8 July 2009

Fr H and the Pope and some ramblings

A friend points out to me that the Holy Father, like me, has not forgotten the association of the beginning of July with the Precious Blood. It is nice to have confirmation that my instincts are sound. And that the Pope's are.

Incidentally, IGLH para 245 allows "any votive office" to be said on any day except Solemnities, Sundays in Advent, Lent, and Easter, Ash Wednesday, Holy Week, Easter Week, and November 2, simply "for the sake of devotion". This is a remarkably wide discretion; and it is not accompanied by any restrictions about where one might get these votive offices from. I don't see any reason why one shouldn't borrow material from the old Breviary on days like July 1. And, of course, since Summorum pontificum there is no reason why, on such days (or any days) one should not substitute - for example - Mattins Lauds and Vespers from the old books for those in ones LH. I do. (And I found some Proper Hymns for SS Cyril and Methodius in my pars aestiva the other day ... they would enrich the OF Office.)

As I understand it, for one to have a Sunday votive Mass of one of those suppressed solemnities, one is supposed to have permission from the bishop in view of an unusually serious pastoral need.

Another friend points out to me some simple but outstanding catechetical materials available at http://www.sancarlo.pcn.net/argomenti_inglese/pagina0.html

Hanging above my computer, I have the rather nice Calendar of the ICKSP. This month, there is a picture of S Laurent sur Sevres ... is that the shrine of S Louis Marie de Grignion? (I've been fond of him since I saw his statue, and bought his book, as a boy in the RC church at Clacton in Essex - I am an Essex Man). My churchwarden lent me a tape of songs from there.

Chattering after Mass on Sunday, one or two of us revisited the question of the benefits of infrequent communion. I said I might do a post on it. Then I recalled that - I think - I did one; probably in February or March, when the question had cropped up in this year's Oxford Bampton lectures. Does anyone remember where it is?

Last night I watched the video of Cardinal Canares doing the EF in the Lateran basilica last May. I was surprised by how much of it he got wrong ... e.g. not genuflecting after the consecrations; not keeping his thumbs and index fingers together after the consecration ... and I'm not sure he knew how to cense an altar. Castrillon was a bit shaky on that last year in Westminster Cathedral. Frankly, I do understand the thinking of Vincent Nichols when he declined, at an EF Conference in Merton a year or two ago, to celebrate the EF himself. If one is going to do a thing, one ought to try to get it right.

A very good Conference on Chesterton last Saturday in the Old Palace. Sheridan Gilley, Ian Ker, John Saward, Aidan Nichols, William Oddie (all very good; Aidan sparkling and brilliant as ever).

Are any of those gentry cradle Catholics? Where would the English RC Church be if it didn't receive continual infusions of Anglican Catholic blood? Why is its own culture so impoverished?

2 comments:

Athelstan Riley said...

"Chattering after Mass on Sunday, one or two of us revisited the question of the benefits of infrequent communion. I said I might do a post on it. Then I recalled that - I think - I did one; probably in February or March, when the question had cropped up in this year's Oxford Bampton lectures. Does anyone remember where it is?"

The answer is easily found by entering Frequent Communion in the Search box of you new-look blog:

10 February 2009: The Auxiliary Bishop of Linz

Ttony said...

"Are any of those gentry cradle Catholics? Where would the English RC Church be if it didn't receive continual infusions of Anglican Catholic blood? Why is its own culture so impoverished?"

Possibly because of the English Catholic blood it shed in such copious quantities; possibly because of the (mainly social but also religious) difficulties faced by those who came to this country. Possibly both of the above. (And at times, unfortunately, because of a sort of reverse snobbery which expresses itself in anti-aestheticism.)