Drugs

Posted on Wednesday, 30 March, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

addictI have occasionally had occasion to write about addiction and reflect on points of view of those who are truly informed from medical and psychological points of view. Many things to which we can become addicted can be dangerous for our health and can even kill us. That is a fact, but must people be forbidden by law from indulging in such addictions and not be allowed to take responsibility for their own lives? In the 1930’s, alcoholic beverages were prohibited by law in the United States, and now alcohol is legal for those over the legal age in each country.

My father came over very strongly with his warnings to his children against drugs. My two sisters, my brother and I wisely heeded these warnings, and none of us became addicted to anything other than cigarettes. Only my mother smoked until her death from heart failure, certainly brought on by her chronic emphysema. My father stopped smoking in the 1950’s even when it was still in fashion, and I was the last of the children to kick the weed, already ten years ago.

There are chemical substances that are intrinsically addictive like nicotine and other alkaloids and opiates. Addiction is mostly psychological and partly bio-chemical. Hooked like a Fish! is an article I wrote quite a long time ago, quite heavily based on information from the journalist and cured alcoholic Damian Thompson. There are also theories according to which some people are more susceptible to becoming addicted to chemical substances and behaviours than others.

escobedo

The drug baron Escobedo from Clear and Present Danger

The real point to this article is to add a couple of reflections on the debate as to whether prohibition on recreational drugs should be lifted and repealed. This article – Legalize it all – is extremely interesting. The real issue is the legitimacy of a nanny state, a coercive law originally designed to protect citizens, but which has had the result of filling prisons and creating drug cartels that practically own South America and other parts of the world. The amounts of money made from black market drugs are obscene. Those who are minded to believe in conspiracy theories saw (modern) prohibition as a way to outlaw all forms of alternative lifestyles like Hippies, off-grid people and non-white races, bring about the Orwellian totalitarian state with all men wearing black suits and closely cropped hair! Plenty do think that way, but it isn’t very healthy.

Progress is being made as alternatives are found to throwing addicts and small-time dealers into the slammer. We have to be clear that all these soft and hard drugs are harmful for our health, and one should never take them, but we all know that. Most of us like a drink, which is a part of our social life – for as long as we stick to our known limits and don’t get drunk. We are responsible for ourselves and others, and the law is right in severely sanctioning someone who drives a car whilst drunk. The danger goes beyond the individual and puts other lives at risk. The law must intervene. But, must the law be the appropriate organ for preventing persons from doing harm to themselves? That is a good question, even in cases where responsibility is to some extent diminished. Where is the limit?

I was highly impressed on reading Brideshead Revisited and thinking of the way Charles Ryder dealt with his friend Sebastian who became an alcoholic. Lady Marchmain’s approach was coercive: take away all the drinks and make sure no money was available to buy booze outside. Charles respected Sebastian’s addiction and diminished willpower. It is agonising to see someone we love go that way, but they can only reverse the addiction if they want to – and then seek appropriate help. It is simply that you can’t get someone off the cigarettes, booze or drugs by punishment and force. The person has to want to quit – and then use the available tools to achieve the goal of being free from the addiction.

Hashish and “shit” rot the brain, but occasional use does little harm. I tried it a couple of times, a drag on a joint in a group of several persons, when I was a student in London. The feeling was like a non-smoker smoking tobacco – it causes dizziness and “feeling sick”, but some people feel very peaceful and contented – stoned. I wondered why people spent so much money on the stuff for the mediocre feeling it gave me. The smell is very distinctive. Back in the 1970’s, if you got caught in England, it was fines and imprisonment – and shame on one’s family. So I just smoked ordinary cigarettes, which filthy habit I started when I was at Wennington in 1971.

Then there are the hard drugs. The 1970 English documentary Gale is Dead was the poignant story of Gale Parsons, who had spent most of her childhood in institutions and died aged 19 from an overdose of heroin and barbiturates. I was 11 at the time, and the documentary made as much of an impression on me as my father’s passionate warnings. Why do kids go wrong? Something is up when they are being burned up from the inside out. The main problem is the society these young people are being born into – just like in the Victorian era. There were drugs then too!

I need no convincing that drugs should be decriminalised, but there needs to be a well designed programme of education in schools and packages for parents. I’m sure it is possible to avoid the moralising tone and still get the message over. Lifting prohibition would save enormous amounts of public money presently spent on policing, the legal system and keeping people in prison. It would put the cartels out of business overnight (at least in theory). People could grow their own pot in the greenhouse and buy other stuff over the counter at the chemist’s shop for moderate prices. Naturally, as with cigarettes and other tobacco products, there should be no advertising or commercial pressure to buy this or that brand of the product.

One big problem would be how the prohibition would be lifted. There are enough deaths from overdoses of prescription drugs. Hundreds or thousands would die from heroin, opium, crack, cocaine and all the others. Public opinion would support draconian policing and repression rather than the “irresponsibility” of allowing young people to kill themselves. There would have to be at least the same degree of regulation as for legal alcohol and prescription drugs. There must be a way to work out a transition.

A key to this would be understanding addiction. You can smoke a pipe and good cigars without becoming addicted to nicotine. I wouldn’t, because I was addicted to cigarettes! One thing that keeps me going is that I never again want to go through the pain of stopping smoking. I envy those who can enjoy a good cigar after a meal! I enjoy a drink in the evening or some wine with a meal – but I’m not alcoholic. I can easily go without a drop for days or longer. One must be careful for signs of becoming dependent. Then, it isn’t just chemicals, but our psychology and what we rely on in life. I do believe in being as independent as possible from outside stimulation and self-aware as much as possible. Some do that through asceticism, others by adopting a totally non-conforming and anarchistic approach to life.

What about using drugs recreationally and not getting addicted? I can’t imagine this being possible with heroin or some of the horrible synthetic stuff people can buy in night clubs! Apparently, no drug is immediately addictive. I often think about the anaesthetic I was given for my hernia operations. You just go out like a light – and that’s it until you find yourself in the recovery room with the oxygen mask. There are drugs that are supposed to make you feel wonderful. There are also the mind benders like LSD and DMT. I have heard of people going to a special clinic where they could be given a dose of this “near death experience” drug and be supervised so they they would not do themselves any harm whilst being under the drug. I envy them. In past eras, such drugs were given to heighten spiritual life in some Native American tribes and shamans of other traditions. I would be too afraid to try something like that alone, but with proper supervision. Ketamine is also said to have amazing effects, but it is a veterinary anaesthetic and can kill you if you overdose. At the same time, would I have the moral right to try such things? I have never done so, and I am sure I never will.

Addiction needs to be distinguished from these chemical substances and studied as a medical discipline in its own right. Addiction is the problem, even to chemicals and behaviours that are not forbidden by law – but are harmful and sometimes life-threatening. I was considerably enlightened by Damian Thompson’s work on this subject – The Fix. This looks interesting: Drugs, Brains, and Behavior: The Science of Addiction from a scientific point of view.

One thing that shocked me when I stopped smoking is that the drug Zyban my doctor prescribed for me at the time was not financed by the health service and its price was unreasonably high. The cost was actually calculated to be the same as that of smoking twenty cigarettes a day. It seems a very moralistic approach. Zyban was originally formulated as an anti-depressant, and doctors found that patients who smoked lost their craving for cigarettes and spontaneously stopped smoking. It worked very well for me combined with a progressive nicotine diminution approach through the use of arm patches. I stopped using the nicotine patches months before the prescribed end of the treatment. Perhaps there is a less moralising approach now and more support from public health schemes. I would hope so. A more positive approach will help smokers and people hooked on hard drugs. That is where they need to spend money, and not on throwing drug users into the slammer!

Many countries have legalised marijuana, and rates of addiction do not seem to have increased. Actually, the stuff isn’t physically addictive. I have heard it can actually be good for you in small doses, perhaps in a non-smoke form is that is possible. It is not sure that an intelligent repealing of prohibition would increase rates of addiction to hard drugs. Everything would depend on developing medical treatment for both soft drugs (including nicotine) and hard drugs, and removing the moral stigma. That takes original thinking and a lot of money, but probably less than with the present police and carceral repression.

What would be the effect on organised crime and the cartels, the big dealers and the complicity of some countries? There has to be a way to put the bad guys out of business! This question would have to be studied, and perhaps some of my readers are informed and would enrich a discussion.

A historical study of Prohibition (against alcohol) in the USA in the 1930’s would contribute greatly. There is not only the supply and demand, but the aggressive marketer who makes a lot of money from old rope and other people’s misery. Binge drinking is a real problem and some advocate the return of Prohibition. Perhaps a state monopoly on drugs, alcohol and tobacco (gambling and computer games too – perhaps) would be the right thing, if the state isn’t corrupt and pathocratic. All the substances would be sold or dispensed at reasonable prices, regulated and above all made safe. “Sin tax” is another issue, which merits discussion.

The greatest issue is human freedom and nanny states. Driving a car is potentially dangerous. So is crossing the street, going somewhere by plane, eating food, breathing polluted air, playing sports, anything. We take risks all the time, and we have to weigh up what is reasonable or reckless. Freedom is improved by education. I mentioned above the idea of taking a mind-bending drug, but under medical supervision and professional care – just something once in a lifetime. Frankly, the idea freaks me out, but I sometimes wonder what it would be like. But absolutely not at home! It is simply a question of safety like using a push stick when cutting a piece of wood on a circular saw.

The world is in such a mess, and people are so wretched and broken. Perhaps we could prop them up in a church and climb up into the mighty pulpit and tell them they’re all going to hell if they don’t show moral uprightness, thrift and will-power. I have lived long enough to know that this would do no more good than policing and prisons. Perhaps it is just what we little people can do, get good ideas out using the internet to have some influence on doctors, lawyers, politicians, social workers – and priests among so many who can really help the wretched. Indeed, blogging is a form of ministry.

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Fraud or Illusion?

Posted on Tuesday, 29 March, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I have just written the third of a thread of comments concerning Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (1905-1991) and the Roman Catholic traditionalist movement. I have seen some of Patrick’s articles in his own blog, and he obviously said his piece to provoke discussion. He said so in so many words. I was reluctant to take up the subject myself. We have just come out of Holy Week and have celebrated Easter to the best of our limited possibilities. I was unwilling to go into the subject of Archbishop Lefebvre and address the various terms of insult.

As I said in my comment, I follow Voltaire’s idea: Think for yourself and respect the same privilege in others. Had I lived in the eighteenth century, I would probably have thought along the same lines had I been an educated person with knowledge of philosophy. Gratuitous invectives show me little sign of someone thinking for himself, but I can be wrong and often am. If that really is Patrick’s thought, I respect him even when it is painful to the memory of a man who has been dead for twenty five years and for many of us who have been influenced in different ways by him.

I also said in my comment that I did not believe that Archbishop Lefebvre or his priests or other followers was deliberately setting out to deceive, in the way that a scammer gets money out of people by fraud. I first saw the Archbishop in the flesh when he came to England in early 1982 to celebrate a Pontifical Mass in Chelsea Town Hall, a rather fine Edwardian baroque building that made a fine church for the occasion. I met him a couple of times in France, and he confirmed me in May 1983 in Paris, since I had recently swum the Rhône (the river that springs in Switzerland and flows through Riddes where the Ecône seminary is located). Unfortunately, in those years, I was still as naive as a child and I spoke French just about as well as I spoke Russian or Chinese! A few months in France enabled me to put a few words together in a sentence and make some sense. I’m still improving!

From October 1982, at the behest of Fr Montgomery, I went to be a “pre-seminarian” at the Ecôle Saint-Michel at Niherne, a small farming village near Châteauroux (Indre). I kept myself more or less sane with a “personal joke” about Nihil-erne being in “French India” and therefore under the domination of the British Empire (I had not heard of Romantia in those days). The idea was ludicrous, but it gave me something to go on. I was lodged in a derelict maison de maître in a room with several adolescent boys. I had a good French teacher, but that was about it. The liturgy was dreary.

It was in the spring of 1983 that I heard about the Naughty Nine, a group of nine American priests of the SSPX who were sedevacantists and made a big deal of using the pre Pius XII liturgy. Archbishop Lefebvre had begun to purge the radical elements from both “right” and “left” – the sedevacantists and those who wanted a ralliement with Rome and Pope John Paul II. How wide was the “orthodox” middle of the road? Was it not becoming more and more a razor edge? I was too isolated to get much of an understanding of what was going on – except that I went to Orléans each Sunday to play the organ at St Euverte. That was a redundant church rented by a group led by a fanatical right-winger called Dominique Cabanne de Laprade who had once been involved in an attempt to assassinate General De Gaulle! There were some sensible young people who came from Paris to sing the Gregorian proper and give something a little more spiritual than the political speeches and anti-Masonic rants at the end of Mass just before I would play the final voluntary.

Decidedly, the French traditionalist scene was weirder than that of the former Welsh church in north London! After a term at a prieuré near Bordeaux, where I was little more than a skivvy, I was done with the Society of St Pius X by the summer of 1983. Many other things happened in the following years, but I was away. I attended the Episcopal Consecration ceremony on 30th June 1988 when I was a student at Fribourg. I just put on a cassock and surplice and mixed with the seminarians. There was so much media hype about Archbishop Lefebvre doing what was really the only option open to him. One thing about Cardinal Ratzinger was that however well-meaning he was, he never saw a job through to the end, and someone else would chop it all to pieces. That was also the pontificate of Benedict XVI, a man whom I profoundly respect and admire as a theologian but was no better a Pope than I would be (he didn’t want the job in the first place)! Like him, I am no leader! So, there were four new bishops, including Williamson who was known to say very strange things to young men going to confession to him.

What is it with “Lefebvrism” as the media call it or the traditionalist reaction in the RC Church? The roots go back to the mid 1960’s when priests and leading lay folk started seeing things change into something that reminded them of liberal Protestantism. They reacted more or less like the Recusants in the sixteenth century. The film Catholics from 1973 about an Irish monastery gives something of the spirit of those early days. The radicalising movement was however under way.

I have already written on Sedevacantism and some of its less rational offshoots. In the late 1960’s, sedevacantism was marginal and quite cranky. Father Joaquín Sáenz y Arriaga, a Jesuit theologian from Mexico, put together something of a theory in scholastic terms, and made his sede-vacante declaration in the years 1971-73. Sedevacantism took off in Mexico, and two priests from that country went to Archbishop Ngo-Dinh-Thuc for the episcopate. It penetrated into the Society of St Pius X via a Dominican priest, Fr Michel Louis Guérard des Lauriers who introduced his own subtle distinctions in his Cassiciacum Thesis. The Naughty Nine were expelled for sedevacantism in 1983, and joined up with the Mexicans. Therefore, acceptance of the 1962 editions of the Roman liturgy was a test of non-sedevacantism. Fr Black in England was for the old liturgy, but was not a sedevacantist, and had to conform to the rules the Archbishop laid down.

I suppose that if I came up with an ideology and made the Use of Sarum its war banner, then perhaps not using Sarum would have to become a test of not following the forbidden ideology. Anyway, that’s another matter.

I never went to Ecône as a seminarian, because I left the Society so quickly in 1983. From then on, my experience with Roman Catholic traditionalism was marginal American conservatism, priests more or less associated with Cardinal Siri in Genoa and then the Indult of 1984, Ecclesia Dei that came out as a result of the ceremony I witnessed at Ecône and the various offshoots of the Society of St Pius X who were bitten by the Roman bug. Rome is a city in which I suffered from anxiety like I never felt in any other, including London and Paris. My love-hate relationship with Rome was in 1985-86 when I joined a bunch of American conservatives housed by the Czechs at the Nepomucene College. It doesn’t really matter how out on the sedevacantist limb you are, or convinced by conservative conspiracy theories, there is something profoundly perverse and built on a notion of truth unknown in the New Testament or the early Church. Rome freaked me out! I continued with the “true church” until my time as a deacon in the Institute of Christ the King working as a deacon in a French country parish in the most surreal compromise possible between the French Right and villages where the older people still had personal memories of seeing Résistance fighters shot by the Nazis.

I don’t see all that so much as fraud or deception but illusion and ideology. I can hear the question being asked of me about my position as an Anglican in a Continuing Church. I am not so eager to justify myself. Perhaps I am in a part of the Church, or in an entity in which the Church is present, like Christ in a hundred fragments of consecrated hosts. Perhaps not. I am in my late 50’s and severely burned out and pretty well broken. My Bishop is kind with me and I try to help him in every way I can. Our Church (the ACC) isn’t yet big enough to get into all the ideologies and power games of men without conscience or remorse. We are little and what’s in the jar is what it says on the label. That’s all. I am grateful for that!

I have had so little to do with traditionalist RC’s over so many years. In the 1990’s I got to know a little bunch of young men in London, and their views colluded with some Germans I got to know in Fribourg. We became quite carried away with Eastern Orthodoxy, which seemed so refreshing compared with the opaque scholastic ideology. In my Orthodox Blow-Out Department, Eastern Orthodox dialogue with other members of their own Church, and it isn’t pretty. Orthodoxy tempted me in about 1989 for the last time. Since then, I see many of the same problems as with Roman Catholicism and other forms of religious fanaticism. My alma mater taught me Ressourcement theology, and that was refreshing – and gave me the keys towards a return to a form of Anglicanism if I was not to fade away from Christianity altogether.

Many of the fallacies of Roman Catholic traditionalism lie in assumptions that are now proven to be absurd. One example is that the Pope is infallible except when he isn’t! Could not that be said for us all? We are infallible when we get something right! All that sounds too easy – and childish – and idiotic. These are some of the assumptions that are clearly nonsense. This sobering realisation can be extended to much of Counter-Reformation Catholicism as to many of the decadent and corrupt aspects of that nice little Sarum parish in Suffolk in 1530 and others like it. Very often, when we open our eyes and emerge from the House of the Blind, we don’t like what we can see. But, you can’t get the Jinn back into the bottle. Clearly, Christ meant something different, and something that can make a difference in our lives for the good.

We then go on and find that “liberalism” is also built on fallacious ideas and ignorance. Intolerance comes from fear and insecurity, then fear of our having to deny everything we believed in the name of truth. In the Enlightenment, that truth was reason and free thought. Now it is new knowledge that casts doubt on conventional reasoning and materialism. I believe that we will arrive at a higher knowledge and experience than religious prejudice or atheistic/materialistic prejudice. In our wonder and humility in the face of the transcendent and immanent God, liturgy can only take on a new meaning.

We celebrate old liturgies and rites because we don’t know anything better and the new rites seem to be such a shallow and meaningless substitute – at least for the few of us who are sensitive to such things. In the end, it is always the same between pneumatics and hylics, between knowers and the ignorant, between artists and philistines, Aspergers autists and “neuro-typicals”, everything, you name it. We are no better than anyone else and our pride becomes our downfall. We will always live in this world that shows incredible beauty and wonder next to cruelty, ugliness and death. After our own deaths, we will experience something different, perhaps through the most excruciating suffering. We will not change the world, and we will be forgotten when we die.

But, perhaps we will have discovered ourselves, been ourselves and found happiness that others will take aeons to find. Who knows?

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Happy Easter!

Posted on Tuesday, 29 March, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

resurrection-runI sought a representation that would be original and striking. Here the wounds of the crucifixion of Christ are clearly seen. The glorified body of Christ is completely bloodless. He is shaking off the burial bandages and is in a hurry to get out of the tomb – he is running. Outside, there is so much light that the artist is dazzled. I am brought to think of the cave of Plato. The shadows and types are just that, only shadows, but the reality is the World of Ideas, a new world and one that is beyond our materialism and limited understanding. In a way, Plato foreshadowed the Resurrection as did the great Prophets of the Old Testament. The life of the Resurrection is our real life, not the one we are presently living in our pain and ignorance.

Christ’s Resurrection is one of a burst for freedom, out of the bonds of death represented by the enclosed tomb and the bandages. The idea and the fact are so mind-blowing and ineffable.

We live the third day of the Octave, still in the euphoria of singing Alleluia after so many weeks of not singing it. Easter Sunday, Monday and Tuesday are the highest in this “euphoria”, and then we take a little step down for the rest of the Octave, and then enter a different mood with Low Sunday, called Quasimodo after the first word of the Officium Missae.

On this third day, I wish you the greatest joy of these three highest days of the liturgical year, joy without limit and hope to give sense to the continuing atrocities and warfare in the world. May this joy bring us faith and hope, above all spiritual knowledge and love to cap it all!

Happy Easter to you all…

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Quomodo sedet sola Civitas.

Posted on Friday, 25 March, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

good-friday2016How doth the city sit solitary… so goes the lamentation of Jeremiah the Prophet.

In the Roman rite (and the Anglican Missal), the Blessed Sacrament is taken to the Altar of Repose on Maundy Thursday, and is consumed at the Mass of the Presanctified on Good Friday. After that, the Church is empty, bare and dead. It is something like a redundant church or what happened to all too many sanctuaries in the wake of the liturgical reforms in the Roman Catholic Church.

In the Use of Sarum and for some other northern European traditions, the Blessed Sacrament (the third Host from Maundy Thursday) and the crucifix are “buried” from the end of the Mass of the Presanctified, and remain so until shortly before the Mass of Easter Sunday. This is the Easter Sepulchre, on which  have already written, citing articles by others on this subject.

Which is better? I am inclined to have taken a liking to the idea of “death with hope”, in the knowledge that Christ rose from the dead – represented by the crucified body and the sacramental Body. There is a superimposition of this continuing “latent life” and the total renewal symbolised by the New Fire and the ceremony of light and the Paschal Candle. This is my impression from the experience of Sarum.

My Sepulchre is something of an improvisation, consisting of a small credence and the wooden urn I used to use for the Altar of Repose when I celebrated the Roman rite. It is covered with a humeral veil. The crucifix is laid on a cushion on the floor under the credence, and covered with a cloth to symbolise the burying.

Sorry to have forgotten to take the ugly gas heater out of the picture!

I wish all my readers an illuminating Transitus Domini and everything this Paschal Mystery can bring each and every one of you.

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The Brain of God

Posted on Thursday, 24 March, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

What a provocative title! Surely God does not have a brain any more than he has hands or the other allegorical images we find in the Scripture! We are so used to the material / spiritual divide that we find it very difficult to comprehend the notion according to which there is no matter, only information or energy, what the ancient Greeks called λόγος or what St John called the Word, what modern science might call information or quanta of probabilities.

When I was a little boy, I read about atoms, long before going to science lessons at school. The science of that time saw them as being like little solar systems: a nucleus being orbited by electrons. I then compared our solar system with an atom, and then I wondered what was over the solar system, and then we can find photos from extremely powerful telescopes of galaxies – thousands of light years across. Then coming back to the atom, who lives on the electrons orbiting round their nuclei? Imagine how small the atoms must be that make up the beings that live on electrons!

Perhaps my childish musings were not so fanciful. I found this photo on Astronomers discover ‘BOSS Great Wall’: Billion-light-year-sized galaxy structure composed of superclusters.

galaxiesDoesn’t this remind you of something? All those things are connected. How about this?

neuronsThat’s right! These are neurons and nerves in a human brain. I was bowled over by this idea of comparing the two. This structure in space is said to be a billion light years across (light speed is about the equivalent of seven times round the world in one second or the distance between the earth and the sun [93 million miles] in a few minutes). Just one light year is beyond our imagination. Perhaps, the BOSS Great Wall, as the astronomers call it, is just a small part of someone’s brain, not made of matter but the λόγος!

Faced with something of this magnitude, we can only be utterly humbled and brought both to our nothingness and our divinity (that image of divinity left within our fallen created beings). Perhaps there are tiny astronomers living on electrons in our bodies looking at the neurons in our brains and marvelling about the brain measuring a billion light years. The mind boggles…

Whatever our lack of scientific knowledge, these few ideas will certainly bring us to the most profound adoration, prayer and sense of wonder.

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Ritual Housework!

Posted on Thursday, 24 March, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

monks_sweepingI have seen that a few people have looked at my old site on washing the altars Washing of the Altar on Maundy Thursday.

This morning (yes I celebrated the Mass in Coena Domini this morning), I stripped and washed the high altar with the prescribed responsories and prayers. The altar stone got a good clean and dry with kitchen tissues. I’m not afraid to use modern materials, like the paintbrush I use to apply the wine and water all over the altar.

When I got to the Lady Altar, I hadn’t realised the extent to which it was filthy with dust and cobwebs. Before washing with wine and water, I needed to give the altar a real clean with a dustpan and brush. I was not far from taking off my red stole and alb! After the brush work and the washing with wine and water, which was a little more than “ritual”, my Lady Altar is now nice and clean and bare until the preparation for Holy Saturday.

There is an allegorical meaning for this altar washing, the connection with the crucified Christ being prepared for burial as in the old Jewish custom. The allegorical meaning is added to the original functional purpose for everything we do in the liturgy. Originally, it was simply the spring cleaning of the chapel. About a week ago, I had flung open the door and window, and gone through the entire chapel with a vacuum cleaner and cobweb brush – that was not a ceremony! What I didn’t see was the filth under the altar cloths. It just goes to show…

Spring brings vigour and energy, a hearty desire to turn off the heating and fling the windows open. Spring cleaning is something important for us all, and is itself a symbol of our spiritual renewal at Easter, reflecting the passage from Christ’s death to new life in the Resurrection. This afternoon, my wife and I are cleaning the house, and I have a visit to make to the local municipal rubbish dump to get rid of some old junk that doesn’t go with the normal dustbin collection.

I’m sure many other people are getting round to the same old chores. It shows the precious relationship between liturgy and life.

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Keeping the Flag Flying

Posted on Thursday, 24 March, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

As a small diversion as Spy Wednesday is gone and Maundy Thursday dawns, I found a nice little video on Facebook about the strange exhibits at the recent Royal Yacht Association boat show.

The video is presented by Roger Barnes the leading dinghy cruising evangelist in England, seconded by David Sumner who gave me the most useful advice for my rig.

What is really striking is the difference between the racing boats and their associated equipment, marketed by the firms that produce them, for the sole purpose of “sailing round the cans” at regattas. Sailing costs money! Or does it?

The striking thing in this show was in the outer corridor, Avel Dro belonging to Roger Barnes and Curlew, a cruising Mirror belonging to David Sumner. Roger made the point that they were not there to sell anything, but rather to provoke curiosity in this alternative way of sailing small open boats for pleasure.

Sailing used to be called the sport of kings because of the sheer amount of money invested in the boat and all its equipment. Nothing comes free in life, but perhaps we cruisers can rely more on ingenuity than buying a new boat off the shelf. I call my Sarum the “tramp sailor”, because I don’t have an awful lot of money to spend on her. I make do and repair to the maximum and only buy bits of equipment when nothing else is possible. Sarum‘s  workmanlike scruffiness, with her battered fibreglass hull and custom rig, contrasted last year at the Semaine du Golfe with varnished wood and elegant hulls. This year, she has a new launching trolley, an improved road trailer and a better boom tent.

Many people were attracted to those two usual boats impregnated with the humanity of those men who work and sail on them. Curlew has been all the way round the Isle of Wight. The video brings a smile to the lips when we see the spirit of English initiative and grit!

This little Mirror is slightly smaller than mine, which was dwarfed at the Semaine du Golfe last May. Sarum has a white hull and a pale blue deck, just between the clinker-built hull and the two men tending a boat with a red hull.

semaine-golfe02Sailing on the open sea in such a small boat is an intrepid venture, and we have to be extremely prudent with the weather and tidal conditions.

I now look forward to my first time out on the sea this year, perhaps in early April after the spate of bad weather over the Easter weekend.

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Mit Brennender Sorge

Posted on Monday, 21 March, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

fascistMonday in Holy Week, 1937 … by Fr Hunwicke was brought to my attention by an e-mail from Dr Tighe, with the title Fr. Hunwicke “Gets Political”. I don’t see him getting political so much as rather being a little uncritical about the view put about by Roman Catholic conservatives and traditionalists that we have a choice between the euphemism of “the social kingship of Christ”, in reality the Papacy and its chosen two-bit dictators with Latino moustache, Havana cigar, snazzy uniforms, hundreds of medals and sunglasses – or the Nazi hell as reigned from 1933 until its defeat and the reconstruction of Germany.

Pius XI was the Pope of Christ the King, and one can have certain sympathies for this imagery expressed by the feast of the Epiphany and events like the Transfiguration. I do think that Christ can be seen carrying an allegorical meaning of the King, the anointed one who would lead through love and example rather than worldly power and bullying. We English treasure our Queen, who has reigned for a lot longer than I have been alive. She is a constitutional Monarch – and I think that fact makes her rule over us that much more spiritual and human through her personality.

The encyclical of Pius XI merits being read – Mit Brennender Sorge. Like Fr Hunwicke, I wish my German was better than it is, so I give it in English here. There are two fundamental themes, the evil of an ideology based on race hatred and the so-called Ubermensch – and the question of whether we are to be ruled by Hitler or Christ. A wrongly understood notion of Christ as a king has given rise to the cult-like situation in the Society of St Pius X. By reductio ad absurdam, the real Christian kind of rule would involve a ruthless dictator like Franco or Pinochet, and with rebels and protesters being arrested by the secret police, imprisoned and executed without trial.

How do we recover a more allegorical notion of this kingship? What did Christ himself say?

Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.

He did not affirm Pilate’s question, but nor did he deny it. He turned the meaning towards the truth of his word and teaching rather than a temporal authority in competition against that of the Roman occupation and Herod. He who preached the Beatitudes and taught that the lowly of this world would be the first in the kingdom of heaven would not behave like Franco or Pinochet. The Βασιλεία τοῦ Θεοῦ is a concept that is totally different from the modern idea of monarchy or empire. I won’t go into the exegesis here, because others say it better than I, and there are loads of articles on the internet and books that go into the Greek words and the Hebrew from which they were translated.

This will certainly be a part of our meditation on the passion of Christ and the Paschal Mystery. The notion of “Christian totalitarianism” is pernicious and dangerous, and constantly opposed to the notion of secularism or laïcité, whether American style or French style. In theory, American secularism respects all religions when there is no trouble to public order (an atrocity or a riot for example). French laïcisme tends to affirm freedom from religion, encouraging citizens to be atheists. The document on religion freedom of Vatican II was written by an American, in an attempt to colour the post-war situation in Europe with the Pax Americana. Now, in its turn, the Pax Americana is becoming a new expression of aggressive war and crimes against peace.

Times have moved on again. Hitler and Nazism are dead. The American ideology of hegemony in the world is wearing thin, and I admire President Putin for standing up to it in the name of peace and respect of the sovereignty of countries like Syria. I believe in the notion of religious freedom, including the freedom not to believe, but this ideology needs reform and adaptation to the present world. French Jacobinism and its overflows into the five Republics also is dead, and the message of men like Hollande and Sarkozy is hollow and meaningless.

I am afraid for the future in spite of any number of exhortations not to fear, but I cannot see Christianity as having any relevance in a globalist dystopia. If there is anything political to do, it is to dismantle empires and nations, and return to a human level. I don’t know how that can be done, but the mega-society cannot continue. Christianity is made for little communities where people know each other and who are fundamentally guided by good in spite of temptations to sin. We need to drop the slogans and come up with something original and real.

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Holy Week

Posted on Sunday, 20 March, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Holy Week is upon us once again, and we get ready for long services in my little chapel. This morning for Palm Sunday I was on my own. I set up a lectern in the middle of the chapel for the Passion and some of the antiphons I sung for the procession. But, being on one’s tod is a little limiting.

The rubrics refer to the different parts of Salisbury Cathedral and there are two Gospels before the Mass. I blessed the palms, English style palm crosses, and carried one about with me as I walked to the ante-chapel and the lectern between the choir stalls. It had to be a little do-it-yourself, as I omitted many of the antiphons designed for accompanying the kind of procession one would imagine in the 1520’s at Salisbury. The four palms ended up in two small brass vases on the altar. I took off my red cope and donned my black chasuble with red orphreys (I really need a bull’s blood red chasuble with black orphreys – another year with my sewing machine). I read the Passion of St Matthew at the lectern, and returned to the altar for the “Gospel” part.

Maundy Thursday will be quite simple. I make the concession of using bright red vestments. The spirit of the Sarum Maundy Thursday Mass is totally different from the Roman in which the theme is the priesthood of Christ being transmitted to the Apostles and the institution of the Eucharist. It is a Passiontide Mass with a secondary Eucharistic theme. There is no procession at the end of Mass, nor is there an altar of repose. The second and third hosts simply go into the hanging pyx. The Easter Sepulchre is reserved for after the Mass of the Presanctified on Good Friday. The “deconsecrated” and empty church is not a feature of the Sarum Holy Week. The Easter Sepulchre remains in place throughout the Easter Vigil of Holy Saturday and is only taken down shortly before the Mass of Easter Sunday.

My experience with using Sarum, albeit reduced to being alone with at most a passive lay person in attendance, gives me a different perspective on the modern Roman Holy Week services. I do find it sad that many ceremonies had to be invented rather than being taken from medieval sources. We use red rather than violet and black vestments (my passion chasuble is a stopgap substitute), and there are only four Prophecies on Holy Saturday, like in the Dominican and French diocesan rites. Pius XII adopted the four Prophecies and Paul VI added a fifth. These are all very variable elements. There was good and not so good in all those reforms of the 1050’s and 60’s. One of the most eloquent criticisms of the 1950’s Holy Week services (Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday in particular) was The “Restored” Holy Week by Msgr Léon Gromier, Papal Master of Ceremonies during the Pontificate of Pius XII. He gave this talk in 1960. Since I published my own translation on the internet, others have appeared. I find Dr Geoffrey Hull’ work fascinating. The best known is his book The Banished Heart, which I believe is still available. When he visited my seminary in the early 1990’s, he gave out a few copies of The Proto-History of the Roman Liturgical Reform, which I have reproduced (and no one has objected). There is also the Notes on the reforms of 1964 and 1967 by a French Benedictine monk of the Abbey of Randol. The text was given to me by Fr Frank Quoëx at seminary, and I did a translation which you can read here.

Holy Week often goes too fast, and it is often a stressing time, either because the ceremonies need careful preparation, or because it is the full moon and people become irrational and moody. Of course, everyone knows that a full moon always occurs during Holy Week, since this spring moon determines the date of Easter. I anticipate having a lot of work to do and little time for prayer. The weather in northern France looks like turning bad for Holy Saturday and the entire Easter weekend. High winds and rain may preclude the New Fire outdoors. Plan B is a bunch of candles in my usual cast iron pot on a stand, and that gives a big flame with little smoke when it has to be indoors. The last time that solution was necessary was in 2008. Perhaps the outlook might change over the week.

Liturgical enthusiasts will be happy to know that I will be doing the Vigil on Holy Saturday morning. The reason is partly the annual general meeting of my sailing club at Veules les Roses. I do wish we could do this on a day other than Holy Saturday each year! So, O beata nox will be sung in the daylight. At least the weather will probably be gloomy and overcast!

I wish all my readers a blessed Holy Week, regardless of the rites they use, and may we all live the Transitus Domini that brings us from death to life as on the day of our Baptism.

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One final note, thinking of death to life and the centenary of the worst year of World War I, let us add this piece by Sir Hubert Parry, composed in 1914, to our meditation. It is the Symphonic Poem From Death to Life. Try not to weep too much as you hear this piece in memory of the fallen and our faith in the Resurrection!

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Herding cats…

Posted on Saturday, 19 March, 2016 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

We have been subjected for many years to the notion that uniting Continuing Anglican Churches and their “alphabet soup” is like herding cats, something impossible or futile. This would be the reason why many sought something more “mainstream” in Eastern Orthodoxy or the Roman Catholic Church (or staying with the Lambeth Communion), and scoffed at the remnants and shreds of continuing churches left by brawling bishops, sometimes of great girth, concerned for their bases of power and prestige.

It might have been like that some twenty years ago, but things have changed. Our ecclesial world seems to have sobered up and come to a sense of realism. We are small Churches and being in proportion with that fact – humble and modest – conveys that realism and seriousness to others. This is certainly the case with four Continuing leaders in the USA, our Metropolitan, Archbishop Mark Haverland of the Anglican Catholic Church together with Bishop Brian Marsh of the Anglican Church in America, Bishop Walter Grundorf of the Anglican Province of America and Bishop Paul Hewett of the Diocese of the Holy Cross.

The article in David Virtue’s site Continuing Anglican Leaders set 2017 as Goal for Full Communion is very encouraging. There will be many difficulties to sort out, like ACC clergy having left our Church under a cloud and having joined the TAC, and now expect to be treated as if nothing had happened. I am sure there is a case-by-case solution for most of those priests – just as long as there is some honesty, repentance for sinful attitudes and acts – and better resolutions for the future. There will certainly be many such canonical issues between Churches that like to do things properly and others where things are a little more sloppy. I am sure we can trust our bishops and archbishops to seek and agree solutions and overcome the difficulties.

For the time being, the goal is communicatio in sacris. We already seem to recognise each other’s Orders (nothing messed up by bishops being indirectly involved with women’s ordinations). That is a worthy goal. In England, matters are between Bishop Damien Mead and Bishop Gray of the TAC in England. Only later would there be any question of a full organic union, perhaps something like what the TAC was intended to be in the 1990’s. Our Archbishop and the Presiding Bishops would certainly like such an organic union to come about, but on a sound basis. That would take time to plan and organise.

Many have given up on the Continuum, which is understandable. Commenters on David Virtue’s site are often unkind and cynical, and of Evangelical churchmanship. Threads of comments often go off-topic and become occasions to blame Anglo-Catholicism for all the ills. We little priests and lay folk need to show support for our bishops and those who have been involved with the Continuum right from its beginnings in the 1970’s.

What is apparent from this article is that this will go in stages. Would the final goal be a “union” or “communion” like the TAC in the 1990’s but with lessons learned from errors and illusions?

Although there are different church cultures that exist among the signing bishops, there is no doubt that the commonality which exists far outweighs our differences.

There are the older questions of low church / high church, “old high church” against a culture that resembles Roman Catholicism before Vatican II but in English. There are different ways of organising things and applying laws. There are different rites within defined boundaries using the various local Prayer Books and the English and Anglican missals. There are also differences between cultures between the western world (the former British Empire), Africa, Asia and South America.

Unity and organic union would bring more institutional weight to bear and credibility in the face of our detractors and cynics. More people, presently impeded by “human respect”, would be inclined to join and support us – and then build up everything for which Churches have been responsible in the past.

There is a joy in return, joy in forgiveness and joy in reconciliation. Truly, this is an exciting and historic time to be in the Continuum.

I have felt this before in situations when many of us were led down the garden path. I believe that this time, things are more sober and serious. What is in the jar is what it says on the label. It is paramount to go from a position of truth to oneself and to others. In this, I have full confidence in our Bishops. May God bless this effort and tireless work!

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A clarification: When discussing developments in America, I have sometimes been asked about the Anglican Province of Christ the King, not mentioned in this or an earlier article. This comment was sent by Fr Laurence K. Wells to the article in Virtue Online (there are some nasty and negative comments which are best ignored):

APCK is already in full communion with ACC. In spite of recent troubles, it is perfectly intact and thriving, as the two latest issues of Christus Rex show very well. To say it is in a mess, is almost malicious slander, David. It is mostly a regional body, separated from ACC/ACA/APA more by geography than anything else. If the XnEC [Christian Episcopal Church] is “hanging in the wind,” that is a self-chosen predicament.

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