The Trouble with the Poor

The trouble with the poor is that they are messy.

There is a secluded area between the church and our hall, a passage, occasionally we find someone has got a few cardboard boxes together and has slept there and if it has been raining leaves a sodden blanket, cardboard there to be cleaned up, often it also smells of urine and there is often excrement there and sometimes a used needle or two.
There is a man who comes into the church, especially during the trad Mass and during the silence of the Canon will pray aloud, "Jesus, I want you to bless Fr Ray and ...., and God, can you persuade the good people here to give to the poor, I am poor", unchecked he will take his cap off and have a collection. It makes a mess of our prayers, it stops some coming to Mass here.

If they are not doing that they are ringing the door bell at every hour of the day and night, and they tell lies. They tell you their Gran is dying in Southampton and they need the train fare, you give it to them and if you don't find them drunk in the street they are back the next day and the other Gran is dying in Hastings this time.

After delivering the poor, the treasure of the Roman Church, to Valerian's palace Laurence was grilled to death. What I don't believe is, the legend tells us, Laurence said to his executioners when he had been on the griddle sometime, "turn me over, I am done on this side". I don't believe it but there is an important message in these words, even in our pain and suffering we can grow complacent, 'the poor' challenge our complacency. They interrupt our comfort, our prayer, our routine bringing the mess of their lives into our lives.

There is an interesting discussion on sin on Cranmer's blog, sin indeed is a metaphysical reality, the Protestant argument was against the pre-reformation Catholic Pelagian practice of salvation through works, the Catholic conter-reformation argument was against Protestant belief that once you were saved you were saved. Catholic's believe the great danger in Protestantism is complacency, having received 'the blessed assurance' of Salvation one can relax. The Catholic doctrine is that complacency about salvation is dangerous, hence the counter-reformation and biblical teaching of 'faith fruitful in good works', no 'assurance' can guarantee salvation, it is God's free gift, unknown to us until judgement day.
The sin of the Pharisees, of the rich man in the story of Dives and Lazarus is complacence. The rich man didn't even notice the mess that Lazarus created at his front door, he didn't respond to it, he needed someone to bring him out of his complacency.

My big difficulty with confession at the moment is that I have grown complacent in my lifestyle, I don't want it changed, the message of the Gospels seem to be let the poor into it to mess it up a little.

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Bits of Beauty

I was a little amused at Mass this evening we had two seminarians, one a member of the Society of St Peter, ascetic looking, prayerful before, during and after Mass, assisted in choro, someone said it was beautiful to watch him on the sanctuary. I think it is beautiful to watch devout young men at prayer, and especially those who want to offer God their lives.

At the back of the Church there was another seminarian, this one was a former Anglican, who is married with children. Tonight he had his small daughter with him, a nice one year old who cooed contentedly during Mass. I heard her occasionally but didn't see her until after Mass, when her dad brought her into the house, it was beautiful to see her father with her, his love for her and her trust in him. It would have been beautiful to watch him praying and nursing his daughter.

They were externally quite dissimilar, internally both illuminated by the same desire for God.

The beauty of the Church is primarily seen its people where we glimpse something of the beauty of God, at the top of this is Michael Voris video on beauty, he is talking the Church's rich heritage of artistic beauty, what an earlier age without condemnation would have described as 'artificial beauty' or the 'beauty of artifice'.

I feel so fortunate as priest being surrounded by so much which is truly beautiful, the other night I had dinner with a couple who were so obviously deeply in love who together were trying cope with the tragic death of their son. That too was beautiful. As was the way our sacristan had prepared and laid out my vestments for vigil of Saint Laurence.

It is too easy to make distinctions between natural beauty and artificial beauty both emanate from God.
I watched this film after Mass, there are some interesting Concilliar themes from 1944, again there are moments of tear jerking beauty in it.

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Thoughts between Sixtus and Laurence

I am not sure why Archbishop Pozzo went back to Ecclesia Dei but I think it is significant that his successor as Almoner to the Holy Father Msgr. Konrad Krajewski has a reputation for going around Vatican City collecting left over food, even from the Pope's own table, to redistribute to Rome's hungry. Apparently beggars taunt stingy ecclesiastics by asking, 'What would Pope Francis say?'

Yesterday was the commemoration of the martyrdom of St Sixtus II and his companions  and Saturday is the feast of St Laurence the deacon, Pope Sixtus' 'Almoner' who would have been martyred with his Pope and four other Deacons, except he was sent to collect 'the treasure of the Church of Rome'. During the days between the two feasts he gathered all the poor, the widows, the orphans, the sick together, all who the Church cared for and brought them to the Emperor, crying out, "Behold the treasure of the Church of Rome, O Emperor". Consequently the Emperor not best pleased had him slowly barbecued to death.


There is a sub-story to these last few days of Laurence's life, which is that he sent to his native Valencia the Holy Grail, which still exist today, and apparently is a 1st century Palestinian chalice. It was never returned to Rome and was used by Pope Benedict on his visit to Spain. One can imagine Laurence quite frenetically trying to organise things before his death, safeguarding the sacred, trying to send some people away from Rome, organising continuing care for the poor during the sede vacante brought about by Sixtus' martyrdom, and presumably knowing he wouldn't be around to see the new Pope, who from the moment of his election would be a marked man and would probably also perish in Valerian's persecution. For Laurence, I suspect as prepared for his end must have thought it was more or less the end of the Roman Church.

It is interesting that Sixtus' companions were actually deacons and not presbyters. Following my last post someone asked what should we do with a Church crisis. The obvious answer is, "Do whatever he tells you".

The Church has a real credibility problem, if people do not believe in her teaching, then they will not believe in her, if they do not believe her they will not believe in Christ and are lost. The deacons of Rome where essentially the Church's administrators, assisting the Pope in the Liturgy but also involved in preparing the sacrifice, the care of sacred things and the discipline of the Church, in the Roman Rite, unlike many of the Eastern Rites they were the ones who proclaimed the Gospel. It is worth remembering St Francis was a deacon, not a priest. I suspect what we should do is what Pope Francis seems to be doing and what Francis and Laurence did and what I hope the Pope intends Msgr. Krajewski to do: to gather the poor and to serve them.

There are two very obvious things Jesus tells us to do, one very much ad intra "Do this in remembrance of me" speaking of the Eucharist to the Apostles but to the disciples it is ad extra. he says feed, clothe, visit. It is not just that we should do charitable things, it is about a movement away from self, it fits in with the Great Commandment: loving God and our neighbour in place of ourselves. Replacing self love with altruistic love for God expressed through our neighbour. That is the Gospel.

In the 20th Century the State took away from the Church much of those carefully built up social care organisations built up over the centuries, it was these that gave us credibility both to ourselves and to the world.
After the Second Vatican Council the Church became obsessed by itself, it became Churchy, obsessed by talk of internal structures; the roles of laity, clergy, religious, forever talking about the minutiae of theology; talking about the liturgy rather than praying it, talking about scripture rather than living it, debating morality rather than actually being moral. The nadir in England was the Intelligence Squared debate 'Is the Catholic Church a force for good?' The overwhelming response was, "No, it is not", it was not even considered good, that was hardly surprising. Scandals and inaction, the failure to do much that touches the lives of ordinary men and women have allowed the Church, our Bishops and Clergy to become the butt of humour rather than the 'Light of the Nations', for the media except as a source of negative news the Church has nothing to offer.

Christians need to reach out to the poor  to learn to love, the Church needs to reach out to the poor in order to be the Church. The poor give the Church the dignity of meaning, otherwise we are just a pious club, a talking shop, if we do not give food for starving bodies we have nothing to give to starving souls. We must have need to show love tangibly, the Word needs to be made flesh.

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From Grandma's knee to the Specialist

Just continuing cogitating on the nature of Catholicism...

I remember preparing some children for first Holy Communion when I was first ordained, the eldest was twelve the youngest barely seven, they were wily and bright but hardly educated, they could read only a little, they were an Irish traveller family, most of the preparation was done by their Grandmother who was illiterate who used to drill them in the catechism sitting by a paraffin stove in her caravan, dispensing sweets to those who got answer right. Obviously they didn't understand much of what they repeated but they knew the words and formulas, and they knew the prayers. They knew the old prayers, like the Confiteor with the saints, prayers to Our Lady, lots of them and their favourite the prayer to St Michael. I admit even after 1st Confession and Communion they weren't that good at attending Mass, presumably in part because of the traveller lifestyle. When they did attend, even with my expert catechesis, they didn't seem to understand the Mass, they either fidgeted throughout especially during the readings. Their grandmother tried to encourage them to say 'the beads', as her grandmother had taught her, ' it was easier for the children with Latin Mass', she used to say. For everyone from their community the liturgy but especially the liturgy of the Word simply passed over them like a silken veil, they were bored stiff. As far as morality was concerned, it was adapted to their needs, Grandma assured me 'we don't steal from one another, Father, and it would be shameful if one of the girls married and wasn't a virgin'.

St Vincent of Lerins in the 5th cent said,

"catholic is that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all" 

my traveller family could certainly sign up to that they believed, they were fortunate Grandma  passed on what she received. She had the confidence to pass it on, in the same way as her ancestors had past it on to her. Fr Richard Aladics has done a series on the rise and fall of Corpus Christi Catechetical Institute which rose in 1965 and finally fell in 1975, his posts on it end here. CCCI was a great and destructive experiment in catechesis which still has its perverse effects today in the English speaking world. One of its chief consequences was to make catechesis something belonging to specialists rather than grandma sitting by the fire with her brood, and what can be said of catechesis can be said of worship and morality too.

It would be difficult for us today to suggest the words of St Vincent actually defined Catholicism today. The faith of the ordinary Catholic, NOT in the pew on a Sunday, the product of our Catholic school system, somewhere between 90-97% of those who we might regard as Catholic, is certainly not the faith presented in the Catechism of the Church. It is our habit to inflate figures, apparently the estimated figures for attendance at WYD, 3 million, would suggest 7 people per square meter on the beach with the Pope, which is unbelievable. In what sense should we regard as Catholic those 1.4 billion estimated as being the number of Catholics in the world? Perhaps statistics should not be taken too seriously especially when used by men of the Church.

St Vincent's word seem to suggest that 'the faith' is something from below, passed on by grandmothers around the fire, rather than something which comes above, from the Catechism, from Rome, from specialists. There is certainly an important role in oversight of the faith from above, correcting error in calling to obedience but somehow there is a need to find ways in which the faith can be given back to the people.

There was a story sometime ago of an Orthodox priest in Russia who 'married'  a homosexual couple, the local men gathered and razed the church to the ground. If such a thing happened in Europe the response would be indifference. The majority of Catholics would either go along the priest, with a 'father knows best' attitude or would probably feel the Church is behind the times and needs to catch up. Whatever the motivation, the Catholic attitude is that what we believe is changeable. The reaction to Pope Francis' election was that everything could change along with the Pope, it is the one thing that unites Traditional and Conservative Catholics with Liberals and Progressives. This is a worrying state. The Papal oath abandoned by Paul VI not to change anything, along with the outward signs that Benedict tried to restore, gave some stability to the Papacy, the unchanging Liturgy, the sense that Liturgy was a given gave stability to the Church.

At the heart of St Vincent's words is the notion of continuation, a timelessness and universality, 'always, everywhere and by all'. The understanding of Catholic merely as 'universal' is a foreshortening, it is the timelessness of it that is important. In many ways the dismantling of the ancient liturgy following VII undermined the sense of 'always'. If the worship after 1968 could be changed, so could the content of 'the faith' and if the changes were enforced from above, from Rome then surely this is also the source of 'the faith', Again, if the liturgy could vary so widely from Mass at the High Altar of Brompton Oratory, with traditional vestments and music and in Latin to Father X sitting on a bean bag wearing just a stole making it up as he went along, why could 'the faith' not also be variable. Despite its intention VII taught, subliminally at least, especially through the liturgy, that Catholicism was what Ratzinger would define as 'Relativistic', most importantly of all by Father quite literally turning his back on that which was held holy by past generations, if not smashing it with a sledgehammer.

'The faith' post VII, was not the faith of the previous generations, it was in a state of flux. The movement of the Blessed Sacrament in some diocese from the centre of the apse to a side chapel or a tabernacle in the corner of the sanctuary and rubrics restricting the genuflections of the priest, said what we believed yesterday about the Real Presence is not what we believe today, similarly the change in funeral rites from sombre black, the Dies Irae, intercession for the dead to Mass in thanksgiving for the life of the dead person brought in a serious undermining of one of Catholicism most important certainties about death and judgement, again it said what we believed yesterday, we do not believe today.

The wholesale rubbishing of the pre-Concilliar 'the faith' by those charged with implementing the post-Concilliar teaching did little to boost the confidence of those who had received the faith at grandmothers' knees. This certainly served to place the 'the faith' in the hands the specialist, especially as their main point was to underline and explain all that was new in contradistinction to what had been passed on. Even amongst the clergy and religious those things that had often attracted them to the priesthood or religious life were often considered evil and simply swept away.

The curriculum in seminaries and houses of formation were often aimed at rooting out that which was passed on, hence scripture was more about teaching the untrustworthiness of scripture, moral theology became how to get around traditional Catholic morality, liturgy became a justification for ditching past practices, theology rather than deepening faith tended to undermine it, theology tended to emphasise rupture and to be based not on the liturgy but non-Christian philosophical notions, Rahner supplanted Aquinas. An apparently new theology with apparently new set of doctrines alienated many clergy. The great boom in vocations in the fifties ended with a whimper in the sixties, and I suspect left many clergy traumatised, trying to explain something which they didn't understand or necessarily belief in, to people who didn't understand or want what was now offered.

Just as numbers of seminarians dropped, so there was the great exeunt from the clergy over Humanae Vitae, whether this was directly to do with birth-control or simply a reason to leave for clergy who had lost faith in the Church will be up to historians to judge. The significant change was that the clergy were left offering a faith which was received from somewhere else, the Council Fathers, which was not what they received from their parents, to give to a people who had similarly received a different tradition.

The situation has changed drastically since the heady days immediately following the Council but survey after survey reports Catholic disagree with the hierarchy, and some of the hierarchy seem to disagree with Rome on everything from celibacy to sexual morality, the Real Presence to scriptural inspiration. It is not they people believe but do not have the moral strength or insight to understand what they believe, as the pages of the Tablet reveal week by week there is a vast gulf between 'the institutional Church' and the 'the Church of the people'.

In Orthodoxy St Victor's description of 'catholic' might well stand but in the West does 'Catholic' really mean, 'that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all'? If so it should be the faith passed on by an Irish traveller grandmother sitting by the fire with her grandchildren.

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The Morphing Church

Watch this RR video entitled, "Wide Range of Music played during WYD in Brazil", well it might be a wide range but none of it strikes me as being 'Catholic', if we understand 'Catholic' music in the terms defined by the Missal and the VII documents, it all sounds incredibly Protestant or at least Charismatic.
A friend of mine who works in an area where there is a strong and active Orthodox presence spoke to me recently of Catholics who were converting to Orthodoxy because the Church was morphing into something quite 'un-Catholic'.
I can't help thinking that one of the reasons why the Church is loosing members very quickly in Brazil and South America and actually slightly more slowly in Europe, is because of a loss of 'Catholic identity'. Great damage was done when the 'Church' started teaching and something different that held and passed on by men and women in the pew.
I put up a post on the impact of St Ignatius of Loyola a few days ago trying briefly to show how the counter-Reformation Church differed in some ways quite radically from the pre-Reformation Church.
Is the same thing happening now but to a much greater extent?
The question we need to ask is what exactly is 'Catholicism'. Is it just a series of credal statements, is it a culture, is it certain moral way of understanding man's relationship with God, is it a particular way of worshipping God? In the past we could simply define being a Catholic as being in Communion with the Successor of St Peter but the last Papacy with its tortuous negotiations with the SSPX, its insistence that they were not in schism and its finding Catholicism within Anglicanism seems to have back-peddled that somewhat.
If the Church is morphing, is it from God?

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Falda Dependency

The Orthodox would see a bishop con-celebrating Mass with his clergy as a sign that the bishop can do nothing without his his clergy, and therefore with his Church, it is an important sign that he is in communion with them as much as they are in communion with him. In many ways it is sign that he can do nothing apart from his clergy and the local Church. Con-celebration in the East is an important ecclesiological sign about the dependence of a bishop.

Cardinal Cañizares Llovera has often said that Con-celebration is not part of our Western tradition and that document on the liturgy in long gestation by the CDW which was supposed to be issued in July but is unlikely to appear at all now, was rumoured to clarify the use and theology of Con-celebration, which appeared after VII without any explanation or much understanding of precisely what was happening. We introduced an oriental practice and imposed it on our occidental Eucharistic theology.

In the West the same theology of the dependence of the bishop was actually signified by other rituals. the bishop could only celebrate Mass as a bishop when surrounded by his minister, sacred and otherwise. Pontifical Mass needed the sign of assistant ministers to take place.

One of the particular aspects of the Pontifical Liturgy was that the Pope literally could do nothing without help. The ancient Papal vestments signified this dependence. The sedia gestatoria used both by the Roman Pontiff, might well have ended by being a sign of medieval power rather than dependence but many other vestments such as the falda the long skirt like vestment that extended below the hem of the alb or the papal mantella, the long cope, meant that the Pope could not even walk without assistance. They were a sign to both Pontiff and the world that nothing the Pope did was done on his own. Far from being signs of the Church Triumphant they were actually signs that the Pope's actions were restricted and absolutely dependant on those around him.

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Not a Renaissance Prince?

My understanding of the feudal world is that it was highly litigious, partly because its basis was about mutual obligation and it was reasonably static, everyone knew their rights and when they were violated they went to court. Medieval court records, at least in England show that even the lowest in society could insist on their rights even over the local Lord or other magnate, even the king. It is not surprising, as the very nature of feudalism was based on the idea of a society with God, the Lawgiver, at its very top. When it worked it was good, when it didn't work the sword ruled.

Renaissance society I always think was different. I read The Prince at an early age. It was fast moving, renaissance princes seem to have been answerable to no-one, not the Church, not God and certainly not to their inferiors, one can't quite imagine a Medici or a Tudor doing public penance like Henry II after Becket's murder.
The Renaissance was a lawless time, the princes will was law, princes were feared, the parvenu was not rooted in society, he was here today and gone tomorrow. It is no wonder Pope Francis keeps saying, 'I am not Renaissance Prince'.

One thing that does worry me about the the present Papacy is that on the one hand the Bishop of Rome is calling for transparency, especially with regard to the IOR, the Vatican Bank, and yet on the other hand seems to act as if he is unconstrained by Law or custom, just like a Renaissance Prince.
Setting as a priority the clearing out of any hint of waywardness in the IOR is certainly important and it is good place to start, It is important the Church can be trusted, especially with money but transparency has to be attached to everything in the Church not just its finances.

I admit I was quite shaken by Francis' disregard for liturgical Law and washing the feet of women despite what the rubrics plainly say. The recent negation of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate's right under the rules set out by Summorum Pontificum, which gave every Latin Rite priest the ability to choose which form of the Roman Rite he wished to use, seems not only worrying but also high handed and most probably illegal, that is worrying too. Even the decision to Canonise the Blessed John XXIII without the necessary divine sign of a further miracle, and today it is reported that the Pontiff is seriously considering the Canonisation of Pius XII. These things might be good or possibly necessary or pastorally fitting or whatever you might describe them as but what is worrying is that they cut across the proper and due process of Law. There is a very serious danger of the Church being seen as a Renaissance Principality, Papa vult is not the basis of the Church's law. If the Pope wishes for transparency he cannot act like a Renaissance Prince, he too has to be subject to the Law, bending his personal desire to it, not bending the Law to his desire.

If the Church's Law is disregarded then the Church simply becomes an institution based on it earthly leader's whim. The most important role of the Pontiff or any ruler is to ensure the law is as clear as possible and immediately obvious to everyone. The Church must be 'a just society' because God is Just. If the Pope acts without due regard to the Law why can't anyone, the answer is obvious, if we do not obey the Law we become not a just society but a band of robbers. Bringing in confusion, muddying the waters, does no good whatever and in the long term destroys the Church's credibility, especially in a time when, as His Holiness tells us some pretty dramatic reforms are likely to take place.

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