Autumnal Musings

Congratulations go to Mr Peter Phillips and Miss Autumn Kelly on the occasion of their wedding, today. I hope they have a long and happy life together.

The new Mr and Mrs Phillips’ wedding has received a certain amount of press coverage in the U.K. because Peter Phillips is the grandson of the Queen (his mother being her daughter, Princess Anne). And as part of that coverage, it has been noted that the charmingly named Autumn Kelly has renounced her Catholic faith in order to marry her beloved.

Why has she done this? I am not aware of any statement issued by the newly weds so cannot be sure. BBC On-Line, however, states that,

The new Mrs Phillips gave up her Catholic faith and converted to the Church of England, enabling Mr Phillips to retain his right to the throne. (Read the full report here).

Interesting. For as the report points out, Mr Phillips is 11th in line to the throne. Of course, when Prince William and Harry become fathers, he will move to the lower teens. That is, of course, if those of child bearing age between positions three and ten, do not produce any offspring.

As everyone knows, Catholics are forbidden under the law to become the king or Queen of Britain. But given the fact that he is such a low ranking claimant to the throne, and one whose claim will only get lower within the next few years, is it really credible to suggest that Mrs Phillips renounced her faith so that her husband could remain a legitimate claimant?

If she did, the question of who required her to make the conversion arises. If it was her decision, she surely betrays herself as an cynical opportunist. Likewise if it was a member of her family who put her up to it. If, however, it was her husband or another member of the Royal Family, well, in a quiet way, it speaks volumes about how the Royal Family in Britain sees the Catholic faith. And it is one that is quite at variance with society at large.

Amidst the great crisis of the world, the conversion of Autumn Kelly is not a matter that will exercise too many minds, perhaps rightly so; but nevertheless, unless it can be said that Mrs Phillips renounced her faith because she genuinly ceased to believe it, the shadows that the possible reasons for her conversion cast, sadden me. As a Royalist, I may also say that I find them troubling.

From the ashes of Communism…

Reading the Daily Telegraph yesterday, I came across an extraordinary story. The headline says it all:

Mikhail Gorbachev admits he is a Christian.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Communist leader of the Soviet Union, has acknowledged his Christian faith for the first time, paying a surprise visit to pray at the tomb of St Francis of Assisi.

Read the full story at the paper’s website here. What can one say about this? To be sure, I do not know which is more surprising - that Gorbachev is a Christian or that he has a particular devotion to St Francis of Assisi. One would expect a Russian to be devoted to one of the tougher saints, let’s say, the likes of Ignatius of Loyola or Ambrose!

Having said that, I am very surprised that Gorbachev has anything to do with specifically Catholic Saints at all. It is rare that I hear of any positive interaction between the Catholic Church and Russian Orthodox, to which the last leader of the Soviet Union belongs. Maybe, just maybe, Gorbachev could be a positive influence here. At any rate, I am sure his prayers will be.

Judicial Sloggers in Italy

Gamesmanship at the crease - in the form of sledging - recently came under close scrutiny when Australia found that it could not take it as well as it has traditionally given it. 

Now, gamesmanship before the law - in the form of lying - is receiving similar attention after the Court of Cassation in Italy ruled that it is acceptable for a woman to lie about having an affair in order to protect her honour. The full story is at BBC On-Line here.

You might have thought that in having an affair, the woman had laid aside her honour, but the judges disagreed. How has this come about? Well, Italy may be the Catholic heart of Europe, but she is also the country of the bella figura where giving a good impression of oneself is regarded as being not just a good thing to do but necessary. Perhaps this blinded the judges to the implications of their ruling.

Or, it may be that these judges are, well, a bit mad, for as the BBC article points out, they are they same judges who once said that a woman who wore tight jeans could not be raped as they could only be removed with her consent.

Whatever the truth of the matter, let’s just hope that the cuckold never asks the judge why he is so fat… 

Three Balls of Glory

Congratulations go to Ryan Sidebottom today. On the fourth day of the first test against New Zealand, towards the end of a fairly unremarkable day’s play, he has taken a hat trick of wickets. Read all about it at BBC On-Line. Only a few English cricketers have achieved this feat before, so it is well worthy of our praise.

A word of congratulation should also go to Tim Ambrose, England’s Wicket Keeper, who scored a half century in his debut test.

Despite all these heroics, Jonathon Agnew is still predicting that the match will end in a draw, but it is encouraging (and a nice thing to wake up to in the morning) to see England do so well.

Short, and to the point

When it comes to official documents, the Vatican is as good as any other body in writing them in dryasdust language. Very rarely, if ever, are they written to please the eye as well as the ear. Having said that, however, one can only admire the following question-answer method as used by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. For example,

First question: Whether the Baptism conferred with the formulas «I baptize you in the name of the Creator, and of the Redeemer, and of the Sanctifier» and «I baptize you in the name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer» is valid?

Second question: Whether the persons baptized with those formulas have to be baptized in forma absoluta?

RESPONSES

To the first question: Negative.

To the second question: Affirmative.

The Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI, at the Audience granted to the undersigned Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, approved these Responses, adopted in the Ordinary Session of the Congregation, and ordered their publication.

Rome, from the Offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, February 1, 2008.

Instead of giving long winded and, ultimately, evasive answers, wouldn’t it be good if Governments were forced to use a similar format for questions regarding its policies? It would certainly give ministers something to think about.

A Matter of Money

Zimbabwe and China are both alike in iniquity yet while the British Government tries to find a way of banning the Zimbabwean cricket team from touring England (BBC On-Line report here), the Prime Minister gets ready to travel to China to watch the British Olympic team compete in the Beijing Olympics. And without a shred of irony, a spokesman for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport says, “We should not let international sport become a propaganda tool for dictators.” Oops.

Cricket at the Crossroads

The Recusant Cricket Club would be remiss in its duty if it did not take heed of cricketing developments in India. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has set up the Indian Premier League - a franchise league playing Twenty20 cricket. The full story is at BBC On-Line here.

Everyone will have their own opinion about Twenty20 cricket. Personally, I abhor it and make no effort to listen to any matches that turn up on the radio. Not that they do very often, except in one minute reports during football programmes. So, I ignore the reports instead. 

Cricket for me is about the four or five day game; county and Test level. The (international) one-day game is to be tolerated, but no more. It takes away the technique and makes the game a glorified slug-fest.

Thus, the idea of the county game being diminished by a franchise Twenty20 tournament is abhorrent to me. To make matters worse, it looks like the franchises would follow the awful practice of giving their teams names that have no relation to the area. In my own beloved rugby union, we have the Sale Sharks. I have heard that the north west is a hard area, but never of sharks prowling the area.  

So, goodbye Gloucestershire, hello Gloucestershire Grim Reapers. Maybe they will play with scythes and not bats. Goodbye Middlesex, hello Middlesex Marauders. Presuming, of course, that the county association is not ditched altogether.

If the IPL is taken up in England, it will be the next biggest sell-out after the sale of all cricketing TV rights to Sky TV. For the sake of all that is good and holy and five days long, I urge readers to reject the IPL and all its off shoots.

Kind Hearts and Minarets

Recently, I was told about the Anglican bishop of Oxford who said that a local mosque ought to be able to sound the call to prayer on Fridays and the question was asked whether this is something we should approve of.

At first glance, the answer seemed to me to be ‘yes’. After all, we live in a country which - the established Church notwithstanding - does not favour one religion over another. Christian churches have the right to ring their bells every Sunday, so surely mosques ought to have the right to make their call on Fridays.

However, as I was mulling over this issue the other day, I began to wonder whether I was not approaching it from the wrong angle, that is to say, from the point of view of the country, instead of the community.

According to the national centred view, the basis on which we say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the mosque comes from the top, that is, from the Government of the day. Thus, if the Government believes it right and fair that mosques should be afforded the same right as churches, then so they must.

But is it really right and fair that the Government should have this final say? Surely the better course would be for it to delegate (so far as is reasonably possible) all local decisions to local authorities; including the issue of how to deal with the transmission of sounds that are liable to affect the community.

Therefore, if the community is likely to be disturbed by the sound of the Muslim call to prayer, it is right and fair that the local authority has the right to say ‘no’ to it even if the Government believes the reverse.

But what about the Muslims themselves? I would suggest that in this matter, the principal of fairness lies with the community (represented by the local authority) and not with the particular group within that community. If it were otherwise, particular groups would simply end up doing their own thing to the detriment of all.

For the above reason, while I respect the Bishop of Oxford’s chosen stance, I think that not only may one disagree with the right of mosques to broadcast their call to prayer, but one may do so and - far from being unfair - actually be fair for one is, of course, a member of the community that will be affected by the broadcast were it to take place.

The Long View

Cricket is a useful metaphor for all sorts of things.  It teaches patience: something which in its ordinary form lasts a day, and in its extraordinary forms lasts between three hours and five days can never be reduced to instant gratification; satisfaction comes from long periods of strategic thinking punctuated by moments of sheer brilliance.

The current Pontificate seems to me more and more like the Edgebaston Test of the 2003 Ashes: it is absolutely absorbing.  The Pope has taken a long view about the importance of winning the Battle of the Liturgy; his opponents think that they can just turn up and win.  They think that he has some respectable players on his side, but are ignoring the fact that he has developed them, and continues to develop them, as a team.  They think, deep down, that they are invincible.  We know that they are wrong. 

One of the strategic mistakes the opposition has made is to think that it owns the idea of “Reform of the Liturgy”, forgetting that for anybody under the age of forty, the liberalisation of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass is a major reform; that being able to attend the traditional Rite is as transcending an experience as it must have been to attend a folk Mass in the early 1970s. 

Another is to think that the Pope’s use of old vestments, or his new MC’s arrangement of the altar at St Peter’s will only speak to the old or nostalgic: they forget that the under-40s have been brought up to question, to ask why things are as they are, and that the Pope has answers.

Another is to think that their Year Zero has any significance for anybody who wasn’t around at the time: they congratulate themselves on a tremendous change without realising that for anybody who doesn’t know what came before, change is what is about to come.

So Edgebaston: a team whose opponents think doomed to failure is showing that it has learned, and that it is more than capable of taking on a powerful opposition.  It understands its own weaknesses as well as those of the opposition, and is therefore better placed to capitalise on them against a team of cocky, self-confident, chippy - what I hope 2008 will tell us are - also-rans.

Bubbles exist to be burst.  Some of us have our pins ready.

Climacteric

His Holiness, and I assume this is acknowledged by all, is a very clever man.  Not just an intellectual, his experience as a teacher, a pastoral Bishop and a Curial cardinal means that he has an unparalleled understanding of people, and especially of the clergy. 

One of the implications of this is that he knows what he is doing.  That sounds like a statement of the obvious, but it is worth stopping and thinking about it: it means that his public statements follow what the military might refer to as the “Effects Based Approach”.  Start by thinking about the endstate that you wish to achieve, and consider the activities that you will need to carry out to reach that position, the order in which you should carry them out, and the allies you will need to draw on to enable you to reach this endstate.

Viewed in this light, it seems that we are approaching a climacteric in the Church: in fact, it may already have started.  The Pope has appealed to priests over the Bishop’s heads and has given them permission to use the Extraordinary Rite ad libitum.  Several Bishops have reacted negatively to this - do they see it as an attack on their authority? - and have “interpreted” the Motu Proprio in such a way as to restrict the permission given to priests by the Pope.

Now if my assertion above is true: that HH the P knows exactly what he wants to achieve: then it isn’t hard to conclude that he expected this reaction.  Indeed, he might almost welcome it.  Although there can be no doubt that he sincerely desires a return to regular celebration of the Extraordinary Rite, and to Masses celebrated everywhere and always in Beauty and adherence to the rubrics, I believe that his target is Episcopalianism - government by Bishops - in the Catholic Church.

One of the novelties which arose from the aftermath of Vatican II was the creation of national and regional Conferences of Bishops which began to federate episcopal responsibility within countries and regions.  The Church  had managed pretty well for 1900 years without these structures, even after the rise of the nation state.  This was because the Church, while local and universal, is not national; but what has arisen is national. 

The Bishops in England and Wales were able to coordinate a response to what became the 1944 Education Act without the need for an Eccleston Square full of officials.  That was because most of their work was local and pastoral.

The Pope’s target is regulation of the Episcopacy, I believe, and the necessary reduction of the power they bring to bear when they act collectively, especially when that power is exercised against the Pope.

If I’m right, then some of us will be asked, however obliquely, to choose our loyalties: do we follow our Pope or our Bishop?  This fight will not be pleasant.