I find myself in the Spanish-speaking blogosphere.
I have never learned Spanish, but my knowledge of Italian gives me an idea of some of it – and I ran the text through Google translation to get something very vague. It was a help. I don’t know who runs Sursum Corda or what his “position” is. Perhaps he is Orthodox with a soft spot for western rites. They do exist in Spain and Latin America.
He mentions The Blue Flower without seemingly really understanding what it is about. I do have an interest in Radical Orthodoxy as one expression of neo-Platonism and at a distance from scholastic literalism, but it is just one current of thought among many others. We need to be open-minded so as not to be victims of fixed ideas that hold us prisoners rather than freeing us to seek the truth.
It’s not a bad or unkind article. I am grateful for that. I doubt that Latins would be inclined to leave comments, but we’ll see. Perhaps an old confrere at Gricigliano we called La Gran’ España. Olé!
The author of Sursum Corda is planning an article about Archbishop Pierre Martin Ngô Đình Thục. I wrote this one three years ago, and the subject matter has been flogged to death by the Archbishop’s defenders and adversaries, mostly in the USA. The sedevacantist world has settled down quite well now, but has been very similar to continuing Anglicanism in the 1990’s with the same problem of mitre-fever and immature men in the Episcopate. I see the variations on the same constant theme of human foolishness. I am grateful to see things settling down and becoming more stable, both in my own Anglican camp and with those identifying as Roman Catholics in spite of their canonical rupture from Rome.
I attach more importance to ecclesial coherence than the exact form of the rites of ordination in the Pontifical and our Anglican Ordinal. I have no problem with the validity of Anglican Orders in spite of the Reformation and the radical changing of rites. The same thing happened in the Roman Catholic Church with the novus ordo ordination rites, and they still have a valid priesthood. We do well not be obsessed with these issues of validity, but rather to live as Christians and adjusted human beings.
The Blue Flower 
Hurrah! Recalling things like Arthur Conan Doyle’s The White Company (1891)*, I wonder how much historical presence of Sarum (and/or other English Uses) there was in Spain, over the centuries? (E.g., how prepared was Catherine of Aragon – or how different would it have seemed, if she was not?)
And perhaps it is not too tangential to note the recent publication in English of José Manuel Ferrández-Bru’s biography, ‘Uncle Curro’: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Spanish Connection, about the Tolkien brothers’ guardian and ‘second father’, the Oratorian priest, Francis Morgan? Maybe (I haven’t seen it, yet!) it tells us something not only about Tolkien’s practical liturgical training and mastery of Spanish, but how these may be related to his sharp eye for liturgical and theological detail in the great Middle-English Arthurian poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
*Enjoyably read aloud by Clive Catterall at LibriVox.org – my most recent re-acquaintance with it!
Dear Father Chadwick. Thank you very much for referring to my publication. I have been a great reader of you for many years.
Sorry for my bad English, but I have not written in your language for a long time.
I am sorry if, for brevity, I did not express well in feeling of your magazine “The Blue Flower”. I will correct it.
What interest do we have in this part of the world in the Continuing Anglican movement and the Sarum Rite? For it is their links with Catholicism, with Orthodoxy and with Tradition. We admire his re-discovery of a pre-Tridentine liturgy, a liturgy that, in fact, does not contradict the Latin rite at all and that therefore reaffirms the most traditional Catholic doctrines.
In Latin America Anglo Catholicism has flourished a lot in the last twenty years. There are hundreds of small Anglo-Catholic churches (at least ten are serious). It is not a topic that I want to discuss now, but I will do it in a future article.
What I do, I am a great researcher of the Liturgy, the expression of faith and therefore, I was always attracted to the Rite of Sarum. I am also diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome (the doctor told me just in 2013 and I am 33 years old). So we have some things in common, besides our love for the liturgy, the history of the Church, and our passion for boats.
Thanks and blessings.
Thank you, Raul, for your thoughts and your ability in what must be a very difficult language for you as a Spanish-speaker. You have done very well in your posting and your comments here. Sorry I was a little hard on you.
If I may give some advice, don’t be afraid to allow your blog to be coloured by your personality and other interests. I often write about sailing even though most of my readers are interested in religion rather than sailing. Allow people to get to know you, and the blog will be really alive. You are “on the Spectrum”. It manifests itself very differently in different people, but there is a common core of a different way of thinking and experiencing our world. I greatly admire Temple Grandin and the way she overcame herself and learned to get the most out of life and make a difference.
I would certainly be interested in reading an article about Anglicanism as it has evolved in Latin America and adapted to a mentality that is so different from our Anglo-Saxon reserve. To read it from a Latin point of view would be very educational for the Anglo-Saxon I am.
Don’t hesitate to write about boats on your blog! I have a lot to learn as well.
“I would certainly be interested in reading an article about Anglicanism as it has evolved in Latin America” – so would I!
One of my ancestral family members was Bishop of the Argentine, but I have not managed to discover anything more, yet!
And I am impressed by Borges’ interest and acquaintance with English literature and things English more generally – and notably some of the Inklings (notably, Lewis and Tolkien – though when he spoke in Oxford, and I asked him if he knew the work of Charles Williams, he said he must plead ‘invincible ignorance’ – which seemed a playfully Borges-y thing to say…). But I, in my turn, am pretty ignorant of his work and life and quite ignorant of whether such interests are widely shared – and how they extend to ecclesiology and liturgy!
My dear Father Chadwick!
I am working on an article about Anglicanism in Latin America. There is a book written by Archbishop Patricio Viveros Robles, of the Anglican Episcopal Church, a Continuing Church that I respect very much.
I commented that I was a traditionalist on the whole spectrum: lefebvrist, sedevacantist, home alone … everything. Today I see that past with nostalgia and pain. I had one of the most popular Spanish-speaking blogs “sursum Corda”, but I allowed the trolls and I made several mistakes, like trusting a lot in some traditionalist priests, who then ventilated what was told in confession or wanted to extort me. Very sad, but I assume my own responsibility.
I thank you very much for the reference to my new blog in yours, and for allowing me to participate in the Facebook group.
God bless you
Dear Raul,
Thank you for the kind comment. We all have to move on and come to terms with our pain. The French novelist Léon Bloy at the end of the 19th century wrote “Souffrir passe, avoir souffert ne passe jamais“. We remain marked by the effects of human stupidity, sinful weakness and evil. I wrote about my experience in “vagante land” and in the Traditional Anglican Communion.
We in the Anglican continuum are finding our Churches moving together and probably in full organic unity within a couple of years from now. We become more mainstream and credible. The “G4” is also reaching out to other Anglican Churches and groups who have the same doctrinal and ethical basis. These are exciting times.
The Use of Sarum Facebook group has some very interesting people on it including Fr Aidan Keller, an Orthodox priest. I find his reflections balanced and mellow. I use the vestments I have, even if they are Roman or baroque in shape.
I found this article quite refreshing. It’s by a priest of the Ukrainian Uniate jurisdiction but presents a view of the Church rather more inclusive than one might expect from someone converted thereto from Anglicanism. I like his reminder that questions concerning the validity of orders and of the eucharistic consecration don’t figure in the Nicene Creed!
https://risu.org.ua/en/index/expert_thought/authors_columns/Siemens/71795/