A den of zingers

A couple of months ago I mentioned my chance discovery of the marvellous French website catho.org which contains numerous primary sources for the study of the Catholic French including the Latin text of the 1917 Code of Canon Law and the 1996 edition of Denzinger's Dogma.

The entire site – design and content – seems to have been adopted by the Congregation for the Clergy for their site clerus.org. On their Magisterium page, they offer Denzinger in English. The text is somewhat older. It stops at what is now DS 3904 (2333 in that edition), the ruling that all must believe in the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in Munificentissimus Deus, 1st November 1950 (n.45 in the English translation at the Vatican website). Much better than nothing.

(The title is a reference to a remark by Ralph McInerny.)

The longer novitiate

Ed Peters discusses a proposal to increase the length of the novitiate in religious orders. (For those who do not know: when you enquire about joining a religious order, even if you are in residence for a while, you do so as a postulant; when you actually join – this is when you are "clothed" in the habit if there is one – you are a novice; when you reach the end of the novitiate you take temporary vows and become a junior. Up to this point leaving is fairly unproblematic and indeed foreseen, once you take final vows you are in for life.)

This two-year (and-a-half) year max applies only to novitiate, the completion of which period makes one eligible for temporary vows. Emphasis on temporary, meaning three to six years (per 1983 CIC 655), extendable to nine (per 1983 CIC 657 § 2). Now, one in temporary vows is a religious, and departures during temporary vows are distressing, but they are, in the final analysis, departures made during a period called temporary for a reason. At which point we may ask, is it probable that one, having gone through at least two years (maybe two-and-a-half) of novitiate, followed by at least three more years (possibly nine more!) in temporary vows, fails to perservere in religious life because of too-brief a formation period? It’s possible, I grant. But probable? Sufficiently probable to explain the tens of thousands of departures that the Church’s religious institutes have experienced over the last 40 years?

Peters refers to an essay from 1984 by the philosopher Paul Quay SJ, Renewal of Religious Orders, or Destruction? Fr Quay, writing in a journal of Canon Law, points out that given the procedures in place for dispensing people from their final vows, there is no longer any right, for those properly disposed and prepared, to take indispensable vows.

With the promulgation of the Code of Canon Law in 1917, however, the Church ceased to recognize any totally indissoluble vows of religion. In virtue of the Pio-Benedictine Code, the religious order as spiritually, if not always juridically, understood for many centuries, was abrogated, at least in the Patriarchate of the West. 

(There you go again: St Pius X reformed the Breviary and made the Liturgy the plaything of the Papacy – with the consequences we all know – but not content with that he also abolished traditional religious orders. And he is supposed to be held up as the traditionalists' favourite Pope!)

Quay's essay as published, and as reproduced by Peters, included a brief commentary by a Canon lawyer, Dominic Andres CMF. Quay concluded as follows:

As has doubtless been apparent throughout this article, I am not a canonist. The problem raised here may well have, for a canonist, an obvious and simple resolution; it may be no problem at all, but only a misconstrual on my part. Yet, having talked to many on this topic, I can attest that many so construe the law. It would, therefore, be of help to many if those more competent than I would address this matter. 

The commentary provides a magnificent hand wave, wafting all the problems away. Andres seizes on that final paragraph with the following smug observation (emphasis added).

The author, while a religious, is not trained in canon law, but in philosophy, and perhaps his acute observations are better understood under this light, for they are not groundless nor lacking in psychological and spiritual importance. Another step toward understanding this matter lies in the final paragraph of the study.

Well, Quay asked for a concrete proposal to resolve this problem. And what does this canon lawyer propose? Absolutely nothing. Literally. That was the end of his reply.

See also Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith The disappearance of traditional religious orders is changing the landscape of the Church.

A cornucopia for copy and paste

My current project requires the transcription of large slabs of text, specifically Magisterial documents of the Catholic Church. I recently discovered a French website, catho.org which has the 1917 Code of Canon Law in Latin and French as well as the 1996 edition of Denzinger's Dogma. So I was able to save myself typing out DS 1247-1279 (the questions to be posed to those accused of the Hussite or Wycliffite heresies, decreed by the Council Of Constance 22nd February 1418). Also Catho.org gives the older paragraph numbers of Denzinger right next to the current number. This is useful for using pre-1963 works of theology. From the home page you navigate to the French versions but there is a little button ("Latin" hand written with a mouse it looks like) to switch to the original. It does not provide the Greek texts of the early councils. Also it only provides French texts of the Fathers. Clicking on the pair of blue semi-circular arrows (looks like a refresh button) within a given text takes you to citations of the passage which you are reading. As they say on the home page:

Un système UNIQUE AU MONDE, issu de la technologie exclusive du logiciel Ictus, permet de savoir immédiatement où un document est cité. Ainsi, vous découvrirez comment les Pères de l'Église commentent un passage des Saintes Écritures, ou bien comment un texte du Magistère (concile, encyclique) est utilisé par un autre document. … Grâce à Internet et aux techniques les plus modernes appliquées à ce trésor de textes, ayez l'érudition d'un vrai moine!

Quite so.

Meanwhile I am agog at developments on Newman Reader. Although they have adopted a rather odd looking font (looks like Papyrus) for the front page we can forgive all that because they have put PDF scans of all 32 volumes of Newman's Letters and Diaries (it would cost thousands to assemble a collection of printed copies) as well as of modern collections of Newman's miscellaneous papers. They seem to have done an OCR job on it so the text is searchable, at any rate it is as searchable as something on Google books (presumably Google did the work, since "snippet view" and "preview" versions of L&D are available on Google books). I cannot find Newman's preface to Hutton's Anglican Ministry, but I just gave you that. Nor is there the full version of his ejaculation in favour of the Papacy beginning "Deeply do I feel…"

Last, but not least, (via Chant Café) the complete four volume Missale Romanum cum lectionibus is now online.  Each volume is split into four files. They take an age to download. They have been gone through a first run with optical character recognition so you can copy and paste up to a point. It is not very accurate however. But it is better than nothing. Much better.

A very loving problem

In a footnote to a review of a book about the possibility of married priests, Canon Lawyer Edward Peters (mentioned in these parts several times) discusses a translation problem:

Cattaneo repeats a very common mistranslation of Presbyterorum ordinis 16 when he quotes it as saying that Vatican II “permanently [sic: lovingly (peramanter)] exhorts all those who have received the priesthood and marriage [sic: the priesthood in marriage (in matrimonio presbyteratum)] to persevere in their holy vocation …”. 

The relevant passage (leaving out a reference to the practice of married clergy in the eastern Churches) of PO  16 is:

Sacrosancta haec Synodus … omnesque illos peramanter hortatur, qui in matrimonio presbyteratum receperunt, ut, in sancta vocatione perseverantes,

The Vatican translation: 

This holy synod … permanently exhorts all those who have received the priesthood and marriage  to persevere in their holy vocation…

Peters refers us to his own article [PDF] in the  Catholic Scholars Quarterly  (Summer 2011), which includes the following discussion of PO  16 and the Vatican translation.

Plainly, the English translation proposes two grammatically equivalent direct objects of the verb “received,” namely, “priesthood and marriage,” While the Latin original proposes only one direct object for the verb “receperunt,” namely, “presbyteratum,” while referring to marriage in a prepositional phrase “in matrimonio”. A correct English translation of the Latin original should read something like “This holy synod … exhorts all those who have received the priesthood in marriage [or ‘while married’ or ‘in the married state' or ‘after marriage’] to persevere in their holy vocation.”

Cattaneo, of course is simply using the translation on the Vatican website. That would be the same Vatican website which notes that Pastors "understand that it is their noble duty to shepherd the faithful and to recognize their miniseries…" (Lumen Gentium n.30). That is why my Parish Priest always looks for copies of Brideshead Revisited, Band of Brothers and so on, when he comes to visit.

Finding the answer I knew all along

More than ten years ago I read an introduction to the history of English law.   The following passage stuck with me.

The earliest canonists held marriage to be effected by the physical union of man and woman in carnal copulation.  They became one fled by commixtio sexuum .  But, since copulation could occur outside marriage, a mental element was also necessary.  There had to be an agreement to marry.  According to Gratian (c. 1140) marriage began by agreement but became complete and indissoluble only when the agreement had been sanctioned by a Church ceremony and consummated in a physical union.  There immediately arose difficulties with this approach.  The requirement of formality tended to increase the subjection of young couples to pressure from parents and lords, while the notion that physical union was essential led to embarrassing theological questions about the marital status of Christ's parents.

J. H. Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History , fourth edition
 (London: Butterworths Tolley, 2002), part two, ch. 28, p.479.

If Mary was perpetually a virgin (CCC 496-501 esp. 499) then the ideal of the Holy Family (CCC 1655) becomes ever more remote. I had wondered how this problem was resolved or if it had simply been quietly dropped.

Then Edward Peters (often mentioned in these parts) posted A caution re reading Bergoglio as a proto-Francis. He discusses an earlier Pope who had been involved in the debate between agreement and consummation as making a marriage.

The great canonist Rolandus Bandinelli lent his prestige to the Bologna interpretation. Coupled with Gratian and Hugh of St. Victor, Bandinelli was a powerful proponent of the consummation=marriage school. True, Bandinelli seemed to shift more toward the consent=marriage school later in his career as canonist, but even upon being elected Alexander III in 1159, he still vacillated between the two theories, and not for some time did he finally side with the Parisian interpretation that consent makes marriage (while consummation adds a technical type of indissolubility). Thus, even though it disagreed with a position Bandinelli had earlier strongly defended, Alexander firmly gave the Church an insight into marriage from which she has never retreated. Moral of the story: Something about being pope forces men to approach issues not as intellectual exercises, both sides of which can be argued, but as articulations of the doctrines and disciplines of the universal Church. Rather more weighty. I am, therefore, much more interested in what Francis says and does as pope than I am interested in what Bergoglio said and did as a bishop or priest or (good grief) as a seminarian. [emphasis added.]

Gosh I thought. There's the answer. So I came to write this post and found the following  in Baker immediately after the passage cited above.

After grappling with such problems, Pope Alexander III introduced, in the late twelfth century, a more sophisticated doctrine of marriage.  Under the new rules, marriage could be contracted by consent alone, without any ecclesiastical ceremony, parental consent or physical consummation, provided the consent was notified in words of the present tense (sponsalia per verba de praesenti ).  Such a marriage was irregular, in so far as the parties could be compelled for the sake of order and decency to solemnise the marriage publicly at the door of a church, and punished for any sinful connection theymay have had befofre so doing.  Yet it was valid and, before consummation, created an indissoluble bond which would be upheld even in preference to a subsequent church marriage with a different spouse.

Baker, op. cit. , pp.479-480.

I must have been asleep when I read that bit. 

 

Assorted links on the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI

I don't want to keep putting up posts on this. It is a little depressing. I want people digging this out of some memory crystal of the first 100 centuries of the internet to say "why did he need to name the Pope in the title of this post? only one Pope in the third millennium resigned". So this post will serve as the dumping ground for any more stories I come across. Fr Alexander Lucie Smith fears

The ordeal awaiting us – watching all and sundry pontificating on all matters Papal and religious. 

Amen, Father.

Apparently the Pope will resign the Papacy exactly 365 days older than Blessed John Paul II was when he died.

 UPDATE 1
The Impossible "Road Map" of Peace with the Lefebvrists

How does Radaelli see the healing of this opposition? In his judgment, “it is not the model of Church obedient to dogma that must once again submit to the pope,” but “it is rather the model obedient to the pope that must once again submit to dogma.”
In other words:
"It is not Ecône [editor's note: the community of the Lefebvrists] that must submit to Rome, but Rome to Heaven: every difficulty between Ecône and Rome will be resolved only after the return of the Church to the dogmatic language that is proper to it.”

That was February 9th. Two days later all bets were off when the present Pope made his declaratio.

Catholic-bashers have embellished the truth about abuse in Catholic institutions. It's time to put the record straight

Brendan O'Neil, secularist agnostic (scroll down), rides to the rescue of the Church in Ireland.

UPDATE 2

Dr Edward Peters asks When will the conclave start? His conclusion is the same as mine (lucky him), i.e. not before 15th March. Also who can be elected Pope? Turns out married men are not excluded, also note the explanation at the end for why the 15 days don't begin until midnight 28th February-1st March (c.203). He also contradicts the assertion that the Cardinals might be able to adjust the start for the next Conclave: "There is nothing ambiguous about the two-week waiting period set out in [Universi Dominici Gregis] 37 and—long story made short—ambiguities in the law, not inconveniences, are what are subject to ‘interpretation’."

UPDATE 3

Tim Stanley lists the ways the mainstream media just doesn't get God or Catholicism.

If someone retired at work, who would you invite to give the farewell speech? Someone who liked and understood them, or someone who hated or never even met them? Parts of the media seem to overwhelmingly favour the latter, which is why we’ve seen the usual suspects wheeled out to give commentary on the abdication – campaigners for women priests, defrocked Marxists, "humanists" and, worst of all, the ubiquitous disgruntled cradle Catholics.

UPDATE 4

There are only two "Vatican watchers" worth reading. That is they know what they are talking about and they appear to have decent sources. John Allen discusses Cardinal Bertone.

(Among "Vatican watchers" I read some poor sap recently who talked about the Vatican having a "Swiss army" – that might be news to André Blattman).

UPDATE 5

The other Vatican watcher worth reading is Sandro Magister.

In the Philippines, which is the only nation in Asia where Catholics are in the majority, there shines a young and cultured cardinal, archbishop of Manila Luis Antonio Tagle, the focus of growing attention. As a theologian and Church historian, Tagle was one of the authors of the monumental history of Vatican Council II published by the progressive “school of Bologna.” But as a pastor, he has demonstrated a balance of vision and a doctrinal correctness that Benedict XVI himself has highly appreciated. Especially striking is the style with which the bishop acts, living simply and mingling among the humblest people, with a great passion for mission and for charity.

The antics of the Bologna school are regularly covered by Magister.

UPDATE 6

An evisceration of a story in the New York Times. Summed up in the opening line:

Gaaaaaaaaaaahhhh.

Scraping the barrel on Pope coverage

The last Pope to resign was Gregory XII who did so on 4th July 1415. But he did so when there were two other claimants (a Benedict XIII and a John XXIII, not to be confused with Pietro Francisco Orsini or Angelo Roncalli) and so it was not immediately clear whether the real Pope was resigning or was being eased out (as the other two claimants were). So far as I know the only other resignation was St Celestine V who did so on 13th December 1294. Pope Benedict visited St Celestine's tomb in July 2010, and left his Pallium there. Anyway those are some facts.

I thought factoids were trivial facts. I was wrong. They are things presented as fact but actually false – such as the sowing of salt into the ruins of Carthage (didn't happen, made up I believe in the 20th century).

Five factoids about Popes and their Appointment.

Edward Peters asks When will the Conclave start?


Further to my theory that everybody in practice acknowledges the vast importance of the Papacy on its own terms, that is spiritually, not merely because he happens to be in charge of the world's largest religion, here are some more links.

Dan Hodges (Glenda Jackson's son) says A black Pope would be the liberal left's worst nightmare. Unlikely. They have no problem going after Clarence Thomas, Archbishop John Sentamu etc.

In a few weeks time they’re going to establish a new Papal Conclave, and when they do, they really need to get Alastair Campbell in there, or Simon Cowell.

This a few shades from Cosmopolitan decrying the election of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger because he would destroy the Catholic Church: We didn't know you cared!

Tim Blair says:

Pope Benedict XVI announces his resignation. I didn't know he was a Labor MP.

The Pope and the PM: Compare and contrast

On 30th January 2013 Julia Gillard, Prime Minister of Australia, announced that the next general election for the Commonwealth Parliament will be on September 14th.

That's a wait of 227 days.

On February 11th Pope Benedict XVI announced that he was renouncing the Papacy with effect from 8pm on 28th February (6am on 1st March in Sydney).

According to John Paul II's Apostolic Constitution Universi Dominici Gregis n.37, there has to be a period of 15 days from "the moment when the Apostolic See is lawfully vacant" before the Conclave can begin. The Cardinals can wait a maximum of twenty days. Given the advance warning it seems unlikely that the conclave will begin any later than 15th March. The mean length of all conclaves from St Pius X onwards is 3.1 recurring (you may want to check my arithmetic). Modal length is 3. Median is 3.5.

There should be a new Pope before 20th March 2013, Wednesday of the 5th Week of Lent. 178 days later Australia should get a new Prime Minister.

Philippa Martyr discusses the chances of the next Pope being a black lesbian. She also predicts every idiot and his dog (usually the less idiotic of the two) giving his opinion. She is pleased by this.

The good thing about it all is that the world - for whose salvation the Catholic Church exists - sees the Church as genuinely everyone's property, and something about which everyone can and should have an opinion. It was actually always meant to be that way - out in the open, big enough for anyone who wanted to join, and plenty of room for all comers.

Just after the Conclave of 2005 began I heard a reliable report that BBC news announced the extra omnes as "we will soon have a new Pope". The Reformation seemed to be over.

Brendan O'Neill – former editor of Living Marxism (which I heard him coyly refer to as "LM" when he was in Australia recently) and an agnostic – is honestly disappointed.

The news that the Pope has resigned sends out a powerful and probably unwitting message – that the Papacy is just a job, like being a bank manager or librarian. It is apparently something you can jack in when you feel past it or whacked out. I think the reason people have felt instinctively startled today by the phrase "Pope resigns" is because most of us, even non-Catholics, probably even the fashionable Pope-bashing set, feel that being Pope is not just a job but a calling, or at least a vocation; something one feels summoned to do and more importantly to be.

My Yoke Is Easy, My Burden Light.

From time to time I have been invited to weddings on Sundays – typically in the early afternoon – at which a Nuptial Mass is celebrated. All Catholics are obliged to attend Mass on Sundays but, by a special rule, one can fulfil one's obligation by attending Mass on Saturday evening. The propers of that Mass (readings, changeable prayers etc.) are almost always the same as those of the Sunday, even though it is on Saturday evening. Mutatis mutandis this applies for those Feasts designated "Holy Days of Obligation" ("Days of Precept" in the old terminology) which happen to fall on a weekday. In Australia such occasions are limited to Christmas Day and the Solemnity of the Assumption on August 15th.

I had always assumed that, to fulfil an obligation to hear Mass on a given day, Catholics must hear the Mass of that day. Wedding Masses have their own prayers and readings, therefore a Wedding Mass on a Sunday would not fulfil my Sunday obligation, and so I would still have to attend Mass elsewhere on Sunday morning or Saturday evening. With the children, and dressing for the wedding, and so on, this can be quite tough.

It turns out my assumption is false. Edward Peters (whom I mentioned the other day) explains things.

…a few folks who correctly remind others that there are two attendance obligations coming up seem also to assert that the type of Mass attended determines which attendance obligation can be satisfied thereat, as in, for example, a Mass of Anticipation for the Second of Advent, celebrated at 5 pm next Saturday, can only be applied toward one’s Sunday obligation, not toward Immaculate Conception. That’s an error arising from confusing the canonical obligation on people to attend Mass with the liturgical obligation on priests to celebrate the Mass called for by the rubrics. The people’s canonical obligation to attend Mass is satisfied by their “assisting at a Mass celebrated anywhere in a Catholic rite on the [day required] or in the evening of the preceding day…” (c. 1248 § 2). The law says nothing about what type of Mass is celebrated, only, that it must be a Mass in a Catholic rite.

A Canon Lawyer on the Catholic Answers forum came to a different conclusion. Peters responds to his arguments (references at the link).

The Church imposes an obligation to attend Mass-on-Sunday (a phrasing I prefer because so many people take the requirement “to go to Sunday Mass” to mean “to go to Mass as celebrated on Sunday with the Sunday readings etc.”, which is to prejudice the very point in question) and recognizes the 24-hour period known as Sunday as being available for one to fulfill that obligation. In that respect, then, not only have we an obligation to attend Mass-on-Sunday, but we have a right to fulfill that obligation within a set 24-hour period. Now, just very recently in Church history, the Church has offered us the option of fulfilling our Mass-on-Sunday obligation during some hours on Saturday. We now have extra time in which to fulfill an obligation, but—and here’s the key—having the option of satisfying one’s Mass-on-Sunday obligation on a Saturday in no way deprives us of the right to fulfill our Mass-on-Sunday obligation anytime during the 24 hours of Sunday. Else, the granting of an option with one hand would be to deprive us of a right with the other. Canon law does not work that way.

Not having ears to hear

In a fit of false piety (it's been known before) I decided not to post on the story of the brawl between two retired priests in Perth.

However lay canon lawyer, Edward Peters, discusses the canonical aspects of the case, which seem quite interesting.

Excuse me? Whaddya mean, you don’t like my goofy classroom hypotheticals? Would it be more believable for you if we said these two clerics were, say, tough old Aussies? Anyway, who says this is a made-up case? Just for that, I’m gonna call on you first, young man.