A self-depreciating smile

Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son (1846-1848), chapter xxxvii 'More warnings than one' (first published in number xii of the serial, September 1847), page 554 in the Oxford World's Classics edition.

Edith suffered him to proceed. She looked at him now. As he bent forward, to be nearer, with the utmost show of delicacy and respect, and with his teeth persuasively arrayed, in a self-depreciating smile, she felt as if she could have struck him dead. 

Mgr Richard Schuler: A chronicle of the reform

I had never heard of him but Mgr Richard Schuler is a big wheel among proponents of a traditional liturgy in the United States. Alexander Sample, the new Archbishop of Portland, specifically mentions him in an interview with the Catholic World Report.

In 1988 he published a long article on the history of the reform of sacred music, especially in the United States. It was reprinted as an appendix to a festschrift published in his honour in 1990: Cum Angelis Canere: Essays on Sacred Music and Pastoral Liturgy in Honour of Richard J. Schuler Robert A. Skeris, ed. A Chronicle of the Reform [pdf] can be found at the website of St Cecilia Schola Cantorum in Auburn, Alabama.

It does not have the satirical verve of Klaus Gamber or László Dobszay (scroll down), but it is a good read.

Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum: the word for blessed!

[The actual sedes vacans, courtesy of Charles Cole].

At the time of writing, the Vatican website still has a separate page on the election of Pope Benedict XVI (if that link dies you can go here).

Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum; habemus Papam: Eminentissimum ac Reverendissimum Dominum, Dominum Josephum Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem Ratzinger qui sibi nomen imposuit Benedictum XVI.

Now that is not what Jorge Cardinal Medina Estévez actually said.

A reason to go to Canberra

Further to the story from two weeks ago last year about a beer from a massive internationa brewery (named after the state of Victoria) winning a prize at the Royal Queensland Food and Wine Show the small brewers are striking back with the Small Brewer's Beer Festival.

"People have no idea how extremely competitive and ruthless the beer business can be, it really is war. And the big breweries don't take any prisoners. So instead of competing with them directly at other beer festivals we thought we would hold our own and just not invite them."

It's on 9th March. So plenty of notice then.

An illuminated history of Ampleforth

The porch of the North Transept of Ampleforth Abbey is connected by a corridor which leads past the monks' refectory into the Central Building of the school. At the beginning of the corridor there is now displayed a history of Monasticism in general and Ampleforth in particular in an illuminated calligraphic manuscript.

Until I read it in 2006, I did not know that Dom Anselm Bolton was the last priest to be tried under the penal laws and had never heard of Dom Sigebert Buckley. So I typed it up for the ages.

It is a good read if stylistically clumsy. "The monks elected their own Abbot instead of the General Chapter, all monks even if they were not in Ampleforth or in the parishes took orders from their Abbot."

That sentence means the General Chapter of the English Benedictine Congregation no longer appointed Priors of Ampleforth, but instead the monks of Ampleforth elected an Abbot for themselves, and that all Ampleforth monks, wheresoever they might be (on the parishes, at St Benet's Hall), are under the Abbot's authority. It does not mean that Abbots ordain priests. "Took orders" is not, I think, a Catholic expression but Anglican.

"Benedictine monks played a major part in the conversion of England to Christianity and the formation of the Church of England". This means the Church in England, it does not mean the institution of which The Queen is Governor in which monks were far from welcome.

A nice loaf of whirlwind-flour bread

Lest you think I only pick on the silly things said by Australian journalists here is a paragraph by Dan Hodges (son of Glenda Jackson, no I can't quite believe it either) in the (London) Daily Telegraph. He is discussing the consequences of the Eastleigh by-election of 28th February at which the UK Independence Party (UKIP) candidate came second, beating the Conservative and Labour candidates. In American terms that is like beating the GOP and the Democrats, in Australian terms like beating the Liberals and the ALP. When these sorts of thing usually happen UKIP is seen to be the spoiler for the Conservatives, in this case it is fair to say it is the other way around.

It was expected, Hodges means to say, that another party would benefit from dissatisfaction with Conservative policy, but that UKIP would reap these benefits was not expected.

However, that is not what he actually says:

Sede Vacante

Visit to the Pontifical Major Roman Seminary, on the occasion of the Feast of Our Lady of Trust, Lectio Divina of Pope Benedict XVI, Friday 8th February 2013.

The second term: inheritance. It is a very important word in the Old Testament, where Abraham is told that his seed will inherit the earth, and this was always the promise for his descendents. You will have the earth, you will be heirs of the earth. In the New Testament, this word becomes a word for us; we are heirs, not of a specific country, but of the land of God, of the future of God. Inheritance is something of the future, and thus this word tells us above all that as Christians we have a future, the future is ours, the future is God’s. Thus, being Christians, we know that the future is ours and the tree of the Church is not a tree that is dying but a tree that constantly puts out new shoots. Therefore we have a reason not to let ourselves be upset, as Pope John said, by the prophets of doom who say: well, the Church is a tree that grew from the mustard seed, grew for two thousand years, now she has time behind her, it is now time for her to die. No. The Church is ever renewed, she is always reborn. The future belongs to us. Of course, there is a false optimism and a false pessimism. A false pessimism tells us that the epoch of Christianity is over. No: it is beginning again! The false optimism was the post-Council optimism, when convents closed, seminaries closed and they said “but... nothing, everything is fine!”.... No! Everything is not fine. There are also serious, dangerous omissions and we have to recognize with healthy realism that in this way things are not all right, it is not all right when errors are made. However, we must also be certain at the same time that if, here and there, the Church is dying because of the sins of men and women, because of their non-belief, at the same time she is reborn. The future really belongs to God: this is the great certainty of our life, the great, true optimism that we know. The Church is the tree of God that lives for ever and bears within her eternity and the true inheritance: eternal life.