Account of yesterdays Speccie debate

After keeping us updated with tweets yesterday on the Spectator debate, Anna Arco has now written up an account: Atavistic tribes: England should be a Catholic country

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The minefield of clerical titles in modern Britain

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Yesterday, the BBC website carried an article headed "Catholic cardinals urge end of 'homosexual agenda'" reporting on the open letter of Cardinals Burke and Brandmüller in advance of the “Protection of Minors in the Church” Meeting. (The full text of the excellent open letter can be found at the National Catholic Register "Cardinals Burke and Brandmüller: ‘End the Conspiracy of Silence’".)

The BBC article is typical of the soft, understated and deniable, but unmistakable spin which makes our licence-fee-favoured national broadcaster so irritating. There is also a gaffe in which one paragraph refers to Cardinal Burke as "Mr Burke", leading to this exchange on Twitter this afternoon:
Doubt it’s a deliberate insult. The average @bbc reporter probably has no idea that a cardinal is a Catholic priest. https://t.co/jXDxthVSQF — Damian Thompson (@holysmoke) February 21, 2019I agree with Damian - although the BBC chose to run the article, it is fairly …
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The "McCarrick Test" and its implications for the papacy

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The intervention of CNN's Delia Gallagher at the Vatican Press Conference last Friday has been circulated widely on social media. There were other good, challenging questions asked during the summit, notably by Sandro Magister, Philip Pullella, Inés San Martín, and Diane Montagna, but Gallagher's seemed to me the most devastating (at 2'10" in the above video). She recalled the meeting of US Cardinals in Rome in 2002 concerning child abuse and pointed out that the reassuring face of the crisis at that time, promising that there would be zero tolerance and an end to cover-up, was Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, whom we now know to have been an abuser himself, and who has recently been dismissed from the clerical state as a result. Gallagher asked Cardinals Cupich and O'Malley how the Cardinals were now holding each other accountable and how they would assure the American people that what happened then is now going to change.

Referring to this question, Matthew Bunson …
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The problems with moving Confirmation to before first Communion

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Every now and again, a Bishop who is concerned for his flock decides to put in place a new policy whereby the sacrament of Confirmation is administered before the reception of first Holy Communion.

Usually, the primary justification for this change is that the sacraments are restored to their proper order - everybody knows, don't they, that in the "early Church", Confirmation was received before the Holy Eucharist. The villain of the story is St Pius X who, though a great chap in other ways, messed the sacraments up by radically lowering the age for Holy Communion.

You may have suspected by now that I don't buy any of these arguments. I don't, and furthermore, I think that the practice of putting Confirmation before first Communion in the context of the present practice of the western Church causes a break with both Eastern and Western tradition without offering any worthwhile advantage.

Tertullian is our earliest witness for the rite of Baptism. As the patrolog…
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"Celebration" and the pitfalls of language

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When posting on Twitter about celebrating Mass at the Lady altar at Bournemouth (above) I was taken to task for using the expression "celebrate Mass" instead of a better choice such as "offering the Holy Sacrifice." The expression "celebrate Mass" is very Novus Ordo language apparently.

It is easy to defend oneself against such a criticism. Celebrare was used in the third century throughout his writings by St Cyprian, one of the first ecclesiastical writers to use Latin; the traditional prayer of intention for the priest before Mass begins "Ego volo celebrare Missam ..."

St Thomas Aquinas quotes (ST 3a 83.1 corp) the Secret which is in the traditional Missal for the 9th Sunday after Pentecost:
"quoties huius hostiae commemoratio celebratur, opus nostrae redemptionis exercetur" and indeed there are many uses of celebrare in the prayers of the Roman Missal. A fine example is the collect for the feast of St Simon and St Jude which goes b…
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The value of learning by heart

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The Synod of Bishops in 1977 considered the theme "Catechesis in our Time" and in 1979, St John Paul II issued his Apostolic Exhortation Catechesi Tradendae which I remember reading as soon as it was available: in those days we had to wait for a printed version but the CTS were always quick off the mark.

A section which struck me then and I think is worth recalling, is paragraph 55 on memorisation (spelt in the official English version with the American Z, of course.) St John Paul recognised the disadvantages that can be associated with learning things by heart, but lamented the suppression of memorisation in catechesis. He says:
"A certain memorization of the words of Jesus, of important Bible passages, of the Ten Commandments, of the formulas of profession of the faith, of the liturgical texts, of the essential prayers, of key doctrinal ideas, etc., far from being opposed to the dignity of young Christians, or constituting an obstacle to personal dialogue with the L…
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