Behold, the Sea!

Posted on Monday, 20 June, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Glossary of Nautical Terms – I apologise for presuming too much of my readers. Open a second window in your browser and you can look up terms as needed.

And if you call for a song of the sea,
We’ll heave the capstan round,
With a yeo heave ho, for the wind is free,
Her anchor’s a-trip and her helm’s a-lee,
Hurrah for the homeward bound!

No two times out on the sea are the same. Like we humans, the sea and the weather have their moods and humours. I am most stimulated by freshness in a lively wind but with a bright and clear sky. Leaden grey clouds and rain bring a sinister hue to the waves. The people of Brittany say about their country that the weather is fine every day, several times a day! I naively expected the Rade de Brest to be like a lake except with a tide! The chop can get vicious as the wind goes against the tidal current. This isn’t a Swallows and Amazons jaunt but real sailing, but it made me live my childhood dreams of sailing a small boat on the sea. There is the Goulot open to the Atlantic Ocean, but make no mistake. This is the sea.

Here are my photos on Facebook: Rade de Brest and Route du Sable.

I arrive at home extremely tired, but it is a good physical fatigue. I have a nasty gash in my left big toe from having disembarked with bare feet. The pieces of cockle shells are like razors! The week was one of discovery, going from hard slogs upwind to the gentle run before the wind up the river Aulne all the way through two locks to the town of Chateaulin. From Tinduff to Brest, and back, and several return trips east to west and vice versa, my little twelve-foot dinghy covered approximately sixty nautical miles, about the equivalent of a return crossing of the English Channel between Dover and Calais.

Tuesday

The weather was really quite nasty and I debated whether it would be prudent to go sailing at all. Finding that the wind was blowing at about twelve knots, I launched the boat at Le Tinduff from the slipway. I ran with the wind up the channel to Daoulas and bought a few bits and pieces from the grocery shop. I met up with a nice fellow repairing his yacht who was living the life of someone who had cut off from most social conventions to live in a caravan and his boat. I tend to collect marginal people! My immediate problem was getting out of a very narrow channel against the wind. No question of rowing! It was to be close-hauling on very short tacks or waste a day. I succeeded with only the ebb tide in my favour. The chop increased as I reached the open Rade. The wind began to freshen and was blowing at about 18-20 knots (force 5) and I had to shorten sail. I doused the jib and sailed with only the reefed main. I cleated the mainsheet and met the gusts by luffing up with the helm.

I turned eastwards and was able to reach an exhilarating speed. I blocked the helm and raised the jib. I was caught is several heavy squalls of rain, and I gladly offer free advertising for Guy Cotten for the quality and tightness of my “oilies” as the old fishermen  used to called waterproof over-garments. I put into Moulin Mer which is the site of an old tidal mill and factory (now a derelict building) and an educational / adventure centre for children.

I moored the boat on a dry-out beach and anchored fore and aft. I slept aboard which was less uncomfortable than one might imagine.

Wednesday

I left Moulin Mer in the morning, but decided against a visit to Hôpital Camfrout on account of worse restrictions than Daoulas. I sailed to Le Tinduff and enjoyed a crêpe at the fishermen’s bar. I had a good think about what I would do. Would I dare try for Brest?

I sailed to the Point de l’Armorique and the Ile Ronde where the tidal currents are merciless on the spring tides. I was lucky to have a week with neap tides. Even so, the chop foamed with white tops. The wind was down to a small force 4 and made it possible to sail with an unreefed sail – to get the speed and momentum to force my way through the chop. Once past the old German moorings built for the Bismarck (and never used), I passed the Ile Ronde on the weather side. One has to keep well away from the Ile Longue where the French Navy has a submarine base and many secrets to keep! I sailed on to Brest and had a pleasant break at the Marina, something to eat and a look round the chandlery shops, where I found a very practical watertight box for my safety kit. I decided that I should return to east of the Ile Ronde to anticipate any problems in getting back to Le Tinduff for Friday morning. I entered the Baie d’Auberlac’h and set up my boom tent and bed with the boat anchored and afloat.

Thursday

I left my mooring and found very little wind. There was a nasty rain squall, and I continued east towards Le Tinduff as a breeze came up from the south-west. At a careless moment, I ventured too close to the rocks and broke my centreboard pivot plate. As I was running with the little wind there was, I had no need of the centreboard and could continue back to Le Tinduff and make repairs. I was well prepared  and had my toolbox in the van together with an assortment of stainless steel screws and bolts. I needed a kind of anvil to straighten the twisted centreboard pivot plate, and looked around. There was a steel frame used by fishermen to straighten their nets, and found that the steel girders had a good sharp right angle. I hit away with a hefty hammer. Bang! Bang! Bang! The plates were straightened to my satisfaction. I drilled six new holes for the screws with my hand drill (no electricity) and screwed the pivot plate back into place.

I tried for Hôpital Camfrout, a pretty village with a medieval fishermen’s chapel, and got about half way up the channel before deciding to turn back. Those are places for boats with engines! Time was marching on in the afternoon, and I returned to Le Tinduff. I left Sarum on a beach fore and aft mooring. I met with some of the guys going on the pre-Route du Sable passage up the first part of the Aulne. We had supper together at the crêperie, and I slept on land in my little tent.

Friday

I awoke at about 6.30 and found Sarum still afloat from the night’s flood tide. I rowed to the slipway mooring on the lee side, and went to take the tent down and get some breakfast. I cast off at about 10 am and sailed around the port, admiring a magnificent schooner in which a retired couple live. Tinduff is full of traditional fishing boats, now used to teach young people to sail or take tourists out for a trip round the Rade. Some of those boats accompanied us up the Aulne the following day. We were all ready about half an hour later and sailed south-east to the first meander of the Aulne. The area is overlooked by the Benedictine Abbey of Landévannec, one of those constructions from between the wars.

At this point I ran into trouble with water turbulence and an inabilty to sail upwind to keep up with the group. We were in contact by VHF, and I was up against the clock from the point of view of the flood tide. I was lucky that there was a fishing boat with a powerful engine. The two kind fellows towed me to the Naval ships’ cemetery (where decommissioned naval vessels go before being towed to places for scrapping). I then had an aft wind and could then run on my own. I thanked the two amateur fishermen and managed to catch up with a few regatta tricks with trimming the sails. We reached Rosnoën with the tide beginning to ebb. We made it just in time!

We all had pizza together at Le Faou and we had two very heavy rain squalls back to back. There was so much mud at Rosnoën that there was no question of putting up a tent. I slept in the back of my van. The humidity pervaded everything, even in my van. This is something a sailor lives with all the time.

Saturday

This was the day of the official Route du Sable, named after the ships that took sand up the river for the farms. The weather was fair. We prepared our boats and had a drink and a hot dog offered by the local Mairie. We, some seventy boats, ran with the wind to the next meander. Then there was no wind and we rowed the rest of the way to Port Launay. I was in the second group to be taken to the non-tidal stretch of the Aulne by lock. I met up with a friend who was once in the Merchant Navy and who now works as a port traffic controller at Le Havre. We joined the flotilla for a meal in a special big tent and watched people playing traditional sea shanties on the accordion and traditional Brittany dances. My friend François invited me to his little house in the country just about 15 km away to sleep in better conditions and get a good wash. That was most welcome.

Sunday

We left Port Launay in the morning and rowed to Chateaulin. It wasn’t even worth raising the sails. We went through the lock and I lowered my mast for the two low bridges. We all had a picnic lunch at the campsite and rowed back to Port Launay. There was a slight tail breeze, and I got a few freebies by raising the jib only. In the afternoon came the sad moment of going for our trailers and taking our boats out of the water. There was only to pack up and go home, tired but fulfilled by this week at sea.

Spiritual Retreat?

I only got to say some Office a couple of times. The sea isn’t a place to pray, but to face what the sea throws at us. It is up to us to decide whether to go sailing or not. I was trained on the English Channel with its frank and honest swell and chop, and I ceased to be afraid of waves since my trip out in a force 6 on a catamaran with Christophe Falon. The movement becomes predictable. Sometimes you get a rogue wave that has to be faced and you get an instant shower! The sea is neutral, couldn’t care two hoots about human beings, and there is nothing “romantic”. You play the game, that of Nietzsche’s Ubermensch, not as someone who is indefectible or infallible, but as humility against titanic force. A sailor has to obey: take the waves at the right angle and trim the sails to the wind. A sailor remains a plain and humble man before that benign force of our sea and weather.

In monasteries, retreatants walk about with rosaries and devotions, often with affectations. The sea makes us truly ourselves, stripped of pride or any need to prove ourselves to anyone. It is like a game of chess. The sea plays and we play back. So much is predictable and then something unexpected happens. The sea teaches us modesty, as an old seafaring priest said to me. There is no theological sophistry or untenable ideologies, just the reality of that force from the Universal Consciousness that is God. That is the teaching of the sea.

The return to land, society and sophistry is hard. We have to keep that same humility and plainness so that we do not again get drunk on the old wine of proving something to other people.

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Gone Sailing

Posted on Sunday, 12 June, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I am offline for a week and am unlikely to “release” any moderated comments (e-mail addresses under moderation or newcomers) until Monday 20th June. I will be “based” at the Port of Le Tinduff on the Rade de Brest, and the fishermen’s café and bar might have wi-fi to enable me to check my e-mail. I’ll take my laptop computer, but will leave it in the van – no question of taking it on the boat! I have recently acquired a waterproof mobile phone, so that GSM 2G and VHF radio will be the only means of communication whilst I am under way.

This will be a time of exploration and communion with nature. It will also be a solitary retreat. I will not be able to say Mass, but I will be saying my Office and spending time in prayer. I need the solitude and the chance to breathe new air. I will be living the same extremely frugal life as last year, though with improvements to my sleeping arrangements and the boom tent. The weather promises to be fair except a few rain showers on Tuesday and Thursday – though the forecast is presently extremely unreliable as the weather is unpredictable.

I am unlikely to be taking any risks, since I have prepared everything meticulously, but I ask your prayers as I seek God in the beauty of his creation. I will only answer e-mails from Monday 20th June.

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Christian Humanism

Posted on Sunday, 12 June, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

The themes keep going through my mind – those of the Romantic’s lament over our passing as humans and our being brought back to a kind of feudal existence under the domination of the strongest. We have to begin with the fact that we are humans – the one writing this piece and those reading it, and then the rest of our species. As in the rest of nature, there is beauty, there is ugliness and there is death. Humanity lives and works like each one of us, creative, exulting, depressive, suicidal and every other mood within us.

Our attitude towards humanity, ourselves and others, will change according to whether we consider man’s greatest achievements and inspirations – or whether humanity is what we see in hospitals, mortuaries, death rows, prisons, corrupt countries and war zones. Our response can be anything from living life to the full, giving the same joy to others – or wishing for a meteor to hit the earth, big enough to send us the way of the dinosaurs.

I do believe that we have the Christian duty of affirming the good and noble in us so that it may overshadow sin and sickness. If that idea is motivated by the philosophy of life Christ set forth, then we are looking at Christian philosophy. The high point of this attitude caused the Renaissance, the reaction against the worst of medieval Augustinianism and the appeal to ancient Greek and Roman culture. The Renaissance was in the blood of Europe much earlier than many of us imagine and it was visible in many of the art forms we call Gothic. This movement was far more advanced in Italy and France than Germany, but the Perpendicular style in England was all part of it. It came to a head in the sixteenth century as Counter-Reformation Catholicism would follow the Renaissance whilst trying to keep it under authoritarian control. Calvinism and Lutheranism would seek to preserve the medieval Augustinian status quo and blame all the corruption on Renaissance idolatry.

Many have written on the passing of the Renaissance and humanism and the advent of a dark age, or an era in which no one knows where we are going. Many signs manifest themselves: the archetype of Frankenstein and the Greek myth of Prometheus, which colludes with the Gnostic narrative of the Demiurge and the Judeo-Christian notion of the fallen angel Lucifer who became Satan or the Devil. This would be the way of technological progress, breaking the taboos one by one. Another sign is the descent to barbarianism represented by Islamic jihadism and the present black stain on the Middle East. At some level, the two are linked by a conviction according to which humanity is but dross – but which is “redeemed” by strength and the lack of pity. Here, we recognise the strains of thought through Nietzsche and the crank philosophers who gave Hitler his archetypes to make his ideology take over the minds and imaginations of the German people. We speak of post-humanism and trans-humanism.

Perhaps one of our duties as Christians is to contribute to a revival of the Renaissance, not necessarily in its appearance, but in its underlying philosophy. Benedict XVI’s lecture at Regensburg in 2006 was a milestone as he brought out the fatal flaw of Islam (and fundamentalist Christianity by analogy) and appealed to Hellenism – to Greek philosophy. This way of thinking has underpinned the whole idea of reason, logical thinking and discussion and metaphysics for almost the entire history of the Church. On this foundation, theological speculation and thought become possible as does a tempering of the blind faith (or adhesion to a leader or an ideology) that can lead to fanaticism and hatred.

I believe that my blog has more or less explicitly been dedicated to such a movement of Christian humanism. It is important to distinguish the Christianity variety from the secular variety, for the Gospel gives the reason or λόγος behind such a consideration of our species and our personal and collective spirit. The secular variety leads to Promethean pride and the move from humanism to post-humanism. The boundaries are somewhat blurred when liberal Christianity colludes with secularism, the accusation thrown against Pope John Paul II and his existential personalism or Jacques Maritain’s ingtegral humanism. The conservative Evangelical or Catholic contends that God is everything and man is nothing, reduced to absolute ruin by sin. The most noble understanding of humanism would be, without qualifying adjective, belief in the intrinsic dignity and value of man, and his cultural creativity.

The old dialectic continues from the old Augustinian view of nature and grace, the effects of sin in bringing about corruption and death. In short, is humanity to be judged by the state of Hitler or Ted Bundy, or Shakespeare, Bach, Plato and St Francis of Assisi? Both? Everything in between? Then we have the misery of humanity caused by disease, natural catastrophes and sin. The general way of thinking in Christianity is that man receives his dignity from God, by sanctifying grace by what makes the spirit stand out from the animal soul we all have (we all need to eat, preserve life and reproduce – sharks and crocodiles too!). Is there a default state? Whether man is intrinsically sinful or endowed with rights and dignity will determine whether our response involves strength and force, or compassion and pity for weakness.

History has played out between lust for power and domination with the consequent extermination of the weak. This is the dominant thought of Darwin and Nietzsche, leading to Marxism and Nazism in the twentieth century – a world-view that persists in America in conservative circles. The Protestant Work Ethic is also an example of the victory of force, strength and thrift. You are worth your money, which is a sign of success and God’s electing grace. Reading Charles Dickens with the knowledge of this idea can be very enlightening. Outside the tiny minority of the elect, humanity is dross to be exploited, worked to death and eliminated at will. If they are poor, let them starve. If they are sick, put them down. If a criminal has sinned – an eye for an eye… and make the execution particularly sadistic! Human beings are totally depraved, so therefore are expendable. The only people worth anything are the elect – and they know they are the elect because they are successful and rich. I have the impression that Hitler and his gang of goons were only the tip of the iceberg. Cut off one tentacle and there still remain seven more…

I understand the temptation. If we have strengths and talents, it is too easy to de-humanise the sick and support capital punishment, refuse to help the poor (they don’t help themselves when they are obviously scamming). We hear about yet another Daesh atrocity and wonder when the meteor is going to come and end it all. Our lying politicians disappoint us profoundly, hypocrisy and treachery from our loved ones and friends, the “nozzle of weirdness” as a Canadian journalist mentioned a few years ago.The decision is ours.

We are faced with the worst of human nature as Renaissance culture evaporates away, not only in its artistic expression but also the rational and spiritual faculties of man. I have no need to recite the litany of ills here. It is well known. Apart from crime and the drifts of science, the century of my birth saw two world wars and totalitarianism. It is also understandable when we hear the banalities of liberal talk in politics, the media and academia. As we get older, we generally become more cynical and disbelieving. We approach death and wonder if the all-destroying meteor would not be a good thing! We were once young and hoped. Do the young people of today not have the right to hope and wonder in what is good, noble and beautiful?

Renaissance humanism gave learning and philosophy, or rather a new angle to add to the heritage of medieval thinkers and saints. Erasmus called for a study of the Fathers and the Scriptures in Greek and Hebrew. Christian humanism brought in the image of God in humanity as the base and source of the dignity of the human person. Life is a gift to be enjoyed and not merely a preparation for our life after bodily death.

Christian humanism, if it ever returned to churches, would herald creativity and restore compassion and pity. It would see the possibility of redemption even for the most hardened sinner, and would oppose cruel punishment. Eastern Orthodoxy has a greater emphasis on the notion of personhood, certainly derived from its theology of the Trinity. We need to seek what is good, noble and beautiful, encourage the arts, education and courtesy.

The Calvinist temptation is never far, nor is its parallel in Catholicism in the form of Jansenism and other exaggerations of Augustine’s doctrine. One can say that if God created everything only for his own glory, it shows a narcissistic and sinful deity. One wonders about the Gnostic belief that the creator was a lesser entity than God! Wesley, following the Arminian tradition, taught that God created out of love and that he loves all human beings even if they are sinners.

Such optimism about humanity may be a dangerous illusion that has outstayed its welcome. History seems to vindicate power and success, the survival of the fittest and the elimination of the weak and inferior. Man is often brought to believe in his own evolution and triumph, but as technology evolves, morality is perverted and defeated. There are scientific articles claiming that human DNA is degenerating and will eventually lead to the extinction of humanity (if something else doesn’t). It seems clear to me that what gives humanity dignity and worth is the image of God by deifying energy (sanctifying grace), and that our vocation is to come to knowledge of this image through knowledge of our true selves. I am intrigued by the idea of Annihilationism, the notion according to which those  who reject God and his image in us face non-being after their bodily death, something like what atheists believe, the difference being that some would be immortal and others would cease to exist. I do not affirm belief in this theory, since I am attracted to Universalism (conversion and sanctification would be possible after bodily death so that the person has a “second chance”), but I find it intriguing.

Surely non-existence is the one thing that makes death so frightening to those who believe in “universal annihilation” (atheists). If such an idea is to be believed, then why bother?

I leave this posting open-ended for views and comments, as I have no real certitude in this matter.

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This one wasn’t written in the Villa Diodati!

Posted on Thursday, 9 June, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I allude to the posting of a couple of days ago about the summerless year and the little threesome of Romantic poets in 1816 challenging each other to write scary stories. Mary Shelley wrote the terrifying and captivating story of Frankenstein. This poor unfortunate creature, made from parts of dead bodies and brought to life with electricity fascinated my childish imagination – and ever since, from Boris Karloff from 1931, to the corny Hammer horror films of the 1970’s to a rather good production of the 1990’s.

The whole story is one of playing God, superseding humanity with science and arrogant manipulation of life itself. We now know that electricity is not life, and that “galvanising” a dead limb does not give life, but simply makes the muscles contract and move. We now have the spectres of genetic engineering and cloning, heralds of a post-humanist and trans-humanist world. I have every chance of not living long enough to see it in its full horror.

They have gone a step even further. Making people from scratch? No need for parents when you have the right chemicals. There is a secret project to create a synthetic human genome.

I ask many questions. First of all, would it work? Would the product be a biological organism with its own life and what we call a soul and spirit? Those of us who have read and watched Frankenstein are divided between the monster being a human being or some kind of malevolent machine. The creature’s various gestures of humanity in Mrs Shelley’s story lead us to believe in a being with a soul. The same question comes up with cloning and genetic manipulation. A possible opinion is that cloned humans would be as human and endowed with a spiritual soul as anyone born via two parents or conceived in vitro.

Another spectre is that of humans enhanced by machines or non-organic material. False teeth and prosthetic limbs have been around for a long time, as have pacemakers and metal replacements for arthritic joints. I have two pieces of plastic gauze in my body which a surgeon used to repair two hernias. All those devices are generally accepted in medicine and surgery and have distinctly improved the lives of those who need them. Science fiction evokes the possibility of futuristic computers planted in the human brain to enhance our mental performance. The idea of bionic humans has been on the go for a long time. Electronic devices can help people with Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease. Where is the dividing line between modern medicine and “playing God”?

My intuition would tell me that the difference is between helping incurably ill or disabled people using technology and making man what he is not. Even worse is the idea of creating humans or “synthetic humans” outside human reproduction. Cloning is monstrous, though it can be argued that nature occasionally clones, as in the case of identical twins. A Star Wars film shows a planet used as a clone farm and the products bred for the Empire’s army. The film The Boys from Brazil portrays Dr Josef Mengele as having escaped justice in 1945 and established a laboratory in South America to make clones of Hitler. In the film, a scientist explains the process to Ezra Liebermann, the fictional character based on Simon Weisenthal.

As the western world sloughs off Judeo-Christian principles of the sacredness of life and the dignity of the human person, we can begin to be very afraid of what lies in store in the future. This Angst has been with us since Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus from two hundred years ago. Technology evolves at a dizzying rate, but man seems just as morally bestial. This is certainly the reason why individual humans have a short life-span. I certainly would not want to see what might exist a hundred years after my death! It would either be a utopian or dystopian vision from science fiction or a black, charred and desolate planet without life.

Why want to create “perfect” humans? Wasn’t this kind of stuff supposed to have been done away with when the Nazis were defeated? Evidently, trans-humanism and eugenics were not specific to Hitler’s ideology. From Mary Shelley to Star Wars, we are faced with the fact that man is at his most ingenious when devising weapons of war and machines of destruction.

Usquequo, Domine?

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Low Mass

Posted on Thursday, 9 June, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I found A liturgical abuse… very interesting on my old friend’s blog. As usual, Patrick is a tad categorical. He sees it from the point of view of a layman, and myself from the point of view of a priest who rarely has anyone at Mass. That leads to another issue, on which I have already written in Mass without a congregation. Anglicanism since the Reformation banned it and Roman Catholic canon law has only loosened the ban since the new Code of 1983. Before then, a priest who was on his own like Fr Charles de Foucault had to apply for an indult to say Mass without a server.

Should Mass be forbidden unless there is everything required for High Mass with music and full ceremonies? That would be excessive. Most of the masses I celebrate are solitary. I have the cruets on the altar and make my own responses. It isn’t ideal, but daily Mass helps me to maintain a priestly identity, however minimal, as well as being the sacrificial prayer to God of the entire Church including the saints and the souls of the departed. Should I stop saying Mass? I have already answered the question, and that answer is largely determined by the place where I live.

The subject is this article is really the use of a specific “low mass” model when celebrating Mass with a congregation with or without a server. The problem goes back a long way to the various late medieval scholastic theories of the distinction between the one Sacrifice of Christ on the cross and the application of that sacrifice through the sacrifice of the Mass. The more Mass is celebrated, the more the Redemption is “effective”. I frankly find the subject boring, but can recommend Fr Joseph de Sainte-Marie, L’Eucharistie, Salut du Monde, Paris 1981. I am sure that an English translation exists of this work.

During the period after the Council of Trent, churches in towns put on as many low masses as they had priests and one high mass (capitular, conventual or parochial). People could freely go and receive Communion at the side altars if they were at peace with their consciences, and lay Communion was rare until the beginning of the twentieth century. There arose a tendency for some people to prefer low mass to high mass for reasons of expediency or because they preferred quietness for their devotions to a liturgical service with ceremonial and music.

I touched on the “low mass ideology” when I wrote my mémoire at Fribourg University, but found I had little to add to the usual dialectics between traditionalists and those promoting pastoralism and modern liturgical forms like Mass facing the people. Rocks and hard places, Scylla and Charybdis, you name it. During the time I spent with the traditionalists, I found the medieval theories and practice perpetuated – the “blessed mutter of the Mass“, high mass ceremonies as something added to the “primitive” form. If we study the Tridentine ritus servandus, we will see the essential structure being a priest saying low mass with the sacred ministers “adding ceremonies”. This was the greatest defect of the Tridentine codification, and it went unnoticed. When I did my research in Fribourg University Library (no internet in those days), I discovered the collusion between late medieval scholastic theory and practice and those of Luther, Calvin, Cranmer and others. I wrote:

The Mass came to be regarded as an occasion of private and subjective devotion: such an attitude would lead inevitably to the protestant conception of the Eucharist. The logical development would have been to remove the external action, leaving the individual to his devotions.

Looking at my footnotes, I referred particularly to Dom Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy, London 1945. Dix quoted the English Puritan divines as having said:

The minister is appointed for the people in all publick services appertaining unto God, and the Holy Scriptures both of the Old and New Testaments intimating the people’s part in publick prayer to be only with silence and reverence to attend thereunto.

That is a direct consequence of the “low mass mentality”, even though the rites were mutilated and emphasis was placed on community, communion and memorial. This quote expresses an even greater degree of clericalism than in the medieval Church! It is true that such a notion led to the drab and dreary services of the eighteenth century or the average Roman Catholic parish since the 1970’s. Mass facing the people alone would not reverse this underlying mentality.

What about my own experience? Most of the masses I say are celebrated by the priest alone and without music, though I do make the effort for some feasts to use incense and sing the ordinary and proper of the Mass, either in Latin or English. Whatever I do, I either have no one in the chapel or occasionally my wife and mother-in-law (for whom I say Mass in French according to the best translation I have compiled myself from other sources). It is still a low mass. The only difference is that it is something imposed on me rather than something I have chosen for theological and spiritual reasons.

This is not confined to my own situation, but also to many other places or worship and priests who are struggling with practically nothing. It isn’t the ideal, but we do what we can.

I wouldn’t sail the Atlantic in my twelve-foot boat – if you get my meaning. But, I would do it in a ship with the right skills and crew. That is something else…

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Nearly Ready…

Posted on Wednesday, 8 June, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

preparation-boatIt looks a mess for the moment with the boom, yard with mainsail and rudder lying in the hull, not at all Shipshape and Bristol Fashion, but Sarum will be ready when I launch her next Tuesday at the Port of Tinduff on the Rade de Brest. It makes a big difference when the rig is in its proper place and leaves more room in the hull.

These two photos are taken from the Port’s official website.

The amazing thing with this slipway is that it can be used at all tides and enables you to launch a boat into the water at any time. I can then tie up against the wall whilst I go and park my trailer and leave everything tidy for the fishermen and other users.

It is an exciting time, like the children in Arthur Ransome’s novel Swallow and Amazons when they arrived in the Lake District from London by train! My adventure for last year was the Semaine du Golfe on the south coast of Brittany. This time, I will be sailing on the Rade de Brest at the western tip of the Finistère and will go far up the river Aulne inland on Friday 17th to join the Route du Sable, which promises to be a numerous flotilla this year, on Saturday 18th.

I found this fine idea on a sailing forum.

mirrorWhen you row a boat, you have your back to the bow and have to keep turning your head to see where you’re going. Someone in Victorian times came up with a complicated idea of an oar mechanism so that you would face forwards and pull the oar handles in the normal way. The oar mechanism would reverse the direction and hey presto. This convex mirror eliminates the Steampunk mechanics! This idea is inspired by the rear-view mirrors of road vehicles, so that you can see what is behind you. These big mirrors are sold in car accessory shops as safety devices to see the road when you have a blind corner getting out of your gate or garage. I have taken this photo from about where I would be sitting on the thwart for rowing – and the view is very wide. I use a G-cramp to attach it to the lazarette of the boat, and I remove it for when I’m sailing – because it is only needed for rowing. It will be interesting to see how well it works when we pass the first or second lock on the Aulne and find there is no wind. In any case, the mast has to come down for going under the two low bridges of Châteaulin when we go and tie up at the municipal campsite to have lunch on Sunday (I’ll need to say my Office early in the morning at Port Launay).

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The Year without a Summer

Posted on Saturday, 4 June, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

villa-diodatiIn these early days of June, my wife has been complaining about the cold and wet weather. We have been lucky to avoid the floods that have driven many people from their homes, not only here in France but even worse in Germany, Holland and parts of the United States. It is not very cold, about 13°C, but very damp with cloying drizzle.

I suggested to her that we could go to Switzerland and rent a villa by Lake Geneva. Of course, we would not be able to afford it, but I did suggest that we would light a hearty log fire and write horror stories and poetry. I had to explain to her what I was alluding to: the year without a summer of exactly two hundred years ago. The foul climate, partly caused by an extremely big volcanic eruption in Indonesia, caused one of the greatest events of English literature, the summer months spent at the Villa Diodati near Geneva by Percy Shelley, Mary Godwin (Shelley’s future wife) and Lord Byron. The most enduring piece of prose fiction was of course Frankenstein written by such a young and fair lady. Lord Byron waxed melancholic as he wrote Darkness. Percy Shelley perished at sea six years later in 1822.

Mount Tambora in Indonesia

Mount Tambora in Indonesia

I think it would be a gross exaggeration to compare our present miseries with that blighted year in the Romantic era. The present outlook shows a gradual improvement over the next week or so as a south-westerly wind chases away the static thunderstorm cells over central and eastern Europe. Temperatures will remain a little under average for the time being, and we wait for the next anticyclone. There have been many volcanic eruptions this year in the world, but I have not read a scientific opinion to the effect that we were in some kind of “nuclear” winter like in 1816 because of Mount Tambora.

I ask your prayers for the many people forced to evacuate from their homes, for families and for those who have lost relatives and friends in the floods. We are not yet at the end of the world, not by a long chalk, and I am sure that this year’s summer will be little different from the ones of these last few years.

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Butcher’s Shop Devotions

Posted on Saturday, 4 June, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

That is how I have heard the feast of the Sacred Heart spoken about – I think it was in a novel but I can’t remember which one. It might have been Morris West who wrote an almost prophetic novel about an Ukrainian bishop elected Pope and released from a Gulag prison camp in Siberia. Anyway…

Yesterday, seeing this feast in our ACC calendar, I celebrated yesterday the votive Mass of the Five Wounds, a devotion that was especially popular in pre-Reformation England and in some other places. Fr Hunwicke has most eloquently written on this topic many times. Most of us, at least those of us with a whit of empathy, relate to the sufferings of others – so it is as we consider the suffering and tortured body of Christ in his Passion. Just out of Paschal time, we find ourselves again contemplating the Passion.

My brother in the priesthood, Fr Jonathan Munn has written The Authenticity of the Sacred Heart. I am very much with him in his eschewing the habitually tawdry, cheap and vulgar representations one find in piety shops selling bondieuseries. Fr Munn draws out attention to another dimension of this part of western Catholic piety around Christ’s Passion and the parts of his body where he was afflicted the most, namely his hands, feet, heart and head. Of course, every other part of his body was horribly mutilated by the flagellum, which would have been much worse than even the British Navy’s cat o’ nine tails. The hands, feet, head and heart are all symbolic of a spiritual reality beyond wounded and dead flesh.

No iconography has ever perfectly portrayed the mystery of Christ and the Redemption. Our perception is limited. Perhaps our devotion will be that much more authentic with a Platonic-based notion of the body and parts thereof being mere signs of something spiritual but no less real.

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Cold Shower

Posted on Thursday, 2 June, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Update: See When Christianity is at its best. Does anyone know of such ideal communities?

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I have had quite a number of reactions on my posting about trying to play the violin as a wind instrument or bow the valves of a trumpet. Some perhaps suggested that ceasing to discuss archaic liturgical forms would favour the work of engaging the modern world with the Christian faith and witnessing among unbelievers. Perhaps. It seems a good argument, and it is obvious that there are several billion Christians in the world, but probably less than twenty persons in the world are remotely interested in Sarum. I attempted a response to an English conservative Roman Catholic who is satisfied with the modern Roman rite and advances the usual conservative arguments. I suppose I should exclaim that I had “never thought of that” and go to my local parish church, served once a month, go through the canonical process of laicisation then perhaps persuade the brave people of our village who are not terribly interested in religion to become model urban conservatives.

I have to admit that I am somewhat “out of it”. I see little of the world living in the countryside in a dormitory village and consulting a fraction of a percent of the Internet. It looks like I am irrelevant. The modern clash and bang of “pop” and rock “music” shocks and frightens me, though it often comes blaring out of car windows as my wife and I go to town for a concert or do some shopping or sort out serious stuff at the bank. I am glad to get home to the cows and apple trees, and better still, get out to sea – the ultimate desert. The reflection keeps coming into my mind: Relevant to what? Everything has been tried and the Christian ideal is utterly incompatible with everything round us.

This came up today, and expressed things so well: The culture war is lost – now get on with being counter-cultural. That seems quite a mouthful. We have French bishops deciding to challenge laïcisme, which is obviously atheism as an official “religion”. Give up engaging in politics and there is no further point to anything. That is quite an epitaph! The liberal left is more resilient than what most conservatives would like to believe. Liberation theology gone all the way! Christianity is no more than a load of empty words with no meaning except a twisted one taken from some ideology based on Marx, Nietzsche and Darwin.

I don’t have to give a précis of JD’s article here, but there is an idea that emerges from the thick London fog. The culture we are in is a manufactured culture as never happened in the past. That notion is extremely far-reaching.

Christianity’s natural home is: a) in defiance of the dominant culture (which often tacitly endorsed a morality Christianity openly rejected) and b) along the borderlands of law, always walking the line between questionable legal status and outright illegality.

The trouble is knowing what Christianity is nowadays in terms of churches. Institutional Christianity seems to have become an image of the current situation in France: a governing party calling itself Socialist but manifestly serving the oligarchs and the elite, and a workers’ union representing ideas that were discredited in the late 1980’s and early 90’s. The weakest will collapse, but the stronger will not necessarily be right.

I am reminded of the much-bandied idea of Josef Ratzinger about the remnant church, something like the underground churches in the Soviet bloc at the height of the persecution. But, in the west, I see little evidence of their existence, whilst there are brash, noisy churches in the cities with lots of people and with no opposition from the political regime. The traditionalists tried to fulfil that role in the 1970’s and early 80’s, but they were eager to join the respectability club and get their justification from political groups. Only the monasteries seem to have something of that gratuity of Christianity as a spiritual way and a philosophy of life. Even then, too many monasteries remind the observer of the barracks! Too many pinched faces who don’t exactly exude the joy of the Resurrection!

My little chapel and my eccentric quirks hardly seem to herald the future. In worldly terms, what I value and represent is dying, as it did at the onset of the Reformation. In historical terms, I will soon be a thing of the past, forgotten and obliterated by the needs of the living. I say this but I am not depressed, just starkly realistic. Blessed Charles de Foucault was shot dead in 1916 by a group of Islamic zealots, and all he did was to live a contemplative life in a desert that was as barren in geographical terms as in human terms. He was not forgotten, but was totally irrelevant in his lifetime and did not convert a single Muslim to Christianity. In worldly terms his life was a waste and a failure.

Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

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Pisser dans un Violon

Posted on Wednesday, 1 June, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

The French expression conjures up a repugnant image of someone urinating into a violin. An earlier form of the expression conveyed the idea of blowing air into this stringed instrument, something that would not make the violin play music either. The real meaning is doing something useless or ineffective.

I received this link this morning: A (proposed) Open Letter regarding the Restoration of the Sarum Rite by Bernard Brandt. The effort is valiant, and I admire Bernard Brandt for trying it even though Fr Sean Finnegan and his correspondent in Rome gave up.

I am reminded of the scene in the film 1492 where Christopher Columbus is rehearsing an explanation of his seafaring project for the theologians and the dreaded Spanish Inquisition:

Columbus: I believe the Indies are no more than 750 leagues west of the Canary Islands.

Antonio de Marchena: How can you be so certain?

Columbus: The calculations of Toscanelli, Marin de Tyr, Esdras…

Antonio de Marchena: Esdras is a Jew…

Columbus: So was Christ.

Antonio de Marchena: Two minutes and you’re already a dead man.

Columbus: For telling the truth?

Antonio de Marchena: Yes. They are burning people for less. The men you are about the confront have no emotions. You must learn to control your passion.

Columbus: Passion is something one cannot control.

Bernard Brandt’s letter is measured. Certainly he should try it, because he doesn’t risk being tortured or burned at the stake. At least that. The big problem is that there is no popular movement for the Use of Sarum, nor is there an idea that availability might arouse interest.

I believe it is a lost cause in the Roman Catholic Church. My doing it as a priest in the Anglican Catholic Church is tolerated, but no one else seems to be interested. There have been conferences and talks in Church of England and Episcopal Church circles. I celebrate it myself, but I hold little hope for the future. Sarum has been utterly crushed by the juggernaut of the Reformation and the Counter Reformation. Until the 1960’s, Rome regulated the liturgy like Brussels EU-dom regulates the size and shape of vegetables. Now it’s the Novus Ordo.

I wish him luck, but I won’t be holding my breath.

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