When the Salt loses its Savour…

Posted on Friday, 11 September, 2015 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

These are the words that came into my mind as I read A Brief (Very Brief) History of Practical Liturgics by JV. He published an unfinished, or rather in-concluded, posting. I would probably have felt the same had I written it, not because of anything “unworthy”, but because there seems to be no finality in sight.

I was not in communion with Rome at any part of the Benedictine pontificate (2005 to 2013), but I kept my eyes open. It became relevant to me as Archbishop Hepworth followed through with his plan, and as the Ordinariate scheme unravelled and twisted and turned as it was pulled out of its bag. I discovered some of the more inspiring Ratzinger texts in the early 1980’s and saw the man as he is, a German theology professor and supremely intellectual bishop. Many of my own professors and fellow students at Fribourg were Germans or German-speaking Swiss, and I learned a smattering of that extraordinarily difficult language. I feel as a Germanophile and at one with that country’s tradition of music and philosophy, the sturdy spirit of Romanticism that would produce both the highest sublimity up to 1914 and the basest evil in the Nazi era. My ancestors were Germanophiles, and my great-grandfather and grandfather were named after Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm. I thank God that I was not around in 1914 when my country had to go to war against Germany. My point? Josef Ratzinger was (is) not a conservative Catholic but a German Romantic, and beauty is a part of his life as it is for me. That is why he did all he could for the liturgy in the Roman Catholic Church.

I think JV refers to The New Liturgical Movement which I hardly ever read nowadays, ever since the end of the Benedictine papacy and the resignation of Shawn Tribe who was running that blog. I don’t say that it is no good, but it attracts me less.

And then things kind of stopped. A hard, sudden stop. And there doesn’t seem to be much sense of direction.

My answer is cuius rex eius religio. Benedict XVI the German Romantic was replaced by the Peronist Jesuit who was nearly elected in 2005. I have always found Jesuits incredibly boring in conversation. Perhaps they are Classicists, or perhaps have an agenda that non-Jesuits cannot understand. Every time I have been tempted to say something horrible about Francis, he comes up with something that we cannot ignore. One thing is sure with this event of just after my mother’s death. It shut down the euphoria of the ordinariates and liturgical conservatives. When Pope Francis goes the way of all of us, who knows? Cardinal Burke for Pope! I don’t think so. What the Church needs is not conservatism but vision. Benedict XVI had it, but he was unable to translate it into terms that would be understood by ordinary folk and priests brought up on slops since the 1970’s and earlier in some places. He was too much of an introvert. I understand that because I am one myself.

As the seeds of something luminous were rooted out and poisoned, we can only wait for the present situation to wear itself down, go the way of the Church of England and the general slush of western institutional Christianity. Like JV, I fail to see how things can go other than decomposition and decline. Then it’s goodnight to the light of the Gospel, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and all we have known. And then it will be darkness, brutality, torture and slavery as has happened in Irak, Syria and other middle-eastern countries. This isn’t about maniples or cuts of chasubles, but about a dying civilisation.

I am in no illusion. My own love of pre-Tridentine liturgics has not been very contagious. I hardly expected it. My own chapel will not survive the time I am in my house or my lifetime, whichever occurs first. The Church I belong to is real and legitimate, but it is fragile. I have been tired and burned-out for many years, but I seem to receive the grace of resilience and the ability to keep myself reasonably healthy emotionally. I am attached to my duty as a priest. It mostly takes willpower and determination, since that is the nature of work and duty. It is something we have to do whether or not we get pleasure out of it. That is the way I was brought up, like many of my generation and that of my parents. Sometimes we see glimmers of light that help us along and make it all worthwhile.

I have been aware that were I to change the way I celebrate Mass, for example put in an altar facing the people and use the Novus Ordo or some modern Anglican rite, it would make no difference in terms of attracting “clients” to the chapel. Such is not my objective. That brings me to think of the Church in general – trying to be relevant is burned out and finished. We can only be true to ourselves.

New liturgical movement? We are all too divided between our various ecclesial and ideological affiliations. I see nothing to compare with the work of French, German and Flemish monastics from the Romantic era to World War II – and a little later in places. My good friend Dom Alcuin Reid is a monastic in France, and his Prior seems to approve his work to which I have had the honour to contribute in a small way. In the end of the day, it all depends on our own work and our publishing it for others to read.

What of the future? The future of the French Church in the wake of the Revolution and Napoleon’s regime was bleak. It was re-born of bright little lights like Dom Guéranger and St Jean-Marie Vianney in his parish. It was a part of the Romantic movement in a strange kind of way since the silliness of the late eighteenth century was over. Minds were turned to something new and luminous. Perhaps that is our hope today.

* * *

Please see Salt of the Earth in response to my article. It resonates within me as does the comment below of Stephen K.

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A People without Memory is a People without a Future

Posted on Wednesday, 9 September, 2015 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I hated history lessons at school, with a master droning on about events in nineteenth-century English politics that seemed so distant and irrelevant. Why is historical knowledge so vitally important? Simply, historical knowledge is an antidote to ideology and manipulation.

It is often quoted that history is told by the victors. To the victors go the spoils of war, including historical knowledge. Where do we get our historical knowledge? When I was at university, my church history professor emphasised the importance of comparing a number of ideologically opposed sources and working out one’s own synthesis. We find the same difficulty with the events of our own days in the Middle-East, Russia and Ukraine, the role of American imperialism and the fast-dissolving European Union faced with the migrant crisis. Is there a coherent conspiracy? Some say there is a fixed agenda of some kind of Orwellian one-world dictatorship or bureaucracy. Alternatively, are we in a world of chaos which only be to the advantage of the dark forces and spirits, the ancient enemy?

If we heed some opinions on the internet, we seem to be at the dawn of a bad era involving war, chaos and the collapse of what little is left of post-Renaissance civilisation. Are there precedents, for example the end of the eighteenth century, the Industrial Revolution and Romanticism? I am in two minds, because I find it difficult to “feel” with that era.

We all try to contribute something to our understanding of the past: its ideas, politics, culture and minority movements. Most men of the early nineteenth century were not Romantics, but pushed for the grandiose world of rationalism, science and technology. The Romantics sought a different vision, as their descendent did also at the end of the nineteenth century and until the hecatomb of World War I.

Our world has been changed and innocence has been destroyed by the two wars. Only devastation remained coupled with supreme pessimism and nihilism or a new inspiration to rise from the ashes. I continue to read as much as possible, from the greatest diversity of sources and points of view, see documentaries, discuss and learn from academic historians. I have no doubt that Dr William Tighe would add his grain of salt, since he is an academic historian. I am deeply obliged to him on account of the fascinating books he keeps sending me. How do we get as much objectivity as possible? Read, read and read.

Each of us has to question ourselves and our certitudes, admitting that we can be seriously mistaken, in our beliefs and assumptions. We have a duty to be historians, because a people without memory is a people without a future. Does that not ring a bell when we consider our current political ideologies and the absolute barbarism of fanatical Muslims like Al Qaeda and Daesh? Even our own philistines do not destroy historical monuments going back thousands of years!

The study of history is our duty to humanity, to ourselves and those we love, to our neighbours and those from afar. Knowledge brings us freedom and peace, well beyond conformism and the “politically correct”. Knowledge and the critical mind will not make us hate or seek to provoke conflict, because we are above the asinine dialectics and the noise of clashing ideologies.

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Episcopi Vagantes Simplified

Posted on Tuesday, 8 September, 2015 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

vagantesIn A conservative blog for peace, we find On pushing progressivism in church and more. I think John is a tad simplistic for many questions:

Episcopi vagantes summed up: “tossing about between Modernism, theosophy, and simple megalomania.” Ex-clergy or clergy wannabes who think they’re better than the church and want to be clergy to get respect; clericalism.

Such an epithet seems probably true for many. I had something of a brush with some men in the independent sacramental world, and I am generally disappointed. The few who sought to get away from the clerical and self-aggrandising category seemed simply to disappear. Did they relinquish their priestly vocation or simply live it in an extremely discreet way away from the internet? I have written a number of articles on this subject, looking for the best and noblest dispositions.

Our friend John would blame the whole thing on refusal of submission to the Roman Catholic Church or the more “kosher” traditionalist movements like the Society of St Pius X. On the other hand I too am disappointed to see grandiose titles and legends built on nothing. Delusion, mental problems of delinquency? There are as many answers as men involved, and I have had some involvement myself. For John, I don’t think I would be counted as being in “the Church”, but I do believe that the Anglican Catholic Church can claim at least the same degree of legitimacy as the Old Catholics of Utrecht (before women’s ordination) and the smaller Orthodox jurisdictions. Our bishops are the result of election and examination by an ecclesial body, and not the subjective wishes of an individual. That said, I am not writing this to justify myself.

Who among us would not be fascinated to discover a country, town or a collegiate church that has remained exactly the same over centuries, resisting our modern era? The archetype of the “time capsule” is powerful in our psyche. Look at the fascination we all have about time travel in science fiction and the work of quantum physicists. How often we aspire to travel back to a period of time earlier than our own. We would be rid of many of the things that dog us in our own time, but we would also  sacrifice things like electronics, health care and sanitation. We who have known something cannot become like those who have never experienced them. We are living in the past compared with (for example) the twenty-second century when Earth will be as barren as Mars or there will be something like Star Wars. This archetype is a part of our Romantic aspirations, and is often expressed in music, poetry, literature and art.

I do believe that some men who find their way to an independent priesthood or episcopate see themselves in this “time capsule” paradigm. They live in another time, as we all do to an extent or degree. Some of us can relate more easily to modernity than others. I find it hard, and have had to make my own way. I went boating last weekend with this thought from the Gospel of St Thomas:

Jesus said, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

This carries a notion of vocation, existential purpose, something that motivates us to live for God, our fellow human beings and our planet with its wealth of animal and plant life. In the canonical Gospels, the same idea is expressed to an extent by the Parable of the Talents. It is cruel for an institution to treat a man in such a way as he loses all purpose of life, his very source of hope. I am sure that more can be done to help and guide “failed” seminarians by seeing further and wider than institutional orthodoxy. I am brought again to quote from the American poet Walt Whitman:

Down from the gardens of Asia descending radiating,
Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad progeny after them,
Wandering, yearning, curious, with restless explorations,
With questionings, baffled, formless, feverish, with never-happy hearts,
With that sad incessant refrain, Wherefore unsatisfied soul? and Whither O mocking life?

Ah who shall soothe these feverish children?
Who Justify these restless explorations?
Who speak the secret of impassive earth?
Who bind it to us? what is this separate Nature so unnatural?
What is this earth to our affections? (unloving earth, without a throb to answer ours, Cold earth, the place of graves.)

Some go to discover the South Pole or some isolated tribe in the Amazonian jungle. Others seek another “expression of church” by being ordained outside the “mainstream” churches and seeking to set off on their own along untrodden paths of self-knowledge and contemplation. Believe me, there is more to it than “Modernism, theosophy, and simple megalomania“. The way I see Modernism is a different one from Roman Thomists in the beginning of the twentieth century in their combat against those who sought to maintain the Church’s credibility in an environment of historical criticism and scientific progress. We either stay in our cages, Plato’s Cave (or whatever image we use), or we set out to discover and thus to bring forth what is within us.

I am just as dubious about theosophy and New Age, because they are artificial systems of “spirituality” that do not come from within our own depths but from hackneyed stereotypes and ideas. The way of Gnosis is not institutional or something for the masses, but ourselves with the transcendent and undefinable within us and everywhere around us. I cannot go back to Roman Thomism having discovered and experienced other things outside the cavern of shadows. But, I have to agree that the little gaggles of men and women in pointed hats calling themselves Tau this-or-that are silly caricatures. We only know about their existence because some curious traditionalist has written about them in the same spirit as circus owners in Victorian England showed off the Elephant Man.

As for magalomania, there are better and more efficient ways. The best way for the budding psychopath or narcissist is to go into banking, big business and politics. Hitler, for a failed art student in Vienna, was somewhat successful – at least until he got the blow-back fully in the face and suffered the defeat that led him to his cowardly suicide. Being a bishop, known only to one’s adversaries and critics, is hardly a way to affirm one’s own sense of self-importance. Perhaps with some.

We do need to make the effort to understand things, our own aspirations and failings. Then we might see a wider and more interesting picture. It might sometimes fall within our pastoral responsibilities as priests working by unusual means (like blogs). Perhaps many of these “vagus” clerics would do better to find something useful to do in life, and explore a new spiritual quest before settling down in some more homely and familiar way. Some are called to extraordinary things, to express their priesthood differently through art, technology and science, or in the way of the many invisible saints around us, whom we would never see in church.

I first read Anson and Brandreth some thirty years ago. I still have the two books, which now gather dust of my bookshelf. I have other books and studies about this topic that captured my imagination but always left me disappointed and empty-feeling. Perhaps some of those men do good, at least for a time. The noblest souls among them give up and become monks, find their place in some institutional church – or look further afield as spiritually minded human beings. Why expose them in the pillory? Is that the spirit of Christ?

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Up and Down the Canal

Posted on Monday, 7 September, 2015 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I returned today from my little weekend on the Somme, see previous article. The descriptions are under each photo.

somme-canal01I am moored just upstream from where I launched upstream from the main lock at Saint Valéry sur Somme. There was quite a current due to the periodical flushing of the estuary with millions or billions of gallons of water from the canal. This process took place from 10 am on Saturday and the great sluices were shut at about 4 pm, a couple of hours before high tide. Without wind, I would not have been able to row against the current, so had to moor and wait. At about 11 am, there was at last some wind, and was able to set off with jib only and rowing. That got me under the first bridge, which allowed my mast under with some inches to spare.

somme-canal02This is the lift bridge, quite a piece of civil engineering. To save having to stop the traffic, I was able to get under the right-hand span with my mainsail down.

somme-canal03Here is Sarum moored as I waited for wind to get me going up the canal. Though the current was against me, the wind would be favourable.

somme-canal04I went for a little walk and crossed over the bridge. Here is my moored boat from the other side.

somme-canal05This is the canal flowing out into the sea port. Don’t get caught in that!

somme-canal06Here I look over the lock of Saint Valéry sur Somme, all sluice gates open.

somme-canal07At last, the first bridge was behind me, and I hoisted the main. I sailed in a dead run, as always on inland waterways. My silent boat attracted attention from cyclists and walkers, and the occasional fisherman (I was very watchful for the lines and floats).

somme-canal08I continued my way past a big barge beautifully converted into a home.

somme-canal09Here I sailed past two yachts that didn’t look to be in very good condition. Sad.

somme-canal10Here’s all my clobber: dry clothes in a bag, toilet gear and towel, cambuse (galley) box underneath, my bedding was in a big dry bag to the right of my umbrella (came in useful for a couple of short showers of rain). My trusty oars are in the middle, ready for use at any time. Sailors, sorry about the mess in my running rigging lines – I just couldn’t be bothered on a canal run. I am a lot more disciplined at sea where it really matters!

somme-canal11Here’s my lunch stop just past the second bridge. I had to lower the mast for this one and the following ones. You will see at the end of this posting how I did it.

somme-canal12As I entered Abbeville the buildings and trees sheltered me from the wind and deprived me of my source of power. I had to row, and thus I was sitting on the thwart as I took this photo.

somme-canal13A real bit of brutalist French civil engineering from the 1930’s, graffiti from much later.

somme-canal14Here I moored at the waiting pontoon for the first lock through town. The bridges and locks are no longer operated after 6 pm and I was there more than an hour after that. The choice would be to wait until morning and continue, knowing that I would be rowing back. I decided to stop at Abbeville, camp for the night on board and then have the whole day if necessary to row back to Saint Valéry sur Somme.

somme-canal15Here’s the lock of Abbeville. It was a quiet night apart from revving motorcycles and barking dogs.

somme-canal16Sunday morning. Whatever wind I would have would be against me, so it was better to have none at all for rowing. It was literally like a mill pond.

somme-canal17Finally for those wondering how I did the mast trick for the low bridges. The forestay is shackled to a pulley. A line is attached to a pulley on the bow plate, and runs through the pulley on the forestay shackle and then through the foredeck pulley, then back towards the mast through a clam cleat bolted to the foredeck and a traditional cleat for safety. The entire manoeuvre is made possible from being on board. My former system was only accessible from outside the boat (beached or moored).

The mast pivots in an aluminium tabernacle (not a place of God’s presence or prayer but a hinge fixed to the mast step of the boat to keep the foot of the mast in one place) which I made for the purpose. The mast can come down much further, and completely when necessary. I discovered a way to hold the yard and boom as high as possible (using the topping lifts) to keep them out of the way for sitting on the thwart and rowing.

I devised this system and adapted it from standard mast stepping systems found on small yachts, the difference being my exact need to lower the mast for going under a bridge allowing less than 3 metres height. A yacht going down a canal will simply demast and use its engine. My system allows me to sail between the bridges and not have to de-rig the boat – provided that the wind is favourable (there are two winds on a canal or a river, behind your head or right in your face).

I rowed about ten miles (taking five hours), sometimes against gusts of wind. I had a favourable current for a couple of hours when the lock keepers at Saint Valéry completed the flushing job they began on Saturday. That probably saved me a couple of hours.

My shoulders are still aching!

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En Somme…

Posted on Thursday, 3 September, 2015 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I’m off sailing this coming weekend on the Somme Canal. I will certainly also have a lot of rowing, because the wind on inland waterways is usually behind your back or in your face. I will be launching “Sarum” at Saint Valéry sur Somme and I hope to get to some point between Abbeville and Amiens before turning round to head for base.

I prefer sea sailing, but round these parts of Normandy it is all cliffs and open sea with the sever waves and swell to accompany a moderate wind. Rather than drive all the way to Brittany, I decided on a canal sail, which will be interesting. I have equipped the boat with a system for lowering the mast to allow the boat to go under a low bridge without unrigging. I can then row the boat under the bridge and then raise the mast again with a single rope and get the usual tightness for my standing rigging.

There will be some locks to go through. I already had that experience at the Route du Sable, which was in the company of many other boats. On the Somme, I will be on my own and will certainly meet people in other pleasure craft and in the various villages the canal crosses. This video with the hauntingly beautiful music of Mozart gives a general idea of this peaceful canal:

As I discovered on the Aulne last year, rowing isn’t that bad on calm water with little headwind. The only question is calculating my average speed using a watch against landmarks on the map. I plan to go at least to Abbeville, a town with a beautiful church but which was badly damaged in 1940. That will certainly involve lowering the mast and rowing, and tying up in some nice place opposite a bar where I can drink a beer and read a book. The way between Abbeville and Amiens, where the cathedral is glorious:

will be interesting. The canal goes  between a number of lakes and bits of marshland. The landscape is open and flat, so there should be enough wind to sail instead of rowing. A beam reach would be helpful to get more headway. There will be plenty of villages to tie up, get something to eat and visit a church and say some Office.

The adventure begins tomorrow night and I will camp in the van or my little tent, and launch the boat on Saturday morning. I have everything needed to sleep on board Saturday and Sunday nights, or pitch the tent on the bank of the canal – depending on what is allowed by local by-laws and appropriate for the place.

It was ninety-nine years ago that the Somme saw one of the bloodiest battles of history, and I will certainly have a thought for the many young lives sacrificed among the poppies of the Somme. The actual battlefield, some thirty miles to the east of Amiens is much further than the extent of my little weekend voyage. Nevertheless, this word – the Somme – reminds us all of those whom we will remember at the going down of the sun.

Why alone and not with my wife? We would need campsites or places to sleep with some comfort. Also, I need some time alone, something women often find difficult to understand about their menfolk. It is something I share my my father – a need for solitude and silence. I also love the chance to be a young boy again on some Swallows and Amazons jaunt! And it will cost very little too…

I have much to discover in my little boat.

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A Long Time Ago

Posted on Wednesday, 26 August, 2015 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

chadwicks1960I have just received this from an aunt in Canada – my family in 1960. I am the tiny tot in my father’s arms and my mother is holding my sister Wendy. We were on a visit to my grandmother in Surrey who died in 1971.

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Square Pegs in Round Holes

Posted on Wednesday, 26 August, 2015 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

hagia_sofiaJV who often comments here has written an interesting posting for his blog – Unity or Coexistence? One cannot but wonder if some traditionalist Christians have simply missed the bus. JV is very lucid about these matters like in an article he took down for some reason in which he wondered whether the victory of secularism over Christianity was really due to some deep-seated human need.

We continuing Anglicans often talk about working for unity, both between our respective independent Churches and with Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. Our bishops in the USA often hold meetings, and some profound statements have resulted from them. Obviously, the work should continue. I do believe that small churches with a similar vision and body of doctrine can work towards reconciliation and a choice between cohabitation or organic union of some kind.

Uniatism has been discussed ever since bodies of Orthodox Christians united with Rome at different times in history and were allowed to keep their own liturgy and traditions. Anglicanorum coetibus of Benedict XVI, like the Anglican Use under John Paul II and Cardinal Law of Boston, is a practical example of a pragmatic uniate scheme to bring a certain number of Anglicans into communion with Rome for the reason that they could no longer remain in the Canterbury communion for reasons of conscience (ordination of women, homosexuality, etc.). The question of the ordinariates has been discussed more or less exhaustively.

Certainly, things have changed since the early days of ecumenism and the Modernist movement that is so denounced by traditionalists as the nemesis nec plus ultra. The question of Islam is becoming very worrying – the apparent invincibility of Daesh aka ISIS and the atrocities they are getting away with worthy of the Nazis or Hirohito’s empire during World War II. Outside the extremist and terrorist groups, we in Europe are concerned about the numbers of Islamic immigrants and the way they will change everything once they attain a given percentage of the population within fifty years or so. It is a fact that Christianity in Europe, and also in North America, is crumbling away. Christianity can no more live in post-modern culture than a fish out of water.

Were that men of the Church were truly modernist! These words put it so succinctly:

The early 20th century, however, benefited from the influence of modernity in that there was an intellectual environment that encouraged contextualization and the conviction that one is not necessarily bound to the conventions of a previous era. Modernism, like most philosophical systems before it, at least offered one item for assimilation by Christianity – the appreciation of historical context and the reasonable limits of said context on the present.

The train has left the platform and the traditionalists are franticly asking railway workers the time of the next train. There isn’t one.

The ordinariates were hailed by some to be the fruits of the ecumenical movement, since there have been no successes between Canterbury, Rome and Orthodoxy. Indeed, uniatism tends to be an obstacle to dialogue between Orthodoxy and Rome. The big problem, especially between the “two one-true churches” is that one has to give way to the other, accept the ecclesiology of the winning church and submit its clergy to its selection and training system.

I appreciate the distinction between organic unity (the “losing” church surrendering and converting to the “winning” church) and coexistence. That is largely a moot question in an age when the governments of the entire western world are secular and care little for religion provided that it doesn’t break the law or disturb public order. I have lived in small northern English towns where no two churches were of the same denomination. In Kendal where I was born, if I recollect: there are three Anglican churches (low, central and moderately high), one RC church, one Methodist chapel, one United Reformed church, Society of Friends (Quakers), Unitarians. As a teenager, I spotted a sign to a Christadelphian church, and there are independent American-style Evangelical groups. What I have dubbed as “Christian islam” is doing quite well on account of its simple message. Kendal is a small market town of about 28,000 inhabitants. Coexistence? It is the de facto situation between Christians since about the 1950’s, at least in England.

Small churches like ours still has difficulty in being respected as a bona fide community on the level of the Methodists or the URC’s by the Anglican establishment or the RC’s. As a TAC priest, when it looked like we would be taken in by Rome lock, stock and barrel, I was constantly invited to be interviewed on the radio in France, asked to attend conferences and meetings. I was almost the star of the moment, but it didn’t go to my head. I was expecting what happened. Archbishop Hepworth’s bluff was called and he was discredited, and I went elsewhere after a time for discernment. I ceased to exist.

It is amazing to see Christians wanting the downfall of other Christians, in a world where the “winning” Christians are going to have a very hard time. I am not one of those who sees conspiracies under the bed or goes along with the “prepper” agenda, but there are concerns. There is the old fable about Constantinople when the Muslim invaders were ransacking the churches like Daesh are doing now in Syria and Irak – the theologians were discussing the sex of the Angels. The story is generally accepted to be untrue, but it teaches the same lesson as Nero fiddling while Rome was burning. Our world potentially faces the end of capitalism and an economic collapse, World War III and the spread of Islamic totalitarianism. That seems to put things into perspective for us.

We can’t do very much about the world, but we can see about our own intellectual and spiritual health, the quality of our own belief in Christ and commitment. That seems to be where it all begins, with ourselves.

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Seraphine

Posted on Saturday, 22 August, 2015 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

seraphineOur little Seraphine left us this night. She was a Cairn Terrier of 14 who had suffered for some considerable time from kidney and liver failure. She was on a number of medications and something to ease pain due to arthritis.

The photo above was taken at the end of last month while we were on holiday. Cairn terriers always lie down with their back legs in this position unlike most other dogs. She was quite bright during our holiday, too weak for walks, but still enjoyed a piece of sausage or cheese. She took a turn for the worse as we brought her back home.

Seraphine was bought by my wife from a garden and pet shop near Rouen. This was before we met. She already had a cat (Frimousse who died in 2007) and went to buy a plant for her terrace. The puppy was in a glass cage and looked quite forlorn. “What do you do with dogs you don’t manage to sell”? – Silence. Shops like this one get their puppies and kittens from “puppy mills” whose owners are often unscrupulous about genetic quality or basic care. Anyway, Sophie went for it and bought the puppy. She was the last pet from before our marriage as Sophie reminded me this morning.

She died apparently without suffering and peacefully in her basket.

We will be burying her this evening in the garden next to our other dogs and cat.

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Sarum Movement?

Posted on Saturday, 22 August, 2015 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

The person running Rad Trad has promised a series: New Series: The Whole Sarum. This will be something to keep an eye on. This blog has on many occasions shown sympathy to other local traditions like diocesan rites and uses in France. This will certainly be a precious contribution to provoking interest in the Use of Sarum – and one which will transcend the boundaries of institutional Churches.

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Interesting Observations

Posted on Friday, 21 August, 2015 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

For some time now, we have been treated by John Bruce of Los Angeles to a long season on the Ordinariates. It would seem to me that he loves doing down anything that is not under the mainstream bureaucracy or where the English eccentric may thrive. American Catholicism seems so corporate! Perhaps that has its advantages like European Union regulations on the shape of carrots or health & safety in corporate buildings in our cities. It’s not for me, but my perspective has little importance.

He has been recently comparing the American with the English ordinariates. If it isn’t big, corporate and “establishment”, get rid of it… The ordinariates are not my concern, and I don’t keep informed about what is going on in them. However, what would appear is that they are about as small and marginal as us Continuing Anglicans, and have little relevance. The observation is also made that most of the founders of the English ordinariate were Anglo-Papalists using the English Missal or the Novus Ordo.

Fr John Hunwicke writes an interesting blog, and I look at it most days on my morning round. I think he looks down his nose at me, but I have nothing against him. I was Establishment until the age of 22 but not a very “successful” one at it. I left the Church of England as a layman and made the error of not believing that to be a good cleric, you have to been of the type of personality that fits into a corporate and bureaucratic structure. Elsewhere, I have heard that the eccentric English clergyman was made possible by the benefice system, which I believe has now been abolished by the Church of England. He is an eccentric. I am a late-comer in the Baby-Boomer generation and underwent many of the same influences as the “liberals” and “progressives”. He is Oxford educated. I went to a red-brick university that is not even in England! Anyway, all that is of little importance.

Anglo-Papalism is an odd phenomenon – the desire to copy everything the Roman Catholic Church but doing it with the hope of joining it as a married clergyman. I remember seeing the Roman Novus Ordo in Anglican parishes in London in the 1970’s and wondered what the point of it was. The architecture of some churches in London and on the south coast is quite surprising. There is a story of an Italian going to Mass for many years in an Anglican church in London before finding out that it was not Roman Catholic!

This is what has brought me to make a clear distinction between Catholicism without any other qualification and the state of Catholicism as it reacted against the Protestant Reformation and embarked on its own programme of reform and regulation. High-church Anglicanism, from about the end of the nineteenth century, began to copy Italian Roman Catholicism as it expressed itself in the refounded English RC Church of 1850. For a time, from my Tiber-swim in 1981, I followed the movement – all the way to the “guilded mirror” of Gricigliano. After that point, my religious-cultural “reference” has been French Benedictine monasticism and aspects of the English “neo-medieval” movement of about 1890 to the outbreak of World War I. Paradoxically, I was interested in Sarum liturgics and medieval English and Norman churches throughout the time.

Eccentricity and limit-pushing can become excessive. Where is the line drawn? Should the Church be characterised by greyness, boring routine and conformity? Should it be adorned by colourful eccentrics? Is eccentricity a consequence of smallness and the state of being marginal? Perhaps. In the Anglican parishes I have known as a teenager, vicars and parsons could be themselves because they were practically their own bishops! Roman Catholicism provides no such security of tenure to its parish priests. Step out of line and you’re out! France is another case, if the priest is supported by his flock. I have known French priests who almost vied with Victorian Englishmen for their individuality and character, and I’m not thinking of Fr Montgomery-Wright who was in a class of his own. In France “everything is forbidden but everyone does it“. American grey corporate conformity would not go down well here. Nowadays, it’s much more difficult to get through the seminary system unless you buckle down and conform, at least until you get ordained.

Being eccentric and individual is an instinct that keeps some of us alive. Too much of it can make us horribly unpopular. In the end, it isn’t something we “put on” but which is a part of us. The idea transpires that the essence of Anglican Patrimony is this kind of eccentricity and priests being themselves and unhindered by the less intelligent aspects of social convention – going against the grain and using different liturgies from the status quo. This is something very English, and both Italians and Americans will find it difficult to comprehend.

Since the Victorian era, England has changed and the Church no less. The Church of England is no more welcoming to rebels and anarchists than the RC Church! No corporation can be, but small communities can to an extent assimilate them if an effort is made to find a modus vivendi. Some of us thrive in small communities, where we become alienated and sick in big corporations. Many people do better in large and disciplined units, whether in their spiritual lives or at work. Far from me to judge them! It is a question of temperament. I have had to discover a mechanism of survival!

I was disappointed to see the English ordinariate founded on the basis of Anglo-Papalism, but not on account of eccentricity. It was a lazy way of stopping up a hole so that normal ecumenical relations could be resumed between Rome and the mainstreams of Anglican slush that converge at Watford Gap and are served up as soup! Rome was obviously disappointed that the TAC was being led by someone with the profile of Archbishop Hepworth – and so had to bring the older Church of England based movement in to cover over the embarrassing cracks. There are different interpretations, and none of us has ever quite got down to the bottom of it.

John Bruce has his way of seeing things, and his work on the blog makes him stand out from the amorphous grey mass of humanity attending the parish where he goes on Sundays. He has uncovered many aspects that others see from a different perspective or brush under the carpet. I think the ordinariates will continue what they are doing in a similar way to that of the Latin Mass Society or the Fraternity of St Peter. They seem to be doing good as we all try to do. Mr Bruce’s message is obviously the dissolution of the ordinariates and pressure on those concerned to conform to the Novus Ordo system in place. That might be the most logical thing for those who have become Roman Catholics unless they go to some Tridentine Mass group or the Eastern Rite. It is easy to forget that each person has freedom of choice – and a conscience (at least outside the Orwellian dystopia).

If we consider things from a “business” and “marketing” point of view, Christianity in general has precious little future. Secularism and materialism seem to fulfil a human need at least to some extent. I already said in another posting that any Christianity that does not mean any more than its visible and institutional dimension means nothing at all. The churches are increasingly empty and the modern world has no use for them, nor does it wish to continue paying good money to maintain them. The corporate vision is the death of the spiritual life. Just close it all down and be done with it! There are more effective ways to control people via policing and electronic surveillance!

I am uncertain of the future of my little ACC diocese, but I do everything I can to help it to continue, grow and increase in stability. If there is a market for religion, it is for the simplistic notions promoted by Islam and Evangelical fundamentalism, the very kind of instincts that made the German people follow Hitler in the 1930’s. Only a very few will see a more mystical, symbolic and spiritual element – and it takes an instinct for individuality and rejection of the “world”. It is the ancient drama between Gnosticism and the Church of Constantine and the Ecumenical Councils.

We have only to be true to ourselves

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Two quotes from Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four:

We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us; so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be. Even in the instance of death we cannot permit any deviation . . . we make the brain perfect before we blow it out.

There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent there will be no need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.

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