Church

Henry VIII and Hampton Court Vespers

Prof. Jack Scarisbrick, an expert on Henry VIII, has a piece at the Catholic Herald that begins,

How would King Henry VIII react to the news that Cardinal Vincent Nichols will preside at Catholic Vespers in the Chapel Royal of Hampton Court Palace on February 9? Not just by turning in his grave (which anyway might be difficult since it is possible, if not probable, that his daughter Mary, when she became queen, had his tomb opened and his embalmed body burnt). No, there would be seething, bewildered anger and ruthless revenge immediately planned.

He was hard on English cardinals anyway. Cardinal Wolsey, who built magnificent Hampton Court (too magnificent for Henry’s comfort), would probably have lost his head had he not died a natural death a few days before facing a rigged trial for high treason. When John Fisher was given a red hat on the eve of martyrdom, Henry famously vowed that the bishop would never have a head to put it on – and carried out his threat.

(Emphasis supplied.) Read the whole thing there. We won’t spoil it for you, except to say that Professor Scarisbrick demolishes the idea that Henry VIII was some sort of Catholic.

 

Update on Catholic Action

Updating our Link Roundup from yesterday, we note that, at The Josias today, “Petrus Hispanus” responds to Gabriel Sanchez. Notably, “Petrus Hispanus” argues,

Leo XIII and St. Pius X favored the strategy of Catholic Action because they came to believe, as a matter of strategy, that still-dominant Catholic majorities in many countries could be rallied under a single party in order to use democracy as a weapon against liberalism. The faithful majorities, it was hoped, would vote liberalism out of existence under the leadership of Catholic Action parties. From this miscalculation, possibly brought on by the success of German Catholics against Bismarck, would ultimately come that spectacle of progressive alignment of Catholic politicians with liberalism that was “Christian democracy.”

All of this, of course, is not to impugn on the many excellent things done by Catholic Action in many countries, or to judge the motives these saintly and venerable Popes had in favoring it. Indeed, under the circumstances they faced, it is difficult to imagine what alternative they had in most cases, seeing as the political links with the ancien régime had almost entirely vanished and a new way of “doing Catholic politics” needed to be implemented seriously, one to which the example of Germany and others gave true practical plausibility.  

(Emphasis supplied.) This is a fascinating debate, which we shall continue to follow with great interest.

Some remarks on Kaveny and Neuhaus

A sharp young Catholic of our acquaintance has pointed us to an interesting exchange over the past couple of weeks. At Commonweal, Cathleen Kaveny argued that the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus sowed division in the Church by articulating a vision of conservative Catholics collaborating with evangelicals and Jews on points of agreement for political reasons. In Kaveny’s opinion, Neuhaus led conservative Catholics away from progressive Catholics for political reasons, and this fundamental rift has become more obvious since the Holy Father marked out a course in his reign not wholly consonant with the political views of these conservative Catholics. In other words, political expediency drew Neuhaus and his circle away from Catholics and toward protestants and Jews, laying the groundwork for the debates we see in the Church today.

This argument was, well, received as well as one would expect. At First Things, R.R. Reno responded with a thorough rebuttal, making the essential point that, in some respects, conservative Catholics do, in fact, have more in common with conservative protestants and Jews than they do with their progressive Catholic brethren. Robert George responded, a little haughtily, and suggested that Caveny was running at Neuhaus only because she could do so without fear of hearing back from Neuhaus. And, at the National Catholic Reporter, Michael Sean Winters has responded a couple of times, first by sort of coming to the point that there’s division in the Church because the conservatives are no longer in good odor in Rome, and later by suggesting that progressive Catholics also made political deals that weren’t good for the unity of the Church. (Although how Neuhaus could have sown dissent is unclear, since the conservative faction of the Church was itself in good odor in Rome from October 1978 to March 2013. But we’ll pass over the anachronism.)

Read through the posts when you get a free minute. It’s practically a who’s-who of Catholic thought leaders.

For our part, it is really unclear what Kaveny thinks her argument is, since it seems to us that she has argued, more or less, that Neuhaus agreed with people he didn’t really agree with because they took similar political positions, and he turned his back on people he really agreed with because they took different political positions. But—and this is the problem—she compares apples and oranges to get there. As for her points of commonality between conservative and progressive Catholics, she looks toward the broadest possible points of agreement:

Does honoring Jesus as the Son of God count as a commonality? Like their conservative counterparts, progressive Roman Catholics acknowledge the divinity of Jesus Christ, and find the interpretive key to the Hebrew Bible in the New Testament. Orthodox Jews do not—indeed, must not—treat Jesus as the Messiah foretold in the Book of Isaiah. It would be blasphemous for them to do so.

Does living in the grace imparted by the sacraments count as a commonality? Both progressive and conservative Roman Catholics believe that God’s grace is channeled through the seven sacraments. Many Evangelical Protestants do not have the same view of grace or the sacraments; they often view the Eucharist as a memorial of a past event, not a way of being present with Christ here and now.

(Some of these things are exceptionally weird ways of expressing these commonalities, but we will pass over that quickly and assume that she means essentially what an orthodox Catholic would mean by these expressions.) But as for the points of agreement between conservative Catholics and conservative protestants and Jews, she looks to some very specific issues to find hidden disagreements.

Neuhaus’s defenders might say that he was concerned with commonalities among conservative Christians and Jews on hot-button issues: the ordination of women, contraception, same-sex marriage, and abortion.  But how deep are those commonalities? Many Evangelical Protestants, for example, believe that women should never exercise authority over men, especially but not exclusively in an ecclesiastical context. But the Catholic Church officially and vehemently denies that its exclusion of women from the priesthood is based on their inferiority to men—and points to the centuries old tradition of powerful, independent women religious as evidence. Orthodox Jews may oppose abortion—but not because they believe the fetus is an equally protectable human being. Under Jewish law, full protection for a new human person is triggered at birth. But in Catholic circles debates about abortion are usually about when a human life comes into being biologically.

In other words, Kaveny’s argument is that conservative and progressive Catholics agree on the broadest possible issues about Christ and his Church, but conservative Catholics reach the same conclusions as conservative protestants and Jews for different reasons. (So what?) She does not contend—and could not contend—that all progressive Catholics are on the same page as conservative Catholics about women’s ordination, contraception, marriage, and abortion. They are manifestly not in many instances. That they might agree about broad issues does not change those disagreements. (However, those disagreements cast real doubt on whether the broad areas of consensus are as they appear, even though we said we’d pass over that issue briefly.) So, Neuhaus collaborated, according to Kaveny, with people he agreed with on specific issues instead of people he agreed with on the broadest issues.

Apples and oranges. (Like we said.) And, accordingly, R.R. Reno has the better argument when he notes that a doctrinally conservative Catholic may, in fact, have more in common, especially in terms of outlook and approach, with a doctrinally conservative protestant or Jew, notwithstanding some serious differences, than he does with a progressive Catholic, who, often as not, holds Modernist and indifferentist views.

But the reason why Kaveny has to compare apples and oranges is because she won’t make the (easier) argument that the traditional social teaching of the Church is actually more consistent with some things that progressives are fond of. For example, both Leo XIII in Rerum novarum and Pius XI in Quadragesimo anno express real reservations about economic liberalism and unrestrained capitalism. And Pius XII affirmed in the strongest language—particularly in La solennità della Pentecoste, his 1941 radio address commemorating Rerum novarum, and Exsul Familia Nazarethana, his lengthy apostolic constitution on migrants—the right of individuals to migrate between countries and the positive effects of such migration. Certainly economic justice and immigration have consistently been traditional concerns of the Church and progressives in the Church tend to be more in tune with the Church’s traditional teaching on these points.

In fact, this point has come up a few times in the context of the Holy Father’s contemporary social teaching. Rorate Caeli ran a piece, almost two years ago, noting that the Holy Father was not far from the traditional social teaching of the Church. (Whether “New Catholic” would make the same argument after Laudato si’ is not clear to us.) And Pater Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., has argued that Laudato si’ contains echoes of Pius IX’s monumental Quanta cura and its annexed Syllabus errorum in the Holy Father’s devastating critique of the individualist-technocratic rot at the heart of modernity. (He later pointed out that other authors made the same connection between Laudato si’ and Syllabus, though they didn’t understand what praise they were heaping on the encyclical and may even have thought that comparisons to Syllabus were negative.) But we digress.

In other words, Kaveny could have argued that Neuhaus ought to have cooperated with socially progressive Catholics because their views (generally) are actually fairly close to what the Church has traditionally taught about income inequality, poorly restrained markets, and the social obligations of capital. (But even this argument is essentially the seamless-garment argument articulated by John Cardinal Dearden, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, and other progressive Catholics, which has not met with uniform success. Or any success.) But she didn’t. Instead, she argued that, because conservative and progressive Catholics have some broad things in common, Neuhaus and the First Things set shouldn’t have cooperated with protestants and Jews on specific points that they have common with conservative Catholics (even if they have different reasons for having them in common).

And that sounds political.

Everything stays down where it’s wounded

The Holy Father today (yesterday?) in Rome gave a brief catechesis at his general audience on the subject of mercy and justice. It is in Italian, but excerpts have been translated by the VIS. (You can obtain a machine translation of the whole thing from the usual sources.) One bit in particular might catch the attention of those who like to read tea leaves:

The Bible, he explained, proposes a different form of justice, in which the victim invites the guilty party to convert, helping him to understand the harm he has done and appealing to his conscience. “In this way, recognising his blame, he can open up to the forgiveness that the injured party offers. … This is the way of resolving conflicts within families, in relations between spouses and between parents and children, in which the injured party loves the guilty and does not wish to lose the bond between them. It is certainly a difficult path: it demands that the victim be disposed to forgive and wishes for the salvation and the good of the perpetrator of the damage. But only in this way can justice triumph, as if the guilty party acknowledges the harm he has done and ceases to do so, the evil no longer exists and the unjust becomes just, as he has been forgiven and helped to find the way of good“.

“God treats us sinners, in the same way. He continually offers us His forgiveness, He helps us to welcome Him and to be aware of our evil so as to free ourselves of it. God does not seek our condemnation, only our salvation. God does not wish to condemn anyone! … The Lord of Mercy wishes to save everyone. … The problem is letting Him enter into our heart. All the words of the prophets are an impassioned and love-filled plea for our conversion”.

(Emphasis supplied.)

A little more on socialism after Iowa

No sooner did we discuss whether a Catholic could support Bernie Sanders due to Sanders’s self-identification as a democratic socialist did Fr. Dwight Longenecker take up the question at Patheos. Ultimately, he argues that a Catholic could vote for a democratic socialist, but that Sanders’s standard-issue positions on abortion and marriage are serious problems for Catholic voters. (He cites a 2002 voter’s guide, which does not appear to have been updated to reflect Cardinal Ratzinger’s 2004 memorandum.) This is, of course, more or less what we said, but we still think that Sanders’s concept of socialism remains, by and large, too murky to make a clear up-or-down decision. As it stands—and notwithstanding Longenecker’s citations to Benedict XVI—it unclear to us what is distinctively socialist about Sanders’s position. Based upon some prepared remarks of his from November, it is far from clear that his concept of socialism is actually socialism as the Church has long understood it. (Cf. 3 Grenier, Thomistic Philosophy, nos. 1150–51.) But, as Paul VI noted, that does not mean that there are not connections between Sanders’s thought and more explicitly (actually?) socialist thinking, with all of its implications.

“Octogesima adveniens” and socialism after the Iowa Democratic caucus

We have so far refrained from discussing secular politics. (We have not refrained from discussing Church politics, though perhaps we ought to have done.) As of the time of writing, CNN reported that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State (and New York Senator) Hillary Clinton tied in the Iowa caucuses, 50-50. Later in the day, CNN reported that Clinton beat Sanders. That’s consistent with the reporting of the Des Moines Register that Clinton beat Sanders, 49.86% to 49.57%. The New York Times reported early today essentially a tie, though that became a narrow victory as the day wore on. In any event, Sanders did very well in Iowa, considering Clinton’s commitment to winning the caucus and the fact that, at one point, she led him in polls by nearly fifty points. And Sanders will likely do well in New Hampshire, barring some unforeseen shift in that state’s electorate. Recalling that Sanders is a self-professed democratic socialist, it seems like a good time to mention again Paul VI’s Octogesima adveniens, which we have discussed previously at some length.

We mention this largely because Sanders’s economic policies seem at least not inconsistent with some of the traditional teachings of the Church on economic matters. (Notwithstanding the Actonistas’ insistence that the free market is de fide tenenda, if not de fide credenda, and notwithstanding some of the frankly hysterical criticism of the Holy Father for suggesting that the rising tide of capitalism has not yet lifted most boats, much less all boats.) Consequently, there are many sharp Catholics of our acquaintance, very traditionally minded, who are at least open to supporting Sanders. Now, there is another very serious issue with supporting any Democratic candidate (who is likely to receive any serious support from Democratic primary voters), but the resolution of that issue is generally fairly complex and we will accordingly pass over it quickly. Given Sanders’ self-identification as a democratic socialist (whatever that means, and we’ll come back to that in a minute), it is appropriate to consider the extent to which Catholics can support a self-identified democratic socialist.

And that is the question that Paul VI addresses briefly in Octogesima adveniens. In some sense, as we may have noted previously, Octogesima adveniens was Paul’s attempt to walk back some of the more extreme interpretations of Populorum progressio, his encyclical commemorating Rerum novarum. (Octogesima adveniens was not, in point of fact, an encyclical letter.) At any rate, he discussed the extent to which Christians may cooperate with “socialist currents”:

Some Christians are today attracted by socialist currents and their various developments. They try to recognize therein a certain number of aspirations which they carry within themselves in the name of their faith. They feel that they are part of that historical current and wish to play a part within it. Now this historical current takes on, under the same name, different forms according to different continents and cultures, even if it drew its inspiration, and still does in many cases, from ideologies incompatible with faith. Careful judgment is called for. Too often Christians attracted by socialism tend to idealize it in terms which, apart from anything else, are very general: a will for justice, solidarity and equality. They refuse to recognize the limitations of the historical socialist movements, which remain conditioned by the ideologies from which they originated. Distinctions must be made to guide concrete choices between the various levels of expression of socialism: a generous aspiration and a seeking for a more just society, historical movements with a political organization and aim, and an ideology which claims to give a complete and self-sufficient picture of man. Nevertheless, these distinctions must not lead one to consider such levels as completely separate and independent. The concrete link which, according to circumstances, exists between them must be clearly marked out. This insight will enable Christians to see the degree of commitment possible along these lines, while safeguarding the values, especially those of liberty, responsibility and openness to the spiritual, which guarantee the integral development of man.

As we have noted before, none of this necessarily forbids a Catholic from cooperating with socialist currents. However, such cooperation involves a serious, intelligent consideration of the “various levels of expression of socialism,” recalling, of course, that one cannot really separate the broad-stroke, solidarity-and-equality stuff from “an ideology which claims to give a complete and self-sufficient picture of man.” Thus, a Catholic interested in supporting Sanders must consider the level of expression of socialism that Sanders himself articulates. And it is unclear to us that Sanders’s notion of socialism extends beyond “a generous aspiration and a seeking for a more just society,” though a society that is still terrifyingly unjust to some people. (Recall that the right to private property is not absolute, whatever else it may be.)

However, due to broader currents in American politics, it is awfully difficult to get an understanding of how Sanders conceives of his socialism. To put it another way, Sanders does not seem especially interested in running as an ideological socialist. (Even when it would be to his benefit to do so: for example, a Marxist would have a more coherent answer to the nagging attacks from Sanders’s “left” on race relations.) And without that ideological element, it is hard for a Catholic to get a good read on just how far Sanders’s democratic socialism runs. And without that good read, it is hard to conduct the careful analysis called for by Octogesima adveniens.

In other words, it is possible for a Catholic to come, in good conscience, to the conclusion that Sanders can be supported due to his economic positions. (Other positions he has marked out are, of course, a different story.) However, given the difficulty in having a discussion about socialism, the process of coming to that conclusion remains murky. But that Catholics are forced into sort of complicated situations like this at all is to be deplored. We recall, of course, the great Divini Redemptoris of Pius XI, in which Papa Ratti, the great prophet of the twentieth century, noted,

Procul dubio asseverari potest Ecclesiam, acque ac divinum eius auctorem, « bene faciendo » aetatem suam traducere. Neque socialistarum, neque communistarum errores usquequaque serperent, si Ecclesiae praecepta maternaque eius adhortamenta populorum moderatores non detrectassent; qui quidem, cum Liberalismi ac Laicismi, ut aiunt, principia ac normas complexi essent, ad istiusmodi placita atque fallacias, publicae rei ordinationem temperationemque ita instruxere, ut, quamvis primo oculorum obtutu aliquid magnum se effecisse viderentur, evanescere tamen pedetemptim finita ab se consilia ac proposita cernerent; quemadmodum quidquid in uno illo non consistit primario lapide, qui Christus est, necessario oportet miserrime collabi.

(Emphasis supplied.) We give the Latin here at least in part because the English translation of this passage is really—weirdly—unsatisfactory:

It may be said in all truth that the Church, like Christ, goes through the centuries doing good to all. There would be today neither Socialism nor Communism if the rulers of the nations had not scorned the teachings and maternal warnings of the Church. On the bases of liberalism and laicism they wished to build other social edifices which, powerful and imposing as they seemed at first, all too soon revealed the weakness of their foundations, and today are crumbling one after another before our eyes, as everything must crumble that is not grounded on the one corner stone which is Christ Jesus.

(Emphasis supplied.)

Indeed. 

St. Agnes’s Second Feast

If you recited lauds according to the 1960 Breviary the day before yesterday, as we did, then you made a commemoration of St. Agnes “secundo.” You may have found it slightly perplexing, as we did. Yesterday, at New Liturgical Movement, Gregory DiPippo had a (typically) erudite explanation of this “second” feast of St. Agnes. He explains,

In liturgical books, the formal name of the feast is “Sanctae Agnetis secundo”, which literally means “(the feast) of St Agnes for the second time.” This title is found on the calendar of the Tridentine Missal and Breviary, as also seven centuries earlier in the Gregorian Sacramentary. The single Matins lesson in the Breviary of St Pius V tells us that after her death, Agnes appeared first to her parents to console them, and then to the Emperor Constantine’s daughter Constantia, who suffered from an incurable sore, while she was praying at her grave, exhorting Constantia to trust in Christ and receive baptism. Having done this and been healed, Constantia later built a basilica in the Saint’s honor.

The original purpose of the second feast, however, is not at all clear; theories abound, but evidence is lacking. In the Wurzburg lectionary, the oldest of the Roman Rite, January 21 is “natale S. Agnae de passione – the birth (into heaven) of Agnes, of her passion,”, while January 28 is simply “de natali.” One theory is that the actual day of her death was the 28th, and the 21st originally commemorated the beginning of her sufferings, starting with her trial and condemnation. However, we would then expect something similar for other prominent martyrs, particularly St Lawrence, whose passion also extended over a variety of days and events. The next oldest lectionary, Codex Murbach, doesn’t mention the second feast at all, nor does the Lectionary of Alcuin. In the Gregorian Sacramentary, the titles are simply “natale” and “natale…secundo.”

(Emphasis supplied.) He heightens this liturgical mystery by rejecting the idea that St. Agnes Second constitutes a primitive octave, which, to be honest, was our first guess upon seeing it in the book:

The most common theory, the least convincing but probably the most influential, is that the second feast represents a primitive form of octave, a theory which I find problematic on several grounds. St Agnes was the most prominent female martyr of ancient Rome, very much on a par with other great Roman martyrs like Ss Peter and Paul and St Lawrence. Pope Honorius I built her current church in the 7th century to replace an earlier one that had fallen into ruin. (It has subsequently undergone numerous restorations.) The original, however, was one of the basilicas built by the Emperor Constantine in the very early years of the Peace of the Church, along with those of the two Apostles, Lawrence, and the cathedral of Rome at the Lateran. The early manuscripts mentioned above all refer to the “octaves” of Ss Peter and Paul and St Lawrence; it seems very odd that the octave of such a prominent Saint as Agnes, and hers alone, should be called instead a “feast … for the second time.”

(Emphasis supplied.) Read the whole thing there and come to your own conclusions.

For our part, we love feasts like St. Agnes’s two, St. Cecilia’s (unfortunately impeded last year by the 24th and Last Sunday after Pentecost, Fifth Sunday of November), and St. Lawrence’s, and tomorrow’s feast of St. Martina. These saints’ feasts retain special features even into the 1960 Breviary, preserving in some way the early Roman Christians’ admiration for these saints. In other words, the special aspects of these feasts serve as a connection between believers today and their forebears in the early Roman Church. They also serve as a connection to Rome itself; that is, everyone celebrates the feasts of these distinctively Roman saints. (Or they did until fairly recently.) The Church of Rome is just that.

————

By the way, in case you’re playing along at home, here is the commemoration of St. Agnes’s second feast in the Breviary of 1960.

Et fit commemoratio S. Agnetis Virg. et Mart. secundo:

Ant. Ecce, quod concupivi, iam video: quod speravi, iam teneo: ipsi sum iuncta in cælis, quem in terris posita, tota devotione dilexi.

V. Diffusa est gratia in labiis tuis.
R. Propterea benedixit te Deus in æternum.

Oratio

Deus, qui nos annua beatæ Agnetis Virginis et Martyris tuæ solemnitate lætificas: da, quæsumus; ut, quam veneramur officio, etiam piæ conversationis sequamur exemplo. Per Dominum Nostrum…

Guarding fumes and making haste

Word has made it out that Archbishop “Tucho” Fernandez, the Holy Father’s favorite theologian (a sobriquet that must break Archbishop Bruno Forte’s heart), is the principal author of the forthcoming post-Synodal exhortation, which will be released, probably, before the end of March. Edward Pentin reports:

Well informed sources have told the Register that the document, which observers believe will probably be released on March 19 — the feast of St. Joseph and the 3rd anniversary of the Pope’s inauguration Mass — is in its third draft. They also say that the chief drafter is Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernández, rector of the the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina in Buenos Aires and one of Pope Francis’ closest advisers.

One reliably informed source, a recognized moral theologian who has seen the draft, said he was “deeply disturbed” by the text as it “calls into question the natural moral law”. A senior Vatican official said he had heard the draft was good, but that was “some time ago”. He said he expects it to be similar to the Ordinary Synod’s final report, almost all of which the synod fathers passed unanimously.

[…]

Earlier this week, Vatican analyst Andrea Gagliarducci reported that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has studied the draft and sent a long note with several doctrinal remarks, rumored to be 40 pages in length.

A senior Vatican source told the Register last week that the CDF has offered “all kinds of observations” on other documents as well during this pontificate, “but none of them are ever taken.” The dicastery, like much of the Roman Curia, is largely left out of such processes and is considered to be “isolated”, according to sources.

(Emphasis supplied and hyperlink omitted.) We note that the controversial paragraphs regarding the Germanicus group’s forum internum proposal (the great compromise between Cardinal Müller and Cardinal Kasper, brokered, allegedly, by Cardinal Marx) did not pass unanimously. Not even close. In fact, but for the Holy Father’s personal appointments to the Synod, they probably would not have passed at all.

The only not-disturbing thing we see is that Archbishop Fernández, who has long been a close adviser and collaborator with the Holy Father, also is supposed to have drafted Laudato si’, which, in the main, is a wonderful document. Not perfect. But still very good. That said, we expect the bigamists to be lined up at Easter Vigil this year, exhortation in hand, demanding to approach the Precious Body and Blood of Our Lord. There has been too much grief over the Kasperite proposal not to go through with some form of it. To have this much trouble and say “oh, well, you fellows are right, I guess” would be almost unthinkable. (Though not impossible: Our Lady and St. Joseph may yet intervene.)

But, for the sake of those men and women who will take a papal pronouncement as a guarantee, we hope that the Holy Father and Tucho guess right.

 

More on the Holy Father’s speech to the Rota

At the Catholic Herald, Ed Condon has a very good appreciation of the Holy Father’s address to the Rota, which he  described as “remarkable for its continuity with the previous addresses of St John Paul II and Benedict XVI. If we were to insist on using political terms for a theological and legal address, it would be easy to characterise it as strikingly conservative.” Read the whole thing there.

For our part, we were very surprised by the Holy Father’s speech—we don’t know if that came through in our initial comments on it—largely because it seemed like another papal address to the Rota. Francis has tried, perhaps consciously, to provide a different tone to his public pronouncements. He seems to avoid the philosophical style of John Paul and the careful theological lectures of Benedict in favor of a broader, perhaps impressionistic, tone. And, of course, the context for any discussion of Mitis iudex and marriage questions needn’t be restated, except to say that Francis had to know that observers of the Church would be looking very closely at this address to see if it contains any clues for the Big Decision. With all that going on, we wonder if it is significant that he has delivered an address so in line with John Paul and Benedict’s thinking.

We also note that the handful of citations in the speech are also apparently sort of conservative: Pius XI’s Casti connubii, Pius XII’s 1940 speech to the Rota, some stuff by Paul VI (including a pastoral letter written when he was archbishop of Milan), some John Paul II, and St. Augustine on the bona matrimonii. If someone other than the Holy Father gave a speech sprinkled with Pius XI, Pius XII, Paul VI, and John Paul II, they’d be called a conservative (or worse).

Septuagesima

Father John Hunwicke has a nice piece on Septuagesima, in which he notes,

I incline to believe that S Gregory has left us his own explanation of his liturgical creation, Septuagesima, in the passage from his writings of which the old Breviary gives us a portion in the Third Nocturn (Hom 19 in Evang.; the full text of which is handily available in PL 76 coll 1153sqq.). Speaking, according to the manuscripts, in the basilica of S Lawrence one Septuagesima morning, he explains the different times of the day referred to in the Sunday’s EF Gospel (the parable of the Husbandman hiring labourers for his vineyard): “The morning of the world was from Adam to Noah; the third hour, Noah to Abraham; Sixth, Abraham to Moses; Ninth, Moses to the Lord’s Advent; eleventh, from the Lord’s Advent to the end of the world”.

(Emphasis supplied and hyperlink added.) Read the whole thing there.

One of our very, very few objections to the liturgical reforms of Bl. Paul VI (up there with the four-week psalter) is how smoothly everything seems to hum along, particularly in Tempus Per Annum. We just saw it, in fact. Christmas ends with the Baptism of Our Lord, and then you skate along in Tempus Per Annum until Feria IV Cinerum, and then Lent (and Eastertide and Pentecost). Then, after Pentecost, you’re right back where you left off on Fat Tuesday, skating along until Christ the King and Advent.

The nice thing, then, about Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima, preserved as they are in the Forma Extraordinaria, is the sense that they create that things might not be so well-oiled as they look in the Forma Ordinaria. The penitential progress toward Easter may not be so squared off, glass smooth, and air conditioned as all that. You’ve got to have your head right to appreciate what is going on. And the Gesimas help with that. As Father Hunwicke notes, “During Lent, of which Septuagesima is the preamble, we repent of the Fall and the mark which it has left on each successive age of human history and on each one of us.” We get the range of the Fall and its destructive effects during the Gesimas, so we can better repent during Lent, and so we can better prepare ourselves for the sorrow of Holy Week and the unrestrained joy of Easter.