A Question

Does any ecclesial tradition have prayers at the Eucharist for tyrants or those who hold political authority unjustly?

Eastern Christian Books: Roman and Papal Iconophilia

Eastern Christian Books: Roman and Papal Iconophilia

Routledge: Iconophilia: Politics, Religion, Preaching, and the Use of Images in Rome, c.680 - 880 by Francesca Dell'Acqua

An Excerpt from Fiedrowicz’s Book

Something not included with Krwasniewski's recommendation over at Rorate Caeli, a link to which I posted here.

NLM: Best One-Volume Scholarly Introduction to the Traditional Mass, Now in English by
Peter Kwasniewski

Anglican Catholics and Divine Worship

I was reminded that I needed to add something to the sidebar for the Anglican Ordinariate use...

Anglicans of the Personal Ordinariate is too long, "Anglicans" by itself is confusing. For now I use "Anglican Catholics" until something more appropriate is accepted. How are we to refer to the modern rite of the Anglican Ordinariates as embodied in Divine Worship? One possibility:
On the Ordinariate Use of the Roman Rite vs Anglican Use

There have been grumblings among Anglicans and Anglican Catholics (not "Anglo-Catholics") about the Missal that was promulgated, especially because of OF "Latinizations," and many blame a certain bishop for his involvement in the creation of that Missal. I can understand why, and it was probably a mistake to put Latins with a Latinizing agenda (or with with no deep scholarship in the Anglican tradition?) in such positions of authority (or subsequent positions of authority, but the old insistence on bishops being celibate and all that). Latins who celebrate or attend OF Mass are nonetheless impressed, and such a reaction is understandable if their baseline for comparison is the typical OF Mass celebrated in Anglophone countries.

The Beauty of the Anglican Usage Liturgy (the Ordinariate)
What I learned from celebrating Mass in the Ordinariate Use by Fr Matthew Pittam
New UK Ordinariate Mass with Elements of “Latin Mass”!

But have Anglicans been discouraged from entering into full communion of Rome because they find this Missal, Divine Worship, scandalous to their sense of tradition and patrimony? Hieratic Elizabethan English is not enough.

Discussion and criticism of the liturgical creativity behind the new Missal:
From 2018: The first Romanist 'Anglican Use' liturgy published, and the crisis in the Ordinariate
Ship of Fools

Psallite Sapienter --
The Secret and the Canon and the Dominus Vobiscum
The Ritual Reason Why
The Ordinariate Mass – Why Eucharistic Prayer II?

There are defenders:
Why Divine Worship: The Missal is so Important
In defence of Divine Worship

And what of the proposed Divine Offices for the Anglican Catholics?

Meanwhile... the Latins are still tinkering with the Liturgy of the Hours. And undoubtedly the old guard is still inveighing against the most recent English translation of the Pauline Missal. They probably would not be happy with proposals to replace the 2011 translation with something more hieratic.

Related:
Two New Chant Projects for the Ordinariates
The Invalidity of Anglican Orders and the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter
The Future of the Roman Liturgy & the Ordinariate Option

Priest Excommunicated, Parish Closed After Criticism of Conciliar Popes by Stephen Wynne

My comment: Is this how the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter is being run? Don't use the name of St. Peter to justify ultramontanism/papal maximalism.

Battling Over Latin Christianity

Latin traditionalists and "conservatives."

1P5: Bishop Barron and the ‘Unhappy’ Renewal of the ‘Trad’ Movement by Timothy Flanders

Pope Benedict would later write concerning his formative years before the Council about his “anti-Roman resentment … imparted to us by our studies” [1] and that “we all had a certain contempt for the nineteenth century; it was fashionable then, somewhat kitsch piety and over-sentimentality — we wanted to overcome all that. We wanted a new era of piety” [2].
He recalls that when he saw the original document on revelation at Vatican II (on behalf of which Ottaviani had pleaded), he wished to circumvent the Magisterium in order to impose his own interpretation of Tradition upon it [3]. He “wanted out of classical Thomism[.] … Thomas’s writings were textbooks, by and large, and impersonal somehow[.] … I didn’t want to operate only in a stagnant and closed philosophy, but in a philosophy understood as a question — what is man, really? — and particularly to enter into the new, contemporary philosophy” [4].
Such castigation of the fathers of the immediate past and the imposition instead of their own interpretation of Tradition seems to be the defining characteristic of the Nouvelle Théologie party. This was the party that, in Barron’s words, “won the day at Vatican II.” This attitude on display by these men appears to run contrary to piety, opening up questions about the continuity that is claimed.

Is the reference to piety here when talking about Tradition and its expressions misplaced? Is a particular linguistic and theological expression of Tradition more important than the Person of Christ?

But at Vatican II, the conservatives switched sides and allied themselves with the liberals in order to overcome the prior Magisterium. They successfully convinced enough bishops to throw out all the original documents (save one, written by Bugnini). They suppressed all the warnings from Ottaviani and others, who stated that their dreams of a springtime were naïve. But after the Council was done, Barron notes, the liberals and conservatives immediately broke into two warring parties, represented in the journals Concilium and Communio.

 But was reconciling the Church with modernity or the modern world the only goal of these "conservatives" or these reformers aligned with or following Ressourcement?

This crisis will be overcome when conservatives renounce forever their alliance with the liberal heretics and unite themselves in charity to the traditionalists they once shunned. They must renew their filial piety toward the pontificates of Bl. Pius IX and St. Pius X.

This is to be stuck in an ecclesiological and theological rut, and of course merely re-confirms the Latin belief that Magisterium of the Church is to be centered in the person of the bishop of Rome.

Is There an Ur Tradition?

Had time to look up something that I had been considering but had put aside.

Latin polemics against Orthodox tradition on divorce and remarriage generally focus exclusively on the Byzantines, arguing that the tradition was a human innovation arising from capitulation to human weakness and state pressure or accomodation. Those polemicists do not look at divorce and remarriage within the Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian Churches.

So I took a quick look -- it appears that there is ecclesiastical divorce (and remarriage) in at least the Assyrian, Armenian, Syro-Malankara/Syriac Orthodox, and Coptic Churches. So how would the Latins respond to that? Most likely: "Only Rome has maintained the purity of the Apostolic Tradition, because the pope is the sucessor of St. Peter!"

Is the origin of the Latin tradition on divorce and remarriage linked to the origin of the Latin tradition on clerical continence/celibacy? Latin polemicists, again: "Apostolic Tradition!"


Related: NEW BOOK – Divorce and Remarriage in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition
Oikonomia, Divorce and Remarriage in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition by Rev. Dr. Kevin Schembri (an article published in Melita Theologica)

Related: Divorce and Remarriage of Orthodox Copts in Egypt: The 2008 State Council Ruling and the Amendment of the 1938 Personal Status Regulations by Nathalie Bernard-Maugiron

Questions on Authority in Liturgy

From "Reflections on authority in liturgy today" by Dom Alcuin Reid:

Earlier I asserted that there was a disturbing issue in respect of Pope Pius XII’s exegesis of the premise lex orandi, lex credendi in Mediator Dei whereby he asserts that it is the rule of belief which determines the rule of prayer, and not the other way around. When this was published in 1947 the dangers inherent in this reversal may not have been all that apparent. Sadly, they have become all to clear in the ensuing decades.

For if the Sacred Liturgy (its rites, prayers, chants, and associated arts, etc.) are a “a constitutive element of the holy and living Tradition,” this organism, as handed on in tradition, is itself an essential source for experiencing the Faith and for knowing and reflecting upon what we believe: the Sacred Liturgy is itself theologia prima.5 However, if what we believe determines the rule of prayer, the liturgy can (or ought to) be refashioned according to changes in theology so as to reflect the latter. It is no longer a primary source of theology, but its mirror.

Again, this may not have seemed so dangerous a thing to say in 1947, but by 1967 when what Catholics believed seemed at best to be in flux and at worst in utter turmoil, its potential to underpin a concomitant liturgical revolution was clear. Indeed by 1977 this principle’s potential had been exploited at the official level with a new set of liturgical books reflecting a new theology. At a local level, with very little exercise of liturgical discipline by competent authority, there were extremes: Catholic liturgy was widely regarded as a subjective matter for the local community to “plan,” using even the modern liturgical books with all their options as mere resources rather than receiving them as containing the liturgy given by the Church to be celebrated faithfully. What was believed determined how we prayed: the divergent paucity of the former informed the radical diversity of the latter. There were notable exceptions, of course, but this problem was widespread in both parishes, seminaries and religious communities and, as we know, it manifested itself no more clearly than in the realm of liturgical music.

1. What if a tradition is not being prayed, as was the case for those faithful who did not understand Latin? Monastics and clerics might understand it, but should the normative value of the liturgy rest solely on their participation? How can the sensus fidei/fidelium be exercised properly if the lay people do not understand it? How can there be legitimate development of the liturgy in such an ecclesial environment?

2. What is the source of legitimate development and how is it recognized? (Who has the authority to create or authorize new texts, but the bishops?) Is episcopal approval sufficient, or do the new texts need to be properly received by the Christian faithful as well?

For monastic communities in which all members understand Latin the reception of new liturgical texts composed by members within those communities may not be problematic. Is it enough that they are then adopted by secular priests or bishops for them to be legitimated?

3. Theologia prima - in light of (1) and (2) do we need to re-evaluate the usefulness of the axiom "Lex orandi, lex credendi" or whether it is correct or how it should be understood? How can one pray without not first believing? How can the liturgical texts be put on the same level as Sacred Scripture or oral Tradition? This might be true of the primitive Christian liturgical texts, but is it also true of those texts that replaced them or were added to them?

I am aware that Latin traditionalists are critical even of Mediator Dei but at the moment I cannot see how their concerns are justified because of the above.

4. For me there is also the recurring question of what "sacrifice" means, and how this word has been employed within texts of the Roman rite. Has it been used properly?

Thinking about the taxonomy of Latin Catholics and the second Vatican Council... who were the "progressives" during the council? What did they seek to change? And the "conservatives"? What did they seek to conserve? The status quo? For the conservatives, perhaps, orthodoxy is identified solely with scholastic formulae, a tradition within the Latin ecclesial tradition but not the only one. Some of the progressives may have wanted to shift the expression of teaching to other traditions; the Ressourcement theologians for example wanted some sort of return to the Church Fathers. Does that mean all progressives were right-minded? There may have been some who were heterodox, seeking to change the beliefs or moral norms of Tradition, just as there are heterodox among Latin clergy and theologians today. And even if some progressives were correct that the Latin churches need to shift their expression of doctrine away from neoscholasticism, it does not mean that their judgement about necessary changes in discipline or liturgy were also correct.

How many of the Ressourcement theologians were willing to concede that what had been taken to be definitive expressions of Sacred Tradition by western councils and popes in the second millenium may not be so?

Related:
CWR Dispatch: A "Conclave" for Camelot by Mary Jo Anderson
Robert Harris's new thriller is about papal intrigue and Vatican politics; it is also an example of how progressives envision the Catholic Church changing with the times.

Latin Religious Orders and the Question of Identity

What if SJWs were to attack Jesuits and their educational institutions for the crime of destroying (or failing to respect) native cultures in their missionary efforts. After all, inculturation was still a means to bringing Christianity to other peoples -- the SJWs could claim that Christianity was nonetheless forced upon them, and thus their original non-Christian culture was destroyed. The Jesuits should have instead recognized that truth is to be found in every culture. Would the Jesuits surrender to the SJWs? I was thinking of the recent controversy surrounding Providence College as well -- couldn't SJWs object to the Dominicans being in charge because of their association with the Inquisition and the suppression of the Albigensians, who should have been free to believe whatever they wanted. Perhaps capitulation on the question of the use of the "Western" canon in a liberal education would not be enough for them.

The Jesuits are already doing whatever they can to accomodate multiculturalism; the Dominicans have shown some resistance at Providence College but it is not clear that the administration will be able to defend their preference for the Western intellectual tradition. Can Dominicans be "nation-less" while at the same time upholding the Western intellectual tradition as being an important part of Roman Catholicism? How can they do so if Roman Catholicism is not Western but aspires to some sort of univeralism? What relation do American Jesuits and Dominicans have to Western/European identity? And how can they take a stand on the question without alienating one group (Anglo-Americans and those identify with them) or the other (those who reject that identity)? Would they understand that any sort of compromise solution (in the direction of multiculturalism) is nonetheless a failure at the political level? Can they pretend to remain above ethnonationalism even if they believe they must be so for the sake of preaching the Gospel? (And if that were their ultimate justification, is it the case that their educational endeavors are a necessary part of that?)

In Christendom it could be possible for members of international religious orders to identify as being part of a united Christendom with a common language (Latin) and culture (even if the Holy Roman Empire never achieved political unification). They could still be attentive to the differences of local cultures and peoples. (Did they or the Church in general do anything to resist the homogenization of language and culture that accompanied nationalism and the rise of the modern nation-state?)

If peoples are determined to separate, should they stand in the way or preach a (non-existent) duty for them to stay together? It is proper for missionaries to assimilate to whatever people they wish to evangelize (in so far as it is morally possible for them to do so), but religious orders cannot have a multicultural university without destroying the university as such. They must either create an alternative institution or acquiesce to the fact that the university cannot serve those who reject its mission of passing on a particular intellectual tradition and culture.