Sentire Cum Ecclesia

I don’t think anyone was expecting this. Certainly I heard no such predictions. Fr Nick has all the details of our new auxiliary bishop in Melbourne (http://apriestdownunder.com/2011/05/20/new-auxilary-bishop-for-melbourne/).

I am looking forward to getting to know Bishop Vincent (as I expect we will call him, since a. He is a religious, and b. Nguyen is a bit difficult to pronounce despite being the second most common surname in Australia next to Smith), and wish him all the best for his ministry among us.

One might observe that in all our speculations about future Bishops, it can be too easy to over look the religious among us. Add to that the fact that Bishop Vincent is a foreign-born priest,… Well, he isn’t Irish, but perhaps the Vietnamese ARE the new “Irish”?

There are lots of interesting angles on this appointment. At the very least, it does seem that the “Australia file” is still open on someone’s desk in Rome, and we can expect more appointments soon.

Tonight my diary had two events in it:

1) regular monthly meeting of the Ecumenical and Interfaith Commission

2) Fr Austin Cooper giving the Catholic Theological College “Knox Lecture” on “Newman in Australia”.

We had a small attendance at the first event, but continued with the meeting anyway, ending a bit early. I thought seriously about just going home at that point, and forgetting about item 2 on the agenda.

But I went to Fr Austin’s lecture in any case, and had the pleasure of sitting alongside one of our regular commentators on this ‘ere blog and his family (currently in his third year of the permanent diaconate course).

Fr Austin was suitably entertaining, as always, and informative, also as always. He got the whole audience rolling with laughter at one point, as he was answering a question concerning the exhumation of Newman’s grave.

“Yes,” he said, “I found it rather embarrassing when I heard the news that there were no mortal remains of Newman to found in his grave, because, only a little while earlier, I had received a package in the mail…”

Well, at this point, as you can appreciate, our imaginations took over, and hence the laughter. When we had all calmed down, he completed the rather strange story. Apparently the package had come from an Irishman who, years earlier, had cared for an old man in a nursing home. This Irishman knew of Fr Austin’s interest in Newman. The old man for whom he had cared had apparently acted as Blessed JHN’s barber, and had kept a lock of Newman’s hair after one of the regular haircuts. It was just this lock of white hair that was in the package which arrived in Fr Austin’s mailbox. So when he heard that there were “no mortal remains” of the new Blessed, Fr Austin felt very uncomfortable, knowing in fact that some mortal remains had survived – and were in his filing cabinet. He told us that he has since sent the relics back to the Oratory in Birmingham for their safe keeping.

“But I bet he kept one or two hairs,” said a certain Country Deacon with whom we are all well aquainted. I was delighted to bump into the Reverend Blogger on the way out of the lecture, and to compare a few notes on the latest news and gossip in the blogosphere. [BTW, have you noticed how his blog address is boacP.com and not boacD.com? How’s that for preparing ahead?] I then got to catch up with a few other seminarians, including a one-time Anima Education student who is now a first year seminarian.

But joy of joys – and this is the “God-Gift” to which the title refers – two of my brothers in the Lutheran ministry were at the lecture: the Venerable Pastor Cecil Schmalkuche, and the good Doctor Jeffrey Silcock from Australian Lutheran College. We happily passed the next couple of hours together, including coffee back at my office.

I would have missed out on so much had I decided to skip tonight’s lecture. Let that be a lesson to any of you who might be tempted to skip an event listed in your diary.

Thank you God. Time to go home to bed now.

I’m going to have a little gripe here for a bit.

I was teaching on the new translation of the liturgy the other night, and just having a little grumble about the line: “and on earth peace to people of good will”.

It would have been so much nicer if we could have had (as I believe the original translation during the 1960’s actually had it) “and on earth peace to men of good will.”

But the language police tell us we can’t do that anymore.

Okay. But that leaves a bit of a lacuna in our language, doesn’t it? The Gloria in Excelsis uses the word “homo” for those who are on earth over against the word “Deus” for him (or her?) what’s up in heaven. We need a word for that which we folk here on earth ARE that distinguishes us over against GOD. Several proposed solutions just don’t cut the mustard.

1) “Human” isn’t a noun. It’s an adjective. I am “human” because I am a “human being”. “Human being” = belonging to the species “homo sapiens”, as compared to belonging to the species “Felis catus” or “Rattus rattus” or even “Homo neanderthalensis”. I don’t want to sing about “peace to human beings”…

2) “People” are “them”. You know, the ones who “say” or “think” things. They’re just people. I hear that even dogs are “people” to some people. But that’s just people for you.

3) The NRSV likes to use the word “mortal”. But that just means someone who is going to die. Even dogs, cats and rats are “mortals”.

You see, we have thrown out the perfectly servicable word “men” (as in “for us men” – ie. not for just us Christians nor for all us creatures) or even “man” (as in “became man”) for something that just doesn’t function in the same way.

Think how easily we still use the term “man-made”, to mean “not naturally occuring”, ie. not “God-made”. Think about how we say that Neil Armstrong was “the first man on the moon”. Yes, I know that he was male, but what we mean is that he was the first member of the human race to set foot on the moon (“That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind”, would have sounded dreadful as “One small step for a person, one giant leap for people”). Think even of the recent successful French film “Des hommes et des dieux”, which was given the English title “Of Gods and Men”. No one batted an eyelid at that.

So it’s still there in our language. It hasn’t entirely gone away. We could revive it if were were determined.

If we can’t revive “men”/”man” to serve the purpose of saying what we are collectively over against the Deity, can we invent a new word to do the job properly? I have been wondering about whether we could borrow something from German, eg. “mann”. Or perhaps a differently pronounced “men”, such as “mun”? I don’t know.

Or we could just be stubborn and go on using the “sexist” language anyway in the hope that one day sense will reign once more…

I was musing this morning, on the way into work, on the implications of Universae Ecclesiae, and especially over these comments from “our man in Rome” (as we ecumenists call Cardinal Kurt Koch):

“However, because a new liturgical reform cannot be decided theoretically, but requires a process of growth and purification, the Pope for the moment is underlining above all that the two forms of the Roman rite [the Ordinary and the Extraordinary] can and should enrich each other,” he said.

It is fairly obvious, thought I, how an increased familiarity with the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite (aka the Traditional Latin Rite, or the rite according to the Missal of 1962) might positively affect the celebration of the Ordinary Form (aka the Novus Ordo, or the Mass of Paul VI). Not quite so obvious how it might happen the other way around.

Nevertheless, I thought I could identify a couple of points, and that it would be a good topic for a blog post (Nb. apologies for there not being a lot of commentary on this blog the last week or so – a bit busy round the house).

However, Fr Z. got to it before me, and you can read his musings here.

Fr Z’s correspondent writes about how he celebrates the Extraordinarly Form liturgy differently because of his familiarity with the Ordinary Form. Less rigidity and more awareness that this is a “priest and people” activity. Not surprisingly, my point of view is from the other side of the altar rail (yes, there ARE altar rails in the Extraordinary Form).

I wasn’t around in 1962, and wasn’t even Catholic until 2001, so I don’t have any personal memory of this. But I have heard plenty of stories about what the liturgy was like before the Council. It is important to keep in mind that the horror story stories liturgists tell their children around campfires didn’t begin with the reforms. I recently heard about a guitar-toting singing group that would sing “Soul of my Saviour” to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon” – during the Sunday Low Mass.

I suspect that – from the lay participant’s point of view – the Extraordinary form as it is now conducted by devotees all over the world has been affected by the Novus Ordo in the following ways:

1) The familiarity that most of us have with the Novus Ordo helps us lay people to gain familiarity with the Mass in the Extraordinary Form. Because the Novus Ordo is fairly simple and “streamlined”, we have developed a fairly good sense of the “shape” of the mass. When we come to the Mass in the Extraordinary Form, therefore, we are not lost in the baroque liturgical forest (as sometimes happens when newcomers attend, for eg., an Eastern Rite liturgy). The clear shape of the Roman Rite in the Ordinary Form acts as a kind of “map” to orientate oneself to the rather more interesting and feature-packed landscape of the Extraordinary Form.

2) Because of this, we lay people come to the Extraordinary Form of the Mass with the expectation that we will be involved. This might mean actively, eg. by joining in the songs that the Choir sings at Mass, such as the Gloria, the Sanctus etc. But I have in mind the prayerful involvement that comes when we are engaged in what is going on. Lay worshippers at the Extraordinary Form these day will be paying attention to the Latin prayers and following attentively the actions of the priest. As in the past, lay participants in the Extraordinary Form will certainly be praying during the liturgical action, but they will either be following the Latin along in their booklets and praying the English in their hearts, or engaging in personal prayer that is appropriately connected with the action and prayer of the priest at the altar.

It isn’t that the characteristics – far less the rubrics and practices – of the Novus Ordo have been imported upon the Extraordinary Form. It is simply that today, as lay people, we come to the Extraordinary Form with expectations arising from our experience of the Ordinary Form. We come, as the Second Vatican Council wanted us to, not just to “attend” Mass, but to participate fully, consciously and actively in the Liturgy.

Strange but true. Well, the rumour is true, anyway.

According to Rocco Palmo:

And elsewhere, another consideration unique to the States has been rumored about — namely, given the Episcopal Church’s 2001 covenant with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America which joined the two denominations in full communion, that American Lutherans wishing to be received as Catholics could be grandfathered into the set-up’s Stateside incarnation.

Shock! Horror! Stop the press! Front page news: “Evangelicals Evangelise!”

The Age carried this story on their front page today: School religion classes probed:

THE Christian group that provides religious education and chaplains in Victorian government schools will be investigated after its chief executive told a conference: ”We need to go and make disciples.”

The remarks appear to breach guidelines governing school religious programs, which ban trying to convert students to any one religion.

The federal and state governments said last night they would investigate Access Ministries after a recording of the speech by Evonne Paddison was brought to their attention.

Let’s leave aside for a moment that the speech by Access Ministries CEO Canon Dr Evonne Paddison (which you can hear if you click the link to the article above) was given THREE years ago. Let’s also leave aside the fact that there is nothing in the Act which governs SRI in Victoria (Education and Training Reform Act 2006 – SECT 2.2.11), (as far as I can see) which addresses proselytisation [possibly I am missing another part of legislation somewhere?].

We will also leave aside the obvious fact that we are here dealing with EVANGELICALS. The wonderful and endearing thing about “Evangelicals” is that they take the “evangelising mission” of the Church SERIOUSLY. They believe that they actually have an “euangellion”, a “good news”, and they want to share it with everyone. Surely that is admirable? Or are we no longer allowed in our contemporary state to try to convince others of the truths of which we are convinced?

[I was at an interfaith service recently where a statement was read out saying that “we will not try to convert one another to our own way of believing”, and about ten paragraphs later the following sentence occured: “We will do everything we can to promote our belief in toleration and freedom of conscience”. It certainly had me wondering…]

In any case, would it be too much to ask The Age and the secularists so concerned about a speech given three years ago, to just “get over it” and accept that Christians – especially Evangelical Christians – evangelise?

But perhaps the real problem is that there is not a sufficient distinction between “evangelisation” and “proselytisation”.

Back when I began in my job at the Ecumenical and Interfaith Commission, I had to work out the relationship between ecumenical and interfaith dialogue and the evangelising mission of the Church. In the end, I concluded that it is fairly well described in the motto “Always proposing, never imposing” (which observant readers of this blog will have observed in the header). It’s the way the Catholic Church goes about the business of evangelisation. We “propose”, we don’t “impose”. I gave a talk once on the difference between “evangelisation” (= “proposing”) and “proselytisation” (= “imposing”). I never finished it properly into a form that actually could be published in a respectable journal, but this is a blog, so you can read what I said (more or less) here.

It needs to be stressed that authentic evangelisation is never proselytisation. Next it needs to be understood that there are many different methods of making the “proposition” that is essential to the “evangelising mission” of the Church. One of the ways we go about “proposing” is dialogue. Another way is education.

I think that Canon Paddison was talking about education as a means of “proposing” the Good News to students. She was talking about making “disciples”. That is a word associated with education, not proselytisation. The context of her words (the rather lame jokes about “Harold be thy name”, for instance) makes it clear that she was talking about giving accurate information to the SRI students. Okay, she might have been a little more circumspect in her comments about the Government giving the Church an open door access (note the name “Access” ministries) to children in the current hostile climate, but again, that is one of the endearing things about evangelicals: they are as gentle as doves and…, well…, as gentle as doves…

Clearly too, any parent who opts to have their child attend a Christian SRI class knows the deal: their kids are going to learn about Jesus. They are going to learn about Jesus from people who believe in Jesus. They are going to learn about Jesus from people whose dearest wish is that the children they are teaching will accept the proposition that Jesus loves them and decide to be disciples of Jesus too. IOW, parents who allow their children to participate in Christian SRI expect that their kids are going to be “evangelised”. This can hardly be called “proselytisation”.

Sometimes dogs bite people. Big deal. It isn’t a news story.

Neither is it a news story to say that “Evangelicals Evangelise”. Its what they do.

Well, I have bought copies of YouCat – two for myself (one at home and one at the office) and one for each of my daughters.

I read the Pope’s forward together with one of my daughter’s last night. In it, I notice that he says (in regard to the process required to prepare the original Catechism of the Catholic Church on which YouCat is based):

“One can, of course, criticise some things or even many things in such a work: Everything that man makes is inadequate and can be improved. Still it is a marvelous book: a witness to unity in diversity. We were able to form a single choir from many voices because we had the same score, the faith that the Church has borne through the centuries from the apostles onward.”

Many have pointed out that, if that can be said of the CCC, it can certainly be said of YouCat. There have been criticisms, and some of them reasonable. However, as an overall work, this little book is surely a positive contribution. It isn’t just a catechism – there is a degree to which it is also a work of apologetics. That note is even sounded by the Pope himself in the foreword.

All that being as it may, I must say that one of the features I really like is the quotations from various people in the sidebars. These hold some real surprises! It isn’t only saints and doctors of the Church who have been included. Anyone who has said anything interesting seems to have been included. On the sacrament of penance, there are two “surprises” at least. The two quotations in question are:

“I would be sore afraid, if it were not for secret confession.” (p93)

and

“The closest thing to a father confessor is probably a bartender.” (p139)

The first is from a very surprising source – for a Catholic catechism. It is none other than Martin Luther himself! I do think the translation is probably unfortunate. I don’t have any sources in front of me, but I think Luther might have used the term “Privatbeichte”, or “private confession”, rather than “secret”. I don’t know the exact source for the quotation in YouCat, but found a comment similar to this in an article in the Lutheran Quarterly sent to me by Dr Tighe, in which Luther says:

“I will allow no one to take private confession from me and would not give it in exchange for all the wealth in the world. For I know what consolation and strength it has given me. No one knows what it can give unless he has struggled much and frequently with the devil. I would have been strangled by the devil long ago, if confession had not sustained me.” (WA 10:III:62,1-2, LW 51:98)

I rather think that last sentence a stronger statement than the one included in YouCat.

The source of the second quotation above?

None other than Peter Sellers!

As I said, surprising stuff.

There is so much happening in the Middle East at the moment that I have been highly selective about what to post. However, I read a report on the Reuters website this morning (via the link from their FaithWorld blog), and thought it was especially important.

Curiously, since this morning Reuters have altered how this report appears on their website. The version as I read it this morning is still here via Yahoo News. But if you go to Reuters, the story has been heavily edited.

One of the paragraphs that appeared in the original article, but left out of the version currently appearing on Reuters website is the following:

“The arson did not stop a congregation from holding Sunday Mass in the church, under burned-out paintings of saints and walls covered with soot. Prayer benches and books also were consumed in the fire. Worshippers wept during the service as they prayed for the souls of the victims. A Muslim woman in a headscarf approached a priest and embraced him in a show of solidarity.”

Unfortunately, that detail was edited out of the story as it currently appears on the Reuters website. Which seems to me to be a great pity. It was the one sign of hope in an otherwise extremely distressing story.

I am teaching at the moment on the new translation of the mass for Anima Education (spare seats in the class still – come if you are able!).

We were talking last Monday night about how the the mass was celebrated in local parishes before the Counciliar reforms of the late sixties. We discovered that only those who were over 55 had any memory of how things were done, and even then, that was usually a fairly limited experience. It is hard for the rest of us to understand the developments in the last 50 years in the Roman Rite of the mass without an accurate knowledge of this real “on-the-ground” history.

So I was thrilled yesterday when I found a lecture by Australian Norbertine priest Fr. William Fitzgerald delivered on October 15, 2008 at Christendom College in the States where he is chaplain. I was following a link from Sonitus Sanctus, and found the lecture on “iTunes U”. It’s called “The Mass: How Extraordinary!”

Fr Fitzgerald is just old enough to have accurate memories of the pre-Conciliar liturgy. He had experience both at St Mary’s Cathedral and in his local home parish. His description of how things developed during the sixties is very valuable. He says a lot of other important things about the development of the Mass over the centuries. I will be recommending this to my class for listening.

It can be downloaded for free from the iTunes store if you go to “iTunes U” and then search for “Christendom College” and select “Library Events”. I think that this link will work too, but you probably need iTunes installed to download it.

BTW I hate iTunes – I find it really unfriendly.

Sandro Magister has been giving a bit of attention on his blog to the Traditionalist attack on Vatican II. The relevant posts are

1) The Disappointed Have Spoken. The Vatican responds
2) Who’s Betraying Tradition. The Grand Dispute
3) The Church Is Infallible, But Not Vatican II

The issues discussed in these posts are of the utmost signficance. The backdrop is Benedict XVI’s 2005 Christmas address to the Roman Curia, in which he famously refuted the “hermeneutic of discontinuity” as a interpretive approach to the Second Vatican Council.

Of the three posts above, the most important (as I see it) is the essay included in the second post (“Who’s betraying tradition”) by Fr Martin Rhonheimer entitled “THE “HERMENEUTIC OF REFORM” AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM” and the appended notes by the same author “CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY: WHAT OF THE INFALLIBILITY OF THE MAGISTERIUM?”

As everyone by now knows, one of the reasons that I became Catholic was the continuity of the Catholic Church. I was more than a little surprised, when I became Catholic, to find that there were two camps in the Church who argued for (what Benedict aptly termed) an “hermeneutic of discontinuity”. Ironically, these two camps are mortal enemies: they are the Traditionalists (of various stripes from the sede vacantists to good, loyal sons of the Pope) and the Liberals (the “Spirit of Vatican II” crowd – an aging but still influential mob). Both agree that Vatican II represented a break in the continuity of the Church’s teaching.

Pope Benedict rejected this “hermeneutic of discontinuity”. But as Fr Rhonheimer points out, it is very significant that the alternative proposed by the Pope was NOT an “hermeneutic of CONTINUITY”. (Do a google search on that term and you find “About 281,000 results”, but Pope Benedict never used this phrase). Fr Rhonheimer writes:

The warning was enthusiastically taken up by Catholics faithful to the Pope, with the opinion spreading that, in his speech, Benedict had opposed the “hermeneutic of discontinuity” with a “hermeneutic of continuity”. […] This understanding, however, is unfounded. In the Pope’s address, there is no such opposition between a “hermeneutic of discontinuity” and a “hermeneutic of continuity”. Rather, as he explained: “In contrast with the hermeneutic of discontinuity is a hermeneutic of reform…” And in what lies the “nature of true reform”? According to the Holy Father, “in the interplay, on different levels, between continuity and discontinuity”.

Fr Rhonheimer points out:

“Continuity”, therefore, is not the only hermeneutical category for understanding the Second Vatican Council. The category of “reform” is also necessary, a category which includes elements of both continuity and discontinuity. But as Benedict emphasized, the continuity and discontinuity are “on different levels”. It is important, therefore, to identify and distinguish these levels correctly.

He claims that a

search for a false continuity that would ultimately distort a genuine continuity and, with it, the nature of the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church.

This is a very important essay. The use of the test case of the Church’s teaching on Religious Freedom is very pertinent, and offers a concrete example of how the teaching of the Catholic Church is actually open to reform when it is discovered that a traditional position of the Church’s magisterium is in fact “trumped” by a more ancient and more authentic Tradition. He argues that although the relationship of Church and State that had become “traditional” under the Constantinian model of “Christendom” in the Middle Ages is indeed venerable, Pope Benedict claimed that there is a more “authentic” continuity between the teaching of Vatican II on this matter and the apostolic, pre-Constantinian Church that needs to be honoured above this “traditional” position.

On the contrary, it would seem that at its origin Christianity even adopted a rather different position. It was born and developed in a pagan environment; it was conceived, on the basis of the Gospel and the example of Jesus Christ, as founded essentially on the separation between religion and politics, and it did not ask the Roman empire for the freedom to be able to develop without obstacles. In recognizing and making its own through its decree on religious freedom an “essential principle of the modern state,” Benedict XVI affirms in his speech, Vatican Council II “has recovered the deepest patrimony of the Church. By so doing she can be conscious of being in full harmony with the teaching of Jesus himself (cf. Mt 22: 21), as well as with the Church of the martyrs of all time.”

This essay has great importance for understanding the way in which “reform” works in the Catholic Church. It acknowledges a certain “time-boundedness” in every teaching of the Magisterium. Of course, the “infallible” teaching of the Church cannot be rejected in a manner of “discontinuity”, but “reform” always seeks to bring to light once again the true Tradition of the Church over the time-bound pronouncements of the past. It is simply not true to say that the teaching of the Church is “irreformable”. The nature of true “reform”, however, must always be grounded in the true Tradition of the Church.

Tricky stuff. But Fr Rhonheimer’s contribution to the discussion is very significant. In my humble opinion, of course. I would be interested in your humble opinions. However, before you comment on this post, please take the time to read Fr Rhonheimer’s essay and appendix in full first.