or theologising in any way whatsoever, if we haven't at least embarked determinedly on this essential work of purification, is delusional and a waste of time, if not worse.  This is what we need to do before anything else - and if we do it, and keep doing it until the end, perhaps we won't have any more questions.

Crossing the Water

My friend TTony, in a very kind "welcome back" post, describes me having "blogged all the way through [my] conversion to Orthodoxy".  This is true, but it isn't what I thought I was doing at the time - and in fact I wrote very little about it explicitly, even after I understood that "conversion to Orthodoxy" was what was, in fact, going on.  I had no inkling when I started to blog, or through the greater number of posts, that I would ever leave Roman Catholicism for Orthodoxy.  Most of the posts on here are by a Catholic Traditionalist - a very "Ortho-friendly" one, certainly (one could say the same of Fr Ray Blake) but with no intention of relinquishing his hard-won position "nor thought of the levelling wind".  The wind came nevertheless, the seas rose, and in due course every deck fitting and every bit of luggage was swept overboard.

Anyway, it occurred to me following a recent conversation with a friend on the brink of Orthodoxy, himself suffering the seasickness and loss of bearings that must always attend the voyage, that there's something useful I could do here during Great Lent: offer a few modest observations from my own experience that might be helpful to the lonely traveller East - lonely, because in this country at least there is no "convert culture" (such as one sees in the US, for example) to help the sufferer understand what's happening to him.  Only after he's made port, it seems, does he run into all sorts of experienced mariners!

These reflections will NOT involve apologetics or polemics.  I have no intention of attempting to argue you out of your Catholicism/Anglicanism/Atheism/Buddhism.  I'm addressing especially those who have already reached some kind of point of departure, whether they've burned their bridges or are keeping the return ticket safe, just in case.  Perhaps at some juncture someone will be able to say, "Aha - I see.  That guy warned me about this..." , and I'll have done what I set out to do.

To clear the ground I mean to start this weekend with Fr. Thomas Hopkos's  "Twelve Step Programme", which I earnestly recommend to absolutely everyone, Orthodox, Ortho-friendly, Ortho-phobic, or Ortho-couldn't-care-less.  Pack the Avomine.

Crisistianity Revisited

During the three years since I last sat down in this abandoned cellar, I've been troubled from time to time over what to do with it - whether to wall up The Undercroft, leaving its odd assortment of slight essays and occasional jokes to the spider, the woodlouse and the occasional Googler for a half-remembered poem or random image - or to refurbish and re-occupy it.

Insofar as there is a shape and a history to the place, it's a story with a middle, an end and a beginning - the record of a middle-aged Catholic's determined bid, before his children got any older, to shake out a stone from his shoe - one which had chaffed and distracted him for most of his adult life. As a consequence of the shaking-out - a far more painful and protracted business than the metaphor will support without gratuitous extension - the unhappy Catholic is now happily Orthodox, and a stranger to the lugubrious lair in which he once spent so many hours strutting, fretting and cudgelling his brains.

And that's the problem: contrary to appearances, perhaps, I do not write without enormous effort. Fluency and facility desert me the instant I sit down before a blank screen. Blood, sweat and tears therefore mark every part of the fabric of this place, and in the absence of very much else to show for half a century's occupation of space on the planet, I'm loathe to bury these few etiolated fruits, however insubstantial or unappetising incompetence or the passage of time may have rendered them. More - my own contribution was frequently the least interesting part of the conversations that developed here, for which I must thank very sincerely all those who read and contributed to The Undercroft. If the record of your thoughts here should ever disappear, it won't be my doing.

Of course, many of the themes and ideas I struggled so hard to articulate have since become commonplace, to the extent that I would probably not nowadays have felt compelled to blog them myself. Nevertheless, with all their inadequacies, mistakes and misapprehensions, these little pieces are part of the history of a movement (or a minority strand of it, at any rate) during one of its most significant, defining periods - the earlier part of the present pontificate, up to and in the immediate wake of Summorum Pontificum; at a more intimate level, they're also a record of individual pain and confusion, exaltation and dismay.

I felt, and still feel, that simply continuing here in Orthodoxy, assumed "like new store clothes", seems frivolous and impertinent. Far better to keep decently quiet for an interval, suckling as an infant the "rational milk without guile" - practising silence in order eventually, perhaps, to have something to say. As it turns out the silence has been imperfect at best, as many of you with comboxes are aware. Whether or not I have punctured it with anything worth saying (as opposed to sterile polemic) is less certain. What prompts me in any event is articulated in the following passage, gleaned from beloved Father Stephen Freeman's blog (begun around the same time as The Undercroft - I grew up under his gentle tutelage):

"Orthodoxy is summoned to witness. Now more than ever the Christian West stands before divergent prospects, a living question addressed also to the Orthodox world… The ‘old polemical theology’ has long ago lost its inner connection with any reality. Such theology was an academic discipline, and was always elaborated according to the same western ‘textbooks.’ A historiosophical exegesis of the western religious tragedy must become the new ‘polemical theology.’ But this tragedy must be reendured and relived, precisely as one’s own, and its potential catharsis must be demonstrated in the fullness of the experience of the Church and patristic tradition. In this newly sought Orthodox synthesis, the centuries-old experience of the Catholic West must be studied and diagnosed by Orthodox theology with greater care and sympathy than has been the case up to now… The Orthodox (...) must also offer his own testimony to this world — a testimony arising from the inner memory of the Church — and resolve the question with his historical findings.”

- Georges Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology II, pp. 302-304

It is obvious that one does not walk away from one's friends, simply because the difficulties and questions that continue to beset them have been resolved in one's own mind, heart and experience. One does not refuse to bear their burdens because those burdens no longer bear heavily on oneself. Today, at the entry to Great Lent, where I stood three years ago on the threshold of Orthodoxy, on the Sunday of Forgiveness, I ask forgiveness of friend and foe. May we pass through the gates of repentance together to a happy and holy Pascha.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the

garden,

Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood

Teach us to care and not to care

Teach us to sit still

Even among these rocks,

Our peace in His will

And even among these rocks

Sister, mother

And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,

Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

- TS Eliot, Ash Wednesday

Loss & Gain

Whithersoever thou shalt go, I will go: and where thou shalt dwell, I also will dwell. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. The land that shall receive thee dying, in the same will I die: and there will I be buried. May the Lord cause this to happen to me, and add more also, if aught but death part me and thee. Then Naomi, seeing that Ruth was steadfastly determined to go with her, she ended her conversation with her: So they went together and came to Bethlehem...
Ruth 1:16-19


The icon is of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, courtesy of Fr Stephen -
The Consequence of a Full Faith

Ars celebrandi

Father Blake has a post today about liturgical silence, from which I've borrowed the image above. He writes:

I think there is a real problem many people have with integration of personal and liturgical prayer. It is perhaps easier with the use of the Missal of John XXIII and its silent Canon or the Byzantine rites when the Canon is in silence, the Royal doors closed and the veil drawn, and prayerful hush descends on the congregation.

I smiled, thinking of something that occurred in my delightful Greek parish a few weeks ago. In the course of twenty-five years of attending Orthodox services, in England and in Greece, what has always fascinated and beguiled me is that almost miraculous conjunction of high solemnity with an easiness and geniality that somehow never descends to irreverence. Well - I say "never"...

One Sunday towards the end of Great Lent, our priest appeared as usual in front of the Royal Doors as the deacon was opening them. "Excuse me!" he scowled, "Does that curtain have a notice on it saying "Now you may talk"?". A certain amount of congregational shrugging ensued. I suspect the phenomenon is peculiarly Greek, judging by the uniformly austere demeanour of the Slavs in our congregation; in any case, the level of chatter (mostly, you understand, from the north side of the nave) following the closing of the doors had on this occasion risen to a pitch sufficient to have launched the present reflection, as well as the paternal tirade...

My friend Arturo Vasquez has somewhere identified as a quality of "true liturgy" that it always "tells the story". I was thinking about Pascha and Pentecost (although it was still Lent) and the crowds milling in the street below that upper room, where "the doors being closed" the Glorious One appeared in the midst of his Apostles, or the tongues of fire descended upon them. Soon the doors of that hidden room would open, and emerging, they'd reveal to the street "He whom the world could not contain".

It's said that one knows an institution is in decline when its occupants have to be competent; conversely it's another quality of "true liturgy" that it works - it "tells the story" - even when it ought not to work.

Harrowed

In the juvescence of the year
Came Christ the tiger…

I’m at the end now. Dust and ashes everywhere I turn; life reduced to mere movement persisted in for its own sake, because without it there is nothing distinguishable from death. It’s time to be gone from here. Why can’t I go? Why isn’t it enough?

Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain…

- You’ve thought very long and hard about it…

Well, yes – you’ve seen it all.

And I pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again…

- I’ve seen a lot of strutting and fretting. I’ve seen a distracted, inattentive father and a difficult husband; a negligent worker, an introverted and inconstant friend…

Yes. I’m sorry.

- Others have paid for your high-minded conclusions.

I know. And the conclusions – they’re still not enough.

- Quite so.

Empty shuttles weave the wind

I’m sorry for the cost.

- I see that you are; but as for these “conclusions” themselves - they concern ideas and attitudes you once made your own. Do your conclusions touch your heart, or only your head? To take a man out of TradWorld is easy, but useless if TradWorld remains in the man…

I see. Metanoia.

- Yes. You know the word. You know lots of words.

Ouch.

It’s still not enough, is it Father?

- No.

Because I do not hope to turn

What more must I do?

- You must die. Go down to the place of blind, unarticulating silence. Lie there in the hands you cannot see or feel, of one whose voice you can no longer hear.

I am already dead.

These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

- Yes – and for some time now. Enough. Nunc hiems transiit.

Arise!

Christ has risen from the dead,
By death He has trampled on death
And to those in the graves
Given life.

What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands
What water lapping the bow
And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog
What images return
O my daughter…

Quotations: TS Eliot - Gerontion, The Waste Land, Ash Wednesday, Marina

Pitiful

Ideology warps the mind and suffocates the conscience.

People who have become accustomed to viewing everything through ideological lenses are often genuinely incapable of recognising or telling the truth. Up is down for them and black, white. War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery. Collapse is Renewal.

Such people seek affirmation in one another's company as a matter of necessity, and are at the same time overwhelmingly anxious to exclude or suppress whatever has the potential to expose or undermine their immaculate falsifications. If they think of themselves as liberals they remain untroubled by the fundamental illiberalism of this mentality, because it is taken for granted that their outlook is co-extensive with rational discourse itself.

It is this more than anything which accounts for the grotesque, topsy-turvy, parallel-universe quality of TabletWorld (whose Rome correspondent recently sneered that the Pope was not, after all, "a trained liturgist"). What looks like comical, mind-bending hypocrisy and intellectual perversity is merely an indication of people struggling desperately to make reality fit their theories and foundational myths: it's cognitive dissonance on public display. They need our prayers, but they will also benefit enormously in the long run from unrelenting ridicule.

Speravit anima mea in Dominum

On the day of the explosion
Shadows pointed towards the pithead:
In the sun the slagheap slept.

Down the lane came men in pitboots
Coughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke,
Shouldering off the freshened silence.

One chased after rabbits; lost them;
Came back with a nest of lark's eggs;
Showed them; lodged them in the grasses.

So they passed in beards and moleskins,
Fathers, brothers, nicknames, laughter,
Through the tall gates standing open.

At noon, there came a tremor; cows
Stopped chewing for a second; sun,
Scarfed as in a heat-haze, dimmed.

The dead go on before us, they
Are sitting in God's house in comfort,
We shall see them face to face -

Plain as lettering in the chapels
It was said, and for a second
Wives saw men of the explosion

Larger than in life they managed -
Gold as on a coin, or walking
Somehow from the sun towards them,

One showing the eggs unbroken.

Philip Larkin - The Explosion

Hw-ay Gai

Someone once told me that learning Chinese had changed the whole shape of his brain. I think I can understand what he meant, just as I think I understand, as a functional innumerate, what people mean who speak of the beauty of mathematics. There's nothing obscure about the beauty of what follows, though. Thanks to my friend Theophilus.

The above shows the Chinese for repentance, as used in most Bibles (for example “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” - Matt 4:17). 悔改

The first character, 悔 (pron. “hui” or “hw-ay”), means to feel sorry; the second, 改 (”gai” as in the English word guy), means to change or correct. Although this is the same as English, in Chinese the meaning of the word is explicit: change and correction through remorse. Perfect.

And there is more. The character hui, 悔, has on the left the character used for the heart (心) emphasising that the remorse felt is something of the heart, just as Biblical writers understood that this is the seat of emotion and intellect. To the right, is the character meaning “every”, or “each”, (e.g. 每天, means “every[每] day[天]”). The remorse we have must be for everything we have done.

Following on from the remorse and regret, crucially, is change (改). Here again are two parts, left and right. To the left we have 已, ji, which means “oneself” or “one’s own”. The right part literally means to “whip” or “tap”, but ultimately has the meaning of change. Our own change, the correction of ourselves.

“Hw-ay Gai” - Remorse leading to correction.

What's the difference between repentance and remorse? It's the difference between Peter and Judas.

Waiting for the Barbarians

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn’t anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.
What laws can the senators make now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting at the city’s main gate
on his throne, in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader.
He has even prepared a scroll to give him,
replete with titles, with imposing names.

Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

Why don’t our distinguished orators come forward as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home so lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
And some who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.

And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution.

C.P. Cavafy translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard

MeMe

Oh, very well - I'm doing nothing else presently, so here's another broken resolution. I wasn't even tagged, explicitly, which makes it all the more reprehensible. If you're not interested in Me Me Me, you may return immediately to your menial pursuits. Run along, now...

1. Do you attend the Traditional Latin Mass or the Novus Ordo?
The former, exclusively, for most of the past 20 years. The tadpoles are unaquainted with anything else.

2. If you attend the TLM, how far do you drive to get there?
50 mile round trip, at present. One should seek some kind of attainder on the Montini estate for the fuel and the carbon footprint. Driving, on the other hand, is something of a passion with me, though some have ventured to suggest it might not be one's forte. Fools.

3. If you had to apply a Catholic label to yourself, what would it be?
Apart from sophisticated, green and unfeasibly handsome? Missal-and-Breviary.

4. Are you a comment junkie?
I beg your pardon? A common what? How dare you...

5. Do you go back to read the comments on the blogs you’ve commented on?
Ah - I see. Usually. Sometimes I forget where I've been.

6. Have you ever left an anonymous comment on another blog?
Once. Not saying.

7. Which blogroll would you most like to be on?
Burke's Peerage (Amphibian Supplement).

8. Which blog is the first one you check?
Varies according to the state of one's digestion. Rorate Caeli, probably, until quite recently. Pass the Andrews, there's a good chap.

9. Have you met any other bloggers in person?
Fr Ray Blake and Pastor in Valle have had that privilege, as have the admirable Shawn Tribe (of New Liturgical Movement) and M. l'abbé Laguérie, at whose Mass I assisted when he was still SSPX, and afterwards when he wasn't. He won't remember me though. The place, on both occasions, was heaving with Frogs.

10. What are you reading?
Matins for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
HV Morton's In Search of Scotland
Giuseppe di Lampedusa's The Leopard (for about the 20th time)

Bonus Question!
Has your site been banned by Spirit of Vatican II?
I haven't the faintest idea. We don't get many of that sort down here, in the dark underbelly of the world...

Nyet! - The Old Gang Not Getting It.

ONE OF THE MORE diverting phenomena of recent years is the consistent inability of the Church's liberal establishment, the '60's avant garde, to read the signs of the times. Wrapped up in their hermetic understanding of the past, the present and the future, which for them defines the limits of rational discourse, more and more they seem to inhabit a vanished world: a bureaucratic, technocratic, relentlessly ideological looking-glass world, its cold, hard edges quaintly draped for our benefit (or is it theirs?) in anodyne, Kennedy-era platitudes from Gaudium et Spes.

Father Z has been "fisking" episcopal reactions to Summorum Pontificum and has identified the emergence of a coherent, hostile Party Line which goes something like this:

1) It's a "step backwards" for the purpose of placating a tiny minority of hard liners (the Pope, on the other hand, insists that the older form retains its permanent value as a bearer of the Living Tradition - that it is therefore an indispensible treasure of the Church for all times and places).

2) It doesn't therefore apply in this diocese, where we don't have any of "these people" to placate.

3) We have in any case already made generous provision for Tridentine Masses (i.e. every fourth Saturday afternoon).

4) The situation viz-a-viz the Old Rites remains essentially proscriptive - i.e. exceptional permission is still required (the diametric opposite of the truth).

5) There must be a "stable group" minimum number X (false), which..

6) ...must have been consistently attached to the Old Rite over a number of years (a completely unwarranted assertion).

7) Adoption of "New Rite" practices, though (concelebration, communion in the hand etc) must not be refused where requested.

...and so on and so forth. What it all boils down to, though, is the strident irreconcileable assertion of No. 4, in spite of its bare-faced, manifest falsehood.

Here is Cardinal Castrillon, as reported by CWN:

Rome, Sep. 14, 2007 (CWNews.com)

With the formal implementation of Summorum Pontificum, the Pope's motu proprio providing wider access to the 1962 Roman Missal, diocesan priests do not need permission to celebrate the Latin Mass, a top Vatican official has stated. Cardinal Dario Castrillon-Hoyos - the president of the Ecclesia Dei commission, which supervises Vatican outreach to traditionalist Catholics - says that "from this point, priests can decide to celebrate the Mass using the old rite, without permission from the Holy See or the bishop."

In an interview with Vatican Radio on September 13, broadcast just before the motu proprio officially took effect, Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos explained that Pope Benedict's motu proprio affirms the right of any priest to use the "extraordinary form" of the Latin liturgy. "It is, therefore, unnecessary to ask for any other permission," he said.

Contrast with the following:

Some questions and answers on Benedict XVI's recent Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum

1. Why has the Pope seemingly taken a step backwards in allowing the former Tridentine rite of Mass alongside the one we have now?

Benedict XVI's main concern seems to be to make a gesture of reconciliation to those who have never been able to accept the rite of Mass we have now. He wants to try to integrate them more closely into the Church as a whole, so he is to a small extent relaxing the rules regarding when celebrations of the Tridentine rite can take place. In England and Wales we have already had an indult from Rome, obtained in 1971 by Cardinal Heenan, allowing celebrations of the Tridentine Mass with the permission of the local bishop. The latest document merely eases slightly the legislation that had already been relaxed for the universal Church in 1984 by Pope John Paul II...

You can read the whole of this egregious piece here. It gets better and better. It purports to issue from the Diocese of Portsmouth, in the person of its Director of Liturgy - presumably one of the lay commissariat who nowadays pretend to decide on behalf of the sheep just how much of the truth we're entitled to (under the old clericalism such were at least clerics in fact, but that's People-of-God "democracy" for you). Whether or not the piece is correctly attributed, it's nevertheless a convenient distillation, in tone and content, of Fr Z's "party line", as pioneered in these Isles by the Archbishop of Glasgow . This one contrives to evolve a couple of ingenious and imaginative refinements all of the author's own, such as the nonexistence (in the Novus Ordo - here is someone who simply doesn't, or is determined not to "get it": we're not talking about the Novus Ordo!) of the Subdiaconate and consequent inadmissibility of the Tunicle at High Mass. Give that man a coconut for superlative, nit-picking, pharisaical ingenuity.

What is hoped to be accomplished by these posturings? Have their authors still not cottoned-on to the fact that the Internet provides instant access to the authentic documentation and to authentic interpretations of it, unspiked by conniving editors, days and weeks in advance of retrospective efforts to "spin" them? - that the same medium will also expose instantaneously such mean and mendacious manoeuverings, for all the world to see? Do they think we're complete idiots, or is this simply a barefaced attempt at intimidation? Either way, the gloves are off. The Ecclesia Dei Commission will have its work cut out.

Ad sanitatem revertens

Fr Ray Blake poses the following questions in a piece about celebration versus populo:

So, why do we do it?

Does anyone know why it became almost universal?

Easy! Most of us are by now aware of the ideological history and discredited rationale behind this aberrant fad, but its present ubiquity boils down to a single factor: we do it because the Pope does it.

In the Latin Church of the modern era, it’s what the Pope does today, rather than what the Church did yesterday, that establishes in practice the operative norm. "I am Tradition!". A single, televised Papal Mass can therefore consign to oblivion an Apostolic tradition, or a mountain of dead-in-the-water paper exhortations.

Summorum Pontificum does two things with startling economy: it rescues the Liturgy (facta non verba), and it restates the permanent force of objective Tradition. That’s why it’s the most important document in 150 years. The most significant act will be that first public, Papal celebration ad orientem.

The Deluge

"Oh Lord, we ken fine we hae sinn'd
But a joke can be cairried ower faur!"

THE LORD tuik a staw at mankind,
A richteous an naitural scunner;
They were neither tae haud nor tae bind,
They were frichtet nae mair wi his thunner.

They hid braken ilk edic an law,
They had pitten his saints tae the sword,
They hid worshipped fause idols o stane;
"I will thole it nae mair", saith the Lord.

"I am weary wi flytin at fowk;
I will dicht them clean oot o ma sicht;
But Noah, douce man, I will spare,
For he ettles, pair chiel, tae dae richt."

Sae he cryet untae Noah ae day,
Whan naebody else wis aboot,
Sayin: "Harken, ma servant, tae Me,
An these, ma commands, cairry oot:

"A greit, muckle boat ye maun bigg,
An ark that can float heich an dry,
Wi room in't for aa yer ain fowk
An a hantle o cattle forbye.

"Then tak ye the fowlis o the air,
E'en untae greit bubbleyjocks;
An tak ye the baists o the fields:
Whittrocks, and foumarts, an brocks.

"Wale ye twa guid anes o each,
See that nae cratur rebels;
But dinna ye fash aboot fish:
They kin tak tent o theirsels.

"Herd them aa safely aboard,
An ance the Blue Peter's unfurled,
I'll sen doon a forty-day flood
An deil tak the rest o the warld!"

Sae Noah wrocht hard at the job,
An searched tae the earth's farthest borders,
An gethered the baists an the birds
An tellt them tae staun by for orders.

An his sons, Ham an Japhet an Shem,
Were thrang aa this time at the wark;
They hid fellt a wheen trees in the wid
An biggit a greit muckle ark.

Noo this wisnae juist din on the quaet,
An neebours wid whiles gether roon;
Then Noah wad drap them a hint
Like: "The wather is gaun tae brak doon."

But the neebours wi evil were blin
An little jaloused whit wis wrang,
Sayin: "Oh that will be guid fur the neeps,"
Or: "The wather's been drouthy ower lang."

Then Noah wi aa his ain fowk,
An the baists an the birds gat aboard;
An they steekit the door o the ark,
An they lippened theirsels tae the Lord.

Then doon cam a lashin o rain,
Like the wattest wat day in Lochaber;
The hailstanes like plunkers cam stot,
An the fields turned tae glaur, an syne glabber.

An the burns aa cam doon in a spate,
An the rivers ran clean ower the haughs,
An the brigs were aa soopit awa,
An whit hid been dubs becam lochs.

Then the fowk were sair pitten aboot,
An they cried as the wather goat waur:
"Oh Lord, we ken fine we hae sinn'd
But a joke can be cairried ower faur!"

Then they chapped at the ark's muckle door,
Tae speir gin douce Noah hid room;
But Noah ne'er heedit their cries,
He said: "This'll larn ye tae soom!"

An the river raired loodly an deep;
An the miller wis droont in the mill;
An the watter spread aa ower the land,
An the shepherd wis droont oan the hill.

But Noah an aa his ain fowk,
Kep safe frae the fate o ill men,
Till the ark, when the flood had gien ower,
Cam dunt oan the tap o a ben.

An the watters rowed back tae the seas,
An the seas settled doon an were calm,
An Noah replenished the earth -
But they're sayin he tuik a guid dram!

W D Cocker - The Deluge

First Blood

This is Dennis. Dennis is a training bus. On Wednesday, I wrapped him round an iron bollard. Two nearside panels and a wheelarch, but I'm still in the job, Deo gratias. Today I passed the first part of my test (the theory part) and returned a 40 footer more-or-less intact.

Sincere thanks to visitors and old friends for good wishes - practical test in three weeks so please spare me a Pater and an Ave as you depart.

Thus, it begins...

Ttony has been the recipient of some ugly rumours at the Muniment Room. I'm sure it'sthe tip of the iceberg, and that dastardly doings are being prepared in certain quarters.

Get your retaliation in first. Sign up to the Summorum Pontificum database now!

What did you do in the war, Daddy?

I DON’T DO MEMES as a rule, so please don’t take this as an invitation to tag me. I’m making an exception for my friend Ttony, because this one seemed for a variety of reasons to be asking the right questions at just the right time. I trust there are no blood-curdling penalties for breaking the chain.

1. How did you start blogging?
I don’t think blogging is what I do here, strictly speaking: hardly any of the posts are timely and only the most obvious ones relate to current events. I certainly don’t log my quotidien doings or thoughts, or respond to whatever rouses my interest from day to day. I prefer in addition to keep myself at a certain distance, because (a) I’m not a naturally gregarious man and (b) I don’t do interesting or unusual things (I start a new job on Monday, so that might very well change). Hermeneutic of Continuity or The Lion & the Cardinal are very different examples of real blogs, by busy men, engaged in exacting and challenging work. Anyway, I started because I found I could: I registered a blogger identity in order to comment on other blogs (I’d been commenting before I even realised that “blogs” is what they were). I used to hang out on a couple of forums, but got bored with the name-calling, cheerleading and party-lining.

2. What do you hope to achieve or accomplish with your blog? Have you been successful?
I wanted to do a “brain dump” on some of the things I’d been mentally refining and revising over the years, to the point at which I thought they might make a useful contribution. Debates on forums had to some extent helped me to develop them, without providing a suitable medium for bringing them together. In other words, I had a load of stuff lying around on my hard drive which, I flattered myself, might make interesting reading as stand-alone pieces. At least, I wanted to see if they’d stand up to a reading by people far better qualified to write on these matters than myself. I used the term “peer review” somewhere, but that’s pretentious and inaccurate. It wasn’t the assessment of my peers I was looking for, but of my betters – and of priests in particular. Was I successful? Well, I did the brain dump, most of it during November and December of last year, and the response was very gratifying from several points of view.

3. Has the focus of your blog changed since you started blogging? How?
Yes, and it will probably change again, after 7.7.7. The war is over, and I’m not interested in arguing about the liturgy any more (other than at a purely practical or local level). Most of the “brain dump” stuff has, to my intense joy, become obsolete overnight. There’s no point in looking for different ways of saying the same things now. The unnatural posture of the lay Traditionalist liturgical autodidact can be relaxed now, though I suspect a limp and a number of reflexive spasms will persist, after a quarter century in the trenches. I’d love The Undercroft to be more like Glory to God for All Things – but then, I wish its author was more like Fr. Stephen Freeman. The Letters to a Fundamentalist Friend begun in March are probably an indication of where I’d like to take it, avoiding the trap of apologetics, which I have grown to loathe.

4. What do you know now that you wish you'd known when you started?
That my hard drive and motherboard would die last week, taking down quite a lot of stored-up, unedited stuff. Oh, well…

5. Does your immediate or extended family know about your blog? If so, do they read it? If not, why?
They know about it. Do they read it? No. Sometimes I drag my wife bodily to the screen and she finds something nice to say (usually about the pictures).

6. What advice would give to a new blogger?
Well, I’m still a fairly new blogger myself, but I suppose I’d say:

- make a bit of an effort with the composition. You don’t have to be Joseph Conrad, but if people are going to do you the honour of spending five minutes looking at your stuff, the least you can do is offer them something decently constructed, properly proofread, and easy on the eye. Arturo's a good example - even when he's lobbing a brick through your window, he does it with style. Don’t post for the sake of it, and don’t pad. If you’re blogging on religious matters consider your responsibilities before God and your downright unworthiness and incompetence to be holding forth about holy things. Be kind, constructive and don’t get personal or snide. Maintain your independence. Don’t tag me for memes.

Our Feast of Orthodoxy: Thank You, Holy Father

"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. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place."
Benedict XVI - Letter to the Bishops on Summorum Pontificum

THE CATHOLIC WORLD has a different landscape after 7.7.7; or rather, the contours of an ancient landscape are becoming once again discernible as decades of thick, disorientating smog and toxic fallout begin to disperse in the freshening breeze. In several pieces on this blog (the obsolescence of which becomes more gratifyingly evident to me by the minute), I have referred to the Second Council of Nicea (from which came the definitive resolution of the first Iconoclast crisis) - in particular, the famous fourth anathema on "anyone (who) rejects any written or unwritten tradition of the Church". This anathema, I have contended, has been quietly overturned in recent decades, and especially since the Council, in favour of a kind of magisterial positivism, without most Catholics noticing or caring.

We breathe the sterile air of iconoclasm today, I have argued, and have grown lightheaded on it. We have been tempted to rationalise and intellectualise the Faith, falsifying our own nature and contradicting the Incarnation - a very much graver matter than any mere questions of taste, ethics, modernity or culture. We have dared to consider the most holy and Christ-bearing things as mere legal prescriptions.

As far as the ancient Liturgy of the Roman Rite is concerned, this argument is now over. Its rights and privileges are permanently recognised and restored, whether or not it becomes more widely adopted in the near future. My expectations of the motu proprio were not high, but I find instead that they've been exceeded on practically every point, beyond the hopes of twenty-five years as a convinced and committed participant in the Traditionalist movement. Last November, I wrote as follows:

If the liberation of the Mass is the essential condition of rebalancing the Church - the sine qua non - at another level it seems to me that some kind of major teaching document on Tradition and Magisterium is urgently required, on the basis that the only means of moving those who now appear to think that the Catholic Faith is whatever the present Pope/latest Council says it is (and who, in a sense, can blame them?) - is a Pope himself telling them otherwise.

The truly momentous aspect of Summorum Pontificum and its accompanying letter is the one most commentators will miss: it is the Holy Father's implicit re-statement of Nicea II - that the whole tradition of the Church retains its permanent value; that whatever has been held sacred in the past remains sacred today and can never be be abrogated, despised or abandoned without contradicting the nature of the Church herself, and of her Faith.

For my own part, all the energy and time devoted to defending and studying the Ancient Liturgy can at last be turned with great joy and serenity to living and praying it "in the Church and with the Church".

From a full heart, thank you, Holy Father.

"Anyone who believes that the liturgy of the Incarnation and sacred images are intimately and essentially linked to faith in Christ - and actually come forth from Him - anyone who finds it easier to imagine the total collapse of religion than its continuance in the absence of liturgy, can be quietly confident about the outcome of the present catastrophe. As the example of Byzantine iconoclasm shows us, a hundred years is a relatively short time to overcome this kind of sickness...

On the first Sunday of Lent the Orthodox Church celebrates the end of iconoclasm with the great Feast of the Reestablishment of Orthodoxy". So it is my dream that one day, when this altar and so many other high altars are reerected, we shall be able to give thanks as we celebrate the reestablishment of Latin Orthodoxy."
Martin Mosebach - The Heresy of Formlessness, p.92

Te Deum laudamus!

GRATIAS AGO SANCTE PATER!

Et cum fratribus nostris absentibus

IT IS SAID that following the the conclusion of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, the Empress Eugenie entered the Bonaparte chapel at Farnborough Abbey and read its terms aloud over the coffin of her husband, ruined after the defeat of Sedan. Tomorrow as glasses are raised and toasts drunk all over the Catholic world, I will go off to a quiet corner and remember those wonderful people I was privileged to know, who never lived to see restored what they had loved so much; who suffered, and bore their suffering with courage and cheerfulness, faith, hope and charity even when the hope of restoration seemed most dim.

David Read
Lillian Hayes
Joe Johnson
Anthony Allen
Tony Smith
Madeleine Primavesi
Michael Davies
Alice Thomas Ellis
Barbara Guest
Eric Dyson
Ted Marchant
Alban Russell
Julia Brophy

May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen