The Hermeneutic of Continuity

My good friend Hilariter , who must by now be near to finishing his Doctorate on St Hilary of Poitiers, doesn't update his blog very often but when he does, it is worth reading. Yesterday he had a fascinating account of a trip to Anagni. Although the museum was " in restauro " (closed for restoration) - an expression with which you become wearily familiar in Italy, the intrepid Father managed to get in, courtesy of a couple of priests who were around. They got to see the mitre of St Thomas Becket and other relics. The frescoes depicting the death of the martyr Bishop St Magnus owe much to the story of St Thomas Becket. As in all good Italian gite, the day included lunch at a "good but cheap trattoria " - that is one of the great blessings of life in Italy. You can have a large bowl of pasta, fresh local bread, and a carafe of local wine for about as much as you would pay for a sandwich and a "smoothie" in London. In another tradition of such days out, ...

Many thanks to the Mulier Fortis for posting some photos from yesterday's Solemn Requiem Mass for the 850th anniversary of the death of Pope Adrian IV (Nicholas Breakspeare). Go over to her post Requiem For A Pope... to see more.

This evening at Blackfen, I celebrated a Solemn High Requiem Mass with absolution at the catafalque, for the repose of the soul of Pope Adrian IV (Nicholas Breakspeare) who died 850 years ago today. Mgr Gordon Read was Deacon and Fr William Young was Subdeacon. We had a full complement of servers and several visitors who travelled some distance for the occasion. At the panegyric, as well as summarising the late Holy Father's life, I spoke of the need for us always to remember to pray for the repose of the souls of those who have died, and the reminder of eternity that the Liturgy of the Church places before us.

Catholic rapper Akalyte has this on Matt 16.18. Rap is not really my cup of tea (don't look so surprised!) but I do rather like the way that the voice of Archbishop Fulton Sheen starts it off and then pops up now and again. H/T Jane Teresa at My heart was restless

Firm, wise, and kindly advice from Fr Michael Mary FSSR to a commenter who has been attending a sedevacantist chapel. Father's advice includes the following: [...] take a pen and a piece of paper, kneel down and write the following note: “I believe in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ upon the Apostle Peter, and today I fully accept Pope Benedict XVI as the true Pope of the Catholic Church and I submit myself to his authority in obedience to the same Jesus Christ who will come to judge the living and the dead and the world by fire. Amen.” Then sign the paper and put the date beside your signature. I advise you to make this act of submission to the Vicar of Christ. You will see the good that it will do for you. While you are over at the blog of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer , have a look at the new ship that has arrived to help them transport a marble altar, church furnishings, sheep, cattle, stone chips, fuel, tractor, trailer and m...

Clerical Whispers has an illustrated post on The Evolution Of The Popemobile . I expect that some would not wish this taught in schools since it is a theory rather than a fact - although the photos give some evidence of transitional popemobiles. My own concern is, of course, the hermeneutic of continuity and I think we can discern this in papal transport. First look at this example from 1930, the Mercedes-Benz Nürburg 460, reckoned to the first real popemobile. Custom-built for Pope Pius XI, it has a central throne in the rear: Now have a look at the Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL Laundaulet from 1966, just after the close of the second Vatican Council: I think one can observe here a new expression of apostolic mobility without any essential break or rupture with the past.

The above is only the first part in a series of videos uploaded to YouTube by Darsham . (Go to his channel to find the others.)

Hallowed Ground is a blog dedicated to "Traditional Catholic Visualism". It is a goldmine for pictures of popes, Cardinals and scenes of historical interest. Above is Pope Benedict XV - I did not really know what he looked like. Here is a very good picture of Pope St Pius X

Sandro Magister has a fascinating story concerning the Credo of the People of God issued by Pope Paul VI in 1968. (Cf. The Credo of Paul VI. Who Wrote It, and Why ) Between Maritain, the great theologian Charles Journet and Pope Paul VI, the text arose, principally written by Maritain, according to an article by Cardinal Cottier in Trenta Giorni . I well remember the little red CTS copy of the Credo of the People of God . Fr Nesbitt handed copies round to us at school and I read it avidly as a teenager when the faith was being attacked all around in modernist sermons, the destruction of catechetics - yes, and the collapse of the Liturgy. The Credo of the People of God was one of those anchors by which ordinary Catholics could assure themselves that the faith of the Church had not changed, and that we still believed what the Fathers believed. Here is a link to the text of the Credo of the People of God . H/T Fr Z

James Mary Evans at Orate Fratres has posted this clip of the Palm Sunday Mass at St Joan of Arc parish in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (For more information on the parish, see Lifesite and Stella Borealis .) James asks: 1. Is the final dark robed figure seen at the end of this clip a visible representation of an unseen reality, as Cardinal Noè 2. Are recent comments from the Vatican concerning UFO’s preparing us for a visitation by frightening creatures who resemble the Jesus found within this video? The reference to Cardinal Noè is in connection with his recent interview with Petrus which I have not posted about yet. Fr Z has a translation . This is the key passage: Papa Montini, for Satan, meant to include all those priests or bishops and cardinals who didn’t render worship to the Lord by celebrating badly (mal celebrando) Holy Mass because of an errant interpretation of the implementation of the Second Vatican Council. He spoke of the smoke of Satan because he maintained that those p...

Sandro Magister has a most interesting article about a two volume work by Carlo Fantappiè entitled "Chiesa romana e modernità giuridica (The Roman Church and juridical modernity)" which looks at the Code of Canon Law promulgated by Pope Saint Pius X. (See: Saint Pius X, a Backward Pope? No, an Unprecedented Cyclone of Reform ) He appends a review of the book by Gianpaolo Romanato. The thesis is that far from being a static, reactionary pontificate, the reign of Pope St Pius X was a cyclone of modernisation in response to the changed conditions in society that had developed during the 19th century. The code of canon law made possible a disciplinary and administrative uniformity that enabled the Church to deal with the modern nation state. The effect of this centralisation and the increased emphasis given to papal authority within the Church certainly brought about many positive developments. Regarding the Liturgy, however, as Alcuin Reid pointed out in his work "The Organ...

Fr Charles Briggs is an expert on 19th century Church history, particularly the life and letters of Mgr Talbot and the life of Blessed Pope Pius IX. One of the main purposes of our trip outside the walls of Rome today was to visit the shrine of Blessed Pope Pius IX. Having duly offered a prayer asking for his intercession, and collected a couple of holy cards, we looked at the rest of the very Roman basilica of San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura. Here is the statue of St Lawrence with his gridiron: Downstairs there is a piece of marble on which St Lawrence's body lay when it was collected by the Christians after his martyrdom. The Basilica has a monumental ambo together with a candlestick for the Paschal candle. This is not the only basilica in Rome that demonstrates visually that the reform of the Liturgy after Vatican II often in practice had little to do with restoring ancient use and a lot to do with dumbing down and the fear of anything beautiful and ancient. The great ambo and candles...

Thanks to New Liturgical Movement for the link to this fascinating pamphlet from 1904: Our Position. A Word in Reference to the Plain Chant Question (pdf) by Dom Raphael Molitor OSB, of Beuron Abbey who explains: In the following pages you will find, dear reader, a brief reply to the most important questions in regard to plain chant raised by the Motu proprio of our Holy Father, Pius X ... The booklet has been written for your enlightenment and to calm your mind. Dom Raphael patiently demonstrated why a single edition of the proposed Vatican Edition of the Gradual was necessary, argued that the melodies were not too difficult for parish choirs, given the right motivation, and that the Holy Father was not insisting on any sudden change or that Gregorian chant should be used exclusively but was insisting that the ancient chant should be used and that is was proper to obey him. 100 years later ...

As reported here previously ( A reform which still "challenges" ), Archbishop Marini was invited to launch his new book "A Challenging Reform" in the throne room at Westminster. There is an interesting article by the widely respected commentator John Allen Marini's book on liturgy: The future of the liturgy is the future of Christianity . Here is a part of the article: When I’m on the lecture circuit, there’s a story I like to tell to illustrate the sometimes surprising diversity inside the Vatican. It’s set in the summer of 2002, when Pope John Paul II was in Mexico City to canonize Juan Diego, the Aztec visionary in the Our Lady of Guadalupe devotion. At the moment in the canonization Mass when John Paul read out the Latin formula declaring Juan Diego a saint, pandemonium broke out in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Confetti fell from the ceiling, drums beat and horns blared, and a knot of indigenous dancers began to gyrate down a catwalk. Inside, it fe...

This letter was sent to the Tablet but not published. (I'm always happy to publish good letters that somehow do not get to be published in that forum.) Something Fishy! It was most interesting to read Michael Northcott's exhortation that "Pro-life should mean saying no to pollutants." (Clouds of Witness 1/9/07) He argues that ecological issues have been neglected by recent papal teaching on the basis that 'John Paul II believed the greatest moral challenge was...threats to pre-natal human life and efforts to restrain population growth.' But I find this does not stand up to scrutiny when scientific evidence [which many environmentalists choose to ignore] points precisely to the threat to the environment by the chemical pollutants caused by the synthetic hormones in contraceptive pills and devices. One recalls the shocking evidence of the scientists from the University of Denver Colorado in 2005 and which again was highlighted in July this year;who studied mutan...

Many Catholic blogs have highlighted this - I am happy to give a heads-up to the New Liturgical Movement whose article I clipped in bloglines. The new Vatican City State website has a page about the Vatican Film Library with a collection of downloadable videos. It is amazing to see footage of Pope Leo XIII.

There is a most interesting article in National Review Online by Ion Mihai Pacepa, ( Wikipedia article ) the "highest ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the Soviet bloc." Entitled Moscow’s Assault on the Vatican , he tells the story of how the KGB set out to discredit Pope Pius XII and were behind the play The Deputy . Amy Wellborn's post Is this for real? has a discussion in the combox. One point is worth mentioning - have you seen anything about this in the news? No, I didn't think so.

Over at Valle Adurni , Fr Sean Finnegan has twenty posts featuring photographs from the coronation of Pope John XXIII and commentary.

Aaron asked about the antipope Benedict XIII. Well, it is quite a long story so I shall just give a few pointers. Between 1378 and 1417, there were rival claimants to the papacy, located at Rome and Avignon. An attempted resolution at Pisa added a third claimant. The Wikipedia article "Western Schism" and the Catholic Encyclopaedia article "Western Schism" give the basic information about what happened. It was an utter mess. As the Catholic Encyclopaedia comments of the time of Urban VI (Rome) and Clement VII (Avignon): The saints themselves were divided: St Catherine of Siena, St. Catherine of Sweden, Bl. Peter of Aragon, Bl. Ursulina of Parma, Philippe d'Alencon, and Gerard de Groote were in the camp of Urban; St. Vincent Ferrer, Bl. Peter of Luxemburg, and St. Colette belonged to the party of Clement. The schism was brought to an end by the Council of Constance which deposed Benedict XIII (Avignon) and John XXIII (Pisa), and accepted the resignation of Greg...