Sentire Cum Ecclesia

I have been reflecting today on the news concerning the Australian Labor Party’s adoption of same-sex “marriage”. Thankfully, the Prime Minister prevailed, and Labor MP’s will be allowed – despite official policy of the party – to exercise a conscience vote on this matter. Since the Liberal Party has maintained opposition (as a party, if not in all its members) to such radical social re-engineering, the Bill, when it is introduced, is unlikely to get up. However, we should not dismiss lightly this weekend’s developments. Polling would suggest that the issue is divisive in the community. It is my reading that many of those who do not oppose the proposition of same-sex “marriage” in the polls are not actually “in favour” so much as holding a “don’t care, doesn’t affect me, it’s a private matter, why not let gays marry eachother if they want to”, whereas those who openly oppose such moves have thought about the issue and are truly opposed to any such change to our law.

But now it comes to this. Were such a law to be adopted, would it be a true law? I’m not highly educated in legal matters or in the necessary moral philosophy, but it strikes me that what we are dealing with here is a “positivist” approach to law. Philosophers and moral theologians reading this blog please correct me if my categories are wrong, but I understand an approach to law to be “positivistic” when the law makers believe that by passing a law they can change reality. There are some laws that have no real correlation to reality – speed limits, for instance. The legal speed can be declared to be 100km/h or 110km/h or 50km/h or 3km/h – it is simply a matter of what is expedient to safe and efficient driving on the road. But laws governing marriage are grounded in a pre-existent reality – namely marriage. Marriage is not created by the laws of the State, but rather governed by the State. The State acts with authentic authority when it passes laws concerning marriage that accord with what marriage IS.

To pass a law redefining “marriage” as a life long union between any two persons of whatever sex, rather than between “one man and one woman” would in fact NOT be an exercise of the authentic authority of the State. The State simply does not have the power to redefine what marriage is. We are told that should same-sex “marriage” laws be passed in Australia, ministers of religion would not be obligated to celebrate such marriages. But it goes much further than this: the Church, it seems to me, is obligated to continue to witness to the true nature of marriage by refusing IN TOTAL to accept such a redefinition of marriage at all. Just as if the State were to introduce polygamy, the Church would be obligated NOT to recognise wives two, three or four (or more), so it seems to me that Christians are obligated – not only out of duty to Divine revelation, but to Natural Law, and to plain, cold, hard REALITY – not to recognise in any way the legality of a so-called “marriage” contract between two people of the same sex.

This may occasion acts of civil disobedience similar to the civil disobedience that occurred in the United States over segregation laws. Such laws were unjust. They were false laws, because they did not accord with the reality of equal dignity of every human being. It would be similar to the civil disobedience that Christian doctors exercise when they refuse to carry out abortions. The positive “law” allows it, but Divine Law, Natural Law, and the REALITY of the humanity of the unborn child does not. There are some things that the State simply has no authority to declare legal or illegal: laws outlawing private property, for instance, or depriving parents of authority over their children, would be in the same category.

The social re-engineers believe that Bills passed in Parliament can change reality. They cannot. We have a responsibility to stand against any suggestion that they can. Were marriage to be redefined in Australia’s laws as proposed by the new Labor Party platform, I cannot see how the Church could even recognise such “legal” relationships. A “root and branch” opposition would be required of us, for such a “law” would be no true law at all.

Are we ready to take such a stand? It certainly will not make the Church any more popular than it currently is (or isn’t). But once again, as I said in the post below, who’s really “out of touch” here? The Church, demanding that our government uphold universal and true justice, or the re-engineers who would have us believe that it is possible to turn black into white simply by passing a law to that effect?

“Yet you say, ‘The ways of the Church are “out of touch”.’ Hear now, O Fr Hodgens: “Are the ways of the Church ‘out of touch’? Is it not your ways that are ‘out of touch’?” Ezekiel 18:25 (modified)

Once again, Fr Eric Hodgens has given us a blue print of the contemporary “what’s wrong with the Church” gripe. It ticks all the usual boxes:

• Pope John XXIII – a prophet who said “the times were changing”
• Second Vatican Council – “redefined the Catholic self-image”, changed the liturgy from Latin to vernacular to be “more inclusive”, replaced the hierarchical church with “the People of God”
• Opposed by “rear guard” in “power positions in the Vatican bureaucracy”.
  Pope Paul VI – a pawn of the power holders who made a mistake with Humanae Vitae in 1968
• John Paul II – appointed bishops “less sympathetic with the Council vision”, “immovable in his vision of a fortress Church”, “defensive”, with a “strong, but uniform and unreconstructed view of the Church”, “authoritarian and autocratic”, who “silenced theologians he disagreed with without transparent due process”.
• The view that there are “two Catholic Churches in the Western World today”, “the hierarchy” (bad church) who are “irrelevant to today’s world” and who “have their lay supporters; although active and noisy, they are very few in number”, and “the rank and file laity, together with their local priests” (good church), who want an end to celibacy, women’s ordination etc. etc.

Etc., etc., etc.

There is nothing new in this story. Fr Hodgens seems to think that if he just keeps repeating it, people will listen. And it is true. They do listen to this version of the story and they have taken it as truth without any examination.

It all boils down to the complaint that the Church is “irrelevant to today’s world”. The Church (defined as the “Vatican hierarchy” and a few noisy but irrelevant laity who support them) is “out of touch” with “today’s world”.

The devil “Screwtape” in C.S. Lewis’s famous “Letters” points out to the junior devil “Wormwood” that he should never let his patient think about anything too deeply, that he should just believe what he reads in the papers, what people are saying most loudly and continue to hold in his head as many contradictory and unexamined ideas as possible.

Let’s just think about this one idea: that the Church is “out of touch” with “today’s world”. Since when was it ever the duty and purpose of the Church to be “in touch” with the Zeitgeist of the world? Has it not rather ever been that the Church should be “in touch with”:

• Jesus Christ (as he truly is, and not as he has been re-imagined)
• The Holy Spirit (who points us to Christ)
• The Gospel (that Jesus Christ is Lord, that he has redeemed us from sin and death, and that he is coming to inaugurate the Kingdom of God)
• The Scriptures (a deep knowledge of which is fundamental all the above and the below)
• The Truth (as committed to the Church by Christ through his apostles and transmitted faithfully by the teaching authority of the Church)
• The Apostles (who received the revelation of Christ and passed it on to the Church)
• The Fathers of the Church (who developed our understanding of the apostolic faith)
• The Saints of all time and all places (who lived the Gospel in the world and remain in a holy communion with the Church today)
• The Eucharist (which is Christ present among us till the end of the age)
• The poor (who are not, as it happens, to be found mainly in “the West”, on which Fr Hodgens focuses)
• The sick (to bring hem God’s healing)
• Sinners (in order to call them to repentance and to reconciliation with God)

2012 will be for us here in Australia a “Year of Grace”. In October, starting with the Synod on the New Evangelisation, we will begin a “Year of Faith”. All this is to call the Church (of which there is only ONE, and which is the communion of ALL the faithful with ALL the Bishops AND the Successor of Peter) to be “in touch” with our true identity and purpose, so that the Gospel may proclaimed to all the world.

“Today’s world” does not call the shots for the Church. It never has and it never will. The Church will indeed be “irrelevant” – to “today’s world”, to the East and the West and the North and the South, and to the world of tomorrow – if it ever loses touch with its Divine Calling to be the Body of Christ – of ALL time – in ALL the world.

“Yet you say, ‘The ways of the Church are “out of touch”.’ Hear now, O Fr Hodgens: “Are the ways of the Church ‘out of touch’? Is it not your ways that are ‘out of touch’?” Ezekiel 18:25 (modified)

Archbishop Mark Coleridge has provided a bit of news about the progress of the “International Commission for the Preparation of an English Language Lectionary” in his latest letter to his diocese, published on the Canberra-Goulburn Diocesan website. (HT to Joe for this link).

Here are the relevant paragraphs:

Some years ago, I was asked to chair a commission which would prepare a new English-language Lectionary[1], using a modified form of the NRSV and a revised Grail Psalter. That seemed straight-forward enough, and the expectation was that the new Lectionary would be ready for publication at the same time as the Missal.

However, we struck problems with the copyright holders of the NRSV and have had some difficulties in our dealings with the Holy See.[2] All of this so becalmed the project that there is now no hope that the Lectionary or any part of it will appear at the same time as the Missal. In fact, we have decided to move away from the NRSV and to prepare the Lectionary using a modified form of the English Standard Version (ESV)[3], still with the revised Grail Psalter [4].

On this new basis, the project has progressed well; and the hope now is to have at least the first volume of the Lectionary (Sundays and Solemnities) ready for publication as close as possible to the appearance of the Missal[5].

Notes:

[1] The “International Commission for the Preparation of an English Language Lectionary” includes Australia, Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales – NOT the US, which will continue to use the New American Bible (which is their own baby) or Canada (which has already published an NRSV lectionary…don’t know where that will go…). See here and here for more information.

[2] I gather that the difficulties were that what the Holy See required of the text, the copyright holders of the NRSV were not willing to allow. The problem with inclusive language would have been a start.

[3] This confirms what I had heard on the grape-vine. It appears that the NRSV just became too difficult. At the time of the establishment of the ICPELL, the ESV was not an option, as they didn’t have a translation of the so-called “deuterocanonical books”. Now we do: the Oxford edition ESV with the Apocrypha. It will be interesting to see what modifications are deemed necessary to the ESV.

[4] The Revised Grail Psalter is already available on line. That means that England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Australia will all be using the same texts for the psalms as the Americans. It leaves open the question of the psalm antiphons – will there be a universally agreed translation of those? One hopes so. Will this be the work of Archbishop Coleridge’s Commission?

[5] I can’t really imagine what the Archbishop means by this. The new Missal has already appeared on the altars of our churches. The people’s missals have already begun appearing, and incorporate the current Jerusalem Bible/Grail lectionary. Perhaps “as close as possible” might simply mean “when we have it ready”. Two or three years time could be “as close as possible”…

UPDATE: I’m sticking this update up here so you don’t miss it. By all means read what I have written below, but as a pre-text, I have since been reliably informed that there will be three editions of the Sunday (and presumably the Weekday) Missal available in the new year: one from the Catholic Truth Society (the same as have published the Altar Missals), one from St Paul’s (which will be cheaper), and another one – which I hadn’t been aware of – from Collins). Australian shoppers are advised to hold fire on their purchases until these three hit the stores.

I was very excited to receive in the mail yesterday a copy of “Your Sunday Missal” published by the Redemptorists in the UK. This is the first of the new editions of the Sunday Missal to come of the printing presses and into our hot little hands. But: Caveat Emptor!!

What we call “The Sunday Missal” should not be confused with the Roman Missal that sits on the altar of our churches. It is, rather, a book that combines parts of the Roman Missal with parts of the Lectionary, giving a book which the laity can use to follow the mass in all its parts on Sundays. A similar book, called the “Weekday Missal” does the same for the masses during the week. Now here is the complication: at this point in time there is a universal English translation of the Roman Missal. There ISN’T a universal translation of the Lectionary (as users of iPhone missal apps will have noticed).

And that’s the first place where “Your Sunday Missal”, produced by the Redemptorists, comes unstuck for use in Australia. While it uses the same translation we are currently using for the Lectionary Scripture texts – the Jerusalem Bible – Australian users will get really annoyed at the fact that it uses different Psalm and Gospel Acclmation responses. It might seem a little thing, but these are two things that you actually need to have if you are going to participate in the liturgy of the word (the most commonly printed texts on the front of Bulletins each Sunday).

This fact makes me wary of ordering any other UK version of the Sunday Missal, including the CTS version (which, in truth, sounds very good indeed – see here). Of course, the UK Redemptorist edition doesn’t have the Australian feasts of Australia Day, ANZAC Day, and St Mary MacKillop either. The CTS version of the Roman Missal does, so I will be interested to see what their edition of the Sunday Missal does in this regard.

There does seem to be an Australian publication in the pipeline, coming from St Paul’s, due in March. While I think you can be guaranteed that the texts of this edition will match our Australian needs, there are just a couple of other issues I have with the Redemptorist Missal that you might want to check out in the St Paul’s edition.

1) Does it have the Latin of the Ordinary of the Mass? In an appendix at the back of the Redemptorist Missal, there is a section called “Latin Texts for the Mass”, which gives not only the Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Pater Noster and Agnus Dei, but most of the other responses you would need to have if the Mass was conducted completely in Latin (only the people’s parts). This is rather nice. That’s more than the English CTS edition of the Roman Missal itself gives. However, the CTS version of the Altar Missal actually incorporates the Latin texts of the Sanctus, Pater Noster and Agnus Dei (those most likely to be used – they could have included the Gloria, but for that matter, the Roman Missal didn’t even normally include the Gloria text at all so…) in the Order of Mass itself, where they are not only easily accessible but rather pointedly suggested as an option.

2) Does it include the Chants included the Missal? The Redemptorist “Your Sunday Missal” fails dismally here. The 2002 Missale Romanum is full of chant for just about every part of the Mass, and the CTS edition of the Roman Missal preserves this completely in the Order of Mass. “Your Sunday Missal” does not. It gives the chant for the responses at the Gospel, and for the Eucharistic Prayer (Opening Dialogue, Sanctus, Acclamation, Doxology), but nothing else. Score a BIG zero. This is one of the best features of the new Roman Missal, and to leave it out is, let us say, a failure in faithful translation.

So I will be returning my copy of “Your Sunday Missal”.* BUT, and this is the real question, WHICH version of the Sunday Missal should we plebs be purchasing? (I know Perry will chime in here and say “none – leave it till the new lectionary translation is done”, but I don’t think that will realistically be any time soon.) What are the Australian Catholic Bishops recommending? Contrary to recent reports, I am not privy to what goes on in the corridors of the ACBC.

What really concerns me is that we pew-sitters have an edition of the Roman Missal as genuine and beautiful and generally useful as the one that the priest has on the altar. It should not leave out anything that is in the Roman Missal itself – it should include Latin texts where the English Roman Missal includes Latin texts. It should include music for the chant where the English Roman Missal includes music for the chant. It should include – and this is absolutely essential – the current Australian variations in the Lectionary and in the Calendar.

So, dear reader, when shopping for your Sunday Missal: Caveat emptor!

*UPDATE: Actually, after talking to various people this morning, I won’t be returning it. I will keep it as a reference to use for an upcoming review of all available “Sunday Missals”. You might like to hold off purchasing until we get more information about the various editions that will be available. In the meantime, my advice is in the title to this post!

I can appreciate how difficult this news would be for Archbishop Hepworth. I was never an ordained Catholic priest, nor was I an Archbishop, but in the end, the decision that Archbishop Hepworth (and some other priests in the TAC) will have to face is not dissimilar to the one I had to face: do you remain where you are in order to continue to exercise a ministry you feel that God has called you to, or do you accept God’s deeper and more fundamental call into communion with the Catholic Church? When it becomes an either/or decision, and not a both/and one, the rubber really hits the road. Please pray for Archbishop Hepworth, and for all Anglican priests considering the call to communion with the Catholic Church. It is a fundamental issue that they are wrestling with.

During the week, I contemplated putting in a business plan application for a new iPad at work. Turns out, on reflection, that I don’t really (REALLY) need it and it would be an unwarranted expense.

But Mr Jobs certainly had a gift for creating objects of desire as well as utility. Was he another Beethoven? Possibly in his own way. Click on the link to learn something that you may not have known about the Edison of our age.

I found the link to this Catholic Herald article on the making of the new CTC missals on Fr Z’s blog. It is absolutely fascinating. Spend a bit of time reading it to appreaciate the beautiful new Missals we have on our altars today.

PS. I went to mass at a centre that did not yet have a copy of the new missal this morning. I loaned the priest my “study edition” to use, which he was happy to do! Actually, we had a bit of fun this morning, as there was no electricity there either this morning. So the candles on the altar had to double as their original (as well as their symbolic) purpose: to give lighting to the priest as he read the prayers from the missal. There was a bit of an “easter vigil” feel about the liturgy, as we had a baptism also. Mirabile dictu, the electricity (and hence the lights) came back on the moment the child was baptised!

When one sees the headlines to an article on the internet such as “Who actually holds the keys of the kingdom?” and “Who controls the Catholic Church’s agenda?”, one hardly expects to find that the major subject of that article is one’s self.

Such a thing could only come from the pen of the erstwhile defender of (his version of) the faith, Mr Brian Coyne, who in this lead article on Catholica yesterday writes:

Who controls the agenda within Catholicism?

Back in May of 2010 we were first alerted to some stirrings in another area central to Catholic worship in Australia through two lengthy discussions on the blog of a recent convert to Catholicism and prolific blogger, David Schütz. The subject this time was Liturgical Music…

Dear Brian is still rather annoyed at some pieces I wrote on the subject of liturgical music (see here and here), in part, it emerges, because of how it touches his domestic situation. He goes on to spin a conspiracy theory that would somehow connect little old me (a mere humble worker in the vineyard of Dionysius) to the corridors of power at the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference…

I do take issue with the description “recent convert” – I celebrated 10 years since leaving the Lutheran Church earlier this year, which might be “recent” in Brian’s terms, but seems a long time ago to me now. In answer to the question: “Who controls the agenda within Catholicism?”, I think we can safely take it for granted that the answer is not David Schütz.

One useful service that Brian has done us with this piece is to get the following response from Archbishop Coleridge (using the method proposed by Jesus in the parable of Jesus about the man who comes to borrow a loaf of bread at midnight):

In Liturgiam Authenticam, the Holy See asked Bishops Conferences to draw up a list of approved chants and songs for liturgical use. The Australian Bishops agreed that, as we cross a new threshold in the ongoing journey of liturgical renewal, it would be good to take stock of liturgical music after decades in which <strong>the repertoire had proliferated enormously — to the point where the common Catholic repertoire was very meagre indeed. The Bishops were also concerned that some of the liturgical music in this country was weak textually and theologically, as well as musically banal. A further concern was that we move in Australia to singing the Mass rather than singing within the Mass. The Bishops Commission for Liturgy therefore recommended to the Conference that the National Liturgical Music Board be asked to compile a resource which would meet the requirements of the Holy See and be a benchmark as we move into the new phase of liturgical renewal. The resource that has been compiled would not be imposed as mandatory, but would be strongly proposed as indicating the textual and musical idiom appropriate to the Roman Rite at this time.

UPDATE: I just read through some of the comments on the CathPews website about this discussion. Some of the comments seemed to suggest that my musical taste was all “Gregorian Chant”. I think it is worth pointing out that while I understand and appreciate those who seek to do all they can to restore the chant to our masses (for the sake of “singing the mass” rather than “singing at mass”, as Archbishop Coleridge said), I do believe that the Church today should harvest the best of all ages in the huge repetoire that has “proliferated” (again, to use the Archbishop’s words). This morning at mass, I chose: Bernadette Farrell’s “Christ be our light” (ironic in the face of the power failure we were experiencing!), a psalm set by Adelaide’s Jenny O’Brien, chant for the Kyrie, Gospel Acclamation, Sanctus and Agnus Dei, an English version of “Rorate Coeli” at the offertory, Taize’s “Stay with me” at Communion, and “O come, O come Emmanuel” for the recessional. Pretty eclectic, but also representative of the breadth of music available to us.

By a young woman named Fatma who was sitting behind me in the conference featured on the note paper.

Occasionally you hear that the Extraordinary Form attracts a certain kind of mass-goer. Well, if it is true, it seems to include people who are generally gifted on the technological side (perhaps you have to be to understand and work out all those rubrics). I’ve just started attending the regular EF Mass at 9am on Saturday mornings at St Phillip’s in Junction Road, Blackburn North, and I went looking on the App Store to see what I could find to help me through.

At first, I didn’t recognise the iMass app for how good it is. I haven’t so far used it for anything other than following the Missal (the top option from the home page of the app), but yesterday (celebrating St Elizabeth of Hungary again) I noticed the way in which you can select a calendar date on the app and it will seemlessly incorporate the propers into the order for mass. No need to page through a missal!

There are lots of other neat things on this app, but this alone makes it worth it. It isn’t expensive (US$1.99). If only someone would do the same thing for the new English Missal.